My grandfather scratched a question into the wood of a grain bin on his farm in Illinois. Four words that shaped the way three generations of Menolds have thought about work, about stewardship, about what it means to do anything at all.
Is There A Better Way Of Doing It?
ITABWODI.
I have written about how that question rewrote a $70M construction company. How it became the operating principle of my leadership, the filter I run decisions through, the name of the brand I am building. What I have not written about is where the question matters most.
It matters most with the five people I am raising.
The default setting of a big family
There is a quiet temptation when you have five kids, and it looks like efficiency. You start to standardize. One bedtime. One rule. One schedule. One volume of voice. One set of expectations. One dad-sermon you rotate across all five children at the dinner table, confident you are being fair.
You are not being fair. You are being tired.
Fairness is not giving every kid the same thing. Fairness is giving every kid what they actually need. A good farmer does not water a cactus the same as a tomato plant. A good father does not shepherd a Tate the same as a Parlyn.
The ITABWODI question, applied to parenting, is not how do I run my household more efficiently? It is what is the better way to father this child in this season? And that question has to be asked five times, not once.
Tate
Tate is the oldest. He is finding his way.
What the world means when it says "finding his way" is different from what Scripture means. The world means he is trying jobs, picking a lane, figuring out what he wants. That is all fine. But what Scripture means is harder — and what I pray for him weighs more. Is he finding that his life is not his own? Is he finding that he was bought at a price? Is he finding that the peace he is chasing in every new thing has a Name?
My job with Tate is not to pick his lane for him. It is to keep pointing him toward the Shepherd who owns every lane.
ITABWODI with Tate looks like this: fewer lectures, more questions. Instead of here is what you should do, it is what are you sensing the Lord doing? Where do you feel Him stirring you? What are you avoiding that He is asking of you? I am learning — slowly, clumsily — to father him more like a pastor than a manager. The managing years are mostly over. The discipling years have begun.
Oliver
Oliver is my second son. He is inside the chapter a lot of young men know — the chapter where the plans are loose and the path is uncertain and the bench around you is thinner than you expected. He has hit some opposition at work. Some of it fair. Some of it not. He is figuring out how to hold his head up under weight he did not ask for.
The father-temptation with a son in this season is to fix it. Call the manager. Make the call he will not make for himself. Solve the problem and hand him the solution on a plate.
That is not love. That is protection from the exact thing that will form him.
ITABWODI with Ollie right now is how do I stay close enough to walk with him and far enough to let him carry it? I want to be the father who sits next to him on the porch when the day is over, not the one who makes the day easier than it is supposed to be. James 1 says count it joy when you meet trials of various kinds, because the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Steadfastness is not a gift. It is forged. And the forge is exactly what I would rip him out of if I could.
So I pray. I ask. I listen. And I let the Lord do the kind of work in my son that I am not qualified to do.
Aribella
Aribella is my middle daughter. And the middle is its own country.
If you have a middle child you know — she is neither the oldest getting the firsts, nor the youngest getting the attention. She is in between. She watches. She absorbs. She notices things the rest of us miss. And she can disappear in a crowded room unless someone deliberately goes to find her.
ITABWODI with Aribella is almost entirely about intentionality. The better way of doing it is to see her. To pull her into the conversation when she is holding back. To sit next to her on the couch for no reason. To ask her the question nobody else thought to ask.
Song of Solomon 2:15 says catch the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vineyards. The little foxes in a middle child's life are not always the dramatic ones. Sometimes the fox is simply invisibility. I will not let that fox have my daughter.
Finlay
Finlay is in a college-decisions season. Which means right now, every weekend, there is a list somewhere in the house — schools, majors, campus visits, financial aid letters, pro-con columns written in her handwriting.
The cultural script on this moment is noisy. Follow your passion. Pick the best school that takes you. Go where you will make the most money. Go where you will have the most fun. Go where your friends are going.
The ITABWODI question for Finlay cuts under all of that: what is the better way of making this decision? And the better way, I have come to believe, is not a better pros-and-cons sheet. It is a better filter.
- Ability — where has God gifted her?
- Affinity — where does her heart come alive?
- Opportunity — where is the door actually open?
Those three circles are how J.D. Greear preaches a sermon on calling, and they are how I want my daughter to make decisions for the rest of her life. This college decision is the first time she will use that filter. It will not be the last.
My job is not to pick her school. My job is to hand her the filter and let her practice with me in the room.
Parlyn
Parlyn is my youngest. She hates attention.
Which is hilarious, because God seems to be specifically assembling a life for her that will require it. She has a spirit that hushes a room when she finally speaks. She has a tenderness that draws people. She has a pattern of seeing things the rest of us walk right past. And she would rather hide than be pointed at.
Moses said I am slow of speech and of tongue. Jeremiah said I am only a youth. Gideon said my clan is the weakest and I am the least. The pattern in Scripture is God calling the exact person who would rather be invisible. He specializes in this. He takes the one who hates attention and builds a life that requires it — not to humiliate her, but because His strength is made perfect in her weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
My job with Parlyn is not to pull her into the spotlight. My job is to tell her the truth about herself, so that when the Lord pulls her in, she has a better story about what is happening than the one the enemy will try to hand her.
The four-question filter I run every decision through
When I am stuck with any of the five — when I am weighing a punishment, a privilege, a conversation, a college visit, a ride-along on a CHE job site — I run the same four questions I run on every business decision.
1. Is this mine to carry? Some of what my kids do is theirs. I do not need to absorb it. I need to let them feel the weight of their own choices so the character gets built.
2. Does this move a current priority forward? My current priorities with each of them are not the same. For Tate it is discipleship. For Ollie it is steadfastness. For Aribella it is being seen. For Finlay it is the calling filter. For Parlyn it is identity.
3. What am I saying no to if I say yes? Every yes with a kid is a no to something else. If I say yes to another hour at the office, I am saying no to a conversation on the porch. If I say yes to one kid's game, I am saying no to another kid's quiet moment. Parenting is a continuous negotiation between competing yeses. Name the cost.
4. ITABWODI — is there a better way of doing it? Always.
The stewardship question
There is a line in an old note in my files that I keep coming back to. Am I present or residual?
Residual fathering is what is left over after the meetings, the projects, the phone calls, the deals. Present fathering is what gets scheduled first and protected hardest. Most of us are residual fathers and we call ourselves present ones because we were in the building.
The ITABWODI question turns a light on that. Is there a better way of doing it? Yes. Put the phone down. Get on the floor. Ask the second question. Wait for the real answer. Pray with her before bed. Read Scripture with him on a Saturday morning. Take her on the drive. Let him do the job himself while you watch.
The parable of the talents was always about stewardship. I have been entrusted with five. The question is not whether I will provide for them. The question is whether I will invest in them in a way that multiplies what God put inside them.
I do not want to bury the talent. I want to improve it.
Five kids. One question.
Is there a better way of doing it?
Most days, yes. And by grace, I am going to find it.