Am I too much?

I want to be quieter.

I have always struggled with this. My personality is loud and outgoing, I love to talk, to laugh and to have the attention on me. Yes, sadly, I do like attention. My older brother was always good at pointing out when I had gone too far or was too loud. This often resulted in me just shutting up for a while. I have this fear of people hating me or dreading being around me. Do you ever have that fear? So sometimes I just do my best to play it cool. I have tried to be aloof or guarded in certain situations. In those settings when I finally do become comfortable enough to speak up people are often surprised by what I say. I'm too blunt, not good at gentling the truth, I easily offend.

I want to be gentler.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The love and the joy come naturally, the peace I have had to seek out, patience the Lord has taught me, kindness, I'm still working on that, faithfulness was modeled well for me in my parents, gentleness... that's difficult, self-control the Lord is really teaching me, has taught me, it's been so good. None of these things can truly be done without the Holy Spirit. I cannot do them on my own, I need the guidance of He who created me.

I often ask, "Am I too much?" Am I too loud? Too hard? Too silly? I have asked this of the Lord very often. I have asked this of my husband too. I have to just say here that this is why I thought I would never marry. I thought: as soon as a guy gets close enough to see who I really am and what I really look like on the inside he is going to run for the hills. I seriously thought that. I never thought I deserved a man. Each time I have been surprised by the response. No Jody, I love who you are and the way God created you. Ben always told me I was a "priceless gem in the sky" (ridiculous, I know) even when I was overweight and struggled with acne and was loud or silly.

The Lord's response has always been the same too.

For I am fearfully and wonderfully made,
wonderful are Your works and my soul knows it full well.
Psalm 139