What is love for you?
How and when did you learn what loving and being loved looked like and felt like and sounded like?
Children learn from the significant adults in their lives what love is.
Love is demonstrated with affection, with positive affirmations, with quality time together, with giving gifts and with acts of service for one another.
We all feel the underlying intention of love in different forms as very young children.
Each of us responds to one or more of these forms more strongly than the others.
As I watch my own attachment to doing loving things, I realize this is my deepest connection with Love.
However, It is only one of five very different ways to demonstrate Love.
It is imperative that I relinquish my attachment to acts of service and listen within for what will be best received by each one whom I intend to Love.
When we know we are being loved, some of us just trust that Love is extended to us.
When we are unsure we can be loved, we are discerning of every way we feel and don't feel loved.
When we believe we are unloveable, we look for all the proof that we are not really being loved.
It is up to the most conscious and loving one to give love in the ways it can and will be received.
As a Grandma have been well educated by my five grandchildren. I have learned to listen for their individual needs no matter what I am doing. I stop and give them the hug, verbal response, sit and read, take a walk, give help and simply respond with an affirmation of their preciousness. Each child is different and each moment calls for something different. When I was a mother, I was focused on all the stuff I needed to do for the family and home and work and community. My focus as a Grandma is on being wholly present for and with them in Love, while doing some simple things to help out Mom and Dad to free up a little time for them to just be with the children and relax. I have learned to put the children first. I am so grateful Love teaches us how to Love.
My work is to let go of any attachment I have to getting things done for everyone, the community, Center, congregation, to be really present with each individual as they come into my presence. I love to serve the whole, the greater Good, and sometimes forget to value serving the individual this is not really true, because I also am aware that I give abundant quality time to individuals! It looks like I would rather do each with total focus and no interruption. Ah! Maybe that is it! I really want to be 100% present for whatever ways I am called to give Love in each moment. Voila! There is my Love discernment process for you to see.
Loving you, Loving each One and All as One,
Betty Lue