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Rails, Not a Cage: A Rule of Life for Work, Love, and Calling

A weeknight field report on ambition, faithful striving, and the hour where my life splits. I am building a rule of life that protects my marriage, my rest, and my calling without worshiping stability.

TL;DR: Every night, my life splits. I can numb out, or I can take one small faithful step toward what I am called to build. This is the framework I am using to stay rooted in God, present at home, and consistent in my craft.

A Day In The Life

It’s a little after five, which means Therese is finishing her day. Mine is a little more than halfway done. Three more hours on the clock, though it feels like I just sat down.

Tires crunch in the snow. Headlights smear a pale bar across the blinds by the front door. That’s my cue.

No matter what I’m in the middle of, I try to meet her at the door. Not because it fixes the day, but because it names what matters. I open it, wrap her up in a hug, ask how she’s doing, and try to let whatever problem I was chewing on fall quiet behind my eyes.

She looks tired in a way that has weight. The kind you can’t sleep off in one night. The kind that comes from standing for hours, from people needing you, from carrying someone else’s fear like it’s part of your job description. When she steps inside, I feel that familiar tug in my chest: gratitude that she’s home, guilt that I’ve been home all day, and a pressure to prove I’m not wasting the gift of time I’ve been given.

Most nights I cook. It’s one of the few ways I can take something off her back: real food, a mostly clean counter, a small mercy she doesn’t have to ask for. We eat, we debrief, and then we land on the couch with the TV on. It gives us room to unwind while still being present.

On busy days I can feel myself calculating minutes like they’re money. I’m trying to be high-impact at work because I’m still a contractor, still temporary, still easy to replace. And when I give Therese my attention in the middle of that pressure, a part of me flinches like I’m being irresponsible, like presence is a luxury I haven’t earned.

She goes to bed around eight-thirty. I finish work at eight. I walk her to the room, say goodnight, give her a kiss, and then I stand in the kitchen for a second like someone who’s forgotten what he came in for.

This is the hour where my life splits.

One path is unwind: games, scrolling, shutting my mind off. The other path is what I tell myself I’m building toward: the blog, the prototype, the “something more.” I want that “more” to be service, not ego. I want it to become a foundation for the family I hope to lead someday, not a fire that burns down what I already have. And it has before.

Lately I’ve been trying to choose with intention instead of guilt. Not perfectly, just honestly. I’ve read about the 80/20 rule, about focusing on the few things that matter most, but at 10:30 p.m. the question isn’t theory. It’s practical: what do I do with the last good hour of my day, and who does it shape me into?

I’m learning that this season it’s less about productivity and more about formation. God isn’t only shaping what I produce. He’s shaping who I become while I’m producing it. That’s the process I’m trying to wrap my head around.

Ambition vs. Faithful Striving

I’ve been at war with myself lately, splitting my brain in two with introspection. I’m an overthinker, and sometimes that is a superpower. Other times it puts me into paralysis. It’s not exactly productive to ask the big question, over and over: why?

I tell myself my purpose is about helping others. And I believe that is true. But the truth is, it wasn’t always centered in that cause, and it still isn’t always centered there.

Underneath well-intentioned endeavors, there comes a point when the prospect of becoming “someone” becomes more important than helping someone. It clouds the mind. Decisions start hinging on self-service and self-worship. It’s insidious. I catch it when I’m more excited to be seen as impressive than to actually serve.

That is what I mean when I say blind ambition: when we become blind to the shift in motivation from serving others to serving ourselves.

Faithful striving is the mode I try hard to stay consciously in. It means staying aware of when my motivations are drifting away from that noble truth: serving others. It’s part of the process, I suppose. Finding ways to stay rooted in the cause, and in the truth behind it.

God is my firm foundation. He keeps me rooted in His goodness, the same goodness I refused to believe in for so long. The material world is filled with temptation to stray from the path Jesus paved. He didn’t just die for our sins. He gave us a framework to live by: serving others.

I wear a cross. I also wear a bicentennial quarter. Two symbols in tension: the selfless love of Christ and the pull of money. I wear them as a reminder of what comes first. My anchor is the cross sitting atop the quarter. A reminder that spiritual oneness will always matter more than material possession.

The pressure I feel isn’t only personal, it’s environmental. The culture around us trains people to worship output, status, and security. When the story a nation tells about itself starts to crack, you feel it at the dinner table. You feel it in the way you measure your worth.

American Exceptionalism

I grew up breathing some version of American Exceptionalism: the belief that this country is different, not just strong, but promising. That if you work hard, you can build a life with margin. That the rules might be imperfect, but they’re real enough to plan around. That the future opens up if you keep going.

Lately, that story feels harder to hold with confidence. Not because opportunity is gone, but because the cost of stability feels higher, and the margin feels thinner. The “door” still exists, but it can feel like it’s getting heavier. And when the promises of a society feel less certain, people compensate by tightening their grip.

More hours. More hustle. More image. More debt.

I’ve seen where that road ends: inside a home where love is real, but peace is expensive.

So I’m not looking for a productivity hack. I’m looking for a rule of life. A way to pursue stability without worshiping it. A way to provide for the family I’m building without becoming the man I used to resent. A way to work hard and still stay soft. A way to repay, in love, some of what my mom and dad spent on me when I didn’t even know the cost.

The American Dream

I watched a version of the American Dream run on debt and anger. I’m trying not to rebuild the same house.

I didn’t grow up clean. But I did grow up with the American story close enough to touch: if you keep working, you can keep the lights on, keep the family afloat, keep the illusion alive. My dad carried that story like a cross. He wanted us happy. He wanted us safe. And to do it, he shackled himself to debt, keeping up with the Joneses, keeping us comfortable, keeping us unaware of the bill.

The cost showed up in the house. He was stressed, tight, quick to anger. Sometimes he lashed out at us like we were the reason the numbers didn’t work. I don’t know what all he was carrying, but I know what it felt like on the receiving end: love delivered through pressure.

I strayed from my dad. We were estranged for a while. I escaped reality in drugs and in the noise of social life. At first it was “fun.” Then it wasn’t. Somewhere down the line, we weren’t turning up, we were turning off. Trying to numb the future we could feel coming.

And then, like that, it was my turn to be an adult.

I stepped out on my own partly to spite him, partly to prove I wasn’t a burnout. I taught myself enterprise software architecture and clawed my way into my first software job. I kept stacking skills. Kept raising my market value. I built a life that looked like “winning.”

Then I reached my destination and felt how hollow it was. Proving my dad wrong didn’t heal me. It didn’t serve anyone. It just made me better at running.

I found God not because I was broken financially, but because I was broken spiritually. I finally saw that achievement without love is just a louder kind of emptiness.

My Rule of Life (a framework, not a cage)

I used to think I needed a perfect schedule to become a disciplined man. What I’m learning is I don’t need a prison, I need rails. A rule of life isn’t a spreadsheet that controls me. It’s a set of commitments that keeps me pointed at what matters when I’m tired, tempted, or anxious.

Mine is built on three priorities I don’t want to sacrifice on the altar of “more.”

1) God First, Not as Decoration

If I don’t check my alignment, I start chasing security like it’s salvation.

My practice (simple, repeatable):

  • A short prayer before I leave my desk to greet Therese.
  • Ten minutes sometime in the evening: Scripture, reading, journaling, or quiet. Not performance. Re-centering.
  • A weekly check-in: Where did I worship output this week? Where did I choose love?

This isn’t about earning God’s approval. It’s about staying connected to the only thing that can keep ambition from turning into idolatry.

2) Therese First in the Home

I can be “productive” and still fail my life if I’m absent in my own house. So I try to be intentional about presence.

My practice:

  • I meet her at the door when I can. It’s a small ritual that says, you’re not competing with my screen.
  • I aim for one “undistracted block” each weeknight. Sometimes that’s 20 minutes, sometimes it’s an hour. No multitasking. Just being with her.
  • If the TV is on, I treat it like background, not the center of the room. Connection still counts.

Some nights this is all I have to give. And I’m learning that showing up is not the same thing as falling behind.

3) Calling, But With Guardrails

I still want to build. I still want to write. I still want to prototype. I just don’t want to build a “dream” that burns down my real life. So I’m choosing consistency over intensity.

I’ve stopped asking, How much can I do?
Now I ask, What is the smallest faithful step I can take tonight?

My practice: Minimum Effective Progress
On weeknights, I aim for 20 to 40 minutes on the “something more,” and I define progress as one of three things:

  • An asset (a paragraph, a demo, a landing page, a reusable tool)
  • Reduced friction (a checklist, a template, a system that saves me later)
  • Feedback (sharing with one person, testing a small idea, moving from private to real)

If it doesn’t create an asset, reduce friction, or generate feedback, it might be movement, but it’s not momentum.

4) Rest that Restores, Not Rest that Numbs

I don’t think leisure is sinful. But I’ve learned it can do two different things in my life:

  • Restorative rest helps me return to my people and my calling with more patience, more clarity, and more softness.
  • Sedative rest helps me avoid fear for a night, and then I wake up heavier.

Both can look like the same couch, the same game, the same scrolling. The difference is the fruit it produces.

So I try to close the night with an honest question:
Did this help me come back to my life, or disappear from it?

5) Sleep as Stewardship (with a little mercy)

I’m not rigid about my nightly routine. I aim for lights out by 11:30 p.m., but if I’m in a true flow state, I might sleep as late as 2:00 a.m. I try to get no less than six hours because I know what happens to my patience and judgment when I don’t.

My guardrails:

  • Most nights: protect 11:30 p.m.
  • Flow nights are allowed, but I don’t let them become the default.
  • If I break the rule, I don’t punish myself. I adjust the next day.

I’m learning that discipline isn’t perfection. It’s returning, again and again, to the life I say I want.

What this looks like on a normal weeknight

After Therese goes to bed, I try to choose one lane:

  1. Rest lane: something that restores me, then shutdown.
  2. Build lane: 20 to 40 minutes of minimum effective progress, then shutdown.

Not both. Not everything. Just one faithful choice that I can repeat tomorrow.

Closing Gratitude

I’m grateful I get to practice this at all.

Grateful for work. Grateful for a wife I still want to run to the door for.

Grateful for my mom and dad, who I still get to talk to on the phone. I still owe them money sometimes, but it’s never about the money when I hear their voices.

Grateful for my brother and my sister, who took steps ahead of me in life and left a preview behind.

Grateful for the friends who stayed when I was at my worst.

Grateful for a God who didn’t wait for me to get my life together before He found me.

I don’t know exactly where the road leads, but I’m thankful I’m not walking it alone.