How to Start Your End of Day Conversations
Questions are powerful. Through the power of questioning, you can open up a whole new world. You learn about people, who they are, their unique story and how they view the world.
Conversations are driven by questions, including conversations with your wife.
There is one question that can really set the gears of gratitude in motion. “What was the best thing that happened to you today?"
I miss Alison during the day. Certainly I’m engaged in many different activities, but no matter how great of a day I’m having, I really look forward to when she’s home and we have some down time together. One of the practices that I’m starting to implement is asking her that fantastic question, “What was the best thing that happened to you today?” I want to know about her day, but I really want to focus on something that she really enjoyed… something that she really knocked out of the park.
Our days have ups and downs. Some days, we’re on it! Other days, nothing seems to go right. Despite what each day looks like to us, there’s always at least one thing that went well. By asking what was the best part of your spouse’s day, you can both start looking at your day from a positive light. Instead of dealing with the negative that bubbles to the surface, you go hunting for the really good things.
The funny thing is, the more you look for the “best thing,” the more good you see. It helps to grow your gratitude muscles. You start to recognize that even in a bad day, there was plenty of good, if you’re willing to look for it. You become more grateful for your work and for the experiences that you had.
We are incredibly lucky to live the lives that we have. Experience deeper gratitude today by asking your wife about the best part of her day.
Keeping Family Prayers Fresh
Family prayers, just like personal prayers, can get a little stale. The problem with stale family prayer is that your little ones will get bored.
It’s a wise idea to set a schedule for changing your family prayer routine. This will help you keep things fresh, but also give you some lead time for planning. Here are a few ideas for ways to change up your routine:
• Pray the rosary. It really only takes about 15 minutes, which is manageable. If it’s going too long on a school night, moving it to your weekend prayer time might be your best bet.
• Petitions. Go around the room and have each family member share their intentions. At the end, collectively pray for them all.
• Scripture lessons. Have you ever had someone blow your mind with the background story of a particular Scripture? It may have been a parable or verse that you’ve heard dozens of times, and when they tell you the historical surroundings, it changes everything? Seek out lessons (my suggestion is to start with anything by Mark Hart) and then teach them to your children.
• Adoration. If you live in an area that has Eucharistic Adoration, take your family and spend some time. Bonus points for making this part of your regular routine.
• Evening Prayer/Night Prayer. The Catholic Church has the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Breviary). The Liturgy is prayed by priests and religious five times daily. Have your family pray Evening Prayer (about 10 minutes) or Night Prayer (about 5 minutes) together.
There are endless prayer possibilities. Keep things fresh and keep your family engaged.
Managing Your Daily Prayer Time
Do you ever go entire days without talking to your wife? Of course, not! Yet, we often find ourselves going days without spending quality time in prayer.
Certainly we pray before meals, but is that enough? Imagine you and your wife only spoke three times a day and you didn’t really share what’s going on in your life. Imagine you simply thanked her for making the food and then you ate in complete silence.
Sometimes we forget that our relationship with God is just that, a relationship. His expectations are reasonable. He wants us to follow His Will, He wants us to phone home daily, and He wants to feed us weekly at Mass.
If you really seek to improve in the spiritual life, you need to implement a daily prayer routine. It’s something that is fairly straightforward and can literally be started today. At the beginning of your day, block out 15 minutes for prayerful activities. You could spend time reading the Bible, reading a spiritual book, praying a rosary or even just talking with God.
When it comes to prayer, it’s easier than texting. You literally just start talking and you and God are linked up.
As with anything in relationships, too much repetition can lead to boredom and fatigue. Change your prayer routine frequently. You know yourself best, but monthly or quarterly is about right. We both know that when you get bored with something, you move on. Your relationship with God is too important to simply “move on” from.
The great thing about changing up your prayer routine is that it will broaden your spiritual horizons. You’ll learn about some new saint or explore a new facet of the Church.
Establish a daily routine and change it often.
Candlelit Dinners
There’s something really special about candlelit dinners. I’m not sure which committee in history voted that candlelight is a requirement for romance, but they were right. The low flickering light puts everything in a better light.
But do candlelit dinners need to be saved for romantic dates?
Every night you (hopefully!) eat dinner with your wife. You sit at the dining room table, talk about your days and experiences. What if one night, your wife came home to find that you had made dinner and pulled out the candles?
Candlelit dinners are perfect at home, especially after a rough day. They might even be the perfect ice breaker after a martial fight. They can elevate a simple dinner, nothing outside of the ordinary, to a romantic one.
• Candlelight sets the mood. Low light helps us to relax. Have you ever seen anyone fighting at a candlelit dinner?
• Candlelight adds an air of elegance. When you pull out the candles at home, you take simple elements and make them special. By simply adding a few candles, you can completely transform your dining experience.
• Candlelight invites us to slow down. We’re always so busy. Someone spends an hour to cook dinner and we finish eating in 10 minutes. Dinner isn’t just a meal, it’s a special time to be together. It’s about sharing, communicating and caring.
So grab the candles and put them on your dinner table and watch your whole dinner experience transform.
Loving On A Budget
Romance doesn’t have to be expensive.
Alison and I have a series of financial goals for ourselves. We first want to be debt free, then we want to buy our first home with cash, and finally we want to invest in her career. These are massive goals which require focus. They also require every financial resource available to us. So how can we sustain our marriage without spending lots of money on dates, gifts, and flowers?
There are certainly an unlimited number of romantic gestures that cost money. I’m interested in doing many of them. At one time or another, we all find ourselves in a position similar to Alison and I. We want to show our wife that we love her, we want to spend time with her, but we don’t want it to cost money.
It was this very quandary that led me to writing the “101 Days of Love.” In it, I lay out 101 ways to show your wife that you love her, with the majority of them costing no money at all. I knew that in the days while Alison and I are becoming debt free I would want to show her that she means the world to me, and I would want to do it in unique and creative ways. I also knew that our budget wouldn’t give me the financial resources for anything too grand.
But that’s the great thing about marriage. It doesn’t survive on grand gestures. It thrives when each day we make smaller gestures. These small gestures are just big enough to make a big impact in her day. They’re tiny surprises that she will love.
We all have the resources around us to show her that she’s special. It just takes a little bit of imagination.
Plan Your Dreams
When you dream, dream big.
Alison and I have many dreams. One of them is for us to go on our honeymoon. When we got married, we decided that with our schedules and finances, it would be prudent to delay our honeymoon. We really wanted to go to Italy for a few weeks and that simply wasn’t a possibility for us at that time in our life.
So our Italian honeymoon became a dream. It’s a big dream. There will be lots of planning to do before we’re ready to take that trip of a lifetime. So while we can’t go to Italy today, we can begin preparing today.
Typically a dream is being held up by something. It could be your age, job, health, or any number of other factors. That’s why the dream isn’t a reality, yet. But dreams are meant to be believed, so while it isn’t a reality yet, we do believe that it will be someday.
When dreams are put on hold, it can be a challenge to endure the time between now and when your dream is fulfilled. Planning your dreams now can be a helpful motivation. So if you need to get to a healthy weight before you can travel, each time you exercise, you can think of how satisfying that trip will be. If you need to pay off debt, it will be a lot easier for you to put as much money towards loans as you can so that you’ll be free to do whatever you want.
Dreams that are huge require huge amounts of planning. I hope your dreams are massive. I hope you dream of running a marathon, building your own personal villa, or traveling around the world. While today you can’t run a mile without stopping, while you may be drowning in debt, while you may have a job that only gives you 12 days off per year, one day you will do those things.
Work with your wife now to start planning. Do massive amounts of research, read reviews. Plan your vacation down to the minute. Plan your dream home down to the last foot of copper piping. Write your business plan with the most extensive of details.
With hard work, the question becomes, “When will I live my dream,” instead of “Will I live my dream?"
Waking Up Together
As I write this, it’s 5:18am on a Wednesday morning. I’ve been up for 38 minutes. So far, I’ve weighed in, made coffee, spent time in meditation, and began my writing for the day. All of this is possible because, when the alarm rang at 4:40am, both Alison and I got up at the same time.
If I don’t launch out of bed like an ICBM missile when the alarm goes off, you can bet that I’ll be in bed for the next two hours. It’s hard to wake up early, even when you go to bed early. Since Alison needs to be out the door by 5:30am, I thought it would be a good idea for us to wake up at the same time. If we’re both up, she can get to work on time and I’ll get about the business of the day instead of sleeping until the still morning air is pierced by Benedict’s shrill “FEED ME!!!” cry.
The morning is an amazing time. If you capitalize on it, you can unlock a whole new destiny for your day. I’m a morning person, so even though it can be hard to get out of bed without hitting snooze half a dozen times, I generally feel better about how a day went if I started early.
Generally speaking, we all know that a stable sleep schedule is good for our health. If we go to bed at about the same time and wake up at the same time, we harvest many benefits. We’re more rested, we fall asleep more easily at night, and waking up much more pleasant. If you stay on schedule long enough, you may find that your body naturally wakes you up at the appropriate time, meaning you don’t have to listen to that awful alarm clock anymore.
Waking up at the same time as your wife gives you both accountability. I can’t tell you the number of times I used to tell Alison that I was waking up early and overslept. With us both agreeing what time we’re waking up, we can be sure that the other person can help us along if we need it.
If you both wake up at the same time, you can spend some time together before work. The start to your day might be a tornado of activity with people running all over the house trying to get out the door on time, which can be a challenge if you don’t have those extra wide doors installed in your home. When this whirlwind blows through, you don’t have time to really stop and say hello. Getting up at the same time allows you to find some more calm together time at the start of the day.
If your wife is on board, but you’re having trouble getting up, harness the power of light. Light plays a big role in how our brains operate. We’ve trained them to sleep when it’s dark and wake when it’s light. If you’re up before the sun, turn on lights in your room to help wake up. It’s actually not all that unpleasant. If you want to be a pro, put your lights on timers and use them as your alarm clock.
While you and your wife have different schedules, if you can align them so that you both wake up at the same time, you’ll both get to enjoy a little more “us” time in your day.
Examine Your Conscience Nightly
The other weekend at Mass, the priest gave a fabulous homily. It was one of those homilies that you want to stand up and applaud. It was one of those homilies that really calls people out. It took a spiritual theory and brought it into our lives.
The Gospel was of the parable of the sower of seeds. Some seeds fell on rocky soil, some fell on good soil… you know the story. The priest talked about our souls as being gardens and the Christian life was us constantly gardening. First we removed the boulders (mortal sins), then we removed the rocks (venial sins), then finally we can start to plant the flowers (good works). Throughout this time, we pull weeds (faults). He talked about the seriousness of sins of omission and failing to do good works, but before we can be in a position to do good works, we have to get rid of the venial and mortal sins in our own lives.
It was incredible to hear. It felt like he was speaking just the right words for everyone at Mass.
The main takeaway from Father’s homily was that we must be constant gardeners. We’re meant to deny ourselves and yield to the Will of God in this life so that we can be happy forever with Him in the next. In order to be a constant gardener, in order to constantly improve, we have to be self-aware. We have to understand where we’re messing up.
The key tool in this sin barometer is to examine your conscience daily.
We do a really thorough examination before receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but a daily one might be able to help us find ourselves in need of the Sacrament less and less. Your daily examination can be really simple, and I’ll bet that certain things during the day will naturally rise to the top. Your rightly-formed conscience can help you with this examination.
In the evening, before bed, examine your conscience using this simple framework:
• How did I sin against God?
• How did I sin against my wife?
• How did I sin against others?
All of our sins, as married men, will fall into one of those three categories. I list sins against my wife as second because that is our most important human relationship. It’s more important than your relationship with your parents, friends, and even your children. If you and your wife’s relationship is healthy and thriving, all of your other relationships will see growth.
This simple examination only takes a few minutes, but it can make a world of difference in the choices you make tomorrow.
We make mistakes. The truly successful Christian recognizes those mistakes, plans to avoid them in the future, and grows deeper in humility daily.
You’re Worth More Than A Paycheck
At some point in our lives, we each ask ourselves the question, “What is my worth?"
Towards the end of my last job, I realized that my identity was starting to rely on the fact that I was working at that particular non-profit. I wasn’t a workaholic, I had just let my work gain too big of role in my self-esteem. So when times were tight at the company and pay raises didn’t come, I started to believe it was a result of poor work on my part. It was an unhealthy view to have of myself.
A man’s worth cannot be measured by the size of their paycheck or the loftiness of their title. Work is a part of who we are, but it’s a small part of our world. We are husbands, fathers, sons, uncles, nephews. We are members of our Parish, members of the Universal Church, members of our community. We are members of hobby groups, sports teams, and clubs.
You have intrinsic value simply because you are a human person. You have dignity. You bring value to those around you by just being who you are. You bring joy into people’s lives, you help others through your volunteerism, you help your company serve people through your work, you build up the Kingdom of God through your active participation in the Mass.
The value you bring to your wife certainly has everything to do with the amount of effort you put into your marriage. You give her support as a chef (part-time?), a driver, an errands runner, an exercise partner, a counselor, a sounding board, a listener, a best friend. You are worth so much more to her than the amount of money you bring in the door.
The value of your contributions to your family is based mainly on how much of yourself you’re willing to give. Be open to love and give everything you have and never doubt your self-worth again.
Marriage Rules, Secularism Drools
Many people, perhaps a good segment of your friends and peers, have a negative view of marriage. Some believe it’s modern slavery, others see it as a roadblock to fulfilling their dreams, and a few even find the idea of having a single sexual partner for life impossible, or at the very least undesirable. Your experience of marriage is shaped by your attitude towards the Sacrament, not the petty opinion of someone else.
Compared with my peers, I got married relatively young. For me, it wasn’t as much a matter of age as it was finding Alison. Despite my vast travels as a child in a military family, I had not found an equal before her. It’s simply an unfortunate reality that my equal is a Yankee, but alas, none of us are perfect.
Many of my peers have been actively avoiding marriage. They prefer idle pursuits and attempt self-actualization through completion of a subjective “bucket list.” There’s nothing wrong with having a bucket list, it just needs to be prioritized properly in your life. I think that there’s something wrong with intentionally being closed to marriage. I think that there’s something wrong with creating a list of criteria that must be met before you’re ok with getting married.
It all feels so pessimistic. I prefer a more optimistic view of marriage.
Marriage offers something that’s hard to achieve… true freedom. We tend to think that freedom means being able to do whatever we want. That would make us wrong. True freedom is being able to do what we ought to do. For those of us who are called to the vocation of marriage, the sacrament allows us the true freedom to be completely happy and completely fulfilled. In the same way, Holy Orders offers true freedom to those called to the ordained priesthood.
When you’re living your vocation, when you’re doing your best to love and serve your wife, life becomes more enjoyable. It feeds off of itself. So when you have a great day because you were a great husband, you just want more. The more deeply you love and the more you serve, the deeper your marriage becomes. As a result, you both experience a higher quality marriage.
Marriage can offer what so few personal pursuits can… the chance to be the person you were made to be.