I think I’m getting close to a resolution for this moment of searching and re-ordering my life. I have enjoyed this process, actually. I’ve learned a lot.
One thing I did was use this site to take a personality test. The test was free, and I purchased the e-book about my particular personality type.
Oh. My. Word.
[enter a moment of speechlessness.]
I won’t get into everything. And I’m not going to tell you everything I wrote in my exploratory writing (you can thank me for that).
I had Vitaliy take the test, too. They actually have it in Russian. It explained him to me a lot.
It really helped me understand. A lot. About myself. About him. The booklet I read even gave tips about how the two of us can be married (it really recommended hiring a housekeeper, imagine that), and how I can have friends.
So, I’m not going to share most of it, but I want to say a few main ideas that helped me. We had a long conversation in the van yesterday, about having vision mostly. I come to vision as someone who is able to 1) see a future that is not in existence but is potential, 2) use my vision as a means to fill my inner need to express my core values through goals, etc., and 3) pretty eloquently talk about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, my ideas, etc. I really enjoy this process and live in it. It’s about as important as, if not more important than, the actual doing.
Vitaliy … does not really like the idea of vision. Though he has one. It’s hard to … get to it, because he just states it as a phrase, and that’s it. He doesn’t eloquently express or communicate well his vision. He also is put off by projecting his vision as a future plan. His need is fulfilled by what he concretely did in the past (for that vision) and what he sees himself doing concretely today for this vision. Well, maybe it’s not entirely true, because he does have one idea right now about his life vision; he just doesn’t pounce on the idea and mentally grow it to magnanimous proportions, as I tend to do. He’s waiting for the opportunity to perhaps “do” his vision in this way. He doesn’t need to nor enjoy dreaming about it.
From these realizations, I have a few helpful insights for myself:
- From this booklet– this thought was very insightful: “The battle for acquiring or maintaining the energy to go forward will be almost entirely decided in an Advocate’s thoughts.” (p.40)
That is a bingo. And hence, all my thinking.
2. In my exploratory writing about this, I wrote this sentence, and it means a lot to me. I think it’s a main thing I need to do right now:
“I would like to start appreciating/valuing that the time and commitment that I’m giving to my family (home school, missionary life) is being true to my core values.”
It helps me to honor that my life now, as it is, with all its seeming smallness and limitations, is me being true to what I value. I don’t have to be doing some big, out there thing in order for me to be true to my core values.
3. I am an idealist. My ideals highly motivate me. So, Vitaliy really urged me that, in home schooling, I need to develop that idealism and conviction. I need to let my idealism, individuality, and conviction grow and express itself. And I need to pray about this, I am praying about it now. … I have put off doing this because I honestly realize that home schooling is not for everyone, and I’m not mentally committed to doing it forever. … But it is for me, right now. I have to be honest that I have other options, and this is what I’ve chosen, just like in birth. So as an idealist person, as I did home birth and unattended birth from my ideals and convictions, I need to do this with home schooling. I can have and fulfill my idealism without injuring, insulting, or judging others who don’t share those ideals. There. My intense need to be compassionate to others doesn’t need to override my intense need for ideals.
4. OK, in my exploratory journal writing, I realized that my past self-experience is making me nervous about becoming attached to my family life in this idealistic way … because I feel like I have betrayed myself in the past. I have had ideas and goals that totally didn’t work. I really enjoyed them mentally, and they actually guided my life in good ways. But I don’t see “success” in them in the way I “envisioned” them. And I end up feeling trapped and frustrated by it.
So, in coming to my family, I don’t want to manically latch onto this “idea” and start dreaming up a bunch of stuff and then wreck the good things I have now already. I want to come to this in a wiser way. I’m thinking about this.
5. I want to learn from Vitaliy how to loosely hold a general vision and seize the opportunities to live it out as they come up. Vitaliy is good at doing things. I’m good at imagining and valuing things. But I end up feeling left in the dust because he’s actually doing things while I’m … just imagining things and going along with what he’s doing (and not attaching value to what I am actually doing). On the other hand, I am not Vitaliy, so the way I take up opportunities might look different, more studied or whatever, but I wrote in my journal: “I wish to be more adventurous and spontaneous. But in a planned and methodical way.” Ha! But one example– I want to be taking the girls to the children’s theater house more often. They do ballets and operas and neat-o stuff. But I don’t do it. Why? I need to find some way to do it, either spontaneously or in a planned way. And maybe I need to convince myself more clearly that this is one way I can express my core values– then I will find a way to do it.
OK, this is what I’ve come to so far.
🙂
