Marriage
Wholesome Recreational Activities
A funny old phrase from Mormon life became a real reminder: couples need ordinary, low-pressure ways to enjoy being together.
Start where it is real
Repair the room you are actually in tonight.
Stepfamily life usually does not need a grand speech first. It needs one cleaner move: a lower voice, a private adult conversation, a child who does not have to pick sides, or a small rhythm that makes the house easier to trust.
Start with the part of family love that is under pressure right now. Then do the next honest thing before trying to solve the whole story.
Publishing rhythm
New writing three mornings a week at 7:00 AM New York time.
The rhythm is simple on purpose. The path keeps returning to the same practical question: what would help this family become safer, more honest, more repaired, and more human by tonight?
These little doors are not categories. They are small discoveries from the kind of house we are trying to build: ordinary, useful, alive, and still full of light in the corners.
Latest
Short, usable guidance for the life you are actually living.
Read when the house is tense, when your courage is thin, or when you need language that lowers the temperature.
Faith
Faith That Makes the Table Kinder
Faith matters when it makes the table kinder, the apology cleaner, the boundary wiser, and the home safer.
Stepfatherhood
Giving Yourself Without Disappearing
Stepfathers often give deeply and quietly. Sustainable love requires rhythms that keep the man from disappearing inside the role.
Faith
The Gifts I Honor and the Fear I Am Outgrowing
Ian honors the gifts of faith and family formation while naming the fear, worthiness pressure, and narrow certainty he is trying to outgrow.
Why this exists
I write from a faith that has changed shape, not disappeared.
Step Parent Path comes from divorce, remarriage, Alana, six children, old certainty, new tenderness, and a house where the dishes still have to be done. It is okay for what I believe to change. Faith still matters to me, even when it has to become quieter, more honest, and more visible in behavior than in explanation.
I am not writing as a man who has arrived. I am writing as someone still trying to become steadier in the rooms that matter: with my partner, with the children, with the old fears, and with the ordinary work of love after the old map stopped being enough.