I love personality tests. I love seeing how my brain and the brains of others work. Almost 2 years ago, my husband and I heard about Enneagram. We took the test immediately and then while on our family vacation that year, we made all of our kids take it. It has been so helpful in all of our relationships! Understanding how each one works, which reactions help, which reactions harm. For me, it made me feel seen.
That’s what we all want, right? To be seen? We want the world around us to understand us and see us. We want to be known. We want our loved ones and those we interact with to really know us, to get us. But do we really want to be seen?
Being seen makes us vulnerable. If someone really sees us, then we can no longer hide behind our facade of what we want people to think. If I’m seen, then I’m exposed. We certainly don’t like to be exposed.
If anyone lived in this tension of wanting to be seen and wanting to hide, it was the Samaritan Woman Jesus met at the well. As Jesus encounters her, she is hiding in plain sight. She is at the well in the middle of the day. This was the way for her to avoid being seen by the other women in the village to be mocked or more than likely, ignored. There’s nothing worse than being in the presence of a crowd and being ignored. But, Jesus shows up during her mundane chore of drawing water and her life changes forever.
However, Jesus doesn’t show up with the preacher’s voice of “REPENT, THUS SAITH THE LORD!” No, Jesus shows up to have a conversation. They talk water, they talk belief systems, then as Jesus reveals who he is to her, he tells her everything she had ever done. Jesus didn’t make a spectacle, it was just her and him. In my mind, she must have collapsed to her knees with relief and shame. Relieved that finally, someone sees her. Finally, she isn’t ignored or shunned. In the same breath, shame would shroud her. What had she done? And now this man was exposing it all. He wasn’t exposing to condemn, he was exposing to accept.
Today, do you feel seen? The Enneagram is a great way to feel understood, but only El Roi, “- The God who sees me”, can really make you be seen.
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen[a] the One who sees me.” – Genesis 16:13
