Desire vs. Commitment

January 3, 2012…I am four pounds away from my heaviest weight, ever. Just typing that brings up feelings of shame and embarrassment. I’ve written in the past about avoidance being my drug of choice…the past few months I’ve been avoiding the scale. I wanted to lose weight, I really did.

One of my goals for 2011 was to lose 50lbs. In June of last year, I had procrastinated enough, it was time to act. One of the owners of Boost Fitness goes to Cross Point and wanted to help me achieve that goal. He came up to me after one of our services and offered to personally train me. I’ve never had a personal trainer. I went in and they did an assessment of my current physical condition and it was worse than I thought. I wanted to change. I wanted to be different. Jon was committed to helping me. I started going 3 times a week and he was kicking my butt. If you’ve ever seen The Biggest Loser and seen the contestants crying and snotting and sweating…that was me. He killed me. On the off days of Jon’s training I would run 3 miles.

I started dropping weight like crazy. I lost like 28 lbs. in the first 8 weeks. Then I started traveling and life got busy and things came up and I stopped going to the gym. I pulled a hamstring playing basketball so I couldn’t run for a few days. Then a few days became a week and a week became two. I started justifying compromising my diet and would think, “This bowl of cereal won’t cost me that much.” “I’ve lost 28 lbs…I won’t gain it back with this candy bar.”

It was a weird thing…when I stopped working out and stopped meeting Jon at the gym, I started gaining weight. That was so wild! I couldn’t understand…my desire to lose weight was just as strong. I still wanted to lose weight, but my commitment faded. I wanted the benefits of working out, without working out. Life doesn’t work that way does it. That reality came crashing home on Monday of this week when I went back to visit Jon and many of my measurements were worse than they were back in June. Everyone has desire, but what I need more than desire is commitment.

We all desire change, right? It’s why you read blogs; it’s why you go to church; it’s why you pray; it’s why you read books; we all desire change. But so often in our life our commitment to change is much less than our desire to change.

What if your commitment to change started matching your desire to change? If your commitment to change matched your desire to change what would be different about you?

If your commitment to be generous matched your desire to be generous, you would give more. You would write a check. You would give your time.

If your commitment to overcome an addiction matched your desire to overcome an addiction you would admit you are addicted; you would tell someone about your addiction; you would seek help in overcoming that addiction.

If your commitment to be honest matched your desire to be honest you would not just be accountable in your life; you would choose to be transparent. You would have hard conversations. You would tell the truth even when it would be easier to lie.

If your commitment to your marriage matched your desire to have a better marriage, you would invest in your marriage more; you would pursue your wife; you would make time for your husband; you would value your marriage over money or career advancement. You would be intentional and not just have good intentions.

When our commitment to change is less than our desire to change…we won’t change.

I don’t want to lose one more day desiring something that I am not committed to. I don’t want that for you either. Today is the day of commitment. So is tomorrow and the next day and the next.