There’s a moment in every man’s life where everything in him wants to quit.
Maybe it’s the business that’s bleeding money and you can’t see the other side. Maybe it’s the marriage that’s been running on fumes for six months. Maybe it’s a Tuesday afternoon where you’re exhausted, your kid is melting down for the third time, and you’ve got nothing left to give.
I’ve been there. More times than I’d like to admit.
And I’ll be honest. I haven’t always gotten it right. There have been seasons where I fell short as a husband. Seasons where I fell short as a dad. Seasons where the business felt like it was swallowing me whole and I was just trying to survive. The difference isn’t that I never wanted to quit. The difference is that I recognized it happening, put my shoulder down, and went anyway.
You just go. You don’t wait to feel like it. You just go.
That’s what Dave Aheimer did, and his story made me sit back and take inventory of every time I thought my situation was hard.
A Custody Battle at 4 Months Old
Dave’s son Jonathan was four months old when Dave showed up at the grandmother’s house with a Lorain County sheriff and an emergency custody order.
Jonathan’s mother had severe intravenous drug issues. Jonathan was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, signs of withdrawal from birth. When Dave discovered what was happening, he did what most men in that situation don’t. He fought.
A year-long battle. Fifty thousand dollars in legal fees. Multiple moments where everything in him said this wasn’t worth it.
“There were many times I wanted to give up,” Dave told me. “It was very distracting from my business and my life. But I had that little guy in my arms and I had no idea how to take care of him and no idea how to move on.”
He held on. The court awarded him full custody. Mom received zero visitation.
The advice that carried him through it was simple. Hold on and don’t let go.
The Dads Who Didn’t
I’ve known a lot of dads who let go.
In the military, divorce rates are brutal. You see it constantly. Dad gets out, mom moves on, kids end up somewhere in the middle. Most of the time the men didn’t fight. Not because the system was fair to them, it wasn’t and still isn’t. But because somewhere along the way, they decided it wasn’t worth the fight.
I knew one guy. Good man, long relationship. His girlfriend had no idea he had a son. He saw the kid so rarely it literally never came up. She found out after years together. That wrecked things between them, understandably. But what it really wrecked was that little boy’s sense of whether he mattered.
Here’s my gut reaction to dads who walk away from their kids, and I’m not going to dress it up. You’re a quitter. Not just on a situation. On a person you brought into this world. You have a responsibility to care for them, support them, and raise them to be better human beings than you are. To abdicate that because things got hard or the system felt unfair or you just didn’t feel like fighting anymore?
No. Absolutely not.
Business? I’ll give a man some grace on that. There’s too much nuance in a business decision to judge it cleanly. But your kids? You don’t get to quit on your kids.
”Maybe I Was Trying to Save Myself”
Here’s the part of Dave’s story that hit me hardest.
He said something about his son that stopped me cold. Maybe this was me trying to save me.
He saw himself in Jonathan. The little boy who needed someone to fight for him. The version of himself that didn’t have anyone in his corner.
I get that.
I was a crier as a kid. Cried for no real reason. And when I see that in my boys now, something in me gets tighter than it should. I jump on it faster than I need to. I’m harder on them in those moments than the situation calls for. And I know exactly why. Because I lived through what comes after if nobody helps you channel it correctly.
So yes, I parent my kids differently in the areas where I see myself in them. Not always better, if I’m being honest. Sometimes worse. But it drives me. It makes me want to figure it out on their behalf before they have to figure it out alone.
That’s what good fatherhood does. It makes you confront yourself, not just your kid.
The Business Almost Took It All Back
Dave won the custody battle. He remarried, to Flavia, who aggressively pursued adoption of Jonathan and became his heart mom. He had another baby. Life was good.
And then 2019 nearly destroyed all of it.
His internet retail business started collapsing. Sleepless nights, overeating, not taking care of himself. And in that pressure, he took it out on the people closest to him, the ones he loved most.
“My wife, God bless her, held the family together,” Dave said. “She was the CEO of the family and spirituality. She refused to let me walk away.”
He didn’t quit. He held on. And then COVID hit, which should have finished the job, but instead the home decor business exploded as everyone was stuck at home redecorating. He sold at the peak. December 31, 2020.
Then spent 2021 traveling four continents, finalizing his son’s adoption, honeymooning in the Maldives and Egypt, and watching Jonathan spend five weeks in Brazil learning Portuguese in 45 days.
That’s what holding on gets you.
Put Your Shoulder Down and Go
I am called by God to be a good husband and a good father. That’s not something I’m vague about. And being good at both of those things means one thing above all else. You don’t quit.
Not when you don’t feel like it. Not when the system seems unfair. Not when the business is bleeding and the marriage is strained and the kid is melting down and you’ve got nothing left.
You put your shoulder down. And you go.
What Holding On Actually Looks Like
Name what you’re avoiding. Most of the time when we want to quit, we’re not quitting the whole thing. We’re avoiding one specific moment that feels too hard. Name it. Is it the conversation you don’t want to have with your wife? The attorney call you keep putting off? The hard no you need to give your business partner? Name the thing and go do that one thing.
Remind yourself of your calling. I know I am called by God to be a husband and a father. That’s not motivational poster stuff. That’s my actual north star. When I don’t feel like showing up, I go back to that. You’re not doing this because you feel like it. You’re doing it because it’s what you were made for.
Lower the bar for today. Holding on doesn’t always mean performing at your best. Sometimes it just means showing up. Be in the room. Answer the phone when your kid calls. Send the text to your wife. You don’t have to be great today. You just can’t be absent.
Tell someone. The moment you say out loud that you’re struggling and you almost quit today, you make it real and you make it survivable. Find your people. Your church, your accountability partner, whoever it is. You were not built to hold on alone.
Dave Aheimer fought for a four-month-old with fifty thousand dollars he didn’t know he had and a year he’ll never get back. And on the other side of it was a son who calls Flavia “mommy,” a family rooted on two continents, and a life nobody handed him.
The advice that started all of it is still the best advice for every area of your life.
Hold on. Don’t let go.