The best way to describe me for the majority of my adult and married life is this: Arrogant.
I still suffer under that self-inflicted moniker quite a bit. The difference is that, since January 13, 2013, I have been making a concerted effort – albeit filled with fits and starts the first year (and ongoing, just fewer and farther between) – to change.
That was the day I went to confession for two hours and confessed my sins relative to every single one of the Ten Commandments – I had broken them all since my Baptism in 1995.
I’m not saying that I committed adultery or murdered somebody, but as the Church reminds us of what Jesus teaches (Matthew 5:28) in an honest discernment and Examination of Conscience, I discovered that I had broken the spirit of those laws – egregiously.
Let me flashback a little…
I wrote poetry as a teenager, rather prolifically, and when I was about to enter college I knew I was supposed to write books. I still have the first draft of a few chapters of a book I called “Cake,” which I thought would be a best seller. Then I got to college and realized every guy I knew had crazy girlfriends and wouldn’t want to read a book about one – no matter how autobiographical it was. So I shelved it. The book bug stayed with me, and I never knew why. I mean, why shouldn’t I want to be an astronaut, instead?
I’ve always done well in English and writing and speaking, so it seemed natural – but all the ideas I had to write about seemed flat, or stale, or just a flash in the pan idea based on some temporary passion of mine.
After Cake, in succession, I started and failed to complete books about…
… terrorists that brought about peace because of their devastating Gravity Bomb;
…the multiple illicit relationships I had in my young adulthood;
…the process I went through as I converted from Atheist to Roman Catholic over many years;
…a secret anti-terrorist organization that used terrorism to defeat terrorists – all communicated to militants through homilies at Roman Catholic masses by the Pope, Bishops and Priests;
…the dysfunctional childhood and family I grew up in;
… the way words are used nowadays, contrary to their actual meaning;
… the spectrum of political ideologies based on my days as a political consultant and blogger;
…my father’s legacy;
… parenting in the social media age.
I even failed to compile a book of all my poetry, some 400 poems, even though one is already printed and bound in a binder, ready for submission.
A few years later I discovered I had a talent for speaking in public. In fact, I adored it, and thrived on the energy from a crowd of twenty or twenty thousand. As an upstart motivational speaker, I emulated Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey, Earl Nightingale, and all the big names…and I pretty much copied their stuff when I spoke, throwing in my own personal stories from my (what I thought was long) then short life.
Throughout the nineteen nineties, I knew I was supposed to be speaking and writing. When I was baptized and came into the Catholic Church in 1995, I thought clarity would come and I could ditch my sales job, be an entrepreneur with my business ideas, and pursue my speaking and writing careers.
Instead, I got married on November 9, 1996 and I took seriously my obligation as a newly married man and either worked for someone or, for most of the time since 1997, ran my own business that usually kept my family fed and clothed.
Usually.
On November 1, 2013 – yeah, seventeen years after I married – I attended my first retreat in a decade. Facilitated by Father Albert Haase, who had been my Spiritual Director for a few months by that time, this retreat focused on discovering and pursuing, and ultimately living the Spiritual Life. Before the retreat started, I set the goal to “Learn what God wants me to do with my life” at this retreat. I was 44 years old.
The retreat was wrapping up a significant year for me. In early January, I was overcome with a sense of discontent; the deep-seeded feeling that my life needed direction. It wasn’t a mid-life crisis – I had already had that twelve years earlier when I went blind in one eye – but more of an idea that there was more that I’m supposed to be doing and, not only that, what I was doing was not the right thing. At that time I was running my successful company, Exposure Strategies, as a social media marketing and consulting firm and work for me was boring, uninspiring, and I was not giving my best.
Mid-January, then, I approached my pastor, Father Patrick Ebner, and asked him if I could schedule a confession with him – my first in over a year. He made himself available that afternoon at 2:00 o’clock, and after a two hour sacrament that consisted of my examination of conscience declaring that I had broken all ten of the Ten Commandments as the Catholic Church teaches us to know them, I received the forgiveness of My Lord, and my year was off to the races – though I did not know it then! The important thing here is to remember my retreat 10 months later in November and the goal I set for that retreat.
During the break after Father Albert’s first session of that retreat, I learned what God wants me to do with my life.
He wanted me to write and speak.
Now, I understand that doesn’t really change anything that I knew for the last twenty years or more. But for those twenty years I did not know what to write about or to speak about, and after I was gifted with Faith, I was extremely frustrated to know that God had given me the talents of speaking in public and writing, but nothing to speak or write about! The only speaking I was doing was occasional talks for local marriage preparation retreats.
But on November 2, 2013, He made the topic perfectly clear.
Father Albert sent us off from the first session with some questions:
- What are the awakenings in your life?
- What have I chosen not to be awakenings?
- What is something only I can do for God?
You’ll have to get Father Albert’s book or go to a retreat to get the meat behind those potatoes, and what struck me most before Father Albert sent us off was the story he told that happened when he was a young Friar, and the struggles he was having – so much so that he was considering leaving the Franciscan Order.
Father Albert spoke about meeting with the Abbot and exclaiming how frustrated he was because he wasn’t like Saint Francis in any way. He described all his faults and shortcomings, and admitted defeat in his ability to be a Franciscan Friar. Then he said the old man looked at him and said, “Albert, God already has a Saint Francis. He would be tickled pink to have an Albert.”
And that’s when not only did my life change, but I could assign meaning to my life over the last twenty years.
The first thing I did in my notes during the break is write down all the things that I was that God already has:
All of these were things that I identified myself as, relative to what someone might identify me as or I might call myself, if I were honest. Lots of it was very unflattering – but it was true. , and more than one had to do with my self-righteous, indignant, arrogant, uppity self.
Then, on the next page, I wrote down the Awakenings that have happened in my life – things that I could consider specific direction from God about what He wanted my life to be for Him.The page actually goes on to the back, and then I listed several things that I had chosen to not consider Awakenings when they happened, but most probably were.
I then asked myself what doesn’t God have, that he would be tickled pink to have? Well, the answer was me: Kristofer Dylan Cowles.
And the only thing left from all the things in my life I had tried, wanted, or faked my way into being that were things God did not need were the things I was really good at – things I neither faked my way into, or wanted, or knew how to do twenty-five years ago.
Through the weekend this message from God became very clear, and His instructions were more clearer, finally culminating in my understanding that he wanted me to speak and write about what I had learned in the last 18 years since my baptism about being a Catholic Man, Husband, and Dad.
I meditated more and discerned as the weekend went along to help me determine that Man, Husband, Dad was where I was supposed to be. But there was a huge chunk of me still in the way…
I had figured out that God had told me half a lifetime ago what he wanted me to do – be a speaker and author – and that He had set about training me in those areas that he wanted me to share and teach people about through my speaking and writing over the following quarter century.
I was ill-qualified, in fact grossly unqualified, and certainly untrained to be a Man, a Husband, and a Dad when God first told me to be a speaker and an author.
I wasn’t event Catholic. In fact, I was an Atheist when the desire to write and speak was written on my heart. And I had no Man, Husband, or Dad in my life and hadn’t since I was six, if even then.
Since April 15, 1995, the day I was baptized and came into the Catholic Church, my education on how to be a Catholic Man, Husband, and Dad has come from the trenches of fighting to be those things – and in many cases fighting to not become what I had learned from my family – and instead learning from the people in my life who I wanted to emulate, and relying heavily on an understanding from God that I was doing the right thing.
All of this, so that I can help other people be, raise and form Catholic Men, Husbands, and Dads.
For most of my life I wanted to be famous, rich, powerful and respected by anonymous millions and have a enduring, history-changing impact on humanity. That’s what I thought speakers and writers were. Now, thankfully, God has whittled those desires down to the last one on the list: Be a ManHusbandDad.
But He has a sense of humor I am slowly coming to understand. He has given me talents for writing and speaking, yes, and when I left that retreat I knew for certain I would be world-famous as an advocate for Men, Husbands, and Dads in a matter of months.
It didn’t happen, and still hasn’t.
Granted, I have written over one hundred thousand worlds, basically throwing up on paper everything I know that seemed to be what friends have been asking me about for a long time: How to be a Man, Husband, and Dad. Somehow I’ve gotten good at those vocations and people have asked for advice, so I figured it was time for me to go big time.
For almost two years after that retreat, God allowed me to let my ego and narcissism to get in the way while I worked on developing web sites, videos, books and all sorts of material to spread the ManHusbandDad message. Finally, probably tired of me wasting my time, He spoke harshly to me to stop, and BE what HE wanted me to BE – first. And maybe the other stuff would come, or not.
What he really wanted me to be is a Man, Husband, and Dad for Him, my Wife, and my Children.
I was wrong about BEING a Author and a Speaker. Those are things He may grant me the privilege of DOING in order to support me BEING the ManHusbandDad I am supposed to be. But I do other work in order to support my being right now.
I am not defined by what I do, I am who I am supposed to be.
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