Shuffling
Our new house has a full basement, about a third of which is unfinished storage space. In the past, Alison and I’s household storage has been limited to closets and the occasional over-garage attic space. This is a whole other league.
As we moved in, it was easy to relegate things to the storage room. Carry the box downstairs and, in the openness, just set it down. Stuff expanded to fill the space it was given. Days into unpacking, the storage room was littered with items, strewn about without rhyme or reason, and leaving me with little room to walk around and a sense of dread every time I opened the door.
With the rest of the house unpacked, last week we turned our attention on this disaster. Shelving was ordered and assembled and, after moving items across the room like a giant version of the puzzle game Rush Hour, we finally got the room under control. It’s a tidy space now, completely different from even just a few days ago.
To get it done, we had to do a lot of shuffling. We moved items from one space to another, from one container to another. It took time, effort, and work, but ultimately nothing was accomplished. Shuffling the items from one wall to the other didn’t get us any closer to our final goal. It felt like progress, but it was an illusion. The concrete step of moving towards completion wasn’t complete until the item was in its new storage space, and we could turn our attention to the next.
This is how we spend too much of our lives. We shuffle, moving things around, without really doing anything to make our lives better. We move laundry day from Monday to Friday, we clear the notification badges on our apps, we switch from evening prayer to morning prayer, but while these feel like progress, they’re not.
The Christian life is anything but boring; it’s chaos. It is a top-to-bottom rejection of the shuffling that most people call “life.” It is an all-in, complete surrender to God’s way not only because He’s the author of life, but because His way is better.
Lent is just a few weeks away; our annual reset. Let’s make a decision this year to change the trajectory of all our tomorrows. Give up on our plans that hold us back, the wedges that separate us from the source of all that is good. Go all in, do things God’s way, and stop wasting life just shuffling things around for absolutely no reason.
Tomorrow Never Comes
I spent a lot of time thinking about the future. My brain is wired for efficiency, so no matter the task or topic, it’s constantly trying to optimize. It saves me some degree of time, to be sure, but I’m guilty of putting together plans for my plans.
Having a plan, for a project or just life, is a great thing. It allows you to make many decisions at the outset, and align your choices towards that end. Decision-making is streamlined because any option that doesn’t result in getting closer to the destination is instantly ruled out. You can move fast, and dedicate your mental load to other tasks.
But spending too much time thinking about the future cuts against you. Like dwelling on the past, you expend effort and emotional energy on things that cannot be changed. Life in the present moment passes you by because your head is always somewhere else.
At least when you dwell on the past, you have total certainty. The future, in many ways, is more troubling. Nothing is guaranteed as the ground is constantly shifting. It can be easy to spiral out of control, worrying about this or that thing that, frankly, might never even approach becoming a reality.
In moments like this, when I spend too much time thinking about the future and my anxiety about it starts to build, into my consciousness floats the words of Jesus:
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. - Matthew 6:34
Every season in life comes with its own unique challenges, no one better or worse than the next. Early in your marriage, you have all the time in the world to spend with your wife, and it’s difficult to figure out what to do with that time. Later, as parents, there is zero time and you yearn for that quiet freedom. Young children require most decisions to be made for them throughout the exhausting days, but they also deliver minutely doses of cuteness and unbridled love. As they grow, you get to connect with them as people, but lost is that lovable innocence from earlier days.
The past is over, and the future is always on its way, but what I have today is the present. And in the present I have a wonderful wife, four delightful children, a warm home, a cool job, and the opportunity to use every minute of today living the life I was made to enjoy.
Blending
We’re back from our annual family ski vacation, and had another successful year. Though more skiing is in our future, a unique aspect of our experience this week was that almost all of us had a ski lesson. In pairs of two, we set off for a few hours with an instructor to work on our skill.
I am still new to the sport, but what struck me was how everyone, no matter how long they’d been cutting across mountains, walked away from their lesson with something new. For me, as I begin to transition to more advanced techniques, our objective was blending.
There are three main skills to parallel skiing, and to be successful, you have to blend them together into a perfect balance. Too much of any one skill, and you could soon find yourself on the ground, collecting your equipment, and starting again. Too little, and as with too much, you don’t end up where you intended to be.
Blending is the quintessential skill of fatherhood. To a child, you must be a mentor, coach, and disciplinarian, all at different points during the day. You train your children in the principles that will guide them in life, encourage and cheer them on as they gain new skills and try new things, and correct errors to prevent them from becoming problems.
Too much, or too little, of any one blend and the results will not be what you intended. It is the art, and effort of a lifetime, for each parent to learn how to blend these skills, and tailor them to each child. It is an unimaginably difficult task, and one that must be done while maintaining work and family obligations. Leading a child is an all-consuming, and all-rewarding, experience.
As with skiing, mistakes will be made and crashes will happen. But we must get down the mountain, and the only way to do so is to get back up, reset set, and push forward.
Flipping Switches
I remember exactly how I felt. It was the fall of 2018 and two years into our new life out west, I was at my (then) highest weight ever. Alison and I decided to make a change, and as the calendar flipped to 2019, we eased into an entirely new lifestyle.
It wasn’t just that we wanted better guidelines for what to eat and how to fuel ourselves, as two exhausted young parents of three little kids, it was that we needed to take control. My headaches were derailing our life, and it was time to make the change.
Together, we slowly eased into it, with a one-week transition. It wasn’t perfect, there were times we fell off the wagon, but we were committed. I walked almost every day, and by Halloween, we had hit our goal. And it held for nearly four years.
The last two years have been a one-two punch of stressors bigger than we’ve faced before, and we lost ground. All of it. Through it all though, I never lost sight. I never gave up on my identity as a walker, or the sure belief that if I did the work, I’d reach my goal. Where I am is a temporary condition, a mile marker on the journey back.
Now settled, we’re back in the game, and it’s incredible how fast everything changes when you flip the switch. Health is a treasured gift that must be protected because once lost it is incredibly difficult to get it back. I have a full life, and to be prepared to tackle the daily obligations, I have to be at my best. I’m getting there because I never lost hope.
What’s true for physical wellness is true for spiritual wellness. We never give up on becoming the people we were made to be. When things get hard, when we fall down, we remember whose we are, flip the switch, and get back into the game.
A Full Day
When I think about my ideal day, every minute is scheduled out. I have books I want to read, news articles to follow, workouts to complete, prayers to pray, meditations to reflect upon, chores to check off, tasks to do, and maybe somewhere in there some rest? This type of zero-based time planning is extremely brittle, especially given how much life can throw at us.
The idea, though, is not a bad one. I’ve written many times over the years about schedules and time management, but if I were to be successful in executing on this perfect schedule for even a week, I can be sure of two things.
First, I can be sure that I’d lay down at night exhausted in the best possible way. I’d have met my needs in every area of my life and could be satisfied with my good work. Second, I could be sure that it would never last. Executing a plan perfectly every day over a long period is simply impossible. Life is impermanent, and that shifting nature would always collide with my perfect plans.
This presents me with a challenge. Do I strive for perfection, knowing that any effort is better than no effort? Or do I give up and fritter away my days?
A full day, in which I end it feeling satisfied, always takes work, focus, and discipline. The reward is that I end the day considerably closer to my goals than when I woke up.
Some Better Thing
We’re two weeks into the new year, and the grand designs that many of us made are at risk of faltering. One of the best ways that we can spend our time each day is in prayer. This tremendously important activity not only contributes to bringing God’s kingdom to earth, but it fortifies us for the struggles that we encounter in the ordinary life of our vocation.
There is no rule or formula that dictates how much we need to pray or ought to pray. It’s particular to our lives. Cloistered religious pray a vast majority of the day, but a parent has other holy obligations to attend to in the course of caring for their children.
The most common challenge we face in praying is just getting started. The time comes when we’ve decided to pray, but there always seems to be some better thing that we could be doing. I could pray now, but what about cleaning the kitchen? I could pray now, but what if I first just tidy my desk? I could pray now, but maybe it would be better if I work out first, and then I’ll be awake and alert.
We have precious few minutes and hours in our day. Our to-do list will never be complete, and there are many good and worthy things that we could do. But why not spend a few minutes in prayer, and then go do that other good thing?
Jubilee
It’s been 25 years since the Catholic Church last celebrated the Jubilee. I was in middle school in 2000, but I still remember the special events that occurred. Throughout the year, there will be many special opportunities to enrich our faith and draw from the treasury of graces.
In the Bible, the Jubilee was more than just a special year, spiritually. Debts would be forgiven, property rights restored, and slaves freed. It’s not difficult to imagine the joy that came with such liberation.
In the Catholic tradition, we’ve celebrated Jubilee’s for over 700 years, and these special years are meant to be equally liberating. There are opportunities for indulgences which erase the debt we owe to God’s mercy, and there will be many ways for us to participate in those opportunities.
In Rome, the Pope has opened the four Jubilee doors at the basilicas, and although most of us will be unable to walk through them this year, our participation in the Jubilee is not diminished. This is the year, our year, for us to finally lay down the sins that have been holding us back, and run through the wide open gates of God’s mercy.
Swept to Safety
In the entirely of salvation history, there are stories, major and minor, that all play their part. Every episode that made its way into the Bible contains enough truth and wisdom to fill a book of its own. This is especially true of the story of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt.
Although it takes up less than a quarter of one page of even a large print Bible, the story contains rich theological value. In it, we glean insights into the silent character of St. Joseph.
In his familial hometown, but away from his adult home, Joseph dutifully brings his young family to obey the order of Caesar. On the outskirts of town, in some empty cave or abandoned barn, the child who is entrusted to Joseph is born. While he sleeps, an angel again visits Joseph in his dream, this time with an urgent warning. The enemies of the child are gathering, seeking his life, and Joseph must spirit him away.
Quietly and in haste, Joseph loads up his family and journeys across the frontier to and into the relative safety and anonymity of Egypt.
As the dragnet was pulled across the whole kingdom of Israel, Joseph slipped through and frustrated the first challenge to Christ incarnate. This early attempt to end his life prefigures the future attempts, and effaces the threat to the global order that this infant presented.
Joseph is understood to be a deeply prayerful man. Angels visit him in his sleep, a sign that even in the quiet, idle moments of his day, he is disposed to prayer and receptive to the voice of God. He never speaks, and never questions these celestial messengers, but humbly obeys them to the letter.
King Herod, though subordinate to Caesar and his governor, still wielded immense and oppressive power over his subjects. The search must have been massive, as Herod reacted with wanton cruelty to the words of the magi. Despite the scale of the manhunt, Joseph, a simple carpenter, outwitted them all. He strongly and silently swept his family to safety.
The Great I Am
Born on Christmas Day is the King of Kings.
He arrived in a damp, cold, dark place, in some cave in the backwater of a once-great kingdom, to a people oppressed by their rulers, foreign and domestic. He chose to reset the global order not in a time of fast communication and stable democracies, but in a time of mass illiteracy, brutal tribalism, and gruesome cruelty.
In the midst of this chaos arrived the great I Am. The spark He struck has turned into the roaring flame that spread through the whole world. None of it was possible without a God whose love for His people could not be contained, or without the simple “yes” of a newlywed couple that brought the Christ-child into their home.
Rethinking Everything
The new year is just around the corner. In just over two weeks, 2024 will be in the books and a fresh new 2025 will be staring us down. Perhaps instead of tinkering around the edges with tired New Year’s resolutions, we should rethink everything.
Children are notorious for leaping to the next developmental stage without telling their parents. I find myself with children who are big enough to take on additional responsibilities in our home, but I’m still doing all the same work I’ve done since they were infants.
Every so often, we need to take a step back, and question everything that we do. What should we start, continue, and stop? This is easiest to do around major milestones in our year or lives, but if we haven’t done it in a while, this is our sign that today’s the day to rethink everything.