RJ Jubber, on hard times and over coming adversity

This episode of Wild Courage touches on the hosts' childhood memories, where they played in Oregon's vast natural landscapes, and their more recent experiences in Wyoming. They nostalgically recall simpler times when community harmony was celebrated. The discussion transitions into a critique of current societal divisions, especially regarding political and religious diversity. They advocate for a return to civil discussions, where sharing ideas and experiences is the norm, urging listeners to engage with others with an open mind and heart. Throughout, the hosts demonstrate that wild courage is not just about adventures, but also about bridging divides and fostering unity.

Transcript

0:28

Hey guys, welcome back to the Wild Courage podcast. Today I'm in the barn with my new, kind of new friend, RJ Jubber. Yeah. Thanks for jumping on here this morning, buddy. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks for uh it's an honor to just be sitting in the seat. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I we so we met a year, a little over a year ago. You came to our spring retreat and that we had McCall. Yeah, yeah. And that's where we first kind of met. And then you came to our retreat. That was like about a month and a half ago or something. Yeah. And you were like, hey, I gotta, I'm hauling some horses through there. And like, dude, come stay. And yeah, yeah. It worked out perfect. We got to go to a branding on Saturday. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. Down in Jordan Valley. Yeah. It's our buddy Will Hudson. Yeah, it was a good time. It was beautiful. Great weather. Yeah, it was a perfect branding day. Vest wearing branding day. Yeah. Not hot, not dusty. Yeah. Just right. It's like we like it. Yeah. Just got in just got in water on the the corral. Yep. Didn't have to worry about that. Yeah, it was good. Um, so like we were talking about driving down to Jordan Valley. I'm like, I have a million questions, but I'm gonna have you on the podcast, so I don't want to ask too much too soon. So this is gonna be fun for me to get to know you this way. Um, so I know you're from Oregon. Yes, sir. I know you're married and you have a pile of kids. Yep. A gag. A gaggle. Yeah. What is a gag? What what animal group represents? What do you say? Because you know there's like a herd, there's a flock, there's a what's gaggle represent? I can't remember. I can't remember what a gaggle is, but it's a lot. Well, I I need to look that up. I know. It's a pop load. Yeah, bantlow. It's more than a handful. Yeah. So you currently live in Lander, Wyoming. Yes. Which is a beautiful spot. Yeah, it's it's a great little mountain town and just just love it. Yeah, like we were talking about. Lander's kind of like what I think Jackson was probably in the 70s, 80s, maybe a little bit in the in the 90s. It's a nice mix of hippies and cowboys. Yeah. There's still some ranchers around there. Yeah. But it's really an outdoor town, right? Because there's like Knolls is there and lots of rock climbing. And so you kind of have a a collision of this this yeah, it's this culture collision of the old ranchers and you know, even the all the ranchers in Fremont County and Riverton, if they're not living there, they're there because their cows are up on the mountain. Yeah, so they're always passing through the restaurant. I like I liked what you said. At the r at the restaurants. Yeah, like the other day, uh so so one of the main restaurants in town is called Cowfish. That's like the date-night restaurant, right? Um, so yeah, we we walked in there, and you know, there's a little hippie couple sitting over on the left side, and you know, maybe uh uh somebody that works at Port Knolls sitting in the back corner. But then there was this table of like four or five team ropers, right? And so they all had their team roping jackets on and their buckles, and it was like this awesome little mix of just all the cultures just sitting there in this nice restaurant, just enjoying the evening together. So and and growing up in Eugene, Oregon, that's what Eugene felt like through the 80s and 90s uh when I was growing up, was my mom always used to say, we're a dysfunctional family, but we're still a family. Yeah. Right? And and now it's just been so sad to see how how divisive culture has become, especially in places like Eugene or or Jackson, or um where it's like, yeah, we can't even tolerate to be around each other. And I think it's such a sad moment in our society and culture. It is sad. I I hate it. Yeah. I have such a heart for unity. Like during COVID, we had like, you know, all the churches and everything was shut down, and we started doing like worship nights in our barn here um every month. Yeah. And we would it was I think it was the coolest representation of like laying down our differences that I'd ever seen in that type of setting. Cause uh my buddy Joe, who's a raining horse trainer, can play the guitar and him and his wife can sing a little bit. So I'm like, hey, do you guys want to come de worship at our barn? And he's like, heck yeah. Yeah. And he was trained he was training horses over in Nampa. And so he'd come over and we literally would invite everyone we knew. Yeah. And dude, we'd have like 70, 80 people. Yeah. And we had we had uh Mormons. I'm not even kidding. Yeah. Jeho uh Seventh-day Adventists, yeah, Baptist, Calvary Chaplers, and then my crazy, weird, charismatic friends would stand in the back and do their thing. Yeah, maybe almost. And it was like you know, some people would just close their eyes and some people would raise their hands, and it was like the most beautiful thing. And we would just be together. Yeah. And not social distance. Yeah. And sit right next to each other. But just uh I would kind of stand in the back and just like it would make me emotional seeing like all everyone laying down their theological differences. Yeah, that's cool. Like at a time where you couldn't go to church. I don't know, it was cool. So I really have a heart for that, and it is sad to see how divided like our church churches are and the politics and all of that. I hate it. Yeah, it just and just I don't know. I okay. I I made a real short video a couple months ago and threw it on my social media, just like just sharing it. Like, it's just so sad that literally people die in 2025 or 2026 for having discussions and just just sharing ideas and this idea that we can't we can't even share ideas without it causing irreparable harm to somebody's emotions. Like it it just I I feel like it is gonna be the downfall of our society. It really is. Because if we have to be able to share thoughts, share feelings, make connections around just the discussion, right? And I I love the quote on your wall, right, that ends with and recognize you could be wrong. Like, I just love that. Like sharing ideas, sharing thoughts, sharing experiences, and recognize I could be wrong. Dude. I I literally been talking to my wife like the last six months, like, I feel like I know less theology today than I did five years ago. Oh. I'm like, I don't know crap. I grew up in the church, and yeah, I'm I'm experiencing that. I'm like, I don't know the vastness of God and man's interpretation of the Bible. Like, I have no idea. I think that I the the further in my my journey with with God and my walk with Jesus, like the more the one thing I'm certain of is that I have no concept of how I have no concept of God. Like I don't like my human brain can't handle the vastness, the amazingness, the the complexity, the omniscience. Like, like we can't even comprehend God. Like we have this like minute little understanding, and it's cool and it's amazing when he invites us into his work. But yeah, like the like what true God God truly is, I'm the more and more as I get older, the more and more I'm convinced I have no concept of. Yeah, I my buddy Jake always says, like, if you are at a church and the pastor says that he has some has it figured out, get up and run as fat. That's such good advice, right? Oh it, yeah, yeah. I don't know. And the whole political thing, I I'm like, if you would sit down with somebody that's on the opposite side of you and have a meal, which I've done. I have friends in LA that are registered Democrats and would be, you know, on the liberal side of things. And yeah, I've sat down at their house and had dinner and stayed with them and stayed up till two in the morning having these conversations, and it's like, oh wait, you want what's best for your family too? Oh my gosh. And you love your children? Yeah. Yeah, we don't want the same thing. We have I I don't know. I just was like, we have so much more in common than we think we do. Absolutely. We just have a whole of humanity. We just have a different understanding of the best way to get there. And how we were raised. Like if you're raised in the middle of nowhere, and I mean, you're gonna be probably a pretty independent person. Yeah, you think differently. So Eugene is definitely changed since you grew up there. Yeah. Were you born and raised there? So I was born in Eugene, and then when I was real little, um, like I don't even have memories of it. So like from the time I was born until about three or four, uh, we moved kind of up and down I-5 from Eugene up to Portland area. My dad, um, my dad was in the timber industry on the uh processing side. So he was in working mills and um most of my life. So he was chasing mill jobs all over the I-5 corridor. So we actually um, like when I was in preschool, we moved out to Crow, which is a little community, a little farm community, um, about 20 minutes outside of Eugene. So, you know, small high school. We've actually lived on a we rented a single wide on a farm. So the farmer had, you know, a little single wide and a couple acres. And um so yeah, some of my earliest like roaming and wild child, feral child uh memories are on that farm and uh just some of the crazy stuff my brothers and I, my brother and I would get into it. So you just have one brother? So I have one brother, he's eighteen months younger than me. Perfect. And then my sister is twenty months older than me. So you could whip his ass pretty regularly? I could until back then until high school. And then he That's when it changed. And then he got taller than me. And did he seek retribution? No, thank God. I know just spending the last few days with you, you're very close with your brother. Um we we were growing up. Um and and we would be closer now, but he still lives in Eugene. I live in Wyoming. We're not as close now. Um when we you know, and it's funny because growing up, we that's what we did. We were each other's buddies. I mean, even through middle school, um, we were always running around. And I remember we we lived in this one place that was my my dad's uncle's place we rented. And my uncle lived like a half mile up the mountainside, and he had like behind his house was like State Forest. And so we always called it his mountain, and we would go up and climb the mountain. You know, if we were bored, we'd just go climb the mountain, right? Heck yeah. Um, just try to get to the top, and uh um, and then we would just run down, right? It was like, you know, southern Oregon, you know, steep, you know, timber-filled mountains, and we just was your playground. Yeah, it was our playground and uh climbing trees and getting in trouble with the neighbors' horses and you know, all sorts of stupid stuff. We did was your so your sister was a couple years almost two years older than almost two years, yeah. Yeah. Um and and that that difference of the older sister, when we were younger, we we engaged together quite a bit and we played together all three of us, but as we got into middle school and high school, she's doing high school girl stuff. Yeah. And that difference between boys and girls, right? That changes dramatically. Dramatically. Yeah. Dramatically. So did mom work or stay was she stay at home? Um, it depended on the financial needs at the time. Um when I was real little, I think she stayed home um most of the time. And uh my dad my dad worked, but then as we got into uh like later grade school, uh she'd pick up jobs, part-time jobs, and well, we were homeschooled uh from third to fifth grade. Um that's more than a full-time job. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially with us. Oh, dude. My Mary tried homeschooling my oldest son, like third grade or something. Yeah. And I would be coming home, and if I saw him running around the house, I would just keep off driving. Because I was like, this is not good. Yeah. Yeah. My wife um homeschooled all of our kids, like through kindergarten, and then most of them go off to public school, and now our two youngest, so we have a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, is our two youngest, uh, their homeschool. Um, so yeah, she's she's amazing at that, like building the curriculum. Well, and homeschool's changed since you were in homeschool. Yeah, when I was homeschooled, it was like, yeah. I always made fun of homeschoolers. Oh, for sure. I was a homeschooler, so I could make fun of them. And when I uh when I went to college, um our dorms were like Jack and Jill's, you know, so we'd have your roommate, you'd share a room, and then a shared bathroom, and then your suite mates, right? And I went to college with my best friend, and I had a roommate that was a baseball player, and he got a random roommate, ended up being a homeschooler. Tough sliding. It was it was tough. It was tough, yeah. But that that social awkwardness and just it it was just weird, right? And um now our kids have so much more social interaction. There's a great homeschool community. Co-ops, yeah. They co-op together, they get to play sports, and um, so there's way more social interaction and have to deal with that. Yeah, so it's not the same as it used to be for sure. Did um what was high your high school career like? Were you a jock or what what social group did you fit in in high school? Well, all through all through school, I was uh I was a jock. Um well I early, like when I was in Crow, um my mom was still in the cowboy world. Um so she grew up um hardcore in the cowboy world. She her and her dad and her sisters were team ropers. Um I've got this really cool picture. I haven't seen the pictures of your family around. I've got this really cool picture of my mom riding wild cows back in the day. Oh yeah. Both hands. Yeah, both hands. And oh it's it's a cool, it's a really cool picture. Um, you know, my aunts all rode wild cows. My um my mom's middle sister was a really great barrel racer. Um, she married a reigning horse trainer from Canada. Um and so it was always around me. But then when I was in first grade, my mom was at a team ropen and she blew out two discs in her little black bag. Oh, geez. She had to have emergency fusion surgery. Um, and so she she walked away from that. Um, we moved to town, she stopped riding horses, you know, and I was living my best life. Some of my earliest memories are either with a rope in my hand or on my pony at a rope in or a theatre in or something, you know? Yeah. Um and so, but I I still played sports, right? I played baseball and t ball and and soccer and all that stuff. I was always pretty athletic. So then when we moved to town, identity became sports. And I was a baseball player, basketball player. Um and because I was always pretty tall. And in a junior high, I played baseball and basketball. My seventh grade year I ran cross country, which was awful. Like I I hate running. Like I absolutely hate it. I would rather play basketball for four hours. Yeah, where you're doing something. Yeah. Yeah. Then go for, you know, a mile run or a two-mile run. But um, so I I played cross country, and then in eighth grade, um, my parents let me play football. They wouldn't let me play football just because of the physicality. Up till then. Up until then. So I got to play football finally, and I I loved football. Um, I was a good receiver. I had really good hands. Um I remember uh we would run wind sprints, like 40s. I was the sl the slowest kid on the team. Oh, dang. Literally. Um, I had chin splints. Those are painful. Oh, they're awful. It was it was it felt like I was running in sand up to my knees. Like I just like I wanted to. I, you know, was using all of my body, but I just couldn't make myself run faster. So it was miserable. Um, my freshman year, I was still um pretty slow because of that, but I played baseball, basketball, and football. I walked into my freshman year uh at 6'3. Dang. Uh 175. So I was a tall, skinny boy, right? I haven't grown an inch since. I topped out. I topped out. You peaked. I peaked as a freshman, right? Um, but uh my freshman year I got hurt um playing well, I wasn't even playing football. We were running 40s to end up practice, and I went to turn around and get back to the excuse me, back to the line, and I felt something, it felt like my knee dislocated, and I just collapsed. So I'm just in excruciating pain. Everybody's like, what is happening? Like non-contact. In total non-contact. I literally was just stopping quick, turning around to get back to the line. Uh, I collapse, um take me to the hospital, and I actually chipped a piece of my femur inside the knee cavity. Dang. Um, so they had to go in, pull that out. I was on crutches for eight weeks. So I missed basketball season my freshman year. Um, but I was able to play baseball. Um we we went to a real small, we we had moved to Glendale, Oregon, super small little mill town. And so there was only like 250 kids from seventh to twelfth grade. Um, so you know, kid shows up. I I moved there in eighth grade. So new kid shows up. He's tall, he's athletic, he's played sports. You know, I'm on I'm an automatic starter, all three sports, you know, as a freshman. Um, so I started third base um on the baseball team. I was still a little slow and I couldn't hit the ball real well, but I always had a a good arm. Um, so I played that uh infield corner. My sophomore year, I showed up for seven on seven in the summer football, and all of a sudden I could run. Like it was on. It was on. Like everybody noticed. They were like, ooh, RJ's got some speed. Like, what happened? You know, I finally got rid of the shin splints. I'd grown out of the shin splints. I mean, think about it. I that's was six three is a front tons of growing, right? And um, so so I finally got through that, and and football was a lot better. I played basketball. I was like the six-man, or yeah, six man and um basketball. Baseball was My thing though. Like I always knew I had two goals in life from a really young age um to be a pastor and play professional baseball. Those were like the two things in my mind, like I knew I was gonna do. Um and yeah, I just absolutely love baseball. My sophomore year, I moved uh across the diamond and I played first base. Um Yeah, that's usually where they stick the tallest, biggest reach, right? Yeah, yeah. And I was always pretty good at fielding, you know, digging and um yeah, again, not a great hitter um early in my baseball career, but and then those years in Glendale, um those they were pretty tough. We'd we had moved there um because uh my my dad's uncle was running a church there. Um so we started going to this really small church, like you know, a big Sunday was like 15, 20 people. Um and my dad wasn't making any money. Uh yeah, before we started recording, we were talking about you know government cheese and no money. That's that was my life for like three years. Um, you know, borrowing uh teammates hand-me-down basketball shoes. So I do shoes. I I did the same. I remember my needing basketball shoes in eighth grade when I finally made the team. And he's like I had to do the same. I had to get somebody's basketball shoes from last year. Because remember that for for me, it was like that's when you didn't wear the same shoes all day. Like you changed into basketball shoes to be on the court. You couldn't wear your everyday shoes. It was like Yeah. I would lay a night dreaming about getting basketball just b just a pair of basketball shoes. Basketball basketball shoes, right? Yeah, and somebody that had the same shoe size, their last year basketball shoes. Yeah. And and so that was like the mid-90s, and that's when like the East Bay catalog came out. And so it was like, you know, you could see all like the the best shoes and the newest, the latest, greatest, right? Yeah, it was like, uh, thanks for letting me borrow your shoes, because I wouldn't have had basketball shoes. My dad, I think, made that last year that we were there, he made like $10,000 that year. Dave. Yeah, that's tough with three kids. Yeah. So uh we were, you know, my my my dad's uncle ran a mission, so he would get um like day old stuff from the little Debbie guy, and uh, we'd get like government oatmeal and government cheese and peanut butter, and so we always had peanut butter by the gallon and oatmeal by the 50-pound bag, and we had a lot, we had a lot of oatmeal and um a lot of different rice recipes. Yeah, we would get the rice a lot, the cold cereal that came in the big like 10-pound bag. Oh, it was just the generic like styrofoam. I remember like getting to have a sleepover and somebody actually had fruity pebbles or honeycombs, and it was like the greatest thing ever. You're like, what is this? Yeah, yeah. Um, but it it was great, right? Because we lived like we rented this house um on the side of a mountain, and um my brother and I would just we'd just goof around, right? We just had fun. Did you get to go to the same high school all four years? No. My um the end of my sophomore year, my dad decided my parents decided that we needed to move. We needed to do something different financially. Um, so my dad used to work at a mill in Eugene when I was, you know, in early grade school. And so he reapplied there and got a job back at uh that facility, Trust Joyce. Um they make the laminated floor joyce, I being floor joys, you know. Um so we moved uh back to Eugene after my sophomore year that summer. Um so now I'm I'm in you went from being the guy. Yeah, I went from being the guy. Now you gotta try out probably for sports and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I gotta try out. I I wasn't a huge football fan. I I liked it, um, but I I didn't have that screw loose that made me love hitting. Um I liked the skill aspect of it. I loved catching and I was like backup quarterback um as a sophomore. I had a really good arm, super accurate. Um but I decided that I wasn't gonna play football um anymore. I was just gonna play baseball. And that summer, a couple of the kids, a couple of the football players, like show up on my doorstep and like, hey, uh heard you're new in town. You're right, and they kind of recruited. Coaches sent them out. Coaching coach sent me out, you know, hey, I hear this new kid uh showed up and he's tall, right? Um so I ended up going out my freshman, or excuse me, my junior year playing foot football. I played outside linebacker, um a little bit of a little bit of wide receiver, um, but like two weeks, I think I got to play like three games, maybe four games. Um I was on the uh kickoff team, and so I'm just bust and butt down the field, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I get a helmet to the thigh and just takes me out. I ended up getting a contusion that was so deep that I got calcium deposits on my femur on my right leg. Um, and it would cause my quad to basically Charlie horse. Yeah, lock up, lock up anytime I would sprint. Um, so I had I missed, you know, the second half of that season. But I stayed with the team and I would um like warm up the wide receivers and uh the cornerbacks and stuff like that, and he used my arm. Um so then I got into I was healed enough to be able to play baseball that season. I didn't play basketball because I was like yeah, I gotta choose. Well, yeah, and that and I would be like the eighth guy in the lineup. And I was like, basketball practice sucks so bad, it's still worse, right? And then to not be able to play, I was like, Yeah, I'm not gonna bust my butt at basketball practice to just sit on the bench. I don't I don't love basketball that much. Um and then my senior year, I didn't play football, I just played baseball. I worked, um, I worked at uh was your goal still to play college baseball? Yeah, yeah, that that was always the goal. Um I wasn't a great student though in high school. Um and uh so so I'm just playing basketball or baseball, um working, and we have block scheduling. Uh so you're only taking like three or four classes a day, but you're there for like an hour and a half. And the way my schedule worked out, like every Tuesday and Thursday, I only had like one class after lunch. Perfect. Yeah. Until I started skipping the class because I didn't need the credit because it was an English class. I had enough English credits, I didn't need the class. So I started skipping the class. And I come to like two, three weeks before graduation, and my guidance counselor brings me in. He's like, hey, um, you're failing this class. I was like, Yeah, it's an English class. I don't need the credit. He's like, Yeah, you need the humanities credit for this class. You don't need the English credit to graduate. To graduate. He's like, you're not gonna be able to graduate. I was like, What? He's like, Listen, we'll let you walk with your class, but you have to take a summer class to be able to graduate. So that didn't pan out. It actually was kind of cool. Because I ended up getting a job at the mill that I was working swing shift, so I'd go to the summer class at like 10 o'clock in the morning, ride my bike and go to class, ride back home, and then it was it was a pretty decent schedule. Um, but skipping class basically let me go ride my mountain bike and snowboard with my buddies because my my two best friends were older than me, and they graduated a year and two years before me, so they're out, you know, living life and working full time and having fun. But um, so when it came time to like look for colleges, my options went sh 'cause they had a 2.75 GPA. I think I scored like a 820 on the SAT, which is awful. Um and so the schools that would accept me were next to nothing. I ended up um going to college at uh Central Christian College in McPherson, Kansas. For some reason I thought it'd be an awesome idea to move from Eugene, Oregon, where the beach is an hour away and the mountains are an hour away, to McPherson, Kansas. I've been there. Yeah. It's a great place, isn't it? Yeah, there's a cool little restaurant downtown I went to. That's about it, huh? Yeah. So my buddy and I roll out of town in his 87 Toyota pickup truck. Everything we own is in the bed. Regular cab, not even an extra cab. We're rolling out. We roll into McPherson about two o'clock in the morning, and it's just lit up. We're like, what is happening in this little town, right? And uh we so we crash out on the couches of the dorm, we wake up, we start kind of exploring, we're like, what is this place? Where are we? Where are we? The furthest east we'd ever been was Denver, Colorado. We had no concept of how flat can central Kansas is. Um, and then all the lights we saw was the refineries. We had no idea there was a refinery. So we're in the middle of this podunk little town in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. And if if you've never been to central Kansas, I don't think you can you can't really comprehend like how flat it is. Yeah, it's like West Texas. The saying is you can watch your dog run away for three days. Yeah, it absolutely is. And there's there's not even because out there it's all cropland, right? So there's not even trees to break up break up the horizon. Like you literally can see for 11 miles out in front of you. Um so there's this huge like geographical shock and this culture shock, but I played baseball. That that college had a baseball team? Yeah, they had a baseball team, they had a volleyball team, soccer team. Um Did w was it such a small was it a like a Christian liberal arts college? Yeah. So was there scholarships or anything? I got a little scholarship to play ball. Um, you know, I think it was like twelve hundred bucks a year or something like that. Which, you know, in a twenty-four thousand dollar a year tuition, it's not that great, right? But um and it it was fun because you know, these average high school baseball players from all over the Midwest and the South, you know, come together and we're like, oh hey, we we're playing college baseball, right? Um and there was some I played with some salty players, right? Some some guy I we had a uh a pitcher from Oklahoma. His nickname was Cat. Uh, because he was uh uh Indian dude and he his face looked like a flathead catfish. Whereas his nickname was Cat. Um he could throw the heat though. He could throw the heat. He he threw mid-90s. Dang. Um just mean. He was a mean pitcher, too, man. Like he had a rule like if somebody hit a home run off him, the next kid was the next batter was getting violent. And we were doing a uh an inner team scrimmage, and I'm on deck, and the guy in front of me hits a danger off of him. You knew what was coming. I knew what was coming. And he throws 95 right at my head. I'm on his team. He didn't care. He didn't care. 95 right at my head. I hit the dirt, and I think I uh I I stand back up and he finally pitched me and I hit a double off of him. But yeah, it was it was a good time. We got to, you know, go down to Texas, go up to uh, you know, all over the Midwest to play baseball. And um that that freshman year of of college ball, I had gotten a lot stronger. I was walking around like 195, so I'd put on 20 pounds of muscle through high school. And um I could hit, I had a lot more power at the plate, and I just had a cannon. Um it's just one of those weird things I can't explain, right? Like God just gifted me with a right arm that um, you know, I would play long toss um and and catch. So if you're not familiar with long toss, it's where pitch, you know, outfielders and pitchers just throw the ball as long as they can and just as far as they can to just get used to stretching your arm out. And I'd have to play foul pull to putt. And we could I I had one other guy on the team that we could we could long toss that far. Um and yeah, I played right field and center field, and I could throw guys out from the warning track, uh one quite in third, one bounce. Um, just just a canon. It was a lot of fun to to play. I remember one one day we're we're uh playing down in Oklahoma. It was kind of overcast and it'd been kind of wet. I'm playing center field, and uh there's a ball hit to the left center gap, and I'm chasing it down. Left fielder's uh gonna back me up, and so I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to dive for this ball if I'm gonna make a play. And I get closer and closer and I dive and I stretch out and I hit the ground and I slide for like 10 feet, and the ball lands in front of my glove. I totally mistimed it. It was so embarrassing. So I bounce up off the ground and the ball sitting at the warning track, and I sprint, I beat the left fielder to the ball, and I was so mad. And I get to the ball and I grab it with my right hand and I look up and the runner's headed rounding second, headed for third. He's thinking he's gonna get a triple off me. And I don't even hesitate, straight off the ground, and I gun him out at third. So you redeemed yourself. I I redeemed myself, thankfully. But um, yeah, it was just one of those things where it was just so much fun to play and experience that just God-given talent that I had. Um, but I didn't get the knees uh to be able to play. By that time I'd already had two surgeries on my left knee. Um, and every single day I was coming back to the dorms, having to ice and elevate my legs and just be able to walk the next day. Um, so I ended up uh not playing my sophomore year. I walked away. Um, and that was that was tough. I bet that was devastating. It was because when you have a dream of like since you're little, and then to the realization of if I can't do this, I don't know for you, but like when my high school career ended, because I like you said earlier, like that was my whole identity with sports. And then it was like I had to find something quick. So I was like, oh, I'll maybe I'll rodeo and ride bucking horses. And yeah, it's a late start because in Idaho everybody high school rodeos, so yeah, yeah. I'm 19 coming into it, and everybody's been riding bucking horses already for four or five years. Yeah, yeah. But I needed that identity piece because I was like, I don't know who I I don't know what I'm gonna who am I? Yeah. If I'm not wearing my letterman's jacket and all that comes with, you know, yeah, that kind of identity and pride, then I didn't know. So it was like and then the same thing when my rodeo career ended, which lasted way longer than it should up because I wasn't very good at it. But it is, it's tough when you're trying to figure out who you are as a young man, and then that thing that you thought was gonna be it goes away. It's like now what? Yeah, and and that's really where I was at. And and also, so I I met my wife our freshman year. Um, so we started dating um pretty early. She was a volleyball player, so she was there early for volleyball. I was there for baseball early because we played a fall season. Um and so we had been dating for almost a year now, right? And pretty serious, and it and so I was also in this crisis of identity around being a pastor as well. Because I um I was in the Free Methodist denomination at the time that college was a Free Methodist denomination, very um very structured denomination, right? And once you get out of college, the denomination just says, hey, this is where you're going. Right? You there's not a lot of flexibility in there and um and you know, how am I going to raise a family as a pastor salary and all that stuff? So not only did I walk away from baseball, I walked away from um my my major, my pastoral studies major, and I ended up just getting uh my liberal arts degree. Um we got married in shortly after our sophomore year. We graduated in 2008. So you're like 20? Yeah, I was 20. Dang, that's early. Yeah. But when you know, you know. Yeah, yeah. Um and and I I had dated quite a few girls in high school, but I I was a good, you know, moral Christian boy. Um did no partying or anything. No partying. Um I remember I went to like two parties in high school. Um, but I didn't drink. I, you know, had Sprite and a cup, right? Make it look like an unmixed drink, right? And um and never so I didn't drink until I was 21. Uh, and then my wife and I were both virgins when we got married. So I mean, just clean, clean, good Christian boy living, right? Well, I would imagine that this probably wraps up the podcast because it's been smooth sailing since then, right? I mean, it is yeah. I mean, God has just absolutely blessed my life and it's been perfect. Um perfect marriage, perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect, yeah. Well, thanks for coming off. Yeah, for sure. Hope that gives everybody hope. No, and and I think that's yeah, if you do all the right things, it just means you're gonna have a perfect life. Absolutely. No, golly, and that was like the Was it a four-year school? Um, they had so our freshman year was the first year that they started upperclassmen stuff. Um but we I decided um I decided that I was gonna go into um business, uh, get my business degree. So we moved to Greeley, Colorado. Uh, and I went to University of Northern Colorado. Um I didn't know it at the time, but what I know about myself now is I'm a crazy procrastinator. And so if my schedule's not stuffed, like I have no capacity to be lazy and put stuff off, I do really, really well. And that was my freshman and sophomore year. Right? So I went from a 275 in high school, GPA, to a 375 uh in college because I was playing baseball. I had no capacity to goof off. It was baseball in school. All business. All business. My sophomore year, I was working 35 hours a week. I'd get home at like nine o'clock at night, uh, 10 o'clock. So I had no capacity to goof off. Um I transferred uh to UNC. I was trying to get a part-time job, and I couldn't get a part-time job, couldn't find a part-time job. And then my brother came and moved in with us shortly after we got married. And procrastination just set in. And I I decided I needed to go walk away. Um, after one semester, I ruined my GPA. I was like, yeah, this is not good. This is not the time. This is a waste of money. It's a waste of money. It's a waste of reputation, that kind of thing. But um, but yeah, it was it was tough. Like being young, like Grace had to drive the rental car on our honeymoon because she's a year older than me. Um, you know, I'm 20 years old, and um, and it's funny you said that about like, oh, okay, perfect life, yeah. You you live clean, you give this perfect life. Um I I thought that, right? I thought that about especially my my sex life, right? Um, and my wife's probably gonna be mortified. Um, but right, I so I I did struggle, like obviously with like most men and most guys do through through their adolescence with pornography and stuff like that. But like the one thing that I promised God I would commit to was maintaining my virginity, right? And you know, I would have like you said, this is what we're told, right? You you commit this and you'll be blessed. So we honeymooned in Tahoe. Um and my wife had to go to the urgent care in Lake Tahoe because sex hurt her so bad. Oh, geez. So yeah, welcome, welcome to your blessing. Yeah, it's not anything was nothing like what I was told, right? It was like, you know, I remember like, you know, I'm at a Christian school, so most of my peers are on the same road I am, right? And we're joking and we're we're laughing about how great it's gonna be when we get married and you know, all this stuff. It's amazing sex. Yeah, it's amazing sex, it's gonna, you know, take away all that, and oh, I can be able to have sex whenever I want and all this stuff. Yeah, no. Well, guess what? Reality sets in, right? Um being so so early in our marriage, that was that was a a struggle, right? It's like having sex with your wife and it's painful for her. Like, that's awful. Well, it's yeah, it's very I don't know, for men it's like it's beyond discouraging. Yeah. Especially like you waited and thought it was gonna be one way, and then what do you do, you know? Yeah. Um and it's it it was um yeah, and and and then, right, it it didn't cure the porn addiction, right? So it's like, well, wait a second, I thought this these were supposed to take care of themselves and um just that journey of okay, how how do I figure out my stuff, right? And um, and then together, right, she was patient with me, and I was patient with her, and finally, right, sex has become something that's you know a blessing in both of our lives, and we both enjoy it, but it was tough. It was like the probably the first ten years of our marriage. It was painful for her. Well, and I no tools. I think in church they do such a horrible job talking or not talking about it. Like I I didn't know how to communicate with my wife about it. Yeah. So I was always just bummed out or a pouty little bitch about it because I was too scared to talk about it. I couldn't. Well now There's so much shame that comes into the picture when it's I don't know, it's tricky, man. I think that the church doesn't do good with the two biggest things because I've got the opportunity to to officiate some weddings and do some premarriage counseling. I'm like, man, in the 20 years that I've almost I've almost 20 years married, sex and money are gonna be the two biggest complications. Yeah. Like let's get good at talking about it now. Yeah. Because it's the thing that I think is the most damaging going into marriage without the right tools and how to how to be open and honest about both of those two areas. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I grew up in the church, right? I was I remember praying the sinner's prayer at three, right? So literally grew up in the church, and sex is taboo, right? Grace, my wife, same thing, right? We don't talk about it, right? Yeah, you grew up in the purity, the purity culture too. Absolutely. Like I I in my sophomore year, I was a part of a a cultural movement called Stars. Students today aren't ready for sex. Yeah, it was a peer-to-peer like abstinence movement. Yeah, like um, yeah, I that was my life, right? That was my identity. Yeah. Because the blessings on the other side. But it there was because it's like no save yourself, there was no leading up to what is the expectation? How do we have healthy sex? How do we have vibrant healthy sex? Um, or even talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a shameful thing. It is. It's weird. And that's one thing that you know frustrates me about cult church culture, right? I mean, like we literally have the Song of Psalm in in the Bible. Like that was like erotic writing when song when Solomon wrote that, right? It's like, um, and yet we still can't talk about pleasure in sex as we we give it to the world to define it for us instead of us having healthy conversations around it and about it. And yeah, it's tricky. Yeah. So so that was, you know, early in in our marriage, um it w it was this this it was never terrible, right? I mean, she didn't resent me for it, or I didn't resent her for it. Um, but it was just one of those like letdowns. Well, yeah, because you thought this whole time it's gonna be this movie thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, and that that didn't happen, right? Um, but patient with each other, and over the years, yes, God has blessed our marriage bed, and um it's gotten a way better, right? Um and and so anyway, we we started having kids young too. Um we I was 22 when my oldest was born. Dude, that's I couldn't even balance my checkbook at 22. Like, I can't I always like think put myself in other people's shoes. I'm like, let's see, at 22, I yeah, I can't even imagine. Yeah. And I I was always um pretty mature. Like I said, I mean, I always had these like long-term visions and long-term goals. Um, so yeah, I was like, yeah, let's have kids early. Uh we'll be done early, and then we can enjoy our 40s and 50s together, right? And our 60s. And um so we had our oldest in um he was born in 2003. In Colorado. In Colorado. He was so he's technically a Colorado native. He was born in Greeley, Colorado. Um, and that's that's a whole story in and of itself. Um, but um shortly after he was so he was born in July of 03. I was working for Rain for Rent at the time. Oh yeah. Out of Fort Lupton. Um you know, uh throughout the West, they're known for a lot of their irrigation products. Um in Colorado, we did a lot of um sewer bypass stuff uh and utility and municipal support, and then some water table stuff. So I I was the first foreman in the company to actually install uh a dewatering system so we could lower the water table uh around an excavation site, something like that. It was pretty cool. Um anyway, we were on a project. Uh a buddy of mine and I were on a project in Colorado Springs. Uh we had been there for like 10 days straight. Uh super cold. It got down to like negative 20. And we were the overnight shift, so we had to watch the pumps overnight. We showed up the next morning, crew's there to relieve us. Uh, the branch manager showed up, and he gets on the radio. Hey, where's where's the weed burner? Uh this pump's froze over here. I get back to him. I'm like, hey, yeah, it's sitting over here. Um, we just checked it, yeah, but it was like negative 20. So these things were freezing quick. Um, I was like, Do you need us to come back? We had the uh Motorola used to talk at the time, you know? Um yeah, you need us come back, uh, help you out, get that unfrozen. Um, nothing. Didn't hear nothing from him. All right, so we head to the hotel, we crash out for the day, show up for our shift at seven o'clock that night, and he's back, and there's two dudes with the day crew I've never seen before. He pulls us aside and says, You guys drop the ball, you're fired. We're like, What do you what did we do? What are you talking about? He's like, You're fired. Like, I he dropped the ball, you're done. This is like right before Christmas. It's like two weeks before Christmas. Um, didn't give us any explanation of exactly what we did wrong, other than he showed up and a pump was frozen. Um, had a perfect work history record, like no disciplinaries, no incidents, no accidents. Um, and he just fired us. Didn't show up to the exit interview, nothing. Gave us zero reasons why he fired us. And you already had your son? I had already, yeah. My son was four months old. I'm panicking. I literally like had to walk away. I started bawling. I was like, what am I gonna do? I've never been fired. You know, my short history of work, I was I would that was like my one thing that my dad instilled in me was work ethic, right? Is show up, show up on time, do your job, put effort in. And here I am, I got fired. It was embarrassing. Um, I gotta call my wife and tell her, hey, I know it's right before Christmas. I just got fired. Um, but I had I had been looking for other opportunities because I knew I wanted to go back and get my bachelor's degree at this point. Um, so I'd been looking for, after my son was born, we didn't have grandparents around. My parents were still in Oregon, her parents were in Kansas. Um we had looked at moving back to Eugene area in the Willamette Valley, but um shortly after my son was born, my mom had a complete nervous breakdown. Uh she was going to work one day and just everything she had to get to the hospital. Um so she ended up being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and um disassociative identity disorder. Um that's heavy. Yeah, it was it was big. The last we were visiting one day after this had happened. Um and the last day of our visit, my dad's in the back room and she's like freaking out. My dad's trying to calm her down. Um my dad ended up having to take her to the mental health hospital while we were there. I'd say goodbye to my mom in the in the mental health ward of the hospital. She doesn't like she didn't recognize who I was. She didn't know who I was. She was like literally like this disassociative identity disorder had jacked her up. Um, so it was like, okay, we can't move back to Oregon because that's not stable to help. I don't want to be there, yeah. Yeah. Um, but it was this weird, like, yeah, I don't want to be there, but I like I need to be there to, you know, support my mom and support my my parents, but I gotta raise my own family now. And so anyway, we moved back to Grace's hometown. I was it's it was a total God thing. Um I had lost my job and I had been talking to some supervisors that worked um at the Kellogg's company. So Kellogg's had a snacks division. So they had bought the Keebler brand um a few years before and had some contacts there, and so I had the name of the and the numbers of the supervisors that um manage the territory managers, the salespeople. I had been hounding them. I was calling them like once a month, hey, you know, uh still calling about a job and you know, see if you had anything, and they didn't have anything open at the time, and um, so I lose my job. We go back for uh Christmas to Grace's parents, and I got a hold of um one of the um supervisors, and he was like, I don't have a territory open, but I have a fill-in rep job open. If you'd be interested in coming in and interviewing, I'd, you know. So I at on our Christmas break, I interviewed for this fill-in rep job. So the territory manager would go on vacation for a week and I would have to take over their territories. And uh so I ended up getting that job when we moved in January um of 2020. Um so it just it just happened, right? It just lined up. I did that job for I was I worked for Kellogg's for nine and a half years. Oh, dang. Um, two three different positions. I was a really good sales per sales rep. I had uh a three-year stretch where I didn't miss a monthly budget. Um, I was going to school full-time or part-time, getting my bachelor's degree. Making some money. I was making a little bit of money. Not great money. You know, we we called it a blue-collar sales job. Um, but it they paid for my bachelor's degree, um, had a company car and you know, that kind of stuff. So it was it was a it was a good gig and mostly it was a good learning opportunity, right? How to how to treat people, how to, how to talk to people, um, how to ask for something when it's uncomfortable. Um, yeah. I I was shameless, man. Were you in your same town that your ma your wife grew up in then? Yeah. So we moved back to her. So then you had support. And how long till you had your second child? Um, so our boys are three years apart. So my youngest son was born in 06. And I had just finished up my bachelor's degree, and he was a baby. Um so it took me about two and a half years to finish my bachelor's degree. And then um, yeah, I was just doing the territory stuff, and it it was it was kind of neat because it always seemed like we had enough. You know, I wasn't making much money. Um, Grace was staying home with the kids, uh, and I had enough to support the household. I had enough to do some hobbies. You know, I rode mountain bikes and started bow hunting and um that kind of stuff, and then it just I just always had enough, you know. I I didn't need a ton of money and um I had enough to do it, right? And then in 2008, we adopted our oldest daughter. Um she was six weeks old. We flew to Atlanta, Georgia, uh, and met her in the hospital. So she was born with uh lymphatic malformation disease. So her lymph nodes and her neck, the left side of her neck and her left side of her tongue, don't connect, excuse me. Don't connect with the blood capillaries. Uh so that's how your lymphatic system flushes itself out. It connects with blood capillaries, and so it can get rid of all the junk in your lymph nodes or your lymph system. So hers just close off and they end up filling up and they create clusters. So what what do you how do you have to go in and they have to surgically like remove all those little lymph nodes and the the ends of the lymph system? Um and or sometimes they will go in and they'll with a small needle and they'll put like a chemical in there and they'll inject it with a chemical to like burn it from the inside to close it off. So we met her at six weeks and she had already had like three or four surgeries. Okay. Because she had like a softball size mass under her left jawline and her tongue. Um so it was just then we just jumped in and it was like surgery, surgery, surgery, surgery. What what led to deciding to adopt? We had we had our two boys and we wanted to have a third child, and we were just we both just felt like God was calling us to adopt. Um and we didn't, you know, at the at the time, you know, that was at the height of um Brangelina, right? And Brad and Angelina had adopted all their kids from Africa and all that stuff. And so there was this big push on international adoptions, and we we just felt led to a domestic, because there's you know, these all these kids in the United States that are up for adoption, and they weren't getting any notice and they weren't getting any press. Like everybody was flocking to adopt from Africa and China and and all this stuff. And um we found uh this organization that takes it they're they're called a clearinghouse. So kids whose parents have relinquished their parental rights and they try to get them adopted before the state takes over. So if a kid, if a mom or a dad gives up parental rights, there's like a short time window. So we got a call on like Wednesday saying, hey, we have this little girl, she has this. Would you be interested? We had a phone call, a conference call with her mom on Thursday, and we were on a plane on Friday. Right. So it's it's quick, right? Um and she's she's black. So Grace and I, two young, you know, this little little white couple from the Midwest drive to Atlanta, Georgia, or fly to Atlanta, Georgia, go to the hospital, meet Mia for the first time, and it was so cool, such a God thing. Like, um, well so Grace heard God tell her that we were going to adopt we we needed to adopt like um that we needed to adopt nine months before she was born. I mean it's just such a god thing, right? We show up, we hold her for the first time, and the nurses all were like, Oh my gosh, she's not been this calm this whole time. Like she got in our arms and she just relaxed. Meant to be. It was meant to be. It was Did you take her home right then too? Um, we had to stay in Atlanta for like three or four days. Because the way the the state system works is you have to wait for the residing state to release the child and the residing, the paperwork basically for the state to say, yeah, you can leave. So we had to stay there for like three or four days, which was hilarious because we took our new baby everywhere we went, right? We went shopping at Walmart in Atlanta, Georgia. White couple with a little black baby. We were not received well. We we decided to go explore Atlanta downtown and Atlanta underground. We had a lot of looks. It was really funny. I had no idea how tense that would be and how tentious that would be, right? Uh so we stayed there for like three or four days. And then You have to wait for the receiving state to allow the child to come in. All right. So we had this like week period of time where we actually had we we could leave Georgia, but we couldn't enter Kansas. So um we were outside the Kansas City area. So we stayed on the Missouri side in a hotel uh for like a week. So that then Grace's family and everybody could come in and and we were closer. We ended up staying at the hotel where um this large black family was having a family reunion. So here we are, this white couple with this little black girl, and go down to breakfast, and this great big black family would be in in the breakfast area. And this one older gal like took a curiosity and she didn't want to come out and ask directly. So she'd be like, is that your baby? Yeah. The next morning. Did you have a C-section? Just like just asking these off-the-wall questions, right? Not asking, not wanting to ask, oh, did you adopt her? Right. It was so funny. Um, but yeah, so that was that was a fun experience. Um and so yeah, we we moved on with our life um until about a year later we decided that we would wanted to adopt again. And this time we wanted to adopt out of the foster care system. And because that was another population of children that just get it completely ignored. Like I think there's something like one and a half million kids eligible for adoption in the foster care system today. And as they get older, those the percentages go down of the chance of them getting adopted. Yeah, it's really sad. Um, so I had one rule with adopting um and fostering. We couldn't bring in kids that were younger than Mia. All right, because again, I had this forward plan. I was gonna be 45 when Mia graduated high school, and I'll have half of my 40s, all of my 50s, no kids. It'll be amazing, right? So um we the first foster placement that we took was two boys, brothers. Um, mom's parental rights were gonna be terminated in 30 days, and so we brought them in. 30 Days Comes, gets an extension. 30 Days come, mom gets another extension. These two boys just fit our family. Like our our boys loved them, our daughter loved them, like it was just a perfect fit. They were from inner city, uh, Kansas City, and um it it just fit our family. Nine months later, they went home. Oh, dude. Um That's devastating. It was it was so tough. And and holding this tension of loving these boys and wanting the best for them and having grace for their mom and not just putting her down and you know, all that stuff, right? Um so living in that tension was tough. We stayed in touch with her mom, their mom, though, stayed in touch with them. They would come for spring break, they would come for a couple weeks over summer and just hang out with us. Um and then when the youngest boy, Eric, was in eighth grade, he called and asked if he could come back and live with us uh through high school. So he lived with us. He did? Yeah. He lived with us from eighth grade when he graduated high school. So he's like a son, even though Yeah. We call him our bonus son. Yeah. Um his mom refers refers to us as his godparents. Sure. So it's like this. So you kept a good relationship with her, obviously. Yeah, yeah, we did. Um so How old is he now? He is 21. He graduated high school. He's one of the first in his generation to actually graduate high school, because he's you know, a young black man from inner city, Kansas City. Um he went to technical school at Fort Hayes State Technical College, wrestled in high school in college, wrestled for two years, and now he's at Fort Hayes State University, uh, finishing his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. That's pretty cool. Yeah. He's a he's an amazing man. Like he it's it's him, right? Like he made some tough choices. He has chosen like to break change, break generational curses. Um yeah, he's he's cool, though. He's a cool dude. He's cool. Um so anyway, rewind. Um, my one rule, foster kids, after they went home, Eric and Derek went home, we continue to foster. But the rule was nobody younger than Mia, right? Did that for about a year and a half, and I heard God tell me, hey, you're being selfish. You need to open your home to babies. Okay, God, I will. So I um told Grace, I said, hey, I've been selfish. God's telling me we need to be eligible for babies. And she's like, Okay, thank you, but we're not even licensed for babies. So it's a whole process. Yeah, it's a whole process, right? You have to have your house approved and you know, all this stuff. I was like, okay, but just so you know, I'm open to it, right? The next day, our social worker calls and says, Hey Grace, I know you're not licensed for babies, but we could do a temporary license. We've got an eight-week-old baby that needs a home. She's like, uh, okay, literally the next day, less than 24 hours, right? And uh, so the little girl uh had been neglected. Her mom left her, her mom has um MR. She's officially mentally retarded, um has a cognitive age of eight. Um, and so we brought her in and um that was Abby, our 14-year-old. Um so foster to adoption. Foster to adoption. Um round we d adopted her at like shortly a little over a year old. And then shortly after that, we got a call from the state of Washington. The state said, Hey, we have a child in care, and we understand you adopted her sister. Um, would you be willing to take her? Mom had found her way to Seattle and got the got her child taken away in the hospital. Like, had her baby such a mess, the state came in and took the baby before they got out of the hospital. Um, so yeah, our two youngest girls are biological sisters. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. And um my Abby, our 14-year-old, the first, she she has always been like my shadow. Like Daddy's girl. Yeah. I've got this. It's funny because she when she'd been neglected, right, for eight weeks, not held. She was stuck in a car seat. So when we first got her, she was just like stiff as a board, wouldn't cuddle, wouldn't rest, wouldn't relax. And now she's like the cuddliest kid we have. She's 14 and she still likes to curl up in my lap. That's awesome. Just cuddle, you know. And she's an itty bitty thing. She's like five, she just made it to five, one, and three-quarters and walks around like 85 pounds. Tiny. She's a tiny little kid. And she always has been, right? And but she was always neither of them have any of her their mom's disabilities. Uh uh. Her their mom um is all over medical journals. Their mom was the first case of a baby surviving 24 weeks of gestation being born. Um, so we we're pretty sure that had way more to do with her retardation than uh anything generic. Um, because both of those girls are Abby is brilliant. She's got just this brilliant mind. She's a little builder. She just loves to build stuff, and um, and Libby's Libby's brilliant too. She loves music, she's a great singer, and yeah. That's a ma wow, sisters. Yeah. How cool is that? It was pretty cool. And um the foster family that Libby was with, our youngest, um, they were super cool Christian family that had her for about six months before all the paperwork and all that stuff, and we could get out there. But yeah, it's it's it's been a fun journey. Um and saw some really awful things about society, right? You see the soft white underbelly of society, but a little bit of hope. We went down the road a little ways. We went to the m the adoption meetings, we didn't oh yeah, go through the um we didn't go through the whole process of like getting our house, like we were on track for all of that. Um it's amazing to me the different graces God gives different people, like with my story and just the sexual abuse stuff, like I I I I I can't do it. Yeah. I it it it hits me in a place that like when we were kind of looking into it, we found a girl and she'd had a horrific childhood and it's it's I don't know, I can't even explain it. Like, I have such a heart for people that have had sexual abuse and um because of my story and my compassion for them. But like uh, you know that movie that came out a couple years ago, the freedom one about uh Angel Studios did it where they go rescue all the sex slaves and I I got to meet one of the executives at Angel Studios and he was like, Have you seen it? And I'm like I I can't I don't know, it just hits me in a way that I think I feel hopeless about. Like I I don't I don't know. I like I said I can't really describe it, but like I can't go down that road very far. Um and it I I don't know why the adoption thing for me too is like kind of touches in that same place of like I I don't know. I'm so grateful for people like you and your wife, and we have friends that have gone down that road, and I have I have lots of first cousins that were adopted and family members that have done that, and I have kids on my football team that are I coach that were adopted, and yeah, it's such a beautiful thing, and like I said, I'm grateful that God gives different graces for different people for different things. Yeah. Because to your point of like that that's such a sad thing that continually seems to happen in our country and the resources that we have. Yeah, and that's such a hard thing. And what we found was there's no resources on the inside. It's awful. It's amazing what we support in our country. It was like we were we were watching TV the other night and one of those save the pets things comes on. It's like for 85 cents a day you can feed a dog, and it's like man, what the links of what we do as a society to feel better about ourselves with our money, yeah, and the foolish ways we but yeah, turn a blind eye to Yeah, I think it's one of the greatest crises in our one of them in our country of what we do to feel good about for ourselves and where we put our money. But then I'm the same guy that just said like adoption is not for us. So it's like Well, and and we always say when when people talk to us about it, because we've we've talked quite a bit about our our foster and adoption journey, like everybody can support, right? Everybody can, whether you're praying for your friends that are adopting, whether you're bringing them meals, whether you're you know just hanging out with them, giving them babysitting the kids. Like everybody can wrap around that community, the foster and adoptive community. Not everybody is called to have kids in their home. But you there is, yeah, that's a good point. You you can do something. We've walked with friends that have done it and like Yeah, they need help. We've been interviewed, you know, because through that process, they interview the people close to them to find out what kind of people they are and some pretty intrusive questions. Yeah. Yeah, and and it absolutely can be. And but but the biggest thing that I think um foster and adoptive parents and families need is a safe place. Yeah, support. To be like this is awful. I need a break. Yeah. Because that's that's like I hear um, you know, the the radio ads and the commercials for adopt US kids or whatever, and they make it sound like Sunshine and Roses. And it's not. It's those kids come with trauma, and that trauma transfers to everybody in the home, and it just gets awful. Um, and our family, like everybody's like, oh no, thank you so much for what you do, and you're such a blessing, you're amazing. And it's like, no, I actually I'm not. Like, this is just how God put our family together. I have a dysfunctional family just like everybody else. I'm a I'm a flawed father. Um, I, you know, may have made horrible parenting mistakes with all my kids. Um and again, going back to you know, do the right thing and you'll live a blessed life. I'm I haven't I I have not experienced that, right? I haven't experienced that. And so Libby, our youngest, we adopted in 2014. We had moved away from Grace's hometown um for a job. I started working for the electric utility. Um and I was working in their key accounts, and so I was using my sales and customer series service background uh to be the point person for the largest electric utility users in my geography. Um great job. Learned about how the electric utility works, made a lot of relationships and connections. In 2015, I started into operations management. So I was uh in in charge of five different groups of linemen and multiple supervisors and just thrown in to the wolves, right? Um union shop, never worked for a union, never worked at a union shop. That's a different beast. It is. It is. Uh so I had to I had to learn, you know, the the contract and managing to a contract and all that stuff. Um and then in February of 2016, um kicked off five years of hell. We had a house fire um February 6th, 2016. Um my son and my wife were up because my son was in seventh grade. He was going to take the ACT that morning because he's a brilliant mind. He was in gifted, and all the gifted kids go and take the ACT in seventh grade as a benchline, benchmark, right? So my wife was cooking him dinner, the fuses start popping in the panel, in the electric panel, and she's like, RJ. She comes and wakes me up. I was snoring that night, so I was on the couch in the in the game room. She comes into the game room and shakes me away. The the the breakers are popping. I don't I don't know what's going on, and I'm losing power in the kitchen. So I'm like all groggy, and I get up and I go to the panel and I open the panel and I see behind the panel there's something glowing. Like it's like hot, hot, hot. And I open the door and there's smoke rolling up the outside of the house. Um I'm like, there's a fire, call 911, get the kids up. And um, so I'm trying to turn off the breakers and um to cut power, but it's it's already on fire. Shortly after that, um, the sheriff lived down the road and he was driving by our house to go to work that morning. He pulls in, your house is on fire. Get out. Like, um, so we're scrambling around. My oldest son had um drove the suburban the night before. It was in the garage. Uh he locked the key, the only key we had in the suburban. That was like one of my tasks the next morning was to like figure out how to get the suburban open. So I have to call the sheriff, I have to tell the sheriff, I need you to break into my suburban so we can get this out so the kid, because it was freezing that morning. It was like 15 degrees that morning. And my kids are gonna have to stand out in the driveway. So we finally opened the garage door, get the suburban out, and the kids are in the suburban with it running to stay warm. Um, fire departments show up, and the whole house is just engulfed in smoke. Um one of the sheriffs showed up and just started snapping pictures. We're just rotating around the house, taking pictures. So I have like 200 pictures documenting this fire. Um, they put it out. The the structural damage stayed in our living room and kitchen. It burnt through some trusses. Um, but the smoke just went everywhere. Now I have a picture from the far side of the house. It was like a big long ranch, and the far side from where the fire was, there's smoke permeating through the siding, the exterior siding. It's just pushing everywhere. Um fought with insurance, fought with contractors to try to get it completely stripped and totally gutted and rebuilt. They wouldn't do it, assured us everything was gonna be fine. We moved back in. Um the night we moved back in, our oldest son couldn't sleep in his bedroom. It was in an attic bedroom, couldn't breathe. He had to sleep in the game room. Um, two nights later, my youngest son, who was living up there, couldn't sleep up there. Um, my oldest son started getting a rash. He's allergic to penicillin. Um my daughter inflamed her lymph system uh like two days. Grace, we were only in that house for 30 days. Uh Grace lost like 60% of her lung capacity. Like, literally, like, couldn't use 60% of her lungs. She'd be like out of breath just talking. Um, some friends of ours at church, or they weren't even friends at the time. We just know knew them. They were like, they came over to pray for us, pray for our house. Um, they were like, you gotta get you your your babies out of the house. That's awful. So they let us stay in their basement. They had a finished three-bedroom, one-bath basement. Um pressure releases trauma. Um we were under a lot of pressure, tight space, living with somebody we don't really know. My our three girls, all three adopted, I mean, just just had a mess of a time, right? And then that trauma just that trauma, right? Um and meanwhile I've got, you know, work pressure going on. Um, you know, I'm managing these linemen and Um, so for the first, so we were in that house for two years. During that time, I had to have another knee surgery because I couldn't hardly walk on my knee, let alone run and play with my kids. They're in like eighth grade. My oldest is in eighth grade, and I can't run around the yard and play sports with them anymore, right? So go in, have a surgery. Um, it's called an osteotomy. They're gonna move my shin bone, and they're gonna cut my shin bone and move it up and to the medial side so that it pulls some release and some pressure off my kneecap because I don't have any cartilage underneath my kneecap. I ended up getting an infection. Big old hematoma. It's all infected. I ended up with MERSA, MRSA, medically resistant staph infection, basically. I was going through 80 pounds of ice a day, just ice in my knee to keep it. Um finally got to uh the to the doctor, they're gonna give me surgery. I showed up that day. Um I'm in the prep room. Grace is like checked out. She's like disassociated. She's thinking I'm dying. Um, I had to go to the bathroom, so I get up from the prep bed, walk down the hall to the bathroom, and I come back and I'm convulsing. Like I can't control my body. The nurses, at that point, the nurses went stark. They were like, they get that tone and that look, everything's gonna be fine. We're gonna get in. Right? The nurses And they're freaking out. They're freaking out inside. They thought I was going septic. Um, so I was probably 24 hours from losing my leg. Um, if not fully going septic. Um, so I have to be on a PIC line, which right, pick line goes in your arm, drops right over the top of your heart, you got to inject antibiotics directly into your heart. Um, and the pressure at work was getting crazy as well. I had a boss that was very command and control, super detailed micromanager. Um, we were talking about this a little bit the other day, right? About identity. His identity was wrapped up in who he was at work, being a leader, former lineman, become, you know, big boss. The big boss, right? He's gonna control people. And I was at work one day. Well, I was in the hospital. He comes to visit me in the hospital, gets a phone call. One of my crews had a safety violation on their job site. Um, they hadn't had a flag on their overhead grounds. So if you're working behind a grounded system, you have to have your grounds on. Well, the grounds have to have a flag so that there's a visible evidence that they're there. They didn't have the proper signage, all this stuff. Some minor safety issues. He comes storming in like a bat out of hell and fires the foreman and just starts doing just this chaos, right? Completely takes leadership and authority off from underneath me. Um, I finally get out of my surgeries and I'm so I'm back to work. I'm still on crutches, I'm still giving injections to my still living in somebody's basement. Still living in somebody's basement, trying to figure out how I'm gonna get a house for my kids. Um and he calls me. And um, if he called me, there was an issue, right? So there's some some little detail that I had handled. It was well within my role, right? It should have just stayed with me. There's no reason to tell my boss about this little detail in the work, right? He loses his mind on me. He's yelling and screaming at me over the phone. I had it on speaker phone, and I have the supervisor that worked for me, uh, that tells the story. She was mortified. She overheard the whole thing, and she was just shocked. Like, he's he's giving himself injections at work, and you're yelling at him. He gives me this ultimatum, right? And just puts me down. And so I'm like sitting there. I just remember thinking, like, ah, get your stuff together, like, just get it together, right? And I'm under this pressure to be like him. And um years go on, and I mean, just he was just would lose his mind if he lost control, right? I remember one day I was sitting in my office, and I had a desk over in the corner with four chairs around it, a little table for, you know, lighter conferences or little meetings. I had a supervisor that worked for me sitting there, and my boss was on the other side of the desk standing behind the closed door. In front of the closed door, rather. And um, he's asking me this question about one of my other supervisors and why they would ask such a stupid question about whether or not a union steward could use a company truck to go to a union meeting. Seemed pretty reasonable to me, right? It's just a question, he doesn't know the answer to. Ask a question, right? He's losing his mind. Like literally physically losing his mind. He starts going red and he finally takes a deep breath. I need a timeout. He turned around and put his nose in the corner of my office and put himself in timeout. Like a little kid. Like a little kid, like 10-second timeout, nose in the corner, stood there. I'm just like, the other guy in the office and I are just looking at each other like, what is happening? Who is this man? Like he just was losing his mind. Um, because he was losing control. His identity was wrapped up in controlling people. And um so a few months later, somebody writes a letter to HR about his management style and the culture he's creating. And one thing leads to another, he ends up being put on administrative leave because he kept trying to figure out who wrote the letter. His boss called me to tell me that and said, Hey, your boss has been put on administrative leave. We'll let you know um what's going on. An hour later he called me back and said, Hey, your boss is in the hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He he couldn't couldn't handle it. Lost control. Lost his identity. He couldn't handle it. He ended up surviving. Um but he a massive wound to the left side of his face. Um I just remember being in that weird position. Uh here I am, I'm finally recovered, but I'm still in this weird limbo place, and um personally and um professionally I'm like trying to come into my own leadership and and hear my boss just attempt suicide, and um I feel bad for him, like, and I feel kind of guilty, but then I I hated the guy. He was making my life miserable. So I had this weird, like, conflicting emotion, and but ultimately I just saw like oh, that's the end of the road. Like when you are so wrapped up and your identity is so wrapped up in what you do and how good you are at what you do, and that comes to a crashing halt, what do you have left? That was that was this crazy picture of like that's where the road leads. Um so, but I was able in that moment to find some relief and really find like who I was as a leader. Um, and it it allowed just gave me freedom, right, to be me, um, lead how I wanted, lead more collaboratively, trust people, delegate. Um, and it was it was amazing the the the transformation of culture that happened after I was able to lead with like who I am and what I know and and principles-based leadership rather than strategies and uh stuff like that. So that was kind of like the work side and what I was doing professionally. And meanwhile, how's your marriage and all of going and all of that? I mean, you guys I just it was crazy. That's a bunch of you living in a very small space. It was crazy. Um And men are so good at compartmentalizing, it's like absolutely right. I'm I'm compartmentalizing, right? I got my work bucket and and my brain, I got my family bucket and I had all that stuff. Plus, I'm we ended up having to sue the insurance company and the contractors, so I'm in the middle of a lawsuit. I'm trying to handle that. And those are never fun, whether you're right or wrong. They are I hate it. They're awful. Um and and and my marriage, right? So Grace loses everything. She had they had rebuilt this house, and it was just it was just beautiful, right? She she's built a home most of her career, right? And again, talk about identity, right? She's a mom, she's a homemaker, she's, you know, all these things. She we rebuild the house. She has this beautiful kitchen, and you know, the the house is just gorgeous, and yet you couldn't live in it, couldn't breathe in that environment, right? And um, so yeah, she loses everything. She she was close to just losing her mind. Um at one point I I told her, I said, I I'm afraid I'm not gonna get my wife back. Like the lady I married, I don't I don't I'm kind of scared she's not coming back. Um I have a couple of well, when we entered into the lawsuit, our attorney advised that we start journaling, right, for some of the peripheral damages, if you will, right? Um so I I have some of those. I because I what I would do is I would just email myself the notes so I didn't have to worry about losing them or anything like that. I still have that. And I about a year and a half ago, I looked back at them and it was dark. It was dark. Um how are you coping with all that? Um like was drinking wasn't ever really your jam, was it? No, and that's that's the weird thing. Um no, drinking wasn't my jam. I mean, I I enjoy drinking, but I I didn't It never was like your escape. No, it wasn't. Um I think the the biggest way I was coping um, well, at the time was probably porn. I mean, just just to get that, you know, that release. Um and just yeah, because that was always like my like growing up as a kid, that was my my my nursery, my fix, right? That little dopamine hit and just that like okay, I've got all this chaos, but I had that relax um kind of feeling is what it was for me. Tell four seconds later when the shame hit. Yeah, until four seconds later the shame hits, and now I just hate myself, right? Um but yeah, it was it was definitely that. And then I think I was also like so busy. I was coaching my kids in baseball. Um we we ended up I had a good friend that um lent us private money uh to be able to buy a farmhouse uh that was falling apart. Um so I was I told you I had to strip that house down to the studs, um, had to rebuild the roof, had to, you know, so I had that project, I had the house project, I've got solar suit, the lawsuit. Six kids. Yeah. Um yeah, I didn't I didn't have time. I mean, I think busyness was probably the biggest coping mechanism. Um, and then trying to find little pieces of relief and release every once in a while, you know, whether it was going on a mountain biking trip with my buddies or um, you know, yeah, any any form of escape. But um I don't know, it was it was such a hard time in in our family's life, a lot of trauma um on the kids. It was awful. Um and then shortly after we moved in, so we were able to we stayed in the basement for two years. That's a long time. Yeah, it was a really long time. They were ready, we were ready, um, finally got the house done, we could move in. Um and I and through the house thing, like I had I had a friend, a true, true friend, um that just helped out. I mean, he was awesome. He stepped up, he owned a um a construction company. Uh, so they did like civil work and you know, actual commercial construction work. So we had a ton of power equipment and you know, or dirt moving equipment. And um I remember we were sitting out on a chair out in front of the house one day, and the house we bought was like an abandoned farmhouse. It had been abandoned for seven years. Um, so from the road, when we bought it, it was 500 feet off the road. From the road, you couldn't see the house. So overgrown. The house was covered in vines and the yard was just a mess. Um, so we're sitting there and he's like, you know, I had a house fire when I was younger. My kids were young. It's like my wife lost her mind. And that's what caused us to get a divorce. She literally lost her mind. She went crazy. He's like, I don't want that to happen to you. Let me do something for you. And he brought us guys over and he completely regraded our yard, did, redid our driveway, gave us this beautiful, you know, yard from the front of the house so that you could drive up to the house and you could see out of the house, and it was just peaceful. It was gorgeous. We didn't you couldn't see any neighbors from where we lived. So yeah, you could just see out. It was just gorgeous. So um he helped me waterproof the basement, put French drains in, and um he was hired, like just gave me his guys because they were just sitting around doing nothing. He was like, I'd rather pay him to come over here and help you than sit around the shop, right? Um, it was amazing. Whatever happened with the insurance company? Um, so five years later, we we fought him for five years, um, went through depositions and where we were headed for trial. Um and Kansas is a weird state from a lawsuit perspective, um, because it's what's known as a percent of fault state. So damages are awarded on a percent of fault basis. So we sued three parties together instead of independently. So we had one lawsuit against the insurance company, um, a restoration company, and then our general contractor. So it's a three-party lawsuit. So what can happen is I could be awarded $10 million in damages. But then the second phase of the trial is okay, what percentage of fault is each party? So we come to the last negotiation phase before trial. Like our trial is scheduled for two weeks later, and our attorney walks in in the room, is consulting with us, and he says, guys, we have a really strong case. Like we're gonna win this case. But the two big companies, because one was you know a huge uh insurance company, uh, won't name them, but they're not a great neighbor. Um the other one is a well-known uh multi, you know, national, nationwide restoration company. Um, they had really good attorneys. Oh, for sure. Right? Our contractor was broke and shady, and his attorney was a moron. I I was a better attorney than his attorney, right? So our attorney walks in and is like, guys, what's gonna happen? We're gonna win this, but the two big companies are gonna put 99% of the fault on him, and you're not gonna get anything. You're gonna try to get blood out of a turnip and you're not getting anything. So he says, if we can walk away with this amount of money, I think we settle today. Okay. And at this point is when I understood that the lawsuit system is a racket and it's built for the attorneys. Conveniently, the three parties settle on the exact number our attorney suggested we settle on. Huh. That was probably not a coincidence. No. And then um he walked away with $25,000 more than we did. He walked away with more money out of this settlement than I did. That sounds about right. And I had to foreclose on the house. So I got out of this whole mess a foreclosure and like $50,000 in five years of hell. All right, it was crazy. And and I had I had so much evidence, Jeremy. Like, I'm like a crazy evidence-based person. I hired experts to test the air quality. I hired experts to test the substances and the dust in the home. Like I had I had a locked, sealed lawsuit ready to go. There was no way they were getting out of it. And yet the system just screwed us. Um, the her first expert I hired was like, dude, you've like, this is like a five, ten million dollar settlement in Texas. I know we were in Kansas. So um, yeah, so that that was going on. Um, that finally settled, but it was behind us, and we felt like we could just move on. Um and you know, our our our marriage was was starting to get better, right? We were getting closer. Grace was was feeling a lot more relaxed, um, but still like, you know, the um she had a she had a promise from God. It was pretty amazing, right? So just getting this farmhouse was a miracle. She was walking one day um past down the gravel road, past our friend's house where we were staying, and she's arguing with God, just mad, just pissed off at God. It's like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to us? Why is this happening? And just being honest, right? And God tells her, Grace, I am still the god of miracles. She's like, Yeah, but give me a miracle. Like, it's gonna take a miracle. He says, Grace, I will provide you a home that has feels more like home than any place you've ever lived. And her response was, well, yeah, that's nice, but where, God? Right? And she just says, Trust me. Like, you've got to trust me. Like, and even if I don't, will you will still worship me? Like, am I still a good God, even if I don't? Right? So she's wrestling with that, she's working through that. And so she tells me this story, and I was like, oh, that's really cool. And like two days later, we were driving down that same gravel road, and I was like, hey Grace, did you realize that there's a house back in this lot? It just looks like trees. Like it's overgrown, and I could just barely make out the roof line and like a second story window. And she says, Really? It's like that's exactly where I was standing when God told me that. And then like God provided the money. Like I I had no cash. I couldn't get a loan because I had a mortgage. Well, I had a m the mortgage on the other house still. I was still trying to keep up the mortgage, right? I couldn't afford a place to rent because I'm trying to keep up the mortgage. God provides the money from a friend of mine that bought it in cash, no contract, like just trusted me out it. Um and yeah, I cash flowed all the repairs and sold some logs off the property to, you know, bought buy some material and was able to take out a loan to buy some more material. And um my my friend that had the construction company, I was needing sheetrock. He was like, hey, I know a guy uh that runs the supply, the sheetrock supply in uh Joplin. Let me hook you up with him. So I go to his place and he's like, What are you looking for? I was like, I just need sheetrock, right? I got a 3,000 square foot house. I need the sheetrock. And he's like, Well, I I've got this stuff that you know I can't sell commercially because you know the bundle got damaged somewhere or another. And he's like, you can take a look at it, see if it'll work for you. It was all like 9 by 12 commercial sheetrock. He gave me a whole truck of commercial sheetrock for $1,200. Dang. You know, the insulation company, I called up the insulation company and they were like, it was I did spray foam insulation. They were like, Well, we're actually going to be in your town um on such and such days. If you can be ready by then, we can do it for like two grand. So like So all it all came together. It all came together. It it all came together. God had his hand in it. And he it truly did become this home. Our son was in like freshman and sophomore year high school. Um, no, he was a sophomore and junior. And it was so cool. Like, we would open our house to the the community, the kids, on Friday nights or Saturday nights. And we at one point we had like 20 high school kids in our house, like literally playing charades and board games and you know, spoons and watching movies and just hanging out, right? It felt like a home. Um yeah, God God really delivered on that promise. Um and yeah, caused a lot of it it's interesting because God delivered on a promise and it offended the church. Um so sometimes I feel like if the church is offended, you're probably doing the right thing. Yeah. Most of the time, it turns out. Yeah. Um what what brought you to Wyoming? Yeah, so um when we moved down to to southern Kansas, I promised my oldest son he would graduate, wouldn't have to move again, right? Um and so after the house and and getting into the new house and and work, work was going great. Um in fact it was going so good that I was bored. I and I'm a problem solver, like I I like to help people solve problems and I come up with creative solutions for people. Um I I literally came home one day and I was like, I had a miserable day at work. And I loved I loved going to work. I was like, why am I miserable? I was like, oh, I didn't do anything today. Like, nobody needed me. I had built leaders that replaced me, right? And I because that was my goal as a leader was um to work myself out of a job. And I think every leader should should have that goal, right? To build a team. Empower them. Empower them, make decisions, yeah. Right. Um, so they didn't need me. They were taking care of their own problems and their cultures were going great, and safety issues weren't were you know falling off. And so I was bored. I wanted in in order for me to move up in the company, we needed to move either to Kansas City or Topeka. And we were like, no, I'm not I'm not if I'm gonna move, I'm gonna move somewhere cool. So we started looking at Wyoming specifically after a process of elimination of all the different states. We actually originally looked at um Idaho uh and Idaho Falls. But, you know, through COVID, it was growing so much, and we were kind of leery on what the culture was gonna do in Idaho post-COVID. Um so we we settled on Wyoming and I started applying for utility jobs. Um, didn't get any of those. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go into consulting. Because I um specialize in a specific methodology called human and organizational performance. Um and I went to work for the company that helped our utility company embed that methodology. Um so once I went to work for them, we could move wherever we wanted. Um and just through a process of research and elimination, we found Lander, Wyoming, um, visited in March of 2023, um, Snowmageddon year. And it was it was funny because Grace was concerned about the cold. She was like, she doesn't do well in the cold. Grew up in Kansas, though. We go to Wyoming in March of the coldest year on in the last decade. And we're walking down Main Street, and I was like, Grace, how cold do you think it is outside? She's like, Oh, I don't know, 32. I was like, no, it's 14 degrees. She's like, Oh, I can No humidity. No humidity. The sun's out, you're a mile high, the sun's nice and warm. Um, so she's like, I can do this. And she'll swear up and down that Wyoming winters way better than a Kansas winter. Uh, because of the humidity, right? So so we moved to Wyoming um in July of 23, another God thing, um, just laid it out. You know, I had a contract on one house, um, they accepted it, went through inspection. Inspection was in June. I was taking my son out um to stay with my mom, who had moved already to Riverton. She moved from Eugene to Riverton. And my son wanted to practice with the football team and work in Lander um that summer so he could make friends before school started. So I took my son out in June and I met up with the inspector on the house that we had a a contract on, and the house wasn't good. It was like it was an A-frame house, the timbers were rotten at the ground, and it was gonna be too much, right? So we pulled out of that contract, and I told the realtor, I was like, I need you to find me something. Like, I gotta move in 30 days, uh, because I had contracts on my place in Kansas. And we were able to split up our place in Kansas. It was 78 acres with a like a 3,000 square foot farmhouse. I was able to sell off 32 to uh the farmer who ran cows on my place, uh 24 to a kid who uh wanted some hunting ground uh and a house that he was gonna build, and then five acres in the house. So I had all this cash. And um, so the realtor's like, well, I've got this guy who's getting ready to put his house on the market. Let me see if he'll let you in. This was like a Wednesday, a random Wednesday. And uh she's like, if you're gonna be here at seven o'clock tonight, he'll let you in the house. It's not on the market yet. Um so we walked through the house, I'm like, okay, this I think we can make this work. So I called Grace, tried to video walk her through it. And um, so it works. I told the realtor, I was like, listen, if he will take a full price offer but not put it on the market, I'll take it. And she was like, well, we have to put it on for 24 hours. And so she puts it on for 24 hours and takes my offer. And he let us take possession two weeks early before we closed, and it just worked out. And um so I called the insurance company to put insurance on the house, and she's like, How much did you buy the place for so I can know you know how much we need to insure it for? And she was like, You bought it for what? I was like, this was she's like, Did you know the guy? Was it family? Like, how did you buy it for that price? I was like, Oh, that was a God thing, I guess. And she's like, I can insure just the structure for $150,000 more than you bought the place for. Um, so yeah, it was a total God thing, right? Um So yeah, and then yeah, we just um started living the Wyoming lifestyle, I guess. Yeah. Um and uh shortly after that, so that was in July, I had to build an addition for an office and an extra room. My son was living in he was living in public space for for a few months until he got the addition in his room done. Um in April of 24, a friend of mine from high school was needing to get rid of some horses. She was in a tight spot. And um so I called her up to say, hey, what can we do? I can I've got some land, um, maybe I can help you out with some horses. And she's like, Well, I've got two brood mares, I'll sell you. I've got a three-year-old Philly, I'll do a co-ownership on. Um, and then I got a 15-year-old um trail horse that I'll lease you no price, no cost lease. So I bought the two brood mares for a thousand bucks a piece. Uh I got a three-year-old and like a 15-year-old trail horse for two grand. She threw out a couple saddles for me to use too. And I I like that part of the story just because it's like this childhood thing that you got to be exposed to a little bit, and then your mom gets hurt and hangs it up, and then the the dream comes full circle. Yeah. And it was um it was it was funny because my kids, like when we were in Kansas, were always like, Dad, let's get a horse. Let's get we went on a horse, let's get a horse, and and being around horses growing up, like I knew what the horse lifestyle was. And no, it's not just, oh yeah, I have a horse and you just have a horse. Like, if you're gonna have a horse, you're a horse person. Yeah, and the cheapest part of it is when you buy it. That's right. That's exactly right. It's like that's that's the cheapest part. And and then like it it affects your lifestyle, right? You can't just go on vacation. You can't just, you know, this. And and I also grew up because my mom was in the performance horse world, it was we don't have lawn ornaments. Like, if you're gonna have a horse, you use your horse. Um, so I had that mindset, right? And um, yeah, and so I I get this opportunity to to have these five horses or four horses. And we actually brought back five. My mom brought one back that ended up just being too much of a trauma dramatic case. Um, and I was young enough or early enough in my training because I'd I'd never trained horses, I'd ridden a lot of horses, but I'd never trained a horse before. And um, you know, thank God for YouTube. And um, you know, I did a ton of research on YouTube and um read Wark Schiller's book and um Ray Hunt's book, and you know, read a lot of books, um, and just educated myself on what is horse training look like. And um yeah, now my so I've had the the horses for two years. I had this Philly for for two years now, and um it's it's been a lot of fun. She was the gal hands her to me and she's like, now be careful with her. She she knows like left and right and walktrot lope. And she didn't even know walk trot lope. She uh had had like 30, 60 days as a two-year-old. Um and the first time I got on her back to lope her out, and my buddy had the my neighbor had to flag her and she bucked me off. You gotta start with those, though. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, you've done a great job with her seeing her at the Brandon the other day. Can I take a time out? So now you're in Wyoming, revisiting long lost childhood dreams of being a cowboy and riding some young horses and breeding a few, and how many kids are at home now? So we're down to three. Um my oldest daughter is um she's a senior this year. She turns 18 in a couple weeks. Um she's planning on moving. My my oldest son is in over in over in Carson City. Uh so she's planning on moving there like in June. So it's crazy. It is it is nuts. Like we we have, yeah, we've got six kids, and I just in fact, I think we um yeah, I I got a phone call on my way to your place Friday that I'm gonna be a grandfather. It's crazy in December, right? It's it's so weird. Yeah, I knew I was gonna be like kids out of the house young. I didn't realize kids in the house. That wasn't part of the original dream. That wasn't part of the original having kids at home and being a grandpa. Yeah. But the the the dream is you know, it's changing every day. Um and like you said, it it's been so cool because my my 14-year-old daughter, um, she's a horse person, right? And you know, I I joke, but I I'm pretty sure this is true. I don't know if it's factual yet, but I haven't done an actual study on it. Maybe I'll do a doctoral thesis on it. But I've I've found that people who like the smell of horse sweat are horse people, and people that don't like it are not horse people. I've never thought of that before, but I think you might be right. Like you either like the English version or you don't. So it's just the two of you. It's just really the two of us that love it. Like the other the other family members like like to ride horses. Like, who doesn't like to be around horses, but it's not in them. Uh so um it's in Abby. Um, she loves it. She just has her her first horse training project for sale right now. And it's been so fun to watch her go into that. And she just loves it. Something you get to do together, yeah, learn together. Yeah. And what little knowledge that I've gathered, I get to pass on and and help her and guide her through that and the encouragement. And um, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun, and I've been blessed to meet some really cool people in in the horse world. Um, you know, we have a mutual friend in Grant Gallagher, and um I go to church with Grant, and I'd gone to church with Grant and I'd seen him in the space, and we'd we'd met and talked, and I knew who he was from his book and that kind of thing, but I didn't really know him. And I just took a shot one day and I was like, hey, um, can I ask you, you know? So I reached out to him and I was looking for a horse training mentor. I had not somebody to train my horse, but somebody to help me train, right? And he was like, Yeah, I I don't have capacity for that personally, but let me get you a number of a guy who might. Um, so he connected me with Zach Curran, um, who's a colt starter. Um, real, real good cult starter, does it for performance horses and barrel horses and stuff. Um, and so we have a system where I go to his place and we ride for about two hours and I pay him for his time, and he teaches me training techniques and where I'm, you know, and uh isn't humility powerful? It's to be you know, can middle-aged, fair enough, probably to say, right? 45. Yeah, you're that's uh you're there. That'd be a good life if that was the middle of my life. Yeah. To have the humility to like not know something and be curious enough to like, oh, I want to learn this, but I I need help. Yeah. I think that's been like if I have um if I have a superpower, I think that's it. Like I said, I'm I'm not afraid to ask the stupid question. Um, I'm not afraid to take feedback. I go back to a quote on your wall, realize I might be wrong. Um, and that's been such a God's grace thing on my life. Um and I think I've had to learn that through through the fire, literally and figuratively. Um, because I wasn't like I wasn't that person in high school. I wasn't that person in junior high. Um, I wasn't that person in college. And I was I was that strong personality of, you know. Had it figured out. I had it figured out. Yeah, I think ass whoopings do that to us. Oh, yeah. Kind of like, you know, we were talking last night at dinner, but just the identity thing of like figuring out who you are, not what you do being who you are. Yeah. And there's the flip side of the coin too. Like, I love the cowboy culture and I love the work ethic, and I love the handshake means something, and I love the pride of like making nice horses and having nice gear and having nice tack and knowing the etiquette and learning how to be a good hand no matter where you go and seeing what they're doing and fitting in. I I love all of that, except for when it's destructive. Yeah. Where pride and ego take over and and it's I mean, I think a lot of that stems from insecurities in all of us. Whenever I show up big anywhere, I'm like, oh, that's because I feel insecure. Yeah. And so I think it's a part of getting older and and finding humility of like, oh, I don't know. Yeah. And I've said this, I think, probably on here before, but like learning that my wife like loves three words she loves to hear from me is I'm not sure. I don't know, but I'll find out. Yeah. Instead of like, oh, this is how you do it and this is what happens, and whether no matter what it is, yeah. Of just having the humility of like, even with my kids or into something that I don't know anything about. I'm like, well, let's figure it out together. Like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And finding seeking out help of people that have the thing that you want to pursue. Yeah. And it's funny because I s I had both examples in my life growing up. Um, so my mom's dad was a hardcore, like, rough and tough, get it done. You know, we were joking, you know, before the the podcast we got on, and you know, it's a long way from your heart or suck on a rock and just, you know, get it done. And I visited my grandpa for like three weeks uh when I was in high school. He had uh a couple horses still, and uh, he was gonna teach me to team rope. Uh and I was it was in between my junior and senior years. And uh so he had this old team roping horse. It had been 25 years old. My my aunts roped off of it when they were kids, right? Uh or still in the house. And he was old fat, you know, head and horse. And so my grandpa had uh one of the first um like mid-90s um roping dummies at the house. But the the horns didn't fold up yet, right? And so you had a breakaway Honda on your rope. And so we're he's towing this thing on the three-wheeler, and I'm riding behind it, and I'm roping the horns, and I'd dally off, and that rope would come shooting back from the breakaway back at the horn. He'd get all flighty. My grandfather was getting all ticked off, right? And he because he's an old, he's that old school, like you just gotta do it, you just gotta get it done, kind of guy, right? Um, so he gets frustrated that. This horse is ducking away, smacking it in the face every time, right? So he loads up the horse, hooks up the trailer, and we go to the team to practice down the road. He's like, oh, so-and-so's so-and-so's gonna be practicing tonight. And uh, well, my cousins and their dad live in the same town. So we show up at the practice open, and there's my cousins and their dad. Well, their dad is there's probably somebody listening that'll know this, is Bill Trump. Um, so people who've rodeoed or been around the Northwest Cowboys, while Bill Trump is my cousin's dad. Um, he's known, he was a um national champion in Canada in reigning horses. So he's got amazing horses, right? His kids grew up. They're mounted. They're mounted like to the hill, right? Just perfect horses. Um and great ropers, right? So I'm like all embarrassed. My grandpa like throws me in the box with this 25-year-old head horse, and I get out and I'm so green at riding, right? I'm hanging on to the saddle horn coming out of the box just to stay in the saddle. We get up there, I rate the steer, I throw the first loop, and as soon as that loop leaves my hand, I was floating. Just that horse just turned left instantaneously. I'm floating in the air. I hit the ground, hit my butt. I'm all embarrassed. I'm like, oh, what's going on? You know? And um my grandpa comes over, he starts yelling at me. You told him to go left, you told him to go left, you moved your left hand, right? And so I was like, he just bailed out on me. So he takes him, and I remember my grandpa was probably 375 at the time, 375 pounds, like unhealthy, out of shape. He gets on this horse and just starts loping it around and just beating it on the left side of the way. Like, I'm like, holy crap, right? And so I have these two examples, right? Bill Trump over here, who makes just amazing, gentle, like bridle horses, reining style, and my grandpa, who's like hard-handed and just mounted on his horse. So he hands me the horse back, tells me he gets back in the box. Same thing. Come out, I rate perfect, throw the loop, and I don't even have time to dally. I mean, he's just gone. This time I hit the ground and I broke my wrist. I broke my left wrist. I think it's broke, right? Um, but I I I I say that to say that, yes, like humility and being able to, I love the saying, like the only way to get good at something, be humble enough to suck at something so that you can get good at something, right? And if we're not humble enough, um, and we can't apply those lessons that we've learned through the fires and the the crap in our lives and um and right the gold that we have when we mess things up and um then we're never gonna we're never gonna contribute. Right? And we'll really have a true impact. I don't know what we learn at winning. Like I unfortunately this year I had to tell my team this too much, but I we learn so much more about ourselves in the loss in in the losses and the failure. That I think it's tricky today in the curated world of social media of the pressure that these we have some young men that come to our fires here in the barn and having an 18-year-old son, the amount of pressure on to figure out the next thing. Like I didn't I didn't I don't remember that. Yeah. Like it's so intense. It's weird. And the isn't it? And the the fear of failing is the stakes just seem a lot higher than I remember. Um because I think to your point, be okay with sucking at something. Yeah. Like it's okay. Like, who cares? Yeah. And and I I'm learning, um, well, after the retreat and you know, having Jake Hamilton there and his story, right, of Iron John, and um the the piece of the story that has stuck with me and I feel God is still talking to me about is when the prince captures the apple, right? Remember the princess throws the apple and he comes in, he captures it. What does he do? He went back to the garden, right? He gives the treasure to the kids to play with. The golden apple. The golden apple, right? And he goes back to the garden, he puts his head down and he goes to work. He does that three times. And even after the third time, he goes back to the garden to just put his head down and work. And I am learning through that and through my journey personally, like, like I you talked about going to the Brandon on Saturday, and like when you said we were going to a Brandon on Friday, I was like, oh, that's that's awesome. Yeah, let's go to a Brandon, this will be fun. And then you said, in Jordan Valley, and my heart like sank. And I just had this like overwhelming emotion of inferiority and like not fitting in. And holy crap, like the first branding I ever go to is gonna be Jordan Valley, like Jordan Valley, Oregon, like where the best hands in all the entire state live. Yeah, that'll be fun, Jeremy. Yay. I you're hoping for a cow farmer branding amenant. I was. I totally was. Like, yeah, like you know, a five-year-old, a 10-year-old, and you know, an 80-year-old. That would have been perfect for me, right? Um and um, and and just so so we get there, and just to finish that story, like right, we get there, there's already a a group in the pen, and it was pretty chill. There was, you know, one young kid and um I think one other like professional cowboy hand there, right? And you um younger women and yeah, there's and then three or four other guys showed up a little bit later that were Yeah. So but so it seemed like that that first group, like, you know, you traded me off. I was doing groundwork and you traded me off towards the end. There was like four or five cows there, calves left, and I I felt like, okay, yeah, I can try this, right? And tried a couple loops and uh messed up my slack and didn't catch anything. But but that second group we brought in, I was like, yeah, there's no way I'm open with these guys. There's no way. I'll I'll get ran over, I'll get somebody hurt, like um. But I kept reminding myself, just go back to work. Just just put your head down and learn what you need to learn. Um I learned groundwork, right? I'd learn to, you know, move ropes and set ropes and um, you know, drop calves and and that type of stuff, right? Where where you gotta start. And so often I think the anxiety I was having was that that performance anxiety of I want, I still have that in me, right? That competitive like baseball player. Like, I want to go out and I want to kill my competitors. I want to be the best. Um and so yeah, if I go to a brand in, I want to show off all the the loops I can throw on the dummy. And you know, and and and show off all the work I've been doing, right? And it's like, yeah, you're pretty good on the dummy, but that doesn't mean nothing in the on the horse. It doesn't transfer that well. There's so many moving pieces. Yeah. But that's what I I I guess respect about you and guys that are coming into this and hungry for it later in life is I go to writings where there's like a lot of gals and a lot of 12-year-old kids that like are freaking so handy. Yeah. And then to be middle, middle aged to come into it, it's it's that's why I love it too, is it's humbling. Yeah. Cause you have good days and you have bad days. Yeah. And there's days where it just doesn't work out that great. And you either quit and go home and buy a boat or you know keep going, you know. That's the story of the of the horse, right? There's it's so humbling. It's so humbling. It's it's it's just like walking with God. It's like you think you got something figured out on like how we started this whole conversation. It's like, I don't I don't know, man. I had when I was in my twenties and early 30s, I was like, I had arrived. Yeah. I knew how to train one up and how to make one do the things, and now I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Well, and and that's that is the beauty of life. Like, and that's where I'm I'm at professionally as well. It's like, okay, yeah, I was I was really good at that and you know doing this consulting thing, and but like I think the the power is just of humility and the ability to pivot. Yeah. And that's kind of ties right in with the identity thing and what we do isn't who we are. And if it's not, if we can hold that loosely. Yeah. Yeah. If we can hold what we do loosely, it's like, I don't know, it was like we were talking at dinner last like life is so much more beautiful if you don't pigeon self pigeonhole yourself into this identity of, oh, to I gotta be this and to be this, this means this, and I gotta be this kind of and dress like this and talk like this and care about that. And it's like I don't know, I think being able to pivot. Yeah. And there's lots of opportunities available when you when you learn to hold things, I think, loosely. And and having grace for yourself and um right? And just telling yourself that it's yeah, it's okay to suck. But it's also okay to hate sucking. It's imperative. Like you gotta have drive. Like I I don't know, man. It it's like everything in is evolving and changing, even with me and and my marriage, and what does it look like to be a man? Like it's hard. Life's hard. It is. It and I think that's the point. And leaning into it, like getting to a spot where it's like, no, I need to protect my wife and my family from this, and what does it look like to carry that weight with honor and dignity and not shrink back from it in unhealthy ways. Yeah. But to lean into the tension and the the hard stuff. And it's just like what we're talking about, whether you're trying to figure out jujitsu or ultramarathons or whatever the hard charging thing is of your choice. Well, it means like it may it may not be an external activity, right? Well, it might be your family, it might be your job. It should be. It should start there. Yeah. It should start with your family, yeah, and not, you know, what's not working in my life. Yeah. And not doing the external thing to distract from it, but leaning into that suck of being a dad and having grace for yourself, but at the same time, like, no, I need to do better. And I can't do better if I'm avoiding it. Yeah. I can't do better in my marriage if I'm avoiding the tension of talking about sex or money or unmet unmet needs. Because when we have unmet needs, yeah, that's when we do all the drinking and porn and pushing hard on the external thing, is because we don't know what to do with the thing that's the underlying thing. Yeah. And I think that's the place where we need to get more curious as men and um lean into. Yeah. Yeah. And not, it's like, I I'm like processing that every day. Like, what am I avoiding today that I need to hit head on? Yeah. No matter what it what it is. Yeah. Either it's shooing my horse or having the hard conversation with my 18-year-old, or you know what I mean? Like, and it it's it's interesting because in in my life, that that shows up in in patterns and and habits, right? And so I find myself um trying to catch it when it's small. Right? So that hose that's not curled up that you walk by and just leaving it, right? The the piece of baling twine in your driveway that you've walked by ten times, and like it in my life, when I avoid those things, avoid just like picking up the piece of trash and walking into the trash can, like that shows up in the times I'm avoiding the capacity with my wife and like engaging with my kids. And um, and so I'm like trying to be conscious of catching it in the small things, right? No, that's that's really that's really good. I think that we probably all are like that at some level. And I think the the cool thing about this journey, we call it because I don't know what else to call it, but is having the awareness, the self-awareness to recognize those small things that always lead. Like Ray Hunt always used to say, what happened right before what you wanted to have happen, happen. Yeah. And that's so applicable to marriage and being a dad and being a business owner and journey of horsemanship. It's like we're so re we're if we can get to the point of not being reactionary, of catching things, but you gotta be self, you gotta have some awareness. Yeah. So that it's not a blow up after the thing happens. Yeah. And then we show up so reactionary. Yeah. Right? It's like, oh, I'm catching this early. Yes. And I have some tools on to know how to process that. Yeah. So that when it happens, it's like I can show up different in that, whatever it is. Yeah. And not this reactionary losing my mind way. I I love the the horsemanship analogy to all of our relationships. Whether it's it's leadership at work, whether it's leadership in our homes, relationships to our wives. And I when you said that, I was just thinking, like, yeah, how many people out there are horse trainers? Probably quite a few. Have trained a horse before, right? Or at least ride a horse. Well, none of us would wait until the horse is bucking or rearing to address an issue in the horse. Right? We're gonna take care of it as soon as we see the slightest issue in the horse, in our relationship with the horse, right? Whether it's what we're doing or what the horse is doing. But yet, how often in our relationships with people do we avoid and avoid and avoid until it's a full-on runaway. Until it's a full-on runaway through the barbed wire fence, right? Badger holes everywhere. And we're and we're not, we're not paying attention, we're not anticipating. And like you said, we're not looking for tools, right? And that's another thing. Like, be humble enough in your personal life to go find tools for your marriage. Right? How many of us have sought advice from another horse trainer about how to train our horses, but have never sought advice about our relationship with our wife? Well, I think we think as men that we should know something by a certain age that we never learned. Yeah. And so there's this uh it's probably fear and some insecurity. Insecurity of like, well, I'm too old to ask about I've been married for 15 years or whatever. I should know that. And I I tell my kids this. I'm like, or even like someone like you who's just getting into this, it's like, remember that dude you're looking up to and was an asshole to you at a branding or whatever, and looked down on you. He wasn't born knowing any of this. None of us are. Yeah. Like everybody has to learn this some way. And it drives me nuts when people look down on people who are just starting out of like, you should know this, you're 45 years old. Like, how? Why? It's not my life experience. I wasn't raised this way or that way, or and it's to your point the same with marriage. Like, if a good marriage wasn't modeled to you, yeah, you don't know what you don't know. Even if it was modeled to you, right? Like, it it's not your marriage. Exactly. The lady you married It's not your mom. Not your mom. Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Hopefully it's not. But she's not the same person. You're not the same person. Right? I think I've heard you talk about this. Like you and your wife, if you've been married for more than five years, are different people. And so your relationship needs to change because you're two different people now. They're growing and changing in age and life experience. Yeah. I I did a, I think we did a whole podcast, me and Stumball, about what happens, I think statistically, if you're married for 15 years or longer, you're married to th it's like being literally married to three different people. If you've had any trauma, if you've had any major disruptions, losses, like that just like every single one of those creates a different person. Yeah. Um and so, yeah, of course, you're going to need to adjust, you're gonna need to adapt, you're gonna need to learn new things about your wife, your kids. Like going from a relationship with my eight-year-old son to 12-year-old son to 22-year-old son who's about to be a father. Different conversations. Why would our marriages be any different? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's good. Well, man, it's been fun to get to know you. Yeah, appreciate the opportunity. It's been good. And how did you find did Grant tell you about Wild Courage? Yeah, Grant, um I never I never asked people that, and I should Grant asked me to uh listen to the podcast, and I started listening to the podcast. Uh, he had stopped doing the fires at that time. Um, and so then I was like, oh, I'd I'd really like to go to the retreat. Um and then I told him I was going to the retreat, and so Ray and I um drove out to the first retreat that we went together. We we literally met at 5 a.m. in my driveway. Is that the first time you met? Yeah, that was the first time we'd met. And now, for all you central Wyoming nights, yeah, you guys have a fire in ri around Riverton. So um every other month we switch off between Ray's place and my place. So we're either in pavilion uh or in lander. Nice. It's the second Tuesday of the month. Yeah. And I never talk about this on here because I always forget it. But if you go, if you're interested in a fire to see where we have them, because I mean we have over 30 fires right now going all over the country, go on our website and look at fires. And there's a map of literally the United States and Canada, because we have a few in Canada too, and you can go see if there's a fire near you. So if you're anywhere in Wyoming in that area, you guys go check out in it. And when you click on the fire that's by close to where you live, it'll have all the information and how to get a hold of you guys in the mail and date and time and location. So it's pretty cool. Well, um, I one of my favorite things about what the byproduct of Wild Courage is getting to meet all these cool different guys from all around the country and um in the retreat space, it's really cool because we literally, I mean, Florida, New Jersey, California, Canada, like Australia, it's been really wild to get to meet different guys that are different parts of their journey and get to hear the stories and the brotherhood that's forming at these retreats we were talking about the other day when you got here of the people that are connecting and doing life together and going on vacation together that met in this space is really fulfilling to me. But um the new parting question. Okay. What is your definition one sentence or a short paragraph? What is a good man? Um I I really don't know how to answer that. Um today. Not who you not what you hope it to be. This is where it gets tricky. Yeah, I think um like the f the first thing that pops into my head is kind of what we were talking about the other day, the Greek word Jesus uses when he says the meek shall inherit the earth. The original Greek uses this word called praeus. It's a it's there for meek. And it means strength under control. And I think a good man has developed strength um, but has also learned how to control it. And without that balance, I think men are lacking. And so a good man has developed strength, but knows how to control it. That's good that that might be one of my that's probably my favorite answer so far. Yeah. We're early on into this study, but yeah. I love it. And that's been the story of my life, right? Either learning how to control it or building strength. Yeah. Um and that finding that balance, I think it's the journey. Right. That we never get to. Yeah. The end of. Yeah. It's like horsemanship. That's right. I mean, because Jesus is the only perfect example of that praise, that that meekness, strength under control. I love it, man. Well, again, thank you for doing this early this morning and for sure. Getting to spend the weekend together. It's been awesome to get to know you. And um, I look forward to seeing you progress in all the ways that matter most. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Thanks, guys.