My personal pie

I grumbled about having to take Communications 111 class for my nursing degree. Not because I feel snobby about my level of communication skills. It's just that I have studied these things before during various career paths and have taught classes for almost a decade. Then there's the whole five-kids thing, which means that my available time for classes is precious and if I can get out of a general ed requirement, I will. (It worked for my other degree-in-progress.)

No luck this time around. So tonight, I had my second Oral Communications class of the semester. I can't say I loved it!!! It's a late class after what are always exhausting days at home with the kids, and sitting through a lecture in a hot classroom doesn't jump out at me as the most exciting thing ever. But tonight brought something into focus that I wanted to share.

Tonight's class focused on identity and the person we present to the world. The instructor asked us to list the many roles we identify with. Examples would be: gender, family role, job, skill set, political party, religion, etc. Then, we were asked to divide these up into relative percentages based on how important they are to us, and to create a pie chart based on these percentages.

So I wrote out my list~~not in order of importance.

Wife
Mother
Student
Follower of Jesus Christ
Future nurse practitioner
Youth leader at church
Woman
Mentor
Writer
Friend
The neighborhood mom

Obviously, I could get a lot more deep and talk about past roles I have identified with and all that stuff, but this was a quick class exercise.

I made my circle and pondered the top labels. Follower of Jesus Christ. Wife. Mother. These were the top three, and I sat there wondering how to divide them up. I drew my circle and wrote "Follower of Jesus Christ" all along the outside. It is my soul's lens. He has changed me in my other roles. I can't put Him in His own unique category apart from the others. This might sound weird to you.

Then, being a wife and mother took up a huge chunk of my pie. The next most important roles to me were that of neighborhood mom (yes, I take that role very seriously!), friend, student, future nurse practitioner, youth leader, and writer. I have opted not to include percentages here, as it's hard to be specific. Who knows what the exact numbers are? There's also overlap. My role as mother definitely spills over into the dozen or so kids that hang out near our home at any given point, and my friendships show up at church, on the internet, and in person. Church includes time with the youth that we work with after the five o'clock service. Etc.

What did become clear is that "political party" did not show up on my list.

Every four years, I get miserably stressed. I get moody. I get unfocused. I get scatterbrained. I try my best to narrow down my viewpoints into a neat political party and pick a candidate. This year, my friend Jenna asked the question, "Who's watching the primary debates?" and from that point on, I engaged with this election and began watching, reading, and taking my role as American voter very seriously again for this upcoming round. I changed my mind about how to vote in the primaries at least three times.

The truth is, I have some viewpoints which would put me at odds with some of the closest people in my life~~viewpoints, beliefs, opinions that are the opposite of my loved ones, and others that are the same. Some of my personal viewpoints diverge from the political party I would otherwise identify with. I can feel myself getting more and more lost in the whole thing and finding it hard to discuss the election without taking a stand for one side or the other and being loud and opinionated in an area~~politics~~that really doesn't strike me as a huge part of my identity at all. One might argue that it's impossible to separate oneself from politics. Probably it is, but here I blog. I am, by the way, remarkably endowed with the gift of sarcasm, but as it states in Proverbs, Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you... (2:11)

So this exercise showed me that I don't consider a political party to be a vital aspect of my identity. Walls have not come up between me and my friends, but being able to state this outright makes it clear to me that I don't want walls to divide us over something so unique to our individual experiences and perspectives. I don't want to feel obligated to "figure it all out" either. My own uncertainties~~the areas I cannot make into a box around myself~~are probably going to remain that way. Simply living life day to day and doing my best to be useful and loving to my brothers and sisters is challenge enough. As I attempt to communicate my perspective with others, I pray we truly can seek to understand each other and let our hearts be open.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' ~Mt 22:37

Even as I get ready to post this, I wonder if I am not being firm enough along certain lines...that ambiguity is terribly unfashionable in politics...that black and white is the name of the game. There are some issues I feel very black and white about, and others less so. The black and white issues are my politics. And I do believe we have an obligation to fight for the issues that matter deeply to us. But does that mean a vehement blog or article about it? Or does that mean grassroots work at the level it occurs, dealing more with the face-to-face of it all? Or both? I pray I can go forward with discretion and understanding and, as my instructor puts it, "achieve the task of communication while maintaining relationship." That is my goal and hope.