Latest / Relatively Functional Dads / Episode 002 – The Dad We Had and The Dad We’re Becoming

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Episode 002 – The Dad We Had and The Dad We’re Becoming · Relatively Functional Dads

• Audio: And we back as Andy Mignot says. Come on, let's get into it. Andy Mignot, J Cole, take your pick. We back baby. Episode two, welcome to the podcast. Buddy here, always co-hosts Reese, big handsome producer Noah behind the camera. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode. Reese, we got a lot of, gosh man, some like deep things to talk about today. Last week we really looked at the importance of being fathered by God. The Boys And Audio: welcome to the Relatively Functional Dads podcast for fathers doing their best and learning every day. We're just three relatives walking through faith, fatherhood, and real life together. That was me. ⁓ experts here, just honest conversations about the wins, the struggles, and the moments that shape us as men and dads. Some days we've got it together, other days we're just trying to get to bedtime, but we keep showing up. And if you're dad... ⁓ In the middle of it too, you're in the right place. Let's journey through this together. Audio: stepping into being a son, really just a more present son with God before we can be a father. So if you didn't listen to that episode, go back and listen to episode one. This week we're going to not just look at like our heavenly father, we're going to actually evaluate our relationship with our dads, our step dads, our father-like figures, because that has shaped us as dads. And this community is for dads who are being shaped, who are just showing up, who like us are drinking decaf tea because the kids just got down from bed. 20 milligrams. Yes. Still got 20 milligrams. Yeah, dude. Oh, I don't know about tea. Decaf coffee is 20 milligrams. decaf tea. Why decaf tea? Because I am about an hour and half from going to bed and I will not be able to sleep if not. No chance we get this done in under two hours. Dude, we got to keep it under an hour. So before I do, we're not going to be those people that just drag on the intro like we're doing right now because we got some really important things to get into. Please like and subscribe. Please. Please just review. Leave a review. We're trying to put me through college again. Reese's gotta get monetized. I didn't make it through. Exactly. That's why we're trying. This is round two. He's got 40 more credit to finish my degree. He's still got to work a job. It could change the world. Reese's world could change a friend's world. So grab your wife's phone, subscribe with her YouTube account. That's right. literally, like seriously, let us know if there's any feedback we would love to hear. Drop a comment and... ⁓ Reese what you got man cuz I butchered that intro I'm just ready to get after I always said if I ever had a podcast I would not just belabor the intro I I think you might have started it with the wrong people yeah I will I will will derail the intro a second J Cole reference too deep for the intro one of his first songs we're not gonna get too deep so let's just keep going okay well leading off with fun segments we've got Big Dad energy this week and then we've got should have known better should have known better is gonna be here pretty much every week But starting off with Big Dad Energy, just a moment of the week that made you feel proud. Anything come to mind for you? You want me to go first? Big Dad Energy. Big Dad Energy. At the time of this recording, Valentine's Day was somewhat recent. Yes. I'm mostly, there's two reasons. One, because I do have some Big Dad Energy I want to share, but the other one is because I want to set you up to have to confess to the world your failures and hopefully some redemption this Valentine's Day. Because you got some stories. I do. Some things to share. ⁓ But yeah. Madeline, my wife's done a really good job of incorporating our kids into Valentine's Day. I do the whole, my kids love balloons. the night before- hates them though. ⁓ dog hates balloons. I mean, it is insane. Vicious. How it just hypes up our household in general. My mom was in town, so I got flowers for her, for my wife. ⁓ I got a little potted plant with a little stuffy around it for my two kids and some balloons. some donuts, we went hard. We had a great Valentine's Day. Kids loved it. Madeline had the kids make a Valentine's Day card for me. So she's getting the kids involved. We want them not just to get the chocolates and the sweets and balloons. What does it look like to love people well? So that was really impactful. And then wifey wrote me a really kind Valentine's Day letter. I felt very seen as we talked about in last week's episode by her and valued as a dad. So yeah, big dad energy as far as receiving some love. giving some love, Valentine's Day, it was a success. There's always a little nervous energy. Did you crush it or not? It was a success this year. Speaking of not crushing it. Tell the world. You know what, sorry. If we're doing Valentine's Day for me, we're skipping to my should have known better. Do it. Okay. This is not the most recent Valentine's Day. ⁓ I've learned my lesson. Should have learned it beforehand based on every. sitcom I've ever watched in my life, every rom-com, every TV show that I've ever watched has played this scene out and I just thought, you know, my relationship was different and it was not. It was not. ⁓ So two years ago, living with you all here at this house, saving up for house with Ellie, my wife, and Ellie and I both agreed we're not going to celebrate Valentine's Day, but hold on. Cause I'm not that big a dummy. say we're not going to celebrate Valentine's day. That means we're still going to celebrate it. Or at least you're going to celebrate it or celebrate them somehow. So I had that part down. We just agreed we'd celebrate it on a different day because we don't like crowds and making reservations where there's going to be lots of people and yada, yada, yada. Just watch the Seinfeld episode that talked about yada, yada, yada today. Either way, I don't remember what day we decided we were going to celebrate it. It was after. So it was going to be a few days after or something like that. And so Valentine's Day rolls around again. This is like two years ago living here. ⁓ And what I had forgotten is that when you live with people, they get to see how the brother-in-law treats their spouse on Valentine's Day. I flexed on them that year too. I may have been fine had I been living with just Ellie and she didn't get to, if you've ever seen the office episode where Bob Vance just brings like an entire flower shop into the building while Pam gets nothing. That's exactly what Valentine's at 6 a.m. donuts, flowers, balloons. I was flexing that day. So I was not flexing. I don't know, rolled out at 8 a.m. or something like that. ⁓ Hair's all crazy. I don't even remember what this day was like. I don't remember if it was a work day. I don't know. I do know that later that day we were both chatting because again, our spot away from the chaos was in our room, which is the front room of the house, lower level. That'll make sense later. And we get to chatting. She's frustrated shockingly about not receiving any flowers, blah, blah, like no, no card, no nothing. And in my mind, we had agreed to celebrate several days afterwards and ⁓ she was not having it. We got into this big tiff. ⁓ and ⁓ I that when she walks out of the room, we're gonna, we're gonna recover as best we can. So ⁓ I up the window, jump out, ⁓ literally there. ⁓ It's there. couldn't know that I was going to get flowers. Cause then she would have texted me and said, it's not even worth it. It's too late. It's too late. But if I could sneak out and get something done, ⁓ which hilarious enough, I went to Meyer to pick up some flowers and a card. ⁓ I that when she walks out of the room, we're gonna, we're gonna recover as best we can. So ⁓ I up the window, jump out, ⁓ literally there. ⁓ It's there. couldn't know that I was going to get flowers. Cause then she would have texted me and said, it's not even worth it. It's too late. It's too late. But if I could sneak out and get something done, ⁓ which hilarious enough, I went to Meyer to pick up some flowers and a card. With some other schmuck who apparently made the exact same mistake. And by the way, the flowers are not choice at the end of the day on Valentine's day. ⁓ the idiots are choice though, that are walking in and out of the building. So With some other schmuck who apparently made the exact same mistake. And by the way, the flowers are not choice at the end of the day on Valentine's day. ⁓ the idiots are choice though, that are walking in and out of the building. So I get some flowers. come back. ⁓ I don't remember how I set them up. This was a while ago. I've tried to repress this memory as best I can. ⁓ but we ended up salvaging the day a little bit, but Should have known better. If your significant other ever says they don't care about Valentine's day, they care about Valentine's day. It's a trap. To a certain extent, they care about it. It may not be as much as other people, but you need to get something. I don't know what that is. Heck, it could be an act of service, something. You need to do something for Valentine's day. Learn from my mistakes. Big dad energy, like bring it dads. Love your kids. Don't replace loving your wife on Valentine's Day with stuff for your kids. Love them both. Get them involved. It's a time for us to flex. It's an excuse to flex. Go do it. My kid's not old enough yet, but yes, I will. I'll need you to remind me of that whenever. Hey, he loves to plank butt naked in the bath ⁓ and scare the crap out of me. He also hilariously enough. Remind them how old he is if this is their first episode. He is. Going on eight months, started planking right around seven months. He's not seven. He's not just going, no, not seven years old. so he's eight months old. He was about seven months old when he started planking. And the thing that just kills me is that he's strong enough to get himself up in the position, but he's also dumb enough to drop his, drop his face straight into the ground and then start crying. Cause he's also teething. So whenever his mouth hits the ground, it's incredibly painful. And I'm just like, I feel like you should have learned your lesson at this point. Your life is he's like, you're the one who didn't get mom flowers on That's right. Freaking moron. Dummy. you've been doing this 26 years. It's amazing. So that would be my Should've Known Better. You got a Should've Known Better? Or did you already? Yeah, no, I do. And then we're going to flip back to Big Dad energy for me. Absolutely. That sounds good. So Naomi, four and a half years old, my daughter, for first time listeners, she had two cavities. I don't know, six, eight months ago. We brush her teeth. We brush her teeth. We bring her to the dentist. That's our problem. When you bring your kids to the dentist, they tell you you got cavities. That's right. And so we have an incredible dentist. No free shout outs on this show, but if you're in central Indiana, Zionsville Pediatric Dentistry. I wrote it down on my sheet of paper so I could give their no free shout out. But if y'all want to sponsor the show, I will give you a shout out every episode. But she's phenomenal. She was Madeline's dentist. ⁓ So the first time we tried to get both of them filled, Naomi said, no bueno. They got one done. So they said, hey, we're going to wait six months. You can have a couple of these little treatments where you put like fluoride. So it doesn't, helps it get not too much worse, but it was traumatizing for Madeline to, you know, never to say the less, but I thought I was going to, this was going to be my big dad energy. I thought this was it. Cause I said, baby, I got you. I'm going take a couple hours off work. I'm going to bring her in. ⁓ Daddy's got this. So for a few days leading up to it, I was talking about the laughing gas. We're gonna do the nitric oxide this time and you know, like it's going to relax you. She was all excited. She was all ready. Soon as she got there, dude, it's like everyone's got a plan until when, Reese? They get punched in the mouth. Punched in the mouth, dude. got absolutely wrecked. And the reason why this dentist is incredible is she's so interactive and like will do goofy things to try and make the kids like relax, but they're on a time crunch. It's a business. Every 20 minutes they gotta see a patient. So we eventually, she went no to the nitric oxide. So we're going no laughing gas. We're going straight into it. They did the drilling, which I thought was the hardest part. But then they got to do the filling. They put the little filling in. You have about 45 seconds apparently before that thing sets to get it in the kid's mouth. And then that's when Naomi knows like, oh, like I really have to behave and like the pressure's on because we were kind of loosey goosey before that. Like get a little drill in here, drill in there. So after the third try, could just see the look. And again, they were incredible, but I could see the look in their face of like, you cannot leave until this is done and this is not going well because she's got a hole drilled in her tooth. So I bear hugged her, bro. I just held her down and just reassured her, I love you, you're okay, this is okay, I love you. And I held her down for about a minute, And it was terrible. She was fine immediately afterwards. I was not. I was a wreck, dude. ⁓ I was like, are you in pain? Are you okay? Like she bounced back within minutes. I took her to get ice cream afterwards at McDonald's as you should. Dude, McDonald's at 3 p.m. on a weekday is a weird place to be. She could feel the weird energy there. ⁓ Luckily the machine was working. I didn't think about that until I was there. And ⁓ yeah, dude, we just sat there. We ended up having some really good laughs, but I was a wreck for about a half hour. It kind of traumatized me. So should have known better. It was not gonna be easy. ⁓ But yeah, not a lot of big dad energy, but limped through and ⁓ Naomi, we will be flossing her teeth profusely. So that doesn't happen anytime soon. You ever see a kid, could have been you, could have been me at some point get to the top of the line at a water park or a roller coaster and say, this isn't for me. need everybody to just get out the way. Walk the walk. All the way back down and see everybody. That's what that makes me think of. Yeah. And there was, there was just no going back. And, and, and plus like, I mean, I had flexed so much. Madeline, I got this. Don't worry, baby. Like I, for my own pride, we, were going to get it done. So parents, if you got to bear hug the kids, it's okay. Like, ⁓ you're not going to traumatize them. It might be harder on you than it will be for them. It's good stuff. Let me throw it back to you, man. Let's, let's end on a positive note. Okay. Let's get some good, good big dad energy story from you. ⁓ Romans teething, ⁓ which is can be a little tricky. Luckily, it seems like every time he's got a new tooth that comes in, it's about 24 hours before it gets through to the point where he's not as angry about it. Now there's a lot of teeth to come through, so you never know when, when a new one's going to be popping through, when it's going to hit, when it's going to start hurting. But he started self soothing, did a lot. He's starting to thumb suck. Eventually I hear I'm to have to break that habit. So he doesn't look like a goon, but, but for now we'll take it. So he started whenever he loses his pacifier, if he's in pain, I'll start sucking his thumb. We'll go back to sleep. Uh, so just watching your kid adapt like that's been cool. Uh, he's so different all the time. He just, it's weird to think that he couldn't have figured that out a few months ago. Just took, I don't know, some type of development for him to realize, Oh, I can just. If I lose the pacifier, I got my thumb right here. He's also hilarious. I mean, he'll basically just slither around the crib like a snake until he finds the pacifier most of the time anyways, in his little sleep sack. I mean, you're so proud of him. looks, you know what? A snake was the wrong one. He's like a fish out of water. He's like just flopping around trying to get from one spot to the next. Uh, but yeah, he's good at looking for stuff and finding it and, uh, he found his thumb. So that was exciting. And then the other big thing is he started saying dad, dad. come on. He has no idea what he's saying. He has only incidentally said Dada a couple of times. Most of the time he goes, Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada. Has Ellie gotten any love? None. And she reminds me every single day that ⁓ it's easier to say Dada than it is to say mama. So ⁓ have you gotten the Jimmy Fallon book, the Dada book? No, but I've heard about it. It's great. That's a dad hack of every animal is Dada. And that's a good one. I like that. Yeah. He's a genius for that. ⁓ but no, I've been trying to get him to say mama. He normally just looks at me. also, funniest thing, he just kind of picks when he wants to talk. So could be two straight hours of him just babbling, getting really loud. He loves to, it's not even whenever he's like trying to go to the bathroom or anything like that. He loves to just, but to volume levels that are not appropriate for anything. He just does it extremely loudly. But then I could try and get him to talk for two hours and he might not do anything. I'll just look at me So he's gonna be the that one guy in small group when someone says something deep and profound they give the spiritual yummies Mmm. preach it. ⁓ Yeah, so that was my big dad energy very proud of my son. ⁓ Learning adapting getting through the struggles of life his first real some of his first real pain Digestion issues and then his teeth coming through. Yeah I love like you can tell you're a dad because the things that don't excite other people dude, they're just awesome. Like finding your freaking thumb. How dope is that? So cool. Two years, who freaking, you better get that thumb out of his mouth or his teeth are going to be crooked. But for now, we celebrate those But for now we're good. Yeah. He so much different with teeth. Yeah. Yeah, they do change. They do change. They grow up fast as they say. So yeah, if you're new to the pod, this is... this is going to be kind of the framework. We have fun, we tell stories, we brag on our kids, we brag on ourselves, we confess sins, we joke around a lot about our mistakes. And I hope it helps you guys feel seen in some ways because ⁓ you're probably feeling a little bit of all this, whether you're a stepdad, a dad, a... ⁓ Soon-to-be dad processing through all some of these things and looking ahead caretaker legal guardian. Yeah, let's go ahead I don't want to be exclusive grandfather. Did I say that? It's sued these days, but you discussed me But we're glad you're here. Hey, ⁓ but then the second half again We have a lot of fun on the front half second half still having fun But we want to go into an area that it's a discussion We think would be helpful for you guys to be a part of and by I mean be a part of there's gonna be some things that There's some work you need to do after listening to this. Friends you need to talk to, maybe a wife, ⁓ definitely talk to God, need to have some time to reflect yourself. And where we want to go today is, as I mentioned in the intro, the importance of reflecting back on how we were fathered. Not just how we're fathered by God as our heavenly father, but all of us, whether you have a biological father who's involved in your life or not, have had father-like figures in the past or presently. shaping who you are as a man and who you are as a father. So that's really the conversation we're going today. ⁓ Reese, I think it would be helpful just to give a little context of our upbringings are a little different, have some similar overlap as well. So let's just start like share a little bit about your upbringing and your journey of being a son. And we'll talk about more how that impacts your journey of becoming a dad. Troy, Ryan, Leah, look out. We know you're listening. No, I'm just kidding. ⁓ Yeah. Whenever I was growing up, my parents had me young. they were, I think they were 17 when they got pregnant and my mom was 18 when she had me. difficulties that come with that. being, being a young parent, ⁓ I'm sure it was terrifying, scary. I can't imagine it every now and again. I'll just think about the fact that I'm 26. So I would have an eight year old right now. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, let that settle in for a second. I ⁓ can't imagine having an eight year old right now. Again, I have an eight month old right now and he's about all I can handle. ⁓ But had me whenever they were young and split up whenever I was, I don't know, two or three. have, I was just talking to somebody about this today. My first memory, I have one photographic little picture in my head memory of my parents when they, my biological parents when they were still together. So I grew up mostly with my mom, Leah, stepdad, Ryan, or like grew up being raised regularly by them and then going to see my dad and getting to spend time with him every other weekend. Him and my grandma, I got to see them a lot. But I have this one photographic memory ⁓ of painting Easter eggs with my grandma. at this house that she used to have, my dad drinking milk out of the carton and my mom sitting on the couch. I, mom, dad, I still got that one. That's Americana bro. Locked away there. That's perfect. It was, and it's a really joyful, happy, happy memory. But it's the earliest memory that I have and it's the only one that I've got of them together. But either way, moving on, my mom got remarried. when I was three or four to my stepdad, Ryan, I guess to fill people in. I got a great relationship with all three of these people. I've also been, you mentioned father figures. I've got more than can be mentioned on this podcast. You got hella grandpas, I got lots of grandpas. Got my papa, Jeff, who again, we were living with them and then a little bit with my grandma, my dad's mom. So spent time with both sets of grandparents, which, bless their hearts, because again, 18 year olds having a kid gonna need some help. I don't know a lot of 18 year olds that are ready to be independent with their kid or anything like that. So I've had nothing but blessings in my life as far as people that have come come alongside me to help me help my parents. ⁓ But my mom got remarried when I was about three or four moved into a neighborhood, cul-de-sac bunch of kids that lived around but Relationship dynamics growing up, just to give you a picture of what my life looked like, I was again with my mom and stepdad during the week. Typically every other weekend I would go stay with my dad or my nan, just depended on what the weekend looked like. Sometimes my dad was with my nan, sometimes he was in an apartment, ⁓ sometimes he was with a girlfriend, he got married for... could get this wrong, like six, seven years. I'm not entirely sure. It was for a little while though. So again, kind of just depended on the weekend, but would go over there. Had some frustrations and struggles growing up. My stepdad bless his heart, took on a. A three year old that wasn't his. It's easier to see it on this side of it, right? ⁓ it's way easier to see on this side. Then when you were eight or 10. And you know what? We'll dive into this a little bit, but one thing that I always respected about later about my stepdad, Ryan, is that he played the long game and he played it well. Cool. Which is that, and again, I'm going to go into a little bit more specifics about this or just one of the questions later. We'll kind of cover this, but, ⁓ Ryan chose to do the make the hard decisions in my life or like set the hard boundaries and lines in my life. And now, now we have a great relationship because of it. But when I was younger, I hated those boundaries. I hated the boundaries that he set. I thought that he was just a jerk for jerk sake. ⁓ I did not think he was out for my best interest. ⁓ And I'm sure that he would agree that maybe there were ⁓ maybe, maybe not. Maybe he wouldn't agree, but. Can you tell them the story of him coming down when you were eating? ⁓ This is great. know, there's a few, there's a few people in my life that I hope listen to this at some point. Scott Wilson, if you're listening to this, you asked me to tell this story every time I came over to your house. ⁓ Jed Zaner, you'll get a kick out of this too. I think you've heard it quite a few times, but ⁓ my stepdad and I are not alike naturally in any way. ⁓ Sorry, not in any way. We both love sports. We both love fitness now, but when I was younger, ⁓ I would have my bouts of just like, you know, I still love sports my whole life. I was always active, but, ⁓ anytime after everyone went to bed until two, three, four, five AM was my time to do the least productive things in my life. Whether that was watching the office until that late playing video games, some combination of the two. ⁓ and I don't remember if I was, I think I was 18. I think I was. Because yes, you know what, cause he made a recommendation that maybe I not live there anymore. So I think I was 18. He didn't kick me out at 16 or anything like that. Strong recommendation. Ryan is a pillar of discipline. All growing up. just remember when I would come down for school, which was early, you tell me if I'm going too long on this. Cause you got to share stuff too. But I would come down in the morning early. for school early for me, I think we needed to be at school by like 720. So I would assume I was up. Well, I don't know. I rolled out of bed and then rolled onto the bus. So ⁓ maybe, maybe 630, but he would be up and he would either have been doing his quiet time, reading his Bible. ⁓ either before he went to the gym or he would have already gotten up and gone to the gym and come back and was doing his quiet time afterwards. ⁓ so he was just, he was always very regimented, always. ⁓ he could, I always tell people he could eat the same thing for lunch most every day. Used to pack sardines for lunch cause they were healthy. People gave him lots of crap for that. He didn't care. He was like, they're healthy. I'm eating them low in mercury. Yeah, that's right. ⁓ and I'm trying to remember where, ⁓ the story. The story, okay. So the idea that I would be the type of person that waits for everyone to go to bed to do absolutely nothing productive for six hours was not it. The reason I mentioned he got up early is because he came downstairs at about 5.30 in the morning at one point, maybe five, and ⁓ I was in the basement. with the TV on watching a show, a gaming monitor and a gaming console set up like in my lap shirtless with a bowl of ravioli. That's the part that gets me. And an entire break and bake thing of cookie dough off to the left. And he walks down and looks at me and is like, have you been, you like, did you get up early? Have you been down here? Almost like what you did. tell me you got up early. Please tell me you got up early. And I'm like, I'm like, Hey, yeah, no, I'm, I'm still up from the night before. And I don't remember if he addressed it right in the moment or if it was later. I just know that at some point by the end of that day, he came up to me and said, basically, I don't remember what he said. Basically, this is not working out. I can't watch you do this anymore. He broke up with me. And he was like, I care about you too much and I can't, I just can't watch you live like this. So it's time for, it's probably time for you to move out. And so I don't, I don't remember where the first place I lived was. Maybe with my friend, Michael, but either way I moved out. And again, I've shared that story with a few different people and they always get a big kick out of it, but it's the cold ravioli for me, dude. Oh, it was hot. I just can't imagine. It was, it was chef boy. RD ravioli. I just got to think that's you are the market for chef 18 year old. Yes, that's correct. Breaking bake, uh, cookies, never, never, sorry. You know what? Not never cooked. If someone cooks them, I'll eat them, but, I'm not taking the time to cook them. I'm just going to eat the dough. fine. They're there. They taste better that way. Wow. What a great example of the differences between you and your stepdad. Yes. Uh, so my, my, always liked to say my, stepdad was kind of like the, the person who taught me discipline. Although by the time I was 18, clearly it hadn't set in, but, uh, but you're getting there. Different see 26 now getting there, different seasons. would say from 16 to 18, I was more disciplined than I'd ever been. Cause he, well, 14 to 18. And then I don't know, must've had a relapse or something like that with the whole discipline thing. I think it might've been like just post high school. So out of routine. That's a weird time. Out of routine, first summer, I was coaching at a CrossFit gym. So my hours were more like 20 a week. So I had way too much free time, ⁓ which never give a young man too much free time. Give him some free time, not too much. And so I think that that's where I fell out of rhythm. 14, he forced me to start going to CrossFit, which I hated him for, because it was early in the morning before school, 5 a.m. and ended up kind of changing my life. I got me into, I found out after about two weeks that I loved it and started coaching. Not too far after that, once I was old enough to coach and I'm a personal trainer now and in part that's because of that initial move for him forcing me to start doing that. But can we talk about my... My dad a little bit or you want to, you want to go first? go ahead. Yeah. Wrap it up. That's good. ⁓ biological dad, ⁓ he's the man he, I always, again, I always, when I try and share about my dad and Ryan, I also lead off with the, as much as Ryan and I are opposites, Troy and Ryan are even more opposite than, than Ryan and I are opposite. again, very, very different people. I, They're both Bengals fans. They go. That's, that's who they nation. They both love Jesus. And that's those are about the two things that I might be able to find. Uh, common grief. Yes, that's right. Common grief. Yes. They could talk about, they could talk about the Bengals and how sad they are for a long time. Yes. So, uh, my dad was the most encouraging and just verbally loving individual in my life growing up. Uh, I guess maybe my mom could have competed on that front, but my dad... ⁓ felt like growing up that his dad wasn't always there for him or wasn't always kind of very loving towards him. I think it affected him a good deal. Maybe he'd say differently, but ⁓ that was always my understanding. And I think because of that, it was something that he, we're gonna talk about later, ⁓ he wanted to rewrite that story. And so I grew up having a dad that told me he loved me. more than I wanted to hear how much he loved me. Not really. As a kid, you know, you're like, okay, I get it. You love me. Like that's awesome. But I mean, it paid dividends down the road. I really do. I always marvel at how God pieces things together because I think Ryan would say he's not the most verbally affectionate individual, maybe more so now than he was whenever I was young, learning how to be a dad for the first time to a three year old is, is very Very different. I don't know exactly what Ryan's upbringing was like with verbal affection and stuff like that. But Ryan, Ryan would tell me that he loved me. wasn't like he was withholding anything on purpose or anything like that, but it wasn't his natural inclination to. tell me how awesome he thought I was and how blessed he is that I'm a part of his life and stuff like that. It was more like ⁓ he was a teacher. ⁓ Complimenting each other. Yes. You've seen those things. And I felt like God just kind of paired those two things together. My dad was the, my dad was the dreamer for me. Like let me dream and let me, I remember I told both of them that I wanted to go to the NBA. My dad up the ante and said, you could do that. You could be an astronaut. I always remember the astronaut part. Which is more likely? Quick poll. Eight year old. Answer in the comments. Do you think that I'm, I have a better chance? I would have had a better chance. pretty good at math. I've seen your jump shot. I think it's astronaut. Well, I'm more of a drive to the drive down the lane. I love math. No shot. I tested out a calc one for college and got to start on calc two. I then flunked. Hey, hey, they don't, they don't. We have a lot of credits you need to pay for still in college. So like and subscribe, okay? ⁓ So I love math. Math is black and white. You know if you have the answer right or not as soon as you're done. With like English it's just like... Okay ADHD Reese, we're gonna reel it in. We're gonna reel it in. The challenge you have is ⁓ both your fathers are still alive and they're probably gonna listen to this. I did tell Ellie walking out the door. I'm like, man, buddy's got it easy. I got it made. My dad's dead. So really got it made. So yes, exactly. Got it made. Either way, that's pretty much everything. I could go on for hours. know that. So anything that I didn't hit that you were like, you should touch on this a little bit. No, I think we'll unpack it. It'll leave space because we'll talk about some different scripts. the reason why it's helpful to have some of that framework is Cause so like I come from a family where my parents were much older when they had kids. They'd been married for a while. I'm second born. My, you know, my mom and dad, just kind of a typical, typical fatherhood experience. No divorce, no huge traumas. We have our family issues. My adult experience with being a son was a lot harder than my childhood one. But we joke, probably shouldn't, but hey, it's my dad. I can joke. Yeah, you he passed a couple years ago. That's again, a different story for a different day, but it is a lot easier. So thank you for being willing to talk about this because it is harder. We want to honor our dads. Yeah. And this whole conversation will be, man, there's things to evaluate. But when you become a dad, you realize just how much grace you need to give those men. I'm going to make plain mistakes just like they did. And I'm hopefully going to have a lot of wins like they did. And they've gotten it more than 50 % correct, which is, think, the goal, because God can do a lot with that. look at how I turned out. You're turning out great. And you're in process, and we are. We're proud of what God's doing. ⁓ Yeah, so even if you heard producer Noah, his experience with being a son is different than us as well. So just that framework of all of us have a little different experience. But ⁓ yeah, I'll just jump in a little bit to, I think it's worth sharing what your dad did really well. Let's just kind of start with that. ⁓ Again, I had one dad, you had two. But what's really cool is you had multiple father figures, multiple grandparents. This is a hard thing, I realized about it a year after my dad died. I was 30 at this point, he died when I was 29. I don't have a significant relationship with a man older than me that's biologically related to me. I don't know how you're as put together as you are. I've got 40 of them and I don't know what I'm doing. It's like the foundation was set, man. I had such a beautiful, good foundation of just, yeah, my parents loving me, but you know, one grandfather died, my dad's dad died before my parents even got married. Other one died when I was four. ⁓ Brokenness on both sides of our family, not close to any uncle, don't have any older cousins, don't have any of that. So ⁓ it's cool to see how different influences impact, but. When I think about like what my dad did really well is he was present. At my dad's funeral, I gave his eulogy and that was a thing of like dad was there and he wanted to be there, dude. My dad, he went to three quarter time, he was a physician, specifically stopped working like a day of the week so he could spend more time with us. And he would take me out of school like in first, second, third grade, an hour and a half early on Wednesdays and we'd go do something fun every week. I love that. I think... I think he'd like go to jail. What's it when like you're not going to school when you're supposed to? I think it's a misdemeanor. Even cooler that it's happening with a dad that's a doctor. Yeah, did. He's got the white coat on it. I gotta go get my son. We're going catfishing, right? I just feel like a lot of very accomplished parents are like, you can't miss school. ⁓ can't get anything. Although I think you got good grades. Yeah, it was a great balance because they did. They did ⁓ value that. like he was the one that he'd come home. He'd take off his collared shirt. He'd have the wife beater on underneath. He'd keep the wife beater on, throw on the basketball shorts and the converse and we'd play three on three, you know, with my buds. We waited till five o'clock when dad got home. he, he wanted so much. So he struggled. I might talk about this letter. He struggled in my, ⁓ kind of like teenage adult life adapting because I, I didn't want to spend as much time with him. And, ⁓ you know, that's, that's normal. I don't regret that because that's just a normal part of life. But, ⁓ yeah, my dad was present and he, he wanted to be with me. And that's what I want to pass on to my kids like that physical affection, those making memories, that intentional time though. Hey, work's important and it's good, but it's not more important than my relationship with you. So anyways, I'll kick it over to you as we keep kind of just unpacking. And again, just for a mind, the listeners, this is important. You got to examine, ⁓ this, the inheritance you've been given of the example of how to be a dad. It's like a rummage sale. ⁓ what are the things that you want to, you want to keep when someone passes away in a state sale? There's some things you want to keep, there's some things you want to get rid of, there's some stuff you want to repurpose. So what are some of the things you want to keep? From my sphere of father figures? your fathers did well. Well, I've got them written down, but let me just skip over to next page real quick. Sure. things I want to keep. You know, growing up, I thought that the way that my dad and subject compliment each other was awesome. And I thought how cool would it be if you could do both? ⁓ like the thing is that the strengths that they both had, my dad was just being encouraging, affectionate. very loving, open to hearing what I had to say. Not that Ryan wasn't any of those things, he definitely was, but just my dad to a greater extent. then just the... I tell people like Ryan forced me to do hard things. when you're 10, that's when you realize whether or not a person's mature, whether or not a parent's mature enough to force their kid to do hard things. Because Ryan could have just played the best friend role and I might have, my life might be totally screwed up because he never taught me how to do anything that I didn't want to do. And news flash. As much as your folks love you and take care of you, eventually you get out into the real world and it is not all sunshine and rainbows. It's a lot of sunshine and rainbows if you make it, but it's, there's a lot of hard things in life. So if you don't get prepped young, if you don't prep your kids young, I say this as someone who has an eight month old, who I don't force to do anything difficult. ⁓ Other than at least force them to eat broccoli. I mean. I don't hate him enough to do that. So, just the exact opposite of what I'm just saying. But, ⁓ I'd always thought if I could pair those together, I'd make one heck of a dad. ⁓ so I think that the things that I want to keep are a healthy balance of dreaming and realism. ⁓ again, I told my dad, I want to go to the NBA. said, you give me an astronaut. I needed that. That was a cool, cool thing to say. ⁓ I told Ryan, I wanted to go to the NBA and he, whenever he asked what I want to do when I grow up and he said, let's come up with some realistic options. You could be a good JV tennis. I was like, I just told you the realistic option. I'm going to the league. ⁓ for those who don't know, I'm six feet tall and not a 10th as gifted as Allen Iverson or any basketball player you've ever seen. So, ⁓ I'll stick to pick up poorly. Cook those kids at the park. Yes. Those 12 year olds smoked those kids. do old guys versus young guys. That's a different story. And that was a great time. ⁓ ready to get back out there. ⁓ we've mentioned it. It's winter here and we're dying. So, ⁓ discipline, realism, being able to let my kid dream, loving them, being intentional with them. ⁓ the person who, and Ellie's seen this time and time again, that has just like really showed up. That was a father figure to me is my, my Papaw Jeff. ⁓ My son, Roman has been a name is Jeffrey. ⁓ because of my Papaw, Jeff, he's a sarcastic tool that I love more than anything in the world. ⁓ Drinking Margaritas with him is the best. he, ⁓ he cares about you by telling you about all your flaws and really funny ways. but he has shown up time and time again, ⁓ for, for my, for me, my whole life and for Ellie and myself. Uh, since we've been married and so I would say between all of those things I just mentioned and then just showing up for my kid, I basically just want to be the perfect dad. That's what I want to do. So I don't know that sums it up for you, but well, we said if you can get 50 % right with two dads, there's your a hundred. I haven't even mentioned Jesus. I'd love to teach my kid about Jesus. Well, mean, he's eight months old. Both my dads did that. You know, we'll, get to the spiritual side. Everything's spiritual. Um, what's something you said, I am gonna do this different. And again, I know this is gonna be harder for you because you have people that could be listening to this, but I'm curious, because I think that's a part of this process. Yeah, something I'd do different. ⁓ And I'm gonna mention these things. I'm gonna defend them to a certain extent. I'm gonna steelman these basically, but I'm gonna defend their the reasonings behind these things. But I'm also gonna say I'd like to do it differently. ⁓ My dad let me overindulge to the absolute max. And I would say that he would probably also classify him as someone who overindulges. And what I mean by that is if you get a thing of Chips Ahoy Cookies, ⁓ Oreos nice can of chef boy. Yes chef boy RD On all these things they have serving sizes. Yeah, and they're laughable Yeah, it's like two chips of a cookies to Oreos something like that as a serving size We're not eating the serving size. We're gonna eat the whole thing One of my best memories of my dad. I wouldn't even say it's overindulging is we're both playing video games one o'clock in the morning he It's like, wanna go down to the UDF and get some shakes? We take a hike, walk down to the, for those who don't, United Dairy Farmers, they have the brand homemade ice cream and stuff like that. And I always loved that. So we went down at one o'clock in the morning, got some shakes, walked back. Ryan, bless his heart, been asleep since 8 p.m. He's not taking me to that, to go do that at one o'clock in the morning. But I would say on my dad's side, I don't... I want to teach Roman to enjoy things in moderation. So I'd say that's one thing that I would change. And the reason I defend my dad is he really only saw me every other weekend. And to be honest with you, I was pretty open when I was a kid about how I hated all of Ryan's boundaries and disciplines and stuff like that. So my dad was trying to treat me to a fun time whenever I was with him and let me kind of, I don't, be honest with you, I don't even remember how rigid the rules truly were, but they felt rigid to me at my house. So my dad was trying to bless me with that. And I think that in the long run, I have had to retrain my brain to try not to overindulge. I'm very naturally hyper obsessive with things that I like. I want to do them more often. I don't want to think about anything else, whether that's food, entertainment, you name it. ⁓ And then on Ryan's side, again, I would say... man, I used to have a whole laundry list of things that I would have done differently. Now know better, Now I'm on the spot and I can't think right. Sometimes time reveals that someone could do wisdom too, I mean, I said it already, I would have been less rigid. Kind of in the middle. mean, it sounds like at least two. that's how I felt growing up. I was like, I got these dads with two extremes. Sure. And actually, you know what? I wrote that down on one of these papers. I don't want to be on the extreme of either one of these things. I to be somewhere in the middle. don't want to, it might be more one-sided than the other. I don't know, but I don't, I don't want to be as rigid. And as I got older, Ryan got less rigid and Ryan would probably tell you now with my two younger brothers, he's less rigid. Cause he, I think he realized that they benefited. Yes. know, sometimes the first one's the guinea pig. yeah, we get to figure it. He was young. Ryan was young, young. Yes. ⁓ and ⁓ didn't even get the experience of one through three. like really just jumping in, figuring out again, I, in hindsight, when you're five, you don't think, wow, this guy made a real sacrifice to be part of my life. I'm like, this guy's lucky that I'm here. Meanwhile, I was a big blessing, but also a huge burden to deal with at the time, especially we don't think the same way. So that's what I'd do differently. What about, what about you? Yeah. Everything kind of has a shadow side so that side of, I was kind of the center of our parents' world. I felt so beloved and so much affection and attention and focus. But as I alluded to, as you get a little older, ⁓ you know, a lot of my parents' life revolved around my sister and I. Relationships, friends, hobbies, like they had some of that, but a lot of it revolved around us. So as we got into high school and older, it became really hard, I think, for my dad to... ⁓ Wasn't needed anymore. So like I think it's a good place to be wanted but but not needed Yeah, so like ⁓ I think for my kids I want them to know like hey as a dad I want to be with you I want to spend time with you, but I don't need you like I don't I don't need your friendship because I don't I'm lacking in friendship I don't need your affection because I'm not secure. I don't I don't need ⁓ You know there was times where I just felt like like if I if I don't spend some time with dad like he's gonna be sad or he's gonna be upset or there's something wrong, you I'm disappointing him as I got older. When I was little, I like, this is freaking awesome. And so yeah, I think that's one thing I'll do different as my kids get older. ⁓ And then the hope is as they grow and mature and they find independence, they find their way back to where again, like when you get older, you don't need your parents anymore, but you want your parents. So if I can like show them, hey, like I'm let you have some autonomy. I'm here. I wanna be with you. ⁓ I don't need you. I don't need you. As you don't need me, you mutually want me. And like that's, to point it back to the Father, I think that's our relationship with God. When we can go with Him because we want Him, not just because we need Him, there's a depth of maturity. That's going to take two decades for my kids, maybe three to get to. I actually like that better. I like when people, when a relationship is we both want each other, but we don't need it's transactional now. Roman needs you. My kids need me. They want me to but they need. Sorry, younger years definitely. Definitely different. But you know, it's that release and if they love you, they'll come back. So anyways, not to belabor but that's that. Let's do one real quick, real fun, like lighthearted if you got it. And if you need a moment, let me know. By time that you've thought, ⁓ crap, I'm becoming my dad. Have you had one those yet? Yeah, I have. And I don't think I realized it until, or I don't think I remembered these moments until I took time to think about it but... ⁓ I realized after a while that I was, it was around when I got my car. I realized that I was just, anytime I felt like something, I was going and getting it. And that's how my dad and I rolled whenever we were together. Feeling like Skyline Chili, we're gonna go get some Skyline Chili. I mean, for the longest time, I can't remember the last time I got gas and didn't go in and get something. I'm getting something from the gas station. Much to my wife's chagrin. She's like, why do we have 40? $3.95 charges from the gas station in the last year. I'm like, it's my bad, honey, my bad. So for my dad, was probably that. And then with Ryan, it's that I've gotten in and out of this, I will hop onto fitness trends way too fast. You're all in, Yeah, I'm all in. We're going to just, I read it somewhere and now it's. part of my life. We're not doing plastic cutting boards anymore. Get rid of them. I think that's his latest thing right now. When I was growing up, was, we had kale all the time. Kale's good for you. I'm not bashing kale. There's something in there in about five years that was bad for The word super food came out with kale and suddenly it was like kale was happening all the time. ⁓ Everything had to be organic for a little while. He tried to curb my desire for Regular milk, so you buy almond milk, which I hated. Every dad had that phase. Hopping on fitness trends a little bit. We soy milk, dude. Soy milk was the worst. I don't think almond milk was that y'all ever have rice milk? No, no rice milk. Yeah, yeah, you were probably exposed to more milk than I were I could tell that where we at Noah How far are we in we got to keep it under an hour? Oh? Dude, we're golden. We got this whole share. There's no shot. We got over an hour But you a coffee breath mine simple Okay, hit me with the daddy your breath smells and I said oh I was snuggling with her waking up from a nap one day I had an afternoon coffee as I normally do and she says yeah, it smells like bad coffee And my dad was perfused. Like he would just drink six, eight small cups of coffee a day. He was a physician. So every nursing station, they had coffee and he'd had terrible coffee breath. Okay. Um, yeah, that was my old crap. I'm becoming my dad. I get that. Yeah. I small cups, you know, no, now, you know, I have like a slight caffeine addiction. I'm 10 days into my detox and finally I'm a Christian in America. don't rest. Yeah. We're freaking our addiction Sabbath. Who it's our drug drug of choice is caffeine. Hey, so we all inherit ⁓ parenting scripts, especially like how to be a father. So it's what I mean by that is when you're a kid, you're given a script on rest and work. You're given a script on ⁓ how valuable friendships and relationships are versus your family. You're giving scripts on physical affection and emotional vulnerability. You're given scripts on faith and how central that is to your life and where it fits in. And a script, in real estate, would say a script's anything you say more than once. It's just the things that are repeated, that you hear, you begin to believe. It forms your worldview as a kid. ⁓ And some scripts were really good, they protected us. So for example, was thinking of one, like good grades matter most to be successful in life. Like you gotta get good grades. If you wanna have a bright future, get good grades. And to a degree that protects you until you graduate school and then you go, ⁓ crap, what's my identity in? Or you realize it's actually people with interpersonal skills that get the best jobs and things like that. And you put all your eggs in that basket. Or another one I thought of is like family is everything. So that's a decent script if you're raised in a home where ⁓ there's not good, like your parents have been hurt by friendships or there's not a lot of trustworthy people in your neighborhood or your environments. Like invest deeply in your family because your family is everything. That fails you at some point though. You have to have relationships beyond your parents and your sisters and your aunt. ⁓ Some of these scripts are really good and really helpful and you want to continue that legacy and some of them, they helped protect you to get you to the place where you needed to be or to be developed, but you need to either rethink them or release them altogether. ⁓ Naming the script is the first step to putting yourself back in control. ⁓ I read that earlier a couple weeks ago and I was prepping for this and I thought that was really good because... A lot of these, it's not good, bad binary. It's just like, let's name it. And then from there, see how we want to adjust. So I'm curious, what scripts did you inherit as a son from your dad's that you're like, man, I'm grateful. These are scripts I want to hang on to and I want to build upon. Yeah. I mean, one of the big ones was do hard things. There's a book that came out that was called Do Hard Things. ⁓ And again, it's always funny because I, I agree with that now. Tom, I was like, that's stupid. If I can avoid hard things, then I'm going to avoid hard things. Who doesn't want life to be easy? Newsflash. It will not serve you to have an easy life. Uh, be good to have a combination to some extent. doing hard things, uh, being kind of seen as a good thing or building, building your resilience, your ability to be able to push through. Uh, I mean, I feel like I've had. that happens in every new season for me. in fitness is your way, like when you can choose the hard thing, because there's things in life you can't choose. You can't choose mental illness. You can't choose when you lose a loved one or you lose a job. But when you can choose to slam that fourth mile on the treadmill, that allows you to say, hey, I have the tenacity to finish hard things. I think you mean one rep max squat. Yeah. Yeah. I know you don't run. You're right. Treadmill. Might be. Progressive overload. Just kidding. Treadmills are good for you. I don't do enough cardio. ⁓ I'll say that was one big one. ⁓ felt like my dad just kind of helped me see that everybody's got a story. ⁓ I don't know exactly how this would be a script, but like everybody's got a story. Everybody's going through something. I feel like up to this point in my life, based on a lot of what he showed me with that, I don't judge super quickly. I mean, I laugh when people do something stupid, but ⁓ I don't judge like the... depth of someone's character very quickly. ⁓ Or maybe, sorry, not never, but. You're less likely. I'm less likely. When somebody makes a dumb decision, my first question is, how'd they get there? How'd you get to that dumb decision? What's your story? What's your story? You see a lot of horrible things that happen in the news. I am absolutely advocating for. Justice and things like that, but I'm also thinking to myself What's wrong with the person who committed the crime like what happened to get them to that spot? Not in lieu of the victim or anything like that. I care about that so much, but I'm always curious I'm like at one point They were an eight month old just like my eight month old. what got them there that kind of stuff? ⁓ So I feel like my dad's had a pretty wild story ⁓ it's one of the reasons I When I came here tonight, just wanted to make sure I was talking to Ellie about it beforehand. I just really want to honor him. Despite the fact that he was by no means perfect. He would tell you that. But also just my dad's had a different road than a lot of people. Everybody's got their own difficulties story. It's not about who's this harder and who's not, whose story and road wasn't as difficult. But yeah, my dad's been through some stuff, man. And so I felt like because of that, And because I loved him and I still do, I get to look at people and think to myself, huh, that's a person worth loving, even though maybe they're a little out there or they've done something that they shouldn't have done. And so I don't know how to put that into a script, but that's kind of what I feel like I from my dad. It It makes sense. And it's a thing to carry on. It's a good legacy, something you've learned. I'd say for me, just do your best was what I heard a lot. and like your best is enough. And I'm going to pass that on to my kids. ⁓ you know, was a good athlete, but not the best athlete. So I was a lot harder on myself after a game than my parents were. It almost pissed me off at a certain age of like, nah, I just like want to be freaking coached and be upset. And I know you did, did you do your best? And I think so. Okay. Well, that's enough. And I've carried that into, I mean, that's a secure relationship. What they ask is do your best. If you didn't then say sorry. And, and you know, ⁓ Ask for forgiveness, but if you did your best, that's, what matters. ⁓ and the second one is I'm proud of you. Like I just, that's a script I heard all the time of like, whether it was said or whether it was felt, I knew, ⁓ both my parents, but we're just talking about my dad. My dad was proud of me. ⁓ embarrassingly proud of me, like come up, side hug you as fricking hard as you can. You know how it is. that. mom, when she found Facebook, you know, just like, golly man, like parents just so proud of you. ⁓ pastoring your parents and just the pride they had in that, in a good way, but we would've won the game if buddy had been in more. Yeah, dude, you should know what he's doing. telling you like just embarrassingly like, ⁓ but I want to pass that along. I want to pass that along. I, ⁓ real quick story, ⁓ BPN bare performance nutrition had a documentary this past week and they, one of their son athletes is a younger Ethiopian runner. And his dad was abusive and would say, you'll never amount to anything. You're just the worst. He was an alcoholic, ended up killing his mom and he became orphaned. Wow. Came to the U S got adopted. Do you know his name? I don't remember his name. ⁓ we might be able to link it in the show notes. An incredible documentary. He runs like his third marathon ever. He ran, ⁓ he was like a D one college runner, all American, but runs from a five K distance, whatever they did to he's recently into marathons and I mean, he ran like a two hour, 11 minute, like just incredible, but he was hard on himself because he wanted to do sub two 10, which is just like a screaming. It's like sub six minute pace for 26 miles. And, ⁓ his coach was so fired up and excited and I know their coach. He's, he's cool. He coaches a lot of the runners and he came up after and just hugged him in a type of way. And he said, I know you're disappointed. I know you wanted, but I'm reminded you're talented, your future is bright and I'm proud of you. When I tell you man, I felt that in my bones because like in that moment that coach became the father that that man never had because earlier in the documentary the runner goes ⁓ Sometimes when I'm I'm in a hard place I began to rehear those lies those scripts that my dad told me that I'll never amount to anything even though this dude's like the top Tenth of a tenth of a percent, know what I'm saying in the world as a runner probably a top 200 runner in the world He just, needed someone in his moment of slight disappointment to say, I'm proud of you and mean it. And I was, I was just, it was a really moving documentary that made me want to run, made me want to be a dad, made me want to say, ⁓ Hey, even to people who I'm not a father, I could be a spiritual father or a brother or a friend. The importance of I'm proud of you. anyways, it's cool. Do you find anything Noah? I don't think that's him. It came out this past week Okay, okay, he did not get banned for doping if you heard that at least I hope not but anyways We'll link it in the show notes and yeah, it's worth looking Something you want to rewrite man, so a script specifically you want to rewrite Yeah, I think that's it and Bessa Yep. Yep. Check it out. We'll link it in the link in the notes Yes, I want to rewrite what's Kind of cool about this one is I don't even want to get rid of the whole thing. I just want to tweak it. Ryan used to hit me a lot with do what you want to do or sorry, do what you have to do and then you do what you want to do. Yeah. You said to me all the time and I think that that is a great rule for a lot of people. It just does not always work for me. Um, if I, I think that there's a way to pair things. like, uh, For me, getting things done that are boring is the most draining thing you could ever ask me to do. If you take what someone could accomplish in an hour chore wise around the house, that'll ruin my day. If you ask me to do the same thing without a strategy or a plan implemented for me, it might be, you know what? I could have done this when I was younger too. So the rule could still apply. basically just, want to edit. I want to rewrite it in a sense that. You compare what you have to do with some of the things that you want to do. So it can be kind of a back and forth. And when Ryan would tell me it was kind of like a do all the things you have to do and then get to do all the things you want to do. And even if I did that one, doing all those things that had to do when I was growing up. And if I tried to do it now. Brutal. There's too many things. There's a lot of things to get done. Uh, but when I was younger, if I would do that, it would even fail me then. Cause I would do all the things I have to do. And then I've mentioned, I like to overindulge. So once I've done all the hard things, I then tell myself there is no limit to the amount of pleasure that you can now give yourself, whether that's through entertainment, food, not drugs. I didn't do drugs or anything like that growing up. If you did, we'd still love you. Welcome to the pod. Yes, welcome to the pod. Friends with lots of- This would be a lot funnier if you were taking drugs. We don't recommend it. If we had gummies beforehand or something We actually have gummies, but they're just not- they're not. Yeah, toss me some gummies. Oh, I don't know where that went. Got some gummy bears. Yeah, we've derailed. That's on me. That's OK. You know, it's nice to share the load every now and again. Here's mine. for it. Kids are more important than your marriage. And that's what I want to rewrite. Sure. So I felt that a lot. But it came to a head. I remember talking to my mom. I was in college when they lived in North Carolina. We were at a diner. Her and I were eating. There's tensions in marriage. As kids you experience some of that. And I remember just telling mom, hey, now that Sam and I are out of the house, my sister, you have to re-prioritize your marriage as the most important thing. Knowing as a 20 year old that should have been the most important thing all the time. Now, what I'm not saying is... So wise. Thank you. So wise. Thank you. What I'm not saying is your marriage gets more time than your kids. I spend way more attention while the kids are awake on my kids. Because you have to. No is not on his head. And it grows exponentially as you have more. You want to share on that together. But the priority is we value this relationship because a centered strong marriage from there you can parent so much better, you can love better, you can have a vision for your family's life better. the one that I want to rewrite is that kids are more important than marriage. That's not the one I support. What I wanted is I want to rewrite it so that our marriage is the foundation to our family. And from there we parent. Other one real quickly is I want to rewrite that community and spiritual family is not important. It's now a priority. So again, my family, my mom and dad had friends, but a lot of them were centered around our relationships, basketball, cross country, my sister ran, things like that. Where I want... My kids and Madeline had this so all of our wives being raised in the same family had multiple deep relationships with older adults because the Frazier family had had great friends I still I talked a lot of them week to week and and our our wives benefited from that I didn't have that benefit So I want to have deep relationships ⁓ with spiritual family, I wanna have deep relationships with community and neighbors, and we're starting to build that here in our neighborhood. But hospitality's gotta become the norm. Like we will be maybe foster parents again, or we will host people who are international students. We will have people over regularly for dinner and hear their stories, both people we know and people we wanna get to know. Are the script of ⁓ hospitality and community and relationships being valuable? That's one I want to write for my family. So that's just the norm. They don't know any different ⁓ as we get older. So that's super cool. It's a lot of stuff that I don't think many families do. it's easier said than done. I mean, we're in process with it. I'm seeing it getting more difficult as our kids get older. Sure. And that's something we're still trying to figure out. I just popped a gummy bear in my mouth, so I need to eat it and not talk. So why don't you share anything that can help me stall for 30 seconds? OK, I got you. It's going to be longer than 30 seconds. What was the other one I was about to do? You mentioned something about your family that struck a chord with me and I realized you can't talk. So I'm gonna just take a look at your notes real quick. the kids are more important than marriage. mean, having only been married a few years myself, ⁓ one of the things we talked about most in premarital counseling or at least a lot of like premarital counseling was the fact that. So many couples have no clue what they're doing once their kids leave the house. Yes. I'm like terrified. That's what it was. I'm like terrified every time I hear someone like, yeah, all the kids are almost out of the house. I'm like, I hope you guys have a game plan for figuring out how to hang out together again. like, you're not just sitting around waiting to have grandkids. When are you going to pop some kids? Like there's 10 years. Like, what do want to do? Yeah. And then you also, mentioned, uh, just the, you said, kids being more important than the marriage. Ellie and I went to a marriage conference at one point because we're middle American Christians. So we have to attend at least one marriage conference per year or else we get our membership revoked. So, but we went to a marriage conference. I really wish I could remember the name because I would totally shout them out. They were great. ⁓ but one of the speakers said that their kids liked to come up and ask that they have multiple kids. ⁓ they like to ask, ⁓ who's your favorite? Yeah. And he says your mom. Like, like normally I say that as a snarky response to everything. Like your mom, but, ⁓ this guy was saying, ⁓ was saying that whenever his kids come up and ask which one of the kids are their favorite or like, which one do they love the most? think was the way that he faced it. He said, I love your mom the most to the, to their little kids, which one being a parent, have to imagine with kids that can talk. you have to learn the art of just completely. Politicianing, which isn't a real word. I don't think that's good. way out of the question. Yeah. Which he definitely did because he did not answer the question that he changed the rules and, and just got out of it clean and gave his kids a great message. I love your mom the most in this household. they're going to see conflict. They're going to, you know, you want to limit that. That'll be a different podcast, but it was about security. ⁓ Security in the fact that their parents are gonna stay together. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they were talking about They were saying that their kids kept coming home and there's a lot of statistics on just like how Kids get nervous like it's just kind of the norm nowadays that their parents just aren't yeah aren't tight there It's the instability of wondering are my parent all my a bunch of my friends parents right up are my parents gonna split up and this kind of helped to when you see them going on date night, when you see them kissing and embracing when you first get home instead of, you're going to your wife instead of your kids first. Smacking a little tush. A little tush, a little affection. You know, there's enough difficulties they're gonna see, even if you limit it, that you wanna show that secure attachment. So, good. Hey, we gotta keep this under an hour. I gotta get to bed soon, cause we got small group in like eight hours. But yeah, what I wanna do is I wanna wrap up. with just sharing a little bit of, there's a framework by John Eldridge. He wrote a book called Fathered by God. And he talks about six different stages. And again, this is just a framework. It's not science, he would say that, but it's where men progress in the masculine journey. And they should progress, but sometimes get halted because they are not given what they need to progress in that. And ⁓ it's not linear. It's kind of cyclical like this, where you'll regress in seasons back to the previous stage. I'm literally going to talk about it for like two minutes. Can we link in the show notes or the comments, the book, and then a podcast that Kerry Neuhoff did with John Eldridge explaining this. It's an older book, but the three of us went to ⁓ Trader's Point Christian Church's ⁓ Man Night. And they spoke on this paradigm about a week earlier, I had listened to this podcast. And then I was like, holy crap, I got to read this book then. Cause God's like just trying to speak to me through this. So I like was driving down to take care of my mom last summer cause she had had an injury and I'm like crying in the car, like listening to this book. So, so I'm not going to do it justice, but the main premise is if you, if you get stuck in one of these stages because your father was not there for you to father you, God can still father you to help you continue on that, on that masculine journey. very quickly, the first one is beloved son. So first 10 years of life, you're seen, you're delighted in, you're wanted, you're provided for, you're safe, secure, soothed, all those things we talked about last week. If you don't get that, you'll become a 50-year-old narcissist that's running a company or the country or a neighborhood or whatever it may be. And you're clearly operating out of your woundedness. How dare you? That was any president, not necessarily just this one. ⁓ But you began to see that show up where people were just attention seeking because they never got it, right? Second one is a cowboy or ranger. He started to call it ranger and is later on as he was talking about it. This is like from 10 to teenage years. You're just free to play. You're free to explore. You're developing some sort of skills. You're learning to navigate the world. There's limitations. I can't do this. This is what happens. It's the law of gravity. There's injuries. You push yourself. You're just free to have fun, worry free to do somewhat stupid stuff, but still stay. Somewhat safe. The next two are Warrior and Lover. They kind of match together. So Warrior is strength, courage, initiation, learning to fight what matters most. A lot of times I see sports do this really well. I see ROTC or the military capture on this. You see a bunch of gangs capturing on this. You see just a bunch of like shadow sides of it. But for men, they need a challenge. And I was explaining that to Madeline. Like it's good to be pushed. It's good to go to CrossFit when you're 15 years old and be pushed in that type of way. You transition into the next one which is your lover stage. You find a bride to pursue, to sacrificially love, to connect with, to nurture, to slow down, to find intimacy with them, with children, with God. Those kind of blend together until you get into your second half of life. You're in your 40s and 50s. It's your king stage. You're the coach of a program. You're the running a small business. You're a pastor of a ministry. You're growing in wisdom and humility and you should be doing this in a way that serves and benefits others. At this point in your life, you have built an empire, but the empire is not about you. It is to sacrificially serve and love others. And then the last one is the sage stage, where you're learning to die well, you're learning to the law of legacy, the things that you've created you want to continue to go on. You mentor people, you counsel people, you're sharing everything that you've learned through experience, right? I share all this to say what we have to realize, we don't get to skip stages. Just because you can run a marathon or you can deadlift 450 pounds does not mean you're a warrior. Just because you're married doesn't mean you're a lover. Like you might be stuck still in that beloved son or cowboy stage and that's why we see a lot of men not maturing and growing up. You see a lot of obsessions with hobbies. You see a lot of obsessions with fantasy like video games or sports betting or that's not just for that dude. Like there's a lot of fantasy out there. President. Yeah, video But I think a lot of men for a variety of reasons, they miss out on having people. Hunting. Hunting is a hobby of mine. It's an adventure to get lost in. is a hobby to get lost in. But here's my thing. Healing comes when we allow God to father us through the areas that we were missed. The things that we did not have because the paper popper of the day, paper popper quote is, you cannot mature as a man unless you are fathered by God. We're building on that from last week. ⁓ I think for many of us, it's hard for us to look back because we think we're being overly critical. ⁓ We don't want to over exaggerate, but it is important to name some of the things we're missing. So just real quick, is there a stage you feel like you missed out on? I know I gave you a lot of questions, but just in summary, is there an area you think, man, maybe I did miss out on this. And because of that, it's showing up in my life as a dad and I need to mature through it with God's help. Originally I wrote down, don't know. love it. ⁓ As you were talking and I was thinking through it. I think I at the very least got the first four or was fathered through the first four, ⁓ which would be beloved son, cowboy, warrior, lover, all great things. And then King and Sage, I don't know. I felt like I got pieces of them. Maybe not from like, maybe not. I feel like I got a lot of these things from different people. ⁓ So I don't know if I, I don't know if you meant like exclusively from my. my biological father or my stepfather, but I felt like I got a decent bit, a lot more of the first four and then question mark on five and six King and Sage. ⁓ but like, felt like I got to watch certain people, like the person that I've seen the most or that has talked to me the most about the King and Sage stage would be David Newman, pastor growing up, my best, one of my best friend's dad's Luke. If you're listening to this, I almost slipped up and said best friend. One of my best friends. Sell out. Yeah. And then, ⁓ Jed Zaner has just talked to me a lot about, ⁓ responsibilities as a dad work, leading a family sage. mean, he mentioned mentorship. mean, he mentored me. I've seen him just counseled tons of young men and help them figure out a lot of these stages, to be honest with you. So, ⁓ He always told me good dads go to bed tired. That's good. ⁓ so that stuck with me six days of the week. sat six days of the week. That's right. He does Sabbath as well. ⁓ but, but yeah, I don't know. That's, that's what I would say. What, what about you? Yeah. As I was reflecting again, this, this might be a little, I don't know, deep. hopefully this is communicated well. ⁓ I was pushed from the second stage that like Ranger cowboy stage, call it, ⁓ the warrior and lover into the king stage, I feel like very early because in a lot of ways, I spiritually led my family from a very young age. Helped lead my parents to Christ, ⁓ helped give them marriage advice when I'm 20 years old, had some weird things with an aunt that just really got me in the middle of some things of her relationship with her brother who is my dad. I answered this question wrong, I'm so sorry. You're okay, you're good. If you wanna recap, everything that you shared is helpful. Keep going, you're good. But because of that, was thrust into being a king at the age of 20. I missed out on a lot of things that you do in the warrior stage. Not only who do I wanna be when I grow up, but how do I refine that craft? How can I do adventurous stuff? How can I train and push my body and my limitations? And then I pastored a church at the age of 22. That's crazy. Planted a church at 22, pastored it for five years. felt like I probably should have had someone look at me and say, let's let you develop some stuff in kind of this warrior stage. Youth pastor? Yeah, I'm not fun enough to be a youth pastor, but an intern or something. You are. So thank you. I'm proud of you. So what I feel like is, that's what to hear. That's what I needed to hear. Sometimes how it expresses itself now is I resent or get frustrated now that I'm in this warrior lover phase. Like I need to be present with my and sacrificially give my life away to them, give my life away sacrificially to my wife. I chose that as a covenant almost nine years ago, but I missed my time to play. I missed my time to do adventurous stuff and to push my limitations. So, man, I really wanna run a marathon, but I can't do that in this season. I really wanna hunt four days in a row because that fricking 10 point that's on that camera, I wanna go get, but I can only hunt one day. So there's these things that when you... when you pass it and now as men we struggle because there's hobbies or there's relationships or there's things that were good 10 years ago but are out of priority or over prioritizing them. We cannot fit them in this season of life and we missed out because we were either asked to be too responsible too soon ⁓ or we're just having an extended adolescence. That's the other side of it because that is an epidemic in our country as well. Well, I think I've experienced at least the first four and it's not missing out, it's that I want them back. Sure. ⁓ And you know, you can have some of them back in certain ways, but it's not like, that's not the season I'm in. I'm not in the season of freedom to play. gone. It is. so recognizing that, anything else to add? I just kind of framed it that way, but I don't want to belabor it. It's just more to give a framework of helping our audience think, were there things that you missed out on? You missed out on? And it's now showing up in your parenting. I'm sure there is. don't know if I've got something out of those six that I can just pinpoint immediately. I know that there are things that I probably missed out on or the opposite, didn't excess that are affecting my parenting to a certain extent. Or like I said, enjoyed one of these more than the other. And now I desperately want it back. Again, don't know chapters and verses off the top of my head, I always ⁓ remember that verse that talks about basically reverting back to child, the things you had whenever you were a child. I think about that often. I often want things that I have when I was, when I say child, I really mean like 14 to 20, 14 to 20 total autonomy after I got kicked out for eating ravioli and cookie dough at five 30 in the morning, uh, doubling up on screen time, but, uh, total autonomy schedules mine. More freedom to play than any person on earth. So yeah, I think that affects my parenting to a certain extent. I try not to do my outdoor hobbies immediately whenever the spring comes around. Ellie knows this. She'll be like, you should go disc golf today whenever it starts to get nice out, which I used to just do immediately because I had all the free time in the world. And I look at her and I say, I really don't want to go. Because once you go. Because once I go, I won't want to see you a Roman ever again. I'm just kidding. Not ever again. I won't be a good lover. I'm like once I go and I get the itch I'm gonna want to be out there all the time. Ranger Reese out there. Reese, that's what I'd say. It's good, it's helpful. I bring this up to say many of us are parenting, fathering from an unfinished place. We're still in process. Just because you're older doesn't mean you've progressed. You may have missed out on some things or you've progressed in some ways but not others. You want to regress at times. And we bring all this up because we don't just inherit our dad's strengths. ⁓ Although praise God for them. Let's identify them. Let's champion. Let's build on that legacy. We inherit their gaps We inherit the things that we've missed but ⁓ You know being a dad has not finished my spiritual formation. It's not like I'm a dad now I'm more patient and I'm more selfless and more opportunistic and it's just exposed it man. It's exposed the gaps and ⁓ Praise God for God's grace. Praise God that ⁓ if we get it 55 % right, I think God's gonna do something special with that But I think healing happens when we expose some of the hurts or the gaps that we had. ⁓ And that's how wholeness can come. And wholeness, the word shalom, and God's word, it doesn't mean perfection. It just means healing. And that's where I think if we can just name those things, ⁓ that's the first step of healing. And then surrendering it, and then just asking God for help, asking friends for help, asking mentors to fill in that gap, asking God to provide men that... you didn't have 10 years ago, but you can have now. ⁓ And I think that's something that if we can name those things, maybe grieve those things and then wait for God to restore, we can see healing happen. I think that's a really good way of putting it. Cool, man. Hey, why don't you kind of wrap us up with just ⁓ last practical thoughts of like what our listeners can be thinking through this week and ⁓ pray us out as well. Sure. All right. So this week, I think what we want you guys to do, we're going to be doing it ourselves. kind of did a little bit tonight, but think about scripts that were handed to you from your dad or dads and what you're grateful for, what you feel like worked, what you like, what you wanna keep, what you wanna change, ⁓ and what you wanna, again, kinda like we talked about, rewrite. What do you wanna rewrite for your family? What was great and then what do you wanna change a little bit? ⁓ What stage do you need God to meet you in right now? How do I need God to father me to provide wholeness? ⁓ The stages are going to be in the link or we're going to try and put that in there. Perfect. If you thought we sounded like a couple of chickens with our heads cut off, mentioning all these names about Cowboys, Warriors, you can take a look and it'll explain that. But, uh, just to close this out, you don't have to heal your whole story to be a good dad. You just have to allow God to keep writing it. My prayers out. It's good. Yeah. Alrighty. Uh, Jesus, I just want to thank you, uh, for the ability to come together, um, talk through. awesome stuff, sometimes difficult stuff, just dive deep. We want to thank you for being here this evening with us. I pray that anyone that listens to this, they would get to have an encounter with you, Lord, not Buddy, myself or Noah, ⁓ as awesome as we are. ⁓ Lord, I pray that you would just have an encounter with anyone that listens to this, that you would be just like your word, alive and active in people's hearts, that you would change hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. And I pray that you would equip the men that are seeking after you ⁓ or anyone parenting a child that's seeking after you, Lord, I pray that you would equip them for the things that are going on. Because without you equipping us, Lord, we got nothing but just white knuckle and faith, which leads to exhaustion. So Lord, just be with us, stand with us, give us our daily bread. We love you, amen. Amen.