31. I have a hard time with moderation and balance, because I find it easier to live by extremes or by rigid rules.
32. I am incredibly ambitious. I am driven by significance. If I feel like I’m not doing something significant, I search for a way that I can change that, or else I go crazy. This makes it hard for me to rest, or to trust that God is at work even when I’m not.
33. When there is a skill I want to learn, I teach myself so that I don’t have to ask for help. This makes me a jack of all trades.
34. I like music as long as it’s actually musical. I don’t understand why the majority of Christian music is so boring. If your musical gift is from the Almighty God and for the Almighty God, shouldn’t it be no less than outstanding and totally unique?
35. I see every event or opportunity in my life as eternally significant. This makes me a “yes” woman.
36. I am a meticulous record-keeper. I love to draw significance out of the story God’s telling through my life. I often spend hours writing down events, lists, text messages, and other things I don’t want to forget.
37. I love to write. It frees me from the tangled spaghetti that is my brain. It draws out significance from the otherwise fleeting thought. It reminds me that there is something good I can pluck from anything, and I don’t want to miss out on finding it.
38. One time, I tried to separate my rationality and my emotions. It sawed me in half.
39. I know that my experiences, my logic, my knowledge, and my feelings cannot, in and of themselves, lead me to an accurate understanding of life. But I know that they are often what God chooses to use to speak to me. So I guess I’ll just deal with them.
40. I believe that social justice starts with the social interactions I have (or don’t have) every day. And this freaks me out, because it means that I actually have to have integrity when it comes to the stuff I claim to believe in.
Even since I wrote this list about a week ago, I’ve been more aware of how my mind works. And I’ve also noticed that, by God’s grace, these things have not had so much power to control my life.
This is a list of 40 things — not 40 things that describe me, not 40 things that I want to change. These things don’t define me or control me, ultimately, but they walk around with me, so I thought I might as well get to know them.
I’m curious. What things walk around with you?
You have enspired me to do forty of my own.