Love With No Small Print

"The most beautiful words I have heard in my 36 years are... I love you just as you are."~ DD Jewell

The mere words "I love you" have lost their potency because of the unspoken conditions attached to them. Within these conditions lie a large gray area of discrepancies between which intentions and/or actions personify love. People are quick to profess their love but slow to demonstrate it. For those who may demonstrate it, they may have "expiration" dates to their "love". These expiration dates are in the "small print", the conditions. Those conditions are connected to their pleasures, displeasures, acceptance, rejection, approval and disapproval.

-I love you if you do or be who I need you to be.
-I love you as long as you are a source of happiness for me.
-I love you as long as things go my way and you accept my terms, demands, likes and dislikes.
-I love you as long as you look a certain way.
-I love you as long as that love doesn't cost me anything or doesn't inconvenience me.
-I love you as long as I don't have to be accountable or responsible to you for my actions, words and deeds.

Most people's love towards others is indeed self-serving versus self-sacrificing. The bottom line is what can they get out of you versus what can they do for you. When I look at a person from the budding of a potential relationship, I ask myself, "how can I be a blessing or of benefit to this person's life?"

What a beautiful feeling to know the expressed and demonstrated certainty of someone's love. We see this expressed from God towards us and most parents towards their children. How wonderfully reassuring it is for someone to see you, in your entirety-the good, bad and ugly- and say "I love you as you are". This translates to acceptance and freedom.

When you accept someone you allow them to be free to be themselves. Of course, this doesn't mean tolerating junk, garbage and foolishness. We must have standards and live principle-centered lives. Yet, in doing so, we must give "grace and mercy" to others because that they are like us, imperfect.

We all have some more growing and maturing to do. Nevertheless, isn't it comforting to know that if we never reach the actualization of all our ambitions, dreams and prayers, we have people whose love for us is constant and unwavering. That's the kind of love we need and the kind we should seed. For the people I have chosen to love (yes, love is a choice), I've looked beyond their exteriors and saw their interiors. I saw souls that I could love with no conditions and/or expiration dates.

What corrupts the unconditional love covenant is disclosure and transparency. Sometimes opportunists mask who they really are and manipulate you into believing a farce. Love is a choice and we have to KNOW who it is we are choosing to love. Sometimes our intuition or discernment discloses the truth but we ignore the signs. Sometimes we choose to have faith in what is presented before us or innately adopt the theory that we can change people.

Not everyone who comes across our paths is a qualified or equally yoked candidate for "unconditional love." God bestows that kind of love to all of us because we belong to him. Nonetheless, we have to choose Him to be full recipients of that love. Just like we have to choose to love, embrace and accept God, we have to do likewise with others. We have to watch as well as pray for those who are in our lives, both entering and exiting.