Be Silly
Benedict’s favorite part of the work week happens on Thursday mornings at our library. He absolutely loves story time. Even though we’ve only been going for a few months, he knows when we’re driving to the library and he always charges into the story room. It’s a great time for us to be out and about, for him to interact with other little people, and for him to learn from someone other than me.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m usually the only dude there. I do have another dad friend who’s wife is in the same program as Alison, but they’ll be moving this summer and soon it’ll be just me. I’ll admit that the whole story time situation is a bit awkward, at least it seems like it is for the moms.
The most awkward part is when we sing. The moms are into it, and frankly, so am I. Yet, for some reason, I just feel these waves of judgement coming my way. It’s as if singing is for moms and not for dads. We’re a changing economy and more dads are staying home to tend the children. In my biased opinion, if a family is able to work out that situation, it doesn’t really matter who stays home. Benedict loves to sing and I know that he takes the majority of his cues from me, so if I’m not singing, he may get the impression that he shouldn’t sing either. That’s no way to live!
All of this comes back to the subject of what makes a “good dad.” So many adults are sadly estranged from their fathers and I think that, in part, it’s because too many men have the wrong idea of who a father is. It’s not manly to be standoffish and cold. That’s called being a jerk. Imagine if God, as our father, acted in that way! No, He’s warm, active, and involved. We should be too. We need to give ourselves permission to be silly, because that’s what our children long for. A good dad is someone who’s not only present, but willing to ignore societal norms for the sake of his children.
We spend too much of our time subconsciously trying to stay within the lines. It’s time that we break the mold, color outside of the lines, and be the dads we ought to be.
Etiquette in Marriage
I recently wrote about my thoughts on reading “Emily Post’s Essential Manners for Men: Second Edition.” In that post, I highlighted the three components of etiquette: 1. consideration (how others will feel), 2. respect (how your actions affect others), and 3. honesty (courteous truth telling). I want to look at these there principles and evaluate in a specific way how their implementation can improve the marital relationship.
I think its important to note just how much we take for granted the latitude we have in our actions within the marital bond. The permanence of marriage can give us a sense of invincibility or that our relationship with our wife can take more neglect than our other relationships. This is a dangerous line of thinking. Rather, our marital relationship should be given extra special and care as it is the primordial relationship of our adult life from which all of our relationships flow. For this reason, we should be especially concerned about using proper etiquette at home.
Consideration is the easiest of the three to apply in the married life. Having empathy for your wife should be second nature. When she feels sick, it’s easy to identify with her misery and to seek to ease her ills. When she’s overwhelmed, it’s easy to connect with those emotions and to find ways to help her lower her stress levels. Consideration is all about responding to her, and as long as you don’t default to rage, anger, isolation, or disinterest, you’ll handedly master this principle. It’s nothing more than the golden rule.
Respect is much more challenging. As with sin, there are two components to respect: omission and commission. Your actions, and those actions that you should be taking but fail to, absolutely impact your wife. It can be a good impact when you keep your word, promptly respond to requests, and maintain the parts of the home that you’ve agreed to tend to. Being self-centered, uncaring, cold, rude, thoughtless, or deceitful are all violations of mutual respect and clearly are poor etiquette. They won’t build your marriage any stronger than it is. Cleanliness plays heavily into the respect category. Leaving a mess behind for her to clean up or failing to honor her requests when it comes to helping her keep things clean are major respect violations. There’s plenty in here and you know where your areas for improvement are.
Finally, we have the most challenging for us as men: honesty. We love to be honest, but brutally honest. The principle of honesty asks that we are courteous with the truth. That means that when one of your wife’s behaviors is causing friction, you must share that with her in a kind and loving way, and not in the form of a demand or a personal attack. Honesty focuses on the action or idea, not the person. We tend to want to lay our cards out on the table, find a solution, and move on. However, we need to recognize that women communicate differently and working though and issue is more of a journey.
Regardless of where you stand in terms of strength of your marital etiquette, there’s always room for improvement. With intentionally, focus, and self-evaluation, you can be a true gentleman and experience the benefits of a fruitful and dynamic marriage.
The Danger of Despair
There are many obstacles to living a holy life. We must overcome our environment, our past choices, and even our own natural inclinations. While our “fight or flight” nature defaults us to looking out after our own self interest, the Christian life demands that we look outward first before tending to our own wants and desires. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle that we must overcome in this fight against our inclination to sin is dispelling ourselves of the false nature of despair.
Despair is when we stop believing in God’s promise of mercy. It’s essentially a state that calls God a liar. There is no hope, no salvation. I am a bad person, I don’t deserve anything good, I, I, I, me, me, me. While despair carries the mask of reality, it is truly far from it. While it is true that none of us are worthy of salvation, God in His goodness extends through space and time to make us worthy. We are worthy not by our own merits, but by His. There is always hope, there is always salvation, and there is always a way back.
Despair, like fear, resides in the darkness of our minds. It is the loud, yet singular, voice telling us things that we first don’t believe, but as we go deeper into the message, fall victim to the thinking. It creeps, grows, and spoils the goodness within us. As we give despair more and more credence, we start to act on it, committing sin that we otherwise would have avoided had we not believed that salvation was just too far. It’s a disastrous thought process that permits sin on the basis of prior sins committed. Like a storm surge over a breached flood wall, we’re overcome. Inundated, we feel helpless and trapped, and so we turn to the loudest voice in our minds. That voice isn’t the sound of God reaching out to save us, no that voice was tuned out long ago. Instead, it’s the voice of despair leading us deeper in the darkness as we drown.
The nature of despair, however, is not the looming monster that we believe it to be. Rather, it’s as wispy as a morning fog. When the sun rises, it rapidly dissipates, leaving no trace of its existence. While we may walk into the confessional lost in the thick haze, the rays of God’s mercy dispel of the darkness leaving us squarely back in the light. The voice of despair remains, but now its strength has been supplanted by Truth itself.
Despair, however, refuses to be beaten. That characteristic is one that we should admire. Like a colony of ants whose hill was just knocked over, it’s right back to work on its mission of deception. The only difference now, however, is that your defenses are back up. Filled with grace instead of drowning in despair, you’re prepared to see through the falsehoods and see despair for what it really is. We can never silence despair, but we can marginalize it to the point of inconsequence.
The of all of the challenges that we face in the spiritual life, none are more sinister than the silent killers. The negative thoughts that linger in our minds are those which will completely destroy us, if we let them. In times of despair, use logic and reason to recall that what God has promised, He has done. There is no cause of doubt or concern. Turn to Him, listen to Him, and follow Him.
Keeping Priorities Straight
If you feel guilty spending time with your family instead of working, you need to adjust your priorities.
Being A True Servant Leader
Servant leadership is a term that’s quite popular in management circles. It attempts to form leaders who care less about the power and more about using the influence to lift up their team members. Servant leadership turns the traditional model of leadership on its head by using its forces for good, instead of allowing itself to become open to corruption. While it may be atypical to find servant leaders in the workforce, once place that makes it easy to find these great leaders is in the home.
Reflecting more deeply on the life of a parent, I’m reminded of the great model of servant leadership that parenthood offers us. Extreme levels of sacrifice, a significant downgrade of personal priorities, and total commitment to the cause are all attributes of great leaders, but they’re also reflective of great parents. Parents forget about their wants and needs in order to care for their children. Parents are true servant leaders.
Too often we build walls between our work and our home life. Rightly so, these barriers are constructed to protect our family from the work creep that comes into family time via our phones and computers. I recently challenged you to not divorce your faith and work life and today I want to take that challenge one step further. None of us are perfect parents, but the lessons we learn in parenting can be applied in other areas of our lives to the benefit of all.
Take, for example, if you applied the same levels of sacrifice you make for your kids in your marriage. What if you answered every one of your wife’s requests, stopped what you were doing to listen to her, and do whatever she wanted? What if she did the same?
What if you took the lessons of parenthood and applied them at work? What if your set aside your own objectives and desires for the sake of the team, if you went out of your way to coach a colleague, and only offered constructive criticism?
Parenting is the ultimate vehicle for adult growth because it calls us back to our core values. Parenting demands respect, gentleness, and humanity. Parenting requires all of those great values that we wish we had in a leader. If we were to take its lessons and apply them in other areas of our lives, I bet people would start to take notice and maybe, just maybe, the benefits of being noticed might take you to a place that you want to be.
Painful Reminders
We’re all a bit detached from reality. We see ourselves in a certain light that tends to be a bit brighter than it actually is. At the very least, we have an ideal that we’re trying to reach. Daily we’re confronted with reality when we consider our mistakes, failings, and past errors that painfully remind us just how far we have to go.
To err is human, but so is to dwell. We like wallowing in self-pity and will indulge ourselves any chance that we get. We tell ourselves that we are the way we are because of circumstances beyond our control conspiring against us. The truth is that the only thing holding you back from being a better you is, well, you.
I like to be comfortable and so I’ll instinctively pivot away from pain at any chance that I get. This is a natural occurrence, but one that we should really focus on overcoming. Comfortable is safe, and safe is dangerous. Like the frog swimming happily in the warming waters, we can be unaware that comfort is slowly killing us.
Instead of internalizing these painful reminders, what if we laid them down and used them as stepping stones. A broken road that ultimately reaches our destination is just as useful in the final analysis as a perfect road that takes us to the same place. We carry too many burdens that rob us of the joys that we could be experiencing today and our family of the man that they deserve.
Pain is our body’s alarm system attempting to modify our actions. When you encounter painful reminders of a dark past, learn the lesson, lay it down, and walk on. In this way you’ll live a happier today and not have to go through the same challenges tomorrow.
Family Time Activities
I love Spring. Nature reminds us of the joy and hope of new life and new growth and the season also signals the beginning of the outdoor season. Every member of the family values, to admittedly varying degrees, time spent together as a family. As humans, we crave connection, and family time gives us that in a very safe and stable way. Just as it’s important to provide a young child with a variety of activities, your family time shouldn’t be spent solely in your living room. Spring and Summer present a wide variety of outdoor fun that can bring joy to all members of your family.
With a range of scheduling conflicts and a to do list that grows each day, I understand the challenges of meaningful family time. It’s easy to just watch a movie together when you’re exhausted from a long week of work and are burdened by all of the things you still have to get done. While watching movies together certainly counts as quality family time, you and your family need more.
Planning family time activities doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t have to be a burden. Taking time to write out a menu of options on Sunday afternoon and then having your family pick one whenever you have family time is a great way to manage the process and prevent defaulting to television. There are plenty of hidden options right in your community. Recently Alison and I were driving back from the outlet malls on back roads and discovered a small local zoo off the beaten path just 20 minutes from our house. That would be a perfect activity for us!
Spontaneity is a significant component in family activities. While some together time is planned, other time will just show up. It may be a night where no one has anything scheduled or a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Be ready to take advantage of good weather when it comes through your area.
Family time activities should be varied to prevent boredom, and they should touch on everyone’s interest at one time or another. By doing some advance work and preparing a menu of options, you can be ready to pique everyone’s interested and create family memories to last a lifetime.
Be You
We all wear masks. We instinctively alter our behavior when we believe we’re being watched in order to match what we believe other people want. This phenomenon is seen most clearly in children who are always seeking to please their parents. The problem with this behavior modification is that it can stifle out what we truly want to express for the sake of being more socially palatable or to gain a sense of acceptance.
How many times have you wanted to voice support for someone who was being ganged up on in a meeting, but you remained silent? How many times have you wanted to express your emotions transparently with your teenage children, but refrained from doing so because you didn’t want it to feel awkward? When you were growing up, do you remember when you wanted to stop being affectionate with your parents in public? As a Dad, I now realize how difficult that must have been for my parents and I dread the day my children take that natural approach with me.
In the long term, systemically suppressing our true emotions and feelings can lead to permanent behavior modifications. Ceasing to be affectionate with your children in the short term can lead to a lifelong change in relational boundaries. Not standing up for someone being gossiped about can lead to you joining in. Not being transparent with your wife can lead to a long term freeze in marital growth.
We have to move past this idea that our emotions are bad and that we should adjust them in order to make ourselves more palatable to others. The fact is, while we may think that others will like us more, the opposite is true. Look at our political system. There’s so much phoniness that when someone comes along and is open, transparent, and truly themselves, it’s like a breath of fresh air. We respect people who admit when they’re wrong, who share how they really feel, and act as the person who they are, not the person that they think that we want.
You are a unique person with something great to offer the world, but if instead you assimilate and are just like everyone else, we lose out on that chance to know you. Be the person you are and share that gift of self with the world. If you remain true to who you are, and I do the same, we can make a real dent in the world.
How Am I Doing As A Parent?
I enjoy systems and stability. I like to learn how to do something, experiment to find the most efficient process, and then implement that process repeatedly to complete a task. I have 90 minutes to work in the morning before Benedict gets up. On weekdays, I spend that time working on web design for clients, on Saturday mornings I write, and on Sunday mornings, I play. I’ve tried many variations of my schedule, but that one works, so I stick to it. There’s little need to review or make course corrections in how I lay out my week because the work is already done. It’s set, I move on. There is, however, one area of my life where this type of process doesn’t work: parenting.
I’ve written about how parenting requires daily adjustment and how the nature of parenting is change. Each day brings a new skill, new successes, and new failures. All of this change and progress means that each morning, we start over. Our children wake up different people and we need to adapt. This rapid change in events and circumstances necessitates that in order to be a good parent, you must be a reflective parent.
Much of my writing on reflection has been focused on self-reflection. I want to explore adapting those same principles to evaluate how I’m doing as a parent. Evaluating yourself as a parent has an added component in that your children are able to give you feedback.
The evaluation should start with your parental goals. What is it that you’re trying to accomplish? The answer should include educational milestones, exploration, freedom, play, faith, and family growth. That means you’re teaching your child daily, exposing your child to new things, giving them the latitude to fail and get hurt, ensuring that they spend ample time having fun, have daily time for prayer, and are exposed to positive family interactions. These elements make up our daily baseline.
When you consider all that you need to do for your children on a daily basis, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. In fact, the time required to both care for them and manage work and domestic tasks usually add up to more hours than you have in a day. Here’s an excellent challenge: incorporate your children into your daily to-do list. This was a big transition for me to make, and one that I’m still working on now that Benedict is awake most of the day, mobile, and capable of helping. I don’t have to just use nap times to get things done. He’ll be perfectly happy playing in the bedroom while I fold laundry, or reading a book nearby while I clean the bathroom. He also goes with me on all of my errands, which can really break up the day.
The second source of feedback comes from your child’s behavior. Generally, behavior that we think of as “bad” is a result of boredom, hunger, or lack of sleep. It’s unfair for you to demand that you keep your child satisfied 100% of the time, but certainly they should not be bored all that often. Varied play, differing activities, and changing the scenery is usually enough to prevent most boredom in younger children. At the end of the day, all you can do is provide opportunity.
The last part of this parental self-evaluation needs to come from reality. While your child depends solely on you, it’s important to cut yourself some slack. When you’re sick, it’s okay to be less involved so that you heal sooner. It’s ok if there are phases when they refuse to eat good things. It’s ok if you’ve provided ample opportunity for play and they’re still fussy. There is no perfect parent, and your best efforts will suffice.
Completing this parental self-evaluation on a regular basis can give you the confidence and peace of mind that you need in order to continue to be a great parent. By incorporating your children into your to-do list, reading feedback from your child’s behavior, and respecting reality, you can be the kind of parent that your children deserve.
Divorcing Faith and Work
Over the past several decades, the pressure to divorce one’s faith from one’s work has become increasingly strong. We’ve done it for a very long time in our political life, even as far back as the candidacy of John F. Kennedy who gave a landmark speech in which he aimed to assuage the American voter that as president, he wouldn’t be beholden to the papacy. The pseudo-logic, when taken at face value, presents itself as common sense. If my faith interferes with your life, then as a holder of public office, I shouldn’t use my faith so as to allow you to have absolute freedom. The problem with this line of thinking is that by leaving behind the tenants of one’s faith in the workplace, we all lose out on the very tangible goods that accompany faith.
Atticus Finch crystallized the idea of living an integrated life in To Kill A Mockingbird, a point which I’ve raised many times on this blog. We cannot be one person at home and one person in the public life. Not only is it difficult to maintain two realities, no one can be successful in doing so. Faith brings a dynamic set of positive qualities with it. Faith does not merely suggest that we be respectful and honest with others, it demands it. Do we not wish for all people to be treated with respect? So if we require that in order to hold public office or to work in a neutral setting that people leave their faith at the door, do we also wish them to be disrespectful and dishonest.
The real problem is a misunderstanding of the proper role of faith and spirituality in our lives. The entire premise of creation is hinged on free will. Blind faith is no faith at all. In order to truly live as God desires, we must do the right things while fully understanding and freely choosing to do them. This crux is what makes faith such a powerful force for good. We give of our time, material possessions, and support not for the praise, glory, or some desire for self-actualization, but because we understand what the good is and choose it over the evil of pride and selfishness.
I can think of no clearer example of this necessity to understand the good in order to do good than Alison’s profession of medicine. Alison objects to prescribing contraceptives on religious grounds. Her faith has informed her belief that contraceptives are not only contrary to natural order, but that they commoditize one’s sexuality. She has learned from the Church what it means to be truly human and truly alive, and she knows that the gift of human sexuality and the cooperative nature of creation demand both self-mastery and self-respect. Through this lens, she can see that the promises that contraceptives make are not only untrue, but they’re incredibly destructive. These are her personal beliefs and its from this starting point that she begins her decision making process. Does it matter to her patients that she starts her thought process with faith? No. Do most of her patients share her beliefs? Doubtful. It’s what Alison does next that lends credence to her conclusion to not prescribe contraceptives. Taking her suspicions that contraceptives may not be in the best interest of her patients, she learns of the increased suicide rates among sexually active young women, she learns of the serious potential side effects, and the serious challenges with infertility that rise out of sustained use of contraceptives. These findings are not in any way connected to her faith; they’re medical and scientific facts. Weighing them against the proposed benefits of contraceptives, it becomes her medical opinion that the risks do not outweigh the benefits and that the treatment is medically unnecessary. That decision is not only based on the medical facts, but on the cost to the patient in terms of monetary expenditure on the treatment, future costs of correcting damage done by the procedure, and the crippling emotional toll that infertility takes on a couple. These are all facts that if her conscience, informed by her faith, had not been suspicious, she may have never discovered. Like the powerful Philip Morris advocating the benefits of smoking to the general public, modern pharmaceutical companies have mounted a successful public relations campaign touting the benefits of contraceptives while minimizing the harmful and lasting side effects.
Faith and work cannot, and should not be divorced. Faith, properly understood and integrated, can be a powerful force for good that lifts up one’s company, cause, and mission. We need strong leaders who are firmly grounded in truth to carry us forward and we need to recognize that without fully developing our spirituality, we live limited, underdeveloped lives.