Learning about myself

This year has been and will continue to be a great experience as I continue to discover who I really am. The things I'm learning about myself are interesting, and range from my strengths to love languages to personality to my quirks. As I discover these things, it helps me not only to understand who I really am, but also why I am the way I am - because I have this trait or this strength, I respond this way. Honestly, some things are not so fun to discover. I've discovered what it is that others do that really hurts me. And as I discover how different I am from other people, with this comes the realization that the things that hurt me are things that they wouldn't even think twice about. Because of this, I don't feel like I can approach people with that kind of thing - mostly because of my avoid-conflict-at-all-cost personality, but also because I realize that I probably hurt people too, and I don't even realize it.

It's also been a lot of fun, especially learning about my strengths. If you ever have the chance to take the Strengthfinder test - do it. My strengths are: Includer, Positivity, Developer, Input, and Empathy. We had someone come in to talk to us about our strengths, and she summarized each of them for us. For me, she said that I'm a people person; I make an effort to include everyone, can sense the feelings of others, and cultivate the potential in others; I have an enthusiasm which is contagious; I collect and archive types of information and crave to know more. I took this test about 5 months ago and when I first got my results, I didn't necessarily agree that these were my top 5, and didn't even see all of them in myself. But since then, I not only have discovered how true that test really was as I begin to see each strength coming up more and more, but those living with me have also seen them in me, which has been really cool.

It's crazy how God makes all of us so unique and so different from others (although I personally wonder how similar I am to my twin sister and how many personality traits of ours are the same...). While this can certainly add drama and conflict, it prevents boring and uninteresting relationships with everyone person with whom we come into contact.

There's no better way to really understand yourself than to live in community - it gives you the option to learn about yourself right along with those you're living with. I really love living in community. Granted, the only people that live here at HDC year-round are my fellow volunteer staff members (and even this is subject to change, and has, with the addition of Dorrin and Rachel, and the subtraction of Ben). But there is something in the relative stability of living with the same people all the time. It's different than living with family, because there is an understanding between family members of how each person works and functions, and a response to most situations is instinctively known before a person reacts. However, in a community, that hunch of a person's reaction is a learned thing. Having lived with Margaret and Jess the longest, I can interpret a look from either of them without the need for anything to be said, and I know how they will respond to things, and there is simply an understanding between us. Granted, it is a continual learning process for all five of us as we're very different, but we are all willing to work at resolving those differences. The longer we live together, the more I appreciate this in the others, and the more I appreciate each indivdual more as well as I get to really know them.

I have been challenged recently to serve the people I live with, at every opportunity. When they ask me to do a favor, chances are that I honestly don't really want to do what they're asking. For example, the other day Dorrin asked me to help him clean out a van that we're selling. Did I really want to go out in freezing temperatures and vacuum out a van that I knew for a fact was very dirty? Of course not. But I agreed to help him. And it wasn't all that bad - there's something that comes with teamwork, which there tends to be a lot of around here. Good thing I like living in community and teamwork - cause that's what happens here.