Life Lessons
What would I say is the number one life lesson that I’ve learned from my mom?
The biggest thing that comes to my mind is unconditional love.
What’s awesome about that is even though I never had a father in my early years, my mom has unconditional love.
My mom has unconditional love.
She is another woman in my life, who very much like AJ, who never loved me for my accomplishments or any of my stuff. It wouldn’t have mattered to my mom one bit what I ended up doing.
It’s been super powerful for a couple of reasons.
One is even though I only grew up with one parent, I have the gift, of knowing what it feels like to be loved unconditionally.
I know a lot of people with two parents who do not get half of that.
Experiencing God
The other thing is I think I know God because I experienced my mother’s love.
People get Christianity all screwed up, but Christianity is so cool because you don’t earn it. It’s not a religion where you earn your way there by being good.
It’s the opposite. We’re also so screwed up and messed up that it had to be given to us.
Jesus is the one that erases the sin so that we do not have to earn it. That is unconditional love.
If I’m a drug dealer, billionaire, homewrecker, or a saint, it doesn’t matter. God loves me because I am His.
And I think that I have a more visceral connection to what that feels like with God because I feel and have that with my mother.
What is Unconditional Love?
The third thing is that I think I am a better husband to AJ because of my mom’s unconditional love.
I am not a relationship expert. That’s not something I would consider to be my expertise, but because I grew up with a single mom and I was around women all the time, one of the things I feel like what women want most is to be loved unconditionally, regardless of if they have a bad day, what they say, how they look, etc.
They want to know that someone is going to be there, no matter what happens. They really don’t want men’s money or influences.
They want to feel loved. Period.
Because I’ve received that gift from my mom, and I’ve also received that understanding of what a woman wants, I feel like I’m able to give that gift to AJ as a husband.
A lot of times I think people are incapable of giving a gift that they’ve never received.
How can I love my spouse if I’ve never received unconditional love? That’s hard.
How can I unconditionally love someone else if I don’t love myself?
And the cool thing about God is no matter who you are, you can experience it. You can receive it whether you’ve received it from a parent or not.
But because I received it from my mom, I’m aware of it from God and I’m capable of giving it to AJ and my kids.
To me, what other gifts would you want from a mom?
And that’s definitely what she gave me.
What about you? Have you experienced or given unconditional love? Share your thoughts in comments below as I love to know.
