Spread God's Love with a Ripple Effect: Be the Example as a Mother with Grace for Others

The are different types of love. We can create space for love and choose to spread it to others creating a ripple effect. As mothers, being the example for our children of showing unconditional love is a gift extended to the many people they have contact with. Allowing them to feel that love regardless of their mistakes. God does not have conditions on the love for us and the continued grace we receive is an example we can use toward our children, friends, people in our businesses and community.

Releasing shame as humans on a journey I believe is part of this. We are living in different seasons, hopefully not reliving the past, depending on current consciousness. This allows safety, even when we disagree with others. We don't need to feel that we need to engage with everyone. If someone desires a conversation to resolve an issue, being open and honest is important. The denial of your contribution to a situation or of the present moment continues the cycle we show our children of what loving behavior is.

I share an activity to feel and share love in this episode, remembering the most loving moments you have ever experienced and feeling them again. We desire more of these moments naturally and can spread these feelings to others and then back to ourselves to fill our cups to overflow.

In This Episode:

-Different types of love, conditional and unconditional, God's love is unconditional

-Being the example for our children causes a ripple effect to many

-Love yourself in order to be loving

-Denial of the present moment or shoulding others is not effective, remove blocks

-Choosing to participate in authentic loving relationships attracts more 

-Spreading the love activity with a ripple effect

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Transcript

Sarah Swift 0:15

Welcome to the Integrative Mother Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Swift, wife for 27 years a mother of three teenagers. I want to have conversations about why so many mamas wearing multiple hats, working, serving others, or owning a business, especially in the beauty industry, feel like they need to choose between their work and their family. We'll also uncover common causes of overwhelm, lack of wellbeing and joy. I am here with over three decades of experience working in the beauty industry. Owning several types of businesses starting in my twenties, and sharing stories to help other mothers avoid feeling that they're always missing out. Time is an asset. We can't get back. I can't wait to dive into these deep conversations. I hope you will join me. Don't forget to check out my free checklist for joy and fulfillment on my website, the integrative mother experience.com, and join my free private community of mamas supporting each other. Welcome back, my beautiful mamas. I'm so glad you joined me today. This episode you are about to listen to is about love. Yes, it was recorded around Valentine's Day, so about a month ago, and just hoping you enjoy it. There's a little activity I include at the end for your enjoyment. Hopefully it will help you spread the love today and beyond. And don't forget, we are only a week into the reset and renewal journal experience in my private Mama's time group. So if you are interested in this experience, it does last for 40 days, and you can go to the integrative mother experience.com, grab your free checklist, and from there you will receive an invite. If this sounds like something that you might enjoy. Welcome back to the podcast, beautiful Mamas. Today we are going to talk about love. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so there's no better time. We are gonna cover spreading the love, creating the space for love and different kinds of love. Let's get started. I'm gonna begin just talking about spreading the love and what is conditional or non unconditional types of love. God does not have conditions on love, and I think that's such a great example for all of us. I am sure you can remember a time when somebody, either by words or actions made you feel like maybe they didn't love you because you weren't doing what they wanted you to do, or saying what you were supposed to say to make them feel a certain way. And if this, this is somebody in your life that is a family member or a close friend in your inner circle that feels like conditional love and God never has conditions on love. He loves us no matter what, and I just think we need to remember that, especially as mothers because we are the example and we want our children to feel like even when we have to. Reprimand them for something or take something away, they are never not loved. It has nothing to do with love. In fact, when we put up boundaries to help them, that is in a loving manner most of the time. I think that sometimes we react, and that might not be the most loving moment, but most of the time when we're taking devices away or we're setting a curfew. Or just saying, you have to do your homework before you can go outside and play. That's being loving and the unconditional love behind that is similar to what God wants for us. Also, just touching on the unending grace that God has for us as well. We are all human. We are going to make mistakes. We all have made mistakes If we're on this earth and we're human. And just remember the grace just keeps coming. It's not conditional and so that's such a great example for us remembering that and trying to extend that, especially during the times when it's really hard to be loving towards others. And we all have that. So this is just a good way to reference that. Sending the grace out that we receive back from God is really a good way to address it. We haven't earned our love from God. It's not what we do, it's just who we are. So if we let go of the guilt and we allow joy to enter, we don't have tobe everything to everyone. That's not even the point of why we're here. We are gonna be more loving if we are loving ourselves and starting there and then extending it outward. We can't possibly do everything that everyone around us wants us to do and loving ourselves, filling our cup first is oftentimes the most loving thing that we can do. I wanna talk about creating space for love next, and there's certain aspects to this that I think that we can all relate to. First of all, just releasing any shame. Again, we're all human. We all make mistakes. It's gonna happen again. It's part of the journey. If we're honest and we acknowledge when something's not working, that's also part of just figuring out what we want in the different seasons of our lives, and that's okay. Some things that worked for us in certain seasons might not be working for us now that we have children. Maybe when our children get older, things that work when our children were younger are no longer working, and then someday when they leave the house, that might be a different situation and certain things might not work. That worked in the past again. So let's start by loving ourselves and keep in mind that when we're sharing our time and our energy and what we have to give, who has earned the rights to hear your story? I think it was Brene Brown that brought this up at one point I had heard and I loved it. I just thought that is so true. Not everybody needs to know everything about us and we don't have to overshare. There are different aspects to relationships and our close knit circle of trusted friends or family is oftentimes relatively small if we really think about what we want to share and we don't have to feel pressured to tell everybody everything about us. So making sure that it feels safe and then choosing not to engage with people as in love for yourself. I think this is so true when when we're out and about and it's really easy in group situations, especially to engage in conversation that maybe isn't authentic to us, or you're saying, or agreeing with something, not even really consciously doing it, but it's part of the environment and that's not being loving to yourself and it's not being authentic. So I believe that when it feels safe, we're going to share more from the loving part of ourselves and also when we're not agreeing with others, the loving part of us can own our part of the disagreement. So maybe somebody has done or said something that was extremely hurtful or even worse. Maybe you had nothing to do with it. Maybe there was nothing for you to own. But I think just discerning, is there even a little bit of that that maybe you contributed to? And if that is the case, then just own that part of it. You can't make anyone else do anything that's on them, and that's the loving thing to do is own your part, move on and. Let it go. The next thing is the denial of what's now. So let's not should ourselves or others. When your advice isn't welcomed, that is not the time to continue to tell someone that this should be doing something. Being discerning of what energy somebody is giving you back with their words or their body language is really something that if we pay attention to, it's really not that hard to see when someone is being receiving or not. Also, just outright blaming people when they don't see their mistakes. That just does not work for certain personalities. I have experienced this so many times in my life, and I just realize that people may never get to the point where they're going to see their own mistakes. They just don't look beyond themselves, and it's not our place to do that. We can move on from that relationship. Or we can have a different type of relationship and that is probably the most loving thing that we can do for sure. Uh, if people are conversing with you in a way that's very disrespectful or yelling at you, name calling, these are all things that are definitely, definitely not loving, and we have to discern how much of that. If any of that we are even willing to participate in, and again, that's being the most loving person for yourself and therefore to the other person because then it's actually an authentic relationship. I find that sometimes removing myself is the best thing I can do. I'm just not someone that likes to yell unless I'm like scared and it just comes out, but like yelling at other people, um, that's just, it's just not in my nature. It's not how I communicate. certainly not name calling either. So for me, I've noticed that with loving relationships that I crave, definitely some are more from afar. I just can't relate to the type of communication that some people that I love, use, and therefore it's not that I don't love them. They may be part of my circle in some aspect, but maybe I just don't wanna engage in what they consider normal behavior, and that's okay. Another thing I think we can do often is just ask yourself, how am I being? It's really about what do you want in life with your loving relationships? And if you start with yourself and you reflect on yourself, kind of back to the earlier example I gave of some people that just can't see their own words and actions. If we're willing to do that for ourselves, we're likely to attract more people into our lives that are being like that as well. It's just how it works. Are you being the most loving person in the room or are you being the most judgmental person in the room? Are you expecting something back from everyone you engage with or are you giving. These are things that I have to ask myself and truly in order to have loving, reciprocal relationships. These are things that I have to check in with and definitely I notice that, my best relationships have a lot of this, and that's because the people that I have chose to have relationships with, such as my closest girlfriends. They tend to be the most caring, giving women that I have ever met. We all desire connection, and there's different types of love, so let's talk about that for a moment. Obviously there's the romantic kind of love with our partners. Then we have the love for our children, which is just hard to even describe. We have love for our extended family members, love for our girlfriends, especially the close knit girlfriends in our inner circles. We have love for our pets if we have pets, and then there's love for our community, and that can be your church community, your work, your neighborhood, your community of friends that you engage with. That's a type of love as well. The cool thing about love is it has a positive ripple effect, and the more of the light that we allow in, the more that we can allow out. Meaning that if we're walking around complaining about everything, gossiping about others, not being a loving person, nobody wants to be around you. And you're not spreading the love. So the love starts from within and then it spreads outward. So let's do a quick little activity. Put your hand on your heart. Remember tomorrow's Valentine's Day, close your eyes and remember a moment when you felt pure pure love. The example I'm going to give you because I'm doing this exercise with you, is the moment that my babies were born, the moment that I was handed these beautiful little beings feel that moment of whatever it is you're envisioning right now. I remember my husband crying when I walked down the aisle at our wedding. I remember when my husband and I had what we call our rum bottle moment. we were on a picnic table with our rum bottle moment, and now I'm gonna take this love that I am feeling. From these really important moments in my life when I felt the deepest love I could possibly feel. And then I'm gonna imagine sending that love out, send that out to everyone around you. Feel how good that feels. Then I want you to send it back to yourself. We are going to end with the takeaways. God is not conditional with his love. Remove anything that's blocking love. You need to love yourself, so be loving. There are different kinds of love. And then lastly, love spreads with a positive ripple effect. So enjoy your Valentine's Day. I hope that this insight was helpful. I hope that that little activity made you feel more loving for the day, and that you go out today and especially tomorrow, and you feel that deep love and you spread it on to others as well as yourself. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful, please follow or subscribe to the Integrative Mother experience on Spotify, apple Podcast or wherever you listen, so you're notified about the new episodes coming up. Please also take the time to leave me a review. This really does help me. I would love to see your beautiful faces. If you want to take a screenshot of this episode, I would love it. Take me on Instagram or Facebook at time with Sarah Swift, period between the word time on Instagram, so then I can reshare your post. You can also start today by grabbing my free checklist and check out some of my favorite things on my website, the integrative mother experience.com. Until next time, my beautiful mamas, thank you so much.