I still cannot help but chuckle when I write down that title. If your eyebrows furrowed a little bit and you wondered what I mean by “P-ness,” let me just take away some of that curiosity for ya.

Last week I was blessed to have a friend in my home along with a woman who is a family matriarch. She’s the kind of woman who knows how to host. She knows how to conduct herself wisely. She has experience with life and listens well when the need arises for an ear to hear. I consider her classy, cultured and city savvy. When she drove into our driveway and stepped out in a strikingly sharp blue and white shirt, I had to gaze. She didn’t look bedraggled as I did that morning and I didn’t smell her armpits, but chances are high they smelled better than mine. 

The three of us (with the  little rump roast meandering about) were sitting in the kitchen talking about Meyers Briggs. I don’t know Myers-Briggs well. I’m more familiar with the Enneagram so I asked questions about the letters – specifically I was asking about the difference between the P (perceiving) and the J (judging). The conversation was going splendidly when I subconsciously heard the matriarch speak low, but slightly over the other woman in the room. “Should I say this?” She murmured. Then she proceeded. “One way I can describe my P-ness is through….” she kept talking, but that phrase took me off guard and I failed to hear the following words. My mind took a few split seconds to let the comment soak in and I found myself leaning forward, clapping my hands and laughing from deep within. What a joy to have an older, wiser matriarch talk about the vulnerability of sharing her P-ness.

Knowing our personalities truly for what they are (good and bad),  and sharing about our personalities with others can be vulnerable and intimidating. I wonder how my own child will be affected by my personality failures, flaws and even – sins, if you will. I don’t want her to see my imperfections and I don’t want her to pick them up. I do, however, believe that naming our shortcomings, while vulnerable and intimidating, is actually an important practice.

I left that conversation thinking about the importance of sharing vulnerability, not just about the J or P-ness in life, but also about the vulnerability of naming the penis and other body parts/genitalia on the body. To know them and to name them can be hard, but it seems important. How much does one share with a little child about such things? And how to find that balance between holding the piece that embarasses you with the knowledge that it’s exactly that vulnerable piece that connects you to the rest of humanity.

Really, it seems that so much of life is about balance. Too much of this and too little of that is not good. You want your PH in the soil to be high, but not too high. And some plants need more than others. You need fat in your diet, but not too much. And some people need more of it than others. We need vitamin D from  the sun, but too much sun burns us. And some people need more than others. Protecting your child from harm is  expected, but too much protection cripples their inquisitive spirit. Life seems to be like that. Constantly seeking balance.  Same with sexuality.

I recently had three conversations with married women who admit they’ve never talked about their sex lives with other people – not a close friend, mentor or their mother. There’s still a sense of embarrassment and/or shame for them in the discussion. All three were women from communities of Christian faith. Maybe the faith practice is trying hard to counter balance culture, which handles sexuality so casually. Our society talks about sex and sexuality flippantly all over the place, but we don’t really have a lot of spaces where genuine questions can be asked or where a thoughtful conversation can be openly had.

Apparently, I’ve been reading a banned book to our daughter. It was banned because though it’s directed towards children, it talks about body parts and shows bodily images on the pages. I think someone told me the book was considered “pornographic!?” I mean, seriously? I don’t want to be flippant about body parts, but I certainly don’t want my daughter growing up believing that those are bad pictures to observe. When I am changing her diaper in the nursery at church I don’t want a middle school girl repeatedly admonishing a four year old boy for watching me change her. (True story.) That encounter was strong enough to teach him that there was something very, very interesting happening there and that something about that interaction was was bad. Also, when he realized that he wasn’t supposed to look, he (naturally) became more curious.

Our child is still learning about herself. She doesn’t know yet whether she’ll struggle with J-ness or P-ness in her personality. She doesn’t yet know all her body parts and she doesn’t know what a penis is. She does know that there are things she does and doesn’t like. She also knows a good variety of her own body parts. While the knowledge of herself might be intimidating in different ways at different time of her life, I hope she can allow herself to recognize that being appropriately vulnerable with the parts of her personality and the parts of her body is a good thing. Everything in moderation, of course, and with balance, but with shamelessness and in the context of people who genuinely care for humanity, their community, themselves and her.