Divine Design

Today, Kim and I had our sit-down with Dr. Douglas of Covenant Theological Seminary. He is the local guru on personality profiling and how a person's profile impacts thier compatibility with various types of work.

Sound interesting? I found it to be more than interesting as it was immensely helpful.

To start this process Kim and I both completed our own 80 page packet that allowed us to self examine and come out the other side with a description of our strenghts and weaknesses.

While much of my results weren't that surprising, some of the categories we had to look through opened my eyes to weaknesses I hadn't yet named as well as outlets for strengths I've been at a loss to use.

Thanks to the gift of technology, I was able to use my MAC laptop to record the entire 2.5 hour session.

Kim and I are almost the exact opposite, but apparently, we're in good company as many seminary couples bound for vocational ministry are in the same position. Apparently we compliment each other in our giftings. I am weak where Kim is strong so she is able to help me out when i get stuck and vice versa. The one problem is, such is not easy. Being so radically different in what drives us can make for challenges.

However, there are great things like this example:

One of my weeknesses is a loud internal critique of myself. I can see lots of possibilities, its a gift. Turned back on itself I can see lots of ways things can go wrong. This often drives me to work harder than I need to on something and expect the worse.

I did that Thursday when I told Kim I expected to fail my Greek quiz on Friday morning. The situation was simple, I had new vocab and new grammatical structure I was given 3 days to learn and hadn't studied it at all--I simply had too much to do and I chose to give way on greek, knowing I could catch up on the weekend. I figured I'd take a minor hit with a failed quiz and move on.

In any case, Friday morning came and I reiterated my emminant failure. Sure, I had studied the night before, but you can't put off the study of a second language and get away with it, particularly when its stuff that doesn't exist in your own language.

Well, I got a 100% on my quiz. Kim kindly exhorted me about my false expectations and warned she would laugh at me the next time I forecasted doom.

When she asked if I'd learned anything I replied "I suppose the Greek quiz wasn't as hard as I expected."
Her response was simple but good for me to hear: Maybe the reason is that I am good at learning Greek and didn't need to assume I would fail if I missed out on a study session or two because I could catch up quickly.

I felt rather silly. That's exactly what I did. I missed out on some study and I made it up.

Thanks Kim for keeping me grounded!