A FAMILY RESTORED: PART I

We took this Disneyland photo in January of 2015, right at the beginning of our change. At this point, my family was like a bag of M&Ms sitting on the dashboard in the car on a hot sunny day. We were able to maintain our fresh candy-coating just barely well enough to hold in the melting contents, but any sudden pressure and we could burst. We gave the impression that we were doing great when really we were having hard times at home. After the weekly Bible studies would clear out and all our friends would leave, we would almost collapse in exhaustion from keeping up the act that we were the perfect family.

I was a control freak that didn’t know how to run a family. On our way to church, I would be demanding perfect obedience from every member of the family in order to keep up the status quo. I was supposed to be a pastor and foolishly thought if people were going to trust me, they needed to see how great of a job I was doing with my family. Unfortunately, I must confess I was not doing well as a husband and a father, and I was constantly having to cover it up, which only made problems far worse.

At the start of 2015, I saw the way my life was headed, and I turned around and ran in the opposite direction. I was about to trade everything I cared about for a successful career in the Christian church. I mean that the man I was becoming was crushing my family, wrecking my marriage, and I was destined to be alone. I was investing all of my effort into church and seminary and there was nothing left for my family. My marriage was falling apart and my kids were turning away from me.

I think the worst was in the close of 2014 when my third son Caleb, basically had no desire to show me any sign of affection. You see, Caleb is like me in that way, he wears his true colors, and if he’s not that fond of you it will be pretty clear by his demeanor. Since I was always gone either serving at the church, writing a sermon, meeting with the guys for prayer and food, the list goes on I am sad to say… but since I was never around for the first four years of his life, he didn’t care much for me, and finally he didn’t even want to say “I love you” before bedtime. It broke my heart. Almost immediately thereafter I began to radically reshape my entire life, starting with my time and my money, and I made sure that my family was my top priority.

This change along with other severe crises in my life, broke me from my course of destruction and started me back on the right path. I stopped sacrificing my family and their needs on the altar of ministry every week and began to spend time learning how to love and care for them instead. I let go of my aspirations of being an accomplished pastor and asked God to teach me how to be the priest of my own home. I repented of my violent controlling behavior and started to respect each member of my family as an individual.

The restoration we are experiencing as a family has been powerful and is definitely ongoing. I have seen enough progress that I am able to look back in hindsight and share the specific areas in our family life that have made the most difference. The shift has been drastic and can be recognized all through our lives, but if I had to boil it down to just two key principles, it would be these: a restored family plans their life together & a restored family has respect for each other. I will approach this in two articles, but they will be best if they are read together.

A restored family plans their life together. You might think this is an easy adjustment. I am sorry to report this is far more challenging than you might expect! Our lives are so divided in American culture, that it’s not even funny. Consider the following: Everyone in the family has their own routine. Jobs require parents to leave early for work and stay late. The older kids have to go to school and then right to sports. Maybe you are fortunate to have one parent home with the younger kids, but either way, our families are divided up within an hour or two of the day and we don’t come back together until the end of the day. We spend the majority of our time separated from those we love the most. This is just a fact of the world we live in.

Of course, you know it has only been this way for less than 100 years. Most of our great-grandparents would have spent the majority of their day with the family working around the farm/ranch together, eating together, and spending life together. This separation of the family is a fairly new problem when you really think about it, but it is a reality nonetheless.

I understand there is a lot that is not exactly under our control. Two-thirds of our day is devoted to work and rest, but you can still control the other 8 hours of the day. But, the first step for me was cutting down my work day to 8 hours. I used to work as much overtime as possible, convincing myself it was for the family. Then I would waste all the extra money on consumer crap. At one point, I was working three jobs, starting at 5 a.m. and working until 10 p.m. on some days! There were times when I would come and go without even seeing my children awake once.

Somehow, I did make time to serve as a church elder, lead a youth group, a home fellowship, and go to seminary. It’s not so much that I was a workaholic, it’s more that I was seeped in consumerism and my addiction to money was my only motivation. I was busy keeping up a front. I was trying to impress my peers with the same old stuff: houses, cars, motorcycles, as well as social credibilities like college degrees, fancy careers, and church titles. So whatever the case may be, you need to do whatever it takes to get your work day down to 8 hours.

In the meantime, work on getting a solid 8 hours of rest. For me, I had to start sleeping more, as I used to survive on 5 hours of sleep and 5-hour energy shots. One of the healthiest steps to take for restoring your family, amazingly enough, is developing a healthy resting pattern of 8 hours every night. Remove the TV and any other artificial light exposure from your room and you will sleep better. I also suggest a smartwatch to track your sleep and see where you are at. Start to monitor your rest patterns and you will quickly see improvements. However you make it work, get your rest and you will be restored. In my family, we play hard, but we know sometimes the rest day is the best day!

Now assuming you have your work and your rest schedule dialed in, you should have a good chunk of free time every day to work with so you can start to plan life together. To start things off right, I suggest you begin with a blank slate and reexamine everything before it gets added back into your 8 hours of free time. If you still are too busy, then you need to keep cutting outside commitments. It took me about a year to really unravel myself from all the obligations outside the home. But once I did I was free to be a husband and a father and to rewrite my day. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

So now that you are freed up, what to do with your time? Don’t just go for one of your favorite old pastimes. Try to learn something new together. This will bring you together in a healthy environment and start to teach you how to have respect for each other. Rather than just choosing activities that you are accomplished at, consider trying something new with your family.

For example, last winter my boys and I went down and took a few months of Tae Kwon Doe classes. For the first time, we were all students together. It was beautiful the way we were able to grow together in a deeper sense than before. As I submitted myself to the martial arts instructor, my children got to see their father is still learning just as they are. This was a humbling experience for us all, me especially, and perhaps that is where the strength lies.

Your kids will still look up to you and follow your lead, in fact far more sincerely, but now you are able to lead them gently rather than forcefully. This equals the playing field and builds trust. This healthy environment provides for your relationship not only to grow but also to thrive.

Some of the old interests may be redesigned to fit a family dynamic, and some may just need to be let go of altogether. When I am deciding if something is a good fit for my family, I just ask myself if this thing can be fun for the rest of the family. I used to spend hours working on and riding my Harley. This is obviously not compatible with family and not fun for anyone but me. I spent so much of our money on this motorcycle and all the gear, it’s not hard to understand why we had no money left for family outings or vacations.

So I sold my precious Harley Davidson. Well, actually I traded it for an RV that I thought we could restore together and travel together. I dreamed of how traveling together would reunite our family. By the time we finished the remodel, which was a lot more work than expected, we learned we were too young for the RV and bought new bikes, and new camping gear and started regularly getting outside instead.

We decided to sell the RV, but unfortunately, our kindness got taken advantage of and we totally got burned. We were trying to help a couple of folks out that were struggling, but soon knew we were being conned and never saw a nickel. This was hard to accept, but I just chalked it up as payback for all my hustling and scheming over the years.

In a sense, I got a taste of the old medicine and it just made my commitment to this new way of life that much stronger. My family knew I was committed to this change and we never really looked back. We realized two things: we were too young for RVs but we loved to go on new adventures together!

Not all hobbies needed to be tossed, however, as many parts of our daily lives just needed to be restructured. Soccer, for instance, used to consist of dropping off the boys at practice, and then sitting in a lawn chair and gabbing with the other parents during the games. I sat at dozens of games before I even knew the rules. Since I didn’t really like sports, I didn’t pay much attention ashamedly. Yes, I watched my kids play, took pictures, and even posted highlights on Facebook, but I was never fully present.

When we restructured soccer, it meant we got off the chair and out in the field. There is always a cry for volunteers in youth sports, so there is no excuse for not participating. My wife and I started helping out when help was needed and eventually, we found ourselves coaching a team of boys from kinder through 2nd grade! Now I’m Coach Chris when I go to the elementary school. And my son Caleb is proud to have me as his dad. Before they did soccer and I just watched. Now we all play soccer together, and to be honest, I have come to love the game. Even on the sidelines, we are participating! This fall, my son Carson will be trying out for the High School team, and I can’t wait.

You see, there is just a shift in everything. We make plans to be together and it creates the opportunity to actually grow together. It is important to keep the momentum and stay active because too much sitting around the house binging on Netflix will quickly unravel all your hard work. I lean towards healthy activities that lend themselves to all ages and all skill levels.

Find things to do that keep you active, and everyone can participate and have fun. Set a schedule and try to get out of the house at least two evenings during the week and one day every weekend to stay active and have fun together. A few of our favorite outdoor activities are bicycle riding, running, soccer, and track. And on the weekends: hiking, camping, and some fishing and foraging. In the winter, we sign up at the bouldering gym (indoor rock climbing), or most recently the trampoline park! I just ask everyone after we get done with the activity if they had fun. As long as everyone says yes, it’s a win. My wife and I love to hear these words, which we hear often these days, “That was the best day ever!”

On the days that you all decide to chill at home, get in a little much-loved rest and recovery, don’t miss the opportunity to also be considerate of each other. This is not the time to just split up. Far too often, families divide up when they get home and everyone has their own devices and their own favorite show streaming. If you have to watch TV, be intentional about it and find something that everyone will enjoy.

Or skip the television and grab a board game. Our favorites are Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, 7 Wonders, and Pandemic, as well as some old school favs like: bones, spades, Rummy, and Farkle. We do best with games that encourage working together, although it can be difficult. Some games still cause fights and are almost impossible to not ruin at least one person’s afternoon. So look out for highly competitive games as they might just make things worse. If this is a problem in your home, go for Pandemic and games like it where everyone is on the same team; it’s genius.

So planning life together means keeping a balance in your daily routine so you have time for family. It’s trading selfish hobbies for activities that will help your family to grow closer. It’s being intentional about every hour of your day and not missing opportunities to be together. One specific place I saw rapid progress was by adopting the practice of regularly sitting down at dinner together every night. This old-fashioned tradition alone will substantially restore the health of your family and should not be missed.

When things were at their worst, we used to eat dinner in front of the TV every night. Episode after episode, season after season, of total garbage. I never had the chance to ask about my wife’s day. I didn’t take the time to see how things were going daily with my kids. I also wasn’t given the opportunity to share the struggles or triumphs of my own day. We only stuffed our faces with processed food and lived other people’s lives through the screen every night. That is time I can never get back and that still hurts.

Today, I can testify we have been eating as a family at the dinner table for years and the impact is remarkable. The boys take turns giving thanks for the meal and a prayer for the family each night. As we get the food moving around, each of my boys anticipates their opportunity to tell about their day. Often we can hardly get through every person’s account of their day because they have so much exciting news to share. This is absolutely a beautiful thing! Kids love to tell you about their day, you have just got to learn how to ask and give them time to talk.

This should give you the foundation of the first principle for restoring your family: plan your lives together. I will finish this up in the second part: A Family Restored Part II. In this next article, I will share how I believe this problem is not just a family problem but a social problem as well. I believe we have the opportunity to see change not only in our families but also in restoring our communities.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but in these areas, I can offer hope. This is simply a very effective and practical way to restore health and happiness to a family that is struggling to survive. Your family deserves it, and so do you.

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