Live the Life You Want to Model

We are a culture of complainers.

We complain about work. We complain about family. We complain about our parents. We complain about our Bishops and Priests.

It’s as if we’ve created a Utopia in our minds and we are repeatedly shocked when the real world doesn’t measure up.

It’s not that I don’t think a Utopia is a good theory. In fact, I think it can be incredibly telling about what we truly value. The only real use for it, however, is measuring things in our lives that we can control.

When you create the ideal life that you would like to model in the following Utopia experiment, you actually discover some of your deepest desires and aspirations.

Stop.

Imagine how you want people to perceive you. What characteristics would instantly come to mind when someone thinks of you? What values do you put into action?

Now measure how you’re doing.

Like me, you’re probably way off the mark.

What we just did was figure out what is important to you. If you want people to think of you as a man of integrity, but you do nothing but lie to your boss, you know where you need to make some changes.

Stepping back from our place in the world can give us an overview of where we are, where we’d like to be, and how to get there.

Remember, with any major change, there are going to be some shortcomings. You aren’t going to bat .1000. Don’t let a short term failure short circuit your goals. Make the changes, stick to the program, and live the life you want to model.

Children Are A Reward

Each year, the Church celebrates Natural Family Planning (NFP) Awareness Week. We should all take time to learn more about this ethical method of responsible Family Planning. I’d like to share some thoughts with you.

Sadly, our culture has come to view children as a burden. Individuals, both young and old, male and female, married and unmarried, take unethical, unnatural, and excessive steps to prevent the conception of a child. The abortion industry, and those in healthcare who advocate for abortions, have convinced the world that pregnancy is a disease, not a gift.

Being a father, and having lived with a pregnant wife, I know that pregnancy can seem like a curse with all of its unfortunate side effects. But that illusion is selfish.

Children are a fruit of a marriage, they are a blessing! Psalm 127:3 states this clearly when the Psalmist writes, “Children are a gift from God, the fruit of the womb, a reward.”

We’ve gotten away from God’s plan for families and moved towards man’s plan for his own fulfillment.

If you’re new to NFP, no sweat. Here is NFP in a nutshell. Your wife is only capable of achieving pregnancy on a few days during her cycle. These fertile days can be scientifically approximated by observing certain fertility signs, such as her Basal Body Temperature. By observing and charting these signs, you can either know when to have sex to achieve pregnancy or when to abstain to avoid pregnancy for serious, valid, moral reasons.

Now, how is NFP different from commonly prescribed contraceptives? Easy. NFP is you and your wife, together, working in parallel with the natural fertility cycle of her body. Think of it as sanding with the grain. Nice and smooth. Contraceptives act perpendicular to your wife’s natural fertility cycle. They seek to disrupt her cycle and trick her body into releasing hormones that prevent her from achieving pregnancy. This is like sanding against the grain. You must actively work against her body to achieve the end.

NFP respects your wife and is 100% organic. No drugs, no shots, no pills to take, no medical procedures to endure, no man-made substances. It’s as clean as a fresh spring air. Contraceptives are 100% artificial. They’re hormones (which you probably try to avoid in what you’re eating), they’re chemicals, and they have deadly side effects.

My wife and I use Natural Family Planning and it has been incredibly effective. It is actually pretty fun to know exactly where she is. It can save you from asking, in an argument, “Are you mad because you’re on your period?” They say knowledge is power…

My favorite part about NFP is having a better understanding of how her body works. I’m no longer grossed out by her reproductive processes and I actually have a greater appreciation for the grand design of the human body.

Don’t take my word for it. Do your homework, dig into the facts (like the incredibly low divorce rate among NFP couples), and work with your wife, not against her.

Reflecting Christ’s Love to the World

When you get married, you take on two responsibilities. First, you take responsibility for the care of your wife and any children you may be given. Second, you take on the responsibility for reflecting Christ’s love for the Church.

The first one is challenging enough, but the second? Whoa, that’s a task! After all, Christ laid down His life for the Church.

As husbands, we are called to lay down our lives for our wives, but that doesn’t necessarily mean physical death. We must daily live a death to self.

What is more important is how we model marital love to those around us.

We should first be concerned with how we model to our family.

The odds are high that there are a few broken marriages in your family. We aren’t called to be critical of another, but we do know that if children do not have a good example of marriage, they may end up divorced later in life as well. We must take great care to reflect our inner affinity for our spouses externally in appropriate ways.

Next, we must model marital love to those we are friends with.

You probably have a broad cross-section of friends in terms of state of life. You have some single friends, some married friends, some friends with children, etc. Again, it is your responsibility to show them the Divine Plan through your own healthy and stable marriage.

Lastly, we must model marital love to the world.

We interact with a huge number of individuals on a daily basis that we have no relationship with. To these people, we must show the true love we have for our wives.

This is a giant task, but it is an essential one. We are called to influence the culture. The more positive examples of marriage that a person has, the more credibility it is lent. When enough people hold marriage in the right esteem, the culture is changed.

Now, it’s time to get to work.

Marriage is Not Committed Friendship

Marriage is a lot of things. It is painful, it is difficult, it is challenging. It is joyful, it is fulfilling, it is complete. Marriage is enduring, it is final.

Marriage is not committed friendship.

When a man and a woman, enter into the Marital Covenant, they are doing more than telling their friends that they kinda think they’ll be BFF. They are fully and completely giving themselves to their spouse. They are sacrificing their individual identities for a new identity.

The myth of today is that Marriage isn’t anything special, it is just committed friendship. A committed friendship that can be broken at any time for any reason. In the United States, our legal code calls that “no fault divorce.” Lazy. Immature.

Marriage is, of course, based on a relationship, on a friendship of sorts. However, calling Marriage a different kind of friendship cheapens it. It is an indissoluble bond. Nothing can ever break it. Not even changing your mind (sarcasm)!

Marriage is the bedrock of the family. The children find their safety, nourishment, and strength in the marital relationship. It is because of the marriage that they have this place of safety. Marriage frees a husband and wife to be themselves and to sacrifice for their family. It is a life-giving relationship.

Committed friendship can’t be life-giving. The reason is simple. In a friendship, no matter how committed or deep, at the end of the day, you are still an individual. You are still looking out for your best interests. In a Marriage, you guard the interests of your spouse and children. If your wife is happy, odds are you will be too!

Marriage is a mystery.

How a man and woman can be joined together, for life, is something that is beyond our human intellect. People change over time, personalities shift, and yet, marriages endure.

That is something worth thinking about.

Confessing to Christ

I have made no secret that I believe that the Sacrament of Confession is critical to your success as a husband.

We fail.

A lot.

Thankfully, we don’t have to give ourselves over to despair.

Growing up, my family would go to Confession once a month together. It was prudent of my parents to set this time aside to go as a family. All parents have the obligation, through promises made at their wedding and at their children’s baptisms, to present opportunities for their children to grow in and live out their Catholic faith.

The thing about Confession is that it can be pretty stressful. Maybe you don’t even go to Confession at your parish because you’re afraid the priest will recognize you.

And let’s face it, at Parish Penance services, we’re all trying to get in the line for the visiting priest who is elderly and can’t hear very well.

I used to go to Confession face-to-face, but lately I have started to use the screen.

The screen has three key benefits:

  1. You receive the Sacrament humbly, kneeling

  2. There is nothing to distract you. You can close your eyes and envision yourself speaking to Christ, because you are

  3. You take away the Devil’s opportunity to tempt to you omit sins. Shame has no power over you.

My favorite is #2. I feel that I am better able to participate in the grace of the Sacrament, along with its sensory experience, when I’m not either trying to maintain eye contact or avoid eye contact.

No matter which way you receive the Sacrament (face-to-face has merits, too!), always take your time with the Act of Contrition.

If you’re anything like me, your biggest stressor in the Sacrament is that you will forget the words to the Act of Contrition. Thankfully, parishes usually have one close at hand.

I like to take my time with the words, speaking them with feeling and connecting them to my resolve. I wouldn’t want to be in a conversation with someone who was just reading to me!

The main point is this: you have little chance of being the man you’re called to be without regularly going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It’s not optional. It is the tool to pick you back up and get you going back down the right road.

Participating in Each Other’s Work

Work is a key piece of our lives. Through work we do two things: we provide for our family and we use our God given talents to glorify Him and bring value to the life of others.

We are incredibly social beings. One of the great struggles of both married persons and single persons is the struggle with loneliness. We long to be a part of community.

I am thankful to have a job that cares about my well being as a person, as well as about the work I do for them, or my productivity. They were caring enough to pay for my move when they transferred me to Michigan so that I could marry my wife.

One of the differences I’ve experienced is that my current office has much more of a family atmosphere. Many of the employees have grown up together and known each other for well over 15 years.

That level of bond has formed the atmosphere of a family in the office. Each employee is keenly interested in the lives of the others. They are each other’s best friend, Godparents to each other’s children, and best friends. They invite active participation from spouses as well.

The advantage to this is two-fold. First, my wife is able to feel as if she is participating in my work. She is able to swing by the office, or come to a team cookout. When I share a story, she knows the players and understands the context. Second, it reinforces that my wife is an important part of who I am as an employee.

My wife, being in medical school, does not have that same opportunity to share her work with me. Certainly there are stories, but I don’t know the players. I’m unfamiliar with their faces and personalities. I don’t know what her world “looks like.” There are no med school get-togethers or after-hours mixers.

Context is so important in communication. What’s important is that you are both able to share your experiences at work. We need our spouses to be sounding boards. It is gossip if you complain to another employee about a problem. It’s a part of your mental processing of an event or situation if you share that same complaint with your spouse.

Whether you are the bread winner, you both work, or you stay home and tend to the family, your spouse’s success is totally reliant upon your support. With your wife on your side, there is nothing you can’t do!

Be an active participant in your wife’s work. Listen to her feelings and the events of her day. Show empathy and offer support and suggestions. Above all, make sure that the advice you give is sound, so that she might benefit from your wise counsel.

Results May Vary

Don’t wait to get married to have sex, do it now! If you get pregnant, it’s not a baby until it is born. In fact, you’ve made a mistake! Great going.

Like me, you have probably received a lot of messaging about marriage before you were married. Despite all of these messages, I’ve noticed something strange.

Results may vary.

Sex

Message: Waiting for marriage is for losers. You should have sex before you graduate from High School. It is awesome. It is the best.

My results: I cannot imagine having sex with anyone but my spouse. Much like cohabitation, you cannot possibly recreate all of the circumstances without the marital bond. It is so life-giving. It is so fulfilling. The physical act is the vehicle for the emotional, mental, and spiritually transcendence. It is like the gateway to those deep connections.

In fact, I would make the argument that when you have sex before you are married, you rob yourself. You steal the chance to know what it really means to have the fullness of this experience. That is not to say if you made a mistake you are not redeemable. What it is to say is that there is a fullness of this reality that is  available to those who make the tough choices to wait.

Pregnancy

Myth: If you get pregnant, you’ve done something wrong.

My results: At this writing (March), my child is just four weeks old. Do you know what a four week old baby looks like? A clump of cells. My child is no bigger than a poppy seed. Despite their small size, I love this child so much. This child is mine. My wife and I have already started rearranging our apartment to prepare for our little pea.

I love this kid. I can’t wait to share my life with them. I recognize that this life is sacred. I recognize that even though they are so small, they are truly a human and they have a soul. It is beyond me that I am allowed, with my wife, to be a co-creator. It is beyond me that I am allowed to participate so actively in God’s plan of creation. It is beyond me that I have given life.

You can see from just these two specific instances, we’ve been lied to. I am grateful that I did not buy into the lie. I am grateful that I chose discipline in my life. I am grateful that I have found the one I was designed to be with from the beginning of time, my wife. I am grateful that our first child, also designed from the beginning of time, will soon enter into my house.

When the torrents beat against you, remember the most popular disclaimer of all: Results may vary.

Single Life to Community Life

When my wife and I got married, I had been living in the apartment that we would live in for about four months. Since we lived close, she had spent many meals and evenings over at the apartment. At the end of the evening, she would go back to her home.

When we moved in after our wedding, it was easy for me to think of it as “our home.” After all, there was someone else here. Someone else’s stuff was here. She had a key and got mail here. What I failed to realize was that she felt like a guest in my home.

After four months in a place, you kind of make it your own. Sure, I had some of her decorations, but the daily rhythm was set by me. The kitchen arrangement was mine. The chores were mine. I just now had someone else with me.

It wasn’t until our first fight that I started to cede over some of the responsibility for the household. We fought over the grocery money, so I asked her to be responsible for the grocery shopping. She did the menu planning and made the grocery list and we both went shopping. I gave her the grocery envelope (budgeting tool that has cash for the groceries) and she completed the transaction at the register.

After that first week where she had control over an aspect of our community life, she said, “I feel like I actually live here now.”

The merging of two people into one is difficult. We each have the particular ways that we like to do things. I prefer to get up early and go grocery shopping, she prefers to sleep in. I’d rather do all of the chores for the house weekly, she prefers bi-weekly. Not better, not worse, just different.

You have to do a lot of compromising as you create a new life together. Don’t get me wrong, it is quite fun. Yet you have to realize that you are no longer the sole decision maker.

The best wedding preparation in the world cannot fully prepare you for every situation that you will encounter in the married life. However, a recognition that you both will have to give up some habits will make the process move more smoothly.

Don’t forget to keep the lines of communication open. Ask the questions that reveal how she is feeling. Make sure that you both feel at home in your new home together.

Compartmentalization Kills

If you are living a fragmented life, you’re cheating yourself.

In the 8th grade, I watched the American Classic “To Kill A Mockingbird.” In the film, I will always remember the scene where Gregory Peck explains to his child how he cannot be one person at home and another at work.

Too many of us are like that. We’re trying to hold together two different lives. We do work that doesn’t line up with our personal values. We ignore our prayer life. We spend more time at the office than we do at home. We never exercise.

All of this compartmentalization is a sickness. We don’t give ourselves fully to anything, so we don’t live fully alive. We waste our weekends away watching TV or playing Xbox.

It is really all too much to handle. Managing those competing interests exhausts what little energy we have left. We need a shake-up.

The problem is that we are disorganized. We don’t know what tasks we need to accomplish, so we spend our time doing things that don’t matter. Then, at the end of the day, or the weekend, we are burnt out and didn’t really accomplish anything.

What we need are priorities. There is enough time in the day and the week to get done what we want to get done. It will just take some work. You must have a plan.

Sit down, and come up with your personal mission statement. Who are you and what are you trying to achieve?

The mission statement will give you clarity and clarity is what will give you your life back. You can have different personality styles, but you must have one mission. This clarity can make it easy for you to discern what you are meant to do, and what you are not meant to do.

A divided house cannot stand. Unite yours and go boldly into the unknown.

Uncrossing Your Signals

It has been my experience in former relationships that when communication breaks down, the end is near.

As social beings, we value quality communication. To prove my point, name the top three things your employer could improve.

Was one of them communication? Exactly.

Marriage is no different. But, in a marriage, you are dealing with two distinct types of communication.

I’m going to cover two levels of communication. I didn’t base these on any scientific study or related research. I name them Type 1 and Type 2 for the sake of understanding. 

Type 1 is the information level. It is mostly superficial. What are we eating for dinner this week? Are you working late any nights? Who is picking  the kids up from dance class/ soccer practice/Scouts?

Type 1 communication is top-level maintenance. It is the communication that is required to keep the wheels of the household turning. If you don’t have Type 1 communication, your marriage needs serious, professional help.

Type 2 communication is not found in every sentence or even every conversation. Type 2 communication is sharing feelings, emotions, and dreams. This type of communication is speaking from personhood to personhood. It is very deep.

Type 2 is also your opportunity for growth. It is your chance to discover new things about your spouse. It is your time to share with her how you’ve grown and matured.

If you do nothing other than Type 1 communication, then you and your wife are business partners. You share enough information to keep things moving, but not enough to forge a deeper bond.

If you do nothing other than Type 2 communication, then you and your wife will isolate yourselves from the world. And nothing will get accomplished!

Too much of anything is a bad thing. You must balance the practical Type 1 with the life-giving Type 2.