Essential Families

The Power of Freedom As a Father of 3, I have seen the true Power of Freedom and the joy it brings to my children’s faces. The Freedoms they received from taking their first steps, saying there first words and/or riding their bikes without the need of training wheels. These freedoms, and many more, they have already experienced in life. But the ultimate freedom that they enjoy is the freedom to choose. If we stop and think about it for a second each action above came from a choice. The first action of learning how to walk, they chose to overcome the bodily restraints placed on them as an infant. But how did they do that, how did they obtain such freedom to walk? Was freedom just handed to them? Was it just something they automatically had? Obviously not!! From the time they were born their bodies had to start using their muscles and their brains had to start making certain connections and destroying others in order to have the ability to just move, let alone balance or brace themse...

We have all been told that we must  Stand for Something or Fall for Anything .  With the current state of our Local, National and World cultures constantly changing and shifting like the wind, this notion and logic at its surface makes sense and is to many, the key to how they deal with their surroundings. Although I do believe that we must stand for something I think the logic has caused many of the issues we are actually witnessing in this day and age. All though I’m not normally one to delve into the political arena, I would like to use the current state of our political divide to highlight a major point as to why the idea of  Standing for Something or Fall for Anything  is an outdated ideology, or at least needs to be clarified.    ...

Everyday is the same, I wake up, take a shower, put my clothes on, and get ready for the day. Then I  try to play with the kids, and attempt to eat breakfast when time allows. But, then in a blink of an eye I have to face you. I have to stare you down and find the courage inside to turn that little round knob that you hold, with all it's glimmer and glory, yet I dislike the very thought of reaching out and grasping it. Now, if but for a moment I think of what extending my hand means. It means that I have to leave my family behind and walk into the world outside, it means that by walking through that threshold I have to miss my children growing up, it means that I have to say goodbye to the ones that I hold most near and dear to my heart. Door in this moment, if I were able, I would fight, I would tell you no and stand up to you in the very way I protect my family. But deep down I know I must go, I must take that step into the world and leave the ones I love behind. Ye...

As we travel through this journey called life, we tend to feel as if we are traveling on a winding road that sometimes feels like we are going up and sometimes we feel like we are falling completely of the side of the cliff, just tumbling down to the seemingly never ending abyss. As we continue on the journey we come into contact with many people who help us to be better than we are and sometimes we find ourselves surrounded by those who drag us down to deep despair and we always wonder how we got there in the first place. Why is this? Why is life so challenging at times and in other instances it feels like we are floating on clouds? Why must we have these challenges and should we allow them to control who we are? Do you see these challenges as stumbling blocks or an all out brick wall stopping you from becoming the person you want to become? The answer to these questions are something that we all must find within ourselves and when we find and answer each one of them honestl...

        Is patience something you have to work on or is it something that people are just born with? I learned last night that no matter how much patience you are born with or you think you might have there are always those moments were you get more impatient in your life then you thought possible. A lot of the time we’re impatient for absolutely no reason at all. Case in point, last night I became very impatient with my son. There was no reason for my impatience, there was nothing different going on than usual. I wasn’t stressed out at all; he wasn’t doing anything to cause me to be impatient with him. It just happened out of nowhere, I just felt so impatient with him for no reason at all. But the biggest thing that bugged me the most was that I couldn’t make it go away. Now I’m not trying to boast and but if you’d ask my wife I am a very patient man, especially when it comes to babies. I never get upset, no matter how fussy they get. So, back to last nig...

How is success measured?  What does it mean to you? Are you only successful when other people think you are?                What defines success? There is no defining answer on what success truly is. Most people I've come into contact with view success as only attainable when you reach a certain age or status in life. But everyone defines success differently and there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, is when people try to push what they think success means onto someone else and say that that other person is not successful. Now let’s take a mother for example, it doesn’t matter how many kids you have, if you have one or ten, you are still a mother.  But in the world we live in I have heard people say “She’s not going to be successful in life”, “She’s going to have to take care of her kids for the rest of her life” or “She’ll be too busy to accomplish anything”. Now these statements just make ...

At different points in our lives we start to realize that we are not being who we are or who we can become. We start losing focus on the things that should be more important to us. We start planning our future, but forget the real reason or what we are planning for. We start to focus on  worldly obsession or monetary items that ultimately have no value in the big scheme of things. With all this stuff in our way we start running from who we are and the responsibilities that we have, because we think we are too busy to fulfill them. But in all reality most of the things we do are busy work, to make us think we are busy, but we really are not accomplishing anything. So I say " It's time to STOP running " and time to start using our time and talents to better the world in which we live.  If you don't like the world you live in " CHANGE IT " stop running!!! -Daniel Baker

A simple but profound question. I have heard this question in many different ways and places over the past couple of years. My simple answer to this question comes in the form of a question: What are you doing within yourselves to help bring peace to this world?