Stuff You Can't Afford to Lose

Most of what you have, you can afford to lose. Really.

You can't afford to lose faith.

You can afford to lose family - and one day, you will, in part or in whole.

You can afford to lose reputation, because it's what other people think of you, and you can't control that.

But you can't afford to lose your honor. Often seen as the handmaiden of reputation, it's far deeper, because it goes into your soul.

Honor, at its basic level, is being the person who does the right thing, and who can be depended on to do the right thing. You keep your covenants.

Always.

Because if you break one, just one time, you've changed your life forever. Yes, God will forgive you and put your sins as far away as the East is from the West.

But convincing your own heart to follow suit is almost impossible. You can forget for a long time, you can accept forgiveness from those you've wronged, you can convince yourself that it's along time past and you're a different person...

...and then a chance remark or a hint subtle as a summer-night breeze will bring it all back, in its dreadful grandeur.

And there is no temporal atonement. The Japanese Samurai thought they were onto something with seppuku...that all honor lost could be regained through the simple expedient of ritual suicide.

Which only serves to show why there aren't many practicing samurai still around, I guess.

For the rest of us, lost honor bows our heads, and shades our hearts. It shouldn't be thus...we should be able to feel washed clean, with a new start.

But most of us don;t, and can't. Fact of life. God may be disappointed, but I suspect He understands.

So teach your kids...your word is vital, and the promises you make before man and God have to be faithfully kept.

Because there are some burdens you simply can't put down.