[SPEAKER_01]: 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_00]: 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 to live intentionally as a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're following a visual framework that you can check out at intentionalfatherhood.org and it's gonna help you break down fatherhood into eight columns.
[SPEAKER_01]: 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_00]: So come along with us as we follow Jesus on this journey towards being more intentional fathers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the intentional fatherhood podcast episode seven we've made it just in seven episodes in Man this last these last couple of episodes that we have for this season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very anticipatory about I don't know if that's the right word.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that word.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm also excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are good because this is, well, you're going to set this up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I hope you're excited because you got to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, one of the just, say thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been so fun to get your questions that have come in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so encouraging to hear from you all, um, to have those who have rated the podcast and subscribe to it and love comments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have an energy into do that, please just pause do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on YouTube, subscribe there anytime we drop new content, it shows up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we hope this has been helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a reminder, we are actively with love to hear if you have questions, all you simply need to do is watch us and tell them, tell them what we need to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Email us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: Add intentional fatherhood.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: org.org.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would have been bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you fixed it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're better at this than I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: But leave us a voice memo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us your name where you're from and what question you have or what comment you have because we'd love to hear about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we will.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will do more of these and address them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we will.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are already planning stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hope you guys have enjoyed the adventure and thank you for going with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But today for our conversation, again, if you want to, the visual, we've said this every time, but intentional fatherhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: or check out the paradigm, the visual that we've been working off for this season's content and and truth be told we're not going to all we're not going to make up like a new paradigm every season by the way we're going to continue to dive deeply in this right but this is just again fatherhood is in the center of intersection of so many different paradigms and so we want to talk about another one of this today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this whole thing for us comes out of realizing that Fatherhood is a lot more than just having a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's being a husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's being a father.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's acknowledging your past as we talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's anticipating your legacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're in a apprentice of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're also an embodied apprentice.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this last axis, I'm really excited about because
[SPEAKER_00]: I love work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look, I love my job, I'm a lawyer, I also do writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in this last axis, we're going to kind of move in those areas, the area of finding work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the next one we'll talk about finding meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you can kind of think of this as
[SPEAKER_00]: the work that you have to do, and then the work that you want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can sort of think of it as vocation and then hobby, but we need to learn how to work in this world for the sake of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Find a vocation or earn money for your family, but we also need and we'll talk about this in the next episode to find
[SPEAKER_00]: parts of life that we just love, like loving your work, finding a craft, a hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so your fatherhood needs you to find work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll start there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the next episode, we'll say your fatherhood needs you to find meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's dive in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your fatherhood needs you to find work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are made to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I can I share my my story because I tell people all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I used to be a missionary in China and now I'm a corporate lawyer who also writes and so people have a lot of questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: I already know the through line and you asked permission to share your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I must say no.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, go in depth.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think even that paradigm that you just set up is really helpful in communicating how complex and not linear.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of this is and our stories become so please, yes, take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have lots of friends who often say like, you know, we don't have Richard scary jobs anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have jobs where you can look into a children's book and like identify like, oh, you're a lawyer, a dentist or a doctor, some of us do, but so many of us do things where it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you get here?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a consultant, your technology project manager.
[SPEAKER_00]: And lots of us have non-linear stories or jobs that are hard to explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sort of have a job history that's hard to explain, but here's my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I graduated from University of Virginia and a lot of my friends in campus ministry, I was in campus crusade, now called crew.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a partnership with China.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was actually really excited after college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was either going to go tour with this Screamo band and try to cut a new album.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just realized recently that we both play drums.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have something in common with the drums.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should just set up to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You better than me, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we should set up two drum kits and just go hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, not to stick around with the next season because we'll do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just two microphones of drums in the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this hobby in college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a couple bands and I thought like I'm either going to do that and try to figure out how to make that into a living.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it would have worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I was like, I had this opportunity to go do missions work in China.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt really called to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually thought that would be a great way to, you know, spend some years after college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never thought it would be my whole life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really was the Lord honor that I had such an amazing experience as a missionary in China, but it was there that I had my real, calling experience that launched me into a life of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that, so I'll tell you what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't think you know this story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a missionary in China for almost five years around somewhere in the middle of my third year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in Shanghai, China and I walked out to the center of the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could picture like New York meets Las Vegas.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a
[SPEAKER_00]: the Times Square area of Shanghai, China.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like I was in the city center.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are, you know, skyscrapers everywhere, like foreigners everywhere, Chinese people everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of like the East meat, West, communist meat, capitalist, just the center of Shanghai.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was walking out onto this pedestrian street and I passed a guy who was like, hey,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you need a laptop and he actually opens his jacket and there's a kid you not like a laptop sized pocket so into his jacket because this was a black market like he has like stolen a computer in the way that you might in New York City see somebody open their jacket.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a bunch of fake Rolexes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the jacket is a big computer is like you want to buy a computer and I'm like no, like clearly you stole that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want like stolen computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I walk on to the middle of the road and I had seen a lot of that, like a lot of black market, but I saw something I'd never seen before in the middle of the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: a lady was unfurling a sign.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was doing it very intentionally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, what is going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: I walk over.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I read Chinese, but it was really slow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it took me a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it said, the judicial system in China is broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people in the country side are being oppressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's as far as I got.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because by that time, a hundred or two hundred people had packed around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, me, oh my gosh, this is a political protest happening in China, which by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't happen often in China.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know anything about China, they should have done.
[SPEAKER_00]: They shut it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is exactly what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: So within a minute or two, I'm surrounded by a couple hundred people or all like trying to read the sign.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's motorcycle cops pulling up to the outside of the circle, pushing their way through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cop pushes his way to the center.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he looks at this lady and he's like, you know you're not allowed to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she looks at him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she goes, but you know what I'm saying is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm standing there like this, the white, like American in the middle of the sea of Chinese people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I quintessential American decided to insert myself into the situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, let me just say.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were two rules to being a missionary in China.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rule number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: share the gospel of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair, fair students.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing campus ministry, so we're sharing the gospel with students.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rule number two, whatever you do, do not get involved with political protesting, like whatever you do, that will get you set home so fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here I am breaking the cardinal rule of being in China and I'm like inserting myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell this cop, I say, hey,
[SPEAKER_00]: Which one, it's weird that like a white guy is speaking Chinese and interrupting the moment, but it's not weird in China to interrupt these moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: People actually, there's a sort of a name for it's called Renal.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a going on and people will talk back and forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't crazy that I was talking to the cop, but I was like, hey, real quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just you were speaking to him in Chinese, by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you were fluent in Chinese, which is very impressive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a profession.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would you were preaching hard to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're preaching Chinese servants.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did get the point where I was preaching in Chinese.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, legit.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's proud of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've forgotten almost all of it now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very painful, but I was talking speaking to him in Chinese.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I started in Chinese, I was speaking to him and I said, hey, I just saw a thief, a black market thief.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to actually arrest somebody worth arresting, I could point out someone doing a crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he looks at me and he waves his hand in my face like that, which is basically a Chinese gesture for shut up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they put the woman in a van and drive away in the crowd disperses and like moment over, like my active heroism did not work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like amazed by this moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm walking away when I hear a guy over my shoulder goes, hey, I'm going to buy some marijuana.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wave my hand in his face like, no, shut up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want marijuana.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like walking home.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking about all the brothels that I'll pass on the way home that I can like literally see them from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the windows of these, they look like barber shops with pink neon lights, which is the signal for a brothel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the point, bro.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a span of like five minutes, I saw four things that were illegal in China, all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Black market leaving, drug selling, prostitution, and political protesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: All four of these things are illegal in China, but as it turns out, three of them are great ways to make money.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can steal stuff and sell on on the black market.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can sell drugs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can sell your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you talk about the way that this system is broken, which, by the way, those three things are prime examples of how the system is broken, it's hard to make money unless you are selling your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will get arrested right away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had this, I had this like the Lord gave me a moment in the wake of
[SPEAKER_00]: that, where suddenly the world popped into another dimension, I had come to China to share the gospel of people in this theory of horizontal change that if I changed, you know, if the gospel changed somebody, they would go change somebody else and, you know, so on down the line, I call it sort of horizontal because that's the picture I had.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing incorrect about it is true, like it is one way that we change the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still support missionaries in China who are preaching the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the world popped into it in another dimension that day and I would call it this like top down dimension where oh, there are forces going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's systems of economics.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's systems of law that are shaping people's lives and outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it mattered.
[SPEAKER_00]: It changed the possibility of how they could love God and love neighbor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had this feeling like I want to be involved in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so strangely for me, it was like, I want to be involved in shaping systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be all of them doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what came to mind in like the wake of that moment was, I want to become a lawyer because like, you know, we, we deal in systems of law and economics.
[SPEAKER_00]: We shape them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We shape transactions.
[SPEAKER_00]: We shape laws.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I actually left China with this feeling that I felt called to live, missionally in this vocation of law and business.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I share that because I still now today feel that that when I think about my job and I'm a corporate lawyer, yeah, I think about it as how am I called into this world to shape the world a little bit more in the love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very convinced that you don't need to be a pastor or a non-profit worker to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That our work in the world, we say vocation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it comes from the Vokare, the Latin idea of you are called to do something in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this to me is like, this was such a gift to me at that time because I think the Lord opened up
[SPEAKER_00]: My life to this genesis theology of work that he made us to work, eat and he made us to guard in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that it's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about in a minute, like there's a lot of pain in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of difficulty in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of suffering in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we talk about how work makes pain, we're made to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been living in that every sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I genuinely still feel called to shape the world and the love of God by loyering.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that brings me deep joy because I feel like I'm made for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you do quite different things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in a musician.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been a pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: You run an nonprofit now.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you resonate with this whole that you're made to work?
[SPEAKER_01]: First, I'm still just hung up, they were preaching in Chinese, it's like so legit.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I would just say excellent, excellent story, really cool, helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: story to to really just describe a lot of what we're trying to say um we have found you found I found as well that when I don't have meaningful work I do not thrive fully it's when we talk about this period I'm it's important let's drill down on that you and you don't have meaningful work
[SPEAKER_00]: we don't thrive fully because yeah I just want to note the reason that story is so meaningful to me because it was the place where God gave me meaning so that I'm not just working to earn a living yes I'm working because I feel like God gave this calling to me and when you don't have that it hurts
[SPEAKER_00]: Like unemployment is way worse than over employment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think as in like I'd much rather be busy and driven and doing something that's hard and that asks a lot of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then under employed or unemployed because it's so painful to feel like I don't have anything to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think it's important to maybe see them see the father specifically the men that
[SPEAKER_01]: are in a job that they hate and they go, I don't even know where my meaning in this job is.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's primarily a money exchange, you give work, you get money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to talk about that that there's an importance there to find meaning if your work doesn't bring some of that meaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are made for work and I think what we have, what I'm trying to highlight is that when I have meaningful work or when I'm living into those realities that I am living into what I was primarily or at least in part made to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a fulfillment that is really hard to match that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that no other bucket can feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like I can borrow from another bucket and it fills this bucket up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Work is an important part of our manhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that it's not like you could fund another but like you have to like it's like it's like marriage and parenting it unless you're married unless you're a parent there's nothing else like that in the world that you accept that right like you can't say having a dog is like having kids it's not it's its own thing and nothing else is like it except it does that make sense it makes a lot of sense actually that makes a lot of sense and I think it's because
[SPEAKER_00]: We've gone back to Genesis.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said it once too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you weren't lying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we are meant to be like God in shaping the world, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So God gives Genesis one makes the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the pinnacle of that is that he makes us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then does this beautiful thing and calls us to be like him in shaping the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think the reason what you said is so true is because all of us ache to be like God.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make and to shape the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing else that can fill that up besides making and shaping the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think living into that work is so important to your fatherhood because it balances you out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When that bucket isn't filled or you're not able to do some of that, it really can unbalance us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or in many ways, at least in my experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say that finding that reality, knowing that you're made for work is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would also say that something that's super important is there's a lot of guys there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were in a job that you didn't pick, but it's very helpful for your family financially.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's a lot of nobility in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of, there's a lot of things to look at in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me just say this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you are in jobs that you don't know why you're in and they are from money, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But maybe there's a meaning that you don't fully see in it yet because I'm thinking of a good friend who who runs an adult foster care home.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not go into his career wanting or necessarily pursuing that, but an opportunity arose by this business, but then to basically become a caretaker for five different adults who need foster care.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's through the state.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in this job, and he would tell you, is the most shaping, helpful to his character type job?
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's asking some deep questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I doing this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was I made for this job?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he like it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's my meaning?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, parts sure I think some are rewarding, but a lot of it is very hard and it's a whole it's a whole curve to what he was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think like for example, there's a ton of meaning in his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's doing beauty in the right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is caring for people.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is caring for people that are in their last years or months of life that no one else will care for.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an example.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he runs a business out of his home.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's laid out really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's separation, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But these, these people live in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his job is to have a staff and people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if his staff's not there, he's the one literally bathing changing diapers, medicating adults who don't have anyone else in their life to care for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's constantly caring for people in their last moments.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a beat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there is so much meaning there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's just be fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: How many of us go run to sign up for that job, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm not raising my hand, but like, I want to change that diaper, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're not going, yes, you are actually in many ways going, have I missed it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do I have to do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying that's where he, how he feels fully.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just, I am highlighting
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of jobs that we are in that I think we haven't discovered yet fully what the meaning is, but God has clearly opened that door and put us in for a reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think of another friend who has a very successful job and he makes tons of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just lots of money and he kind of found himself in this job.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's young and he makes a lot of money and he's asking the question, like, I feel called to ministry, but I'm in this job that's like really successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I make a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do so many people in Minnesota who would love to have that problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very funny, like it's a funny, juxtaposition as a conversation to have, but his heart was always like I was called the ministry doing and now it's been really cool to see how God has like been helping him see like, hey, maybe I actually gave you this job.
[SPEAKER_01]: to fulfill some of the ministries that I want.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what if I was to use your resources and ability to make those resources to allow ministries to thrive and happen in ways that otherwise they wouldn't be able to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what if you started partnering with strategic people and using the the gift cards given you to bring beauty in the in a way that wasn't your linear predicted way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, these are these are just statements, but I think they're important to just, you're made for work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes we, I think there's a lot of guys that kick against their working and get mad at it because it's not what they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like their ideal or what they want to do, but I would just say there's a journey to get to the thing that is what you're supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, and that's my story completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would encourage people, somebody gave me a venn diagram one time that really really helps me think about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can think of three overlapping circles and one of them is what you can do, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what you're good at or at least you can perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another one is what you love to do, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a smaller overlap there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the third one would be, what does the world actually need?
[SPEAKER_00]: At the center of that would be, that's an ideal vocation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an ideal calling because the world needs you to do what you're good at doing and you actually enjoy that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're thinking, how do I find God's calling for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a beautiful place to aim at.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a beautiful place to think through.
[SPEAKER_00]: What can you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you love doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does the world need?
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is, we are all made for work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we are all made to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: God made us to be workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in a fallen world, the ability to actually have that overlap is rare.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say that I'm very thankful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like in my corporate lowering, I found something that I can do that the world needs and that I actually enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But many of us for long periods of our life are going to be in one or the other of those circles and or like we're moving like
[SPEAKER_00]: I love doing this and the world really needs it, but I'm not good at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you need to listen to feedback, you're finding that now really fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's as fair to say, you're forty and all of these worlds are finally starting to merge together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and they started before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say it was about at the age of thirty that that I they found it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel lucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say this on the early side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on the early side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I would nuance it like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brooke, I it was four years into my lawyer ring that I started writing as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll talk about maybe more of that in the next episode because that was started as a hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was the point in my life where I was like, I have things to do that I love doing, but the world needs and that I'm good at and they all started happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about the age of thirty four that I was like, okay, I can do this for the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually think that's pretty early.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people don't find that nearly that young, but it is, it's to say, it actually did take a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's been working in the world before I was like, okay, this is what I love doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the world needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was going to say like if I actually think back I was about thirty five or thirty six when that started for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this slow journey for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just give us a recap.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, I started as was mentioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: I graduated early and I played drums.
[SPEAKER_01]: I and I was able to fake it until I made it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning just someone took a chance to say, hey, well, you come out and play.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do this tour with us and I did and
[SPEAKER_01]: It opened up a bunch of different doors for handful of years to play music and travel around and do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I think interestingly enough, I quickly realized even as young dude, like, I'm not gonna do this for my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not sustainable for my soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ended up too many stories long, ended up in being a middle school pastor and an intern at a church that my father-in-law was starting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bottom of the barrel, I will not kid you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I made a hundred dollars a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my, a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was like two of us at Harvard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, anyway, all that said, I, I started there very reluctantly like, oh, and ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like, fourteen years of all sorts of growth change education in pastoral ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole time asking myself, whatever they want to do this, one of my mates do, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: How should I do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time recognizing no this provision God is calling me to this there's stuff here Don't want to interrupt your story, but just can I drill down one second?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you this is important yes, so you are in a long season where you are not making a ton of money
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it got easier, you know, probably a year or two in as far as financially, but uh, but a long season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe three years, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not making huge money.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're making a little money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doing something that you are not sure that you want to do and you have a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are having kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I just I just want to pause because I think a lot of people find themselves there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I either don't like this job or the shop's not making enough money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have the demands of family and and they're like, I'm discontent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't want here about how I made the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: This sucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord works through our work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes us a long time to find our calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, you have to provide in the meantime.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you persevered, I guess, what happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So long story short, I think it was that I never felt, I mean, this sounds so Christian, but there was a part of it that was very true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just never felt released to jump into other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't figure out why.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there wasn't another passion in my heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just really felt in my wife and others that were wise and speaking into my life really sense like staying this trajectory and continuing to grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this particular vocation was really important for my life in some way that I couldn't see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly enough, I have a pretty extreme personality and I think pasturing and the responsibility of it, the call of it, the weight of it, the grind of it, was if I could be God and I'm not, was the exact thing that I needed to be shaped into the human that I needed to be, to do what I do now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there was a lot of rough edges that needed sanding and molding and shaping and pastoral ministry exposes all of the parts of you that are wanting things for the wrong reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: forces you to die to yourself, constant humility, it requires ruthless faithfulness privately and publicly.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be in the same space, every single week, multiple times a week, to say stuff in front of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a grind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is exactly what I think my character needed to be shaped.
[SPEAKER_01]: would have told you, like, pastoral ministry, you know, probably, uh, ten or eleven, twelve years into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm probably going to do this for the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't because, like, I resigned and was like, I hate this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started to see, like, know, there's some beauty here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also, whole time, felt like this isn't it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I couldn't, like, fully, like, this isn't, like, I don't think this is the, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The medium in which this is going to live into its fullness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so,
[SPEAKER_01]: I lead an on-profit now and all that different stuff and that has been truly where I sense more and more of like who I am naturally not who I think I am but who I actually am lines up beautifully with what I do now and everything that I learned in pastoral ministry was the exact right thing to set me up for what I'm doing now
[SPEAKER_01]: and to have the, whether that be education, experience levels of failure before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could learn from those others to be successful in these areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I guess all to say like some of you are just right in the middle of that, you're just right in the middle of the thing you haven't, you haven't stepped into it yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it takes a long long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a lot of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of life is lived trying to figure out your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but this is what I think it's important to go back to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your father who needs you to find work, you need work because there is something beautiful that happens in the discovery process.
[SPEAKER_01]: The discovery process keeps you hyper dependent upon Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you are trying to figure out what I know that this isn't what I was made to do,
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I have hope that there's still something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: You sit in this place of dependence, which is exactly what brings you to a place of surrender, the ability and closeness to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your fatherhood needs you to be in that space, as much as you can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really, really like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think when you put work in the narrative, the whole biblical story, you have this grand call that we're made to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you also have this horrible fall that we work among the Thistles and Thorns, like things are broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have these
[SPEAKER_00]: dual sides of ourselves that we long to work, we long to find meaning, we long to do it and yet it hurts and we can't find meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like what you're naming here because I think it's in acknowledging both of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we hit the grind that makes us more like Jesus and we see the end of the story and that is that one redemption Jesus wherever we find ourselves in our broken work in whatever part he's going to bring it to meaning we might not see it all but that is the promise that nothing that we do you know that he will he will take the works of our hands and do something with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe into the kingdom come maybe now but we we labor in that hope and so you have these two ideas next to each other that yeah you are made to work but the other side is that work makes you work makes pain and that is the sanctification you're talking about yes by being whoever's out there and you're like well I hate my work
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't pay well, or it's just a grind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you are being sanctified by saying, I'm going to do that anyway, because I need to provide for my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I need to keep hustling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a holiness to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think maybe just to also drill down on what you're saying, work makes pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is pain that that process as it looked back.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really painful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, I think that the greater work God calls you to, usually in my experience, I could be wrong, but the longer the process of preparation, we often get frustrated about our obscurity, but obscurity is the thing that is the most important you.
[SPEAKER_01]: If a baby is born before it's time, it's not good, it's bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you have success before you're ready for it, it will just
[SPEAKER_01]: you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're here listening to this and going, I just want to be this person who writes all the time and speaks and does this stuff like if that's your ache of your heart, then you better be ready for a journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is long and if you truly mean it in the way of Jesus, like obscurity is necessary for your thriving information and you won't
[SPEAKER_01]: have, and those seasons of the security are lonely.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're frustrating.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're sad.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of why God moments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's where a lot of us find ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I think work makes pain, but work sanctifies.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sanctifies, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: That it is a sanctifying process to have to figure out and discover what was I made to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really the golden all this men really truly it is in the discovery process that the gold comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the it's the forcing of you having to figure this out and having to call them and to ask your best friend and have to wrestle with your feelings that process makes you a good right or rather a better father of more rounded human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay, completely agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's also a very real tension there, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if anybody's listening, they're probably already thinking, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: My work is the thing that makes me travel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm away from my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: My work is the thing that makes me mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I come home stressed for my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: By work is the thing that makes me feel like I haven't found my calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just chronically empty and annoyed around my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where I think we want to
[SPEAKER_00]: both acknowledge the tension, but also acknowledge the call that one work is the thing that puts you out of the house often.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's talk about how to balance that with family time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And too, let's talk about how work is the thing that often makes you mad and how it's our responsibility not to bring that home and take it out on our family.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, first balance, both of us have pretty demanding jobs that ask us to travel.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you balance that with actually all the other intentional fatherhood stuff that we talked about for episodes now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we are right now, both of us, come in nice away from our family as we talk about how to be intentional with our family.
[SPEAKER_00]: But hey, this is the reality, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we, um, workouts used to leave the home, yeah, often and do something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, balancing time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I think the phrase that came to mind when we were talking about this is busy but balanced.
[SPEAKER_01]: I find that if I am too busy, it is destructive for my family.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if I'm not busy enough, it's also destructive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: There it is right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think you have to just realize, Father's, please listen to me for my failures.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I don't have enough to focus my energy on because I got a lot of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I focus it on the wrong things on my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be her who are under employed or unemployed or honestly, I want to name this because I see this happening a lot now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are in a work from home job where you're just like an awful day and not actually it's not good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not actually living up to the potential and you can you're and you're getting away with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're making lots of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we'll eat away at you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be demanded of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a part of work that is just good like that we are under the yoke of something.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: No problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good for a young man to bear the yoke.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like his youth.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the time, you know, forty still your youth or twenty thirty forty.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but there's also the other side of, okay, many of us just do way too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so busy but balanced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say busy but balanced is you have to figure out usually by failure.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is too little and what's too much?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what is too much often is felt by your family, your wife, your kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would say we've realized like I can travel about two times a month.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my max.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two weekends a month, two nights at a time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's usually what it
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's outside of that, it's put it under consideration.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to really look into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really needs to be worth it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really needs to make sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs to check some personal value boxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for an example of this, like you go away, you know, it is a juxtaposition.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my kids joke about this with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're going to go help families and leave your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they do this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Irony is not lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: My kids actually, they do this all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like hey, you're being really intentional by leaving us.
[SPEAKER_01]: They joke with me about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I respect it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we laugh a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would just say like it is the balance of, hey, part of my job is to step into these worlds for micro amounts of time to help.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm always going to make sure that you are okay and taking care of, but I have to step away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll just say this, it is so good for me to step away, meaning that too much, I feel the pressure of it, but just when it's right in that balance, going away, I just by probably our five of being gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like, I already miss my family.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate them so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, why am I so crumpy about that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why have I been so lame about that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just appreciate them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it resets me personally in a deep way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think you know, work sanctifies like we talked about, that's a point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another point is I think you need to be busy, but you need to be balanced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And having too much kills you, having too little kills you, you have to be balanced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that overwork, and I just want to say this, overwork is often a thing that we has been hide behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we fathers hide behind to not deal with deeper issues.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think you have to be very honest and careful about
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is worth naming.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll talk about this on the daily schedule because we both travel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but there's also a daily rhythm to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you just named is so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of dads out there, you're listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: You use work to cope and you use work to get away from your family and you're working more and more because family's harder and harder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is this wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not your calling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your calling is not to use work to escape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your calling is to use work to shape the world, but part of that is to say, I'm going to have limits to my work because my family also needs me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this has been really true in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest travel rhythms are important, but I think you gave a good overview of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest thing in my life for Lauren and I has been how do I shape the daily grind so that I can be faithful to work very hard and very well and faithful to be very present for my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, I would just kind of harken back to the spiritual disciplines episode that we did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, I think it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember the number.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because for me, rhythms of, you know, an hour with my phone off in the evening, family dinner is one of our major rhythms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Scripture before phone, meaning my phone is out of the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are just daily balances to say, I'm going to be with my boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to wake up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make them breakfast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to see them out the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do a little morning prayer before we go out to the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like thirty seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: We say the same thing every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's just a touch point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I go to work at ADM.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I work really hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, I'm not home until like five thirty or six.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's a long window.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when I'm home, my phone goes away.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing bedtime liturgies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so on the daily work is getting a lot of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my kids are also getting a constant of me, a regularness of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you put that in the context of the weekly rhythm that I'm also going to be sabbathing on Saturday evening to Sunday evening, they're going to get a long twenty four hours of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that helps, we talked about last episode, what the normal of your family feels like, it's really helped me move from a very unhealthy place when I was a young lawyer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just constantly working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my family was paying the price of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: to now having an integrated rhythm of family and work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody listening is going to figure out their own rhythms, but hopefully that gives you some ideas to think these two are not necessarily always battling each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can be put into integration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes a lot of work and practice, but that's what you should be seeking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Integrated life where you realize you're called to be a dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're also called to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're also called to be a husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is sort of a theme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's go look at the diagram.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your your fatherhood happens at the intersection of all these callings work is one of them be faithful to it, but don't let it whole everything else into its gravity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You pull it into that center of following Jesus into fathering in the husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's end on this today.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what you're saying is you wrapped that up beautifully and just to give permission.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think invitation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: If your job is demanding so much of you that you cannot keep it without damaging your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a world where you can say no and there's a world where you can start to pray and seek other jobs and opportunities that better fit the kind of man you want to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many of us have had to do that and do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of things I've said no to in my life because it will destroy my family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Planting a church in New York City was one of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: My family categorically could not, and it would not be good for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a dream that I had for so long that I had to really, I mean, sounds visceral, but I had to let die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've let it go.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't mean like my heart doesn't ache.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was telling you there's a place where it aches.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just still don't understand why.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know why.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like, why would you dangle that carrot?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, then the question comes in mind, like, was that God or was that me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of dynamics at play.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway,
[SPEAKER_01]: As we wrap today, I would just want to say, your fatherhood needs you to find work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are made for work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And your work also makes pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: But can we just remind you to find your ability?
[SPEAKER_01]: What the world needs?
[SPEAKER_01]: What you enjoy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, like you talked about, there's a, there's the, that Vin diagram.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we're just in the place where we enjoy it, but it's like not very lucrative.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I love what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Making no money.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was music for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is rad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm making no money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but you know, where does your ability?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where does your enjoyment?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where does the world's need needs meet?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the goal, but that doesn't always, that's not the majority of your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of our life to figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not find it, but I really like that permission.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you need to leave your work to make this work, then you need to go find a new job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or some of you just keep seeking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep finding it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's worth it because you were made to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You made to work.