The Power of Personality

Little Orphan Annie Columbia Pictures 1982 Creative Commons

"Why I Oughta!" 

She was spunky. Full of life, and oh so loyal. Little Orphan Annie (Columbia Pictures, 1982) was an icon of my childhood.

I loved that she never left a room without leaving people changed forever.

I love that she could break out into a fight or break out into song just as easily!

My childhood was filled with loud and off key renditions of "Tomorrow". I wanted a shaggy dog and a brood of orphans to lead.

When someone asked me, "who do you want to be when you grow up?" I answered "Annie!"

So here I am, all grown up...now what?

Reality Is...

If I had to measure my expectations to my reality I would fall short. I think we all do. No one can live up 100% to a childhood icon. However, if I take stock of my life and look at the core of who I am I can say I am a close match.

I too can break out into a fight or song with ease. I rarely enter a room and people don't notice. When I leave, eventually the quiet that follows announces I have left the room. Whether that is a good thing or not I cannot say!

My hope is that I have an impact that is positive and not negative on the people I encounter.

When God made me, I did not get curly ginger hair. Though, I am sad about that more than you know since so many in my family are gingers. (Maybe this is one reason I like Jeff Goins so much!)

I was however given a decent singing voice and a penchant for leadership. I am spunky and pretty loyal. I love people and I have been in tough times in my life too: just like Annie! These things in me identified with a fictional character who was brought to life on the big screen during the 1980s.

They are the same characteristics that drive me today. I have developed other areas of personality and character over the years, but the ones I admired as a child are still very active in my life. They are part of my design.

I am sharing this with you because I want to touch on something that isn't as spiritual as we normally talk about, and I think we miss out in the body all the time: personality.

Everyone Has One

Personality is as individual as a fingerprint. It is what makes you an individual distinguishable from all other humans. We all have the same physicality, but personality is first designed by God then developed throughout our life.

Sometimes circumstances or insecurities affect our personality. If we are naturally a more introverted person, then our quiet natures might be amplified by an insecurity or because you married an outgoing person you may just become even more quiet in the public moments.

If you are loud like me, you may feel like it was not a fun and successful night out with friends unless everyone talked and laughed at least once. If you find a shy person in the room, you may spend extra time talking to that person just to make everyone happy.

Regardless of your personality leanings, whether you fall at one extreme or another or sit comfortably somewhere in the middle, you were designed that way for a reason.

Paul covers this in 1 Corinthians.

 "If our bodies were only an eye, we couldn’t hear a thing. And if they were only an ear, we couldn’t smell a thing. But God has put all parts of our body together in the way that he decided is best. A body isn’t really a body, unless there is more than one part."

Be You

Be the person God designed you to be. Life may have kicked some dust up onto you, but that can be washed away. If you notice there seems to be something stuck or clinging to you that is not true to your design, then that can be refined out of you too. 

You, your laugh, your smile, your quirks, YOU were made you for a reason. Be the best "You" you can be and let God continually have way in your life. With God adding to what He already made you to be, there is no where you can't go and nothing you can't do! 

As a friend of mine says, "personality is required!" 

Join the Conversation

When you were a kid, did you strongly identify with a TV, movie or comic book character like I did? Who was it? 

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Design Specs

Dayna Hackett Bickham at age 16 

The Younger Version of Me

I was sixteen, working as a waitress at a locally owned fast food restaurant called Dean-o’s. Think Mel’s Diner with me as the teenage version of Alice.

I loved that job because my best friend worked there too.

Now I grew up in a small town, only about 3000 people lived there, and it seemed a large portion of those citizens were either kin to me or knew my family. I often could not “stop by” the grocery store without my parents knowing before I ever got home. So there were very few opportunities to pretend to be someone I wasn’t: except at work.

See what happened was….

Girls like to flirt and at 16 and I was honing my flirting skills. Add to that a cute out-of-town boy and my flirt would pick up an accent. (I was such a drama queen and a bit of an Anglophile, so I always picked either a British accent or an Irish accent.)

With (bad) accent in tow, I would take his order, flirting with my eyes and smile and wait for that question, “where are you from?”

And so my story-telling would begin.

See, I have always been able to spin a good story, even when I used it for something as pedestrian as flirting.

I bet you are no different.

You may not be a story teller, but somewhere, in the back of your mind there is a memory of you doing something silly as a kid. That silly story probably has a connection to who you are at the core of you.

For me I was 1) quirky 2) imaginative and 3) light-hearted.

Now, over 20 years have passed and I am not much different from that 16 year old girl, though now I leave the flirting for just my husband. Those three traits are still at the core of who I am. God designed me that way.

Now Your Turn

Close your eyes and think of a time when you were a kid and you had a moment that was fun and carefree. Now answer these two questions:

1) What about that moment was fun or made you happy?

2) What does that moment say about who you were and are at the core of you?

Finding our purpose is not wrapped up in mystery. It has more to do with how God designed you in the first place than you know. Don’t discount yourself. Who you are at the core is who God wants to use. The Manufacturer always knows what they made the “thing” for and how to use it the right way. God made you for a purpose and He did not get the design wrong.

Discussion Question: Did you ever pretend to have an accent?