Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal

INTRODUCTION

A Declaration of Independence

Well, let’s just come out and say it: I have no business writing the book you are reading right now. A book on family by a thirty-two-year-old with small kids and minimal life experience? It’s like a preschooler saying, Hey, I can count! Let me teach you how to balance a bank account!

But that’s the thing: I’m not trying to teach you anything.

I’m declaring independence.

Independence from the insidious individualized culture we live in that has trickled down to affect every facet of our lives and that has become the poison at the root of just about every family tree.

It doesn’t matter if you are a nice and tidy religious family or a rugged nontraditional family or some other version. In the West we have the same rot festering right below the soil—same disease, different plants. And that is the disease of self being the most important thing.

This book is me putting a stake in the ground and saying, I’m out. Consider this my formal request for independence against the typical Western family story that creates consumption monsters. Built to consume. To hoard. To stockpile. To fight for their rights. To get what’s theirs. To only use our family as a launching pad for the individual success of ourselves.

Most of our families look like something out of Lord of the Flies. And we feel it. Home isn’t a safe place; it’s crushing us. We feel overwhelmed and overworked. Chaos is our new normal. But hey, we had at least one cute Instagram-worthy moment at the park with our kids, so that’s enough, right?

There has to be a better way. But let’s be clear—I’m not teaching you how to start a new country.

Our Founding Fathers declared independence in 1776, but the Constitution didn’t come until 1787, eleven years later. The Founding Fathers knew what they didn’t want to be before they knew what they wanted to be.

The zeal and passion and declaration come first before you have any shot of running a new country. You have to draw a line in the sand. They believed there was something fundamentally wrong with structuring government around a monarchy. And so they rejected it and cast a new vision.

And guess what? They got the same critiques everyone does when they step out in inexperience and young age.

Ha! Yeah, right. You guys don’t know how to start a country.

You’ll fail immediately.

You all haven’t lived enough or long enough to know anything about how the government should work.

And who knows? Perhaps even we would have made that critique of some of our Founding Fathers.

James Monroe (our fifth president) was eighteen when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary and an enormously large figure in our country’s shaping, was twenty-one. James Madison was twenty-five. And the principle author, Thomas Jefferson, was thirty-three.

They believed there was a new way forward, and they were willing to call out the status quo and believe there could be something better.

This book draws a line in the sand. I know what we don’t want, and I know the absolute center of the poison that’s killing us all. And I’m rejecting it. There is something more, and there is something better. I see a better vision and a future and a promise found in the ancient text of the Scriptures (the Bible) that call us to a new place.

Join me in finding a completely new yet ancient way to do family. It just might change everything.

ONE

A Recent History of Events

Downtown Jerusalem. The heart of Israel. Friday night.

Just a few hours before, my wife, Alyssa, and I had gotten off a very long international flight from New York. This was my first time in Israel. Before we left the States, our friends the Pryors, the ones who invited us and were already there, said, Hey, meet us at this place in downtown Jerusalem when you land. If you can’t find it, just ask the cab driver.

Our phones didn’t work internationally, so we got into the cab at the airport with nothing but a name and a picture on our phone of a map. Surprisingly, it all worked out and we made it to the heart of Jerusalem, just a few blocks from Old Town.

Now, I’m not quite sure what I was expecting Israel and Jerusalem to look like—but sadly, due to no context, and too many sword-and-sandal Jesus-style movies, I was expecting the first century. But it was obviously the twenty-first, and we rolled into a hustling, bustling metropolis that didn’t seem much different from a Manhattan side street or a Seattle thoroughfare—with obvious differences of language and culture.

We pulled up to the curb where our friends and mentors were waving us down. It’s still surreal to think we successfully met up with them in another country at a specific place and time with no way to communicate during our travels. But we did it.

We walked up to their apartment with our huge bags in tow, then freshened up before joining them about an hour later for dinner.

It was a common, and normal, and actually very familiar scene at the restaurant:

Alyssa and I and a few other families—old, young, kids running around. There were plates of food, silverware, and all the normal signposts of the things we basically do at dinners every night of our lives. It seemed like a typical meal.

Then right when I was about to pick up my fork to start eating, the whole crew started singing and yelling (and hitting the table!) in unison, Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shabbat shabbat shabbaaaaatttt shalllllom.

I had no idea what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what they were saying, but within about .6 seconds I was trying to phonetically and loudly repeat their words. I was yelling, hitting the table, and I wanted in. All I knew was this felt very much like what I would call a party. You know that scene in Dead Poet’s Society where all the students begin marching in circles in unison and they can’t help it? I felt like that.

Then the fathers and mothers stood up and blessed their children. And not just the little kids but their teenage daughters and sons. And I mean blessing. There was standing involved, hands placed on heads, eye contact (awkward, right?), and more.

And what struck me the most was that the teenagers weren’t recoiling. They weren’t embarrassed. I was expecting the classic refrain, Daaaadddd, stopppppp as their father and mother placed their hands on their heads and blessed them with love. Scripture. Blessings.

And the real big game changer? We stayed there for almost a month—and this is what they did every Friday night. It was expected.

It all seemed so strange and different to me. Also, why were the teenagers even here? Wasn’t Friday night the most valuable time of the week? Shouldn’t they be out at the movies or downtown with their friends? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was true of everyone at the table, and I wondered how often, in our modern, Western downtown cities, we would find a few families over the size of twenty putting away all distractions and saying yes to each other for a feast and sacred meal every Friday night.

Let’s back up and give the experience a little more context. We had some friends who lived in Jerusalem part time and had invited us to come stay with them to enjoy their company and friendships and the city and culture. They sent an email that started with, If you’re reading this, then that means we are . . . , which is also eerily close to how I imagine most spy emails start, so I got excited.

And then we hopped on a plane.

Alyssa was five months pregnant with Kinsley, our first, so as new parents-to-be we were wide-eyed, with a mix of shock and horror and delight and expectancy in every situation we found ourselves in. We were on the lookout for how we would do this family thing.

As we walked around Israel during the next week, we saw things that were not common in the United States but seemed normal in Israel. Dads gathering at the park with their kids or pushing strollers down the street. Restaurants filled with families of seven or nine or twelve (grandparents, aunts, everyone included). Alyssa and I joked that in the US the restaurant limit at a table is four people. Two parents, two kids. If you have more than that and you try to come into a US establishment, you are a burden.

In Israel we routinely sat with other families at large tables, full of feasting and drinking and eating and laughing and songs. The grandparents seemed to matter. In fact, they were the ones leading or sitting at the head of many tables.

That first night in Israel, Alyssa and I realized just how special and rich and delightful it was to be there for a traditional shabbat dinner. It’s like Christmas dinner, but it happens every Friday night. Shabbat shalom. After the eating and the blessings and hands put on the kids (things that just don’t happen where I grew up), we hung out on our friends’ balcony overlooking the Jerusalem skyline. I asked my friend Jeremy what had been on my mind all night: Why did families seem so radically different, and also stronger and happier, here?

Without missing a beat, Jeremy looked at me and said, Individualism hasn’t quite seeped in as strongly here, and they see the family as one of the main places to find an identity and the primary vehicle for bringing blessing and goodness into the world. In America, Christian or secular, we just simply don’t believe that. Families are teams here, and the Scriptures are their playbook.

To which I felt confused and slightly defensive. Weren’t the Scriptures our playbook too?

But then I realized he used the word team. That wasn’t the first time I had heard him talk about family as a team, and it was starting to seem quite the X factor. That there was some secret sauce the Western, modern world had left out that more ancient cultures had been attuned to. That the hyper-individualism of our culture almost acted as a block to strong families and groups.

But let’s take a little detour to a year before that, when the seed of questioning our presumptions about family was really planted.

Back in 2012, I had the strange privilege of having a video of me talking for four and a half minutes go viral. All of a sudden I had a lot of people wanting to talk to me, to get something from me or give something to me, or wanting me to give them advice—and I wasn’t quite sure how to best steward that moment. I had just graduated from college and finished a church internship program, so my logical next step was to pursue a role in church, to be a pastor or something in that regard. But here was the problem: I inherently didn’t feel cut out for that. It felt like fitting a square peg into a round hole. I wanted to create. Make things. Think outside the box. Carve a different path. Most of the advice I was getting, however, was to go on staff at a church. Become a pastor.

But my best friend said, Hey, I know this guy named Jeremy Pryor who’s a family friend, and he runs a successful online video company in Cincinnati and loves Jesus and has an awesome family. He’s really creative and entrepreneurial, and I think it could be really illuminating to pick his brain for a few hours. Let me email him.

I lived in Washington state at the time and Jeremy lived in Ohio, so I figured we’d have a Skype call at best. But then Jeremy not only said yes, he said, I’ll come to you. I just booked a ticket for Thursday.

What was even more surprising, though, is he was the only—and I mean only—person who gave me advice that encouraged me in where I actually wanted to go. He said something different from everyone else. This thing that happened to you was really special, and you should pay attention to why it happened and how you are uniquely wired to maybe keep doing the same thing—creatively using your gifts to start conversations about Jesus on the internet. Why would you stop that and do something else?

When the meeting was over, for the first time I felt, He’s right, I could keep doing this. I kept thinking about it over the next week, and that thought was making me feel alive.

About a week after the meeting, I walked to the mailbox and saw a letter from Jeremy. Inside was a check for $10,000, with a note: I’ve thought about our meeting since we left last week. I believe in you and believe you have a peculiar and unique gift to keep doing this and I want to support you and where God is taking you. Go buy everything you need to level this up and make it something sustainable—cameras, lights, editing software, a working laptop if you need one, and anything else.

Not to be too vulnerable here, but my first thought was, Is this what a true father is like? because I didn’t really know the answer to that question.

And it was not just about the money. I was struck by the affirmation. The investing spirit. The support. The belief.

First, that’s a lot of money to anyone I know. But it was insane to me. I grew up on welfare and food stamps, and at that point I was twenty-two, living with ten other guys, sleeping on a homemade bunkbed, paying $200 a month rent (kind of a deal, I know!).

Just a few months before this moment, I had discovered an overdraft charge on my bank when I tried to buy some Peachie O’s gummy candy and an AriZona Arnold Palmer iced tea (I think the total was $3.17), while filling up on gas. (Worth it by the way! Arnold Palmer is life.)

What I found even more striking was that Jeremy didn’t ask for anything in return. He was just living generously, kingdom minded, and investing and following the Lord’s Spirit and prompting. In fact, we didn’t even talk after this! Life just moved on with his incredible investment and support of me. But two years later Alyssa and I found ourselves in a small town in Ohio. I was speaking at a conference in Harrison and remembered that Jeremy lived nearby.

It was delayed and long overdue, but we finally met up with Jeremy and his wife, April, at a Cracker Barrel (who knew you could get a nineteen-plate breakfast with every possible breakfast food known to man for six dollars? And those cheese grits!). If our first conversation changed my life from a vocational standpoint, this second one changed it from a family and marriage standpoint.

Have you ever had those conversations over a meal or with others where you feel like you’re fully coming alive? It’s so stimulating and intriguing and revelatory that you come away a different person? Something unlocks and clicks in a way that you can’t unsee it? Yeah, this was that moment.

And it wasn’t even like there was a specific purpose or goal to the conversation. We just started talking, and Alyssa and I kept peppering them with questions. As we asked them questions about their family and life in Cincinnati, everything coming out of their mouths sounded so strange and alluring and different. They even called themselves Team Pryor.

From their description we sensed the