#137 From Adrenaline Junkie to Faith-Driven Realization: Brent's Journey through Chaos, Healing, and Redemption

Summary: Explore how life's twists shape identity, as Brent copes with faith and adrenaline. Raised Adventist, his journey involves ambitious projects, a house fire, and a Christ-centered awakening. Teenage years bring daring adventures and a Crohn's disease diagnosis. Discover his resilience from early education to college, drug use, and marriage healing through faith. Join us for Brent's transformation from adrenaline junkie to a faith-driven, resilient man. Don't miss this inspiring journey!

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Timestamps:
0:00 - Adrenaline Junkie's Coping and Spiritual Grounding
8:03 - Homeschooling, Financial Education, and Childhood Adventures
22:35 - Rebuilding After a Devastating House Fire
27:47 - Navigating Trauma, Risk, and Athleticism
33:06 - Health Issues and Childhood Adventures
41:17 - Diagnosis and Treatment of Crohn's Disease
54:52 - High School Adventures and Schemes
1:04:27 - Navigating Health Issues and Life Choices
1:10:20 - College, Camp, and Searching for God
1:20:03 - Struggles With Drugs and Crohn's
1:28:31 - Forgiveness, Assurance, and Personal Growth
1:37:11 - Struggles, Adjustments, and Healing in Marriage
1:48:54 - Transformation Through Gospel Message
2:05:08 - The Blessing of Living in Freedom

Keywords:  identity, faith, adrena

https://www.lovereality.org/podcasts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:21

When you're on a dirt bike and you're ripping through the woods, if you don't spend all your energy focusing on the present, you're going to crash, and that was totally an escape for me and all this extreme sports stuff that I was doing and this adrenaline junkie activities whether I'm rock climbing, a 400 foot tower in Moab, Utah, where I'm like ripping around on my dirt bike or whatever. It was totally a coping mechanism to escape from all the craziness that's going on in my life, where I just had to focus on that one thing but then coming into freedom like I didn't have to do that anymore.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yo, welcome to the death of life podcast. My name is Richard Young and this episode is with my brother, brent, and this dude and I have very little in common when it comes to how we lived our lives. Like entertainment wise, this dude was an adrenaline junkie and seek to avoid many things. Uh was protecting himself because of trauma, and this episode is what happens because of that. Uh, man, it's such a beautiful story to hear about people that spoke life to him through this turmoil and how he came through on the other side and received the truth of who he is in Christ. I think you are going to be blessed by it. So this is Brent learned, buckle up, strap in Love y'all, appreciate y'all. Where does your story start, man? Yeah, so I think it starts when I was pretty young, just like some background.

Speaker 1: 3:19

I grew up in a in a pretty devout Adventist family and so and there were some really good positives with that. Um, I think every single morning and evening ever since I can remember, we did family worships together, which is really cool, and they were always like super tailored to, uh, to us kids this on the middle child, and then I have an older brother and a younger sister and like, when we were super young, there was like the worship toy had been with the tambourines and I don't know what other instruments are in there to to play, and then there was like a series of songs that we would always do together. Yeah, it was super special and super meaningful. And then, like from that, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the and the countless times we talk about where, you know, when M級, you know, wenn틱, jupiter, it looking like a star, like, also like and and and many times with interest on that, like all the time you know we were together a lot and and and we were 16, 17, clare, uh, and and we were equal and and the, the eye vision of Islam and the Buddhism mutualism you know it was, could be and being tripped up a little bit. There was like this little quiz that the teacher was giving about like different Bible trivia, and one of the things that I remember is he did this little quiz about how many wise men were they. And so my buddies were like oh yeah, it's totally three. And then we got to the end and we're going through it and he's nobody actually knows. The Bible doesn't actually say, and I was like what do you mean? It doesn't say there's always three in the Bible story bugs. And then just learning, oh, there was three Gamsons, it's assume that there was three, but we don't actually know. And but that's how grounding those Bible story books were, the pictures and the images and stuff like that stuff. It just really burned a lot of those Bible stories into my memory and learned a lot of super, really good stuff.

Speaker 2: 5:16

I'm doing that every morning. Now we're doing the blue book. Before we go to, before we eat breakfast, we're reading the blue book. We're right now in the Exodus story. Or they just passed over the Red Sea. But okay, I feel like there's this next level of growth when we realize that number one, hezekiah is not a book of the Bible. Number two, jesus was not born on December 25. And number three, there were we don't know how many wives were there. We're like, oh wow. So yeah, you had that beautiful family experience of being grounded in the Bible and stories from the Bible. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Yeah, and just continued when we. We always went to church or super regular. The only times that we skipped were sometimes if we were traveling or if we were camping or something, but a super regular attendance and so going to the church in Sabbath school and we'd always do Sabbath school with church there was none of us go to church, sleep in, skip the Sabbath schools and I was like, nope, gonna be at church by 930 when the whole thing starts, and largely when I was for most of my childhood it was like an all day affair and it's like you go to a Sabbath school at 930 and then that rolls into church. And then my church and I grew up in was we did Pollock every single Sabbath, so we'd roll into Pollock and then by the time you clean up from that, then we're like going for a walk or a hike or doing something and then it just like rolled right into the Saturday night Vespers and so it was like an all day thing most of the time, which was cool. I was homeschooled through eighth grade and so that was like a time to hang out with my friends and be social and stuff. And I think one thing I need to mention here is sometime in those elementary years it was related to me a story of when I was two. My grandpa's really into flee markets and stuff and buying stuff for a nickel or a dime Junkly you don't need, and so my dad was there with him and I was like hanging out with my dad and my grandpa at this flee market and walking around and I guess I just didn't wanna hang on in my dad's hand anymore and I jerked away and was wandering around by myself and got lost and I don't know, somehow my dad didn't catch it for a while by the time he realized he was like walking around trying to find me and people were saying like, oh yeah, we saw him going this way, we saw him going that way and it was in the parking lot of this bowling alley. And then after a while nobody had seen me and didn't know where I was, and so he's just I'm gonna go check inside the bowling alley and just see if he went in there. And when he went into the entrance there was like this lady that he had never met before, that was just holding me there and he's all it's my son and grabbed me and took me back and the lady was apparently acting pretty strange and just about that time that my dad took me back and was like oh glad we found you and all that was car pulled up, this lady walked out, got in the car and drove away, and so it was like this story was related to me in these elementary years of almost being abducted when I was two years old, and so there was always this mindset of God takes care of us and watches over you and your special kid, and we obviously watched out for you in that circumstance and in that time. It was pretty scary, I was like did you live? So I grew up in Maple Plain, minnesota. It's just on the west side of Minneapolis, like 35 minutes from downtown, like by Wizeda at Minnetonka in that area, and I was gonna steal you. Yeah, she straight up was about ready to abduct me. So yeah, and I don't know what would have I obviously I don't remember that I was two, but that was a story that was often told to me in those elementary years. That was pretty formative. I'm just like God taking care of us and watching over us, and so that's definitely something that I remember and think of pivotal, I don't know like a grounding experience in that, in God being real. And, like I said, I was homeschooled through eighth grade and it was I think it was fairly normalized. In my circle. There was a lot of kids. I think the majority of kids in the church I grew up with and grew up then were homeschooled. I have six cousins, three on my mom's side and three on my dad's side and they were all homeschooled and it was cool. Sometimes we'd get together and we'd be doing homeschool together. We lived fairly close to each other and doing the like, going to church and doing all the church activities I think was pretty important for my social life and that's when I that was like the time I had to hang out with kids and play soccer and build tree forts or whatever, run around and do what kids do. I think, another thing, that another piece that's important is my parents were pretty big on financial education when I was pretty young, and so they were pretty open with their finances and pretty open with saving, giving and spending money appropriately. My dad started a he's entrepreneur. He started his own cabinet shop about the time that I was born and so he made these little wooden banks and I don't remember which birthday he gave them to my brother and me and my sister with four compartments that each compartment like would fit a would fit like a standard size bill. Four one for saving, one for spending and then one for Tide and one for offering. And I don't remember how they came up with this, but we had a 10% for Tide and then 2% for offering and 80% for spending, or 80% for savings and 8% for spending. And, yeah, I put you, it's pretty tough. There wasn't a lot of buying like gumballs or I don't know what else. You could buy one M&M, yeah, basically, yeah, every once in a while, and my parents didn't do allowances. They were like no, we want you to understand that money comes from work, comes from hard work, and so we had chores and stuff that we'd do around the house, but then there was always opportunities to do additional things to earn money. And so we never got allowance, but there was always opportunities to earn money. And I remember being when I was fairly young, I don't know, I was probably like six or seven or something. It was stuff like yeah, you can wind up this garden hose for a nickel. And then it was like you can sweep my dad's shop, which, just for context, is 30 feet by 60 feet, and there's like wood, dust and sawdust everywhere, because that's what happens when you're making wood product, but yeah, and so I could sweep the shop for a quarter and so it was like this kind of stuff. So there was not a lot of spending happening in those early years because there was a lot of money, and then I'm sure we didn't do a very good job at that age. And then we got older and then sweeping the shop was a dollar, and then my dad ended up doing an addition on the shop and stuff and so then sweeping the shop was $5. And those different things like that. But I bring that up as a precursor. One of the things that I saved for fairly early on is our neighbors. Well, I was just saving and then our neighbors had a garage sale and had this go cart frame there was no engine on there or anything for $100. And so I was like dad, this is the one I want to use my savings for, and I got this go cart frame and it was a really cool deal. My dad's fairly handy with stuff and so he worked with me over the next year buying the part, the stuff that we needed, and I think he donated an engine from an old snowblower rototiller or something and we put it on the go cart and got it running. It was a cool project that we did together over six months or a year or something, and so I had this go cart that I drive around, just drive around the yard and stuff, and that was, I think, a really fun toy that I had in my elementary years and when my cousins would come over friends and stuff, take them for rides, and sometimes I'd let them ride it. And one time my mom was babysitting my cousins and it was winter time and snow was all packed and stuff, and so I had my cousin on this go cart with me and we were cruising around and one of the things that I would do is go out the driveway and then go out on the road and I learned that if I hit the gas and turn I could slide the back end around and do a 180 on the road and then shoot back into the driveway and so for whatever reason you were drifting with, this go cart is what you're. Yeah, I'm Tokyo drifting in the winter time with this go cart, granted this thing. It's not super fast. It's a four horsepower engine on this thing. My dad geared it so that I don't know what the top speed was like. Maybe 20 miles an hour, just like 20 fast for a kid of that age, but it's fairly mild in terms of like overall what could happen. But for whatever reason, this time I went out to go do that with my cousin and I didn't check the road, I didn't look at all and I just I didn't notice that there was any cars or anything, until I'm just getting ready to do the turn and there's this car right there. Oh no. That just appeared and I ended up slamming into the back tire of the car and I wasn't going. I was fine, my cousin was fine, we were probably going less than 10 miles an hour. We weren't going super fast, but I just remember not seeing this car coming at all and then all of a sudden it was it had passed far enough in front of me that I hit the rear tire and I just remember that that instance really shook me and I remember I went, the lady got out and I talked to her a little bit and then she ended up driving on and then I went and I parked my go-kart and I went in the house and I told my mom I'm half in and I was like I'm never riding my go-kart again. And yeah, and that was pretty crazy. And then I really was into mechanical things with my dad and so after that I ended up buying a mini bike without an end again and my dad helped me build that again and then dad probably went 35 miles an hour and I got a lot more competent and a lot more careful about riding and just got a lot better and I did what I was with the go-kart. And then I think when I was probably like 12, I bought my first real dirt bike. I bought a 1986 Kawasaki KDX-80 with a 80cc two-stroke dirt bike, top speed of about 60 miles an hour, lobb's master a lot more powerful and it was really cool, it was really fun to ride. But that thing, I didn't know at all about how to take care of or maintain a two-cylinder engine. You got to mix oil with the gasoline and you got to do it at the right ratios and stuff. And I knew I had somebody explain how to do that and so I was like, oh OK, but I wasn't super careful with it. Long story short, I ended up having a lot of problems with it, with the machine, with that old. It broke down a lot and I remember it kept breaking down and finally I had to take in the cylinder to get a cast iron sleeve put in and the transmission all got taken apart because it wasn't shifting. Good. Anyway, they had to spend a ton of money on this thing to get it going and it was one of those things where I thought it was going to be pretty simple. And then the further I got into the project, the more I needed, and so I felt like I couldn't turn around at that point. It was just like we just got to power through it and get this all done and in this process my dad ended up paying for some stuff and then saving the receipts for me to reimburse or pay him back or whatever. And I knew I didn't have the money to cover all this. And so I remember one summer I was working really hard in the shop and splitting logs. I was like the shop was heated with wood and one of my jobs that I could do was to split logs with the log splitter and stack the firewood for the winter, and so I'd been working hard. It seemed like all summer. I might have only done a couple months or two, but I was like, ok, I should go talk to my mom and get paid and see how much I owe, and I think I probably worked enough. Where all this is wiped out, where I'm at least going to be out of the hole. And I remember I went in and we sat down and my mom went through everything and it turned out so I'm like 12 years old at this point it turned out that after all that I still owed $1,200.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1: 18:22

And so I don't know how much in repairs this thing costs a couple grand probably. And I just remember I just was exhausted from what I thought was working so hard and I just remember just crying and just being like this is just an insurmountable amount of money. I'm never going to be able to pay this off, and I remember I ended up I think I worked the rest of the summer and I think I ended up paying it off by the end of the summer or shortly thereafter. I ended up being not that big of a deal, but it left this huge impression on my mind that I am never going in debt again for anything, for any reason, which I think had some healthy sides. I don't think that debt is necessarily a great thing I will talk to Dr Morrowor being slayed to the lender and things like that, and I think that's true. But I also also the way that this transpired. It definitely gave me a scarcity mindset and I became, from that point on, I was like very much a saver person and did not spend a lot of money on things because I never knew what could happen, and so I ended up with this mindset of scarcity that stuck with me for a long time at like, which I think overall was probably there was definitely negatives to that. We know in Christ that we live in abundance and that he has infinite resources. At that age and at that time I didn't understand that and I think my understanding of the gospel and God was also very, very much a scarcity mindset, I like. So there was that incident that was very formative in my mindset and then, not too long after that so I was 12 at that point and somewhere in that same time frame, august 2002 happened and I don't remember leaving an electric blanket on my bed, but apparently I did. I just remember we were eating supper one night in the kitchen in the dining room upstairs and all of a sudden my sister noticed this big clump of thick black smoke coming up the stairwell in the basement. Oh no. And we had rehearsed as a family what we do in a fire situation. I grew up right next to my dad's parents. My grandparents literally lived right next door, and so that was the drill that we had practiced, just that we'd run over the grandma and grandpa's if a fire ever did happen and have them call 911. So that's what we did. All of us kids left the house. My dad tried to run downstairs it's a fire extinguisher and by the time he got there my whole bunk bed was like a bonfire, just a huge blaze. The whole room was flames all over the place lapping up on the ceiling and stuff. So he wasn't able to do a whole lot. Fire department was called. They came. I don't know if any of those that haven't been in these types of situations that feel like an eternity. It's a volunteer fire department, so the firefighters are all at home, in this event eight o'clock or whatever. They got to go to the fire station and typically it's like a 15 minute response time and then, once at the fire station, they got to get in their gear, hop in the truck and then it was probably like a I don't know five to 10 minute drive from the fire station to our house and then, because it's a fire, there's like a whole process. They got to set up the swimming pool on the street to have water there, and so it's probably 30 minutes from the time we called to the time that the fire department actually showed up, and so, although the house was not, it didn't burn to the ground. There was smoke damage everywhere, like this thick black city smoke from like plastics and then synthetic burning. So, yeah, our house burned and the investigator, when he came out and looked at it, said they everybody knew that it started in my bedroom in the basement. But when the investigator came out and looked at it later and was going through the rubble, he determined that there was a I don't know if it was a short to ground or short to power some sort of electrical issue in the electric that I had in my bed. It's basement. It was cold at night and so that's why I had that on there and apparently I left it on during the day, which you're not supposed to do and so we lived at Graven's for a while, I remember no one ever blamed or talked about it. But I remember feeling like yelting shame about it, being like, oh shoot, like my family doesn't have a house and although, like I didn't know any better had I known better I could have prevented that Like I could have not used an electric blanket, I could have not plugged that thing in and or I could have not leapt it on during the day and just let that go. And so I just remember that way, really heavy on me. I remember after the fire I got pretty sick and I think it was looking back on it I'm pretty certain that it was just from like all the stress and anxiety of the trauma of that situation. I lost everything. The next day I didn't have a clean pair of underwear to wear. Like all my belongings gone. They were either incinerated or so badly smoke damage that they were no longer usable. Yeah, completely unusable, and the rest of my family wasn't great off either. Their stuff wasn't usable either and we're living at Graven's and Grandpa's for a little bit trying to figure out what to do. It's quite a lengthy process, working with insurance and investigators and trying to figure out like what the best situation to do is, and some of the smoke damage stuff we hauled out in the backyard and went through it and then sent the cleaning company to try to get a clean. But that was that didn't really work. Super great. You just it's just hard to clean stuff when it's that badly smoke damage that smells just so embedded in that and everything. So it didn't really end up with any earthly goods that came out of it. My family and me were. We were pretty tight through the process because nobody was hurt. Thank God nobody died in the process.

Speaker 3: 25:05

Nobody was hurt Like we all managed to get out of the house in time and everything.

Speaker 1: 25:11

A lot of pictures and other memory items were gone, but we had each other like all of us were fine, and so that was a huge blessing. But also it's just. It's just a very traumatic situation to go through that. When did that rip and down the house? We decided, instead of trying to remodel it, it was going to be cheaper and better in the long run to just pull the whole thing down to the foundation and and then build from there up. And I remember, even when it was all ripped down to the foundation, Mike standing there with a pressure washer blasting this black set up the concrete floor. This is like pretty involved in the whole process. And then in the whole rebuilding process that's when I started working a ton more my parents decided to take the opportunity to make the house into what they always wanted it to be, so they decided to add a four season porch on the back and add this four car garage that they never had and like all these things, since we were rebuilding anyways and my dad didn't do a whole lot of making cabinets in that time and mainly put his business on hold, and then we were all just like working on the house and trying to do the work ourselves to save money so that we could make the amount of money that the insurance company gave us, Not only build the house back that we had, but also build their dream house that they always wanted. And so in the construction site there was always work to do, and so in the summer we had to work contractors there doing work and my brother and me we pretty much in the summertime we basically just went to work full time and we were working 40 hour weeks or close to it Most of the summer. I'm like 13 years old and we're land flooring, we're nailing on sheathing, we're stepping insulation, we're doing all these different string and wires, drawing holes for plumbing pipes like all the whole process for building a house like pretty involved and learned a ton about construction through all that. But looking back on it, I think that was one of the ways that I coped with. Just the trauma of having the house fire was going to work. I think there was a couple pieces to it. Hey, there's a lot of affirmation that I received from just the contractors that were there and my dad and stuff about like how hard I worked and the quality of stuff that was done, and then also there's just a sense of accomplishment by completing something and being like yeah, I built that. Yeah, I did that and, like I found a lot of value and identity and hard work and just like getting to the grindstone and just going to work, just doing it and so, yeah, it took a couple of years to build the house. One of the things my parents did to save money is we they bought a 35 foot fifth wheel RV camper, they parked in the backyard and so we lived in that. And then we build the house and I don't know, I don't know how it is for other people, but when you have five people living in RV at 35 foot that we all, like you, have no personal space, like you have none. And so I just remember like hating that and not liking having literally nowhere to go to just take some time out myself, and I remember just like thinking, coming out of that I have done enough RVing for multiple light times over and I'm not going to be I'm not going to be one of those retired people that's running around RV. I've done plenty. And it was just like. It was just tough, you know, and you'd like you lose everything and you're living in this Fifth wheel, you have no personal space, like and then just going to work and working hard. It was. I think I was, I think I was depressed. Looking back on it. From that situation, from that trauma, I didn't know how to deal with it at all and I think that the mental model that was given me was just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just pull it together, get it together. You just got to move on, you just got to go forward, you got to move past it. And so there ended up, I think, dealing with all this just by bottling it up inside because I didn't know how else to deal with it, and it created a lot of internal stress and anxiety that I just didn't have an outlet for. And I just remember my brother started having some behavioral issues and that time, like pretty normal teenage stuff, and I just remember it was like a really tough time in life. I didn't know how to get through it and I just kept moving forward one day after the other, but I didn't. I wasn't really getting better. There was no like traction mentally. I think my mental state was probably just as bad. I also learned in that time that, like, being in stressful situations was exciting to get adrenaline pumping through my body. Like you know, one of the things that I spent quite a bit of time doing in the construction project was roofing and like it's a pretty scary two story house, pretty high up, pretty scary, pretty high consequence If you fall off. I'm not super scared of heights, but I think I just learned that this adrenaline pumping stuff is like this is pretty exciting and pretty fun, and so I learned what that. And then also I had my dirt bike that I would go ripping around and riding in here. My brother and me we ended up building a bunch of jumps in the backyard. Like, looking back on it is pretty intense for how old we were. These jumps are probably like three to four feet high and we would be jumping our dirt bikes 20 plus feet in length. Oh man. This is fairly intense and so, like I just lived, a lifestyle Could you do that now.

Speaker 2: 31:16

You think of like you got a dirt bike and you were in your backyard. You think you could make those jumps.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Maybe on the right piece of equipment having, if I got up to it over a period of time like a few weeks, maybe, I don't know, maybe a few days, I don't know, but definitely not like we did that. We didn't have any riding gear. We had helmets that didn't really fit that grade Because my mom insisted that we had helmets at some point. You cannot be out here ripping around doing this stuff with that L helmets. So we got helmets. We didn't have riding boots, we just had like sneakers. We had no like special riding pants. No kidney belt, no chest protector. Like dirt biking gear is pretty intense. There's quite a bit of garb where to keep everything safe. We didn't have any of that Like we could afford I guess I shouldn't say afford but we could save up money and buy the dirt bike itself, but safety was way on the back burner. We didn't really care about that much. I mean, thank God we never got hurt like seriously. But yeah, that's what we did. Started really loving the adrenaline pumping activities at that stage in life. Like never super was into game sports. I don't know just like all sports in me are not not super good at them. I remember like playing softball at church one time. I don't know it's just like after Path funders or whatever. Like some weekday event we're playing softball. I'm like sprinting to second base and just got beamed in the side of the head by the ball. Like that was just I think, yeah, I think that was pretty much in general my experience with ball sports. Just getting hit in the head getting. I tried to do basketball a little bit, get fingers jammed Was not super coordinated with ball sports. I think the only team sport that was probably when I played the most and felt the most confident with was hockey. Growing up in Minnesota for those that don't know there's basically a public ice rink at every single small town and it's all dark in the wintertime, so at least in my town that was like the hangout for kids in the evenings after school, like you go to the hockey rink and you play. And so I played a lot. I started skating when I was two. Parents got me my first skates pushing a chair on the ice. I don't know when I got a hockey stick real young. I just grew up playing a lot of hockey and was like felt pretty confident with that, but like other team sports, not, I didn't have it. I could run fast, but just not super coordinated, especially with the ball sports.

Speaker 2: 33:55

So after this whole thing, you're getting into high school, right?

Speaker 1: 34:01

Yeah, like I'm getting done with with metal school and getting into the high school years. Oh, one of the things that I did. I'll just wrap this up and then we'll go into the high school bed. Just, I was pretty athletic as a young kid and I think the first like major athletic accomplishment that I didn't think anything of at the time. But looking back I'm like, oh shoot, that's intense One. When I was seven I liked home with my dad from Hutchinson from camp. Maybe in one day. A Stifty Minals.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah, that's a long ways.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Yeah it's a long ways and it was like on back roads and stuff and some of it was on trails and I'm riding like this 10 speed bike that my grandpa dug out of a dumpster somewhere not anything special piece of equipment but when I got home it was pretty much a mostly all day affair doing that bike in and got home and then I remember the first thing I want to do is I hopped on my BMX bike and was like hitting some jumps in the backyard Definitely not out of energy or anything like that and just was very athletic kid and I ended up doing another thing three years back from Hutchinson my dad. So super into that and then also cross country skied quite a bit in the winter and then also did some downhill skiing too. I remember my dad took my brother and me to powder ridge, which I remember this this particular time I wasn't super confident or confidence skier, but decent, and I think it was either a black diamond or might have a blue square rod. There was like a more advanced sale for a seven, eight, nine year old kid. I was going down and I went to do like a hockey stop, turn, and somehow I went a little bit too far and I ended up aiming slightly backwards down the hill and it up, skiing backwards a bit, and I thought I was pretty close to the bottom and so, for whatever reason at this young age, I was like, oh, I'll just ride this out, like I'll just cruise backwards all the way to the bottom, and it's like the middle of the middle of winter and it's dark a lot, and so by this point, like we're night skiing, it's in the evening, and so I'm skiing backwards down this hill going for a bit and then all of a sudden I just remember just like everything in black and what happened and they ended up hitting one of those snowmaking machines that they have on the side of the run. Oh, no, and they like put that little foam pad on the front or whatever. I crashed into that and I knocked myself out. It's the only time I remember being knocked out cold. And I just remember waking up behind the snowmaking machine with the ski patrol standing over me Just asking me if I was all right. And so I'm like with on my toes and like moving my legs and arms. I'm like, yeah, I think I'm fine. So I got up and put my ski down and I don't know where my dad was. He finally showed up like a little bit later and was reiterating the same thing Like oh yeah, y'all, so I ski the rest of the night, I don't know another hour or whatever. And then the days after that I couldn't hold my head up straight. My neck was all crooked, had to do a bunch of visits to the chiropractor to get my back all straightened out. Thankfully like no long-term repercussions from that. I have no idea. I don't remember. I just remember skiing backwards. Everything went black and then I woke up and the ski patrol was there and I remember a little bit of skiing the rest of the night, but not really. So I don't know if I was concussed or exactly what happened, but I just remember like one of those major incidents that looking back on it I was like shoot, I could have easily killed myself Because I don't know how fast I was going, but fast enough to knock myself out and get ski patrol involved and all the rest. And it was like one of those incidences where I was like God was definitely looking out for me and making sure that I was okay even in the midst of my stupidity, and so, yeah, and then just living in the high school Well, just before high school so I'm 14 at this point and I started having some digestional issues. I started having mad diarrhea, gas and these issues that I hadn't ever experienced without flu, like symptoms before, or anything, and it just kept lasting. And then I noticed I just started feeling nauseous and I was having trouble. I had no appetite and I was having trouble forcing myself to eat and I was tired all the time and was sleeping way too much, like 12 plus hours every night and just to feel rested. And as the months went on, I started losing weight. So I was 14, so I was probably I've not five foot nine, five foot 10. And I probably started. That's pretty thin then. So probably like 130 pounds, 125 somewhere in there, and I just couldn't eat and kept losing weight and my parents didn't know what was going on and my dad was like thought that I think he thought that there was some mental thing going on and so he started being like all right, like we're gonna go for runs and my like on the weekends and for a four mile run or whatever. He'd be like, yep, you're coming with me for this. And then my mom would be like, yep, you're gonna come walking with me during the week. And I think she extended her walks so it'd be like an hour a day or something We'd be out walking. And the other piece I think that played into this is I had a fairly high heart rate for my age and my family Like it wasn't anything that was concerning for a doctor but like my family typically has for kids that age would have I think my brother at heart rate 65 resting and mine was like 75, 80. And the hits was like pretty normal for my family, and I think my blood pressure might have been a little bit higher, but I just remember my heart rate was higher too, and so I think they thought that some of the like there was some mental stuff going on. My dad got a weight set and he started like having me do bench press and like different activities that I had never done before, these different gym workouts and I just remember it just kept getting worse and I would throw up sometimes and there usually wouldn't be a lot to throw up because I had need very much and my weight kept going down. And I remember at this point my dad had me like get on the scale every single day and, toward after a few months of this, I started losing about two pounds a day and like my bench press even though I like used to have me do this every single day kept getting less and less. And just to understand how extreme this was, I remember at like the worst point I could not get up 35 pounds.

Speaker 2: 41:14

Oh mercy.

Speaker 1: 41:15

I just could not get that off my chest and so I got down to at the lowest point. I got down to 82 pounds and when you're like five foot nine, five foot 10, you've got 82 pounds. There's not much there, like my belt had gone in like several notches, I was just wasting away. There was not much and they left. And I remember my parents didn't have health insurance because my dad was an entrepreneur and it was expensive, and they were always like, no, we're healthy, we live a good lifestyle, we don't need to go to the doctor and stuff. And so I think there was some hesitancy to take me in, just because of the financial implications. So, oh, we know, just walking in the dorm it's gonna be like I don't know what it would have been at that time 500 bucks or 750 bucks or whatever and then actually get anything done, it's gonna cost more. So I think there was some financial hesitancy too, taking me into the doctor. But I remember there was an anointing service that my parents did and still was getting worse and I just tried everything. There was like some different random health things, that food supplement things that they were trying, like spirulina and cereal and like carrot juice, and like these random health things that I had never tried before and they hadn't either. They're just like oh, we'll just try this random thing. And none of that was like working or helping. And I remember just talking with them one evening of just bringing up something they effected about. This has been a good life. I enjoyed it and like I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know I'm dying. I know I'm not in a good spot. I don't know how far away it is but my body is failing and it's not gonna continue. It's not gonna be able to continue doing this forever and I don't see any way out of this. So, um, and then at that point I think that's what scared my parents and my mom took me into the doctor and it was like one of these clinics that was in a grocery store and the doctor didn't just came out and didn't really wanna even do an exam or anything. I can tell by looking at it in this terrible shape, terrible health and skin tone awful, he's way too thin. You guys need to actually get serious health. And so then they took me to the university house at all in Minneapolis, which is like one of the big major ones, and they're like they took it a lot more seriously and admitted me for a bit and they're like, hey, we don't, we think you might have appendicitis. We don't know what's going on. We're gonna do a CAT scan, a CT scan, and so I had to drink a bunch of this Kool-Aid stuff that would dye my gut so they could get an image and get all that. And we're like appendicitis, that'd be great, like easy surgery going, you remove the saying done, you're good to go. And then the doctor came back and was like he has Crohn's disease. And we're like huh, what? It's Crohn's disease. We've never heard of this before and here's a pamphlet. It's an autoimmune disease and sent us out and didn't do anything beyond that. And then I think he said, hey, you need to go see a specialist. And so then a little bit later we drove down to Rochester to a Mayo Clinic just pretty renowned medical care and saw a gastroenterologist a specialist for that and talked with him. He did a brief examinee. Hey, look like I'm not comfortable giving a diagnosis without doing the scope. So that's like where they send a camera up your rectum and look around and see if they can find, and they're looking for specific signs of Crohn's that they can actually look at with a camera, versus just CT scan damages. And buddies, you're using Brenton's such bad health that we need to get him in better health before we can discuss any treatment plans, any long-term medications. There's a few different options immunosuppression stuff that you can take, but he's so small and so skinny and so frail we have to get his health up to a better point before we can discuss a long-term treatment plan. He prescribed a steroid drug called prednisone and he wanted me to be taking 20 milligrams of that a day for a certain length of time. I don't remember how long it was a couple of months, a few months. And then this drug you cannot just go off of it, you have to taper it down, and so you have. So you're gonna start in 20 milligrams and then, after the certain length of time, you're gonna go down to 15 milligrams and then 10 and then five and then nothing over a series of a few weeks, and I don't remember exactly the time frames in there, but I just remember him really reiterating that you have to use this drug properly. And we just want to put some weight on him and then we need to get the scope, we need to discuss a long-term treatment plan. So we left, stopped with sparmacy, got the drugs and started taking him right away and I remember by the time I got home I could notice, simply feel, that I had a lot less inflammation in my gut and my appetite was already starting to return and I was like this is crazy, it's like a miracle drug. And so when on this treatment plan, on this drug thing, ended up feeling amazing and eating a ton and gaining my weight back pretty quick and was finally in better health where I could actually do things physically again, and by the time I got done with the treatment plan, there's a lot of nasty side effects, like terrible acne from it. I still scarred some of my face from one and my back too from that prednisone and getting these big, nasty, almost like cysts, acne from this drug makes a lot worse.

Speaker 2: 47:28

Is there a drug that when people have acne, it's a steroid that they take and it dries everything out in their body? Is it similar to that kind of thing?

Speaker 1: 47:37

It's not similar to that at all. It's like the opposite of that, yeah, it makes it really bad and it like makes your body retain water and so I had this huge puffy face and just didn't really look like myself at all like I had before. But I felt amazing, like it was crazy. I went from to sleep and had to sleep like 12 hours a night just to get through the next day to randomly waking up at midnight. And I remember this one time in particular. I went downstairs I was looking upstairs at that point went downstairs, got in the shower and then at some point, while I was shower and getting ready to start the day, I realized I looked at the time and it was midnight and I had only been sleeping three, four hours. But I felt completely ready to go for the next day, choose, pumped up, full of energy, just ready to charge and get the day going and work hard and study harder, whatever I was gonna do, and then trying to go back to sleep couldn't really do that. There were definitely some side effects from the drugs, from the prednisone, that were not the greatest, but I felt absolutely amazing. I think some of that is the drug itself and some of it was because I felt so bad. I didn't realize how terrible. I was feeling at each and every single day that when I finally was feeling remotely healthy again, it just it felt like I was super human, did that set of drugs and then I felt great. So I was like I don't think I need to go to the doctor anymore. I think I'm cured, I think I'm good. And so then this point is when I started high school, my parents, for whatever reason, were not like super thrilled about the. They weren't gonna send me to public school. That was a non-starter. And then they didn't really wanna send me to the local boarding school and so they sent me my brother was already going to this school, but they sent me to as well to this self-supporting school right near Moab, utah. Super gorgeous location, tons of outdoor activities to do. So I went, I started schools there. I was 15, I was gonna turn 16 pretty soon after that. I hated elementary school. I did not apply myself, and because I was home of school, I was like a self-directed curriculum. I just didn't get the work done and so I ended up falling behind a grade and so I started about a year older than the other kids that were there. But the last year I had been making. I had been making strides towards accelerating back up to the grade that my peers were in and it was pretty hard being away from home. I remember being homesick a lot and calling my parents and being like I just wanna go home, but they always talked me down and talked me out that this is part of your education Learning to get along with people and learning to be independent and all these different things. And yeah, so I lived there and that was when I was exposed to the other side of having kids. On that I was not super familiar with. If we were gonna go swimming in the pond, it either had to be like only the guy swimming or only the girl swimming, or if we were gonna do it together, the guys had to wear shirts and I was like I don't know if you ever tried to swim in a T-shirt, it's, I don't know, it's weird. Yeah. And so it was just this stuff that I had, that I didn't grow up with. And this is weird, what's going on, and like all the food was vegan. We used to joke that we used to call the pizzas plastic pizzas Because, like, when you pick it up, like the cheese would just like slide. It wasn't cheese, it was like some sort of fake stuff, but it would just slide off in a single sheet and tasted like plastic. It was awful. It was just exposed me to this different side of advertising that I was not super familiar with In these years, too. I went to a program in the summer called Youth for Jesus that is put on by an organization called ASI, and so it's like a summer program of doing a banjo with them, with kids, and so I think there was. I don't know. I went in 2008 and 2009. 2008 was Tampa Florida. We're there for the whole month of July and this is when I met Wes by. He was one of the Bible workers there at my site actually. So during the day and mornings we would do trainings. We'd like different speakers that come in and do trainings and talk to us about evangelism, and then in the afternoons we'd spend the whole time going and knocking on doors and like the Bible study guides that we were going through the only one that I had ever done up to this point in my life were Bible studies that just walk you through the Adventist 28 fundamental beliefs. I didn't know anything beyond that and so, like you know, we had some trainings on like how to answer tough questions and like talk people through Daniel too, and like some some like good stuff about the Bible. But like that was the extent of my knowledge at that point in my life. That was where I learned the proof-testing model of like going to a specific verse to answer a specific question and just memorizing as much of it as possible so that hopefully, whatever question came up, we I'd have the answer ready Right. Went there, did that for two summers and met with self-supporting school. A lot of the gris wore, had like pretty strict dress code stuff, a lot of dresses needs to be scurried, needs stuff and of course, always like really long, but I didn't really care about that too much. I wasn't really interested in girl in that time. I think my mindset up until this point in life was pretty much just living for fun and to get the most out of life that I could and the most enjoyment, and ended up bringing my dirt bike to school there. And at this, like in this stage in my life I was really into I started out skateboarding and then got really into kick-stoolers and doing tricks on those, doing rails and boxes and tail webs and like a bunch of different random tricks. Like probably one of the better riders that time that wasn't sponsored. Like we made a little state park there at the school where we could ride these things, spent quite a bit of time doing it. I remember what I wanted to do for career at that point in life was I wanted to be a pro scooter rider. I like would get the. They do these a lot for extreme sports. They make different companies will make videos. They'll make films of professional riders just doing tricks. They're really top-tier for skateboarding all the way from the 80s. And then at this point I started I switched from skiing to snowboarding because snowboarding was much cooler, I thought anyways, and just like eating up all these boarding sports and riding my scooter a lot and doing different tricks, constantly practicing, and really just like living my life to have the most fun, never was like one of the cool kids in school, always was on the side, running my own shell, maybe with a few of my friends I remember a bunch of my friends. One day have you seen Ice Age? And I hadn't really. I didn't really grow up watching films and stuff, and so I was like no, I don't know. I know the movie but I don't know anything about it. And, like you, remind us of Scrat. Just like little squirrel character and this is like the main film, like the main storyline that's happening. And then you got this squirrel that's just like off on the side doing its own thing, Like little comedy thing, and they're like, yeah, you like Scrat. And I was like, oh okay, I can see that. And then I remember another thing that my friends told me at this time. They're like one of the awards for some program at school I got the Caleb award Because I was always positive and encouraging. I was like oh, that's cool. So I think like that's pretty much like the perception I think that other people had, which I think was probably pretty accurate, and it's like a positive, encouraging kid, but didn't really like wanna be the cool kid or be in the spotlight, just wanted to do my own thing. And so I was always just off on the side and I was always trying to make deals. One of the one of the things that we would do at this school is we would have what they call outreach. Every week we'd spend like an afternoon doing outreach, which was community services, what it was so like we'd go to some lady's house and help her like landscape or yard or the one that I did the most of. We would go to this thrift store and organize clothes and stuff, and I really liked that because they were pretty chill and if you worked hard, you get done. Then be like we don't really have anything else for you to do, you can just like shop for a couple of hours. And I didn't care about that. But I'd bring my scooter with me and then when they were, when, as soon as they said, yeah, like you're done with all the work that we have, then I would take off them scooters for the skate park. And so I'm like always trying to cut deals with the van driver, with the staff, to be like oh yeah, pick me up at the skate park, don't pick me up over here, and all. We're just trying to cut deals with people and then also run a little side business. So on Hock and Ramen and John Soda and other junk food in the dorm, it was crazy. It was a crazy time in life Just trying to live in under that curiosity mindset of, like Money is limited and I'm gonna be over here selling this stuff to my friends. I can buy ramen for a dime and then sell it for a quarter and then I can eat all this junk food for free and still have some money left over. So there was that. And then we would take choir trips and we're touring all around the western slope of Colorado and I'm making deals with the van drivers. I'll be like how can we work this trip out so you can drop me off at a ski resort for at least half a day or something? And looking back on it from working in an institution perspective, I'm like this is nuts what I was trying to do, because there's insurance involved and liability and all these different things Never got to be dropped off at a ski resort but was able to pull a lot of different deals with the van drivers. I was like, basically constantly, that was like my game that I'd be playing Over sitting in the van. Everybody else was trying to sleep, but I'm over here in the front row trying to smooch up to the van driver to get to stop at some gas station that has some snack I want, or stop at something exciting and fun, take an extra trip to Walmart, or like these different random things. Oftentimes it was pretty successful at convincing the van drivers to do the different things, but that was like my game to pass the time would always be to try to convince these van drivers or staff that are just trying to get kids in point A to point B to do all the little special trips for me. Yeah, so that was basically like my high school experience. At that school so I finished my freshman year and I took as much classes as I could. By that point in life I did pretty well academically. I applied myself, tried a bunch of crazy study tactics. I remember one of the things that staff and adults told me all the time an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours after midnight. So I was like I got this brilliant idea of oh, as soon as we get done with dorm worship, I'm going to go straight to bed and then I'm going to get up to 3.30 in the morning and do all my studying in the morning before class, because then I can get by with less sleep at night and then I'll have more time in the day to do fun stuff and screw around and not apply myself. I'll just apply myself while everybody else is sleeping the hours away. And no it doesn't work at all. It's a horrible strategy. Don't do that. You should study when it works best for you and your body rhythms. But the whole. I don't know what was. What was the intent of being trying to communicate it by the two hours, or every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two, but I obviously took it to some extreme. That was not effective. I don't know if it has any effectiveness in moderation or not, but it definitely doesn't work at extremes. At least it didn't for me. My roommate thought I was absolutely nuts for doing that kind of stuff and then I just really apply myself. If I had a map problem that I was struggling with, I would sit there for sometimes a couple hours and be working on it and thinking through it, trying different stuff, and he gave it five minutes and he couldn't figure it out. He'd oh, he was going to talk to the teacher and I don't know if it was shame or like pride or what was going on. I didn't talk to the teacher to get help, I was going to figure it out myself.

Speaker 2: 1:01:08

It seems like you're a guy who just is always scheming to figure out to I don't know, to just get an easy way out, or maybe not an even easy way out, but a way that you did it Exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:01:23

That was totally it. I wanted to be in control of my own life and I didn't like rules and restriction, and so it was like it just became a total game and a joke to me to just do whatever I could to subvert the system, and even my studying really hard played into that. I remember sitting down with my mom and she was talking about yeah, like you go to college, basketball is really important in scholarships and we don't have that much money and there's all these loans and stuff and you got to pay that money back and you got to pay it back with interest and sit down with the calculator and like work through how much the interest would have crewed over the years and all this different stuff, and so, like I had it, even my studying, I think, was playing into that. Okay, like I understand the system of how this works, I need to get stellar grades so that I can get scholarships for college. I need to try to get leadership positions in school because that could help with scholarships too. And my studying really hard and applied myself and did great, I think I got a 4.0 that year and took as many classes as I could so that the next year I could return as a junior and, along with all of my peers age group, I had taken English or something like a summer, like a self-directed thing, which I was motivated and applied. So that was like not too hard study a bunch of hours, but it wasn't too big of a deal. So I came back the next year as a junior, didn't have to take as many classes because I was only going to graduate from the school with the minimum requirement that needed to get into college. I wasn't going to take no chemistry or physics or like challenging classes in high school. I was just going to take I need three math credits. I'm going to get three math credits. How many science credits do I need? Okay, I'm going to do the bare minimum, but I'm going to do it well. I'm going to get good grades. And so I did that. I started my junior year some 16 and 17. I started getting started having some gut health problems again and I'm like, oh shoot, I know what this is, but I don't want. I don't want this to be true and I had. It was a stressful time. I had a girl, I was interested at that time and things had not been going super great the last couple months and there was just like some crazy other drama stuff at school going on between just staff and students in general. Honestly, I feel like the students were probably running the show most of the time and the staff more often than not didn't know what was going on. Particularly in the guide storm there was so much craziness Just for instance I'm just going to say it's one piece, that's just an example the boys Dean needed some help getting his internet working. He wasn't very tech savvy so we got a couple of guys from the boys dorm and set it up. So they're on tech support with the internet company. And at some point the internet company was like it'd be a lot easier if you just set up the Wi-Fi. And they're like, oh, okay. And so, like the boys Dean lives in the upstairs of the boys dorm. They set up his Wi-Fi router. The dude had no idea and so for the most of one semester there is free, unlimited on internet sifted Wi-Fi in the entire boys dorm. All that guys know about this, but the entire time everyone has a computer device and of course there was one person that did look at some very inappropriate things that got dealt with and ended up to be like a whole investigation to figure out who was doing it. Obviously he didn't want to own up to it. I think everybody else was just using it for watching movies and like me I'm just watching like BMX videos and snowboard videos and stuff and there's a lot of that kind of stuff, but that's just like one example. I mean we went the majority of a semester with free, unprotected Wi-Fi in the guys dorm and boys Dean had no idea. I mean it was just like that level of and just so many areas. That was just major incompetence with the staff and the kids were at least the guys in the guys dorm were pretty much manipulating the system. So it wasn't just me that was doing it. I'm sure I was not the one that set up Wi-Fi for him. I was not like that techie at that time, but it was crazy. It was an absolutely nuts place to be. So it anyways, all that drama stuff led to me lying to cover up for a bunch of kids and that weighed really heavy on me and I wanted to do the right thing, but I also didn't want to get my friends in trouble and it just ended up to be a lot and that's stress and anxiety. Looking back and certain, that's what caused the health issues to come back. Yeah, we got health Necrons, disease to come back in full force. So at semester I was not very happy to be there. I didn't want to be there, I didn't. I just was tired of lying all the time and, just like the crazy drama environment, I just felt like the. I felt like the only way I could get out of the situation was to leave. I could not figure out how to get myself back on track and my gut health was terrible, so I left. At the semester I went home, did correspondence school, which is just sending in assignments. I do them and either email them or shove them in a envelope and mail them and then they would grade them and eventually send me grades or whatever. So I did that for the rest of the semester and I worked with my dad a lot in the cabinet shop. He then worked for so many years. That's pretty competent and could do a lot of jobs that he wouldn't trust other people to do. I worked hard. I applied myself always when I was working and I enjoyed working and gave me a sense of self, words and money. Living at boarding school and living a life like I was. They cost money to live like that and always be going to Walmart and spending money and that and trying to. I was getting low on finance, I think my and for me at this time. I understand this is not normal, but for me at this time, low on finance, this was if I had less than $1,000 in my bank account. So I went and was working for my dad again getting that back up, I think. At this point I think I had negotiated up to $725 an hour. I just worked a lot of hours for him and finished that school year out and that summer I think I went to see another doctor. That's the next summer. So it was quite a while toppling through on treating mediocre health. This remember straight up asking the doctors doctor, can you just write me another prescription for prednisone? This was the miracle drug before did all this. I just need more prednisone. I need another round of this and I'll be good to go. Doctor did it. He wrote me another prescription for prednisone. I did the round of that and ended up doing that through my senior year. So by this point I was just done with high school. I was like I'm tired of the rules, I'm tired of the drama. I can live in adult life. I got my driver's license, so I convinced my parents. I was like look, how about I go to Maple with a cat? And here's the deal. I know you have reservations, but I'll live at home and I'll drive the 50 minutes each way to go to school and back. And also I was like and here's the deal. There's I got because I got good grades. I've been studying hard in school. I qualify for this program, minnesota. I'll post post secondary educational opportunity, psel, which is where you can take college classes in high school and the state pays for everything. They pay for your books, they pay for the classes, everything. The cool program. Most states have something like that. So I was like I'll go to Ridgewater College in Hutchinson too and I'll take classes and they'll take the minimum over. At Maplewood I took I think it took two classes each semester Ridgewater College two three credit hour classes, like taking 12 credit hours, my. I graduated from Maplewood that's where I met Tyler and then Maplewood. All I took was Bible choir and a semester of self directed PE. So yeah, I graduated from Maplewood but I was never around in the weekends, I just wasn't around the whole lot. So I didn't take a whole lot of classes. But I technically did graduate from there Was just like super done with high school. At that point Then was trying to figure out what I want to do for college. I decided after I had I purchased a car by then and gotten pretty competent working and repairing, that this is my car. First car was 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle. And there's things are. There's a reason cars are so much better now but it's so many problems. They just require so much maintenance, repair. I learned a lot. I ended up rebuilding the engine a few different times because I didn't know what I was doing and screwed it up but finally got it right and drove that thing to school most of the time and learned a lot. And so I was like I decided from that I was like I'm going to go study automotive technology and learn how to fix cars more competently and then do that as a career. And like my whole mindset from this point was like I'm going to go, I am going to learn how to fix cars. Then, once I and then go work in a shop for a few years, get really good at it, understand what I'm doing. Then I'm going to go start my own shop, make a bunch of money, run it successfully for a few years, and then I'm just going to stash away, scroll away a bunch of money and then I'm just going to retire. I'm just going to go live, life and travel and ride my scooter around the world. I had given that up at that point, thankfully. But just travel the world and just do whatever I wanted to. So I went to college, I went to my, I went to Southern Adventist University in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was the first time I'd ever been to the South.

Speaker 2: 1:11:52

So it's your first time in the South Yep.

Speaker 1: 1:11:55

First time in the South and the Southern Adventist University. I went down there for a tour of my senior year and talked with the automotive department. Enough, put it in an application, ended up getting hired to work as a student technician in the shop In July. I think end of June is when they called me and they're like hey, we got this job for you. When can you start? This is like July 2010 or June 2010. And I was like I'll put, pack my stuff, I'll leave tomorrow. I like threw some stuff in my truck. I had a different vehicle at that point. I had 1991 GMC 3500 diesel pickup. So I like threw stuff in there and I left the next day for college See mom, see dad and drove down there and started working in the shop on campus and went to school there. The school is really good. I had learned a lot of good stuff. It was a good environment, made some really good friends, and Southern requires a lot of worship credits. So I went to a lot of worships. Some of them were not that great, but some of them people actually had really good stuff to say.

Speaker 2: 1:13:04

That really connected Well who was God in your life at this point?

Speaker 1: 1:13:09

So God at this point was? He was somebody that showed up every once in a while and took care of me and protected me. So I knew that he existed and was around, but day to day he didn't really have any influence. One way or the other, I think I was probably. I think I'd probably say I was deist at this point in life. The idea that God in the universe is like a watchmaker, that the watch being the universe and the watchmaker being God, where watchmaker winds up the watch and then just lets it go. So I think I mostly say that I was deist at this point and whatever happened in life was just the way that the chips fell and God didn't have anything to do with that, except for every once in a while he would step in and show up and take care of me when I was about ready to kill myself or do something really stupid. Yeah, did that. Had a great year, had a lot of fun, played on the floor hockey team with my buddies. That was really fun, connected, made some really good friends. And then that summer I actually during the school year I applied to work at North Star Camp and I got a letter saying that we're too full. We've had too many applications. We're sorry we don't have a spot for you this year. Try again next year or we can connect you with another camp if you want, which, looking back on it, I think is pretty crazy. It's pretty easy to get hired at summer camp. There's always a shortage of people. A couple months later the director did up calling me okay, somebody dropped out. Do you still want to do camp? Like yeah, yep, definitely do. So. Got hired to do that. My brother had worked there. The previous year. I got hired as the rock climbing director. I got into rock climbing while I was a Southern and started doing some of that with my friends, my brother's. What you really want to do is you want to drive boats, and so he's going to need your lifeguard certificate, and then you can talk to one of my other friends that has applied for this boat driving position and has it and see if you just want to swap. So I was like okay, so I self directed, took a lifeguarding course over the summer and then showed up to summer camp and there's like one of the first days the director's all right, if you have your lifeguarding certification stand up, we just need to know who's got it. So I'd stand up and he gives me this look like huh. I was like yep, here's my certification, here's all my stuff. And then talk to this other guy and was like hey, do you want to do climate rock climbing? And I can drive boats. And he thought sounds cool. And so I ended up switching with him and talked to the director and directors he both are good with it. Okay, that's fine. I ended up driving boats, doing a lot of wakeboarding and water skiing and top that and then also was counseling kids and I think this is where God really started to become a lot more real in my life. I'm having cabin worships morning and evening with kids and I'm seeing that God is actually making a real difference in their lives. I sometimes would stay up late at night and just ask real questions, not not theological question and train to answer and use for Jesus, about Satan, for the dead, or what the mark of the beast is or these different abstract things, but real life questions. I remember one kid was just asking what's heaven going to be like and how do we know we're saved? That one was really tough because I didn't know the answer to that at that time. And so I remember talking with the director and he really, during this period of time, was the first time in my life that I would say I had assurance of salvation. I didn't have that before, didn't know what exactly was the criteria for salvation, but I figured that it had something to do with my performance, and so at that summer it really became ingrained in me that salvation was a gift and that we had assurance of salvation. And, yeah, it was a super positive summer. That year, following that, I decided that I was going to read my Bible all the way through, cover to cover. I wasn't going to skip anything. I was going to read every single word on every single page and read it at whatever pace was natural. So I did that. And then somebody suggested, yeah, you should read the conflict of the ages series. So I was like, okay, so I read that. And this time in my life I started actually reading for fun I didn't do that before, right and I started learning a lot more about God and about spirituality and about plan of salvation and during that summer. And then I came back to summer camp again the following year and it's the first summer I worked there at 2011,. The next summer of 2012. Between those two summers, I came to know that I was forgiven and forgiveness was a gift and that Christ died for my sins, and so that was super impactful. I should mention that in early 2012, I started having Crohn's disease symptoms again, and there's a big piece of my story. I had already gone to the doctor. I had seen what they had prescribed and what that had done. This time I decided that I was going to fix the problem by myself. I was poking around on the internet and is able to purchase some prednisone from a website that claimed was Canadian and it's a prescription drug only in this country. In the United States Somehow, I don't know where it actually came from, but show up in the sketchy box and was actually prednisone. It was legit though it was prednisone yeah for sure I took it. I knew what to expect at that point.

Speaker 2: 1:18:53

Was that kind?

Speaker 1: 1:18:53

of risky, oh, super risky. I do not recommend. I do not highly recommend, but it was surprisingly easy. I'm not super tech savvy and it wasn't a ton, it was only a little bit. And this time I decided I was going to start taking five milligrams a day and then just see how I felt that was good. I was going to take more than I wanted to take any more, so I wasn't going to take any more than I needed to. So I started doing that and that supply started dwindling and through some connection with like friend of a friend that was getting some I think it was dental worker, I don't know was getting something done in Mexico, where you don't need a prescription for prednisone Purchased a mother lot of this stuff for me it was a time it was like years of supply and brought this back to me. So now I had way more prednisone and I could ever then I would ever end up using and so I started taking this at 10, five milligrams and then just any drug that you take, whether it's prescription or street drug or whatever. Suddenly that's not a div anymore.

Speaker 4: 1:19:59

So then I was taking body adapts to it, your body adapts to it.

Speaker 1: 1:20:02

So then I started taking 10 milligrams a day, and then, by the time I returned to summer camp 2013, I was taking 20 milligrams of prednisone a day, and I had been taking it for I probably had started doing this nine months prior. So I had been on this for a long time, way longer than any doctor would ever recommend.

Speaker 2: 1:20:26

Kind of side effects are we talking about?

Speaker 1: 1:20:29

Not sleeping good at night, terrible acne, puffiness all over the body, a raven appetite. I never gained a ton of weight. I'm pretty lean guy, I've always been pretty lean. But that's a side effect that a lot of people experience. But those were the main ones for me. I think I had a crazy drive in life on the drug to get stuff done and do it. But I also think that it made me not the kindest person. I think my director was really impressed at that how much stuff I could get done. But I don't think that I was always. I was the waterfront director at this point. I don't think that I was always the kindest to the people that were underneath me. Brent's really working hard, but he's a meanie yeah kind of meanie and just expects I can do it, why can't you do it? Kind of attitude, just not a very gracious attitude towards peace. So you're.

Speaker 2: 1:21:25

You liked being on the drug, though.

Speaker 1: 1:21:27

Oh, 100%, because I just felt absolutely amazing, borderline superhuman, I could just get tons of stuff done. I didn't need a lot of sleep, I could concentrate really well, I just had tons of energy and felt amazing. I didn't have inflammation in my gut and so like gut health, just it felt really good. But what happened is I ended up. I don't remember which week of camp it was, but I woke up in the middle of the night very abruptly in severe gut pain, like I was on a pain level of 1 to 10, I would say I was at a 9. And I was like I got to get to the nurse right now and I remember I took my phone with me because I was like I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it all the way to the nurses cabin, that quarter mile. I could easily collapse on the way and I need to at least be able to make a phone call, so like how the sharp pain, like your stomach is just twisting or oh, yeah, super sharp, and I like couldn't even stand up straight. I was like all bent over just holding my stomach.

Speaker 2: 1:22:33

Oh mercy.

Speaker 1: 1:22:35

It was awful. It was excruciating pain like I had never experienced before. Thankfully, I did make it to the nurses cabin. I hobbled in there. Nurse, bless her heart, she's like all right, I'm going to give you two charcoal tablets and we're going to give it. We're going to give it a couple of minutes and see what happens. And I've been around that type of path that's stuff long enough.

Speaker 2: 1:23:02

The charcoal is great, we're not hating on charcoal, but yeah, you're dealing with something else, yeah, so she took me to the ER and they checked me out.

Speaker 1: 1:23:13

I'm like vomiting and stuff. There they're trying to give me anti-nausea medication. I think I got a shot the butt for that, but I remember. I just remember that Rome was all by itself and the doctor comes in the middle of the night. Doctor walks in by himself and he looks at me straight in the eye and he said what it's just like in a super loving but very direct way. He said what are you doing? And that was the point in my life where I realized that I had been lying to myself and to everybody around me about what I was doing with the prednisone and not addressing the cause of Crohn's disease, and that the drug was just massing the symptoms. And somewhere in my head I knew that. But I had been lying to myself, telling myself that it was curing me, it was working and I was fine and I was normal, I was healthy, I could live my life. But when he looked at me and he asked me that, it hit me exactly what I had been doing. And I was like I cannot lie to the doctor. And so I told him exactly what I had been doing that I had been getting drugs from Mexico and I had been doing this, exactly how much I'd been taking every single day. And he just looked at me, non-judgmental, with the most loving eyes and face, and he said I guarantee that if you continue doing what you're doing, you'll never let the C30, 30 years old and I'm like 22 at this point. And that shook me, that rocked me to the core. I was like I have got to make a change.

Speaker 2: 1:24:54

So was it the prednisone or was it the Crohn's that was the problem, and then the prednisone just wasn't doing it anymore.

Speaker 1: 1:25:02

So the Crohn's disease is what was causing the problem. The prednisone was masking the symptoms so that I didn't realize how much damage was actually happening in my body. The doctor ended up sending me home or back to camp and I just could not stop throwing up just like dry heaves constantly. So a day or two later I went back to the hospital and they admitted me. The surgeon was like I'm going to have to go in, I'm going to have to cut a section out. He was like it's really bad. You might have to wear a bag for the rest of your life.

Speaker 4: 1:25:38

You may not be able to use like a normal person.

Speaker 1: 1:25:40

You may have to wear this bag to collect the poop for the rest of your life. And at this point I was really sorry for what I had done and realized that and was no longer lying to myself. I was being honest that I had a real problem that needed to be addressed. I don't ever remember tapering off the medication, I think under the doctor's recommendation. I think I just quit taking prednisone altogether, but I'm not positive. I had this IV shot in my arm. The doctor finally was like hey look, this is not really an American practice, but we're going to try European style intervention where we pump you full antibiotics and hope that your body heals and we'll monitor it over time and then we'll go from there. Got another CT scan. What happened is to be technical. I got a microperforation in my terminal alia. Terminal alia is one of the sections of your small intestine. Microperforation is a small hole, so I was leaking fluid from inside my intestine, which is not a sterile environment. There's a lot of bacteria and stuff in there good bacteria into my pelvic cavity, to the point where in the CT scan I can see it there's a pool of fluid in the pelvic cavity. And so the antibiotics.

Speaker 2: 1:26:59

Not great.

Speaker 1: 1:27:00

No, it's not great at all. This can turn into a life-threatening infection really quick and that's what the antibiotics were for. To make sure that I didn't get an infection in there, I ended up staying in the hospital I don't know who's a week For 10 days. My parents came up at this point. It was quite a big deal. They started. I ended up watching somebody get a scope on YouTube. I'm like, oh, this is what happens. And somebody had Crohn's so I could see. Oh, here's what the inside of my intestine actually looks like, which I could see. It was obviously like there was massive sores in there. It was awful in this person that got one. I was like, okay, that's what's going on inside me. I'm at least being honest with. This is the state of my health and my body right now. I couldn't even eat food. I was on a clear liquid diet for a while after the IV and then finally could introduce some juices and stuff. And then my mom started making me green smoothies and green juices and bringing me kombucha juice Anything that the doctor would allow. That was like naturopathic in nature and I just started looking at major lifestyle changes about managing my stress a lot better and being intentional about not thriving off adrenaline, living day to day like that, but living with peace and happiness and just being content. And so I started learning some of these spiritual pieces in my life. At that point Left the hospital and no. Before I left the hospital, my camp director came and visited me and I thought for sure. I was like there's no doubt in my mind he's going to walk in and he's going to say dude, what you've been doing is totally unacceptable on a summer camp environment. You're fired, you can go home. Don't ever apply here again. We don't need, we don't need drug addicts, especially people sneaking this stuff in Not telling anyone at this environment. This is a spiritual camp, so it's fully expected for that he walks in. And it was completely the opposite. He said look, I know you don't have health insurance. I know you're concerned about the bill. We're going to do everything that we can from the conference level to try to make sure that we can help wherever possible. It's not going to be a lot, but we'll do what we can Don't worry about getting done to pay for your time in the hospital. We're going to continue paying you as if you were working and whatever you're healthy, whenever that is, know that you're welcome back and that absolutely broke me. I broke down in tears, I was crying and that was. I think that that was the time when I experienced forgiveness and a big whaling I had never experienced before in my life that somebody could just legitimately, without me asking or anything, would extend that level of forgiveness to me in an employer employee situation which I interpreted at that time as a totally transactional relationship. So that that, really that was a very pivotal point in changing my my thought about how God felt about me. I was like, if my camp director can treat me this way and is this good, I bet God's is good too, but he forgives me. And so I left the hospital, all stay without any guilt, any shame, knowing that I was fully loved by God and by my camp director and everybody in my life, and work the rest of that summer by this point in time this is a bit of a backtrack, but my first summer working at camp, during one of the Sundays, while we were waiting for campers to arrive, I was rip sticking around with another staff, just around like on the pavement, and God spoke to me. And so I just graduated where I was going into my last year at Southern because I just have a two year degree, I have an associate in automotive technology and God spoke to me while I was rip, sticking in a super clear, audible voice, something that I'd never experienced before, and he just said have you ever thought about working? The self supporting school that I went to and I was like, nah, I'm not doing that, that place is whack. And I could not shake that feeling my entire senior year while I was reading for the Bible and the whole conflict of the ages series at Southern University. So I finally, just to shake the feeling, I picked the phone and called to see if they had an opening. They did so. I started an automotive program at self supporting school in Utah there and ran that and also taught outdoor ed along with another guy there for him. So I was doing that during the school year and then working at summer camp in the summer. And, yeah, back to summer 2013,. This pivotal moment happens. I go back to the self supporting school. I'm still working there going into 2014. I met my wife 2013. She worked, came and worked a summer at at North Star camp and, but we didn't really talk much that summer. She wrote me a note when I was sick. I don't really remember that at all. 2014 summer, I'm waterfront director. Again. I was like I don't know where you're living in Colorado and she's I'm going to be living in leadville and be teaching in leadville. I was like I don't know where that is and she's 30 minutes from copper mountain. I was like, oh yeah, I know where that ski resort is, I've been there, I've spent some time on those slopes, and so she's like, yeah, you can crash in my living room floor and we'll go skiing together. Cool, didn't think anything of it. 2014, rolling into 2015. School year a day star, all right. The self supporting Academy I was working at. I was also in charge of their campus ministries. But at this point I said a burden for kids after working at summer camp and I just saw that their spiritual development and nurturing was really neglected. So I started teaching the high school sabbath school program and started organizing with several of them all the best for programs and all the spiritual program on campus. It's a ton of fun. It was a great opportunity to connect and spiritually mentor a lot of kids, but it was also a lot of work on top of what I was working like 80 to 100 hour weeks pretty consistently and it was just a lot. And so when I had a free weekend where I wasn't doing that, I was like I'm going to be doing that. And then I had a free weekend where I wasn't doing that the kids were on break or whatever I would I started driving over to Colorado to hang out with my wife Cassie my wife no and so we just go for hikes around different lakes or through the woods or whatever in chat. And so that fall and late October we start dating. And at the end of that school year I realized that I needed a change. I needed to not be working so many hours. I needed different pates of life. I needed a different environment, and I realized the impact that I was having at the school was going to stay pre-limited due to some some of the board's politics that were going on at the time. So I was like all right, peace out. I 2015, we both worked at North Star Camp together and that was my last summer working there, which is tough because I'd worked five summers. I came and I worked there as the assistant camp director. That was quite a different role. In the water director learned a ton about how to work with people and be much more kind and organize things.

Speaker 2: 1:35:08

I think maybe not being on that drug was probably helpful to your kindness.

Speaker 1: 1:35:13

Oh, it was. I'm sure it was helpful, but also I had experienced forgiveness in a way that. I had never lived with before and I had assurance of salvation. I was a much healthier person. I had no idea about the, the resurrection power and the Holy Spirit living within me. I knew that I was forgiven and I knew that everyone was forgiven in the same way I had been, and I knew that if we believe in the cross and what Christ has done for us, we all have assurance of salvation and we can confidently say that that we are right with God.

Speaker 2: 1:35:54

I want to jump forward a little bit here. I know you get married. All this is happening, I think, learning stuff through marriage. I'm sure you learned a ton, but it seems like going from like this deus guy and now seeing this forgiveness and seeing this reconciliation that you do have assurance, that probably made you a much better husband than you'd probably hope to be right.

Speaker 1: 1:36:19

It did eventually. Well, we first got married. So we got married July 4, 2016. And because I was working in the automotive industry I was not. I was working at a shop as a technician at this point that's. They don't like to give a lot of time up, and so I went, and I think I flew on like a Thursday to Minnesota and then I think I took a week for the wedding and get them to drive back to Colorado to start work again. We've only been married for a few days. We had a pretty big fight and it was really dumb on my part. I was this hard charging guy and I the way that I traveled is, I didn't stop for anything. I would stop to get gas and put the gas thing in, and while the gas was filling, I'm running to use the bathroom and I felt like I needed to be back out at the vehicle before that pump shut off. So as soon as you shut off, I could hang it up and we can get back.

Speaker 2: 1:37:12

Absolutely. That's how you do it right.

Speaker 1: 1:37:14

That's the only version of me and how I traveled. My wife never traveled like that, thank God, and.

Speaker 2: 1:37:20

I one time drove from Lincoln to Michigan and I didn't let Natalie drink anything so we wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom. It's the foolishness.

Speaker 1: 1:37:30

I don't know. I don't know why you did that, but because we had to make time.

Speaker 2: 1:37:35

Maybe we got to get there. I am very ashamed at my behavior and not saying I'm not advocating for not letting Natalie drink anything, I just and I didn't tell her she couldn't, I just didn't stop yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:37:48

So you sound like you're very familiar with that mode of travel. She wanted to stop and enjoy things like. We just got married, like a few days ago, so she wanted to stop at the Badlands and then we would see the faces of Mount Rushmore, which was cool. I am so glad that she was like we're going to do this, yeah. So we stopped and we saw some cool stuff, but I don't remember what it was about. But we had a pretty big fight in the car where we ended up cutting our trip short by a day or two just to get back Because we at least I, couldn't stand being in the car with her anymore. This is awful, and I don't remember what the fight was about. I'm sure I was acting a fool, being stupid. I'm sure that's what was going. We had a pretty rough start initially just getting married and stuff and there was a lot of fights and stuff just over the pettiest stuff. George, in the house, I think my schedule for when things need to be cleaned was a little bit less frequent than for schedule when the bathroom need to be cleaned, the floor need to be vacuumed, and it was just an adjustment and so there was. It was not super peaceful, it was that. And then I got sick, I got the flu one time and I ate over the course of, I think, 12 hours. I think I ate like a head and a half of garlic Cause I was like I'm going to kick this thing in the pants and I'm going to get healthy as soon as possible. And so she comes in and she came and breathe in the house because I've been eating garlic like nobody's business. So it was stuff like that. That was a lot of that. And then I remember I wanted to watch the Olympics. I didn't want to pay for it, so I got a. I started streaming it through a VPN at Canada where you could watch it for free. So I'm watching Canadian Olympics and she's this is unethical, what are you doing? It was just stuff like that. It was crazy. You're like what do you mean?

Speaker 2: 1:39:41

What am I doing? I'm watching the Olympics.

Speaker 1: 1:39:43

Yeah, exactly, I'm watching pole vaulting, what are you? Doing. It was yeah, and then I. Thankfully, one of the things early on in our marriage is my boss at my shop. He had some financial troubles in the past and he had gone through Dave Ramsey's financial peace university. He was a big believer in that financial software and for our marriage, that's what he gets it out. See, I want to give you the course in the class. So very early on I think it was we'd only been married a few weeks we started financial peace university. We went through that, learned a lot of really valuable things together about how to manage finances properly. I think what we learned most is how to work together, and that that was huge where I didn't have to be I don't know a hard headed person, where I could understand, like, okay, we can work together and there's some give and take here. So, yeah, things were get got a little bit better. After that. She ended up wanting to go to graduate school. So we moved to Colorado Springs just north of there to monument, living in a townhouse, and because she was going to school, she wasn't making much money. She ended up getting a teaching fellowship, which is basically where she could teach a couple of classes for the college, a class or two in exchange for tuition for her to go to graduate school, which is great. That was amazing. But she wasn't bringing home a lot of money and housing is pretty expensive in Colorado, coming from the perspective of Minnesota, and so we we couldn't really afford an apartment just for the two of us, but for not too much more money we could. We got a four bedroom, four bed, three and a half bath town home, but then we had to help. We had to rent out a room to somebody, so we just got you know, we've only been married like a year or so and we got some other person living with us. Not the greatest situation, but that's what we felt like we needed to do to make financial ends meet. I ended up getting fired from a job at a shop for some things that I didn't do and some things that were blown out of proportion Now with people just in regards to the specific repairs of some vehicles and just some random things, and that really rocked me because my identity was really wrapped up in my work and my accomplishments. I was very, I took a lot of pride in what I did and what I could accomplish and do, and I ended up applying and getting a job to teach day and night school at an automotive school in Colorado Springs called Teletech. So I'm teaching from eight to oh, eight to noon and then usually a couple hours of grading, and then I teach from five to nine at night and then a couple hours more of creating and lesson planning and stuff Monday through Thursday. So basically I would leave the house at seven because there's traffic and I wouldn't get home till midnight or one and I was always starving. When I got home said eat something and then go to bed. I never saw my wife because she was on a completely different schedule and then I was. I'd leave the house. I might see her a little bit in the morning before I left it, but I definitely won't see her at night. She's long gone to bed. And then Fridays I'd sleep a lot of the day because I've been working so hard Monday through Thursday and this is where things really got bad in our marriage because she's look, you got a free day Friday where you're not working, clean the bathrooms, do some grocery shopping, vacuum the carpets when she'd leave a lift of chores and I'm like I'm exhausted. I've been busting it for four days. I've been working like 16 hour days. I don't have anything left to. I just want to go for a bike ride or go for a run or something. And this caused a lot of fight. We fought a lot and pretty bad and hard about mainly about chores in the house. It was pretty awful and pretty bad. I did that job for nine months and then the Rocky Mountain Conference called me and wanted me to work for the youth department. I took that job and then it got even worse because now I traveled a lot weekends and when I was home it was fighting about chores and you're never here. And then when I would leave she'd be calling and we would talk some and I'm like babe, I can't talk a lot, I'm trying to work here. But she was just trying to have a normal, healthy relationship and I did not do that. I was definitely. There's definitely some dysfunction that I was dealing with. And then I would come home and a lot of times she would pick a fight as soon as I'd get home. So we'd start fighting and it'd be awful. And then, because we were fighting, I was like home isn't fun, I don't want to be here. So I would schedule even more work trips and I'd be like I'm going to go preach at this church over here, do this or that Other things that were legitimate work things, but I didn't absolutely have to be doing Right. So I was gone even more and that made it even worse. And because we were fighting all the time none of us, neither of us, I don't think we're having anything and we didn't have very much in relationship. I wasn't around a lot. I was gone so much of the time. We never said it, but both of us were definitely thinking of getting a divorce. Oh, wow. We were like this is awful, we're not. I certainly wasn't enjoying it. I was pretty awful and pretty miserable, but I didn't tell anybody about it. I think the family culture I grew up in was that a divorce is never an option and and we have to work it out. But it was absolutely just. It was so miserable I didn't know how else to get out of the situation. And then, so this is. I started working for the conference in the fall of 18. And then sometime in 2019, I think, the youth department partially sponsored LRT wave two at life source church on the west side of Denver, and I didn't know about it until about the time it was happening. And then I was like, oh, the youth department partially funded this. I should probably be attending and supporting this event. So I was like I'm going to go show my face, talk to some people, send for supporting them. So I should, I should be there. So I went to one. It was the Adam one. I didn't think it was night two Adam one no, not Adam. One out of two is always son, always daughter, the prodigal son story. And I remember coming away from there being like I have never heard anything like this before, and I remember opening my Bible and reading through the story and I was like this checks out. I don't know why I've never heard this before, but this checks out. So I went to a couple more and Kat where I'm still fighting with Cassie and she's like, where are you going now? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to this meeting thing. She's like, and you want to come? And she's no, I don't want to go, I just want to be home with you. And I was like, okay, I'm going to this thing, yeah. And so I went to a couple and then she came to at least one. She came to at least one or two. I didn't make it every night, I made it to maybe half of them. The Adam one, adam two was another night. That really hit me. I was like I have never heard anything like this before. This. If this is true, this changes everything. And I don't know if she was at that night or not, but I remember reading through Roman six and Roman five and Roman eight and was like this has been here the whole time. And I know I've read it before because I read the whole Bible cover to cover it. I didn't skip anything. So I know I've read it but it seems brand new, like I've never heard this before. So then COVID happened and there was an LRT zoom online thing and I was like, all right, like I'm not traveling for work much anymore because this COVID stuck at home. I'm really curious about this because this is really interesting and intriguing and this really changes everything. If this is true, let's just go through this thing together. Let's just do it together. And she was like she had been to one or two of the wave two at LifeSource and she was like, yeah, that sounds great. We went through, we're like we're going to go to every night, we're not going to skip, we're going to take this seriously, we're going to be adults here. At least, that's what I was thinking. And so we went through the whole wave one zoom online thing and heard a bit of what Tyler Morgan had gone through at that point and just, we're just eating it up. We're both like really engaged and learning a ton. And I remember, not too long after that, just having a prayer and just receiving. I was like God, I received your Holy Spirit. I know that I was like baptized when I was 12 or whatever, went through the standard point of fundamental beliefs, but I didn't. I didn't understand any of the gospel. I was like I know I've been baptized with water, but I don't feel like I've received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And so I just prayed a prayer asking to receive the Holy Spirit that God's promised and just to be open to the truths that are in the Bible, that are written there, playing for us to read and receive.

Speaker 2: 1:50:16

All right, we're going to take a real quick break from this episode and I'm going to just bring on a random guy, Jonathan Leonardo. Jonathan, how long has it been since this good gospel changed your life?

Speaker 3: 1:50:29

I think it's going on seven years, since summer of 2016.

Speaker 2: 1:50:32

Summer of 2016. And has it changed some aspects of your life? Just a few here and there.

Speaker 3: 1:50:38

Just a little bit. You know, I think the changes start at the beginning and they get all the way up to the end. So everything in between.

Speaker 2: 1:50:45

So like from top and then probably near the bottom Bottom. Okay, just say less. What is it about this gospel message that has made you decide to donate some of your heart-earned income to keep this message moving forward?

Speaker 3: 1:50:59

Coming into the realization of the Father's love and what Jesus had accomplished for me at the cross and in his resurrection, liberated me to actually live according to the truth that I was created to live for. I'm just not under the burden of trying to be somebody I wasn't created to be and trying to be something I'm not. I'm a son, so I get to live like it.

Speaker 2: 1:51:20

Wow, listen, if you are listening to this and this podcast, this ministry has been a blessing to you. I'd like to encourage you to go to loverealityorg slash give and give so that we can continue to move this message forward. We are sold out for moving this message forward, as anyway we can, and right now we're doing it in podcasts, we're doing it in Bible studies, we're doing it online, we're doing it everywhere we can, and we would just be super blessed if you would go to loverealityorg slash give and partner with us to move this message forward. Thanks a lot, jonathan, appreciate you. Amen. Do you remember what you had believed before? Or is it now getting all tossed in there? Because now you're standing in the truth of what?

Speaker 1: 1:52:19

God. I had believed what I would say was half the gospel. I believed in the forgiveness that was given us at the cross. I knew that we were forgiven, whether we asked for it or not. We could receive, we could choose to receive that forgiveness, but that forgiveness was guaranteed and given at the cross. So I understood that the death of Christ is what gave us that forgiveness. I had no knowledge at all that we were living in the resurrection power of Christ, and the same power the resurrected Christ and the dead is living within us, and that we are free from sin, and not only free from the penalty of sin, but also from the power. And so that's what was brand new that I was learning. And I remember going through that Zoom LRT wave one and I came away extremely angry. I felt anger that I hadn't felt in years, and not anger at what I had been learning, but anger that I was at this point like 28 years old, late 20s, and nobody had ever told me this before, no one had ever told me anything even remotely close to it, and I was like this has been in the Bible the whole time, plain as day. I can read it right now, and nobody's ever told this to me like and was very angry for all the years that had gone by that were frankly pretty miserable and I came to realize several I'm probably a few months into it I was angry parents. I was angry at my the Sabbath school leaders I had as a kid. I was angry at a lot of people, a lot of spiritual mentors, basically every spiritual mentor that I had in my life up until that point, probably minus my camp director Jeff. I was probably angry I think I was angry at all of them for withholding. I felt like that had something big, had been withheld the entire time.

Speaker 2: 1:54:24

Do you think that they knew it and they just didn't tell you? That's what.

Speaker 1: 1:54:27

I thought for a while and then I came to realize a few months later look, they didn't tell me because they didn't know it themselves. They were just teaching what they knew and they were doing the best job that they could have and they just didn't know, so they couldn't share. And then I started having a lot more grace towards them and thoughts of love and man. I should share this with them. This has made my life so much better. I want that for other people and our marriage started getting way better.

Speaker 2: 1:54:58

Okay, talk to me about that. What like? How is it, was it able to be applied to your marriage? How was it applied?

Speaker 1: 1:55:07

when a fight would break out, instead of me just standing there and arguing back and lashing out and expressing whatever anger was coming to mind, I just knew that I was loved and that, regardless of what was happening and the circumstances, whether I felt like it was justified or not, that had no bearing on how I needed and on how I should behave and I was like I'm loved, I'm fully accepted by God, I can treat my wife this way, I can treat others this way without expecting anything in return. And so if a fight started to happen, I would just try to listen and not lash out and have an anger response. And I realized in this time I said I'm trying not to, but I realized that those feelings were not there. I didn't have the same desire to lash out and anger and respond with mean words and and other just aggressive behavior slamming doors, walking off other just unhelpful behaviors. I just didn't have the desires for those like I had prior and it was just so peaceful and so relaxing and and really freeing to just being for once in my life, to when I had, like those intense feelings of wanting to respond, mainly because I felt like I had been wronged, to just not have those. I felt like I could actually behave the way that I always wanted to behave and just never had the self discipline to execute before.

Speaker 2: 1:56:59

The actual pastoral commentary in the book of Romans is actually found in chapters 12 through 16. It's not found in chapters one, and two and three are like the state of the world right in sin the Gentiles. God gave them up to themselves because of the Yadda. Chapter two oh, the Jews had the workles of God, but they were still hypocrites. Chapter three is the whole world has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But now a righteousness comes, apart from the law. Then he starts getting into the theology of it. We have the faith of Abraham, so that we're counted righteous. Five is this comparison contrast between Adam and the second Adam. Roman six is a comparison contrast between life being a slave to sin and life being a slave to righteousness. And then it goes all the way up until 12. And then he starts giving pastoral commentary. And because of all of these things, love one another, sit with one another, look past certain things, don't judge each other because of this, don't judge each other because of that. And it's almost like before we knew Romans five through eight, we had to know Romans one through four, and then, because now we know Romans five through eight, we can actually love. Now we can actually lay down our lives, we can actually seek unity, and so maybe the whole point of the book of Romans is the last four chapters and the first. The first 11 chapters are why we can live the way we've always wanted to live.

Speaker 1: 1:58:40

Yeah, and that's where I had read it wrong. I had read this way the way that you should live in the Bible up until that point, as prescriptive Of like, oh, loving, looks like me behaving in this way, and so, through, through self discipline and through grit and determination, I should try to behave this way, even if I don't feel like it, and so I had been trying to live that way for a while, but it clearly wasn't working. I wasn't getting results in my marriage and I don't think I was getting fruit in the rest any areas of my life, any work or otherwise, living that way. And then, through this new understanding of the gospel, I understood oh, this is describing what love looks like when it's implanted in the heart, and that was what I was experiencing too is that I didn't have to grit my teeth and try to behave so much, as it was just happening, and my, my heart towards my wife and others in work situations was just completely different, and even if the situations maybe improved or maybe they didn't, I realized that I have joy, I have peace, and I remember the two verses that I just really clung onto and claimed all the time, multiple times a day, for that first couple years was Ephesians 1, 3, through 6. And we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. We already have it. Let's just live out the gift that we've already been given. These aren't things that we try to do. They're things that God has placed in our hearts, because Christ is no longer in the grave, he's risen. And in Colossians 1, 22, it was the other one that kept coming back to, and then later on it was I think it's 1st John, 3, 17 that says as Christ is, so are we in this world. And I was like what my mind is blown, like how has this been in the Bible the whole time that we've been seated with Christ in heavenly places, that the same status that Christ has in heaven? He's given that to us as a free gift and it just, it really just changed my life. It changed how I viewed God, it changed how I viewed others, it changed how I treated everybody, especially my wife, and like we could live at peace. And I do now and I live in freedom and understanding that sin doesn't have any power over me anymore. And just because before I thought that if I sinned, if I did a sinful act, that's what made me a sinner, and then I came to understand in freedom that no, I committed that sinful act because I hadn't received the goodness that Christ had offered, because you were a sinner, because my identity wasn't a sinner.

Speaker 2: 2:01:59

That's what you were, so you didn't. Your sin didn't make you a sinner. You were a sinner and so you sinned, and so much more. Now that you are righteous, there should be righteous fruit, and if there isn't, it just means that there's something that you don't understand yet or something that you're not setting your mind to because you already have the qualified heart, because he's done that through Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 2:02:23

Exactly, yeah, and all that was just hitting so hard and it was just the best thing. And then our marriage started getting a lot better. We started communicating a lot better, we started actually having fun together and doing fun stuff again and and go on dates and just hanging out and going for bike rides and going for runs, Just living life together and laughing and enjoying life because of this incredible gift that God had given us and I. One of the things that I that I picked up again as I started just running when I was in elementary school I love to go for runs. I wasn't very good at ball sports but I was great at just running around like a little kid, just careless and free, and that was one of the things that hit me in that same time period is just going outside and just going for a run and just running like a kid again, just completely free, and just enjoying the birds and the fresh air and the greenness of the grass and the ways the water's rippling behind the duck that's swimming on the lake and all this stuff. So I started like spending this time distance running and would oftentimes be listening to, started listening to the death of life podcast during that time Started listening to the Bible on tape, audio versions of the Bible and and then just spending time in solitude and just praying while I'm out there on the trails too, and it's just been like it's been my secret place of just cruising around through the woods and the trails wherever we live, whether in Colorado or up here in Wyoming, and it's it's been absolutely freeing and incredible and I don't feel like I have this giant weight on my chest anymore that I always felt before or I would be trying to do these extreme sports. Because the thing is, when you're like when you're on a dirt bike and you're ripping through the woods at realistically probably for me probably like 34 miles an hour, maybe more, If you don't spend all your energy focusing on the present, you're going to crash. And that was totally an escape for me and all this extreme sports stuff that I was doing and this adrenaline junkie activities whether I'm rock climbing, a 400 foot tower in Moab, Utah, or I'm like ripping around in my dirt bike or whatever it was totally a coping mechanism to escape from the present, to escape from all the craziness that's going on in my life, where I just had to focus on that one thing. But then, coming into freedom, I didn't have to do that anymore. I could just I didn't have to be an adrenaline junkie and just be living right on the edge, just like pumping full of adrenaline. I could just live at peace and honestly just enjoy the subtleties of life the full colors, the birds, the cryptobiotic soil that lives out in the desert, Like all these things that didn't really mean that much to me before were just everything. Was just so vibrant and bright and beautiful and just peaceful and joyful. Like my life is so much lighter and I don't worry about things like lose my job. So God's got me under control and before that stuff would stress me out, Like I need to take care of my family. No, God's going to take care of my family and whether he uses me to play a part in that or not, God takes care of the birds and the flowers and he'll take care of my family and that's not an excuse to be lazy, but I don't need to stress about that stuff anymore and it's just. It's completely different. Everything in life is just so much joyful Like I find myself laughing a lot more and really caring about people a ton more and just seeing that Christ has given us all of this, and I didn't know that until my late 20s. But I can live my best life from now on and live the life that God's created me to live, and that's to love people and to love them well. Hmm, amen.

Speaker 2: 2:06:30

Well, man, you and your wife have been a testimony to me and a blessing to me. Spending time with you guys and hearing your hearts, the way you guys have stewarded your life in light of freedom, is a blessing, and I know that it will continue to be so. Man, thank you so much for sharing your heart and your story, and God's going to use it to bring glory to his name. Thank you, wow. If you have been seeking excitement to mask what life is like for you, if you've been just always searching for the next rush and maybe, maybe that had the answers for you, then this is for you. If you don't want that anymore, if you want the peace that passes, understanding. This prayer is for you. Father, thank you that I am complete in you, that the whole deity of that, the whole deity, was in Christ and I've been filled in him, and that I can move forward without the need for adrenaline to push my life, and that the truth has spoken a better word over me than any situation, any circumstance. That I am free in you. Thank you for that truth In Jesus' name amen.