Focus
The opportunity to gain clarity in your life is rare. The busyness of the world and daily distractions easily get us to lose focus on our objectives. We’ve got too much going on in the present to be concerned about tomorrow, the broader future, or even what’s just on our periphery.
My family is growing in the next few weeks with the birth of my fourth child. One of my favorite parenting techniques for helping my kids prepare for the birth, and the dramatic changes to come, is to pull out baby gear in phases. I start with the car seats. First, everyone gets their new seat assignment. A week or two later, the new car seat base is installed. More time passes, and the empty seat is fully installed. It gives them a chance to adjust and takes the edge off when the new baby is finally here.
One of the benefits of impending birth is the gift of focus. I know that my whole routine is going to be upended, so I make a detailed study of what’s working now and what isn’t. I’m looking out for blind spots and pitfalls. With that information, I process what changes will be necessary. It also gets me to think about my future. Insurance coverages are reviewed, plans are checked, and other important things come to mind that I haven’t considered in months, or even years.
Another opportunity for clarity came with the pandemic. I went to Confession the weekend before everything shut down. In those six or eight weeks when the parish doors were shut and locked, and I knew that the Sacraments weren’t available to me, I thought differently about my actions. I readily acknowledged the grace present within me, and labored to grow in virtue. It worked. I was engaged, consistent, and committed to my personal spiritual growth. When the doors re-opened, I lost some of my spark. It’s not a loss, though. That focus proved something to me: I can do it. All I need to do is re-implement the plan.
Focus is breathing room. It’s the space that we need to process the events of our lives and chart a path forward. While some major events naturally tend to lend focus, giving yourself a momentary pause to catch your breath and evaluate your life might be all that you need to course correct and get moving in the right direction.
A Few Extra Minutes
Taking care of children is no easy task. Apart from the heavy lifting of moral and character education are the daily mundane tasks. These are the repeating things that I do every day without a thought, like getting dressed, taking a shower, or brushing my teeth. When I do them for myself, it requires almost no effort, but doing them for all three of my children is a heavy lift.
I have a bias towards my children. I can get my kids up and dressed every day. I can get their little teeth brushed, and even help them pick up their rooms. The problem comes when it’s my turn. The care of my children is too often to my own detriment. They’re dressed nicely for the day, but I look like a slob. Their teeth are brushed, but mine, well, I’ll get to it later.
Part of the equation is energy and part of it is time. If I’m short on time, it’s easy to skip shaving or picking out an outfit for myself. It gets me on to the next thing that I need to do.
After letting this process play out over several months, I’ve come to a conclusion. Taking care of myself does take a few extra minutes and a little more effort. That investment of time and effort makes a big difference in my day. By slowing down and enjoying those moments getting ready for the day, I subtly acknowledge my own importance. I acknowledge that I deserve to be taken care of, too. Plus, doing the math, skipping these things saves me five or ten minutes, tops.
The way that we treat our bodies plays a big role in the way that we see ourselves. Even in the rush of morning, make sure that you have the time you need to get yourself a nice shower, fresh shave, and a comfortable outfit that makes you feel great. Then you’ll be ready to take on the world (and your kids).
Our Responsibility
Once or twice a month, I’ll take an hour or so on a Saturday afternoon to go to Confession. Occasionally, I’ll throw in an additional errand or two that is better done without the kids. For many of these outings, I’d spend my entire time away from home feeling guilty. I’d feel guilty about leaving my wife, who worked hard all week, alone to watch the kids. I was wrong to feel that way.
Taking care of our children isn’t my responsibility and it’s not Alison’s responsibility. It’s our responsibility. As a stay-at-home dad, I’m on watch while Alison is at work. When I’m away from home, it’s Alison’s watch. I shouldn’t feel guilty about Alison taking on a responsibility that we share together.
I told Alison how I felt, and she rightly noted that it was silly. In fact, she loves spending time with the children. I do too, but by the end of the week, a break is a welcome relief. I should take that hour or 90 minutes on the weekend to feel relaxed and at ease.
Parenting is something that couples do together. It’s not your spouse’s responsibility or your responsibility, it’s our responsibility. Get the job done, together, and don’t begrudge your spouse when they need some time off.
Daily Preventative Medicine
Virtue is the antidote to sin. It’s not enough to avoid sin, whether by white-knuckling it or avoiding triggers. The only way to truly avoid sin is to live a virtuous life. The best way to live a virtuous life is to build prayer into your day.
Prayer functions like a daily preventative medicine. It builds up charity and virtue. It makes it harder for temptation to sway you and it keeps you from ending up in places that lead you to sin.
Teachers and pastors in the Catholic Church spent plenty of time talking about sin. Do we spend enough time talking about virtue? Prayer isn’t just a few minutes here and there of rote recitation. It’s rest. It’s time apart from the cares, concerns and worries of your life. It’s communication. It’s intimate connection between created and Creator. It’s rehabilitation. It’s acceptance and absorption of grace, restoring the soul to a state of grace.
If you want to beat sin, if you want to overcome temptation, focus on prayer. A consistent habit of prayer, of different means and expressions, sprinkled throughout your day is how your gear up for daily battle. Perfection is not possible; virtue is. The path to virtue is through prayer.
Opening the Domestic Church
The center of the daily life of the Church is the Eucharist, but it’s not the whole life. Most of us have been unable to physically access the Mass for the past several months, leading to great sorrow. In the midst of this suffering, we’ve experienced the beauty of opening the domestic church.
The domestic church is an idea codified during the Second Vatican Council. It’s not a physical structure; it’s the place where the family lives and serves one another. It’s the atmosphere in which faith is taught, where we first learn about God, and we each seek to do His will.
Home is our family’s refuge from the world. It’s a place of safety and peace. It’s the place where we work, play, pray, create, learn, and rest. A child’s home is their first school. It’s the place where they learn virtue, morality, and about their faith.
The doors to our parishes may be closed and locked, but a new Church has been opened in every home. Never before has there been such a profound opportunity to live out this idea. Our circumstances encourage us to pursue an active faith life at home. It’s easy for us to lean heavily on our parishes to provide not only the sacraments, but religious instruction, community gatherings, and devotionals. While quarantined at home, we are confronted with the reality that the parish is meant to support the faith life that we cultivate in our home.
Now’s the time to continue your good work. Continue to find new ways to pray together as a family. As your family’s faith life matures, find new devotionals and practices to incorporate into your week. Be confident in your ability to teach your children about God, faith, and morality. Parents are the primary educators of their children. Be bold enough to take personal responsibility for that role!
Now that Churches are re-opening, don’t let your domestic church close!
Beyond Routine
For a few weeks now, I’ve felt like I was adrift. While considering my daily routine and struggling to get back on the horse, I came to a deeper insight. A daily routine without purpose is monotonous. If I’m going through my daily repeating task list with no aim or goal, I should feel bored and lost. If the tasks that I’m accomplishing day in and day out aren’t oriented towards some larger goal, then how can I expect fulfillment?
Using that lens, I took a closer look at my schedule and daily task list. On it, I saw lots of cleaning. Every Monday I do the laundry and clean the entire house. Each day I clean the kitchen and sweep the floors. Cleaning is my responsibility in my family and I relish a clean house. In order to fulfill my responsibility and have a clean house, I have to work at it every day.
I enjoy writing and publishing on this blog. I need to take time each week to plan, write, edit, prepare, and publish.
I want to live a healthy life. I need to maintain a healthy sleep cycle and exercise for an hour each day. I need to avoid sugar and drink water each day.
I want to be a constant learner, so I need to take time each day to read.
I want to be a great father, so I need to take care of my children and play with them.
As I take a look at these goals, I start to see the contours of my day. I want to get an early start, so I need to get to bed on time. Waking up early with nothing to do is annoying. Waking up with purpose, and understanding how that enables me to get all that I want to get done, gives tremendous meaning.
Routine is more than just a cycle. Routine is your goals, broken down into daily steps, and assigned a specific time to work on them. Woven together, these days bring meaningful progress over time.
It’s easy to feel stuck or adrift when everything is routine. When you start to look at the bigger picture, your goals and the direction that your life is going in starts to come into focus.
Safety and Stability
We live comfortably, but that’s rarely the experience of Catholics. Many, if not most Catholics throughout history lived very rough lives. They’ve been outcasts, despised, reviled, jailed, tortured, and killed. In this pandemic, we too share in this experience of discomfort. How will we respond?
In the midst of this chaos, it’s plain to see our misplaced reliance on ourselves. Our failure to place total faith in God is made quite plain. This is an invitation to get back into the sheepfold. It’s an opportunity to let God do as He promised, and to concern ourselves with the spiritual welfare of our families.
We seek safety and stability, two concepts rarely experienced in the Salvation History by God’s people. Be bold enough to live out the faith that you proclaim. Seek God.
First Communion
I made my First Communion more than two decades ago. In that time, I’ve rarely been more than seven days without receiving the Eucharist. As I sit here at my desk in early June, it’s been over 90 days since I’ve been to Mass and celebrated the Sacred Liturgy in person.
This weekend, my family and I will return to Mass. During this time in the desert, I have hungered for the Eucharist. What was before taken for granted is now sorely missed. It wasn’t just the ritual or rhythm that I missed, it was the physical separation from Love itself.
I’ve spent time reflecting on the Eucharist and its importance in my life. One of my biggest takeaways is how difficult it must be to be a non-Catholic Christian. Christianity isn’t an easy way of life, but it’s made easier through the strength and grace that the Eucharist confers. The fact that I’m able to attend Mass almost every day of the year and come into physical contact with the God who knows and loves me is mind bending.
Frequent reception of Communion can have a dulling effect on the senses. That routine can easily bring me to the point where I put more faith in Tylenol than the Eucharist. When I take Tylenol, I expect something to happen. Do I have the same expectation of the Eucharist? How can I physically come into contact with life, love, and goodness Itself and not walk away a changed, transformed person?
I don’t specifically recall my emotions as I prepared to make my First Communion, but I have vividly experienced this time apart. I hope and pray that I will never have to endure such a period again. I also pray that I’ll never again take my Eucharistic Lord for granted.
Contemplating Life
Change is on the horizon for my family. Later this summer, we’ll be welcoming our fourth child home. The Book of Psalms describes children as a “gift from God” and as “a reward.” As I watch these young lives blooming before my eyes in slow motion, I’m seeing the wisdom of the author.
The warped view of human sexuality that has taken root among our friends and families is discouraging. The most intimate expression of human love diluted and redefined into merely a physical, transactional act. The overall effect is a loss of the sense of awe that we possess surrounding marital love. If we dare to pull back the veil, if we seek to explore more fully its meaning, we see our pivotal role in the divine plan.
God chose, in His wisdom, to actively involve spouses in human reproduction. Separate from the animal kingdom, the decision to establish and grow a family is meant to be one deeply rooted within a marriage. It’s a process full of prayer and discernment. It’s a joint conclusion that meets at the mysterious crossroads of martial and divine love. As a result, an entirely new being is brought forth
This new person’s creation, effected by God and the love of spouses, was intended, from the beginning of salvation history, to be brought into the world. Their participation in the divine life and plan is only possible through the mutual love of spouses.
This summer, our family will experience, and make possible, the joyful fulfillment of God’s loving plan. As a result, everyone who comes into contact with our daughter will have the experience of our joy.
I hope that I will not soon forget the gravity, mystery, and majesty of this birth.