Ok, so I get it, I guess. 

     This entire week now I've had to face how I work with the inter weaving of my family.  As mentioned in an earlier post I thought I was doing a good enough job but that measure was taken against what I thought and my standard.  There is of course another standard, the ultimate standard, by which I should judge how I'm performing.  Again I thought I was doing all right.  But, there's always a squeeky wheel I suppose and well it was letting me know that it wasn't getting the grease that it needed.  So, fall back, punt, reformulate, and strike again.  We'll see how this turns out in a month or so.

     So for the ironic part.  About a week and a half ago I stumbled across Men of Integrity online.  I used to subscribe to the publication several years ago when I worked for Charter Communications.  Back then I got an hour lunch so I'd spend 15 minutes eating and the remainder of the time doing a devotion from my Men's Study Bible and the Men of Integrity publication.  I would argue that I was much happier then . . . or at least as I recall it I was.  So I thought I'd start reading again.  I setup the RSS feed so it'd dump the daily articles into my email and awaited the updates. 

     As I come off the holiday week struggling with what I am or am not doing for the family I get a list of the articles for the coming week (now this past week).  How comical is it that the weeks articles had everything to do with 'Filling your Family Role'.  Now it's not like the articles resulted in me lashing myself because of my short comings or anything of that nature.  If anything some of them pointed out that what I was doing was right . . . insuring that each family member gets enough of your time and that they are not compartmentalized like the rest of a typical man's day goes.  I have a date night with my oldest, when the younger is able she'll have one too.  I'm working on getting something set for the wife but that's a lot more complicated.  When she takes time for herself it's usually with her girlfriends for a girls night out which needs to happen.  We're solid, but that's because thus far neither one of us has taken the other for granted and we remain commited to the commitment. 

     Again, ironic I thought.  This coming weeks articles have a subject heading of 'Radical Repentance' . . . let's see where this goes.