Latest / LifeAudio / Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seid... - When Success Hides the Drinking: Josh Kerr on Secrecy, Surrender, and Sobriety

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Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic with Jon Seid... - When Success Hides the Drinking: Josh Kerr on Secrecy, Surrender, and Sobriety · LifeAudio

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Coming up on Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. People die
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: from benzo and alcohol withdrawal.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: And I fully have not read the medical report, kind
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: of because, like, to me, it's sort of just, it happened.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: But I believe they helped induce a coma at that
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: point because they didn't know if my spine was broken
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: to help with the seizures, all of that. But basically,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I was admitted into the ICU, and I was... from
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: what I understand, in a coma for 19 days.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, and welcome to the Confessions of a Christian
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Alcoholic podcast. I am your host, John Seidel, and I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: am the Christian who became an alcoholic. not the other
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: way around. Here, we get radically vulnerable about addiction, recovery,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: messy sanctification, and all the things we turn to instead
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of Jesus because we're all addicted to something. You'll hear raw,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: honest conversations from those who have struggled, those who help
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: those who struggle, and why aiming for Jesus and getting
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: sobriety thrown in is actually the best goal. So, let's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: get right into this week's episode. We'll be right back
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: after this. Josh Kerr has spent a lot of time
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: with people in recovery. He's especially worked a lot with families.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: He's helped open sober living facilities. He's ran them. And
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: he is qualified to do that because he himself has
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: quite a recovery story. Josh reached out to me online
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and asked if he could share his story. And boy,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is it incredible. I think one of the things that
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate, I was actually having coffee with someone
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: this morning, a very successful person. And someone who I've
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: interacted with and hung out numerous times. And this person
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: wanted to meet, I thought, for just a very different reason.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: But in the conversation, They admitted that they were struggling
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: with their relationship with alcohol. And I know, like, at
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: this point, I shouldn't be shocked, right? But yet, I
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: was a little surprised. That was Josh, too, right? Like,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Josh was so successful. Like, he had a business. He was,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: you know, great marriage. And, like, everything was.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Everything on paper was going fine. He had the lake house.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: He had the boat. Everything was good. And yet at home,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: he was cracking two beers at once so that it
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: only sounded like he was opening one. I continue to
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: be amazed at how innovative those of us who want
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to hide our struggles and our sins and our addictions
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: can be, right? And that was Josh. It eventually culminated
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in a 19-day coma. That's where his drinking eventually led.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And so Josh is going to tell that story, the seizures,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the jail time. But he's also going to talk about
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the scripture that his mom continued to pray over him.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And it's one that means a lot to me personally.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It's Joshua 1, 9. And so I'm excited for you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: to get to know Josh and hear his story. But
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: before we do that, I would be honored if you
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: would check out VeritasRecovery.org. That is the ministry that I
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: started for you. That's really, it's for you. If you're
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: listening to this, that is a ministry for you. We
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: meet every Sunday night at 7 p.m. Central Time. And
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I was just so blown away this last week. I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: think we had the most people we've had in a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: long time. It was a full room. And you can
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: remain anonymous. It's a time for us to chat. I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: share an encouragement. And then we talk about what I've said.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: We talk about what you're going through. It's a place
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: for spouses as well. We have a lot of spouses there.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: And there's also plenty of other resources that you can
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: take advantage of. So please go to VeritasRecovery.org. So without
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: further ado, Josh Kerr. Josh, thank you so much for
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: joining the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic podcast. I love this.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: You know, you're one of those people that reached out
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to me on social media and just said, hey, love
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: what you're doing. Kind of have my own story. Let
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: me know if you'd ever like to chat about it.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And so when I talk about that on this podcast
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and tell people, please reach out like you are an example.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So I'm excited to have you to have you here.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you. It was kind of a.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Nervous reach out, to be honest, because I've, you know,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: as a Christian and a Christian in AA and growing
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: up in the recovery AA environment, I haven't been able
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: to tell much of my story kind of through the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: lens of.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: My faith, exactly the way I would like to at times.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So interesting. I was kind of about reaching out to you,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: but I'm glad I did.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting. I do want to, I actually do
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: want to dig into that then a little bit. But
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: before we get there, I think, you know, maybe if
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you could just give people, you know, a quick intro,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I had, I had the bigger intro before this,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: but give people a quick intro of who you are,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: where you are, what you're doing. Um, I know that
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: by the time this podcast airs, uh, some of that
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: will have changed, um, just based on what we've talked about. So, um, however,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: however comfortable you feel, uh, talking about that and say that, um, just,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I just want to give you the floor real quick to,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to let, um, let everyone know who you are and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: what you're doing. Yeah. So my name is Josh Kerr.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Um, I'm originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I, uh, Got sober
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: almost five years ago. I'll be five years in about
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: two weeks. Since getting sober, I kind of threw myself
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: at the mercy of my servant's heart, kind of as
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: John mentioned. I fell right in while I was in
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: treatment to start being of service to guys, and that
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: led to opportunities to work in treatment. I've worked at
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: three treatment centers in Colorado. I managed and helped open
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: a few well, four sober living homes.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And another treatment center.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I also did, beyond that, I started doing a lot
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: of family work, which was kind of where my passion was,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: helping the families find, you know, safe place for the
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: loved one who's struggling to go. And through that, I
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: ended up learning a lot about intervention, doing a lot
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: of trainings. I had a mentor in Colorado and I
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: did a lot of transports for him all over the country.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: So I've driven guys that need detox or on the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: way to treatment or on the way back from treatment.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I've flown them across the country. And about two and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: a half years ago, through an intervention I did, I
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: got asked to move to North Carolina, Raleigh, Durham, to
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: open a sober home specifically around the needs of one
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: person through that intervention that I did. It was a
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: person with special needs who struggled with addiction for some time,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: about 10, 15 years.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And the family was kind of ready to try to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: give him stability.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: So getting to know the family, excuse me, moving out
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: here was also an opportunity for me to branch out
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: on my own and do private recovery coaching, family, work
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: with families on a private level, you know, getting to
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: know some of the treatment centers and what they offer
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: and where to send guys and just making that path
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: easy for people. Cause that's a very hopeless and fearful
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: time for, Not just the person who's struggling, but probably
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: more so for the family because the families are pretty
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: lucid for it. As the, you know, the person who's
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: struggling might not be all there to really realize what's
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: going on.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: So I kind of cover all the bases on that.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So you alluded to your own story of recovery and,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: you know, being depressed. five or so years into that.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I would honestly just love for you to take us
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: through that story, however long, however short that is, you know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: but with honestly the charge that like, man, I want
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you to give it to us, right? In the sense
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, I know you kind of alluded to,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and I want to talk about that in a little bit,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: just not being able to really tell the full story
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: in some of the circles that you've had to run in.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And so, man, I want the full story. I want
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: to know. I want to know everything in not in
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: a seedy way, but like, let's let's point to the
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: person who ultimately delivered you. So, man, tell us your story.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: OK, well, I'll just start by saying I have been
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: able to tell my story with all the gory details.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: um i just haven't been able to tell it often
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: in terms of exactly who jesus is to me that's
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: what i meant by that yeah yeah met um you
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: know you can allude to it in those recovery meetings
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: and people know but i try to respect the traditions
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: of that 12-step program and uh alluding is usually pretty
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: good enough um But as far as my story, like
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: I said, the reason I mentioned I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: is because that's usually how we start our stories.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So I was born and raised there.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: My parents, by everything on paper, I had a very
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: good childhood. We had a lake house. I went to
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: private schools after middle school. Catholic private school, that is.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: You too.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Southern Baptist home, went to a Catholic private school.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an evangelical home, went to private Catholic school. Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: So that was interesting. But, and I'll get to it later.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize how I'd gotten to recovery as great
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: as my parents were and as faithful as they were
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: and as much of servants they were. of Christ, um,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: there were certain things I don't think I necessarily got. Um,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: and that was sort of a consequence of a lot
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: of things. Um, and I'll mention the first one being
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: that when I was at the age of 12, and
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: it's kind of where my drinking started, um, I caught
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: my dad having an affair on my mom. Um, I
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: saw that with my own eyes and I was sort
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: of Charged with the task.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Of letting it be known.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Come to find out later, you know, there were some
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: things going on and my mom had an idea, but
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: that was kind of the nail in the coffin, if
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: you will. So that happening, that was rough in the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: sense of, you know, when we're young, we look at
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: our earthly father to be an example of our father,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: our heavenly father. Um, so what I, what I got
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: from that situation was I very much honored my dad.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I looked up to him. He was my best friend.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And so when that happened, it was more or less
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: like a lot of abandonment issues came from it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: A lot of trust issues.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: How could someone that supposedly loves me so much, not
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: just do that to me, but I was in real
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: time seeing what it did to my brother and my mom.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Which was very difficult. And shortly after that,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: I had a best friend at the time and he
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: was going, his parents were going through a divorce also.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And both of us having two older brothers that.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Were already in high school and already going out on
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the weekends and kind of doing the dumb stuff. We
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: decided to partake in our own way. And I remember
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the first night I went out drinking with him at,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: you know, just found a park with some high school kids.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: after a few, we laid down in the grass and
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: we're just chatting and sort of opening up about our
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: feelings of what was going on. And the comment that
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: was made was, this feels really good.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I can't feel anything. And we weren't talking about physically.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'll never forget that moment. Um, and that
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: guy was a really good friend for a long time. Um,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: he's doing very well in life now. Always has been.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Um, and that I just, I.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Held onto that. That was escape, right? You talk often
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: about escape. That was immediately what I found. So from there, um,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I was a pretty good kid. I got in your
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: normal trouble. I think, um, I did start at that
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: time partying on the weekends when I could in middle school.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: And as I look back, um, A lot of addicts
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and alcoholics like to say sometimes it was hard to
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: fit in. We never felt like we fit in. I
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: sort of did that to myself because I would get
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: invited to slumber parties and overnight things, lake trips or
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: whatever it was, and I would refuse to go because
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I knew I couldn't drink. At that time, I was
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: also stealing cigarettes from my dad or my brother's friend
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: or I think my brother had a run of smoking
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: in high school. And I wanted to be able to
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: have my safety net. I didn't want to leave that.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So I kept myself away from a lot of relationship
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: building activities that most young people get. And I did
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: have plenty of that because I played sports. I was
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: very active. I traveled basketball, baseball, things like that. So
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I had a solid group of friends, but it just wasn't, um,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: I sort of kept myself from fitting in, in a
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: lot of areas. And that kind of led to just
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: an attitude towards life of I'm doing it on my own.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And that, you know, living with your mom as a,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: in high school age boy who my brother had left
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: for college. My dad was obviously out of the house.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: So I had become sort of man of the house. Well,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: anyone can imagine that my mom was also going through
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: a very difficult time.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And as great as she was, she was a career woman.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: She ran Special Olympics for about 25 years and then
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: worked at the University of Tulsa fundraising.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So very full life on her own. But we also never.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Missed a home cooked meal. There was dinner on the
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: table every night. She never missed a basketball game. or
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: a baseball game. She was actually my elementary school baseball coach,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: and we won two city championships.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Come on, let's go, Mama Kerr.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: And that's what they called her, Mama Kerr.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: So a lot of good with a little bit of,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: you know, just a lack of normalcy. And I kind
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: of kept my father at bay at that time, my dad. And,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: you know, tried to have a normal childhood.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But was there was there, by the way, I think,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, you talked about I think you made the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: comment raising a Southern Baptist home, going to a Catholic school.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And so at this point, what what does the relationship
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: with the Lord look like for you, for your mom,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: for your dad? Like, is there any sort of animosity
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that's kind of. festering with, with, with the Lord? Like,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: how could this happen? How does, you know, you, you
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: saw your dad cheat on your mom. And is it like,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: did that shatter your faith? Like what, what's that like?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: It didn't shatter my faith at the time. And it was,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: it's been kind of like, I've always known that was
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: my issue. I've always had a very realistic view of
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: God and, And the stuff that we go through is
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: not punishment. He's not doing it to us. He's doing
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: it for us. I haven't had that as a kid.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: My mom would talk often about how everything was a
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: test to prepare you for the next thing. And I
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: don't want you to feel sorry or anything like that.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: My mom actually passed away when I was 22, 23.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And my dad passed away the day I left treatment.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: So, and I can go into that later about how
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: working the step, the 12 steps actually opened me up
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: to realize that I was a lot like my dad
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: in certain ways, which was the obvious part. But the
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: main thing was it helped me have a lot of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: understanding for him. So I now, I now have a
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: lot of empathy. And I did at that time too.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: and that kind of correlates back into my story as well.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: But no, at the, at the time, um, I think
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: there was a part of me that had a little
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: victim hood mentality. Would this happen to me? Um, you know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I was trying to be a good kid trying to
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: do all the things right. Um, but as time went on,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: I just, I'm real good at putting a chip on
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: my shoulder and, I tried to learn from Michael Jordan
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: and Kobe growing up.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And he took that personally. I did.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: And I learned how to take everything personally. There were
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: a lot of times in my life, especially on the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: basketball court, that that did work. That worked in the
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: little businesses that I started in my teenage years, like
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: a lawn service and a little roofing company for a summer.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: It just made me have some drive to work harder
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: and be a little competitive and But I would take
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: it into the rest of the areas of my life,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: which just really leads to a lot of building resentment.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: That kind of everybody, you know, in my recovery, we
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: call it people, places, things and situations. So it kind
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: of encompasses life. and a lack of acceptance and all
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: those areas really, um, kind of hinders you, or at
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: least it didn't me, you know? So as time went on, um,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: in high school, I was your weekend partier.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I would go hard.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Um, And I would do okay in school, you know,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: good enough to not or to be eligible for sports.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: And then when I applied myself, people would say, what
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: the heck have you been doing? You know, well, we're
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: all these B's and a few C's. You're capable of
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: kind of doing things at a higher level. And what
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I realize now with that was a lot of really
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: a fear of putting my full self out there or
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: back then, at least because of fear of rejection.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Um, so during that time period in high school, when
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: it was just my mother and I, um, I learned
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of loneliness. I learned a lot of survival mode. Um, I,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I felt rejected even though I wasn't. Um, I think
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: those are, you know, kind of atypical feelings to have,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: especially if you're a younger person. Um, I definitely wasn't
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: emotionally mature enough to be able to recognize all that then.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: So I went on to college at the University of Tulsa.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I attempted to walk on the basketball team, which just
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: meant like I played with them in the summer to
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: see if I could get a practice squad spot. I
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: got a cool practice jersey, but I decided to go
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: to join a frat. Yeah. where, you know, the first
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: taste of freedom away from home, um, I could do
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: what I want. The, the benders really started at that
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: point off and on and it, I really, uh, I
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: really didn't do well in school that first semester. I
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: kind of pulled it together the second semester, but I
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: don't know. There was something about the drinking lifestyle that just,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: it fit.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: My, I don't know what it was, ADD.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Procrastination brain. I could still walk into a class and
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: pass a test.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: You know, it crammed the night before and just go
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: do that. So it was kind of like, you know,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: half measures in all areas of life. Just kind of
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: getting by. Um, but one thing I would like to
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: focus on throughout this whole time, especially after my mother passed.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Away, um, you know, I, I know it now.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I kind of knew it then, but I was hearing
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: from God the whole time. I, I had this, I
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: had this like unwavering faith about me that when I
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: would go to church, I wouldn't pay attention, but I
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: knew exactly what they were talking about. And I never, um,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I never went home and, you know, kind of did
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: set prayer time. I was always just constantly having a
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: conversation with God because I knew he was real.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Right. And every once in a while, it felt like
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I would get like little nuggets of downloads of, you're
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: not acting very well over here. You know, you might
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: want to curtail that a little bit. And it was
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: more of a redirection. I just didn't always listen to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: it because.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't want it. Our flesh doesn't want to do that. Right.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Kind of like Paul says in Romans, like I do
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the things I don't want to do.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Amen, man. So by the way, though, before we even
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: kind of go there, I'm curious, you had talked about,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of that frat lifestyle in college. Like
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: what did that look like, especially as it relates to
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: your drinking?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: I would say my life kind of revolved around it
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: at that time. That was the most important thing. And
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: that's where I'd say, I turned drinking into an idol.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of drinking every day, really. Not
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: so much during the week. And then, you know, starting
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Thursday night, kind of going all the way through Sunday.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I don't think I was doing anything much different than
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: some of the other guys. It's just for me, it
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: never stopped. I was always the last guy awake. I
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: was always the encourager of let's get things started.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I was that guy.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Every frame of reference they used to try to describe us,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I was that guy.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: It gave me the false.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Courage to talk to girls, to just take other chances,
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: I would say. Which is kind of the weird part
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: about my life is some of the courage it gave
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: me to take risks actually did pan out. And when
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: those things happen, it proves your ego, right?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: You know, and can keep rolling with that. And then
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: it just builds and builds and builds tilts pride. So the,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: the funny part about my fraternity was I had some
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: really good guys in there who they would do a
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Bible study once a week.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And I was good friends with them. They would invite
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: me every week.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I would pop in every Bible study for the prayer
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and say, say what's up to everybody. And then I
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: was like, hitting the doors out the road to go
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: to whatever frat party was that night or where in Tulsa,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: there's not a real big strip to go to, if
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: you will, but there are a few places. Um, but
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I just concentrated more on what I thought was having
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: fun at that time. Um, and really what it was
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: doing was kind of knowing me out from reality. Uh, not,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: not only what I was doing to myself, but the,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: the truth of what I was becoming. And that was
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the truth of that is I was, even though I
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: had faith, I was not walking with it and drinking
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: that way only pulled me further and further away from God.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: On my side of things.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: I know, I know for a fact that God never
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: leaves us, but when you start making things like that idols,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: you know, it's, it's only a matter of time before
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: you fall away in a sense, lose complete sight of it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: I still hadn't at that time worked through anything with
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: my dad. I was very close with my mother. I
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: did work for my dad off and on at that
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: time still. And that relationship was always very tenuous and
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: to the point where I went on spring break my
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: sophomore year to Destin, Florida, and I didn't come home.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: And I just dropped out of school without telling anybody
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: and I didn't come home for.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: It was a couple months that I just staying down
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in Destin. Yeah. And was that just like party, party, party? Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Cause I don't know if you know anything about spring break, Destin, Florida,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: but it's like, yeah. So, you know, I had, it
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: was like, Oh, you spring break one weekend. Oh, it's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: used the next university at Tulsa. I had friends at SMU.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: So every week there was another friend group down there
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: for me to hang out with. And I finally came home.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And it was clear that I wasn't going back to school.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I was just admin at that time. School's not for me.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I just didn't want to be a student, which was
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: kind of insane because my mom was the chief development
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: officer for the University of Tulsa.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So I had a free ride.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Right. And I was willing to give that up to party, essentially.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: That's not how I was framing it back then, but
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: ultimately that's what I was attempting to do.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: What are you in this period, you had talked about
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: kind of, you had referenced the escapism. Like, what do
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: you feel like at this point is, you know, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: maybe on the surface, you're like, I just want to
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: have fun, right? But you had talked about the numbing
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: and the escapism. What is some of that underlying stuff
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: at this point that you're trying to numb and escape from?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: At that time, the thing I could pinpoint is, thinking
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: back on, I prayed a lot about it, is really anger.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I was very angry and spiteful at my dad mainly.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And my older brother for reasons I don't really understand.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: And him and I have talked about that, you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: plenty to work through that at this point. But at
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the time I was sort of angry. I saw a
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: lot of my other friends having kind of normal lives,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: you know, as far as their parents were still together,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: they were dropping them off at college, taking care of
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: them while they were in college. So just to give
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: you a frame of reference on that, the day I
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: left for college, but to move into the frat house,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: it was, I walked out the door with a duffel
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: bag and just said, see you mom.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And she said, okay, bye.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: And yeah, Also, at that time, my dad had been
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: paying for my fraternity fees, right? So my rent and
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: fees like that. And my parents had agreed to do
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: that as long as I was in school. Well, this
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: was the second time my dad started not doing so
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: well in business. He owned a chain of discount grocery
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: stores and a wholesale kind of operation. And all of
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: a sudden, this is where the animosity really got kicked
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: up and why I stayed on spring break. right before
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: I left, they asked me to move out. And not
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: only that, but I was at the University of Tulsa
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: big luau party where the whole school is partying on
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: the front lawn type of thing. And other students, including
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: girls from sororities, because of the president of my fraternity
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: had figured out that I was late on rent. And
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: so I was being kind of ostracized for not paying
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: my bills and And that's something my dad had never
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: told me he was behind on any of that. Or
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I very well would have gotten a job and paid
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: for it myself. Right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: So there's a humiliating kind of aspect to that. Yeah.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: So, you know, it wasn't only the hurt and the
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: pain from kind of what he put our family through,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: but the embarrassment of that. So it's another form of rejection, right?
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: That I was experiencing. So that led to that. And
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: After the whole spring break kind of debacle, my mom,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I had just come back. She told me I needed
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: to come back because there was something big going on.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So I come back and I moved back in with
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: her because the frat house was gone. And my dad
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: had gone almost bankrupt, although he kept one store alive.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: So I went to work for him, even though I
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: had all this animosity. I went back to work for
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: him to try to help him get this last store
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: up and running so he could get back in his flow.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: So I was doing that for a few months and
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: my mom finally talked me back into enrolling back in school,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: which I did. And right after that, there's a big
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: ice storm. I think it was 2008 or six.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Or eight.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And she, I was, pulling an all-nighter for a final
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: and she walked out in some serious pain, which my
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: mom did not show a lot of pain. I ended
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: up taking her to the hospital that night and it
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: was her appendix was going bad. Well, they also found
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: some tumors. So she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I was also at that time planning on moving into
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: a rent house with, you know, a couple of buddies,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: college buddies. And, um, I decided to stay home because
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: she needed my help. So once again, I'm, I don't
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: know if it's once again, but I'm staying at home,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: taking care of my mom. I'm still going out with
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: my friends on the weekends, but I don't have much
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: of a life cause I feel like I need to
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: be there with her. And I, I would never be
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: resentful for that cause of how much she had to
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: take care of me as a child. Cause I was
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: big time preemie and kind of sickly for a while. Um,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: But that was just a real hard time to see
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: all my friends starting to graduate, move on. Some were
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: getting married. And I was sort of in this weird
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: no man's land. So the only solace I found was.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: You know, drinking. It would make me feel comfortable.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: And I would have these sort of grand delusions of
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: what I was going to do next. I would start
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: plotting my next move and things like that. Well, she
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: passed away. when I was about 22 and I was
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: finishing up, I had about a year left of school
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: and she had made kind of one last wish to me.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: I call it kind of her dying wish. And it
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: was just conversation her and I had, I don't, she
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: didn't kind of outright say that was, but she asked
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: me if there's any way my brother to go back.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: My brother had a store at the time, one of
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: my dad's stores. And They weren't working together. It was
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: almost a little competitive. My mom's kind of sentiment towards
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: me was, you know, I'm worried about your dad. What
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: happens if he never gets these stores back? That was
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: his life. Because he also had a little prison ministry
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: through it. He only hired people out of halfway houses
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: that were getting out of the prison system.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: So I grew up around people at halfway houses and
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: addicts and people that were coming out of prison. Um,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I worked alongside him my whole life. And later I,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I'm about to tell you, I took over that business.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: My brother had decided that he didn't want to do
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: it anymore. I think he was on his, he's about
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: to have his third child. I could be wrong on that,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: but he just didn't want to do it anymore. It
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: wasn't what he wanted for his life or his family.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: And the night he told me he was going to
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: get out of it and wanted to sell, we had
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: a conversation and I just, I bought it from him essentially.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I ended up selling part of a landscaping business that
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I had at the time that I'd built up since
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: high school. And I bought it from him over time.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: He gave me a year, but the kicker was I
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: brought my dad to work for me. Cause I figured, well,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I'm full-time school. He's the one with 35 years of
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: connections in this industry. I know pretty much everything about
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: it because I've been working in his stores and warehouses
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: since I was a baby, pretty much. I drive a
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: forklift when I was five.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, that type of thing. Some are doing
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: power wheels. You're doing forklifts. Yeah.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: So that was another big ego trip for me because.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: It worked. I was successful with it.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I sort of just let my dad do
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: his thing when I finished school. But once I was
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: done with school, I started to expand it. I, I
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: developed a wholesale operation with it. I had a, not
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: just a store, but a warehouse in Tulsa. And then
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: I bought a seven half acre property in Grove, Oklahoma,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: which was in a lot of art. And I turned
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: it into a multi-dimensional kind of retail operation. I had a,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: 192 booth open air flea market. I got into selling,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: you know, insurance claims from Lowe's and Home Depot, like
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: building materials out of some other barn type structures on
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: the property. I sort of was attempting to make it
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: into like almost a retail event center. You will. So
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: I was using the businesses at this point to try
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: to obtain commercial property.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And I, I mean, I was doing that. That was
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: my end goal.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Um, so working in that for almost 13 years was, um,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: kind of, kind of brought out the real bad side
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: of me. You know, it was like never, never facing
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: or getting through your resentment, just hanging out with it
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: every day. Pretty much. Um, although, um, the blessing in
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: that was I got to spend almost every single day
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: with my dad who was the most unabashed, unabashed lover
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: of Jesus I've ever met. Okay.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Let's pause there because I know I'm thinking, wait, what?
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: And other people are maybe like, wait, what? I walked
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: in on your dad having an affair and you're categorizing
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: him as the most unabashed lover of Jesus that you
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: ever met. Now, I say that slightly facetiously, right? Explain that.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Well, he was broken and sinful like the rest of us, right?
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: My dad fought his own demons. We are very similar,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: so I know which ones he fought. In fact, he
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: told me about them later in full detail. So I
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: also know A little bit more. I have been married myself.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: So that really opened my eyes to problems that can
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: arise in a marriage. Not giving any excuses, by the way, whatsoever.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: And I told him that at the time at the
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: age of 12, when it happened, I remember saying to him,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: you know, I understand that you're not happy, but you
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: could have just gotten a divorce. You didn't have to
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: do this. I don't know what, what spurred that on
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: as a 12 year old. Um, but I just knew
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: how wrong it was.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Um, I do know, I do know the man really
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: well and he spent a lot of years. In fact,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: why he would lose his businesses often was because it
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: was almost a false sense of atonement. Like he had
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: to make up for something and he was giving a
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: lot away. Um, he did spend, majority of the rest
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: of his life handing away six million copies of the
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: prayer of jabez book.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Wow for uh yeah wow wow yeah so.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: He turned his stores and then later my stores because
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: he was so involved with them everything but the budgeting.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't let him have a home.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: He was more my business development guy.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Because he had all the connections.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: But anyway, he ministered to people in a way on
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: the most authentic level that I think actually reached people.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: And having that example is what I think helps me
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: do the same thing now in the areas that God
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: has placed me in. Cause when I, when I did
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: get sober, I was in Denver, Colorado or outside of it.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I went to sober livings out there. You know, there's
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: not a lot of Jesus talk, which, you know, to
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: each their own. I, I'm not allowed to judge anybody
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: and I don't, um, But I know for a fact,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I won't just say I believe, I know I have
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: a real knack for talking to unbelievers. And I'm not,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: you know, dogmatically quoting scripture at them or anything like that.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: I saw an example through my dad of, you know,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, he was just trying to
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: be the light, right?
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: And when people were ready to hear it and needed
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: to hear it, he.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Would lay it down, but he wasn't afraid to walk
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: around anywhere in public. And when someone's griping or complaining,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: his famous quote was, Oh, Jesus will handle it.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: That was his way of saying, stop complaining. Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: He's this way into it. Don't worry about it. You know?
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, so I heard often his favorite, his favorite book
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: of the Bible was Mark, but his favorite, chapter in
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the entire Bible was Matthew 6.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: And he relied on that relentlessly. That's Sermon on the
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Mount stuff.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Right. And that's recovery stuff. Especially when you're coming back
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: from nothing. Or in my case, coming back from losing everything.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Getting caught up in financial fears and everything else. You know,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: that's not the point. Is what he's trying to make there. So,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: That was kind of the relationship with my dad. Bad
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: and a lot of good, I think.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like there was then a repentance on
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: his part? Oh, 100%. And I only ask that because
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that we continue to
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: talk about is repentance, right? And that you can come
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: back from anything, right? And with genuine repentance, it's like
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: there may be consequences, right? still for your actions. And
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: yet you can still testify to the grace and the
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: power of God, you know, and I look at my
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: own stepdad and this was kind of hard at some point,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: like when I wrote my book, there were some family
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: members who didn't like necessarily some of the details that
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I included and even just and wanted to include that
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I ended up not about just some of the way
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that my stepdad was in our younger years. He had
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of anger. He was abused as a kid
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: and modeled and mirrored some of that with us at
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a very young age. And yet, very similar to you,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: like my stepdad went away for a period of time.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: It's funny. It's like I've come to understand that it
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: was only a month. It seemed a lot longer to me,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: but I was younger, right? Right. He went to a
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Christian treatment facility to work on himself and came back
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a different man, a broken, soft, literally just some of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the things that you're saying, right? Like we would get
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: up Like we're like, hey, the angry Mike, could we
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of him now? Because like you
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: are just getting walked over. You are getting stepped on.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: You are like and you're just like, hey, God will
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: take care of it. Like if that's the thing, fine.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: You know, we're like, yeah, we don't want, you know,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: volatile Mike, but we could probably use a little like
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: justice here, Mike, you know, and he's just it was
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: just it was just a change. And I think the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: thing that I tried to convey to my family in
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: using some of those details and writing confessions is, hey,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: I want to point out who he was because that
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: makes who he became that much more of a testament
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: to God and what he did in his life.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Like understanding who he was before, you know, makes understanding
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: who he was. he also passed away before he passed
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: away that much more of like, wow, but God, you know,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: that's what God can do. Right. And he was repentant.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: And it's funny, you said something there that I need to,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to need to, Josh, I'm going to need
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: to like meditate on for a little bit, but just like,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: like you said there about, you know, him giving away
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of, a lot of money and maybe, you know,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: going bankrupt, if you will, on some of those businesses,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: because of a, a sense of, And I just wonder, like,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I look at my stepdad's life, you know, after post
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: post treatment, which it wasn't for drugs or alcohol, but
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: it was for anger. It was for just some of
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: these root issues, you know, and I look at what
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: he would do. And I wonder if like there was
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and not an atonement in a in a let me
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: earn God's favor. But also just like, I know the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: grace that has been given to me. And this thing
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that this person wants, like, fine, you know, great, take it,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: you know. And I'm going to have to like, look
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: back at my stepdad's life and kind of be like,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that's part of it, too. You know,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I would see my stepdad I would come down in
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: the mornings, you know, I don't know, to get a glass.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I grew up in Wisconsin, right? So it wasn't a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: glass of water. I came down to get a glass
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: of whole milk in the middle of the night. And,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: you know, it would be three, four in the morning
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: and he's just on his knees praying. And I think
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: at sometimes in my young high school years, I would
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: look at that with kind of like a skepticism, like
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: almost like a religiosity, like, oh, you know, Come on. Well,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you see the hypocrisy.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: And what I think I'm, or what I know, what
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I've come to understand and appreciate is, even though there
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: were still struggles, is that how much worse could it
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: have been if he wasn't doing that and how much
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: he knew he needed that? Because I know that like,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: you know, my prayer times, you know, throughout the day,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I can just as quickly have a terse word for
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: my wife or kids, and they could look at me
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and be like, well, now you're reading this? It's like, yeah,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: because you don't know. If I don't, who the sin
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: wants me to become is even worse. So I know
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: it's a little tangent, but as you said that about
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: your dad, I think it's a good reminder to us,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: for all of us, if you're listening to this and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: maybe you have one of those father or mother figures
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: in your life and you're, and, and maybe instead of
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: chalking it up to their hypocrites, which by the way,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: we're all hypocrites.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Um, 100% is, is like, maybe, maybe, uh, they are
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: pursuing the Lord in that aspect of their life. And
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: that's actually a gift because of who they could be
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: without it.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Right. And I, on that, I saw a direct correlation between,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: when my dad passed, to my recovery program. Because, you know,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: recovery emphasizes just what you just said, that relationship, right?
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: That is the main point, that we need that relationship
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: with Christ. And my brother and I found his prayer
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: journal after he passed away. And the times he stopped journaling,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: we could directly... put with times where his businesses went down,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: where his marriage started to fall apart, where our relationships
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: respectively with him fell apart or all during times where
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: he wasn't solely focused on things of heaven.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, And that was so important for
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: me because my dad passed away the day I left treatment.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: So I never got to see him again. And that
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: was the first I got to see of him.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: And it was just a reinforcement of how bad or
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: how intense I have to be about this thing.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Not just to say sober. That's not really the goal. Amen!
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: That's not my goal. My goal is to grow into
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: my identity in Christ. Who my creator created me to
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: be because for a long time, I wasn't living that way.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: When you're living in fear of rejection, loneliness, inadequacy, all
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: these things, right?
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Josh, what you're saying right there, that is what I
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: think is the difference between secular recovery or non-gospel recovery
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: and gospel-centered recovery. Is like, sobriety is not the goal.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just different language in AA. Like the AA
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: book talks about growing in the image or likeness of
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: your creator, right? And talks a lot about emotional sobriety,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: that the getting sober is just the first part.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: You know, it mentions all that stuff often.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't specifically name the true source, right?
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Is how I kind of think of it. I think it's,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: It's very clear.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: To me that AA used the book of James, Colossians,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: and Romans to write the big book of Apostles Anonymous.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: And there's writings that Bill Wilson did to say he
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: wished he would have brought more Jesus into it. But
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: also it just leaves it open because there are so
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: many atheist agnostic people out there. And in my experience
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: working in treatment, that's the first battle. Hmm.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Besides drying out.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of people have kind of what I've
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: noticed to be over the thousands of guys that I've
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: come across is this.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: They take that hypocrisy piece and they they use it hard.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Yep. Right.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: It's easy to do because like you said, we're all hypocrites.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I wrote an article recently of just like,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I think as Christians, we need to start embracing the term.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: like I think someone calls us a hypocrite, right? And
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: we like run from it and we're like, we think
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh, now they've got me. And I'm like, no,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: like I'm a hypocrite, guys. You're a hypocrite. Christians are hypocrites.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: If Christians weren't hypocrites, we would not need Jesus. Like
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: we are going to say one thing and do another.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: We are going to profess that we love Jesus and
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: we're going to do things that are antithetical to our faith.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: And who else? That's exactly why we need Jesus. So like,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Stop running from the term. Someone calls you a hypocrite,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: be like, yes. And guess what? You're one step closer
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: to the gospel now. They're like, what?
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah. Right.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, so let's reset in a sense of like, yeah, no, no, no,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: this is good. Cause you had mentioned like coming out
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: of treatment and seeing your dad, like what happened in
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: your life? What led you to, to what led.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: You to treatment?
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Of knowing and getting into treatment. Like what did life become,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of as you're, you know, growing successful
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: business and whatnot. And I'm assuming like so many of us, like,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: you know, you drink when you're depressed, but you drink
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: when you have success, right? And so sometimes that success
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: can really mask it because it's like, well, I'm not,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not draining my savings in order to
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: get liquor. And it's like, things are really great. I'm
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: a better person, you know? So what led you to
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: get to treatment. All right, there's a lot in there,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: so I'll try to fast forward it. We'll be right
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: back after this.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: So I got married at the age of 30. So
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: we started dating around the time my mom passed away.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: So talk about not feeling lonely anymore, first of all.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Great person. She is now my ex-wife. She's amazing in
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: her own right. nothing bad to really say. We dated
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: kind of off and on because she moved around a
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: little bit in our twenties. And while she was doing that,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: I was kind of growing the business and doing my
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: own thing. And around the age 29, she moved back
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: and we decided to get married.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: I proposed and all that.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: And I also, that's the year I also bought that
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: big property that I talked about. Hmm. So I grew
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: in all sorts of areas at once. That was the
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: year I also bought a lake house close to that
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: new property. So I had a lake house, a boat.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Everything looked good on paper. Marrying a beautiful, intelligent woman.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Lake house, boat, solid businesses. And at this time, I
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: could hear my ego kind of, well, the enemy kind
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: of taunting me. Like, well, you got it all together now.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Now no one will really know. what's actually going on. Um,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of people like to, a lot of people
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: close to me like to think it was the pressure
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: of all that, that kind of sent me toward downward spiral,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: but I was already spiraling there. I mean, I was,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I was one bender at that point away from it
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: having its grasp totally on me. And I mean, it
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: was already taking me I would go out on a
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: long weekend, have everyone up to the lake and party
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: all weekend. And then it would take me until about
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: Wednesday to level out and feel normal.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: And is it just alcohol at this point or is
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: there other stuff?
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just alcohol. Just alcohol for me at that point.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: And that kind of, and like I was referring to earlier,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I kept those same habits from college.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: I'm that type of addict where I was in that
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: same habit for years. 15 years. So that, that just
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: got worse and worse. You know, it progressed as it does.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Those vendors stopped being week long. They started turning into
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: a month and I started hiding how much I'm drinking,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: how often, you know, I was doing the whole, um,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: stopping at the gas station, especially out by my lake house.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: Cause there's a two mile dirt road. So I could,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: Slam some down before I walked in the door. And
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: then the ones I had later that night didn't, it
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: didn't look like I had the, it's back before, right?
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, man. I was a master at that.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: I also would, and I laugh at it now. I
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: know it's not funny, but in my house, I had
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: a side room that was kind of my man cave
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: as a little TV room. There was a mini bar
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: in there. So a little mini fridge. And I would say, hey,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go get a beer. Do you want
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: a glass of wine or anything?
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: It's always no.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: And I would walk in there and simultaneously pull two
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: out and open them both at the same time. So
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: it just sounded like one. Well, you do that three
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: or four times. Yep. And I didn't care if it
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: got warm. They were there for me later in the
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: night or the next morning. Because at that time I
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: started getting the shakes.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: Throughout the college years and even in real adulthood into
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: my 30s, I always relied on the hair of the
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: dog after a hard night. That was just my go-to.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: This was more than that. This was, I need to
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: level out so I can start my day. It started
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: being that. Now, still at this point, there was times
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: where I could stop drinking for about a month or two.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Or even a week. You know, even if it was
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: a week, I would like go to the gym three
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: or four times. I would eat healthy that week and
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: be like, oh, I'm all good. Isn't that insane?
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: It's so insane. But like, I know that there are
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: people listening to this right now. That that's your story.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: And. Josh.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Who drinking that way will get the shakes, could stop,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: could stop for a little bit, a week, a month, whatever.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I could do the same thing, right? And I cannot
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: tell you how much I used that to convince myself
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: that I didn't have a problem. I'm like, no, alcoholics,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: they look this way, they have these symptoms, it's this,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and man, does that keep us enslaved.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Well, my thing was I knew I had a problem,
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: but I had my problem under control. Sure. Yeah. Because
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: look how powerful I am. I'm essentially controlling everything else
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: in my life right now. So I control that too.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: That was the sense that I had. But then it,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm probably not even expressing how bad it
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: actually got like at that point, but it got worse.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Quickly, you can just like, what did that look like?
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: What did worse look like?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, here's where I'm really getting into it, and it's
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: totally fine.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: And that's up to you, man. It's like you share
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: as much or as little as you want. I'm an
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: open book with it, to be honest. Basically, it turned
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: into all day, every day. My employees eventually started knowing it.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I started going to said lake house, pretending that I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: had to work. And I was working up there, but
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I would sort of fib about, oh, I have, you know,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: merchandise trucks coming the next two days, so I'm going
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: to be up here. Might as well spend the night
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: because it's an hour and a half away from home,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: things like that. And that would just give me the
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: availability to drink the way that I wanted to, the
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: way that my alcoholism wanted to, right, without being judged.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: But it started to have its hooks involved. me where
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: I would, I just couldn't go home. There were times
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: whether it was I was too drunk to drive, which
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: is kind of always, or if it was because my
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: anxiety was so bad coming down off of it, already
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: experiencing pre-withdrawal symptoms that I couldn't even leave my driveway.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: And I couldn't tell that to my wife. So what
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: I would do would sort of start a fight to
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: be like, this is why I don't want to come home, right?
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: Because I'm angry. I don't like that you did something.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of us do that in whatever
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: capacity or way.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Brother, yes.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: You know, it's a way of throwing up walls and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: flares to go pay attention to something else.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Giving you an excuse to drink more.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Well, we had a fight. I just need to calm down. Yeah.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: And she would call and say, hey, well, you've been
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: calming down for four days now. Like grow up, which
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: I needed to. So my marriage became more distant. Right.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like there was a ton of all the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: really bad stuff.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: You hear about or bad.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Really any of that necessarily. I have no doubt that
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: I was probably emotionally abusive just in those fits of
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: sort of my irritation to push away. I was emotionally abusive,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: never physically or anything like that, but it just only
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: created distance between us. Um, so I started becoming kind
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: of a, isolated version of myself that is not who
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: she married right so eventually she decided to leave there's
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: a separation I took the separation as a one foot
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: out the door which it was but in that moment
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: of sort of either always under the influence or always
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: very irritable restless and discontent I would lash out. I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: would justify things of you're giving up on our marriage
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: after this like small thing. You know, it's just a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: rough patch. So that's how I was trying to justify
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: it to myself when it was much more than that.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: Talk about your identity completely changing, right? In like a
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: few years, I'd become someone that even the person I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: married didn't recognize. And not only that, but she was
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: watching me slowly commit suicide. And, and after she separated,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: then COVID hit like shortly after, um, I had to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: have my gallbladder removed at that time. Cause I drank
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: that away. Um, so my health was going down the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: drain and it was apparent. I was, you know, pale yellow, very, very,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: I'm a thin guy, but I was very, very thin.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: And it got to a point and I'll just fast
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: forward again. A lot of things went down. Just me
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: being even distant from my own businesses. I was rarely
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: there and I would play the whole, well, it's COVID.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: So I can't come in. I can't get sick.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: So don't worry.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: I'll send you guys merchandise to fill the stores up.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: You know, just keep it, keep the tills running basically.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: So I was putting on this facade is still working.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: still caring, things like that. And that's when it got
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: real bad. I invited a few people in my life, well,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: one mainly, that was not well at all. So we
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: ended up getting divorced, and that was quick because we
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: didn't have children. So in the state of Oklahoma, that's fast.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: And it was very amicable, everything like that.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Would you consider yourself a Christian at this time or no?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I had my Bible open reading Psalms 37 just
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: about every single day or Psalms 34 also. But it's,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: it's one of those things, at least in that moment,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: it was, I would read, read that.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: I would pray.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: And then 30 minutes later I would start screaming at God.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: Why haven't you changed anything yet?
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Right. Like, you know, who do you think you are?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Um, But I did invite someone else that came in
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: my life. I had known for a long time. She
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: was living with me for a while and I was
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: just making really weird decisions. Like this is when things
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: were starting to get so bad that my family would
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: send welfare checks and they, they didn't think it was
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: necessarily drinking.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: They thought I had.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: Some sort of mental issue, like very bad mental health issue,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: which I, I did because the way I was drinking
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: at that time and lack of REM sleep was causing
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: me to be very manic. So I was presenting manic
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: bipolar and all sorts of things. And when they would
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: send those welfare checks, which was only a couple of times,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: and I went on my own also, I would literally,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: I had a bag ready after the first trip, but
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: I would fly to go straight to the airport and
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I'd fly to Puerto Vallarta. And it's to the same,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: cause I knew it, it wasn't some, some sort of
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: weird sentimental thing is cause I knew the place so well,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: I would go to the same resort where we had
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: gone on our honeymoon and I would just go and be,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: you know, I thought I just needed to breathe. I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: just needed silence, um, to try to figure it out. Right.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I need to figure something out. And there were a
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: couple of times I actually didn't drink much at the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: but something would happen. I would hang out with a
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: couple or, you know, get invited to dinner or something
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: like that. And it would just be go time, you know,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: wouldn't stop. And I would, a few of those times
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: I had a four day trip plane and kind of
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: like destined, I would come back 15 days later.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: So I was just blowing money on, you know, all
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: inclusive stays. But the main factor of that was, I
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: knew what would detox me, what would level me out.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: And I knew I could get it in a pharmacy
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: in Mexico.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: So I did.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: And that's when things got real, real interesting. So that's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: when I started to use Xanax. Very moderately, just what
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: they call a quarter of a bar at a time
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: and tell myself, okay, I'm just going to do that.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: It will take away the anxiousness. I'll only drink three
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: or four drinks tonight. But in those intermediate times, and
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: this is not an exaggeration, I know it sounds crazy.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: I was going to the quick trip at 61st and Harvard,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: or I'm sorry, 31st and Harvard, Tulsa, Oklahoma, every morning
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: at 6 a.m. buying two 30-packs of Bud Light because
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: I'd sworn off liquor, four bottles of Josh Chardonnay, and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: a pack of cigarettes.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Every single morning.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: My sister found the receipts when I was eventually in
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: the hospital and.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Was like, what the heck? And you were drinking that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: in a day? Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: And she found.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: Her and my brother found all the evidence in trash
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: bags in my garage. The bed of my truck were
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: just full of empty beer cans. Like, an enormous amount.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Do you....
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that period of like, like, is that
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: kind of like a foggy period then?
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Very, very foggy. And when I introduced the Xanax, which
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: I honestly do not believe, obviously I was abusing it
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: by taking it in general, but I wasn't going overboard
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: with it. I wasn't like crazy popping pills, but even
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: a little bit of Xanax, whether it's a half a
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: bar or a quarter mixed with any kind of drinking brother,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: I did that for a year and a half. Dude.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, every time you're rolling the dice. Yeah.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: So that year, year and a half, see that that's
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: where the timeline gets kind of hazy for me. I
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: know I started losing.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Chunks of time.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: I remember having moments of clarity and being talking to myself,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: being like, dude, you just lost a week. And then
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: it was two weeks. And it wasn't like a crazy blackout.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: It was just like, I was in a dream world.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: And then, and then I started really acting out doing
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: some pretty crazy things. Um, one, I, I won't mention,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: I did have to go to court for, um, yeah. Um, it,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: it happened in broad daylight. It involved a, uh, firearm.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Not another person, but an object. I also cut down
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: power lines in my back. with my bare hands and
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: wire cutters.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: So it was a new power line drooping over my
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: back deck and the neighbors weren't calling the power company
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: quick enough. So I walked out there, wrapped my hand
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: in a towel, grabbed the live wires and cut it. Yeah,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: should not be here. Should not be here. And then
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: there was lots of psychosis. I saw space troopers breaking
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: down my back fence. Just all sorts of kind of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: what I know now is really demonic activity. There was
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: a certain figure that would taunt me all the time.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Especially at night. Let's just show up in your room. Yeah.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Not just in my ear.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Like I knew when it was right in front of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: my face and at night I could see it.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: And I'll get to that.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll just go ahead and, you know, a lot
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: of guys in the treatment world, especially if you're around
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: a heroin and meth addicts, well, fentanyl and meth now
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: they talk about shadow people. That's exactly how I would
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: describe this thing. So remember that because I'll get to
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: it in a second. So after a little while of that,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: I had the police called on me at my house
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: for something that went on at my house, which was
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: like a breaking of a computer or something like that.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: And I had walked out to the truck in my
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: driveway and I was just sitting in it and of
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: course had a couple beers on me.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: And the cops pull up and they gave me a DUI.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: So they take me in, and this was such a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: blessing that this happened. They take me in. They made
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: fun of how much I blew because I blew very
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: close to a. 4. It was like a. 3.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, dude, I hadn't drank water in probably
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: a month.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: It was just nothing but Bud Light or Kuru's Light, Chase,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: and bottles of Chardonnay.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Wow. Whatever it was. Yeah.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: So I'm in jail for about eight hours, I think
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: it was. And I felt very, very strange. That's the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: longest I'd gone without alcohol in a year and a half.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Easy.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe two years. Like I hadn't gone more than two
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: hours without a drink. And I definitely hadn't slept more
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: than two hours in a couple of years either.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: But as I'm being released.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: I'm handcuffed to the guy in front of me. I
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: started getting tunnel vision really bad. Kind of like I
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: was also getting in the jail cell. And all of
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: a sudden my right leg started shaking, like wobbling. And
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: it was out of my body. I had no control
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: over it. The next thing I knew I was losing consciousness.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: And I just remember falling, hearing what sound like a
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: baseball sound. hit a wood bat like Mark McGuire just
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: smacked a home run or something and a flash of light.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: So what had happened was I had a seizure while
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: I was handcuffed to the guy in front of me
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: and I fell and I landed right on my temple
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: on one of those bolted in benches.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Wow. And if I wasn't.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Being released in 10 feet, 10 feet away from the ambulance,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I would be dead. Wow. they immediately got me in
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: the ambulance. I was having horrific withdrawals. My body was
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: in shock. I was seizing like crazy, like a seizure.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: You don't survive. You're, you're not supposed to, well, people,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: people die from Benzo and alcohol withdrawal. Oh yeah.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Just say that. Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Die from. And I think I fully have not read
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: the full medical report kind of. Cause like, To me,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: it's sort of just, it happened. I know what God did,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: so I don't need to know anything else. But I
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: believe they helped induce a coma at that point because
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: they didn't know if my spine was broken to.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Help with the seizures, all of that.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: But basically what happened was I was admitted into the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: ICU and I was, from what I understand, in a
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: coma for 19 days. And at day 13, well, my
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: family didn't know I was in the hospital for seven days.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: Because you at this point probably just weren't really communicating
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: with them, right? So seven days.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: I had gotten a completely new phone number. I was
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: trying to disappear from everybody. Hadn't talked to them in
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: a little while. One of the nurses recognized me from
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: high school and called me. Who she knew to call,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: which was one of my best buddies, Michael, who I
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: had sort of, he helped not really get to treatment,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: but sort of, I was supportive of him about 15
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: years prior when he got back from Afghanistan.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: And I had known this guy off and on.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: We were kind of best buds at different points, always
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: just showed up in each other's life there for each other.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: This nurse calls him. He gets a hold of my brother.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: My brother leaves his wife and kids in Frisco, drives
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: straight to Tulsa.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: Frisco, Texas, where I'm from. Well, not where I'm from,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: where I'm doing this right now.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Drives all the way from there, left his four children,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: his wife alone, to go sit in a hospital room
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: looking at his little brother not knowing if he's going
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: to live or die. And I'll also go back to
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: from what I know One of the last things my
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: mom asked of him was to protect me from myself.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: There's a reason my mom named me Joshua. And she
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: would always point out Joshua 1.9 from when I was
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: a little kid and say, you're going to need this someday.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: Because you're going to have a fight in your life
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: that you won't be able to do without God's help.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: She used to tell me that.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: What's Joshua 1.9? be courageous.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Right. For I'm with you.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: So, and that, that ends up being a cool story
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: later in my recovery journey. But so sitting in the hospital,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: 19 days on day 13, my sister had asked the
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: doctor a question and the doctor looked at her and said, well,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: we don't know if he's going to be paralyzed or,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Or if he's going to be on a ventilator because
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: of the wet brain, could be permanent.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: And she asked, what do you mean paralyzed?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: He's moving. And the doctor said, no, he's still having
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: delirium tremens.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: And those are only supposed to last to day six
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: or seven. We're on day 13.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: So the chances of him waking up and not being
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: a vegetable or incapacitated. Very unlikely. Holy cow. Now, I
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: had an experience while I was in that coma. I don't,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: like I said, I didn't read the report. I haven't
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: heard anything from my brother or sister whether I ever
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: toted or not. I can tell you my brother was
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: in the room and he said he knew what happened.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: When I tried to tell him one day, he said,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: you don't need to explain it to me. I was there.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: And What happened in that coma was I was, I
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: was basically taken to a place that at first were
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: not the gates.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: It was dark.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: And the only thing that was there was that same
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: shadow figure that was taunting me. Looked like it was
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: in some sort of black cloak and like without hands,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: it was kind of waving me towards it. And it
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: was going down into the left. And I remember looking
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: around and thinking, well, there's nothing else here. That's the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: only thing I know. I guess I'll go that way.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: And then out of nowhere, I felt hands on my shoulders.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I felt that, that figure just
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: vanished completely. Like ran off terrified so fast. There's no
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: millisecond to describe how No millisecond of time to describe
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: how fast it vanished. And those hands turned me towards
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: a light. And then the person that was behind me,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: putting its hands on me, walked around to the right
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: of that light.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: And all I got.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: After that was some very lovingly described, like, fatherly direction. Not,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: you're in trouble. It was more of a, you think
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: you've been living the right way? And I got a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: glimpse at sort of where we go. I didn't get
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: to see all the way into it. But I was
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: told that everyone I've ever loved is waiting on me
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: if I wanted to go, but that it wasn't probably
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: my time yet. And so it was a choice in
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: a way.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: For me to make.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: Um, but it was very strange in the sense that
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: I remember a lot happening, but not all of it
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: came back with me. So it's hard to describe sometimes.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: The one takeaway from it was there were things I'll say,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: explain to me, but there was not through words. But
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: now if I could fast forward a year into my sobriety,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: when I really started steadily studying the word again, it
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: was more true than ever. I started seeing things and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: saying to myself, that's true.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: I was given that information. And it's not like this,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: some spiritual egotism or anything like that. It's just, I've
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: heard other people, not that I don't listen to too
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: many other people's near-death experiences, but I hear they say
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: similar things of they got information that they weren't allowed
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: to come back with. And that's kind of how it
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: feels sometimes. But what I did get was Joshua 1.9.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: And I was told, despite everything you've gone through, I.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: Still need you to go back.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: But you don't have to worry because I'll be with
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: you just like I always have. And that's the thing
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: I really took away from it. You know, I wasn't
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: shown the secret to the universe or anything like that.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: But I think it was just very truth affirming to
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: what we know to be the truth in the word.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: Right. And so I'm assuming you wake up, right? You
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: go to treatment after that.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: I woke up and my sister was kind of frantic,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: which I don't blame her. You know, she was, do
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: you know what you've done? I'm going to have to,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: she took my guardianship when I was in that coma
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: because they didn't know if I was going to wake up. And,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: you know, at this point I have a little bit
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: of an estate with my, homes and my businesses and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: things like that. And, you know, that was her main
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: focus at the time combined with my wellbeing. But I
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: remember waking up and just saying, send me wherever you
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: want to send me. Everything's going to be okay. And
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: people in the room, do you know how bad it is?
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Blah, blah, blah, all that.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: And I was just, I kept saying, everything's going to
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: be okay. Just send me wherever you want to. And
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: they still did the, my family being they, still did
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: the intervention they had planned, which they read a few
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: letters to me that they had written.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: And I really, I heard them at the time.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: I know I did.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: I don't remember very much of them except for one.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: And that's my niece, Ashton. And she kind of pleaded
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: with me in that letter to, to find rest in Jesus.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: And finally, let him fight for me. And she wrote
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: down Matthew 11, 28. And I still carry that, that
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: letter with me. So anytime, anytime I got down or
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: discouraged on myself in treatment, I'd pull that letter out
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: and try to remember who, where I find rest and
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: who fights my battles.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Right. How long were you in treatment for?
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: Um, I was supposed to go for a month. and
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I ended up staying 28 days. No, this is a
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: different treatment center. They didn't, they didn't go by insurance. Uh,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: they did 30, 60, 90. Um, but I, I went
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: there and voluntarily stayed six months.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: Cause by month four, I was being asked to lead
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: a book studies.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: I was giving tours to families.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: I was helping new guys, uh, And in fact, the
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: first person I was ever able to really feel like
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: I was of service to more than a way of
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: like helping do their dishes or give a tour. He's
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: now like a brother to me. Still five years later,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: old mountain cowboy. His name's Eric. He's funny guy. He
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: was a little distraught when.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: He showed up.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: He was 54 years old, I think at the time
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: or 53. he had lost his son in a car
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: accident a few years prior. And what led him getting
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: there was, of course, alcoholism, but stuff with his wife
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: was not going well. And we clicked kind of the
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: first day. And so I'm about four months in, and
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: I finally had just picked up the Bible my brother
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: had packed for me. And it was the same Bible
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: my mom gave me. She monogrammed my name on it.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: And she had a sticky note on Joshua 1.9. And
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: I heard this guy talking. And one morning I walked out.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: He was really kind of down and out about being
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: in treatment and everything. And something just told me to
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: go show him that verse. And this was kind of
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: in a very secular AA house in Colorado where that's
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: way more prevalent.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: I was stunned.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Had apprehension to do that, but something just said, no,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: you need to go do this. So within 12 hours
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: of me finding that Bible again, I walked out and
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: I just slapped it down in front of him and
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: pointed down and he just started crying tears. And he
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: still calls me Joshua one nine.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: That's what I love.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: So I even used it to really, kind of put
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: a stamp on it of how I was to be
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: of service to people. Right. That I, at least it
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: told me whether it's secular or Christian, I can't be
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: afraid to talk about God wherever I go. Right.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: So, so that kind of brings, I mean, I feel
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: like we could go for another two hours, but that
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: kind of brings me to one of the things that
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that we covered as we
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: wrap up here. And that is, You know, you just
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: told that story, and I know there's more, like, in
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the sense of, like, there's more details. But when you
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: talk about, you know, kind of the conviction to tell
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: that story with the faith aspect, right, with God. Because
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming, right, like, you open that Bible, and, you know,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: I know where you are today, right? Like, your relationship
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: with the Lord is paramount, and shooting for Jesus is paramount.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: So how are you able to tell your story faithfully
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: in kind of those more secular settings where you know
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: you want to point to Jesus, but that's not really
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: allowed or accepted? How do you fight that tension? We'll
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: be right back after this.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: It's hard sometimes. the way I've learned to fight it
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: is to not say what's on my heart. Right. Um,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: you know, essentially if everyone, if everyone in those rooms
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: is allowed to talk about their version of their higher power,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: then I can't mind. Um, so in our, in the
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: AA book, you know, it even says in there, real
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: men of courage have faith and men of faith are
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: not afraid to share it.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: Hmm. Right.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: So I think what's happened to AA is just along
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: the lines of what's happened to culture today.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Right. Yep.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: It's very clear that AA was supposed to be a
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: lead into Jesus, right? Finding that again, in my opinion.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, I see the word all over it. I
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: think it was meant to be a way to ease
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: atheists and agnostics into it, or at least point in
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: that direction. Right. you know, um, that's just my take
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: on it, but I don't know. It's getting less and
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: less difficult. You know, it's really easy to, you know,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: talk about grace. It's essentially what we're talking about. Redemption
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: and grace in those rooms.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: So, and I, I don't have a problem saying where
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: I think mine came from. Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: I just love that in the sense of like, you know, um,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I was talking to someone yesterday just about even just
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: my own story and just like where the Lord is
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: leading me and to just walk in a boldness, you know,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: and not in the same way that you are like,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about like necessarily sharing my story.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: But just in some other areas of my life. where, um,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: not looking for other people to affirm something in me.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: Like if I believe that that's what the Lord has
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: called me to do, that's what I believe he's telling
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: me to do. Like just walk in that if I'm wrong,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: asking him to correct it, you know? Um, and there's
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a freedom, there's a freedom to that, right? You're like, Lord, I,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: you know, believe that you've told me to do this.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: If that's not the case, correct it and, and, and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: bring me to a place where I understand that. Um,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: but I'm just going to let you in a sense,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: like it's, it's, it's my stepdad. It's your dad. It's
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: just like, okay, God, that that's what I'm doing. You know? Well,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: and yeah. Well, I'll take it. I'll circle all the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: way back.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: And the same feelings I had sort of in high
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: school about feeling rejected, never fitting in. I'm being tested
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: with that big time. These last five years, I've had
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: plenty of church people tell me, That I don't belong
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: in AA. And I've had plenty of AA people tell
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: me that I don't belong in church. So I'm still
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: getting the pull in all those directions. I see them
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: very clearly as melting together. Mainly because, at least as
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: far as AA goes, I mean, where would Jesus be?
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: Would he be in the church? Or would he be
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: with the sinners? Right.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, we have examples of what he did, you.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: Know, and I'm not saying I'm Jesus by any means,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: but what I, what I am supposed to be his
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: hands and feet.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: That's for sure.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: Right. And I just think you walk into any AA room,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: I have direct line to be of service on a
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: daily basis and be the light and a representation of
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: Christ and all those opportunities.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: I want to say something. You're saying that, and I
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: want to make something really clear. If you've made it
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: to the end of this podcast and you know that
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: I've done episodes about AA, and I've talked about AA,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: and I just wasn't called in that direction. And yet
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: here's what I want to make clear. Again, I was
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: talking to someone who also really was saved and got
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: sober in the AA culture. And they said this, and
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: I think it's really important. They're like, I'm not against AA.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: In the sense of like as long as you, the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: general you, understand that it itself is not the gospel.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: The gospel is the gospel. But if you are going
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: to do AA, do it with a spirit of that
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: is an insanely right mission field. It is an insanely
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: right mission field. And so if you've listened to this podcast,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: and just in general, not just this episode, and you've
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: felt like I've said, don't do AA, what my encouragement
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: to you is, first of all, be grounded in scripture.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: Be grounded in Jesus, right? He's the only, like, that
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: is the ultimate goal. And then if you can go
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: into AA with the understanding of who is your higher
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: power and not be ashamed of that, I 100% want
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: to encourage you to do that because just like Josh
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: is saying, man, there's some language there that you can
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: like really capitalize on, right? You can be this like ninja,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: this like gospel ninja in there, you know? And I
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: love that. I love that. I'm not called to do that, right?
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: Because I didn't study the big book. I mean, I
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: studied the big book now, right? I go every week
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: and do an AAB. Big Book Study. But the AA
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: people look at me and they're like, you're not one
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: of us, right? I'm like, great. So I can never
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: fulfill the role that you're fulfilling, Josh. And I'm so
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: glad that you've been called to fill that role. And
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: I'm so encouraged that you are listening and doing that. Man,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: thank you for sharing your story. I feel like we
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: need to have another episode.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like a tenth of it.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. And so I'm excited. Josh is actually
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: coming into town. Josh and I are going to meet up.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: And I just feel like even just in some some ways,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: this is just the start of something bigger. I don't know.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: You know, there's that song. I don't know what you're doing,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: but I know what you've done. And and man, I'm
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: just so grateful. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: for reaching out to me on Instagram and let it
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: be an encouragement to those other people who are scared.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think I'm a scary guy. I mean, it
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: took us a while to like find a time. I
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: felt like we kept missing each other, but we did.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: And here we are. So, Josh, thank you. Thank you
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: so much. Thank you, John. I appreciate what you book.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: I really do appreciate what you do. Love you, brother.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: We'll see you soon. I love you, too. There's one
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: thing Josh talked about in there that. Yeah, just especially
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: home for me. it was the starting an argument and
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: almost using that as an excuse to drink, right? Like,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: I remember, and it is one of the hardest things,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: I think, still, to just, like, that I have to
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: fight back feelings regarding, like, feelings of shame and whatnot.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: But I would remember, like, starting an argument with my wife.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: And I talk about this a little bit in the book,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: but it was like trying to point out like, you know,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: things that she was doing wrong or, or, you know,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: or whatnot, because it made me feel better about myself.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: Like, like if I could start an argument, if I
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: could nitpick about something that she was going through, then, um,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: then I felt better about what I was doing. Right.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: And and then if it went sideways, I was then
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: I had an excuse to drink.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Like I could go drown myself in my sorrows, if
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: you will. And I could stay awake and I could
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: stay up and I could just, you know, well, she
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: she got me angry and and I'm right and whatnot.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: And I think, again, those things that we do. When
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: we are fully pursuing whatever it is we want to do,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: like we can be so crafty. And so I appreciate
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: Josh sharing his story and getting to know him a bit.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: If there is one thing in this episode that really
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: spoke to you, I would love for you to share it.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: You can like and subscribe and all that stuff. But really,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: if you share this episode, that would mean the world
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: to me. That is the most important thing. because the
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: more that you share it, it's not about listens. It's
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: about people getting free. And, you know, I, uh, as,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: as I'm releasing this episode now, I take the last
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: two weeks off, not intentionally, but, um, I'm in a
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: new role that is requiring just a lot of, uh,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: work up front and, and great work. And I'm excited
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: about it. And I just was overwhelmed. And I felt like,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: I was like, Lord, I haven't, I haven't released a
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: podcast and, And I just felt at peace about like,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: I just need to be and not try to force it.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: But there was someone on our Sunday night call, Veritas Recovery.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: And they're like, you haven't released an episode in two weeks.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you guys are listening. And listen, we have
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: plenty of people who listen and I'm so grateful for that.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: But it's always a nice reminder. So if you miss
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: these episodes, let me know. If you like these episodes,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: let me know. If there's someone you think I should interview,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: if you think I should interview you, let me know.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: You can fill out the form at veritasrecovery.org. As always,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: thank you to our partner, Life Audio, who makes this possible.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I am so grateful for them. Check them out at lifeaudio.com,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: and you can listen to some other great podcasts. All right,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: we will see you back here, I promise, next week.