How to Get Along With the People Who Matter Most

My dad drank three quarts of beer everyday for fourteen years. That’s why today is a day that should never have happened.

That’s him, in the front on his knees with his finger up his brother’s nose. I’m the smallest one standing with my sister.

All the men in this picture have most likely been drinking except for Pop, the oldest one on the right who quit years before this photo was taken.

This is family, for better or worse.

I wish I could tell my younger self that one day my alcoholic, non-believing-in-Jesus Dad would write a book about God and family and grace and what it means to get along with the people who matter most.

Today that book, A Family Shaped by Grace, releases in bookstores and I have cried about it, laughed about it, and then did both again when I watched this short trailer.

While the images in the video are from our family album, I know you’ll find shadows of the dreams and longings you have for your own family in here, too.

Here’s to showing grace, to having hope, and to believing that good things are yet to come.

A Family Shaped by Grace is available now!

My sister and I wrote the foreword and it was one of our most fun and humbling writing assignments all year.

Learn more here about Dad, his book, and how you can get the Best Family Summer Together Ever video bonus he created for free for everyone who buys a copy.