Marriage & Family

The Conversations I Get to Have With a Son Who Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-09-11 /

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? â€” a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love. C – Clarity: I…

Teaching Your Teenager to Handle Money — What Generosity at Home Actually Looks Like

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-09-05 /

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…

The Manual I Wish Existed for This Weird In-Between Stage

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-09-04 /

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…

The Disagreement You And Your Spouse Never Actually Resolved

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-09-02 /

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.…

The Apology You Owe Your Kid, Not Just Your Spouse

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-08-29 /

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…

The Question You Ask at Dinner That Actually Gets an Answer Besides “Fine”

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-08-22 /

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…

The Phone on the Counter During Family Time — What It’s Really Saying

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-08-15 /

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…

The Blessing You Could Speak Over Your Child Tonight

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-08-08 /

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,…

My Nine-Year-Old Asks Before She Says Good Morning

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-06-10 /

The Daily CHEWâ„¢Moving God’s Love From Head to Heart for Christian Professionals It is 8:14 on a Saturday morning. You walk into the kitchen. Before your nine-year-old says good morning, she scans your face for two seconds and asks the question she has learned to ask first: “Dad, are you working today?” You were not…

The Wealth Manager Whose Wife’s Biggest Win Was Getting a Shower

By Ryan Bailey / 2026-05-16 /

The Daily CHEWâ„¢Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals You can build a successful firm and lose the marriage you built it for — and not realize how close you are until your wife casually mentions that getting a shower today was the biggest win on her list. A Christian wealth manager…