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“By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.” — Proverbs 24:3-4
I came across something that stopped me mid-scroll.
It was a simple post.
A few lines from Joena San Diego that said, essentially, this: if you didn’t come from a good family, pray that a good family comes from you.
I read it three times.
it made me think
I didn’t come from a perfect family.
Nobody really does.
But I came from a family where my dad stayed.
Where he showed up.
Where despite everything, despite the imperfections and the struggles and the quiet sacrifices that kids only understand when they become parents themselves, we never ended up hating him.
We love him.
We make sure he meets his grandchildren.
We call.
We show up back.
That’s what I want.
Family.
That specific thing.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to be intact.
A Promise to God Made a Decade Ago
More than ten years ago I made a promise to God.
I had just come out of a bad breakup. It made me question everything.
Love.
Life.
Finding another person to invest feelings in.
And then I met a girl.
I fell in love again.
I knew I was still a little broken but I made a deal with God then to help me not make any stupid moves. Keep me on the straight and narrow. And I will do my part. That this will be the last one. No more.
That girl became my girlfriend.
I asked God again, quietly, to make me a man she could be proud of. To make me the guy who stayed when others didn’t. To spare her the fate of friends whose relationships dissolved around them.
She became my wife.
And then we had a child.
And every prayer since has been a variation of the same one.
Make me worthy of this.
Guide me.
Don’t let me become the thing I was afraid of becoming.
A deadbeat dad.
A bad husband.
I have made mistakes.
Many of them.
I am not standing here as a man who got everything right.
I am standing here as a man still trying to atone, still trying to build, still trying to choose the harder, better path when the easier one is right there.
Every day I strive to be a better husband and father.
Proverbs 24:3-4
Aa house is built by wisdom.
Not by money.
Not by luck.
Not by perfect circumstances.
By wisdom.
By understanding.
By the slow, deliberate accumulation of knowledge applied with love.
I think about that when I look at my son.
When I sit through my job with little to no sleep.
When I do the housework and the night shifts and the early mornings and all the invisible labor that goes into keeping a family functioning.
None of it is glamorous.
None of it gets applause.
But it is the building.
Every ordinary day that I choose to stay, to show up, to try again… that is a room being added to something.
Something my son will walk through one day and feel safe inside of.
Something that tells him, without words, that men in this family stay.
That we build.
That we don’t walk away when it gets hard.
When things get hard, we push back harder.
Hope is not enough on its own.
I believe that.
Hope without action is just a wish.
What changes the story is participation.
Showing up when it’s inconvenient.
Praying hard and then working harder.
Deciding, every single day, that the family you are building matters more than the comfort of giving up.
I am not a perfect husband.
I am not a perfect father.
But I’ll be here.
I’ll keep trying.
and building.
And by wisdom, this house will stand.
