Christmas Reflection
Merry Christmas!
The days of preparation of Advent are over and we’re now finally celebrating the birth of Christ. I had a particularly fulfilling Advent this year and I hope that your preparations helped you reach today with a greater sense of peace and joy.
It’s becoming a tradition that I post some form of reflection on the Holy Family on Christmas Day, and I’d like to continue that today. This is, of course, my 2nd Christmas with Benedict and the reality of being a young father has helped me to see the events of Christmas in a new light.
I particularly want to focus on St. Joseph. I continue to be impressed with his strength of character and commitment to mission. While we focus mainly on Mary’s “yes,” it can be easy to overlook St. Joseph’s constancy and protection.
The Holy Family’s journey to Bethlehem, and then on to Egypt, was treacherous. They were fleeing from a hostile and powerful government, they navigated difficult terrain, and they avoided all sorts of thieves on their route. On top of all of this, they cared for a newborn baby. What a trip that must have been!
Joseph was truly a holy man, he’d have to be to accept his mission. Not only was he to take Mary as his wife despite a pregnancy that he may not have fully comprehended, he was then asked to take his family into Egypt and support them there. Being that open to accepting the Will of God required an immense depth of Spirit, and it’s something that we should all strive for.
I’m most impressed with Joseph’s courage. He was courageous in accepting Jesus as his adopted son, he was courageous in standing up to the societal pressures to divorce and perhaps even to publicly shame Mary, he was courageous in undertaking the journey to Bethlehem with his pregnant wife, and he was courageous in taking his family to Egypt and finding work to support them there.
What does all of this tell us? How can we apply the example of Joseph in our own lives?
First, we should make ourselves open to grace. Joseph was given a tremendous amount of grace to carry out his mission, but he was only ready to accept it because he was disposed to it. A solid relationship with God is foundational in grace on this scale, and yet, many of us are called to similar missions. We’re guardians and protectors of our family, and, if we do it well, we can easily become a target of the Devil. So it’s good and necessary that we allow ourselves to be as open to God as we can be.
Second, we should place our will second to God’s. This is a true challenge. Joseph’s life plan probably didn’t involve being foster father of the Savior of the World. It was probably more along the lines of running his own carpentry shop. Yet, had Joseph sought to only live out his life plan, no one would know him and God would have had to find someone else to shepherd the young Jesus.
Last, we should do everything in the service of our family. It’s clear that Joseph was a devoted family man who was intimately involved in the life of the family until his death. He wasn’t satisfied with simply providing for the material needs of his family. He was only concerned with their happiness and fulfillment.
St. Joseph is a powerful and silent role model for us as men. May we do a better job filling his shoes in 2015 than we did in 2014.
Thank you so much for being a part of this Catholic Husband community! I wish you and your family a happy, blessed, and fulfilling Christmas and I look forward to continuing to serve you in the future!
Merry Christmas!
Eat for Success
As a husband, your health takes on a new importance. As a single man, it didn’t matter much whether you were at the top of your game or slacking off. As a married man, you have people depending on you. Your health is tied to the length of days that you get to spend with your family. While exercise is a big part of your overall health picture, one thing that can’t be neglected is your diet.
We have a pretty unhealthy view of the word “diet.” It either means pain, hunger, or desperation, depending on whom you ask. The fact is, we’re all on a diet. Your diet is the total of all that you eat. It can be a very healthy diet or a very unhealthy one. It could be high in this, low in that, or perfectly balanced.
The fact remains, no matter how much exercise you do, if you don’t control your intake, you’ll never reach your goals.
The best way to get started with a healthier diet is by menu planning. Having a plan for the week, and a list when you go grocery shopping, can significantly help you get back and stay on track. When you have a list, you’re not at the mercy of sudden whims. Grocery shopping becomes a destination, instead of a journey.
Another really successful tactic is to use a food diary. It can be a pain, but research shows that those who use a food diary meet their goals more quickly and more consistently. There are even plenty of apps out there, if that’s your thing. I personally use MyFitnessPal. Their database is huge, so the actual keeping of the diary isn’t too big of an inconvenience.
Finally, if you really need to get moving on your goals, the absolute best thing you can do is to get a friend (or your spouse!) involved. Just like having a gym buddy can keep you on track, the accountability of a friend can be the difference between success and defeat.
If you keep eating junk, you’ll end up with no energy. So hit the Internet, grab some fresh new recipes, and reach your health goals!
Time Management for Kids
Kids today are operating under very tight time constraints. While the number of potential activities continues to rise, what’s also driving this boom in kid’s after-school activities is college applications. We’re told that colleges are looking for well-rounded applicants. That means that between homework, after-school activities, friends and family time, kids today are facing a real time crunch.
As a parent, you’ve been there. You know the pain, misery, and exhaustion that comes with being overwhelmed. You’ve been in situations where you had too much going on and things got missed. You know the regret that comes with putting your work in front of your family. You’ve been in the land of task overload. This means that, as a parent, it’s your job to help your kids learn to make the difficult decisions that come with prioritizing time.
Just like work, kid’s activities will expand to the amount of time you give them. Also like work, there will always be more things to do. There’s always a sport in season, always another theater production to try out for, always another club that would look great on a college application.
The struggle is not choosing between the good and the bad. It’s the struggle of choosing what’s the most good. It’s the struggle of being exposed to new horizons while maintaining a healthy balance in life. This is where parents really need to parent. If kids don’t learn to prioritize their time in high school, college will be a mess and their life could end up a disaster.
When you sit down with your teen to discuss time priorities, it’s important that they know that you’ve been in this situation before. It’s also important that you emphasize that all of the things that they are doing are good, and it’s only when the good is too much that it becomes bad.
Work with your teen to develop a formula for how they spend their time. Priority 1 is school work, priority 2 is family and priority 3 is all other activities. Using this framework, or another that you both come up with, rework their schedule. Dive into how much time they need for each activity and how much they’re actually spending. Then, edit their schedule.
Your kids need your help when it comes to prioritizing their time. This critical life skill is really only learned when you’re in the moment, so take the time to help guide them to success.
Take Vacation
I want to begin this post by noting that I’m on vacation all this week. There will, of course, be new posts and some social media updates, but I won’t be writing and I won’t be actively working on any projects. It’s been a busy, and very successful 2014 thanks to both you and Alison. We’ve made huge progress on the Catholic Husband blog, published two books, and launched a podcast.
I’m taking this vacation for one simple reason: we need rest.
I’ve always been confused by people who don’t take all of their paid vacation. In fact, I’ve had people brag to me about how they haven’t taken vacations in extended periods of time. That’s not only very sad, it’s extremely unhealthy. Not only do you need rest, your family needs rest!
Paid vacation is a part of your compensation package at work, meaning that instead of paying you more to do your job, they’re giving you the chance to not work for a few days a year and still get paid as if you had. Your company needs you to use those days because you’ll be a better employee. Burnout and loss of productivity are extremely expensive to companies and you’re far too valuable to not be able to give your full effort.
Heck, even God took a vacation from creating the universe.
Vacation, even a vacation at home, is freeing and fun. You can do whatever you want, you can spend time with your family, you can even take a day trip. This space gives your mind time to relax and recharge. Vacation days help to restore your creative energies. Use your vacation to try something new or to work on a hobby.
I haven’t intentionally taken a week off since this summer, and I was only off then because of the move. I need to be more intentional about taking vacations, even if that just means that instead of writing while Benedict is napping, I might nap myself, read, or play a game.
When I planned out my 2015 calendar, I gave myself 3 weeks off. Yet, even though I won’t do any work during those 21 days, I know that I’ll deliver better content, products, and ideas on days when I am working because I gave my mind time to recharge.
Clean House, Happy Wife
I love a clean house and a fresh start in the morning. I get up and work for about two hours until Benedict stirs and demands breakfast. Lately, I’ve been refining my evening routine to allow for more time to pick-up the house before bed.
I’ve noticed some significant changes since making this tweek to my evening routine. Each evening, I do a full cleaning of the kitchen and run the dishwasher, I pickup Benedict’s toys in the family room, prep the coffee machine for the morning along with our water bottles, clear the dining room table, and setup my desk to be ready for whatever work I’m starting with in the morning. In addition to setting up my physical workspace, I close all applications on my computer and open only the window I’ll need first thing in the morning.
I’ve found that it’s much easier to get out of bed in the morning and I’m able to more quickly shift from sleeping to working. The clean spaces and prepped workspaces have really allowed me to get up and running instead of spending time preparing. It would take me between 15-30 minutes before from wake-up to starting work and I can now do it in under 10 minutes. I’m also more productive and have a clearer head space. I’m not worried about what I have to do before I get to work and there aren’t any physical barriers slowing me.
I’ve found something else. Alison really loves it.
She loves the order and cleanliness that it brings to our home. Messes are no longer huge, unmanageable projects that have to be deferred to the weekend. Dishes are always clean and ready. Since the dishwasher is empty in the morning, breakfast dishes land in the dishwasher, not in the sink. It also means that she doesn’t have to worry about tripping over anything.
I start the evening cleaning around 8:15pm. The kitchen is already clean after dinner, so I begin with unloading the dishwasher. I then work from the front of the house to the back, and then upstairs in order. I’ve also found that this is a great way to close out the day. When everything is clean, I’m ready for bed because I don’t want to get the house messy again. There’s also nothing else for me to do. It’s a really awesome way to stay in control of my cleaning.
Clutter creeps and sinks fill up fast. With daily maintenance, I’m able to better manage our home and keep it clean for us. It took me two years to figure out, but a small investment of 15 minutes in the evening can result in huge wins in the morning.
Live A Saintly Life
When it comes to fitness, it’s easy to tell when you’re out of bounds. That fateful day when you hop up on the scale and the number shocks you is the clear sign that you need to make a change. You get on the internet and find outstanding resources and training plans. You get on the App Store and download fitness apps and trackers to help you stay on target. You make a clear decision and then execute. Why don’t we treat our spiritual life the same way?
Sainthood is an open membership club. Anyone can be a saint, no matter their state and position in life. Membership is gained through a conscious decision to accept grace and to live in humble obedience to God’s Will and Law.
Truthfully, we all know that the only way to true happiness is holiness. While some other pleasures give us temporary comfort, nothing will leave us as fully happy and satisfied as living a holy life. We know that sin leaves us empty. We know that being impatient with our wives leaves us feeling uneasy later. We know that gossip only leads to guilt. In fact, with gossip, the feeling of guilt overcomes us almost immediately.
So if we want to be truly happy, if we want to live truly free, if we want to know what life’s like living rightly, why don’t we attack the goal with the same tenacity that we attack our fitness goals? Why don’t we cut out hours of TV a day (sin), hit the gym every day (prayer), and start making better decisions about what we eat (control over thoughts)?
The fact is, we can. It won’t be 100% perfect, but it is possible. We know that temptation will come. We know that temptation will be tough. We’ve all been tempted back to laziness when on a health kick. We’ve all had to face cold weather or a rainy day and had to decide if we were going to get out there and get it done or sit the day out. The same is true with the spiritual battle. Temptation is tough, but it can be overcome. Each time you beat temptation, you get that much stronger.
Is today the day that you decide to focus on becoming a saint with intentionality and dedication? Is today the day you start backing up that goal with prayer and action?
If it is, I applaud you. Just remember, you’ve opened yourself up in the past to certain sin, and those temptations will be the hardest to overcome. Be alert, be vigilant, and be ready to beat it down.
Choosing to become a saint is an act of the Will. Decide to be a saint today, and manage that decision each day until you hit your goal.
Sex Isn’t Just for the Bedroom
It’s quite easy to see that we’ve really got a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of sex. On one side of the spectrum, there’s the pervasive hedonistic view that galavants around with the classic “anything goes” mentality. On the other side is the rigid, closed view that sees sex as an inconvenient necessity. The Catholic Church’s teaching is clear, but what both of these views ignore is the fact that sex isn’t just for the bedroom.
If a couple views sex as a singular act, they’re missing out on perhaps the most fundamental aspect of a healthy marital sexual relationship. Sex itself is a physical act, but only as its outward mechanism. Sex is so much more than a merely physical act. Through its experience, sex is able to dial into biological responses that trigger deep emotional connections. Beyond just the physical and psychological, sex is a deeply spiritual experience.
For an act that’s such a transformative and transcendent experience, sex is not and cannot be contained in the bedroom. Sex is all about continuity. If spouses are harsh and bitter to one another throughout the day and then suddenly go into the bedroom and enter into the marital embrace, the lack of continuity is going to severely diminish the sexual act. A person simply can’t flip a switch and expect a rich experience.
Your daily married life is an extension of the sexual act. It should be foreplay. Not running around the house pushing each other up against a wall foreplay. Rather, living in harmony, peace, love, and service will give your relationship the kind of continuity and foreplay that’s required for deeply moving sexual encounters. These sexual encounters are so much more than the act itself as you both feel united in every way and closer than you could possibly be in any other setting.
Sex incorporates all aspects of a married couple’s life. The bond of trust that you share, your communication skills, your ability to love, your ability to respond to one another’s needs, and more, all meld together into your sexual relationship. The only way to have a truly satisfying sex life with your wife is to pour your whole self into your relationship. Your whole life must be fully integrated… you can’t be a jerk in the daily routine and expect a healthy sexual relationship.
We need to live more integrated lives and relationships. Always be loving, always be kind, and stop trying to put your sexual relationship into a box. Sex isn’t just for the bedroom, it’s for daily life.
Caring for A Sick Child
There are many powerful acts of love and service. These acts force us into uncomfortable and inconvenient situations. However, it’s not usually the inconvenience that we recognize. The understanding that what we’re doing is important and helping someone else moves us beyond ourselves. This is never more clear than in helping to care for a sick child.
Kids get sick. When a child is sick, the child lacks the basic understanding of what the illness is. They don’t have years of experience with illness, and so they’re more upset. They lead simple, uncomplicated lives, and this sickness is interrupting everything. This is where, as a parent, you can really show them love and model a life of service. By tenderly caring for their needs and making them as comfortable as possible, you can wrap them in a mantle of love. You can help them feel better emotionally and ease their worries. This love will help to lower stress and facilitate the healing process.
Illness turns a child’s world upside down. Everything that they thought they knew, everything that they experienced is no longer true. They’re miserable and they don’t yet know the little hacks that can help make the path to recovery much shorter. For example, a sick 1 year old doesn’t yet know that blowing their nose can clear some congestion. This is a time for you to really guide your child. As a parent, you possess an immense amount of real-world knowledge that they don’t have. This is the time to use that knowledge to help them understand that this is only temporary and they’ll be up and playing very soon.
Illness in your child’s life is a great chance for you to love and care for them. Cleaning up after them, helping them with even basic functions, and easing their burdens is what true love demands. If they’re older, this level of service can be a pleasant reminder of a time in their lives when they were younger.
There’s also a measure of deeper personal sacrifice for the parents. In order to care for the child, one or both parents might have to give up vacation days. Those hard-earned days are meant to be spent in restful relaxation. Instead, they sometimes are used to care for a sick child at home. Yet, therein lies the beauty of sacrifice. Parents would rather use those days being home caring for a sick child than at the beach on vacation.
Caring for a sick child requires a parent’s great love. It’s just the scenario that the graces of parenthood prepare every adult for.
Surround Your Marriage with Friends
The life of a young single person is filled with friendships of all degrees. Think back to your college days and the boundless number of friends that you had. Each relationship achieved a particular purpose. They weren’t formed out of some utilitarian purpose, rather, as each friendship was cultivated, it ended up meeting some need that you each had.
After graduation, when your friends dispersed across the country and around the globe, some of those friendships faded and were replaced with others. Perhaps you found friends at work, in your apartment complex, or in your parish. Again, you had needs that needed to be met, like the need for a confidant, the need for a sounding board, or the need for a social wingman.
The single most radical relational change that we experience as adults comes on our wedding day. Your wife, your marital relationship, is designed to meet all of your essential relational needs and most of your peripheral needs.
Your wife is your best friend, your sounding board, your emotional support, your confidant, your career coach, and so much more. While your marital relationship meets all of your essential needs, there’s still room for other relationships. These relationships are certainly important, but they’re no longer urgently needed.
This is the single biggest struggle for any newly married couple: maintaining old friendships while investing the majority of work, time, and effort into the newly formed marital relationship.
While it can be sad to admit, the relationships that one has during their single life are instantly diminished on one’s wedding day. This doesn’t negate their importance, but it does mean that those old relationships must take a back-seat to the relationship with one’s new spouse.
Balancing out those relationships in a new paradigm is important work. Although the friendships are no longer in first place, that doesn’t negate their overall importance. Married couples need to still rely on these non-marital relationships because they do have value and they are still a part of one’s social life.
The married life brings with it the difficult task of navigating this new reality. I’ve found that it requires intentionality to foster and continuously cultivate these friendships. I would argue that your marital relationship is enhanced by these friendships.
All of this brings out the great marital trap: couple friends. In movies and media we are often confronted with images of perfectly aligned couple friends who share their lives together. It’s presented as something that’s effortless and crazy fun. In reality, finding couple friends is incredibly elusive. If we believe that there’s a couple exactly like us out there and spend all of our time trying to find them, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.
More likely than not, you’ll have couple friends that share some commonalities with you, but are not necessarily going to be the “share this life together” variety. In those instances, I’d encourage you to embrace the commonalities that you share, enjoy your time with them, but don’t force the friendship to be something that it’s not.
As spouses, we need to be okay with the fact that our wife will be friends with people that we’re not necessarily friends with, and vice versa. It’s important for us to support her in that relationship and to expect the exact same with the reverse. Your wife should support relationships that you have with people she might not consider to be friends. Again, it’s all about finding common ground. It’s important to choose your friends wisely, to maintain friendships you had prior to your wedding day, and to cultivate relationships with new people.
Your relationship with your wife is the most important one that you have in your life, but remember to surround yourselves with high quality friends.
Outsmart Temptation
Temptation is a fork in the road. We either freely choose to avoid sin, or we freely choose to commit sin.
Temptation in and of itself isn’t sinful. It’s not a sin to be tempted by something. It’s a sin to act on that temptation.
The problem is, temptation is very influential. It plays to our weaknesses and in that way, it gains a tremendous amount of power over us. That also means that we can, over time, give less and less influence to it.
You know your weaknesses, you know which sin is alluring to you. You also know what it’s like to commit those sins and their effects. You know the shame and guilt that come with it. You know the dirtiness, sadness, and emptiness that it leaves behind. You know the feeling of knots in your stomach waiting in line for Confession.
If you’re ready to beat back temptation, if you’re ready to have the upper hand in this struggle, you can choose to fight starting today. You can no longer be reactive, you must be proactive.
Temptation takes advantage of the moment. Your body’s natural responses to sin amplify the temptation and cloud your judgement. For example, if your budget is tight and you had an opportunity to steal money from the cash register at work, the thought of committing that act would get your adrenaline pumping. That physiological response would prevent you from objectively viewing the situation and removing yourself from it. In a similar way, a high school couple whose canoodling is reaching the point of serious sexual sin is impeded from resisting the temptation to engage in sex. In both cases, very real physiological responses impair judgement.
But it’s not your body’s fault that you commit sin. It’s not your life situation’s fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault because you let temptation get too strong.
If we want to be successful at defeating temptation, even ones where we’re most weak, we have to go on the offensive. We have to outsmart it.
We both have multi-year track records of sinning and, by this point, we both know what our triggers are. We both know what things always lead us to committing sin. If we want to be temptation and sin, we need to take on those things.
The people you hang out with, what you do with your idle time, the websites that you surf, the TV shows that you watch, the movies that you go see, the music that you listen to, the magazines that you subscribe to, the books that you read… all of these things are potential triggers. None are intrinsically bad as a category, but each have elements that are intrinsically evil. The internet is not a bad thing, but it has bad sites. Television isn’t bad, but it has bad shows. Music isn’t bad, but there is bad music.
You have the power to overcome temptation, even where you’re the weakest. The only question is, will you get rid of the things in your life that lead you to sin or are you too attached to them to walk away?