To live as a disciple of Christ is to embrace this profound calling with sincerity and humility. It is to see every interaction as an opportunity to reflect love that is deeper and more transformative than mere human kindness. Grace does not discard the good found in natural human inclinations but elevates them, infusing them with divine purpose.

Co-parenting, family stress, and personal relationships all have a way of stirring our emotions faster than anything else in life. A tone of voice, the wrong look, or a misunderstood comment can send the heart racing and the mind into overdrive. We start reading motives, assuming intentions, and judging situations before we ever pause to breathe.

But when I opened 1 Corinthians 2, something shifted.

There was a night — one I’m not proud of, but one I’ll never forget — when I sat at a table with tarot cards, crystals, candles, and a desperation that felt louder than any prayer I had ever prayed. I was trying to talk to “spirits,” trying to force blessings out of shadows, trying to find riches, success, and meaning through whatever voice would answer.

It’s hard to see your own life spelled out like that. Hard to admit that you’ve been moving through the world without a safety net: no friend circle, estranged biological family, no regular community, no one checking in, no one to lean on. I co-parent, I raise my son, I try to be his example — but in the quiet moments I realize I don’t have an example of my own.

Co-parenting brings you face-to-face with realities you can’t ignore. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t the schedule, or the school forms, or the hand-offs — it’s the emotional swirl happening between two parents who love the same child, but respond to him in completely different ways.

Lately I’ve been watching my son bounce between us, trying to figure out the rules of his world. And without even realizing it, he has learned something powerful:

If he expresses a big emotion, he can change the plan.

When I first learned how St. Faustina wrote about the Child Jesus in her Diary, something in me softened. I’m a parent, a co-parent, a man trying to walk in faith, trying to stay steady in a world that doesn’t always feel steady back. And the more I read Faustina, the more I understood that God wasn’t inviting me to become stronger, louder, or more “in control.”

He was inviting me to become smaller.

My ex-wife has struggled with a relationship that has ended and restarted more times than I can count. Her friends see the red flags. Her family does. I do. She even sees them herself—she has shared the pain, the drama, the disappointment.

But then something pulls her back.