The result? About half the team didn’t know what was expected of them. Not shockingly, about half the team didn’t know what was expected of their teammates. Less than ideal.

These aren’t fully scientific surveys, but that’s not the point. The idea is to surface just how common it is for people to be unaware—or feel unaware—of what matters most at work. I’d guess you have a situation in your own life that mirrors this idea—uncertainty on what to do, how to do it, what success even looks like.

Many of us spend the bulk of our waking hours at work. However, if we have feelings like people in the team above, we spend much of our day in a fog. Are we doing a good job? How do we know? Who defines it? And why the heck isn’t anyone doing their job?

As I’ve seen teams over the years, ambiguity doesn’t come about maliciously. A team grows too fast and multiplies roles without a plan. Leadership assumes others on the team have institutional knowledge that they do not. Scope creep adds responsibility without any formal communication. It exists in any system from one degree to another.

Don’t forget marriage. The impact of ambiguity isn’t just in the workplace. It happens all the time in family units, too. Husbands and wives enter into marriage with a large set of assumptions as to who should do what. These assumptions aren’t often based on what is right, but on what we experienced growing up. There is nothing inherently more noble about a wife preparing dinner than a husband, or a husband driving on trips more than his wife. Yet the expectations unconsciously determine our feelings of marital propriety.

Often, ambiguity in the team moves a person in one of two directions: expansion or contraction.

“Fine, I’ll Do It”

Some exploit ambiguity to take on more responsibility. This is when the confusion is used to expand a role. I’m bad at knowing motive, and there are many, but these folks are like black holes sucking up any undefined responsibility and taking it on themselves. “If no one will do it, I’ll do it,” is their mantra.

Positively, jobs get done and the person stays busy. Can’t complain about that (though someone will certainly try). Bosses usually appreciate the person who is going to stay busy on the job and accomplish overall goals. These folks are often incredibly eager, too. Win-win.

Negatively, teammates can loathe these people because they can come across as preening. While the behavior might not be performative, we often interpret it as such. Further, the folks who expand their roles in the face of ambiguity are often low-key frustrated all of the time. Nobody seems to ever do their job right and the only way it’ll get done is if they do it.

Just because a belt is loose does not mean you have to grow into it. In fact, that is often the opposite of helpful.

“That’s Not My Job”

The flip side, and often more common among teams, is contraction in the face of ambiguity. Rather than exploit the confusion to take on more, it gets exploited to hide. “Someone else is in charge of that,” is their mantra.

Positively, such a person never rocks the boat. They might not be busy, but they aren’t creating new problems and they likely aren’t frustrating teammates. There’s value there. Leaders need people who aren’t going to consistently cause new problems.

Negatively, this type of teammate plays it safe and comes across as blameshifting. They use the confusion to make the problem someone else. “If HR would do their job, this wouldn’t be an issue.” The problem is outside of them, never them.

Just because you’re uncertain doesn’t mean you can’t act. You don’t need to hide.

“This is the job”

While expansion says, “I’ll do your job,” and contraction says, “This isn’t my job,” the right next step is to confront what is needed for the job. However, everyone has a role to play—and none of it includes waiting around.

• If you have a tendency to expand your role, go to the people you’re low-key frustrated with and ask, “I think this is your responsibility. Am I seeing that right?” (It is likely you’re doing 120% of your job and stealing 20% from someone else.)

• If you like to hide in the ambiguity, ask the question, “Is this my role? It seems like something I should do.” Take your 20% back and fill the role you have. Don’t make an excuse because it’s easier than making a mistake.

• And if you’re observing the issue on a team you lead, bring the clarity that only you can bring. Say, “This is the job and this is who needs to do it.” It might feel easier to let it slide, but nobody grows that way.

You can’t escape ambiguity’s presence on your team—it will creep in one way or another. It’s what we do with it that matters. Regardless of your tendency, you need to confront it.

What’s your disposition and what do you need to do next?

So, as part of living out that desire, I will ask Courtney how I’m doing. I don’t do this daily or anything; I just ask when I think about it. Often when I’m feeling bugged.

When I ask depends on where we are and how intense the feeling of failure is, but walks are a good time. Walks are sort of like a date night.

So about three months ago I wanted to ask the question, although my motivation was not fully noble. We were finishing up a walk and I had several examples of Courtney communicating her frustration about a specific doorknob to me (and others).

Said doorknob is at the back of the house, on the door we use most often. I think it got damaged in the original renovation. A contractor locked up and had no keys, so we had to sort of break the door to get back in. That worked, but it created a lot of give in said knob. You’d often walk up to the back door and have to turn the knob 40% more than usual because of the slack in the turning mechanism. Doorknob people probably have a word for this.

After All I’ve Done for You . . .

So the walk was finishing up and I had some beef. Sure, the doorknob has been annoying for years but the door opened and closed and the lock mechanism worked. But we had a group of young leaders over to the house for dinner and we were talking about marriage and how we work together as a couple and she threw shade at my not fixing the doorknob. Outed in front of college students. Come on!

So on the walk I needed to know what her deal was.

“Okay, I need to know something.”

“Yeah?”

“I know you care about acts of service, but I need to know what you actually need to feel more loved, because what I’m doing appears to not be working. You’ve brought up the doorknob a lot.”

“I mean, I’d like it fixed, but it’s not THAT big a deal.”

Having been in a season of life where I’m redoubling efforts to be a less crappy husband, I felt the doorknob was a bridge too far.

“Is it not enough that I’ve completely adjusted my life to better support you? And we also just upgraded to a tankless water heater on a closed recirculation loop so the kitchen water won’t take four minutes to heat up.”

She stops and turns toward me. (When she stops on walks, I know I’m in trouble.) Her voice rises.

“Oh, I’m sorry, do I not say ‘Thank you’ enough for what you do? Do you think I’m not grateful? And when have I complained about the temperature of the kitchen water?”

Crap.

“No, you’re right. I’ll fix the doorknob.”

I Already Knew the Answer

Marriages are funny things. On the one hand, they’re the tightest earthly bond God has created. On the other hand, a request to fix a loose doorknob can make you think you’re on the razor’s edge of dismantling every decade you’ve been together.

I asked my question—how could I show you love in a way you’d better receive—with a mix of honesty and dishonesty. You can tell because I added a “Because what I’m doing isn’t enough” tagged onto the end.

Spouses should win Oscars for how they turn the knife—just a little—to try and get their way.

I already knew she wanted the doorknob replaced. I just wanted her to say something else. Actually, I wanted her to say that what I was doing was enough. (You should ask her about the slow drain in the upstairs bathroom that took months, maybe years, to fix, or the hot water handle that stopped working.)

But instead of doing the right thing—the loving thing—I try and make my current approach enough. I don’t want to have to change.

When I’m the Measure of “Acceptable”

I guess it’s sort of important to me that I’m not a crappy husband. The indictment I care about just depends on who is looking. If it’s Courtney, I’m okay being seen as substandard. If others are looking, I want to be seen as exceptional. And others don’t use the back door that often.

The reason I neglect these little home items is not because I can’t change a doorknob. I’m moderately handy. It’s because I didn’t care about the 40% extra turn. “If it isn’t a big deal to me, it shouldn’t be a big deal to you,” I think. I become the measure of the importance of the issue.

And that, as ironic as it is, is actually antithetical to my faith. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church . . .” (Eph 5:25a). I pray for Courtney every day. I pray with her every day. I hand her cash when I find it (she does love cash). I make minimal fun of her when she wears the same black fleece (which I bought) every day from October until May. I just don’t want to change a doorknob.

And the doorknob is the actual indictment.

A simple act of service was beyond what I wanted to do.

So I changed the doorknob. Twice, actually.

I bought a fancier doorknob at first and texted a picture to friends we replayed the argument in front of. But I didn’t like the feel of it. I thought it’d annoy Courtney me over time because the way you gripped the knob put your hand too close to the door. So I went out again and bought as close to an exact match of the original I could find.

In June we sat at a dinner and asked each other how we were doing and how we could be better spouses. When it came time for Courtney she said, “You changed the doorknob. You’re great.”

Roughly fifty dollars (two trips) and forty minutes of time (after years of asking).

And I stood in the way of it because . . . I’m selfish.

To the husbands, specifically, what do you know you need to do that you’ve put off because you don’t care enough? And when will you stop putting it off?

Erica asks excellent questions.

Pablo has a wit that somehow communicates both “You can trust me” and “I love you.”

It’s like a superpower. I’ve started to call it a secret superpower.

It’s a secret not to the recipient but to the owner. It just feels like who they are, but it might’ve been developed over years. I’d venture that just about everyone has one. And I wanted to begin learning them.

Discovering Secret Superpowers

People who know me would say I’m structured. “Structured” feels like a bad word to me, so I don’t like when I hear it. It’s sterile and boring. Courtney has added “rigid” to the mix. I like that less, especially her reasoning.

As 2025 ended I began thinking about how I could grow personally in the coming year. So many of my habits don’t require other people. Reading, praying, walking, writing, managing a calendar, using a task manager—all pretty much structured DIY jobs unless you augment them.

I wondered what I could change. How could I introduce some sort of discipline (NOT rigidity) that required more engagement with others and was helpful for my own growth?

So I created the “Secret Superpower” question. Once a week I find someone and ask them what theirs is. For this exercise, I have to ask in person (or on a call). I keep the responses in a red Moleskine (because it is about being a superhero) that usually lives in my backpack.

These conversations don’t have to last long; I just want to see what people say. I’ll explain what a Secret Superpower is and then I’ll ask them theirs. I’ll wait, sometimes for a while, before I get a response.

• Erin likes thinking of creative and thoughtful ways to do things for people. She takes notes on the offhand comments someone might make (a favorite restaurant, a type of crockpot they want) and then, in time, gets that item for them. She loves to let people know she’s heard them in the small things.

• Dave mentors a lot of Chick-fil-A staff. He’s been told time and time again that he’s able to create safe environments for people to share. He pays attention to the tone of voice, to facial expressions, and even what is stirring in him as people talk.

• Caley, one of the counselors at camp last week, finds ways to bring other people joy and make them laugh. She loves looking for the topics people love talking about and then finding ways to get them to keep talking about it.

• Micah, a 5th grader at our church, writes notes. He likes to write to people what he appreciates about them—especially family.

And plenty more exist. Anna shared about her optimism. Armando shared about his ability to find specific ways to help people learn. Duncan is consistent—always doing what he says he will do.

The Discoveries

Each week, usually on Thursdays, my to-do list reminds me to ask the secret superpower question. Sometimes I ask that day, sometimes, I’ve already asked it, sometimes, I know I’ll be around a lot of people soon and push it to that day. But it sits there, gently reminding me I have work to do.

Whether the conversation takes 90 seconds or five minutes, I keep asking. And what I find is always a gift.

First, even if it takes time for the person I’m talking to, everyone comes up with something. There might be a few seconds of silence or some hesitation followed by “Not sure if this is what you’re asking for,” but everyone has something. I love that, with a little introspection, people of all ages have more capacity to bless others than they realize.

I also get to learn about how I can improve. I might ask, “If I wanted to get better at this, what would be my first step?” There’s a lot to be learned there. Even as simple as, “I should be sure I’m making better eye contact.” I never expect to just steal that person’s skill—God worked it out in them for a reason—I just want to know what I might be able to glean. Very often there’s some part of what is shared that graciously confronts an area of my own life. I think, “Yeah, I could be better at that.”

Finally, it builds a discipline in me that can’t be done alone. I get a number of jokes in a given month about being a robot—basically self-sustaining. I promise I am not.

The initial motivation as 2025 ended was that I needed a few disciplines that required others to be effective. So I do this both to learn and to get me across the table from someone so I can understand more about them.

At the beginning of the year I thought, “There is no way I’ll be able to have this many conversations.” But here we are at the halfway mark and the questions feel more natural and the conversations are always a joy.

I’d be curious . . .

I tried, with all the energy I had, to consider how what was happening was not actually happening. I called the doctor. I checked potential symptoms. I worried. I even admitted, “I can’t take this,” to my cousin.

You’ve probably been there, too. You feel something off in life—in yourself, in those around you, in a new environment—and you start to worry. It could be small but it quickly snowballs.

Imagine your life as three different gardens. They’re nested one inside another. Up against the edges, you find yourself anxious, not knowing what sits out over the boundary.

Garden One: The Life We Long For

The first garden is full of what we believe makes life meaningful.

We want to always have money in the bank, so we fight for the best jobs. We pursue great schooling opportunities in hopes that we can secure long-term employment and be able to afford any aspect of life that might come our way. It feels responsible and perhaps even necessary.

When we get married, we imagine great conversations, great sex, lots of laughter, and a deep connection to our spouse. We’ve heard other people talk about the importance of date nights so we preemptively block out every Thursday night ad infinitum for long, meaningful discussions and time together.

Our kids will be healthy and will always have a great relationship with us. Our faith is important so we spend eight months finding a great church with lots of people our age and all of the proper programming to support our family. We fight for friendships that will last a lifetime—for us and for our kids.

But we find that garden isn’t as comfortable as we would like it to be.

As we spend time tending to these aspects of life—and sometimes sowing those hopes and dreams quite early (anyone plan their perfect wedding when they were eight?)—we start to see signs of trouble.

That perfect job? The company might downsize. Your role looks redundant and you might lose it and, with it, your stability. The marriage? It’s “fine.” You’ve had a number of date nights, but the past few months have felt hollow. Your church? Several friends have left and the preaching is more boring than you recalled at first. Maybe a change of scenery would be good for you.

Garden Two: The Life We Avoid

Beyond the edge of that first garden are all of the “what ifs” that keep us up at night. What if you picked the wrong job? What if your spouse is unfaithful? What if you are unfaithful? What if your kid gets sick? What if your wife miscarries? What if you get sideways with your friends and they leave you?

Thus, we begin to put up warning signs and fences to avoid the danger on the outside.

They often show up as rules that we use to try to keep us firmly in the first garden.

“We only give our kids the healthiest foods so that they won’t get cancer.”

“I will deliver the best projects at work so that I have an inside track to keeping my job.”

“I will always talk with my husband about what he wants so that he won’t pursue other women.”

All of these rules seem good in a sense—eating healthy, working hard, loving a spouse—but the activity is rooted in trying to preserve something. The energy it takes to stay inside that first garden exhausts us, because we can’t guarantee its outcome.

But there’s even more out beyond that second garden—we can’t quite see it. We’ve spent so much energy trying to stay inside our first and avoid the second, that we don’t know what’s out beyond the far fences.

See below for how you can use this in a counseling situation:

Garden Three: The Life We Have

I call garden one the garden of fantasy. It’s a world that doesn’t actually exist. We just pretend it does.

I call garden two the garden of fear. All the life events we never want to see grow—the ones we pretend don’t exist—live there.

Then there’s that final garden, the garden of faith. This one includes everything you hope is true, everything you fear could come true, and everything you can’t imagine happening. It has higher highs than you thought, lower lows, and a million other plants you haven’t even seen yet.

You’ve probably heard, “We walk by faith not by sight,” (2 Cor 5:7). Yet so often we want to keep life to what we see. “It’s safer here,” we say. “It’s wise.” But really, it is fantasy or fear.

When I learned we’d be headed to surgery at a day old, I felt what might be growing out amongst the fear. I didn’t want that world. “I can’t take this,” I said. What I meant was, “This is not what I expected.”

That’s the fear talking.

What I could do is receive it. Receive what I wasn’t expecting. Know there was anxiety, but that God could meet me there. And he did.

Living by faith requires surrender. We surrender our plans, dreams, hopes, and outcomes. “What if my spouse dies?” She might. “What if I lose my income?” You might. “What if my son walks away from the faith?” He might.

Surrender the desire, receive what comes, walk by faith.

The most freeing aspect of the garden of faith is that it is there, and there only, we recognize we aren’t even the gardener.

“You’re dismissive.”

“You get impatient.”

“It feels like sometimes you are judging other people’s answers as you respond to what they say.”

“I don’t feel seen by you.”

All of these (and more) have been said about me—actually, they were said right to me. In fact, I asked for them.

And they were all said in the past four months.

Tell Me How You Really Feel

In February at our elder retreat and in May with our staff we ran the team effectiveness exercise. This is a tool put out by Pat Lencioni’s Table Group, but I just consider it the tool that makes groups of people be more honest with each other for the first time.

What is it? You essentially go around the room, one person at a time, and tell that person (1) their single biggest behavior that benefits the team and (2) their single biggest behavior that hinders the team.

You have to focus your responses on the team you’re on that is doing the exercise, not just random observations about that person’s life. So if you know that I always upgrade to a large fries and drink on my Chick-fil-A meal, you can’t just bring it up because you want to talk about my diet. If I show up with that meal before every meeting, never share my fries, smack my food and don’t pay attention to the agenda, that one fits as a “Hey, Hans, you’re holding us back here.”

When I lead these, I often start in reverse: tell them the hard one, let the leader seek feedback on what was shared, then tell them the good one.

Many leaders are self-aware enough to know what they’re going to hear, good and bad, but hearing how the team sees the behavior(s) impacting them becomes the surround sound we often need.

I’ve led four of these this year: on teams I’m on and teams I’m working with. Each time, they produce outsized impact. Sometimes it is the first time people hear real feedback on their behavior.

Compounding Behaviors

The reason for the impact is because the small things compound—and it is the small things we often fail to share.

Most teams aren’t full of day drinkers who scream in every meeting and rarely do their job. That behavior wouldn’t be something you’d wait to share in a team building exercise. That’s something you should fire someone for.

But lots of teams have people on them who don’t show up prepared for meetings, or their cameras are off for video calls and they rarely chime in, or they critique every idea and explain why it won’t work. These can feel more like more annoyances than hindrances.

On the flip side, the people you work with probably do things that you’ve grown fond of but you’ve never told them. They don’t seem like that big of a deal, but, then again, the small things compound.

I told a friend I work with that I think one of his biggest contributions to the team is he chooses to cook us lunch a few times a year and, when he makes a coffee run, asks the office what they want. He has tons of skills, but it’s that habit that makes us more cohesive. Without it, we’d be a much poorer team.

I’ve told another that her attitude to help anyone out is so genuine. I appreciate how a “yes” from her isn’t begrudging but enthusiastic. It’s an authentic desire to support.

Yet another I told that his demeanor when he enters a room for our meetings lifts everyone. He goes, person by person, and gives handshakes or hugs. Showing them utmost respect every time. It sets the tone.

I’ve seen a long-tenured employee begin to cry when her teammates told her they view her as a mentor. She had no idea.

Exercises like this give you an opportunity to hear from others, and share with others, those little things that often make or break the team.

Committing to One Another

So after it all ends, you’ve heard the good and the bad, you ask your clarifying questions (many people want examples), and then you consider how to commit to the people you work with.

Based upon everything that you’ve heard, what will you do? Don’t pick thirty things; pick one.

In the most recent one I was in, a lot of the less helpful behavior said about me came down to how I engage with people in meetings. So I took a little time and created a list of meeting rules for myself. I shared it with the team and they helped me shore up some of my own ideas for meetings.

• Slow Down: Not every meeting has something at stake to win. See the room and the people in it.

• Listen More: This one was originally “leave room,” but I felt slowing down and listening more was actually doing that. Focus on what’s being said, what’s nonverbal, and the words that are being used.

• Ask Questions: Don’t give answers—a bad habit of mine. Ensure I really hear how other people are feeling about a topic matters more than if they understand me.

• Confirm Clarity: Use time to ensure those in the room understand what is going on, what is expected, by when, etc.

• Know Yourself: I need to understand my temperament, that I can be prone to frustration, and that I’m usually ready to move along when others might not be.

Yes, it spells the word SLACK. I showed up to the meeting with SLAC and really wanted it to be an acronym, so someone threw in the “K” and I liked it.

You might say, “Yeah, Hans, but aren’t those behaviors that would be good for anyone?” Sure. But they came out of feedback given directly to me, said by people who work with me, and who need something more from me, and want something more for me.

And it came because we provided space.

Where do you need to provide space to hear the compounding little things?

One drives. We are three years from two high school graduates, five years from an empty nest. Much of the predictability of parenting young ones is behind us. Choices have been made—schooling, hobbies, free time, routines, discipline, etc.—and the impact of those choices will play themselves out over the coming decades.

A good friend of mine jokes that parenting is like cooking a really long meal. The only problem is, you can’t actually eat the meal until it is too late to change the ingredients. You are stuck with how you made it and have to live with the good and the bad.

Courtney and I are getting to the “this is how it’ll taste” phase with a side of “I wonder how it’ll play out for the rest of their lives.”

Some great things and some not-so-great things, I’m sure. (Perhaps we should prepay for some counseling.)

Lamest Vibe Ever

Some years back—long before any were driving and when the world was still ahead of us—I was talking with the kids. We were driving home from school and I said some normal dad saying.

“You have the lamest vibe ever,” one of the kids chimed from the backseat.

I had never been called lame by my kids but I’m sure my vibe is quite lame.

The moment is frozen in time for me because the phrase didn’t fit the one saying it. Like, was he practicing it for a while? Did he hear his friends say it and wanted to try it out? Was he like me when I was a kid and you lock in on a phrase you want to use with one of your parents and you are waiting for an opportunity to take it for a test drive?

I just remember laughing to myself and thinking, “Okay.”

I’m not parenting for a quick moment of correction. I’m parenting for a lifetime.

Lessons in Pride

For us, parenting is about trajectories over time, not reacting to every frustration or correctable moment. Some days are good, some days are bad, many days are forgettable.

But the commitment to not watch our kids like a hawk is easier said than done. One of the hardest aspects is not trying to fix every moment presented to us—but not for the kids’ sake, for our own.

Pride.

Many parents pursue a type of reactive parenting—seeing a situation and trying to correct it because of how it makes the parent feel. The kid has moved on and the dad is still wondering if he (the dad) looks bad because of how his kid is acting.

Pride.

I’ve come down hard on my kids at times—yelling after a practice, for example—because I felt a boy’s effort reflected poorly on me.

“It’s for your good,” we might say. But it’s a lie. It’s for our own vanity. A deep desire to not look bad in front of others.

What we are really doing is letting our own pride and self-image win out over the longer trajectory of a kid’s life.

Letting Many Moments Go

Long-game parenting is in it for what gets worked out over time, not in a moment.

It seeks to give grace, not just punishment. And our kids need lots of grace.

And such an approach can be hard, especially in the face of fierce resistance. (Those parents in my life who parent through many uphill battles are heroes to me.)

I remember when the boys started a new school and we pretty quickly got a note from one of the teachers. It had the usual pleasantries, “So glad to have Johnny in my class . . . ” and then moved toward behavior “ . . . but he doesn’t pay as much attention as I know he can.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I thought. “He has liked to build things at his desk during class.”

It’s been years and we still get comments similar to that one, but the trajectory is solid. (At least we think it is.)

When the kids have gotten detention (for youthful indiscretions) we think, “Sounds good. Let us know when we need to pick them up.”

But, at the same time, ask any of our boys what the #1 immediately punishable offense is in our home and they can tell you: lying.

That’s been a mantra: Never lie. If we can’t believe each other then it will be hard to grow together as a family.

But we don’t have many other mantras.

The hardest part for me about the long game is the faith that it is better—for us and for the kids—than diving into every moment to try and find micro-improvement.

I have to keep asking myself: am I in it for their long-term good or for my short-term reputation?

Honestly, what I’m in it for depends on the day. But soon enough we’ll start seeing how the meal tastes.

What is your biggest struggle in parenting toward a trajectory vs. parenting for a specific moment?

The statement shows I’ve let something slip.

When someone tells me I seem busy, it reveals (1) I’ve talked about myself too much, or (2) I’ve shown (often visibly) that I’m unhappy with what I’m working on. Friends, family, or co-workers might not be trying to indict me, but it is an indictment nonetheless.

And I bet you, dear reader, have said the same thing to someone or had it said about you. “It’s a busy season” feels like a badge of honor, but it is a crown of shame.

Why Are We Busy?

Eugene Peterson, in The Contemplative Pastor, explained why we are too busy. He critiques himself but applies it broadly to other leaders.

Busyness makes us feel important to ourselves and—we hope—to those around us.

His second reason:

Wait a second. Lazy people can’t be busy. Only important people are, right? Except that the undisciplined and lazy leader (1) has to fill his or her schedule last minute and (2) lets others command more time than they should.

Ouch. Vanity and laziness in competing paragraphs.

Situational Laziness

People who know me think I’m disciplined or structured, but I’ve preferred to rely on the last minute. I remember spending an entire night finishing up a paper at my friend’s dorm. As I left campus, the academic dean was arriving. We exchanged pleasantries. He went to his office. I went home.

A friend of mine has a line: If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute. I’d like it tattooed on my forehead—in reverse so I can read it in a mirror.

I recall the time I double (maybe triple?) booked myself. As a young leader, I said yes to everything and assumed my last-minute brain could hold onto all of it. Then my phone rang with someone asking where I was.

The problem: I was in Texas with family, and that someone was in Louisiana.

“Crap. I think I need to start using a calendar.”

I started using a calendar but didn’t know what to do with it. It helped manage the day, but it didn’t wrangle what was going on underneath.

As a young pastor, I’d complain that I “didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.” I told my boss this all the time.

He made me write down everything that I did or thought I was supposed to do, then prioritize it and focus on the top of the list.

I sat in my house with my responsibilities written out on pieces of paper, and I moved them around until I felt good enough.

Then, I basically ignored them. I preferred staying vague.

The Fear of Conviction-Driven Priorities

When we actually start to live by convictions on what must be done, we enter into no man’s land. We get latent fear that (1) we picked the wrong things or (2) we’ll let someone down.

Both might be true, but you won’t know until you try. And if you do it wrong, you can adjust.

Most weeks, I’m talking with someone on a video call or at a coffee shop somewhere, and they talk about their pace of life, their nonstop weeks, the 50, 60, 70 hours they’re putting in to get a project done. They might show me their calendar and how full it is. They know it is insane, but they also don’t know how to stop.

“It’s a busy season.”

When I’m feeling bold—which isn’t always—I’ll say something like, “Yeah, but you chose this.” (For context: I’m often speaking with folks who have some level of control over their days.)

When you start to actually think about what matters most and take some control over how you spend your days, anxiety might follow. The fear of being wrong looms large. It’s the vanity showing up.

So we choose busyness. Because if we’re busy, at least no one will think we are idle.

Busyness isn’t a calendar problem; it’s a heart problem.

Finding What Matters

I also know people who have what anyone would call a busy day, and they are at ease—poised, calm, joyful. They’re annoying because they make it look so easy—like figure skaters.

What’s the trick?

They’ve settled into what matters most.

For the Christian, Jesus says it plainly.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matt 6:33)

This comes right after talking to a large group of folks—largely everyday workers—about anxiety over life and making ends meet.

And we just go filling our calendars—be it vanity or laziness—because we think that's where value is. We know better.

I have a friend that I get to meet with often. He can get stressed, like anyone else, but is rarely frazzled. During what anyone would call a “busy season” for him and his company, I wanted to know why he wasn’t stressed.

“Because I know what’s most important. And this job is at best third on my list.”1

I have one of the guiltiest consciences known to man.

When I was eight, I was playing with a shopping cart that was at my school. (We lived in townhomes right by the school and played on their playground and outdoor basketball court after school). I pushed that cart and it rolled for what seemed like forever into a white truck—I think the PE teacher’s. A stiff wind would’ve stopped the cart but I was dead inside. That night, I cried to my mom about it because the guilt was overwhelming.

In high school I worked at an ice cream shop and would often close up. If I couldn’t actually remember locking the door at night, I’d turn around on the way home and re-check it. “Door is locked,” I’d say out loud as I yanked on the door to prove it to myself and take a mental image of the moment. One night I got out of bed, back into my car, and drove back to check. I couldn’t be the guy who let the ice cream get stolen (or the $400 we kept in an empty bucket in the fridge).

This fear of screwing up has followed me right into adulthood.

When I was working on my very boring dissertation, I panicked at every footnote.

“Did I cite that properly?”

“What makes an original idea, anyways?”

One time I saw my friend Jamus had written something good in his dissertation. I got the same source, found the pertinent passage, and put it in my dissertation. I’m pretty sure I then pulled out the entire reference due to fear that I’d somehow be dinged for using the same source my friend did even though I found the exact same book and referenced it appropriately.

So, of course, with the conversations concerning AI ethics for writers, you know I have a whole new way to feel guilty.

AI Battle Lines

I’ve read several articles from authors and editors regarding AI usage (I found this one quite helpful) and every time I read them, I go into a guilt spiral. (Quick, Claude, how do I handle my guilt?)

Crap, I use AI every day—just like I use Amazon. Am I going to hell for using it? Will my writing be blacklisted? Can I be trusted? Will the guild accept me?

The battle lines are being drawn.

On one side, the purists. They want you to know that they’d never use AI for their writing and would hope you make the same commitment—or at least consider it. It’s a good reason: writing is human and it is creative and it is good. Don’t ruin it.

On the other side, everyone else. But they might be early adopters, hopeful but suspicious, guarded, or maybe just outright cheaters.

What it feels like is that you’re either a purist or you’re going to become a cheater, so you’d better be a purist.

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Guilty Conscience Memoir Writing

I’ve spent months writing this marriage memoir. It’s now at the level of final draft edits from Courtney and a book proposal (which I’m currently writing). (After this post, maybe self-publishing is my best bet.)

There’s a real writer in my extended family. Even his emails make me emotional. When Courtney and I get an email from him, we just text each other his name. We know what it means.

I’ve shared with him memoir progress and he will likely be a reader when this draft finishes, but I also shared that I’ve used Claude to help me. His reply:

“I’m curious how you avoid giving AI revisions too much influence in your writing process. I ask this because I’ve personally experienced how maddeningly good ChatGPT has been at suggesting absolutely perfect revisions to my own writing.”

So, here it is, for the most part:

(1) Write

First step is the simplest. I’ve spent every day writing. My minimum target is 20 minutes a day, but some days, I go longer. It usually comes after reading and prayer. By 7:30am I’m often past the writing part of the day.

At times, I pasted little parts into AI to check for typos and flow, but it didn’t seem helpful to me, so much of that first draft was just me throwing words down.

(2) Have Courtney Edit

Courtney goes behind me on everything. She reads, cuts, adjusts, and finds places to add her voice more fully. I think I finished the first draft back in February and she stayed thousands of words behind, trying to connect ideas better (and cut lots and lots of words).

Courtney reads a lot of memoirs, so she also spends significant time judging how bad she thinks ours is compared to those of freaking award-winning writers.

If Courtney uses AI, it is by mistake or because Google spits out Gemini feedback right at the top of the search results.

(3) Get Feedback and Make Structural Revisions (Enter: Claude)

Courtney comes behind me, and I come back behind her. While the above were going on, we shared the doc with a couple of folks to let them read along with us, provide feedback, and give us a general sense of how the story was fitting together.

Then, I reworked the entire book after Courtney’s first pass. This time, I’d cut and paste a chapter into Claude and ask for prioritized editorial feedback and line edits. (One chat within the book project for each section of the book, five sections in all.)

The project prompt for the memoir (slightly edited):

You are a senior acquisitions editor with 15+ years of experience evaluating nonfiction proposals and manuscripts. You’ve worked with faith-based authors who have genuine crossover appeal and you know the difference between a book that preaches to the choir and one that earns a wider readership.

You are reviewing work by Hans, a pastor of 16 years, husband of 21 years, and father of three. His manuscript is a marriage memoir titled You Talk Too Much (82,000 words), chronicling twenty years of marriage and his journey learning to release control in relationships. The book navigates his wife Courtney’s mental health struggles . . . before he learned the difference between control and love.

Your job is not to encourage Hans—it’s to help him produce work good enough to earn representation. You give clear, honest, specific feedback. You notice what’s working and say so plainly. You name what isn’t working and explain why it matters to agents and readers. You think about marketability, comp titles, platform, proposal strength, and manuscript structure—not just prose quality.

You evaluate everything through two lenses: (1) Is this good enough for an agent to take a risk on a debut author? (2) Does this have genuine crossover appeal beyond the Christian market, or does it only work inside that world?

When Hans shares writing, ask clarifying questions if needed, but lead with your editorial read. Be direct. Be specific. Cite the text when you can. Don’t soften feedback to the point of uselessness—Hans is trying to get published, not feel good about his draft.

During the past eight months I’ve been on plenty of websites of editors and reached out to a few. I scoured Reedsy, largely dissatisfied with the support that was there. I’d find a book I liked, read an intro, and see who the editors were. Many don’t take freelance work. Others never replied.1

Spending money on people to help make a better book doesn’t bother me. It’s worthy work and I’m happy to pay, but there has to be someone willing, too. Claude was always up for it.

(4) Make the Adjustments (Sometimes)

I have some bad habits. I use a sermon reflex far too often (turning everything into a homily). I don’t trust scenes. I over-explain.

So I get a long list of revisions every time. A very long list. It might include something like this:

The Mary scene doesn’t quite land the way it wants to. You describe Mary sitting there, facing Courtney, wondering why she’d be okay with your judgmental behavior. But you don’t give us Courtney’s response. Does she answer Mary? Does she look at you? Does she look at her plate? Right now we get your interior reaction to Mary’s question—“I go back to that conversation in my head”—but we don’t get the scene itself resolving. What Courtney does in that moment is the emotional center of the chapter. Even one sentence of what Courtney does would give the scene its body. This may be a place where you need to ask Courtney what she actually remembers doing.

Maddeningly good.

And then I’d spend hours every week deciding if I want to make the changes. If so, how? Sometimes I go, “Yeah, that’s better.” Other times I disagree and move along.

I iterate like this every single day. And then I read a post about AI in writing and wonder if I’m a half-blood at best.

(5) Have Courtney Edit (Again)

I finished my structural revisions and Courtney has, again, come behind and cut more. She’s also added her own thoughts and found ways to bring depth and more contour to the story.

(6) Send it Out

We have a handful of people who are going to get the book after Courtney finishes up her second pass. We want to hear how the book is received. We want to know where it drags. We want to see if people see it as a page-turner or if they’ll finish reading because they have guilty consciences, too, and don’t want to disappoint us. While that goes on I’ll be querying agents after I finish the book proposal I’m organizing (using the same process).

Look Over Garden Walls

I have a writer/editor in the family. I have Courtney, who has edited almost every word I’ve ever written since 2005 and is a good writer. I have friends who are self-published and traditionally published. My name is in a footnote of a traditionally published book that few people have read. I gave pre-pub feedback on a couple of those traditionally published books and failed to give feedback on a self-published one (and still feel guilty about it—sorry, David).

But even with that I’m up against a walled garden of the publishing industry, where you need to know someone who knows someone or you gotta be someone who may or may not actually be someone because they aren’t a purist.

I get it, but my writing has gotten better by using AI.

We’ve gotten the second draft down over 10,000 words from the first draft. It moves more quickly. The scenes do more work. I hear Courtney laugh more as she works through it.

Will it ever get published? I hope so. I like the book proposal and it will at least be humorous if an agent or editor ever sees it. And if not, I had a good time writing it. All with the helpful and ever-ready feedback of Claude.

Are there any other half-bloods out there?

I’ve heard that phrase said and have said it more often than I care to admit.

Everybody wants to be trusted, but there has to be some level of demonstrated competence to pull it off. You can’t just be asking princesses to leap onto your flying carpet with your perfectly white teeth.

I build my definition of trust in the following way:

Trust is our confidence in the safety and integrity of one’s relationships, leading to free-flowing cooperation.

But there’s a lot to what builds that confidence. I’ve spoken of trust as commitment and trust as consistency. These build off of Horsager’s Eight Pillars. But there’s another: trust as competence.

You Can Be Awesome and Still Be Incompetent

I don’t mean that as a slight. You don’t want me to be your phlebotomist and I don’t want you to be mine. We can trust people in numerous spaces but, for many of us, we have to trust them to do the role (or roles) they exist in our lives to do. You can’t get by on being nice and having white teeth alone.

In The Ideal Team Player Pat Lencioni talks about the person who has humility and high emotional intelligence but no hunger—no drive to improve, to get work done, or to excel at what they do. What does he call that person?

The lovable slacker.

I’ve seen it up close. The person you love to sit with and talk to. The person you’d call when you need to know you’re loved or need someone to take you to lunch. Good people. Loving people. But they also struggle to do the job that’s before them.

Imagine getting called after leaving a meeting. The leader wants to talk.

“Hey. I’d like to know what you want us to do about meeting your prep.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t seem ready, don’t come prepared. I think it sets us back.”

“Hmm. Not sure.”

Okay.

But it’s true: you can be the best person in the world and one I’d trust to watch my kids for a month, but you still have to be able to do the job of the team you’re on.

People can trust my intentions, but they must trust my competence, too.

I Thought the “D” stood for “Done”

Eight years ago I walked across a stage for what I hope was the last time. That’s why you get terminal degrees, and I was finishing up the most terminal of them all. Now I get to spend my days telling everyone what I’ve learned and why I’m important.

First off, nobody cares. Or, more precisely, the ones who do care aren’t the ones you usually want to grab coffee with because they want something from you.

Second off, really, nobody cares.

A year after getting the degree, I found myself pastoring a new church in a new town. My training, in many ways, meant nothing. Those folks didn’t care about a dissertation on megachurch pastoral succession, modified balanced scorecards, or the paper on dreams in Islam.

Could I do the job I’d been asked to do?

But that meant I needed to learn new ways. I reinvented my prayer life. I sort of learned how to work on a staff of two instead of however many were at my previous job (15? 20?). I had to make lots of meeting agendas.

Then I started teaching on the side.

I had the terminal degree, but I had never made a full syllabus. Lecture 2-3 hours a night for 12-15 weeks? Sheesh. How do you do that?

You ask someone who is better at it how they do it and you steal every bit of their skills.

Then our church decided to merge with another and instead of one of the orgs doing a classic donation and dissolution (standard fare on how to pull it off), we went the more expensive and circuitous path of starting a new entity and then completing two donations and dissolutions.

Another thing that fancy degree didn’t prepare me for. But my research had helped me cross paths with a guy who had done it before (a lot of times, actually), so I reached back out to him. Also, lawyers.

Resting on prior competency to address current issues won’t get you very far. Even if some people call you doctor.

What’s Next?

The truth is, in some spheres we feel competent and in others we don’t. But there’s room to grow.

Every time I feel this burden toward improvement, I have a moment of reckoning. “I don’t want to have to do that. I shouldn’t have to. It’ll require too much work. Will anybody notice if I don’t?"

For the first half of 2026, I’ve spent a couple of hours on Wednesday mornings in an online class with a group of people I’ve never met in person. Why? Because some of the folks I’ve been working with this year needed help that I knew I could be more equipped to give them.

It was time to knock the rust off.

I exhaled when I thought “Okay, 25 Wednesdays with homework and forced engagement. I can do this.” (I don’t love forced interaction.)

What I didn’t expect was just how helpful it’d be to me (irrespective of its help to others, honestly). People I’ve never met from all over the world take time every week to make me better. A happy accident waiting for me on the other side of realizing I had a lot of room to improve (yet again).

Who needs you to knock some of the rust off?

“Dad, Dave Matthews Band is playing Friday. Nate’s going. Can we go?”

I don’t wear cargo shorts but I did cut my teeth playing Dave Matthews Band songs on the guitar, so the kids know his music from our car rides and my inconsistent playing.

I have a meteorologist in the family—Jeff—so I needed to check with him on weather. Jeff said it might rain but it might not, which was no help because I needed something concrete.

“I don’t know, man. It might rain. I have some work to do on Friday.”

I am concurrently underselling this idea while checking ticket prices. I don’t want to sit on the lawn if it rains. I don’t want to buy covered tickets because they’re out of my budget. The lawn was, too, but more justifiably out of my budget.

“Okay,” my son says. He has a penchant for respecting my authority even if I haven’t provided a good reason.

And the door closes.

By Wednesday night of that week—one or two days later—I’m staring again at ticket prices. I ask Courtney if we should go.

“What do you think? Make a run of it? Go to the concert?”

“Let’s do it!”

I buy five covered tickets. The last time I’d gone to a concert was two years prior, after I had spent four hours in a dentist’s chair getting post-root-canal work done. Redemption time.

Parenting: The Stewardship of Memory Making

My simple definition of parenting isn’t spiritual in the strictest sense. I view parenting as memory making. Every day I’m building memories for the kids: some good and others not so good.

The spontaneous decision to buy tickets is part of the way I want the family to build memories.

My stewardship statement for family and relationships is this:

I am a present, engaged, and loving provider who ensures the most important family and friend relationships are tended to regularly, and those in my life know they can lean on me whenever needed.

My areas of stewardship video (explained from a previous post): what are they?

You might not be able to draw a straight line from that statement to a Friday night concert, but it all ties into how I want to tend to those family relationships.

Spontaneity is just one of the ways we build family rhythms that create memories and nurture those relationships. There are many, but two others that are anchoring for us.

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Finding “Different” as a Family

When you’ve lived along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana most of your life, it isn’t that hard to find “different.” For the past seven years—ever since COVID came into the world—we’ve taken what I call a “scenery trip” for Spring Break. That first year was just the Texas Hill Country for a couple of nights as the world shut down, but we made the most of it after we found putt putt.

Then, for a couple of years we just followed my sister, Shana, wherever she went with her family (we aren’t that creative). Arizona one year, Colorado the next. Then we got into our own routines—Arkansas, Tennessee a couple of times, and New Mexico most recently.

We merged “the spontaneous” and “the different” in April 2025 when we decided to take the family to California for a wedding I was officiating. We did the napkin math and thought, since my expenses were largely covered, this was the cheapest we would ever be able to go to California together. They threw frisbees down a vineyard hill and apparently made a short about it.

The Consistent

And every summer we load up for the same trip over and over again. Pine Cove Family Camp. This is our consistent space—many times with the same families who have become extended family for us over fourteen-or-so years.

Listen. I’m not a camper. I don’t do spunky. I am not big on game nights. I have never purposefully dressed for a theme night. After our first year at camp, Courtney and I got into a huge fight on the way home as a mark of just how bad of campers we were.

But we keep going back, and not only because of the views on my many walks.

The consistent space gives us a benchmark—year after year—to ask certain kinds of questions. How has the past year been? Where do we need to grow? Where have we grown? How much weight have I gained or lost? (Because of all the pics the camp staff take of you.)

I re-up every year unsure of how I’ll pay for the next year, but we keep going. We don’t go because we must. We go because it’s good for us.

It Doesn’t Happen by Accident

I sat that Friday night amidst 16,000 or so strangers, save for the handful of people we knew were somewhere in the crowd. It didn't rain (the forecast was right). The kids had not been to a concert before. I didn't know how they'd respond to the size, the noise, or anything. The opener was one of my absolute favorites.

And as we stood there listening to that first song, I was holding back tears—hoping nobody saw me. Sure, I could have a few hundred more dollars in the bank, but I would’ve paid many times more for that memory—for them, for me, for us.

We don’t stumble into well-tended relationships. I’d love to hear what you do.

“Hey, Dad, can I play disc golf this Saturday?”

[Checks calendar. Nothing on it. But still not sure I want to approve.]

“I’m not sure. It’s only Monday. Can we talk about it later?”

“You always tell me you want to talk about it later.”

“Okay. But can we?”

“There’s nothing on the calendar.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

Now I have a choice to make: Do I enter into the conversation or do I bail out?

The temptation for any leader—in or outside the home—is to leverage positional power to get things done (or avoid them). You want people to do something, and you saying it should be reason enough for them to do it.

“I need you to do that because I said so.”

It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Makes us feel important. Like we matter.

But it doesn’t accomplish what we think it will.

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Pulling Rank: Your Reserve Chute

If you jump out of any plane, you are jumping with a reserve chute. Pulling rank is the reserve chute of leadership. When it comes out, you should be running out of options.

Too many of us run to the reserve chute of authority to solve almost all of our leadership problems. Why actually confront a team member when we can just sit in our office and shoot off an email giving a new command? Why take a strategy question from a confused staff member when we feel like we’ve been crystal clear?

“Please just do what I said.”

Many times pulling rank means you can’t trust the relationship—it can’t stand up under the test. It reveals we don’t have the relational clout to lead and we have to resort to the position because we’ve lost everything else.

There’s Certainly a Time For Authority

Reserve chutes are for a reason.

There’s necessary (and beautiful) merit in responding to authority properly. When a decision gets made, we should abide. There are chains of command for a reason.

A decision was made that I took the liberty of questioning. (If you know me, you are not surprised.) I wanted to offer a different perspective on the conversation but I didn’t realize it wasn’t actually a conversation. Another person, over 20 years my senior, said to me, “Hans, the decision has been made and you need to align.”

It was the only time I can remember where rank was clearly pulled and clearly needed. A lesson in what nagging does to people in authority.

I think that was the last time.

A Better Way: “What Am I Missing?”

Exasperated leaders live and die by the reserve chute when they are out of options all the time. The result is a demanding culture with unclear reasoning and a good bit of confusion.

“Why can’t anyone listen to me?”

But we are often far less clear than we think and don’t know how much of the confusion we’re creating.

Rather than say, “Because I said so,” consider asking others, “What am I missing?”

“What Am I Missing” is Harder to Ask Than We Think

A few weeks ago I was in a staff meeting and it didn’t go nearly as well as I had hoped. We were ill-prepared for a conversation on an agenda item I had given a week prior.

I said, “Well clearly we aren’t ready for this item so we’ll move on to the next,” but my face said, “Why was this so hard and why weren’t we prepared for the thing I said we were doing?” (When I say “clearly,” I am really saying “ugh.”)

But the entire week I was bugged. I was bugged because at least 70% of the meeting kerfuffle was my lack of preparation of the team. I was asking for serious reasoning and unfiltered conversation. I didn’t prepare them in advance. I didn’t give any parameters on how we were going to talk. I didn’t remind them of the importance of the topic.

It was on me, not them.

When my son wants to schedule a disc golf tournament with me at night and I say, “Not right now,” it’s because I’ve been gone all day—not because he wants to be a nuisance. It’s me, not him.

“Because I said so” is often not a way to help someone recognize the chain of command—it’s a smokescreen for ineffective leadership that wants outcomes the easy way.

When it comes to your desire to pull rank, what have you found you’re missing?

There was a point in time—well, half of 2019—where tunnel vision took over. Our house was full of issues and I had a list of solutions. The solution I thought most important was to tear up my house, get down to the foundation, apply epoxy, and then rebuild.

When I told an epoxy floor guy my problems he said, “I’d just sell it.”

I was committed, though. We were going to fix the problem. Well, I was going to fix it. Courtney was just going to let me because she knew she had no choice . . . or she didn’t care.

To save money, and because I was sure I could fix it well, I was going to take this on. I was given great confidence by a contractor who’d dedicated his life’s work to installing epoxy floors for moisture mitigation.

“You could probably do it yourself better than 99% of the idiots that do it professionally.” (His words.)

I’m not an idiot! I can do this.

I got my gallons of epoxy. I rented a HEPA vacuum, an air scrubber, a concrete grinder. I even created a negative air pressure room.

Then I began. I had to strip the floors down to the slab and needed to get started early on a Friday.

Excerpt: Not Made for Tyvek

My uniform that day included a Tyvek suit like the remediation pros, rubber boots, and a dual-cartridge respirator. It was July in Houston and the AC in my house wasn’t on and I was wearing an impermeable suit while working indoors. What could go wrong?

Time to start.

I poured a bucket of water onto the floor, which included self-leveler (from our renovation), old tile mortar (from previous work), and the old asbestos linoleum (original to the house). I had to get through all of them to expose the slab and I was there for as long as it took.

Water. Grind. Shovel.

Each pass of the grinder created a gross concrete sludge that I had to shovel out and dump into a bucket. I was sweating so much that my Tyvek suit was filling with it.

Squish. Squish. Squish.

Each step over time getting noisier and grosser in those boots.

Water. Grind. Shovel.

A few hours later I took a minute, let the concrete dry out some, and surveyed the scene.

I wasn’t sure I’d made any progress. I mean, I saw circular lines in the concrete from the grinder I’d rented, but I didn’t see much progress in the floor itself. I kept trying.

Then I went into the garage, which contained our entire downstairs, and changed. I assumed my clothes were dead so they went into the garbage. I couldn’t go home (at that time, my sister’s house) in asbestos clothes.

But I didn’t go home. I went to a local park because I’d scheduled concrete day on the same day as the church picnic. So I moved from a house with no AC to a grill outside at a park—a grill I’d made so hot you’d fry if you got near it. I grilled the chicken and burgers and sausage people had brought.

I saw the kids so that they could remember what their dad looked like. I talked to Courtney. Then I went back to the house, put on another Tyvek suit, and got back to work.

By the end of the day—after 10PM by my last photo of dirty boots—I’d made next to no progress. I left the house messier and in worse shape than I’d found it. I changed and got back to my sister’s defeated, dirty, and with fewer options than when I’d begun.

Tunnel Vision on Lesser Things

I spent months of 2018 and 2019 largely navigating my house issues—both the original renovation (2018) and the journey of redoing the entire first floor with epoxy (2019). My email history is littered with requests for help and advice on what to do. I now know more about moisture mitigation than any human should and I’ve made zero dollars off of that knowledge. (However, I can help my neighbors when they get the same issue because I now know how to address it and not just mask it.)

I also continue to deal with mild house trauma and still pray about it so anxiety doesn’t set in.

Am I glad it happened? Debatable. I am glad for the army of people who helped and the relationships forged through concrete grinders. I’m grateful for my brother and cousin spending a Sunday with me to epoxy almost the entire first floor bit by bit.

But tunnel vision is expensive in ways that don’t show up on an invoice.

I mortgaged away months of my life staring at that floor. I spent thousands of dollars on my solution. I stole away time from family and friends. I lost plenty of sleep. My mind could rarely be present in any one place.

We were experiencing a year of significant family transition—changing jobs, moving to a new state, changing schools, settling into new routines—and I was trying to distribute my focus as if I had an inexhaustible supply.

I got hyper-fixated on fixing.

I neglected the people closest to me. I lived a half-distracted life.

I know it’s “just a season” but “just a seasons” stack up. All of a sudden you’re in a vortex you can’t escape and have a pain in your upper back from wearing the stress.

It comes on faster than you might think. . .and then you wonder what you lost.

We all can get caught in a black hole of making less significant things feel more significant. When it happens, how do you get out? And what has it cost you?

If you're at Whole Foods, you might not have to worry as much. If you're in our fridge or pantry, you might. (No, Trader Joe's cookie butter is not organic—but I believe it is vegan so we have that going for us.)

People want organic, but it comes with a cost. Organic produce runs 50% more on average—and over 100% for some items.

Organic costs more because it requires more attention. The crop might get reduced by bugs, someone might have to hand-weed parts of the field, and the types of products you are allowed to use to remain “certified organic” simply cost more.

And that means your iceberg lettuce costs 180% more than the version you eat in your favorite restaurant salad.

I Want It to “Feel Organic”

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a penchant for structure. I’ve been in plenty of meetings where I harp on the need for a clear plan or process. (I’ve probably triggered some staff reading this.)

At times, I’ve heard the phrase, “Yeah, but we want it to be organic.”

Kiss of death.

“You do know how much work it takes for something to be organic, right?”

Anyone with a garden knows they can’t go a day without giving it attention. Two days and look out. A week? Game over. It takes daily effort. Inattentive gardeners end up with an overgrown planter box and a lot of regret.

My day job (pastoring) is notorious for a love of the organic. Organic as anti-structure, organic as letting the Spirit move, organic as “how it used to be.”1

Nothing wrong, but often misguided—as if any structure automatically kills the thing.

Farming is hard work. And whether the fields you work are literal acreage or the people in your care, the effort to “feel organic” only increases with size. But everyone has a ceiling—and when you hit it, what felt like a garden turns out to be a houseplant.

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Personality at Scale

In the work of people, the ceiling that defines organic is less about the reality of what is and isn’t “organic” and more about what one’s personality can tolerate.

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard some version of “I want to know everyone.”

That’s a personality preference potentially masquerading as a virtue.

What does it mean to know everyone? You mean first-name basis? Able to name all of their kids? Have a meal with them once a month? Daily text thread? What about your neighbors—are you allowed to know them the same way? Co-workers?

“No, I don’t need all of that. I wouldn’t expect that.”

But push into it and the expectation usually comes down to this: people want a relational structure they can personally tolerate.

It’s one’s personality applied to all personalities in the group—an elusive target that is hard to hit for any leader.

When someone says they want the structures to be “organic,” they generally mean something else. Below is a quick video on how leaders can hear the question behind the question.

Know Your Field

We don’t take care of plants at our house. We’ve made that call and are happy with it. We don’t have the drive to take care of plants.

Several years back a freeze knocked out a good number of our bushes out front. They’re still missing. We have no gardens. We’ve removed three trees. I paid a guy to remove the bushes from the back along the garage so I’d have less to manage.

I know my lane.

In the realm of people—vocation, friendships, all of it—I’m obsessive.

There are others in my life who manage fewer relationships by design, or know their temperament enjoys a little less structure. Being great at caring for five people doesn’t mean you need to care for 200. Enjoying more fire pit chats with a few doesn’t mean you need to go start a church bonfire.

Know what that approach gains you and what it costs you. And appreciate the others who contribute differently.

Know what your work requires.

Regardless of approach, it isn’t the size that makes something more or less organic—it’s the attention you give it.

What's your field?

Greg’s a guy I want everybody to know. However, knowing him is rare—he spends most of his time overseas with his family. Trained as a petroleum engineer, he’s spent his adult life largely in the Middle East raising his family, doing his day job, training leaders, and helping people start businesses throughout the world.

Why does a guy who works in oil and gas make me cry?

Bringing Order to Disorder

When I taught seminary students, I’d bring Greg in for a video session. When I led a coaching cohort last year, I brought him in to teach the same material. He taught late at night (his time) for the cohort. Then got up at 3am to fly to Tunisia to watch his kid play oboe (can’t make this up).

It’s common to hear people talk about work as a curse—something to be endured. Greg talks about it as a blessing—something original to how we were created. Work matters because it has always mattered.

But we lose that too often—drowned out by years of clocking in and clocking out.

He’ll ask why it’s so satisfying to cook a big meal for friends. The kitchen is a mess, the dishes will take a week to clean up, and the house will smell like spices for days—but we are content.

It’s the same with a garden. Why do we spend so much time tending to plants, fighting bugs, and insisting that a tomato bought at the store isn’t a real tomato?

Because there’s something inherently dignifying about creating good things for others.

Greg then talks about work as one of the ultimate ways to create good things for people.

As I debrief with class after his teaching, I’ll often hear, “I’ve always thought that was true but I’ve never had the words for it.”

Then, as I try to summarize, I get choked up. In part for the content and in part because I love my friend.

Vocation and Contribution

I recently shared about different areas of stewardship—areas everyone is responsible for, even if we neglect them.

Our “vocation and contribution” isn’t trivial. I define this area as your work and service—the way you use your gifts and talents to benefit others.

While earning income is important, knowing how we live out our vocation matters. It’s why I’ll say “and contribution” as a part of it.

Even if you don’t earn income, you can learn how you uniquely contribute and add value and meaning to those around you—named and unnamed.

For me, right now, the clarifying statement I have around this is:

I pastor, lead, and coach with thoughtfulness, care, and intentionality—investing deeply in individuals and teams to help them thrive, and trusting that faithful work expands its influence in ways I won’t always get to see.

The clarifying statement can change. It’s never gospel truth, but it reorients me when I lose focus—or when I feel like I’m in a rat race.

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What You Do Matters

One of the reasons Greg’s teaching resonates so deeply in my heart is because it is a constant battle: why does anything I do matter?

One of my favorite moments is watching someone recognize the value they actually bring to others—paid or unpaid. It doesn’t always come quickly—but when it connects, it connects significantly.

The payoff, at times, seems vague. I’ve also known those who have recognized that their job is the way to provide for their more significant contributions. There are people who do their jobs well, but they then go home to invest in the things and people they love. They’re using their job as a means to engage more fully in their vocation.

Where do you most feel like you’re actually contributing something that matters?

There’s a moment after the games where you huddle up with the team and do your little post-game speech. Parents hover at a distance to act like they can’t hear but they are listening. I remember another coach friend of mine, Dave, who would hold the pow-wow in the outfield, far away from the parents.

“Hey, Dave, why do you do it that way?”

“Parents don’t need to hear what I say. The kids will tell them anyways. Not a secret but a team conversation.”

Made sense. So when I managed my second season—now a pro—I would run with the team into the outfield for the post-game moment. It was fun to watch Bennett—one of the fastest kids on the team—use it as an opportunity to see how far he could slide. You play like you practice.

Little League Accountability

Quickly in the season, that moment became what we called “shout-outs and own-ups.”

Shout-outs: Talk about something good one of your teammates did this game.

Own-ups: Talk about a way you know you could’ve improved.

I wanted a time that wasn’t built on me having to fill the team moment with platitudes like “You guys have what it takes.”

What surprised me was how quickly it took. These kids were about ten at the time and they took to the opportunity to do both.

Shout-Outs (in kid terms, without significant specificity):

• Jake came in and pitched great.

• Brayden had a good hit.

• Mac was funny.

It was great to see how quickly the boys volunteered support to one another and highlighted the contributions of their teammates.

Own-Ups were my favorite, though.

• I let my attitude get the best of me.

• I missed an easy throw that I should’ve made.

• I didn’t hustle on that hit.

• I got in my head during my at-bats.

I was proud of the kids for how easily it came to them with a simple structure for how to engage, encourage, and take accountability.

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Structuring for Accountability

What was I going for? There’s a proverb that says, “Let another praise you and not your own mouth.” So I wanted to create a space where others could be encouraged and lifted up. I had a buddy at school who would say, “I do not think anyone can be overly-encouraged.” It might be uncomfortable to hear (especially if we aren’t used to it), but it isn’t rejected. Encouragement is like oxygen—and most of us are deprived.

I also want people to have enough humility to realize there is always room to grow. So the “own-up” produces a space where people are expected to name areas where they know they need to improve.

And here’s the truth: you don’t have to be ten or eleven to do it.

I’ve run this with 30- and 40-year-olds—same words, same structure, same result.

I think my favorite moment to watch—regardless of team—is how surprised people become with how their teammates view them. What I’ve seen on teams—in work, in marriages—is that they operate at an encouragement deficit.

So when the team starts to praise one another (even if they have real trust issues to deal with), it becomes an antidote for the cynicism that creeps in.

I sat in a room and watched someone begin to tear up as she realized the value the team saw in her. There’s a significant difference between “I think I do good work” and hearing people say, “You do good work.” You might believe you’re a good communicator. But hearing someone else say it? That lands differently.

Similarly, when a leader says, “I’m failing you guys by not giving enough attention to supporting you,” the team doesn’t get mad—they get helpful.

That’s the permission we’ve been waiting for—a place where praise remains constant and failures don’t bring retaliation.

Whether it is your workplace, your marriage and family, your friendships, or your 12u baseball team—we all need it.

What do you need contribute more of—shouting out or owning up?

I think my 5th grade PE teacher—Coach Smith—gave me that advice. If not her, then someone like her. Standard advice for anyone wanting to know their actual weight without a day of regret on the scale.

I’ve also heard the full spectrum: “Weigh every day to measure change” and “Don’t weigh at all—just go by whether your clothes fit more loosely.”

You can game that last one, though, by not washing your jeans—convincing yourself over the course of a week that you’ve lost 45 pounds.

For most of the past thirteen years, I’ve had more days than not standing on the scale.

You name it, I tried it. Logged my weight daily. Measured weekly. Used apps. Asked Courtney some version of “Am I losing weight?” or “Do I look okay?” on a rotating basis.

She’d reply with either, “You’re crazy and must have body dysmorphia,” or “Yeah, I mean, your love handles are real but I don’t care.”

“Wait—why don’t you care?!?!”

Needless to say, I had (and have) problems.

Bayou Trips to the Doc

I had historically not been a “get your physical” guy. I mean if you’re sick, sure. Go to the doctor. If you’re not sick, who needs a physical? Don’t drink, don’t smoke, sort of move around, eat Chick-fil-A and trust God.

Instead, I’d just write my weight every day (often by tenths of a pound to try and get some extra positive momentum) and make Courtney wonder why she married me.

But then you become middle-aged. You wonder how you’re doing. My Baton Rouge doctor—still a friend—told me he’d still be my doc but I’d have to see him in person once a year. Aside from that I could just text and go, “Hey what’s this thing on my chin?” and he’d answer if he had the confidence to. Other times, like many folks, you just let urgent care be your doc.

During these years (early 2020s to now), I’d drive up around the new year and see some friends, then go get my bloodwork done and drive home.

If you’re wondering why I spent 9-10 hours of driving to spend 28 minutes at the doctor’s office, you’re not alone. It’s about 1800 miles of driving over three years for 70 minutes of being at the doctor.

New Numbers, New Stressors

Then in 2025 they flagged something in my bloodwork. By clinical terms I was pre-diabetic. I guess the one before that is pre-pre-diabetic, AKA normal people.

That bugged me. A lot.

Literally nobody believed me, which had the comfort of absolutely nothing.

I’d share the actual screen grab of the result and it might get met with, “Well, that’s weird.”

And it was weird.

I spent the next five months (yes, five months) chasing some picture of health. I’d tweak diet. I started exercising more. I became highly cognizant of my decisions. I still had Jell-O (blame Courtney, who would essentially tell me I have love handles while handing me Jell-O).

Got my new blood work and the numbers went up.

Now I’m comfortably moving toward “definitely probably diabetic.”

It made no sense.

So I do what any normal human does: I start 16:8 intermittent fasting and check my blood sugar (with finger sticks) roughly 150 times over the next two months.

I drive back across the Mississippi for a mid-year doc visit. I text the doc my PDF of glucose numbers. He laughs at me in his understated doctor friend way.

The result: I’m back to my original panic number from January, moving the needle almost none over the past two months despite significant lifestyle changes and loving yet quiet mockery from my wife (you know, the actual diabetic).

Chasing the Wrong Goal

We’ve all chased numbers to try and close gaps we’re feeling—the scale, barbell, the 401k. Sometimes those numbers are the goal; sometimes they aren’t.

But all my efforts were changing almost nothing (except marital harmony).

It wasn’t until around December of last year that I had finally settled into some changes I felt could stick. I was working through areas of stewardship—a simple framework I’m using—where I had to write a broad statement for what “ideal” was for me in different areas of life.

Introduction to Areas of Stewardship

Under “health and fitness” I wrote this:

I keep an active lifestyle, making wise decisions every day and maintaining a weight that affords me the ability, Lord willing, to enjoy my life into old age.

The statement isn’t supposed to be a SMART goal. It’s an ideal. A picture of what I want. Then I work backwards from there. It re-orients the number as supporting evidence but it isn’t what I chase.

Funny how there was nothing about bloodwork on there.

The scale wasn’t the enemy. Neither was the bloodwork. I just kept asking the numbers to tell me something they were never designed to tell me.

What are you measuring that might be answering a question you’re not actually asking?

I was guarding this guy, I think it was Andrew. Andrew is probably 5-10 years younger than I am and very fast. I pride myself in old man defense—using your size and your brain to not kill yourself. So I get low and wide and put my left foot down.

Pop.

I’ve heard the phrase “I felt a pop” before but have never experienced it. It felt like they said—something in my knee popped. Immediate weakness.

Over the next week, it started to swell. I had a PT friend test it. ACL seemed intact.

“Probably a meniscus.”

“Do I fix it?”

“Nah. You’re not an athlete. If you can function with it and walk around, then you’re fine. Fix it when you can’t handle it anymore.”

Re-Injury Anxiety

There’s a real thing called kinesiophobia: an irrational fear of movement triggered by a former injury.

Sports medicine has a whole assessment framework for psychological readiness to return to sport—separate from physical clearance. It shows up especially around significant injuries like an ACL, where the last time you trusted your knee to handle the force of planting your foot, your ACL said, “No, thanks.”

Even with repair and rehab, some people can’t get past the thought that their knee won’t be able to withstand the force. It’s why athletes talk about physical rehab and mental rehab.

In my case, I never got the repair. I walk around with a pain of 1 or 2 out of 10 most days. Largely fine. But certain moves give me pause. I don’t like moving left and then changing direction. Much of my basketball is behind me. I can jog, but I go straight and rarely turn.

I operate differently.

Note: Even knowing this, I don’t follow my own advice. Here’s proof.

Repaired Teams, Same Behaviors

Every team is a system of relationships, and that system produces behaviors that become ingrained. We don’t even know we’ve learned a way of operating.

• John shows up bugged most mornings, so people stay away from him.

• Hans (different Hans, I promise) shows up overly critical, so people stop bringing ideas.

• David can’t keep a secret, so people stay surface level.

• The boss always does what he wants, so people know their input won’t matter and stop contributing.

Those behaviors become the team's muscle memory—like me showing up differently at the gym.

But what if the change is real?

• John’s anger softens and he starts to listen.

• Hans starts to encourage.

• David becomes trustworthy.

• The boss stops demanding outcomes.

Many times, we still don't believe it. We want to—but last time we tried, we got burned.

So we keep doing what we’ve always done: avoidance, no vulnerability, no real contribution. We behave as if the repair can’t hold.

When we believe nothing’s changed, nothing changes.

The Mental Game of Teamwork

The big change in teamwork is always the change in us. We’re John—or Hans, or David, or whoever. There’s some way we’re contributing to the strain, and we have to keep looking at that honestly.

Someone on staff recently mentioned that, at times, I have a look on my face when they come into my office of, “Why the heck are you in here?” The result? Guess who will come into the office less?

But just as the first change is in us, the second change is also in us.

Assume the team begins to change. John really is different. He’s changed and is changing. Hans does want you in the office. There’s a line from 1 Corinthians 13—probably read at a wedding near you—that love “believes all things.”

What does that mean?

It means extending trust to the person who has changed and believing the repair is real. Choosing that posture before the track record is long enough to be convincing—because it’s the better posture to have.

You have to believe the dynamics are different with very little evidence.

You have to plant your foot.

Say it Out Loud

Take a moment and consider your own relationships. There’s either someone you’re avoiding or someone who is avoiding you. There’s a disengagement somewhere—and someone misses their connection with you.

Whatever it is, name it. Don’t let it exist in the dark.

“I’m afraid of contributing ideas because I’ve been critiqued too often.”

Then bring a trusted person or two into the light with it. Tell them what it is, what you’re working on, and why. Naming it changes your relationship to it—and gives the people around you a chance to respond to the real thing, not the compensation pattern.

And then?

Do it again.

Also, if you’d like to hear Courtney and me talk about this incident, managing diabetes, and our failures of not getting continuous glucose monitoring earlier, we' have just the treat for you! Listen below to the extended version of the story.

I have a tendency of reaching over toward Courtney at night and asking, “Are you okay?” She’s a light sleeper and will usually answer me regardless of the hour. If she fails to answer, I know there is a problem. This particular night—in Old City Jerusalem—I reached over. Cold and damp. Not good.

The cause? Low blood sugar. If you’re awake, you catch it.

But Courtney was dead asleep. The sweating made her colder as she slept. She really was crashing—soaked through her clothes and relatively unresponsive.

I entered into a controlled panic.

“Courtney, can you hear me?”

If she could, she was playing coy.

“Courtney, I need you to wake up.”

Light murmurs. Some semblance of consciousness but alarming.

I had no means of helping her. Smart people have glucagon pens for these occasions. We did not. Our hotel didn’t have an elevator to our floor. It’s a small hotel in the Old City of Jerusalem. I had to bolt down a few flights of tile stairs, descending at tight, 90-degree angles.

I arrived in the lobby, a little intense-looking, and started asking people for something to drink. The bartender wasn’t there.

“Hello? I need some help. I need something sweet.”

Another tourist spotted me in the lobby.

“Calm down. It’s going to be okay.”

I knew she was just trying to help, but I also knew for a fact that things would not be okay without intervention.

I procured a beverage of some kind—warm, sweet, chocolaty. I headed back upstairs, assuming we were on the home stretch. I had done this enough to know a little sugar and about 15 minutes work wonders.

The only problem? Courtney is too incapacitated to swallow. What I was trying to get her to drink just fell right out, getting into her hair and onto her pillow. So gross, but we hadn’t gotten anywhere near bringing her sugars to a normal human level.

And there was so. much. shrieking.

During this entire ordeal Courtney wasn’t speaking; she was just shrieking. Loudly. The noise she landed on was one part banshee, one part getting stitches with no anesthetic. I was sitting there, wondering why nobody was waking up to help us out. What kind of team had we traveled with? It wasn’t like the walls were thick. Our door was perpendicular to another, and we did not even get a knock asking, “Is everything okay?” You’re quietly begging that someone can hear this noise, wake up, and lend a hand (doing what? No clue). The other part of you just wants your wife to shut up so that you don’t draw more attention.

Apparently, people did wake up, but they “thought it was a cat” and paid no mind. I’d married a diabetic cat.

To that point, Courtney hadn’t improved any. How do I bring my sweaty, incapacitated wife down several flights of stairs and get her into a taxi so that we can get to whatever hospital we need? What was the Hebrew 9-1-1?

I look for help one more time and someone whom I assume is hotel staff brings me to the kitchen.

I should’ve been laser-focused on Courtney, but the kitchen was hideous. Dishes piled everywhere. These were the dishes that were used for breakfast! I probably could’ve found my plate if I’d looked closely enough. Now I had two problems: (1) my wife was maybe on the brink of catastrophe, and (2) I wasn’t sure I could eat at the hotel anymore. By the end of the trip, I wasn’t eating breakfast anywhere we stayed, but that could also be because I didn’t really want sliced tomatoes for breakfast—or ever.

The procurement of honey packets realigned my priorities.

I got back to Courtney, honey in hand. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started dipping my finger in the honey and rubbing it on the inside of her cheek while she shrieked. Some of it mixed with spit and got in her hair as she lay there. Finger, honey, cheek, shriek, sticky hair. Rinse and repeat.

I learned later that substances like honey can get absorbed into the bloodstream under the tongue. Thus, even though the cheek isn’t the tongue, there was enough honey in her mouth that some got absorbed.

When Courtney recounts all of the chaos, she remembers staring up at a ceiling fan in our room that was spinning. That’s it, just spaced out, confusion, and a ceiling fan. Must be nice to not register all of the chaos and trauma going on. That part is for me, and now for you.

After some time had passed I assessed the situation. Next step? Check her blood sugar. So I found her glucometer, pricked her finger, and squeezed a drop of blood on it. I fully expected to see something in the 20s, which is the “better figure something out or your wife may die” zone.

However, her sugar was comfortably over 100—which is the “live your life and enjoy it” zone. A reading in that range and she should be fully functioning.

Great. Now what?

The shrieking had slowed but Courtney, while conscious, was still not really responsive. I had no bullets left. The script I have is “give her 15 or so grams of carbs and 15 minutes and she’ll get back to normal.” I didn’t have a “and if she doesn’t, then do this” move. In a little over two years of marriage, we had played that game enough times and every single time I had been able to work it out.

Unable to work it out, I began settling into another thought.

During all of the shrieking, the flights of stairs, and the stress, I thought, “I guess this is the rest of my marriage.”

I genuinely believed that something inside Courtney had died (physically, this time, not emotionally) and I needed to settle in for a marriage where the rest of my life would be taking care of my immobile and generally unresponsive wife.

This thought process wasn’t resignation or fear; it was ownership of my new phase of marriage.

But there we were, on the top story of a small hotel in Jerusalem in the middle of the night in the midst of a medical emergency, and I was doing everything I could for her.

When all my interventions proved woefully inadequate, it was there that I thought, “Here we are.”

And it was truly us.

Courtney interrupted my thought process by barely mumbling, “Ccccooolld.”

She’s cold? Well that would make sense. She had sweated through her pajamas. I’d be cold, too, but I’d still be able to move. Her blood sugar had been so low for so long that she was also dealing with hypothermia as her body fought for survival.

I was fresh out of campfires and electric blankets there in Jerusalem, but I did have a bathtub that, by God’s grace, had a detachable shower head. I picked her up and put her in the tub. I’m glad I didn’t need to carry her down three flights of stairs. The fifteen feet from the bed to the bathtub seemed Herculean enough. Shoutout to all the nurses who move people every day.

I began to spray her down with warm water while I left the stopper in the tub to fill it up. This felt like how you would spray a pet, not a wife.

Within moments, she snapped back. Because she was back in the land of the living, she quickly realized her hair was a sticky, gross mess and decided to shower. I went into the room and emotionally surveyed the impact of those last moments. She emerged conscious and clean. Soon after, she shared how much her mouth hurt now. Apparently, she had tried to eat the honey on her cheeks by gnawing on them, causing sore cheeks for the rest of the trip.

All worth it, though. Courtney was back. We were back.

Her pillow was gross.

Other Memoir-realted Posts:

I’ll start with one of the more obvious dumb tasks: air conditioner repair.

Our office has roughly 15 air conditioners. When your facility has been frankensteined together over 30-40 years, you make do. They’re almost all residential units. Deferred maintenance has meant that in the past 26 months we have replaced (I think) six of them. We have done repairs and diagnostics on another three or four. One currently doesn’t work. Another one has a wire mesh screwed over the top of the condenser unit.

One of our AC vendors keeps vampire hours. He’ll work on a unit until late into the night if the customer is up for it. He was built for odd hours and has the stories to show it.

So he has to replace one of our bigger units and he chose vampire time to take care of it. No problem, I thought. I’ll volunteer as tribute.

It’s the right thing to do.

Assuming the Role of the Joyful Martyr

If you’re like me, you might be a joyful martyr—that person who gladly suffers just a little more because you assume nobody else will join you or help you.

On the surface you’re the team-player. You’re the “take the lowest place” kind of person. You live to serve, right? Nothing wrong with that.

Not so fast.

The joyful martyr assumes nobody else is interested. He or she takes the place, in part, because of an inflated view of self-importance. (I speak about myself here.)

I mean, can you not even ask?

So there I am, sitting up at the building. It’s 10pm, 11pm, 12am. It’s so dumb. I’m exhausted. Why am I not just leaving the guys here? If we can’t hire a trustworthy contractor we have more than AC problems.

But there I sit. Forever. I go sit in my office, do work, and then climb the stairs and check in on the guys working.

“Done yet?”

“Not yet. Need to do a few more things.”

Sitting. Waiting. Walking. Working.

Now I’m annoyed. “Joyful” left a long time ago.

Keeping Help at Bay

The joyful martyr in me enjoys being the last to leave and the one who appears the most willing to help.

But all of this got slowed (I won’t yet say “halted”) a year or so ago. I was in an eval with some other leaders on the team and my propensity for stepping in and taking on tasks I assumed no one else wanted came up.

“We’re on the same team. You have to stop taking these on yourself.”

Okay, so maybe the joyful side isn’t as obvious as I thought it was.

What mindset did I actually have? One that assumed only I was the one who needed to do the most annoying tasks. Such a perspective limits in at least two, inter-connected ways: (1) it removes the chance that someone else might actually want to do the task and enjoy it, and (2) it prevents me from leaning on those around me.

But assume that nobody wants the task (which with vampire ACs is usually the case) and it is no one’s direct job to keep vampire AC hours (besides the AC vendor himself). What then?

This is where that second reason becomes so important.

It doesn’t have to be your job to step in—it can happen simply because you’re on the team. You share the tasks and distribute the load.

Just Ask

It might sound simple but the allure of being the joyful martyr—and that little bit of self-inflicted suffering we get from it—keeps us from leaning on others.

Every team has vampire tasks (even if it isn’t necessarily keeping late hours). Sometimes those tasks have a clear owner; other times they don’t.

Rather than assume you need to do it because you’re the bigger servant, share the load. Let others step in. Let them help. Without it, you’re assuming the team you’re on can’t handle the load and you have to take it on yourself.

That’s not a team I’d want to be on (even if I am complicit in creating it).

And what do you gain when you ask? You gain a team with a new capacity to serve one another.

Where are you under-estimating those around you?

(Also, for the record, I just leave our AC guy at the building now.)

I mainly have stories. That time at Thanksgiving she printed out and recited text messages. That time in high school she made me a cheeseburger after I came home from work. Her laugh had this unforgettable way it ramped up into an unstoppable force of staccatoed glee.

Most of you didn’t know her, so here we are, over 21 years ago:

My mom was great and I have plenty of stories about her. She also drove me crazy in ways that only moms can.

But one thing she was really good at—something Courtney and I still regularly talk about—was being a mom to an adult, married son. The story I remember the most, and retell the most, is how she set her expectations for my marriage.

Mom’s Marriage Comment

I am not a fan of how people talk about marriage sometimes.

“I’m not losing a son/daughter. I’m gaining a daughter/son.”

I don’t think that’s true. Marriage fundamentally changes the way that you relate to your family of origin. You lose your unmarried son and you gain a married son, but in doing that, you also lose a whole lot. Marriage establishes a new, more important, union.

My mom understood this and wanted me to know, very early on, how she was going to operate as Courtney and I began our life together. One day, she pulled me aside and shared with me something that was important for her to share. (This is my paraphrase.)

Hans, you can see your father and me as much as you want, but you never have to see us. You’re always welcome but never expected.

Mom nor Dad ever expected us to be with them for a holiday. They had no traditions that were so important that we had to show up. There was never even a time (that I can recall) where Mom said, “I’d like you to be there,” or, “I haven’t seen you in a while; it might be nice if . . . .” She fully trusted me to be a husband first and then, somewhere down the line, her son. And it was true—she was always glad to see me but she never expected me.

My mom made being her son very easy up until her last day.

Over two decades later, two main thoughts stay loud in my mind.

Embrace the New Stage

Why do I keep going back to that perspective? Why do Courtney and I replay it? Why does Courtney say when friends might be frustrated with their in-laws, “My in-laws have been great”? (I’ll add into this my siblings since the also read this—you’re great, too, Shana and Dale.)

Because Mom and Dad knew how to embrace the new stage they had—as articulated by Mom’s advice/charge/comments/grace.

The pivot from kids in the home to kids out of the home is fierce—we’re not far from that in our own home. The pivot from unmarried kids to married kids hits hard, too. Your child truly and wholly becomes a new unit.

So many of us fight against these relational changes because we are fighting for something that doesn’t exist anymore. We want a time capsule from another era when, really, we need to die to what used to be and embrace what is.

It is one thing to pay lip service to the idea. It is another to live it out. My mom lived it out.

Say It Out Loud

The other aspect of Mom’s advice that was so powerful was that she put herself on record with it. She said it directly to me and couldn’t back away from it.

Her words mattered, and they stuck. I never needed to call her back to those words.

Can you imagine first how freeing it is to hear such a statement? Second, how endearing it made me toward my mom? Would I, with all of that love and trust, want to go, “Thanks, lady, see ya!”

Never.

It is one thing to believe something, and another to articulate it. Something powerful happens when your perspective leaves your mind and heart and actually comes out of your mouth. Now you’re official—now others have heard it. You can’t go backwards. Mom kept herself from going backwards, which allowed us both to go forward.

I miss my mom, but I’m glad for what she taught me. I’m sad for my boys because they’re at the age where they could’ve really cherished her disquieting zaniness and mid-tier opportunities she took to be slightly embarrassing. We can’t drive home from seeing her and laugh together about how goofy or loving she was. They (we) don’t get that, and soon most memories will fade into what we can recall from photographs.

But one thing that the boys will be able to experience, should marriage be in their future, is the same advice: be who you need to be. And I’m always here for you.