Seriously though, it’s odd to think that 30 years ago, when I was a kid, most of us were taught to keep our thoughts to ourselves … to be seen and not heard, to portray the right image to the right people.

Although, maybe nothing’s really changed — maybe, we’re still trying to portray the right image, it’s just that we’re trying even harder. Let’s be honest, how real are all these ramblings that we follow? And how many are smokescreens and illusions?

I had a friend tell me recently that he just didn’t know who he was any more, so he chucked in his marriage and kids to go and find out. You would never have known if you followed him on Facebook — he looked so together. He has spent so much time living a life that was outwardly cool, for the world to see, but he’d not taken the time to learn to live with the real man on the inside. Sound familiar?

So my ramblings today, for you to read if you care to do so, are a collection of transparent thoughts.

The real thoughts of the real Tim Sisarich — if you’re going to read, and form opinions on, the things I write or say in all the forms of media through which I commun-icate, surely you have the right to know what’s going on, on the inside.

Money plays on my mind a bit — how I’m going to pay to keep all five of my kids in a Christian school while providing enough to cover the groceries, the power bill and the odd treat for my wife and kids.

The joke in our house is that I always need to buy shoes because I always spend the money I’m saving to buy them, on something one of the family needs. I’m actually cool with that though — it’s the face of an ox that Allan Meyer talks about in Valiant Man.

My wife is amazing and we have covered a lot of life and living since we met when we were 16. I always knew she’d be my soul mate and she is. But it’s a struggle to keep my mind and eyes pure only for her. What’s worse, I think that I should know better — I’m the family expert — apparently.

I think tat I’m not spending enough time with each one of my kids. I worry that, if I don’t fix that, they’ll end up with father-wounds that they’ll try to mask with drugs, alcohol, sex or all three, when they hit their teens. It’s what I did.

I sometimes wonder whether I should acquire a university degree. Would that make me feel less inadequate as the executive director of the New Zealand office of the very organisation established, built by and on the back of Doctor James C. Dobson, PhD? I mean, seriously, this is the man I grew up listening to on the radio.

Most days I wrestle with the fact that I don’t pray enough, study the Bible enough or live a life that’s as squeaky-clean as do all the other Christian leaders in this country. In fact, someone once asked how I’d feel if my inner life were displayed on the front page of this paper. It was more than just a bit scary, to be honest.

Yet despite all of my fears and struggles, my wife loves me and still finds me good-looking … she tells me every day!

All my kid, who are old enough to talk, know Jesus and tell me he lives in their hearts and they all talk with him every day.

My little girl told me I have a daddy smell and it’s a “handsome smell”.  She wears a ring on a chain around her neck that she proudly tells anyone willing to listen that her Daddy gave it to her and that it says she’s worth the wait. My boy dressed up as dad for a school mufti day when they were each asked to go as their favourite superhero. My oldest told me that he didn’t want to become a teenager, because he “loved me too much to be mean like teenagers are to their mums and dads”.

God seems to be using the ministry he has called me to lead and we are seeing incredible things happening in the lives of men and families in this country.

And according to www.globalrichlist.com, our family is in the top two per cent of the world’s richest people! Can you believe that? We are, according to New Zealand standards, a fairly average, single-income family, living in a rented house and yet, from a global standpoint, I’m rich!

Who would have thought that this little dyslexic kid who struggled through school, whose teachers told him he wouldn’t go anywhere with his life and whose ex-con father didn’t really know how to show us kids real love, would be able to look at his life and say, “I’m rich!”?