Unconditional

The journaling challenge for the week at 2Peas is to write about Unconditional Love, in the light of the upcoming Valentines holiday. I am hesitant to write about it because it bares something about me. Valentines is my least favorite holiday.

Unconditional love. I've always thought of this a one of humanity's "trick questions". Afterall, we all want to enjoy the wonder of being loved unconditionally but are we ourselves up to the challenge that it is to actually love someone else unconditionally? It's monumentally easier to accept than it is to give.

The term "unconditional" obviously means without conditions.
Without boundaries.
Without limits.

I'm not sure unconditional love is humanly possible.

I love my children with all my heart and their father even more than that. Loving him is the hardest, most wonderful thing I get to do. Sometimes it's a chore. Sometimes it's a delight. (I'm sure he would say the same thing about me.) It's always a choice.

However, do I love him without conditions, without boundaries, without limits?

In a romanticized way, perhaps. I love him like I have never loved another human being on this planet. I would do things for him that no one else can or dares to ask of me.

However, realisticaly, I don't think it's possible to say that my love for him is completely unconditional. Way out in the far recesses of possibility, there could conceivably exist conditions in which I would no longer love him, based on his actions or choices. Not likely to occur--but conceivable.

Unconditional. No. Because there are remote conditions that would shred my heart and my love for that man.

I believe the human spirit is capable of great love and even greater forgiveness, the lengths of which most people never come to understand. I believe forgiveness is a gift from God, on much the same level as miracles but in my own power, I don't think a completely unconditional love is possible.

I look at my youngest son and I see a baby boy that I love so deeply. The lengths to which I would go (as his mother) to keep him safe and to insure a wonderful chance at life for him are immeasurable. There just aren't words to define the possibilities. So while he is an innocent, perhaps his mother's love approaches unconditional, but love changes. Will I still feel that same way when he is 30 and no longer an innocent in need of protection. I don't know. I've never been the mother of a 30 year old man.

I do know this: God's love for us is unconditional. He gave his perfectly innocent son to demonstrate His perfectly unconditional love of us. Shortcomings, failures, brokeness and all. The ways of God are not the ways of man. Hence the chasim of need we all feel.

So, now you know.