Family Life
Common Language
Two months ago, we had a power outage after strong spring storms swept through the area. It was getting near bedtime, but with the daylight growing longer, the children were restless. I pulled out my iPad and opened one of the few apps that isn’t dependent on the internet: Sneaky Sasquatch.
I’ve had access to Apple Arcade for years, and the game itself is nearly five years old, but this was only the second time I opened it. The first time, I quit in frustration. On that powerless March evening, something clicked.
The children gathered around me in my oversized chair as I navigated the open world, accomplishing all sorts of silly tasks. The graphics, lighthearted humor, and casual gameplay drew us all in. They begged to have access to Sneaky Sasquatch once the power returned.
Months later, my son will play on an iPad and stream it to the TV for his sisters to follow along. He’s getting jobs, and even adopted a dog that follows him around everywhere. They love it, and while I’m still a few steps ahead of him, he consults me on strategy and objectives.
The characters and gameplay have become part of our family lexicon. We even devised a token system to reward good behavior and helpful children, and to caution them when they go out of bounds. We have a powerful new tool in our family toolbox: a common language.
Every child responds to correction differently, and theirs mostly appears to mirror my dispositions. They need to be challenged, not confronted. The embarrassment of failure inspires a desire to move past it quickly. Simply marking the error and offering a correction is usually all it takes. Having Sneaky Sasquatch as a tool, I can offer a gentler correction, and ease us back into daily life.
In the game, when Sasquatch breaks the rules, he gets into “Ranger Danger,” and the park rangers capture him and put him back at his house or in jail. When my children cross the line, I can warn them that they’re in Ranger Danger, and with that challenge, they can correct.
Beyond just reward and discipline, I have a new universe to communicate with them. There are many interests that I do not share, and characters that I don’t understand. It wasn’t until I watched the Dogman movie that I understood what they were talking about all the time. Sneaky Sasquatch gives me another look into their world, and a playful way to connect with them.
I’m not a gamer, and most days I don’t have time to play Sneaky Sasquatch. But what I do have is an offline way to connect with my kids, to be playful with them, and to encourage them along.
Domestic Things
The Mass readings in the Easter season feature vignettes of the Risen Christ reintroducing Himself to His followers, and His followers grappling with what they are experiencing. The stories and scenes are familiar to us, but they are also eminently relatable. These are among the easiest stories to place ourselves in.
There is a thread that sticks out to me. We live in a culture of busyness that praises those who do-it-all. An intact executive function and one hundred sixty-eight hours are, in reality, not enough to do it all. Our work, family, and domestic responsibilities exceed our ability.
In the last decade, work-life balance was the watchword. This mythical reality stalked corporate America as workers sought the elusive goal of keeping their personal and professional responsibilities perfectly balanced. They were to be exactly 50/50, without any instances of one taking priority and harming the other.
Confronted with this hard truth, that we can’t do it all and there will never be stasis in our lives, we tilt towards feelings of overwhelm or out of control. In those moments, we’re more likely to prioritize our professional obligations over our personal ones. The domestic, after all, is pedestrian. I can do laundry any time, but if I do well on this project, I might get a promotion.
In comes Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, rising from the dead. Resurrected, before He even leaves the tomb, He makes His bed.
When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. - John 20:6-7
A few days later, when the Apostles are out fishing one morning, Jesus appears on the shoreline. Hearing of their lack of production, He sends them back out and they score a great catch. They race back to be with their risen friend,
When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. -John 21:9
But it wasn’t just that Jesus had prepared a fire, He went further,
Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. -John 21:13
Making beds, preparing breakfast, do these unassuming tasks sound familiar? They are ones that we undertake every day; small, ordinary things that evidence the rote nature of our routines. It’s these boring domestic things that we discount and society considers nothing. But it is in these small act that we find God, and our calling. We find our very purpose, to do small things with great love as Mother Teresa reminds us.
He did these things to show us that the simple, essential, repeating tasks that we must do each day are not to be despised. Rather, they are the very path to our perfection in Him.
Play-Based Childhood
My first phone was the Motorola Razor. I vaguely remember getting it as I was entering my sophomore year of high school, but it could’ve been my freshman year. With its T9 keyboard, and limited minutes and messages each month, I don’t believe I used to all that much. I called my parents and friends, but I was nowhere near tethered to it. The original iPhone was released the summer of my freshman year of college. I was an adult, with a mostly formed brain, and received that phone as a gift shortly after launch.
The iPhone marked a fundamental reorganization of the childhood experience. My Razr had little function outside texting, which was arduous, and phone calls. The iPhone, and really the App Store that rolled out the following year, changed everything and no one thought twice.
There’s no argument that kids and teens face a harsh world today. There’s plenty of reason to be anxious and unsettled, but it’s always been that way. Nostalgia clouds the mind as we try to go backwards in time, but the reality is that every generation of young people has faced its share of existential challenges.
As the research continues to pour in, we’re learning more about the troubling drop in happiness among youth and its decline into despair. The last 18 years, an entire generation of children, have been involuntarily enrolled in a social experiment. The results of that experiment will be a burden they carry forward for the rest of their lives.
Childhood, adolescence, and puberty are critical in the development of rational, productive adults. These are the times when we safely learn the rules of living in community, we curiously explore what it means to be a person, and we come to understand our place in the world. For the last 18 years, our children have instead spent less time playing and learning, and more time sedately staring at a rectangle.
Now, as teens and young adults, they continue to stare at the rectangles. Predators and charlatans no longer have to go to the mall to hawk their ideas and wares; they’re right in our children’s laps. Through a steady diet of anger and fear, then conscript these kids into their virtual army, child soldiers fighting for the agenda of a person they’ve never met, ruining their lives and worldview while enriching their new generals.
Parenting is a whole-of-self endeavor and entirely exhausting. Between work, taking care of the house, and raising children, it’s no wonder many houses are a mess, we eat out more than we should, and parents’ physical health is largely neglected. But, like the best things in life, doing the hard thing counterintuitively brings satisfaction.
Giving our children their devices as on-demand babysitters is the easiest thing to do. Fighting for them, protecting their innocence, and giving them the gift of a play-based childhood, although objectively harder, is objectively the right thing to do. It’s the childhood they deserve, and the childhood that will prepare them to be happy and satisfied adults.
Breathing Room
Impulse shopping is really, really fun. There’s the enticement of an email, the excitement of a deal, and the endless possibilities that this next purchase will open up. Anticipation builds as the fulfillment and shipping process plays out and crescendos at the unboxing.
As we mature as people, and in the management of our finances, it becomes clear just how damaging impulsing can be. What feels great in the moment fades to the reality that’s transpired. You changed your priorities, and now that you bought the new thing, some other thing must be deferred or delayed.
While true that impulse shopping feels good, so does a lack of chaos. I aspire to a boring, predictable financial life where the system mostly runs on autopilot. I want a financial life that allows me breathing room to make decisions, where I can add in new priorities without wrecking the essentials. I want to make decisions about what I’m going to impulse on at the beginning of the month, and then be ready to make that leap.
There are a minimum number of things that we have to buy every month: cleaning supplies, food, gas. When I feel that urge to impulse something, if I want to keep that breathing room in my financial life, I need to save it for later, think about, and plan to buy it in the next month.
IOUs
One of the false hopes that our psychology causes us to believe is that if we only had more, we’d be satisfied. If we only had that one more thing, a little more each paycheck, one more cookie, that’s all that we need. Regrettably and predictably, we get to that one more thing, only to find that the goalposts have moved.
Financial stress is a spectrum, and while we feel it very acutely when trying to get out of debt, it never really goes away. We will experience major negative financial events in our lives, and regardless of how prepared we are, it will be a trying time.
When you’re broke, a major car repair is stressful. But when you have a full emergency fund, you experience that same negative feeling when you have a major medical condition that requires you to pay out your deductible in a short period of time. The stress transfers from a scarcity of money to a desire to protect your emergency fund.
The budget is the plan to keep you on track towards your financial goals and prevent overconsumption. In times of stress, you may have to pause funding some of those major goals. This strategic pause then raises a new issue: do you forgive yourself for the months you “missed,” or do you run an internal debt IOU system to get back on track?
The answer to this question is not straightforward, but it’s okay to forgive yourself. We are not robots and none of us are on a perfect hockey stick growth trajectory. Long-term goals require long-term commitment, but missing a month or two or six on saving towards a 30-year goal is not going to make you miss the goal. It’s a small time window on a large horizon.
Don’t move the goalposts on yourself; get through the hard time and get back on track as soon as possible. Think about the future without dwelling on the past.
Renew, Refresh
About this time, every year, Alison and I are bitten by the spring projects bug. There’s something elemental about it; I never see it coming, and it always just bubbles into my consciousness.
Right on schedule, this week was the week. While last year we focused on an outside cleanup and overhaul, this year we’re totally focused on the inside. Not only is it time to refresh the wardrobe and make sure the kids have clothes that fit, we’re getting ready for students moving swiftly through their schoolwork.
Life with young children is always messy, but no matter how bad things get, I always yearn for the rejuvenation that a clean home provides. There are always different and better ways to organize and optimize. Though it’s difficult to stay on top of these things, having the right tools and plan makes all the difference.
This sense of renewal is precisely what Lent is, for our souls. We are material beings, but we’re also spiritual beings. As the house needs cleaning and refreshing, so too does the soul. As the weather changes, the buds bloom, and our bodies sense the newness of spring all around us, now is the perfect time to take care of spring-cleaning for your home and your soul.
Stillness
The Jewish people anticipate a great messianic return. Elijah tore off to Heaven on a chariot of fire, and he was merely a prophet! In ancient Israel, under the yoke of Roman occupation, the entire Jewish nation pined for the freedom the Messiah would bring and for the promise of the Covenant fulfilled.
Despite the anticipation, from the moment and manner of His birth, Christ sought to conform our wills to His. No triumphant return, but a common birth to a family with no title or land, all from a backwater town long forgotten by even the shadow Jewish government. Can anything good come from Nazareth? He was born in an anonymous cave, long forgotten by history, and welcomed by a few dirty shepherds.
There were no royal messengers dispatched to the four corners of the kingdom announcing the birth of the new king, no festival organized for days of celebration. There was only the total stillness of a dark winter’s night deep in the country.
It was the opening salvo in a ministry that sought to reorganize the world from top to bottom. A violent global population that only focused on survival and expanding temporal power was challenged by the message of Jesus. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself.
The message is simple. Though our hearts may yearn to be known, respected, desired, honored, praised and consulted, the slave is not greater than his master. We are called to live simple, quiet lives, fulfilling the high duty of our vocation, loving those around us, and walking in Christ’s footsteps, from the hill country of Bethlehem to the rock of Golgotha.
Fresh Start
With the house unpacked, and the children returned, today is our family’s fresh start. We are the same people, with the same jobs and school schedule, in a completely new environment.
It’ll take us time to adjust, to figure it all out, but this fresh start feels like a real opportunity. A new house, a new town, a new parish, it’s a chance to look at everything. I wrote last week that I had to touch every single thing that we owned when I unpacked. Now, I have to touch every single routine.
What do I want our days to look and feel like? How do I want to keep building my relationship with my children, expanding their minds, and exploring our world?
We get so few fresh starts in life. When they do come alone, it’s best to seize them.
Every Single Thing
We moved last week. Although I had the benefit of a whole crew to box up our home and relocate it, once the boxes were in the correct room, the crew left, and it was up to me.
The last several days have been chaotic, waking up early, going to bed late, and little to know schedule. I’ve had to physically touch every single item that we own, and decide on a new place to store it.
We grow numb to the magnitude of our property, to the amount of stuff that resides inside our four walls. We have everything we need, everything that could make us comfortable, entertained, even productive.
Moving always inspires people to slim down, and this move was no different for us. It was an exhausting process, even with the kids away. Although I’ve declared that I’m never moving again, I probably will. Hopefully, between now and then, I’ll be more mindful about the things that I buy and the stuff that I bring into my life.
New Beginnings
Growing up in a military family, moving was always a fact of life. Now with a family of my own, we’ve certainly moved a few times, but never like before.
A new beginning is just around the corner. After six years of life, and conquering Alison and I’s number one goal, it’s time to move on to new opportunities, and new right steps for her career and our family.
We’re starting to take things off the wall, preparing for painting and putting the house on the market. As I took that first hook out of the wall, I felt that moving feeling that filled my childhood. As the fresh paint dried, my nose picked up on that familiar scent that always signaled something new.
Our adventure continues, hopefully opening up broader horizons and brighter futures.