Last September, Sandy and I celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary. I could tell you today that it’s been 43 years of heavenly bliss, but she would correct me by saying there’s been a lot of hell in the mix. Like all couples we married for better for worse, for richer for poorer, and in recent years it has been a lot more sickness than health. Yet, relationships are held together by an invisible cord called commitment. Commitment is an island of certainty in a sea of change. We are not human butterflies fluttering through other people’s lives stopping long enough to get what we want, then flying off. We are human beings capable of making one thing certain in an uncertain future. That is “I will be there, no matter what,” and that’s that I want to talk about today.

I. Commitment Is Not a …