Who do you think you are?!

Have you ever wondered how other people view you? Have you ever thought about how you view yourself? Life-altering questions....

I took a temperament test a few months ago, and one of the things that struck me as I read the analysis was that I apparently like shiny, prettily wrapped things... even if there's nothing inside them. Now I don't know about you, but that would seem to say something about me, and it's not good.

What does that even mean? I was taken aback by what that meant to me at first blush: that I'm a shallow person not concerned about meaning or substance -- just let it look pretty and I'll be fine with it. I'd always thought of myself as an intelligent person with some issues. According to this test, I have a lot of issues, and intelligence is definitely one of them.

My view of myself as a person skewed sideways and I was forced to view myself with new eyes. Is that really how I am? How does that show up -- in my environment, in how I deal with people, in how I deal with life?

Makes me want to get a degree in psychology just to find out. My psych teacher at St. Cloud State University told us that all psychology majors go into that degree with the intent to fix themselves. Don't know how true that is -- psych majors, help me out here. That's why I'd get MY psych degree....

Maybe I only THINK that I'm not shallow, but maybe that's what shallow people like to think so they don't throw themselves off high ledges. We all know people who we THINK are shallow, but do others think that about us? And are these people actually shallow, or do we just not know them well enough? Is it being judgmental to think that some people are shallow? And what does "shallow" even mean?

I've been known to hold a lot of strange facts in my head... you may well have been a recipient of one of my strange, little-known facts. In fact, I've even called myself the Queen of Unknown (and Why Do You Need to Know This) Trivia. Does that mean I hold onto little facts without digging into deeper meanings and more information? Do I even have enough time to look into these things in-depth? And do I need to come up with a better name?

I do know that when I'm interested in something, I will tear it apart (and the internet) trying to find information on it and become maybe a little obsessive about it. But is just knowledge any good? Should I be trying to see/process that knowledge into a bigger picture and apply it? Application is usually good, unless it involves drugs and/or immoral activities.

In the end, I have to remind myself that all tests have weaknesses; maybe this is one area that they're wrong about. Dear Lord, let them be wrong about it! Otherwise, I'd have to face the fact that my view of myself has been completely wrong for my entire 43 years.

It's nice to know that no matter my own personal weaknessess and foibles, God loves me even though He knows EVERYTHING about me. As a mom, I know that not even I have that perfect perspective about my own precious, crazy offspring.

In the meantime, if you receive a prettily-wrapped present from me with nothing inside it, I don't mean anything by it -- except that I forgot to put your gift inside. Maybe I should just stick with cards.

Let me know if the analysis is dead-on... or not. I won't hold it against you either way. Promise.

Of flowers... and bedbugs

I'm cautiously optimistic that we may be done with freezing temperatures... it's May 5th, after all! Of course, this IS Minnesota, and the last freeze date is still weeks away, I believe. The grass has just leaped out of the ground, and the spreading green is such a relief to my eyes.

Tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, forsythia, and other hardy spring flowers are showing their sunny faces, and I see tons flower buds on the many lilac bushes in our new backyard. There's a little round flower or herb garden in the middle of the yard that has some mysterious buds pushing up out of the earth, through the overgrown dead grass. Can't wait to see what those are.

Spring is my favorite part of the year, until the mosquitoes hatch out, then it becomes my least favorite. I'm hoping our proximity to the Rum River won't make our property mosquito central. Sometimes it seems with every good thing, there's a little bad to go with it.

I know that the despised mosquito has a place in nature, feeding all those birds, fish, and other wild critters, but do they have to like MY blood so much? I ask myself on those gray, cloudy days when I'm feeling particularly affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder -- not enough sunshine), WHY did God have to create the mosquito? Can't even blame Noah and the Ark for that one, because the flood was mosquito heaven.

And don't even get me started on ticks, leeches, bedbugs, and other ickies that like to feed off us humans. Oh, and in the tropics, you REALLY don't want to know what some creatures do to survive on and IN humans. If you watch Animal Planet, they have some shows that'll keep you awake nights.

But they are all God's creations, just as much as those lovely flowers are, however much I'd like them not to be. They would seem to be the dark spots on God's tapestry of life, the shadows cast by those flowers. As much as we wish they weren't around, they are, and we have to accept that.

That's why I'm so looking forward to a time in the future when "the wolf and the lamb will feed together" (Isaiah 65:25) and not ON each other! Now, the Bible doesn't say this, but I'm assuming, because it also says "the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard... no more," (Is. 65:19) that mosquitoes will no longer want to hunt me down and make me weep into my coffee when I step outside on a sunny June morning.

I'm just hoping that blood-sucking creatures will be happy eating dirt, or whatever other non-living things they can find. OR, horrors, does it mean we just won't care that they still want our blood? I shudder to think about that option. Maybe I'll be like that crazy mosquito biologist who goes into the wild tropics and lets rare mosquito breeds feed on him so they'll perpetuate. That's just... crazy.

Maybe I'm a perpetual pessimist and can't see the flowers without also seeing the bugs and other negatives. Some may say I'm a realist. Whichever it is, I hope I can focus on the flowers and enjoy them while being aware and wary of the other things, the dark spots on my sunny spring days.

Isn't that the essence of a joyful life? Knowing that bad things are here, but able to still enjoy the good things that God has given us. I'm still working on it.

What's your favorite thing about spring? Help me overcome my negativity :-)