I’m a grown woman (see previous posts for more on that subject), but sometimes I do the most childlike things. Last night, I was up sick as a dog because I’d eaten something that I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat. As a matter of fact, I ate a whole lot of stuff I wasn’t supposed to eat – all weekend long. So all day yesterday I was feeling a little shaky and last night I was miserable. It would be one thing if I didn’t know that was going to happen. But I’ve had this issue since I was in college and this year I finally came up with a solution. So I knew that eating what I ate was going to make me ridiculously sick – and I did it anyway.

But how many times do we do that? The relationships we know aren’t any good for us, but we enter into them anyway. Commitments we can’t possibly keep or responsibilities we know we’re too overloaded for, but we agree to anyway. Things that are self destructive and counterproductive, but we justify them anyway. I think the key word here is ‘anyway’. What ‘anyway’ means is that the thing in question will happen at any cost – any way. Too often it ends up costing our sanity, our health and our relationships.

You can justify anything if you try hard enough. And sometimes there are good things to do, but we just aren’t in the position to do them at that time. But when you know you shouldn’t do something or you can’t accept a commitment to the best of your ability right now, don’t go doing it anyway. It won’t turn out the way you want it to. When your commitment is to give the best you’ve got, you have to make some tough choices. Some things might have to fall away so that you can give your best where you can. And if what you’re wanting to do ‘anyway’ is something you know better than to do, giving your best means giving it up completely. When you know better, you do better, right?

I apologize, tummy. I won’t let you down again.