Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 54.

It’s My Birthday Week (with a gift for you to share with someone you love)

Hello human.

Please read this intro. It is not recorded on this episode 54. This is my birthday week, and I have a gift for you.  A short BIRTHDAY BUOY that you can “gift” to someone in your life (and keep gifting) along your way.

Psalm 139. Because God knew each of us before we were conceived. (no BUOY intro or outro, just Psalm 139)

A brief thought about knowing who we are:  In the beginning of my career in the nonprofit sector, I worked for the Girl Scouts of the USA. At one point our staff took the Myers-Briggs personality test. It was validating to see myself in the analysis and liberating in how I interacted with my colleagues, family, and friends. That said, my profile represented only 2.6% of the population. A couple of years ago I took the Enneagram personality test, which was a new approach for personality profiling with nine personality types. My enneagram is 9% of the population.

Who Knows You Best?

For me, these tests are simply a practical tool for recognizing myself in how a behavior is being described in tangible situations. The fact that I fall within 2-9% of the population, explains a perspective I know well.

Misfit. Off the beaten path. Until I listen to David speak to his God in Psalm 139. David must have had epic birthdays celebrating the intimacy he had with his Creator.

I am good with being a rogue-ster for God, created by God.

Thank you Lord for making me who I am, in your image.

Enjoy Psalm 139, share it, and thank you for listening, human. Happy birthday to whoever you love.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

1 You have searched me, Lord,

    and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

    you, Lord, know it completely.

5 You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

    too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?

    Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

    if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,

    your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

    and the light become night around me,”

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;

    the night will shine like the day,

    for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand—

    when I awake, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!

    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!

20 They speak of you with evil intent;

    your adversaries misuse your name.

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,

    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

22 I have nothing but hatred for them;

    I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, God, and know my heart;

    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

24 See if there is any offensive way in me,

    and lead me in the way everlasting.