Commitment

I looked at my computer’s date and time this morning and realized it is August 23.

This day is special for me. I met my wife 24 years ago today! I met her in a park on a Sunday afternoon. Then again later that evening at church. She was playing the prelude music on the piano while everyone was being seated. Being the cool guitar player that I was, I walked up to her and turned the page over on the sheet music she was playing. She looked at me and said. “Excuse me, I was playing that.” In my suave irresistible way I had with women I replied, “Can you play it a little funkier?” Have you ever heard of foot in mouth disease? She glared at me those beautiful blue eyes of fire (kind of like she still does today when I do something stupid).

After taking my seat with the other musicians, I realized my fatal blunder and tried to make up for it. I looked at her, pointed at the piano and gave her a thumbs up. I thought rolling the eyes was a guy thing. Anyway, that was the start of our relationship.

After church I asked her if she wanted to meet at a restaurant for a piece of pie. She amazingly agreed. When we arrived at the restaurant, to my disappointment there was a group there from church that asked us to join them. Bummer, cuz I was ready to put my foot in my mouth again during our private conversation. I guess that would have to wait, because I wasn’t going to do it in front of everyone.

Are you wondering what all this has to do with commitment? Here goes – A few days later we met at the mall. I told her straight out that I don’t believe in “dating” or wasting time trying on every potential mate like a pair of shoes. I told her I was going to ask her to dinner in a couple of weeks and to pray about it. I said if you say yes, I am talking long term commitment. How is that for bold? Two weeks later she said yes to dinner. We both knew that yes meant – yes to a commitment to working on a relationship for the purpose of getting married. Commitment.

I will talk about old fashioned courtship another day, so today I will just stick with commitment.

Have you made any commitments lately? Are you following through or giving up because it’s getting hard? If you make a commitment, you are making a decision to do something. Don’t just give up when it gets hard. Have you made a commitment to being successful no matter what? If not, why not do it today?