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