Faded Promises

Have you ever made a promise, forgotten about it, and then years later are reminded of it? Or a promise that someone made to you?

I had that happen to me today. I was up in our attic, looking for a book, when I found a box of old letters. Really old, from the summer of 2007. I began sifting through them, and found some from an old friend of mine with whom I've fallen out of contact. Of all the letters I happened to pick up and read, it was the one in which there was a promise of working to uphold our friendship.

Now I can't deny that my friend didn't try. There was plenty of effort put into our friendship, and it lasted for a good long time. However, life made its inevitable play and we have moved our separate ways. It simply struck me as ironic, that promise. A promise made with hope and determination, but one that time has proved to be rather empty.

I don't blame my friend for our distancing. In fact, I still count my friend as a friend of mine. Time has just pushed us different directions.

We each make promises each and every day. It truly is interesting to see just how few we are actually able to keep as the years move on. We make our promises, well-intended and full of determination and desire, but as the years wear on, we find that we are either unable or no longer wish to keep that promise made some time before. Perhaps, with this new thought in my mind, I'll be a little slower to make promises that I may not be able to keep simply because of the passage of time.