Marriage and Family
My son moved out completely a while back, and I expected to lose something when he did. What I didn’t expect: my influence with him didn’t disappear. It just changed shape entirely. C.H.E.W. with Me New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love. C – Clarity: I…
Your teenager has never once watched you decide to give something away. Not because you’re stingy — you give plenty, quietly, often automatically, a check written or a transfer made somewhere they’ll never see it happen. You’ve just never done it where they could actually watch, and a money lesson taught entirely in secret doesn’t…
My twin boys just turned 21. My daughter is 18. All three are believers. All three have jobs they love. All three are now facing taxes, buying their own things, and living with the consequences of their own choices — real adulthood, arriving in real time. I wish someone had handed me a manual for…
You both stopped talking about it. That’s not the same thing as both of you agreeing it’s over. Somewhere on the calendar sits the unmarked anniversary of a conflict that ended in exhaustion rather than resolution — one of you went quiet first, the other followed, and life simply moved on around the unfinished business.…
You’d apologize to your spouse within the hour if you snapped at them unfairly — it’s practically automatic at this point, a rhythm most healthy marriages build without even discussing it. Snap at your kid the same way, over the same kind of unfair moment, and most of us just move on. No repair, no…
You ask your child “How was your day?” at dinner, and you get “fine” — every night this week, the same word, delivered the same flat way. While you’re frustrated with the answer, what you might not notice is that the question itself trained that answer. A question this vague doesn’t tend to get anything…
John set his phone face-up on the counter “just in case” — a client had a launch going live over the weekend, and he told himself he was being responsible, not distracted. His daughter was telling him about her science project, the one with the baking-soda volcano she’d rebuilt twice after it collapsed. Somewhere around…
Most nights, the last words Aaron’s kids hear from him are some version of a correction — brush your teeth, turn off the light, stop stalling, get some sleep. None of it is wrong to say; a household needs those sentences to function. It’s just the only kind of sentence they hear, night after night,…
The Daily CHEWâ„¢Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals I have been preaching simple practices all week — practicing Christ’s presence, CHEWing on His love throughout the day, not just in the morning. This week I had to practice what I preach. I reduced my hours so I would have energy at home…
The Daily CHEWâ„¢Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals You said no to the late meeting. You protected the evening the way you and God mapped it out this weekend, and now you are exactly where you said you wanted to be—at the table while your son works three feet away. But…