Είναι τελικά, É acabado, Es ist fertig, זה נגמר Terminado esto, E' finito - How ever you want to say it: "It is finished,"

It is finished and believe it or not I miss it.  It was hard, soul searching and life changing.  I think that one reason I liked it was because my supervisor and I had similar personalities.  I learned I am a "1" on the Anneagram scale.  This means I think that there are rules and everyone should abide by them!! And it also means I am a great organizer, I follow directions well, and I am very detailed oriented.    I also learned this personality can be seen as an perfectionist type of personality.  What I learned the most was that this is ok.  I just have to realize others have a different type of personality and do not necessarily live by my rules.    Even though I tend to call them the kindergarten rules because I believe we all learned them at some point.   I believe that others choose not to follow them, and this irritates me to no end.  While this can be very irritating to me I realize now that it is irritating to the other person for me to try to make them obey these rules.  Who'd of Thunk!!!  

I learned that God is truly in control.   I know my theology says this, and I would tell others when asked that I was not in control.  But the truth of the matter is that I am a control freak and need to be in control.  I catch myself falling back into this "I am in control," attitude but I know now that I am not in control.  Even when I made poor decisions in my life, God used them for good.  I look back at all my mistakes and I see that I got something good out of them.  When I dropped out of school and had children and then had to struggle for the next twenty years to get my degree, my children got to see how important an education is.  That is not so bad.  When I made poor choices in a spouse, God used it for good.  I have two wonderful children out of the bargain, and a third that is mine because I say she is, I would have never have met her if I did not have to live alone in low income housing.  When I chose the wrong person to be my best friend, God gave me a true best friend and I married him.  See God is in control, he has guided me and always had a plan for me.  He has honed me, strengthened me, and gave me good morals.


I also learned that I tend to get angry the most when someone questions my sense of fairness.  I have a hard time saying I am a good person, but have realized that through Christ I am.  Yet when someone questions if I am following the rules or not, you better get out of the way.  I know the rules and I follow them!!!!   Well ok most of the time.  I also have this rebellious streak in me, I don't like people telling me what to do, which brings us back to that little control issue.  Vicious circle huh!?

 While I am struggling with these things and see I probably always will.   I can now say that this is who I am, and God loves me.  I have value, not just because I deserve to be loved but because my voice has value, I am highly intelligent, and I do not have to be perfect to have this value.  That was the hardest thing I learned.


I will write more later because I have learned that if a blog is too long people lose interest.  I have a whole list of things I learned in CPE this last year.  I am definitely saying that CPE is not for sissies, but it is worth it!!