Stepping Into Fatherhood With Both Feet
Brandon Clark had climbed a lot of rungs since signing onto the Lynchburg, VA police force as a cadet fresh from high school in the summer of 2004: patrol division police officer, street-level drug interdiction team, street crimes unit, undercover vice and narcotics unit, FBI Drug Task Force, U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
In 2019, standing on the ladder with the rank of Sergeant at the still-young age of 33, Brandon took stock. He looked behind, at the years of near-singular focus on his career. He looked inward at the toll daily stress and unspeakable evil were taking on his psyche. He looked across at his wife and five children, who he felt he was neglecting. And he looked ahead.
He didn’t like what he saw.
“I was essentially ‘funding’ my home,” Brandon says now, noting that while his paycheck was present, he wasn’t. “I was moving up the chain and succeeding but I’d look up ahead of me and see people who’d ‘made it’ and were divorced. I began to ask myself, ‘is it worth it to make it to the top and be alone?’
The question wasn’t new to Brandon. He’d been listening to Adrian Rogers on Love Worth Finding for years on his way to work. “I’d listen to the sermons and get all kinds of ideas of how to connect with my family, but then I’d let busyness get in the way. I buried myself in my work because I was getting such great feedback there. But I had this conscious awareness that my wife and children needed me and I wasn’t following through. I was trying to escape.”
So Brandon interrogated himself: “As a detective you always ask yourself on a case, ‘what’s the ultimate goal?’ I discovered that when I leave this life I want to be surrounded by my wife and kids and know that they knew me as a husband and father who took his responsibility seriously. The world’s success, the title, the finances, you leave those here. Godly success, the soul, the family, you take those with you.
Soul-searching led to radical change in April of 2019. Brandon literally got off the ladder and took his family with him from Virginia to Arkansas, where he is Chief Production Officer for Keto Brick, a company that makes meal replacement bars for those following the ketogenic diet. He also serves as a health and fitness coach for Deeper State Keto.
While changing careers may not be necessary for some families seeking a more God-centered home, for the Clark’s, the move was nothing less than transformational.
“I never thought I was going to be able to walk away (from police work) but God made it clear this was what I needed to do. I was finally able to step into my responsibility as spiritual leader of my home. I spend my off-work hours intentionally now, either scheduling one-on-one time with a child or actively engaging the family as a group.
“There’s an entirely different vibe in the home. I’m connecting with my wife. We’re not living separate lives. We’re a team. We’ve intentionally created a godly atmosphere in our home. We try to live out our faith openly in front of our children. If we get emotional during a (church) service, we explain why. When we make decisions according to scripture, we explain it. We’re imprinting on our children.”
The key, Brandon says of his new life, is “proactive fatherhood.”
“You have to learn to really focus on your role as a father or you can’t build a future for your family. When my kids leave home and are ready to be on their own, I want them to be rock solid.
I want them to have everything they need to face this world head on.”
Brandon’s Six-Pack from LWF
When it comes to spiritual health and fitness for the family, Brandon Clark says good intellectual nutrition is essential. He said he has found LWF to be a valuable resource to witness and encourage others over the years with what he calls “absolute results.”
Husband to Jaclyn and father to John (13), Ava (11), Jackson (8), Aiden (6), and Julia (3), Brandon highly recommends to other husbands and fathers the following six resources from Love Worth Finding:
Brandon says he keeps a record of his journey as he “strives to be the man, husband, and father that God has called me to be.” Look for him on Instagram (@brandon.t.clark) or Facebook (@brandon.clark.37266).
