Posts tagged: family Archive

Silliness and Wrecklessness

2026-06-07T18:39:57Z

I talked with my oldest daughter about silliness and wrecklessness today. She and her sister were playing too rough at bedtime and the younger slapped the older one pretty hard. It wasn’t malicious, they’re 4 and 6, they were just being silly but without respect for reality, they were tired, and have been tired for a while (thus the bedtime) and in their silliness and tiredness their actions became wrekless. This is what I explained to her, and she paused and said “Dad, what is wreckless?” and oh man did my heart melt… I’m so proud of her for asking that question, and feeling comfortable to do so in the middle of our conversation made me feel good as her dad.

The Ridiculous Blessing of the Lord

2026-02-12T04:25:38Z

I went to sit down this morning with a cup of coffee and do a meditation like I try to do at least a few times a week. I meditate on the Bible, on God’s word because I believe it is God’s word - and what a shallow belief it’d be if I knew nothing about the Word. For the last few years this has been the normal way I spend time with Jesus, and he has brought comfort and guidance to me, not through new knowledge necessarily, but through perspective and wisdom.

This feels almost like a lazy way out of hardened theological study, a practice I hope to come back to before too long, but through semi-regular reflection, meditation, and writing Jesus has done a lot of good to my heart.

I hope it wouldn’t take years of the Lord’s work on my heart to recognize the blessing in my life, but left to my own devices I certainly look at what he’s given me and still desire more. So, that wish is certainly nothing more than a fancy - and praise God for that, because it only further shows my need for him. He works on me every day and by God’s grace the blessings in my life are pretty flipping clear.

The passage I was going to meditate on this morning was 2 Corinthians 1:5

2 Corinthians 1:5

For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, thus through Christ our comfort overflows also.

By God’s grace, “suffering”" isn’t something I feel very “connected to” - it’s not something I feel a deep current need to meditate on (right now). I have been brought through many trials, just like a lot of people, and my story isn’t full of only stupendous highs, but I do feel like it’s a bit easier for me today to resonate with Paul’s words in Romans 8.

Romans 8:18

For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us.

In God’s good grace on my life he is showing me day by day the glory that will be revealed. He shows me through daily blessing of work - where my family is more-than-provided for via gifts and talents he’s given me. He shows me through my family, who love me in my mistakes and celebrate my wins. He shows me through my wife specifically, who wants my holiness more than my happiness but in that support she often increases both.

There are sufferings in my life that Jesus has used as a means to bring comfort to others - I think that’s one of the points of the larger 2 Corinthians passage. However, in that same breath in the quietness of my office with this cup of mushroom-coffee, I can say that the sufferings he’s brought me through pale in comparison to just the glory he has already revealed to me, and that means the glory “that is about to be revealed” can be only greater.

The blessing of the Lord on my life and family is beyond insane. And my prayer is just that I (and my family) would see it. This is on my mind because of a simple event the other day - an interview and job-offer. I didn’t take this job, if you’re new here I’m in Cat Autonomy 2.0 (a story of its own filled with divine grace and provision). However, getting a job isn’t exactly an easy thing right now - and in the Lord’s blessing on my life I’ve had multiple opportunities. I mentioned the offer to my wife and her only response was “The Lord is too good to us”. And she’s right - he is.

Praise God for blessings, and praise him for sufferings. I pray today for myself he keeps my eyes and heart focused on what I can do with excellence and for his glory. I also pray for continued blessing and favor - it isn’t a sin to want things to be going well… May God bring peace and favor to anyone reading this - favor through adoption and peace through the strength and power of the creator-God.

Travel Entertainment For Kids

2025-06-01T07:15:42Z

We are quickly becomming a Great Wolf Lodge family… we’ve got several times over the last couple years, and I only forsee more going forward for the next 5-8 years or so. We also travel to see family every now and then and so when we do I’m in charge of kid’s entertainment… Normally we use a simple setup for each kid that basically consists of an old android phone with syncthing and VLC…

In my homelab I host an instance of tdarr which is a tool batch processing media files - say you have a folder of tv shows encoded in h.264 and you want to re-encode to h.265 for space savings - tdarr is a great tool. So what I do is configure a “library” in tdarr (basically a folder of media), and then I hand-select the tv shows or movies the kids might want for the trip into that folder. tdarr compresses the media quite a bit and then that folder is also the syncthing back-end so the compressed media is just automatically updated and synced to the phones when on our home network.

This has allowed me to put almost anything the girls might want onto hand-held devices that fit in their backpacks and will work without an internet connection!