Same Facts, Different Meaning

A Story About How Love Turned Work into Family Legacy

This year I am trying to see every moment through one question. Is this love or fear? That’s what my Heart-Strong adventure is about. I’m exploring where love and fear show up in our world, especially for men. And I’m asking how freeing men from fear heals people, communities, and systems.

To do that I feel like every moment matters. And I am trying to carry that lens into everything. An interaction with a clerk at the store. A talk with a friend. A hard moment with my wife. A planning call. How I view my work.

And Heart-Strong didn’t just change how I see my work. It changed the work I do.

For seven years my wife and I’ve run strategy projects through our small firm, BIG Acts. I love that work. We help leaders line up vision, purpose, pillars, and values. The challenge with the work is it requires long blocks of time. This year I needed more room for exploring and sharing. I stopped chasing new projects. I picked work with more flexibility. Construction and home renovation.

One of those projects is my parents’ house. It is the house I grew up in. And I get to work with my dad.

While wrestling with a new window, I was reminded of an important truth. The same facts can have different stories. We get to choose how we see it, and that choice changes how we show up.

Changing out 40-year-old windows is not easy. My dad and I were struggling. At the height of a frustrating moment, my dad got a spam call. He answered and snapped. He was short and mean with the person. He rarely does that.

Under his snap I could hear the fear. He knows time is real. He often says he might have five or ten good years left. He has a picture in his head of being free to do whatever he wants at this age. The project looked like it was stealing that freedom. It looked like an obligation. It felt like a list of “have to do’s”.

The funny thing is that what he wants was actually right in front of him. Time with his son. He just did not see it yet.

That night my wife and I talked about how to name all of this with care. The next day we sat with my parents at the table.

I told my dad what I was seeing. “Yesterday we fought a stuck window, and that spam caller set off a snap that was not about the call. It was the weight of years of deferred maintenance and a house that is not set up for aging in place. We have talked about new windows since 2022. Many of these forty-year-old panes barely work. When you hold time the way you do, ‘maybe five or ten good years’, important work can start to feel really heavy. We have slipped into have to.”

I named the fear I thought was under it. “You had a picture of freedom at this age. The project looked like it was stealing that freedom. The funny thing is that how you tell me you want to be spending your time is right here in front of you. Time with your son.”

“What if you change the frame. What if this is time together. What if this is a chance to leave something that lasts.”

I drew a line through our family. “Your father helped shape this home with you. You have carried it since. Now I get to work on it with you. One day your grandson can add his own hands with me. Every window we set, every piece of siding we replace, and ever wall we open up becomes part of that story. This is not a punch list. This is a legacy.”

The next day when we sat down to plan for the upcoming week, I could see a huge shift in my dad. There was a sense of ease and contentment. For years he resisted the work the house needed. Not only the deferred maintenance he kept avoiding, but also the fact that the house was not set up for my parents to age in place.

The work did not change. My dad’s lens did. From fear to love. He was now looking at the same list through a love-based lens. Not obligation. Contribution. Not losing time. Making time count.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to do. We are replacing more than 20 windows. We are combining the two small bedrooms my sister and I had into one larger room.

We will add a stair lift to make the climb safer. We are renovating the bathroom so we can move the laundry up from the basement. We will replace siding and lay down stain. And the back deck may become a simple three-season room. It will likely take a year or more.

Here’s what’s staying with me from this experience. Most moments in life are neutral. The story we tell is not.

Fear says there is not enough time. Love says we have this time together today.

Fear says this is a burden and a drain. Love says this is a chance to build a legacy of a home built by four generations.

Here is what I believe. Time in our current human bodies is real. Lists are long. And viewing things through the lens of love changes how they feel.

When I lead with love, the same task feels like a chance to serve. To connect. When I lead with fear, it feels like a drain. A waste of my time. I am learning that the story I choose shapes the world I help build.

If this brings someone or something to mind, how might you write the love-based version of that scene? If you want to share it, I would be honored to read it.

P.S. It’s been fun to re-witness parts of my life through the process.

Remnants of the super hero wall paper I choose when I was 5.

A hole in the wall in my sister’s room. Likely from her foot and likely because she was mad at me. I wonder for what?

Tracking the height of my niece when she was 10. She is now 26.