Commit is an appropriate word for Valentine’s Day for Keith and me. I’ve written about our love story for The Perennial Gen, but the short version is captured by Ann Voskamp in her newest book WayMaker, releasing on March 15*. “Detours are the way dreams and destinies actually come true,” she writes. Because of detours—and disappointments—Keith and I found our dreams and destinies, coming together in love nearly two decades ago. Thanks be to God.
Voskamp: “God knows that it always takes three to make the realest love out of anything, never only two. In the space between two people, only God can make a love that transcends the disappointments. The way that God wants the most is the way that keeps us close to Him.”
Commit the verb, commitment the noun; committed the adjective, meaning obligated by a pledge to some course of action, which takes us back to the verb.
Commit: “to give in charge, entrust,” from Latin committere “to unite, connect, combine; to bring together,” from com “with, together” (see com-) + mittere “to release, let go; send, throw.” Mission.
Before the verb comes the noun commitment: engagement, guarantee, pledge, promise, responsibility, charge, committal, devoir, duty, liability, must, undertaking, vow, word.
Voskamp: “Love is more than an emotion; love is commitment set in motion.” The noun leads to the verb.
Commit: act, carry out, do, execute, perpetrate, violate, accomplish, achieve, complete, contravene, effectuate, enact, offend, pull, scandalize, sin, transgress, trespass, wreak.
One can commit for better or for worse, to complete one another or sin. Speaking at Voskamp’s wedding, the pastor said, “You both are here today to make a solemn vow to be committed to each other not when it’s easy—but when it’d be easiest to walk away.” Or worse. But as Voskamp writes, choosing one another “…isn’t about a life of perfectness but a life of withness.”
Commit for better leads to the adjective committed: devoted, faithful, pledged, attached, bound.
As with last year, Keith and I were home yesterday, attending church online and cooking instead of eating out because of snow. Second Sunday of the month Communion—committing commitment in community—will happen next week. Yesterday was also the Super Bowl. Keith air-fried chicken wings and cooked his award-winning baked beans, while I made coleslaw and baked cornbread. Cooking together, eating together, watching the game. Together.
Commitment. Commit. Committed. The noun, the verb, the adjective.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Link up with Five Minute Friday: https://fiveminutefriday.com/2022/02/10/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-commit/
*As a member of Voskamp’s book launch team, I had the honor of reading the first three chapters of WayMaker.
There are times I feel I’m the worst
thing that happened to my wife,
giving her a cancer-cursed
day-to-day, a barren life.
Illness was not what I courted;
nonsmoker and teetotal, too!
But somethings cannot be averted,
and thus it happened, and I’m through.
We planned a long dual Harley ride
through the deserts of the West,
and the Continent’s Divide
would, of all things, be the best,
but that dream can now never be,
and I’m just glad she’s here with me.