PoM Reflections — Senior Year

For both my Junior and Middler reviews, I wrote some reflections on the feedback I had received from my Profiles of Ministry assessment. You can access those thoughts with the Junior Year and Middler Year links in the sidebar to the right. This year, I am setting aside just a few minutes to examine those reflections and see if I’ve made any progress in the ways I had hoped I might. I do look forward to seeing the results of my second Profiles of Ministry assessment (completed earlier this semester as part of my exiting the GST). Perhaps those results will give me new things to contemplate, new victories to celebrate, and new challenges to engage. For now, though, my thoughts on the weaknesses identified in my first Profiles of Ministry assessment.

Acknowledgment of limitations — This will probably always be a challenge for me. Acknowledging weakness and limitation comes hard to me, largely as a result of the family that I grew up in, in which everything was near perfect all the time—at least on the surface. But I am growing and changing and coming to a healthier place. I do believe that I am getting better about admitting my limitations, both to myself and to others. It helps that I know my strengths more fully and am able to encourage myself with those. And being secure in a relationship with my husband, who encourages and strengthens me in ways no one else has ever been able to do, goes a long way as well. I am learning that community is particularly important because while each of us has strengths and weaknesses, together we make a stronger, better whole. And in community, I am learning that it is okay to acknowledge my limitations, for (in addition to simply being truthful), doing so allows community to flourish, thereby helping individuals also flourish.

Self-protecting behavior — I do believe that on the whole I am getting better at having only healthy kinds of self-protecting behavior. One might call that self-respecting behavior, perhaps, but the difference is mostly in degree, not in kind, at least for me. I am learning to set boundaries that allow space for me to be me while still calling me into vulnerability in relationships. I am learning to take risks and to allow myself to fail at times. This is a hard process for me, but it is important.

Assertiveness — My relationship with my husband has been extremely helpful in building up my assertiveness. He helps me believe that my own thoughts and feelings are worthwhile and therefore worth being expressed. I am learning that assertiveness is one form of honesty that is important to not neglect. Though I still sometimes hesitate (generally based upon my desire to not hurt feelings or impose on others), I am more confident in voicing my thoughts, desires and needs, and disagreements. In the midst of the turmoil this can cause (both outwardly and inwardly), I am learning that I have inherent value as a child of God and that I don’t have to rely on others for validation and permission to feel and think in any number of ways.