A Minion's New Year's Resolution

Hello everyone.  It's that time of year again.  It's New Year's Eve.  Many of us will spend tonight going to parties or celebrating the passing of the old year and the ringing in of a new one.  I firmly believe that 2012 will be my best year yet.  It won't be the best year that I am ever going to have but it will be the best year yet.  (Thanks Dan Stratton for that saying)  Why do I think this?  Because I have faith that my God is able to do what he said.  It's the great thing about serving a God who is alive.  He can still perform signs and wonders like no other God can.

But that's a post for a different day.  My assignment today is to talk about New Year's resolutions.  Many of us (including me) have made them in the past and with the best intentions we start into January with a changed life.  For many years my New Year's resolution was always to quit eating badly, exercise and lose weight.  I exercise at a gym in Fort Worth that I dearly love.  It's where I lost all my weight and I still enjoy working out there.  I would almost bet you that there will be several new people in the gym the next time I go who will not be there by the middle of February.  I know that I was one of those people for many, many years.  I had the best intentions but no real commitment.  I could only resist giving my body what it wanted in the way of food for so long and then I would give in.  I might lose 10 pounds only to gain it all back plus five more at the end of my "diet."  Let me say this about diets.  If you go on a diet, you will lose weight but when you get off the diet, you will probably go right back to where you were before.  Don't go on a diet.  Change your life.

So am I saying don't bother making a New Year's resolution at all?  Don't attempt to improve your life or change things about yourself that you don't like.  Of course not!  If you have read many of my blogs you know that's not the case.  Well then, you ask, what are you telling me Mr. Minion?  What I'm telling you is that New Year's resolutions shouldn't be taken so lightly.  If you are going to change something about yourself, there is a high probability that it will take a lot of work and perseverance.  The only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Does this mean that I don't think you can do it?  Of course not!  I know you can change anything you want to change.  I did.  I once was extremely overweight and now I am not.  What I want you to do before you make a New Year's resolution is count the cost.  Prepare yourself for the battle.  If you just make a half hearted resolution, you are setting yourself up for failure and that hurts.  I want to see you succeed in anything you set your mind to do (as long as it's a good thing).  When I finally made a change in my eating, it was after several months of preparation to do so.  I took me a long time to finally get honest with myself and admit that I had an eating problem.  After that, I had to go before God and ask his help in getting free from carbohydrate addiction.  There may be another way to do this without God but I don't know what it is.  I tried on my own for many years to lose weight with no success.  After this process, I was able to make a commitment to lose the weight and God gave me the ability to persevere through trials until I lost weight.

Let me summarize by saying this.  Please take your New Year's resolutions seriously.  It's OK to make them.  Just count the cost and be prepared so that you can be successful.  If you are a Christian, take your resolutions before God and ask for his help.  Then know that you will have to stand through some adversity if you are going to see your resolution fulfilled.  Remember this - there is never a testimony without a test.  I know you can do it. 

Wishing you a very Happy New Year - The Minion

Is It Real?

Today I want to talk about something that is a little strange to me.  The question is - Is it real?  Is what real, you ask?  When someone tells you something nice is it real?  Several months ago, I wrote a blog about the Box.  It was probably the most significant thing I have written thus far because it meant so much to me.  In this blog, I wrote about how we should look at the stuff that is on the inside of people and not the outside.  I think it is important to see the great things God has put in all of us.  Now it may have been the same blog or maybe not but I also wrote a little about how to take a compliment.

Recently, I have been around someone who has taken the time to take the lid off my box and see what's on the inside of me.  This person has been very complimentary of me and to be honest, it is a little unsettling.  I am not really sure how to take it.  She's used words to describe me like nice, sweet, caring, etc.  She even went as far as to say that I was a good man.  I am extremely grateful for the compliments and I believe that they are from the heart and sincere but they made me a little uncomfortable.  That made me consider my own actions a little.

When I am around someone, I try to be very positive.  I have worked hard to be someone who sees the best in others.  While I am not perfect, I feel like I have come a long way.  Like I have said before, I'm not where I want to be but thank God, I'm not where I used to be.  But I got a lesson today in how it feels to have someone do the same thing back to me.  Now it is unsettling but in a good way. 

I recently told someone that I thought they were a very special person and the response I got was not surprising.  That person basically said she struggled to believe what I was saying but she was working on believing it.  I have had this answer before in a different context and I wasn't shocked.  What surprised me a little was that this person didn't believe me.  Now she didn't think I was lying, she just found the nice thing I said difficult to believe.  At the time, I didn't understand why but now I think understand why she felt this way.

Have you ever been around someone who tells you one thing and then does another?  How about someone who tells you that they love you and then they do hateful things to you?  What message does that send?  Actions speak much louder than words so the actions certainly override the words.  Also, for some reason pain has a much more lasting effect on people than love.  At least on the surface this is the case.  So when we feel pain, the thought of it stays longer than love although love will impact you on a much deeper level.  But after someone hurts us, especially if it's for a long period of time, we really have a difficult time believing someone else when they say something nice.

Let me ask you this.  Has something happened in your life that makes it hard for you to believe things when people say nice things about you?  Maybe your self esteem is so low that it makes it hard for you to believe the nice things that people say about you.  The truth about the matter is that everything God ever made is amazing.  He made you and by definition that makes you an amazing person.  God wrote a whole book about you and how amazing you are.  The book says you were made in his image.  If someone tells you any different, ask yourself who's lying?  Is it them or God?  I choose them.  If someone tells you something good about you, it's probably true.  Now I do believe that we need to watch out for people who say nice things to manipulate us.  However, there are many people who just recognize the amazing gifts that God put in our box.  When that happens, let it soak through your skin like rain into the ground and get to your heart where it can grow into something amazing.

Today as we were walking, this person told me that I was pretty special.  I know what she says is sincere and I should have been able to believe her and just say thank you.  However, this is hard for me because it's hard for me to feel worthy of the compliment. There is a fine line between believing that we are worthy and being arrogant.  For years I have tried to hide behind humility to avoid compliments.  Now true humility is good and I try to be a humble person.  But I would avoid compliments or block them out because I didn't feel worthy of the compliment.  Instead of dealing wih not being worthy, I simply chose to believe that accepting a compliment could make me arrogant.

I am learning to accept these things from people and let them cause a harvest of good things to grow from my heart.  In truth, we all need to learn this lesson.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

The Love Tank

I am not sure if today's blog will be something truly meaningful to anyone but me.  However, today I want to reflect on something interesting in my life.

For the first time in some time, I am actually content.  Today I sat for a little while and thought about why.  What I came up with actually startled me a little.  There is an author named Gary Chapman who wrote a book called "The Five Love Languages."  It is a very good book and if you haven't read it, you might consider it.  Now in this book, he says that we all have a love tank inside of us and that we all have different things that fill our love tank.  While I'm not sure his list is all inclusive, I can't think of anything that would not fall into one of those five categories.

Also recently, I was talking to a very special person in my life and she made in interesting observation.  She said that her heart was full.  I remember at the time this struck me as something interesting.  She recently told me that she ponders things in her heart and I guess that I have been pondering that statement ever since. 

I think she was saying that her love tank was full and since I had read a copy of Gary's book that was directed at children, this concept really stuck out in my mind.  I don't believe in coincidences and I believe that the Lord was trying to show me something but it took me a little while to understand what.  See, I think for years that I have been running on a love tank that read - empty.  There are a many reasons for this and I certainly won't try to address them in this post but suffice it to say that is the way I have felt. 

Now have you ever heard the saying, what goes around comes around?  Well, I believe that is a true statement.  Some people call it karma but in all reality, it's a principal that comes from the bible.  The bible describes it as sowing and reaping.  In other words, what you sow, you are going to reap.  Most of the time we all think of this as doing something bad.  A while back, I played a little joke on my mom that we both laugh about and recently someone else played the same joke on me and we both laughed about sowing and reaping.  Have you ever hear of something bad happening to a bad person and then heard someone else say that person got what was coming to them?  Well, I think that can be true at times.

But what if the opposite was true?  What if when you do good things for people, that same type of stuff happens to you?  I almost find this hard to believe for many reasons but I know the bible is true and so it must be true that when I sow good stuff, I eventually reap good stuff.  For years I have tried to be someone who sows good stuff into other people's lives and didn't really see the results I thought I would see back.  I remember writing a blog this summer where I talked about breaking the cycle of being hurt and hurting other people.  In that blog, I talked about how Jesus was hurt by John the Baptist's death and how he helped people even though he was hurting.  I hope this doesn't come across as bragging because I am not.  This is just a point that needs to be illustrated.

As I sat here today, I realized that I truly was at peace.  I'm not restless, not in a hurry, not trying to figure out what to do tomorrow.  I'm just content.  Why am I content?  Because that love tank or my heart, however you want to classify it, is full.  Now I have always tried to be a giver but I can tell you that when your heart/tank is full it is much easier to give than when it's on empty and you are doing it out of obligation.  There is someone who will read this and know that they are one of biggest reasons my tank is full.  To that person, let me say thank you from the bottom of my heart.  That wasn't the only source that filled my love tank but it was the biggest.

So what can we learn from this?  Well there are a few things that I can think of.  First of all, keep doing good things for people.  If you do that, sooner or later things will start coming your way.  They used to sing a song in church and one of the lines was, "You've gotta keep on casting your bread upon the water.  Soon it's gonna come back home on every wave."  This is true in life.  Second, don't quit.  My mom sent me a link to a blog by Pastor Bob Nichols and the first line said, "Don't quit on your first day and don't quit on your worst day."  I like that a lot.  Sometimes, you will wonder what's taking so long for the good things to start happening in your life but don't quit.  They will come if you keep at it.  Lastly, for now, it's OK to be happy.  This content feeling bothered me because I was so used to not feeling it, it took a couple of days to get used being content and understanding that it was OK to feel this way.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Doors

Today I want to take a stab at a funny topic - Doors.  Let's start with wooden doors and then we will move onto metal doors and glass doors, etc.  OK, for those of you who have read a few of these, you know that I won't talk about actual doors but I do want to talk about doors in our lives.

Just like I joked about there being different types of actual doors, there are different types of doors in our lives as well.  Sometimes a door represents an opportunity.  Maybe it represents a new job or a new position at your current job.  I could also represent the opportunity to do something new at school.  But doors can also represent a new friend, a new girlfriend or boyfriend, etc.  We can be talking about one of my favorite subjects - people.  This is were I want to focus for the next few paragraphs and then we will see where things go from there.

Have you ever had a relationship end?  Maybe they end badly and sometimes they just end.  As many of you know, I am 40 years old which means I have been out of high school for a long time.  Now I still keep in touch with some of my friends from high school and there are many who I don't see at all anymore.  I can't think of any of those people that I had some type of problem with.  We just drifted apart over time.  We all went to different schools, started working at different jobs and many of us started our own families.  That all happened over time and many of those "doors" closed in my life.

But there is another side to this.  Most of my very closest friends I didn't know while I was in high school.  We met somewhere along the path of life after and I am certainly glad we did.  All of those people represented doors in my life.  I had to be open to meeting them or I would not be friends with them today.  So let me pause here and ask you this.  Is your heart open to meeting new people?  For some it may be closed because of what happened with other relationships in your life.  I will try to address that in just a minute but let me say, your heart has to be open to new people or you will miss out on some truly remarkable ones.  I recently met a person in the strangest way and I am truly a blessed person because of it.  Which brings me to another point.  God has a million ways to put people in your path that he wants to be part of your life.  Don't let your thinking get so boxed in that you miss the opportunities he puts in your life.

Now let's talk a minute about what would cause someone to close all the doors to new friendship.  Most of the time this happens because someone in our lives has hurt us.  Somewhere along the path of life, a door closed but it didn't just close, it slammed on our finger and it hurt.  When that happens what do we do?

First of all, let it hurt.  Chances are if you are a girl, you are very in touch with your emotions.  You know how to cry and how to feel things on a much deeper level than if you are a guy.  Now us boys, on the other hand, don't do emotions like girls do.  So boys, you are going to have to let things hurt some if you are going to get true healing.  But once it hurts for a while, the healing process will take over and things will get better.  Have you ever cut your finger?  When you do it hurts.  That's your body's way of saying you need to put a band aid on your finger to stop the bleeding and start the healing.  But have you ever noticed that even before it is completely healed, the cut stops hurting?  It can be the same way with our friends.

So how do we start the healing process if we lose a close friend?  There are probably many things to do but I can think of a few that are pretty important.  First of all, admit to your part of whatever went wrong with the friendship.  If you did something wrong, you have to own your part.  Don't make excuses for why you did something, just admit that you did it, ask for forgiveness from God (who will give it to you instantly) and if it's appropriate, ask the other person(s) involved for forgiveness. 

Second, you have to forgive the other person.  This is pretty critical in starting the healing process.  When we hold onto those hurtful feelings and keep that unforgiveness all to ourselves, it can actually feel good.  Using anger at someone to overcome the hurt feelings we have is a pretty normal thing to do.  At first, it works great but just like a cut that gets infected, in the long run it can do us a tremendous amount of damage.  Have you ever seen what happens with a cut that gets infected?  If you let it go long enough, the infection will grow to the point that it can cause the loss of limb or loss of life.  This is the same thing that happens when we choose not to forgive someone.  Notice that the infection gets in us and hurts us, it doesn't hurt anyone else.  It's not contagious and we can't pass it to someone.  It's the same way with unforgiveness.  It only hurts us.  I know this isn't an easy thing to do sometimes because of the bad things people do to us but it has to be done.

Third, while we are on the subject of forgiveness, you have to forgive yourself.  Just like I talked about in the last paragraph, unforgiveness is a killer.  It spreads more quickly and does more damage when we don't forgive ourselves.  Why this is, I am not sure but I have noticed that when I am really getting down on myself it does more damage.  It's almost like opening another cut and letting it get infected.  It hurts about as bad.

Fourth, and this may or not be important, if you are in a hurtful relationship, you may have to leave it.  I will leave that for you do decide.

If you do these things, you are closing a door but you are doing it the right way.  After that door closes, you will find that another one opens.  Regardless of your age, if something like this happens in your life and the person that is leaving is a boyfriend or a girlfriend, this can be extremely painful.  You can have emotional attachments that are strong and they make you want to hang on to the relationship.  That's normal and that feeling is what caused you to become boyfriend/girlfriend with them in the first place.  But what if when that door closed in your life, a better one opened?  That is a difficult thing to see happening for most of us yet it happens all the time.  So, let me encourage you by saying this - If a door closes in your life, you have to process the door and bring "closure" to the situation.  Once you have done that, take a look around.  There may be a much better door right in front of you that you never saw before.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

My Faith Story

Hello everyone.  As most of you who read this blog know, I am a Christian.  An amazing person asked me to share my testimony with her and because if what she said to me after I told her, I thought I would share my personal testimony with you.  After you read this, I would very much love to hear yours.  Please, please, please right back and tell me your testimony.  They are such a blessing.

I have edited it a little but this is what I told her:

I think I was saved when I was four or five. The reason I say this is I have always thought that Jesus was my Lord as long as I could remember. Living like he was Lord was a different thing growing up. We went to a non-denominiational church that believed in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in other tongues. The problem with the penticostal denomination is there are some very wierd people doing extremely strange things that make everyone else look strange. I attend Eagle Mountain Church now and it is a non-denominational church. 

Anyway, let me go back in time. Growing up I had a drug problem. My mom drug me to church every Sunday and I hated it. It interfered with watching the Cowboy games and even when they weren't playing I liked to watch wrestling on Saturday night which put me up late.  Hey, I was just a kid.  I didn't know it was fake back then.  I watched local wrestling and really go into it.  Anyway, after I got out of children's church, my brother and I sat at the back of the church in a strategic spot that would allow me to put my bible under my right arm and keep my head straight up and down while I slept. The only way you would know I was sleeping was if you were sitting in front of me and turned around or if I snored.  No one ever woke me up so I guess I didn't snore too loud.  We were also far enough away from the pulpit that the pastor or preacher couldn't see us either.

Back then we went to Calvary Cathedral which is a non-denominational church near downtown. So I slept every Sunday and Pastor Bob Nichols would always end his service by saying, "Father, we have heard the word of God today...." I always felt bad because I hadn't heard it. I slept through the service and I didn't want to lie to God so I wouldn't say that part. Then I finally started staying awake and listening to the word.

That's about when I started TCU. At TCU I was in ROTC and was pretty excited about doing a "varsity sport" called Ranger Challenge. I was in the hunt to make the team when I had an accident at church softball practice that caused me to miss making the team (it was just a bruised thigh but by the time I could run again, I had missed it). That sent me into somewhat of a depressed state. To cut the story a little short, I ended up getting "kicked out" of ROTC because I couldn't hold my weight down and ended up moving in with a girl. This is probably the lowest point in my life and what happened next was truly terrible.  I got her pregnant and she had an abortion.  At this point, I was as far away from God as I ever remember being.  But here's something amazing.  I was far from him but he was never far from me.  The bible says he will never leave me nor forsake me.

While I was going through this period of my life, I obviously quit going to church. I thought up all kinds of nasty things to say about the people who went there. I said they were hypocrites, unfriendly, not real, etc. Word of what I was saying got back to the church I am sure but I never heard anything ugly in response. So, I was living in a one bedroom apartment with this girl and her parents came down and broke us up.  I met her parents before the pregnancy and I remember going for a walk with her dad.  Since we were in college, dating was serious and he wanted to know what my intentions were with his daughter.  I told her dad I wanted to marry her.  It's a wonder he didn't shoot me right there!  I was a complete disaster.  I had been kicked out of ROTC, I was barely able to stay in school, my grades were terrible and I lost my job because I was too lazy to go to work.  If my daughter brought me from back then home, I would have been horrified. After they broke us up, I ultimately got evicted from my apartment because I was too lazy to work and moved back in with my mom and dad. I was either 21 or 22 at the time. At this point, I knew something was desperately wrong. I could not figure out what to do so I would go sit in the bathtub with my bible knowing something wasn't right but not knowing what to do.

Finally, I decided I needed to get right with God (Maybe I got saved for the first time at this point. Honestly, I am not sure). So I decided to go to church with my brother who still attended our church in the youth service. I was prepared to be shunned and rejected and I deserved it but I needed to get right with God and I knew he would be there whether or not the people received me or not. The youth pastor's name was Mark Carillo and I know he preached a sermon but to this day, I have no idea what he preached. As I sit writing this, I am listening to a song called, "The Lighthouse." It couldn't be more appropriate. So Pastor Mark was preaching and it was all I could do not to yell at him to shut up and open the alter. I needed to get right with God and I wanted it done right then. The thought of just going to God on my own was something I could not quite understand yet. Anyway, as soon as he opened the alter, I was the first one down. Then something truly amazing happened. Those people who I had bad mouthed just gathered around me and loved me. They hugged me and prayed with me. It was living mercy that still brings tears to my eyes.

When I stood up, I knew I was right with God and it was a great feeling.

That's the testimony of the Minion 

My Friend Stays at the Mailbox

Today I want to talk to you about something that was a bit of a revelation to me.  I have to give credit for this analogy to my cousin AB.  Cuz, I know you told me where you got this but I forgot.  But I want to talk to you today about friendships.

Now you may find this hard to believe because I have no problem writing about myself good, bad or indifferent on this blog but I am a shy person.  I'm not super shy to the point where I won't talk to you but I will probably not just walk up to someone out of the clear blue and introduce myself or talk to them unless there is a specific reason to do so.  If introductions are made, I will probably talk to you about you and I really don't like to talk about myself.  When I started writing this blog, someone came up to me who knows me pretty well and asked where all this stuff comes from that I write.  The answer was it comes from inside my box.  I spent years closing the lid on my box and not sharing what was inside it because I didn't value it enough to celebrate it myself.  However, I do not share my inner most thoughts and feelings with everyone especially if I don't think they will appreciate it.  Guess what, I realized that's a normal thing.

I have met people who are on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to there inner most self and neither of them are healthy.  If you will not tell anyone anything about you ever, you are destined for a lonely and unfulfilled life.  I know that some people would say that they like being an introvert and that their life is just fine.  I seriously doubt that because of how we were created.  On the other hand if you are the person who tells everything to everyone, you are destined to get hurt more than you should because some people will not value what's down deep in your Box.  It's unfortunate but true.

I think too often we let our friends and relationships happen by default and never take the time to evaluate them.  That is a bad place to be.  Think about it for a minute.  You can spend hours deciding on what college to go to or what house/car to buy.  These things are important but a house is just a building that you live in.  It's not a home without relationships.  A car is just a way to get from point A to B.  Don't get me wrong, I drive a very nice car and I like it.  It is comfortable, etc. but understand this.  If I drive a real nice car and the guy driving beside me drives a beat up piece of junk and we both drive for one hour at exactly 60 miles an hour, will I go farther than him?  Nope, we will travel the exact same distance.

Now if we spend that much time deciding on things that are important but not of supreme importance, why don't we spend any time evaluating our friendships?  For me, part of the answer was I didn't like being alone.  It hurt and I hated it.  Now I haven't really evaluated my friendships lately so if I haven't talked to you and you are a personal friend of mine, don't take this to mean that I there is something wrong with our relationship because that's not true.  I am really thinking about this more as I move forward.  When I meet someone where do they belong in my life?

See there are some people who I meet that really should stay out at my mailbox.  So when I go out in my front yard to get the mail I can talk to them.  Please don't take this to literally.  When I say out by my mailbox, I mean that I will not let them get too close to me personally.  I will talk to them about life in general and I will listen to them but they are not meant to be closer.  Also, just because they aren't meant to get closer to me doesn't mean that they shouldn't be very close to someone else.  They should be at the core of some one's friendship circle, just not mine.  I am not saying that their is anything wrong with them, just that they are not supposed to be super close to me.

Then there are some people who I would let up on my front porch.  We might sit in the swing or in a chair with a cup of tea or coke and talk.  I might let them know that I write a blog.  I might tell them that I am writing a book but it would be talk about things that are pretty common knowledge in my life.  But it wouldn't be the super deep things in my life.  It wouldn't be the most important things to me.  Also think of this as a funnel.  There may be many people who are mailbox friends and their would be fewer people that are front porch friends.

Then there are living room friends.  These are people who I invite into the living room.  We eat dinner together and we hang out.  We watch TV and our kids play with each other.  There will probably be very few living room friends.  I only have a few.  You can probably count them on two hands.  They are people who I trust and who I would talk to about almost anything.  I might tell them if I was struggling with something or if I was trying to make a major decision, I might want to talk to them.  They are close friends.  These people you must choose carefully.  They don't represent a building or car, you are in trusting them with a special part of you.  You must make sure that you can trust them with that part of you.  Don't let just anyone into the living room.  That is a hard thing to do.  If you cannot trust them then don't let them past the front porch. 

Lastly their are bedroom relationships.  Now before some of you go where I think you will go with that, it has nothing to do with sex.  The bedroom is where you lay down at night and sleep.  It is the place that you feel safe enough to become completely defenseless while you sleep.  You turn off everything that would be a defense.  You stop actively listening, you close your eyes so you cannot see danger coming.  You lose consciousness and it would be extremely easy for someone to hurt you without you being able to stop them.  This place is a place where you only let a couple of people.  If you are married, your spouse should be one of them.  Ask yourself if he or she really is.  If not, why?  I recently had dinner with a friend and she was telling me that her perfect mate would be another friend of hers who is a girl.  Again, pump the hormone brakes.  She isn't gay, she's just saying that this person accepts her completely and that she can be totally defenseless with her friend.  Many of you have a best friend like that and it's important to have someone like that.  I don't really have anyone in my life that I am completely comfortable with becoming totally defenseless with yet.  I have people that I know love and support me but I don't have a bedroom friend right now.  That's OK too because that part of me that I let be so helpless and exposed is worth protecting.

Let me ask you, do you have friends in the bedroom who should not be there?  If so, you are destined to endure pain.  Do you have any friends who can get past the front porch?  If not, you are destined to be lonely.  You have to find the right balance and work from there.  Also, let me tell you this.  You will have friends that move from time to time and that's OK.  If someone hurts you deeply, they might get locked out of the bedroom or even out of the house for a while.  That can be a good thing.  I recently was involved in a situation where someone in my life had to go out to the mailbox.  I don't hold that against that person and I don't think that person holds it against me.  It was just what needed to happen.  Those things are OK.  People will move around and it's OK.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Ask the Minion

Hello Everyone,

I decided to do another round of ask the Minion because I have had fun with the first couple so here goes.  Before I start, I think most of you know this but I want to be clear on one thing.  I am in no way associated with the movie Despicable Me.  I just liked the character so I put it on my page.

BA - Why do I call my blog the Opinion of the Minion - Originally, I was really just joking about writing a blog with some of the guys in the office.  While on a trip to Houston in February, a friend of mine asked me where two people were who should have been with us working.  He asked me where the minions were.  I thought it was funny at the time.  When I decided to start writing my own blog, I knew it was basically going to be my opinion and minion just rhymed so the name stuck.  What I didn't see happening was the number of people who would actually read what I write.  It is still very difficult for me to wrap my mind around all the people who are fans of this blog.  Thank you all.

ANH - Have you ever resolved the problem with the anti-gravity serum? - I'm not associated with the movie.

EW - What's my Opinion on gay people - Wow.  This is a loaded question.  First of all, I love people period.  Gay, straight, black, white, green, purple, or orange.  I know some people who are gay and they are really nice people.  However, I think what you are asking me is do I think being gay is right?  The answer is - What I think isn't important.  What the bible says is.  If I look in the bible, it says that same sex relationships like that are wrong.  Please don't send me any hate letters.  I didn't write the book.  I'm just telling you what it says.  Now before you gay bashers start chiming in on how wrong you think homosexuality is, let me tell you something else.  Jesus told people to work on themselves before they got into other people's business.  He said that people are walking around making a big deal out of someone elses' sin that is little while they have massive sin in their lives.  What does that mean, mind your own business.  It's not my place to judge a gay person.  It's not my place to judge anyone.  When they get to heaven, they can take it up with God.  It won't matter to me at that point because I will have plenty of areas where I am wrong to discuss with God.  He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.

RS - Why can't you give me $10? - RS, many people in my life have asked me for money.  You are the first one to do it on the Minion and that's funny.

MMDM - Do you think aliens are real?  If so, why? - I think there is life that is not on earth.  After all, God is a real person and he is in Heaven.  We know that Heaven isn't on earth.  It is a real place and it is somewhere so there must be life outside earth.  I don't know if God put other life forms on other planets though.

SB - Why did you pick that as your profile picture? - When I was setting up my FB page, I needed something to go up as a profile picture and I wanted a picture of a minion because of the name.  I really didn't know what to expect but I knew I didn't want anything that looked scary or bad.  When I googled pictures of a minion, the one I used came up and I liked it.

ZKR - What language do you speak? - I don't know much about the movie characters but I speak English.  I can speak very very little German and even less French.

TM - If you choked a minion for an experiment, what color would it turn? - That's cute.  No clue.

JC Part 1 - Explain to me what the real definition of success is in today's society? - JC is a good personal friend of mine so let me start by asking JC something.  Would you consider me a success?  Why?  The definition of success in society is how much wealth you have and what you have been able to achieve like college degrees, etc.  Unfortunately, that measuring system has nothing to do with success.  Success in life is really measured by the number of lives you touch and how you touch them.  Are you a good dad, friend, husband, wife, mom, etc.?  Do you help people when they are in need if you can?  Do you have good relationships?  Are you trying to make a positive difference in the people's lives around you?  If so, then I would call you a success.  Success is measured in the quality of your relationships not the value of your bank account.

JC Part 2 - What will break the cast system we currently need to overcome today for everyone to be able to thrive and prosper together peacefully? - OK you will definitely not like my answer on this one.  The answer is the second coming of Christ.  The bible says that in this life you will have trouble and that there will be wars and rumors of wars.  So the live together peacefully part won't happen until then.  As far as breaking the caste system, I think people have to wake up and want out of it.  If you look at many people today, you will see apathy.  They simply don't care about what is going on around them enough to make any kind of change.  Let's take politics for example.  If enough people don't like someone, they can get together and have him or her voted out of office.  Does that happen normally?  No because it takes a lot of a four letter word - work.  When I was at my heaviest, I was always telling your brother that I was going to lose weight.  Finally one day he told me that I was a liar.  He said that when I got tired of being fat, I wouldn't be fat anymore.  I think it applies to breaking out of the caste system as well.  People have to get tired of it but most don't.  They are more interested in watching TV than changing things.

IR - What's a question?  -That's funny.

IR - What would you do in case of a Zombie Apocalypse? - No clue. Again, that's funny.

WH - How can you recover from a broken friendship? - This is probably a good question for a completely separate blog.  In short, it takes time to heal from a broken friendship.  They are the hardest because typically it's someone you trust.  To start with, find someplace safe.  Because you are a guy, I will give you a piece of advice that applies to everyone but we guys don't do this much.  Let it hurt.  It's going to and when you feel pain, it's your body and spirit telling you something is wrong.  I tried to shut all painful emotions out of my life for a long time and it made me very callous which is a bad place to be.  Next, own up to anything you did in that relationship that was wrong.  Here's another thing I see a lot today, people are afraid to be wrong.  It's OK to be wrong.  Guess what, there was only one man ever to walk this planet who never made a mistake.  You and I are going to make them.  After that, ask God to forgive you of anything you have done wrong.  These next two can be hard.  First - forgive the other person.  You shouldn't be around them if they are going to continue to hurt you but forgiving them will help you heal.  Second - forgive yourself.  After that, it takes time.

JC - lotto numbers - If I knew, I would have already bought my own ticket.  :-)

SS - What is the name of the minion in your picture? - I don't know.

TK - Do you like pie? - Yup.  My favorite is my grandmother's homemade pecan pie fresh out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream on top.

MS - Why can't minions talk? - I don't know.

BP - Why are they yellow and not, like, purple? - Again I don't know.

EM - Do you think the world will end in 2012? - Probably not but I don't know.  Here's why I say that.  The world will radically change when Jesus comes back the second time but from what I have read in the bible, I will be around for a few years after that.  The bible also says we don't know the day or the hour when Jesus will return.  So if everyone says 2012 then I doubt it will be then.

MS - How can the force of gravity come together from mostly the sun and make the world end in 2012? - No idea.

BA - When are you going to answer all these questions? - Today.  Sorry it took so long.

BM - What's a minion bible story? - It's a story from the bible that I try to tell in my own words.  Several weeks ago a couple of people asked me if I would write them so I thought I would give them a try.

SS - Can you rap anything? - Nope

DP - Are you a glow stick? - Nope

JB - What's your girlfriend's name? - I don't have one yet.

JB - Have you cheated on her and what's your dad's name and your momma's name? - I don't have one and so I can't cheat on her but I wouldn't anyway.  If she isn't the girl that I can't stand to be without then I won't stay with her anyway.  I want the girl that looks fine dressed up but is more beautiful to me in blue jeans and a tee shirt with her hair in a pony tail.  I want the girl that I cannot stand to leave.  Someone that I just need five more minutes looking at her and talking to her.  I want her to be physically attractive certainly but that's not enough.  She has to be attractive as a whole person.  If I find that, there will never be any need to cheat on her.  My parents names are John and Donna.

GD - Republican or Democrat? - Hard to say.  Neither party has a clue about fiscal responsibility, neither party seems really accountable to the American public and I am not convinced that either of them has the best interest of the country at heart.  That said, from what I know in extremely broad terms, the Democratic party tends to want bigger government and that is just a mistake so I typically vote Republican.

JWG - How is cooler:  Pon or Zi? - I don't know.

SDJ - Why are minions yellow? - I don't know.

AR - Why can the minions only say ehhh and ahhhh? - I don't know.

SG - Does this page have a contest? - Sort of.  I like to give out "The Box" awards.  What are they?  I will try to write a post but I like to give out an award to someone who does things for others.  If you know of someone, let me know and we can talk about getting them an award.

AA - How small are the minions in inches? - I don't know.

JH - Who does the voices of the minions in the movie Despicable Me and why do they talk in an alien sort of language? - I don't know

And those are answers from The Minion

Christmas Blues

Today I want to try to address what I like to call the Christmas blues.  Do you ever find yourself getting down at Christmas time?  If you are a child, it might not be as big a problem as if you are an adult but I even heard my friend KS say something about it in her blog.

For the last couple of days this has been my struggle.  I know the holiday season is here and I really look forward to Christmas until it gets here.  Does that makes sense.  In some ways it doesn't to me.

See right now I should be happy.  I have direction in all the major areas of my life, work is going fine, I feel like I am growing as a father and as a friend.  I have opportunities every day to help other people and I am entering the holiday season but I find myself more and more these last few days struggling to really get excited about Christmas.  Now I want to continue to help people, I want to be around people, and I look forward to giving them gifts.  I recently discovered that I am really a people person. But I find myself looking forward to January 2nd more than almost any other day of the year.  Why?  Because the holidays will be over.  Don't get me wrong, I don't get ba humbug but I just don't get as excited about the rest for some reason.

Part of the reason I think the holiday season can be difficult is because of what seems to be important these days.  Everything seems to be about the commercial aspects of the season.  At Thanksgiving it was a big meal.  Now we turn to Christmas and it's all about getting and giving gifts.  The whole thing has gotten a little twisted.  Giving of gifts was the first thing that happened on the first Christmas.  God gave Jesus, his son, to the world so that the world could be eventually be brought back in to right relationship with him.  We all know that Jesus eventually gave himself for our sins on the cross but did you know that on the first Christmas he gave up being in Heaven where everything is perfect.  We know he gave it up for us but he gave it up for someone else.  He gave a Christmas gift of his life to his Father so that He could have right relationship with His creation.  I bet you never looked at it that way right.

So what's the common thread in the giving?  Neither God nor Jesus gave a financial gift to the world, the both gave something infinitely more special.  They gave Jesus to the world.  With God is was always about relationships.  That was what was on his mind the first Christmas.

Now don't misunderstand me, I think giving gifts is a very good thing to do but I think there is much more to the season than just stuff.  If you don't get what you want, it's OK because if you got anything, you should be thankful that someone was there to give it to you.  Again, it's about relationships.  If you are a parent that doesn't have enough money to give your child everything you want to, don't worry about it.  There is someone in your life for you to give to and that's really important.  If you don't have enough money to give everything you would like to people, remember this - even though you don't have a lot of money, you do have something to give.  Let me tell you about a few very special gifts that I know of.

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about getting things for her family at Christmas.  She is a really nice lady but was working a job that didn't pay very much money so she didn't have a lot to spend.  I think she gave her parents a framed picture of her but she made some part of it.  I guarantee that her parents will cherish that gift so much more than a new car.  See, she put herself into the gift.  She gave part of something special.  She gave her a small part of her life to her parents.  If you are the person who I am talking about and you are reading this, I bet you never thought of it that way.  :-)

Another person I know gave her daughter a gift for her birthday.  She was the first person to receive the Box award.  Here is what the person who received the gift had to say:

     “My mother cant afford a lot and I don't ask anything of her. This year for my birthday I said no presents.. just let me cook you dinner. Mom surprised me with the newspaper clippings and cards that came from my actual birthday. This was the most rewarding birthday gift ever. It made me feel like she was truly proud of me. “

I will tell you of another gift that shocked me.  I few months ago, I wrote an Opinion of the Minion about my grandfather.  Now I didn't really think this was one of my best blogs but I put it out there to pay honor to TS Rawle.  What shocked me was the response I got.  I wrote that particular blog because it was what I felt.  Comments on Facebook and e-mails came in from all over the family and everyone was touched.  I couldn't physically give them all a hug but I was able to give them something.

Do you ever find yourself coming down with the Christmas blues?  Well you are not alone, most people have to battle it at some point in their lives.  But know this, as you focus on the true meaning of Christmas and what the real gifts are supposed to be, you will see things differently.  You definitely have something to give and people will really appreciate a gift that comes from the heart much more than one from the wallet.
Well, I have done it again.  I have blogged myself happy.

That's another Opinion of the Minion