Unconditional Love

Getting rid of half your clothes so someone else can have half the closet space.

Sharing your mom and your dad with a stranger - and having them get more attention than yourself.

Sharing your room.

Not getting angry or crying when your new Wii, the only gift you got for Christmas and your birthday gets ruined - and never hearing an apology.

Having your beautiful pink suit jacket, which you saved up your own money to buy and which is dry clean only, shrunk and responding by saying thank you because you knew how much pride the person who thew it in the washer and dryer had.

Telling jokes to make your parents smile when all they want to do is cry.

Watching your dad break down a door to witness your sister trying to kill herself - and not telling all your friends about it because you don't want to humiliate her.

Spending two days and a year's worth of haircuts for yourself to give your daughter hair extensions so she will feel beautiful.

Taking a complaining, disappearing child to Sea World.

Buying your daughter contacts for a year, out of your own pocket money - not medicaid - when you know she'll be leaving your home in a week - just so she leaves with convidence.

Sitting on gravel, in a skirt, holding a 220 pound child who is biting and head butting - so that she can't hurt herself.

Making a birthday cake.

Tucking in a child.

Picking up a teen at a friends house at 2am after she has snuck out of the house - when she tells you to send her away - you hug her, tell her you love her, and you'll get through it together.

Loosing your heart and having your integrity questioned.

Going out of your way and doing everything which is humanly possible to make a child happy - and never being thanked.

Setting boundaries and being told you're hated.

Going out of your way to be kind to someone who resents and degrades you.

Loosing sleep because of fear for your daughter's safety, and because of depression, and stress, and crying out to God for help.

Going to Disney World.

Wanting despertly to take all the pain of someone else upon yourself.

Falling in love and losing the person - physically and/or emotionally.

Not being understood, or liked, or respected.

Doing what is right even when it is being called into question.

Doing everything you can to make someone happy and have them run to someone else.

Having your heart split in two and still being willing to give it away again.

Unconditional love?

Being spit at, humiliated, beaten, and killed for someone else's crime.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." - I John 4:10

Unconditional love?

This is love: not that they love us, but that we love them and sacrifice our time and wants and desires so they can live a life that glorifies God.