Is it sad that a gazelle does not fly?
Or that a sparrow is not fleet of foot?
Shall I grieve for the squirrel that does not swim to the depths?
For the otter that does not play in the treetops?
Or shall I simply marvel at the astounding creation around me,
Celebrating a spectrum of life whose experiences I will never be able to comprehend?

Making Peace With Yourself

Many of us are on a journey of discovering our uniqueness, growing into an acceptance of who we are, and learning to adapt our lives and expectations accordingly. And it’s so easy to think the goals of this journey are to embrace who we are, build a life suited for our type, live out our relaxed, loving relationship with God, and accomplish good work on this earth.

But we can do all that and still live in a haunted state of alienation and disconnection. And that hurts our hearts terribly.

I believe we will never be able to truly make deep peace with ourselves if it is only about us and our kind.

The Goal of the Uniqueness Journey

The end purpose of growing into who we were created to be is not to simply make peace with who we are, but

• to intertwine our life with certain safe others who are vastly different from us,
• to accept them in their unfathomable foreignness,
• to consider them with honor and harmony,
• and to grow in peace with them as much as is up to us.

We highly sensitive people profoundly need less sensitive people in our lives. And those less sensitive people profoundly need us. But neither of us ever need to look or function like the other.

But It’s Really Hard

Honoring someone in their differences sounds like an inspiring, reasonable thought. But it’s much harder to put into practice than it sounds. Much harder.

The sad fact is when we human beings look at other people who are different from us, we tend to see defect, not difference. And we rarely recognize their treasure.

The truth is it’s far easier to see flaw than treasure.

Why It’s So Hard

Let me explain one reason for this. As human beings, we don’t often truly experience what it’s like to be anybody but ourselves. Some of us get glimpses, but others get none. And because our own lives are all we’ve ever experientially known, we don’t tend to comprehend that what we do so naturally and effortlessly is a strength, and that that strength is a gift.

Instead, we see our strengths as Normal Human Default Mode. In fact, the easier something is for us, the more likely we are to see it as “just something people do”, with “people” meaning everybody, and “do” implying expectation.

And so we measure people by whether they properly measure up to what we believe is Normal Human Default Mode. And approve and disapprove accordingly.

Those who are fundamentally different from us fail to share our default settings. And we tend to see such lack in an unflattering light, whether we call it unenlightenment, immaturity, character flaw, defect, failure, stubbornness, rebellion, or whatever.

One Man’s Story

I once spoke with a highly sensitive, creative man who had a great drive to develop his human potential and what he called his “spirituality”. He was broken-hearted that his wife wasn’t pursuing her own spiritual potential. She just liked to do stuff. As he described her, I recognized an extroverted “doer” kind of person. She was highly social, had lots of friends, liked being out, was not happy spending much time alone — basically the total opposite to him.

He explained how she had failed to respond to his efforts to help her grow spiritually. He interpreted her behaviors as total failure to be in Normal Human Default Mode. And he determined his marriage was in great trouble, and that she was the source of that trouble. He had persisted in the marriage because he has been convinced that ultimately she would change into the person he knew she should be.

When I met him, he was in great crisis because he had begun to fear she might never change. And to him, that meant the marriage was over.

My heart grieved as I listened to his fixed belief that there was only one acceptable way to be in this world, and that the only hope for relationship with his wife was if she measured up to his default mode.

An Treasure-Seeking Alternative

I would like to suggest that when we look at someone who fails to function in our default mode, we develop a different mindset.

When faced with the absence of a familiar, comfortable behavior in someone else, we can search out the less familiar treasure God has put into them.

So in this man’s situation, he could have said, “Well, my wife doesn’t have my spiritual appetite. If somehow (unbelievably) she wasn’t designed to have that appetite (could it even be possible?), what does she have that could be called a strength?”

And if he had eyes to see, he would have at least seen a loving, connected heart and a woman who served him by holding down most of the household chores, allowing him to retreat into his creative work undisturbed. And he could have blessed those things in her and built a relationship with her that made light of their differences and honored their opposite strengths.

What the Process Entails

So the next time someone violates your belief of how people are supposed to function, ask yourself, “If they don’t have that behavior, what good thing is present?” And go on a treasure hunt. And in so doing you will counterintuitively be making progress toward making peace with yourself.

You may need to ask Jesus to give you His eyes, because it can be quite the process to humbly learn to value what God considers the treasure in someone else.

As you practice this, I can’t promise anyone will receive your gift of honor. And unfortunately you really can’t expect a particular person to reciprocate your treasure-seeking eyes, so please don’t cast your precious self in front someone who is not able to value you.

It’s not about changing the way the world sees each other, or even about how the world sees us. It’s about a shift in our own hearts that will change how we see and value other people. And in the process, usher in a greater healing into our own hearts that just might be contagious.

Blessings,
Gail Ruth

A Look at the Scriptures

Romans 14:4
Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

I Corinthians 12:14-26
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have not need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

NOTE: Dec. 1. Due to technical problems with the original file format of the slideshow, I have converted it to a downloadable pdf file.

Many highly sensitive persons find going to the doctor to be far more stressful than they think it should be. And most find medical procedures and hospitalizations to be completely overwhelming. They often think it’s just them, but it actually has to do with their trait of high sensitivity.

As part of  renewing my nursing license, I’ve put together a slide presentation called Health, Healthcare, & the Highly Sensitive Person: Issues & Solutions – for patients, families, & providers. It’s something you might share with your medical provider.

It introduces the trait of high sensitivity, discusses some special health needs of highly sensitive people, and closes with advice for both healthcare providers and patients.

Some of the information comes from Dr. Elaine Aron’s research and teaching, and other comes from my many years in the healthcare arena.

Click on the link or the graphic above to download the pdf. Feel free to share it with your healthcare providers, family members, and other highly sensitive people you know.

(File size is 4.1 MB. It may take a few moments to load. Last edit and upload 12/2/10, 8:30pm PST.)

May you find especially kind and respectful providers!

Blessings!
Gail Ruth

I get lots of questions about what being a highly sensitive person is all about, how we are different from those who are less sensitive, and how we fit with the rest of the world.

If you wonder any of these things, this post might satisfy your curiosity. Or it just might provoke it further.

What Exactly is the Trait of High Sensitivity?

Clinical psychologist Elaine Aron, who researched, defined, and wrote about the highly sensitive person, says the clinical word for high sensitivity is “sensory-processing sensitivity”.

Essentially, if you’re a highly sensitive person, you have an especially sensitive neurological system. That’s it. Basically high sensitivity is a function of physiology. It’s how your body is wired.

What a highly sensitive neurological system does is pick up incoming stimuli in greater detail and with greater intensity than the nervous system of someone with lower sensitivity.

This incoming stimuli comes both from outside you and from inside you.

• Outer sources include the environment, various energies, and people around you.
• Inner sources are your own thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations.

That’s It?

Well, there is more to the story. The rest of the story covers:

• The benefits and limitations of that physiological makeup.
• How those benefits and limitations play out in your life.
• How you and people at the opposite end of the sensitivity spectrum are entirely alien to each other.

In fact, there’s a whole book of “more”. Elaine Aron’s book, The Highly Sensitive Person, is an excellent primer on this subject. Personally, I find three chapters particularly valuable. In the first two chapters of the book she explains in detail what high sensitivity is all about. In a later chapter she addresses the kind of health issues we tend to have, and our often problematic relationships with the healthcare system and medications.

If after reading this post you still wonder if you’re truly highly sensitive, take Elaine’s insightful highly sensitive person quiz on her website. It’s filled with concrete characteristics associated with high sensitivity and will help you wrap your brain around your uniqueness. She also has a test to help you get a sense of whether your child might be highly sensitive.

The Scope of Sensitivity

The research on sensitivity reveals an entire spectrum of sensitivity – at the one end high sensitivity, at the other those who are “not at all” sensitive.

A significant percentage of people are highly sensitive: about 15-20%. That’s one out of about every 5 to 7 people. Another 20-25% or so are moderately sensitive. At the other end of the spectrum, almost half of the population is not sensitive to some degree.

What’s so interesting to me is that men are as likely to be highly sensitive as women. AND the percentages hold across cultures and throughout the animal kingdom, from mammals down to the tiny fruit fly.

Hm, I Sense a Pattern Here…

We live in a world laced with dissonance, and because of that I don’t believe the widespread presence of a trait is proof that it’s a good, positive thing. But in this case the consistency of the percentages across gender, culture, species, and throughout the entire spectrum of animal life on this planet cause me to suspect that the full spectrum of physiologic sensitivity is an intentional design of the Creator. It seems to me the Creator considers the entire spectrum of sensitivity important in the larger community of life.

But few people on the planet appear to agree with Him.

It seems someone is always marginalizing either the more sensitive or the not so sensitive. Various cultures idealize different levels of sensitivity, and at the same time devalue the opposite. (Yes, surprisingly for us Westerners, some cultures actually idealize the highly sensitive temperament. Who knew?)

What We All (Sort of) Have in Common…

In coming to grips with differing levels in sensitivity, it’s absolutely critical to understand the implications of optimal levels of stimuli. This is where so many misunderstandings arise between people.

The principle is that everyone does best when they are at an optimal level of stimulation. Everyone. We all thrive at an optimal level of stirring, challenging, motivating, engaging stimulation. The consequences of being out of this optimal place are dire.

• When there’s too little stimulation, people sink into an unmotivated sludge of bored immobility.
• When there’s too much, the result is a frazzled and jangled state in which people cease to be effective or pleasant to be around.
• At an optimal level, however, people are capable of being engaged, motivated, and at least relatively pleasant and effective. This is a universal reality.

The complication here is that an optimal level is different for people with different sensitivity needs. It’s highly individualized. And any person will need different levels of stimulation at different times.

What’s important to realize here is there is no level of stimulation best for everyone. What might engage a highly sensitive person may be snoozeville for a less sensitive person. And what is a great time for a not-at-all sensitive person may be unbearable, or even traumatic, for the highly sensitive.

Aliens!

Different sensitivity levels might sound to you like simple, understandable variations between people. But in fact the results are far more dramatic than it might seem.

The sensory-processing differences between people at opposite ends of the sensitivity spectrum create experiences of the world that are so different from each other that they are functionally alien. The realities of those at the one end are virtually unfathomable to those at the other.

People like to believe they are capable of understanding another person’s experience of life, and usually try to do this based upon their own experiences and their imagination. But really, when people are this different, it just doesn’t work.

The Assets of High Sensitivity

Highly sensitive people are equipped to bring exceptional assets to the table. We have the potential to be aware of subtle nuances others are oblivious to. We are wired to be able to see things that tend to be hidden from less sensitive people. We might pick up on little clues others miss. We can be highly intuitive.

We potentially see more shades of meaning than others. We can therefore possibly have deeper and clearer insight into situations, plans, and ideas.

We also have the potential to better understand the implications of any planned strategy, and to foresee consequences of a proposed action. And so we are capable of offering great advice – potentially.

But…

The reason I liberally use the words “might”, “potentially” and such are because these inborn gifts operate well only when we are at a reasonable level of stimulation.

When we are in a state of overwhelm or over-stimulation, we tend not to be aware of anything but the sheer nerve-wracking magnitude of the incoming stimuli. Unfortunately this is a common experience for us.

Being highly sensitive means that, by definition, we are relatively easily overwhelmed by too much noise, too many people, too much time on the go, too much stress, too many demands, and too much of any other stimuli.

And we don’t function particularly well when we are experiencing overload. No one does. We just go there easier than others.

Living in the Asset Zone

When we are not in overload, the world and our personal relationships benefit greatly from the insightful, intuitive, well-considered contributions we highly sensitive people so conscientiously make. Therefore, the key here is to learn how to live in the asset zone.

Highly sensitive people typically try hard to diligently do the right thing. But sometimes we get confused about what the right thing is, especially with the less sensitive world telling us the right thing is to keep up with them.

I propose that one of our highest value priorities is to set our boundaries and sculpt our lives to care for our physical sensitivities. It is just good stewardship to live our lives in such a way that our gifts are free to flow out of us.

But many highly sensitive people don’t feel comfortable doing this, trying instead to get over the bar set by those who cannot begin to comprehend how we experience the world.

And, when we try to measure up by faithfully keeping pace with the lives and expectations of the less sensitive people in our world, all we do is we squander our gifts and hide our light under the proverbial bushel.

The True Gift

People often wonder if being highly sensitive is a Special Gift. My response is, yes, but only if being not-at-all sensitive is also a Special Gift. And every degree of sensitivity in between.

You see, I believe the true gift from God is not one particular flavor of sensitivity, but rather the entirety of the sensitivity spectrum.

It is valuable to understand our own place on the sensitivity spectrum, to make peace with it, and to sow into it. But that is not enough. To actually live out the heart of God here on planet earth, we need to honor the full spectrum of sensitivity.

Anything else – any elistism, any superiority, any lesser valuing of those who are not what we are, any presumption of being more significant or more advanced – falls short of the glory of God.

So come celebrate the full spectrum of sensitivity with me – even if much of the rest of the spectrum still rejects our particular uniqueness.

Forgiving and valuing has to start somewhere. Where better than with us who were created to see deeply and to fathom the finer nuances?

Be blessed.
Gail Ruth

Guest Post by Elissa Starks, a highly sensitive Christian.

I am coming to the realization I have been made “quirky” for a reason. I believe now that God has made us all with so much diversity. This really hit home at a visit to an aquarium.

A consummate fish nerd, I stood in awe at the 1.3 million gallon tank in front of me. It was feeding time, and I was struck by the unique feeding habits of each inhabitant of the tank.

The tuna, weighing 500 pounds or so, are the first to snatch up the food. They bulldoze over everyone (even over the sharks, which was surprising to me.) The sharks are a soft and boneless fish and could be injured or killed by these massive tuna torpedoes, so they hang out and are sometimes fed by the end of a pole. The smaller fish and sardines then eat the crumbs that fall from the huge fish.

My personal favorite was the ray who has to be fed altogether differently. She actually waits until everyone is done and goes all the way to the surface to be fed on the end of the pole.  The commentator explained that over time she has learned to watch for their feet and go to the surface. Then, in dog-like fashion, she rolls over on her back with her tummy towards the feeders and receives her food.

It was such a beautiful picture to me of the diversity and unity within the body of Christ. Same tank, same precious food… different fish. It showed me there are those in their strength that can take the food as it comes and those that need a little more personal touch.

I saw this again on a recent trip to Hawaii. Once again at the aquarium (surprise, surprise!) and this time colors were the rule of the day. There was one particular fish called the Christmas wrasse that made my jaw literally drop. It wore an array of neon colors, some of which I had not seen in such abundance since the nineteen eighties. It was stunning.

In fact, I got the impression with some of these fish that God was purposely going over the top. The more spots, squiggles, stripes and colors, the better and yet not a hint of garishness.

I came away with the distinct impression that these fish were not necessarily more interesting or valuable than the ones elsewhere in the world. They were just different and I would not want one type without the other.

To me these fish tanks are a stark reminder of what I believe God intends for the church: diversity and unity within the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12,13). I think one of the reasons I have struggled so much over these few years – heck, over my life – is that I am more like the shark or the ray who needs a gentler touch.

I have come to the realization that some of us are just made differently and that is not a bad thing. I want to be able to swim to the depths of God and have a relationship with my Creator. I want to be able to let the tuna and other fish be themselves, and appreciate their beauty without diminishing my own.

story ©2010 by Elissa Starks. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Off the Grid

We all benefit from having someone who can model and mirror back at us at least a glimmer of who we’re created to be and how we might use our gifts.

When we’re fortunate enough to receive this, it gives us a needed sense of “permission” to be in the world. And it can show us how to be authentically ourselves in a healthy, loving way. It’s even helpful in living out our relationship with God.

But for those of us who are highly sensitive, highly emotional, or sensitive-gifted and who feel different from other Christians, this helpful mirroring is a rare thing to find, especially in the church.

The church doesn’t lack for people who want to model for us who we are to be as Christians, but this isn’t always helpful for people like us. The problem is that people who are harmonious with the Christian cultural norm might not be good-fitting models for us. Their practical expressions of the Christian life are not always relevant for us.

For clarity’s sake, I’m not talking here about core virtues the Holy Spirit grows in us like love, humility, gladness, valuing others, peace, patience, faith, integrity, etc.

I’m talking about your gifts and created design and how they function in practical ways:

• what the expression of who you were created to be looks like in the context of your love relationship with God
• what the expression of your gifts looks like in the realm of serving God and others
• and even what the expression of prayer looks like for you.

Given To Be a Blessing

What this means is that if your gifts and created design fall outside what is culturally common in your stream of the church, you might find it difficult to grow into the person God created you to be.

The reality is that many unique and hidden gifts intended to bless the world, fellow believers, and the Creator’s own heart, are often misunderstood and overlooked, leaving them lying dormant.

And so today I want to call for a treasure hunt, looking for the unique hidden gifts and treasures the Creator has woven into the very core each individual. Yes, even you. You might be surprised what you find.

Gifts & Accompanying Weaknesses

One place to start looking is with what we call our weaknesses. It seems to me that every gift, every trait, every strength, has its accompanying weakness.

What do I mean by weakness? I consider weakness to be part of our unique design, countering our gifts and strengths. To be considered a weakness, our failures in that area are defined as undesirable by ourselves, our culture, or by individuals around us.

Some examples might be:

• a nurturant highly sensitive person’s struggles to interact with others in noisy social environments
• a deep thinker’s poor tolerance for dealing with the physical environment
• a helpful extrovert’s dislike of being alone for long
• a dancer’s inability to sit still in meetings
• a seer’s difficulty in praying out loud in words
• a dawdler’s inability to operate in efficiency mode
• a strong, competent person’s obliviousness to subtleties
• a multi-faceted scanner’s failure to dedicate herself to just one thing
• a hardy, not sensitive person’s incomprehension of details
• a tender hearted person’s uncontainable public tears at the most inconvenient times
• a writer’s low appetite for social relationships

Weaknesses As Signposts

All these weaknesses look unacceptable to at least some people, and you will most likely be encouraged to sow your energies into mastering or eradicating your weakness. But I don’t see God calling us to this in scripture. To the contrary. Our Creator seems to value our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

For those of you who are aware of your weaknesses (a.k.a. “defects”), I’d like to suggest that maybe your weaknesses can be signposts that something wonderful lies hidden deep inside. Something no one has ever mirrored back at us.

This is how I see it. Your gifts and weaknesses are a package deal. Everybody’s are. When you look at one end of the package deal, it looks like a gaping hole that needs to be filled and all you see is what’s missing that you believe is supposed to be there. But if you look at the other end, it looks wonderful and rich and useful and lovely.

Choose Your Focus

The bottom line is that you can either pour your energies into the dud end (trying hard to be what you’re not) or into the treasure end (seeking out your treasure and investing it).

I would like to propose that instead of hating our weaknesses and dedicating our lives to self-reformation, we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us on a journey that will awaken, open up, unpack, invest, and mature our dormant gifts.

It’s truly a treasure hunt. What our weaknesses will show us is not predictable. What they do is provide clues that can send us on a search and a journey with the Holy Spirit. And there’s no one who can teach us who we are like the Holy Spirit can.

How ‘Bout We Stir Up Some Dormant Gifts?

I love to help stir up gifts hidden deep inside people. To this end, I’m doing an inspiring series of interviews with individuals who express their love for God in ways for which many churches don’t offer a grid.

My hope is that one of these people might reflect back at you something that’s never made sense in you. Or maybe their example will send you on your own out-of-the-box journey with the Holy Spirit to see what lies under those plaguing weaknesses of yours.

Come Join the Treasure Hunt

The interviews are free to access. You simply need to be on my mailing list and I’ll send you the links to them as they’re posted. You can sign up in the purple form to the right. And you can read about the interviews on my Goodies page.

I invite you to come join our treasure hunt. May you find priceless treasure both in yourself and in the people around you.

Blessings!
Gail Ruth

Did you know you don’t have to take advice from everybody who sets themselves up as an authority for your life? I propose it is the wise receiver of advice, not the wise giver of it, who needs to be the one who determines if the advice given is good or not.

Bad Advice

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of downright bad advice out there. Descriptive words for such bad advice pop to mind:

• idealistic
• “shoulds”
• controlling
• pat answers
• inexperienced enthusiasm
• superficial solutions
• offensive values
• untested theory.

But what I’m most looking at today is good advice.

Principles versus Advice

To clarify what I mean in this post by advice, and to lay a foundation for our response, let me contrast principles and advice.

Good principles are broad truths or realities. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out how to live out these good principles, and that’s where good advice comes in.

Advice is about implementation. Good advice helps us find specific, practical ways of implementing those good principles. Good advice tells us how those principles might look when they are lived out by someone:

• in a particular culture
• with a particular value set
• with a certain preferred cognitive style
• with a distinct personality type
• in a certain season of life

One example of a good principle is the call to love God with all your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind. Advice takes this principle and suggests practical ways to sow into this love and live it out in our daily lives. You might hear a lot of this type of advice from teachers at church.

Another example is exercise. It’s a wise principle that we humans need movement and physical activity in order to thrive. The specific how-to’s of implementing this principle are the domain of advice. “You need to start exercising” is more principle than advice. “You should sign up for that pilates class with me” is what I mean by advice.

The Limitations Of Good Advice

While certain overarching principles can continue relevant throughout various times and cultures, even the best of wise, practical, experienced advice has significant limitations. The reality is that good advice is rarely useful for those who are different from the advice-giver. This means that a lot of good advice isn’t good for you.

In my mind, it’s important to distinguish the difference between the outright bad advice I mentioned earlier, and advice that doesn’t work for you. I call this kind of advice that’s truly quality advice for someone else “ill-fitting advice”.

Generally, I believe people of one design are unqualified to give nitty-gritty, how-to-live advice to people of another design.

To make that statement more specific to my readers, I encourage highly emotional people to only take advice about how to handle their emotional lives from someone who is also highly emotional and who has made peace with their created design.

The same thing goes for highly sensitive people. Highly sensitive people who take advice about how to manage life from people with lesser sensitivities are setting themselves up for failure and pain.

The reality is that really excellent advice that hugely helps one type of person can utterly devastate another type of person if they persist in trying to make it work.

Good Advice For You

For advice to be good for you, it has to fit you and make sense in your heart.

While there may be global truths in the world of greater principle, advice is never globally applicable. What is good advice for one is ill-fitting for the next. For example:

• the specific foods to eat to be healthy
• the particular exercise form to feel good
• the desirable modality for inner healing
• the style of worship to express love for God
• the prescribed devotional style
• the ideal way to feed on scripture
• the way to express love to another person
• the specific practices that make a marriage work.

Advice cannot be distinguished as good by it’s claim that it promises results. Advice cannot be deemed good just because it seems to work for everybody else. And advice is not made good by some authority’s insistence that it’s the “right way” to do a particular thing or the “right way” to be on this earth.

The reason I’m writing this post is because it seems so many of us highly sensitive people are suckers for people who tell us what we’re supposed to be doing and how we’re supposed to be doing it. We so easily believe people when they claim to know the best way for us be in the world.

My agenda is not to point any finger at those often well-meaning people in our lives who are burying us in ill-fitting advice and instruction. On the contrary. I’m sending this to myself and to you to alert us to the power we give to other people to be “right” on our behalf, and point out the danger of acquiescence.

People are without a doubt going to be giving us advice for our entire lives. We need to learn to deal with that reality.

So How Can You Recognize Good (For You) Advice?

Recognizing good advice for you sometimes works similarly to what I’ve written about the Holy Spirit’s voice – how His voice makes something come alive in us. Good advice can do the same thing.

But good advice doesn’t always feel good. People don’t usually share the Holy Spirit’s skill at making even a correction feel safe and palatable. Sometimes I get good advice that goes strongly against what I want to do, but even then, there’s a deep knowing inside that I’m hearing wisdom for me. My response to such can be something akin to a disgusted, “You’re right. Bummer. That’s not what I wanted to hear.” But I know I’m hearing something that will fit me in a positive way.

Alternatively, a big red flag that I’m hearing ill-fitting advice is if the advice misses the “knowing” spot and hits the guilt/shame/”Oh no! I’m doing it all wrong!” trigger that many highly sensitive people have inside them.

Applying This at Church

So what do you do when you hear specific, detailed advice taught from the pulpit as if it were God’s own mandate? Unless you’re fortunate enough to sit under a highly sensitive teacher who is comfortable with their sensitivity, it’s unlikely that such specific how-to’s will be at all helpful for you. (And in that case the specifics would be a confusing burden for the non-sensitive crowd.)

While prescriptive ministerial advice can be helpful to some, such teachings are likely to derail the lives of those for whom the advice is ill-fitting.

In their defense, ministers who prescribe one-size-fits-all specific courses of action have no understanding of the ramifications of their prescriptions in our highly sensitive hearts. And many will grieve deeply when they do ultimately come to understand. Scripture states that teachers will endure a harsher judgment than other people (James 3:1).

I personally have known a number of highly sensitive persons who spent decades earnestly implementing a prescribed spiritual plan of action that was a good fit only for a far different type of person. Having been given no good alternatives, and wanting to love God deeply, they worked hard to try to please God and measure up to His alleged expectations.

They expected their obedience would somehow lead to abundant life, peace with God, and a flowing, passion-driven purpose. It never did. Instead, what commonly resulted was an inauthentic life of neurosis and distress, often with unresolving physical symptoms, and a subconscious (or conscious) view of God as some demanding, harsh, unfeeling Master.

I’ve had the privilege of sharing in many a slow healing journey as one by one these sensitive hearts have begun to heal and grow into the joy and freedom of a relaxed love relationship with God through Jesus.

The Fly In My Ointment

And so I sit here giving you advice about receiving advice. But many of you are not going to find my advice practically useful.

This post may help you differentiate principle from advice. But it gets sticky when it’s time to start sifting through the advice you get and attempting to evaluate or disentangle yourself from it. The fact is, dealing with advice is actually more of a heart matter than an easily-implementable behavior.

For one thing, it’s hard to stand your ground in the face of someone else’s certainty on your behalf.

More importantly, though, if you view God as harsh, demanding, and judgmental, or if you regularly trash talk yourself, being a harsh, demanding, judgmental god to yourself, you won’t be able to recognize what I call “life”. It won’t be able to get near you. The driving need to measure up and become acceptable will drown out any gentle voice that speaks to you of life and grace.

Unfortunately, the harsh voice speaks with greater authority and sounds more “real” to our senses than does the beauty and kindness of the Creator.

Recommendations and Blessings

I wish I had some good, clear advice to give you. But I don’t. I only have a few general principles.

• Keep asking for, seeking for, and knocking loudly for a personal experiential encounter with the true God of the Bible who loves you, and then walk in relationship with Him.
• Learn to be led by the Holy Spirit.
• Honor the human teacher who is giving you ill-fitting practical advice, and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit for you.
• Accept that the offending advice-givers are fellow fallible human beings.
• Forgive.
• And, whatever it takes, eradicate bitterness and judgment from every part of your heart.

May your heart come alive with the love God has for you, and may you discern His still small voice in Your heart. And so may you learn to weigh the fittingness of every drop of advice you receive.

I bless you on your highly sensitive person Christian journey. May the advice given to you by people not drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit in your heart.

Blessings!
Gail Ruth

Have you ever wondered what humility might look like in an insightful, aware, gifted person? We certainly don’t benefit from doing the “aw shucks” routine that often passes for being humble.

If we’re honest with ourselves, some of us have some pretty amazing gifts and talent. The gifted can think circles around the rest of the world and still leave them in the dust. Some of us interact with the invisible and mystical as simply and naturally as if it were all perfectly tangible. And then when you throw cutting-edge creativity into the mix, some people frankly look pretty impressive.

The “I’m just humble and ordinary and nothing really special” line doesn’t really work for us. It’s not even true. (Not that it is for anyone else either.)

If we’re done with demeaning ourselves and putting ourselves down and hiding who we really are, what then is humility? If we’ve actually grown into our gifts and strengths and if we have adapted to our weaknesses, what might true humility look like?

I have a few ideas that might challenge us. These aren’t things you can capture with a quick read or even with your logical mind; instead you might want to ponder them in your heart.

• Humility deeply believes, often times entirely by faith, that other human beings are priceless in the eyes of God, designed and strategically placed on the earth as a treasure and a blessing to Him.¹ Even that loud, insensitive neighbor.

• Humility discerns that the widow’s mites excited the heart of God far more than the all the generous and faithful offerings given that day.² Therefore humility does not disregard that which clearly appears inconsequential.

• Humility accepts that the kingdom of heaven treasures our weaknesses.³ It therefore has no need to judge or to strive, and rests peacefully in grace.⁴

• Humility considers that one is a thread in a great majestic tapestry. It understands that the plain neutral threads are as great a contributor to the beauty, wholeness, and integrity of the piece as the brightly colored threads, the pure gold threads, or even the jewels that sparkle and catch the eye.⁵

• Humility comprehends that every human is given a measure of different weaknesses and strengths. Therefore, humility never uses one’s own kind – one’s natural strengths, gifts, type, or tribe – as a plumbline to evaluate or compare with another.⁶

I have known a few amazing people who have simply lived this way without ever identifying these thoughts. But for the gifted person, humility may need to be nurtured through lingering contemplation of such perspectives.

A New Year’s blessing toast for all sensitive and gifted Christians: Here’s to humility. May we kindly regard ourselves and others.

Blessings!

Gail Ruth

¹Psalm 139, Philippians 2:3-4
²Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4
³1 Corinthians 1:27, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
⁴Matthew 11:28-30, Hebrews 4:9-10
⁵1 Corinthians 12:20-25
⁶Matthew 7:1-3

Have you ever wondered about the various ways God manifests Himself in different churches and different cultures?

Many Christians expect God to express Himself to others in the same ways He expresses Himself to them, and end up rejecting God Himself in situations where He is not familiar. This is a common misunderstanding between different streams of Christianity and between Christians in different cultures.

I learned some profound lessons about honoring facets of God that were foreign to me when I visited Israel with my husband three years ago.

A Thin Curtain

When I arrived in Israel, I discovered the voice of the Holy Spirit came in loud and clear. I quickly found that the spiritual realm was much louder there than it was in America. As a highly sensitive person, I found it a bit overwhelming. It was like the curtain between the natural world and the spiritual world was thin throughout the whole country.

The good news is the Holy Spirit was able to teach and lead me easily to great effect while I was there.

“Not As You Know Me”

In Galilee we visited some of the beautiful Orthodox churches that had been there for many centuries. At that time I was not yet familiar with the Orthodox Church. Foreign country. Foreign church.

The first church we were to see was the Beatitudes Church. I asked God if He would be there. After all, it was the middle of the week and the church was a tourist attraction. He replied, “Not as you know Me, dear.”

I pondered His answer for a while and wondered what He meant. Finally I told Him I would like to take the opportunity to meet another facet of Him. And I did. Although if He hadn’t prepared me I might have missed Him.

As we walked slowly through the church, I noticed it was a place of great reverence. And the Presence of God was there, but not as I had known Him. I worshipped God as I touched His foreign-to-me, yet still recognizable, Presence. It was a memorable experience.

Silence and Transformation

Next we visited the Loaves and Fishes Church. The signs outside the church called for silence inside and instructed tour guides to speak to their groups outside and to maintain silence in the church.

I have to confess that when I first saw those signs requiring silence in the church, I judged them to be some empty, meaningless religious demand thought up by somebody to make life complicated. What I observed convinced me otherwise.

In spite of the signs, when my husband and I walked into the sanctuary of the church, a tour guide was lecturing in a loud voice to a large group. What most caught my attention, however, was the spiritual environment. Something terrible was happening in the spirit realm. I grabbed my husband and pulled him outside, where I explained that a horrible thing was happening in there.

We waited, pensively wandering around the beautiful outside until that group emerged chattering. We could hear the tourists freely talking to each other as they moved through the church sanctuary and out the door.

After they were clear, we ventured back inside. Another tour guide with a small group was lecturing inside the sanctuary, this time in a soft whisper. It still felt like something bad was happening in there, but it wasn’t as intensely terrible, and we lingered in a corner, waiting for them to leave.

When they finally left, there were the beginnings of shiftings in the spiritual realm and within a few moments it became of place of absolute spiritual beauty. Powerful angelic worship of God began to manifest in the room, the Presence of God was ushered in, and it continued so for the rest of our silent visit.

Rules versus Wise Discerning

Contrary to what I had assumed, I learned that the silence rule was not a burdensome religious rule of man. Instead it was a rule that wisely discerned how God was manifesting Himself in that place.

When the silence was flagrantly broken, it was not just a rule that was being violated. It was a violation of something mysterious and spiritual, like some interface between heaven and earth was being disrupted. I believe what I experienced in that church was that those speaking in the sanctuary in clear disregard to the signs requesting silence were bringing a curse on themselves. It was truly terrible.

My Heart Shifted

As we drove away, the Holy Spirit explained to me that nothing is empty and burdensome religion in and of itself. He told me every stream of the church have those whose hearts love God and also have those whose hearts are hard to Him.

He taught me that, because of how He made me, some things may be personally meaningless to me, but those things actually reflect some aspect of the heart of God that He shares with those who are designed to share that part of Him.

He showed me that for every behavior I think of as merely “religious,” someone is doing it in a meaningful way from an authentic heart of love for God, and God is expressing Himself back in that same language.

And then He kindly said, “Do not judge.”

My heart permanently shifted with His words. May you receive the same gift as you read this.

Blessings!

Gail Ruth

I’m a dawdler. I always have been. I’m always wafting off into my own inner world, oblivious to all else.

I have no idea how dawdling correlates with high sensitivity, but lots of highly sensitive people I know are dawdlers. Not all. But lots.

Although I’m sure there are other good reasons for dawdling, for me it’s part of being an introverted thinker. I fit the INTP profile in the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. (By the way, logical thinkers who are also heart-driven and emotionally intense are not as rare as one would think; I know several in my little world.)

And under the patient tutelage of the Holy Spirit, I have come to understand that slow is a wonderful pace at which to live life. The problem is that almost no one else agrees.

Growing up, my Dad would holler at me and deliver the ultimate disgracing judgment, “You’re slow.” Try as I might, I couldn’t really do a whole lot about it. I could ratchet up the stress level, but it didn’t help accomplish stuff faster. All it did was make me anxious.

A number of years ago I was stressing about being slow, and lamented to God, “I’m so slow.” He responded clear as a bell, “I know.” It shocked me. Not the acknowledgment, but the tone. He communicated that message as if He were savoring a delicious taste – with utter delight and approval.

I don’t have language to express the profound astonishment and shifting that those two simple words triggered. Besides taking all the sting out of my Dad’s lingering judgment, it was my first clue there might be something divinely intentional about it all. My antenna went up.

As I started observing other dawdlers, I began noticing that these “undesirable” traits correlated with certain types of human design, as if they were an inseparable piece of a larger package. In addition, it seemed that those who had these traits were people in whom God took especially great emotional delight. I pondered this for years.

During those years, the Holy Spirit wooed me into an acceptance of a slower pace for myself. After a lifetime of stressfully trying to hurry up, it was a significant shift of mindset. “Go slow,” He’d always tell me. “Just waft. Peace. Relax.”

The odd thing I discovered was that I was more functionally effective in a slow, dawdly mode than I ever was in a hurry, chop!-chop! mode. Not enough so to satisfy an inherently efficient person, but it was an obvious difference. I also discovered that this slow, wafty, dawdly pace created a frequency of health for my body.

Our culture, however, continues to speak in dissonant counterpoint to this, even at church. Dawdling is considered a defective behavior. Slowness is labeled a lack of maturity or a character flaw. Some attribute rebellious or passive-aggressive motives to these ways of being, as if its existence is merely an attempt to thwart the busy lives and efficient schedules of other people. Or they liken these behaviors to a work slow-down as if these were a sign of protest or dissent. Others claim that dawdling is a definitive sign of ADD and should be medicated.

Many of these judgments may be true in some cases, because everything authentic has a counterfeit. But I am convinced there are those of us for whom a slower pace is an authentic expression of a God-given design. For us it can be what abundant life looks like.

Last year I spent over half the year intensely seeking God for His perspective on dawdling and dawdlers. The season began with an angelic visitation delivering the assignment. Out of that season came The Dawdle Song, which I have recorded for you here. This song holds the answers I received. I feel that each concept and line was, with much labor, sought and pulled out of heaven and out of the very heart of God.

I’m not idealizing slowness or dawdling as some refreshing standard for everyone to embrace. But for some of us it is the frequency we were designed for.

If you were created a dawdler, may this song bring you freedom. And if you were created for efficiency, may you be free to bless the dawdlers around you.

The Difficulties of Being Different

One of the complications of being a highly sensitive Christian is that most Christian teachers are not highly sensitive, and yet they’re the ones teaching and modeling for us the nitty-gritty of how to live our Christian lives.

Many highly sensitive Christians find themselves becoming increasingly neurotic as they sit under such training. It seems the harder we try to live up to these less sensitive ways of living the Christian life, the further out of reach slips the abundant life promised by Jesus (John 10:10).

Hard-wired entirely differently from less sensitive people, the highly sensitive experience the world in a way that few appreciate. In the church, highly sensitive people are rarely understood – even by themselves. Instead of sensitivity being celebrated and found valuable, as God intended, it is often disapproved as immaturity, defect, or character flaw.

Even among the teachers in the church who are highly sensitive persons, few have come to peace with their high sensitivity and many battle it as if it were an enemy.

Investing Our Sensitivities in the Heart of God

Highly sensitive people have richer senses and usually deeper emotions than their less sensitive counterparts. As highly sensitive believers, we have the potential to invest those deeper emotions and richer senses into our relationship with God, although people who don’t know about sensitivity are understandably unable to tell us that.

The highly sensitive person has an uncommon potential to develop a relational style with God that is strong with emotion – both our own and God’s – and able to sense the intangible Presence of God, emotions of God, and/or communications from God. What a joy to overtly experience the warmth of the love of God for oneself!

Enjoy Your God!

So, enjoy your high sensitivity. Enjoy your God (Psalm 9:2). Dance in His presence (Psalm 149:3). Rejoice (Phil. 4:4). Christ is your life (Col. 3:4). Rest (Heb. 4:9-10). Play (Mark 10:15). Come into His Presence with happy confidence because of Jesus (Heb. 4:16). Drink from the river of His pleasures (Psalm 36:8). Be safe in Him (Psalm 91:1). Respond (Rev. 3:20). Soak in His presence (Rev. 1:10). Thank Him (Psalm 107). Worship (Psalm 29:2). Believe (Matt. 9:28).

Be blessed.

Gail Ruth