Table Talks with the Tares

The first few weeks of anything good feel awkward.
Nobody walks into a gym for the first time and enjoys it. You feel clumsy, you're sore, and you wonder if people can tell you don't know what you're doing. Reading after years of scrolling works the same way. Ten quiet pages will feel slow before they feel good, and that's not necessarily a sign you picked the wrong book.
Here's the part nobody says out loud: the person who never misses a workout isn't running on discipline. Discipline is riding on top of something they've grown to love. You can train that.
We get into where to find book lists worth using, why to start with what you already enjoy, and how to pick books around what you actually want to grow in. You'll leave with a plan you can start tonight.
 
 
Resources:
Catch our first two episodes in this series: 
What if Your Best Year isn't About More Discipline? 
Why Can't I Sit Still Anymore? 
Links to help build your reading list: 
John Senior's 1000 Good Books List (free list)
Building a Home Library (free list)
BibleProject Resource Hub (free list of theology books) 
For Moms: 
Well-Read Mom Reading Club
Mother Academia  
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 186 — What if Duty and Desire Weren't Meant to be Split?  — If 194 has you thinking about training what you love, this one goes underneath it, into the older brother in all of us and why what you ought to do and what you actually want were never supposed to be at war.
 
 
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

Attention is the thing every other habit runs on.
I didn't set out to fix my attention. I set out to read more. But the days I scroll are the days I can't sit with Scripture, can't pray for ten minutes, can't hold a thought long enough to finish it. It turns out the disciplines weren't the weak spot. The muscle underneath them was.
So what if sitting still with one thing is a discipline that other disciplines rely on?
We get into what shifted for me and what I'm doing differently. Then we get practical for anyone starting from zero. A book, a time of day, a number of pages per day.
 
 
 
Resources:
Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A. Swensen, MD
Spiritual Books I’ve Read This Year: 
How God Became King by N.T. Wright
Letters to the Church by Francis Chan
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
The Overcomers: God's Vision for You to Thrive in an Age of Anxiety and Outrage by Matt Chandler
Why I Am Not a Calvinist by Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell 
Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God by Tim Keller   
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 160 — How We're Building Health Habits That Actually Stick  — We rebuilt our health the same way we're rebuilding attention, one small thing we could actually keep.
 
 
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

You are always being formed by a story. The question is whether you picked it.
Most of us chase a better year with more discipline. But habits shape what you love, and what you love shapes who you are and what you do. So real change has less to do with forcing new behavior and more to do with training what you want.
What if the year you're hoping for starts somewhere other than willpower?
This one is the framework. How people actually grow, why your affections need training as much as your mind, and why reading good books is one of the clearest ways to pick your story on purpose. Next we build the plan.
Resources:
Faouzia - You Don't Even Know Me 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 159 — Rethinking Resolutions: Why we're focusing on habits not hustle.  — If the habits and loves piece is the part you want to sit in longer, 159 takes it into goal setting, where we swap crushing checklists for cultivating the kind of people we actually want to become.
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

Some rabbit holes are worth the fall.
 
It started as a detour from the plan. Because I was bored, of course. And apparently I don't like being told what to do, even when I'm the one telling me. Then it turned into 4 days of obsessive reading. Which may or may not have been followed by watching the 3-part trilogy. Any guesses on the story? Tune in for the escapade and how I’ve convinced myself some obsessions are good.
 
 
 
Resources:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men by Anthony Esolen   
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott 
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 186 — What if Duty and Desire Weren't Meant to be Split? — If chasing something just because you want to feels a little irresponsible, 186 sits in the tension between what you should be doing and what you actually want (and makes the case that you don’t have to pick).
 
 
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

You probably learned that discipline starts when your child does something wrong. That's the model most of us inherited, and it puts you in reaction mode for eighteen years. 
But what if most of the discipline happens before the wrong ever shows up? We walk through Clay and Sally Clarkson's Heartfelt Discipline and the three parts they name: directive, corrective, and protective. Plus the honest version of what we're still figuring out.
 
 
 
Resources:
Podcast Episode with Clay & Sally Clarkson 
Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson
Clay & Sally Clarkson Website 
Parenting by Paul David Tripp
Childproof: Parenting by Faith, Not Formula by Julie Lowe 
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 185 — Why I Aim to be a High Agency Father — Directive discipline takes more of you than correction ever will. This is worth the follow-up where MJ talks about where your best energy is actually going, and how to aim more of it at the people right in front of you.
 
 
 
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

Tired people don't tend to slow down. They speed up, cram more in, and stay up late trying to claw back the little time that they have to themselves. We came home from vacation and did exactly that. So what actually gets you back to rest? In this episode we talk through what we had to clear out, the rhythms we knew we needed to lock in, and the one we kept treating as optional until it wrecked us.
Resources:
Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 79 — How I Cured my Insomnia: After 4 Years & 3 Doctors — If bedtime is the piece you keep losing, this one goes into the four years and three doctors it took Ash to find what was actually keeping her awake, and it was not what either of us expected.
New drop on Mondays. If this helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

Mid haircut, MJ's barber asked: how do you know you're compatible with someone? Isn’t that what everyone wonders going into a relationship? This may sound crazy, but we've come to think it's the wrong question to ask. 
Compatibility asks where you match, and you’ll most likely tend to get along where you agree. So, we started asking something different: what are our differences, and can we actually live in unity with them? And underneath that: what if your differences were never working against you, but part of what makes each of you better? 
Drawing on our How We Love series (ep. 25- 28) we walk through the questions that have reshaped how we see our own marriage, so you can start asking better ones about yours.
 
 
 
Resources:
How We Love
https://howwelove.com/ 
Our “How We Love” series - episodes 25-28. Start here: How We Love & Argue 
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 183 — Designed to Disagree: Why Your Spouse's Pushback is Actually an Asset — Your spouse pushes back, everything in you braces. Turns out that friction is part of the design, not the flaw, and maybe the thing that helps make you both better.
 
 
 
New drop every Monday. If this one helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave us a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

Anger is one of those things you probably don't think you struggle with. But when someone lets you down, do you go cold? Get short? Decide it's not worth bringing up and tell yourself you're being the bigger person? That's the case for us. 
Then Ash read a book about how anger shows up. Some of it is loud, a hammer knocking down walls. But it shows up in more insidious ways too: resentment, dismissiveness, ignoring people, all of which feel more respectful in the moment but work like water damage behind the walls, silently destroying the integrity of the whole structure. 
We all deal with anger. And we should get angry at injustice and harm towards others. But how we handle it shapes our relationships more than we might think.
 
 
 
Resources:
Books Mentioned: 
Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help for a Common Problem 
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 182 — Don't Tear Down What You Spent all Week Building — 187 names one silent way we tear down what we've built, and 182 flips it, showing that on the exhausting days when you can't add a thing, just keeping the walls standing still counts as moving forward.
 
 
 
New drop every Monday. If this one helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave us a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.
 

You already know the prodigal son, the younger one who blows the inheritance and comes crawling home. But the story was never only about him. 
There's a second son out in the field, arms crossed, who did everything right and still won't go in, and here's the part that stings: there’s a prodigal and an older brother in each of us. 
In this episode we get into the divided soul, the war between what we ought to do and what we actually want, referring from Heidi White's The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life to name this split that runs through each of us. You'll walk away with a clearer pulse on your own battle between duty and desire, and why wholeness isn't about picking a side.
 
 
 
Resources:
The Story of the Prodigal Son: https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/luk/15/11-32/s_988011
Books Mentioned: 
The Divided Soul Duty and Desire in Literature and Life
Perelandra
The Last Battle
Interview with Heidi White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc4IrsAD_vw&t=1820s
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 165 — A Culture Clashing Marriage: is it Honor or is it Love? — If this episode has you noticing the divide running through your own heart, 165 follows that same split into a marriage, where two people carry completely different rules for right and wrong, honor on one side and justice on the other, and learn to build one life that holds both.
 
 
 
New drop every Monday. If this one helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave us a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.

What should a man aspire to? 
We recently toured the Billy Graham Library. Near the end of his life, Billy Graham realized he had reached the whole world but still wished he'd given more of himself to his own family. That stayed with MJ. 
In this episode he unpacks what it means to be a high agency father: a man who decides his family gets his best, even when good and worthy things are pulling for it everywhere else. Whether you're a dad, a mom, or building toward a family you haven't started yet, you'll walk away weighing where your best energy is really going, and what it looks like to aim more of it at the people God has set right in front of you.
 
 
 
Resources:
Article: https://jeremypryor.substack.com/p/become-a-high-agency-father
Quote: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” - G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
 
 
 
Continue the conversation:
→ Your Next Listen: Ep. 146 — Seeking the Sacred Work of Ordinary Days, What if Ordinary is the Point? — If this episode has you rethinking where your best belongs, 146 makes the quiet case that the long, messy days with little kids are exactly where it counts.
 
 
 
New drop every Monday. If this one helped, pass it along to help someone else or leave us a review. It’s the best way to help more people see their underscore, too.
Stay connected: 🌐 http://honestunderscore.com
📩 Enjoyed the episode? The conversation goes deeper in The Greenroom. Once a month we give the field notes version of the things we’re learning at the table so we can recalibrate what we mean to do with what actually shows up. [Let me into The Greenroom]
✉️ Something from this episode hit home? Send it our way → hello@honestunderscore.com. We always enjoy hearing from you.