Know Your Story
In the not too distant past, I didn’t care much about my family’s genealogy. I knew about my parents and my grandparents, and that was sufficient for me. This viewpoint was completely the opposite of Alison’s, which espoused the joy and adventure of both learning about your history and then going to visit those places. While studying abroad, she took a few trips to European ancestral hometowns and got a small taste of what her ancestors saw and did. For whatever reason, last year, I became intensely interested in my family’s story and embarked on a family genealogy project to learn all about my family tree. I’ve concluded that by understanding your family’s story, you can better understand yourself.
We share a connectedness with our ancestors. At some point, someone in our family made the brave decision of getting on a boat and making the treacherous and uncomfortable boat trip across the Atlantic in hopes of a new and better life in the United States. Their bravery, determination, and frankly, their grit, set in motion a series of events that led to our lives here in America. We’re living where we are because of them. Their sacrifices have yielded tremendous opportunities for us. Beyond just our physical location, we may be benefiting from all sorts of legacies that they left for us, including crafts, hobbies, careers, and faith. So much about what our ancestors did is reflected in our lives, perhaps even in our names.
It can be exciting to learn even the most mundane facts about our ancestors. You can see their handwriting in documents or glean their job history from census data. You might even learn that your ancestors just 100 years ago didn’t know how to write. You might find their name on ship’s manifests or see their marriage license. This time-traveling sleuthing is an adventure in and of itself.
I was wrong when I considered there to be little value in knowing my ancestor’s story. Their story is my story. So much of me is because of them. I invite you to take some time, do some digging, and explore your own family’s history. Know your story and have pride in the sacrifice that your ancestors made so that you can be who you are, where you are, in the land of opportunity.
Walking for Health
Earlier this year, as the temperatures began to rise and Spring poked its head out, Benedict and I started seeing more and more residents along our street spending time outside. Some were just sitting on their porches, others were doing yard work, and still others were playing with their kids. More than a few came up and talked to us, for the first time, and noted how much they enjoyed seeing us out and about, even in the bitter cold winter months. As it turns out, Benedict and I are well known in our neighborhood.
My preferred form of exercise used to be running. I liked challenging myself and trying to beat personal bests. About 3 years ago I converted to walking for health after developing IT band syndrome. What I learned about the benefits of walking surprised me. Walking regularly can have the same positive benefits on heart health as running. Even more exciting, regular walking (10,000+ steps per day) leads to weight loss. As it turns out, excellent exercise doesn’t have to be unpleasant.
The average American walks around 3-4,000 steps per day. Generally speaking, 10,000 steps per day or more would describe an active adult. I use a Fitbit to track my steps (and compete against friends and family) and it helps me not only measure my daily progress, but it encourages me to keep moving. When I’m actively working towards an exercise goal, I won’t sleep until I hit my daily step goal.
While walking does take more time than other forms of exercising, it can be just as interesting. You can explore your neighborhood and community by using varied routes. Keep things interesting by having routes that span different distances so that on days when you don’t need as many steps, you can shorten your workout. On other days when you’ve got all the time in the world, you can get in a few more steps.
Walking can be fun. I’ve already mentioned the competition feature with Fitbit, but even a comparison for yourself between last week and this week can be fun. Use this time to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Take your wife or your kids with you. Look at the architecture of different homes and plan to build your dream home. Stop in at yard sales and keep your eyes pealed for good deals on used cars. Exercise doesn’t have to be boring or tedious. In fact, it can be an adventure.
Walking for health is perhaps the best way to exercise. It’s a one size fits all approach that allows for you to get healthier without overdoing it.
How to Move Past the Worst Mistakes
Perhaps the most painful mistakes you or I will ever make will involve money. Bad buying decisions, late payments, or even bouncing a check are all extremely embarrassing life events. We all struggle to let go of dumb money mistakes that we’ve made in the past. Yet, your mistake might not even be an external money mistake. Sometimes money mistakes involve only your family, like going over budget on something. Even though it only involves your family, it’s still embarrassing. It’s incredibly important that you be able to forgive yourself and to forgive your wife for money errors.
We’re all sensitive about money mistakes. Money is like a scoreboard, so when you mistakenly blow some, you feel dumb. Paying fees, fines, or penalties stings because there are so many other great things that you could’ve used that money for. Not saving enough for your child’s college may cause them to miss out on their dream school, running that red light could set you back a month on your goal, and forgetting to pay a bill could cost you late fees. Whenever we have a negative money event, it hurts us on a personal level.
Money mistakes will happen. If you’re working, generating income, and making transactions, you’re going to make a mistake somewhere. It’s a statistical reality. Consider the sheer number of transactions that go through your bank account every month! Learn your lesson and move on; don’t let it be a drag on your life.
If your wife is the one who committed the mistake, be exceedingly patient with her. Empathize with her. After all, you know exactly how she feels. Help her work through the issue by showing her that it’s not a catastrophe, just a bump in the road. This can be a moment that either devolves into a fight or brings you closer together. Support her and build up your relationship.
The most important reason for you to move on from money mistakes is that if you obsess over it, you make money your god. You lost some, ok, go out and get some more. Work a little harder, sell something, do whatever you need to in order to get things going in the right direction again. But don’t let this become the headline that dominates your days.
You’re bound to make money mistakes. When you do, fix the problem and move on. Your family will be glad you did.
How to Help Your Wife Live Her Dreams
Alison has been accepted into a medical Natural Family Planning course later this year. I’m not sure how long this has been a dream of hers, but a year into her medical career, I know that she’s eager to live this dream. It’s important that while you’re chasing your dreams, you ensure that you’re doing all that you can to support your wife’s. After all, she supports you in everything that you do.
Depending on your wife’s particular dream, your role will vary. If she’s training for an athletic event, you can help with menu planning, food prep, or child care during her training time. If she’s trying to launch a business, you can adjust your demands on her time. No matter what she’s doing, you can’t do it for her, but you can do other things around her that will allow her to pursue her dream. Be tenacious and willing to sacrifice some of your time so that she can do something that she’s really passionate about.
Your full commitment is required in order for her to be successful. None of us can accomplish anything on our own as we rely heavily on our spouses for support. If you’re half-hearted in supporting her dream, she may never fully accomplish it. That’s the worst case scenario. Give her everything that you’ve got. Find new ways of helping, cheer her on, and do all that you can to help make her a success.
As a married couple, you’re a team. Your wins are shared, as are your losses. By helping your wife live her dreams, you not only help her to have a better life, but you help your family have a better life. You all get to share in the glory of a win.
Chase your dreams, pursue your passions, and do everything you can to help your wife do the same.
Stop Sin in its Tracks
In aviation, all mishaps, crashes, and fatalities are the result of a chain reaction of decisions. Each link in the chain contributes to the overall accident, and yet, breaking a single link is all that would have been required to avert disaster. The same is true in our spiritual lives. Sin doesn’t just happen. Rather, it’s the culmination of bad decision making and missed opportunities to choose a different outcome.
While sin is usually preceded by many decisions, it’s increasingly important that we not submit in defeat. Sin can be beat, it can be stopped, and we can sum up the courage to choose a better life for ourselves.
Our conscience is a very powerful tool in our daily decision making. Although over time it can be perverted, it nevertheless keeps fighting, albeit in a more muted manner. In action, our conscience throws up multiple flags, warning us of impending danger. Each flag, each nag, each feeling of unease, is an opportunity for us to choose something different. Sin is always appealing until you act on it. Once on the other side, it has no further reason to masquerade as something fun or exciting. Instead, it’s laid bare (pun intended) and we see the destruction, unhappiness, and pain that it brings.
In the fight, temptation and sin remain appealing. That reason alone should be all the motivation that we need in order to keep us in control. You control you. By ceding that control to anyone, or anything else, you give up the greatest bargaining chip that you have. When you’re in control of your thoughts, desires, and actions, you’re fortified against the empty attacks of temptation. When you cede control of your thoughts or your actions, or your emotions, you become increasingly susceptible to sin.
We all face varying degrees of temptation, and sometimes we’re stronger than at other times. Fix problems as they come. You’ll always have a principal sin, that big sin that you struggle with. Yet, over time, as you root out one principal sin, it’s replaced by a weaker, less destructive one. You work to minimize both the strength and danger of your principal sin.
Despair is a tool of the Devil, and it’s used to get us to give in where we otherwise may not. The fight is difficult, and the struggle is real, but each one of us has within ourselves the capacity and ability to stop sin in its tracks. Choose something different. Choose something better. Choose freedom.
Work Needs A Finish Line
The line between on the clock and off the clock has been blurred beyond recognition. Today’s workforce is finding it increasingly difficult to stop working. Ever. We work at home in the evening, in the morning before work hours begin, and even, sadly, on vacation. I’ve allocated myself 7 hours during the day for work and, to be completely honest, I struggle to stop working even then. When I lay my head down in the evening, I’m exhausted from a day full of work and chasing Benedict.
We need to develop a hard stop in the evening. We know where the starting line is in the morning, but we’ve lost the finish line in the evening. Work will expand to the time that you give it, and there will always be more things for you to do. By initiating a time that’s a hard stop in the evening, you know where the finish line is. Once you cross it, you’re done until the next day. It really is that simple and it really is completely necessary.
Our work needs boundaries. We were made to work, and work is a very good thing- when it doesn’t take more than its share of your time. Work provides for your family, helps you grow as a person, contributes to your sense of dignity, and helps your customers to live a better life. Yet, when work creeps into off time and family time, it not only burns you out, it robs your family of the time that they’re due.
A hard stop in the evening can make you more productive. If you know that you stop working at 5:30pm and that’s all the time that you have, you’ll naturally stay more focused. There isn’t any bonus time, there aren’t any more minutes after 5:30pm. Here’s what you have to work with, now go get it done. You’ll surf less, daydream less, and you’ll also skip low importance tasks that might have suckered you in before. It’s a productivity tip that’s proven to work.
Your life needs space. You need time to focus on the other aspects of your life so that you’ll remain a balanced, healthy person. Plus, working too much will lead you to hate a job that you might truly love. Burnout gets the best of far too many people, and the quickest way to get there is by working endlessly.
Find a hard stop time in the evening when you know you can achieve it 80% of the time. If you have a job with a lot of night meetings, you need to be creative. More likely than not, you can find that hard break. Commit to it and then do it! Once you hit that hard stop, leave everything for the morning. Your wife will be glad you did.
Don’t Let Vice Kill You
You’re likely a pretty good person. You go about your life doing the right thing every day. You have responsibilities to your wife and your family, and you do them admirably. You’re an above average husband and a dedicated father. This is the image the that World sees, and it’s the one that you hope you’re presenting. Your interior life, your spiritual life, is probably somewhere around average, though it does have one thing weighing it down. It’s a common struggle that we all share. We have a vice, a singular sin is holding us back, but we can’t seem to shake it. I call it our “principal sin.”
We’ve grown pretty comfortable with sin. It’s almost as if we have a certain level of tolerance for it and as long as we’re within that tolerance, we let things slide. We accept a certain level of uncharity, a certain level of laziness in our prayer life, and a certain level of whatever else our particular character deems ok. We’re comfortable, and it’s incredibly dangerous. Sin presents a real and present danger in your life. Small sin takes root, grabs hold of you, and branches out. Realistically, we will all have some sin in our lives as perfection isn’t possible in this life. Yet, our goal needs to be getting our sin portfolio, if you will, to contain only the smallest and innocuous sins imaginable. Don’t let sin ruin you.
This path to perfection, wherein we remove serious sins from our portfolio, is a lifelong journey. We’re talking about changing thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors that we may have had for decades. The time required is intensive because it requires our sole focus. You simply can’t take on all of your sin at the same time. Instead, you have to focus on one at a time, a process that may take months. Yet, it’s focus that’ll win this battle. It’s focus and attention that will get you to a place that you didn’t think was possible.
There’s something incredibly freeing about living the life that you’ve always wanted. A life free of the burden of temptation towards your principal sin. Surely, as you work through this process, the name of your principal sin will change, but the importance of rooting it out of your life is unchanging. Your life is significantly impacted by your current principal sin in ways that you can’t recognize, because you’ve been stuck for so long. It takes courage to challenge something you may now consider to be unbeatable. It takes tremendous courage if you’ve been entrenched for years.
We all loathe the habitual nature of our principal sin. In the back of our minds in the Confession line, the thought creeps up that we can’t beat it. We’re frustrated that we’re back in this line, for the same reason. It makes us feel weak. It makes us feel powerless. Yet, when we start beating back our principal sin, we get a glimpse into the true power of God. When we cooperate with His power, doing something that’s His Will, things happen.
The truth is, we aren’t fond of our principal sin, but there is something alluring about it still. While we’re trapped, we also acknowledge that it isn’t worth it. Why run the slightest risk of losing what you’ve got? Why run the slightest risk of missing out on a life of happiness?
The question becomes, where do I start? In the vast array of our spiritual life, how do we know where to start chipping away? Identify the habitual sins that you commit, and from that list, identify the most serious. Serious is a relative term, because you could be trapped in sin that right now is incredibly destructive, or you could be trapped in a gateway sin that, based on your personality or history, is a fast track to destructive sin. Once you’ve identified the most serious, you’ve found your principal sin. Understand everything about that sin. Why do you do it? What are your triggers? How did it start? Why does it continue? Do other people face it? How have they been successful? Ask these questions and more. Then, devise a plan, build in accountability, and focus. Track the number of days that you’ve been able to beat it. Pray constantly and specifically. Go to Daily Mass or stop by Adoration. Go crazy attacking, beating it down, and cooperating with God’s power.
After some wins and losses, some victories and setbacks, with enough grit and determination, you’ll beat your principal sin. You’ll finally know freedom and have the strength of character, self control, and depth of interior life to keep it subdued. Then, it’s time to identify your new principal sin.
Beating sin in your life is a lifelong process, one filled with difficulty, joy, sadness, and awe at God’s willingness to be so active in your life. And yet, it’s the lifelong process of a saint.
The Beauty Around You
This week will mark the eighth anniversary of this blog. We live in a hurried and distracted culture, one in which we assume that longevity means success. I don’t think that’s true in general, and it’s certainly not true with this blog.
In many ways, this blog is the journal of my adult life. I started it months before my first child was born. Now, I’m at home with four little ones and running our homeschool operation. As I write this post, I look out the window and see three of my children playing cooperatively, and happily, in the backyard. The lessons that I’ve learned, and in many cases relearned, are woven in posts throughout the years.
Catholic Husband is a rough draft. Imperfections can be found in each post, whether they be grammatical errors or the transparency of my mistakes. Taking the time to write about my life and experiences gives me an opportunity to process events and understand the deeper lessons. The blog has grown with me, and will continue to do so.
Spring is upon us, with flowering trees heralding the change in season. As I start to look two years down the road at the 10 year milestone, I want to continue to improve. I want to continue learning life’s lessons as they come, day by day. I also want to firm up and modernize this blog. The nature of life is impermanence, but it’s within my control to ensure that this blog stays on the web. I will be going through the more than 800 posts and correcting grammatical mistakes. I’ll also be taking steps to bring this blog into conformity with modern web standards, ensuring that it can continue to be accessible fare into the future.
While I’m still young, the reality of adulthood slowly creeps into my conscience. When Alison and I are at Mass, and we’re simultaneously praying and wrangling four kids, I often marvel at what we’re able to accomplish. We started this project together, and together we’re raising our family. It’s my sincere hope that by continuing this blog, I will keep growing in my vocation to love, lead, and serve my family.
Are You Taking A Pay Cut?
Spring is my favorite season. It’s used to be fall because I absolutely love cold, grey, steely October days. Yet, I’m a person who loves hope, promised, and newness, so therefore spring must take the crown. Perhaps my favorite part about spring is getting Spring Fever. On the first warm day of the season, I immediately want to get outside, wash the car, and pull out all of my summer clothes. While the nice weather is usually gone the following day, the sentiment is right. Get out of your house and enjoy being outside!
Winter is incredibly harsh and sedentary. It’s no wonder we all gain weight while everything around us is so bleak. The only exercise we get in Winter is shoveling all of that dang snow. Winter makes me feel trapped, like a hibernating bear. It’s a necessary season, but it’s one that’s pretty unhealthy.
Spring, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. It’s warm, cheerful, and the sounds of chirping birds lift my spirits. We get to be active, play outside, and not put on four layers of clothing just to get the mail. Spring is inviting and it brings us the promise of an amazing season to come. Nature and creation are truly beautiful, but it’s all too easy for us to ignore it. We drive past the same scenery every day going to work, but we fail to notice the sheer beauty and magnitude of the life around us. Spring invites us to again appreciate creation because what was once dead comes roaring back to life.
Now that we’re nearing the end of spring and entering into the summer season, I encourage you to spend more time outside. If you have a deck out back, pray out there in the morning or read out there in the evening. If you have a nice lawn, play out there with your kids or have a barbecue with your friends. Open the windows of your house, go for a walk, and get active again. Nature is all around you, waiting for you to enjoy it. Get out there!
How to Spend More Time with Your Wife
Earlier this year, during one of Alison’s many rotations, she was assigned to a hospital about 45 minutes away. Her shift was from 7am - 7pm daily with the exception of Wednesday, meaning that her schedule and Benedict’s schedule aligned very poorly. In fact, during the week, with the exception of Wednesday and the weekend, she often wouldn’t see him at all. To help alleviate the loss that all three of us felt, twice during the month Benedict and I drove her to work and then went on an adventure.
When time is tight in your schedules it becomes even more important to make time to be with your wife. Certainly sacrifices will need to be made, but the fact that there is limited time necessitates that for the sake of your marriage, you make time.
You could stay up later, go to work together, or reserve time in the evenings. Hopefully the restricted nature of your schedules is only temporary, but during that time, you jointly need to create time to be together. Your marriage cannot withstand, nor should it be asked to, prolonged periods of absence when a few schedule adjustments could free up as much as an hour or more a day.
We all struggle to balance our time and we tend to look back longingly on the days when we had all of the time in the world to do as we pleased. Yet, the “struggle” to balance your time is not as much of a struggle as it is a difficult decision process. You likely will have to sacrifice a good for the sake of a greater good, nourishing your marriage.
It’s hard to be apart from your wife and there will most certainly be times when your schedules conspire against you. In those times of difficulty, choose to not be overcome by the tyranny of the clock and instead make reasonable adjustments to your schedule so that you can have more time together with your beloved on a daily basis.