[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the intentional fatherhood podcast where we give you a strong biblical framework and lots of practical ideas on how to live intentionally as a father and a husband.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Brooke Moser and I'm Justin Whitmore Early and we're your host to guide you through the many roles and challenges that God is calling you to live intentionally as a father.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're following a visual framework that you can check out at intentionalfatherhood.org and it's going to help you break down fatherhood into eight columns.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in each one, we're going to talk about how God made you to be a father and what practical habits you can start trying today in order to live intentionally into that home.
[SPEAKER_02]: So come along with us as we follow Jesus on this journey towards being more intentional fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the intentional fatherhood podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are laughing for so many reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of fun doing these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do you're going to have to push that microphone just a little closer because people are going to hear what you said.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm new with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just knew that we were having some we're laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: season season two episode two.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you turn it tuned into season one, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you listen to episode one, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully that will give some framework.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what we're going to talk about today is really launching off of a lot of that foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to get into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also want to say thank you to everyone who's rated, subscribed, and left a comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we would just encourage you if this has been helpful at all, could you just take five seconds and do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I mean, who ate it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, here's how to think about
[SPEAKER_02]: And it gives the episode to somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It helps in a huge way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go over to YouTube, subscribe there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's always very helpful as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to watch the content, we have different shorts and different long form video there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can check out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also just count one more to more housekeeping things.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have questions from this season specifically, simply send a one minute voice memo your first name last name and where you're from and leave that there send that to hello at intentional fatherhood.org and we would love to respond to that and respond to your questions because we love your voice mama's it's so fun we're fun to listen to hearing different people's accents from around the country and around the world it's fun to hear how many different places people tune in from.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, and it's so good to hear the real time feedback questions, which as you know, we give answers to.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't wait to get into responding to some of season one, which we're going to do soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: But wanted to just say, thank you for everyone that's done that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And make sure that if you haven't had a chance to do that, also one more detail, we released a PDF on the website, intentionalfossil.org, the age chart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So go check that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That will make sense if you've listened to the last episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't, let that be a curiosity to listen to the last episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the age charts just helped was, we're talking about this next topic, but just maybe just for everyone listening, if they haven't maybe been able to engage in season one, or sorry, episode one, let them know where we're kind of launching from for today.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we have a framework, this is a thing for us, diagrams, frameworks, so you probably saw them when we did for season one on the website.
[SPEAKER_02]: Season two is we are thinking about the stages of fatherhood in time, seasons of formation, seasons of discipleship, three stages we're diving into getting your life together, then giving your life away, and then giving your death away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's so helpful because this helps you see where am I in this journey and this pilgrim journey of being a father, being a disciple of Jesus and a lot of the are getting your like together is going to be your early stage of life, but no lots of us are still working on many areas of I know I am, because of getting our likes together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the second stage, which we're going to dive into in the next episode, we're still kind of hanging out and getting your life together, but then we're going to dive into the stage of giving your life away, which is that great realization of what it actually means to be able to cycle of Jesus, a father, a servant, is that it is all given to you in order to give away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the third stage, we'll talk about an episode's five and six about giving your death away, leaving him like a certain thing long term about your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But here we are, in episode two of
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we want to get really practical through story and through things we're doing now, because there's nothing worse than talking about these ideas and not knowing how it actually plays out in real time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I ask you the question, I'd like you to start with a story, a bucky's hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so...
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're watching on YouTube right now in the bookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, everyone on the East Coast like Midwest all the way over the East Coast, they're loving this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we don't have this, like on the West Coast, we don't have Bucky's.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is showing that season two is in Virginia.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we are here on the East Coast now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's Bucky's.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you'll see it all over social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to Bucky's like they're going to Disneyland.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it's a wild place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've not yet been.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have not yet had a chance to.
[SPEAKER_00]: But next time I've decided, next time I'm traveling,
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter what's happening, no matter what the schedule is, we're stopping.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're asking it right now, but no, we're not sponsored by Buckley.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're open to it, but we're open to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if anyone's listening and works for corporate, would you please let them know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we're so happy to support.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about, I want to ask you a very specific question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost interviews style.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did it look like for you to start getting your life together?
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me some stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me some real grit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man, this is kind of fun because people who know me now read my books now.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, okay, he's a corporate lawyer, which by the way means I'd write contracts, I'd help buy and sell businesses, write these long contracts that govern bigger commercial transactions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Corporate lawyer who writes books on spirituality and habit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're probably most people guess, like a really type A guy, really organized guy, really, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: And anybody who would know me in college last now, because I was so different.
[SPEAKER_02]: My life in college at UVA was marked by not wearing shoes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I generally traveled barefoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do were you that guy that was like that guy like you need to see is as you can catch from your feet alone No, dude, you're fake it rapidly adapt to walking outside but they're fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're fine It's actually just the discomfort of seeing someone else for shoes in public That's all it is like anytime you can see someone else's toes in certain settings You're like, I don't know if I trust him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, I don't recommend it for your reputation But I was I was generally barefoot in college.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I didn't have a computer or a cell phone for a lot of college
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, partly just disorganized really partly just my computer got stolen after my first year of college and it took me a year to replace it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have a cell phone because that actually wasn't really a thing when I was necessarily like some of my friends had cell phones, but not everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I was I was like the community guy like I was always hanging out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Always with the boys, you know having fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, I'm fairly, I'm wiggling my hand right now, like I'm fairly gifted academically, like it's easy for me to do pretty well without trying too hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for better or worse, I could, I could do okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, I didn't do great in college because I basically majored in community, which was great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I learned to live with my brothers and Christ.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you looked at my life then it was a guy that was,
[SPEAKER_02]: beginning to learn to be a disciple of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: But not one that would know how to be a husband, not one that would know how to earn an income to provide for a family, not one that would be ready to have kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much I see now in my college self that was really great beginnings of emotional maturity.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't have my life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: So because I thought when I was gonna graduate college, I was either gonna continue to play with my punk emo core band that I was in, then called Crash Everest.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we share, many listeners will forget, broken I share the, there we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: High five.
[SPEAKER_02]: The legacy you much more than me of being a drummer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I thought that might be life, but
[SPEAKER_02]: I was really involved in my ministry, campus crusade for Christ, and now called crew.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they had a mission's partnership with East Asia, China.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got on a mission's week there and I really loved it and here's the thing, my dad was a missionary for two years in the Philippines when he graduated college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so I had in my head, this was before he went to law school.
[SPEAKER_02]: So and I didn't know that I would go to law school that I actually really didn't think I'd be a lawyer when I was an undergrad at UVA.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had in my head that it would be a cool thing to do to do missionary work for
[SPEAKER_02]: a season after college, but I honestly didn't think about it that much.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was getting towards a year and a half from graduating.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't have a clue of what I was going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people were starting to politely ask, like, what do you have to college?
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my life was not together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I had a super important summer experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was on a mission trip with crew.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do these mission trips.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're called Summer Projects, where you go to a city and you work the summer to evangelism there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on one of these trips.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had one of those afternoons that changed your life for the Lord works in your journaling and your prayer time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was having a quiet time and I was writing a notebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for some reason, I got a glimpse of my life to come.
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of like doing the H chart, which by the way, just another plug, if you didn't download the H chart in the diagram for the season, and you didn't fill it out yet, you really should.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might even consider stopping the episode right now, I'm going to do the H chart and then listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just insightful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: because it helped so much to see your life in time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was one of those quiet times.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had this experience of the Lord prompting me for whatever reason, Brooke, I could not tell you why.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote down three things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote, I want to be a father, I want to be a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I want to be a missionary in China.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember not being sure about this, but I asked the Lord on this hill in San Diego this afternoon, while journaling, Lord call me to these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I was like, if you're not in them, I don't want to do them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which, which I think speaks to some of the ways that my emotional life was maturing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I use it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever I wanted to do after graduating, I wanted it to be following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm suddenly remembering now, as I talk about it, it was because I'd just read the story of Peter walking out of the boat to join Jesus on the water.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought about, I was thinking about all these places of discomfort.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, do I want to get married?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do I want to have kids?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is my profession going to be?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, you know what, if Jesus is in it?
[SPEAKER_02]: then I'm going to be able to walk on water like anything is going to be amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm if I'm listening to his call to say get out of the boat, follow me, walk with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I remember asking about I was like, would you call me for these three things?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a great can we just pause on this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like praying for God to call you is a really cool thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why want to highlight that is because there's that wonderful scripture that says, God will give you the desires of your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I love this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's that's kind of tricky, though, because we have to remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: Think about the desires of your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So often times we're talking about, remember, getting your life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is going on is disorder desire desires disorder.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first prayer to that is usually just highlight getting your life together, but also just like what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: is allowing God to reorder desire.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does give you the desires of your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the ones that he's implanted there for their flourishing and you the things that he wants to give you that maybe you don't even see yet or maybe you have glimpses of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just to maybe reinforce that for anyone listening like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray for God to call you to the things that you're passionate about and maybe a metric to know like are these good things like Yes, the three things are you in them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like think of the three things that you wanted to do they were all to help other people Huh I That's and I think you're right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you're right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could be wrong But I think no, I know that's interesting because I think it's a really important you pointed that out I think you're right, but that makes me realize there's an important nuance to the story that I might need to know is that I
[SPEAKER_02]: am now and was then a very selfish person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: So significant about that is that I was thinking how what is going to make my life fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I wanted to go to war with my emo core bank.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's like, this would be more fun than trying to actually get a job.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was unusual that I was asking the Lord to potentially call me to
[SPEAKER_02]: be a missionary in China.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was not something I thought would be cool necessarily to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was something to be good to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, keep going now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I also, I was dating Lauren at the time and like any man or young boy, like I was very interested in sex.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, sure, you know, this was a huge, difficult to figure out desire in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so most of my life was spent thinking about sex as most of the time, especially right before me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very intelligent young 20s.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's a really stop.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so it was kind of unique and interesting that I felt the Lord Prompting me to ask him to call me to marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know the this was a moment where the Holy Spirit was working So I just wanted to note that yes, they were selfless things, but that was because the Holy Spirit was working
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe to highlight, I appreciate the nuance.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be super clear that I think that doesn't mean it's not mixture because nobody in the entire world even now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll speak for myself, but I know it's true because I know you too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your motives are not 100% pure in either of mine, and they never will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all wildly mixed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This.
[SPEAKER_00]: side of heaven, they will never be 100% pureest heart motives like what are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like yes, we do desire to help people, but we also desire to care for our families and we desire to actually do something with our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's mixture.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess maybe to say maybe a different way to say the same thing is that your desires were not selfish exclusively.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were not just
[SPEAKER_00]: were you going to be benefited by them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, but I also think that God, when we're stepping in his design, there's not only benefit for others, but benefit for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're walking in God's calling, the reason he's saying die to self is actually for your flourishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it helps people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to highlight some because some people, you know, on the calling piece, it is truly almost a fully isolated desire just for selfishness.
[SPEAKER_00]: There isn't like a buy product, maybe a fruit, and maybe that's just a way to measure it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, don't be legalistic about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's never helpful, but maybe just use this as a prompting to think about your own story.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just wanted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's something there that asking God to give you his desires for your life and then praying those desires in I think he's really excited about answering those prayers.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's so good and I think this is going to be something we're going to repeat throughout this episode and even season.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we're looking at our life with the perspective of a follower of Jesus, then we're asking the Lord to help us get our life together in order that we can give it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I see now that the Holy Spirit was working in that moment because I was getting excited about getting my life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there was so many flaws and mixed motives about what I thought all of these things would be, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I saw that most clearly actually in my struggle to become a father.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my three things that I prayed for that afternoon was call me to be a missionary in China.
[SPEAKER_02]: Call me to be a writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you call me to be a father?
[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously fatherhood involves marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was dating Lauren.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved so many things about Lauren at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, she was in many ways like everything that I wanted.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I actually very early.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't quite where you were.
[SPEAKER_02]: You shared that subset of Atlas of both.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, I'm going to marry this girl.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember early on in Lauren seeing two things.
[SPEAKER_02]: This incredible vivaciousness, like hunger for life.
[SPEAKER_02]: which I was just so attracted to, not to mention also being attracted to many other things about her beauty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, my motives are mixed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most of it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she was just fall of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I also saw that she genuinely loved Jesus and that that was going to be her life, that she was going to follow him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember thinking this hunger for life and hunger for the Lord, I want to be a part of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was so attracted to her in so many ways, but I very quickly,
[SPEAKER_02]: realize the real, so a lot of other things that didn't like about her.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's also we got into fights.
[SPEAKER_02]: She would bother me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would bother her apparently and there's all this friction.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had
[SPEAKER_02]: Brooke, I don't know, like I was so well raised and so many ways by my parents, but I still have what most Americans have and what most guys think about marriage is that this woman should make me happy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when she doesn't, I'm like, well then I don't want, I don't want to be with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be fine somebody else, you know, this fundamental idea that if this isn't working for me, I'm gonna leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I really struggled with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So any time we would have a fight, I would be like, okay, well, clearly, this isn't marriage material because we have problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, ding, ding, ding.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought problems were an impediment to marriage, not the heart of marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not quite.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, but I really didn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have, I'll,
[SPEAKER_02]: won't tell it on this episode because it's so long, but we have a pretty epic break up and get back together story.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I broke up with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a, I'll just get the quick highlights.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,
[SPEAKER_02]: We were basically, we had like a three hour long conversation about breaking up, and there was in the middle of the night on our college campus.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm about to walk home and I say goodbye, and she says, I love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's the first time in our relationship, she's ever said that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were issues probably not like I was certainly nothing Anyway, she says I love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the last thing I heard from her as I'm breaking up with her.
[SPEAKER_02]: She never said that before I like fell apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: I spent like two months.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just just yeah, keep going I even said too much realizing how bad life was without her
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she wouldn't talk to me because she was like, we're not gonna be friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we're not gonna be friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can date or marry me, but we're not just gonna be buddies.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I come crawling back because I realize how much life is better with her than without her.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I still wasn't really sure there was so so many problems we had.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then this is like, this is a long winding story, but I actually left to go to China.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's graduating.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's doing her fourth year at UVA and I'm back and forth like should we get married should we not and then I just one day Had a quiet time.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a there's a theme here right spend time in the word and spend time in prayer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was having quiet time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep in Ephesians.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was reading Ephesians five.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, on Husbands and wives and Christ loved for the church and I remember reading this line about You know
[SPEAKER_02]: husband's love and serve your wise, wash them with the water of the word, for this is a metaphor of Christ in the church, it's a great mystery and I remember reading this passage, I've read it a million times, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: But suddenly the Holy Spirit hit me in this reading that if we had to wash each other, help each other, serve each other, sacrifice each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: This implied there were problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was sin, there was friction.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because as it turns out, in any relationship, particularly marriage, there's two ingredients a center and a center coming together to be married, and that was going to create problems, and that was precisely the point that you had to figure out how to love a center and be loved by a center, and that figuring out how to love in spite of sin and flaws and problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: was the whole point and I suddenly I literally remember looking up from my Bible and journal and thinking if I've got a Mary a sinner, well I sure would love the Mary more and she's my favorite sin of the earth and okay okay there's a point to all this and I great line I went home the next month and proposed to her
[SPEAKER_02]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you went from broke up for two months?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, okay, this story is hard to follow, I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the spring, I broke up with her two months not dating.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got back together, then I graduated.
[SPEAKER_02]: We spent a summer dating, and I left for China, late summer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: This epiphany moment happened in the winter of that year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I went home for a trip mid winter and I proposed to learn on that trip home.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I had to leave literally the next day after I proposed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I went back to China and we spent five months engaged overseas and I came home and got married.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's disgusting.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be so hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should probably griff your curiosity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Griff your purity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard for like the sense of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was great for purity.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was also great for the spiritual revelation of what marriage is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, wanting to be married to Lauren and her wanting to be married to me, but us being a part being engaged.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were as we couldn't pretend that we were married.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we couldn't like hang out all the time and pretend that we're married.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had to wait.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to wait to go home and actually get married and consummate this wonderful thing called marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've never
[SPEAKER_02]: realized how much this is a good metaphor for the kingdom of God and engagement is like you're waiting for the wedding day, then waiting for Mary Lauren overseas who's actually incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But okay, here's why I shared all the story because I don't want to hear some of your story of growing up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I realized early, I think it was at 20, you know, I wanted to get my life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: The load was calling me to do stuff, so I wanted to be a missionary, I wanted to become a writer, I wanted to become a father, I needed to get married.
[SPEAKER_02]: But any one of those, and I just told the story about marriage, I was focusing on that one, I realized was going to require me dying to myself in order to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought getting my life together was about me accomplishing things,
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, no, no, no, oh, sorry, you didn't realize I'm going to use all these things to invert you from the selfish life to realizing use for some areas center and it's that fact of that difficulty that's going to make you more holy and more like me and I could tell the story of how China did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could tell you the story of how writing has done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could tell you the story of how fatherhood has done that, but any of these grand callings that I was so desires of in my early 20s.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, the Lord slowly threw that decade, picked each one of them and said, yes, I'm calling you to get your life together here, so you can give it away.
[SPEAKER_02]: And marriage was the first thing to do that for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear about yours, but maybe you can ask questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I just have a couple of thoughts and questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's really beautifully said, I love the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very applicable to exactly what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Giving your life away is a real challenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're talking about in order to get there is getting your life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you were telling the story about not only just Lauren and you and where you guys were out, but just thinking through,
[SPEAKER_00]: you have your life that you're trying to get together and it's really, it's just challenging and it's time-consuming.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to highlight for it wherever you're at.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just said it was like 10 year, like, you know, you're just a long time span.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just highlighting maybe the first step for getting your life together is beginning to identify call and just practically how to do that just if anyone's here and like listening like how do I identify it and for some you your way past this you've already heard this but I'd say find trusted people in your life that know you and love you and will be
[SPEAKER_00]: honest with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will tell you what you don't want to hear, um, who believe in you and love you, uh, ask them, like, what do you see me being gifted?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, called it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I'll say this in my own story, because I think once we identify where we are called and we identify, you know, stepping into those things, that's when we're starting to get our life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you need other people to help you find some of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bad for my story, who's my father-in-law again, man, he has been in many ways more of a father in this second half of life than my dad could be for lots of reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would always say to me, so I was a pastor for 18 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in the pastoral lane of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I helped plant a lot of churches, a lot's along, a lot's in exaggeration, a handful of churches, and helped on key leadership positions of all churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've played every role in a church except lead pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been on every team, you could imagine, I've been on teaching teams, I've been on the executive teams, I've done all the stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because I'm a man and I wanted to climb a ladder, mentally I was like, well, the next thing I need to do is obviously start a church or plant a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember my father-in-law would always, he believed in me so much, saw all my gifts and said, I see all this in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anytime I was talking about this, he would just kind of get quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: What the heck aren't you saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you not believe in me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just simply set a handful of times.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I think you could do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you could do well at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't know if that's what you're supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, planting a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Planting a church and leading a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: It just makes me feel like you don't believe in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, he's like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think you'll be way better at leading a nonprofit than you would be at like, leading a church because you're gifts and dynamics.
[SPEAKER_00]: He called this out years before I even ever thought of leading a nonprofit being a part of it never even wanted to do it And he would always say things like I think he'll be really good like in a family ministry type thing and I'm like I don't want to be in the family ministry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like at what age is he telling you this?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is probably like 29, 30s or one like young enough to go Enough ego in there to be like
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be a family pastor, no offense to anyone who's a family pastor listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you just know when you have visions of grandeur, it's hard to accept like, you want me to play a role of a family pastor and a staff that like, I just couldn't see myself as a friend of grandeur for you to think about being the lead pastor, planning a church.
[SPEAKER_02]: Was that like a...
[SPEAKER_00]: Vision Granger is hard to say, I just mean like, there is, it's mixture like we talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's so, like, I didn't, I knew I wasn't a, I could follow, but I also knew I had a lot of leadership in my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was hard for me to be like, is that going to be my whole life?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always trying to fulfill someone else's vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I was put vision to my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it was that coupled with like, oh, I think climbing the ladder is leading a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so it was like the pinnacle maybe for like this is what I should get a lot of this by the way was so unspoken and unidentified at the time like for me I wasn't like I was just operating towards this all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only but with looking in the room here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been like this is what was happening
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I was operating bookmark requests.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think a lot of this season and a lot of what we're going to talk about this episode is on naming those moments.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we need to talk about unspoken and unnamed later.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I'm bookmarking, but you're in the middle of your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'll share where my story really actually started in just a second, but I just want to say for anyone listening, I think it's it is listening to those around you because people were calling this out in me and I didn't see it and I have a long story to tell you how I became a president of this ministry intentional and all this stuff, but I'll just tell you this it started with my father and law calling something out that I couldn't see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then inviting me to help with this ministry to work with him again in a part-time fashion where they could barely even pay me where I worked still part-time at a church and part-time in this role.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was needing in my early 30s to say yes to a call that I couldn't see the outcome of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty the initial call was pretty unglomerous not fun divided in my attention and not something I could see myself doing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm
[SPEAKER_00]: It is over the last five, six years evolved to, I feel more called to this than any work I've ever done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually more wired, this suits more who I actually am not just who I thought I was, which is a really important distinction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had other people start calling that out of me when I couldn't see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it took a long time for me to get on board all that to say, I think you need other people to help you listen to those people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was hoping you would underline that point because I could give and actually I will.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were three books in particular that really helped me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Name them, get my life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I want to wait to name them for just a second because
[SPEAKER_02]: far more than any one thing you can read or far more than any one health influencer, financial influencer, whoever's trying to tell you how to get your life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's great wisdom and advice everywhere, but if you're not in the community of the people of God,
[SPEAKER_02]: you're not going to get your life to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, because you need that you need a brother or an elder, a father, a disciple or you need someone else to come and speak into your life because there's so much that you don't see.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much that I don't see.
[SPEAKER_02]: We cannot see our whole life and that and without vision.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember the people perish.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need other people to help come in and say I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: you're actually not good at this, but you are really good at that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that, I tell my sons, I actually told them last week at the dinner table.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, when you leave this house, one of the things that I want to be second nature to you is you go find a church.
[SPEAKER_02]: You go find a church to root in because you need the people of God.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there were some good books that
[SPEAKER_02]: The call by Oz Guinness was an extraordinarily helpful book that I read in my early 20s that got me thinking about asking the Lord to call me to something.
[SPEAKER_02]: the meaning of marriage was a wonderful book by Tim Keller that it wasn't out when I had my marriage story with Lauren that I just shared.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had been listening to his sermons on marriage and that book is built on his sermons series and that sermons series was part of why I started reading Ephesians differently, probably in retrospect.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the meaning of marriage
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I read a wonderful little book actually just after I finished law school that really helped me get my life together in the second way.
[SPEAKER_02]: This was in my early 30s called Designing Your Life.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's by two Stanford professors who do a whole and it's I think it's one of the most popular courses or at least it was in undergrad at the time a decade ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: They do a course on how to think about what you want to do in your life and what you're good at.
[SPEAKER_02]: So purely academic, non-spiritual advice, but it was so helpful to me to think about
[SPEAKER_02]: What am I good at?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do I want to do?
[SPEAKER_02]: What am I long for?
[SPEAKER_02]: So the call, meaning a marriage, designing your life, all super helpful books and sort of thinking about getting your life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why we mentioned books, I'm going to share some of my story real quick, and then we'll move to some practical, is why why we say books is like the content of this season is coming through inspiration of our dear not-friend yet, but hopefully soon, Ronald Rulhizer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like,
[SPEAKER_00]: This changed lives and a lot of this is a role in the framework of both of our lives and he's put this framework together in such a brilliant way and now obviously we're elaborating changing words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're adding our own spindle of it, but the core of it came from reading.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, roll highs is a wonderful author.
[SPEAKER_02]: His book, The Domestic Monastery.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, was a big influence in my book, Habitat House of all huge and I've continued to love him this holy longing sacred fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's healing with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest thing that I have it right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest is my favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: But some people who are listening will recognize this, get your life together, get your life away, giving you death away, which is a framework.
[SPEAKER_02]: He names in his books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were also joking that I think was T.S.
[SPEAKER_02]: Elliot that said, good, good artists copy, great artists steel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure he got it from somewhere to you, we're elaborating on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my favorite quote on genius is,
[SPEAKER_00]: being genius is simply knowing how to hide your sources.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing new under the sun.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's the active and or effects the role hazard for his writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Say good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, we believe in books like books.
[SPEAKER_02]: He should be young.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should interview your eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see what we could do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, if anyone has a connection, we might have one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I, we, we got to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're listening, we're all eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to talk to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I shared my story.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said something that were helpful for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you describe this season of you getting your life together when was it and what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll be brief just because I want to get to some of the heart of this, but I just took a couple bullet points that I think are important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got married at 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shared it in the last episode, a lot of my father and law like encouraging me to go to college, that whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was very helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was
[SPEAKER_00]: I got married at an age where I made the conscious decision with my wife that we were going to get married and grow up together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew even at 21, I don't know what this journey is going to be, but I'd rather do it with you than anybody else in the entire world, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know what's going to be, but I pick you, I choose you, I love you, I'm in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we about a year and a half in literally were like, you want to have kids?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we decided on our own that quickly to have children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, wow, it wasn't an accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we, like, we have never accidentally got in pregnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was always with purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was she always got pregnant too quick, which was a bummer for me because the trying stage was just so fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because everything changes once they are pregnant, the hormone things, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's just a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's going to be our next episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: Giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the difficulties of marriage and young children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a big time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So giving your sex life away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so many things to say, let me stay, we'll get there, we'll get there, we promise, I'm so worried.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so worried about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to keep going.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that said, I got married young, I had my first, I had my son at 23.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my getting my life together was to not use intense language, but was thrust upon me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm married now, who am I going to be?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm now a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was also in ministry and I have to say something about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so helpful with getting my life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: When people who did not have their life together came to me to ask how to get their life together, it was very motivating for me to go like, I don't know how to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was given a position of responsibility and authority in a biblical public sense that forced me to have to mature in certain ways and figure stuff out.
[SPEAKER_00]: vocation required a certain level of understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Required a certain level of the Bible study.
[SPEAKER_00]: Required a certain level of understanding of times the cultural moment we're in, how the scriptures interact with that and how we apply that to our lives and why that changes who we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that was actually very helpful for me in my getting my life together because I went from playing music, doing the whole like signing autographs to like leading a middle school group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the most humbling thing that's a whip-lash when like six months prior that whole middle school group and all their moms write your show asking for you know autographs and you're like, you know, leading 30 smelly kids to the way of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will, you know, so humbling and it's so exactly what needed to happen in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think my vocation coupled with my, with marriage and parenting in an early age forced me to really begin to get my life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say that a lot of that was motivating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a lot of them mentors because I was in a position where I realized I had to have them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some like my father and a lot of others like, yeah, you know, my brother and Laugher Mark, he's not only been a dear friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a brother to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you know any of his work, he's a pretty smart dude and he thinks a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was, he's been a dear friend who's shaped my life in all sort, he's been a brother shaping my life for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that impacts a person, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had models and people that were like, and by God's grace, not my, it wasn't my design.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had immediate access to that could help me in my journey in my questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: That helped me get my life together, but when I was 29, I hit this wall and this wall of realizing like I have a lot of good spiritual mentors, I have people that can give me some pretty sound wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm not the man I want to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel really stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I have procedural memory and patterns that I can't just undo.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're locked in.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something that I can't get past.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't be this with all my spirituality and praying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't become a better husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't be a better father.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized, and this is late 20s.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, it was exactly, you know, I remember the date.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I started seeing my therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I with a lot of hum, you, you know, um, humility, I want to go see a therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I share a little bit of this story, but I would say, part of getting my life together to get to the next stage to actually be able to give it away for me because of my background, my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to undo a lot of stuff that had been done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until I actually begun that journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: that I could begin to understand a name, which we're going to talk about a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was actually going on in my life in my story?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really, it's interesting because when you're talking about getting your life together, we might be able to reduce or think that it's in your 20s and 20s alone and not 30s.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that it's all practical.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's learning a job learning.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I got to learn yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to learn, I think there's some that are in the process of giving their life away, but still haven't gotten their life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Parts of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: that let's just, let's name that really quick because we're talking in these seasons and we're going to have to emphasize over and over and over and over.
[SPEAKER_02]: They overlap a lot because you're probably already learning to give your life away in some senses to your children.
[SPEAKER_02]: In part, your kid would be six at the time and six, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You started therapy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're still realizing we constantly as far as wake up and realize, oh, here's a part of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to gather.
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: What made you think that therapy would be a good idea?
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like so many people out there thinking maybe they ought to, but something needs to spark them to get their life together and go get help.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think if you're honest with yourself, my people aren't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how we have it, you start.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was really uncomfortable in my own skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started, I started with understanding that
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a vision, you know, 2018, I had a vision that I wanted to be a better man than it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be a better husband than I could be, I wanted to be a better father than I could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had this sense like I don't want to be this man forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But all the things that I'm doing that everyone's told me to do in a theological sense has been done and it's not changing me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you can sort of see who you're becoming and I want to be clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, of course, yes, Jesus is the wonderful counselor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he also uses others as we've talked about at Nazium to help with that process.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so important to bring others.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I realized my journey in story because of my upbringing and my background in my drama, I had to have somebody who was a special specialist with therapy and theology to help me understand and unpack and undo the
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people can come into adulthood and don't have that, and that's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the majority of people really do, and I think until you can have somebody who is spirit filled and understanding and trained has experience to help you understand and name your experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are gonna be often at least this is my opinion you'll be stuck and I was stuck and I felt it and you know Just my life had these parts that just didn't make sense meaning like I knew who I wanted to be But I couldn't be that and so what what do I do and so I did upon prompting of a friend Go to therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started going to there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's actually John Mark he said How does therapist I think you should talk to her really?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was actually going to ask probably a lot of people listening either need to or need permission to go find a good counselor or therapist to get over some part of their life where they rise my life isn't together here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you advise people to find a good one?
[SPEAKER_02]: who follows Jesus, who knows the word who is filled with good theology, because there's a lot of bad things that can be done to you, because their best are powerful, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I had to, and they're all made the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all made the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would just say this, to identify what you're pointing out, a trusted person who I trusted, who knew me and loved me, gave me a suggestion, gave me a suggestion and gave me permission.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the John Mark for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he gave me a number.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he made it easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I made it easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people don't have it that easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you look on one?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's some, I'm not going to go deep down on this, but there are a lot about their piss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say very clearly that you have to be so careful and be very picky about who you pick to pour into your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be picky about who you pick to pour into your life in every stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say they have to be Jesus' center, they have to have a framework.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say somebody, if possible, it's not always possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are very gifted young therapists, but I think there's something to be said about life experience in the profession that you're in and having age maturity and understanding coupled with experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a lot there that can help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say take the advice of somebody you trust if you know somebody that's seeing a therapist and they can say and they can vouch for them, go off of recommendations all
[SPEAKER_00]: the therapist I see, he will literally only take people that are recommended to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I recommend anybody to him, he'll take them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as an example, but like that's a lot of therapists because they like, you know, that's how that's how you find a good therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more word of mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like broadcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I I'd pray it through and then I would just be open to try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it feels weird, it feels off like tested.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: And wait until you find the right one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, pray it in.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have prayed in so many therapists.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had the most amazing therapists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, who do you want me to see?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a part of the formation, you know, your formation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say, start there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not exhaustive by any means, but I would just say, if you're hearing, you're like, where do I start?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was having a conversation with the guy that listens to the podcast, who just started therapy and he's like, I want to help fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we scheduled the call, you know, maybe a month ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't even told you about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he basically longs for a short was like asking how to reach fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like dude, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got a lot of brokenness and I've been trying to figure out my own story in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew I should probably help fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt God put the call in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've been the most sheepish to do it because I feel the most disqualified because of my own life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was interesting talking to him, you know, he's in this line of work, and he was asking these good questions, but I was like, in my heart, I'm like, I don't know man, start with your brokenness, just start there, like you don't need help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I think therapy has been a huge part of my story of getting my life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd say in the last 10 years, I've learned to understand my story, name my story, and it's helped me get my life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you say that word a couple times?
[SPEAKER_02]: And thirdly, it basically helps you do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you, let's say more about naming?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a couple notes, because I think it's just important to say things clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think with our life, especially with our kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to highlight, this is for your own life, you as a man, father, and also for you to do for your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even your spouse depending upon the situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to name experiences,
[SPEAKER_00]: properly.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to know how to properly name things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because not everything in your story your life can be fixed or cured, but it can be named.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you say it one more time, not everything can be fixed or cured, but everything can be named.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example,
[SPEAKER_00]: You can name that there was a parent figure that didn't give you all that they could have and that was really bad And that was sad for you and that's major life harder in certain ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and it's made you broken in certain ways And they came from a hard space and they probably tried as hard as they could maybe they didn't but there's
[SPEAKER_00]: You can name that experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have the childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wished I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have the experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wished I did and when we name something correctly, and this is where it's so important, it partly we free ourselves from its dominance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it loses its power when you name this is true for confession when you name the sin when you name your struggle.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's huge part of getting the power out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, when you think about when you think about totalitarian regimes, like why they fear artists and writers and religious people and prophets and journalists, it's because they name things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They name them.
[SPEAKER_02]: They go, this is what's happening that is provocative.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's so true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what it's so interesting when we think about the power of naming something it has power in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is not just an idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jim.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I jump in really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: We actually talked about this last season to call back for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Adam is given.
[SPEAKER_02]: the power, the gift, the right to name the world, which, of course, God just spoke the world into existence, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So God's words create reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, fundamentally different way than our words, but he also passed on that God given capacity to name the world, create reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: He tells Adam to name the animals, and then he joins him in that test because that's the moment, right, when Adam
[SPEAKER_02]: When God says, hey, you're, you're actually lonely.
[SPEAKER_02]: You need a helper to do all this naming work, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think about this all the time, you can read the biblical story in this lens, which is a very helpful lens of God creates the world through words, we're given the power to shape the world and words.
[SPEAKER_02]: We mess that up a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jesus is the word made flesh.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is like the infleshed word that comes to fix everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this idea to figure out what the world is to name it to shape it is an image-bearing capacity that we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: what a beautiful add-on and clarifier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: A James Hillman says a symptoms sufferers most when it doesn't know where it belongs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we have symptoms from our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we don't know where to place it, and honestly, that was a lot of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, I had all these symptoms, but I still know, I couldn't name them and understand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think for me in my story, then I'm gonna talk about this with your kids really briefly, and then we give you some practical stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But where that was important for me,
[SPEAKER_00]: was when you don't, when I didn't name stuff and understand my story properly, I just made all these assumptions or, you know, half conclusions about stuff and it just made my life in my brain specifically, very chaotic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't order things, which means everything felt chaotic and and and and conjumbled and hard to follow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And each painful long ongoing, I still
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single time it is a faithful little chipping away of something and understanding it more and it's only been in the scope of a decade for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be 40 this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're 40 now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 40 December.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be in the 40 in the summer it has been a whole decade and I finally feel like
[SPEAKER_00]: I can kind of see my story now, by the end of the step.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get my life together, and that's not because this therapist's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because real change takes a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: My therapist told me this and he said, please give this to anybody that listens to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please tell them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I pass this on on behalf of one of my most beloved friends and people in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Real change takes a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are here and you're like, I've been doing the work, I've been doing the work, I've been doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep doing the work, keep doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes a very long time to change really in a deep way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why it's important to name things for yourself is because that helps you name things for your kids and why you might go, why do I need to name stuff for my kids and what's happening and like it's important for us to explain reality to our kids, but when parents don't take
[SPEAKER_00]: When you don't clarify, apologize for a pair, when parents don't take responsibility, often what unfortunately happens is kids will.
[SPEAKER_00]: They take responsibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when a child goes through something overwhelming, maybe that was caused by you or something in life, you know, that could be a bully at school, it could be a really hard situation that they're in,
[SPEAKER_00]: when a child goes through something overwhelming and the parent doesn't name it or label it like hey that happens to you or walk the child through how to experience it something opens up called a narrative void and this visual is so helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a really helpful name in and of itself right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're still living.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a narrative void opens up, which the child will fill often.
[SPEAKER_00]: They fill that void with and think, well, it's because of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm the one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That happened because.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did something where it's because I'm broken or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why why why why do you name stuff in yourself?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you need to know how to do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you don't need therapy for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why do we need to learn to name stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when we start naming stuff in ourselves, we start to name it for our children.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we do not do that for our children, it will keep them confused, frustrated, unintentionally agitated in their life because they are moving through the world, not understanding it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of your best gifts you can give your kids is naming their experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of complexities in our home with health in regards to our kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I do so often is explaining my little girl birdie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold up that drink.
[SPEAKER_00]: There it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Coffee shop down the street from us.
[SPEAKER_02]: We love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We walk to this coffee shop in his birdies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I almost tear up every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not kidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime I see these things like I have a couple of hats that have horses on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate horses.
[SPEAKER_00]: birdie freaking loves horses and I mean my AirPods have a little horse emoji on them not because I like it because it reminds me of my girl every time I mean amazing but birdie is special needs and she has a very challenging dynamics that come with her experience in her life
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm learning how to name that for her, which is like so hard and painful, but I'm also most of the time spending, I'm sorry to get emotional please.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to name that for my kids and what's so hard for them is like how to understand like why is she have to be that way or why is she act that way or why is she
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, speaking that way to you guys, why is she freaking out and having to constantly go on a daily hourly basis?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's because her brain doesn't work the same way as yours is because when she was little she had a form of catastrophic epilepsy, which caused permanent brain damage and her brain is not
[SPEAKER_00]: Formed the same way yours is all the things didn't connect that we're supposed to yeah, and she doesn't have the same access to the emotional abilities that you do Yeah, and so she's gonna say things and do things and she doesn't mean it the same way, but I know it feels the same way I'm so sorry, and I know that it's hard and yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, at the end of my son, he has a lot of autoimmune stuff, so it was my wife, and he's like in a health flare right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like having the name for him, son, you're really sad that you don't feel well a lot of the time, that your body's feels sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you feel like as a 16 year old, almost man, that you shouldn't have to deal with this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that sucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want to highlight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am so far from a perfect father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't believe me, wait till we have Elizabeth on the show, she will give you details of the weekly ways I miss it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The daily ways I miss it, honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't live into fully who I want to be, but I have a vision and I'm slowly chipping away at getting there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, I'm so glad you went down that path because we have some stuff about male initiation rituals talking to your kids, helping them get their life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think we should get there later, just book market, because I think you've brought up something that probably should take up the rest of the space in this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is the idea that getting our life together often means healing from the pain of the past.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of that is what has been done to us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this is true also for how and I just on an honor and thank you for sharing about your children because I think people have enough pain on their own.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, traumas or mental wounds mental illnesses have.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what you scared shared autoimmune problems, health difficulties, like a lot of people might be hearing this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't get my life together because all these things are going wrong with my body.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, but we experience it even more with our children when we see things going wrong with them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we worry how are they going to get their life together?
[SPEAKER_02]: How are they going to grow up?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just think it's such an important thing to name so we can give it over to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: At the time of this recording, I've just finished work on a book project that's been so dear to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: it'll be out by the time this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's out now probably while you're listening to this, the body teaches the soul.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the thinking chapter was really important for me, thinking about brain and spirituality and how do we take both really seriously?
[SPEAKER_02]: So the fundamental
[SPEAKER_02]: premise of the book is don't ignore your body, but don't idolize your body, image got through your body.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think about this paradigm a lot in terms of a garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just said something really important a couple minutes ago that your therapist thought you changed is so slow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Real change.
[SPEAKER_02]: Real change is so slow.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've begun to think about it as and change happens at the pace of a garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's slow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing that you're doing right now makes any difference for what you're doing right now makes so much difference later.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the garden analogy actually became part of my governing image for the book, because I suddenly realized that too to not ignore our bodies, and that means, by the way, health stuff, on on new stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: It means neurological traumas of the past, mental traumas of the past, like all these things that we're now realizing something emotional was done to you, but now it's showing up physically.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And vice versa, something as physical happened to you, called a seizure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now it's showing up emotionally.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this idea of not ignoring the body means we can't be Christians who pretend.
[SPEAKER_02]: That we are spirits without bodies because God didn't make us like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we try to over-spiritualize our mental health issues or our food issues, it means we're ignoring That God intends us to get our life together by caring for our whole self.
[SPEAKER_02]: That means body and spirit Because we're a whole soul where a spiritualized body
[SPEAKER_02]: And the garden analogy, I think, is a really helpful way for people to think about that has been really helpful for me, because in a garden, if you ignore it, it will become either a jungle or a desert, okay, it will die or it will grow so periodically that nothing really can flourish in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you idolize your work in a garden, you will be humbled really quickly because there's things called weather and dry and drought.
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, your soil isn't the same as your neighbor's soil.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're doing this and it worked for him over there, or her over there, but it's not working for you here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can't idolize your work in a garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your body is not the only thing that needs attention.
[SPEAKER_02]: So don't ignore it, you need to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: But don't idolize it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to work over the long haul labor faithfully, but imaging God in our body and bringing together mental shallone mental health, physical shallone physical health is the idea that that's the original vocation we had.
[SPEAKER_02]: To be gardeners of Eden and to say we're going to labor alongside God to create shallone and flourishing in the place that he's given us.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was originally the Garden of Eden.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now it's it's.
[SPEAKER_02]: everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's our bodies, it's our jobs, it's our families.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think we can properly talk about getting our life together without naming that a lot of our lives have fallen apart because of some mental issue or physical issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: But nonetheless, part of the good stewarding work that God has called you to.
[SPEAKER_02]: is to guard in your body, guard in your family, guard in your mind, guard in your health, guarding your job, labor, faithfully alongside the master gardener named Jesus, who longs to bring your health, your body, your mind, your family, your marriage, into Shalom.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a long, slow project, but it is so worth doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love so much of that and if you are listening, go get that book because dude, I got to read it and I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to endorse it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, don't don't thank me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was meaningful to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to do nothing for here for the cell of the book, but I'm happy to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the right word.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean, especially that book, like I so believe, like this is where it's been so cool that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like you and I have been so aligned in so many different ways just naturally and so it's like too I could not support that book more because of how much rich theology isn't it but how you just practically connected all the parts and I think a lot of guys gave feedback that some of the episode on physicality that we did last one They loved that in so many ways and I understand why it was such a great conversation, but primarily from the book, so go get that
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also want to maybe just, you know, as we're wrapping up today, I think getting your life together is really hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that some guys listening are like, you know, thinking, oh, where's the practical stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: The practical stuff has been truly throughout this whole episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we can't jump into your life and tell you how to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: our generation lacks models.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know so many good world men that would do the thing they just don't know what it looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we're trying to do in a kind of haphazard, not always clean way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So trying to just give you a model of what it could look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are our stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is how it's looked for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that for you, it might look really different.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the best parents I know are people that have gotten their lives together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're like wanting to parenting hack, you're missing the whole thing, you have to start with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to start with your information to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to start with your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now obviously there's certain things that we're going to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: That maybe you could try, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also think that there are so many things that we miss when we don't actually just take the time to learn how to name our own stories and get the help that we know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: And man, if I could just speak to you, I am so honored that you would trust us with your ears and your time, times a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's some of you listening that are so stubborn and hard hearted and it's not because you're strong, it's because you're weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to say this to you is so much respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strongest thing you could do is admit your weakness and get help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strongest thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strong men say, I can't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strong men say, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please help me.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do not take a moment to acknowledge that all those people giving you that feedback of like, you need to get help or you should, you know, they're saying that not because they hate you because they love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's your spouse saying that to you or someone else, can I just be a voice of someone who compassionately cares for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: And very much wants to see any man listening or watching to thrive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please know that the strongest thing you can do is get help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's a mentor, a therapist, a friend, begin the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to start the process of getting your life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know for Justin and I, we've given you some stuff like we like to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think we also talked about some of our favorite spiritual practices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can do more content on that for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think one that has helped me recently, and I'll just say this as far as giving your life away, you talk about this a lot, and I appreciate that you do, is this is a body to use the soul stuff, but how our physical posture affects our heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, yeah, it's the face down on the ground, has been probably the best posture.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how low can I get and how,
[SPEAKER_00]: But really, is that, is that a common thing for you to pray face down?
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been recently, and I'm telling you, I think it's going to be a consistent one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's really interesting for me, because everything's dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because I can focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because I feel like I pray differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I pray humbly when I'm on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, man, there's just something about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just something about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think just practically start there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Start on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like get your life together from the ground up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Start there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a beautiful image.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get your life together from the ground up.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you feel undone, if you feel ashamed, if you feel confused, my life is not together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Starting in prayer is perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: and kneeling or face down, even better, and just to pick out and people are hungry for practical practicals to pick out the practicals that were embedded in all our stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That started with prayer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: A huge part of my story was journaling and praying.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lord call me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, second big thing was reading.
[SPEAKER_02]: Read, read books about the areas of your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to read on calling, go read.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say the call.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to read on becoming X or Y or Z, find a book on a beer reader, stay in community.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to figure out how to get your life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not even going to see the gaps.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not in a local church community, which, by the way, when I say stand community, that means that presumes you are embedded in a transparent and vulnerable way to other men.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're just attending church, great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Start attending the Bible study.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're just going to the Bible say, we're not talking great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Start sharing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Start being vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I often say just show up and speak up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Show up and speak up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I mean by community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Number four, practical.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get actual help.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you, if you think.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 35, and my life is stuck.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be like, Brooke, go say, you know what, I need to, I need to do some counseling, or there have been finds, I find a counselor at the University of Love's Jesus and knows about the brain and, you know, that's beautiful thing to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And number five, practical thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: be attendant to your health.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of us are falling apart because you really do have mental health issues that need medical attention.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of you are falling apart because you are ignoring your body, you are not exercising, you're not eating right, you're literally trying to undo everything that the Lord is done in your body by giving you health and you're trying to undo it, that's not getting your life together.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's literally tearing it down.
[SPEAKER_02]: So be attentive to your health and those are, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Pray, read, stay in community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be attended to your health.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are five practicals that you can embed it throughout this episode that you can now go try out.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a fun conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which you keep having these.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, hey, I gotta let's do a next one on giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Episode three is episode three.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about why we lay, you know, get our life together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can begin to give it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, that's the, that's the T's come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be here next week, giving your life away.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you there.