A father is rarely destroyed by open rebellion. He is worn down by small permissions. Scripture names this pattern plainly.
It is called the teaching of Balaam.

There is a moment in fatherhood that feels almost frightening—not because something bad has happened, but because you suddenly see clearly.

You realize how many people walk around calling something “normal” when it’s really just adaptation.
How many storms live behind calm faces.
How much trauma gets buried, managed, rationalized, or renamed instead of healed.

And you realize: this includes us.

There comes a point in a man’s conversion where he realizes something shifting inside him.
Not just “I’m trying to be better,” but God is fathering me.
Not just “I believe in God,” but I’m being led.

This is the heart of Catholic theology on divine sonship: the Father doesn’t simply forgive sinners—He raises sons.

There’s a moment in every believer’s life when the Lord quietly pulls back the curtain and lets us see why we act the way we do. Not in a shaming way, but in the tender, fatherly correction that only God can give. I had one of those moments recently in my Catholic study group.

For months I’ve been wrestling with my zeal—zeal for the truth, zeal for defending the faith, zeal for keeping our group rooted in solid doctrine. When someone shared questionable prophecies or said something emotionally driven, my instinct was to correct it fast. Sometimes out of love, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of frustration. I felt like I had to protect God or defend the Church.

But the Lord, in His Fatherly patience, revealed something deeper to me this week.

There are seasons in the spiritual life where God feels near, and seasons where He feels silent. There are moments when faith feels like fire, and moments when it feels like ashes. But sometimes—very quietly—God is not abandoning; He is transforming.

As I’ve been learning more about the teaching of the Dark Night of the Soul, something in me has begun to make sense. Not in the mind alone, but in the heart. I can look back now and see a pattern I didn’t notice before: the way God slowly revealed Himself to me in stages. Not because He changed, but because I did.

What began as a cry to a distant Creator became a relationship with a saving Lord. And now, almost unexpectedly, it has become a whisper in my soul: “Say Father.”

This blog is that story.

There are seasons in co-parenting when the emotional weather changes without warning. Plans shift, promises wobble, people you depend on become unpredictable, and suddenly your week becomes a moving target. For years, that unpredictability triggered resentment in me — a reflex born from feeling responsible for everything yet powerless to change anything.

But something different happened recently.

The storm came — same patterns, same chaos — yet I felt something I haven’t felt before:
I wasn’t drowning in it.
I was near the storm… but not in it.

There is a pattern in Scripture—a rhythm God uses to form His saints—that we often overlook when we’re in the middle of our own spiritual growth.

God starts us with zeal.
Then He purifies the zeal.
Then He restores it with wisdom, gentleness, and true authority.

You can trace this in Elijah.
You can trace it in the Apostles.
You can trace it in Jesus Himself.