Last week I was reminded of why I need to be more appreciative of the high Examine Energy in my life. My husband Ed is Abundant in this Examine Energy. Sometimes it can be a little maddening. For example, when he feels the need to tell me why my brilliant ideas will fail… or when he bursts my bubble by telling me that I am “not being realistic.”

This week he inadvertently reminded me that high Examine’s attention to detail and their need to look at what could go wrong comes from a desire to protect.

I was standing in the kitchen with my husband grabbing a bite to eat when he glanced into the backyard and saw a fire raging right behind our house. He screamed for me to call 911, which I did as he ran outside to grab a water hose.

Of course, there was no need to search for a hose because everything in our yard is always in its place, thanks to him. I have to admit that it drives him a little batty when the neighbors leave things in disarray for months at a time, but I digress. Yes, being able to get to anything and everything very quickly because you maintain all of your possessions in an orderly fashion is a high Examine trait (and Execute too, but I digress again), but this was not the reason that I realized that I should value my husband’s abundant Energy. I came to that awareness after the firefighters arrived at my house and after the fire was under control.

We have a pasture behind our house and the grass gets pretty high. We don’t get enough rain in Texas most of the time, and dry, tall grass is known for burning quickly. My husband is a big believer in doing all of the work around the house that he possibly can. He doesn’t like to spend money on things that he can take care of himself. So every spring and summer you can find him mowing, weeding, edging and blowing our 1.5-acre property.

He has a system (not a surprise to those of you who understand the Examine Energy) and part of his system is that he goes behind our fence in the backyard and mows a few strips in the pasture even though it is not our land. I always found that to be silly and unnecessary. But this week, this week it probably saved our yard and possibly our house from going up in flames. You see, the fire spread through the pasture very quickly, but where Ed had mowed just a few days earlier was wet as we had a little bit of rain the day before the fire broke out.

His high Examine had thought through what could have happened and he planned for this possibility. In one million years I never would have thought about that, but I am sure thankful that Ed did.

Although we can sometimes become frustrated with people who have Energies different from our own, we need to try to think about how those people add value to our lives. They are probably the very ones that we need to keep around. I found out this week that this is not only true in work relationships but also in personal ones.