How to Navigate Mountains, Enneagram Differences, and Elections
We’re en route from a cabin for two at the top of a mountain to a trail promising a difficult hike and spectacular views. He pauses thoughtfully then asks which Enneagram number is hardest for me to get along with. It’s couched in curiosity, but I hesitate, because for all the ways our differences refine and deepen our love, our Enneagram numbers often feel like polar opposites.
He thrives on what I prefer to avoid: conflict.
He sees in black and white while I see all the sides at the same time. He’s efficient and honest while I use way too many words and tell a story out of order.
I gently admitted that 8 intensity is good-hard for me as a 9. Because the truth is Enneagram differences can be really, really good—in marriage, friendship, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
On our own, all of us fall prey to our ruts and blindspots. We don’t question our motivations, name the vulnerable roots of our commonplace fears, or invite the perspective of other lenses. Although we idealize labels like self-taught and self-wrought, we’re at our best when we’re surrendered to Jesus and surrounded by other people.
For anyone new to the Enneagram, it’s a tool to help us see how we default so we know where we most need to grow. I find it fascinating and remarkably useful for spiritual, mental, emotional, and relational health. (Discover your Enneagram number and how it helps you love your neighbors well below.)
Back to our conversation. After fifteen years of marriage, we’re still practicing holding space for our differences–seeing them as gifts. For all the alikeness of our faith, values, and food preferences, we process life through quite different lenses.
Sometimes we reach the same conclusion, but him in his straightforward way and me in my non-linear one. Other times we simply see differently—as evidenced in our gut-reaction responses to prompts in Jennifer Dukes Lee’s guided journal, Stuff I’d Only Tell God, which filled hours of drive time.
Embrace Differences
Too often we shy away from what’s different as if the difficulty outweighs the good. But maybe we’ve gotten it backwards. Maybe the tensions and growth pains actually get us where we want to go: where we’re both whole and known.
I mull it over as we embark on our trek up 100 stairwells worth of elevation change in under a mile. We’re never fully prepared for challenges—on a mountain or in the rest of life.
We can’t know ahead of time all the places we’ll need to pause to let descending hikers carefully pick their way down the narrow trail. We won’t anticipate everywhere we’ll feel weary and where we’ll linger to scoop up breathfuls of mountain air.
Neither will we foresee every tense conversation, every opportunity to set aside differences and welcome each other with care and compassion. Most of learning happens as we’re growing, not before we begin.
I find what works on a mountain also applies to our relationships with our Enneagram opposites and how we approach an election. Here’s where I arrive:
1. Assume we don’t see the whole picture.
First, we accept that there’s more than what we can see. On a hike, that may mean riveting views that will make the effort worth it or an overlook we would have missed. It also may entail trusting map reading to someone else.
Countless times outside of hiking, I’ve needed the insight of my husband to reorient me—even if I don’t agree with him right away. It takes humility to admit our bias or ineptitude. Yet when we choose vulnerability and meet each other with grace, we get to fill in what’s in another’s blind spot.
2. Let others help you see what you’ve missed.
When you’ve rounded the most difficult part of the trail and realize that the second half of the loop offers a slightly easier descent, you pass it on to other hikers who are just starting out: keep to the right. But here’s the thing. If you veered left at the onset, you’ll have to keep going to find the best views and also the better way down. If you stop at the top and turn around, you’ll scramble-slide your way slowly back to your car.
Just as directions are welcomed on the trail, so too could we gratefully accept that the people around us know things we haven’t discovered yet. We can push blindly ahead, dismiss the cautions and corrections, but we only make it harder on ourselves.
What if we instead invited other perspectives? Leaned into curiosity? Asked more questions? Listened intentionally?
Could we see differences as what equips us to more fully love God and each other?
3. Name the actual problem.
The challenge of a hike is no fault of the mountain’s. It’s our battle with our preparedness and resolve. It’s the minute-by-minute choice to keep going when we’re far from the end and already tired.
Just as the problem is never the mountain, neither is it each other. It’s all the stuff that gets in between us that clouds how we see and shapes how we treat each other. Target the other person, the other party, the Enneagram you don’t understand and no one wins. But work together towards curiosity, empathy, and grace and we’re all in a far better place.
Let’s pray.
Jesus, we welcome You into our conversations, our homes, our neighborhoods, our marriages and friendships. Grow in us both wisdom and humility so we may embrace our differences as gifts. Lend us Your lens so we are more willing to borrow each other’s.
Just a friend over here in your corner,
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