The esteemed Glennon Doyle Melton signs off most of her posts with “Love Wins.”

I’ve read a few of her essays on the subject matter and I’m sure there are many more I haven’t read.

It’s a pithy little mantra that has recently come into focus on an entirely new level for me.

It first surfaced when a person with whom I had an unfinished business project blocked me on Facebook and sent me an email stating all correspondence of any kind would be disregarded.

What if I have a problem with the product? What if it doesn’t arrive? What if it is damaged? What if…

Ah, the amazing power of What if?

With each of those questions, emotions of angst, anger, and confusion filled my central cavity.

I much prefer feeling love and warmth and security and trust, so I asked myself the question, How can I change my thoughts?

Love wins.

One thought. Two words.

Love wins. This project was born of love. Send her love.

And so I did just that.

I shut my eyes and said, I send you love.

Peace filled the space where chaos had moments earlier resided.

Of course I immediately began trying to rationalize how two little words instantaneously changed how I felt inside, how something so simple could alter my center of spiritual gravity so profoundly.

You see, I’ve sent out love many times before and haven’t felt that response.

Like the time I stared at my rounded, muffin-topped, stretch-marked body with its drooping, breast-fed-three-babies boobs and said, I love you and I’m going to love you even more when you are healthier and fitter.

Say what?! That’s what my core screamed back at me.

I immediately recognized that the love I was offering that day was conditional, that my greatest, most profound love would only be given to my body if it met whatever standards I was placing on it.

And most recently, this morning, when I came face-to-face  with a person who left Beauty stranded hundreds of miles from home…

I could feel every hair follicle bristle when I spotted this person, feel my disdain, my utter lack of respect…

Send her love, my mind bristled back…

I walked through the store thinking: I sent her love. Nothing. Notta. Hair still standing and I’m still seething…

Though I have an inkling, I can’t say for sure what the conditions I’ve placed on that love are…

This morning’s event prompted me to take a good hard look at the differences in  how we offer up our love.

Though I have much more reflection ahead of me, what I do know for sure is that the love I sent out to the former business associate was purely unconditional.

I wanted to feel nothing but love, which meant the only attention I could give it was love…

…a love that isn’t hinged to definition or sewn together with strings.

It’s what lies at the very essence of what I’ve repeatedly told my children: “I love you, always, forever, and no matter what.”

In order to feel nothing but love, we have to send out a love that is not framed by expectation.

It’s a hard thing to do, Journeyer, for the world we live in is often conditional, tinged by stereotype, and tainted by ego…

In the past week I’ve had to remind myself of what I learned over and over again…

Love wins.

We must choose to keep relearning the lessons we’ve learned, keep working if we are to adopt a new way of breathing life into ourselves and out onto the world…

Melon’s message is now one of my own personal power mantras, inspirational cues that help us live our best personal, professional, and philanthropic lives, even in the face of adversity…

What today taught me, though, is that the love that truly wins, the love that triumphs tragedy and traverses time, the love that prevails no matter what is one that is unconditional.

Unconditional Love Wins.

Until we meet again,

Yours in hope, healing, and happiness,