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.

Dad Smart

One of the most interesting experiences for me in being a new dad is how I am starting to recall particular memories.

When you and your wife are expecting your first child, there is a certain type of mental activity that, I must assume, all parents go through.

You begin to see the world around you differently. You notice other people’s children and how they behave. When they do things that you think are right, you try to figure out how you will mold your own child to do that thing. When they are a nightmare, you go through the same exercise.

I am finding that I am re-processing little childhood memories of my dad and how he incorporated faith into our daily lives.

For example, at family prayers, we’d go through questions in a Catechism. To this day, I call still tell you the four cardinal virtues by using the phrase, “Toilet Paper Just Fell.” Translation: temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude.

Each evening, before we went to bed, we’d each bless each other by drawing a cross on each other’s foreheads.

He used to put up weekly bible versus on the refrigerator. Sadly, many military deployments disrupted that tradition. But, I still remember the first one. “Children are a gift from God, they are His reward.” I was four.

It is important to realize that your actions as a man make an impression on those around you, not just your children.

How you model the role of husband (and father) is seen and observed by both little eyes and grown eyes. As the saying goes, “More is caught than taught.”

So many blog posts have asked you to look at the example you set and start to live the one you’d like seen. I do this again today. This time, pay extra attention to how you are showing your faith to your wife, family, friends, colleagues, and strangers.

Communication is Critical

Communication is key. But what if you don’t have the keys to your communication?

By now, you realize that both you and your spouse communicate in different ways. You also (hopefully) realize that in order to successfully navigate a lifetime of wedded bliss, you need to understand when she is communicating a particular emotion or when she is just communicating using her natural style.

For example, you may interpret your wife’s short stories about work as being closed off. Why doesn’t she want to share about her day? Her natural style may cause her to be brief and just hit the high points. She may have given you all of the facts she deemed relevant. In her mind, the story is over. In yours, you’re wondering if she’s mad.

There are several tools and scientific tests on the market to determine personality style and communication method. My favorite is the DiSC profile.

No test is better than the other, they’re just different.

Regardless of which test your choose, you need answer questions about yourself honestly. It isn’t helpful to anyone if you answer the way you think you’d like to be perceived. Honest answers give you insight into who you are as a person.

Once you have both completed the same test, share the results. You might finally understand her quirk or why that coworker is always driving you insane.

Communication is vital to the success of your marriage. Ensuring that you understand the communication style of your spouse will help you communicate more clearly.

Skip the fights. Stop translating mixed messages. Be open, clear, direct, and always loving.

Working Professionals

One of the major challenges for any newly married couple is how to balance two very full schedules.

When you first are married, you will probably start at $0. Both of you are most likely working very hard to put your new life together.

If you are married at a younger age, both spouses are probably working hard on their careers.

There is a temptation to be a workaholic, or to focus on careerism. You want to perform well at work so that you can increase your family’s income. That is noble, but not when it comes at the cost of your marriage.

Clear and open communication is the key to solving this problem. You both need to understand each other’s point of view and plans for the future.

Will one of you stay home and raise the children? Who has the greatest capacity for supporting the family? If one of you gets a promotion that hinges on your family moving, what criteria will you use to determine if that is the right move for your family?

The whole issue comes down to whose career is the priority? It is very likely, if not inevitable, that there will come a point where you both will have to make a hard decision. A choice to advance one career may inherently negatively affect the other. It is not a bad thing, but a reality when both spouses are working.

There is nothing wrong with work. However, if you want to avoid fights in your young marriage, take time to discuss this delicate issue in your pre-marriage counseling. Work out a rough sketch of where you think you’re both headed.

Make as much of the decision ahead of time so that you already have a plan of action in place.

Remember, above all, that work is a holy endeavor.

7 Things I Wish I Had Known About Pregnancy

Becoming a parent for the first time is an amazing experience. I should warn you, though. You have been lied to.

Now don’t blame me, I didn’t do it. Like so many things in life, you are given the good while they conveniently forget to tell you the bad and the ugly.

I thought that pregnancy was no big deal. Your wife is a little queazy, nine months later, you are holding your kid in your hands.

Let me tell you, friend-o… it’s not that simple.

Here are the 7 things I wish I had known before.

  1. “Morning Sickness” is an innocuous term for three months of pure hell. Your wife is going to be sick, and I mean totally sick. Not just in the morning. At all hours. Everything about you will cause her to vomit. Your breath, your body odor, the same breakfast you’ve been eating for the past three years. There is nothing you can do to stop it.
  2. Deciding to get in shape while your wife is pregnant is a horrible idea. Research says that if you want to stick to the gym, you need a buddy. We need accountability and support to keep moving forward. While becoming a father will probably encourage you to do all you can to take care of yourself, don’t expect your wife to be too happy. Find someone else whom you can share your victories with. She’s not impressed that you weighed in at a new minimum weight. She’ll just glare at you while she finishes her second bowl of ice cream.
  3. Loneliness and the First Trimester are BFFs. Sadly, as your wife is feeling unwell, there will be a decrease in the amount of time you’ll be cuddling. After all, if she can’t stand the smell of your breath, you won’t be getting very close. There will be some loneliness in there. It’s not that she doesn’t love you or that you don’t love her. It is just that there is some distance out of necessity. (And BTW, she feels lonely too.)
  4. If you like cuddling at bedtime, forget about it. As your child grows, your wife will need to get a body pillow to support herself. That pillow becomes the Berlin Wall in your bed. You will never be able to get close because that dang pillow is in the way. MOVE OVER PILLOW!!!
  5. Say goodbye to your favorite foods. Pregnancy causes changes in your wife’s digestive system. Do you love burritos? Not anymore you don’t. They’ll still be there… in nine months.
  6. Check to see how her day went first. If hers was horrible, yours better be just as bad. If your day was amazing, and hers wasn’t, don’t plan on sharing that little detail. She isn’t interested in hearing about your five mile run at dawn or the great time you had at a Chamber of Commerce open bar networking event. She’ll be grumpy and glare at you. Better tell a friend.
  7. Get ready to work! Your wife is going to lose control over her abdominal muscles. On top of that, she’s sick and can’t bend over. Strap yourself in because you just became the housekeeper. She can’t tie her shoes, pickup a sock she dropped, or get up off the floor without your help. You’re going to be carrying the household.

Now, the good parts in pregnancy are definitely there. The first ultrasound is awe-inspiring. Talking about names, learning about parenting, and preparing your house are all fulfilling adventures.

You’ll be in a new phase of your life. As with any other stage, there will be good parts and challenging parts. Roll right on through and keep your eye on the prize.