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What Does Success In Family Life Look Like

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It became obvious that I was wasting my time. I was impatiently waiting for my wife and kids to be available for something that I’d been looking forward to most of the day.

I wanted to play a new board game (because I’m a nerd).

That needed to be returned to the library soon (because I’m cheap).

However, homework and lesson plans gave way to phones and books. Everyone was exhausted and wanted to relax. I spent the evening sulking like a typical middle-aged man.

Ok, it may not have been as traumatizing as I’m making it sound, but it did get me thinking. Recently, I wrote that the first step to reclaim our day from chaos, challenges, and disappointments is to visualize success. I assumed I knew what I was talking about–which was a mistake–and that I knew perfectly well what success looks like.

But, I didn’t. As I reflected on the way I tend to respond when things don’t go as I plan, I struggled to define what “ideal” would have looked like.

I started with condemning feeling sorry for myself. I had grand ideas about balancing my disappointment with gratitude for the incredible blessings I’ve been given. Surely success means curbing the self-focus that leads to self-pity, doesn’t it?

That didn’t seem right, though. Defining success around feeling a certain way, even through indirect methods like countering them with positive thoughts, doesn’t work. Emotions are like hair. They’re technically attached to us and we dress them up as well as we can, but when the wind gusts against us we realize they are completely out of our control.

Sure, stoic mastery of my emotions can keep them tamped down like a gallon of gel on my head, but at what cost?

Plus, I remember what I felt when we waited for biopsy results for a lump on my two-year-old’s neck. I remember what I felt when I lost my mom. Some emotions cannot be rationalized away. Success can’t depend on soldiering through tough situations.

I kept searching. “Healthy detachment” was a promising theory, until I realized that it shared many of the flaws of “balancing emotions.” I liked the sound of “living in such a way that I will be at home in heaven” except it was too long to remember and I had no idea what it meant! Defining one term with something else that you don’t understand doesn’t help.

After a few days of praying and pondering I’ve settled into a definition of success that seems to work for now: responding with faith, hope, and charity.

Both sinners and saints feel disappointment, resentment, anger, and other unpleasant emotions. Perhaps the difference is that saints in the making focus on staying separate from the feelings while keeping an eye on God. A ship’s captain doesn’t try to make a storm stop. She focuses on riding it out safely while continuing to her destination. She is constantly in contact with the waves but is only in danger when they get inside.

Regardless of our emotional response to a situation, success looks like faithfully trusting that God is real, confidently hoping that He has not given up on or abandoned us, and choosing to treat others and ourselves with charity whether we feel like it or not.

God help us on our journey!

Ready for the next step in finding pace in everyday chaos? It's time to seek conversion in our lives.

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