Glory of Home Life

A few years ago, I was in an Exodus 90 group with several high-quality gentlemen. It was our first year in the program. Expectations were high, and experience was low. Such a combination naturally resulted in frustration.

Throughout the first few weeks, a recurring thread of scrupulosity reared its head frequently in our group meetings. We’d lament the many ways in which we had stretched the rules here and there or had simply failed to live up to what we considered the spirit of the program.

The most memorable example from this time came from a friend and co-worker who spoke with some dissatisfaction about his lunchtime routine. At the time (and I don’t know if it’s still true, but I assume it is), one of the rigors of the program was to not snack between meals. This good man had started his lunch, got called into a meeting, and an hour later was able to return to his lunch.

“But,” he said, “I didn’t eat my food. I hadn’t finished lunch, and to eat now seemed to me to be violating the ‘no snacking’ rule.”

Of course, as we read this we can employ a modicum of intuition (plus a heaping of charity) and call nonsense. Lunch is lunch, even if it gets broken up by unavoidable circumstances.

As a father, I often second-guess my own decisions. If the payoff isn’t immediate and obvious, then presently a temptation exists to think I’ve done something wrong. Raising children is simultaneously simple and challenging. Simple because the steps are minimal: provide a good example, love unconditionally, and give clear expectations and consequences. Challenging because doing any one of those three things consistently and with a cheerful demeanor requires heroic effort.

My primary vocation is not to be an engineer (Lord help me; it’s not even close). My primary vocation is to correspond with God’s will. How is this possible for a wholly imperfect lump of clay like myself? Well, it isn’t. That realization could crush me, and indeed it crushes many. How can I reconcile the fact that every decision I make is not optimal? That every decision is fundamentally flawed? Without forgiveness, I can’t.

Herein lies the majesty of our divine filiation: God knew that I’d have a rotten temper, struggle with pride, have a tendency towards acedia, etc. Yet He decided I was worth making. As if, before time, he saw these things and had already forgiven them. And of course, the great irony is that the blood of Christ, for which I played a part in its being spilled, is the very thing which brings about my salvation.

But not if I refuse forgiveness. There is little to no forgiveness in the heart of a father or a man who suffers from scrupulosity. We should be hard on ourselves, yes. We should have exacting standards of behavior, dress, work, cheerfulness, what-have-you. When we come up short, however, we should remember something important: every saint who has ever lived, has sinned. By nature of their humanity, saints are sinners.

So, too, are we sinners. So too, then, can we be saints. The real hallmark of a saint, as Saint Josemaria Escriva says, is to begin, and begin again. Nunc Coepi.

At this moment, my four-year-old son is sitting on a stool in front of me for what I would consider poor behavior. He’s too young to rationalize punishments, so for now I’m relying on immediate consequences. He can at least make the connection between, “I did something Daddy didn’t like,” and, “I’m sitting on a stool.”

As important as the punishment is, though, even more is the forgiveness. This is why I talked about scruples earlier. What if I never forgave my son for his behavior? What if I merely punished? How might that pervert his response to failures later in life? Would he, like my friend, say he can’t finish his lunch because too much time has passed? Would he develop the poisonous mentality that whatever he does isn’t good enough and is also irredeemable? That he didn’t do something just so, therefore he did it all wrong? And how will that impact his future relationships?

I’m going to spend some time today thinking about what this little boy (and his brother and sisters) might become, and what he needs from me to get there.