discipled living

We live in an age where people are less than honest about their commitments. Marriage, parenting, work, school and faith are constantly victimized by failed commitments. To be certain, there is no shortage of tempting proposals, some real and others imagined, that threaten our resolve to remain committed.

The old saying, “The Grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence…” is still just as true today as when it was first said. Wilson Pickett sang, “Don't let the green grass fool you, Don't let it change your mind” expresses the extremely deceptive nature of your perspective when you look across the fence from your current vantage point.

Consider your “vows”, the things you said before witnesses that you would begin and carry through to completion. While you may not have verbally stated your intent, be certain that your actions communicate your intent. If you began the thing, your actions say without question, “I plan to finish this thing”.

I often counsel young men as well as young women,

Don’t act like a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if you don’t intend to be the boyfriend or girlfriend.

Your actions are a statement of intent that carries even greater weight than your words. For instance, if I said to you, “I Love You!” and proceeded to slap you; which would carry the greater weight, my words or my actions?

Conversely, if I said, “I never want to see you again!” Yet the next day I call, invite you to lunch everyday of the week, send you gifts and the like, you would conclude that my words meant nothing because my actions are the real indicator of my true intent. You might even seek a restraining order against me.

The reality is that there is no difference between word and deed. When we behave as though our word and our deed are separate from one another we are being irrational at best and lying at worst. At the heart of integrity is the idea that there is no distinction between what you say and what you do.

Without integrity everything that relies upon it may crumble. The structural integrity of your chairs, your home, automobile and more must be maintained in order to safely occupy and or operate.

The integrity of commitments is especially important for our exclusive, intimate relationship; meaning marriage. We are prone to disdain the life we have for some fictional life we might have had given different decisions, circumstance and actions. Like the character Walter Mitty, from the James Thurber’s acclaimed short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, we concoct fantasies that speak our latent desire to be bold and daring. The real danger is that our fantasy is not our reality.

Fantasy is always the stuff of legend, it takes place in the best of all possible worlds; a place where the variables of life are ever tipping in your favor. Yet reality is not fantasy. Reality is often punctuated by moments of pleasure and joy, yet it is the presence of challenge, struggle and pain that give your pleasures their power.

The grass can be green on both sides of the fence, if you maintain the commitment you began when you chose to occupy this side of the fence. Remembering that reality is not fantasy, that your actions do not take place in the vacuum of your imagination;

• where no one is ever injured,
• loved ones are never shamed or embarrassed, or
• a life-time of valuable work is erased by a moment of indiscretion.

In truth, reality takes place in the actual and fragile world of human beings, where the tipping points are many and the crashes are often fatal to committed relationships.

You are the commitments you make, whether you keep them or break them. Fortunately or unfortunately, you get to decide.