The group of Catholic dads I was hanging out with all nodded with ironic, knowing smiles. Someone had just shared that no matter how successful you are at work, you always get knocked down a few notches when you come home.

Honestly, I've felt that too. Why is that?

The rules for success at work are not the same as the rules for success at home. Let's chat about the differences. Grab a coffee and join me.

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Hey, everyone.

I am hopping on here with a quicker, more impromptu type message for you today.

I hope you don't mind the impromptu nature, but I was at a birthday party for my son, Blaze, just a few weeks ago.

He celebrated his seventh birthday.

It's very cute.

And the party was hosted by his friend, who also had a birthday very near his.

So they had a joint party, and all of the students in his school class were invited.

So there are a bunch of families from the school.

Now, Blaze just started attending a Catholic grade school associated with our parish just last year, so he's going into second grade.

And honestly, Sarah and I are just now learning, you know, getting to know all of the parents and school community.

All of this is to say I found myself in a group of men, which was quite refreshing.

You know, there's a circle of like six or seven of us.

And one thing that one of the husbands, one of the dads, said just has stuck with me for several weeks now.

And it was said in jest, but I think he really meant it.

And what he said was this.

Something along the lines of, no matter how successful we are at work, we all know that when we come home, we get knocked down several notches in parentheses by our wives.

And I. I just had a. I have a lot of reactions to this, gentlemen.

Some of my reactions are, yeah, that kind of hits home.

I've.

I've felt that.

And I know for a fact that my wife Sarah, is amazing, and I love her, and I know that she would never intentionally knock me down in that way or intentionally make me feel inferior or, you know, anything like that.

There's no maliciousness in our relationship whatsoever.

And I. I kind of doubt that these men feel that their wives have any sort of, you know, malicious intent behind that for them either.

But I felt it nonetheless.

And every man in that circle, you know, there's, like I said, six or seven of us, they all kind of chuckled and nodded knowingly.

Why is this?

And I think for me, for me personally, when I was at work, when I worked in corporate, in the corporate world, I worked for Amazon for, you know, eight or nine years and other companies prior to that, anyone who has been successful in the world of work and has advanced their career, you know, gotten a promotion or two under their belts, that in itself means they know how to play the game of work.

And work has a set of rules.

And once you learn them, you know where you stand, right?

And there are institutional touch points designed specifically to let you know where you stand.

I'm Thinking, you know, manager check ins, of course, annual review processes, all of these things.

And, and everyone is measured at work, at least in large part by outcomes.

Right.

Are you productive?

Are you efficient?

Are you producing results that matter to the company that are, you know, in accordance with what you are hired to do?

Are you doing those things?

You, you have a job description, you fulfill the job description, you win.

That's kind of how it works.

It's pretty cut and dry and straightforward.

Right.

And the things that really allow you to be successful in that scenario, in that environment are not necessarily the same things that will enable you to be successful in marriage and in family.

Marriage and family don't work like that.

You don't have a job description in the same way as you do in the professional world.

And it is not transactional.

That's the key, key thing.

Marriage and family is not transactional.

It is not the case that I, you know, fulfill these six or eight core functions plus other duties as assigned, and then I get a pat on the back and everything's hunky dory.

I wish it were that easy.

Well, actually, I don't.

It's not that easy.

Why?

Why is it not that easy?

Because marriage and family is about relationships and it's about love.

It's about human development.

It's about conforming myself to the will of Christ, helping my wife grow in holiness as well.

And the two of us together helping conform our children to the heart of Christ and all of us as a family marching down this path of holiness towards heaven together.

That's what marriage and family is about.

It is not measured by efficiency, by productivity.

It's measured by the quality of our love.

It's measured by charity.

It's measured by the things that matter to Christ and that St. Paul tells us about.

Right.

Those are the things that will enable us to be successful in marriage and family.

And so many times we as men, we get caught up in this kind of transactional worldview because that is the environment in which we spend the majority of our waking hours.

Yes.

Know, in a corporate world, in a business world, and that's, that's, you know, the way it is.

I'm not saying we can all just quit our jobs.

I'm not suggesting that.

What I am suggesting is it is helpful to have a frame of mind that very clearly understands that the environment of work and the environment of transaction, the rules of the game for the corporate world are not the same as the rules of the game for marriage and family.

The rules of the game for corporate World are defined by contracts, you know, employee, employee law and employment contracts and all these things.

They can be adjudicated legally if necessary.

There are very clear transactional, if this, then that type rules in play and you can learn those rules and be successful within the context of those rules.

That's fine.

I'm not saying anything against that.

What I'm saying is we can't bring that same mentality into our home.

Those kinds of rules are not the framework which enables true authentic love or charity or faith to flourish.

The rules that enable those things to flourish.

What?

Love and charity and faith.

Faith, hope and love.

Right, Those things.

The only real rules are the ones Jesus gave us.

There's two, he told us two commandments.

Love God and love your neighbor.

Those are the rules.

What does that entail?

Take a look at the crucifix.

That is how we follow Christ.

That is how we show love.

That is how we succeed as a father.

That is, that's how we succeed as a husband is self sacrifice.

Taking up our cross and following him.

So like, let me try to wrap all this back up to that comment.

I like that comment.

No matter how successful we are at work, we always get knocked down a few notches, at least when we come home.

Man, I have so felt that so many times.

And it's not that success at work is bad.

It's great.

If, if you find great success at work fabulous, that is wonderful.

That does not necessarily mean that you are successful at home as well.

Don't take me the wrong way.

It is such a good thing to find success at work.

What I challenge everyone listening to this to do is to recognize that there's a different set of expectations and a different framework at home and work and strive to be successful under that framework.

Also because that framework, the framework of home, of marriage, of family, that framework is our vocation.

That framework is the one by which God will ultimately judge us.

When we meet him at the end of our lives.

He's not going to ask us how high up we climb the corporate ladder.

Not that that's bad.

It's a good thing.

And for any, you know, executive C suite people, you, you rock.

Dudes like I have such respect.

I've worked with many of them.

I've never been C suite myself, but I have such incredible respect for people who do that and who do it well.

And you are in a position of great responsibility and influence.

And the way that you treat your employees, the way that you lead your employees can have a massive impact on their well being.

And that can be a vocation with.

With a small V, right?

Like a small V. Vocation, a calling from God, like a way that you live out your Christian call in the world.

Very, very much can incorporate the way you act and the way you lead and the way you inspire in the workplace.

That's awesome.

We need that.

You need to be leaven and light and salt of the earth in the workplace as well as at home, as well as, you know, in the community, everywhere.

But what I'm.

Again, just to reiterate, and then I'll wrap this up because I think I'm repeating myself, but I'll repeat myself one more time because repetition is the mother of learning.

We can't let the transactional nature of the corporate world, of the business world, we can't bring that transactional framework into our marriage and expect to be successful when we do so.

We won't.

We won't.

What we need to do is bring Christ's framework into marriage.

Christ's framework of love, of charity, of self sacrifice, of taking up your cross, that is.

Those are the things that will make us amazing men, amazing fathers, amazing husbands.

And those are the things that will ultimately conform ourselves to Christ, because that's what Christ himself does.

And the more we do what Christ did, the more we conform ourselves to Christ himself, the further along in holiness we will be and the more assured we are of our heavenly salvation.

God bless you all.