I can't tell you how excited I am to share this post. What a wonderful man I am married to...
Bacon Papa here, taking the plunge into a desire I’ve had
for some time, writing a blog for The Bacon Mama or being a guest blogger? I
think that’s what you bloggers and readers call it. When I say being a guest
blogger, I mean writing with some major grammatical errors and then passing it
over to the talented Bacon Mama to edit and post. :)
You might be asking, “Why do you want to blog on the bacon mama’s
blog spot?” Well, I want to share what it is like being the bacon papa and
maybe inspire a person or two. First and foremost, I love God the Father and
aspire to be the best earthly father to my children and the best Joseph to my
beloved wife. So what’s it like to be a (kind of) stay at home father? Even
though I am working 4 days a week in my family business as a health insurance
provider (half the time out of our home office), I still make it my job to support
my wife in the area of home duties, in order to allow for her to focus on
loving and spending quality time with the family. After working all day, she
needs to refill her batteries during the weekday evenings and on the weekends.
I love taking care of my family in this way. Just like any human, I am not
perfect and there are days that I fail at this and Kelly ends up having to pick
up the slack, which she does gracefully with a smile and plenty of love. She
is truly an amazing person who I look up to, a lot. She inspires me to be
better at everything I do, because she does so much and she does it pretty
awesomely.
So back to what it’s like for the Bacon Papa. I try to ensure our
mornings on the weekdays are as peaceful as possible. Especially on the days
that we are getting Jack ready to head off to either Nana’s or school/daycare,
which he absolutely loves, I see how important it is that our mornings are
peaceful, joyful, and smooth! Lately in order to be St. Joseph to my family, I
have been spending a lot of time weekly/daily in prayer, whether that is in
adoration, saying a novena or doing the morning prayer out of the Magnificat,
which normally takes longer than just the guided prayer, because I definitely
pause throughout and enter in to deep personal prayer and spend time on my
daily intentions. I love praying for my family and our surrounding influences
in our lives, whether that be Nana and Jack’s uncles, or our great group of
friends near and far, or Mima and Papa and the Flynn family. I love praying
through our struggles and lately I have really been being called to a deep
reliance on faith as we navigate life, with all that it brings.
Okay, so some more on what it is like being married to a working mother and wife. Our
lives are a bit different than most of our surrounding friends. With two
working parents it can be pretty chaotic at times and aside from trying every day
to be centered on Christ, in order to get through the busyness that each day
can bring, I also plan, plan, plan! (The Bacon Mama is Type A so I’ve learned a
lot from her.) It is such a blessing that Kelly has the career that she has and
that she is very passionate about her vocation as a wife, mother and employee. Anyway
with my more flexible schedule, my job in life is to support and cheer on my rock-star of a wife, who (as you all know) has multiple jobs
right now, with the most important one being brewing our baby #2. Having a pregnant wife who has a lot of
responsibilities at work (but also a big heart for her family) often means grocery shopping, helping with dinner
(although Kelly’s been cooking most of the meals lately, she’s just way too
good of a cook) and always handling most of the post-dinner clean up. Together
we bathe Jack and then as a family read books, pray and tuck our little
train-loving monkey into bed. I say train-loving because last night we dressed
Jack in his PJ’s (handed down from Aunt Lisa and Uncle Mike) and this pair had
Thomas the Train up and down both legs. I think Jack was either too tired or
was having too much fun playing peekaboo and getting swooped up in mama’s arms
and sung to, because he didn’t notice that he had trains or “choo-choos” on his
legs as he went to bed. But this morning when I went in to get him out of his crib, he was sitting up
in his crib playing with his blanket (known as “nigh-nigh”). I turned on the
light and he finally saw the trains and was immediately happy. He found
each train, pointed to it and said “choo-choo”….it was great. Next he wanted to
share it with mama so we shut off the amazing sound machine (highly recommend
one of these for any expecting parents), turned off the light and went to go
show mama, which he was super excited about. Typically every morning we walk
to mama and papa’s room and jump in bed with mama before we get our day going.
It’s a pretty special moment. Family is such a gift and I am so thankful for
our little bacon clan and really looking forward to bringing into our little
home bacon #2.
I would like to close this with a shout out to other bacon papas,
first, it’s okay to be a bacon papa and support your wife, as long as she is
happy with what she is pursuing. Take pride in your vocation has a husband and
father and do it with passion, because your role in your family is as important
as being the main earner in the family. Now to all the readers out there, life
is full of many different experiences: joys, sorrows, tears, and laughter, so I
end with this…I encourage all to read the book of Psalms. Scripture is truly a
gift from God and I encourage you to get in and read those words. I promise you
that it will bring you joy in times of sorrow and it will bring you even more
joy in the times of joy. Give thanks for this day and the very breath you are
breathing while reading this. I hope you enjoyed this little interjection from
the Bacon Papa.
Bacon Papa, out.
