I’ll have a write-up for Sewing Summit sometime soon, but for now, I’m continuing my Cultivate project!
When I was contemplating faithfulness for the first part of this month, I found myself concentrating on the fidelity part of this fruit. Faithfulness is a broad and beautiful spectrum of ideas, but for some reason I kept coming back to the idea of relationships and adultery.
I recently took a personality test, which determined that I am of a melancholy temperament, with a bit of sanguine and choleric thrown in there for good measure (you can read more about this test here and here). While I take all tests like this with a grain of salt — and make sure I don’t use them as an excuse for bad behavior; “I was just born like this” — I do think they can give us insight into ourselves and those around us. One of the main characteristics of a melancholy is that we tend to be incredibly loyal.
I think this is very true for me. I’m very close to my family and friends. I love and value them deeply, make them a priority, and I’d side with them in any sort of conflict (it is very, very difficult for me when two people I love are fighting). While I’m not the epitome of the word loyal, someone has to do something fairly awful to break ties with me. This have to go awry in a big, bad way for me to get so upset that I’ll break a friendship or relationship.
But one way that I can see my loyalty tested is when I start to believe it’s all about me. I think that’s what gets couples in trouble — one (or both) person starts to forget that there are two people in a relationship; that their actions affect someone other than themselves. While this doesn’t happen as much to me in my personal relationships (though I am definitely not immune to it), it does affect my relationship with God all the time.
I think this goes to show that as much as I love God and try to walk with Jesus daily, I often forget that there are two of us in this relationship. I start thinking in “I, I, I” and forget the “You” and the “Him” and the “us.” So I’m trying to re-focus my thoughts and prayers away from me and onto Him. Because there’s nothing faithful in thinking of myself as the only person in this relationship.
