Native Exiles
Native Exiles
One Man's Story of Growing Up in an Alcoholic Home and Finding Real Hope
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What does God do with a childhood full of addiction, loss, and rage? Jeff McFarlane grew up in rural New Hampshire in a home where alcohol was everywhere — in every room, every car, every memory. By the time he was a teenager, he was stealing from his dad, planning his death, and watching his family fall apart piece by piece.
Today Jeff is a licensed counselor and the founder of Restoration Counseling Services. But the road from that New Hampshire farmhouse to here wasn't a straight line.
In this conversation, Jeff shares the moments that cracked something open in him — a brother who sent a letter to his law school confessing to cheating, a Sunday night church service where he told God to go ahead and break both his legs, and the decades it took to finally stop hiding his story.
This episode is for anyone who's wondered whether their past disqualifies them, whether faith is enough, or whether real change is actually possible. Jeff doesn't wrap it up neatly — and that's exactly what makes it worth your time.
Native Exiles, a podcast from Alderwood Community Church, where we talk about following Jesus in the tension of being in the world but not of it. We want to help you think through how to walk with Jesus in a world that is seemingly walking the opposite direction. We want to equip you to engage the world without disengaging from Jesus.
For more questions and inquiries, reach us at reachus@amcc.org or visit us on our website at nativeexiles.com.
Welcome to Native Exiles Alderwood Community Churches podcast where we talk about living in the tension of being in the world but not of it. One of the things I love being a pastor and getting to share with you on a podcast is a great story. Today we have a guest, Jeff McFarland. He is a Christian counselor, wonderful friend to so many here at our church, Alderwood, and he's going to share his story today of redemption, of how God reached into his life of total chaos growing up in an alcoholic home and brought him true hope and redemption. I think you're going to love it. Jeff, thank you so much for being here with us today. Really appreciate it. Tell us a little bit about Jeff McFarlane. What do you do? Tell us a little bit about your family.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm uh I'm married. We'll celebrate over 40 years this August. We have four mostly adult children. Um and so they have kids. Two of our kids have one each, and two of them have three each. So you are a grandfather. Yeah, so we're in the grandparent thing, which is is fun because you can send them home. That's what makes it most of the things. That's the best part, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. And you can kind of break some of the rules. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Of course. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You got to be careful as a grandparent not to break the big rules. And sometimes you cross that line. You can spoil them right. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And Jeff, you are a therapist, you are a counselor. Tell us a little bit about that side of your life.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So um I started off as a pastor, and so I'm still an ordained pastor. Um and then somewhere in that process I felt like God was calling me to further my education. And so at one point I got a master's degree in counseling in California, and then when I came here and SPU had just opened a doctorate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was in the first cohort. Um so I got a doctorate in psychology. And in the early days, I just it was clear that to do this, but I didn't know why. Uh opening aware part of my thinking.
SPEAKER_03And then as it emerged and Peter, first Peter, he himself and steadfast.
SPEAKER_02And when I came across that word restoration he will restore you in a split second, I knew that I was going to open a counseling center and I was going to call it Restoration Counseling Services.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know the history.
SPEAKER_02So that's that's where the name came from that passage of scripture.
SPEAKER_01That's really beautiful. We'll talk more about just all the ways you've blessed so many in our own congregation, but that's one of the reasons I was so excited to have you here today. And I think part of the reason for that, Jeff, is because I know you, but obviously most people in our audience don't. And your story growing up in uh New England on the East Coast is a tumultuous one. And tell us a little bit about your world growing up. What was it like?
SPEAKER_02So I grew up in a tiny little town, uh, New Hampshire. Uh matter of fact, uh my high school graduating class encompassed 12 towns, and it was less than 200 students. Wow. So these are very small towns, and um, and that was the town I grew up in. And I grew up in just a really unhealthy system, and I'll just share some of them. So we believe uh my mom and dad probably were drinking by the time they were late high school, college age for sure. My dad went into the military. Um, and so in our home, uh my mom drank vodka and dad drank whiskey. Dad every week went to the liquor store and bought a case of whiskey, six bottles, every week. Wow. And so in our house, there wasn't anywhere that there wasn't alcohol. It was at bottles in the bathroom, in the bedrooms, in the kitchen. It wasn't like they hid it, it was just everywhere. As a matter of fact, he owned a company car. He was an insurance adjuster. And so he was given a car because he traveled m most of northern New Hampshire. That was his region. And so uh and I'm sure I this will come out somewhere, but I I I have had to come to a place where I had to admit that I was really a lousy son. But so my dad was unhealthy, damaging, destructive, but I wasn't a very good son. And so at 14, whatever my dad said, I did the opposite. So dad said, you can never drive this car. You're not insured on it, it's a company car. Well, that's the first thing I drove. So I would drive it at 14, and I'd pick up my my uh friend that lived in the town, John Sawyer. They had they were Catholic, so they had seven kids, and we would just take it out. And when you slammed on the brakes, no joke, two bottles always rolled out.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02A whiskey bottle and a Listerine bottle. That's how he coped. That's how he dealt with all of life. And then my mom, um, she thought that vodka would not be smelt. Right. So she mixed it with other things. Both of them lost their careers. They had careers, and they both lost them due to alcohol. So alcohol was laced throughout my uh growing up years. As a matter of fact, we affectionately call what my dad did, we called it the McFarlane Shuffle. Our house was a straight line from the front door to the back door with rooms on either side. Right. And he would bounce off the wall stumbling.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02And we called that the McFarlane Shuffle. How old were you, Jeff, when you first realized like this is not normal? Well, the thing that that really blew it all apart was um the first thing that blew it all apart was my uh so I'm youngest. Uh-huh. Uh I have a sister that's two years older, Alex. We had a brother that was four years older, Greg, and then my brother is nine years older, Pete. Wow. Greg, um fourth grade died of leukemia.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_02We knew he was sick because he didn't go to school. Again, small town. My mom and my mom was a nurse by profession. So doctors always came to him. I don't I don't ever remember Greg going, and even growing up, rarely did we go to doctors' offices. Right. Uh now, and that was also the era of the time. But my mom was a nurse and she administered whatever. But so he was sick, he wasn't going to school, one day he's alive and one day he's dead. Oh my. And our folks didn't even take us to the funeral. He just didn't exist. And so imagine as a parent, uh I mean, any couple that has had the horrific experience of a kid dying, it's devastating.
SPEAKER_01Unimaginable.
SPEAKER_02Children's hospital, the couples that end up there for their kids have a pretty high divorce rate. I heard that. The stress is so horrific. Yeah. Well, that was just whatever was unhealthy, it just exasperated it. So my mom and dad were not very connected to begin with. But uh that just so that was the first thing that we were aware of. I was I was uh uh only six, but when he passed? Yeah. But the thing that is identifiable is at 12 years of age, I was on the phone listening to my dad on the phone, and he was talking to a woman. And I realized that my dad was living with this woman Monday through Thursday night every week. Oh. And the message he gave us was well, you know, I have this region of northern New Hampshire, and I have to travel. Well, if you take our house to the northern tip of New Hampshire, it's an hour and 15 minutes away. Yeah. It's not like it's three days. Right. It's not like Texas. And yet he would leave on Monday morning, be gone Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, and he'd return Friday afternoon. And so at 12, I realized my dad was living with this woman. You put two and two together. It was just obvious in the and then and then after that. So all of a sudden at 12, I began to develop a great hatred for my dad. And that's where I developed a 12-year-old philosophy that whatever my dad said, I'd do the opposite.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it didn't matter what it was. So in New England, people having private gardens, vegetable gardens, is a big deal. As a matter of fact, this time of year, if you drive through my town, it smells like cow manure because all these private gardens are filled with, you know, manure. Yeah. So they grow good. My dad would make me go down and pick rocks out of the garden. Because in New Hampshire, um gardens in the winter, um, frost pushes the rocks up because it's, you know, it's it's open soil. Right. So you had to remove the rocks so that it didn't hurt the plow. Right. My goal was to I had to go because it turned into such an argument. I am not proud of this, but I believe I can, in utter honesty, say years of picking rocks out of this garden, I never removed one rock. I would throw them into the area that he had already cleaned. Just out of spite. Just surely out of hatred for my father. And then the same thing with um planting. He would plant rows of corns, rows of asparagus, rows of beans. Um, and then we would weed them. I would pull the plant and leave the weed. Now, now you also have to understand that any event that we did, my dad is drunk. Right. And so he'd go, he'd kind of cuss and say, What the, you know, how did how did I miss that row of corn? I don't know, Dad, you just missed it. Wow. So again, whatever it was. Um, so at 12, unfortunately, due to my anger, and and it was, it really was a hatred. I, my view held this totally wrong, obviously. I decided that if my dad would die, we would be a better off family. So I just started to plan ways to have to kill my dad.
SPEAKER_01How old were you when you started playing?
SPEAKER_02Oh my. So here's what I can tell you. When you're that kind of drunk, you can put rat poison in whiskey and it won't kill you. That much I know. Uh I used to take his whiskey bottles and break them so they were sharp edges, at and put them at the bottom of our stairwells. My dad fell down every stairs in our house weekly. And the only reason he didn't get hurt, when you're that drunk, you're like rubber. Yes. He never broke a bone, but it would cause this huge riff between my mom and dad. Dad would yell, Janet, what and swear at her, you know, why didn't you throw this away? I could have killed myself. And it was you the whole time. And of course, my mom would yell back, yeah, you're so drunk. You have no idea what you're talking about. You probably dropped it yourself. And so so they would have these weekly arguments over broken bottles. I cannot imagine. And it was me. Yeah. Then at 16, Blizzard of New Hampshire, I am driving back from a friend's house. Uh, I park my car, I walk in the house, and the house is filled with smoke. My mom and dad not only were drinkers, but they were chained smokers. And I I don't know if anybody's ever seen this, but when you were drunk and you smoke that much, every piece of furniture, every tabletop, every chair, my dad and mom would pass out and they would create rectangular cigarette burns on everything the floor, the carpet, the chairs, the tables.
SPEAKER_01Because they were just too knocked out to even know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's it's a wonder the house didn't burn down. So I come 16 and the house is filled with smoke. And by this time, my mom and dad are are just existing together. That's all. And so mom is upstairs, I look at in the bedroom, she's fine. I go downstairs, and my dad's bed is on fire. Oh my goodness. He'd gone to bed drunk, passed out smoking. I come upstairs, I go outside, I start my car, and I think this is it. This is my opportunity. I start the car and I think ten minutes, I'll just drive around the block, come back, dad will have burned to death, and I will save mom and I'll be the hero. Fortunately, I didn't do that. I went back in the house, I went down the stairs, grabbed my dad, he's in boxer shorts, and I threw him across the room in the corner, and I went to bed. The next morning I get up and my dad is passed out in the corner where I threw him. Wow. I grab him, pick him up by his neck, I pin him against the wall, and I scream at him, and I said, Dad, do you have any idea what happened last night? And I can I can hear the tone. He goes, Nope. And now I have my hands around his neck and he's gasping for air. And I scream at him and I said, I saved your life. If I get the opportunity, that will never happen again. And I said to him, There is nothing you will ask me to do that I will ever do for you again. Don't ask. Now I'm stealing a hundred dollar bill out of my dad's wallet every week. Uh, he says, You'll never own a motorcycle. I went out and bought a motorcycle. And I parked it up against the driveway. When I would, when I would take my dad's car and I would drive it, I would park it on the lawn so that he'd know I took it. Never confronted my dad avoided everything, nothing was real. Meanwhile, I have a sister that's a drug user. My sister, this isn't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna say that everybody that takes NyQuil is gonna end up using heroin.
SPEAKER_01Oh no.
SPEAKER_02But my sister started on Nyquil.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_02She would drink NyQuil in elementary school going to school. Wow. And and so now she's a heroin addict by the time I'm 16. And she would come home and just steal stuff. And back in my day was the big console color TV. Oh, yeah. You know, the wooden frame. Oh, I remember him. Yeah. Dad's down in the garden. I see, and I'm no longer going down. He doesn't even ask anymore. Yeah. Because I've drawn a line in the sand. And he comes up, and I'm just in the fan room. Uh and he comes in, he sits down and looks at the TV as if it's there. Alex has stolen it. But he's looking at it as if he's watching tag team midget wrestling. Oh my goodness. Because that's what he watched. And Red Sox baseball. And I go, Dad, TV's gone. Yeah, yeah. What do you think happened? Oh, I don't know. I said, Well, Alex was just here. She stole it. Just like she stole all your guns last week. Oh no, she'd never do that. He'd go out and buy a new color TV.
SPEAKER_01This is this is a very good thing.
SPEAKER_02I can identify six six incidences. There might have been more, but I cannot identify six incidences where I'm in the car with my mom. She's gone to a family friends, and they all drink, she comes home drunk, goes off the road, and hits a stone wall or a tree. I know this sounds like it's not true, but it is true. Bob the sheriff showed up first. It sounds like Mayberry. It is exactly like that. And he'd say, Janet, you know, I'd have to give you a ticket if you hit somebody. You gotta promise me you're gonna stop drinking. Oh yeah, Bob, I will. Jeff get in the back of the squad car, are you okay? Yep. And then by then, Bob, the tow truck guy in the one garage in our town, would be there and he'd go, Janet, the car's total. I can tell by the frame. Because I'd have to crawl out because it would bend. You couldn't open the doors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you couldn't open the door of doors.
SPEAKER_02It's a lot like, well, I'll I'll use this example in a minute, but um, and so the car would get towed behind the garage so nobody would see it. Right. No ticket. And I don't know this for sure, but I believe the we had Ford LTD panel station wagons. Yep. Lime green. I believe the Ford dealership said, hey, those McFarlands, let's buy 12 of these. And next day, should go to Hayes Sawyer, the insurance guy, should go and get a we had brand new cars all the time. Unbelievable. And then my dad, same thing. My dad, we took one vacation a year. This particular vacation, we are and he's drunk, of course. He's coming home. We're probably a mile and a half from the house on a back road. Sure enough, you know the movie Chevy Chase where he flips the car. I don't know if you've seen that movie. Is this Christmas vacation? Yes, yes. My dad gets off the road, he's in the dirt, dirt of a road, headed for the railroad tracks. He hits the railroad tracks, it doesn't flip the car over, it flips, it shoots it up, and it lands on all four on the other side of the railroad tracks. Tires are flat, windows are busted. This is crazy, and we just get another station wagon. So that's plus That's the world you grew up in. That's the world I grew up. Plus, my nine-year-old brother, he was at the real Woodstock. My brother was doing heroin. I I joke. Sometimes my brother and I speak together, and when I introduce us, I will say, Peter shared Jesus with me, just like he shared heroin. Jeff, this is the best thing I have ever done. That's how that he wanted me to do drugs with him. And he'd say the same thing. This is the best thing, Jeff, I've ever. You need to come live with they lived in a commune. The 60s, huh? And then my and then my sister is just wild. And eventually she is a heroin addict and ends up on the streets of Boston as a prostitute.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell So, Jeff, you just are hinting at what I'm so dying to hear because I know you, and most of our listeners, as I mentioned, don't. And you are a man who loves Jesus deeply, and you've helped so many that I know come to a place of loving him deeply too. We're gonna take a break here, and I just when we come back, I am dying to hear that how did God possibly reach into that complete chaos and get a hold of your soul? We'll take a break and come back. Okay. Jeff, I'm literally sitting here thinking we could make an unbelievable movie about your life. But the best part of that would be how you came to know Jesus. So just tell us, how did how did God possibly get a hold of you in the middle of all that pain?
SPEAKER_02So most of my life, I'm living it as a single kid. My brother is nine years older, so he's out of the house. Sister. Is 14, 15, she is not home. She's living, sleeping with guys, she's living with guys. So I was basically a single kid.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell For how many years growing up?
SPEAKER_02Probably if I'm 14, Alex is 16. So before she was 16, she was gone. And my my dad, my dad was critical. In addition to all of that, my dad gave each of us a message of you are absolutely worthless. And he did it I could survey, my dad is dead, but if I surveyed him, he could say to me, I never said you were worthless. And that's the truth. But it summarizes like if if I didn't do something right, he ridiculed it. If my brother went to private school and he played soccer, and so this this would be every Saturday. We would be in the LTD station wagon coming home with a drunk driver, and and Peter would lean over the seat and say, Dad, Dad, did you see me score? And Dad would literally cuss his son out and say, How did you let that guy get around you? Or how'd you miss that? Or, you know, you won, but you guys shouldn't have won. And I would watch my brother melt into the seat and we just drove home in silence. Same thing with Alex, critical of her. And so, in addition to all the behavior, he was just uh damaging emotionally. He was mean. I think he was, and all of that. And of course, Dad, uh, you know, I mean, he'd hadn't he just didn't know how to be healthy. So I'm living my life, and I'm fortunately, you you know, the one the interesting thing about faith is you can look back on your life and see God at work, even when you don't know Christ. So, like I had a group of really good friends. I had another group that ended up, many of them in jail and did a lot of damage. And I just I just didn't hang with them much. Interesting. But I had this group and we became family, and I look back on that now and see that God used that to protect me. Totally. Uh, because we were wholesome, we there wasn't sex amongst the group. There was some drinking and partying, but it wasn't extreme. It wasn't big drugs, it wasn't so so in that respect, I wasn't doing awful things. Yeah. I was doing unhealthy things if I can make that distinction. We got ahead of the case. So all of a sudden, my brother comes home from Colorado, and my brother had gone to law school and couldn't pass the bar exam. And my brother was in the hippie movement, and he was a hippie. Wild, crazy. So my brother comes home and he was dating a gal, uh, Peter, it was my brother, his wife Nancy, they were friends of mine, even though they were older for a long time. So the two of them had gone to Denver. Uh he had he had not passed the bar exam in New Hampshire, and he just was lost. He didn't know what to do. And so he thought, well, I'll go, I'll go to Colorado and maybe I'll ski. So they were living together in Colorado, and they come back, the two of them, and they say, We found Jesus. Wow. And I'm like, Yeah, okay. Great. Now, this is so odd for us. There are churches in New England that are actually closed. And so they found one and started their own church.
SPEAKER_01By closed, you mean no one's attending.
SPEAKER_02Doors are closed. It's just a building. Peter, Nancy, and at the same time, Nancy's brother had found Christ in another state. So there's the three of them and me. And we I I I think the model they saw is you have to sing, preach. I don't they didn't take an offering, but they say it, and and none of us can sing. So the singing was horrible. And then the preaching was maybe a step above. Just barely. But barely. Um, and I would say, I went twice and I said, Peter, I don't know what you guys are doing, but I I'm not coming back. And they kind of said, Yeah, we we kind of got to do something different. So then, so they've they're walking this journey with Christ. And my brother is a high extrovert, so he's sharing Jesus with everybody. So this is what changed my life. Um, so I'm in this about almost a year of watching Peter and Nancy. Peter comes to me, he says, Jeff, I want you to see a letter I'm gonna send to Denver Law School where he got his degree. I said, sure. And and my brother is is is shares Jesus with everybody. So in the this is two pages, Dear Denver Law School, and he outlines the gospel. Jesus Christ died for you. He he puts the scripture in there, he's he he get he tells you how to make a prayer, how to receive Christ. That's page one. That is hilarious. And then page two is oh, and by the way, I cheated in two of your classes, and as a Christian, I feel like I need to let you know that, and would be willing to write a paper or you know something. And I said, Peter, you're what are you doing with this? Be out of your mind. He says, I'm sending this to the to the law school. I said, Peter, you're an idiot. You're an idiot. Why would you do that? And so he presents the gospel because Jesus Christ has changed my life. Now, the model of my brother was a recovery model. And one of the powerful things about the recovery movement is spiritual inventory and making amends. My brother had a lot of to make amends for. I mean a lot. And this was just one of them. So he sends it, and I don't think anything about it. Month, two months later, he says, Hey, I got a letter back from Denver Law School. I said, Great. He says, You want to read it? Sure. Dear Mr. McFarland, thank you so much for your honesty. In all of our years of having a law school, nobody has ever done this. We are very impressed with your integrity and that you would do that, but we have revoked your law degree. Until you take these two classes over in their entirety, either from us or in an accredited law school, you do not have a law degree. I said, Peter, see? You were an idiot. I watched my brother drive an hour away to Manchester, New Hampshire, had an accredited law school twice a week with joy and take those two classes. Amazing. I could not shake that. I could not shake that my this was so real to my brother that he would do that, but not only do it, but there was some sense of joy in it. And fascinating thing, after he did that, he passed the bar exam. He did not pass the bar exam until he had corrected.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I I find that fascinating.
SPEAKER_01At the time, did that kind of feel like God was in his life somehow to you? Well, I just knew it was real.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I I I still didn't I didn't know. And so now my brother has stopped having his own church and he's going to a tiny little church. I mean 30 on a good day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_0230. So I would go occasionally, and on a Sunday night, so let's say there's 30 on a Sunday morning. There's probably 15 Sunday night. So this pastor that seemed well, he was old. I I thought he was 80, maybe 100. He was probably 45. He just knew Moses. He just seemed old to me. So and I didn't know this at the time. I just I knew it afterwards. And the story is Sunday night, I'm there. He knows, he knows everybody there. Yeah. He knows that I'm there and I don't know Jesus. And in that service, he gives an invitation to receive Jesus Christ as Savior. This is warped theology at every level. But this is what happened. I said, you know what? That's what I need. But I know, God, that you will break both my legs so that I will never snow ski again. Snow skiing was my God. On my local ski area, 10 minutes from my house. If you showed up and you were a better skier than me, I went home. But I would do things to prove that I was a better skier. Crazy things. Um, and I've skied all over the world. Uh, winter term in college, I took the minimum amount of classes and skied. Uh so I would take classes two days a week and I would ski uh five days a week. That's a pretty good gig. And I I've skied in in Spain, I've skied in Austria. Uh uh most people won't know this, but Jean-Claude Keely is a French Olympic skier. He is the only one to hold three gold medals in downhill, slalom, and giant slalom. I bought my ski boots at his dad's ski shop in France. Oh wow. The only thing I regret is they broke. And you know, there are I don't think we do this anymore, but I remember there are people that used to bronze baby shoes. Oh, yeah. I should have bronzed those ski books. I I regret it to this day. I threw them away. I I if I knew where they were buried, I'd go dig them up. It's funny. So so when I when I tell you, Steve, that I got up and walked that aisle. How old were you? I would have been 20, 20-ish. Okay. And I said, Go ahead, God, break both my legs. I am telling you, that's how much I knew I was empty. I knew that the life I was living, even though it wasn't horrific, I was a lot of fun, I did fun stuff, I knew I was empty. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. And so I said, It's a small price to have both both legs broken. Now, God didn't break my legs. Thank goodness. But that's how he came to Christ. And then my brother said, If you're gonna if you're gonna follow Christ, you can't you can't kround about this stuff. I said, Well, what does that mean? And so he just automatically said, You've got to do the disciplines. You've got to pray, you've got to memorize scripture, you gotta journal. And so that's what I did. And one quick final story in all of that. So then I had also um been accepted into a college exchange program in in um in the I was going to the University of New Hampshire, and you could pick either go to San Diego State or Chico State. Um I picked Chico State, and here's why. I looked at a map, and Heavenly Valley ski area on a map is really close to Chico. Easy choice. Because in New Hampshire, you can drive the whole state in two hours. Yep. So I show up, so that's why I picked Chico. Obviously, there was something amok in my thinking. 60 students from New University of New Hampshire went to California. 59 went to San Diego. I'm the only one that went to Chico. So I show up at Chico, I'm in the dorm, I pull my studded snow tires into the dorm room. Oh my gosh. And my my guy said, What are those? I said, Yeah, funny. No, what are those? No idea. These are for the winter. What do you do with them? What do you mean, what do I do with them? I put them on the car when it snows. Jeff, it doesn't snow in Chico. Of course it snows in Chico. Well, then I realized Heavenly Valley was three, four hours away. It it wasn't ten minutes away. So it was shocking. Now, if I hadn't gone to Chico, I would not have met my wife. Perfect. And and so again, you can look back on that. Um, but when I went to Chico, there were all of those Christian organizations, Campus Crusade, Inner Varsity, and one of them was Navigators. Yep. Well, I went to them all. And I went to church, and and one mature individual at church said to me, Jeff, you just need to pick one organization and the church. And I said, Okay. So I picked Navigators. Now, if you know anything about navigators, navigators was born out of the military and they are disciplined. Like if you go to a uh campus crusade uh gathering, they have food and they have, you know, they're friendly and they games. If you go to a navigator conferen conference, they want to know where's your memory pack and how many verses have you memorized. So I see this guy that's the head of navigators meeting with guys like you, and I go, Mike, what are you what are you doing? He says, Well, I'm discipling them. Well, I don't know what that is, but I think I need that. He goes, Jeff, I am really busy. Well, what do you mean you're busy? He says, Well, I don't know if I can fit you in. He says, I'll tell you what, if uh if you can meet me at 6 a.m., I can meet with you. Now, I I didn't start my classes till noon for a reason. So I said, uh okay. He says, Great. As soon as you memorize the book of Philippians, let me know when we'll start. Well, I knew Philippians was in the New Testament, that much I knew. And I I I knew it wasn't the longest book, but I knew it wasn't short either. Yep. This is pre-electronics. I had Philippians, all of the chapters on three by five cards, everywhere I went, I memorized. King James? Yep. Oh yeah. And so then I did it. And I sat with Mike and he says, Jeff, it's not that I don't believe you, but you have to quote it. So he made me quote the whole book. Wow. And then he said, uh, great, let's find a later time to meet. What do you mean, later time to meet? You said you only had 6 a.m. He said, Yeah, I was lying. I said, What do you mean you were lying to me? Jeff, you have no discipline in your life. I can see it. So to be honest with you, I didn't think you'd ever come and meet, and I certainly didn't believe you would memorize Philippians. I have never asked anybody to book to memorize the book of Philippians. He became an instable part of my journey because I knew nothing. Yeah. If I were in a church service and you picked an old testament book, I'd have to go to the index. I I I mean, I kind of knew it wasn't New Testament, but I didn't know where it was. Yeah. I I didn't I didn't know anything. And um Mike and Navigators was huge. The other thing that God did, looking back, He had to move me from New Hampshire out of the shadow of my brother. Yeah I I am not my brother, and I can't live like him. And so it created an opportunity for me to find out what does Jeff as a follower of Jesus Christ look like? And I don't think I could have found that in my brother's shadow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I just love the way, not just that your story connects in so many levels, but the way you're able now, with the huge benefit of hindsight, to see God's hand in all those little details. I feel like in wrapping up, we could go with so many different directions. But I know, as I've mentioned several times already, so many friends who've been helped by you, your counseling ministry. And I just want to go in kind of an interesting direction because I think it's a question a lot of Christians are wrestling with. You now don't just delve into theology, you delve into therapy. You know the therapeutic models and all those things. And it feels like we live in an era when, you know, everybody thinks, including most Christians, that the real problems that we have in life, we need therapy. You know, Christianity gets us saved and gives us some theological framework, but for our deep-seated emotional issues and struggles, relational issues, we need therapy. What would you say, especially in the light of someone who's lived so much chaos and Jesus got a hold of you and brought so much hope? How do you wrestle with that tension between just Christian community and growing in Christ and the need for therapy?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm obviously not opposed to therapy. Um didn't think so. And don't want less people to come because uh, you know, I make a living at this. But I also think we live in a in a moment of time where we tag everything with a mental illness and therefore that automatically requires six sessions with therapist X. Right. If we believe the word of God, then um God's scripture will not come back unto us to us void, but it'll accomplish that which He sent it. I there is legitimate mental health issues. Everything from depression to schizophrenia. They are they are real things that uh are in the wiring of a person that often God does not remove. Now, now there are people that would say I had depression and I prayed and God lifted it. Then I will rejoice greatly with them. Sure. But most people that would have clinical depression, it isn't like that because the wiring, the chemical imbalance, those kind of things are deep within them. And so that requires somebody to come alongside them and help them face it. The thing that probably I think has helped me the most. Um so one time my wife and I were doing a marital retreat. We were young. The pastor never should have had us do it. But we did. You were leading it? Yeah, we were leading the marriage retreat. And and it was a break, and I this woman, this this girl comes up, college aid girl comes up and says to my wife, Lori, I don't want to be rude, but why would you marry Jeff? He comes with so much baggage. Now, obviously, I am interested in that answer. I bet you were. And this is what she said. She said, Jeff was honest with me. He shared everything with me. As a matter of fact, he flew me back to New Hampshire so I could see it. He's never withheld any of it. But he also didn't know everything. He didn't know the full impact. But he loves God and he seeks God.
unknownThat's the difference.
SPEAKER_02That's the difference. I want to be, as the psalmist writes, I want to be a deer that pants for the water. Now, that isn't always true, but when we seek God with our whole heart, there is freedom in Christ. And I believe He will point out what we need. And sometimes we just need a group of people that we will journey with. The trouble is that I find, and this isn't, I don't want to ding us Christian men, and I certainly don't want to ding men's Bible studies. But I find them to often be the most dishonest place. You can hide behind Luke chapter four, you can talk about the mariners, you can talk, and and and that's not the way God designed it. God designed us to be rigorously honest with Him. See if there's anything in my life. But that is displeasing. And then Eugene Peterson writes, And lead me in your way today. That is almost a daily prayer, I pray. Um so Laurie said, I believe Jeff will choose to be accountable to his God our entire marriage. And as best I can, I have done that. Now, that said, I want to say one last thing. I hid my story. I was at I've only been in three churches on staff. Church one, I was nine and a half years. I never told my story. I believed that if if, and I was a youth pastor, I believe if the parents knew my story, they would fire me. They would lose and they would want me around their kids. So I went from California, I went to Idaho to a much larger church, and I also had a master's, so I taught at a Christian university. Still didn't tell my story. In 91, I got a call from a church to come to Seattle. And we're driving here, and I said to Lori, I said, Lori, I'm gonna tell him my story. And she just wept and she says, Jeff, I have been praying for you for years to quit hiding it. You're believing a lie. So I'm interviewing, and the pastor, and I'm I'm kind of I'm willing, but I'm hoping he doesn't ask. Right. But of course he asks. Jeff, tell I don't even know your background. I'm thinking, oh, Christ, could you return now? Uh this is and so I just took seven minutes, barely, two hours later of that staff meeting, the staff is done asking me questions. Wow. And I think, yeah, I'm not gonna get offered this job. I get offered the job. We go to the board meeting that night, and this particular pastor was um really a great guy. I worked for him for a long time, and he said, Listen, I'm telling you, you don't need to interview Jeff. As a staff, we're gonna hire him, and I just want you to approve it. We've got a lot of other things to settle here tonight. This is not one of them. And they said, Okay. Incredible. And I think, are you kidding me? And and as I moved here, I said, his name was Theron. I said, Theron, I know this seems like a silly question. Why would you have hired me? He says, What are you talking about? I said, Why would you hire me? I come with so much stuff. He says, You don't think others don't have stuff? The fact that you would be honest with it, I've never forgotten that. One last thought. Somewhere in that speaking my story, God said to me as clearly as I've heard anything, when you tell your story, you would uh never tell it, but you don't end with this line. Hey folks, God has set me free. But I still wrestle with this stuff. It hasn't gone away, it is not eradicated. My transgressions, my sin is gone as in the deepest ocean, white as snow, far as the east is from the west. But the inner struggle that I learned, my worthlessness, how I see myself, that is a lifetime struggle. And folks, I don't want you to think praying and receiving Christ wipes away those things. It doesn't. But it gives you an avenue to be free in it.
SPEAKER_01That is beautiful, Jeff. Honestly, I think the message, and there's so many things we could take away, but the clearest message to me is if we haven't been honest and real and taken the time to understand and try to tell our own stories, we're really limiting what Christ can do in our lives. Thank you so much for taking the time to be so honest and open up your story to us. Really appreciate you, Jeff, and thanks for this great story you shared. You're welcome. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Native Exiles. I hope Jeff's story has been as encouraging to you as it has been for me. It has been healing for so many people I know. And just the takeaway is, folks, we got to be honest, we got to understand our story, and we got to see that God is showing up in our story. I hope that will be something you can take away with you. And we'll look forward to seeing you next time again on Native Exiles.