Welcome to the first-ever edition of CTWR! I’m glad you’re here.
Here’s what I’ve got on my mind today:
- The failed experiment of the nuclear family
- The Indian Premier League
- Parenting is hard
- Sextember
- Faith vs Apathy: A Jesus Story
Keep scrolling if any of those things sound interesting to you…
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The Failed Experiment of the Nuclear Family
For the past year or so, I’ve been learning a ton about the history of family. For many modern thinkers, we assume that family has always been done how we do it today. But the reality is far, far from that. The idea that a child would grow up, leave the house, find their own way, marry, have 2.5 kids, and settle down somewhere is a very new concept. For most of history, families stayed together, both literally and symbolically. Children learned their trade from their parents and worked in the family business until it was time for them to pass it down to their children. Families lived on family land. A person’s identity wasn’t something they had to go out and search for…it was something that came as their birthright. This idea has captured me and I’m doing everything I can to soak it up and learn from it. Here are a few of the resources that have helped:
- Family Teams (website)
- Take Back Your Family (book)
- Family Revision (book)
- Intentional Family (podcast)
- The Family Teams Podcast
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The Indian Premier League
I’m positive this was the section you are most excited about…cricket. [sarcasm]
But this email is about what is in my head right now, and I’d be lying if I said that the IPL wasn’t taking up a big chunk of it. As of writing this, the semi-final match just ended and the Kolkata Knight Riders (boooooo) will be taking on the Chennai Super Kings (yaaaay!) for the championship in two days.
The tournament is usually over in less than two months, but with Covid playing a starring role, the tournament was stopped halfway through and moved from India to the United Arab Emirates. After several months, play resumed recently and the tournament is all but finished. CSK has had a great season throughout the tournament, and KKR have staged an incredible comeback from nearly last place before the season resumed.
Come Friday (when this email goes out), I’ll either be incredibly joyful that the boys in yellow have brought home another trophy, or I will be very sad that they did not. #whistlepodu
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Parenting Is Hard
As many of you may know, we finalized the adoption of our son Reymond back in August. If you’ve talked with us about that process, odds are that we didn’t sugar-coat it. It has been and continues to be very hard.
Recently the big struggle for us has been weekends. Reymond seems to usually do pretty well during the week when there is more structure, but on the weekends, he tends to get himself in a lot of trouble. Really, any time he is bored he ends up doing something he shouldn’t.
Anyone else have an incredibly-impulsive child?
Over the past few weeks, our son has orchestrated:
- Midnight kitchen raids
- Home-office break-ins
- Urine in places other than the toilet
- Screaming fits (indoors) that the neighbors heard and messaged to make sure everything was okay
- and a 40-log, 1-bottle-of-lighter-fluid, 3-hour fire on our back porch at 2am
…just to name a few. It’s terrifying and exhausting.
Don’t get me wrong, we have some great moments. But parenting is hard and I think we got more than our share of struggles.
If you’ve been there and found anything that has worked for your child, PLEASE share your thought. We would love to hear them…
Here’s an article I read this morning that really hit home as well:
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Sextember
One of my soapboxes is how we avoid topics of conversation that are difficult. For example, we’re taught to avoid topics of conflict (faith, religion, politics, sex, alcohol, etc). But I believe that we not only shouldn’t avoid those conversations; we should actively engage in them. It’s not that I believe we should all agree on them, but that we should be able to have open, respectful dialogue where we learn from each other. That starts with admitting that we don’t have all the answers on any given subject. Consider that my challenge to you.
So, this section is about sex.
One of my favorite things from September was a podcast series that Rhett & Link did called Sextember. They dedicated the whole month to talking about sex in a very open, honest, and public way. They shared their own personal stories about being raised in an evangelical worldview and how that shaped their beliefs about sexuality, as well as the positive and negative outcomes of that.
One of my favorite parts was that Rhett actually recorded the first conversation he had with his oldest son about sex and (with his son’s permission) played it on the podcast for listeners to hear. It was incredible!
It was so good, in fact, that it gave me exactly what I needed to talk to Reymond about sex. We had a great conversation about it a week or so ago, thanks to the encouragement I received from the podcast series.
I highly recommend listening, especially if you are raising children and want them to have a healthy view of sexuality.
Here’s a link to the first episode.
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Faith VS Apathy: A Jesus Story
Every Sunday, our family reads through and discusses a bible story together. After our discussion, Reymond’s job is to then go and build the story out of Legos (technically I believe the plural of Lego is still just Lego, but that seemed awfully pretentious).
This week, we read a story about Jesus and his followers taking a boat out onto the lake. Their boat was suddenly caught in a huge storm and the passengers were terrified, certain they were going to die…that is, all of them except Jesus. He was fast asleep, not even noticing the storm.
When his frightened followers anxiously awoke him, they asked, “Don’t you care that we are going to die!?” But Jesus calmly rose and commanded the storm to stop, and it immediately obeyed.
This got me thinking: often the world mistakes faith for apathy.
Jesus' followers thought that he didn’t care. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. He wasn’t calm because he didn’t care…he was calm because he had immense faith that God was in control.
I thought that was worth sharing and hope that it will serve as an encouragement to those whose faith keeps them from running frantically, trying to save the world around them. Even if others see your faith as apathy, hold fast. You’re in good Company.
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Well, that’s it for the first edition of CTWR. If you read the whole thing, woah, I’m impressed…and thankful! I doubt they will be this long in the future, but today I just had plenty of thoughts to get out. Please reach out on social media if you’d like to dialogue about anything I wrote here. I would love to hear your thoughts! (Links below)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_mayfield/
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