"What coheres and endures"

"While we can't choose our families in that most basic sense, we choose what to make of our families every day.  When fathers are rarely home because they are pursuing big bonuses and promotions, when families eat meals in front of the television instead of the table, when parents overbook their children in countless activities and sports, then they are making choices that pull their families apart.  "If we do not serve what coheres and endures," writes Wendell Berry, "we serve what disintegrates and destroys."  Most people never wake up and decide to disintegrate their families, but we make a series of decisions over the years- most of them seemingly small and harmless and often well-intentioned- that gradually erode the bonds we have been charged as parents to maintain."
Tony Woodlief, Somewhere More Holy: Stories from a Bewildered Father, Stumbling Husband, Reluctant Handyman and Prodigal Son

Somewhere More Holy is one of those books that I keep thinking about, more than a week after I finished it.  I keep going back to those highlighted passages.  Want to read a parenting book?  Choose this one.

Somewhere More Holy can be a hard book to read.  Woodlief tells some hard stories- about his family, about his life.  But it was also a hard book because I frequently saw myself, and the illustrations from lessons that I am still learning with my family. And I am reminded that it goes all too fast.  I am running out of time.

This book is about living, in a family, in a home, in His presence.  It reminded me of how much I do wrong with my kids.  It prompts me to keep confessing and to keep forgiving.  It shows me what grace looks like, lived out, yet another time.

And it made me laugh.  Out loud. Spit your drink out- that funny!
In between the tears, that is.

That sentence, on serving "what coheres and endures"...
I'm still thinking on that one.
I think, perhaps, we all should.