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8 Thoughts on on Being a Dad on Father’s Day

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father's day

As today is Father’s Day, and now being a dad for over 10 years and a son for a lot longer than that, I thought I’d share some things about being a dad.

8 thoughts on Father’s Day.

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1. In our culture, being a man is difficult. I know that being a woman is incredibly difficult, and I’m not wading into a historical debate or sexism in our culture (which sadly still exists). The reason I say it is hard is because of a lack of clarity, which is also one reason why being a woman is hard (but that’s a different blog post).

Most people have no idea what a man actually is. Now with people choosing their gender identity, the lines are becoming even more blurry than they already are. This makes success as a father, husband, friend, brother and son that more difficult. Are men supposed to be tough or tender and cry a lot? Should they be hard workers and entrepreneurs or play video games until 4am? All of them at once? Which is it?

Being a man (and a woman) is difficult.

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2. Purity is really hard. I’m not just talking about sex here, but that’s part of it. Having a pure mind, a pure heart, pure motives as you pursue your dreams, those are all incredibly difficult. Sometimes this is because we are sinning, but other times it is because what we are pursuing is right, but it just doesn’t line up with what people around us think we should do.

3. Parenting is really hard. I know, parenting has always been hard. Throw in now raising kids with social media, exposure to porn at an early age, the gender conversation, and it is really hard. It is hard to keep kids focused on who they are, who God is while everything gets pulled in a different direction. On top of that, everyone has an opinion on every parenting topic: discipline, vaccines, schooling, sports, dating, and you often feel like a failure. I figure my kids will end up in a counselor’s office when they’re adults (I did). I just hope it isn’t that bad. Just writing that makes me feel like a failure of a dad, but you can judge.

4. Being a picture of God as a Father to my kids is scary. Going along with #3, I’m reminded on a daily basis that my kids are forming a picture of not only relationships with others but with God as they interact with me. Here’s a question every dad needs to keep in the front of his mind: What is it like on the other side of me? What emotions and feelings do people (my kids and spouse) have as they interact with me? As your kids grow up, that is what they will often feel from God.

Ask: What is it like on the other side of me?

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5. Dealing with your wounds is hard work. Depending on your upbringing, your wounds will be different than mine. But you have them, and they make an impact on your life today. I’ve talked before about mine, but if you don’t deal with yours, they will haunt your future. You have wounds, and they are impacting every relationship you have. They are impacting every interaction, everything you hear. But it is hard work. I want to leave what happened when I was 11 back in 1990 with Vanilla Ice. But I can’t, and neither can you.

If your past is not dealt with, it wreaks havoc on your life.

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6. Having friends is hard work. Let’s be honest, friends for most people are difficult. For men they seem to be a lot harder than I expected. In college hanging out was easy. In your 20’s, really easy. Now with jobs, mortgages, kids, marriage, moving across the country, being friends with people is hard. We expect people to keep up with our lives on social media but never really connect with them. I keep hearing from men in their 50’s and 60’s about how they have no close friends, and that is really scary to me. I asked a room full of young church planters recently how many of them had close friends, and in a room of a 100 just a few hands went up.

Having friends as a man is hard work.

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7. I’m astounded by my wife. Regularly when people hear we have five kids, the looks are often comical. Sometimes they say what is running through their heads, sometimes not. I always fill in the blanks if they don’t say it out loud, but they always stop in their tracks. They wonder how we ever sleep, have time for ourselves, not lose our minds, and it takes being intentional for all of that to happen. That’s why I’m simply blown away by Katie. Without her I wouldn’t be the father, husband, leader or man that I am. When church planters ask how Revolution got off the ground, my response is, “Besides God, my wife.” The way she rounds me out, holds our house together, pushes me, believes in me, deals with me, deals with our kids, it astounds me.

8. I’m hopeful about it all. We’re about to enter the teenage years in our house, and I’m hopeful. I love the relational beings my kids are becoming, the questions they are asking (even though we’re having the sex talks a lot earlier than I thought we would when I was a young parent), I love playing games with them and experiencing life. I also love that I have the privilege of raising five people who will make an impact on the world one day. That thought shapes my parenting every day. I get to be a part of the legacy they will leave.

As a parent, you’re part of the legacy your kids will leave.

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What to do When Your Husband Checks Out

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husband

Many couples have a tension that happens every night when a husband comes home from work. It doesn’t matter if his wife stays at home or she works, but most nights, in most houses, this scene plays out: He walks in the door, drops his stuff, says hi (or says nothing), walks onto the back porch, pulls out his phone or sits down in front of the TV and checks out. 

What do you do?

This is a question Katie or I get a lot.

What to do if your husband checks out at night.

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If this happens in your house, here are a few things you can do:

1. Have a conversation. Most couples don’t know what their spouse needs or wants from something. Many men do not understand the stress a wife feels from being home all day with kids and having zero adult interactions. Men also don’t understand the pressure a wife feels who works outside of the home, while trying to run a house at the same time.

Women often struggle to understand the pressure that a man is feeling and how he needs to disconnect from work so that he can connect at home and be emotionally present.

2. Set expectations. When you finally talk about how you are feeling and what you want, you need to move towards setting expectations.

What do you each expect life to be like when you get home from work? What do you each need to be able to engage as a family and as a couple as you head into the evening? Most couples aren’t sure what would make a successful night at home, so talking through that is incredibly important.

Do you and your spouse know what the other one expects in your relationship?

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What often happens in relationships is we have a picture in our head of what will happen, what a night or experience will be like. We build this expectation up, but we never share it with our spouse. Then when it doesn’t happen, we hold our spouse responsible for not fulfilling the picture in our head that we never verbalized.

That isn’t fair. But it is incredibly common.

3. Learn how to unwind on the way home (or some other way). The reality is that after a full day of working, meetings, running errands, helping kids, you need and want to unwind. You want to check out. I get it. Which means you need to figure out how to do that. For me, when I’m driving home I will use the quiet time to let go of things at work, use some time to pray. If I’m working from my home office all day, I’ll use the time between work and being off from  my work by walking around our neighborhood or working out.

You need to figure out what that is for you. What will you need to do so that you can let go of work and focus on being at home?

For many people, we don’t know how to unwind without technology, alcohol or food, and that leads to some incredibly unhealthy lifestyles. I remember talking recently with a leader about how to rest and recharge, and I asked him, “What gives you life? What fires you up and gives you energy after you’re done?”

Stop for a minute.

How would you answer those questions? Do you know?

4. Learn how to be engaged. On top of not knowing how to unwind or recharge, many men do not know how to engage relationally with their spouse and kids. Most men grew up watching a father (if he was around) who was simply there. He did not engage emotionally, relationally or spiritually.

Engaging with your family is being interested, being present. Not being on your phone. For most parents, if they stayed off their phone and social media until after their kids went to bed, there would be an enormous change in their family.

Want to make a big change in your family? Stay off your phone at night.

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When you sit down for dinner (and this is still the best way to engage your family because you are all sitting down), no electronics, and talk about your day.

I’d recommend having some questions prepared. Things like:

  1. What was your favorite part of today?
  2. What did you love about school or sports?
  3. What made you sad today?
  4. Were your feelings hurt at any time today? Do you want to talk about it?
  5. How can I pray for you?
5 questions to ask your wife and kids each night at dinner.

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While you may get grunts and “I don’t know”, the answers are not as important as your kids and wife knowing that you are interested and making an effort.

4 ways to engage with your family at night.

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Leadership Means Hard Conversations

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Tough

At some point as a pastor, you will get an angry email, someone will put you down on twitter or social media. Their criticism may be completely out of left field, false and have no bearing in reality. It may be right on.

How you handle it often has very little bearing on the truth or falsehood of the criticism.

The reason is that the criticism is reality to the person making it.

Another tough conversation that happens for a pastor and leader is letting a staff member go or replacing a volunteer on a team. What often follows this decision is anger and frustration.

In that moment, you as a leader can lash out at someone and tell them they are wrong. Or, help them to see where you are coming from or try to learn from it and help them learn from it.

3 ways to handle difficult conversations

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Here are some things to keep in mind:

  1. Understand where the other person is coming from. As a leader, it is easy to get angry and not see where someone else is coming from. In our sin, we want them to only see our point of view, but our point of view is just that, ours. It isn’t even the correct point of view, it is just ours. It might be right, partially right or completely wrong. Before having a hard conversation and during it, try to see from the other side. Don’t jump to conclusions, don’t try to come up with an answer while they are talking. You may be wrong. You may have made the wrong assumptions about them before the conversation. There might be something happening in their life that has caused them to lash out, maybe there is a reason the ball got dropped on something. Often, when something is going wrong in someone’s life, they lash out at the closest authority figure in their life, and for many Christians, that is a pastor.
  2. Help them understand where you are coming from. In a hard conversation, after understanding where the other person is coming from, you need to help them understand your perspective. This is equally as hard as it will be for you to see it from their side. Maybe there is a reason for your reaction, for your distance, for the change you’ve made. If so, explain it to them. If you no longer see them because you aren’t part of a meeting anymore, explain it. If someone has outgrown their role or doesn’t have the leadership capability, tell them. Too often, leaders will simply make changes without explaining them clearly. One of the things this is most difficult in is when you have to remove a volunteer or a staff member who isn’t cutting it anymore.
  3. Help them see the big picture. This piece is what sets leaders and followers apart. Leaders are tasked with seeing the whole picture, the whole forest, followers are not. That’s okay. It is the job of a lead pastor to see how student ministry fits into the vision, how it affects kids ministry, community, worship, etc. The leaders of those areas are not tasked with thinking about how their area affects another area. It is nice if they do, but that isn’t their role. A person often does not see how a change that might be uncomfortable for them can be good for the whole church. Your job as a leader is to help someone see that. Sometimes this can be helping someone understand why they have to make an appointment to meet with you instead of just dropping by like they used to. This could mean helping a leader see why you won’t fund their idea or continuing doing something “you’ve always done.” It is difficult when this loss is personal for someone and that is why these conversations are so important.

Does this always work and end well? No and sometimes you have to prepare for those losses and see that when someone leaves angry at you, that is God protecting you and your church.

Often it does end well.

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How to be a Better Writer

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blogger

Recently, I watched the author platform conference online. This was a series of interviews with authors, bloggers, marketers and other experts to help writers, speakers and bloggers be as effective as possible.

Below are the lessons from each interview that I watched:

Jonah Berger

  1. Create a connection with your book. Give something to people so that they make a concrete connection to what you are saying. At book events, he gave out tissues with the word Contagious: Why Things Catch On on them for his book and made the connection of “wouldn’t your like your ideas to be as contagious as the cold?”

Chris Brogan

  1. Be married to the outcome more than you are to the idea. This will allow you to enjoy the content you create.
  2. When it comes to branding, people think about people. The person sticks in the mind of people if you know who the person is.

Chad Cannon

  1. Books that sell come from authors that hustle.
  2. An author needs to provide value to the audience outside of their book.

Chris Ducker

  1. Writing a book is not like writing a blog post. Editing is by far the hardest part of writing a book.
  2. Just be you. Your readers and listeners will know if you are being real or not.

John Lee Dumas

  1. Failures happen when people don’t listen to their intuition. Successes happen when we do listen to our intuition.

Carmine Gallo

  1. Ideas are the currency of the 21st century and you are only as successful as your ideas.
  2. Most speakers fail because they don’t have their message down, they don’t know their story.
  3. The difference between a great speaker and a good speaker is the great speaker is always looking to improve.
  4. The 3 components to any great presentation: Emotional, novel and memorable.

Jeff Goins

  1. Activity always follows identity.
  2. Offline relationships still do matter in the midst of our social media worlds.

Chris Guillebeau

  1. A lot of people can launch a book well, but successful authors need to think about how to make it successful in 3, 6, and 12 months.

Derek Halpern

  1. The best way to promote yourself is to help others, to give a benefit to someone else.
  2. Content is not just about what you say, but how you say it.

Michael Hyatt

  1. Know your audience, who they are, what their needs are, and what questions they have.

There was some incredibly helpful things in these videos.

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Questions Every Blogger & Writer MUST Answer

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blogger

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why every leader and pastor should blog. If you decide to blog, here are a couple of things you need to think through:

  1. Why. Most people struggle with what to blog about, more on that in a minute. Why are you blogging? Why is it worth your time? If your goal with blogging is to build a platform to write a book, that’s a poor reason. Do you want to help people? Serve people? Get better at writing? Be famous? It is important to have a stated goal when it comes to your blog. Not everyone should blog. If you don’t have a compelling reason to start blogging, once the fad of it wears off, you will quit.
  2. What. This is the content. For me, I blog about things I find interesting and helpful. I blog about leadership, books, preaching, family, marriage, NFL, fantasy football, crossfit. Things I like. I assume that there are others out there who are interested in what I am interested in and so far, that seems to be the case. I will share things I think will be helpful to my readers and my church, things I’m learning, things I want to rant about, things about my kids and Katie. Some blogs are focused on one topic, which is great if that’s what you want to do. You should have a focus though, a grid that helps you decide what you do and don’t blog about.
  3. How often. This right here is one reason most blogs fail. They don’t blog enough. You can read about how to design a blog, what plug-ins to use, how to connect it to social media (and you should do all this). If you don’t blog on a regular basis, your blog will not get off the ground. I probably blog too much, but that’s my choice. Some blog 3 times a week or everyday. The point is, your readers need to know how often you will blog. People will tire of checking back on your blog for new information and it isn’t there, they will give up. I would say someone should start blogging when they can do it 3 times a week.

Blogging takes work, it is a job in many ways. You will spend hours writing, working on ideas, finding pictures for posts, responding to comments, looking for links to share and doing it all over again.

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Questions to ask Yourself about Electronics

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electronics

Many in our culture act as if electronics, social media and TV are neutral. They are simply there. That is naive at best. Electronics are not neutral. They dictate our lives, pump us with more desire for approval, and often help us waste time and miss out on relationships with family and friends. They can keep us from work and ultimately, run our lives and ruin our lives.

Below are some helpful questions from Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions by Arthur Boers to ask yourself about your relationship with electronics:

Attention: What is the primary and ongoing focus of our awareness? Screens and virtual relationships? Family and neighbors? Voyeuristic television “reality shows”? Nature and our surrounding environment? Is our capacity to pay attention, dwell, and be aware diminishing? Are we so overwhelmed with information and stimulation that our ability to respond is affected? Are we moving from receptivity to expecting to control what we perceive?

Limits: What guides our sense of what is appropriate? Do we have the moral strength to recognize when something is beyond the pale and that we need to say no? Or does technology, which makes more and more things possible, including voyeurism, pornography, and gambling, also make all things permissible? Which taboos are worth guarding? How does technology free us from moral constraints and accountability? What is the relationship of technology to addictions? How does technology reinforce addictions? How is technology itself addictive?

Engagement: How are we coping with life and its challenges? Do we approach our day and those we love with calm anticipation, eager to be and work together? Or do such rushed and harried attention spans lead us into being demanding and curt? How does technology speed encounters, making conflicts and misunderstandings more likely? Does planned and perceived obsolescence contribute to eroding commitments?

Relationships: Do our lives include rich networks of loved ones, supportive friends, caring confidants, and casual acquaintances? Are there people who know us in our fullness, care about our hardships, and challenge us to grow in virtue? Or are our lives characterized by growing isolation and loneliness, our relationships dispersed and fragmented? What are the implications of having relationships increasingly mediated by technology while opportunities for face-to-face conversations decline and in-the-flesh friendships decrease? How does technology reinforce casual approaches to relationships, ones that are easy to enter or exit but do not necessarily sustain? What kinds of communities are created by our technology use?

Time: Do we have a sense that there is enough room in our lifestyles for the things that truly matter—work and play, rigor and rest, love and laughter? Or are we too busy to live according to our deepest and highest priorities? Do distracting demands and pressures lure us away from our highest values? How does engagement with technology make us busier? And how does technology erode and displace opportunities to pause and determine, reflect on, and honor ultimate priorities? Space: How well connected are we with the geography and places where we are located? Are we rooted in neighborhoods, connected to the earth and our environment? Or is much of our life lived abstractly in “virtual” reality?

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Making Room for What Matters | Cut Back on Electronics

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book

On Sunday, I finished our Breathing Room series at Revolution by looking at how to find breathing room between work, life and everything that has to get done. This week, I want to share 6 simple ways I’ve done that and you can to. I’m going to share one each day so you have time to process them and hopefully put some things into practice.

The first one we looked at was how to get a good night sleep. Yesterday, we talked about why you should take a break every 90 minutes. 

Today I want to talk about one of the main things that keeps us from having breathing room and enjoying life: electronics. 

I’m not going to tell you that electronics are bad or evil, because they don’t have to be. But, they do need to be controlled in your life.

Why?

They waste time and sap life out of us.

There are also studies being done about how our brains are struggling to handle all the screen time we are getting.

How often have you checked your email, facebook or twitter only to get angry, jealous or frustrated?

Then why do you keep doing it?

Why do you distract yourself at night when you can connect with your kids or spouse? Let’s be honest for a minute, for many people, electronics are an escape from life. At that point, it becomes a sin. It is a way to not deal with something or someone. It is a way to get lost, to escape, it becomes a fantasy.

If you are like me, you need to cut back on electronics. Over the weekend, I don’t check my email. I spend very little time on social media on the weekend and at night. During work hours, I block Facebook on my computer so it doesn’t distract me.

When Katie and I have date nights, we have a strict no electronics policy.

One thing we’ve started to do is to put the Do Not Disturb feature on our phones after 9pm. That means no texts or alerts on our phones. Often, I’ll still pick up my phone to see if I have any alerts and remember, “Oh yeah, nothing will come through.”

Try it sometime.

Tonight, this weekend, your next vacation, sign off of social media and email.

The reason we don’t has to do with fear. Fear we will miss something. Fear that we will discover we aren’t as important as we think. And pride. Pride about how many likes and RT’s our posts get.

So, what are you waiting for?

Tomorrow we’ll look at the most controversial or at least, the one thing you will think is unattainable, yet can make an enormous impact on how much you enjoy life.

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