There's a scene in the television show Landman. A daughter is distraught over the breakup with a boyfriend her father had predicted would end in a breakup. The daughter asks her father, "why are you always right", to which he responds, "because I've spent my whole life being wrong and never forgetting any of the lessons I've learned."

Over the years in my work trying to prevent substance misuse, especially among our youth, I've had parents ask me, "how am I supposed to talk to my kids about the dangers of using substances when I used them myself?"

I am quick to tell them that many of the giant difficulties in my life can be tied to using substances as a teen and young adult, and that those are the stories I tell most when talking to my kids or any kids about using substances.

I no longer run from my imperfections, I embrace them. My imperfections don't take away from my credibility, in fact, they ARE my credibility.

I'm not sure why any parent would feel the need to hide their mistakes in life from their kids. I don't know why they would be afraid to talk openly about choices they made that resulted in outcomes more unfavorable than a different choice likely would have produced.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we prepare our kids for mistakes more than we prepare them for perfection.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we don't beat ourselves up for mistakes, no matter how old we are, and get immediately to the work of figuring out the lessons to be learned.

And shared.

Do we not realize that most of the folks advising us on what we should do in books and on podcasts and in TED Talks got to a place of advising us after years or decades of experiencing the results of doing the opposite of what they are now suggesting we should do?

Do we not realize the pastors populating our pulpits got their taking the routes of Moses and David and Abraham, the broken and often quite sinful paths? Pastors are often not preaching about the road to avoid as much as they are about the lessons learned on roads they should have avoided. (I do wish more would clarify that in their preaching).

When we come to know better and start doing better, we aren't hypocrites, we are wise.

When I suggest that my boys should do some things opposite of what I did, I'm not spreading hypocrisy, I'm offering them hard and often painfully earned wisdom.

We get to decide the value of our mistakes. They are burdens or gifts, and that is often determined by our ability to mine the lessons and gift them to others.

There is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect parent, trying to convince anyone otherwise might be the biggest mistake of them all.

​We sat there, side by side, and watched him kick the ball. The ball initially headed right - (insert panic) - then curved back in and soared through the two uprights.

Without even a look at one another we clapped one single boisterous clap. A shared sigh of relief that felt a lot like celebration. Our claps were so synchronized it was as if we'd been practicing that clap for 18 years.

In my dreams, I supposed we had been.

When you find out you're going to have a baby boy, your wildest dreams do indeed go to places like sitting together one day, watching Notre Dame play in one of the biggest football games of your lifetime, that baby boy beside you, now grown into a teen who loves your team as much as you do.

It is actually no longer your team but OUR team.

You imagine that last second kick to win the game, sending your beloved Fighting Irish to the National Championship game.

You imagine that late night moment, much later than any other moment you would even consider staying up past midnight for, as magic.

As pure joy.

What you don't imagine is you'll be watching it in a small one bedroom apartment.

What you don't imagine is that you're teen son will be visiting you and not living with you.

What you don't imagine is how much love will fall apart in your life on the way to building this shared love for a team.

And as that ball sails through the uprights, as the crowd roars and the players celebrate, as your shared clap echoes through your tiny home, you realize that dreams come true don't really care about the circumstances you experienced along the way.

Dreams come true are going to deliver the joy they were always dreamed to deliver. Turns out our dreams can survive challenging circumstances.

Some may read this and think, wow, that's a bit much for a simple college football game.

Maybe.

But that moment, that shared clap, it had as much to do with healing as it had to do with a football game.

Maybe God allows us to have dreams over our babies that he knows will one day come true at just the right time. A reminder that we have a lot more victories in front of us no matter how heavy the losses might feel behind us.

Some folks say it's just sports.

I get that, but it usually never is. 

Friday afternoon, my 18 year-old son wanted to go see the movie Sonic the Hedgehog. I was a bit surprised but surely happy about his eagerness to still see a 'kid' friendly movie.

Saturday morning, the same 18 year-old asked to go see the movie Nosferatu. I hadn't even heard of it. I quickly watched the two minute Nosferatu trailer, then looked at this kid with disbelief and asked, "really?"

How is it possible, I asked him, that the same human that wants to watch an animated movie full of laughter and joy want to go watch all the darkness and blood-letting that comes with vampires?

He gave me the blank stare, non-answer that teens expect their dad to interpret as the answer, but in that look he seemed far less confused by this choice than me.

So at 60 years old yesterday, I watched my first vampire movie.

Walking out of Nosferatu yesterday, I told the boys that I was pretty sure I'd never in my life sat in two more opposite experiences on consecutive days as I just had with those two movies. They do not make movies any more different than these two, I told them. In response, my youngest offered up, "but both writers achieved what they were trying to achieve."

I actually found that to be quite an empathetic thing to say. Ian's ability to look into the hearts and minds of both writers, looking beyond even the final production and audience makeup and response, was encouraging to me.

Our kids are often learning lessons we aren't teaching.

As a dad, I am reminded that yes, there are certain ways I'd like my boys to adapt to my way of seeing the world. It's a natural parental instinct, I think. But I also think there is great value, necessity even, for a parent to adapt to a child's wide ranging curiosity of the world, to give a child's interests permission to defy categorization.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what the Sonic/Nosferatu overlap genre and category could possibly be!!

Reflecting on Elliott's movie choices, I couldn't help but see a blend of innocence and maturity. I couldn't help but see that two simple movie choices were complex indicators that my kid is definitely becoming his own person. And that a lot of that person has interests that aren't mine, a lot of his decisions don't and won't look like mine.

Maybe some parents get scared by that. Scared when their kids have minds of their own.

I don't.

I feel like I've been fighting my whole life to develop a mind of my own. I'm not sure I've ever felt as free to equally embrace Sonic and Nosferatu as freely as I can embrace their differences today. I'm thankful for that freedom.

More than that, I'm thankful that my boys seem to be embracing that freedom long before I got there. Who knows, if they hadn't, I may have gone my whole life without seeing a vampire movie.

I'm still processing how I feel about that reality 🤣🤷‍♂️ - but in the words of my 16 year-old, both writers achieved what they were trying to achieve.

Parenting can be a wild ride, and sometimes it makes perfect sense to just go along for the ride.

​I was sitting in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble earlier this week. I was talking on the phone with a friend. I told her about a gift idea I had for my boys. I told her I was going to buy us all the same book, then I was going to put a note in my boys' books offering them cash to read it, write about it, and have a conversation with me about what the book meant to them.

She said, "that's a great idea. I might steal it."

(It's a blessing to have confidence building friends in your life who will tell you that they are going to steal your ideas).

I also told her that if I'm being honest, this gift is for me and not for them. Having meaningful conversations has never been my strong suit, even if I am better at it than I've even been. I also know there are some hallow voids in my life from never having had and being unable to have meaningful conversations with people in my life I wish I could have.

And maybe at times feel like I should have been able to.

I don't want my boys to have those voids. I don't want to deepen the holes of my own voids by passing them down to them. And it just seemed easier to me, and yes, maybe just easier FOR me, to say I'll pay you guys a couple of hundred bucks to read, write about and talk about this book with me than it would have been talking about voids.

I admit, it had a bit of a bribery feel to it, even if I felt completely okay with that while believing the ends would justify the means. But all feels of bribery disappeared when the boys opened their books and read their notes and smiled.

Not just smiled. I have seen their smiles when they get their hands on cold hard cash. These were not those smiles. These were smiles that said they were looking forward to this project together far more than they were looking forward to the cash. (Even if I have no illusions that when we are done they are going to say keep your money, dad....).

I think all boys have an inner longing to be able to read with their dad, write with their dad, have meaningful conversations with their dad. I think it's there long before a boy turns 50 and discovers he missed out on it.

These were not smiles of granting a dad his wish, these were smiles of boys having THEIR wishes granted.

I don't know if this was a great idea - one worth stealing. But I know for sure it came from my commitment to relentlessly tackle some of the deepest holes in my life, even if most of the time I have no idea how to tackle them.

Sometimes I'm sitting in the parking lot of a book store and an idea comes to me about how to tackle them. There were days when my tackling ideas would scare me off. Those days are gone.

As we head into the new year, it might be worth the time to think about things you've been wanting to tackle. Maybe consider trying something that feels way out there and yet, someone way out there in your life might be waiting for you to try it.

Sometimes relentlessly tackling our wishes ends up being the granting of someone else's.

Sometimes bribery isn't bribery at all.

​Eight years ago, these two boys spent the day at the finish line of the Richmond Marathon waiting for their slow and plodding dad to finish his first marathon.

Boy did they get a lesson in patience that day....

Out there on that course, battling the pains of tackling what was once unimaginable for me, I lost sight of the reality.

They are watching.

Some days that reality comes with great joy, seeing my marathon finish through their eyes. May what they see lift them to places they have not yet imagined, Lord.

They are watching.

Yet, there are days, days I come up short of being the man I want those eyes to see, and it is frightening, quite honestly. May their eyes guide them beyond the mistakes they have seen, Lord.

They are watching.

And yet, here I am, no longer a kid, somewhat like the men my eyes have seen, and in many ways quite the opposite. For it is our hearts and minds and souls that ultimately determine our paths.

And our finish lines.

But they were there, my kids. They did not quit waiting for a man who did not quit.

And they have been here the last several years through some hard times together. And still they have seen, the same, maybe even more, a man who will not quit.

And so I don't take it lightly, when I know they are and when I'm completely unaware of it.

They are watching.

Sometimes us, sometimes our spirit.

They are watching.

​Elliott and Ian were leaving to go home last night. I walked them out. As they got in Elliott's car, I noticed that one of Elliott's tires was low in air. So I told him to stop and put some air in it on the way home.

Elliott got out of the car and came to inspect the tire with me. He said, "I think it's okay."

It obviously wasn't, but in that moment, I knew there was a reason Elliott was hesitant to accept that. So I explained where he could get air on the way home, and how the automated air inflation machine works at Wawa. I told him he should check all of his tires while he was there.

Then he said words that broke my heart. He said, "I don't know how to do that."

You may be thinking those words broke my heart because he didn't know how to put air in his tire. Quite the opposite. My heart broke because I know how hard it is for someone to admit they don't know how to do something to someone who they fear might see them as stupid for not knowing how to do it.

I know the kind of bravery required of "I don't know how to do that."

I have become much freer with saying those words these days. I've become much freer in owning that in some of the generally accepted - or projected - gender roles of a man, I have very few of them.

I'm not a great mechanic. I'm not a great builder. I'm not a great do it yourselfer. My hands do much better at writing with a pen and waving around when I'm speaking than they will ever do fixing anything. In some of the stereotypical corners of the world, I am not a manly man. But in my world these days, I am quite fine with that.

That hasn't come easy, I have wrestled with that most of my life. And it's not a wrestling that serves you well in most relationships. Especially in relationships that require you to work on projects together, that sometimes require someone to fix things, and where those projects might leave you feeling exposed as incapable or inept or broken.

Sometimes that's because of the stories the person you're with will tell you, directly or implied; or equally often it's the stories you'll tell yourself because they are the stories you've been telling yourself all of your life.

So there I was, looking at my kid on the other side of him saying, "I don't know how to do that." And I said, that's okay, follow me.

I led him up to the local gas station, to the air machine, and we put air in all of his tires, which were all dreadfully low. I showed him how to use the air machine, (While also showing him the value of having a Ziplock bag full of quarters in your glove compartment 😊).

I am grateful this morning for that experience. So grateful. A simple low air experience was an extravagant step into healing on so many levels.

A situation that could have at one time left me feeling less than brilliant was a situation that left me feeling like far more than enough. And a situation that I hope helped me assure one of the most important people in my life that what he knows about air has nothing to do with how I feel about him.

A situation that I hope helped build into my son's identity a freedom to say "I don't know how to that" without fear of it making him look like less of anything in my eyes, especially less than a man. Because the truth is, I was far more proud of having a son who could say "I don't know how to do that" than I would have been of a son driving off knowing how to put air in his tire.

We are all faced with those opportunities from time to time. An opportunity to help someone without spending a lot of time deciding whether or not they should be able to help themselves.

It's what I love most about Jesus, I think. How he was always good about showing up to help the helpless without ever shaming them about their inability to help themselves. Jesus always saw that gap between the helpless and the helper as a chance to show love.

As I knelt down putting air in Elliott's tire last night, watching him watch the numbers rise to the right spot on that air machine, that's what I felt, love, love like I've rarely experienced.

And I think Elliott felt it too. As he got back in his car he said "thank you". It's not like that's the first time he's ever said it but in that moment it felt like it was.

In that moment it felt like love.

Love without shame.

Love.

​I imagine the hardest part about divorce is different for everyone. For me, among all the hard parts, the hardest part will always be - by far - answering the internal question, what have I done to my kids?

The question gets planted even before you divorce. There's such a cultural emphasis put on two parents in the home. I helped create that emphasis over the years. And in spite of my own situation, I do still believe that's in the best interest of kids.

At least until it's not.

And that's the questionable part, isn't it? When does it become not? A lot of people have an answer for that, when in the grand scheme of things there really isn't one. It's always a best guess.

But I do know some people believe there is an answer. I certainly had voices in my ear after my divorce suggesting I'd done great damage to my kids in leaving. And when you're already wrestling with those questions, those suggestions do great damage to you, the dad.

I've also been fortunate to have many voices since my divorce telling me I'm doing great as a dad. Mainly because those voices see how well the boys are doing. I mean, I myself see that.

But for some reason, that's a question that is never going to go away. What have I done to my kids?

No counsel. No affirmations. No quiet can quiet that question.

But every once in awhile there is sweet relief. And one thing that particular question loves, maybe it constantly begs for it, is sweet relief.

Elliott and I were talking about the baseball playoffs Sunday. It was a strange conversation, because in spite of us both being big sports fans, we never talk much about baseball.

Elliott said the only baseball players I know are the ones we met when we went to that Washington Nationals camp when I was a kid. He was smiling.

I thought about that for a second. That was a long time ago. And yet, there he was, recalling it fondly.

Monday morning, I found the picture we took that day of him tossing the ball with Ryan Zimmerman. I texted Elliott the picture while he was at school. I thanked him for the memory. I told him it was good for my heart that he remembered it.

Elliott doesn't know the full extent to which it was good. Our kids don't know many of the questions that haunt us.

And they don't need to.

Yet, out of the blue, it is often our kids who unknowingly bring us the most soothing answers to those questions. They bring us memories that seem, at least in the moment, unscathed by decisions we can convince ourselves our decisions had destroyed those very memories.

There are some questions in life that never go away. I'm convinced of that. Probably because for some questions that are no answers that bring complete certainty to effectively kill the question.

But as we move on, the questions get quieter.

They come at you with less vengeance. With less frequency.

And then every once in awhile your kid shows up and tosses you a memory, a very precious and timely memory, that offers you the most certainty you'll ever get a chance to catch.

In the end, for this dad, who's spent hours playing catch with his boys, that might be the best game of catch ever.

It's certainly the most healing one.

​Somewhere along the way my "I miss you" wires got short-circuited. Like, it was very easy for people to disappear from my life largely unnoticed.

And visa versa.

I never really considered that there might be some part of me that was broken. I guess I always just thought I was cold. Distant. Unattached. All of which sounds much healthier I suppose than broken, even if not completely healthy.

All of that changed, though, when my sons came along.

I was driving home Thursday afternoon in the pouring rain. It had been a long week. Home sounded inviting.

Refuge.

But what sounded most inviting was knowing Elliott would be coming over to watch Thursday night football. I had missed him since I was with both of them the previous weekend.

My weekend.

Divorce gives you plenty of options when it comes to grieving, but without question my greatest divorce grief has been missing my boys when I'm not with them. When it is not my weekend.

But what an unexpected gift in the grief. I miss them. I can say that. And feel it. And some feelings may be hard to feel but at the same time they are quite the gift to be able to feel. Because it turns out we don't miss people, their names or their roles in our lives or their titles, but rather we miss the kind of love we experienced in our connection to them that makes it very difficult to live without when it disappears.

That is a gift.

I didn't go into marriage wanting kids. Or divorce. I got both. It is quite often the unwanted things in my life I learn the most from. The things that become my greatest gifts.

I attribute that to God in my life. A God who longs for me to miss him so deeply that I will go searching for his presence even in the unwanted.

National Sons Day. I will never miss the chance to celebrate this day. For it is this day, really, that recognizes the chance I was given to miss anything at all.

Missing. It's a gift. 

​There we were, me and Elliott, eating cheese pizza and watching the NFL. What a perfect way to celebrate National Cheese Pizza Day. But as we were sitting there, just as peaceful as father and son could be, it hit me how cheese pizza used to be anything but peaceful to me.

From his first bite, Elliott would never eat toppings on his pizza. He wouldn't even go so far as to experiment with them. And it used to drive me nuts.

You'll never get anywhere without taking chances in life, I thought. Your brother eats all the toppings, he has the same pizza genes as you, you're just being stubborn and picky and maybe even defiant.

Those are just a couple of the psycho-dad raising boys to men thoughts that went through my mind. But his insistence on never adventuring beyond the cheese, I'm embarrassed to confess, could genuinely drive me nuts.

But there we were. Me and him. Two guys; two cheese pizzas. And I wouldn't have traded it for all the toppings in the world.

It also hit me as I was reflecting on it just how many things there are that used to rob me of peace years ago that rob me of nothing today. Things I used to be anxious about that no longer trigger the slightest worry. Losses I was sure would destroy me that feel more like gains today. People that I used to worry about every thought they had about me that I haven't thought about in years.

I had to ask myself, what is stealing my peace today that I won't even be thinking about a year from now? Or even a couple of months from now. What feels like total destruction in this moment that will be a fleeting thought by the next time National Cheese Pizza Day rolls around?

I know one thing that did NOT come to mind: Elliott not trying toppings. Eat up all the cheese pizza you want dude! (And when your kid won't try toppings, sit down and enjoy those topping-less moments with him instead of giving a sh*t about it. Just a friendly dad tip).

The truth is very little came to mind when I thought about those peace-robbers. Today I feel more at peace than ever because I know my mind is more conditioned than ever to pour mental energy into the things that are going to keep mattering. Things that will keep bringing me peace.

Jesus.

My sons.

Healthy, healing-centered relationships.

Writing and teaching.

Today, when I feel things start to rob me of peace, I turn to the things that give me peace. Today, when I feel things start robbing me of peace, I start reminding myself that chances are this won't even be a thought in my mind a year from now.

A year from now, when I'll be eating cheese pizza with my boy, and being grateful for knowing that what one day robs us of peace can one day become our peace.

That's a helpful thing to know, at least if you're searching for peace.

​I watched him sitting at the edge of the lake, staring out to where his line dropped into the water and down to the lake bed below. It's the nature of fishing, isn't it, staring - wondering what the line might ultimately connect with.

Sure, we have some visions of what that connection might ultimately be, but we never really know do we?

The pole rattled a bit and the line tightened. He jumped up and began to reel it in. In those initial moments, the adrenaline taking over, your mind doesn't allow you to much picture what you're bringing in. But the adrenaline does feel like extreme curiosity.

It's a catfish. Maybe a couple of pounds.

It's a boy. A dream come true. Even if the boy wasn't entirely sure what the dream was.

Later in the day, he sends me pictures of catfish caught in that same lake that he'd found online. One of them is 14 pounds. Looks like we've found our fishing hole, we joke.

Or maybe, actually, we are not joking.

Because he knows what he wants now. The dreaming and wondering come with more clarity once you have a taste of what is possible.

Dreaming is magical. Holding for even a moment what that dream might look like come true is a gift magic sometimes hands us while we dream. A beautiful gift.

I wonder if we can do that for one another a little more. Show each other what is possible, especially in those places where so many of us have given up. We are staring at the line but don't allow ourselves to imagine that it will connect with anything.

It just falls to the lake bed and plops like the end.

We don't need to catch a dream there. A simple hint of one will do. A simple hint of what is possible, and we can take the fishing from there.

New life.

You don't have to be someone's catfish today. What an ugly assignment that would be. But maybe you can be someone's shot of hope. Even if just a tiny shot. I don't think there's anything ugly at all about that assignment.

We all do life a little better when we believe something good is coming.

Be that reminder for someone today. They are staring at a line waiting for it.