I. Love others unconditionally-it’s your best option
Unconditional love means to care about other people without any strings attached. It means you don’t ask for anything or expect anything in return. It is not that I will do this if you do this in return. It is not a love that is for sale. It is not keeping a score of what you do for someone else and what they have done for you. Paul writes in his letter to the church at Corinth a passage about how we are to love and how it comes without conditions.
I Corinthians 13:4-7
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.”
Loving unconditionally allows you to have the freedom to have to change others. Once you learn to accept people the way they are you will be amazed at how people accept you for the way you are as a person. Unconditional love is what God has for each of us. He accepts us no questions asked. Not for what we should be or what we can be, but for who we are as we are. Does he want us to be better and cut out things that can harm us and others? Does he want us to correct things in our life? Does he want us to live more according to his word? Yes, but acceptance is always there from Him.
We need to do the same for people that come across our path. Acceptance is part of transitioning. It is part of the transition from one phase of life to the next. Your transitions rely on your ability to love and understand unconditionally.
To love unconditionally is to not put conditions on the relationship. My own children need to know that I will love them no matter what. Not just because they clean their room, not because they make good grades, not because they do their jobs on time and not because they excel at some extracurricular activity. They have to know deep down that I will love them no matter what. Sure they will mess up and we will have our struggles. They know that whatever happens and even if I am mad or my wife is mad at their actions we still love them.
The players I coach need to understand that I love them and want them all to do well. Each player we have must know that I will keep things tight and strict, but if they mess up I will still love them. It takes a while to develop that type of relationship. I do not love them more for winning than losing. I do not love them more for having a good practice than having a bad practice. There is not more love if they make the winning shot or miss the last second shot.
A freshman does not understand that the first day they arrive on campus. It takes time to develop a relationship. It is the same way in most of the relationships we all have. When you arrive at a new school or new job you will not immediately have a bond of trust. To get to that level it takes time. It can’t be rushed. Strong relationships that are built on unconditional love do not just happen just as they are not easily broken. It takes time and patience.
There are no strings attached in unconditional love. It is a love that is pure and can be life-long. You will find when you begin to accept people for who they are and not for what they can do for you it makes your relationships that much stronger. There will be people you come across in your life that either directly or indirectly will take the approach that they will be takers and not givers. They will be the type of person that will only want to be around someone that they can get something from. Those are the type of people that do not have unconditional love. Unfortunately you will come across them and you may get burned by them if you don’t pick up on it in time. Like we will talk about throughout this book some of the lessons you need to learn on your own. This is one that can really hurt because any time people inflict a type of pain it can cause long term emotional issues that some people have a difficult time getting over.
If you have unconditional love and start to have tolerance with others you will be amazed at how much less stress you can have in your life. You add a lot of problems to your life by having high expectations of others and by not accepting them the way they are as people. It is extremely freeing to be accepted the way you are, warts and all. We all come with blemishes and marks that make us imperfect. It is in being accepted by someone else that makes being felt loved the even better.
One of the coaches I worked for Mark Gottfried used to refer to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament as the “greatest show on earth.” I couldn’t agree more. Before I was able to coach at the NCAA level at Murray State and the University of Alabama I would travel somewhere in southeast and go wherever I could to see some of the tournament games. If an NCAA tournament site was close I was going to find a way to go. For a basketball fan like me it is a blast. On a particular trip I went to Birmingham on a Thursday to watch the first round games. I stayed with some friends and got up the next morning and drove to Atlanta to watch another day of games.
Of all the games a game I watched over the two day period that Thursday evening had a scene that has been locked into my brain ever since. What often happens in these first round games is you will see an upset which makes the tournament that much more exciting. Over the years this has created the hype of the event, “March Madness.” This evening a team from a lesser known league upset a highly ranked team from one of the big conferences. It was seen as one of the big upsets in the tournament that season.
The star player of the losing team missed a shot in the last few seconds of the game that could have made a difference in the outcome. Once the game was over I watched the young man that had missed the shot. He was bending over in obvious emotional pain. He knew his career was over. There would be no more games for him with his college team. He would never wear those colors or that jersey again. He was out there on the floor all alone.
Since it was a fairly big upset the other team was busy celebrating. Players, coaches and cheerleaders were excited to have such a win for their school. The losing team members each had their heads down or were making their way to the locker room.
This particular player took the loss very hard. I felt sorry for him even being a neutral observer. It was then I saw the scene I will not forget. I watched his coach walk across the floor. He looked back at the commotion on the floor and during all of that was going on he looked directly at his player. The coach gave him a glance. It was a look without sympathy almost to the point of disgust. After the coach saw his player he practically did not break stride and he kept walking.
I could understand how upset the coach was to lose the game. His team should have won easily. Emotions run high in those situations. The coach was visibly unhappy about the loss and almost in a bit of humiliation. Maybe the player did not execute in the last few minutes like the coach had instructed him to do. Even so it would not have taken a lot of effort for him come over to console the player. The moment sticks with me to this day and hopefully makes me more sympathetic. I have been both the player that has missed the shot and also the coach that has lost the close games.
Those few seconds can tell a lot of stories. For the coach his look said so much. It was part indifference to the player, part shock at the loss. For the player there was definitely a degree of hurt, embarrassment to go out with a loss like this and the end of a very good career. A cynic may say he was trying to get sympathy from someone, anyone.
A few seconds can tell a lot about us as people. These were real adult characters in a real adult story. What you will find as you make your way in this world is immaturity doesn’t stop at the junior or senior high school graduation. We all in a way hoped that pettiness was going to stop once we walked down the halls of our high school for the last time. I hate to report it doesn’t work out in a pretty picture like we had envisioned.
Life is so similar to that moment at the end of the game. A lot can happen in a few seconds. Your true colors will come out as will the colors and character of other people in seconds. Coaching at the highest level is packed with pressure. Fortunately I have been able to see it up close.
Being a part of the NCAA tournament as a coach it was an dream come true. While coaching at Murray State University our team took on Duke in the 1997 NCAA tournament. All the preparation you put in as a player or a coach you look forward to have this kind of an opportunity. The events then happen so fast you have a hard time taking everything in as it occurs.
As our teams took the court with for the final warm-ups I found myself turning the corner after walking down the hallway from our locker room and following Coach Mike Krzyzewski. There was a lot more attention paid to him, but you could feel the magnitude of the moment. As I walked a few steps behind you could feel the uniqueness, but also knew that this was a different kind of a game. Cameras going, fans cheering and knowing you are the part of something very special. People who say they know how they would react or judge others for their reaction have not been in the others person’s shoes most of the time.
It is easy to say that you would show the compassion and be there for the player when they miss a big shot. Are we there when someone needs our help with an everyday problem? Are we there when someone just needs a listening ear? I observe a lot of coaches as well as situations in athletics where I cringe when I hear what they say and how they respond. I’m sure people say the same as they watch me coach. Looking back most coaches in their deepest moments would like to take certain times back to relive, but like the rest of us we don’t get that chance.
From this particular game I witnessed the losing coach would now have to face the media. Then he would have to face the alumni which would naturally be upset. No one was going to be happy about the outcome. The coach usually gets the blame in losses like this one. Most coaches at this level of athletics understand the job description. You lose-you take the blame. I can identify with the coach being upset at the player. I understand all the emotions from both the player’s perspective and from the coach’s side.
To comprehend fully you need to understand that at this level of basketball the recruiting process is long. It starts when prospects are in the 10th or 11th grade on average. It could be even earlier depending on the player. So this relationship most likely had been through a lot of highs and lows. This relationship between coach and player had been a long one. Probably more important was the relationship between the coach and the player’s family.
The recruiting started so long ago. The player was an outstanding talent and seemed to give everything he had to the basketball program. Now in an instant the career is over and finished. Unfortunately the coach at that point in time was like a lot of us. How do we treat those around us? You do well or perform well for us and we will like you. You don’t deliver and we will be disappointed. I would like to say as a college coach myself we don’t act like that, but we are human and make human mistakes.
That image still is with me. I see the young man with the unbelief that the season was over. He was a major star at the college level and went on to play in the pros. He may have never known that his coach left him out there on the floor. Since his head was down he could not see his coach. The head coach looked directly at his player, saw him in emotional pain over the loss and walked the other way. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal to the player, but to most of us unconditional love is a big deal. In that moment the player-coach relationship came down to the missed shot and the lost game. It was about what can you do for me?
It was a sad picture watching the scene unfold right there on the floor. I am not sure how many people saw the exact same sequence of events that I saw. I was in a perfect position. Standing a couple of rows behind the press tables I was close enough to see it all unfold. There was no misunderstanding what I saw. I witnessed it just like I witness myself making the same mistakes. In the big coliseum that night maybe my eyes were the only ones that saw the exact scene the way I described them. Even so this scene has played out on other courts, fields, businesses, homes and you name the place across the world. People see someone hurting and because the relationship is built on conditions they do not stop. You can find a excuse or you take the time. It is a choice we each have. An excuse to not really care for someone unconditionally or we take the time to love someone unconditionally.
Love others unconditionally and you will find those transitions in life will go smoother. People that get under your skin, maybe just maybe they have a good side to them after all. People you think are nearly perfect have their stains and need unconditional love even when you find out they are not perfect.
John 3:16, 17
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
- How have you been loved unconditionally in the past?
- Are there situations where you could have loved someone and cared more about them despite their faults?
- What steps would you have to take in order to love those around you unconditionally?
