Choosing a name is really hard! The decision feels so consequential. You are giving your child something that will be with them for the rest of their life. Names have meanings, too. So, you’re giving them a name that carries something with it as well. It’s heavy!

The premise of Family Man was to professionally record and produce the songs I had written for my sons. I wanted them to have these songs until the end of time in a form they could be proud of and cherish. I wrote these songs out of the heart of a father who tries very hard to be the best father I can be. But, I am a sinner which means I get it wrong more than I probably get it right. I will be honest and say that it weighs on me.

I grew up Baptist. Mary grew up Methodist. We met at the Baptist Student Union at Virginia Tech. We attended a Baptist church together in college, and we worshiped at Faith Baptist Church when we lived in Florida.

When I met Mary, she was a math major at Virginia Tech. Around that time, I think, she decided that she wanted to become a math teacher. She had done some tutoring for the athletic department, specifically some guys on the football team. She was struck by how many of them had missed the fundamentals to algebra and calculus. So, she went even crazier and decided to become a middle school math teacher, catching kids at that critical moment for the foundations of more advanced math later on in school. She was crazy enough to go out with me, so it made sense that she would be crazy enough to become a middle school math teacher.

It was 2012. Reeling from the loss of my grandfather, my dad’s dad, right before Thanksgiving, we approached Christmas with a heavy heart and a joy-filled hope. Mary was pregnant with our first child. The dream of moving back closer to our family was to start a family of our own, and it seemed that dream was coming true.

When I was in high school, my whole thought was how to get out of Danville and never have to come back. I penned the words once that “it was a dying town, and it was killing me”. It was an old town in every sense of the word. But, as I have grown up, I came to appreciate all it had been and maybe what it could become.

My mind often drifts back to the fall of 2002 when I first met Mary. I love to tell the story because I think it makes her blush, or it at least embarrasses her. But every word of it is 100% true. I was about as lonely as a guy could be. I was brokenhearted and tired of the game. Yet, I was a hopeless romantic in every sense.

In 2009, I had started leading worship at our church in Sarasota, Faith Baptist Church. Pastor Dave asked me if I would perform a song for our Easter Sunday service. I don’t remember the exact song, but I think it was by Keith Green. Not to knock Keith Green, but I remember getting the song to listen to it. I made it about 20 or 30 seconds into it and thought, “I can’t do this song.” At this point, I was scrambling! If I was going to tell Pastor Dave I wouldn’t do this song, I had to come up with a song to take its place.