The Wild Courage Podcast
Real stories of redemption from men & women who have the Courage to be vulnerable and tell their stories of hope
The Wild Courage Podcast
Jordan Weaver, a candid conversation. Host of The Flatbed Podcast
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Jordan shares his story of becoming a pastor and the toll it took on his life. The lessons he has learned through the hard times he's faced. He has overcome a lot and is still in the process of his healing journey. Jordan is the host of the Flatbed Podcast and is involved in the Hondo Rodeo production company.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Wild Courage podcast. Today I'm in my old stomping grounds with my newer friend, Jordan Weaver. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come join me in the Best Western Plus in downtown Wickenburg, Arizona.
SPEAKER_04You know things are going good when you're staying in the best western plus. Yeah. Not just the best western. Yeah. I've stayed in some best western minuses. And this is nicer for sure. Yeah. Uh yeah, thanks. I appreciate it. It's nice to be a part of a podcast where I've had no setup. I literally just walked in, it's all ready to go. Shut down. This is, man, I wish I could do other people's podcasts all the time. This is so much better. Yeah, it's so much easier. I didn't tell you this before we started. So just here's the here's the pre-qualifier. Um, two things. I've talked myself out of doing this podcast already three times today. Three different times today. I was like, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. Uh to the degree that I got home from dropping my daughter off a minute ago, and I'm not a nap guy. I don't take naps. And I walked in, laid down. I'd stress myself out about it so much. And as somebody who's not like a stressed person, and laid down and I actually fell asleep and took a nap. Like nice. Uh so I'm glad it didn't take you any longer to get stuff set up because there was still time I might have still bailed out. So Well, thanks for not. Here's why I didn't. The thing I got to go to in May with you guys is still one of the most impactful weekends of my life. And I remember thinking if I'm ever gonna talk about what we'll talk about today, it'll be with Jeremy and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna line it up. If that ever happens, we'll do it. And so can't tell you that, right? Like I can't tell you like Jeremy, this is how I feel like this is gonna go, like I'm not gonna say anything. And you called me yesterday and you're like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? So the reason the reason that uh I talked myself back into it uh four times was I just I don't I I just kind of felt like this was probably gonna happen at some point.
SPEAKER_03So Well, thank you. I I know you're don't take it lightly, and I I get the the weight of of doing stuff like this, especially sometimes coming on this one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, and I I mean I think if somebody's listening that knows me at all, I it's been two years since everything in my life changed, and I haven't ever talked about it. I haven't talked about it at all. And I do a podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I've talked a lot. There's been a lot of communication. I've been like a pretty visible job and haven't said a word about any of this.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, that's where we first got to meet is um at our retreat the last fall? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, May. It was May this year. Oh, spring.
SPEAKER_04Or May of 25, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And uh our buddy Dan made you go in the street. I'm so mad. And then he couldn't make it. I was so mad. That's the truth.
SPEAKER_04He's like, hey, I I I owed him a favor, and he said I'm calling him my favor, and we're going to this retreat. And I'm like, Dan, listen, like I hear the word retreat and just instantly no offense, but just like it's in the woods with a bunch of guys. Yeah. You know? And he's like, I'm calling him a favor. So I'm like, all right, all right. So then he calls me and he's like, Man, I hate to do this. He goes, I I had something come up, something with family, something he couldn't get out of, which fair enough. I was like, hey, no problem. That's great. Perfect. No big deal. I'm not gonna have to go in the woods and throw throw axes with a bunch of guys. No chance of gay things happening in the woods now. I didn't know no hand holding. And uh, he's like, No, no, deal's the deal. It's not the deal. And I, you know, I was as mad as I was about that. I I know that's a god thing for sure. So shout out Dan and just what a blessing it turned out to be. So yeah, he's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's fun to reconnect with old friends in this process. And I'm sure you having a podcast has probably reconnected you with folks that you lost track with over the years.
SPEAKER_04And it it has for me, because what we do is so lighthearted, um it's not like a Pat McAvee level lighthearted, but it's not, it's not a spiritually charged podcast, right? And so what it's done is given me kind of permission to call people that I've always wondered about or wanted to get to know better and be like, hey, if I just called and said, Will you talk to me? Then that, I mean, I'm sure they would have, but it'd been weird, right? And so it's let me kind of get to know people. It's opened some doors. Um, I actually sold, I don't know if you know this, I sold a podcast.
SPEAKER_03I know. I saw it and we haven't got to really catch up, so I was stoked to find out what all went down with that. Yeah, and I mean it'll all tie in.
SPEAKER_04Um, how much do we have time? I mean, is this how much okay, okay, just I I I figured. Um, it's all gonna tie in, but I was at a place where I just kind of needed to not be the boss of anything. Um, I told God not that long after leaving Oregon, uh God, please don't ever make me be anybody else's boss ever again. Because I love people, I feel things deeply. I cover that by being kind of a dick about things sometimes. It's just not a good situation. I just don't want to I don't want to be anybody else's boss ever again. And that wasn't enough. I think I even got to a place where I was like, I don't want to be my own boss for a while. Like, somebody tell me what to do. Literally, literally, like, uh, and there's some there's some medical applications to that too that I'm sure we'll get to, but uh no, I just needed to, I just needed to kind of follow for a little while. And and this group, the Hondo, um, this is they've had their second year event in Phoenix this year. They're going to the Superdome, they're putting on rodeos and concerts and stuff like that. And so they've taken over that. And the 1017 project, which is the beef donation.
SPEAKER_03Have we talked about that? I I know about it.
SPEAKER_04Um, so they uh took all the board seats at all and we're we're rolling and going with that, and it's been great.
SPEAKER_03How did that marry with your podcast, which by the way, is called the Flatbed Podcast? If nobody knows what we're talking about. Yeah. I assume no one might be able to do that. No, I assume everyone does. That's why I was just gonna let it go by because it's a monster.
SPEAKER_04Well, and and so what that's done is it's the joke is it's kind of I'm kind of a Swiss Army knife with that company right now because um leadership background, the podcast, the communications media, I'm getting ready to go do a media tour, which is like morning shows, radio shows, and stuff like that, promoting the event in New Orleans and working alongside. I'm not sure how much this we're allowed to talk about, but some of the politicians in the state of Louisiana that have gotten involved with the beef donation portion of it. And so that's kind of the joke. It's like, what does Jordan do? Well, kind of a little bit of everything. Sure. You know, if there's just a different hat. And it's a small team. It's a really small team, which is great. Um, they can pivot quick, which I really like. Uh I it's hard for me to work in a system that's like big and red taped. Corporate. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's nice to be athletic.
SPEAKER_04Yep, that's exactly right. You know, we have Zoom calls and everybody can fit on the screen. And so um, what that means is in a growing business or company, there's just kind of gaps that develop as it grows. And I've really enjoyed being able to be in a support. I really like our our CEO and our you know, our team that we he's got in place. I'm not that old, but I'm old enough and he's younger than I am. I it's like I'm getting to serve in a role I wish I could have had somebody help me, if that makes sense. Yep. And that's not to blame anybody, it's not saying I didn't have any help, but I really needed what I'm hoping I can do for them is what I just man, I really need somebody to have done for me. And that's been great. I've loved it. And if you've never been to a Honda event, dude, it's the best. It is the best. I've rodeoed my whole life, and it's it's like an orchestra where like if somebody plays one instrument, it's cool. If somebody plays another instrument, it's cool. But man, when you combine all of them, you know, that combination of the concert and the digital media and the top eight contestants in each event and the top stock and uh is that the format? Yeah, eight events or uh eight contestants per event and a concert at the end of it. And so they sold out Chase Field all three nights where the Diamondbacks play this year. Oh, nice. Yeah, it was ranked. It was so cool. That's a big stadium. Yeah, yeah. So there's a little bit of a dopamine element to it that has probably been a little bit I'm not gonna say it's helped me, but it's made me feel a little bit better sometimes. There's like energy in the room. That's a lot going on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, and you come out to be a part of it. I mean, that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04Oh well, and that's been so like I asked, I asked our CEO, I said, because I had a rodeo and I said, Do you mind if I take the artist into the arena and like just kind of give them a tour? Because you can't buy tickets that would allow you into the arena, right? He's like, if you think they'll go. So I got to take uh Treaty Oak Revival. They were pulling cinches for for Tilden Hooper. I told the contestants, I went to the contestants' room, and I said, if I'm up there, you guys just treat the artist like one of the guys, and they're like, Can we talk to him? I'm like, heck hey, you can talk to him. So by the time we got up there, the contestants were like, hey, jump in. So uh Treaty Oak was pulling cinches for Tilden Hooper. Uh I didn't line this part of it up, but Zeke got up on stage and sang rock star with Nickel back. I took I took John Pardy into the arena and hung out at the shoots during the timed event. And then the last night, Riley Green went and did a tour out behind the shoots, and Zeke Thurston's like, hey, can you get me out? And Riley's like, What does that mean? Like, what? Like, this is not this is a very real rodeo experience, right? So the pressure. Yeah. So the stock, and and and of course it's Riley Green, right? And so, I mean, we got like a whole stadium full of girls that are like, oh my gosh. And so the stock contractor next to him is like, just stay right here, like, like, don't let him turn his head this way. We want when that shoot opens, we want the horse to look that way. So he kind of stands there and Zeke goes 89 and a half. And so what we're getting-and they got to be a part of it. Well, that's the thing. It's that symbiosis of like the the artists are just as excited about the rodeo as the rodeo is for the artist. And and those sorts of moments have happened in the past, but they're in like the back tunnel at Houston where they're excited to meet the contestants, contestants are excited to meet artists, but it's kind of hidden. We're putting it out on the front.
SPEAKER_03And you're capturing it all on video and yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, absolutely. And so that was the best part is that afterwards, everybody that shared a Riley Green video after the Honda, everybody's got a video of him singing on stage, right? We have a video of him behind the shoots getting out Zeke Thurston on a horse. He goes 89 and a half. And then, you know, that horse does what he does, and Zeke does what he does. And this Riley's like, We've got, you know, now we've got a fan. Treatio, same thing. And um, John Party knows some of the contestants he ropes a little bit. And so just for him to be able to be in the arena and kind of hanging out, they shared a lot of his media content stuff from in the arena. And so just that sort of innovation type stuff from a rodeo background has been life-giving.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's really that's really a great concept because music and rodeo is like I went to the American when I was a senior in high school at the National FFA convention after the rodeo in Kansas City.
SPEAKER_04You gotta clarify it. Yeah, no, the American means something different now. That's a rodeo in Dallas. Yeah, that you were out of America Royal. Sorry. Yeah, there was no American when you were a senior. American Royal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Royal in Kansas City. And the rodeo got over and a a flatbed semi pulls out into the arena and Garth Brooks was. Oh, yeah. But it was like right when he first was coming on the radio. No way. So it's it's like that's been happening forever. But to marry those two things together for them to get to feel like to be a part of it, then they're hooked, man. They're gonna be, they're gonna be asking you guys, hey, when's the next one?
SPEAKER_04That well, and that's what we're getting now. We're getting managers of of people, and I uh in New Orleans, we've got Cody Johnson, uh Jason Aldean, Creed, uh Old Dominion, Leonard's Kinnard. Cool stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. Creed's making a comeback too. Dude. So was Nickelback. Remember that for a while, Nickelback was kind of like jokes, right? Yeah. And uh, but now we're getting them reaching out to us because we're having success in stadiums and stuff. And so there's the joke that like every rapper wants to be an athlete and every athlete wants to be a rapper. Yeah. Same is true with country music and rodeo. And still want to be cowboys. Yeah, I mean, it's not bad for your for your public image that you're on the back of the shoots hanging out with cowboys when you're singing country music. And so yeah, it gives you some street cred. Yeah, instead of allowing those moments, we're kind of cultivating them, creating them. And so that part's been fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's awesome. What a what a cool thing to organically start out doing your podcast. When did you start?
SPEAKER_01I think we started in twenty two. Started in twenty-two. So four years ago.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Crazy has been that long. It goes by fast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Mine mine this turns five years old this month. Really? But I haven't I'm not as consistent as I'm supposed to be. But yeah, it is crazy how fast it goes.
SPEAKER_04You know, they say that's the trick though, is that if I decide I want to be a painter, I need to understand that I'll look back someday at the paintings I start and they're gonna suck. The people who make it are the people who keep going. Yeah. Right. And I think I I heard a weird stat. I heard that it's in the 90s, 90 something percent of podcasts never make it past like their third episode.
SPEAKER_03I I I've read that too, because nobody listens to it and they quit because they want the instant instant gratification of it. And I mean, for the first year, I had like my wife and four of my friends were the only ones that listened to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I'm glad because they were so bad. You can also tell, I think it's that it's the instant gratification. And then there's the thought of like, I think I'll be better at this when I start, without realizing the process. Like, there is a certain amount of skill or talent or whatever to being able to hold a conversation for longer than five minutes. And I think a lot of people practice that five-minute conversation in their truck, and they're like, I got this. I know this recording, and they're like, shoot, I've used every word I know. There's a story of a of a photographer of a lady in New York, and she when she died, they were going through her apartment and they found all these pictures. She was a photographer and they were amazing, but she'd already died and she never marketed them. She never sold them nothing. And those became super famous and super expensive because she wasn't doing it to sell. She wasn't creating a project for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And I think that's probably the trick to maybe most things in life is that if you don't love it enough to do it that way, you're starting with half a tank anyway. Yeah. You know, I mean, your tank's gotta almost be filled by the process of doing it. And so, um, I think podcasts for me were the same. I just needed an outlet. And so I don't know if that's been the same in your in in your case, but it was just good for me to have an outlet for it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I've said this all along, like I don't love it. I feel cult to it, like I feel like I'm supposed to be doing it. Um, because I don't take it lightly that people trust me with their stories.
SPEAKER_04Well, look at the time you took to set this up and get it. I mean, it's obviously something you take, like there's a seriousness to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I care. Because I want to I want to honor you and not be like, oh my gosh, is this gonna fall over and is this gonna work? You know what I mean? Like well, and probably if you're like me, you've had things fall over before. Yeah, we were talking before we hit record, like all the mistakes we've made.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, broken tables, table.
SPEAKER_03I did like early on, I was so excited to interview Todd Pierce because he's a friend of mine and he does powerful things. So he came up all the way from southeastern Idaho to where I live, which is quite a drive. And I was so excited, and I forgot to plug my computer into the thing. So we had a wonderful two and a half hour conversation that didn't happen, and I still haven't got him back.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's gonna happen. It felt so good. It's gonna happen. Like I said, that's that that's part of that pay in your dues thing. Yeah, it's it's gonna happen. What's what's the hardest part of like every now and then I get a podcast where I'm like this job is worth it for that? And then there's other podcasts that feel different. In your mind, what are the ones that are harder for you to do? Well, no, no, okay, let me ask a different because I don't want to sound like I'm targeting anybody. Is it hard for you to find people that break through the shell into that lower level that's so rare? And you know what I'm talking about. Like every now and then a conversation will break through and you're like, man, we're into the rich stuff now. And that's so rare and so hard.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I that's why I take this I don't take this slightly because I feel like it's not fair for me to judge someone's vulnerability based on my vulnerability. And you know what I mean because you're good at this. I can tell when it costs somebody something, and that means everything to me. Yeah. If it costs them to share something, right, and to me, it might not be that vulnerable, but I know it is to them. Yeah, I just feel like they want a dignified. I feel thank you so much because I could tell that that was hard for you. And it just it's so humbling, again, that people trust me with their stories because a lot of times, like yesterday, I was in Weatherford and I did a podcast with the guy that I'd never met. And that's um that's hard because I don't I don't know their personality or I don't like you and I have talked on the phone for hours and we got to spend a weekend together, and so the you know what I mean? There's there's some relation there. Yeah. But this guy is a cavalry trainer. I I don't I didn't even know his name till an hour before he walked in. That's brave brave of you to go through with it. Yeah, the good news is is he's listening to the podcast, and most people that come do this podcast anyway, they know what they're saying yes to. Sure. Yeah, that does help. So that helps a lot. But yeah, I I've definitely had I I can't can you judge yours? Can you tell that they're good when you're doing them? Yeah. I cannot, dude. The ones that I thought were like, wow, this is rough sledding, like get the most feedback. Really? And th there's been a couple that I've done that I was just Well, that's different though.
SPEAKER_04That's a that's that's not the same. The ones that are good versus the ones that get good feedback, those two things are not the same. And and that's not that that's not intended as a correction. I'm saying what it depends on how you measure good. And and and again, not that I didn't that sounded like a correction. I didn't mean it that way. Like when I can I can tell in the middle of it when we're achieving what I set out to do this podcast for now, there are times where like a not very good one is going to just be skim across the surface and people will laugh. And one of our biggest episodes was a series we did with guys that were just almost blackout drunk and they were laughing and it was fun. Tons of feedback, tons and tons and tons of feedback. But was it good?
SPEAKER_03No, I mean, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's a good it worked differentiating. Um Yeah, I the in some of them I've been my favorite that I got a lot out of, which is what's cool about it. And they didn't hit. I've had that, and I was like, I don't care. That was so amazing.
SPEAKER_04Well, and when it's like that, you don't care because like, am I gonna give up the satisfaction that I got for an external qualifier? And I can't. I mean, I I've lived that life. I d this is not me saying that I'm not prone to external validation, I very much am. But I had come out of such a season of just being torched in a different career, thankfully, I I'm not gonna give back the good just because it maybe didn't get the yeah, you're yeah, you're absorbing it. Yeah. Yeah. Well that well, uh real quick before we move, how do you measure success on an episode?
SPEAKER_03You if if I know kind of what I already said, like if I know it costs somebody something, I feel so much gratitude and love towards them, and it moves me personally. Yeah. And if you're not in the room, it it might go over your head because there's body language, and I I didn't record these until more recently, and even then you can't always tell, but I'm like I'm impacted deeply by that, and it might again not come across as like super vulnerable, but it was for that person, yeah. And that really m moves me because I can tell that it was costly for them to share that. And and again, the whole point of this is to give hope.
SPEAKER_04So it's and so and so you no matter what, if that mark is achieved, no matter what, that's a success.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, all of them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_03I think I have never had one where I was like, I'm not putting this out. Have you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's just not good.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, and I'll I'll swing for the fences sometimes when someone's like, I don't want to do a podcast, and you know, I'll I'll persuade them into doing it. And I'm like, no, you're right. Um and I and and I'm somebody that would post a train wreck. Yeah. You know, but I just don't want to do anything that's gonna, you know, embarrass anybody or anything like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the the hard part is is there's a lot of remorse like the next morning. I've probably 50% of the time I get phone calls. Social hangover. Yep. Don't I can't I Yeah, I get that. And I'm like, it's gonna be all right. It was it was good. You because we overthink everything, right? And it's like, oh, I I either said too much about this and I don't want blowback. And I've actually seen the opposite happen of like it opened the doors for conversations that needed to have happened for years, and healing and redemption took place in the midst of the fear of having that hard conversation with whoever that it's usually a parent. Yeah. And so I but I also I I didn't give you the spiel that I normally get, we just kind of jumped into it. But I also tell everybody like, I have no agenda. This is your story, and there's no I'm not trying to get it's not a gotcha thing. I don't it's your story, whatever you want to share, whatever you don't. Like, I'm not gonna pry anything. So just trying to like take the pressure off too, you know.
SPEAKER_04There's a uh Study that I thought was so fascinating about Alzheimer's, they said that they started to notice an increase in creativity with Alzheimer's patients. And the doctors would the reason they were baffled is that the part of your brain that deteriorates in Alzheimer's is a creative element. But these people were noticing, they were noticing a spike in creativity. So I got to studying it, and what they found was that the prefrontal cortex, which is like your logic center, your editor, was deteriorating faster than the creative center. And so what that meant was the editor was turning off, and that creativity had always been there. And so it was just able to be exposed. They didn't become more creative, they became more free. And I think that that's something I try to, I try to think about every now and then is how much is my editor stepping in and suppressing or toking down what would otherwise be true? And those moments, like you're saying, this, this like, oh, I don't know if I should have said that. I shouldn't have said that. Like, man, if it was real in the moment, whatever my my view of truth has changed a lot in the last two years. I have a very different relationship with truth now. And I was never anti-truth, to be clear, I was not ever against the truth. I never thought it was wrong. I just have a very different relationship with it now that the consequences of truth will always in the end be better than the consequences of trying to soften it or navigate around it. And so those moments of like, you're almost better just to close your eyes and go with it. If it was true.
SPEAKER_03If it's yeah. Because again, the the cliches, right? Like the truth will set you free.
SPEAKER_04It might be painful in the middle, but there's a freeing element to it for sure. You've been around rodeo enough to know there's a there's a terminology of simple, complex, simple. And at a rodeo, you'll see a guy riding a saddlebronk horse. Happened the other night. I was at a rodeo with my son. We're watching the saddlebronk, and he says, he goes, You think I could you think I could do that? I'm like, no. But but in his mind, he's like, those guys make it look so easy. It's pretty simple. Well, if you're asked the Saddlebronk rider, he'd go, Yeah, it's pretty simple. But between my son's simple and his simple is this field of complex. Simple, complex, back to simple, right? And I think I've got a very simple, complex, simple relationship with truth right now where I can say the truth will set you free. But that means something very, very different on the backside of a lot of complexity from when I used to say it. The truth will set you free is a much deeper concept.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of new new nuance to it and complexities for sure. Yeah. And it and it's it's crazy because what we think to be true two years ago, five years ago, and we would bet the farm on it. One day you wake up slowly and you're like, that actually isn't the truth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, there's a difference, I think, between truth and being right. I can tell you the truth. I might just be wrong. Yeah. But it doesn't mean I'm white. It's your truth. The truth is, I know it. Yeah. And I think that there's a universal truth that I don't have any control over. I think people can abuse the term my truth. And and I don't know how much that I want to get into today, given everything we're going to get into, but my truth can get scary because I feel like it's mine to manipulate or control. That's not what I mean. I can tell you what I believe to be true today. Yep. But if in two years from now that's changed, the truth is to go back and go, I got that wrong. Yep. I wasn't lying. I was just wrong. And there is a difference between being right and being truthful. As long as I'm doing my best to be as truthful as I know how to be. If it turns out I'm wrong, there's a I heard a guy say the worst thing an honest person can do is an honest mistake. It's an honest mistake. You can live with it.
SPEAKER_03You know? And especially if you didn't hurt a bunch of people by it. Well, and and sometimes we do. You're going to, dude.
SPEAKER_04And that's life's life's message. So so here's we'll do the best we can. And I guess if I have my social hangover tomorrow, I'll call and be like, please, God, delete all that. Uh I learned how to lie in church. Do tell. And it was a slow frog in the boiling water process. And I think that I haven't talked about it. And the reason I haven't talked about it for the last two years and everything that went on and everything that's gone on in my life that's changed is I didn't know what was right. And I didn't know. I would hear versions of it and I would think maybe that that's true. You know, if I if the last thing I said to you before you get in your truck to leave Arizona is I was like, man, I just think you're such a fraud. Like, no, I'm not. But then you're gonna think about it. You're gonna drive off and you'd be like, well, why do you say that? Well, does he see something I don't see? And like anybody with any amount of self-awareness is going to wonder if an accusation is true.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Right? So I in 2012 moved to Oregon to start a church. Where did you move from? Fort Worth. Dribbing Fort Worth. I was 30 years old, 29, I was 29 years old.
SPEAKER_04You know what's crazy? I thought about that the other day. I was still a baby. I mean, 29-year-old grown man, but like you can rent a car and have kids. I was four years into being able to rent a car. Yeah. That frontal lobe was still and I have for all I know, I was a late developer anyway. Um but we would go up there rodeo in the summers, and there just wasn't a church that I I I at no point, not for one second in my entire 43 years of life have I ever said, man, I'd love to be the pastor of a church. I've never said I want to be in occupational ministry. Um raised in church, my dad's a church, my dad's a pastor, my uncle's a pastor, my grandpa was a pastor. Um, so there's a there's a certain amount of business of church, you know, church incorporated. There's just some some basic kind of stuff that almost a trained monkey could put together as a successful church. I don't know if you're supposed to say that, but like there's a there's a model that you can follow, right? For sure. And so we'd go up there road, and in the part there where we would go, there just wasn't really anything like that. And so I d looking back, I don't know why I agreed to do it. Um, if I really thought about it, I could probably rethink what led to that. But it almost felt like a responsibility. You know, like you sign up for two years in the military and you're like, okay, I'm gonna serve my time, I'm gonna get my two years in, and then we'll see where it goes from there. And so God opened the doors, and I know that's where I was supposed to go. That's all I know. I know where we're supposed to go. And so um, 29 years old, I'm living in a cold area in the north where I didn't want to be. That's the other thing. I didn't want to move the day that I moved. I didn't want to go the day that I went there. Now, imagine that. I'm going somewhere I don't want to be to do a job I don't want to do. Very similar, I felt like maybe to Jonah, to be honest, is like giving up fine. This is where I'm supposed to go, I'll do it. How do you where's the truth in that? Because when you start into a new area and a new community with people you don't know, and you're there to do a job you don't want to do in a place you don't want to be, where what does the truth look like? Because you can't be too transparent, you can't be too vulnerable because if you tell people day one, like, I don't want to be here and I'm gone in two years. Yeah, it double expedite your two years. Thank you. Yeah. They're like, Let me just save you two years, you can go home.
SPEAKER_01And so I didn't it just started to work. Almost from the minute we got there, it took off and it started to work and it started to grow.
SPEAKER_04And I mean, I'm leaving in two years. Game over. April 2014. I mean, I got my I can see the the the airplane, it's loaded up, cargo on, there's the landing strip, there's the takeoff spot, 2014. I'm going back to Texas. And our second Easter service, and and Jeremy, this place was in the middle of nowhere to the point that we eventually would have people fly out from headquarters in Springfield, Missouri to come see what we were doing. We were breaking we were breaking the molds in ways that weren't measurable. They didn't understand it. They would fly in and they go, where do these people come from? The f we weren't close to anything. Our second Easter, we had 970 people. Jeez. In a town that had a charter school that went to eighth grade, a post office, and a gas station, a little country store.
SPEAKER_01The end. The end. Nothing near it. 970 people.
SPEAKER_04And so everybody around you is like, this is awesome. Congratulations, man. This is so great. You're doing such a great job. And like all the external validation and the whole time on the inside, I'm just, it feels like the the prison walls are just getting higher and up.
SPEAKER_03That runway's getting longer away.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so um, fast forward, we bought some property and we have people just jumping in willing to help. And you're new. You're new to that area, and so you're the new guy. So you don't know where all the little hidden social landmines are. You don't know that that family doesn't talk to that family. You're just like, man, I don't know, just you know, I'm I'm I'm the out-of-towner. Um, and instead of being the new guy, all of a sudden you're kind of like, it's cool and it's working. And there's we bought 56 acres, we started the cattle project, and in December of 2014, half a year past the exit date, I went to the board and I went to my family that was there, and I said, I don't know how to say it any clearer. I don't know how to ask for help any clearer than this, but I I'm done. I didn't save anything for the swim home because I thought I was gonna be here for two years. I would drive all night to get home from somewhere else. I mean, I was all in because once it's built, in my mind, once it's built, that's my exit. Bought some property, built a building, church is good, like it's done.
SPEAKER_01That's supposed to be but it became a prison and and there's some debate.
SPEAKER_04There's some debate uh within the relationship that the marriage that I was in at the time. There's still some debate over the conversation, but here was my experience. Here's how I experienced it. I guess that's a good way to put it. This is how I lived it.
SPEAKER_01My understanding was this if you leave, you're gonna do it without me and the kids because we're staying, because there's security and there's no plan. We've had that conversation, and that's not how both sides remember it.
SPEAKER_04So I'm not gonna say that I'm right. I'm just gonna tell you in the moment that's how I experienced it.
SPEAKER_01And I was raised in a religious home, your marriage comes first.
SPEAKER_04And even if I misunderstood or wasn't right, that's what I got out of it. And keep in mind, after two and a half years, I'm toast.
SPEAKER_03Like I got nothing. Did did you have people under you? Did you have like associate pastors or anything?
SPEAKER_04Well, that's the other thing. There wasn't just a ton of uh like real highly developed spiritual heritage there. It was new. And it was designed for that. It was designed for people that hadn't found a home and church anywhere else. It was a startup, too. You feel it all the time. We hear all the time, like, you're not here believe who's here, you're not gonna believe who's here. And I started telling people, like, why don't you believe they'd be here?
SPEAKER_01That's what this place is for. Um, but because of that, I was like, okay, I guess we're staying.
SPEAKER_04And to her credit, I was so burnt out that she's like, well, then what would the plan be? And I'm like, I don't know. And it wasn't until way later. Remember the story in the Bible where God tells Abraham, go and I'll tell you where I went. I didn't know where we're going.
SPEAKER_03I just knew I was done. Gotta have a Were you, can I ask some questions? Yeah, yeah, please. Were you like doing like marriage counseling? And were you were you doing all the roles of Oh, in the beginning, I mean, like it's any startup, right?
SPEAKER_04You you everybody gotta do that?
SPEAKER_03You gotta wear and I'm a terrible marriage counselor. Like I'm horrible. I'm like rub some dirt on it. I don't know. But that's the crazy thing about church is the guy that's up front behind the with the mic, he somehow's become the counselor, he's become the confidant, the priest, the the confessionals come to you. Like there's it's such a flawed system in the structure of church in the West, anyway. So I'm just like kind of picturing you like kind of gung-ho at first, because it's new and there's probably some newness elements to like and God's breathing on this thing clearly, yeah. Which that's gotta be confusing too, right? Because there's a grace on you to do this, and at the same time you're being tore up inside, but it's working.
SPEAKER_04Well, and and that's gotta be confusing. I've been in church around church enough. Like I said, I've been raised in the business of church by great people. I got my the men in my family are great men. I know a little bit of the pitfalls to avoid, you know, but it was very personality driven, and I would beg for it not to be. I did not want to be the centerpiece, I didn't want a whole church built on my back. And the people that came alongside to help were good people. They were good-hearted, well-meaning people, but didn't understand the the spiritual leadership stuff at the degree that you need to run something that big. I should have, it sounds crazy now, but I should have cut it off at 150 and said, if another person walks through that door, go start another church somewhere else because we're full, we can't do this. Yeah, do it. With the structure that we have, we can't, we can't continue to grow. We were never under a thousand again after that on the holidays, after that second Easter.
SPEAKER_01Dang.
SPEAKER_04So they said, okay, we'll help. Well, there's, I mean, talk about fatal mistakes. You know, you look back over the the story, and the fatal mistake was that in my guilt and in my burnout and in my my shame of feeling like I'm supposed to be okay, I'm supposed to be happy here, and like my family's not leaving, and I okay, I'll stay. I they just swarmed me with assistance in ways they knew how. But I was standing up and preaching every Sunday morning, and I was responsible, and now all of a sudden, and and this is this is part of why I haven't maybe talked about it, is there's some bitterness that I had to work through because it started with one family, where when the momentum starts to wane, and all of a sudden you're not just a vibrant, bright-eyed color behind your eyes person, you start to kind of feel the weight of it. They use that as an opportunity because they really wanted to be the spiritual leaders of the neighborhood. They wanted to be the gurus, and it's this appeal to authority, right? Like, I can't tell you this is what I think, but I can tell you Will so-and-so says, and it's this appeal to authority, like because he says it, and I'm gonna disagree with you using his words. And they're looking for a platform. Oh, what and and now instead of being like we're a part of this big thing, because they had been, we're a part of this big thing. Now it was, well, we're gonna put ourselves in like spiritual authority over this big thing. And what I needed was to leave. I'm I'm I'm telling you, I should have left. Not mad, but if God said that I was done, that's all the confirmation I should have had. Um, and so I we we did everything imaginable. You cannot, you cannot imagine. It's like getting to the surface, and the surface of the water is frozen, and you can see air, but you can't get to it. We started growing this and growing that and doing that, because I'm like, if I'm staying, then I have to change this whole region to somewhere that I can survive. And so I I decided I was gonna drink the whole ocean, right? And so for eight more years, we stayed. For eight, eight, eight, eight more years.
SPEAKER_01Um and uh I will I will tell you by the end of it, I was dragging by on the boat. I was done. And I I didn't have any vision for where we were going. I didn't care. I didn't care if it worked, I didn't care if it didn't work. I would lay on the floor.
SPEAKER_04I remember I remember telling my wife at the time, I was laying on the floor and I said, Have you ever seen roadkill that's been run over so many times, it starts to blend in and look like pavement. Like you can kind of make the outline of what that animal might have been, but it just kind of looks like pavement now.
SPEAKER_01I said, I'm there. I don't want to ever even mention this topic lightly because I know there's people who have been through it.
SPEAKER_04I had a a cousin in December that actually ended his own life, and so I don't want there to ever be a moment where I I casually reference it, but there were times where I would think about like what I want to be careful with this. I can't say, I can't honestly truthfully say I was to the point I was considering it. I don't, I don't, I don't really my heart of hearts believe I ever was. I think I just wanted it to stop hurting. Yeah. Yeah, is there a way, like even the like, is there a big enough risk that if this doesn't work I got in a place of glory? At least everybody's like, oh man, he was such a good guy, not a great driver, it turns out, or whatever, you know, but yeah, I just wanted, I wanted, I didn't want to quit on my family, but I wanted to be done.
SPEAKER_01And then and then it got worse because then I just didn't feel anything at all. You know, saying hypothermia, you stop feeling cold.
SPEAKER_04I got where I just didn't feel anything. I had nothing. Numb. I mean numb. I felt like you could have handed me a million dollars cash, and logically, you go through it and you're like, man, that's awesome. You could have told me that my house was burning down and I needed to get out. And logically, I would have like, yeah, I know that's gonna be real bad if I stay in here. But whatever that ignition switch is, the triggers to get up and get out or to rescue the people around you. Like there was nothing functioning left. So what that did is it put the burden on people who have jumped in and like, I have people cleaning my stalls and I have people doing this and doing this. Like I had, but I was standing up preaching every Sunday, and people don't understand the burden that that takes out of you every Sunday. Because no matter how many jobs they take off your plate, you're still the one that everybody's looking at. So the criticism comes and the burden of leadership comes. And I'm, you know, I'm getting trotted out there every Sunday morning trying. And I never preached a sermon casually ever. That was the one thing I always held to is I was going to put in research. I was going to dig up things because I remember going to church and have it just be surface stuff. And that was the one thing I couldn't make myself do. So I'm still pouring myself into having something to say on Sunday mornings, and then I remember saying I felt like the little monkey with the music box. They take me out of the little cage, they put me up there on Sunday mornings, I do my little dance, and then they put me back in the cage, and I just am dead the rest of the week.
SPEAKER_03Um did I assume with earlier you mentioned that the headquarters was so you were part of a denomination. It was they didn't have any overwatch over you? Yes.
SPEAKER_04Yes, they did. And uh we're part of the assemblies of God. Oh, yeah. I grew up AG, but I had a local guy that loved me very, very much. He's a very good person, and I love him dearly to this day, that very is very different than I am. He's the passer's passer, compassionate heart loving, not the guy that's gonna have like an entrepreneurial mindset. He's just a shepherd, shepherd shepherd. And I love him to death. And there was times where I try to describe how I was struggling, and it was just like he loved me, but like it didn't resonate. Yeah, well, I don't understand why this is so hard for you, right? And I'm like, I don't understand why it's so hard for me either, but I'm just telling you, like.
SPEAKER_03And then So you were open with him about Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I was open with everybody, dude. Like, this is not the secret. This is the worst-kept secret of uh in my inner circles, it was the worst kept secret. I was begging, I was screaming for help to the point that, to the point that I had someone really close to me, as close as it gets, say, Why can't you just be normal? And I was it was humiliating. Yeah, that's humiliating because I'm like, if I knew, why would I choose to be this way? If I knew that there was just choosing to be normal, whatever that word means, I'm not I'm not suffering through this voluntarily. I can't, like, I feel like I'm losing my sanity. I I don't know what's real anymore. And so then I remember this is it's not funny, but it's kind of funny. In January of 2015, went to my board, they're like, Yeah, we'll get you help. And they just help me with like all those daily tasks, but like Batman stuff. Yeah, yeah. And uh, so I get invited because we're doing this big new thing and everybody's proud of us in the state. We're kind of the golden child. And so I get invited to this weekend with uh an author, and one of the pastors of the big church there, not like over the mountains from us, was like, I want you to go with me. And I was like, Okay. Not something I would normally go into, but I'm like, whatever. I'm already selling you, like I'm burnt out. Let's try it, right? And so we go this weekend, and it's like these professional people, they're professional pastors, they've all had success and they know all these important people. And it get like we just spent the week in this guy's house, and so we're in the basement one time. We're just having like guy talk, you know, we're gonna guy talk. Like, I mean you're like this, like I was rodeo guys, like I yeah, man time is not something I was short on, right? Like I get, I get guys, but anytime it's like a coordinated man conversation, it always feels kind of hard anyway. And so they get to me and I'm just like bawling. I'm like, I get out of here. And they're like, what's the matter? I'm like, I hate, I can't, like, I'm dying. I don't know what's wrong with me. And it was so bad. I remember bless their hearts, because these are like career pastors, you know. And then there's like some 31 year old dumb kid who's like, I'm dying. It was so bad. I know they love me, but it was so bad they were like. Didn't know what to do with you. Yeah. Yeah. And so then again, here again, I've exposed as much as I know to expose, asking for help. And they're like, get it back out there, champ. And I remember how discouraged I was flying home. I'm like, man, these are supposed to be the professionals.
SPEAKER_03And I'm like, But they like send you scriptures to encourage you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Can we pause for a second? Yeah. I gotta pee so bad. Sorry. I should I should have known there. Is there a restroom? So I can I go back a little ways. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um knowing what you know now. Did I'm just curious, is there any part of you saying yes to this in the first place? Um that you felt there was some thing around, well, dad did it, grandpa did it, they would be so proud of me if I did it. No. No.
SPEAKER_04No, I would love to think that I'm that virtuous, but no. Um, it was just 30 years old rodeo and 29, I guess, rodeo, and like that's not gonna be a forever thing, and just kind of working, and I'd done some work in the oil field, and um it's it was probably more like I think this is a good thing, and I think it's something I can do. You know, and it was near my wife at the time, it was near her family, and it was something I thought would kind of help that group. And so, no. Um, and I think I I'll I'll go I'll go further into it, but I want I hope if somebody's listening, they'll listen clear to the end because it's it's gonna sound really negative and gloom and doom and poor me for a minute, but I want, I would like the chance if somebody's listening, if you're listening. I'd like for people to stick with us until I get to the moment that explains it, because there's a lot of confusion for almost 10 years. Almost 10 years of my life made no sense to me. I couldn't, I couldn't get my feet on the ground. Nothing made sense anymore. Um, so I remember flying home from that trip with the author and just being like, no one is understanding me. I felt like I was in a fiberglass box and I was speaking, but there was like a speaker on top of this fiberglass box and it would say something different. And then the conversation had this break in between what I was saying and what people were hearing, or what people were saying, or what I was hearing, and I was going insane, literally feeling like I'm losing my actual mind because why, why, why am I not able to be heard? I'm a communicator. I know, I know that whatever God's gonna do in my life, it's going to operate in the vein of communication in some way. I know that that's true. So why am I so misunderstood and I'm not a victim? So if I'm being misunderstood, I'm doing something wrong and I can fix it. That's always like I'm not a victim. I can dip into control for sure. So I can fix it. It's up to me, I can fix it. I would have friends and that because it started to change over time. I would have friends where I'm like, hey, buddy, how's it going? I remember one time I was at a branding and I see one of my friends, just a friend. And I'm like, hey, how's it going? He kind of gives me the nod. And then I was like, well, maybe I imagined it. You know, you don't want to be the guy that's like sensitive, especially to branding, you know. So I see him later. I was like, How's it been? He's like, you know, just kind of dismissive. This is not an the abnormal. I'm what I'm telling you is kind of the things that started to begin to happen. And uh so I sat by his house later and I go. Are we good? This is not, I'd never experienced this. Like I was friends with somebody, I was friends with them. It was just, it was easy. It's literally as easy as are we friends? Yes. Okay, great. And I said, Are we good? And he's like, Man, not really. And I go, Okay. Because I've made people mad before. I've had people upset at me before, but I can trace it back to what the root cause was. And then once you get to that root cause, you fix it and it's either better or it's not. Like, but at worst, worse, you can apologize, right? And he goes, so-and-so told me that. And he goes in this list of things, and not any of them were even kind of true. Usually I think I was always aware there's smoke, there's fire. You know, if you hear something enough, you kind of figure like maybe that's not the whole story, but that's like this was not that. This was a complete departure from anything true. It was just small town rumor that it got and started. Well, now the rumors are fun because it was such a big deal in town that it was just fun to talk about. And so now the rumors start up. And this guy was a friend, and he tells me all this. I'm like, oh, I'm so relieved, right? I'm like, there's no truth to it. No, okay. Okay. And I I can prove everything I'm saying. Like, no, no, no. I don't, I don't know where he got that, but like I can show you everything that you're saying, like you'd heard that we're doing this with that or that with this, and like this guy said that. Like, here, here's all the evidence, right? He's like, Yeah, maybe done. He wasn't budging. And never after that day. We weren't friends again after that day. And I I was so confused. So I'm like, what? I don't understand. Like the thing that caused the rift, it's it's different now. And that happened. It happened frequently. Um, and anytime somebody's like, I didn't do anything wrong, and that guy quit me. I'm like, I bet you okay. Sure. I'm not saying I was perfect. That's not at all what I'm saying. But there were several different occasions where people my own age. So then what happened was I was a young guy in a high visibility, small town leadership position. I didn't have my nucleus of friends. I didn't have like my real close group of friends. Abe still to this day is one of my best friends. That's you know, there's a couple, I mean a very small select group, but you know, families and stuff like I didn't have the ability to go to dinner because if I went to dinner, I'm surrounded by people that like I went into a gas station in Gentura. You know where Gentura's at? Oh yeah. Uh for those listening, it's not near where I live. I walked into a gas station, a lady at the gas station I was rode on. The the guy that was with me would walk in and she goes, Oh, hey, you're Jordan Weaver. I mean, it was it was rippling out from where we were. We were digital and stuff like that. Um life just quit making sense. All of a sudden it was like I couldn't win. I was, I felt like I was pastoring a church for what felt like a community that had turned against me because we were doing remote. And I'm the reason we were doing remote was I had to get out of Oregon. Started a campus in Arizona, it worked. Started a campus in Texas, it started to work. And it was just an ability to like treat this mind-numbing level of burnout that had started, turns out, started dipping over beyond burnout into PTSD that I had no clue. I had no idea. I just thought I was losing my mind.
SPEAKER_03Um so you were going, you went to Arizona, planted a church, would record it and live cast it back to the one or the other.
SPEAKER_04Either we would record in Oregon and we would broadcast it to a digital uh format in Arizona or vice versa. Um and then dur after COVID, my dad's church had bought a an event center, and during COVID, everything started struggling. So we go to Texas, we started a campus in Weatherford there for a little while. It was up to like 100 people and doing good. So we were trying to manage. Now, this sounds crazy because I thought you said you were burnout. Like it doesn't make sense to me. Like it was stupid. I know it was stupid as a survival. I'm just trying to survive. I'm just trying to do anything that I can do because I'm tied by my throat to a job that I know I was supposed to have left, but I'm still there and I'm dying. And so it's that, like I said, the the surface of the water is frozen. So it's just this panic, do everything you can do, take over the event center for my dad and help him run it for a year. It's the first time in the 20-something year history of that entire facility that actually made money. We were running that at the peak of it. I think we had like 200 employees between between the three places. I was living on airplanes, um, which sounds like the opposite. Where was was your family in Oregon while you were traveling? Kind of a variation. We built a house in Oregon, or excuse me, in Arizona. So we had an apartment in Texas, we had the facilities had a house in Oregon, and then we built our house in Arizona. And so we were between the three.
SPEAKER_03We were just Dang you, you added more gas to the fire. Yeah. Yeah. And so um Do you feel like that was when you're trapped? It's like I look back at some of the things I did, and I'm like, Oh yeah, I was it was like a a coping mechanism, is like we were talking about yesterday, there's like fight, flight, or freeze. And you were kind of like, I gotta get out of here somewhat.
SPEAKER_04Remember when you were a kid and you'd be wrestling in a swimming pool and somebody didn't realize you were like close to drowning. Time for air.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And like you're kind of wrestling, but then it gets serious, and then at the end it's just like spasms, right? And I felt like there was just years of spasming. Um objectively, I guess if somebody somebody could hear this as arrogance. And so I guess if there is arrogance in what I'm about to say, I hope that I'll be able to see it at some point because it doesn't feel I don't want to say it in that vein. I know that I'm talented enough to make things work. I've been able to make things work my whole life. Yeah. Effort. So just because it was working doesn't mean it was blessed. God allowed some things to work in those places that look like success, but it was just spasming. Yeah. No, I was now gone.
SPEAKER_03So um So you got all these places going in the right direction. And every time you go somewhere, they're mad that you were gone.
SPEAKER_04You're not coming home to like a hero's welcome anywhere. No. They feel slighted. Yeah. So remember where I said church is where I learned how to lie. After 2014, people were like, hey, you doing good? And I'm like, oh man, I'm so good. I'm so good. What about you? Tell me about you. Change the subject, divert. Well, I was lying. But in my mind, I was lying in an effort to preserve. I was telling well-intentioned lies.
SPEAKER_03Well, you already tried to tell people the truth, and that didn't get you anywhere. When I still was behind the scenes. Even in that, I still was.
SPEAKER_04I never quit telling that part of the truth, but publicly, right?
SPEAKER_01Excuse me. So I don't know. This is kind of where the story turns, right? I mean, that was the lead up. Nobody had any advice that I could make sense of. And I was asking.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I was asking people that I thought would know the answers, and they're like, I mean, uh, you know, just keep on keeping on, tricking. You're doing good. And I'm like, is this normal? And they're like, yeah. I mean, you know, yeah. I didn't have anybody in eight years that I can remember that ever said anything to me that I said, I know that what you just said is true. A lot of people said a lot of things, but nothing that I could make sense of. Nothing landed in your soul. No, and even when things would work, Weatherford worked and it made things worse. Running the facility for my dad that year, it worked, but it didn't make anything better. Oregon was working, but it didn't make anything better. So then you lose trust that like you anticipate positive outcomes. If this works, this will happen. And that started to die. Like, even if it does work, it's not gonna matter. It's like I'm living in a world that doesn't have oxygen. Um and so this is the this is the part that I'm gonna kind of tiptoe through because I don't want to dishonor other people that were involved at this point.
SPEAKER_01And I think it was January of 22. My wife at the time said, I can't do this anymore. Well, to her credit, I was dragging my own boat. I wasn't any help, I wasn't doing anything.
SPEAKER_04I would sit in board meetings and had nothing. We talk about budget and I'm like, I don't care. So they're carrying the weight of everything. And she finally gets to the point she's like, I can't do it. She's married to a complete dud. Granted, granted, I was aware that I had become a dud. I was aware of the fact that I was dragging behind my wife's efforts.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know what to do. She says, We're I can't do this anymore. And I said. Me neither. Great.
SPEAKER_04I don't know what that means, but and so we July 31st of 2022 was our last, our last day in Oregon. We moved to Arizona full time. And what did you tell the church that you were just gonna do it in remote? No, I do remember actually. I do remember this. I said, I'll still stay a part of the teaching team, I'll be back, you know, I'll check back in. And the guy that came in, I never got invited back. And so I don't blame him. I think looking back, I'm like, I did it. I remember at the time being like, well, I kind of handed you the keys of the kingdom here, bud. Like, we handed him a bigger church than he had pastored before. And that doesn't matter. At the time it felt like a big deal. Yeah. It's not a big deal. Uh it had kind of started to diminish a little bit by then. And I'm not saying he walked into an easy situation at all. Um they'd been pastored by a dead man for six years, you know. And so uh never got invited back. So you moved back to Moved to Arizona full-time. To Wickenberg? Yep. And I didn't know what else to do. I felt like Peter building nets. I just started riding horses, and I really, to be honest, I didn't understand the physical condition that I was in. I understood that like life didn't make any sense and I was tired and I couldn't feel anything. I didn't feel anything, nothing. I didn't feel I felt nothing. And I don't I didn't understand everything that was going on. Started training horses, sold a horse that year that went on to win horse of the year. So remember me saying like every time I do something, it seems like it works. God just blessed it and it worked. Um so I had a bunch of outside horses.
SPEAKER_01Um and I haven't ever talked about this. Whatever people have heard happened, I tell them all the time, assume it's all true. Because it wasn't like it was kept secret. I had a I had a come apart that there's no excuse for. I didn't know well literally it's like watching a bad movie.
SPEAKER_04Not understanding why. Nothing had made sense. I didn't feel anything anyway. So then when things start going bad and you start behaving or doing things that go against your own beliefs, you don't feel emotionally connected to it. You don't feel anything. And so in January of 2024, everything came out. I'd had a a year-long meltdown. And and good and bad, the bad is the bad, but the good is it was so bad, there's no way somebody could go, well, he's kind of always been that way. Like it was so far beyond anything I'd ever been. People were shocked by it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I was shocked by it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it wasn't the norm.
SPEAKER_04Now I will say not everything people have probably heard is true. But I I tell people believe all of it. Because if you believe everything you heard and there's still enough of me left when you're done with all that to love, then here I am.
SPEAKER_01But if that's all too much, I understand it. No pressure. But it was looking back, it's been in some ways the best, in some ways the worst two years. Both.
SPEAKER_04Because there's a loss of reputation. All the people that were like, that guy's no good, that guy's no good when I was doing everything I knew to do. And and Jeremy, what's crazy is I feel things very, very deeply. And I cover for that by being unavailable. But I man, I feel and I feel responsible. I don't I don't know that I ever really made a distinction between feeling responsible to someone or was feeling responsible for someone. And because I felt responsible for everybody, that was part of the burning up that was going on inside until everything just quit working. So um marriage is done. Rightfully so, I guess. Um, you know, I I remember saying I I just want to be somebody it's worth coming back for. And that's not how it went.
SPEAKER_01And I didn't do it well. And I didn't, I mean, I spent seven months believing that I had been loved perfectly and ruined it. That was for seven months, that was the truth. If I would have told you the truth, that's what I would have told you, but it wasn't right.
SPEAKER_04Um went to uh, you know, if this is what men do, right? Like everything blows up and they're like, I need to go to my counselor. And I was just like, God, this is so cliche. Like I'm following the like stereotypical blip print, like, all right, I'm because I've been to counseling. I've been to counseling and I was such, I was so good at covering. I wasn't trying to lie to the counselor in Oregon. I was telling him what I best I knew. And he's like, Man, you're good. I was like, okay.
SPEAKER_01Dang. Another dead end. Got it. So I remember talking to a counselor and just being blessed honest.
SPEAKER_04Like, here's everything. And he said, How much do you know about mental breakdowns? And I was like, Oh my gosh, do you think I'm close? Like you shot past the Yeah, yeah. He got I remember thinking, like, oh my gosh, because in my mind, like a mental breakdown is like a strait jacket and a wheelchair and drool and medication, and you know, like your family comes and visits you on the weekends, right? And so I was like, oh my gosh, I think I'm close. And he's like, you're patiently in the middle of it. Patiently, he's like, Um, I need to read you stuff. So he reads through all that stuff, and I'm like, oh no. Oh no.
SPEAKER_03It didn't never cross my way. I know, but in that moment when he's reading that to you, and it's it's I would assume it's resonating.
SPEAKER_01Did it make you feel better?
SPEAKER_04You know what it did is it it made me feel hope because I was like, oh it validated your experience. Well, if I go to me, I go run into my ex-wife now, and I'm like, I got great news. Didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And and that part made it worse because I'm like, hey, hold on. Yeah, wait a second. Um and and the explanation that he gave me was this. He said, You can push and push and push and push. And he said, You redline for so long that your physical brain just stops. It says, I've gone as far as I can go, and it just stops. And he said, So what you're experiencing is your logic center is working. The logic. You can drive. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, I went from 205 pounds to 167 pounds.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because the body does keep a score.
SPEAKER_04It just stopped. Yeah. And he said, So what you're experiencing is a survival technique of taking dangerous risks, looking for some light that will turn on. You're going around this cave of darkness and you're pushing every single button. And the riskier the behavior, you feel like this little jolt of something. And so then you pursue that because you're in such a survival mode that you're just trying to like you feel like that you've died in a body that still has a beating heart. And there's a panic. That same like instinct to want to live is activated. So you're you're like, I'm I've I've I have not I'm dying, I have died. How do I navigate life if that's already the case? And so, yes, validating for sure. But then what do you do with it? Because now you've made a mess of it.
SPEAKER_03And so um it's been Well, that's when you have a choice to some choices you have to make.
SPEAKER_04Well, and I want to go, I want to go back to what I said about people taking their own lives because it's such a serious, heavy thing. And I think that maybe, maybe previously I had thought of those moments where somebody's like, I'm sad. I'm just gonna do this as a as an impulsive moment. And I I'm sure that is a cry for attention or something. Sure. And I'm sure that there are times. But I think I have a different relationship with it now because if I'm already dead, I've already achieved and it didn't work. I was successful, it didn't work. I tried and it worked and it didn't work. The mechanism for optimistic anticipation shuts down in a mental breakdown. You quit anticipating anything positive. Somebody's like, hey, if this works, we're gonna make a million dollars. You go, well, I know the energy it's gonna cost me, and I can't connect what a million dollars would do for me anyway.
SPEAKER_03That's that's how powerful hope is, and how powerful the opposite of it is not having it.
SPEAKER_01That's a scary place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, and and so in that regard, there doesn't seem like a tremendous difference between being alive in that condition or dead. It doesn't feel like a big decision. Well, it doesn't feel like a big emotional decision. You know, I mean, I I was I didn't feel any connection to it at all.
SPEAKER_01Because I remember I'm not feeling anything anyway.
SPEAKER_04Um man, it's been the most isolating and yet freeing thing because now I'm not having to be responsible for everybody. I've had people hear.
SPEAKER_01Something that's awful, and they'll call and they'll go, I heard this. I'll go, Yeah, that's true. Dude, are you okay?
SPEAKER_04Well, that's very different than oh, then you rotten son of a bitch. I've heard that too. Sure. I actually got that a lot. Um, but man, when someone calls, is like, dude, I'm so sorry, are you okay? What can we do? Like, that's obviously not you. I've also had people call and go, I heard this and I know that that's not true. I know that that's not true. So how can we be a help? Because there's people whose emotions and feelings are wrapped up in this that are also angry and hurt and also now burn out and things like that. And so um, I was praying about it, and I want to go back. So I want to go back to 2014. I was praying about it, and I've never, I told you yesterday, I was like, I don't feel like I've ever really been mad at God. But there are times where I'm like, God, I don't I went up there because I thought it was good. I thought it was a good thing to do, and I know that you paved the road for me to get up there, and maybe I didn't get it exactly right, but like you know that I'm in this condition because of how hard I was trying. You can look at all the things I did in a state of burnout trying to survive and do right. And it's now cost me a marriage. My relationship with my kids is different. I was always really close to my kids. It's different. It's good. I mean, we're good, but it's different. And it wasn't like I was saying, so what's up, God? Like, how'd you let this happen? I just remember thinking, like, I got in this condition with the best of intentions anyway. Like my intentions were right. And as sweet as God is able to visit with you, there's times where he says things that are painfully true, but in a really loving way.
SPEAKER_01He said, I know. I know. He said, I told you to leave. And you chose to obey her.
SPEAKER_04Whether she remembers it exactly that way or not, that's how I experienced it. You chose to obey her. So then you would go to people and ask them to explain to you a solution in a place you didn't belong. They can't give you advice that goes beyond my will. An expert can't give you advice that solves being out of where I've called you to be. For eight years, I would ask and I wouldn't get any help because I was asking the wrong questions because I was in the wrong place. I remember one time we were gonna go uh hog hunting, and I was taking my son, we're gonna go hog hunting, and this lady is giving me the directions. She says, You go to the White House with a green roof, take a left. Once you get down there, the road's gonna tee, take a right, and then all these other directions. So I go to the white house, green roof, take a left, and this road just goes and goes and goes and goes and no tee. Well, all of a sudden none of her directions are making sense. Like nothing's making sense. I'm like, I don't like. So I called her and she's like, Did you turn at the White House or the green roof? I'm like, Yeah. She goes, Did you go to the T? Like, there was no T. She's like, I'm so sorry. There's two. You got to go to the second one. So what I'm what I'm saying by that is I had taken a wrong turn and was asking for the directions to clear up. From the wrong starting day. Thank you. Thank you. I needed to go back, go where I was supposed to be, and then the directions make sense again. And there's been some, there's been some hard truths that I've had to face about what kept me there. Instead of being like, well, look at me, I was trying to do the right thing, I have to face the fact that I stepped out of obedience, not rebelliously, I'm not saying that, but I was the leader, and your marriage is the most important thing, but that's not true. My relationship with God is the most important thing, even if it cost me my marriage.
SPEAKER_01And ironically, by going the route that I went, it cost me the marriage that I was trying to save. I would like to believe that she, as best she knew, was trying. I don't think she was right.
SPEAKER_04I think there's a lot that she got wrong. And I think that you could put her on a polygraph and she'd tell you she was trying in her defense. Whether she's doing it right or wrong, I know that she was trying. For me, I was in a position where I was supposed to be leading and I started following. I'd gotten burnt out, I was tired, and it wasn't long until there was just nothing on me left.
SPEAKER_01Um and that's that's probably why I haven't talked about it, is it's not resolved yet. I'm fully divorced. She's fully moved on.
SPEAKER_04I'm in a great place with somebody that I care about a lot.
SPEAKER_01But I don't know that I can say perfectly exactly what all the resolutions to all those things are yet. But at very least, what I can say is whatever God's gonna do.
SPEAKER_04I I heard I heard today somebody said that to some people God is a list of rules, and to other people God is beauty.
SPEAKER_01And I want to get to a place where I can see the beauty of God in the midst of a problem that I haven't quite solved or worked out yet. And I hate talking about it before it's resolved. That's why I'm grateful that you're doing this. Because as men, as leaders, as you are, it's it's hard to be in process and not be able to think it all the way through because you're highly intelligent, and I think it it makes it harder sometimes because you don't see the end of the tunnel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And like we were talking yesterday, like insert analogy of the desert or whatever season this is. And I heard I'm listening to this amazing book right now, and he was talking about and it made me think of you because it was after we talked, but it it was called um, he was talking about sacred wounding. And it's like this arc of the the first half of our life. And it's not an age thing, but it's like going through the sacred wounding, which is what you're still in the middle of, that is preparing us for the second half of life that includes eternity. And I'm butchering it, but it's a really beautiful picture that I just just that phrase, sacred wounding, yeah, is like I don't know, hopeful. Because there's something sacred about what you're experiencing, even though it sucks. And it I and I have I have the advantage of hindsight now because I've been through my sacred wounding, like we were talking about yesterday, and I'm just full of hope for you because I know what type of man you are, and that you're not gonna quit. And I think that that's how we get through the sacred sacred wounding into the next half of our life that he has for us. That is the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_04Let me ask you something. And here we are with process, because I am an outcome person. I can tell you the whole story as long as I know how it ends, right? Clearly. I hate I hate telling a story, and I'm like it halfway through to be continued, right? And I feel like a lot of my life is there right now. Um what I what I experienced with burnout, there's burnout, and then there's burnout that goes to literal physical post-traumatic stress syndrome. And what I experience now physically, I'm not out of yet. I, you know, when people talk about hope, it sounds exhausting. Like to think about hope is tiring. And I feel it in my like my physical body of I don't know that I have the energy to start whatever it is that God's gonna do in my life. And it's I don't feel any physical anticipation of positive outcomes yet. And that sounds really like Eeyore from Money the Pooh, right? Like, oh, it's all good, it's okay. I know it sounds honest to me, but but I think that how do you how do you you say you feel hopeful, and like my logic, what I what I believe and what I feel don't align a lot of times. Conflicting emotions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I can feel something and logically go, I know I don't believe how I feel, but I feel it. And the thought of whatever this next I just listened to some of the other days like God took the children of Israel, the desert for 40 years. Jesus went to the desert for 40 days, 40, 40, 40, 40. Like, I like my 40 is where things fell apart. I'm like, oh crap, I'm doing this in reverse. Like my 40 good years from now. What does that mean for the rest of it?
SPEAKER_01Um, but I I don't know how to I had this conversation today with somebody that I care a lot about that I don't think about the future at all anymore. It's almost like I don't have the energy to think about the future anymore.
SPEAKER_04I know what the cost of building and planning and all the things that I've done and been a part of and all that goes into it, how hard it is to build something from the ground up. I'm feeling like I'm on the ground right now.
SPEAKER_01Um, where do you go for the energy part of that from a healing standpoint? Where do you start with that?
SPEAKER_03I I would just something that like popped up to me when we were talking about hope and how that you feel that in your body is like maybe to me when I think of hope now, and this is where things started to turn around for me. Um I found that hope looked like rest. And it started to feel like rest to me because I, like you, I was trying to do everything possible in my might to change outcomes that I didn't have control over. Right. And it had served me well up to I was 38. Right. And so that's where I learned hope meant rest. And the the beautiful part about that too is for the first time, because I know that feeling in your body, I I had it for years and years and years where my nervous system was Yeah, it's a physical thing. Shot, dude. Yeah. And it started to that type of like hope felt restful. And it felt like a picture of getting into this big, comfortable bed with the most comfortable down blanket. And and then I started experiencing peace and letting go of outcome because I couldn't work hard enough. I couldn't go to enough counseling, I couldn't stay sober long enough to fix the mess that I had made. And it was it was, it felt like surrender. And I know that's a word that gets thrown around a lot and it's a super Christianese thing, but also I don't know a better word to describe it. Did it feel did your surrender did it feel like acceptance? Acceptance of my circumstances and that there was nothing that I could do to change the outcome of how other people were going to receive me.
SPEAKER_04I heard a I heard a statement one time that said, I used to think that God was the bar I was holding on to.
SPEAKER_01What I found was he was the safety net. I believe that. I think that the genuine request that I've made to God that he's answering apparently in his time, is uh I want to experience him that way.
SPEAKER_04Because I think that the most honest assessment of where I'm at with my relationship with God right now is that remember that there's that story where the man's asking Jesus to heal his kid and he said, Do you believe? and he says, I want to believe but hell my unbelief.
SPEAKER_01And and that's that's honest, right?
SPEAKER_04I heard a guy say, I can't lie to God, and if I lie to you, he's gonna hear me. You can't you can't lie to God.
SPEAKER_01I mean you're asking him to do something, and you can't lie to him, and he says, Do you? But do you believe me or do you trust me? Do you have faith that this can happen? And the only answer he could say was no. I don't, but that's the bar. The stakes are so high that I want to get it right.
SPEAKER_04And I think that's kind of where I've found myself with God lately is I want to believe that home exists, a place that feels like it was made for me, a place where I feel like I'm like fully alive and able to to operate within my own agency in a healthy manner, somewhere that I feel like is sustainable. I mean, I I just I fantasize about what that would be. And I know that the Bible talks about, you know, like the 23rd Psalm, like you basically lie down in great pastures and he talks about the tough times too. And I think that that's the that's what I was asking about the acceptance is that I feel like that I'm reaching a place of acceptance of like, even if he doesn't, what I'm doing's not working.
SPEAKER_01Right? And I don't know that I really trust God.
SPEAKER_04As terrible as that sounds to say, I don't know that I've really been able to fully trust that God's gonna get it right. I know he loves me, but like what if, what if, what if, what if?
SPEAKER_01And so the surrender part of that has been like a whole nother version of death. It's super scary.
SPEAKER_03And I I just and if you don't have kids, it's hard to understand this, but you know, when you're your kids were little and they fell down and got hurt or did something horribly wrong.
SPEAKER_01What helped me with this so much is like when your kids running to you, even after they mess up, you run towards them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I don't know, I just having uh uh kids has helped me so much, like because if we think we have good gifts for our kids, it's snakes and rocks, you know. And I don't know, uh it took me a a long well, probably almost 40 years growing up the same way you did, the same theology. Same denomination turns out the same everything that I I just thought God was pissed off at me all the time. And something changed in me when I allowed his goodness to wash over me. And I I and again, but it didn't change my circumstances. That's the hard part in all of this. Is like my circumstances were not changing at all. And it was like I was trying to walk out James 12. Right. And that's hard to do.
SPEAKER_04Well, and I think if you're exhausted, I mean, I don't know your whole story, but enough of it, just the stuff we've talked about. That when you feel that level of just burnout and exhausted, that it almost feels like I don't have the energy to re-establish that depth of my relationship with God.
SPEAKER_03That's the letting go part. And that's the being honest, like you are like, I don't even know if I can trust you. And he's like, Oh, come here.
SPEAKER_04Well, and I feel like I'm even even in that, I'm defying what I believe to be true. I want to be very clear, like logically, I know that I do. Logically, I know I do. I know, but you're being honest. And I and I think that I've been really fortunate. I'm very fortunate that there I could see where addiction would be a trap at a time like this. And I'm very grateful that I haven't experienced that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what what kind if if you don't mind, like I I was I was fine when I was drinking.
SPEAKER_03It wasn't until I got sober that I ever put a gun in my mouth.
SPEAKER_04Well, they say they say that there's a way to guarantee that you never get diagnosed as an alcoholic, is that you just never try to quit. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04As long as you don't try to quit, nobody can prove it.
SPEAKER_03But you know what I mean? Like if I didn't feel the totality of the pain that I was in until I got sober. Sure. Because now you're sitting in it. And so I'm just thinking like without those coping mechanisms, you're just taking this like full on. Like that's that was the hardest part of all of this for me is once I had to let go of my coping mechanism, and that's when it all got real, you know.
SPEAKER_04I had well, two things. First of all, I had a guy call me not that long ago. And we're, I mean, we know each other. I wouldn't say we're close. We're just we talk when we see each other.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he has your phone number.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. He calls me and he's telling me that he's gotten sober. And I'm like, man, this is awesome. Like, I'm not a pastor anymore. People don't call me tell me this stuff anymore. Used to be. Like, I would understand, like, I guess maybe from a spiritual standpoint, you know, or whatever. But how would anybody talk to me like I'm a pastor in a long time? Thank God. And uh he's telling me he got sober, and then he goes into like, man, uh cocaine addiction and all this stuff, and he's just like putting it all out on the table. And I'm like, man, that's I'm proud of you. But I'm inside, I'm thinking, like, where's this going? Yeah, why are you telling me this? Like, this is kind of personal and I'm proud of you. I'm I'm I'm all for it, you know. He's like, I mean, I just need to call and tell you, like, I know of like your past and you know, your experience, what you went through, and you know, you understand what I'm talking about. And I was like, I kind of hear the record scratch, you know? And I'm like, uh what now? And he's like, well, you know, like with your uh like the whole uh meth thing, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy being so I had a meth addiction. I lost a bunch of weight. Like I went from, like I said, two or six anywhere. And there had been some assistance with that story from people that I was close to. To be clear, never not once. Never touched it. Never, not not one time. And uh I had to tell him, I'm like, man, I hate to ruin this moment of having. But I just like how to do it. Yeah, I was a wreck in a different way. Um and then, I mean, it was fine. The conversation ended well. But I said that to say this. I actually attribute a lot of that to my mom. And German Native American lady and pulled her teeth with pliers, and you know, and there was, I think she would even say at the time, there was some shame wrapped up from her childhood stuff of like guilt of are you gonna deny your faith if you're ever tortured for your faith and toughen up and she was hard. She was a she was doing the best she could.
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you what for her for how my mom's life could have turned out. She's a special lady.
SPEAKER_04Um but I think in that moment I was so because remember I said for the first seven months I just thought I, you know, sh I just thought I was just a bad person.
SPEAKER_01And uh probably the pain is something that was like how I treated my own guilt. Like I deserved the pain. Yeah, shame. Yeah, the more it hurt. Um I lived in an RV for three and a half months with no electricity. When all this happened, all this blew up. No electricity. And I was just I was like I was just eating it. Bring it. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want it to feel better.
SPEAKER_03I hated myself.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I hated myself so much.
SPEAKER_03Because pain, however, you were getting at least felt you were feeling something.
SPEAKER_04That's probably I don't think I've ever made that connection, actually, but that's probably what it was from the years of just feeling nothing. Nothing. Yeah. That's that's insightful, actually. That's probably exactly what it was. But um I didn't, you know, I still had this, I saw this hope that God was gonna make it all better. You know, finally it all broke open, but at least it broke open, right? And like now things were gonna get better, and they didn't the way that I thought that they would. And so maybe in my maybe in my own mind it was that like the more I suffer, the more I can earn things going back together, you know, and so whatever the case, I know that I am really fortunate and really blessed that I don't have to then have addiction battles. Grateful for that. However it happened, however misguided you're gonna be.
SPEAKER_03It's pretty amazing. Yeah, I mean, what a what a gift. Yeah. To not have to add that on top of it. Yeah, truly. Truly. Yeah. And it doesn't diminish what you're going through at all, by the way. Well, it's not too late. I mean, I may pick something up.
SPEAKER_04Some circle cage around the corner. See how it goes. I might brown bag special for a little while.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Um As weird as it sounds, I heard I heard this I don't remember where I heard it. Somebody said, if I gave you$10 million cash, but you don't wake up tomorrow, would you take it? And everybody's like, no. And he said, So you would trade$10 million just for the chance to wake up tomorrow. And I think there's been times I feel like I'm just cashing in$10 million every day.
SPEAKER_04I don't know why. I don't know where it's going. I can't say that I've got it all clear in my head. I can't say that everything that's bad is going to be made good. There's no way. Bad things don't become good things. Bad things can be useful for creating new good things. You know, and I think there's times I'm just cashing in the 10 million every day, just logically knowing that God's good. Can I ask you this?
SPEAKER_03Why do you get out of bed every morning? And and I'm I'm not talking about like suicidal ideation or anything, but like literally what makes you get up every morning to do the things that you're saying yes to. Yeah. Um because it there's days where it'd be easier just to lay in bed. There are days I have that have. Sure.
SPEAKER_04And you should. I I would have never thought that this would ever be true about myself. My favorite place in the world right now is my bed. Yeah. Um There's some safety to it. Yeah. Yeah. Um and I'm not a lazy person. I'm not a I'm not a sleeping guy.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm an up early person, always have been. But um part, in part, I'm stuck.
SPEAKER_04The same stubbornness that kept me there for eight years in that condition keeps me one foot in front of the other right now. Part of it's just stubbornness.
SPEAKER_03Is it stubbornness or discipline or combination? I think I'm I think I'm painfully optimistic.
SPEAKER_04Um perhaps unearned confidence at times that it's going to break. It's going to change. Something like it just doesn't stay this way forever.
SPEAKER_03But I I think it's I think it's more than stubbornness because that would only last so long. I think there's something else. And I'm not trying to pry at you. Let's dig it. Let's dig into it. I this this is the kind of stuff I love because I usually end up learning something. But you know what I mean? Like I I get that at a certain level. Like it's the flip side of the coin. It's the thing that's good about all of us, it's the thing that's detrimental to us, whatever. But I don't know. I just feel like there's something more worth being curious around that than I'm just stubborn, so I get up and I'm because can I tell you how I experience you from the distance that that we are? Right? We we've had some amazing conversations on the phone and we spent a powerful weekend together, and that's it, really. Yeah, we we infrequently go really deep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, frequent infrequently, yeah. But I at the beginning you told us all the things you're doing.
SPEAKER_03And I and I just feel like there's something more to it than stubbornness that is like because you don't go create and you don't go chase down opportunity and you don't go be parts of really big things because of stubbornness. If stubbornness is getting up and going and to a job you hate. Okay. That's good.
SPEAKER_04I I I accept that. Fully accept that. And I I think maybe what I was saying was more um, why do I get up every single day? Every single day is because of stubbornness. Even if there are days I'm excited, even if there's things I'm looking forward to, there are also days where it's just what you do. Because what's the opposite? Uh fear of failure, losing my house, bills not getting paid. If I think about what the opposite would be, where does it go? And so fear of failure has got to be part of that. I I know that's not a very deep answer, but part of it's fear of failure. Part of it is fear of going broke. And I read something the other day that said that money becomes a surrogate god in times of torment. Money becomes a surrogate god in times of torment. And so I don't like thinking about money. In fact, money has always followed me my whole life. Money has always chased me my whole life. And I've never been wealthy. I've always just had enough. I've always paid my tithes. I don't think about money. Money works for me, I don't work for money. And I don't like the fragility of finances in my mind right now. My finances are not fragile. I'm not wealthy. That's not what I'm saying. I my finances are not more secure, more fragile than they've ever been. But I don't like that's a part of my psyche now where it didn't used to be. And so um stubbornness, fear of failure, optimism that something's gonna click into place. Have you ever had a moment like where your back hurts and you're stretching? It just feels like any moment, any moment's gonna pop and then like the the pressure's gonna be off. I feel like I anticipate that moment.
SPEAKER_01But I don't know that sounds a lot like hope to me. You son of a bitch. It does.
SPEAKER_03And I I also caught it when you're telling me at the beginning of this conversation, there was a light in your eye that you're putting yourself to something bigger than yourself. Sure. And you were part of something that's amazing. And I there there was there was some joy and and hope. And then we're gonna do this, and then this is happening, and it's amazing.
SPEAKER_04And I don't know. I I you know the you know the best part of that job? It's interesting you say that. You know, the best part of that job is I want to pour into people. You know, I've I've done what I've done in my life enough to like I've kind of like paid for my lessons in blood, and there are times I get to speak into people's lives of like, hey, you need to watch this. Trust me, this thing that's getting missed, please trust me that that's important. And I've got a qualified voice to speak into it, and I get to see the results of that. There is, there is little sparks. And so I want to, I I appreciate that you've said what you said because I don't want it to feel like I'm gloom and doom. I don't feel that. I feel a complete depletion of energy to go pursue stuff. And and God's been really faithful to keep things coming, for sure. Um, so when I say, when I say discipline, I that's a good clarification because I don't feel like I'm walking around with a cloud over my head 24-7. I feel like that when I stop, it's never far away. If I stop too long, it feels like it still catches up. But in the middle of pouring in two people or um my kids, I love my kids. I adore, I adore my kids so much. And this is going to be useful for them. You know, I I it is, I I I'll I'll acknowledge, I want to acknowledge, I think there is an element of that that is hope.
SPEAKER_03I just And I'm a hope junkie, so I'm I I pick up on little Yeah, no, and it's good.
SPEAKER_04It's good it's good for me to hear it. It's good for me to hear it because I'm like, that sounds that is true. Um I think that where I where I want to improve is I want to be able to metabolize that as hope better. I don't feel like I metabolize it as hope very well. But I know I'm not gonna I'm gonna can't quit. You know, I don't I don't feel like that I want to walk into the gates of heaven and be like, okay, I know I put myself here, God, but now you gotta deal with me. Because he's like, Do you know what I have planned? Like that moment would be the worst. To get to heaven because you've given up and you quit. And Jesus shows you the life that he was building through all the hurt and all the, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Like logic, I hope in his goodness. Logically, I believe in his ability to take bad and create good out of it. Logically, I know, I know him. He's good.
SPEAKER_04Physically, I'm not, you know, I feel like that my logic is tied to the wagon and the wagon's moving, and my logic is tied to the wagon, and my physical, mental, perhaps even spiritual, is still kind of dragging a little bit. So maybe that's maybe that's the more well-rounded answer. What gets me out of bed is probably the genuinely deeply held core belief that God's good and this is going to go somewhere.
SPEAKER_03I I you said something in the middle of all of that that I think is to simplify everything, is you said the words don't quit. I think that's how we win at everything in life is not to quit.
SPEAKER_04Well, think of it this way: if I was dragging behind something and I was holding on, I was dragging behind something, and all of a sudden we're going through a cactus patch and it sucks, right? And I let go, where do I stay? Whatever drug me into it is the only thing that's going to be able to drag me back out of it. That's it. Right. And if I let go, now that's where I'm at. And this is what I mean, I I don't want this to be how the story ends. I don't want, I don't want for everything that's happened in my life for it to end the way that it is now. So I do I really want to wake up every day and attack life? No, I don't have the feeling that that's what I want. But what I also don't want more is I don't want this to be forever. And then he died. You know, we've been doing some work. This is so fascinating. We've been doing some work with some inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and I can't go into all of it because of just some Sure. But to talk to people who will tell you if I had another chance. People that haven't seen their kids in 17, 18 years. People who became monsters because of addiction and that are clean now and that are living for God, like, man, what I wouldn't do with a second chance. And how dishonoring would I be to those kinds of people that would give anything for a second chance when I have one? You know, I walk outside and I'm free, and what I do with that freedom really is up to me. Pass or fail. But it's still up to me. I'm not being told what time to wake up, I'm not being told what time to go to bed, I'm not having every decision made for me every day because those guys are experiencing life after death. Like their sentence ended the period at the end of their not just court sentence, like their book was done. Life sentence, game over, but I'm still here. Okay, so I'm still here. I'm I'm I'm not dead yet. Like I'm done. Like it's over. Story ends, but I'm still here. And what you see them doing, life that they're living after their death, has been kind of clarifying for me too. It's recalibrating for sure, right? There there's some There's a word. There's a word, and I can't think of what the word would be, but it's almost like listening to them describe it helps me understand where I'm at too, because in some ways I went through a death sentence. There are people, people that I loved that I begged for help, begged, begged, get me out of here. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm dying, I don't know what's wrong. I can't, like every like for eight years that won't speak to me now because of the way that the meltdown happened, and the meltdown was horrible. I'm telling you, I'm not backing away from it. I've never not taken accountability for it. I've owned it, all the things you're supposed to do. And they like they despise the ground I walk on. I can logically go, that's not fair. That's not entirely fair. I'm not saying that I don't deserve the criticism, but like as a human being, you were right there when I was begging for it. There's a death sense of like, I will never speak to you again. So here's my question: What's the difference between I will never speak to you again or I wish you were dead? There is no difference. I'm gonna tell you in my mind, there is no difference because there are people that I'll never see again until I get to heaven. What's the difference between if they're alive or dead just because they're on the planet somewhere? That doesn't, as it relates to me, there's no difference between them being alive or dead.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And so there are people that in my own life have said there is no difference between you being alive or dead to me. But I'm still here. I'm still here, I still wake up, I'm still having thoughts, I'm still experiencing life the way I'm experiencing it. So then what do you do with the life that comes after death? And and getting to visit with those guys that are building lives, they're making disciplined decisions to improve themselves, knowing they are where they will die.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a whole nother level. And it it's recalibrating for me to even hear that of like it's so inspiring to hear stories like that, which is why all this works, right? Is like, yeah, this life is a very short blink of an eye gift. And what are we gonna do with it? And we can do whatever we want with it.
SPEAKER_04Interestingly enough, there are people that I adore that work there that have chosen that as a profession and they get to go home every night. So it seems like free versus prisoner, right? But if you're a school teacher, they graduate and they go on. These people are growing old with the people they work with. They're living the same sentence, growing old and watching their friends either die or be put to death that are experiencing life life more abundantly in a place where life isn't supposed to exist.
SPEAKER_01How does that this is interesting to me. How has that impacted you in going through all the things you're going through? And then to go sit with these men with everything you just explained.
SPEAKER_03Does it inspire you or do you feel shame in like I'm not doing enough with my life? I should be. Like, where does that land? Both.
SPEAKER_04That's the that's the magic of that place, is it's nuance because I can't say they don't belong there. They're there for a reason. They didn't they didn't get a life sense because they did nothing. Right. So I'm not saying they don't belong there, but these are people that I would hang out with if they were in the free world. Yeah. So it's both. It's new. Well, it's and and for me, there's a little bit of like, man, why would I ever have a bad day?
SPEAKER_03Like get your crap together.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But I tell you what, it's done is is again, so much of what is powering me right now is what I logically believe, not what I emotionally feel. What I logically know to be true is that it's re-established the value of right now, that right now has value because I could live every day in the past and go nowhere. I could live every day in the future, but right now, today, it does not matter. I could have been the worst person on the planet, but when I wake up right now, what's the best right move right now in this moment makes you present. And it and I have the freedom to choose that. I am free to choose right now that if I want to change my life right now, today, I'm free to do that. And I that's a gift. To be living in the free world is a gift because I can't, there's things I can't change. There's things I can't predict. But right now, today, what is the best and I think so many times the enemy doesn't care what really you do in the future. He's gonna remind you of the past as long as you never value right now, because right now is the only time you'll this is trippy, but past exists in my mind. The future exists in my mind, my imagination. The only part of life I'll ever get to experience is right now. And if I devalue right now, I've devalued my entire life. My whole life, my whole life has no value as long as right now has no value. But if right now has value, my whole life has value.
SPEAKER_01Because it's the only time. If I want to change something in the future, when would I be able to do it?
SPEAKER_04Right now. If I wanted anything changed, the only time I'll ever get to do it is right now in the present. And I think that in eternity, we're gonna step through a veil, and what we're gonna realize is that time was just a big joke anyway. The past, the future, it was all nothing. And what we have is the value of right now. And I think that's really been established in my logic center that those guys wake up and because of their past, their right now is always affected. And they're still choosing to improve and work out and farm and ranch and build the rodeos, and they're they're embracing life. And there was two of them that said I was never as free on the outside as I am on the inside. Come on. And what a perspective to have. Well, imagine the value if somebody could get a hold of that and they're still free. I get to go home and hug my daughter tonight because she's at my house this week. I get to hug my son on Sunday night. There's people that haven't seen their kids in 17 years, and you know what else that did, and this is not to cast shade at anybody, but there's a guy that was talking about how every time they go to the gas station, he's been there for 18 years. And every time they go to the gas station, his daughter still buys an extra candy bar. So that if he ever gets to come home and they're still legally married, she's still married to him 18 years after everything that he did to deserve a life sentence.
SPEAKER_01She stuck with him. And that's a gift for him. And there's a sadness, I think, to that.
SPEAKER_04But again, it's like watching a tree grow out of a rock. Like it's not supposed to do it. You know, science that can't explain why a bumblebee flies, right? We don't know why a bumblebee- Do you know this? We don't know why a bumblebee flies. It's not supposed to. Everything that we know about a bumblebee says you can't fly, and then it just does, right? And those are the sorts of things of like, really, really, in the scheme of things, why do I get out of bed, Paul? I'm free to, I guess.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I I don't know that I've ever really thought of it that way, but I'm free to get out of bed tomorrow. That's good. I love I love how we started that question of why do you get out of bed? Yeah, and a lot out of it. No, that was that was beautiful. That was I feel impacted deeply by that story. Yeah. Like that's a good thing for all of us to hear. You need to go, you need to go with me. I'm in. You need to go with me, and you need to be. I've done a little bit of prison stuff with Todd Pierce, and it's yeah, you don't leave the you leave you don't go there, you don't leave there the same as you you walk in. It's so calibrating because at the end of the day, what I love about story, because it's story. Sure. It's no different than the f wild courage fires or retreats. There's something impactful about the realization of you know, I wouldn't trade my mess, my problems for anybody's problems.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_03That I find hope in. Because we all are going through stuff. If you're breathing oxygen, you're going through something. Yeah. Right. And when we get centered about us, it can feel like big bigger than it should sometimes. And I'm not talking about you. I'm just talking about I'm just not talking I'm talking about me. When I sit next to you and hear your story. Tonight I'm going to be going through my stuff. Sure. And not in a comparison way, but in a comparison way of like, man, there's things I need to be more grateful for. There's things that I'm taking for granted right now that my brother is going through that I'm not I'm going to be more aware of not taking for granted because of what you just shared. And I think that's the power of story, is that we take the time to sit and listen to people's stories, whether it's an acquaintance or an old friend that we haven't seen, or go to a prison, or put yourself out there. Yeah. And there's hope everywhere. There's hope to be had everywhere.
SPEAKER_04There's a I can't agree with that enough. I wish I had words to agree with it more than just I agree, but there's a podcast between a guy named John Vervecchi and Jordan Peterson about the value of the story. And I don't know if you've ever heard it, but I'll find it instant to you. Love Jordan Peterson. But they said it's what helps us categorize life. Because if we know the story, we know what to focus on, but we know what to ignore. Because if we didn't know what the story was, we're focusing on every bolt and every road sign. We don't realize like that is that's auxiliary to the story, but it's not central, right? And back to Jordan Peterson, he said without a vision, you have no way to regulate negative emotion. Because if you know the vision, then you know what you're suffering towards. You're not suffering from, you're suffering for. And the story, I think that's maybe that's maybe the TBD part of my story at this point is that I don't know that I really have a clean grasp on that. And I just know where it is, right? But the story, I I I can't agree with you enough on the value of the story because it helps you know what to focus on, what to ignore. What's important to my story is not the details of how I fell apart. And that's taken me a long time because I felt like accountability meant you own it as much as you like. You said you're sorry. You've made it as best as you could. You've made it clear you're sorry. And you're trying to prove that you're sorry enough because if You're sorry enough, it's gonna fix it. And he said, You need to stop basically enforcing how sorry you are. Yeah, it's you're done.
SPEAKER_03And you can't move on if you are in that constant state.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, because I mean, we know Jesus, right? So if like if I'm sorry, then it's gonna get better. And there's not people that'll let it get better sometimes. There's people who are not gonna let it get better. And I'm determined. I've just learned this recently, but I'm determined not to argue with somebody who's determined to not understand. There's people that are determined not to understand. I can't argue in those moments. The story does not need me to convince for an outcome. That's right. My story is not even about me. You know, I'm the I'm the NPC. Like if we're watching the movie Gladiator, the story is about Jesus. I'm just the guy that's in the bleachers.
SPEAKER_01And man, that crazy as that sounds, that provides hope, right? Like I'm not the main character. If God tells part of his story through all of this, man, that takes a lot of pressure off me. His his story being the ultimate story.
SPEAKER_04That gives me, that gives me kind of an external processor. Like sometimes I learn by talking. And I think that's good clarity for me too, because you get out of bed because it's not my story. I'm living out a story that's going to ultimately point towards Jesus because I know I'm not going to give up. I know that I never willingly walked away from God. That's the craziest thing. For as bad as it went, I never willingly walked away from God. I didn't mean to. That sounds so stupid. I didn't go to details of how bad it got, just trust me. Rough. But I didn't mean to walk away from God. I'm not going to. I'm not giving up on him. Whatever he wants to do in my story, he's going to get the chance to do it.
SPEAKER_01That's story enough. It's good. You know what excites me?
SPEAKER_03And uh is six months, a year, two years when we sit down and get the next part of your story.
SPEAKER_04Please, God, don't tell me it's gonna be two more years. No, that's why I started with six months.
SPEAKER_03I'll take I'll take that one. Since I'm oh junkie, let's say three months. I can't wait for you to call me and be like, dude, where are you at? Yeah. I'm coming to you. We're doing round two. Do you think it happens that way?
SPEAKER_04Do you think it happens like a moment? Or do you think it happens gradually, slowly, and you look up and you're like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01I think it's my dad always used to say this saying, steady by jerks. Explain. It's a slow burn.
SPEAKER_03Falling away from God slow. You don't know that it happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And slowly, slowly at first and then all at once.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And then you get down towards the bottom of the slide and then it's straight down. But for years it's like, oh, this is great. Yeah. For me, the rebuilding and and the reclamation process that God did with my life was like four years and counting. It started 15 years ago. Sure. But the beautiful part of it is that it goes in increments that gives me hope to go to the to keep going. Right. Yeah. The incremental thing I understand deeply. It's like my wife wouldn't talk to me other than at the handoff of my son to fast forward three years, and she's inviting me over to their house that I don't live in for Christmas lunch. And to watch my son open presents. Yeah. And then I had to leave. But it was hope.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was a resurrection because that had died. It was something. Yeah, that was dead and it came back to life.
SPEAKER_03And every month of sobriety that went past was like hope. Yeah. And that's why I'm that's why I use that word so much, is because it's what he rebuilt my life with. True. Because it wasn't all of a sudden, but it was enough.
SPEAKER_04Jeremy, I feel the most okay in these moments.
SPEAKER_01For all the fun stuff I'm getting to do, they're fun. And I think I'm good at it. And it's a job. And I love the people I work with.
SPEAKER_04I deeply love the people I work with. But I feel the most myself in these kinds of conversations. And these are the incremental things. Last May in Idaho was one of these incremental things. It was the first time I felt like I was allowed to come back into this sort of uh I don't know what the word would be.
SPEAKER_01Frequency, maybe. It was the first time I'd stepped back into a frequency that felt like myself again.
SPEAKER_04And you said it about getting to go back in open presence with your kids, but then or your son, then you had to leave. But there's a frequency to it. And I think that maybe that may be my takeaway is that I have little moments like this, and it's a reminder. It's like I God didn't say, Jordan, you're gonna do a podcast with Jeremy. That's not what I'm I'm not I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_01I just knew I was never gonna talk about this until someday you and I did. And I'm I'm experiencing it now, knowing that God had paved the road in advance.
SPEAKER_04So what I say is I know that God's good. Logically, I know that God's good. I'm anticipating this moment where what you're talking about happens. And in the same way that I anticipated that we would do this someday, without ever even talking about it, I anticipate that what you're saying is true. These moments are validating because they validate that that moment's coming.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's why that's why with Wild Courage to have a a a band of brothers that you don't need to perform for. Sure.
SPEAKER_03That you can show up as you are, that you can we say it all the time, you know, we're supposed to weep with those who are weeping or rejoice with those rejoicing and mourn with those who are mourning. And it's like, if we can just get that right in this life. Man. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04The things I experienced there, uh, I've never experienced before. And that's in a life of ministry. Well, that says a lot. Yeah, it's I've never experienced anything like that. I can't recommend it enough to anybody. I mean, I I may Dan Flitter somebody on it someday, but um the men, the men experiencing the freedom to feel it at all. I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to tell you to do with this. I don't I can't fix it for you, but you're allowed to feel it. You're allowed to feel it here. And that they were able to give themselves permission to just feel something that they've buried is uh something I would wish on every man on the planet. Because I think we take it to our wives, and that's not where it belongs.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04We're the umbrella. The last thing we want to do is create a mom out of our wife. Yep.
SPEAKER_03And so many little boys that are grown men are do that. Yeah. Yeah. And so many women are trying.
SPEAKER_04They're like, well, if you're not gonna lead, I will. Yeah. And then we have sitcoms where the dad's the idiot and we wonder how we got there. Yep. And for men to know that there's a mechanism that kind of flips the switch and that even if we can't fix it today, we can feel it together. Um, man, that's that's that will on my deathbed, that will be one of my most powerful weekends.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Well, I'm doing this new thing that I just started. Of course you land the plane. And oh, oh, oh, I thought you were telling me about a new project.
SPEAKER_04I was like, of course you've always got a new project.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well, there's there's a lot of that, there's a lot of that too that's happening, but that's for another time. So this is gonna be really hard. I'm just warning you. In a sentence or a short paragraph, what is your definition of a good man?
SPEAKER_01Describe what it means to be a good man. If you can follow me and you end up closer to Jesus. Good enough. I love it. More crying than I'd really anticipated. That happens.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So you know what, I don't think that's true. I think I probably did think that it was possible, but I didn't really intend to end it on one, so that it's a good that's a great question.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm asking it to I just started because I haven't done a podcast in a long time, but I I'm gonna ask it to everyone. And tomorrow I'm having a gal on here, and I'm gonna ask her what the definition of a good man is, because two months ago I woke up and I was like, I don't know that I know the answer to this question. And so I'm gonna find I want to find out. Yeah. Yeah. Because it means a lot of different things. And it it's already been, you're the third person I've asked, and it's been interesting. And I think, I think there's something to this line of questioning in that both the guys that I asked in Weatherford told me, I'm gonna be thinking about that now for a very long time. Like it's stuck in my brain now, and it's been stuck in mine. And I think it's a good question that men should be asking themselves.
SPEAKER_04Because if we don't know what we're aiming at, that's right. That's right. How do you measure success or failure? If there's no target, you're just shooting into the black.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And it's good. Yeah. So anyway, thank you for answering that. I didn't mean to leave it intentionally broad, but that leaves you some wiggle room. Yeah. Like if you can follow me long enough and you get closer to Jesus, we may go this way or may go that way, but I could live with that. If somebody says, Man, I follow Jordan and in the end I was closer to Jesus, okay.
SPEAKER_03That's a great answer. I love it. I love how uniquely different it's been for everyone.
SPEAKER_04I can't wait to hear the answers on the guys coming up too. Yeah, it's good. I think I'm gonna compile them and do some cool stuff with them. Yeah, that's good. We talked so long that I think your lighting got bad.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, it's in we're in the dark now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity.
SPEAKER_03Sincerely is an honor. And I I'm I'm closer to you now. That's the beautiful thing about vulnerability and story again, is I have a I have a deeper level of understanding and compassion for you, and I'm full of even more hope for you now than I was yesterday at this time. So everyone, go check out the Flatbed podcast. He's amazing.
SPEAKER_04None of this kind of content on there, Hartley, at all. It's just BS, but it's fine.
SPEAKER_03Super good. But you know why I was hesitant to call you to do this? Because I was super intimidated to sit down and do this with you because you were so freaking good at in this space. No part of me. I felt like so inadequate. So I I we both we both jumped in here.
SPEAKER_04So I appreciate the compliment. No part of me emotionally connects that. I appreciate it, but I cannot hear why that'd be the case.
SPEAKER_03So glad we did it. Go check it out anyway. Anything else? Go go to your rodeo. What's your the Honda coming coming near to you?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well uh April 10th, 11th, and 12th in New Orleans, and then in November in Phoenix. So sweet.
SPEAKER_03I'll come down to the Phoenix one in November. Dude, I'll I'll take you everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that'd be awesome. All right, thanks, brother. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Adios, and