Latest / Imagine Media Podcast Network / Hope Unlocked | Christian Testimonies, Hope &... - The Long Road Home: Addiction, Surrender & a Father Who Kept Praying with Robert Ruesch

Transcript

Hope Unlocked | Christian Testimonies, Hope &... - The Long Road Home: Addiction, Surrender & a Father Who Kept Praying with Robert Ruesch · Imagine Media Podcast Network

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Ready to get unlocked, meet our featured partner of the month.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: What if a story could do more than entertain you?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: What if it could help you see God and even your own life differently?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's the heart of Paritable Productions, a kingdom-centered creative company telling God's stories through books and media that stir the soul, reveal truth, and point people to Jesus.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Discover the stories Parable is bringing to life at myparadable store.com and use code HOPE15 for 15% off your first order.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: All right, friends, here's the Hope Unlucked conversation.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Hope Unlucked Podcast.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Kristen Kurtz, your host, and I pray this episode is like a holy envy of hope for your soul.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Please help me welcome Robert Roosh to the show.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so excited to have him here today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Always great to connect with a new brother in Christ.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we have sisters in Christ who come on here as well.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: So before we get into your story and what the Lord has you doing in this season, would you just share a little bit about yourself?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Kristin.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I for appreciate being on the podcast.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was an adopted eight months into a family with Walter and Alice Roosh.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: There was a blessing in my life in the fact that my mom was brave enough and loving enough to know that to protect me, she needed to give me away.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I found that out when I was 50 after actually meeting my bio mom.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she wouldn't she would never tell me what the specific reason was, but she said, I did that to protect you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would accept that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So how old was she?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do you mind me asking?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I met her, she was 70.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: So she was 20.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: 20, yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do know that she was, you know, from Wisconsin, where I was born.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently the the marriage was just not good in any way.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so she decided that during pregnancy that she would give me up.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then she moved, she got a divorce and moved as far away from Wisconsin as she could, and that was basically to the west coast of what of the state of Washington.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was the furthest she could move away.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it was something that happened.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that was the beginning of my life, which was a blessing because my dad took over a camp called YMCA of the Rockies.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's his park center.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you're familiar with that or not, but that's the largest YMCA in the world.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is a world-class year-round resort with uh over 11 lodges, 360 cabins on 3,000 acres with its own zip code, and they feed up to 4,000 people a day.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mother Teresa, George Bush Jr., etc., have visited there and spoken there.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They had a conference once that was called Praise in the Rockies, and these names will be familiar to you.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ed Boltz and Michael W.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Smith, Amy Grant, Patty have all sung at that conference and taught other Christian artists during that time, including Garen Davis, who who wrote Holy Ground, which, as far as I'm concerned, uh probably got the inspir inspiration of writing that at the Y.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just a YMCA with a bunch of funny old guys running around in Speedos looking for the shallow end of a pool.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, it's it's a it's a world-class resort that has conferences, brings kids internationally to work year-round during certain seasons, and has families that that well, some families have been there for almost eight generations now.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was started in 1907.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, generations.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was started in 1907.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where I grew up in a Hoham Paradise called Dust Park, Colorado, with Rocky Mountain National Park as my as my playground.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that must have been amazing.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how God protected me.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Pardon me?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: Was it amazing just growing up there?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was, yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, basically, as I grew older, that's from about age eight on, uh, sunrise to sunset was uh when I should, you know, I could wander and just be home after that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, being in seventh grade and on up, I hung around with college students all the time.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was in high school, when we had student teachers, to me, it was like those are people that are my peers, not my teachers.
• 5:04
  unknown: You know.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: So would you consider yourself to be kind of an old soul at that time?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Would you say that did people see you as kind of older than maybe your age?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I didn't act my age.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's I learned a lot from college students.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I also learned it was a two-edged sword.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I learned to protect myself from friendships.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Friendships would build very quickly, because it was we were there in the summer a lot.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so people would come in, and I'd be in the day program, they'd come in on a Sunday, they'd leave on the next Sunday.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd build this friendship very quickly, and then it would be away.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Much to the consternation of my high school bride when I would say in this, you know, I'd leave in the summertime, say, bye, see ya.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't understand that.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, that was just that was the way things were.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we were apart for 25 years until we got back together and we discussed, well, how could how could you just walk away from you told me that you loved me and you know you wanted to get married in high school?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, that's what you do.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have uh you have a one-week or two-week friendship, and that's it.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's just it doesn't go past that.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: So and do you have siblings too?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have what?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Siblings?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I found out that I have two half-brothers and two half-sisters, of which I've met three of them.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and they're fun to be around.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see each other a lot, but you know, we connect when we connect, we connect.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so all right.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: But you growing up with you know your parents, you didn't have siblings that you know independently when you're growing up.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't part.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I had no idea who they were until I was almost 55 years old.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then one of my sisters is nicknamed Bomber, and it fits her to a T.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us more about that if you want.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Bomber.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta know what is bomber.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: What does that what does that mean?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bomber does verbal bombs.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I did some research and found out, you know, that I was that I did have probably some relations in a town in Wisconsin.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was up being a publicist for a friend of mine at the Oshkosh Air Show.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And after it was over, did this call and called this gal, called Bomber, and you know, is asking her question after question, and she was answering them.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says, wait a minute, I have to put your call on hold.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in a laundromat using a payphone at the time, and I thought, oh, great, we're done here.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she comes back about a minute later and she says, Well, I had to tell the police that I'd call them back.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: My car got stolen, but this is more interesting.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'd rather talk to you.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we kept talking.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said, Well, I based on what you said and what I found out, I really think that we are probably uh related as brother and sister.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this huge pause, and she goes, Yep, you're right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Come on over.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we went over, Barbara and I, my wife, and met her, and we talked a little bit more, and she says, Let me call, let me call my mom.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she always called her mom by her first name, but but not by mom.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she she said, But I need to call her in the afternoon because then she'll be on the sauce.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so she calls her up and she says, Hey, she said, Um This was your second marriage.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Dad, was he ever married before?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Did they have any kids?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they had a little red-headed girl.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, mom, you're wrong because this guy is not red-headed and he's not a girl.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then she calls up her older brother and said and said, Eric, I need to tell you something.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You aren't the oldest, you're not the tallest, you're not the best looking.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have an older brother.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the name bomber.
• 9:28
  unknown: Right.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just absolutely no filter with her whatsoever.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you're you discover that you have these half siblings, and you're like, how has this gone for you?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like in the 50s, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: So you're in your 50s, and even for them, were they, you know, in their 50s as well to learn?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were yeah, and they were very welcoming.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've met three out of four of them.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't met my older brother, he just was not tolerant of that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I have met three of them, two sisters and and a brother, and we've enjoyed our time together.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's been lightly comfortable, is the best way to say it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Susan, my other sister, connected with my wife to the point that she actually came out here in Colorado and taught for a while.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she teaches anywhere from special needs to highly advanced.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's and she also in the summertime teaches sailing on e-type and sunfish boats.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And her students win the races.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I did find out that my my bio dad still, I think, holds the record for the fastest ice sailing in the world.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that was over 200 miles an hour, and he was on the cover of Life magazine.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: January 19th of 19 something, 1950 or something like that.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have a cover of the magazine somewhere.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: I never met him.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had passed away since then.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: So you you had a really, I mean, just an interesting like environment to grow up in where there were so many different kids coming in.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like you said, you made friends quickly.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then as you were growing up, it sounds like it was you kind of did you kind of hold people like at at bay, or what did that look like as you were starting to get into your 20s or so?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then did you did you go to college then, or what did that look like for you?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I went to college, small college called Sioux Falls College in South Dakota.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the reason I picked that college is that our pastor that we where we went to church had gone there and he'd lamented that nobody ever went to his college.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, hmm, I'll go there.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what the heck, you know.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So and Reverend Perry took me up there with his college parole that he had.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we went to all the places that he used to visit.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So but I went there for two and a half years, and I packed four good years of college into 25 years, is what it amounted to, but eventually got my degree.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh being at the Y of the Rockies, you you met so many people, and yeah, I did put up defenses.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've had people tell me over time, and it's been something that I have to work on constantly, on chipping down the barriers.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can throw up an emotional barrier quicker than than anybody else can.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been told that.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay once it's over, it's over.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's very difficult me to for me to understand, you know, what love is.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's taken a it's taken 80 years for me to define that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that that came through.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're not 80, are you?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and yeah, yeah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well really 28,500, 400, 700 days and keep counting.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I thought you were like in your 60s.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: You guys, if you're not, I know you you might not be watching on YouTube right now, but wow, I I had no idea.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for you know for doing this.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I I feel like there's a lot of people I I love talking to people in their 60s, 70s, 80s.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: I I hope to have somebody in their 90s on this podcast, even in 100, because I don't know about you, but I feel like there's this this lie in the world that like when you turn 65, you just need to just sit down and do nothing.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: And like you're in your 80s and you're on here sharing your story, and you're gonna tell us more about your book.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know when when did you release your book recently?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was released two years ago.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It took almost two and a half years to write.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my fourth book.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're in your 70s when it released?
• 13:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that amazing?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: We'll talk about it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I I think when you're 65 is when your life starts.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Say that again.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody needs to be.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you're 60, yeah, when you're 65, your life starts.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're not put on a shelf.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: At one time in my life, I was property managing an independent living building, and everybody in there had to be over 60.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I had people that uh were World War II vets, and I would ask them, I said, tell me stories about your grandparents.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now that person took them back to when we were a new country in 1776.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and the stories they would tell about things that they did back then were amazing.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it it helped me in my writing because it it gave me a a foundation to work with, actually, footers to write work with on a foundation.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It you know, it was built on a rock because you could these people just had amazing stories about their grandparents coming across America, you know, on the Oregon Trail.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was and others that as a small six-year-old, the first thing they saw about freedom was the Statue of Liberty when it was fog shrouded as the boat came into New York Harbor.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: Can you imagine?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those, you know, a lot of those stories get lost, which is unfortunate.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love to be a storyteller, you know.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so so a storyteller, do you feel like you've always been a storyteller?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Did that start at a young age?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like when did that start kind of percolating in your life?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in seventh grade, I realized that I really wanted to tell stories and write.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was the end of seventh grade, I was walking home, and the school bully, the bully, decided that it was time to teach me a rather physical lesson.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it was kind of that you got pounded.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they called it back in in the 60s.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he kind of beat on me and landed on the grass, and I felt in my lip that I was bleeding.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing I could think was he felt the salty taste of blood in his mouth as his life was being ebbed away.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this is not a time to be thinking about prose.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is a time to be thinking about running.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I realized that, yeah, I'm probably gonna enjoy writing someday.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be something I'm gonna enjoy a lot of.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's quite a moment.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're thinking about this and you're laying on the ground and you need to run, but yet you're wanting to write in essence.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then he said, he said, Steve, you're not the toughest kid in seventh grade.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I looked up at him and once again got myself in trouble.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, well, I guess you're gonna do test seventh grade again because you just said that you failed seventh grade, so you're gonna go back.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I realized that it's a track race that I needed to get out of there.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: But his kid, his friends just started laughing at him, you know, because I just made a fool of him.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: So that was the moment.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: That was kind of that defining moment.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: I love that you, you know, able to like, I'm I'm imagining I whenever I hear people talking, I'm I'm seeing like a story play out, like a almost a movie.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: So you you run.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then did you start just running, walking into writing?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: What did that look like for you to start writing?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: Was it like fostered in school?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Did your parents really like kind of help you with that?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: Or was it just something that you innately started doing?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at the Y of the Rockies, we had a thing called program, a program bulletin that was a myrd of pages that came off the mimigraph machine every week with uh different activities, horseback riding, uh, hiking, craft projects.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the pages in there was all the evening programs.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved reading about what that was.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then I'd go to one of the programs as a kid or teenager, and what they wrote about it wasn't really what I thought the program was.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was more than that.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I can do better than this.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so in college, I took a couple of creative writing classes, and they had a a book that came out, kind of a pamphlet book, and I thought, ah heck, I'm just gonna put something in it.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what it was.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it ended up at on the back cover of the book.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I met an editor for Bethany Press, and he said, Well, can you, as a photographer, can you create a collage and some writing for me?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, I can do that.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize it was Bethany Press.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I did not realize he was an editor for that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew him and knew that he liked writing and that he worked somewhere where he read writing.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it ended up as one of their posters in 1967, I think it was.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they they printed it and sent it to all these different places.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like that's kind of when the career started.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I always enjoyed seeing something and trying to describe what it was, whatever it might be.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's that's amazing.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: What what would you say?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm just gonna want to have you maybe think of a time that you obviously had these moments where you're like, oh yeah, I think this could be a thing.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember having something that you tried to explain in a way that maybe nobody had ever seen before?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it actually like helped them see beyond through your writing?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember any moments like that?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I was working, I went to work for the YMC, the Rockies, and I was remember, I talked to you about the program bulletin.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed writing about what that next program would be and uh who would be there and tried to tug on the emotional heart of that, of the reader to say, you gotta come see this.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how you can express that way?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta come see this?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you gotta, you know, like a lot of times in writing, if you start out with a question, people will read on.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's that first sentence that really is important.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I read once with this young lady, one what they call a lead sentence in publishing, and she was in LA when there was an earthquake.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And her lead sentence about the earthquake was the bet moved and shook, which was unusual because I was the only one in it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that is funny.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna read the rest of the story.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about one of the great, one of the bigger LA earthquakes.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, but if you have a chance to sit down, you know, with one of the astronauts that that that flew the shuttle craft, or to uh walk down the road with Jim Irwin, who walked on the moon and started high flight for the prisoners of the POWs and the families that got reunited that came back.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you have a chance to relay what they have said to you to somebody else.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in any of the stories that I I wrote before I wrote my books, working for small newspapers and stuff, I would always what I call Beck quote.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if if you gave me a statement, I would write it down.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But before the article got published, I would call you and say, This is what I think you said, and this is what I wrote in the paragraph.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the quote I've given you.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't read the whole story to you because that's privileged until it is printed.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But did I get it right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you really sent?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what I really heard?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And other journalists would say to me, Well, how come these people always call you back to do a story?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's because I call them back and make sure that what they said is accurate.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be word for word, because a written word and a verbal sentence are two different things.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the meaning has to be the same.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's so good.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_03: So for those people who are out there listening, I feel like there's a lot of people who have books in them, love to write, but they just maybe don't make the time to do it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever find any excuses like that in your life?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Just for recreational writing?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everybody has a story to tell.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Carald had a thing called On the Road that was an incredible thing.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one of his lines that he always said was, Don't mess with the story.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Allow this the person to tell you the story and don't change it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: We at one time we had a ministry that we started where we placed RV chaplains into in, well, chase placed chaplains into RV parks in the in the wintertime.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason, chaplains don't want to be in an RV park in Minnesota in the wintertime.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know why.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to me, they would be the chosen frozen, but you know, that's a different story.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh so one of the gals that uh was married to uh one of the chaplains kept saying, Well, I just really want to write.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to write, but I just don't know where to start.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, yeah, you start with a blank piece of paper and the typewriter, essentially.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I will give you a sentence.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you write to that sentence.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Bob, I know who you are.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I finally broke her down and she says, All right, give me the sentence.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the sentence I gave her was the clown was really interesting, except for the machine gun in his hand.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I said, seven days, 500 words.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she came back with this cute little story and she said, I did it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, you did.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now go write your book, write your story.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: And did she do that?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she did.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: She did.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: She is not published at this point, but she achieved a personal goal.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote to the glory of Christ.
• 25:27
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what she wanted to do.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I I told another person in a at a convention I was at, they came up a document.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Well, I'm so jealous that you wrote a book and da-da-da-da.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I said, anybody can write a book.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Oh, no, no, I I wrote a book, but I just don't think it could be published.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, wait a minute, well, what do you mean?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, I don't know if it's good enough.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: All these near-drive excuses was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard all those.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at her and said, Ma'am, I said, I'm just gonna ask you one question and I want you to answer it from the depth of your soul.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had not written the four gospels, where would you be today?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And she gave me the same look that you did.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Well, you're right.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, That's my publisher over there.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hand him the manuscript.
• 26:23
  unknown: Yeah.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not yours anymore.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been yours.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been God's.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she's published today.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: And how long ago is that?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not three years ago.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, three years ago.
• 26:38
  unknown: Wow.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's just, you know, but everybody has a story.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's so true.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I have a little thing on my water bottle that says your story matters.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I think sometimes, you know, maybe you've talked to people as well that think, well, my story isn't as important or not as, you know, death-defining as yours.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's comparison that happens.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say to somebody who maybe has some of those comparison lives coming for them?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't compare yourself to anybody else.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your fingerprints different than anybody else's in the whole world, just like a snowflake is.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no comparison to what you wrote.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have a pastor friend of mine that was worked for the CIA before he became a pastor.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I was taught how to lie.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now he tells the truth.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is a story.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: That is a big story.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: But nobody ever knew that until we were playing a game of tell me something you don't know.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's a sentence to start from, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that started a dialogue with him.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was in his office saying, Well, what about this?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what about that?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what why is this picture here?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And why why is this object here?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he opened up, he said, Nobody's ever asked me these questions.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: So you like just in listening to do you do you feel like you notice things?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're a notice, and you like are really listening to what people are are saying more so maybe than others, would you say?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think I do.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: My wife says I'm kind of disconnected most of the time, but you know, and I I feel that I am a lot of times.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: But if I I live in a plus 55 community with my wife, and occasionally I have to take a one of the guys out to a hospital for his medical infusions.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, it's going to take a couple hours.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Stanley?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just love going because I'll just sit there in the lobby and watch people.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll make up stories about, you know, why are they there?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who's uh attending to this wheelchair?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they at the level they're attending?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it good, bad, and different?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a job or is it a mission for them?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 29:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I pick up.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have fun in airports.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was wondering.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's how I am.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm always like, I wonder where they're going.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are they here for a vacation business?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like my whole brain is like coming up with stories too.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's really fun.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's, I mean, like I said, everybody has a story.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, and there are people in the world that can pull those stories out.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Carolt was one of them.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Walter Cronkite was another.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think Hannity does an excellent job of interviewing people, you know.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Barbara Walters always asked, always had the statement, tell me more.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that's good.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's best three words ever.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us, tell us more about, you know, even between your college age, you came to be an author.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like what did you have books prior to this that you've released as well?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't write a book until 20.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I started in 2016, writing my first book.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that started because of the gal I gave the the the clown and the machine gun sentence to.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there is this thing called NanoRimo, which is the National Writing Month thing where you write 50,000 words in 30 days.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's about 1700 words a day.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, guess what?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I signed up for NanoRimo, and I'm looking for an accountability partner.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Gee, I wonder who that would be.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, great.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: I stepped in it.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what you do is you write, you know, it's kind of a contest for personally, but if you have an accountability partner, then you're comparing your story to theirs, and you're keeping, you know, your word count where they need to be.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: We were up at the why of the Rockies, and I was telling a couple of friends out.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: We were by the car, I was telling them that I was going to have to do this and write this thing.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what I wanted to do is I wanted to write a story called Two Rachels.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Rachel from Columbine that was slain because of what happened there back in '99.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then a friend of ours who was at 27 found out that she had absolute terminal cancer and only three years to live.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And she had several, she had three daughters and a husband.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she prepared them for that.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to do a monologue between the two of them, kind of a stage play.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said, Well, there's this other story that I've always had for years called In the Worth of the Shadow, which was my first book.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about me growing up at the Why of the Rockies.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the historian for the Why of the Rockies said, I think you should write that book.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the other friends of mine that I'd worked with, she said, I think you should write that book.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going, Well, I know best I'm writing the Tomb Rachel's.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Barb and I start traveling back home.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: She turns down the radio.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if she starts a sentence with, Well, you know, then I need to listen very carefully.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Well, you know, you have had the outline for that book ever since we've been married.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you did the outline in 1970.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: We got married in 88.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: This 19, it's 2016.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she just turned the radio back up, and I thought, okay, I am not going to argue with three women.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I heard God say, This is the story you need to write.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the litmus test saying, All right, I will do it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so for Nano Reinwell, I wrote In the Warmth of the Shadow.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um both of us came into our word count about the same time.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of a you know photo finish.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So cool.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And over Christmas, I just tossed it off to a publisher.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And on the 27th, I got a call back from the agent.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then about two weeks later, I got a call from the publisher saying, We're gonna publish your book.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: And you guys not supposed to happen.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: You weren't expectant that that would happen?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't I just wrote the darn thing, you know, because because Kim said, you know, you're gonna you are gonna have this little track race of writing.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: So wow.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: So what did that process look like then once they brought you on?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It it became a a pain in the butt because I had to edit it.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: You had to okay.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had to I had to agree to some of the word syntax that was wrong.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And since then I have re-edited it.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when I read the first edition of the book, it's like, really?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is in print.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh please.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I found a strong Christian proof reader and copywriter that I could work with.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And between her and myself, we were able to to make it make me a better writer because of her.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I republished it a couple of years ago under a different publishing company.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: So and then you have a if you're not watching on YouTube right now or Rumble, there I can see the name of the book that's behind our dear brother here, Robert.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: Could you tell us a little bit about this book that you have behind you?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was the toughest book.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first three were training to write this book.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was a single mom for many years.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jennifer's mom, my only daughter, decided when she was, when Jenny was five and a half, almost six years old, that she wanted to seek another different type of lifestyle.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So Jenny came home from school one day and said, Where's mom?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, She's gone.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time that Jenny had kind of a departure syndrome of losing somebody.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't mind being Mr.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mom.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: We lived in a place in Granby, Colorado called Snow Mountain Ranch, was the sister camp of the Estes Park Center.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was working there full time.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it was basically my childhood being married in her, just at a different location.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize that, you know, she was blaming herself for mom leaving.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we went through a lot of, you know, time and challenge on that.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time she came, I would pick her up from school at the entrance to the camp.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she got in the Bronco and slammed her lunchbox down in her backpack with a little bit more force than usual.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I'd go to the office and take her with me, and I just drove past it and went home and said, Look, I am never going to leave you.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, I'm afraid of that.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in the book, she says, I didn't know if I'd ever come home and see that dad was gone too.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: If mom left, why wouldn't Daddy be gone?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't he leave?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I told her I would, I would, I would not leave her.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, because I was adopted, she wanted to know who her mom was.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I resonated with that because being an adopted is being a donut.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Being born into a family is being a cookie.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: This adopted person always has a hole in them, wondering, what's the genetics?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who was this?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: When Jenny was born, we her mom and I went back to her parents' place, and they kept saying, Oh, Jenny looks like this, and Jenny, you know, has this and da-da-da-da-da.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: I got so upset, I got in the car and drove for almost two hours, just trying to say, Well, who do I look like?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I like?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had no idea.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: So she went to live with her mom.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Long story shorter, eventually I heard that she wanted to stay with her mom, which kind of surprised me.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: But later I found out that wasn't necessarily the total truth.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: But her mom at that point was married.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she was a police officer in a town north of Denver and was married to a police officer.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at 14, Jenny became an alcoholic.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: The reason being is that her stepdad would walk around the house buck naked.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And her mom was doing night shift, he was doing day shift.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they never saw each other.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jenny discovered vodka.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as she says in the book, she drank to numb the hurt.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then her stepdad said, Oh, you have a secret.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have a secret.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you tell your secret, you know, I tell my secret.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so who are you gonna tell when you're in a family of two police officers that are on the same police department?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the stepdad is the juvenile detective highly decorated for the police department.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you're you're in quicksand up to your nose.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so from at 14, she started drinking.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: At 15, she started using.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: And anything that she could swallow or sniff, she would do.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: This went on for years that we didn't even know.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Barb and I got married.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean you have no idea.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Alcoholics are very good at hiding.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're extremely good at that.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the the more that you know he, you know, abused her, the and the more that the more that she drank.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then she got like she said, I made this one decision to go to party A or party B.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: If I'd gone to party A, it would have been better, because that was the moral compass was pointed straight up.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: I went to party B, the moral compass was pointed straight down.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when she discovered designer drugs and more stuff.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So over time, her mom found out that this husband that she'd been married to had been doing this.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: He had been charged with three counts of sexual abuse of minors for a person of trust.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And her mom at this point had also become a lawyer.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: She had stopped the police department, she had her law degree, and she bounced before the trial.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: She took off and went to the Bahamas.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her mom, and it's nothing against her mom, it's just this hard to handle.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Jenny needed a mom and a lawyer of what she had in the same person.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you left.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going to court with Jenny, and Barb was with me at the time when he was being sentenced.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And after he was sentenced, and he got sentenced for 90 days.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just nothing for three cows.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was 90 days.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was ridiculously short.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Jenny was able to see him visually cuffed in front of her, which I thought, well, that's healing.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: We left the court and I said, let's go to lunch.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, No.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: She got in a car and drove off.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: She was so angry.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, now she's her mom's left her again.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: What caused her to leave, do you know, at that time?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like what caused her to run?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't, I really don't know.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think when she found out what was happening to her daughter, it was more than she could handle.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Now was it a vacation to the Bahamas or she like left town?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, she left.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like she permanently.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Start a new life.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Started a new life on a dive boat as a cook and uh dive instructor.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think she was the dive instructor.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So Jan was left to her own vices.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it just remember those.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw those old black and white cartoons with Mickey Mouse, where he's in a rowboat and it's in a whirlpool, and he's trying to get to the top of the whirlpool, and he just about gets there, and he takes the breath and he's all the way back down to the bottom.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that taking the breath is a relapse, boom, down.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: She would just about make it to the top, and she'd go back down and it would get worse.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Time after time, we've tried to get into rehab.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: She ended up marrying a guy that's an atheist agnostic, both, and highly intelligent.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Benza cat candidate.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I I enjoyed him, I really enjoyed him, except he just didn't see that there was a God.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: They had a kid, a small baby boy, and Jenny at that time was still drinking and doing drugs, and her husband put her into rehab.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first time that he visited, he said, I want a divorce.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting a divorce.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: She thought they were getting back together.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Strike number three across the I'm leaving you plate.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like people closest to you.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: People closest to her kept walking away.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So why wouldn't she not, you know, trusting her dad, which she did, me.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: But she didn't really trust anybody at that point.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: So anything I could do to help her, she just she wouldn't do.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's with addicts, that's the way they are.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: See, an addict never recovers, they continue recovering.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like for some who maybe are walking along, some somebody right now, even.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if um if you take an alcoholic that's had 30 years sobriety and somebody slips into a drink, that 30 year is erased as soon as he swallows or she swallows.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just right back.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's that it's they're they're like claws, they're like talons of a of an eagle.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: You you pull one off, goes up this way, and you work for this one, and this one comes back again.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: They just stay with you.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And until you find Christ and center on that, these talons never release.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jimmy just thought, well, why would I even you know want to quit drinking and driving?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's still dulling the hurt.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we finally got her into a program called Teen Challenge when she came to Louis at one time.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's several times she came and left.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when she filled out the form about how many drugs have you taken, and there were 30 check marks that you could have.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: She checked 27 of them.
• 44:27
  unknown: Oh my god.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was absolutely shocked.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't no, and of course, by then she's not a teenager.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Teenagers, she's in her 30s, and she goes Teen Challenge with a bunch of teenagers.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm the old lady here.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, shocker, there were people older than her that were in Team Challenge.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: The program really helped her.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it did.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: But she still relapsed and eventually went, made another really bad decision and went with two gals from Texas to New Mexico.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: They bought drugs, came back, and the U.S.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Marshals picked them up.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, everybody that's on the roller coaster gets the same ride.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: So these two gals that picked up drugs, she's in the car, she gets the same charges.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was charged with several felonies, consequently, spending almost three years in jail.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because she did she did offend once she got out and she had to go back for another six months.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: But let's go back to Teen Challenge.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: The gal that was the director of Teen Challenge, the female director, you know, really worked with Jenny.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: When Jenny was incarcerated, you end up, especially in federal prison, after you're sentenced, you take what's called Conair, which is Convict Airlines, that's what they call it, and you go to Oklahoma City, and that's the distribution point.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the cellmate she got was a friend of Shelly, who had been her director at Teen Challenge.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this gal taught her the ways of prison.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now Jenny had to take a psychological test, so they flew her out to California.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was out there three months, came back.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Guess who her roommate was again?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: The same gal.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's no consequences world.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can't make this up.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So then they, because she has multiple sclerosis, they they sent her to a prison in Fort Worth called Carswell, and that's the only female medical prison.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Her roommate there was called Red.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she was the alpha gal for the floor.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: She was in there because it was a first-class felony that she basically ended somebody's life, from what I understand.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Red put out the word, you mess with Jenny, you mess with me, you will be a mess.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Jenny was totally protected for her whole time in prison.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: She never got in a fight, never got any type of solitary confinement.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything, God protected her, and that came because of prayer.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because my prayer to her, my prayer to God was keep her protected and keep her safe at any cost.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and God did.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then when she got out of prison, she ended up getting this boyfriend we named the minus one in the book, because I will not use his name.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And insignificant other is too hard to say and even harder to spell.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: So minus one became his name.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she was with him for six years.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: And finally he started hitting her.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when she realized that she needed to get out of drugs, out of alcohol.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was, it'll be three years this October of 26th that she has been with us and away from him.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: That she has been alcohol free for nine years, and just we're very, very close to three years now of drug-free.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is amazing.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: So she came came to us at 49 years old as a 16-year-old.
• 48:23
  unknown: Really?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is that like just still psychologically everything?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's well when you become an alcoholic, that's where you stop.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um stop growing psychologically.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, she had gotten two years from being from 14 and starting as an alcoholic.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: She progressed about 16.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so she came to us with a a baby voice, and you know, just like any teenage girl.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: I asked, there's four things I told her that she was going to do from October to December.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, she was going to go to church with us.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to find a Christian counselor.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because of methamphetamine and fentanyl that she had overdosed on, and she almost died from that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, she did die because she quit breathing.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the only time this nefarious boyfriend was good to her, is that he went ballistic in the ER waiting room, and it took four doses of narcan to bring her back in two days.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: Four.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: In four.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: That usually doesn't happen.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: They usually stop at two.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and then she was in ICU for a couple days.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I said, You have to find a Christian counselor, you have to find a job, you need to get your driver's license because he wouldn't allow her to drive, so she's 48 years old and can't drive.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the the fourth one was Christian.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, because of the fentanyl and the meth, she had lost her all of her teeth.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you need to find a periodonist that can give you teeth that work for you.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: She had teeth, but they were they weren't right.
• 50:13
  unknown: Okay.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: So by Christmas, she had done all of that.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she found a paradonist that generally, when you get uppers and lowers, it's anywhere from$25,000 to$50,000.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: She found a paradonist that did it for her for$11,500.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, here's another good thing.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm I'm curious as her father.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: How did you keep your hope alive throughout this?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: I can only imagine who I have two 18, 20-year-old, 21-year-old boys, or men, I should say, not boys anymore.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, how did you keep your hope alive?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: And and to those who maybe are walking this out with their own children or family members.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: Just say prayer.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing, it's the most powerful weapon you have in the world.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: But to use prayer, you have to give them over to God.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then person.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, yeah, and that's, you know, I was rather do it myself.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I tried to rescue her.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: My wife tried to rescue her.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: Other people tried.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it didn't work.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: What does that look like for you to try to rescue her?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Kept bringing her back, and she would just fall back, you know.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you enable people, it doesn't work because there's no consequences to it.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Jenny understands today that there are serious consequences to her actions.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that and she accepts that.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so prayer is the most powerful thing to do.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: When minus one called me in the middle of the night and said she quit breathing, I don't think she's going to live.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: She's turned blue, they're working on her.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just finally said, okay, God.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: She is my daughter, your child.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: If this is the time that you take her to heaven and she's saved, she believes in you.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's your choice.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing I can do about it.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I can't, if I could hold her one more time when she's breathing, I would like to do that.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't make any bargains like, you know, I'm I'm gonna go to Africa or whatever.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just it's your will.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that was at two o'clock in the morning.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember falling into a deep, deep sleep.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day, because he worked for an airlines, he got me a ticket on standby, and I was able to go down and be with her.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we were able to get her into a rehab that she'd already decided to be into.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was in that for five and a half weeks, went down, picked her up, brought her home.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: And on that ride from Texas to Colorado, she opened up and it was like a Dr.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dodson focus on the family interview.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I heard God say, you need to write the long road home.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, you have got to be kidding.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got a sense of humor, and right now this is not funny.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: He says, No, you need you need to write this with her.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, that's what you want me to do, then through you, through me, to the paper, to the reader's eyes.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing this alone.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's with you.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so over time, Jenny and I wrote the book.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had to take my daddy hat off, put on my journalistic hat, ask her hard, hard questions, put on my research hat, and then put my daddy hat back on and find the box of Kleenex.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I bet.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: What was the hardest question that you asked?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: What did it feel like when you got on the table at the abortion clinic to have the abortion when you were in high school?
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: How did that make you feel?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: What was going on in your mind?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when you heard the such a machine start.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Did that chapter when we did that chapter for Audible took six tapes?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I bet.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the hardest question.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: And through this, was there a lot of healing in writing this together?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to put things down.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: She came and lived with us because he had his hooks in her and he worked for the airline, she could fly back and forth for free.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a text when she was living with us, I got a text from her on Father's Day saying, I really want to give him another chance, but I believe I have to.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's a heart stabber.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I cut off all conversation with her.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I can't do this anymore.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it took several months, and that's when she finally called and said, He's starting to hit me.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we went down with my youngest son from Barbara's side of the marriage, and we extracted her.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when her journey of healing began.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was difficult to write, but when she finally got here and we were able to get her into counseling, and and she gave me her journal that she had when she was in rehab, so I could use that as the as the basis for research.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: And reading that, going, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: So she she was literally an open book.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, she opened wide open.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's incredible for somebody to do.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if we just did an author talk several weeks ago, and we were together in that, and I would look over at her and she would just pick up the sentence and and start speaking.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because she wants to share now.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, isn't that incredible?
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know, you you see some people who've walked through a lot of of trauma and challenges in life, and you you do, you have a choice.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: You can either share what you've walked through to help others, or you can keep it hidden, right?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I just feel like have you heard from people who've read the book, like that they've, you know, some testimonials from people who've read this book and people who've been at these author talks that have been really impacted by this?
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's yeah, that's a good question because if you say, well, I wrote a book about my daughter's 30 plus years of addiction and the journey we took together, most people say, I have a relative, I have a friend.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I say it's probably 90% of the people say that.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now the stats will tell you that the usage of fentanyl and meth are down, which they are.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a new drug that's out that's worse than both of them combined, that's coming up.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't look at this stuff and say, oh, we're solving the problem because we're not.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I had gave the book to a gal that was the hostess of a restaurant where I go for, I call it the grumpy old men's Bible study breakfast, because it's just a bunch of grumpy old men that get together.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and she read the book, and a couple weeks later I went back to breakfast, and she came up to me with her arms out, and her eyes were just tear-filled, and she said, You told my story.
• 58:18
  unknown: Wow.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I had another friend that gave me a review, and he said, This book should be in every junior and senior high school.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it should be recommended reading because it's raw, it's unfiltered, it's straight from the heart.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hemingway said that anybody can be a writer, all you have to do is open a vein and bleed.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we opened our hearts and bled out and put it in the book.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for, I mean, coming from, you know, you mentioned before, kind of having arms distance, you know, with people kind of growing up and such, I imagine there's you're almost inviting people in in a way that you've never invited people in before with this book, right?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: And even sharing on the podcast.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're allowed to walk around my soul.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if they want to do it in slippers, that's fine.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: If they want to do it in spiked feet, that's fine.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's whatever helps them heal.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: And to understand that you're not alone in this.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are so, so many people, so many homeless that are out there that are trying to reach out, and families have said, you know, I'm done with them.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm finished.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you can't be finished.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'm not saying this as a bragging standpoint, Krista, because it's not.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if I would have said I'm finished with Jenny, she would have been finished with life.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: That is, I mean, it's like the prodigal son in the Bible, right?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's that, you know, the vision of the the father, you know, running with open arms to his son when he went away, right?
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: Did you exactly feel that all the time?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and today she's she works for a big box company as a sample person and loves it.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's got a lower management job that she has just received after working there three years.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: So she's got a raise.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: She has her car that she drives.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: She has Christian friends.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: She goes to church with us, goes bowling with her friends from the company that she works for.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: She will be going down to see her her well bonus sister because her car needs air conditioning fixed, and her and her bonus sister's dad is going to fix that for it should be over$1,200.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's doing the whole thing for under$400.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then she's going down to Albuquerque to visit a friend that she was in team challenge with that she hasn't seen for 14 years.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: So she's growing up.
• 1:01:19
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the here's the thing is that through all this, we have now found a condominium that she is going to be able to get into, and that will be hers.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a one-bedroom, it's a handy, semi-handicapped unit.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's all on the first floor, and there's handicapped parking right in front of it.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if through God's will, if we can get that condo in Colorado Market, which is terrible to buy anything, including a candy bar, you know, that so she's this is where God's grace has come in and God's mercy has been there.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's it's not been me, it's been him through me and tons of people that have have been beside her.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what a blessing.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: I I just I'm just thinking of, you know, like Team Challenge and how many different, you know, places, rehabs that this book would just be so incredible.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh have you guys been talking to them, telling them about this book and her story?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like, I'm seeing you guys speaking, and this is what my brain does.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would love, I would love to do speaking with Jen.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we had this first time and it worked out really well.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: This afternoon, we had craft author show that when she gets off work, I said, Well, you're gonna come to that.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if people answer questions, you can you can answer or questions, you can ask them or answer them.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm just gonna sit there.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: The neat thing about when she didn't have her driver's license is that her daddy kept telling people, oh, she's the student driver.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Guess who her teacher is?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just really kind of punked her as much as I possibly could.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: She finally said, Dad, can you can you just stop on that?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I don't think so.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is way too much fun.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: What a relationship.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, to look back on these years and just the name of the book, The Long Road Home.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say to somebody who maybe has been praying for breakthrough for many years, even decades, for something to, you know, they're continuing to pray and pray.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's not a situation like this, even.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say to that person who maybe just feels like their prayers, like they're just not going anywhere?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: What would you say to that person today?
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, every prayer that we send up to God is answered.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them we don't like the answers, and some of them we can't hear.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: The the teacher is always silent during the test.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes we have to do that.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because of our ministry of placing chaplains at RV parks, we traveled over 360,000 miles in an RE.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we burned up a lot of dinosaurs.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: But what I saw along the way was this yellow sign with black writing on it about the time I needed it.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was up on a light post or some type of electrical post, and it said, Trust Jesus.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I would say to them.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Trust Jesus, but give it to him.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't say, Oh, I'm gonna trust you, but I'm gonna keep this part from me because I don't trust you.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, trust Jesus.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I would say.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: Two words, two words, that's all you need.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, with anything.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, everything.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, trust Jesus if you whether you want a chocolate malt or a vanilla malt.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them are good.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_03: Which one would you choose?
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: Both.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_03: Mixture, even mix it up.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I would love for you to just share as we wrap up here, of course.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how can people get in touch with you?
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, if they would love to have you maybe speak at an event or you know, have you on their podcast?
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_03: What would be the best ways for them to get in touch with you guys?
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just through my email, Robert N Roosh, R-U-E-S-C-H at Gmail, is the best way to get a hold of me.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you want the book, it's on Amazon, it's on Barnes and Noble, it's on Audible, it's also on Kindle.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you can, you know, it's three across the plate on that.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the book is the ministry.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what I say, and it's I say this very sincerely, that you know, if if you know somebody that needs the book and you know they can't afford it, talk to me.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: We'll figure out something.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's very generous.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I will I'll be sure to have all the information for your contact information, the book, everything in the show notes so you guys can grab it, reach out to Robert.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_03: He's I mean, as you've listened to him today, it's you're just I don't know.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know the best word to put up put out there at this point, but like you have such a big heart and the heart that you would even Give books away if somebody can't afford it.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know that I've ever had somebody say that on my podcast before, to be honest with you.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for that.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I need to just say one other thing, too, is that I wouldn't be where I am today, number one, without Jesus.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: But number two, without a prayer that I did 25 years, year well, actually at eight in 1988, when I just said, Lord, I am so lonely.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to be married, but only to a Christian woman.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's not in your will for me, then I need the strength.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if it is, then send me a Christian woman.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was on a Monday.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara, my high school sweetheart that I hadn't talked to for 25 years, I received a letter from her on a Friday.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it was in five days.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: In five days.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is how prayer works.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_03: Can't make sense.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lay it on, lay it on the line.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Barbara has been a mom to Jen.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a frustrated mom because it's a frustrated dad, but she has been there for her through thick and thinner and thicker all the time.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if it wasn't for her, you know, it's just not me, it's God.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Barb has been there for her.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been so blessed with not only having Jenny back, but having to help raise and love her four children.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jenny always wanted to be the little girl with an older sister with brothers in between.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: That happened.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't God so good?
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you could you probably you could probably never have conjured up the story on your own.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: Ever.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: But yet He's given you the opportunity to share this story and bless so many.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, as we've been talking today, if you can just imagine that one person who's listening in, do you have any other just words of encouragement or wisdom that you'd want to share with this one?
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: You've shared so much already.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else?
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's you're on his journey.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your road, it's his road.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I have seen people that have decided to sideline and not stay on his road.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of the superhighway, it becomes the dirt road.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: Get back on the superhighway.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just trust Jesus.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's so simple, yet so difficult for people to do.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because we just want to do it ourselves.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the guy that told God, he said, Well, I can I can make a human being.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Well, go ahead and do that.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he reached down and grabbed some dirt, and God said, Ah, make your own dirt first.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Trust Jesus.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Armstrong was a former senator and the president of Colorado Christian University.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the last words I ever heard him say before he passed away was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is a three-part sermon.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: See, to be a Christian is very easy.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: All you gotta do is start with in the beginning and go to the Bible and it's Amen.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Read the books, figure out what happened.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are 66 books, and if you take the acrostic of Bible, it's basic BI, basic um instructions before l leaving Earth.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's basic, and yet at times it can be complicated for some, right?
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not until we reach heaven and you know inhale our last breath on earth and exhale our new breath in heaven, we don't have the answers.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not supposed to.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_03: I know, right.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And and our world is well, we could get on a whole we could get on a whole podcast episode about that, I'm sure.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, our world is just there's so much information and everybody's just trying to know everything, and it it's kingdom's different than than where we are now.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_03: I love.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think we'll end with that today.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much for being on today, Robert.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_03: You have been amazing.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for just your journey and how you've shared your story with us today.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: I am going to end the Hope Unlocked podcast with our Hope Unlocked anchoring verses.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_03: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that's Romans 15, 13.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you so much for being a brave voice who's setting so many free.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be back with another episode next week.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Robert.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: God bless.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Me too.