PS: I love me

One more thing from my pastor's sermon on Sunday about love.

Today's culture presents love (especially the couple relationship) in a lot of screwed up ways. One hour at the gym glancing at those ridiculous music videos they play convinces me of that. But one thing in particular is completely, 180 degrees backwards. That would be the premise that "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself".

The truth is, loving yourself is a result of loving others...as long as that love is expressed or practiced or experienced within those guidelines from good 'ol 1 Corinthians 13. When you treat others with patience, kindness and respect, avoiding jealousy, rudeness, selfishness and anger, you are loving them. And we are called to do just that, whether we happen to be feeling love for ourselves or not.

When I was growing up, we spent a lot of holidays at my aunt's home. On the wall in her living room was a plaque that read:

A song is not a song until you sing it.
A bell is not a bell until you ring it.
Love was not put in our hearts to stay.
For love is not love until you give it away.

Give it a try. Next time you are feeling not-so-great about yourself, reach out to someone and treat them in a loving way. Then see how the way you feel about yourself changes. Even if they don't respond in kind, your outlook will change because you have acted in love.

I think I'll take my own advice on this today.

What love is, and what it isn't

"I punch guys in the face for a living."

So said the tough-looking dude in the seat next to me to the guy next to him on a flight from Denver to Southern California. He was wearing pants with the "Tapout" logo and had quite a few tatoos. When I glanced over he seemed familiar. Found out he was a mixed martial arts fighter (for the WEC) as well as the owner of several gyms.

Most of the conversation was between the two guys. When the tough guy mentioned that he has two daughters, I immediately grinned imagining the looks on the faces of any suitors who asked one of the daughters for the first time what her Dad does for a living. Heh heh.

And a few minutes later I came to know just how fortunate those girls are to have this professional fighter as a Dad when he pulled out his Bible. Now, it's not that I think only men of faith can be good fathers. It's that - whether you believe or not - the Bible has a lot of great stuff, especially about love.

My pastor's sermon last Sunday was on this very topic. He mentioned those awful segments on some daytime TV shows about couples where one is totally abusive and the other justifies staying with their abuser because "I love him/her". Don't you just want to scream at the television..."WHY??? THAT! IS! NOT! LOVE!"

So what is love? It's all laid out there in 1 Corinthians 13; it is patient, it is kind, it bears all things, it never fails. Love is not jealous, pompous, or boastful. It is not rude. It is not easily angered, and it does not keep a record of wrongs.

(Read the whole awesome chapter here.)

The best thing you fathers can do for your daughter is to follow the Bible's guidelines on love...especially in how you treat her mother. Give your daughter a model of love so she knows what love is, and what it isn't. That goes for your sons too...they watch you to learn how to treat a woman, and how they should be treated by her. And they will know how to defend and build up their sisters when they are not being treated right by a guy.

Although it does not seem like it a lot of the time, parents are still the most influential people in a child's life...that goes for the good and the bad. There are a lot of influences out there in the culture. When it comes to love, who would you like your children to emulate?

So besides having an automatic (and healthy) fear of a Dad who punches guys in the face for a living, that fighter's daughters have a man who looks to God for guidance. Lucky girls.

Bros and hos (Part 4)

(Start from Part 1)

I believe that the meaning of life is found in our relationships. What other aspect of life truly defines who you are? Your looks? Your job? Your money? Those are just things you have. From the most casual to the most intimate relationships, the way we treat people - and the way we allow people to treat us - reflect our character and our self-worth.

So what is the meaning found in the bro-ho relationship? To be a ho to a bro seems to mean that you are allowing yourself to be used to fulfill his immediate needs without much (if any) consideration of your own. Maybe you feel you are just having some harmless fun and it is all part of being young. Maybe you hope that the casual will lead to the serious, and I suppose that could happen. But remember...each encounter says something about you. Just make sure it is what you want said.

Same goes for you bros. Maybe you don't care about what your lifestyle says about you to people outside your bro-hood. But someday you might. Some day you may want the kind of relationship that takes place outside the bedroom (or car or hot tub or alley) and lasts for more than one night. Maybe some day you will have a daughter. And the kind of relationships you have will absolutely have an effect on the kind of relationships she has.

Back to those two young people who started this story. Is said guy a bro? On a scale from one (has a circle of male friends with whom he enjoys spending time) to ten (Tucker Max), maybe he's a three (still plays an occasional game of beer pong). Is said gal a ho? Obviously not, or she would not have hesitated to meet said guy.

What would be really sad is if said guy is what said gal says is the "worst kind of bro" - a nice guy who thinks he has to act like a bro.

Bros and hos (Part 3)

Start at Part 1

Changes in societal norms happen over time. When we are young, we are living within a time, and we are not seeing that things were ever different than they are right now. So you gals of a certain age might not know that calling each other bitches and hos used to be extremely insulting. Perhaps you cannot imagine a time when a girl getting a tattoo was taboo.

And that's OK. Trends come and go, and most trends - especially those relating to fashion - are ultimately harmless. Like the trend of guys getting perms (early 1980s). Although somewhat horrifying in retrospect, it was short-lived and was naturally resolved in the time it took to grow it out.

What disturbs me about today's culture isn't that girls call each other hos. It's that actually being what we called a whore or a slut back then is no longer outside the realm of acceptable behavior. It appears to be close to the norm now.

Hear me out before you write me off as just an old prude. I'm not referring to sex between consenting adults in a committed relationship, or even the "friends with benefits" thing. I'm talking about women wilfully offering themselves up as the very "sex objects" that, in my day, men were villified for desiring. During the wave of feminism that I experienced, those types of men were referred to as "male chauvinist pigs".

Just a few decades ago, the feminist movement fought to empower women through educational achievement and professional equality. The goal was a society in which women and men could compete at an equal level. The struggle was about banishing every negative stereotype of female sexuality. Today, those very stereotypes are not only accepted, but are actually held up as the new standard of empowerment for women.

Hos, you have given the bros exactly what they wanted.

(continued)

Bros and hos (Part 2)

Read Part 1

It's New Year's Eve. In the parts of the world that have not yet already arrived in 2010, people are preparing for one of the biggest party nights of the year. A lot of alcohol will be consumed tonight, and a lot of hangover remedies will be employed tomorrow.

But for bros, tonight may not be much different than any other Thursday night. Cause bros f'in love to get f'd up! And they don't wait until the weekend to do it! One thing that might be different tonight is the location. Bros will be willing to spend some extra bucks to gain access to an environment with increased odds of slaying a slam piece (I can't believe I wrote that).

Bros will roll deep into a party, bar or club event (many already drunk from their pre-game), scout the crowd for the hottest girls, chat them up just long enough to gauge their chances, and be in the right place when the countdown ends. Some bros will have to fall on a grenade (settle for an ugly and/or fat chick so their bro can hook up with the hottie). A few bros won't get lucky at all, but will still have an awesome night because, hey, they're with their bros!

But the primary objective is to score. And that's where the hos come in.

In my day (I am allowed to use that phrase because I'm hitting 50 in 2010, God willing) I loved to party too. I didn't go to college, but I went to a lot of college parties. I once fell off an Amtrack train after pre-gaming it alone, because I had to work while the rest of my group drove from Chicago to East Lansing. It was an epic night. I think it was the night I met my future (and I mean way in the future) husband, so I kinda wish I remembered more of it.

What seems to be different from my party days and what I've learned about the bro culture of today is that I pretty much always partied with a group of people I trusted. We were friends with a lot in common, and we hung out together whenever we could, even if it wasn't a party. All these years later we're still friends, and we still sometimes drink to excess. The only negative consequence of this (besides the hangover) is hearing the same old stories for the hundredth time.*

Anyway, the bros of my day seemed to respect women a lot more. And maybe that's because more women in my day respected themselves enough to avoid being known as a slut or a whore. Today that seems to be a designation with little shame attached, if not a badge of honor. I'll explore that further in Part 3.

*I just thought of another negative consequence...digital photography. I live in fear of finding a picture of me on the internet from a canoe trip in 2008. Damn pre-mixed mojitos!

(continued)

Bros and hos

I recently set out to learn something about a facet of popular culture for which I was almost clueless. It all started innocently enough, with me thinking that two young people I know might want to meet each other. Not that I have any qualifications as a match-maker, but you never know who might hit it off.

The girl I know quite well. The guy - I know one facet of his life (his profession) pretty well, and he seems nice enough. The people he works with all speak very highly of him. So I show said girl a picture of said guy, and am surprised by her reaction. Yeah, he's good looking...but he might be a "bro".

When she tried to explain to me what she meant, it didn't seem to fit what I knew about said guy. But again I don't really know him outside of our professional relationship. So I wanted to learn more. A few words typed into a search engine, and I've got a ton of information for my research.

With billions of pages on the Internet, there are sites dedicated to everything you can think of (and even more to things most people would never think of). And there are plenty of bro sites with awesome stories of all things bro. They even have their own language, epitomized in this essay from The Onion (language warning).

These sites were a lot of fun to read. Assuming that most of what I read was super-exaggerated for comic effect, it seemed like bros are basically a modern version of the Deltas from Animal House.

So I was all set to do a funny take on the bro thing. I was even going to write about doing "field research" by observing the behavior of bros in their natural habitats (said girl offered to be my guide). But then my online research took me to places that weren't so funny.

What if many of those stories I read weren't exaggerated after all?

(continued)

Pooped puppy takes a nap

Meet Slim, the newest addition to our family. She's still very shy, getting used to her new home (my sister's house). She's sweet and fluffy and sleepy and I love her already.