I’m surprised, Becky, at your sweeping dismissal of what Jordon may say in the future based on one thing that it seems you, if not misread, then at least didn’t have any background info about on which to form conclusions. Context is everything.

Sorry, it just seemed a bit harsh and reactive… and also out of character.

According to local lore, Jordon became a Bronco fan while watching the Raiders beat them on Monday night. If the Broncos had somehow won that game, Jordon could have become a L.A. Raider fan.

The idea of an overweight dog driving around in a bus appeals to me. That could be the name of our next dog

I think back to the 70′s and early 80′s when permissive parenting was the norm. I heard thousands of people say “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t” – both in and out of church circles. Part of the impetus towards creating the original “Focus on the Family – Dare to Discipline” videotapes was that sentiment.

But, I think, if Jordon had to do it over again, he’d be a Raider fan, and he’d name his dogs Madden (the large dog that barks a lot and drives a bus) and Davis (the colorblind one, who moves to LA in the middle of the night).

Becky, it may have been just me but I don’t think that Jordan was prescribing a viewpoint, only sharing his own experiences with Wendy and the boys.

I think you may be reading more into the comment than what was intended.

First of all the person who made these comments has told many other people that he had them. He is very unhappily married and is an unhappy father and doesn’t care if the world knows about it. He knows that I disagree with him and that it bothers me when he says it. Not only does he know that I disagree with him but he even asked me when I was going to post it. So when I was drafting this post up last week, he saw an excerpt well ahead of time.

As for my own doubts. I thought long and hard before proposing and marrying Wendy. We dated for a number of years and had a long engagement. I understood the consequences of what I was going to do and I worked through the baggage that I carried into it. Same thing with fatherhood. We spent a couple of years thinking of marriage before Mark came into our lives and then there were some miscarriages before Ollie was born. Do I have doubts about those choices? No, I really don’t. There are consequences to choices and all choices have a cost but I don’t have any doubts those that I talked about.

I analyze and adapt how I interact within those relationships all of the time. Parenting calls for a balance between compassion, flexibility, and boundaries. I have changed how I am as a husband as well depending on what Wendy needs from me. At the same time I don’t have any doubts on my decision to enter into those relationships with them. In fact I am more sure of those decisions on a daily basis.

Sorry if you find that so offensive.

So when your friend admitted this to you, did he think you’d blog it for strangers to see? Or did you just mention it to show everyone how you have never experienced such racking doubts about choices in your life?

Personally, I think it’s okay to face these kinds of doubts head-on, and yeah — even say them out loud (hopefully to people who won’t exploit them publicly). I think anyone who has been in a serious relationship for any extended period of time has had these flashes of doubt. Now, whether or not you choose to acknowledge them, and then hopefully move past them — or just squash them with an overconfident blindness — that’s another issue.

I was just struck by how you could take such an honest admission from a friend of yours, and then juxtapose that with a Morty Seinfeld wardrobe reference in the same paragraph.

So I’m not interested in following this blog or reading Twitter updates anymore, if this is the kind of positioning you’re going to take in your posts.

I think, like you that there are a lot of things that I would be glad to do over again the same way. My marriage has been one of the best things in my life, I’ve gotten to do things that contributed to the good of the world, my kids are great in their own ways.

If I could change things, I’d go back to when everything didn’t ache so much after exercise! To when my heart didn’t do its silly little pitter patter dance like it seems to do some mornings.

And I might have gotten a seminary degree at a much younger age. But then I could not likely have afforded it either – either in time or money. Maybe seminary will become one of those retirement destinations for oldies like me. Maybe we should just send younger people with what we spend on ourselves. Maybe both.