Onboarding Week 3: Who Am I?

The focus of this week was on figuring out who we are, what our personal values are and how to resolve conflict. It started off with this: Jesus doesn’t have any confusion about who we are. We have confusion about who we are. We answered a lot of questions about ourselves, did DISC assessments, thought about the things we love/loathe doing (in a work context), talked out future plans and developed personal mission statements. To be honest, I struggled with many of the exercises. I just couldn’t think of anything. Perhaps I don’t do enough internal reflection, but I found that once I started, the devil really used that as an opportunity to make me doubt myself. When you see everyone’s personalities laid out, it’s hard not to compare and really focus on all the negatives of yours. I’m a high I (influence), and interestingly the only one in our group (which means patience will be key for me on this field service as many of the others are detail oriented). The negatives of my personality type include talking too much, being overly enthusiastic and difficulty with focus. It’s easy to see that I have all of those.

Kat & I had a nice paddle boat ride until she fired me for
being unable to create appropriate ripples (to photograph).

Thankfully I am surrounded by such amazing Godly people and I was able to talk it out with my small group. One girl in our group has the opposite personality of me and has always struggled with feeling she should talk more. Here I was, saying I thought I should talk less. God made us all different for a reason and He has different plans for each of us. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on the fruits of the spirit (gentleness anyone?), but it does mean we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others or wish we were different. Those aren’t Godly thoughts. We were each wonderfully and beautifully made by God and we need to remember that. I need to remember that.

We also did an exercise where we narrowed down a long list of values until we only had four. That’s a really hard exercise! Internally you’re like, do I just pick love, grace, joy and peace? But this goes back to us each being different. Not picking a value, doesn’t mean it isn’t important. However there are certain things that you demonstrate more or that guide you more than others. My four values, in order, were: grace, selflessness, honesty and passion. We read out our values and every single person had values that differed from the others. After this we developed our mission statements. I thought about this a lot but what I came up with (for now) was this: My life purpose is to use my passion and honesty to share stories of grace and truth that encourage others to seek God’s face and give Him all the glory. This is the culmination of a lot of thoughts that came during this week. One of the teachings was about how God gives us a new name (ex:Peter), and the words that kept coming to mind were storyteller and encourager. All things to think about.

In terms of the conflict resolution, the piece that stuck out to me the most was the idea of creating safe space for discussions. Do I want to be RIGHT or do I want to grow the RELATIONSHIP? I know what the “right” answer to the question is (relationship) but if I’m honest, being right is often more important to me. I often don’t create a safe environment for people to share their ideas and opinions (this is never intentional). I get very heated and passionate sometimes (all the time?) and that tends to shut people down, especially those who avoid conflict. It’s definitely something I need to work on. Do others believe that I care about their goals in this conversation? Another point was talking tentatively, which I mostly took to mean being gentler and having less absolutes in a conversation (ie. In my opinion, I perceived it this way, what do you think about….). This is going to be a long work in progress because I am a person of absolutes.

Cowboy church.

One new thing: We went to something called Cowboy church on Sunday. What an interesting concept! They try and get men, especially ranchers, coming to church, so they have a big ranch and rodeo and all kinds of ‘cowboy’ stuff. 75% of the vehicles were trucks, everyone had cowboy hats and jeans and cowboy boots (including the pastor) and the worship bordered on the country side. We really weren’t sure what to expect but it was awesome! The worship, message and people were all fantastic. It’s so cool to see people worship the same God, in different ways. It really drives home a lesson they’ve been teaching us: It’s not wrong….it’s different. If it’s not a Biblical principal then it’s just a preference, and those aren’t as important as loving others.

One thing I observed: We are becoming such a family! We spend our free time having intense dinner conversations (and solving decades long theological issues), playing board/card games and watching movies together. When some people leave on the weekend, their absence is really felt. We can’t wait to have them back. We also swim and one girl is leading a water aerobics class. We all submitted baby pictures to one person and now we all have to guess who is who. It's awesome. 

One of our many game nights.

One thing I felt God was telling me: I’m realizing that God had a lot He wanted to teach me before sending me back to the ship. Everyday is filled with wonderful realizations of who He is and how He is working around me. I’m working on seeing Him in everything. This week He gave me this beautiful picture of standing in the middle of a flowing river, dancing and singing joyously, so content in Him. All around, there were thirsty people, looking hesitantly at the river and wanting to drink from it. They were drawn to it because of the joy of the people who were already immersed. We can cause people to question things and seek answers just by our indescribable joy and peace. It’s an encouraging thought. Come to the river, all who are thirsty, come and drink. Come to the river, taste and see.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. - Colossians 1:9-12

Our lovely onboarding group!