Be patient and just give it time... (FMF post)

Just.

When I saw the writing prompt for this Five Minute Friday write, this most certainly IS NOT the direction I originally saw myself going.

But it is what I've been thinking about and it does include the word just, so...

Here we go!

I first took the Myers-Briggs personality test almost 30 years ago. It is a took I've come to appreciate, not as it it reveals gospel-truth about who I am and my personality, but rather as in it reveals certain personality traits that help to explain why I act and think as I do in particular circumstances. It helps me understand myself, often helping me to adapt and change my initial first-and-best-option-according-to-me, to better meet the needs of my family, my friends, my colleagues and others I'm seeking to serve.

My initial test results said I was an I/ENTJ. Dead even on the introvert/extrovert scale, intuitive regarding my understanding of the world and people, I made decisions based off of logical analysis and I preferred a plan rather than flying by the seat of my pants. Then I became a mother... of many. For the last 20 years, every time I've taken the test, I turn up an INFJ. Introverted to the extreme (perhaps a reaction or coping mechanism to having worked much of my life in a third world country surrounded by immense needs in every direction and then inside my home, having eight third culture kids in 13 years, and having rather intense side effects to the malaria prophylactic I took while working/living/raising a family in that third world environment), intuitive (where time has consistently demonstrated that my intuitive read of the world around me is usually pretty accurate) decisions based off of feelings - often the feelings of others of which I'm intuitively aware, as in they are screaming at me so loudly it is hard to identify my own feelings, and I'm still someone who prefers a plan, though I've learned to be flexible in adapting that plan.

It is that intuitive part that I've been mulling over lately. 

I do read people well most of the time. I know when someone is hurt, frustrated, angry... and I want to come up with a plan to make it right. 

I try and come up with some sort of constructive action or reparation to resolve the conflict, to heal hurt feelings, to reconcile and restore what has been ruptured.

Sometimes that is the absolutely right thing to do.

Some times, however, I just need to be patient. I just need to wait. I am not really part of the problem, but will rapidly become part of it if I try and force the solution.

I just need to stay out of the way, pray and let the Holy Spirit do His thing...

photo credit: Mara ~earth light~ 

Camel - the ship of the desert 

via photopin (license)