An Introvert in the Hands of an Extroverted God

I'm surprised it didn't occur to me sooner. The Trinity stuff should have been a dead giveaway – triune God, three Persons in One, a divine posse, heavenly hommies. And what about His motivation for creating mankind, His words regarding Adam - “It is not good that the man should be alone”...? Yep, the Deity I worshiped was an extrovert...

As early as middle school, long before I was familiar with the meaning of the word, I knew I was not one - an “extrovert”, that is. I knew what one was, the boy in school who engaged the teacher in circuitous conversations that made her forget the promised quiz, the girl who could fearlessly approach any group of kids and start talking about anything. Nope, not me... If a teacher wanted to hear what I had to say, I needed to be called on. And I could come up with the perfect social conversation starter...usually about two hours after the opportunity to use it had passed. Some people described me as shy, but I thought of myself as quiet – until I had something to say – and then I said it, after thoroughly pondering and rehearsing it over and over in my mind, of course. My mind was a very busy place, but nobody knew that except me. Because of the way my mind and personality worked, and because of all the energy it took to put myself out there – in school, in the neighborhood, in relationships – there were certain social things that I shied away from doing, usually involving large groups of people. “That's just not me,” I would think, and go and find another book to read.

When I was seventeen, I decided to take God seriously and found myself on the other side of a sudden shift from a third person (“Him and me”) relationship with God to a second person (“You and me”) relationship. The relationship got personal in the best kind of way, and in the early days of getting to know that triune God of the Bible – Father, Son and Spirit – in a deeper way, I found myself listening for His speaking into my life. (I'm not getting weird here. I'm not talking about audible voices, just a strong sense of thoughts and ideas that were too wise and profound to come from my teenaged introverted mind...) One of the first things I felt God speaking to me about went something like this: “You know how you don't do certain things because you think you can't, that it isn't in your personality to be outgoing, to speak up in groups? Well, I've changed all that...” (“Wow!” I thought. “God knows who I am, and He's going to turn me into one of those cool, outgoing, social types!”) But He wasn't done. “I've changed all that. I'm taking away your ability to use the quiet, thinking person I made you as an excuse not to do what I call you to do, to speak when and where and to whom I want you to speak...” I was left with the profound sense of, yes, God did know who I was, who He created me to be, but it wasn't up to me to decide what I was capable of doing. It was up to Him. I wasn't sure how I felt about that...taking away my ability to use my introvertedness as an excuse...previously, it had worked so well for me...

Over the years since then I have found myself in situations where I have been asked to do something I have perceived as too “extroverted” for who I am – speak in public, facilitate a Bible study, lead a small group, approach and socially engage someone I barely knew. My default is to want to use my introvertedness as a good reason why I can't do it. But God had been true to His word. He did in fact change me, taking away my introverted excuse of social energy deficiency. As I'd step back, as the words “No, I really can't do that...” were making their way to my lips, the hand of Him who created me would gently push me forward, and I'd find myself saying “O.K. I'll give it a try...” Yeah, momentary panic would often ensue - “I can't believe I just agreed to do that...” - but over time I've learned to depend on my faithful, extroverted God to compensate for my perceived introverted social deficiencies.

So, I've gone through most of my life feeling like, as I've described to myself, a large rubber band, functioning at the stretched limits of my introvertedness. Sometimes I fear I'll snap, when I've said “yes” to something outside my comfort zone, but, in truth, I never do snap. When I stumbled upon the following quote in Susan Cain's excellent book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, it was with some amusement and a sense of camaraderie:

...Free will can take us far,...but cannot carry us infinitely beyond our genetic limits. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer. We might call this the “rubber band theory” of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much.

The introvert in me wants to wholeheartedly agree with this statement, but my extroverted God reminds me that it is He who determines the limits to which I can be stretched. He made me the way I am, in His image, so sometimes I acknowledge that if He is the extroverted God I perceive Him to be, part of me must have some piece of the extrovert in me as well. Other times, when I think He's completely forgotten who I am and how He made me, I'm reminded of Jesus, in Matthew's gospel -

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone... *

- and then I know my God does understand what it means to be an introvert, seeing Him through His son's need for those moments of quiet solitude. So, I trust Him with the rubber band that is me. He knows the amount of stretching I am capable of. In His hands I can rest in the confidence I will not break, even when I may not feel it in the moment. He may choose, like a bold middle school student, stirring up things in the back of the classroom, to stretch and shoot me in directions that would cause my old, distant now, self to mumble “I can't...not me.” But this present introvert, in the hands of my extroverted God, all excuses removed, can only acknowledge such a launching as a trajectory toward the true me...

When you meet me, you think I am quiet.  Then you get to know me and just wish I was quiet. - Anonymous

Quiet people have the loudest minds. - Stephen Hawking

* Matthew 14:23