Something for Sundays: The Key to Heaven
finding the place designed specifically with you in mind
Something for Sundays is a series of posts about my experiences with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, featured in my Kimber Was Here newsletter. My posts reflect my personal journey wrestling with Mormon faith and tradition and may challenge some beliefs. If you're not in the right space to read this, I understand, I do not fault you, and I am so grateful you subscribe anyway. :)
I had a shocking thing happen this week: My Enneagram CHANGED. (They are not supposed to change!)
In the past, I took the test and got Enneagram 2. Which is basically, “The Helper” (read: demonstrative, people pleaser). I retook the Enneagram this week as part of an online writing workshop that I participated in. I was surprised to find that I got an Enneagram 4, which is basically, “The Individualist” (read: sensitive, expressive creative).
I wondered, why it would change?
I did a bit of poking around on the website and found a section called “Enneagram 4s who mistype themselves as Enneagram 2” — interesting.
The first paragraph said this: “Female Fours who have been reared in traditional or strongly religious environments may identify themselves as Twos”
Ummmm, WHAT??? I’ll have to unpack that later. :)
I’ve always liked personality tests because I really like to feel known.
In some ways, I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider. I love people and find it easy to make friends, but I often find myself on the edges, observing interactions between people and sensing peoples’ feelings. I have never felt comfortable with knowing what is “cool” and what isn’t. This is the only reason I have ever attended football games in high school and college — to try to care about something the majority of people seemed to care about! But in reality, I’d like to be at a cute coffee shop with brick walls and worn-out chairs discussing philosophy or religion. Basically, I am an extrovert with an introverted mind and introverted hobbies. If you get it, you get it.
Throughout my young adult life, I’ve spent a good portion of time trying to figure out my identity and who I am, so when I find a personality test that claims to KNOW THE REAL ME, I’m like yes! Finally! Someone can explain me to me!
I feel a sense of safety in finding words for the parts of me that feel so hard to understand.
And, what would you know, when I started to read about Enneagram 4, it said their basic fear is that they have no identity and their basic desire is to create an identity. Yeah, that seems about right!
Perhaps because of this Enneagram Four-ness, I’ve always found comfort in the idea that God knows us fully — our inconsistencies, failings, triumphs, deepest desires, fears, joys, all of it.
I love this quote from C.S. Lewis from Made for Heaven: “Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.”
Ahhh, doesn’t that seem nice?
Having grown up in an area where people all around me were my same religion, looked like me, talked like me, believed the same things as me, I subconsciously developed an inner story that God wanted us all to be the same. I thought that when Jesus said “be one” (John 17:21) that he wanted us to conform, or at least to reel in our passions if they didn’t quite fit the norm.
There’s that oft-quoted scripture in our perfection-obsessed LDS culture that seemed to reinforce this idea: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” (Matt 5:48)
In Mormonism, we have regular worthiness interviews, which give tangible checkpoints that we are required to meet if we would be on that path to perfection. There is a strong idea of what it means to be perfect. It means the Celestial Kingdom. It means abstaining from drinking certain things, it means dressing a certain way, it means not questioning Church leadership’s divine calling, it means accepting the history as “God’s way”, it means fulfilling Church assignments with ease and without complaint.
I find comfort in another translation of the Greek word teleios. Instead of being translated as “perfect,” it could also mean “complete.” So the verse would read, “be ye therefore complete, even as your Father in Heaven is complete.”
The idea of being “complete” does not feel like something I need to aspire to, rather, it feels like something I can receive.
In his discourse on Heaven, C.S. Lewis compares the shape of our soul to that of a lock. He explains that if we just saw the inside of a lock it would look like something strange. The knobs and the hollows and jagged protruding insides don’t make sense on its own. Similarly, our souls each have a curious, individual shape that God has the curious, individual key to fill.
He writes, “Your place in heaven will see to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
This description of heaven has stuck with me for so many years because it just feel so true. Nothing feels more like heaven than experiencing joy from finding my life’s purpose or understanding my individual identity. Nothing feels more like heaven than breathing a sigh of relief when finally being met with a Kimber-shaped key. Nothing feels more like heaven than saying, “Here at last is the thing I was made for.”
I think of all the people I love who are kept out of the narrow view of Mormonism’s celestial heaven. You don’t need to look far to find someone who, in this current environment, would be excluded. And that’s just not right. It’s not the heaven I believe in. It’s not the heaven that exists.
The heaven that I believe exists is a place that relishes in the sweet justice that only God provides. Where the ones who are oppressed and given lowly status in this life are raised to be the greatest in the next. It’s a place where there is a full view of the unconditional, compassionate Love that binds together existence. In heaven, people see each other for the divine souls they are. Jesus and God are with us, within us, among us. There are colors there that don’t exist in our life here. There are fuchsias that go beyond fuchsia, and blueish-greenish-turquoise that can’t be explained with words. It’s a place where walls are let down and bridges are built instead. There, we see the light escaping from our fingertips. We get a chance to say the words we never got to say in our lifetime. We get to hug the person we never got to hug before they passed on. We get chances to say I’m sorry and I forgive you and I love you when we didn’t take those chances here. That’s heaven to me.
It’s not about ranking. I don’t think you’ll get to the pearly gates and there will be a keypad for you to guess at in order to get in. It’s not about hoping you’ve done enough. It’s about entering into a peace that surpasses our understanding. It’s about receiving a complete healing of body, spirit, and mind. It’s about being complete, even as God is complete.
Thanks for reading, and Happy Sunday!
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This is all so beautiful. I have never done an enneagram test before but now I want to!
So interesting to hear about your enneagram changing. I think the new assessment of you as a sensitive creative really describes you well. And I love the quotes you shared from C.S. Lewis. I’ve never heard them before. 🩵