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When You Hate Your Personality

What if you don't like your personality?  -christyfitzwater.com

I don’t know who you are –maybe the life of the party? The get-it-done-right? The serve-quietly-from-the-back?

As for me, I’m the bulldozer.

Sometimes this is good. Like when an old structure needs to come down and be carried away. Or when new ground needs to be dug up. Or when something needs to be pushed to a new place.

Sometimes this is bad. Like when I raze over the top of people, not seeing the fragile that needs to be picked up and carried with more of a soft-gloved hand.

All I know is that sometimes I abhor who I am.

Bulldozer in a China closet is more like it.

I wish instead that I were quiet like you or thoughtful like her or fun and not always so intense like him. I wish I could be anything but who I am.

But my husband holds me tight in the kitchen and says he likes me. He doesn’t want me to change. He says when I have a bad moment, like a shouldn’t-have-spoken-so-boldly moment in a meeting, all I can see is the bad side of me. But Satan is the one who condemns.

You are all bad, he says. He is a liar.

We all wish for a Freaky Friday -maybe if I were you and you were me? Then we would be perfect?

But I realize that to hate myself is to live in ingratitude to God. Didn’t He shape me in my mother’s womb? Didn’t He put this bulldozerish brain inside me for a purpose? What He says to me, in my blubbering to Him about my failure, is that I need to daily allow Him to master my personality.

Paul says,

Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness…  (Romans 6:22  NIV)

Sin used to master my personality, but now God will master it. When my personality goes to an ill extreme, God calls it to my attention. I weep. I apologize to whom I need to apologize. I cry out to the Lord to shorten the rope that binds me to Him, so that the purity of His person rubs off on mine.

There is a benefit to putting our faith in Christ –the reaping of a holy personality.

Not so perfect today maybe, but a little more perfect than yesterday and a whole lot more perfect than a few years ago.

So until I get to that glorious, restful place of being a holy person, will you help me see the good God is doing in me when I can’t?  And I’ll purposefully overlook those unpolished spots in who you are, because I know the Master is refurbishing your personality, too.

And together we’ll hold onto the sure hope of future holiness.

5 Comments

  1. Anonymous says:

    I struggle with this sometimes (not liking my personality) too only to the other extreme. I have a hard time socially “fitting in”. I am soft hearted and always afraid I’ll say or do the wrong thing so I end up not saying anything. As I’ve matured and grown older this has lessened but now I see those traits in my son and he is having an extremely hard time. He tries too hard to fit in and then finds himself all alone with no friends. It’s a hard place to be when you feel as though everything you say or do brings rejection. That every laugh (even though unintended by others) feels as though your being scorned. I know God has accepted me so it doesn’t matter who rejects me. I’ve learned that I can love others unconditionally because I am to see others through our Fathers eyes. However, I am trying to teach this to my son but he just seems to hate everything about himself. I tell him how much I love him but he thinks I and everyone else hates him. He is angry one day and crying the next. Most kids his age are social and want to spend time with other kids his age but he says he has no friends. Any suggestions on how I can help him see his true worth through the eyes of love?

    1. This is a huge question you’re asking, and I had to chew on it for a while. My thought is that in every situation we need to learn the truth about who we are and the truth about who God is. How does God see your son? Where does his value come from? He needs to decide whether to believe the truth that God is a faithful friend when no one else is. Really, we have to choose to believe the gospel every day. I would parade the gospel in front of your son every time he suffers in the friend department, because the gospel tells us the truth about who we are and who we can be, as well as the truth about how God feels about us and what he expects from us. Your son is going to have to choose what to believe. If he refuses the love and grace and value placed on him at the cross, then he is refusing the gospel. Our job as parents isn’t to build our child’s self-esteem but to help him have a correct self-esteem.

      A question to ask is -are there character issues in your son that are making it hard for him to have friends? That’s certainly not always the reason behind a difficulty in making friends, but he should think about it. Is he kind and generous to others? Does he put their needs above his own? Does he pray for the people he hopes to be friends with? Does he help them and serve them?

      Consider teaching James 1:2-4 to your son. We face trials as a testing of our faith, so how is this trial helping your son grow in his faith? How is his struggle for friends teaching him perseverance and bringing him to a place of maturity? Not only that, but how might God be using this trial to develop compassion in your son, which might be used in his caring for people down the road?

      Finally, it is a good exercise in prayer when we long for something that we can’t really force into happening. There are many things in this life that we sometimes petition God for in prayer FOR YEARS before he chooses to supply. Teach your son to pray and wait -and that God sees him and cares about him while he’s waiting.

      That’s kind of a lot, but I hope it’s helpful!!

  2. Just knowing someone else struggles with–well–basically hating or very much disliking who they are in personality (and not even the “sinful” aspects necessarily) is an encouragement to me. How glad I am that your post was one that came up in the first page of results on Google and that you are a fellow Christian as well.

    1. I’m sorry you don’t like you who are sometimes. I pray God will show you the beautiful truth about who he has made you to be and give you hope that he will sand off any rough edges in your personality until you are pure and holy. Thanks for writing me this sweet note -it means a lot!

      1. Oh I do so hope He will! I am rough around the edges. I suppose we all are in our own way, but the bulldozers among us are more obviously rough at times, perhaps. 😉

        You’re welcome, and thank you for your prayer and encouragement! I’ll pray for you and your family and ministry today.

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