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