Blog hiatus

… until my paper is finished.

Quote for today

Often as I move through my day, trying to navigate the whirlpools of this world, the relational, spiritual and social whitewater, I will often turn to Jesus in my heart and ask, “What do I need to do, Lord?” My question is usually fueled by some twist or turn I don’t know how to handle – some test or trial, some oncoming battle. Life as usual. His response is nearly always, “Love me.”

That’s it? Love you?

That’s it. That is what is most needed.

For when I love God, my whole being is re-oriented, re-aligned, healed. When I love God, the internal effects are almost immediate; they are often profound. I can’t hold onto that grudge, not while I am loving God with “all that is within me.” I can’t covet or worry or fear. When I love God, really, it changes everything.

And this is why he said, start here. This is core. Love me.

~John Eldredge

Quote for today

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

The essence of courage is to stake one’s life on a possibility; the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.

~ Wm Salter

found on Twitter Kinderbeten

Poor or rich? (cont.)

Whatever Happened to the Rich Little Poor Girl?
Catching up with Eddie Ogan, author of “The Rich Family in Church“
by Kimberly Claassen

“All my life, I’ve been able to find something funny in anything that happened.” So says Eddie Ogan.

And most things were. But her story of a childhood Easter was a slight miscalculation. The story she wrote to make people laugh, made them cry. As she copied the letter with that story in it, folded and stamped it, sending it around the world to missionaries who could use a laugh in their day, she never guessed its bittersweetness would give pause to millions of readers worldwide for years to come.

…

The Rich Little Poor Girl

“We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and Dad for parents [Dad died several years before the Easter story] and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly,” Eddie wrote. “We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.”

This slice of Eddie’s childhood, set in 1946, has become known as “The Rich Family in Church.” Written in a letter to missionaries in 1990, it took on a life of its own and still circulates in magazines, books (Chicken Soup for the Golden Soul), and Web sites (Google.com pulls up 100 links to her story—including translations in German and Indonesian). Other than some versions mistaking Eddie for a boy (her name is pronounced like the male name, “Eddy”), the story has remained intact.

Eddie (Smith) Ogan, the sixth of seven children, who found out at age 14 that she was “poor” is now 72. She and her husband, Phil, live on Social Security. They clean the grounds and bathrooms at the Northeast Washington Fair; the Colville, Washington, Father’s Day Rodeo; and Town and Country Days at the next town over.

Are you thinking that poor girl became even more poor? Then you don’t know the end of that Easter story, and you don’t know Eddie Ogan.

Growing Up “Poor”

“We didn’t have much, but everything we had was shared with everybody else,” Eddie says. “If any kid needed a place to stay, we took him in. If anybody didn’t have clothing, Mom would do everything she could to come up with something for them.”

With bounty to share, it never occurred to Eddie that they didn’t have enough. Perhaps that explains why she and her husband have 13 children—12 of them adopted—and have fostered 77 children.

For Eddie, the dozen-plus-one children are an unexpected fulfillment of childhood determination.

“When I grow up, I’m going to have 12 children,” she’d tell her mom repeatedly. “And they’re going to be red and yellow, black and white.” That was Eddie’s favorite song: “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white….” It made sense to her that all would be in one family. Her family.

“So my mother spent years and years telling me I would grow up to marry a white man, we would have white children, and I wouldn’t want a dozen of them.”

By the time Eddie and Phil had 12 children, they indeed had red and yellow, black and white: six Korean (two of them half-black), three American Indian, three Caucasian. And Eddie’s mother wondered why she’d wasted so many years trying to convince Eddie differently.

In truth, neither the fostering nor the adoptions were exactly in Eddie and Phil’s long-range plans. When on their eighth adoption, their caseworker asked how many children they planned to adopt.

“We never planned to adopt,” Phil told her. “But I was raised without anyone telling me I was loved. So, if it’s a matter of another child not having anyone to tell them that they’re loved, well, I do love them.”

In particular, Phil wanted to love Korean children.

A highly decorated serviceman during the Korean War, Phil served in Korea six years, including three years during occupation and 20 months during peace talks.

“He had a lot of nightmares about babies that were lying alongside the road that they couldn’t do anything about,” Eddie says. “It bothered him that so many children were fathered by American servicemen and weren’t socially acceptable in Korea. So when the first Korean children came over, we wrote to see if there was any way we could adopt Korean children.”

They didn’t care if the child was male or female, handicapped or not. “We got our daughter Suzie when she was two and a half. Our doctors here told us we should send her back to the orphanage because she was so emotionally upset that she would never be normal. Every time you made a move by her she would throw her hands over her head and lean forward, trying to protect herself.” Though it took a year before anyone could move near Suzie without her dropping to the floor, by the time she entered kindergarten, she was as eager as any other child.

Suzie was their third adopted child. When she and her two sisters begged for a baby brother, Eddie told them they didn’t have enough money to adopt a baby brother. “They prayed that God would give them a baby brother,” Eddie says. “I should not have been able to have children, but I had Timothy.”

With three children in the house and one on the way, they got word of another child. Tom was crippled by polio, paralyzed from the waist down.

“I felt that we couldn’t afford him at that time,” Eddie says. “I talked to everybody. I went to everybody I could think of who might possibly be interested in adopting him. I couldn’t believe that nobody was interested. Finally, we decided that we would adopt him because nobody else would.”

While in the process of adopting Tom, Tim was born. Then the roof started leaking. They had to take the money they’d borrowed for the adoption to put a new roof on the house. They couldn’t afford Tom, after all.

“For six months, my husband said he didn’t even want me to say anything about Tom because it bothered him so much,” Eddie says. “Then on Christmas Eve, the Lord spoke to him and told him that if he adopted Tom, He would always take care of us—we would never go without.”

They had just paid off Suzie’s airplane ticket, so they could again borrow money from the bank—this time, for Tom’s ticket. “He was four-and-a-half years old,” Eddie says. “He was the same size as our 8-month-old son. He weighed the same amount. He came to us in a box. They had him in a cardboard box with a pillow in front of him so he wouldn’t fall over in the box.”

They were told Tom would never walk, but “after a great deal of prayer, he got feeling in his legs,” Eddie says. “One leg, that was so terribly short, grew longer. He stood alone for the first time on Mother’s Day. Thinking back, that, to me, is one of the biggest high points in my life—when Tom stood alone for two seconds on Mothers Day.”

The only remnant of those early days for Tom, now a successful businessman in his late 40s, is a limp.

Worldwide Correspondent

In 1961, Eddie had those first five children at home—seven years and younger—when she took three days off for a church conference. She was unsuspecting when she picked up a booklet listing the 40 or so missionaries within their church district. The divine nudging took her by surprise.

“I felt that the Lord spoke to me and said He wanted me to write to all these missionaries,” Eddie says. “Immediately, I told the Lord, ‘I couldn’t do that. I haven’t even been to Bible school.’ These were missionaries. They’re just two steps under God. The Lord then said, ‘They don’t need your theology. They need your sense of humor.’”

With five children, Eddie had plenty of material. Her first letter brought a response from a family in India.

“They wrote back and said that when they’d gone to India, there was this elderly missionary in his seventies,” Eddie explains. “He was retiring and going home. They asked him, as new missionaries on the field, what to do. They were so disappointed because the only thing he said to them was, ‘Find something to laugh about every day, and you’ll be successful. If you don’t, India will kill you.’

“They thought this was stupid advice. He’d been there 40-plus years, and they thought he would have some great words of wisdom. They said then that the longer they were there, they realized it was actually the best advice anyone had ever given them: to find something to laugh about every day. That’s what my letters are supposed to be for. To make people laugh.”

Reaching back into her childhood—or grabbing material from her present-day mothering—Eddie wrote at the beginning of each month. One missionary told her, “The only thing that has kept me going all these years is your false teeth letter.”

Missionary children around the world came to know her as Aunt Eddie, though they’d never met her. The 40 missionaries on Eddie’s original list sent her letters on to other missionaries. The list grew. Missionaries retired, and children grew up but asked to remain on her list. New missionaries replaced the retiring missionaries. The list grew.

The first year, Eddie hand-wrote each letter. The next year, 1962, she moved to a duplicating process using heavy ink carbon paper. It was slow but—since it was faster than handwriting—an improvement.

In 1963, Eddie was ready to take up her church’s offer of using its memeograph machine. They loaned her the stencils. She cut out the letter at home, then took it to the church office to print.

With each letter, Eddie enclosed a small surprise: stamps, Kool-Aid, or gum; whatever she found that month that fit inside the envelope. They’re “like a box of Cracker Jack,” one missionary said. “There’s a prize in every envelope.”

No More Letters

Those letters ended in 1979, when a new secretary and a new pastor entered the church office, and the office equipment was restricted to church use.

“We [took the letter] to the print shop,” Eddie says. “It was just plain more money than we could squeeze out of our budget. There was no way we could pay. I bawled for a couple days and then thought, ‘Well, maybe that time is through.’”

In the meantime, Eddie and Phil had adopted several more children and begun foster parenting.

“I was raised with so much love and affection that I felt sorry for the ones that didn’t have it,” Eddie says. When the youngest of their seven children entered kindergarten, “I was home all alone,” she says. “I knew we couldn’t afford to adopt more kids. The house was empty, and I thought I had a lot of love to give.”

Children from age 17 down to infancy stayed under their roof; four foster children were ultimately adopted into the Ogan family. By the time Phil and Eddie let their foster parent license expire in 2002, 77 children had stayed with them.

Busy with her children and foster children, Eddie had one more reason to think her letter-writing days were over. In 1979 she found out she had cancer. For the second time. The first time, in 1965, resulted in a hysterectomy. This time Eddie had an inoperable brain tumor.

“I’ll go home, and take care of my kids,” she told the doctor. “If it’s the Lord’s time for me to die, I’ll die. If not, I’ll live.” Two months later, the tumor was gone.

In 1984 the battle broke out in new territory. A malignant growth in her kidney ruptured the organ; cancer spread through her system. This kind of cancer had to be surgically removed—and that was impossible.

“The doctor told us, ‘If there are any dreams, you need to do it now,’” Eddie says. “We had always dreamed that when my husband retired, we’d move to eastern Washington and build a log cabin in the mountains on a creek.”

Phil quit his job, and the family, including several foster children, moved to a spot on Clugston Creek in the Gillette Mountains of eastern Washington. They built their log cabin.

Eddie’s new pastor was worried about her as she became thinner and thinner. “He didn’t know I had cancer,” Eddie says. “When people know you have cancer, they don’t act normal. They think you’re dying, so they hardly talk to you normally. So I didn’t tell anyone. We knew that when it got a little further along, we would call the welfare office and say they’d need to find another home for our current foster children.”

They moved into their cabin on a Sunday in September 1985 and went to church that evening. “The pastor preached a sermon explaining that no one knows how long they have to live,” Eddie says. “The doctor may say you have only a year to live—you may still be around in 20 years. The pastor wanted people who were willing to dedicate the rest of their lives to God, no matter how long they had to live.

“I rushed up to the altar where I told the Lord I might have three months left. ‘I’ll do whatever You want me to do, whatever time I have left of life is yours. I want to give it totally to You.’ “

Now at age 72, Eddie Ogan has no problem telling people her age nor the fact that, at her height of 6 feet, she weighs 238 pounds. She’s healthy and thankful for it. “The Lord has given me the strength I need for whatever I do,” she says. “Every day I have is a gift from Him.”

Back in the Saddle Again

In 1988, Eddie headed out on her second missionary trip—a month-long circuit to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and China. She kept running into missionaries who knew only her signature. “They’d gasp and say, ‘I thought you’d died 10 years ago!’ Eddie says. They begged her to start writing again.

Then Dave Ellis, the child of missionaries and now a missionary himself, came to Eddie’s town for a conference. Upon meeting Eddie, he added his plea.

“I was just telling my wife how we always waited for Aunt Eddie’s letters to come,” he told her. “When you sent gum, we’d chew it until it was out of flavor, then keep the wrapper to sniff.” If only their daughters had an Aunt Eddie, as well, he pined.

“Aunt Eddie made us feel special and wanted, and we felt we knew her although we had never met her,” he said.

He urged her to begin writing again. “After all, receiving letters from home is part of what being a missionary is.”

Eddie wrote a letter the following month and hasn’t quit since. Her letters carry the addresses of 200 missionaries and missionary kids.

Sharing the Wealth

In 1946, as a widow and three young daughters stared at the money they had earned for the poor family scattered across their own floor, silence entered the usually chatty home.

What redeemed this story for Eddie and her sisters in 1946 continues to redeem readers today. The young family, newly poor while holding the most money they’d ever seen, trudged to church the next week. A missionary visiting from Africa told of poor people who needed the church’s help. When the pastor decided to take a special offering, this family smiled for the first time in a week and promptly deposited the envelope with $87 into the offering plate.

The missionary was delighted. The offering of a little more than $100 was much more than he expected from this small church. His words, “You must have a rich family in this church!” may have brought a pleased—or perhaps confused—smile to the faces of the congregation that day. But for one small family, they were words of life.

“Though the minister had said we were poor, the missionary said that we were rich,” Eddie tells. “We believed the missionary.”

So now Eddie and Phil live as the rich family they are: Social Security meets their needs. Any other money they bring in, they turn around and send out again. The $1,000 for cleaning the grounds and bathrooms at fairs and rodeos buys copies of The Book of Hope, distributed to children and youth worldwide. Eddie’s job of agricultural surveys contributes to projects such as shoes for orphans in Siberia, material to make rag dolls for orphans in Japan, and postage for her monthly letter.

Because that letter will continue to go out.

“Unless the Lord tells me to quit writing, I’m not going to quit writing now,” Eddie says. “I quit for the wrong reason to begin with. I didn’t pray about it. I just quit. I expect to write every month until I’m dead or have Alzheimer’s. I firmly believe with all my heart that the Lord will provide whatever I need.”

(found at Mikey’s Funnies, go there to read several responses to the original story and an interesting discussion about the difference between poor and broke, and how to help her present ministry)

Poor or rich?

The Rich Family In Church (by Eddie Ogan)

I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1.

We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.

We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.

We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night.

We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed—I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way.

Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.”

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that “little over $100.”

We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on I’ve never been poor again. I’ve always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!

(received from Mikey’s Funnies, go there to read several responses to the story and an interesting discussion about the difference between poor and broke)

Wednesday without words

Our true heart

Here comes Life Model bite #1:

One of the key concepts of the Life Model is living from “the heart Jesus gave you.” Many people find it difficult to understand what this could mean, especially in reference to the heart. I am not surprised that there is some confusion about our hearts. How should we see our hearts?

When I think of the human heart, the first Bible verse that comes to mind is:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. (Jer 17:9)

I guess, I must have heard this verse often enough, to associate it so quickly, even though I do not remember any concrete situation. The basic message, if you consider this verse as defining for what our heart is like, is that our heart can’t be trusted. Never trust your heart (or feelings), only your intellect. Mistrusting our heart, together with feelings and emotions, is very common but not necessarily biblical. If you have read my blog posts on Why Western Christianity Failed, then you already know where this is coming from (see here and here and here for more details).

But this is misleading because there are plenty of other references concerning the human heart that paint quite a different picture:

• We are called to love the Lord with all of our heart. (Dt 6:5, Mt 22:37)
• God said he will write his instructions on our hearts. (Jer 31:33.34 // Hebr 8:10; 10:16)
• We are told to trust the Lord with all of our heart. (Prov 3:5)
• We are told to guard our heart because it is a wellspring of life. (Prov 4:23)
• God made his light shine in our hearts (2 Cor 4:6)
• Christ even decided to live (dwell) in our hearts (Eph 3:17) – then it can’t be such a bad place.

On the background of these verses I am inclined to believe that a better translation of the above verse would be ‘deformed and desperately sick’ (Jer 17:9) as Jim Wilder suggested. I think that ‘deceitful and desperately wicked’ implies intentional badness and a state that is beyond hope, while ‘deformed and desperately sick’ paints the picture of a heart that is not how it should be but that it can be healed. And this is what God promised in Eze 11:19 where God calls the human heart dead (stone) but promises to give people a new heart that is alive and will know his will. Looking at some translators resources I find this view confirmed. Among other things, the heart is described as the place where God communicates with us and that knows Gods will.

In the context of the Life Model the terms ‘the heart Jesus gave you,” “our true heart” and “the heart of hearts” are used interchangeably and refer to the part of our heart that reflects God’s image. We are made in God’s image. Our true heart reflects this and each of us reflects a different aspect of God’s character.

However, this true heart has been buried among a lot of bad stuff – our own sin, as well as the sins of others, and the hurts that have been caused by these. They are like several layers of dirt on our true heart. This is why we often don’t even know our true heart and have problems trusting our heart. As a result, we often react from our hurts, instead of from our true hearts.

Another comparison I found helpful: the true heart is like an x-ray or a diapositive, but there are several other layers of x-rays on top of it, so that it is difficult to see what the original one looked like.

Over the last years I learned to recognize indications of my own true heart.

At first I was very surprised, when a friend exclaimed in a conversation that she can see my true heart in this situation. It was especially surprising because it was not something I had done or thought, but something I wish I had done. So, I thought this is not really me; quite to the contrary – how can this be my true heart? Over time I came to understand that it is the longing to have acted a certain way that is an indication of my true heart, of how God made me.

At the Thrive conference last year, we learned another way of discovering our true heart – by looking at our deepest pain. Often the things that cause us the deepest pain are an indication of the true heart that God put in us – because it is contrary to what we were made to be.

This is the heart Jesus gave you – a small reflection of himself and at the same time an indication for who he has called us to be to glorify him. I find it a worthwhile pursuit to find out more about it. This is what the Life Model is about – learning about the heart Jesus gave you, and learning to live from it. It means discovering of who God originally made us to be and how to live up to our calling and glorifying him through it.

Bist du HSP?

Vor einem halben Jahr entdeckte ich, dass ich HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) bin – das heißt ich bin hoch-sensibel. Das war eine ziemliche Überraschung für mich, da mich bisher nie jemand als zu sensibel bezeichnet hat, eher das Gegenteil. Ausgelöst wurde das ganze durch meine Überlegung, wie es möglich ist, dass ich einerseits sehr sensible auf Lärm reagiere, aber anderseits in einer großen Menschengruppe das Gefühl habe, halb taub zu sein. Auf Empfehlung einer Freundin habe ich mir ihr Buch über HSP ausgeliehen und den Selbsttest von Elaine Aron gemacht – das Ergebnis war eindeutig: ich bin HSP. Als ich dann auf einem Flug die ersten zwei Kapitel des Buches las, hatte ich am Ende eine Liste von mehr als 20 Dingen, die nichts miteinander zu tun haben, die ich über mich selbst wusste und die typisch für HSP sind. Mir sind ganze Kronleuchter aufgegangen. Seither habe ich andere Bücher gelesen und einiges Neues über mich selbst herausgefunden. Während der letzten Monate entdeckte ich auch, dass alle meine besten Freunde HSP sind. Interessant!

Hier einige Beispiele die im Selbsttest von Elaine Aron vorkommen:

• man nimmt Feinheiten seiner Umgebung wahr
• man wird von den Gefühlen anderer beeinflusst
• man hat an geschäftigen Tagen ein starkes Bedürfnis sich zurückzuziehen
• man empfindet helles Licht, starke Gerüche, raue Materialien oder Sirenen als überwältigend
• man hat ein reiches, komplexes inneres Leben
• man empfindet laute Geräusche als unangenehm
• man wird von Kunst und Musik tief bewegt
• man bemüht sich sehr, keine Fehler zu machen und nichts zu vergessen

Um den ganzen Test (in Englisch) zu machen geh auf diese Webpage. Bzw. gibt es einen ähnlichen Test auf Deutsch hier.

Einige Auszüge von HSP Definitionen und Beschreibungen, die man im Internet finden kann:

„HSP sind normale biologische Unterschiede in der Persönlichkeit und Physiologie, die von ca. 15- 20% der Bevölkerung geerbt wurden, und unter allen höheren Tieren zu finden sind. Diejenigen mit diesem Charakterzug nehmen Feinheiten in ihrer Umgebung war.
„Es scheint logisch, dass jene die mehr Feinheiten wahrnehmen daher leicht überwältigt werden von der Fülle der Wahrnehmungen. [Ich denke, dass es vergleichbar ist mit der Erfahrung von Personen mit Hörgeräten, bei denen das natürliche Unterscheiden von wichtigen und unwichtigen Geräuschen fehlt.]
„Der Unterschied ist schwerwiegend, und hat Auswirkungen auf alles was HSP tun sowie ihre körperlichen Reaktionen. Zum Beispiel, sind wir als Gruppe viel sensibler gegenüber Schmerz, Kaffein, Medikamenten, Temperaturen, Licht und Hunger. Wir sind nachdenklicher, tiefgründiger, lernen langsamer aber gründlicher, und sind ungewöhnlich pflichtbewusst.
„Ungefähr zwei Drittel aller HSP reduzieren die Überstimmulierung indem sie Introvertiert sind – d.h. sie bevorzugen wenige enge Freunde, statt sich in großen Gruppen oder mit Fremden zu treffen. Aber ca. ein Drittel der HSP ist Extrovertiert. (www.hsperson.com)

„Ein HSP zu sein ist kein Fehler. Es ist in Wirklichkeit ein erblicher Charakterzug, den man zu seinem Vorteil einsetzen kann. (www.thehighlysensitiveperson.com)

Basierend auf den Einsichten, die ich beim Lesen von Arons Buch erhalten habe, begann ich mich selbst zu beobachten und entdeckte, dass ich wirklich ziemlich oft „überstimuliert“ (Fachausdruck von Elaine Aron) bzw. überfordert bin von Sinnesreizen. Und zwar in Situationen wo ich früher einfach dachte, ich bin müde, gestresst, ‚peopled-out’ („übermenschelt“), usw. oder dass ich einfach wie ein typischer introvertierter Mensch reagiere. HSP nehmen auch leicht die Stimmungen anderer Menschen wahr, was mit ein Grund ist, warum sie sich in Gruppensituationen leicht überfordert fühlen. Ich merke langsam, dass mir das öfter passiert, als ich ursprüngliche dachte.

Ich habe auch festgestellt, dass ich mich in all den Jahren sehr angestrengt habe wie andere „normale“ Menschen zu sein, indem ich mich zwang so viel Lärm, Stress, Menschen, Arbeit, usw. wie andere auszuhalten. Anderseits wurde mir auch bewusst, wie Gott mir geholfen hat, Dinge in meinem Leben zu ändern, die gerade richtig sind für HSP bevor ich wusste, dass ich das bin. Diese Dinge haben mir geholfen die Lärmreiche und Menschenreiche Umgebung hier in Afrika besser auszuhalten.

• Ich weiß schon länger, dass ich mehr Schlaf als andere brauche, und dass mein Tag nicht gut anfängt, wenn ich von einem Wecker aufgeweckt werde.
• HSP brauchen mehr Ruhezeiten als andere. Ich bin froh, dass ich über die Jahre mehr solcher Ruhezeiten in meinen Alltag eingebaut habe.
• Ich brauche eine lange Zeit der Gemeinschaft mit Gott in der Früh, bevor ich bereit bin, den Tag zu beginnen. Für mich bedeutet das vor allem, Zeit in seiner Gegenwart zu verbringen, und nicht wie viele andere eine Aktivität abzuhaken, oft „Stille Zeit“ genannt, bestehend aus strukturierten Gebetszeiten und die Bibel mit einem Plan zu lesen.
• Wenn ich ausgehe am Abend, brauche ich danach Zeit, um zur Ruhe zu kommen.
• Routine ist sehr wichtig für meinen Alltag, inkl. regelmäßige Essenszeiten, Mittagsschläfchen und Fitness.
• HSP tun sich im Allgemeinen schwer mit Veränderungen. Das erklärt warum ich so ungern reise und oft ziemlich lange brauche, bis ich wieder in meine Routine zurück finde, oder mich an eine neue Situation gewöhnt habe.
• Ich kann besser in einer ruhigen und ungestörten Umgebung arbeiten.
• Ich kann schlecht mit ständiger Musikberieselung, Unterhaltungen im Hintergrund oder anderen Hintergrundgeräusche umgehen.
• Ich trinke extrem viel Wasser. Elaine Aron erwähnt, dass das hilft Stress abzubauen. Das erklärt mir, warum ich auch in kühleren Klimazonen viel Wasser brauche. Je mehr ich gestresst bin, desto mehr Wasser brauche ich.
• HSP sind tiefgründige Denker. Sie haben eine angeborene Vorliebe, Informationen tiefer zu verarbeiten, und z.B. gegenwärtige Situationen so vollständig wie möglich mit ähnlichen Situationen in der Vergangenheit zu vergleichen oder zu analysieren. Dies erklärt, warum ich so lange brauche, um Dinge durch zu denken, inklusive dem Analysieren von Filmen oder TV-Shows. Das gleiche gilt für theoretische Probleme oder Spannungen in Beziehungen. Es erklärt auch, warum ich so lange brauche, bis ich in einem Beitrag zu einer Diskussion formuliert habe, oft erst wenn die anderen bereits beim nächsten Thema sind.
• Ich lerne nun, meiner Intuition mehr zu vertrauen. Bisher habe ich sie oft ignoriert wenn ich keinen guten Grund oder einen Namen für etwas hatte. Wenn ich zurückdenke, wird mir klar, dass es viele Situationen gab, in denen ich etwas richtig wahrnahm, aber nicht darauf geachtet habe.
• Ich bin lieber mit ein paar engen Freunden zusammen als auf einer großen Party. Ein Grund dafür ist der höhere Geräuschpegel; der zweite Grund ist, dass es dort oft zu keinen tiefen Gesprächen kommt.
• Ich glaube, ich bin ein guter Beobachter, und lerne jetzt erst, dass ich wahrscheinlich oft Dinge richtige kombiniere.
• HSP sind meist sehr begabt in verschiedenen Bereichen (Entwicklung von Theorien, Analyse, künstlerischer Ausdrucksformen, Einfühlungsvermögen, …), aber sie unterschätzen sich selbst oft und verkaufen sich schlecht. Aber diese Gaben können sich nur dann entwickeln, wenn es uns gelingt, einen HSP freundlichen Rahmen zu finden oder zu kreieren. Dies ist eine ständige Herausforderung.

Typisch für HSP, bin ich sehr gewissenhaft – weshalb es mir schwer fällt, mit der Liste aufzuhören, bevor ich alle relevanten Punkte erwähnt haben.
Aber es reicht auf jeden Fall für einen Anfang. Wenn es dich interessiert, kann ich dir nur empfehlen, das Buch von Elaine Aron zu lesen.

Hier ist eine Liste von Ressourcen über HSP, großteils auf Deutsch:
Das grundlegendste Buch ist von Elaine Aron auf Englisch von Amazon.de erhältlich, gibt es aber auch in deutscher Übersetzung, wie auch ihre Bücher über HSP Kindererziehung und Liebesbeziehungen.

Es gibt auch andere Autoren, die auf Deutsch geschrieben haben:

Georg Parlow – Zartbesaitet. Es gibt von ihm auch einen Nachfolgeband über den Arbeitsplatz. (Ich habe seine Bücher nicht gelesen, kann sie daher nicht ausdrücklich empfehlen.) Damit verbunden gibt es auch eine Internetseite mit vielen Links. Dort gibt es auch einen ausführlicheren Test als der von Elaine Aron.

Ein deutsches Buch aus christlicher Sicht ist „Lasten tragen, die verkannte Gabe“ von Ehepaar Lüling. Ich habe es selber gelesen und kenne viele, die dieses Buch als sehr hilfreich empfanden.

Beide christlichen Bücher (Carol Brown & Ehepaar Lüling) sind von John Sandford (Elijah-House) geprägt, der HSP als Lastenträger bezeichnete und vermutlich schon vor Elaine Aron darüber lehrte, aber selber kein Buch darüber schrieb. Beide Autoren sind von Elijah-House geprägt und verarbeiten Sandfords Ansatz in ihren Büchern weiter.

Nun bin ich natürlich neugierig, wer von meinen Lesern HSP ist.
Weißt du es schon lange? Oder bist du durch diesen Blog-Eintrag drauf gekommen?

Are you HSP?

Half a year ago I discovered that I am HSP – this means that I have a highly sensitive personality trait. This was quite surprising to me because nobody ever called me too sensitive, more to the contrary. What triggered the insight was my sensitivity to noise and the feeling of being half-deaf in group settings (which seems contradictory). Once I did the self-test in the book by Elaine Aron, it became very obvious – I am HSP. When I read the first two chapters of her book during a flight, I ended up with a list of more than 20 items, unrelated things that I knew about myself and that were mentioned as being typical for HSP. I had lots of aha-moments. Since then I read several other books and discovered more about myself. I also discovered over the last few months that all my best friends are HSP. Interesting!

Here some examples of things mentioned in the self test on Elaine Aron’s webpage:

• being easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input
• being aware of subtleties in my environment
• being affected by other people’s moods
• feeling the need to withdraw during busy days
• being overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens close by
• having a rich, complex inner life
• being uncomfortable by loud noises
• being deeply moved by the arts or music
• trying hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things

For the complete test go here.

Excerpts from HSP descriptions found online:

“HSP is a normal biological individual difference in personality and physiology inherited by about 15 to 20% of just about all higher animals. Those with this trait notice more subtleties and process information more deeply.
“Anyone noticing more subtleties would logically also have to be more easily overwhelmed than others by prolonged, intense, or chaotic sound, sights, etc. (I think that this is probably similar to the problem people have with hearing aids, the natural filtering of important from unimportant sounds is missing and therefore it often becomes overwhelming.)
“The difference is quite profound, affecting everything HSPs do and many bodily responses—for example, as a group we are more sensitive to pain, caffeine, medications, temperature, light, and hunger. We are more reflective, learn more slowly but thoroughly, and tend to be unusually conscientious.
“About two thirds of HSPs do reduce the stimulation in their lives by being introverted—preferring a few close friends rather than being in groups or meeting strangers. But about a third are extraverts. (www.hsperson.com)

“Being a HSP isn’t a flaw. It’s actually a genetic character trait that can be used to your advantage. (www.thehighlysensitiveperson.com)

Based on the insights from reading Aron’s book, I started to observe myself and realized that I am actually often “over-stimulated” (term used by Elaine Aron) by sensory stimulants when I previously thought that I am just tired, stressed out, peopled-out, etc. or just being a typical introvert. HSP are also very perceptive to other people’s emotions which is one reason that they easily feel overwhelmed in group situations. I probably experience that more often than I originally thought.

I realized that I have been pushing myself too hard over many years, by trying to be like “normal” people, support as much noise, stress, people, work load, etc. as others. On the other hand, I also discovered that God has helped me make adjustments in my life over the last few years that are just right for HSPs and helped me ‘survive’ in the high-people and high-noise environment of Africa.

• I know I need more sleep than others do and starting the day with an alarm clock is not good for me.
• HSP in general need a lot of downtime. I am glad that I have adapted my day to this need before knowing that I am HSP.
• I need a long time of fellowship with God in the morning before being ready to start the day. For me this means spending time in his presence, not the usual checking off of an activity called ‘quiet time’ consisting of structured prayer times and reading the Bible according to a plan.
• Time to unwind in the evening after having been out is very important for me.
• I need a good routine, including regular times for eating, a nap at lunch time and physical exercises.
• HSP in general have a hard time adapting to change. That explains why I find traveling very difficult and it takes me fairly long to settle back into my routine or adapt to new circumstances.
• I am working better in a quiet and uninterrupted environment.
• I can’t handle constant exposure to music, talking or other noise.
• I drink a lot of water, much more than others, which Elaine Aron mentions as a way to reduce stress. This explains why I can’t go very long without drinking water, even in colder climates. The more I am stressed, the more water I need.
• HSP are profound thinkers. They have an innate preference to process information more deeply, to compare the present situation as completely as possible to your knowledge of similar situations in the past. This explains why it takes me such a long time to think through things, including analyzing movies or TV shows. The same applies to theoretical problems or tensions in relationships. It also explains why it takes me so long to formulate my contribution to a discussion, when others have already moved on to the next topic.
• I am realizing that I need to trust my intuition more. So far, when I did not have a good reason or name for what I felt, I disregarded it. Thinking back, I realize that there are many situations where I correctly sensed something but did not pay attention.
• I enjoy being together with a few close friends more than attending a big party. One reason is the higher noise level, the second reason is that there is often no opportunity to go deep in conversations with people.
• I think I am a good observers and I am now learning that I do often make correct deductions from the things observed.
• Being HSP also means being very gifted in different areas (theory building, analysis, artistic expressions, empathy, ..), even though HSPs often underestimate their abilities and sell themselves badly. But these gifts can only develop when we manage to create or find an HSP friendly context. This is an ongoing challenge.

Typical for an HSP, I am very detail oriented and conscientious – which is why it is hard for me to stop here with the list before I have mentioned all the relevant points. But this is definitely enough for a starter. If you are interested I can recommend reading Elains Aron’s book.

Here is a list of resources about HSP:
Online introduction
If you want to know whether you are HSP, do the self test.

The first and most well known book on the subject is from Elaine Aron “The Highly Sensitive Person.” She also wrote several others, for different sub-fields – child raising, relationships / love, work environment.

A very interesting treatment of the topic from a Christian point of view comes from Carol Brown: “The Mystery of Spiritual Sensitivity.”

There are several websites that offer help and/or networking for HSPs

• www.drtedzeff.com
• www.hsperson.com
• www.thehighlysensitiveperson.com

There are also several Facebook groups on the topic.

• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=2232091680&ref=ts
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/The-Highly-Sensitive-Person-Publishing-Company/218089290709?v=wall&ref=ts
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=5553709195

HSP is sometimes misinterpreted as ADD or Asberger Syndrom /Autism. Here is one article that addresses this question.

Now I am, of course, very curious who of my readers is HSP or just discovered it through my blog post.

Anniversary and new series

Those who have been reading my blog for some time know that there are certain regular occurrences.

• On Sundays I usually post a quote under the title “Quote for the week.” The idea is to provide some “food for thought” for the week.
• On Wednesdays the post is called “Wednesday without words” with photos from Mali, or as Eddie called them “Mali without words.” You can see them all under the category WWW.

I just went back to see how long I have been doing those, and was very surprised to discover that both had started during the first week of January 2009. The first “Quote for the day” appeared on January 4, 2009 and the first “Wednesday without words” was posted on January 7, 2009. So these series have their first anniversary this week!

For some time I had the intention to add a few more series like the above. In a way, some of them have already started ‘incognito.’

• Life Model bites – For some time I posted topics related to the Life Model in Monday or Tuesday. You can find them in the category Life Model. I want to continue this more purposely as I announced in a recent post.
• Anthropology and culture topics – These posts have been rather irregular. So far I managed maybe one post per month. You can find them under the category Anthropology and Culture. I will post them on Thursday or Friday.
• Book reviews – This is the most recent addition. Apart from one lonely book report in April, the idea to do this in a regular form started in November. You can find them under the category Book Review. I plan to do them more often, namely on Saturday.
• Personal news – At one point I had planned to post personal news in irregular intervals under the heading Sammelsurium / Smorgasbord but this never happened. I guess this is due to the fact that too few of my personal (real life) friends, who might be interested in this kind of detail, are reading my blog.

The idea is more to follow a pattern, even if it is only semi-regular, have certain ‘weekday slots’ for certain topics. ‘Quote for the week’ and ‘Wednesday without words’ will certainly remain my most regular series, while the others will be posted whenever I have enough time.

Here is my weekly blogging grid:

• Sunday – Quotes for the week
• Monday / Tuesday – Life Model topics
• Wednesday without words – Malian photos
• Thursday / Friday – Anthropology and culture topics
• Saturday – Book reviews

I think that this grid also reflects very well the main topics I have covered on my blog.

Now it is your turn:

What were you favorite topics last year? Which is your favorite category of blogs? Or which topics would you like to see more often?