What a whirlwind the last several months have been. There are the normal responsibilities I have of being a husband, dad and business owner; but when you add watching our third child “leave the nest” this past fall; adjusting to holidays without having our whole family around; and the odd sensation of having only three kids at home, it’s been more like a hurricane.
One of the hardest tasks for me is staying in my writing routine. I am a writer. I love to write; but that strong discipline of maintaining a daily routine constantly eludes me. Just when I think things are going to be “normal” and I’ll get a lot of writing done, something else comes along and thrashes any hope of finding my groove.
Our two oldest girls came for a visit this past week. We hadn’t seen them since back in August, when we left them 10 hours north of our home in Southern California. It was a great visit, but the week seemed to flash by and it was over before we knew it. Two days before the girls flew back home, we had a “plumbing malfunction” in our house. As a matter of fact, we had water gushing into our kitchen at 3AM on Sunday morning! Not something you want to wake up to in the middle of the night.
I promised myself there would be no more setbacks or distractions. Once the girls left, I would get back into a routine. Nothing was going to stand in my way. No excuses. When I woke up Sunday morning with our house flooded, essentially all thoughts of writing left my head. I had the stress of the mess, the clean-up and trying to figure out what to do next in our current situation.
As I sit poolside enjoying the Southern California sun at a Marriott hotel a few miles from the beach, I realized breaking a promise to myself should be considered just as bad as breaking a promise to someone else. Have you ever broken a promise to your kids, your niece or nephew or maybe your parents or grandparents? I do everything in my power not to break my word because the last thing I ever want to see is disappointment in the eyes of people I love! When I give my word, I want it to carry weight; to carry value. When I give my word, I want people to know I will do everything in my power to fulfill my promise.
Why do we find it acceptable to break promises that we make to ourselves though?
I promise: No more junk food!
I promise: I’m going to work out more.
I promise: I’m not going to let people take advantage of me anymore.
I promise: I’m going to work hard to get that big promotion at work.
We make these promises but most of the time, we have zero intention of following through or of making sure we don’t break our promise to the most important person of all – ourselves! Today as I sit here writing these words, I’ve decided that if I truly want my word to be worth something, I will take the promises I make to myself more seriously.
If I were to promise little Sophia, my youngest daughter, that we were going to get ice cream today after school and then when picking her up I told her, “Sorry. I know I promised but I really never had any intention of getting you ice cream”, the devastation in her eyes would be more than I could bear. Trust me, if you ever met my Sophia, you would never want to see pain in those beautiful blue eyes.
We disappoint ourselves so often that we stop believing it when we say, “I’m going to be healthier” or “I’m going to get that next promotion at work”. We’ve disappointed ourselves so much that we stop before we even start. Most people would tell me that it’s okay to break a promise I’ve made to myself because of my present circumstances: I’m in a hotel with my family for a couple of weeks–maybe longer–and our lives have been turned completely upside down; yet, I still have a business to run, children to raise and a wife to love; but still looming are those promises to myself I have yet to fulfill.
I want to encourage you today, as I encourage myself, to stop living in disappointment and to start living like our word means something, focusing more on being people who follow through on promises– especially the promises we make to ourselves!
Steven L Struble 