For years, I’d expect my family to leave me alone for a period of “decompression” when I got home from work.
I’ve always worked in highly relational/conversation based positions. I’d often arrived home in an overstimulated state and disappear to my office.
2/ My wife would want me to deal with a discipline issue with a kid or be interested in what happened in my day. My kids would want to tell me about their day or have a thousand requests requiring permission from dad.
But I just wanted space.
I was fried.
"Give me a min, guys."
3/ I slowly came to see that this was a missed opportunity. It was a failure of leadership. The way I re-entered my home after a long day of work played an important role in the forming of my home's culture.
A man doesn’t just provide resources.
He provides leadership.
4/ I decided that I would use “re-entry” as an opportunity to provide leadership with 3 habits:
#1 - I didn’t listen to anything on the way home. I used the drive to pray, organize my thoughts & prepare myself to do some more work. Habits two & three flow from this first one.
5/ Habits 2 and 3 start the moment I walked thru the door.
#2 When I get home I asked my wife if there were any discipline or pastoral issues that needed a father’s touch (Heb. 12:11). There are many situations in which a mother needs the father to step in. Jump on those!
6/ After dealing with my kids, I move to #3 Telling my wife something about my day.
She’s been with kids all day. Zero adult conversation. Moreover, she is the key support to the mission I’m engaged in. I want her to know what she is accomplishing by being a 'helpmate' to me.
7/ I see a lot of complementarian pastors chiding men for not chipping in with the dishes & laundry.
I rarely do either.
I'm not above it.
She just usually has it knocked out.
Plus, me fathering my kids and encouraging my wife does 10x more for the wellbeing of our household.
8/ My household doesn't need a second mother.
It needs a father.
These habits have helped me get to that work the moment I walk thru the door.
Find what works for you.
Look for ways to seize all opportunities to lead your home.
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1) In ’63 Betty Friedan wrote the The Feminine Mystique. It described a widespread discontent among women. She concludes her 1st chapter with:
“We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’"
2) What was the “something more?” Friedan claimed it was a career. “The problem that has no name” stemmed for a woman’s single path of fulfillment namely being a wife, mother & a keeper of the home.
This, argued Friedan, didn’t allow women to grown full humanity.
3) For a woman to become, she must liberate herself from the “conventional picture of femininity.” Only then will she “finally [begin] to enjoy being a woman.”
They must pursue the “creativity” that allows them to find their potential or they’ll remain “less than fully human.”
1/ There is an excellent phrase contained in a personal letter John Calvin wrote to his good friend Guillaume Farel. Calvin had just a received letter from Geneva asking him return to the pastorate after having been expelled just a few years earlier.
This letter includes...
2/ ...the following sentences:
"O marvelous spectacle, the stone which the builders rejected is become the headstone of the corner. Come, then, my venerable father in Christ. The Lord has given you to us. All sigh for thee."
When Calvin wrote Farel he described the letter as...
3/ ...being “full of nauseating flattery.” That is a helpful phrase.
It is difficult for me to believe that the majority of Christians would find such a letter nauseating. Some might raise an eyebrow up in concern but few would be nauseated by flattery.
1 Today is a real American tragedy. No doubt about it. Only the wicked or the naive aren’t grieved by it. The incoming administration is truly abominable.
This is a major setback for freedom loving Americans and especially Christians.
2 The presidential pardons show that there aren't any maverick moves on the way. It is the end of this administration.
And it’s good to grieve the end of an administration which attempted to root out the corruption and compromise rife in our government.
So grieve. I am.
3 But this brings me to my biggest problem with most of the YouTube/website wild claims floating around…
…they basically urged Christians to be passive and wait for something to happen. It was the whole "trust the plan" mentality.
Would you run for your life or just stand on the beach as a gigantic tsunami rushed towards you?
You’d run, right? Don’t be so sure.
During the Boxing Day Tsunami, many vacationers just stood on the beach and watched as the ocean receded into a monstrous wave...
The locals knew better. They ran as hard as they could. But some of the foreigners stood on the beach, stared in amazement, and were engulf in a deadly mass of water.
Why didn’t they run? Why did they just stand there like a bunch of idiots?
Because tsunamis weren’t a normal part of life in their country. They knew that tsunamis existed and that they happened in this part of the world. They, however, had never seen one. So they underestimated its danger and were slow to take actions.
1. Don’t go offline or camp out some little right-wing ghetto apps (ie Parler). Stay active on the main platforms. But expand and “back up” your online network “offline.” Big Tech will cancel, censor, & silence anyone that speaks against the zeitgeist.
2. Build an analog library of important books and documents. Also, download ebooks/PDF to an external hard drive.
Big Tech will delete works that undermine their plans and speaks against the zeitgeist.
3. Find a community that is a “winnable and worthwhile hill.” This is a place that is small enough for you to have influence, large/strategic enough to have some cultural, economic, and/or political significance.
Ask “Could this town/county become a city-state? Put down roots.