Broken Promises

by Lillian Humphries

Have you ever broken a promise? Most of us have, intentionally or not we have fallen down on our word. It isn’t nice and normally guilt follows.

Of course the worst promises we can break are the promises we make to God. But today I want to focus on what a broken promise to yourself does to you.

When we make a deal with our self, a promise, we are making a commitment, putting our word on the line. I know when I make a promise to myself I mean every word of it. Down to my toes, I am gung-ho about the project. Doesn’t matter what the project is, when I say it I mean it.

• Starting January 1st, I will read my Bible 15 minutes every day. 
• Come Monday I am going to start my diet.
• After the Halloween candy is gone I am going to cut out all sugars.
• No more diet sodas for me.
• This year I’m going to mail more cards of encouragement.

I will . . . . fill in the blanks.

Then something happens and we break our promise. Normally it is just life gets in the way. A party comes up and we go off our diet. We skip a day reading our Bible because we got up late. We run out of cards and forget to buy some the next time we are at the store. Pretty soon it has been a couple of days, then a week, then two weeks and we haven’t gotten back to our promise.
It's done, we have broken the promise.

What happens when we break these promises? We feel bad about ourselves. Sometimes they can really depress us and they carry negative emotions with them. There are enough negative messages coming at us; we don’t have to add more with our own inner voice attacking ourselves.

 
 When the promise is broken we need to take a positive action.

• Apologize to yourself. Literally tell yourself you are sorry and you will try again. That is what you would do to a friend.
• Forgive yourself. You forgive others, why not yourself.
• Start over. It isn’t the end of the world, you stumbled, and you didn’t jump off a cliff.

 I have been promising myself and others to write a book that is on my heart. I keep going back to it and then life gets in the way. Today I am starting again, not at the beginning but right in the middle where I left off.

 What promise did you break to yourself? Share with me and let’s see how many of us can pick that project (whatever it is) back up and start again