I have often
seen, heard and even said the words, “unconditional love”. I’m sure if you were to ask yourself if you
express unconditional love, especially to those closest to you, you would give
yourself quite a bit of credit by saying yes.
Our family has
been thrown a test in the unconditional love category and if I am being honest,
I have thought long and hard these past few weeks about how well I have done in
that category. I am telling you today,
that I failed. I failed my kids, my husband
and even friends. My greatest comfort is
that I know I have a Heavenly Father who loves me unconditionally.
That knowledge
is what I want to try to share in this blog entry. I KNOW God’s love is unconditional and
because I KNOW that, I also know that He doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to
His children.
My son is
gay. That is simply one small part of
what makes him who he is. It’s
unfortunate that when he broke that news to us, I expressed poorly my
unconditional love for him…that definitely had conditions. It still hurts my heart to know how terribly
I handled it. When I replay the
conversations in my head, I feel sad for my son. We are working on repairing that and I pray
that someday he can fully forgive me but if he doesn’t, I’m okay with that too
because he should have been able to count on me, his mom. I promised to protect him and instead I hurt
him.
I have been
doing a lot of self-evaluation and analyzing why I placed conditions on my love
and I realize now it was primarily due to fear.
I think that is what causes most of us to love with strings
attached. As a mother, I had no control
of how the world was going to treat him or see him. To me, he was the same person that he was before
but now people were going to attach a label with preconceived notions. I know this because I did that.
I talked a good
game about being a decent Christian while letting fear control me and believing
the bad instead of the good about people I didn’t even know. Here is the
reality, because I know that God’s love is both unconditional and unchangeable,
I know His love for my son didn’t shift simply because of his sexual
orientation. He loves him exactly the
same as He did before sending him down to this earth and entrusting me to be
his mother. I need to follow that
example a whole lot better.
Reading one my
son’s Facebook posts to his fiancé was a serious reality check, one I needed,
when he expressed that he was the first person to teach him what true
unconditional love was. And he was
right. I got that wrong, but I am
grateful for his patience and willingness to trust that I will do better.
So, here’s the
bottom line. Quit claiming unconditional
love while still justifying why someone’s life or choices are wrong according
to you. This is for anything, the way
they dress, who they love, their professions, their hobbies, their culture,
literally anything we judge others on. Also, quit claiming what you know about
God and His love for His children because the God I know, loves ALL of His
children.
This post is
not about my son being gay, but I want to state the obvious for the people in our lives who are conflicted in whether they should support us or not. Please don't take offense to how harsh this next statement will come across. We don’t need nor do we seek your approval or
your support if it is not in your heart to offer either, that is not at all what this is about. I just wanted to share
some lessons I learned through this journey and I am grateful that God gave me
a beautiful soul to teach me what unconditional love is truly all about.
Unconditional
love is known as affection without any
limitations, or love without
conditions.
2 comments:
Nadine,
I want to share something with you. The day before your post about your sons engagement I had watched the documentary about the Imagine Dragons singer who happens to be a mormon and it was about him asking the mormon church to changes it's views on homosexuality. I am not sure if you had watched it, if you haven't I highly recommend it, if for no other reason than it's a wonderful documentary. I found it so strange that the very next day you posted your post. I thought, man....the world works in mysterious ways. Or is it the world or something else? Anyway long story short I wondered what your views were and thought to myself, really none of my business and it seemed so wonderful you were supporting him. I have a lot of gay family members so I have often wondered and talked to Greg about the prospect of our son being gay when he was older, how would we handle it? What would be do? Would we be accepting. We both said we would and both understood it would be hard in the world for him but we would. Of course that was all hypothetical and we never really knew how we would have handled it and it's easy for us to say we would have handled it perfectly. I think you are so brave, so loving. Maybe you didn't handle it the way you thought you should have, but you sharing this so publicly and maybe giving some other parent something to think about before they think about their unconditional love for their child is so brave and so selfless. You love your children like few I have ever seen, my opinion of that will not change, and I can't or won't speak for Michael but what you have poured in to him for all these years, that love is there, and will always be there. He knows how to love because you showed him. Whatever mistakes you made at first will not long sit with him I imagine as you show him and his fiancé the love you have in your heart for them. You are a good egg Nadine, you can teach us all a lot about love. I have never been more proud to know you.
So so so proud to call you friend. ~Danielle Ralston
Post a Comment