This is wild.
Let me back up a moment. I’ve been fascinated with the MBTI — Meyers Briggs Temperament Indicator — since I learned about it in the early 90s. I’ve had more people go glassy-eyed on me as I carry on about dominant, axillary, tertiary and inferior preferences, desperate for others to see the amazing, complex, dynamic pattern I see when I look at those four letters that indicate one’s personality preferences than the economics teacher in "Ferris Bueller." I love this stuff!
Okay, so I’m weird.
Here’s the thing that’s got me so excited tonight that I went from falling-over tired to wide awake with excitement. I should know by now never to check Joe’s blog just before I go to bed. He makes me think and can induce insomnia faster than a Venti Chai Cream Frappuccino. But sometimes I’m a slow learner, so I checked. He posted his indicator results from this MBTI website I’ve not heard of before. He’s an INFJ. Now, that’s the personality type I’ve come to call my own for the last four years, so I thought it rather cool that we shared it.
However, I also realize that the last couple of years I’ve been "testing" as an INFP. Most of these are those fun little quizilla things that are way too short to have any real value or meaning. They’re just fun ways to say, "Look! I’m like Dumbledore." or whatever. But I also began to recognize a growing preference in my life to live more spontaneously, or at least less structured. So I knew I’ve been shifting preferences, but I didn’t realize it was enough to truly throw me into a different MBTI type.
Turns out it is. The crazy thing is, at least to me, is that I not only scored solidly on the "P" side (though it does seem to be balanced with the "J", which is good; balance is what you want to achieve, I’m told) but when I read the profile for an INFP I see myself completely. Almost as if I’m seeing myself for the first time, or first time in a long time. This is really me. The me I am inside. The me I’ve been afraid for anyone to see since I was a small child.
INFPs never seem to lose their sense of wonder. One might say they see life through rose-colored glasses. It’s as though they live at the edge of a looking-glass world where mundane objects come to life, where flora and fauna take on near-human qualities.
INFP children often exhibit this in a ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ fashion, switching from reality to fantasy and back again. With few exceptions, it is the NF child who readily develops imaginary playmates (as with Anne of Green Gables’s "bookcase girlfriend"–her own reflection)…
Lord have mercy. If that’s not me I don’t know what is. As an aside, I have to say I love the idea of having more in common with Anne of Green Gables than red hair. I love her drama queen ways and see a lot of myself in her passion and imagination. As a child everything was fodder for my imagination. Everything had life and meaning and mystery and I saw it all come alive and dance for me while everyone else just saw "stuff." I ran around with Jesus as a playmate and Will Robinson as a brother.
I don’t think I ever lost the wonder of life but I learned to bury it deep within the older I got. Most people, I’ve learned, don’t see the wonder of life with such awe as I do. I was often teased, laughed at, made fun of and otherwise tortured for my way of viewing the world. So I learned to hide the awe, the Lu-in-Wonderland of the real me in favor of the sensing-thinking mentality that so dominates our world. I can fake that pretty well, amazingly enough. I thought one particular sentence in the profile was incredibly helpful in my understanding of this "gift": "INFPs can even masquerade in their ESTJ business suit, but not without expending considerable energy." Surprisingly very true. I can. To the point that I sometimes questioned if my awe and wonder were really me, or just parts of someone else that I’d stolen because I secretly thought they were cool. But it really does suck the energy right out of me.
For so long I tried to be who I thought everyone else wanted and expected me to be that I lost touch with who I really am. My re-commitment to Jesus in 1993 and my time at Mosaic seemed to bring me back in touch with that wonder and awe, and slowly I began embrace who I really am. I think that shows in the shifts of my MBTI results over time: INTJ to INFJ to…. now INFP. The last last three years in particular have been incredibly significant in finally rediscovering and reconnecting with my true self.
No "profile" or indicator result can truly define all that a person is. There’s so much more to me than my personality preferences; things like my strengths, passions, experiences and spiritual gifts. Yet reading this profile tonight I felt like God was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "This is kinda cool, isn’t it. This is a picture of who I created you to be; who you were early on. Look how far you’ve come: full-circle. Not changing, just maturing into who I made you to be."
Who knew that when I took this thing tonight with no other motivation than to have a little bit of fun and prove that Joe and I are "special" together (we are!) that God would take the opportunity to remind me of the wonder and awe of life in all it’s seemingly random craziness.
