Sleep Hygiene
Sleep. We all need it and many of us don’t get enough of it. It affects every area of our daily life and yet we don’t spend much time trying to improve it.
I am a very process driven person. If I have a routine, I can set goals and make sure everything that I need to do gets done. For a long time, I didn’t have a good sleep routine. I’d run, run, run and then jump into bed and wonder why I couldn’t fall asleep. The problem was that I didn’t tell my body that it should get ready for sleep. Our bodies have a biological process for restful sleep, but that process can only start if we give ourselves subtle cues. So I developed a bedtime routine that now involves serious quality time with my wife, Alison.
When I don’t get a good night sleep, I drag. I get grouchy. I’m very irritable. So getting a solid night sleep is very important.
Light is a major cue for our bodies. In the evening, low light causes our brains to release melatonin, which promotes good sleep. Things like TVs, computers, and mobile phones produce a blue hue that turns off the melatonin release. Planning to avoid those devices can help you get a great night sleep.
I start getting ready about an hour before bed. I finish up most of what I need to do on my phone, I go into the bathroom and brush my teeth. I then get into bed and turn on only a bedside lamp. I then pray for 15 minutes and read for 30 minutes. About 20 minutes into my reading, my eyes are getting pretty heavy.
After the 45 minutes of reading and prayer, I turn off the lights and cuddle with Alison until it’s time to roll over and drift off to sleep.
What is really great is that Alison has started to join me with the prayer and reading time. After a day apart, we have quality time together. The pre-sleep cuddle time fills that particular want of hers and makes the perfect end to the day.
A sleep routine is good. A sleep routine that builds your marriage? Well, that’s even better.
Nature is a Love Letter
We’re busy, I get that. We’re men. All day we charge, we fight, we win. We’re always on the move, always striving for our goals.
We can move too fast.
We can move so fast, that we miss God’s constant reminders for us.
The majority of us haven’t seen God. We have been given the gift of faith, and we are lucky to have received it. There is a blessing in believing without seeing, but there is also a challenge. We can easily forget God because He is not always in our field of vision.
Or is He?
Oh, He is alright!
Nature is God’s love letter to us. When we stop to admire the beauty of nature, we can see His hand. A stroke of His brush paints us a beautiful sunset. The vibrant colors of a garden reflect His master design.
We can see God’s hand in the most beautiful creation we have ever seen, our wife.
It’s a reminder. He’s there. And He wants us to have life to the fullest.
Leaving A Legacy
One of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had was seeing pictures of my parents when they were first married.
As a child, you know your parent in one dimension. They are the mature, wise, fully grown adult. You never get to meet or interact with your youthful parents in any memorable way.
When it comes to the topic of legacy, you should consider what you leave your children beyond money.
Certainly there will be stories and family folklore. You should also consider leaving them a written history.
My wife and I have been working on writing down our family history. We are each writing about our own childhoods and working together to share the real life journey story that begins when we met.
As life happens, we plan to add chapters and sections that will highlight important family or personal events.
By the time my life comes to a close, I hope that this work is a great adventure for my children, grandchildren and beyond. I’m trying to be honest so that they can really understand who I am. I am partly inspired by the brutally honest Steve Jobs biography (title?).
Not that my life is ugly, but I want them to know and understand my thinking through difficult decisions.
Consider leaving a written record to your own children. They may not appreciate it today. One day, however, it will be a cherished experience for them to get to know you as person, not just you as parent.
Shared Goals
The power of unity in your marriage can’t be underestimated.
When you and your wife move together towards something, there is an incredible force at play.
The strength of unity in your marriage gives you a key advantage over single people. When you and your wife are moving towards a goal, one of you will want to quit. There will be a moment of weakness and you’ll want to back out. She won’t let you. When you both cross the finish line, there will be an amazing feeling of accomplishment.
Shared goals will cause you both to do things that you didn’t think were possible, and that certainly wouldn’t happen with you alone.
For example, my wife and I went shopping for baby furniture recently. I didn’t have a clue what things she was asking for, so I decided I had to go into a store and physically see the options. We shopped for three hours and there were a few close calls.
We made the purchase at the last store: The Salvation Army. We got a three piece set for $25. Bingo.
Over the following four days, we sanded, painted, and moved our new furniture and there was an amazing unity in our marriage. We spent as much time as we could together, working towards our shared goal: getting the nursery ready.
It doesn’t just have to be about baby furniture. Setting goals with your wife can be about whatever you wish to accomplish. You will both sacrifice (time, financial resources, etc.) to reach that goal.
Sit down with your wife, set some goals, and experience the power of unity.
When Prayer Becomes Alive
Your prayer life is a relationship.
It is a conversation between Creator and created.
Like any relationship, it is going to have its ups and its downs.
There will be days when you throw yourself completely into it. There will be days that it doesn’t make it very high on your to-do list. There will be days when it is the only thing that keeps you going.
There are Springs and there are Winters.
I believe that the most magical time is as the winter is fading. Spring is on the horizon and you notice an uptick in your energy.
This is the moment when your prayer becomes alive.
You start to put yourself in those Biblical stories. You speak the words of the “Hail Mary” with vigor. You pray the Act of Contrition, feeling every word.
As your prayer becomes more alive, you become ensnared in it. The words become a part of you.
It is a mystical experience.
But how do we get there?
Easy. Pray for it.
Pray through the winter that your prayer life may have a spring.
Pray to Him who brings all good things to completion.
When Your Love Languages Don’t Translate
There may come a point in your marriage when you realize something. You and your wife may communicate differently.
You may want to show her an act of love that she’s not really interested in.
I recently got my wife a new iPhone. As an Apple geek, the unboxing is a magical experience. They have created a really brilliant user experience that makes even opening the box a great experience.
My wife was working and I had gone out and gotten the phone. I wanted to show her that I loved her by having it all set up and ready to go as soon as she got home. It was a way for me to show her my love. I would take all of the hassle of the new phone setup out of her life.
The problem was that she wanted to set it up. It was something that she enjoyed.
I could have gone through and just done it and she’d probably would’ve been ok. But I didn’t.
In that moment, at that time of decision, I decided that even though this was a way to show her my love, it was not one that she wanted.
So, I simply looked for another way to remind her that she is the love of my life.
Risk Management
There is a term in insurance called “risk management.”
Risk management essentially acknowledges that with a given activity, they are inherent possibilities that might lead to an undesirable outcome, but we put in place procedures that lower the risk to its lowest possible level.
That is a lot a of words.
I’ve posted several times about risk management in your marital relationship. From not traveling alone with female coworkers to avoiding the dangers of the internet.
It’s an essential thing for us, as men of honor and integrity, to not give the Devil a chance to work in our lives.
As I write this post, I am on the desktop computer in our living room. I can see my wife cooking in the kitchen (and boy does it smell good!) and the desk is located right next to the TV.
Having the computer in the living room is a risk management technique. We have lowered the risk that the computer could become a weapon against us.
It is also a sound parenting strategy. By having the computer (and laptops, and phones, and iPads) only for use in common spaces, we can keep each other accountable and protect ourselves from opportunities to make bad choices.
Look at your life, see the risks, and manage them.
Work is Holy
“I work so that I can live.”
That is the mantra for my generation.
We’ve moved to a point where we loathe work. It drains eight precious hours of our day and we can’t wait until the freedom of the weekend!
We’ve forgotten how holy our work is.
You may not be in your dream job, but maybe your current job is getting you where you want to go. You may be in your dream job, but jaded by all of the negative aspects of it.
No matter where you are in your career, you’ve got to remember that what you are doing is a holy act.
By working, you are gaining fruit to support yourself, your family, and the poor around you. Think about it, work is the vehicle to turn your efforts into money, which you can then use to help others. How is that not holy?
But we’ve lost that idea. We don’t cloak our work in prayer, praying for the success of our labors. We don’t pour our heart and passion into it.
Your job is not what defines you, your career is not who you are as a person, but it is a major component. Just like your intellect, your spirituality, your sexuality and your physical being, your work is a component of who you are. All of these aspects come together to shape who you are.
That’s not a bad thing. It is a healthy balance.
Consider today how your work is holy, how what you are doing is blessing those around you. Your job, no matter what it is, is serving someone else. The things you do bring value to people’s lives. If you are a road construction worker, you make roads that are safe for families to drive on. If you are a builder, the buildings you create give shelter. If you are a an accountant, you provide confidence to investors and stakeholders, if you are a salesman, you give new items or programs to people to improve their lives.
Are you seeing now how work is holy? Pray for its success, and labor for the glory of God.
To Avoid Whatever Leads Me to Sin
There are many things that society has decided are weak in men.
Forgiveness, losing a fight, being beaten by a girl.
The problem is, they’re wrong.
In fact, some of the things that have been called weak are actually strength.
Humility is one of those things.
In the Act on Contrition, we promise, “…to avoid whatever leads me to sin.”
Sin is a chain, it’s not a single action.
For each violation of your Baptismal promises, there are a series of non-sin decisions that take you across the line.
At each link in the chain, you could call it quits and stop the sin. It’s like an offramp on a highway. But we don’t often take it.
Knowing yourself can be a great help in forming yourself in virtue. If you recognize the links starting to put themselves together, you can break the chain.
So, what is it that keeps getting you into trouble? Knock it off.
Support
We humans yearn to be connected.
We connect in person, on the phone, via text, or on the internet.
We are made to be in community.
The reason we long for community is that we need support. Life is challenging and we can’t do it on our own.
In marriage, you are the first line of support for your spouse. No matter what happens, they can always count on you. And you can count on them.
There are macro and micro ways that this support is demonstrated. You might support your spouse in a career change (macro) or you might clean up the house when they are working an overnight shift (micro).
As we’ve discussed before, we have to continue to die to ourselves in order to truly experience the joy of marriage. The more we lose ourself in love to our spouse, the more deeply and completely we can be in union with them.
Focus on the big things, but don’t forget the little things. Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference in the world.