Donny's Ramblings

I believe that it happens everyday.

I think love is choice. Chemistry and passion are cultivated, it is an investment. The good, the bad, the ugly – we take it all and it enriches are lives. We choose to love.

Michael
The Confessions of a Porn Addict

Yep, I sure do!

I do believe you can choose to love anyone, however, romantic love requires more than just “find(ing) the good inside another person”, etc. Those things are WAY more important than initial physical attraction, but attraction is part of it. And believe you me, at 339 pounds I wish it weren’t so! LOL That’s part of why I’m moving down from 452!!!!

God bless.

Three different questions. Answers: No, Maybe, and Not on my own, but with the Grace of God, and with great difficulty.

Seems to me that what we call “falling in love” refers to infatuation. Largely a mysterious emotional thing, supposedly a result of brain chemistry, or so I am told. So if you concentrate on it hard enough, you can affect influence who you fall in love with, but it is also beyond your control. Some people like Limburger cheese or think Paris Hilton has talent. Go figure. Having “fallen in love” with a few of the wrong people, I am inclined to trust the words of National Lampoon.

“Remember that a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely be enough to get your feet wet. Fall not in love, therefore. It will stick to your face.”

So that brings us to Question Two. If you are interested enough in someone, and truly love them – i.e. you are concerned about their welfare and hapiness, want what is best for them, are willing to put it before your own, etc. – you are more likely, but not certain, to fall “in love” with them. I.e. you actually want to do this, and it feels good on an emotional/romantic level. You might have a hard time being “in love” with someone toward whom you are actually loving. Alternatively, one may, (and alas, I am proof of it) find oneself strongly and irrationally attracted to someone who should not be approached without protective clothing.

This brings us to Question Three. Answer: @#$%^& No! If it is up to me and me alone, not a chance. I can give it a try. I do. Sometimes I succeed. But without God’s grace, this is impossible.

But God can. God does. God must. That is why scripture says that God is love. Or, the way I look at it,

God = Love

This sets up one of those tricky, illogical questions with which you used to enjoy stumping your religon teacher, priest, minister, or whoever. Remember the question, “If God is all powerful, can He make a rock so big that He Himself cannot lift it?”

The problem here of course is not in what God can or cannot do. The problem is in the limitations of human logic and language. To say that God cannot do something logically impossible does not make God less omnipotent. So here is another thing God cannot do. God cannot choose not to love His creation. God is love. Thus, God failing to love is illogical. So we see a God of ancient days described time and time of welcoming back, even longing for, His faithless beloved. And if you look at Genesis and a few of the other early books, God is not always pleasant about it. God is jealous, determined, and sometimes downright mean. In my view, this says less about how God is and more about our limited perception and understanding of God’s love, but it makes an important point. Of course God keeps welcomig back and longing for an pursuing His beloved. He can’t help it.

If God is love, any love we feel for someone else is a reflection of God’s love for us. As with all virtues, our expression of it will be imperfect, and like all virtues, it is a gift. And it falls into that mysterious realm where what we choose to do and what God does for us becomes unclear. OTOH, these virtures are gifts. We cannot, all of our own, choose to love, to forgive, to have faith, as these abilities are gifts. As such, it is tough for us to condemn others who have not received them. OTOH, we can choose to accept and exercise these gifts, and put ourselves in a position to receive them. So exactly where the line is between what we do and what God does becomes unclear.

Ultimately and ideally, there is no line, but we will not few if any of us will reach that state this side of the grave, and I leave to further investigation what happens on the other side.

Well, that took a lot longer than I expected. Hope I didn’t bore anybody.

I have loved many times. But now that I am older, not sure if each time was love or the need to be loved.

But I know for sure that there is no greater love than the love of a mother and her child. When I hold my son, he takes my breath away. And I mean that. That type of love, is so pure and so perfect. And I am blessed to know it.

I do believe love is a choice. Once the initial “in love” phase wears off you are left with two choices: To continue loving the person or move on. The problem is many people continue to just move on to the next thing.

Somewhere in the confusion of life I found that God wants us to have faith like a child.

So I thought about how my mind worked as a child and remembered some invaluable details. I was told many stories as a child, and read a fair amount more. I became very interested in how to show kindness to people from a warrior which is what I wanted to become when I grew up. I thought about protecting all those who I loved with my very life.

Then I became very shallow-minded as I was a teenager, and then there was all kinds of confusion until I got saved at fifteen years old. Of course now that I’ve been on a journey of Christ and have been changed by him, I realize that there are certainly many depths, and hidden depths to love.

There have been a couple of occasions when I thought I was actually falling in love, but because of certain events, I realized it was not real love, which comes from the Lord, but a cheap imitation meant to throw me down again and separate me from the Lord.

Having those thought patterns leads me to recognize the proverb, don’t be unequally yoked!

I believe God has chosen a certain woman for me. I will always pray for her.

God Bless!

You have a very handsome son. And a beautiful wife. You know what, I love her eyes. Really.

Hmm about my blog, somehw I’m nt sure hw come it turn out this way. when you exit the window, re-enter my blog. it will come out back to normal.

I pretty much agree with all those. I’ve been infatuated, but I chose to feed it and then it grew into a monster. That isn’t love, it’s more like projecting on to someone else what you think they are and then getting obsessed with them.
In my marriage I see my husband as he is. And I CHOOSE to love him. I choose to see the qualities in him that are good and excellent.
Those were interesting questions, Donny!

We have argued this point before, so you already know I don’t agree with you here. I am not arguing this because I think I am intelligent but because I have made this mistake! I am going to use a silly example as to why I don’t agree with this statement.

If you don’t have a lot of money you buy a “CAR”. Compare your emotional maturity with $$$$. You buy what you can afford. It gets you by, you can get to where you want to go, it fills a void. Soon you realize your CAR is lacking options you find you would like or need. When you can afford it (or realize it emotionally) you start to look for another one, perhaps, a truck with towing capabilities or a luxury car with more power options, or a car that doesn’t have a steering clunk.

Oh, I will not get into the whole Chevy -Ford thing…

“Love is not a possession, nor will it be possessed.” Kahlil Gibran, from “The Prophet”

I worked with a girl a few years ago. She was sorting through some things at the time. Basically she had said something mean to her father and he had died within hours of what she said. She very much wanted to sort through the subject of love, probably because she was dealing with her worthiness — was she worthy of love — issues. During a conversation, passing the time at work, we talked about the subject and I asked her hypothetically, what if she fell in love with a woman? She answered, “I can’t help who I fall in love with.”

Love is a choice, but we don’t choose it. It chooses us.

Randy

Randy,

Personally I think the idea that “love chooses us” sounds really romantic. But I don’t buy it. That idea plays well on film, but I don’t think it’s reality.

Yeah, we can be infatuated by seeing someone and romanticizing about who that person might be inside, but that’s not love. Love comes with time and commitment. One chooses to put in the time and the commitment. Love is chosen by us.

Just my opinion.

Jeanine: what I just wrote to Randy applies to what you mentioned as well: trading in a car for one with more options is a choice.

- D -

In other words, you don’t believe in love at first sight. Love is like shopping for a new puppy at the local pound, no, not that one, his tail’s too long, and not that one, it’s nose is too pushed in. If you think love is selection, then I wonder how selective you’ve been during some of your more bawdier times? I remember one of my experiences when a woman asked me out for drinks and my initial response was no, she persisited and I went with her. Overtime I convinced myself I was in love with her. I wasted three years of my life on that woman, all because I didn’t trust my initial feeling.

Randy

you’re kind of not getting what I was saying, I was saying that it is nice to find someone you like in the first place, not just fill a void with “anyone”. Someone with similar interests, IQ etc etc, instead of get married and realize all those things afterwards. Poor example I guess.

oh and when I reread what I wrote, I can see why, I didnt mean that you traded up because you were unhappy in your marriage, I meant to say that you should wait to get married until you have the emotional maturity to find someone who is “right” and stay married.

This is what I was trying to say! I found it at http://www.maureenmoss.com/sexuality.html

The ego uses relationships as a means to fulfill needs as the personality defines them. Perhaps what the personality needs is not to be alone anymore, so the ego settles for whoever is available. Perhaps the personality is desperate to feel loved, so the ego promotes being sexual with someone too quickly in an attempt to achieve that—and the light of day brings the painful realization that love had nothing to do with the encounter. When holidays loom, the personality wants a partner for the festivities. Desperation, rather than consciousness, drives the search for someone with whom to go to parties, exchange gifts, share a bottle of champagne, and usher in the new year. If we are already in a relationship, the personality and ego start expecting of our partner a certain kind of behavior, which coincides with the holiday time of year, not the condition of the heart.

These superficial standards for a relationship are often the reason we attract people into our lives who don’t really want us. We don’t really want them, either. We want what they can give to us on a superficial level. We want immediate gratification. We call forth someone to do things for us or with us, and to fill a void not meant to be filled by another. When we do this, we aren’t heeding the call of the heart and soul by calling forth deep love or opening ourselves deeply to love. We aren’t inviting a beloved into our lives to bring forth the maximal opportunity for our mutual spiritual growth. Instead, our ego and personality want a dinner partner and a bedmate. When we choose a partner in this way, sooner or later we come to realize that this is not a person we can trust. We realize that although we are not alone, we’re still lonely and unfulfilled. If we’re lucky, it will finally dawn on us that we have loved ourselves too little, again, and we will decide to treat ourselves with more dignity.

i knew my best friend since elemntary school…went on to junior high..still best friends…and all of a sudden boom”’we both went our diffrent ways after that and went on to high school……and we haven’t seen each other for 8 or 9 years in total..and 2007 of june we met up again..re-united, and we became really best friends once again and we still are best friends. really close friends. he’s told me he liked me before and i told him the same thing, but we said that we would be best friends always. and we are still friends but i can’t help it that i notcied that i really like him and that i’m falling deeply in love with him. and he doesn’t actually know that. so i am wondering what should i do? just stay best friends or find the right way and how to tell him how u really feel about him?…..and he is all i think about day n night…he calls me every night, he visits me every night…we chat online every time., when should i tell him? but i think once i tell him this he will stop being friends with me??? or if i tell him this and he says ” he jus wants to stay friends? or what if he never wants to see me again? so i don’t really know what i should do. i need a lil help here..hehe..thxs for ur time