Love Part 1

Hello Everyone,

Today I want to begin a several part blog on love.  This is one topic that I need to know much more about.  See, I love my wife and I love my children.  But what does that really mean?  Does it mean I feel warm inside when I'm with my wife?  Does it mean I really enjoy my children?  The answer to both of those questions is sometimes yes and sometimes no.  But it doesn't change the fact that I love them both.

But, before we get to what love is, I want to take the rest of this blog to talk about what love is not.  For those of you who read this blog inside the United State, we use this word entirely too much and we water down what it really means.  You might hear someone say, "I love my car" or "I love my school" or something else.  But that's not real love.  You can enjoy your car and you can really enjoy your school but real love is reserved for something else.

For all you young ladies let me tell you something else that is not love.  If a guy starts telling you he loves you and then starts pressuring you to have a physical relationship with him, that's not love.  That's lust and selfishness.  See anything someone uses to get something from you, is not love.  When you are dating, you might have heard if you love me, you will do this or that.  But that's not really love, most of the time it's someone trying to con you into getting something they want.

I've even heard Christians say that you are not walking in love if you don't give them the money they need or give them something else they want.  Again, that is not love.  Love does not seek to get it's own stuff.  Now let me ask you this, where are you upset with someone else because you aren't getting what you want from them?  It could be that you need rethink how you love are loving someone.

When we think about love, we often think of a feeling, but that is not love either.  Feelings are great and when I feel really close to my wife and get those warm, gooey feelings about her, I really enjoy them but that doesn't define my love for her.  In fact, I don't think feelings have anything to do with true love at all.

Well, I like to keep these fairly short so we will pick it up here next time with a little more about what love is not.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Ask the Minion

Hello Everyone.

Last week, I asked you to post your questions on Facebook and I told you I would do my best to answer them.  Before I get to the questions, let me give you a couple of things.  First of all, I am not associated with the movie, Despicable Me so any questions regarding those minions, I will decline to answer.  Second, please remember that when I write these posts, they are just my opinions and what I believe the Lord shows me.  I do not have any type of degree or certification counseling so if you have a serious problem, please seek professional help as I don't want to lead you astray.

OK, let's get to the questions.

1.  MB - How do I get a guy like you?  Let me start by saying how flattered I am at the question.  While this may sound like false humility, I really don't consider myself all that special but I am a good guy.  So how do you get a good guy (someone better than me, I hope)?  My first thought is that you have to find one.  So when you are around boys or girls, ask yourself how they make you feel and why?  Are they good to you and do they treat you right?  Do they always strive to do the right thing (even if they aren't perfect)?  Do they make you feel special and are you compatible?  Is there any real attraction between the two of you?  If the answer to these questions is yes then you have found someone.

Now here's the hard part - How do you get them to like you?  The answer is - you can't.  Just be yourself, if they like you for you then great.  If not, then they really aren't the person for you.  If you have to change yourself to be someone else for them to like you, eventually you will go back to being your real self and then you have a problem or you will change so much that you won't like yourself.  So just be you.  Be bold enough to go say hello to them and talk to them and then see what happens.  MB, if you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask and I will try to answer.

MP - What is the meaning of life?  According to Webster's dictionary one meaning is - the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.  If you mean philosophically, I really don't know.

TTS - Why is life so confusing when it gets hard?  There are a lot of reason for that but I think one thing that happens to me is when life gets hard my emotions tell me one thing and my head tells me something else.  When that happens, sometimes my heart is right, sometimes my head is right.  The only thing I can tell you is to take your decisions to God.  When you get peace from Him about the right decision, then go with it.  I will probably try to expand on this in another post.

JAE & AA - What's your favorite food? - That is a hard question and the answer changes based on the mood I am in at the time.  I like almost all kinds of food.  Over the course of my life, my absolute favorite has probably been pizza.

KL - Why does God allow awful things like abuse, especially child and domestic to occur? The Lord is supposed to be this all-knowing, all-loving, kind, caring God. Yet He lets his children suffer?  KL, I have struggled with this question for many years.  I mean, why did God let the serpent take the blessing in the garden of Eden anyway?  Part of the answer is that we are free will beings and we can choose what we do.  Thing about this - If you could make someone love you and you knew that the only reason they loved you is because you made them, would you make them love you?  I wouldn't because it wouldn't be real love.  I believe that God set a system in place and he expected us to follow that system.  As adults when we don't then there is the risk that we will get hurt.  Now let me say, I can feel pain from thinking about child abuse and I don't know why this happens.  It is so awful and so wrong.  I believe that God's hands are tied in certain places and sometimes he can't interfere but I really don't know why.  Now I can hear some of you saying that God is all powerful and he can do anything.  If that's the case, why did Jesus have to come die for my sins?  KL, I don't feel like I did a good job of answering this question but I hope this helps some.

PC - Who is better - Batman or Superman? - In my book, Superman is better.  Why because he always stood for truth, justice and the American way plus he could fly and was super strong.

FB

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Do Nice Guys Finish Last? (Part 2)

Last time I wrote, we talked about how to define a nice guy.  Today I want to deal with the question - Do nice guys finish last?  Most of you probably have not read a post that I did about this time last year discussing why women can be so attracted to guys who are not very nice to them.  Well today let’s look at this from the other side of the equation.

In high school and in our 20s I think it is very difficult for us to know what exactly we want.  We want everyone to like us.  We want people to want to hang out with us.  We want admiration from our friends.  These things are all OK but what this really defines is “being popular.”  Unfortunately at that age, we don’t know how to be comfortable with just being us so to make ourselves feel better we put other people down.  Now if you are a popular kid then when you put someone else down they are “unpopular” right.  

So if you are a girl which group do you want to be associated with?  The “popular” crowd or the “unpopular” one?  That’s a no brainer right?  Well let’s look at the nice guy for a second.  Think of the nicest guy you know.  Does he typically go around putting other people down?  I doubt it.  That’s what makes him a nice guy.  Is he typically going to be in with the “in” crowd?  Many times not.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that if you are popular that you are not a nice guy because that just isn’t true.

But I think girls in high school are attracted to the popular guys because they are “popular.”  Nice guys in that group may be seen as finishing last.  I mean when a girl says you are a great guy or a nice guy isn’t that the kiss of death in high school?  I know I always felt like that was the case.  However something interesting has happened since I got out of high school (which was 20+ years ago).  I discovered that women’s opinion of what they want change.  When the most popular guy in the school struggles to hold a job, doesn’t appreciate her the way he should and never really does things for her, all the sudden her opinion of being with the “popular” guy changes.  

Just a side note for everyone struggling with this issue who is in high school today.  One day after you graduate high school popularity will mean nothing.

Anyway over the course of time the “nice guy” starts to look much more appealing.  What girl doesn’t want to feel special and be with someone who treats her like she is a princess?  Does that sound like a fairy tale?  Well to some degree in real life it is but I think that we guys can be nice and treat ladies the right way.  See guys, here is what I found out.  When you are over 30 and a woman tells you that you are a nice guy, that is no longer the kiss of death.  In fact, it can be just the opposite because a lot of times that lady is so tired of being with someone who doesn’t treat her right that she is actually longing for a nice guy.

I am dating a truly amazing woman.  She is everything I want and so much more.  She is elegant, classy, beautiful, funny, smart, intelligent and I could go on for a while.  When   one of my friends met her, his first comment was how is she even available to date?  Another friend told me that I had far “out kicked my coverage.”  That’s a football term but it is a high compliment for her.  Another friend of mine asked me if she was as pretty on the inside as she was on the outside.  On a scale of 1 to 10 she is an 11.  And here she is attracted to me!  I still find that hard to believe.  But I bet you if you asked her what attracted her to me one thing she would probably say is that I am a nice guy.

That’s another Opinion of the Minion.

Trust

Hello All,

Today I want to talk to you about trust.  For some of us, trusting people can be a very hard thing to do.  If we have been hurt by something or someone, trusting becomes that much more difficult.  Today's blog will not be about trusting someone else.  Today I want to write about something that has been very hard for me until just recently.  We all know how hard it is to learn to trust other people but for me it was even harder to trust a very important person - myself.

For many of you this may not be an issue and if you know me, you might be surprised that this was an issue for me but in certain areas of my life.  I had to learn to trust myself.  Have you ever heard the saying, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck?  Well for me, if it walked and quacked like a duck, I still might have thought it was a pelican.  Why?  Good question.  I don't really know the answer.  But I will tell you that not trusting myself was causing me some problems.  See when we don't trust ourselves, we are always unsure of what to do.

Don't get me wrong, even if you totally trust yourself, there will be times when you don't know what to do.  In those cases, the best thing to do is to get quite until you have peace about doing something.  If you are a Christian, peace is one of God's ways of letting you know what he wants you to do.

Now specifically for me, I had to learn to trust my own instincts when it came to dating.  Because I haven't been in the dating world in a long time, I went to some friends of mine and asked their thoughts on dating and how to do it.  I specifically asked about online dating.  A friend, CS, told me that I should try it after I got divorced because he had friends that done it and had success.  I was very skeptical to say the least.  So after talking to another friend of mine about online dating, I set up a week where I was supposed to have several dates with different women during the same week.  After all, that was the way to work this online dating thing.

I was also got some good advice about how to work things if you found someone you liked.  In order to not appear desperate, I was told to wait to contact a person until the next day and always wait a couple of days before you tried to schedule another date.  You really didn't want to appear desperate as that frightened girls away.  So I took all this good advice and was prepared to follow it.  Why?  Because the advice came from people with more experience than me and that made sense.  However, I learned an extremely important lesson during that week.  First of all, I didn't go on all four dates.  I didn't need to.

On the second one, I found someone I really special.  She truly is an amazing woman and I am very blessed to have her in my life.  On our first date, we went to lunch and talked for three hours.  I think we have talked to each other every day since.  Anyway, after lunch as we were walking out to our cars, I had a decision to make.  I could do what I was told or I could trust my instincts.  The advice I was given was good advice but I decided that I just needed to be myself and do my thing my way.  So I asked this person if I could see her on Sunday of that week and she said yes.  It was simple as that.

After that, I cancelled the other two dates because I wanted to get to know this person better.  When I did it, one of my friends made fun of me a little for doing it.  He is a great friend and he had my best interest at heart but I had learned to trust me by that point and knew I did the right thing.  See I realized that I was never going to be the guy who could date multiple women at the same time.  I just don't have the time or the energy to do it.  I also realized that I had found a truly unique person who was definitely worth getting to know more.  To use a football analogy that a friend of mine told me, I had out kicked my coverage.

The interesting thing is that after my friends met this particular woman, I think they are more interested in inviting her to things than they are inviting me!  I could go on for a long time about her and maybe I will in a different blog.

I don't know if any of this would have happened if I hadn't learned to trust my own instincts.  I just did what I had peace to do and the rest took care of itself.

So what am I saying.  Trust yourself.  You will be glad you did.

That's the Opinion of the Minion

Believe in Yourself

Today I want to encourage you to give yourself a tremendous gift this Christmas season.  Believe in yourself.  That may seem pretty hard to do.  I know it is for me sometimes.  Now when it comes to what other people think, I guess I look pretty "successful" but there are times when I have trouble believing in myself.

There are going to be times in your life when this is a very difficult thing to do.  Especially during the holiday season, it can be easy to get depressed and down if you let yourself.  My friend, Kari already posted something in her blog about this and I will try to deal with it later myself.

The reality is that you have to believe in yourself if you want to be truly successful and happy in life.  It is very easy for me to believe in other people and their abilities.  Do you think you can write a book?  I believe you can.  Do you think you can go to school and get a degree?  I believe you can.  Do you think you can overcome being overweight or some other addiction?  I believe you can.  Do I believe I can do any of those things?  Yes on the last two and I am working on the first one.  Now especially when it comes to writing, I didn't really believe that I was a writer until recently.  I must say I enjoy the experience.

Did you know that you can have self confidence in one area and lack it in another?  I know I do.  My daughter gave me a great glimpse this weekend of what self confidence looks like.  We were sitting at breakfast eating donuts when a mom walked through the door carrying a baby.  Many times when we see a little child, I tell the kids that they were once that small and we all laugh.  The mother had her back to us and the baby was big enough that he was holding his head up and it was above mom's shoulder.  Before I could say anything to my daughter, she said, "I was that big once."  She beat me to the punch and I smiled.  Then she leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, "But I was cuter."  She obviously has no problem believing that she is a cute kid.  She certainly gets plenty of confirmation from everyone about this fact and that's good.

For me, I used to be fat but now I am not.  I must admit that I struggle in this area a little.  I don't have a bad self image but if a woman shows interest in me (for all my friends, yes it does happen occasionally), I have a hard time believing it.  That's not to say that it is an every day occurrence by any stretch of the imagination but it's nice when it happens.

I struggle to understand why it is so easy for me to have confidence in some areas and lack confidence in others.  I think it's because I am human (as much as I hate to admit it sometimes).  However, you have to believe in you before anyone else will.  Before anyone ever told me they appreciated the Minion, thought, I had to believe that I could write and do it.  Before anyone told me that I could lose weight, I had to believe that I could and change my lifestyle.  Before anyone ever believed I could go through law school, I had to prove to myself that I could.  Do you see the common thread?  Also consider this, if I had never took action on my belief, I would never have gotten anywhere in any of these areas.

See, faith in yourself or in God without works is dead faith.  You cannot truly believe in yourself without taking action in a specific area.  If I really do think I am a good guy, I should ask a girl out.  If I don't believe in myself enough to ask, how can I expect her to say she will?  And if I never ask, we know for certain that she never will.  Also, let me leave you with one more thought on the subject.  Let's take dating because the illustration seems clear to me right now.  If you want to go out with a girl and you never ask her out, you will never go out with her.  However if you ask her, she might turn you down but she might actually go.  Don't be afraid to fail forward.

So what am I trying to tell you?  You must believe in yourself and you must do so before anyone else will.  We will truly know if you believe in yourself by your actions.  Until your believe motivates you to act, it isn't really faith, it's still just hope.  So what are your dreams today?  Believe in yourself and give yourself a chance for success by taking a chance.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

My Oldest Son

In keeping with my theme for this month, I want to send another letter.  This one is to my oldest son.  I am so thankful for him.

Dear David,

As I write this, you are going through a hard transition in life.  Some of this is just part of life and some of it is because of your mom and I.  You are adjusting to 6th grade, changes in your attitude toward girls and unfortunately mom and I's divorce.  It is a lot for one kid to handle and I think you are doing such a good job.

As I look back on my how I have done as your father so far, I am a little sad because I know that I could have done much better.  I was just recently that I realized how little I knew about being a Godly father.  It is my whole heart's desire to teach you to be one in the few years we have left before you step out on your own.  I want to prepare you to be a Godly man.  If I can do that, I have succeeded beyond my wildest imagination for you.  The strange thing is I think in spite of all we have done, you are already becoming a very Godly young man.

I am so very proud of you.  Whether you know it or not, you started school when you were three years old because you had speech issues.  This was due to a hearing problem you had as a little tyke.  Now when I was in school kids in those classes were sort of looked down at and made fun of.  When I was in school, those kids barely made it through.  But not you.  You went from needing help with speech to all honors classes.  You are a really brilliant young man.  I also see things in you that I never could be at your age.  I look at you and see courage.

How?  Well, it took courage to ask that girl to the homecoming dance.  I would never, ever have done it because I would have been too afraid.  When we talked afterwards, you told me that your heart was pounding in your chest pretty hard and that even though when you asked her the dance had already passed, she was nice to you with her reply.  Son, I want you to remember that feeling and what you did.  There will be many more opportunities in life for you to feel that way and make a decision.  You are going to be in places where you risk rejection in your life.  It just happens.  But you possess that special quality called courage.  Don't ever change that.  Take risks because if you don't, you won't have rewards.  I know you didn't see it that way then but that's what you did and I am extremely proud of you.

Son, you are growing up so fast and it seems like it will only accelerate from here.  As you get older, I want you to understand something.  I heard a story about the head of the Salvation Army.  You know those guys who stand ringing the bell at Christmas time asking for donations.  Well they take those and use them to help people who need it.  One year, the head of the Salvation Army was going to send a telegram to all his offices around the world.  He wrote it out and then went to send it.  When he got to the telegraph office, he realized that it was too long and he had to cut it down.  So he trimmed it down to one sentence. Again, it was too expensive to send.  He finally trimmed it down to a single word - others.  Son, that's what our life is all about.  We are to help others.  You have to let the Lord show you who and how but always remember that's what life is about.  As you get older, you will see people who define success by how much education and money you have.  I thought the same way for a long time.  Don't get me wrong, money and education are important but not as important as people.  Think of others and ask the Lord to show you who you can help today.

Lastly, I want to talk to you about what you are going through in school today.  I know some of the kids make fun of you.  That really hurts your feelings and quite frankly, it just plain sucks.  When I was in school, kids did the same thing to me.  Grandma and Grandpa did they very best they could but I didn't wear brand name clothes like the rest of the kids and some people made fun of me a lot.  I also got made fun of because I had big ears and I had a lot of pimples.  It really hurt my feelings.  Son, as you go through these times, know that you were not alone.  Guess who else was made fun of and people talked bad about? - Jesus.  I guess that puts us in pretty good company huh.  You may not see it now but this will pass.  Just keep doing the right thing because it's the right thing.

I cannot begin to express how impressed I am with you.  You are smart, handsome, loyal, you love God, you aren't afraid to share your faith, you know how to build stuff, you always try to help your brother and sister, and you are a really respectful young man.  No matter what you do, know that I will always love you.

Love,

Dad

That's another letter from the Minion

Friendship vs. Dating

Today, I am going to try something new.  I want to discuss the topic of Friendship vs. Dating relationships.  I don’t have a lot of dating experience but I think something is missing from the process.  See, I want to have a relationship that stories are written about.  I want to be in love with a woman so deeply that I hurt when she is away from me but I am glad she is doing things that fulfill her life.  When I wake up in the morning, I want to be so in love that I stare at her as she sleeps and just wish for five more minutes to look at her.  I want her, not just her body.  I want what she thinks, how she makes me feel, and how she makes me a better person.  I want to be around a woman who feels the same way about me.  Is this possible, I believe it still is.  I just think we have lost sight of how to get there. 

I also want great friendships with people who know me really well.  One day, I want to say I have known that person for 50 years.  I want to be around people who enjoy life.  How do I find those relationships and will I know when I do?

To really be fair to both guys and gals, I want to bring in a good friend of mine, DD (DD is a woman), to help me discuss this topic and give you a woman’s perspective on our discussion.  This will take more than one post so let’s get started.

To begin with let’s start with the question of just friends or something more?  I asked DD her perspective and here’s what she had to say.  In any relationship we have goals, while these goals are not written down on a piece of paper, they are there whether we realize it or not.  For instance, when you meet a new friend, you might hope that they are someone you can confide in about boys or girls.  You might hope they can be on your baseball team, or whatever.  If you meet someone you want to date, one goal of a physical relationship at some point.  It might not be on the first date or even by the tenth date but at some point, your goal/intention is to hold hands, kiss, cuddle, etc.

I struggled with this definition until I realized that there is an emotional connection that goes along with dating.  I am not totally sure what the emotional connection is but I know it is there.  Men, realize this, whether or not you want to believe it, you were created as an emotional being.  We all know that men and women are different but what we don’t realize is that somewhere along the way men and women were trained to be more different than they actually are.  Men, emotions signal needs.  Whether or not you like this, it’s true.  Think of it this way, if your stomach tells you that you are hungry, you can choose to ignore the signals from your stomach but it will not change the fact that you are in need of food.  If you ignore the signals from your stomach long enough, you will starve to death.

It’s the same thing with your other emotions.  Men, we have emotions.  Over many generations, we have been trained to ignore them.  We are supposed to be Mufasa, the Lion King.  We are supposed to roar and protect the pride.  But yet, we are not supposed to feel anything.  That is why we don’t connect with girls like we really want.

Before we go further with this, I want to take a minute for DD to give you her initial thoughts on this subject. DD, welcome to the Opinion of the Minion.

DD says - I think there is an emotional development or connection in both types of relationships.  Say you just made a new girlfriend and you confided in her about what guy you liked and the two of you plot, plan, and giggle about how to get the guy to notice you or ask you out.  That is developing an emotional bond between you and your friend.  You trust her to keep that confidential information to herself—not tell the entire school or worse, the guy.  If she did tell someone, you might feel betrayed and hurt.  An example for dating is if a guy kissed you for the first time, said he would call you then next day and didn’t.  You would likely feel disappointment and hurt. 

The Minion – When DD and I began to discuss this subject, her insights really taught me something.  Obviously, she will explore this topic more with us as we go along.  I want to keep this first segment a little short and because DD and I do not consider ourselves experts, we would like to hear from you about what you think the differences are between being friends and dating.  You can address your comments to either of us.  If you have a personal question you would like either of us to answer, please feel free to e-mail either:

Minion@theopinionoftheminion.com or
DD@theopinionoftheminion.com 

And that’s an Opinion from two Minions