The other night while I was giving the boys a bath, I told Jude that some day he would grow up and get married. 

He looked at me like “o.k. that sounds alright”. 

Then…

I dropped the bomb on him.

“You will grow up and marry some girl and you will live in your own house with her”.

As the tears began to well in his eyes I knew I had crossed the four year old barrier.

His poor little mind was racing.

“But…I don’t want to live any where else, I want to live with you”.

Immediately back peddling I said “oh of course you can live with me; you can live here as long as you want”.

I might live to regret this some day.

Right now I am alright with him staying with me for at least another 14 years.

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.

Today was beautiful here on the farm. 

The shaded breeze felt so soothing and relaxing.

I heard the rumble of the big yellow bus coming down our dusty farm road.

Kennady was home.

We got her off the bus and brought her in to spend some time talking with her.

I got her out of her chair and changed her and began doing some range of motion stretches. 

Meanwhile the boys were outside helping Robin clean out the van and probably doing some new landscaping if they found any of our shovels.

We have to keep Kennady stretched out so that her muscles don’t get contractures.

She is already having problems with her muscles shortening, so we are trying very hard to keep things stretched out.

After we stretched her legs out for a little while I put her on her tummy for some “tummy time”.

Tummy time helps her to keep her abdominals stretched out and gives her a chance to work on her head strength and control. 

As she was laying there, I began to look at her feet.

These feet.

These feet are perfect, yet flawed.

They have never walked a single step.

They are softer than a newborn babies cheek.

They are beautiful in my eyes.

I began to think of how her muscles have pulled them into a new shape; a shape that is not pleasing to the eye, yet it doesn’t take away from their beauty.

They are getting more and more deformed the older she gets.

But they are still as soft as the day she was born.

I began to think of all the people who have told us they have had dreams of her being healed………our dreams of her being healed.

The decisions we are having to make about her life the older she get seem to become more daunting with each year. 

Now it is major life changing decisions.

Will we put her through a surgery that will permanently change her?

Can God heal what we as man have changed in the flesh?

If she is to be healed..

When…

How…

Where…

these are all questions that we let flow through our heart.

These feet have never walked a step….but one day they may.

I have felt so heavy about the decisions about her care lately because of this.

I don’t want to do something in the natural that changes things in the spiritual.

If God wants her to be healed I fully believe that it is possible.

As I sat here today I thought of what it would be like to go to her next Dr. appointment and say “You know, I think we are just going to skip the surgery because I believe that God is going to heal her completely”.

I got butterflies in my stomach just thinking of it.

It is a step of faith.

It seems totally irrational to the human mind.

My heart aches to see her healed, but at the same time I love her more than any words could express just the way she is.

These feet hold the potential for a notable miracle.

I wonder today if she will walk before we get the chance to have any other procedures done.

My  soul screams yes.

So today I will believe.