"I produce, therefore I am."

Our first response when we truly encounter God in all his holiness and ourselves in our essence is not a sense of delight but a sense of utter ruin. - JD Greer (paraphrased by me)

So this morning, I pulled out my handy dandy "Discovering the Enneagram" (Richard Rohr) book to re-evaluate, study, and attempt to continue a process of growing through, against, and into holier places in my personality, character, and core tendencies. For those of you not familiar with the Enneagram, it's well worth checking out... think improved MBTI, with hope for growth and change.

At any rate, the older I get, the more I am persuaded that I fall into one particular category... partially because I read through it and simultaneously identify with and loathe it. At once, my sin is identified, my weakness highlighted, and my battle laid forth. The lie that I believe is:

I produce, I achieve, therefore I am.

It is devastating. It's like looking in the mirror and seeing that huge zit that you knew was there but were adamantly pretending wasn't. Confrontation of reality. Yes, this is who I am. Yes, these are my core tendencies. And I'm good at it. And I'm comfortable with it.

When you look your sin in the face; when you see how far you are from holiness, the result is this sense of ruin. Utter and complete. I know it is lie. But woe is me, I still operate under these guiding principles. I am undone.

But fortunately for me, that is not the end of the story...

[They] "... long, sometimes without knowing it themselves, not only for praise and recognition, but for real love. They get so much applause for their successes that in the end they think that's all they want. It takes a long time before they understand that there is more than deserved recognition: unmerited, unconditional love." [Discovering the Enneagram, Richard Rohr]

And the beautiful part for me, is that as I look back over the last year, I can see how God has begun to write that redeemed narrative for me, where I am not defined by what I do, how much I succeed, what I can achieve, the applause of the multitudes, but by something far deeper. A type of love which is entirely unmerited, based not on what I can do, but completely unconditional. And to experience that is to long for it...

It is the freedom to fail.
It is the freedom to take risk.
It is the freedom to not be guarded, not pretend to be something that I am not.
It is the freedom to give and receive love freely.

I'm still on a journey. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. But I am not where I was a year ago... or even 6 months ago... and that's a good thing!

Here's to celebrating the little things...