Personality

Finally, good news. While the meaning of Oswald's message is still a bit tangled with threads of other thoughts in my brain, I believe there is real comfort here, and even now, I am beginning to taste it.

I confess that I actually liked the quote with which I began yesterday's post. I've wanted to shout something like it on numerous occasions. The problem is I'd primarily be shouting at myself, and where's the comfort in that?

Yesterday, my counselor gave me a sheet on "core sensitivities in close relationships." I saw myself most closely mirrored in the one titled "esteem-sensitive": "We believe that who we are, just as we are, is not enough to be valued. Therefore, to protect ourselves from criticism and judgment, we continually attempt to prove that we are worthy through performance and achievement." Performance and achievement, I believe, are part of what Oswald labels individuality -- all elbows. Also terribly unreliable and remarkably short-lived.

Beneath all my blustering to be loved and accepted for who I really am, the truth is that I'm not even willing to let you see who I really am. I'm trying to distract you with my performance. Notice the word "protect" in the quote above, and remember Oswald's words from yesterday: "The shell of individuality is God's created natural covering for the protection of the personal life, but individuality must go in order that the personal life may come out and be brought into fellowship with God." Otherwise, we become isolated. My performance, my blustering, my individuality keep my personal life hidden -- protect me to some extent, yes, but prevent my fellowship with God. They do the opposite of what I desperately desire -- they keep me from being known.

"If you give up your right to yourself to God," Oswald writes, "the real true nature of your personality answers to God straight away. Jesus Christ emancipates the personality, and the individuality is transfigured (not lost); the transfiguring element is love, personal devotion to Jesus."

If what I truly want is relationship -- to be known and loved -- then the insistence upon individuality and the hiding behind performance have got to go.