I have been thinking about this lately.

What is true unconditional love and how do you define it.

I know a few things about it….

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 8 Love never ends.         {1 Corinthians 13}

I have thought about this more with my boys lately. 

What will they be when they grow up.

Will they be a musician, doctor, keeper of the public disposal system (trash man), veterinarian, farmer, barrista, administrative assistant, pastor……………….

the list goes on.

I am not sure what they will be or do, that is completely up to God.

I just pray that I can help direct them and guide them in a way that they will listen to His spirit guiding them in all of their decisions.

When I was growing up I am sure that I wanted to be a million different things before I hit 10 years old.

Among those things was..

mommy, wife to my cousin, doctor, singer (like Mariah Carey of course) and veterinarian.

I am sure if I asked my mother she could fill in more of the blanks.

All of these were just dreams floating around in my childish heart.

But now, I am a wife, mother, friend, pastors wife, doula, childbirth educator, director of services, hiring and firing in my house, speaker for E.C.I….

wow, the things I never imagined abound here and I think that only two of them are things that I thought I really wanted to do as a child.

The beautiful thing about my childhood and life now is that my parents have ALWAYS supported me and ALWAYS shown me unconditional love.

They never withheld things from me for the decisions I made regarding my jobs or schooling after high school.

They let me have the freedom to decide and live my life the way I thought was best.

They did however step in when I was headed down the wrong road with the law or making bad choices for my life that might be harmful.

My parents never made me feel like I was any less loved or any less approved of for where I worked or the school choices I made.

To me, that is unconditional love.

I will offer that same unconditional love to my children.

I will always be there to guide them and correct them when they are making decisions that might harm them physically or spiritually, but I pray that I will be supportive in the dreams God has given them for their life.

My husband gave me the grill about unconditional love and support and what it really meant. 

Support, for me, is wrapped up in words of affirmation.   I need to hear that you accept me and your words of encouragement, because silence slices my heart like a knife. 

{Proverbs 27:5}  Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

Unconditional Love for me is knowing that no matter what decisions I make, no matter how bad I mess up, I will still be loved. 

They may not like or agree with those decisions, but I still have arms to run to.

Up until this day, I have always felt that from my parents……

will it always be this way…..

I hope so.

I guess this is just one small aspect of it for me.

The list in the Bible goes into much more depth about Love, but here, it is a small piece of the love puzzle for me.