The Promise
“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”
- C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity
*confession time*
There was a point in recent time that I didn’t like myself. Not even a little bit. I was struggling in my faith. I was trying to come to terms with how I made it back from multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in one piece. (It’s called survivor’s guilt.) I was pushing friends and family away because I knew I was toxic. I knew that I wasn’t doing what I needed to do. I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do to not do what I was doing. I just didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t know how to deal with people around me, and didn’t even want to try. I even tried to convince my wife to leave me. She was bearing the brunt of all of it. How could she not? She’s my wife.
Lucky for me (thank you Lord!), she refused. She said: “No! You promised me! You promised me that this was forever! I know you, you don’t break promises. Don’t start with this one.”
Talk about a wake up call.
Men, don’t break your promises. If you find that you’re “not in love anymore”. Grind it out. Figure it out one way or another. Find a reason to be in love again. Yes, of course she deserves that from you. You owe it to yourself as well.
We all fall. We all fail. What makes you a man is whether or not you get back up and keep doing the work.
