Latest / The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast / This is Fatherhood| a conversation with Joel Fitzpatrick

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This is Fatherhood| a conversation with Joel Fitzpatrick · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hi friends, welcome back to the Simply Wholehearted Podcast.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd so much to have you choose to take this conversation along with you today.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Amy with your host, and here at Simply Wholehearted, we provide perspective, purpose, and plans to help you love God, love others, and live your best life.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if it's flipped to your mind that it's Father's Day week, this episode is here to help remind you.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And here's a little fun tip.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't already know, the Dollar Tree Store Chain has fantastic hallmark cards.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's only a dollar.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you can send your dad a heartfelt message without breaking the bank.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I was sent the most perfect book and guest option that I had to snag it for a chat.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so we didn't interrupt our summer in the anneagram too much.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is another two episodes week.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: For all of those who still have yet to subscribe to this podcast, be sure and push the easy button so you don't miss a single conversation.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Joel Fitzpatrick is a pastor in Southern California and is passionate about being intentional with the moments that he has with his family.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know you will love his energy and this conversation about how dads can stop feeling guilty about the limited time they have and start making the most of their minutes with their kids.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: But we chat about how us women who might be more spiritually aware can support our husbands in their spiritual leadership role.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's not much Enneagram chatting today.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I saved all of that for Thursday's conversation.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: But you'll want to share this episode with all the men in your life.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll want to share it with your girlfriends so they can have perspective about supporting the men in their life.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Are you animated and ready to go?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm great, Sam.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: I've got hold on a second.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: Look at this.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: I've got a I've got a Sasquatch shirt on.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love that so much.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have got my VBS shirt on.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: And pick up this mug.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can't very held responsible for what my face does when you talk.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, I love it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is gonna be fun.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have ourselves a good time this morning.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: I'm I'm really looking forward to it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's gonna be a blast.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is gonna be a blast.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you're a dad of a 16-year-old girl.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're not talking about dads and daughters here, but come on.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've got to talk about that for a moment.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: She is she is a wild one.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_04: I love her to death.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: Oh she makes me so happy.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: But uh 16 is a is a thing that makes you feel like an old, old man.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can I can imagine.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can imag I only I only have a 13-year-old this year.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not there yet, but I'm feeling it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, definitely.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you feel it.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh like I used to be I used to be this nice red beard, you know.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: Great brown hair.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_04: Now it's all gray and gray.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_04: No, she's fantastic.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um I have a I have a 16-year-old daughter and a soon-to-be 13-year-old son.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_04: So they both are just the the joy of my life.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I love them dearly.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and my daughter is super creative, so she always is like she's constantly singing and dancing and um painting and doing selects.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_04: And she's just like all the time.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's great.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: My son, my son loves to lay in his bed and watch YouTube.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: And then fish and go play video games.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's his gift.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, you would still benefit.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: You had mentioned to me, I don't know a thing about the Enneagram, that it's okay.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I can help you begin your journey with what I do.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I won't try to do it in this conversation today.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: But just you have kids that are the perfect age already.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like typing them as you describe them.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, you will have so much fun figuring out this Enneagram thing.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because for us parents, it's this resource to help us know why they do what they do, not just what they do.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, it just takes parenting to a whole nother level.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: Just saying, just saying, everybody tells me, everybody tells me that I need to do it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um are you a rebel?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a rebel?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, no, I'm more like I just I I've got so much going on because I work full-time in construction.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_04: And then I've got, and then I preach two to three weekends a month.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then we do the tent making thing and the pastoral.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_04: That's a lot.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_04: And and I'm the so I'm a Presbyterian.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you know anything about Presbyterianism.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit, yeah, yeah.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_04: So, and then I'm also the moderator of my Presbyterian.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: Which means I'm the one who like uh who plans all of our Presbytery meetings, who is on every committee.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm yeah, it's insane.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's for like a a region, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, for all of Southern California.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: So that's crazy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: I used to live in Southern California, actually.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was really what part?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all over.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Fullerton, but lived kind of I say between LA and San Diego.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: All over.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_04: So like in like Orange County area?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Mission Viejo, Ventura.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I still have family out there.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's beautiful.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that's where you were located.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's yeah, I'm in I'm down in San Diego, so I'm in Hawaii, um, which is like a northeastern suburb of San Diego.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_04: And um I am I'm literally gonna be in San Clemente next week meeting a buddy at Pizza Port for pizza and beers to talk about presbytery matters.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So like that's great.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you're traveling a lot on top of all of this.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, I travel for work and I travel to preach, and I travel for uh for um uh yeah, just to to meet with other churches and whatnot.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's a it's an insane life.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then you wrote a book.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um way to go.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the Anneagram, yeah, you can put that on the back burner.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your wife can read some books.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_04: She read the book, man, and she's weighing in like she wanted to do it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh huh.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe an audiobook while you're driving.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, there we go.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I the roadback to you is on audio.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: My that's the way my husband will read a book, is audiobooks.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So when I yeah, so we even invested, we bought this like, you know, Amazon.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is so silly.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I saying this?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, like Amazon did this Kindle or not Kindle audiobook deal where you bought like you paid a certain price for 10 in a year or 12 in a year ago.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a screaming deal.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we did that because some audiobooks are like 25 bucks, and this came out to, I don't know, eight a book or something real cheap.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's how we roll.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that way we can talk about things.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I just read it because I love to read and he listens and he works in trees all day and all of that, so he can listen and you know all of that.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: That sounds like a dream job to work in trees all day.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: Well waiting from computers.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it he loves it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: He really does.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have to on his defense, we live in the Midwest, and so we have you know 100 degree days, and then we have 10 below.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there is that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_04: No, thank you.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's funny.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_04: One of my dream jobs, actually, my two dream jobs, one is to be a wine taster.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um I like that wine all day long.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um second dream job has always been to be a landscaper.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_04: I freaking love landscaping.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, like, like my wife told me, she's like, Joel, I'm hiring a gardener.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, no, babe, I love to mow our lawn.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I don't want a gardener.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: I want I want to mow our lawn.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: And she's like, no, like we have to do this because you're too busy.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's that's real.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's our issue too, which I thought this was a great question because I gave your book to my husband and you know, just said, Hey, I'm I've had a couple that I'm like, hey, could you help me vet all this material coming in?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so he he was taking a look and I was asking him yesterday, I was like, Well, you know, if you were on this conversation, what would you ask?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And his big and I think you could really speak to this because it sounds like you're in the same exact boat.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: But here he is hustling, working hard.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's got three kids, but there are some days he's out by like 5 45 and could be home at six or seven o'clock.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And those aren't every day, but that you you get it.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so for him, he's like, I'm doing my job to provide, but he feels like he's missing out on the most important moments with his kids.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you reconcile that as a dad?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're supposed to be providing, but what about the quality time?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I not feel like a failure?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, so for me, um, being, you know, construction worker, I start most mornings at six o'clock in the morning, um, almost every morning of the week.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_04: I'm in front of my computer at six.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I am, and then I I uh get my kids up and ready to go to school.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: My wife is a full-time nurse.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: She works five hours or five days a week, uh, eight to ten hours a day.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Man.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so And you live in Southern California, you have to totally so um, you know, for me, outside of just the regular like duties of like just taking my kids to school and picking them up every day, which I absolutely like adore doing.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's like such a huge privilege for me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um I do that, I do that every day with my kids.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_04: But um, I think that for me, what I've had to do is I've just had to realize that um on certain days I'm gonna do really well plugging in with my kids, and on other days I'm not, and that's okay because I have an entire life to live with them.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, yes.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: But what but what I do is intentionally, I s I spend time intentionally with them.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_04: At least a couple of times a week.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_04: Whether it used to be, uh we uh we would all go out in the evening for a walk.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um the whole family would.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we would leave uh right after dinner and we would walk for a half hour, 45 minutes, and in that walk, um, I would talk to my kids about all sorts of stuff.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, whether it be like friendships or, you know, school or them getting bullied or whatever it may be, um, all the way down to things like well, what does it mean that God's the creator God?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and we would just we would capitalize on the little moments that we had with each other.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: So that when we have longer, bigger moments with each other, yeah, um, we could actually uh I could uh move into those spaces knowing my kids well and um and then it wouldn't feel unnatural or stilted for me to have important conversations with my kids.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're just talking about things all the time.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: See, I think that I think the things that dads one of the things that dads um really get hung up on, I know I did, I know a lot of the dads who are my friends to you, is they think that they need to have these like big, huge conversations uh with their kids.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Totally right.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_04: When in reality, uh like and this is what I what I was hoping to do with this book, was uh I wanted to give dads kind of like a guideline for having um conversations not just once, but over the entire like their entire life with their kids.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, the 18 years that you've got you have with them.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because like look, um if I only talk to my son once about his interaction with girls, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's that's gonna my son's gonna be like he's gonna be learning from the internet, he's gonna be learning from his buddies, he's gonna be learning from his teachers at school.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: So you have all these people like just pouring input into him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: And yet, like me as his dad, like I'm I'm I think, uh, and I think I can make a case biblically, that as a dad, like I am outside of his relationship with God, I'm the next most important relationship that my son has.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so, you know, like for a dad who who wakes up at uh and has to be on the road at 5 45 or at his job at 5 45 and then gets home at 7, like that night, go go home and go to sleep, bro.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's okay.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're tired.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: You're tired, just go to sleep, dude, and don't feel bad about it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_04: But the next day when you get to work at 7 in the morning and you finish by 3 in the afternoon, yeah, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe take your kid out of school early and go fishing.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, or go go and just right after dinner, just say, like, look, I'm uh we're gonna we're gonna head out and we're gonna get some frozen yogurt and uh we're just gonna chill out and we'll talk about we'll talk about your day.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_04: And then like let's let's also as I listen to um as I listen to my son talk through his day, I'm picking up and listening actively for key um information that he's telling me.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: And then um and then in a nuanced way, I'm asking good questions, right?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh like open-ended questions, like tell me instead of yes or no questions, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like, how did it make you feel when this happened?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, tell me what you what did what happened there?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: What did you do uh in response to that?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: And those sorts of things begin to like open up a um a trusting dialogue between you and your son.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_04: Last thing you want to do is is to have a monologue.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like nobody wants to hear their dad just talk the whole time.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_04: Totally.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Talk to them.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: You want to have a dialogue so good questions lead to and open up the space for important conversations.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really good.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm picking up too, it's the quality over quantity because the reality is there maybe isn't a ton of time, and there may not be time every single day as you want.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But even if there is 30 minutes, what are you gonna do with that 30 minutes?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna be actively listening or are you gonna be on your device trying to, you know, multitask relationally, which isn't gonna get you very far.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and the reality is is dads, like a lot of us are professionals.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Now, I work in a corporate office for a for a uh um a very large uh multifamily developer.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um my job is I'm an implementation specialist.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: Now I used to be uh I used to be uh working doing demolition.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so like I know what it's like, dads, to feel like completely ill-equipped to have any conversation with your son because you know you're barely getting any time in the word, you're exhausted, you come home, you're cut up, you're bruised up, you're tired.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So tired, right?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_04: Like I get that, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: You're hungry, you just want to eat, and then you want to go chill out.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like I fully get that that life.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: I also know what it's like to be like a working professional.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, after my body eventually just gave up um doing demolition work, like I transitioned into our corporate office or into a corporate office and worked traveling the country, training, teaching, uh, implementing uh uh uh information systems, uh web-based information systems.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so I get what that lifestyle's like.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: I get what it is to wake up at at six in the morning, be on a flight by 7.30, you know, be back the next day at midnight and wake up the the next day to go back to work again.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like I get that.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um but uh we all we all have enough time to interact for five minutes or ten minutes with our kids every day.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_04: And it and to show this that during that time um that they are secure in our love.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um that they're that we that we deeply value them.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um that we're and and we can use words that are really powerful sorts of words.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um we can say things to our to our sons, like, son, like I I love you, and I am I am so happy that I'm your dad.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I love to hear from you.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: So please tell me about your day, right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_04: And then at that point my cell phone goes away, yeah, and I just sit and listen.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um and and I and I listen actively, like I said, you know, you can tell your son, like, bud, on good days and bad days, right?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: On days where where my son does really well, or days when my son just uh like does his own thing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um I can tell my son, like, son, I'm deeply proud of you.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: Like I'm proud to be your dad.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um I wouldn't trade you for any other boy in the world.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um you are absolutely secure in who you are around me, and you need to know that.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um we can say little things like that that don't um and we we mean them, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_04: Because we actually are proud of our sons.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: We actually do love them.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um we actually I love my son.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um whether he gets straight A's or he gets C's.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm proud of my son.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_04: I know that I know that um there are times when he struggles and times when he does better.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um but those sorts of things are so important uh for us as men to say to our children.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, to our daughters, we can say, like, honey, like I am so so thankful for you.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I love the fact that you're so for my daughter, I love the fact you're so creative.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I love the the way that you just display like God's, you like show his image in the fact that you love to paint.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we can just look out our back window and we have hills all in the back of our house.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: And when the sun goes down, it looks like God's painted the hills pink.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like it's like, honey, you show like a part of God to me through your creativity.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: You see, what we're doing there, dad, is we're taking our kids outside of like the um the performance model that the world tucks them into, right?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_04: And we're grounding them in the beauty of the gospel, which um which quite frankly is God looking at us and seeing Christ.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um He still sees Joel, right?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah but he sees Joel who is, as First Corinthians tells us, who is now the righteousness of God.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um the very righteousness of God, because Christ became sin who knew no sin, right?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um he became sin who knew no sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: So when God sees me, he sees his son, and he looks at me and he says, Joel, you're my son, in whom I'm well pleased.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: You are my child, and I'm proud that you're my child.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: And he does that on days when I blow it, and he does it on days when I make when I when I do exactly what I should be doing, right?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_04: Which these days are far smaller than we think they actually are, and these days are way more than we think they actually are, right?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Like the days when we blow it are like are like every day, and the times when we when we actually do what we're supposed to do are like like so few and far between.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's all grace.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: It is, it is because if it was worth, if it was a if it was performance, then Ephesians 2 tells us we would have reason to boast.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: But we don't have reason to boast.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's all grace through faith, and it's a gift, and in the same way, our relationships, I mean, dad, you get this chance to stand in the place of like the the father in the parable of the prodigal son, right?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_04: You get to stand in that place where you just you're just waiting.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_04: You're like, yeah, I know my kid wants me dead.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they already took my inheritance.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_04: I get this other kid who's like who's like fully self righteous.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I get that.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_04: And Dad, you get to stand in this place of the of the father in the parable of the prodigal son, and you get to hike up your skirt when he comes running, when he comes walking down, and you get to run out to him and say, like, no, you're not even gonna apologize.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like Welcome home.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: Here's my signet ring.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_04: Here's my cloak.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill the fatted calf.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna party tonight because you were dead and now you're alive, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_04: So import that onto daddy, right?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_04: Onto dad's life.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's like your kid comes home with an with an F.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like, how could you fail me?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like what's your problem?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, no, like, welcome home.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_04: Let's let's celebrate the fact that I'm your dad and you're my kid, and we have that bond together, and let's realize that grades aren't everything in life.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, let's move forward.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we can only go up from here.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and let's think about how we can do that, you know.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_04: I'm asked that's full dad life.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: And that's that's the beauty of the gospel when it gets a hold of a dad, and then a dad starts just pushing it out to his kids over and over and over again.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that's a good word.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: We had some church today.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I am interrupting this Father's Day conversation to remind you about the Simply Summer Workshop that's here to help you with the no-schedule, long days, sibling fighting, boredom content eating, and the messy house.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can have the summer you've always wanted with your kids.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: A Simply Summer is completely possible for you because it totally works.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: First, you can download the 50 screen-free boredom buster ideas, which are perfect for those with kids 12 and under.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can get my Simply Summer Quick Start Guide, which helps you guide each of your kids into the routine they need.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the Simply Summer workshop will take you step by step to create the schedule you desire.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: It helps foster your sibling unity, eliminate boredom, and help keep people clean your home, all while giving you more time to get things done.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can have your best summer this year.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I put all the details in the show notes as well as a special discount code for you.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And now back to our conversation with Joel Fitzpatrick.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I am a preacher.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm so excited for the dads to hear this.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for the women too, because uh you know, we talked about this ahead of time.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this question too that's just left out to me.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I I want to say was you know, within some of the first few pages of the book, because us as moms have this awesome responsibility to support our husbands and their role as dad it's not they just as we cannot be perfect mothers and we're learning as we're going, we don't have it all figured out.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of cut our husbands the same black, and we have no example of what a good dad is.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're just making it up as we go along.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: But this this phrase about our wives are more spiritually aware.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think a lot of women would go yes and not want to be prideful about it, but to feel like they might carry the spiritual awareness.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we how do we walk this out humbly in a way that only encourages and builds our husbands up and supports them in the right way?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so um a little bit about my background, and that'll help set the context for this answer.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um when uh I grew up in in the church, I was kind of a wild man.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but uh I grew up in like a like a non-denominational church.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm not like when you when you hear the rest of this, don't think I'm slamming on non-denominational churches.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, no, we're good.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're yeah, we yeah, we we hear support all of it.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: If we love Jesus and He's the only way we're good, we're good.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um so you know, um I grew up in a non-denominational church, non-denominational church.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um my dad, my dad was a phenomenally spiritual man, um, a godly man.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_04: He and I never talked about about uh what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant to be a man in light of the world around me.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but every day when um when I woke up, I would walk out and I'd see my dad's Bible open on um on the counter.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: Now my dad worked construction as well, so he was gone before I woke up most mornings.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um and he would he but I knew like okay, dad read and prayed, and I knew that was like what would happen, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: My wife, on the other hand, um she grew up in an Orthodox Presbyterian church.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_04: And if you if you know anything about the OPC, um uh they are uh they are very, very strongly into theology.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um they're very conservative.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_04: And the things like family worship.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if you don't know what family worship is, in the back of the book, there's a guide to family worship.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_04: Let me just point you there.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_04: But her dad, every day after dinner, um even up until I married her, um, her dad, every day after dinner, they would open, um, they would open the Bible, read a chapter of the Bible, her dad would expound on that chapter of the Bible, and then they would sing a hymn, and then they would pray as a family, and then they'd all go their way, right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's pretty much it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: So on the one hand, yeah, on the one hand, you have my dad, who's a phenomenally spiritual man, great guy, he's an elder at his church, I mean, an amazing dad.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: On the other hand, you have my father-in-law, who is um who is a PhD level seminary teacher, um, great dad, loves his kids, right?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_04: So coming into our marriage, um, my wife's knowledge of uh of the Bible and of theology was like light years ahead of mine.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: She'd gone to school for 18 years.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right, every day.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um and my um my uh experience of like Christianity, um, my own Christian walk was very much on the on the personal private end of things, right?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_04: Sure.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_04: So she was way more in a way um spiritually aware than me.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was like way far behind.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_04: What that did in me was uh at a certain point, uh God just grabbed a hold of my heart and I was like, like, I don't feel like I need to catch up to my wife, but I know this is important.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so like I started to read, um, and I started doing really simple things, like just reading the children's catechism.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my kids have to memorize that for school, and it's it's such a blessing to have that in a couple of.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: It totally is, and this is just it, right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_04: For me as a guy, like I feel like in a way to prove my masculinity, like I always felt like I needed to be reading books that were like 2,000 pages long, you know, and beat dollars.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like, dude, I don't I don't know what these books are saying.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I got a master's degree.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_04: I still don't understand what they say most of the time.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um but reading something like the Children's Catechism or like the Jesus Storybook Bible, or um, or there's a great little book called The Manual of Christian Doctrine.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, reading little things like that helped to start to build, um, start to build the foundation for me.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_04: So that then I could start to build um bigger and bigger houses on top of it.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so, you know, as a wife, my wife, um, it really frustrated her at the beginning of our marriage.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I think she'd be happy with like she'd be fine with me saying that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_04: I think she was frustrated with the fact that I just was like completely like I was more interested in watching The Simpsons than I was in like reading a theology book.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: So different than her culture.
• 30:10
  unknown: Right.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_04: Family culture, it's totally different.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, I'm like, well, do we really, you know?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, not like in a mean, like sarcastic way, but like, really, like, are you sure about that?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: And what we've ended up doing is through her prayer and encouragement and me realizing that in my role as a husband and a dad, I'm supposed to do like what Christ does for the church, right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: Ephesians 5.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm supposed to die for her to serve her, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: So me realizing that that's my role, her praying, us fighting over it, um, us reconciling, us try starting to like get to the closer and closer together.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, now after we just celebrated 19 years of marriage.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um thank you.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we've got we've got, like we were saying, the 16-year-old and the 13-year-old, we've come to the point where it's like, okay, um, we have a target.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Our target is three to four times a week doing family worship.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_04: Some weeks it'll look better, some weeks it'll look like seven days a week, other weeks it'll look like one or two days a week.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but we're shooting for three to three to four days a week where we're we're doing family worship.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_04: As a family, we're gathering together every night.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_04: We eat together um around the dinner table with no distractions.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: So put everything away.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, amen.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Put the iPhones away.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you see, this is just it, right, guys.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's all about intentionality.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's all about little things, being faithful in the little things.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: So, for wives, what can you do?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um, first of all, you call a spade a spade, right?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: You just recognize that like this is just a reality in our marriage.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, and it's not something to necessarily lament.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's not something that you have to feel like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have married this spiritual giant.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_04: Most men start out as spiritual children, yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they're just very, very uh um, they don't know how to be a man.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they're just figuring this marriage thing out, they've got all of the pressures of of um work and of providing and the world saying the things that they have to do to be a man.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_04: And it's only over time, Eugene Peterson calls it um a long obedience in the same direction.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's it's a long period of time of obeying and and growing and reading and thinking.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's over that long period of time uh of time that men grow into spiritual um men.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um I don't even want to say spiritual giants because like that's reserved for a very small category of people.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's not for everyone.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: Most guys, like it's okay for most guys to just wake up and read their Bible and pray and go along the day and then come home and love their wives.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um and love their children.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: And that is that is like man, that is manliness um right there.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: So um I would say to wives, you know, for my wife, it was prayer.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was a lot of her expressing her um her desire for me to grow in an encouraging way and not a nagging way.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: And the way you tell that is as soon as your husband starts to like cringe and like ball up, right?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: Then you've moved from encouraging to nagging, you know.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it doesn't mean look, it doesn't mean that you don't talk.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like you need to hear that clearly.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of people will say, Oh, you're just a nag.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, she's just speaking the truth to you, dude.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_04: Like, um, you actually do need to grow.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, but the funny thing about growing in like spirituality and and producing fruit, you know, what is what does a tree do?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm thinking of the image in Psalm 1, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_04: What does a tree do to plant itself by the water?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_04: It does absolutely nothing.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: Someone else pulls it out of dead ground and puts it into live ground.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: What does a tree do to produce fruit?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like nothing.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it just grows, right?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's just next to you, puts roots deep.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_04: Its roots are driven into you, um, into rich soil and um and a stream that feeds it well.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_04: But the question is, how does it how do its roots grow?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: Does the tree do that intentionally or just naturally?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and who provides the nutrients for the tree to grow, you know?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_04: So really, wives like um that's God's work to do, not yours.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um dads, uh dad's that's God's work to do in your children, not yours.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um, that doesn't mean that you just blow off all your responsibilities.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: And wives doesn't mean you blow off all your responsibilities.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_04: But what it does mean is you don't personalize it if you don't see the growth that you want to see.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: Because it's not you.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_04: You aren't the Holy Spirit, you aren't Jesus.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um, John the Baptist, right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_04: Behold, I'm not the Messiah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I'm not the Christ.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um no one else but one.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, it's it's the Holy Spirit's job to sanctify us.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um the the Westminster shorter catechism, which I love dearly as a Presbyterian, um, this is like I I just love it.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the question is, what is sanctification?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_04: Um and in the start of that question, it says, Sanctification is a work of God's grace, yeah, whereby He enables us.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_04: And you notice in that, it's like all of the stuff is all God, yeah, and then it's God who enables us to begin to grow.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_04: And so, moms, I think that a lot of moms carry around burdens for their husbands.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_04: I think a lot of moms carry around burdens for their children.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they think to themselves, like if I can set things up in the right way, then my husband will grow and my children will grow.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um, moms, that's a treadmill that like just will wear.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um your husband will not grow because you're spiritual.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_04: That's just not gonna happen.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um like your husband will grow as you pray for him and you pray for the Holy Spirit to work inside of him, but his growth isn't gonna look like my growth.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: His growth isn't gonna look like someone else in your church's growth.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, his growth is gonna look like the path, Ephesians 2.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: He's gonna do the work that God has set in front of him to do.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it's God who sets that work.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's God who sets that work.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we really do a disservice if we start nagging, if we start, you know, comparing and using the comparison then to guide our conversation instead of you know, it's just the the tree does it plants itself by the streams of water.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, you know, the irony is the tree doesn't even have much of a choice because my as part of my husband's work is he plants our trees.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, where the owner wants it to, and that's the end of the story.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and where you know it's it's based on a little bit of recommendation from the employee who knows what they're doing.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so like we're just so not in control.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the sooner we realize that, the better.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for you know, a lot of women, especially if they were raised in a Christian home, it's gonna be easy to have this uh idea in your mind.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: But remember, your father had all those years until you are leaving and cleaving to become the man of God that he was.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you're not kind of starting back here, and you daddy, you don't remember what your dad was like before you were born or when you were living.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they had to come along and grow.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and I think I have for sure learned the hard way prayer is absolutely the best thing I can do, and to lead by example and not do it from the motivation of like, I'm gonna show you what spiritual is.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Live your thing, be the aroma of Christ, let it you know, just flow from you.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: The more you just are like Jesus, the more attractive um closeness is gonna look.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um Yeah, you know, I've got a uh so this is a weird illustration, but um when my when my wife was pregnant with our first child, uh she uh she has a really like strong, had a really strong sense of smell.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I got this.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's not fun.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: So she and I went out to Italian food uh one night.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_04: And me being like the 24, 23-year-old uh boy that I was at that point in my life, um, I decided to eat a plate of pasta that was named Garlic Explosion.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, and I'm totally feeling for her right now.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, I just crushed that.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_04: There were like 12 cloves of garlic in that thing, and I just I smelled it, right?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_04: Well, what did I end up smelling like?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_04: Oh day.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: You reeked for days, for like weeks, maybe.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_04: At least it was at least four days, three days that I was sleeping on the pullout sofa um because she just couldn't be near me.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-uh.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: Here's the point it's weird, it's a weird tie together, but I think it's so perfect.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um when you when you are so fed deeply by the gospel, you end up smelling like Jesus.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_04: When you when you just are taking that in, like Jesus comes out of your pores, he comes out of your out of your mouth, he comes like like you can't help but just radiate.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you can't help but to be so like uh enraptured in love with that man that you just end up smelling like him, right?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_04: You end up like having the aroma of Christ coming off of you, and that's just it, um, moms, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like um, the world keeps telling you all of the things that you have to do to have a perfect home, the ways that you have to act, have a perfect kid's like do I helicopter parent?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: Do I not helicopter parent?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: Do I make sure they get grades?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: Do I not make sure they get do I take them to tutoring?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_04: Do they need to be active?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_04: They gotta, they gotta, you know, and then pretty soon you're like you're spun up because you're you're um you're marinating, you're like sitting in the world's pressure on you to be a certain type of woman.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: And that doesn't even just include like the way your physical appearance is, right?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and that's just I mean, like I I feel deeply for um for the women in my life, like uh and the women in America, quite frankly.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um the amount of pressure that's put on you to be perfect, to succeed, to look perfect every day, to make perfect meals, to have like a Pinterest worthy house, yeah, is just insane.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: Insane.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but but if you so dwell deeply in the gospel and what that means for you as a human being that you're free.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I always love to think about Deuteronomy 6 and like uh the Sabbath day, you know.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy, because you were once slaves in Egypt.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: Well, what was that all about, right?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: Slavery in Egypt looked like production.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_04: It looked like constantly making more and more bricks, doing more and more work, being more and more productive, being more and more perfect.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_04: And God freed you from that slavery.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_04: That for a mom means that you can now walk into your home and if it looks great, awesome.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: And if it doesn't, that's okay to you.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_04: Because God's freed you from the slavery of having to be perfect.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so if your husband reads his Bible and prays for hours every day, great.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_04: And if he doesn't, like that's okay to you.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_04: You can pray for your son or your husband, you can love him, you can you can encourage him with things that you're reading and finding out about the Bible, not in kind of a gotcha way, but yeah, in a way where like you just want to tell him because you're so excited about it.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can send this part of your life.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, through those little things, you know, dads start to say, like, oh wow, like this actually could change me cheating a lot.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Man, this I am just loving this conversation.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, there's so much good here.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I want to end on this note because it's a little bit lighthearted.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I didn't exactly straight up ask this, but I would love to know if you had a conversation, one of these that are in your book, or that that's in your book.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um And I think you had 12, right?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: Twelve conversations?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_04: 14.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_04: 14.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: 14 conversations.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: Was there one that you just totally bombed and you're like, hello, need a do-over?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um, ask my son.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I wrote That's awesome.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: I wrote I wrote this book.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I told my son that I was gonna write this book.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_04: This was after years of us having conversations.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um of actually doing it.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_04: Of actually doing it.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_04: And then I and then I told him, and when I told him that I was gonna write this book, I said to him, Bud, like, I want you to tell me which which ones were good, which ones were bad.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_04: You need to tell me if things didn't work or you didn't understand them because like together, I want us to take this material and bless all of these families with it.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_04: So did I bomb any of them?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_04: Of course.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_04: I bombed all of them.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, there were ones, like I can remember, I can remember talking to my uh to my son, um, just a normal talk about about playing.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_04: And pretty soon I realized after that, like I had taken all of the joy out of playing.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um I remember talking to him about about like masculinity.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I rem and then and then like halfway through the conversation, I was like, oh my gosh, like I have completely like taken the gospel out of this whole talk.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I've made him into like this guy who has to be perfect.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_04: And and so, you know, one of the one of the uh one of the really impactful chapters for me in this book writing it was the um chapter on perfection and disappointment.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um that talk was so vital, I feel like, and it took me three or four, probably more like five times of talking to my son about this over the span of a couple of years, um, to really get to a point where I felt a little bit settled with it.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_04: And even now we're having the same conversations.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_04: You see, I think that we fall into this trap thinking that we're going to, through one conversation, we're gonna completely alter the life of our child and make them into like this this example, this paragon of obedience, you know?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like, man, you know, if if the Bible tells us anything besides our need for Jesus, it tells us that we're just dumpster fires.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_04: Like, and sometimes the dumpster fire is a little bit less, and sometimes it's a whole lot more, right?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and yet God continues to come back to us.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_04: And this is the thing I love about scripture.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_04: God comes back to us through story, through rules, through poetry, through amazing visions, through great, great um letter writing.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: He comes to back to us in all of these different forms, using word pictures, using all these things to tell us the same truth over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, just in slightly different ways.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_04: So that we, over a lifetime, have this conversation with our good father through the pages of scripture.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_04: You see, dads, that's just it, right?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you're you're gonna blow it.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's gonna happen.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna say something stupid, right?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_04: And then as soon as it comes out of your mouth, you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um you know, you may you may have a subject for me.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: When I was a young boy, I was molested.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_04: So that's something that I have in myself that's very, very painful and is a very deep, deep wound that God is continuing to heal, you know, by the power of his grace.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: But, you know, when I got to those sorts of talks, those were painful, yeah, talks.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, those were ones where where me being an emotional guy, like I was, I was I was in tears.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm also I also have a ton of like energy.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so there are times where like I would talk about something like racism or human trafficking, um, which yes, you should be talking to your sons about racism and human trafficking.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: You need to be talking to your sons about about how they treat people with respect, um, how they love and can be a conduit of God's grace in those in those areas.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but I got fired up and I probably I probably said um uh a lot of swear words in those uh conversations.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: Um you're gonna blow it.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_04: You get fashion and you're just like ah, and it's like this is so wrong, and dad, you're gonna blow it.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's just it's just the nature of life, right?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna feel like a total hypocrite.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you're gonna be talking to your son about the goodness of work, and then you're gonna wake up the next day and be like, oh my gosh, I hate going to work.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: And you're gonna feel like a total hypocrite, right?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you're gonna feel all of those emotions.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: You're gonna feel all of those things.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_04: And instead of just saying, like, just grit your teeth and bear it, right?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: Those are perfect moments for you to admit your own humanity to your son, and then lead him to the gospel in the same way that you are leading yourself to the gospel.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: You get to do this great thing.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, gospel means good news, right?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's news that's pronounced from the lips of one people, one person, and it's received by the ears of another.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_04: So when I talk to my son about something that I really struggle with, let's just take anger for for a moment here.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, perfectionism is another one.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um when I talk to my son about that, I say, son, here are the ways that I like really significantly fail in these areas.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_04: This is why, right, Adam and Eve fell.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_04: Because of that, I'm no longer able to be perfect.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um you aren't able to be perfect.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_04: God knows that about you, and yet he still calls us to obey.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, here are the ways that I just really struggle in this, and you see it, bud.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_04: You see it just as much as everybody else, right?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but Jesus never was sinfully angry.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_04: And because I have faith in Jesus, um, I have his perfect righteousness.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_04: And now I can go out and I can just try to live a life of love for God and my neighbor.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you see, dads, like you're gonna fail.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_04: Your kids know you're a hypocrite.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um, welcome to the club.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah uh we all are.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um that's just the reality of it.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, for people who say that they hate religions with hypocrites, it's like, well, um then you haven't been around very many religions because every religion has hypocrites in it.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_04: Even atheists, um, which atheism, which is a religion, they have hypocrites.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, like people who just don't live up to the standards that they profess to live up to, like that's a part of it.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_04: Your kid already knows it about you.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_04: Take them to Jesus and do it over a fishing trip.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_04: Do it in the ordinary moments of life, right?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you blow it, you blow it, you go and you tell your son, I blew it with you today.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, ma'am, let's let's go to Jesus because I need him, and so do you.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that if we just keep that in the forefront of our mind as we're tucking them in at night, that it's an opportunity to repent, just like we have the opportunity to go before the Lord as we lay our you know, head down on our pillow and to have that conversation, and uh it's so good, so many good things, and that there's freedom, and again, we go we keep going back to grace.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, I mean, and that's like that's the lifeblood of the whole thing, man.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't if you don't have a grasp on God's mercy in you, um then please like start to start to read into that, start to really get into that.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like, there's so many good books coming out right now.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, my mom wrote a great one that I'd just tell you to start in on, and that's a book called Because He Loves Me.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, just start there and begin reading that and start living into that.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, start really dwelling.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if you if you pick up, well, of course, you should pick up my book.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, of course.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: You want you want to read it for your dad, and in wives, you want your your husband to read it.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, start start digging into what the gospel truly is, and then thinking through that every day for yourself, and and then start living that out.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_04: This love um will begin to just flow out of you, and life becomes so much more fun.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_04: The disappointments don't go away, the pain doesn't go away.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_04: Good this isn't this isn't about you like being wealthy and prosperous and all of that stuff.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_04: Like the way of following Jesus is the way of the cross.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_04: But what it is, is it's a good way, and it's a way that you can live into with freedom and love and joy.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Such a good way.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Joel, most important question.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I don't know that you've had it all planned out, but Father's Day is coming up.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what are you gonna do?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna celebrate?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_04: Oh man, actually, uh so I was hi I was uh hired by a church to come in and preach both Mother's Day and Father's Day.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, look at you.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Mother's Day was one of my favorite sermons I think I've ever preached, and it was so much fun.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_04: I preached a sermon called Daughters of the King, and uh, and then just said, like, look, um, we're gonna we're gonna blow out Mother's Day and we're gonna make this Daughter's Day.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then I went through like different examples of women, you know, talked about adoption, the doctrine of adoption um out of Galatians 4.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_04: Then went through and said, like, you can be valued, you you're deeply valued in your singleness, like you're deeply uh you can use wisdom in your marriage.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you can love people in your mothering and grandmothering.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_04: So for dads, we're gonna look at the prodigal son, um, that parable, and then we're gonna we're gonna work into that.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_04: And then I'm gonna go over to my mom's house.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_04: She lives here in town with me.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_04: And uh and we're gonna have we're gonna have some lunch together, hopefully drink a little bit of wine, nice, celebrate um uh the goodness of God to us, and then um and then as a pre-Father's Day gift, myself and my son were going out on a on at least at least one half day fishing trip.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um we're gonna go down to go down to Point Loma here out in the kelp bed.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_04: Oh and we're just gonna try to catch some fish that we can eat on Father's Day.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so great.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I want to come.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, but you know what will most likely be.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, most likely what's gonna happen is I'll probably work the whole time and then and then uh and then go and preach and go home and just want to crawl up in a in a ball.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean for us Sundays, we don't we don't preach and we're we get pretty tired.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: So Sunday is like the long nap is necessary.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I can imagine sanctified naps are freaking amazing, man.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: Those things are like a different thing.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: So have this nap.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where my life would be without them.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's like a it's like a kiss on the cheek from God every Sunday.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, I love you, take a nap.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, exactly.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, it's good.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is so great.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: I just hope you feel seen, valued, and appreciated.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you hear from us women that we genuinely respect the role you were meant to play in our family's lives.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: You are invaluable, and we say thank you.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this conversation, would you share it with your friends and family?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: It would mean so much to help me share this good word from Joel and highlight his message and book to others who would benefit from his encouragement.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: So many didn't have a good example of fatherhood.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the wisdom in books like this can truly change lives.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be back in Earbuds again this Thursday to continue our travel through all nine types of Anegram.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: This Thursday, we are talking about the two.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you are blessed with a healthy type two in your life, there is a good chance that they are one of your besties.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's likely to sense what you need even before you say something.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a gift.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: And again, be sure you're subscribed so you don't miss another two episodes each other.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: You never know when I might hear an extra conversation.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget to check us out on Instagram and Facebook.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: We post giveaways on Instagram tips, and so much more.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's continue to invite others to join us as we continue to pursue perspective, purpose, and plans for a simple hard device.