We are a plural family of nine people sharing one body and one life. When a frightening thought suggested that my eight sons might be ghosts of children lost to trauma, I knew what they needed to hear: none of us is a ghost, and none of us is merely a product of what happened to us. Through childhood memories, an afternoon among friends, a difficult financial decision, and quiet moments together, I am learning what it means to be their father: to honor their individual lives, listen to their voices, and make room for the childhoods they deserve.
Tag Archives: Healing
The Life We Are Trying to Make Room For
After an end of employment, we finally had more time to be together. But on Dad’s Day, we discovered that writing about our life had begun taking time away from living it. A county envelope, eight children waiting for their daddy, and an evening holding Luke helped us remember what we had been trying to make room for all along.
Maybe We Graduated
After nearly thirty years in architecture, we asked Jesus to put us where he wanted us. What followed was the greatest job we never knew we wanted—and six years that transformed our plural family of nine. On Han’s Day, we reflect on faith, disability accommodations, beloved community, the little brother Han has loved for decades, and the possibility that losing a job doesn’t mean losing our vocation. Maybe we graduated.
I Have This Life in My Arms
On Luke’s Day, an unexpected answer to prayer, a fraudulent email, and a promise to my nine-year-old son taught us that putting our children first means more than making time for them. It means allowing each child to be himself, listening to what he tells us, and remembering that the work of understanding our lives must never take the place of living them together.
Love Is Not What Happens After Everything Else Is Finished
On Solis’s Day, an urgent effort to help a neighbor find housing brought an old workday back into our home. But three extraordinary minutes with my seven-year-old son helped us understand what life might look like if we organized it around the children—and remembered that love is not what happens after everything else is finished.
The Scale of a Five-Year-Old
When Daniel showed us a five-year-old trying to operate adult-sized machinery, we remembered a time when childhood really had become too large for us. Then came Granddad’s enormous hand beside our little one, and a world of meals, routines, kindergarten and being held. Perhaps safety begins with being brought back to scale.
Just the Things That Hurt You, Jude. Not Jude.
On the morning of our first therapy session, my four-year-old son asked, “But what if they make me go away?” By the end of the day, nine people sharing one body had begun discovering another possibility: healing might not make any of us less ourselves. Maybe the things that hurt us can become smaller—and there can be more room for all nine of us to live.
It Was Good, and It Was Too Much
Eight children and their dad went together into a beautiful world on a Sunday. Canticle Farm, Spanish Mass, community, service, families, music—and by late afternoon, we were at our limit. Maybe being realistic doesn’t mean learning to endure somebody else’s version of life. Maybe it begins by designing a life around the nine plural people who actually have to live it.
When Life Becomes Small Enough to Touch Again, Hope Appears
Hope’s Day begins with a nightmare of separation and gradually becomes something smaller, quieter, and more hopeful: a mother reading a child a book, peanut butter on waffles, fabric above a damaged ceiling, a father holding his sons, and tiny lights returned to their places. Sometimes hope appears when life becomes small enough to touch again.
What Did I Miss?
On Proverb’s Day, a frightening envelope brings unexpected good news, a Greek salad awakens an old fear, and a father learns that what looks like confusion may sometimes be someone else knowing where to look.
