Philosophy
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.
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.
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.
Gratitude
And just like that, the end of 2024 is upon us. We celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, and many of us will be traveling across town or across the country to spend time with family.
My daughter asked me what we’re thankful for on Thanksgiving. I told her that we’re thankful to God for all the blessings in our lives. The debt of gratitude we owe to God surrounds us; from the very relationship He seeks to share with us, to the fact that we’re sitting in our climate controlled homes reading this blog post on a magical rectangle.
There is much to be grateful for, even on our darkest days. We were made for this place and this moment, and along with that purpose comes the side benefit of living in the most technologically advanced and comfortable society in the history of humanity.
This week we will collectively pause to reflect on the many blessings in our lives. May we be truly grateful for all that we have, and may God’s blessings continue to fill our lives in the days to come.
Thank You
I have written many posts over the years marking Veterans Day. This is a day for us to pause to not only thank those who gave us everything, but the many, many more who gave part of their lives to protect and defend us and our way of life. This self-sacrifice is among the highest of human ideals and for that, all I have to say today is, thank you.
One Second
On Saturday, I made a scheduled site visit for work. It’s a bit of a hike to the office, just over 2.5 hours, but the drive is mostly on big open roads. It was a normal Saturday, almost boring.
I wrapped up my work and swung into a local gas station to fuel up and grab a snack. After getting my gas, I went inside and quickly picked up my food. Checking out, though, was weird. I tried to use the self-checkout, but it was painfully slow between my four items. The fourth one just would not scan. The manager insisted that the system was fine, but I hopped over to a cashier anyway. I had similar trouble with my debit card.
I got into the car and, as I pulled away, I prayed the Traveller’s Prayer. I usually pray it when leaving the house on this trip, and can’t recall a time I prayed on the return trip; I always just figure once per trip is fine.
The drive was busier than usual, cars moving slowly and keeping me from an easy cruise-control drive. Things were really slowing me down. The path is on a wide four-lane divided highway, with long stretches of open road between tiny towns.
There is one town, in particular, where the speed limit drops precipitously as the divided highway gives way to a 5th paved center lane. It’s known for speed traps, so regular drivers know to take it slow. As we neared the end of the city limits, I was eager to accelerate, but cars in the left and right lane were blocking my way.
As I moved into the right lane to pass the driver cruising in the left, my eyes were drawn to a gold Toyota Camry crossing the center lane, entering the left lane, and coming right at me.
When I was in high school, I participated in a teen defensive driving program called Driver’s Edge. Sponsored by insurance companies and professional driving tracks, the one-day course creates a safe and controlled environment where teens can push cars to the limits in extreme driving scenarios, and understand how to react. The instructors are nearly all professional drivers.
In that moment, when I perceived the car coming at me like a YouTube dash cam crash video, I reflexively reacted. I jammed the accelerator and made an evasive swerve away from the oncoming car. The car passed by close enough that I could see the driver’s face, and slammed head-on into the car behind me. Had I reacted one second later, or braked instead of accelerated, it would’ve been me.
I remember three still frames from that moment; when I first noticed the car, the blank look on the driver’s face as he passed by, and the moment of impact behind me as seen through my rearview mirror.
I stopped, along with many other drivers. We did what we could, but the situation was dire for the wrong-way driver. From the entire time I saw his car in motion, there was no reaction. Combined with the blank look on his face, it appeared that he was unaware of what was going on. He wasn’t much better when we reached his car, he was seriously injured, in pain, and fading. He lost consciousness as the paramedics arrived, less than 10 minutes after the collision, and did not recover.
It was comforting, in the days before the contentious election, to see who we really are as a country. All of us who stopped had somewhere to be, and no idea who these people were. But we saw that they were in trouble, and we helped.
Speed wasn’t a factor in this accident, merely the violence of two cars traveling at speed in opposite direction violently colliding. One second and a few feet is what made the difference for me on Saturday afternoon. I’m confident that I would’ve been okay, but it was still terribly sad for the driver to experience a medical episode, lose control of his vehicle, and die with such numerous and traumatic injuries. I was one of the last people he spoke to in those 10 minutes as he faded away, and pray that whomever he was, he went from speaking to me to standing in the presence of God Himself.
One Thousand
To understand life is to understand impermanence. As we grow, experience, and learn new information, we are changed as people. We become ourselves as the sum total of the people we meet, the things we do, and the books we read.
I started this project, Catholic Husband in March of 2013 with the idea of working as a writer. I did become a writer, but by practicing this craft for more than a decade, I actually set myself up perfectly for my current job.
This is my 1,000th blog post. Taken together, this body of work reflects my thoughts and experiences as a husband and a father. As I flip through my old posts, I can recall the emotions and events that inspired the post, like mile markers along this journey.
It was not always easy to stay committed to this project, and there were some breaks here and there. But now, standing here at this milestone, I find myself receiving a gift from my former self. By taking the time to express my thoughts in the medium that I prefer, writing, I can see clearly the experience that is my life, laid out all together.
Catholic Husband is not meant to be a historical record, but rather a living handbook. These thoughts and ideas are the ideal that I aspire to; these are the ways to think and act for those of us who wish to live as the Holy Family lived. I, like Catholic Husband, am a work in progress. But if I persist, if I run the race, I will end much closer to my goal than if I never tried.
Few blogs make it this far, but I’ve only just begun.
Starting Over
In the 5th grade, my teacher, Mr. Gleeves, would start most days by announcing, “Today is the first day of the rest of your lives.” That was over 25 years ago, but now as I sit down to write this, those words are coming to the fore.
Life is considerably more complicated than it was to my 5th grade-self. I have my children to tend to, a job, and all the responsibilities that come with being an adult. It’s a lot to manage, and it means that I take my eye off the ball regularly.
I’m not a robot, and I cannot reasonably expect myself to adhere methodically to my ideal schedule. Yes, if I did everything in strict time blocks, I would have time to get it all done. But life doesn’t work that way.
Many times a day, a week, a month, I have to start over. And while it may be discouraging at first, having to build momentum again starting from zero, I’m still in the fight. I haven’t quit, I haven’t given up, and I’m not staying where I’ve been. That is something to look forward to.
Hints of Fall
The dog days of summer are in the rearview mirror as pumpkin spice season is just around the corner. It was another long, hot summer and I’m so ready for the first blast of cool Canadian air.
The green shoots of spring inspire me every year. Subconsciously, I reorganize, plan, and start thinking strategically again. I find myself getting outside of the day-to-day and making a game plan for the season ahead. The crisp fall air and cozy gray skies have the same effect on me.
As I perceive the first hints of fall, my mind gets back into that higher level thinking. It’s natures way of reminding me of the coming winter, and how quickly my life is progressing. The best time to live my best life was last summer; the next best time is starting today.