Trait Expression

This week I have been following a blog titled, "Heart to Heart with Holley" It has been such a blessing and I wanted to share some concepts with you here that Holley has shared on her blog. She writes, "Stephen Covey once said, "When you pick up a stick, you get both ends." In our stories, a "stick" might look like...

Anxiety...............Sensitivity.....................Compassion

Sensitivity in itself is a neutral personality trait. On our own it can lead us toward worry (negative). With Jesus it can lead us toward compassion (positive)." (Heart to Heart with Holley)

This makes so much sense. When I was young, I was fainthearted. I passed out three different times when visiting friends who had been admitted to the hospital. The sight of IVs in people's arms and the hearing of the accidents that placed them in their hospital bed just made me queezy and faint and I would find myself smelling a strange mixture under the bright lights of the ER. Who would have thought that I could ever work in a hospital?

But, God turned my life so that I did that very thing. When I was completing my undergraduate degree in psychology, I did my internship as a hospital chaplain. When I started, I asked God to give me His compassion and He answered that prayer. I found myself not only visiting patients and hearing their stories, but also holding their hands while the nurses threaded IVs and did other procedures that caused patient anxiety.

In our DNA we all have traits that are expressed and genes that are recessive. It makes sense that the same would be true of behavioral traits. Notice on Holley's model above that the trait on the one end is a trait that is expressed when one is focused on self and the one on the other end the same trait is expressed another way when the focus is on Christ or others.

All of us have one thing that we have absolute control over and that is what we give our attention to. What we choose to focus on can make all the difference. This week I have been teaching my fifteen-year-old son how to drive. We have talked a lot about focus because drivers tend to drive or drift toward what they focus on. This is why it is so important in night driving to watch that white line when passing other vehicles.

If we focus on Christ, we will continually stear towards Him and the behavioral traits that we express will be those that communicate Him to the world.