Unconditional Love

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.

Just.Be.Kind

Let me preface this post by stating that this is absolutely something I also need to work on.  I am definitely a work in process in so many ways and this is just one of my many “under construction” areas.

This is something I have really been thinking about most of this summer.  I have been really fortunate to witness some powerful moments of kindness but I have also been able to watch, uncomfortably, moments of exclusion and downright meanness.  Both areas invoked much emotion from me.  I used to think I wasn’t that emotional of a person, but the reality is…I am, sometimes too much!

One of the cool things I get to do through my service as an AmeriCorps VISTA is coordinating a leadership camp for middle school and high school students in our local school district.  In our curriculum, we do an anti-bullying lesson.  If I am being honest, I have not been happy with our lesson the past couple of years and really wanted to create something that would leave a long-lasting impression and hopefully spark a desire to truly be an ambassador to just be kind.

I have a dear friend whose family has started a rock campaign in honor of her nephew who took his own life last year as a result of being bullied.  They are located in North Carolina but their story really resonated with me and I wanted to somehow pull their mission into my lesson on bullying.  I reached out to her and asked if she was open to starting a kindness rock garden at our school, hoping to expand that across our district (I am still working on that).   She jumped at the opportunity and came in, shared her story and our high school kids started our kindness rock garden.  This activity was powerful!  I mean people were crying, sharing their stories and in the moment, were motivated to create change.  I can only hope that the students and adults who were a part of that, will be able to carry that through.

After that amazing experience, I made a personal decision to work hard to be a better person.  I wanted to be kinder.  I don’t necessarily struggle to be kind, but I do know that I am often not as nice as I need to be when I’ve become frustrated with people.  I don’t go out of my way to be unkind, but I also don’t go out of my way to be nice.

So, what is the point of this rambling?  I can be very forgiving when kids are kind because I believe they are still very much in the development phases of their life.  They mimic behaviors, they exhibit values and beliefs from their home lives and sometimes they are just unaware of their words and actions because no one has taught them or they have not really grasped the concepts that are being taught.  I, however, struggle when it comes to adults who are mean because I believe they should know better.

One of the most disappointing acts I witnessed this summer was a group of young adults purposely excluding a peer.  It broke my heart and fired me up at the same time.  I went throughout the day replaying it in my head, trying to make sense of it and even thinking that perhaps what I saw was not actually what happened.  After discussing it with a few different people, it was confirmed that it actually did happen and that just made me sad.  I try so hard to be an advocate for our youth because I think sometimes they get a bad rap and I have seen so much good from teens and young adults, I just didn’t get to witness it that day and the fact that it was intentional was so hard for me.

So, after that moment, again, I made a personal decision to strive to be better.  The reality, folks, is that we are definitely not going to click with every person we meet, work with, serve with, interact with.  That being said, we can still be kind!  I have an intense personality that I have worked on mellowing out over the past decade.  I mean, I have worked hard to be intentional in my thoughts and actions.  I falter, daily.  Just yesterday, I spoke before thinking and said something to a peer harshly.  Immediately, I felt remorse and apologized the first chance I got.  It didn't take away any hurt I may have caused, but I hope they recognized that I knew I was wrong and that I tried to fix it.

So, in closing to this long rambling thought is that we all just need to work on being kind.  Not to get something in return but just because it’s the right thing to do and it’s really not that hard.  It’s something I am trying to work on and it’s something we all probably need to put a little more effort in.  Just be kind!

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” ~Og Mandino

I Like Me

At 37, I have been through a lot in my life. I have accomplished many things and I have made a lot of mistakes. As I have been teaching and interacting with my young women at church, I really want them to know their self worth. I know I struggle with that myself at times but most days I feel like I am finally content with who I am. Flaws and all.

I was reading in Psalms today and was reminded of one of my girls favorite scriptures. "I praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

My Lord loves me for me.

Peaceful Contemplation

Life is Beautiful (picture taken by my sweet friend Kristi and edited by me)

Yesterday morning I woke up and felt angry.  We had received some news on Thursday evening that kind of shifted our focus for a bit.  It's the kind of news that sort of affects us but not really.  I know that doesn't make a lot of sense but it isn't our news and in the big scheme of things we are okay and will be okay.

As I have mentioned before, I am a deep processor, I like to really analyze things.  When I woke up yesterday morning feeling out of sorts emotionally, I started breaking things down.  I normally do not enjoy the beginning of this process because it makes me really sensitive emotionally and usually sparks tears and some heartache.  Now, neither of those things are a bad thing.  A lot of times, the emotions sparked are great reminders to me of how truly blessed I am.  On the opposite end, it also allows me to see things with much more clarity and forces me to make decisions that I may have pushed to the side.

As I was contemplating my life and the many things in it, I realize I have outgrown some people in my life.  I realize that I have a lot of toxic relationships in my life.  Some of those I have held onto simply because it seemed safe and others because I don't want to deal with the drama that might come if I sever ties.  It's an interesting place to be. 

I have a very close and sweet friend who I am constantly advising to cut ties with people who bring nothing to her life.  I always tell her to ask herself if she would be friends with these people outside a certain demographic they share.  What I realized yesterday is that I really need to take my own advice.  I also got some good stuff from watching The Real Housewives of Orange County (hey, don't judge me, HA!) when crazy Alexis told her husband that you can still be friends with someone even if you don't get along with all of their friends.  That is so true.

This past week I also had an interesting encounter with somebody.  They told me straight to my face that they did not like me.  I'm guessing she was expecting some type of dramatic reaction but since I don't really care for her either and had decided long ago that she was a non-factor in my life, I just didn't care.  It led to a very interesting conversation between her and I, the end result being that none of her opinions really matter to me.  She is the type of person who is very toxic and brings people down, she takes it wherever she goes and who needs that in their life? I hope she feels better about confronting me and that she can move forward now.  The encounter did nothing for me.

Last, I have an amazing family!  I KNOW I am truly blessed with good kids and a loving husband.  Kevin and I work hard to instill good morals and values into the boys.  We talk a lot with the boys about life.  We are not friends with our kids and we have high expectations.  We are disappointed often, that's the process of parenthood.  We try to take each obstacle and use it as a teaching point with them.  We get complimented often on our boys and their behavior.  That is NOT an accident, that is a lifetime of hard work and effort!

Why do I bring this last part up?  I had someone tell me recently that they are sick of my "perfect" life and overly positive FB statuses where all I talk about is all the good things my boys do.  They told me that my kids weren't perfect and I should post that part too.  I chuckled at that.  First, I'm turned off by people who constantly berate their children in FB statuses.  Second, I don't see the point of spreading negativity.  That might work for others, but it's not me.  My children make plenty of mistakes, but public humiliation isn't the route we choose to take, instead we offer love, understanding and face to face interaction.  I vent to close friends who love my kids just as much as we do.  There are many different ways to parent...this is our way.

Last night, as I went to bed, I reflected back on my day and the thoughts that I processed.  Overall, what I decided is that I'm really blessed and I'm right where the Lord wants me to be, doing what He wants me to do.  I feel at peace with my life.