June 11, 1994 was the day Shannon and I looked in each other’s eyes and committed our lives to one another.
At the end of the ceremony, after I had kissed my new bride, we were pronounced husband and wife and began the recessional. Once we were out the back door of the auditorium, we were all alone as a married couple.
And that’s when it hit me.
I didn’t feel any different. As a 22 year old young man, I truly believed that getting married would feel different than being single. Almost as soon as I realized that I was the same exact guy as 30 minutes before, I realized that marriage had nothing to do with feeling and everything to do with commitment.
You see, feeling is something we have very little control over whereas commitment is completely up to us. As a newly married man, feelings did not determine the success or failure of my marriage. My commitment totally did.
The same is true for nearly everything else in life. If we rely on feelings alone to get us where we want to be, we will fail to find ourselves there.
But if we commit ourselves, we can accomplish nearly anything we set our minds to.
Joel Stiff's Adventure 