As I said in my last post, sometimes you just have to take a knee and hydrate. Currently I am enjoying the silence while I sit in my driveway in my truck. I sit here contemplating my life, my wife and my kids. With the exception of my wife, I can’t help but feel that life is a constant and loud hamster's wheel…we run and run and no matter how hard we try, we are still on the bottom of the wheel and we didn’t get anywhere. We’ve seen radical acceptance, sleep and other things to make life a little easier, but how do you break the loops of life that we get stuck in? How do you all make it so you’re not in the same loop, where life feels like a constant hard road to nowhere?

Sorry for the long stretches between posts. Life happened, as it so often does, and trying to write and find meaningful topics while dealing with the negative sides of just about everything discussed so far is taking its toll on the creativity and focus needed to put things out there. Holding it all together for everyone is hard. Sometimes we just have to take a knee and hydrate…

Loving Them Through the Phases One of the hardest things nobody really prepares you for about parenting is this: Your kids don’t stay one version of themselves. You fall in love with the baby who needs you for everything; Then the toddler who thinks you hung the moon; Then the kid who wants you to watch every single thing they do. And somewhere along the way, they start pulling away. They test boundaries. They challenge authority. They figure out who they are, sometimes by pushing hard against who you are. Some phases feel easy. Some feel like survival. Loving your kids sounds simple until love looks like patience when you’re exhausted, restraint when you feel disrespected, or staying steady when the relationship feels one-sided. So here’s this week’s reflection: You’ll always love them, but how do you keep liking your kids through all their phases without drowning in the hard ones? And for those who’ve made it through to adulthood with their kids, how unscathed did you really come out on the other side? Because sometimes knowing others survived the phase game is what helps us get through ours.

Refueling the Tank…Resilience We’ve talked about control. We’ve talked about anger. We’ve talked about discipline in the moment. Something that doesn’t get talked about enough: You can’t regulate what’s empty. Running on fumes will only get you so far. Strength isn’t just about absorbing pressure. It’s also about knowing how to refill the tank. Some of us recharge in silence. Some take a walk in the woods. Some recharge with a fishing pole in hand; some under a barbell. Some meditate in prayer. Some unwind by laughing with our kids, and some by raking leaves and letting the dirt settle. The problem isn’t that we run low. The problem is pretending we don’t, or thinking we can power through without a reset. Reflection question: When your needle is bouncing on E…what actually brings you back to your baseline? No deep confessions required this week, just awareness. A man who knows how to reset and recharge is a man who is resilient.

. This week (today) tested me… and it’s Monday. Disrespect has a way of finding the exact button that will light you up. Sometimes it’s not even the act itself. It’s the pattern, and the buildup; the feeling of being dismissed in your own home. I overreacted, loudly, and took my frustration out on inanimate objects in the moment - one minute and eight seconds of letting emotion drive instead of discipline. No excuses, just facts. What’s hitting me in the aftermath isn’t guilt. It’s clarity. Strength isn’t proven in the moment we explode. It’s proven in how quickly we regain control, own our reaction, and reset the environment, especially when kids are watching. They always are. After things settled, my youngest came and sat next to me…no words…he just wanted to be near me. And it reminded me of something important: We aren’t defined by one bad moment. But we are defined by our patterns. The real work isn’t pretending we never fail. I don’t know anyone in my circle that hasn’t…It’s breaking the cycle before it becomes who we are, or changing the pattern to break the cycle. Reflection question: When you feel disrespected, by your kids, your spouse, or anyone else, what usually happens next? Why does disrespect from inside your own home hit differently than from the outside world? And what would it look like to interrupt that pattern before it runs you? I’m open to suggestions and input…Lord knows I fail. Share if you want. Honesty, especially with yourself, counts