My wife is a full-time mental health counselor. I’m a full-time Dad. Oliver is seven and Wren is four. Olly wants to be a farmer. He's always wanting to forage or build a shelter or fish. I'm not especially handy, so I've learned right alongside him. Wren loves stuffed animals. When she’s upset, I transform my hand into the shape of a puppy. And a puppy can solve most of her problems. 

I'm a former pastor. I like my current church, but I don’t want to work in a church at this point. I want to give myself room to explore what it means, in my mid-thirties, to be a Christian. To look at my faith through new eyes and allow myself to ask the questions that are on my mind, as opposed to pushing them aside. It's hard to do that when you're up front, leading and teaching. 

Last December, I decided to go back to school to study mental health counseling. Some of my friends were like, “Wow, big change,” like I’d done a 180 or something. But others said it wasn’t surprising. As a pastor, I would meet with people one-on-one, listening and helping them through difficult circumstances in their lives. That's where I excelled. I enjoyed preaching, but I’d come alive in those conversations, the back and forth and the opportunity to be present with people and empathize with them in hardship. The difference is just serving a wider, more diverse audience that might believe, or act, or live differently from you.