Confidence and Marriage go hand in hand. Having the confidence to choose a mate. This is something I lack. The confidence even to take the first step. It’s like standing on the ledge of a cliff, but I’m not even willing to come within 1000 feet of the cliff, let alone stand on the ledge. Let alone jump off!
I’ve noticed in my life, due to pornography, but in a general sense being gratified with various desires in an easy way, disrupts the ability to deeply choose a thing. I change my mind often, and therefore don’t commit to very many things. This is specific to those things I lack self-control in. If I sin in a certain area of my life, my ability to perform in that area is much less than is proper, sometimes significantly so.
It’s about attention. Who and what do we give our attention to? How often do we shift our attention to different things? 5 times per day? 500 times? 5,000 times? There is a cost here, I think, that has to do with our sanity. What we focus on, how hard and how often, will affect our life on this earth and our ability to live well.
My priest recently gave a homily on God’s Grace. He talked about how when we go to confession and receive absolution and forgiveness, Jesus Christ heals our wound, but the scar remains. Sins have consequences, both now and eternally. The eternal consequences can be healed by Christ, but the temporal consequences aren’t always.
We go through our short days on this earth fulfilling various desires, such as Lust, using women as the primary target, but through this process of filling desires without additional check and balance of marriage, or really any authority, it all just ends up crap.
We are unable to commit, bind together, and build something that lasts any amount of time. This can be a marriage, and family, or other things even. A job, project, health, fitness, fasting, prayer, etc.
In the beginning of April my brother came up with the idea of, “Burp Into Spring – 2023”. We do 10 minutes of burpees every single day. You can do 1 burpee, or 100. As many as you can do in 10 minutes. There are about 5 of us doing this little endeavor.
What I have learned from this experiment is the power of discipline in the small things. I’m now more able to quit drinking, which I plan to do for the rest of the year, I feel more confident moving forward in life even in work or other more complicated matters. All because of doing one small commitment of 10 minutes of burpees every day for a month.
Imagine how much more if we committed to the right things in other areas? I think about praying every day. Reading my Bible every day. Helping a homeless person every day. These things are easy. They legitimately could take, in total, including the burpees, 1 hour of my day.
Would I see a similar benefit? I think burpees would quickly become the least important daily activity on the list.
As St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:8, “For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”
Committing to a thing is a powerful aid towards salvation and becoming a good man. Committing to a person even more so. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it can be something very simple.
It’s not about me/you. It’s about them. Committing to something for the long-term, and having that thing be not for your gratification, but for the other person’s gratification. That’s the real trick.
