Unconditional Love

Okay, so I just LOVE my new class--Intro to Marriage and Family. I've taken this class before at another school, so it is helpful as far as terminology goes, but I didn't have this professor for that class before. He's so cool! He stretches our minds without being too "out there" and keeps class fun. That's pretty cool, especially for a 4-hour class. I love this book I'm reading for class called "The Family," and I think that anyone with kids should read it. It's not wordy, like some books I've had to read, and occasionally, there are cute little pictures. I'm a visual learner, so that is helpful. ^_^
What I just read about touched my heart, and so I wanted to share with whoever reads this blog. Some of this is quoted, and some is paraphrased. ^_^
Unconditional love is beautiful, God-given, and achievable with the side note that we will never achieve perfection. Family begins with an unconditional commitment between man and woman, and NO--this is not the same as a contract. Contracts are conditional, and they end when one or both parties is not fulfilling his or her commitment to the contract. Unfortunately, this is why the rate of divorce, even among Christians, is around 50%.
Once the commitment is made, grace covers a multitude of sins. "Bryan, you left three dirty coffee cups in random corners of the bedroom!" "Kristi, you're nagging me again!" (Whups) Thank God for grace, right?! Also, God's grace yields an action: MERCY. Yea!!!
Grace leads to empowerment. Family is not about control over action--it's about loving a person so much that you want to yield to their needs before yours. Instead of wanting to control Bryan, I love him and pick up the dirty coffee cup, and Bryan loves me and puts up with my complaint. I'm not a fan of being boxed in. Empowerment is freeing for both the empower-er and the empowered! Empowerment also helps a person reach his or her potential.
After the family has empowered itself, there is genuine intimacy between the members. This is a mature relationships between each individual person. This interdependency is a connectedness between individual group members and the group itself. There is no enmeshment--overconnectedness in which you can't see where one person ends and the other begins. There are individuals that belong to each other and yield to the other person's desires! If everybody is putting the other person's true needs ahead of his own, then why shouldn't we be content? Sounds better than divorcing after six months because of a lack of fulfilled contract!
My teacher told me that if you feed your kids, you should feed your marriage. No one should suffer in a family unit.
Love to all, and here's to content marriages and content families. ^_^