Total Commitment

Total Commitment

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7

When the late Patrick Swayze wrote his memoir, he wasn’t telling his story to others as much as to himself and his wife, Lisa. Actually, they wrote the book together, as a team. Though the book focuses on the dancer and actor’s life, it also examines the couple’s life and their nearly lifelong relationship.

Lisa and Patrick met when she was fifteen years old (he was eighteen) and a dance student of Patrick’s mother. Four years later, on June 12, 1975, in Houston, Texas, they were married. Over the next thirty-four years, they worked together and dealt with success, disappointment (including two miscarriages and no children), addiction, and loss.

In 2008, Patrick was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His struggle to fight the disease captured headlines around the nation, and he died the following year at the age of 57. Since his book was begun after his diagnosis and came out after his death, its reflections had perhaps a more sober tone than many other memoirs of people so relatively young.

In The Time of My Life, his memoir with Lisa, Patrick wrote, “The one thing I realized as Lisa and I retraced the arc of our lives is that no matter what happened, we never, ever gave up—on each other, or on our dreams. I’m far from perfect, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. But that’s one thing we both got right, and it’s the one thing that’s keeping me going today.”^a

As the saying goes, commitment in the face of adversity produces character—but another result is a rock-solid marriage. What can you do today to infuse your marriage with the kind of staying power that flows from forgiveness, trust, and unwavering commitment?

I suppose it’s about keeping love alive, learning how to fall in love over and over again, not taking each other for granted, forgiveness, trust. Whatever it is, it works for us.

—Patrick Swayze

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