I’ve been studying some personality assessment instruments as I work through a deep edit of my novel, The Tower of Babel. In the process I’ve learned a lot about myself.

The Enneagram model seems to peg me as a Loyal Skeptic, which means I become a Performer (another personality type) under stress. One sentence is still ringing in my head from the paragraph on self-development for Performers:

Remember that love comes from being, not from doing.

Why am I constantly trying to recover my self-worth with my accomplishments? Is my faith in myself, and in God’s declaration that I am made in his image, that small?

Love=doing is an easy lie to swallow. If my girlfriend does my dishes, I’m obligated to do something in return, right? Wrong. She did my dishes out of love. Acts done out of love don’t go onto one side of a scale that needs balancing; they go into an infinite pool that doesn’t keep the books at all.

Stop requiring achievements, accomplishments and doings from other people and yourself. You don’t have to have something impressive to talk about. Be silent and accept silence. Accept a life of mundaneity. Accept the simplicity, smallness, and emptiness of being human.

Be in God’s love and in the love of your family and friends.