Understanding the depths of our own complicated behaviour is one of the hardest things to master. 
It was fourteen years ago that I first made the attempt.  I had ignored my inner depths all my life and had been quite content to hide behind a series of elaborate masks, hiding the real me (whatever that was) and operating at a very surface level.  I suppose it was all I could handle at that time and it seemed to serve the purpose.

Then life changed.  We moved house, changed jobs, lived in the country, had teenagers go off to Uni........ a series of losses that left me shaky and insecure, no longer able to understand what life was all about.  All the certainties had gone.  The ground had slid from under my feet.  I was lost.

Five years later I also had to accept that I was depressed, a fact that my doctor had been trying to convince me of for a long time.

It was during that time that I discovered the Enneagram.  I didn't like it because it was forcing me to look right into my soul and I was scared.  But within a few days of taking its wisdom on board, I began to notice a difference in my attitude to myself.  The biggest thing was the discovery that if God had specially created each of his people, then I must be a real person, not the fake or the non-person that I felt myself to be.  He doesn't make mistakes and he doesn't waste his time creating rubbish.  So he must have made me exactly as he did make me.  And there must be something good in me.

The other realisation was the passage in Psalm 139 in the Old Testament where the Psalmist talks about how God created us in the womb.  Before our families came to love or hate us, before anyone tried to shape us and mould us, before even our mothers had the chance to love us, God saw us.  I picture his presence in the womb with me as a tiny embryo, stoking my tiny forehead and saying, "Dorothy, I am creating you.  You will be a lovely person though you might have a bit of trouble believing it for a time.  But never forget that you are mine.  And I love you because I made you and I love you because.....well, just because!  I don't need a reason!"

So if God can love me like that, then how dare I hate myself so much?  That was the start of growing into wholeness for me.  It took years.  In fact, the process will last as long as I do.  But we have to start somewhere.

If you resonate with any of what I have just written, I would love to introduce you to the Enneagram.  It is not the gospel.  But it certainly can be used by God to introduce you to a wholeness that he dreams of us having. 

"Science is finding out God's thoughts after him."
somebody once said.  I feel like that about the Enneagram.  It is a tool to find out more about the lovely person God had in mind when He created you.  Give it a try.  Come to see yourself and the one who created you in a whole new light.

The picture at the top of this post signifies the kind of Enneagram session you will have with me!

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