LOVE, obligation and FREEDOM....

To love someone is not to insist that they follow the path we would choose for them. It is to respect that their journey may require experiences we neither understand nor would choose for ourselves.....an invitation is not a summons. Compliance is not the same as connection. The freedom to say yes has meaning when the freedom to say no is also respected. One person's expression of love is not the standard by which every one else's love is judged. Disappointment can exist without punishment. Stop prosecuting the past. An invitation is an expression of welcome. An obligation is an expectation of compliance. And when the two become indistinguishable, relationships begin to suffer. The importance of an occasion does not automatically give another person authority over our decisions. Declining an invitation does not mean declining the relationship. There is a difference between disappointment and entitlement. But disappointment does not confer the right to pressure another person until that person surrenders. We can honor a significant life event without attending every celebration surrounding it. We can recognize another person's disappointment without accepting responsibility for eliminating it. Otherwise, we risk teaching our children that love is measured by how successfully they can override another person's wishes. And that is not a lesson I would want passed on to the next generation. Love sometimes asks us to make sacrifices for one another. But sacrifice freely offered strengthens relationships; sacrifice extracted through guilt and pressure diminishes them. Yet, one personal standard cannot reasonably become a universal obligation. Love does not require that we think alike, behave alike, celebrate alike, or make identical choices. Love asks something far more profound of us: that we recognize and honor the sovereignty of another human being, even when their choices differ from our own. Be attentive to the subtle transformation of love into obligation and what happens to relationships when personal freedom is no longer honored. When love becomes an expectation, freedom becomes the casualty.In Light and Love.....i/we love you........dr. teri...