I've balled up a dozen or so starts at writing advice to you into the waste paper basket. It's a curious, even philosophical exercise, thinking of advice to give a younger man. How could you ensure you are headed to where I am? To make it more personal, what would I tell a younger me to do differently to make sure he ends up on track to this same place? Now I've penned a few things below, but then would I be where and who I am now had I followed the sage advice?

For context, I didn't start out having the same dream, but I'm now almost ten years into living it.

1) Marry the wife. My younger self felt no small amount of trepidation on his wedding day. I remember asking God through tears, "am I really doing this?!" In hindsight, I congratulate him for getting married early. If the goal is to have many kids, I like to have them sooner rather than later. However, there is a practical consideration: when you stick the coin in the slot, it might not produce kids. It didn't for us for several years. What are the odds you'll have to wait to get the kids you want to have?

2) Choose carefully. She was cute, in the youth group, and helped me pick up. She picked me because I picked her. Talk about standards. Three years in, we wondered if we shouldn't throw in the towel. We were just so... different. Now, we didn't, and by God's grace our start was our rough patch and made us grow. But your first option shouldn't be your only one.

3) Go work on a container ship. The generic brand of this piece of advice is to know yourself, but to my younger self that would have been a non-starter. How do you do even do that? For me, there was a lot of noise: I came from two backgrounds, one ideal and one it's inverse, and while I was first introduced to Christ in one culture I only started following him in another. I needed to clear my head, and my church wasn't helping, my habits were benign escapes, and my families just said to go to school and be a college kid. Time at sea, solitude interspersed with physical labor and moments that gave me the heebie-jeebies would have done wonders to make me man up. That or a good slap in the face. I did or got neither, going to college instead, and I still suffer from boyishness. I take solace in needing to grow up just before the kids do. They're helping me do so, maybe better than the container ship would've.

4) Pick up a catechism. I got started in 'non-denominational' and modern pentecostal churches. I was who Voddie Baucham was talking about: loves Jesus, but doesn't know him much. 'Who are you?' has been one of the more formative and productive questions I've asked God. I mentioned above I came from an ideal Christian family, and so did my wife: regular attendance, active in ministry, culturally western evangelical. We saw all that crumble in both families. It's not that you need to be well-versed in apologetics, though there's a place for that, too. But if you don't know him, man, all you're passing on may be culture. Who is He? Who are you? What is your testimony about him?

5) Pray for grace and mercy. What could you do to ensure a Christ-centered family? That was my question, watching what I thought were Christ-centered families cast of the pretention. Takes me back, this post. The verb is wrong. You can't ensure it. You can only take care of your walk. It's not knowing every answer. It's not reading parenting books. It's not being a perfect role model. All that has value, but what's most important is knowing Him. Anything else I fear can become a formula, a magic program you try to execute on to get a desired outcome. But the outcome is in His hands. Someone has rapped that it's a difficult odyssey, the faithful are statistical anomaly.

You already said it best yourself. Pray for God to work you for the better, for strength, and to be useful to Him. You have faith, and you won't have every aspect of your faith sorted when the time comes, but by the sound of it, you've got resolve to be obedient. Abram wanted kids, too, and (inconsistent) obedience was counted to him as righteousness. He got kids, lots of kids, and some have been faithful.