The fourteenth installment in the 30 Things My Kids Should Know About Me series is to describe 5 of my strengths and 5 of my weaknesses.  So without further ado…

5 Strengths

1. Passion

I don’t know what more to say about this.  I don’t do “halfway.” Either I love it or hate it.  I’m in or I’m out.  What I choose to do/believe in, I do/believe in with passion/fervor.

2. Valuing Truth

This one plays out in different ways.  I love to study Scripture because it’s Truth-seeking.  I like for justice to be served, because it’s largely a matter of finding out the truth.  I like to know how things work, which is a sort of truth-seeking of itself.  Lack of deception is important to me, and accuracy is, too.

3. Boldness

I don’t mind trying something I haven’t done before.  (I’m not a huge risk-taker in a physical sense.  I’d rather preserve life and limb, thankyouverymuch.  But I’m not generally scared by new and different.)  I will just jump in with both feet, and see what happens.  I’m also not afraid to be the only one standing up for something when I believe it’s right.  (It gets tiresome being the only one all the time.  But not scary.)

4. Ability to “Boil Things Down” and Identify the Core of a Thing

For practical purposes, this might be the most significant trait on this list.  I can dig beneath the rhetoric and hear what’s really being said.  (Which is a little ironic, given #1 in the next list!)  And I can take a subject, investigate it, and then boil it down to simplify the complicated.  This is really helpful for teaching!

5. Curiosity/Questioning

I always wonder…why does this work?  Is there a better way to do this?  Why have we always done…?  It means I’m always reading, researching, and learning.  It also means that (especially when paired with #’s 1 & 2 above), although I follow the rules, I question why they are the way they are and work to change them when they don’t make sense.

5 Weaknesses

1. Oblivious to Subtlety

Don’t drop hints to me; you’ll be wasting your time.  I don’t hear them.  I mean, really…I’m not being ornery; it’s just that since I just bluntly say it like it is, my brain doesn’t even process a subtle hint as having really said anything.  It’s too “gentle” for my mind to grasp.  I need blunt.

2. Lack of Gentleness

(In manner.  I’m not typically physically harsh.)  There are definite downsides to having strengths like passion and boldness.  For one thing, these are not traits traditionally appreciated in women.  Women – especially in the Church, where everything seems to revolve around a “gentle and quiet spirit” and little else – are valued for being soft, gentle, and nurturing.  But these things tend to be the inverse.  Strong passion and boldness tend to innately be somewhat harsh, and it takes a lot of work to learn even a little bit of gentleness.  The direct effect is all the negatives that go with being ungentle!  The indirect effect is that we’re trained to believe that we’re “less than” as women.

Tact goes along with gentleness, too.  Sometimes I just don’t know when to shut up.  (I’m learning.  But, see, some people don’t have to work at tact at all.  How people are going to feel in response to something is at the forefront of their minds all the time, just by nature.  Not mine.)

3. Scattered-ness

So many ideas, so little time!  The curiosity and questioning results in so.many.things. running through my head that it often leaves me a bit scattered.

4. Singular Focus

Coming hard on the heels of #3, this probably sounds a bit crazy, but it’s true!  I am a terrible multitasker.  That’s partly because of the “scattered” thing.  I forget what I’m doing and can’t juggle two or three things at once.  But I’m not good at doing things in little, steady bites, either.  My tendency, instead, is to go all-out on one thing for a big chunk of time, and then switch gears.  This can be great for projects, but it’s really not great for all of the recurring rote tasks that make up homemaking.

5. Selfishness

And of course there’s the “good old” (that phrase sounds wrong in context) basic human selfishness.  We all have it – some more than others – but that doesn’t mean it makes any less a mess of things.

How ’bout you?  Do you know your biggest weaknesses and strengths?  How do you put your strengths to use in your church, home, and/or community, and how are you growing in the areas where you’re weak?