Am I Doing Enough?
It’s been a year since I started caring for Benedict full time. It’s almost hard to believe not just that a year has passed, but how quickly his development has progressed. He’s awake more, walking around, and talking to me. I share one of the looming questions that I’m confident every dad asks himself on a daily basis, “Am I doing enough?” Am I doing enough to support and promote his development? Am I doing enough to help him have confidence and trust in himself? Am I doing enough to make sure that he knows that he’s safe with me? Am I doing enough to help him know that he’s loved? Your kids need love, attention, affection and time from you. If you’re giving them those things, then you’re doing enough.
There’s a real temptation to lean too much on the use electronic aids in parenting. I’ll readily admit that Sesame Street, Arthur, and any other number of children’s programming can do more in 30 minutes than I can on my own. These programs are backed by very educated people and present concepts across a broad range of topics. Yet, while these types of shows should aid in your parenting, they shouldn’t be the primary education source for your kids. Play with your kids and read to them.
As the “Am I doing enough?” question lingers, it can drive us to other types of potentially unhelpful parenting practices, like being a helicopter parent. While your children do need interaction and to play with you, they also need the space to entertain themselves if that’s what they choose. Your kids have to learn everything, so helping them learn to constructively entertain themselves or to sit quietly and look at a book is an important skill.
The key in all of this is to both remain available and able respond to their needs. You don’t need to hover over them all at times, but by all means prevent them from hurting themselves. You don’t need to be in their face leading playtime all of the time, but don’t devote so much attention to whatever else you’re doing that you can’t break your attention the moment your child needs you. Be flexible, be dynamic, and be agile.
Parenting fills the mind with plenty of worry and doubt. At the end of the day, if you’ve done your best and given your child all that you have, then yes, you’re doing enough.
Finding Time to Pray
My daily prayer time is often a moving target. Depending on what the day has in store for me, I could find myself praying at any number of junctures during the day. My goal is to spend about half an hour when I first wake up, 15 minutes or so praying the Rosary with Benedict during our morning play time, meditation for a few minutes at noon, the Divine Mercy Chaplet during the 3 o’clock hour, and finally prayers with my family before bed. It’s a pretty rigorous plan, that’s for sure, and one that’s proven elusive. Yet, when I add the time up, it ends up being about an hour during the day, during which I’ll have 14 waking hours. Considering how much time is wasted throughout the day, it’s a very reasonable plan. Yet, even with the best laid plan, it’s still a daily challenge to actually do it.
I think that the best approach to prayer, and making sure that you have a robust and fulfilling prayer life, is to use creative scheduling. For whatever reason, we’ve adopted a mindset that prayer must look, sound, and feel a particular way in the same way that Catholic Radio hosts all sound the same on air. Prayer is personal, it’s intimate, and it’s a relationship. Not all relationships are the same, so why should your prayer life be? Certainly the Church offers a wide range of support for how to pray, but those should be considered primers to get the conversation going. Along with the beautiful prayers that have been shared with us as aids to our relationship, there should also be a measure of frank conversation with God.
Creative scheduling is the term that I use for making ordinary things holy. It’s a total rethinking of what prayer looks like and when it can happen. Creative scheduling has me praying while doing very ordinary things during the day, such as driving, mowing the lawn, exercising, or even making the bed. Like St. Therese’s “Little Way,” creative scheduling has me pray while doing ordinary or simple tasks and, in that way, makes them holy. I still struggle with focus, but my full attention is not a prerequisite for good prayer, only my good efforts.
Another strategy is to merge current time blocks in your day. If you plan to pray in the morning and in the evening, accomplishing neither, consolidate those two times into one. Get really good at praying once during the day and then eventually split them back up. If you have time during the day that’s scheduled as free play with your kids, add some prayer to that time. When you’re about to fall asleep, use some of your pillow talk time with your wife for prayer. This is about optimizing your schedule and finding new, different, and creative ways, places, and times for prayer.
Prayer is talking to a friend. Don’t overthink prayer time. Strike up a conversation and just say what’s on your mind and in your heart. I’ll admit, when I started conversational prayer, I did it privately because it was awkward. My prayer was full of weak English and awkward phrases. It was all new and that was ok. After some time, and practice, I grew comfortable enough to pray conversationally out loud with Alison. Give this form of prayer a try, and give yourself some grace when you do it.
The time of understanding prayer as having only one dynamic is over. Prayer is multifaceted, it’s diverse, and like the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it comes in many forms. Take this Easter season to continue the good work you began in Lent and grow in your relationship with God through regular prayer.
Look to St. Joseph
One of the traditions in my line of Collins men is that each of us share the same middle name, Joseph. It’s a tradition that started at least six generations ago, although I’m sure that the further I dig, the more Josephs I’ll find. I’m not sure of the particular reasons as to why it was started, but I’m confident it was meant as a prayer for the intercession of St. Joseph. Joseph is a strong and silent character in the Bible, and the more we know about life in Nazareth in his day, the more we grow to respect him.
While Joseph has no recorded words in the Bible, his actions speak to us quite loudly. We know that he was an honorable man, being described in Matthew as a “just” man, a description ascribed only to the greatest figures in Scripture. We also know that, when he discovered that Mary was pregnant, he was, “unwilling to expose her to shame,” despite the fact that the law allowed him to take some serious courses of action. We know that, being chosen to be the foster father of Jesus, he must have been a very holy person, deemed worthy of marrying the perfect creature, Mary. We can know with certitude the depth of his faith because he was attuned enough to God to receive not one, but two messages from angels and respond to them in obedience without question. His response was commensurate with Mary’s, and unlike the doubt expressed by Zachariah.
Joseph was a great husband. He traveled hundreds of miles with his very pregnant wife to Bethlehem in order to comply with the census. Any man who’s even gone for short walks with a pregnant wife can easily imagine what a trying journey that must have been. Further, after experiencing the miracle of the birth of Jesus, and the mysterious events surrounding it, Joseph took his family to safety in Egypt. It wasn’t just the journey that was difficult, but also living as an alien in a foreign land, having to set up a home, gain employment, and continue to provide for his growing family. Scripture is vague about many of the pragmatic realities surrounding the life of Joseph, but context clues and historical knowledge point to a very difficult life in Egypt, away from friends, family, and a land that he knew.
Finally, we know that Joseph was a great father. He taught Jesus his skill. He raised Jesus as his own. He tenderly and lovingly cared for his family. He treated Jesus as his own child, instilling in Him the customs and traditions of Judaism.
Not a single word spoken, and yet we can know all of these things about the great St. Joseph. The Church holds Joseph up as a model of virtue, holiness, purity, and as the type of husband and father all men should strive to be. Through his intercession, may we be St. Joseph to our own wife and family.
Relational Fresh Air
If on your Wedding Day you expected your marriage to be full of positive emotions and the warm fuzzies, you may by now have found yourself disappointed. Emotions are ephemeral, but love is not. When things get a bit chilly in your marriage, sometimes all you need is a bit of relational fresh air. My favorite part about spring is being able to open the windows. After a season of a closed up house, there’s something really refreshing about a gentle breeze whipping through the halls of our home. Everything feels better and I feel more motivated to get things done. At times, you need the breath of fresh air in your marriage.
Attitude is everything. You can choose to let something that your wife does bother you, or you can let it roll off of your back. Are you caring towards your wife? Are you serving? Marriage is all about giving and not at all about taking. Give, give, give until there’s nothing left… then give a little more. As you give more of yourself away, whether it be giving of your time, effort, energy, or self, you find yourself becoming more full. This doesn’t work if you’re only giving in order to get, but if you do everything sacrificially, you’ll find your tanks topped off and even overflowing.
Yet, over the course of a 30, 40, 50, or even a 60 year marriage, rough patches are to be expected. Stress creeps in, fear creeps in, maybe even a little resentment creeps into your marriage. All of these scenarios, though quite normal, actually stem from a selfish attitude. When you stop trusting your wife to take care of you, when you forget that you are one, when you start to turn inward, that’s when external forces start to negatively affect your marriage. In the times when you notice things getting a bit stale, do two things. First, recognize that you’ve turned too far inward and begin to focus your attention and service outward, towards your wife. Be aggressive in finding opportunities to serve her. Second, sit down with your wife and clear the air. Agree to a reset, forgive past mistakes, and push forward.
When your marriage is uncomfortable and things are difficult, the best reaction is positive action. Put all of your focus on your wife and things will work themselves out.
One Step Closer to Holiness
The battle for self-control is one that’s waged daily. We’re constantly being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, we want to do what’s right and on the other, we want to do whatever will selfishly benefit us. At times, good is winning and at other times, evil is winning. This is our daily experience. Yet, it’s possible, with time and discipline, to do more good than evil. Beating temptation today makes you stronger tomorrow.
The struggle is real and so is the temptation. Our weaknesses are exploited and our humanity seeks to overpower our will. Our faith and our vocation to the married life both ask that we reject our humanity and instead choose the higher good, but that’s no easy standard to reach. In fact, after a moment of personal reform, temptation can become even more intense.
Consciously choosing to reject evil and choose the good is the right choice and, ultimately, will make us happier. We all objectively know this to be true and have some amount of experience to tell us that it is. By choosing to do good over evil, we get a little stronger and evil gets a little weaker. We deprive evil of the thing that it desperately needs to survive, our consent. Yet, despite this objective knowledge, in the moment, it seems all too easy for us to be over powered.
The best way to deal with these realities is to take the long view. You might lose the battle today, but Ultimately you’ll win the war. By imagining how committing this particular sin will affect you tomorrow, a week from now, and a year from now, you gain critical perspective to help you make the right choice today. So while a temptation appears to be fun or exciting today, you can see the negative effects that it’ll have over the long term, and be better equipped to reject it.
There’s no quick fix to overcoming human weakness. We’re all flawed, each of us in a particular way that will be constantly exploited. Yet, if we take one small step towards holiness today, and another tomorrow, and one more the day after that, soon we’ll find ourselves in the place we want to be.
Do Something Amazing this Summer
Believe it or not, the summer months are upon us! Schools will soon be shuttering their doors for the season and temperatures will continue to rise, allowing for a more robust daily outdoor schedule. Summer signals more than just a season of rest, relaxation, and recreation; it signals the midpoint of the year.
Amazingly we’re almost half-way through 2015. You might find that thought a bit terrifying. It’s not that time is moving too quickly, it’s that our New Year’s plans and resolutions are probably looking very different right about now. New things have become more important and maybe you never really got your resolutions and goals off the ground. The good news is, summer is a great new opportunity for us to get the ball moving in the right direction.
I don’t want to let this summer season wash over me. I want to do something amazing! I want to sit down at my desk one morning this Fall and report back that this was the best summer ever! Yet, neither of us will be able to make that claim unless we declare today to be the starting line. Weight loss, working on a passion project, or trying something totally new are all compatible with the hope and newness of summer. Spring woke us up and summer is pushing us out of the nest into the great wide world. Don’t defer your dreams for another six months for January 1, get into gear now!
Spend time with your family, work on your marriage, go on outings, take advantage of work slow downs and enjoy the great outdoors. Put down your phone, pick up a book and explore new worlds. These are all the things that summer was made for. The start of summer is here full of hope, excitement, and opportunity. Press the reset button and start running after your dreams!
How to Allocate Charitable Dollars
I love the hum of the mail truck. Although we live on a busy street, there’s a particular sound that the mail truck makes as it rumbles down the road. It’s a low hum combined with short bursts of acceleration as it moves from box to box. Even if I’m in the back of the house, I can usually hear when the mail has arrived in the early afternoon. Several days a week, our mailbox is filled with charitable solicitations. In the Christmas season, it gets even more intense. I don’t mind receiving these mailings and we give each request due consideration.
Alison and I have found a model of allocating charitable dollars that works for us. Essentially our guiding principle is that we need to be intentional with every dollar. That intentionality makes the whole giving process a lot of fun.
There are two strategies when it comes to making charitable contributions: share the wealth and big splash. A share the wealth strategy is when your family makes small donations to many organizations. The dollars that you’ve earmarked for giving are spread among numerous organizations and causes. The big splash approach is when you make bigger donations to fewer organizations. Your family isn’t involved in a wide variety of causes, but rather is helping in a more significant way one or two causes that are tightly aligned with your values. Neither approach is better than the other, but I’ll bet that your family falls into one of the two approaches.
We have a moral duty to manage our charitable dollars well. When we make a donation, we have to ensure that the money will do the most good. That means that research should be done before any contribution is made to ensure that dollars end up in the form of resources distributed to beneficiaries and not entirely in marketing. Certainly nonprofits need to spend a percentage of gifts on things necessary for smooth and growing reach, such as salaries, office supplies, and mailings. However, a careful balance must be struck in order for an organization to be worthy of your money.
It’s best to have some rules for allocation. Identify the types of causes that your family will support, perhaps 3-5, and only give to organizations working in those causes, with few exceptions. You can also have rules that help you to vet organizations, such as political action, operating budgets, leadership, and 3rd party ratings. There are countless charities, with new ones being started every day, and a simple set of rules will help you filter through to the organizations that you really can get behind.
Giving is one of the most fun things that you can do with money and I’m always excited when Alison and I start writing checks in our budget committee meeting. Have some ground rules in place to make sure that your charitable dollars help the most people.
Sunday Afternoons
I love Sunday afternoons. Many people don’t really like them since they start to feel the Monday creep, but for me, I find them to be incredibly relaxing. All of the housework was done on Saturday, leaving the docket completely clear on Sunday. These wonderful afternoons are also the perfect time for some much needed family time.
As I’ve written in the past, I’ve made the move to keep Sunday as a day of rest, meaning that everything chore that needs to get done on the weekend, I take care of by Saturday evening. If you have kids in school, for them it means getting both chores and homework done by the end of the day on Saturday. Perhaps one of the biggest contributors to the Monday creep on Sunday is that there are loose ends that didn’t get tied off. If you must work over the weekend, get it out of the way as soon as you can so that you can clear your head and just focus on relaxation.
Sunday afternoon should be a standing appointment on your whole family’s calendar; nothing else should be allowed. If kids want to hang out with their friends or go to a movie, they have Friday night and all day Saturday to do it. Sunday is sacred, not just in a spiritual sense, but also in a family sense. It should be set apart from the other six days for your family to be together.
The way that your family spends Sunday is totally up to you and it should vary widely. Morning will most likely be devoted to Mass and breakfast. No matter how early you get to Mass, you’ll still probably find that by time everything with breakfast is over, it’ll be near noon. That means that the afternoon is your time for family activity. It should not only vary by week, but also by season. In the spring, summer, and fall, you should do as much in the great outdoors as possible. Go to a park or playground, go on a hike, explore some eco-tourism, play at the beach, float down a river, or any other number of things. In the winter months you may ski or snowboard, but more likely you’ll all want to stay inside where it’s warm. This is the time to go the movies (or watch one at home), play board games, read together, cook together, or do similar activities together.
The family is the second most important relationship that your children will have in their lifetimes. The only way to grow a relationship is to spend quality time together and Sunday afternoons afford the perfect opportunity for just that. Migrate your family’s schedules to a reserved Sunday schedule and enjoy God’s day as a day of rest and recreation for your family, free from the burdens and stress of the rest of the week.
You’re Irreplaceable
One June evening in 1996, I was almost left without a father. My dad was deployed in Saudi Arabia when the barracks next to his was bombed by terrorists. As I think back on that night, though I was quite young, I’m grateful that my dad was not among the 19 killed in action that night. While our culture doesn’t put a premium on the impact that a great dad can have on a kid’s life, the fact remains that no one can take your place. You’re uniquely and perfectly suited for your wife. Your marriage is the most important relationship in your life, more important than that of yours with your children and more important than your relationship with your parents. Certainly these relationships are in a very close second place, but nothing will ever be as important as your marital relationship. It’s the spring from which blessings flow, and no one can take that place of honor.
You loved your children first. You’re their father and they need your unique gifts. More than that, they need your guidance, your firm discipline, and your tender love. Their mother is able to offer them love and gifts in her unique way, but they also need to receive it from you. In that way, you and your wife complement each other, providing for your kids in a holistic approach. Since you’re irreplaceable, you need to act like it. Be involved in their lives. Be present in all ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually. If no one can take your place, then it’s up to you to do your best to meet those needs. Rise to the occasion, and be an awesome husband and father.
The role of husband and the role of father aren’t for the faint of heart. Stand up and do something.
Book Review: Marriage
Last December, during one of our regular visits to my parent’s house, my dad handed me a book of his to read. This happens from time to time; a book that he got a great deal out of will end up in my temporary library to enjoy. Since I’ve committed to a habit of regular reading this year, my book queue is able to take on these random offerings. The latest book he recommended to me was What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George. Published in 2012, Drs. Anderson, George, and doctoral candidate Girgis lay out a reasoned, logical, and thoughtful argument for what has been termed “traditional marriage,” for the sake of this article and blog, we’ll just call it marriage.
Reading this book, I was profoundly struck by many aspects of the work, from the approach to the solid logic. In 97 pages, these authors succinctly laid out a defense of marriage without any dependance on any particular religion, rather, by relying on philosophy, logic, and social science. Unlike most of the “arguments” on marriage today and the op-eds with pseudo-logical arguments that devolve into nothing more than attacks ad hominem, against the man, What is Marriage? refuses to lower itself to this new low of public discourse. Instead, the work argues for marriage against all attempts to revise its definition, not merely against any one person or revisionist viewpoint.
The authors point out one of the reasons why it seems that arguments for marriage are much weaker to the public than those arguing for a revisionist view of marriage. Astoundingly, marriage can be found in every culture in an almost identical framework, regardless of religion or political structure of a society and culture. As such, there hasn’t been a need, even until the past three decades of the human experience, to develop a cogent argument for it’s benefits since they were completely self-evident. Marriage provided stability for children, growth for society, and pressure for men to help with the raising of children they have begotten. However, as challenges to marriage have recently arisen, the need to articulate the unique properties of marriage has become urgent.
This book isn’t about same-sex “marriage.” In fact, it spends almost no time at all discussing the issue. Instead, as the title suggests, it reviews the basic question of “What is Marriage?” It goes over the fundamental aspects of what makes a marriage, including the organic bodily union (sex), its permanence as a stabilizing factor, and a complete rejection of the notion that marriage is based solely on intensity of emotion. It also views the consequences of a legal implementation of a revisionist view of marriage which eerily mirrors the warnings of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae against contraception, all of which have come to pass.
While this book provides the most cogent and well researched argument for marriage, on either side of the issue, I found that it isn’t simply a scholarly work designed to rebuff poor logic. Reading it, I found myself inspired in my vocation and further in awe of the Sacramental marriage that I entered into with Alison. I saw my role as husband and father to be more unique and more sublime. By examining the philosophical underpinnings of marriage, and relating them to the experiences of people in every culture throughout time, I found a deeper sense of satisfaction as being a part of the institution of marriage. I better understood my role in society and the value of the support that I lend to Alison in raising Benedict.
What Is Marriage? is about more than defending an argument, it’s about affirming and educating married people. It helps us to more deeply understand what our marriage truly is, why the organic bodily union is so important, and how we’re helping to build our society. It will also help you teach your kids why marriage is different and what it takes to have a great marriage.
I highly recommend you pick up a copy of What is Marriage? This book will affirm you, it will inform you, and it will help you grow in your marriage. Sadly, we’ve stopped putting a premium on logic in debate, but this book will show you how rich and powerful sound logic can truly be.