What Five Years of Rebuilding Taught Me About Leading When You're Broken

Leading your family when you are privately broken is one of the hardest things a parent will ever do. In this deeply personal teaching, one father pulls back the curtain on five years of rebuilding after infidelity, divorce, abandoned children, shattered confidence, and financial pressure — and shares what prayer, presence, and honest conversation looked like in the darkest moments. If you or someone you love is quietly carrying a season like this, this article is for you.

How Do You Lead When You Feel Completely Broken Inside?

The honest answer is that you do not lead from strength you do not have — you lead from the strength you ask God for. After discovering his wife's infidelity, this father describes breaking down in tears at his workplace, having to step away from his desk, and sitting in his supervisor's office unable to stop crying. He was not pretending to be fine. What carried him forward was a repeated, intentional choice: return to prayer, speak life over his children, and refuse to let private pain become public collapse in front of the kids. He describes this season as one that "knocked the wind" out of him — and he is honest that no one gets through something like this on their own strength. You need the grace of God because this is not something you can handle alone.

What Do You Do When Your Child Comes to You Crying and Can't Sleep?

One night around one in the morning, his teenage daughter tapped him awake, crying uncontrollably, saying her mind would not stop and she could not sleep. He did not lecture her or minimize what she felt. He simply said, "It's okay, mama," held her, and prayed with her. She was able to fall asleep. That same pattern repeated for nearly a week — she kept coming back to his room, and each time, they prayed together. His second son went through a similar stretch, crying and overwhelmed by what was on his mind, and ended up sleeping in his father's room for over a week. The consistent response was the same: hold them, acknowledge the pain, and pray. He also describes a long-standing practice of walking through the house after his kids fall asleep — anointing the home with oil and praying over each room and each child. That rhythm of nighttime intercession became the foundation under an otherwise unstable season.

How Do You Respond When Your Child Says Something That Breaks You?

During a long drive — over an hour of just riding together — his daughter opened up about feeling that her mother regretted having her and did not want her. Then she said something that stopped him completely: "I didn't choose her to be my mom. You chose her to be your wife." He did not deflect or defend himself. He confirmed it. He said, "You're right. I did. And we are all paying for it." He cried with her. Sometimes leading through pain means sitting inside the truth of a hard moment with your child instead of rushing to fix it. In another conversation, when his daughter said he did not know what it was like to not have both parents, he agreed with that too — because he grew up with both of his parents still married. He validated what she was experiencing rather than arguing against it.

How Do You Stay Emotionally Strong as a Single Parent When Everything Is Falling Apart?

The short answer from this teaching is that you do not always stay strong — you stay present. He describes mornings of crying before school drop-offs, watching his children fall apart at school so frequently that he received calls nearly every day and had to leave work to go pick them up. He describes juggling cooking, homework, PTA meetings, and every household responsibility alone while also managing the emotional wreckage his children were carrying. Through all of it, he made a consistent choice to speak life — to encourage rather than spiral, to focus on what was possible rather than only on the pain. He is also transparent that this particular season broke through his usually positive disposition in a way nothing else had. Acknowledging that is itself a form of strength. He asks directly for prayer, modeling that the strongest thing a leader can do is admit when they need support.

How Do You Rebuild Your Confidence After It Has Been Completely Destroyed?

He describes his confidence dropping to an all-time low — to the floor, in his words — as a result of years of being verbally attacked, dismissed, and humiliated by his spouse. He says rebuilding confidence is not something that happens overnight, especially when you have been, as he puts it, "dragged to the ground." What he points to is prayer and intentional refocusing. It is a slow process. He also made a deliberate decision about celibacy — not out of superhuman willpower, but as a way to honor God and avoid compounding an already complicated season with more pain. Protecting your own integrity during a season of rebuilding is part of leading well, even when no one sees it.

What Does It Mean to Marry a Prayer Partner Versus a Prayer Point?

He shares a framework that someone gave him: when you marry, you either marry a prayer partner or a prayer point. A prayer partner is someone who fights life alongside you — who gets frustrated with you, works through it, and stays committed to figuring it out together. A prayer point is someone you find yourself constantly asking God to give you the grace to deal with. He reflects on this honestly, noting that the family you marry into and the person you choose has a direct and lasting impact on your destiny — especially when children are involved. Even after divorce, that connection does not end. The conversation about the absent parent will always come up, and it is always a tender one.

How Do You Pray for Your Kids When Times Are Hard?

Prayer in this household is not a formal or distant practice — it is physical, immediate, and repeated. When a child came to him crying in the night, he prayed with them right then. When he walked the house after they fell asleep, he prayed over each room. When his daughter was shattered before graduation after a painful phone call, he prayed with her instead of making another phone call that would have created more conflict. He told his children: love your mom and pray for her, even when she has hurt you. Teaching children to pray for people who have wounded them is one of the most durable gifts a parent can give. And when everything is heavy — college tuition deadlines, delayed invoices, emotional weight — his posture is the same: Lord, it's going to take you. It's going to take you.

What Can Someone Who Is in the Middle of a Hard Season Take Away From This?

He closes with a simple ask: share this with someone who is going through something and is not saying so publicly. People are carrying enormous pain quietly. The gift of this kind of raw honesty is that it gives others permission to stop masking what they feel. He also reflects on the deepest grief of this season — that the one thing he wanted most in life since he was a young child was a family, a marriage, a home full of love. That desire became the source of his greatest pain. But he does not regret his children. He states it plainly: he always wanted them, and he does not regret them at all. Rebuilding starts with holding onto what is worth keeping — and for him, that is his kids, his faith, and the daily decision to show up even when broken.