Absolute GAME CHANGER! "The Road Back to You" by Ian Cron.

My wife, Jen, and I are starting a church small group in our home.  It's not our first time leading a small group, but it's the first time in a while, so we didn't want to do an exclusively marriage study so we could appeal to a wide variety of people.  The staff at our church, Puyallup Foursquare, are reading a book called "The Road Back to You".  We've heard great things about it so we figured we'd give it a shot.

HOLY SMOKES!  This book is amazing!  We knew it would be good, but we had no idea what a game changer this is.  Here we were not wanting to do a marriage study, and we find a book that will forever improve our marriage!

This a book about personality types, but it's different than any other study or test.  It's based on the Enneagram, which is a very old diagram for understanding personality types and interactions.


We started by taking this online enneagram personality type assessment, to get an idea of which number we each were.  Jen took the test twice and got different results each time.  She then took it again with me sitting next to her so she could bounce questions off me.  This time it gave her a different number again, but this is the correct one.  She's a 9 - the peacemaker.  Part of why she got a different answer each time is that 9's can be chameleons.

I took it and found out that I'm a 5 - the investigator.  I took it again just to be sure and still ended up a 5.  When I read the more detailed description in the book of what a 5 is it describes me completely!  It was honestly encouraging and affirming, because I have spent many years thinking that I'm broken inside.  I've spent years despairing about how I relate with others - or more accurately, don't relate with others.  This has caused many arguments and hurt feelings in our marriage, but now we both understand that this is how I was made.

The really great thing about this book is that you learn what each number is like, what their strengths and pitfalls are, how they are in relationships, how they are at work,  how they are as kids, and a list of concrete steps on how people who are each number can grow and overcome the inherent negatives in their personality type.

Highly recommended!

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