My top strength, via fireworks

Once my family moved to Michigan, we adopted a lot of traditions. One of those traditions was watching the 4th of July fireworks with the rest of our town at the high school football field.

Sometimes folks go downtown to catch the bigger fireworks show, and I remember doing that one year in high school. My friends and I could only find a place to sit in an industrial parking lot. It was uncomfortable but we felt the boom and shake of the fireworks deep under our bodies. They reverberated in the cement.

Another year, my best friend Catherine and her mom invited my mom and me to watch the downtown fireworks from the roof of Grand Rapids's tallest building, where Catherine's mom worked. I loved that night. Something really funny happened, a secret between me and my mom ... my mom was such a trooper. We waded through currents of people on the sidewalk and really enjoyed the high-altitude summer air.

But this story is about sticking with the quaint tradition of the high school football field.

The man who lived across the street from us was named Henry. And Henry was a fireman. And the town firemen were in charge of controlling the fireworks. They flooded the area with inches of water in order to prevent a fire and, of course, kept a watchful eye.

Before we found a place to layout our blanket and eat watermelon, my parents took my sisters and I to see Henry behind the scenes. We saw all of the fireworks packed like canons. I hovered over the cannons and looked the bundles of fire eye-to-eye. That was a wonderful night.

However, the wonderful night turned into a stressmosphere after the fireworks. We had to quickly pack our stuff and beat everyone out of the parking lot. When we were that young, my family could flip between getting along well and arguing nastily with a great finesse. After forcing ourselves into the car, all heads counted for, we found a place in the exit line and waited. No sooner than that, my sister realized she was missing a shoe. Yes, a shoe.

Everyone got out of the car again, huffing as we scoured the football field for Morgan's shoe. And back then we didn't have cell phone lights to help us see. It was dark. I don't know how many blessed minutes we looked for her shoe until we found it, but I am thankful for each one.

Once we got back in the car and out onto the street we saw a huge accident. Two cars, in a haste like that of our own family, crashed into each other and things looked ugly.

If the car wasn't silent enough already, we were hushed even more by my mother's words, "Girls ... I saw both of those cars in line behind us and in front of us. If we hadn't gone back to get Morgan's shoe, that really could have been us. You see why I tell you that everything happens for a reason?"

That football field has since been replaced with a new, fancy field.

Henry moved away years ago.

And I realize that sometimes bad things do actually happen and they are awful and painful and nobody wishes for them.

But my mother's words have buried themselves deep into who I am.

So when I bought this book and took this test, I wasn't too surprised to find what they deemed as my top strength:

1. Connectedness:

People who are especially talented in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason. They can help others defy the "Us v.s. Them" mentality.