Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

Personality is a major organizing force in the development of our worldview, our personal way of making sense of the world and shaping our approach to it.  Our natural outlook is not inherently right or wrong as though there is a perfect personality to attain. Rather, God has made us each with our own abilities, roles, emphases, and perspectives so as to offer unique contributions to each other. Every personality comes with its strengths and weaknesses—we offer our strengths as gifts and receive the strengths of others to help with our weaknesses.  Like the interlocking hollows and loops in jigsaw puzzle pieces, we come together as a whole.  In this way our differences can be a great  bond for relationship and a source of insight and growth when handled with mutual respect and validation.

But alternative views are often at odds with our own perspective and so appear meaningless, confusing, or threatening–not understanding how to inter-connect, we knock against each other.  I discovered this to be a huge part of the conflicts Kimberly and I had early in marriage. It is not simply that Berly and I disagreed about our boxes of morals, relational expectations, and the like… but that she had no boxes.  I was trying to discuss box dimensions and what fit where, and she said, “What boxes?”  Without boxes, even “outside the box” thinking doesn’t exist.  I am analytical and she is intuitive, I need categories and she needs space, I want clarity and she wants connection.  It was the tower of Babel in miniature and without a translator.  I didn’t disagree with her individual points, but with her whole system.

The more cohesive my worldview, the stronger and more stable it is, like the many separate strands a spider weaves into a web, and in a well-integrated system, when one strand is touched, everything is set jangling, so trying to incorporate a perspective at odds with one element threatens the whole.  For instance, Kimberly said she was hurt by my words, but was not blaming me.  That made no sense in my world where pain was proof of fault–either she was too sensitive or misunderstood me or I was too insensitive.  We had to establish responsibility so we could figure out how to fix it.  She wanted to share, I wanted to fix.

I can see the benefit of her view: sharing puts us both on the same side of the issue, blaming sets us up against each other.  But that one idea threatened my whole system.  Is no one responsible for anything?  That would be chaos.  Or do we let everyone determine their own standards?  That would be war.  Trying to integrate her one idea raised a hundred questions about good and evil, spirituality, relationships, God… the whole enchilada.  I was tempted to find a slot to squeeze her idea into, validate her perspective by twisting it to fit my worldview.  In this case, between my boxes of “hurt blamed on speaker” and “hurt blamed on listener” I could add a box of special cases, “no-fault pain.”  The threat is quelled and my system holds together, but at what price? I fail to truly understand my wife or to stretch and grow in any substantial way.  My system is fundamentally challenged, but I shunt the new idea onto a side-railing where I can occasionally access it for special use with my wife.  But getting savvy about word choice to avoid conflict is hardly the same as real understanding, acceptance, and validation.

To truly understand Berly, I had to understand her from within her own worldview, not as addenda to mine.  To validate her, I had to find a way to also appreciate her worldview.  To benefit from her view, I had to find a way to make her ideas meaningful and important, to make room in my system for who she is and how she sees the world… in other words to change my worldview by valuing and incorporating her perspective.  It took years and was not smooth sailing, but love finds a way, and it changed me for the better in a hundred ways.