The Global Conversation

Tag: what would love do now

  • Effortless parenting

    Whether you are a new parent or a “seasoned” parent, you know that parenting is a full-time job. It requires patience, understanding, endless energy, emotional endurance.  And the list goes on.  However, what I’ve found to be true is that what our children require most is Love — and the rest will fall into place naturally and effortlessly.

    I know this may sound like a patently obvious, if not naive, statement; but after raising two boys who are now 15 and 24, I want to share with you what I have learned, and continue to learn, about Love “in action” and what that awareness has taught me.

    An experience which greatly impacted and influenced my parenting approach, and one which further deepened my understanding of the Conversations with God principles, happened when my mother passed away. My youngest son was six years old. Only a short time into my mom’s memorial service, my son started to leave his seat. While his father and his grandmother attempted to keep him quiet and make him sit still due to their understandable uneasiness, I asked myself the question, “What would love do now?” I realized that this beautiful child would not act in a way that disrupted the service, knowing the love my son had for my mother and the powerful connection they shared. So I let go of control. And what happened next was stunning.

    Without saying a word, my six-year-old son moved from person to person — from my mother’s caregiver, to my mother’s best friend, to my own best friend, and then on to my brother. He simply sat next to each of them, working his way through the room, letting others know that he felt the same way they did: Sad. I sensed that he knew what was best for him, and apparently so did he. He felt moved to both give and to receive comfort.

    After the service, each of those individuals came up to me and shared how he had profoundly shifted their sadness to love.  I realized that day that my parenting could be more effortless if I would genuinely love and embrace and trust what was showing up, allowing myself to be guided by Love rather than by Fear and all of the Dos and Don’ts of parenting that I’d been taught. Perhaps it was just that easy.

    Love is a feeling. It is a reflection. It is a connection of energy that readily resides within a parent and a child. It is the key to unlocking effortless communication. Listening and being fully present to what our children are expressing, whether in words or actions, allows us to become more of a guide than a parent. When we understand that our children come here with a specific soul agenda, and each thought, each expression, and each action is fulfilling that agenda perfectly, we can let go of beliefs that our children will choose the “wrong” choice and, rather, trust that they will make the “right” choice…the one that feels most in alignment with Who They Are.

    When we listen and when we are fully present, providing a palpable experience of what our Love is, we shift the parenting dynamic and create a more natural dovetailing of instincts, allowing our children to express Who They Really Are while we do the same! Parents and children have a natural rhythm of feeling each other’s intentions, even when personalities may sometimes seem at odds, understanding that, no matter what, the Soul’s agenda, the purpose for which it came here, is still being fulfilled.

    Of course, we will have days that do not seem so effortless regardless of our best intentions. It’s a messy and wonderful process. And although some might argue that this perspective lacks discipline, I believe that gifting our children the freedom to choose their path provides them the opportunity to determine his or her own course and to develop their own sense of inner guidance and self-discipline.

    What would it be like if we lived in a world where both parents and children asked more often, “What would Love do now?”

    (Laurie Lankins Farley has worked with Neale Donald Walsch for approximately 10 years. She is the Executive Director of his non-profit The School of the New Spirituality and creative co-director of CwGforParents.com. Laurie has published an inspirational children’s book “The Positive Little Soul.” She can be contacted at Parenting@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

     

  • What would love do now?
    Wear a pink tutu in Times Square, of course!

    51-year-old Bob Carey, standing 5-foot-10-inches tall, and weighing more than 200 pounds, is appearing around the country in only a pink tutu and creating a 61-page book of his self-portraits in an effort to support his Beloved Other, Linda, who has advanced breast cancer.

    His extraordinary journey has taken him to the Grand Canyon, Coney Island, Times Square, The Washington Monument, a cow pasture in the midwest, and Giants Stadium, just to highlight a few.  You can view some of the images from his self-published book here:  Tutu Breast Cancer Project.

    Linda Lancaster-Carey, 51, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, says, “He’s not afraid to put himself out there. It’s his own body, with all its imperfections.”  The Careys say laughter has always been at the heart of their relationship and that the photography allowed Bob Carey to focus on something other than his own fear and anger surrounding his wife’s illness and the loss of his father to lung cancer and his mother to breast cancer.

    The Careys’ story demonstrates the level of unconditional love that so many people desperately yearn for but fall short of time and time again in their relationships, a level of love and commitment that perhaps may have not have been as fully experienced but for Linda’s illness.

    I imagine there was an earlier time in Bob Carey’s life where he would not have even considered donning only a pink tutu in the middle of Times Square, much less actually do it.  Even now, some members of the media have been less than kind, colorfully pointing out the flaws in Carey’s physique, to which he replies, “The photos are about transforming into somebody I’m not. It’s about being vulnerable.” Carey is also feeling pushback from critics who question his actions, women who are put off by the pink tutu and those who have grown tired of the “pinkification” of October, which has been designated as Breast Cancer Awareness month.

    In the midst of darkness and pain and uncertainty, Bob Carey answered the question, “What would love do now?”   He pushed past the illusions of fear, embraced his vulnerability, and stepped into his next grandest version of himself, gifting to his wife and all those whose lives he touches the remembrance of his own sufficiency and divinity.  His act of self-definition now spans the country, if not the world, so others, too, can remember more fully who they are:  as sufficient and divine.

    Conversations with God, Book 1, reminds us:

    “What you do for your Self, you do for another.

    What you do for another, you do for the Self.

    And this is because you and the other are one.

    And this is because…

    There is naught but You.”

    Perhaps the Careys’ story will serve to inspire us all today to do something extraordinary, something silly and unexpected, an expression of pure givingness to our partner, and thus to ourselves — or to ourselves, and thus to all of humanity — as a demonstration of our Highest Self and our deepest affection and in remembrance of who we really are.

    Yes?

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support .   To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)