Wayward Weekly Wisdom (W³) - Issue two
A Weekly Practice of Awareness for Moral Leadership
To the Leaders reading this; Welcome Back to this weekly experiment.
Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your attention. Time is the one thing we don’t get back, and I’m learning to write in a way that respects that. Thank you for your trust. So, before I begin I want to say, whatever path you’re on, I hope you find something useful in Issue II. (Or as the French would say, “Issue II,” but in their own language.)
If you haven’t read the first issue (its a nasty pancake - the first one always comes out rough), you can check it out here:
Last weekend I was sitting in a military base chapel. Rows close together, families everywhere, everyone bringing their week into the same room.
The space was steady, quite, and what seemed peaceful…until it wasn’t.
Kids cried. Shoes thumped. Tension crept in. No one turned around. No one said anything. Everyone felt it, but everyone stayed still, bracing. Maybe it would stop. Maybe someone else would handle it.
Now, kids belong at Mass, and any religious service for that matter.
The noise wasn’t the problem. Not addressing it was.
What hit me when I reflected on this was the weight in the room and the silent agreement that a few people absorbed through the disruption while everyone else just accepted this, to include the parents of the kids causing the shared chaos and over stimulation.
It made me think of where I’ve seen that moment in other places.
I’ve seen it in meetings where everyone knows a process is broken but no one names it. In marriages where one person keeps noticing what needs repair while the other drifts. In families where a parent carries a child’s stress as proof they’re failing. And even in leadership, where capable people quietly become shock absorbers because it feels easier than having a hard conversation.
Something is off. Everyone senses it. But instead of naming it, responsibility drifts, and often lands where it doesn’t belong. We then feel things like: Irritation. Guilt. Fatigue. Control. Withdrawal.
I used to read those feelings as personal failures. A lack of patience. A lack of kindness. A lack of discipline. And ask myself what is wrong with me, before even acknowledging what is going on around me.
Now, I see these signs differently, and for the information they are. They show up when something systemic is being handled personally.
Walking through this reflection this week, brought up even older memories for me.
I grew up watching my dad drink alcohol every night. Couldn’t go a day without drinking it seemed. Over time, parenting gave way to guilt, control, and lectures about who I should be. Somewhere along the way, he stopped being my father and started trying to manage me. At least that is my lived experience.
That history matters here because when life got dark for me this past year, I made a decision that surprised some people but felt obvious to me: I didn’t drink.
Today marks one year sober for me. And I am proud of that.
I didn’t stop because alcohol is evil. I stopped because I’ve seen what happens when pain goes unnamed and turns inward. Will I ever drink another drop of alcohol in my life again? Probably. But right now in the season I am in, I can’t. I’ve watched people I love numb themselves instead of name what hurts, and I know what that does to someone who is lonely, depressed, or not healthy.
Numb long enough and the ending is rarely a mystery. The story gets blamed on something tidy. A diagnosis, an organ, a condition, a projection to something not the person. But everyone knows it wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t random.
That’s what happened to my mom.
That’s also why last week in church felt heavy. And it wasn’t because the kids were loud. Not because kids were being kids. But because responsibility had drifted. It landed on a congregation who’s role is not to intervene.
Moral leadership doesn’t ask others to absorb what belongs to you. It starts by carrying your own weight.
I am responsible for myself and for how I respond, while making sure I do not react.
I am responsible for my children. And I am responsible for the shared spaces my community holds together.
When we numb, avoid, or endure instead of act, responsibility doesn’t disappear. It moves. It lands on the wrong shoulders. Or it becomes the new unspoken standard.
Because the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Now, when parents feel trapped, afraid of judgment, afraid of disruption, afraid of being seen as failing, responsibility quietly shifts. A child who hasn’t learned self-regulation, or emotional regulation, is left to carry what an adult should have held.
That’s the same pattern. Different setting. Same cost. And what this reflection left me with was that there seems to be a line between moral injury and moral leadership that is simple, but can be demanding.
Learning to carry what is yours, or you end up making someone else pay for it.
As a Husband:
One insight I reflected on this week as a husband is that I’ve learned the hard way that we don’t marry the person we love; we commit to how we will love the person we marry. Read that again, because it took me time to understand that.
One red flag I watch for in myself is simple after many months of therapy and reading the Love Dare with my wife together is that if I’m picking at my wife more than I’m praising her, selfishness has taken the wheel. And if 15 years of marriage has taught me anything, it is that marriage doesn’t usually break from one big failure. It actually erodes through small and repeated neglects.
I like to think about marriage now like a graduation certificate. The certificate doesn’t mean you’re finished learning. Image if you all you ever knew was what you knew when you graduated high school. What a mess we would all be. All that piece of paper meant was that you’ve met the requirements to begin the next level. You don’t stop learning because you earned your diploma.
You should remain curious. You keep studying. You fail exams. Flunk tests. You retake classes. You grow. And marriage seems to work the same way. It appears once I worked through some grief and some of my own self-limiting beliefs, I came to a better understanding that marriage is about choosing, again and again, to grow into someone more faithful, more patient, and more attentive thanI was before.
Love is practiced daily.
As a Parent:
This past week was full. Military life. Teaching. Four kids. Practices. Groceries. A surprise snowstorm. Everything at once. It reminded me why I don’t believe in work–life balance, or everyones weird fetish for it. Life doesn’t divide cleanly.
The same nervous system that reacts at work reacts at home.
The same habits show up everywhere.
There isn’t a parenting self and a leadership self and a personal self. There’s just you, showing up in different places. That’s why cadence matters more than balance.
Knowing when to stay. When to step out. When to move fast. When to slow down. And when to return.
Cadence gets harder when everyone is overstimulated, especially in families with ADHD. Regulation takes more time, more patience, and clearer boundaries. My kids aren’t broken. The kids who went crazy in church weren’t bad kids. Their nervous systems are learning rhythm and how to self regulate.
Children don’t need to be controlled. Most of the time, they just need to be shown. Shown how to pause. Shown how to step out. Shown how to return. Shown how to create their own cadence. That’s how regulation is learned.
As a Leader:
I talked a lot about shared understanding this week, and often it is easier to start by naming what something is not. So, most leadership problems aren’t skill problems. They’re meaning problems. People don’t commit to what they’re doing. They commit to why it matters.
What sucks sometimes is that most organizations live in the what: metrics, roles, checklists. Some leaders take organizations to the level where they reach the how: better processes and communication. Very few stay with the why, because that’s where discomfort lives. When people don’t know why they’re doing the work, they default to survival mode. Survival breeds anxiety. Anxiety erodes trust. And trust is the real currency of leadership.
Now, most leadership failures aren’t skill gaps; they’re measurement errors. We measure what’s easy, output, compliance, speed, and assume it reflects what matters. Fun fact; it doesn’t.
People organize their behavior around what gets counted, not what gets said.
When the why is missing, metrics become a substitute for meaning, and activity replaces trust. What goes unnamed spreads. What gets measured multiplies.
Leaders don’t just shape results by what they reward, they shape culture by what they choose to count.
As a Wayward Lay Christian:
Now, after this weeks readings, my Reach More class, and some conversations with some close friends, I wanted to highlight that Wayward Purpose isn’t about convincing anyone to arrive where I arrived. My, very long, and wayward, all over the dang place, path led me to the Catholic Church. But the work here is broader and harder because what I am focusing on here is how people who serve wholeheartedly survive moral injury and come back with deeper purpose instead of self-destruction. My way back just ended up as me becoming a Catholic in the process of my healing and growth.
Now, addiction, money, status, distraction, success without substance. They are all different behaviors, that take the same root. And when you can’t name what’s wrong, it grows. I have found that awareness is where moral repair begins and is where moral leadership starts.
We aren’t human beings who occasionally dabble in spirituality; we’re spiritual beings learning to live a human life with integrity. I think it was C.S. Lewis who says we don’t have a soul, we are a soul: we have a body.
That’s why information doesn’t change people, but practice does. Doing the work does. Commitment does. Community does. The role of the lay person isn’t to escape the world for safety, or to live in the church, but to be present in the world with discipline and care. Doing what you should, when you should, with your whole heart. Leading with love. Language will always fall short, but the experience is real. Wayward Purpose is simply a place to pay attention and come together, and all are welcomed regardless of where they are in their spiritual, religious, or faith journey.
Podcasts:
Reading:
If you’ve ever met someone with ADHD, you already know that we’re all in the middle of, just starting, or somehow not quite finished with about 23 books at the same time. So here is what I have going on this week.
Films & Shows:
28 Years Later, Bone Palace: Not for the faint heart. In theaters now. 100% not for kids. But zombies films always have a place in my heart and this did not disappoint a zombie horror fan.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: This one is a little throw back to a great classic.
I came across the phrase “oaks of righteousness” this week in scripture and laughed. My brain briefly took a detour through my twenties that involved a gentlemen’s club and a very different thought of someones stage name, righteousness (not one of my proudest thought bubbles, but an honest one, lol). Then the question stuck: why oaks? Scripture rarely wastes imagery I am learning. Oaks grow slowly, sink deep roots, and are built to carry weight over time.
That’s when Jung’s line came back to me: “the tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to hell.”
Righteousness isn’t about looking good above ground; it’s about what you’re willing to face, absorb, and integrate beneath the surface so you can stand when the load finally comes. Like when your child is screaming in church and you don’t react for appearances, but get down to their level, take responsibility, and quietly walk them out. See how I tied that all the way back?
The thing on my mind as I wrap up the week is the future. I know worry can’t change the past or control the future. Worry only steals today. Hence, Give us this day our daily bread. And a translation for those who don’t speak Scripture: Do the work you can do today. Ask for what you need today. Stop trying to control tomorrow with fear.
So here’s my question for this coming week and to take into service this Sunday:
Where am I practicing trust one day at a time, and where am I trying to stockpile certainty instead?Feel free to leave a comment if you want to answer it here.
Your time and trust make this space possible, and I don’t take that lightly. Everything here continues to build on what we are researching and on how to turn moral injury into moral leadership, so self-destruction never feels like the only option. If this landed (or took off, who knows), leave a quick (or long) comment (I won’t judge either way), it helps me know this work is reaching real people. If you want to support it, subscribing is like buying a monthly coffee, with nothing behind a paywall; a one-time Back the Work contribution works too. However you engage, read, share, support, or simply reflect, thank you for being here.
Congrats on your full years of sobriety and pressing into growth.