I am very grateful for my family and I desire to love them everyday, but I’ve got a problem… I often feel like an awful husband and father! 

It rarely feels like I have enough time, energy, and solutions to give my family. Even when I am present and attentive, I can feel inadequate because I haven’t solved all our problems and made everyone happy (I know, talk about unrealistic expectations!) 

Feeling like a failure all the time sucks (duh!) and I naturally look for ways to escape the feeling through finding someone to blame. I project my own feelings onto my wife and become defensive and resentful towards her, thinking, “You’re labeling me as the bad guy!”

What a mess!

Processing a situation like this recently with a friend, he reflected back that it sounded like I was the only one labeling myself as “bad guy.” He was right. I was getting all worked up and defensive, but the only person on the attack was me!

This realization gave me a chance to pause and attend to reality. “What was really going on? What was I believing about myself? Was my wife actually labeling me the “bad guy?” And most importantly, “What does God say about me?”

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What Fr. Jacques Philippe told me in our recent podcast conversation helps me in moments like this to consent to the reality of what God says about me.  

“A human person cannot accept herself completely without the mediation of God's gaze… God is happy to be your father. We are not a burden for God! It's not a burden for God to love us, it's a joy to love us. But we do not believe that, everybody of us is convinced [we are] a burden for God. No, we are a joy for God. This is the grace of the Holy Spirit: convincing us [we are] sons of God, as Paul says. But when we begin to understand how God is looking at us, how God is loving us, the tenderness of his fatherly love, [we] begin to reconcile with [ourselves].”

What a relief to know that God loves me, accepts me and that I’m not strange for often doubting this truth! 

This gift of God’s acceptance frees me up to love my family because I’m no longer isolating in the echo chamber of my own negative narratives. My defenses are down because I no longer see myself as the bad guy, but as God’s beloved child. I can be present with my family, actually listening and enjoy them because I’m not worried about whether or not I’m doing a good enough job.

Friend, today may the Holy Spirit convince us more deeply of our belovedness as children of God. And may we experience, bit by bit, the freedom to lay aside our own judgments so that we can be present with our loved ones. Amen