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.
Stealing Little Moments
Your day is a series of blocks of time. Every 15 or 30 minutes, you have your time parsed out to one meeting or another project. At home you have time for reading, relaxing, or maybe even gaming. So with your schedule full and your wife’s full, how do you find time for your wife?
MAKE TIME.
It really is that simple. They might only be small chunks of time… 15 minutes at breakfast, 30 minutes during dinner, an hour after the kids go to bed. If that’s the case, then that’s all you’ve got, so make the best of it!
You will never regret spending time with your wife.
Attend to Her Needs
A major theme of this blog is personal service. I believe that the most fun you’ll have is in serving your wife selflessly. If you lose yourself in your wife’s needs, you’ll reap a harvest so abundant that your marriage cannot help but grow.
About once a month, I upload pictures of Benedict to Facebook for my family to see. It’s a nice little tradition that allows them to see him grow without new pictures constantly clogging up their feed. As I was preparing this month’s batch, I ended up looking through all of his pictures since his birth. I’m glad that we live in the era of digital photography where we, “take pictures now, delete some later.” We have a vivd timeline of Benedict’s life. I spent some time thinking back to our stay in the hospital after his birth and how I was Alison’s advocate.
Certainly as a medial professional, Alison can handle her own, even if she is the patient. Yet, in that time after the ordeal of childbirth, I was her servant. I’d get whatever she needed, I’d make sure we both understand what the care team was telling us, and that she was taken care of. It was a time of intense service, and I loved the feeling. So even though I was extremely tired after being awake for so long and sleeping so poorly on the “dad couch,” I was able to put my needs on hold to take care of her.
Caring for your wife shouldn’t just be an exercise in self-actualization. It should be an exercise in humility. It should be an exercise in love. When you attend to her needs, she feels the love that she deserves. When you anticipate what she needs, you honor her place in your life.
Take the time to take care of your needs so you can fully lose yourself in selfless service to your wife.
Choose Joy
Being joyful about our lives can be a challenge, despite all of the good things we have. It’s all too easy to let the bad overshadow the good.
It seems like in the times that I should be thankful and praying even harder, I tend to let my prayer life slide. I let the things that are going wrong almost consume me. That’s no way to live.
In our lives, attitude is everything. People in history have accomplished amazing things, despite all odds being against them. They’ve accomplished these things because they had the right attitude. They chose to not let the things that were going wrong discourage them.
If joy is so essential, how can we maintain it?
• Refuse to let outside factors affect you. When things go wrong, we choose how much energy and effort we give to that thing. Our response affects how we respond to everything else in that moment. So when something bad happens to you, don’t let it ruin the rest of your day.
• Stay in a loving mindset. While there are many things in our lives that we cannot control, our mindset is one that we can. It’s a challenge, especially in the face of adversity, but it can be done.
• Remember that joy is essential in the spiritual life. Although we’re very reverent and reserved at Mass, let’s keep in mind that the Christian life is essentially meant to be a joyful one. Even though times may be tough, the battle is already won. We are not meant to be somber and sad, death is conquered!
Choose joy!
I Feel Like A Bum
“I felt like a bum.” Alison spoke those words to me two weeks ago. She was describing a team building activity that she participated in with her new coworkers. She felt like a bum because she was floating down a river on an inner tube while I was home taking care of Benedict. The funny thing is, I felt like a bum, too.
I have three main responsibilities during the day. First, I’m in charge of making sure Benedict is safe, happy, and full. Second, I work on Catholic Husband and the iOS app that I’m developing. Third, I’m charged with maintaining the household. I’ve known for a while that I would eventually be in this role, so I’ve been preparing. The fact is, I feel like a bum because I love what I’m doing. It doesn’t feel like work or a burden. It feels like exactly what I want to be doing.
That was the truly funny thing about both Alison and I admitting that we felt like bums. We both realized we were doing what we truly wanted to be doing.
This is the magic of doing what you want. Work isn’t designed to be oppressive. It’s liberating! It’s a prayer! You can see movement as a result of your labors. You can feel the impact that you’re having in the world. It’s a truly beautiful thing. Of course, doing work that you love might not happen overnight. You might have to come up with a plan to move into a job that you truly love.
The key to loving your work is to work in your gifts. We each have things that we’re naturally good at or that we get a great deal of satisfaction from. When you’re doing work that helps other people, where you feel really fulfilled, you’re most likely using at least one of your gifts.
Our gifts were meant to be shared. So if you’re in a place where you’re not working in your gifts, you might need to make a change. Find ways to start small. Find a volunteer opportunity to help with and pitch in! Find a different way to go about your career or a new angle and work it.
Our gifts were meant to be shared. When you finally get to a point where you’re doing work that you love, using the gifts you’ve been given, you, too, can feel like a bum.
The Key to No-Work Sundays
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest in our lives. I’ve written recently about my Lenten journey this year to not work on Sundays. If you want to move towards not working on Sunday, what is the key?
Turning Sunday from “just another day” to a day of rest is more of a process than a decision. In order to not have to work on Sunday, you have to get everything else done in the other six days of the week. It will take planning and it will take discipline. All you really have to do is make these three changes:
• Friday is no longer the finish line. Right now, you probably consider Friday to be the “end of the week.” It means you don’t have to show up to work for two days, so that means that your break has begun. While it’s true that your “work” break starts on Friday at 5pm, you still have a list of things at home that need your attention.
• Work hard Saturday… get up early. Saturday has just taken on a whole new meaning. This is your day for errands, yard work, car cleaning, and home cleaning that didn’t happen the rest of the week. Get up early and run your errands as soon as the stores open. This will help you to avoid losing time waiting in line or in traffic. Don’t stop working until you’ve finished your chores, errands, and any preparation that you need to get done.
• Enjoy the fruits on Sunday. Everything is taken care of, give yourself permission to relax. Don’t be anxious about work on Monday, don’t worry about the day slipping away from you. If you want to nap, take a nap. If you want to go on a day trip, pack up the car! You literally have nothing else that you need to be doing (except going to Mass!).
When you’re finally able to make the switch to a no-work Sunday, your whole world will change. Make the effort, follow the steps, and enjoy the change.
Building Our Own Prisons
Temptation is difficult to endure. You’re actually not doing anything wrong by being tempted. It’s only when you indulge that you get into trouble. The real problem comes when you start actively seeking temptation.
During this month, I spend upwards of 13 hours each day alone at home while Alison is at work. 13 hours is a lot of time for me to get into trouble. They say that idle hands are the Devil’s tools, so I pack my schedule in tight. Between cleaning, cooking, baking, chasing Benedict, and running a business, I limit the amount of idle time that I have. This is critical in my proactive plan to avoid temptation.
Sin traps us. When we choose to sin, we create our own prison. Just like people who fall victim to substance abuse, we get caught in a cycle that can be hard to break. Sin is oppressive and binding. It can take away our hope and lead to despair.
So when temptation comes along and we flirt with it, we start building our prison until we’re finally trapped in a sin that we don’t want to be committing. The only way out is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It’s our get out of jail card, though it’s far from free. Some has already paid the price for our freedom.
Stop building your own prison!