Well, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Family Business with the Alesssies. And I get to kick off the podcast today. Kick away. I just kicked it off. I did a good one take wonder.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Today I'm excited to be in the studio with none other than the Steve Alessie, Pastor Steve, husband Steve, Father Steve, all the things. And I love this subject that we're going to be tackling today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's exciting.
SPEAKER_01Mary, we're looking at the book. Thank the Lord that uh 42 has been put into print. Yes. And so we've been taking some time on our family business podcast with TMSEs because family is everybody's business.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I missed that. Oh, sorry. That's okay.
SPEAKER_01I blew it already. No, you're doing great. The uh, you know, the whole thing about the book that we will discuss is its impact on our family. Because, you know, our family, any any person that goes through a 42, it's never just that person, it's family. Right. I think of David and Tony when they lost their business. The whole family suffered. I I think of what happens with divorce when people get hit with a divorce. They're 42. How will they ever survive? It's always affecting the family. Right. Um, on you know, seeing sicknesses coming out of nowhere. The whole family is affected. So, how did our family um deal with it is is one of the things we like to be able to discuss when we come on the podcast. So, but today we um fortunate to see all these years later, you know, our our lives experiencing a level of uh blessing and success that as we have said on some of the past episodes, uh you you just don't you don't smell the smoke of the fire that all of us have gone through. Right. And thankfully that's the case. But uh what are we gonna be talking about today out of the book?
SPEAKER_02Well, the the 42 book, first of all, I just want to say the cover is beautiful. Yeah, they did a very good job with the graphic. Um, if you can't see it because you're listening, trust us, it's beautiful. But I I love how easy it is to read and how many times I've been brought to tears, even though it's our own story from the perspective of how many people I know this will help as they read this book. Because the 42 doesn't begin in your life when the good things happen.
It shows you that life happens when you overcome the bad things. When what has happened to you should have taken you out, but you're still here. You are surviving the loss of a spouse or the loss of a family member or a child. You are still surviving the loss of a marriage. You're still here. Yeah. What are you gonna do with your life now? Right. So you can see your life as a culmination of all the mistakes you've made that have led you to a bad harvest, or you could see your life as a 42 moment. And that's what this book is all about. So I think no matter what your story is, those of you that are listening, your 42 is personal to you. And it's what you know could have been that um, that dividing line between the good and the bad and the ugly in your life that you you might be ashamed to even tell your story. The great thing about the 42 principle that we like to really, that this book is built on is that we had to overcome a setback that we weren't prepared for, we weren't thinking about, never saw on our radar. It came from one split second to the next, we were in survival mode. Um, and all that comes with that, I didn't expect to be here. How did I get here? Yeah. Okay, well, you're here.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02What are you gonna do with it now?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I love every chapter in this book. And I I don't know, can I jump into this part right here?
SPEAKER_01Well, can I mention this to you? We we we talk about wanting the best out of life, but you know, from a biblical perspective for a minute, there's there's no such thing as a promised land with all the grapes and all the blessings that come with the promises from heaven without giants. You can't have the promised land without giants experiencing the promised land. So you want this great life. We all want a great life. We just don't realize that some of the hits that we take, especially the big haymakers, how they could enhance the promised land that we feel is something we desire, how it can really help us in our dream. Most people look at a divorce or they look at a setback, major setback in life, sickness, whatever their 42 is, and they look at it as a failure.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01They look at it as, man, this was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Hey, I I look at my life and I don't know that 42 moment, if it's if somehow it helped me get to where I'm at today, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's but that's it right there. Is your 42 the end of your life or the beginning of your life?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_02And I think for us, it was what we thought was the end, because now we have to get into health mode, survival mode, reflection mode, what could have been, and we really had to move forward with well, you should be dead, but you're not, you're here. What are we gonna do with all that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it became our life. It became the beginning of a new life of understanding. And honestly, I don't want you to ever have another heart attack. Certainly, I don't want to be witness to that again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I want you to have walk in full health, but I'll tell you the experience of that and having to climb the mountains, which is what you talk about in every chapter, the different mountains that we both had to climb. You climb different ones than me. Our kids have had to climb. They've we've talked about it in this podcast booth to just overcome a near-death experience. Um, it makes or breaks you. And the truth is who we are today is a direct result of that experience. Yeah. That one day.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02That marker moment.
SPEAKER_01Now, now you're gonna read
something out of one of the chapters here, and it's it's called blind spots. Blind spots. Um, because this is what maybe we don't always take in consideration. Yeah. Yeah, a heart attack. Uh, could it have been avoided? I think so. For me, yes. Could your 42 moment be avoided? Sometimes, yes. Then again, there's some accidents that come out of nowhere in your hit, boom. But I did have a blind spot. And on this particular part, you're gonna read, it says surprise. Surprise, surprise is the header of this portion. Yeah. Um, read a read that because there was a door that I didn't realize I was leaving open to this attack.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And I was blind to it. I was oblivious to it.
SPEAKER_02But uh so it's it says in the big heading over here, so many things demand our attention, making blind spots blind spots hard to notice. So it says, surprise, surprise. And you said this before my heart attack, my life was full of distraction. Church building projects, a new condo, an RV vacation, all of that on top of the already high demands that come with ministry, marriage, and family. I got so busy with things, the big things, that I had to take on a triage mentality and what I thought were little things, I let slide. And who knew that food was a big thing? I want to talk about that too from personal experience after I read this, about what happened to me looking at people that were taking advantage of food. Anyway, that's a whole nother thing. We'll get to that in a second. And you say, because that's what food was, it was my blind spot. It's you say food helped me with all those stress stressors that I didn't even realize were happening. Like all of us, I knew I had to do better with my health, but it turned into a next month project because this month was already overfilled. I'll just have this plate of fettuccine tonight and I'll do better tomorrow, was my approach. Kicking the can down the road seemed to work, though the reality is that the blockage in my arteries probably started happening in my 20s and 30s. But back then, my only health matric was that my chest would stick out further than my stomach. Explain that, please, sir. No, that's stupidity. Are you kidding me? Of your chest, because you worked out a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I thought I was. And as long as my chest was big and your stomach was flat. Sticking out further than my stomach, I was okay. I I didn't feel like, oh man, I'm overdoing it. You know, I'm not working out like I should, but yeah, when I'd look in the mirror, as long as my chest was sticking out further than my stomach, I felt good. But somewhere in my 40s, that changed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because it says in my 40s, though, my stomach was winning the race against my chest. I wasn't able to hit the gym as I had when I was younger because life was busier. Mary and I started to do some cardio exercise in the park. We did. We were walking like fiends, but I still kept up eating and using food to deal with stress. The eating gave me comfort. And though I was covered because I was still doing the exercise part. You'd like to think, and this is really this this is a blow. This is an incredible part of this chapter. You'd like to think you'll have a heads up before that blind spot punch lands square on your jaw. But up to the day of my heart attack, I had no physical warning. Anything was wrong. Sure, my doctor had warned me about high blood pressure and other things. And yes, I didn't have the energy I had when I was younger, but everyone slows down a bit as they get older, right? I was fine and normal for my age. You never saw this coming. I never saw this coming. No, never even considered it for a minute.
SPEAKER_01But should we have those burgers? Remember FUDR's back in the day after church?
SPEAKER_02We go the best French fries, wedge fries, and my favorite was to get their honey mustard sauce.
SPEAKER_01Oh Lord.
SPEAKER_02See? And you covered it with that cheese. I was. I used to make fried pork chops. I don't know if you remember when we first got married. I I just only knew how to make southern food. Yeah. And that was frying everything and putting gravy on everything.
SPEAKER_01You were a toothpick, mayor. And I didn't put the weight on, but I was feeding you like a I carried your weight for you. I'm like the savior. I carried your weight.
unknownIt was bad.
SPEAKER_01It was bad. Not realizing, you know, with all of that, you know, there was this heart attack lurking.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Now it was a blind spot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was just something that was there, but nothing was really going off to warn me about it. Listen, everybody that struggles with their weight, everybody says the same thing. They know, yeah. Okay, I gotta get this under control. I gotta get this under control. Just like a person that has a bad marriage.
SPEAKER_02You know.
SPEAKER_01They know.
SPEAKER_02Or a bad kid. I gotta get this taken care of.
SPEAKER_01I gotta get this taken care of. Somebody that's you know, not doing their end of the job. They they know, man, I better start, I better get there on time, I better do it. You know, so we it's it's really hard to say I I I didn't see this coming. I should have seen it coming.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because that little voice was going off in my head. Um and yet I didn't, and it became a blind spot for me and out of nowhere. The very last thing we would have been talking about all these years later when I'm in my 60s would be me having to deal with a heart attack.
SPEAKER_02I know. I think it's still hard for you to really process. Yeah. The book took you a long time to write, yeah. Uh but I think you've written it at the perfect time.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Because now we're looking at our lives 15 years down the road. And yes, we've talked a lot in this booth about what God has done in our lives and working with our kids and all of that. And we've looked at it from the perspective of what if the heart attack had had its way, what it was designed to do, all that we've lived in the last 15 years would not have been lived. And one thing that we've learned from the experience, which has helped us not only as parents, as in our marriage, in the in the career that we have, which is really helping edify people and helping people get through the narrow roads in their life, helping them get through those difficulties of divorce and all the things that come with life and mistakes and blind spots. Because the truth is, none of us want to get halfway through the journey and go, I went the wrong way. You know, we that's that's really, really painful. And along the way, you've had children going the wrong way, or or you've you've adopted some health issues going the wrong way. Nobody wants to get there and go, what have I done? And there's a lot of grace there for, and that's what I love about the book too, because it's not about let's just analyze what you did wrong, but let's also acknowledge that you're somewhere you don't want to be and you got there because there's probably some things you ignored. There's some flags along the way, signs along the way you ignored, but now you know better, and so you can do better.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad you say that because the um the fact that there was a blind spot, I knew I should have been taking care of my health health better. We knew we should be taking care of my health better. Um yeah, we knew it, but boom.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01We didn't do anything and it happened.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But the good thing is, if we look at all of that, and for all of our listeners, yeah, you know you should do better, but when you don't and things hit you like this, it isn't the end of the world. Right. Because there is a way, even in our humanity, that we can climb back in the game. Uh, so much of the boxing analogy that I love throughout the book is you know, the the uh blind spot is the knockout punch that you didn't see coming.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, but you still can figure out a way to get back up off the canvas. You still can figure out a way to get back up on your feet and get to the corner and wait to the next round and you can survive, you can survive. Which I think if we're going to help our listeners with today, it's saying you had the 42. Um, did you learn from it? Yeah. If we're going to go through all this pain, we better come out with at least an education. Something. I gotta learn something. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02It's made me a smarter person.
SPEAKER_01And I've never been back up to that weight again. For me, I'm like, no, no, I I could never get back up to that weight. I figured out a way after a while to finally get the weight off through my wonderful program. Um, and that's that's part of making sure, you know, that you won't make the same mistake twice. You know what they took, said Mary? When I'll never forget, in the hospital, the lady from the American Heart Association came in and gave me a menu of what the food was going to be from here on out. And I I mentioned this in the book. That made me depressed.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Because if I would have liked these foods, I probably would have never had the heart attack. But now you're telling me I have to eat like this food that I hate. Yeah. And I remember the person coming in and she made this statement. She goes, the average person.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yes, I remember this.
SPEAKER_01That has an event like this is gonna clean up their act for about a year. Yeah. Maybe two. But in three years, they're gonna go right back to behaving the way they were.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that offended me when she said that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I hated it, but I took it as a charge and a challenge.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01Like, I hear I remember it's not happening. Putting everybody through all of this, right? Come on, you how many marriages you got to go through before you realize this is just too painful?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How how many mistakes you got to keep making? How how many heart attacks? Come on. Right. How how many hospital stays do you have to be to have before you finally say, no, enough's enough? I better make some life changes here. The guide to finishing well when you thought you were finished is all about making sure you can make adjustments after you're 42 so that you finished well, you finished better in the end than having that event than you would have without having that event.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And how could that happen? Because you say, all right, it was a blind spot once. I didn't see the punch coming once, but you better believe I'm open to it now. And I'm gonna treat my spouse better. I'm I'm gonna be more Christ-like, I'm gonna, you know, be more understanding of other people. I'm gonna learn from my mistake so that I don't make it over and over again and have to end up being resuscitated by some paramedics all because I like bacon or cheeseburgers too much.
SPEAKER_02Or fringe fries. Yeah. And you know what though, Steve? I think what we've taken away from the experience, and again, it's been so beautifully captured in this book that I I think it's it says it almost even better than what we say it sometimes. But I think that if we look at life, which we kind of did, as the journey to living
perfect, issue-free, problem-free. Like we have this mentality that there are other people out there that don't have these problems, that don't have these issues, that they've kept it together and their kids, I'm sure their kids are perfect, and they never have any health problems. And, you know, they run eight miles before they go to work and they don't ever eat French. We have this mentality that somehow life is supposed to look perfect and therefore we're living it right. And we don't understand that the things that maybe we had blind spots or the areas that we didn't see, the things that listen, the big question is why God when things like that happen? We don't have answers. We don't always have answers. But the truth is you learn so much from trouble. You learn so much from difficult times. If you will allow yourself to really reflect, not on just the thing, but reflect on yourself and say, well, okay, where were there blind spots that I didn't see? Where are there areas that I don't want to take that into the next season of my life after I've had this 42? What's the rest of my life gonna look like? And I don't think we've made up time. What I think we've done in the last 15 years is we have lived our lives at a higher level of understanding and quality, just even in the little things at home than we were before, because you just take so much for granted when you're younger. And again, I would love for you to never have had that happen. But I look at who we are now and the spiritual strength we have and the relational strength we have and what we appreciate. The things that we appreciate now are things that we overlooked before the heart attack. We did not put the value on those things like we do now. And just time together, just spending time where we're not in conflict. Because you realize when you spend so much time in conflict over petty issues in your marriage and you're bickering and you're fighting and you're wasting so much energy on dumb, petty stuff. And then you have a life-altering situation happen in your life where you could lose it all, you really stop being so petty. It really causes you to say, all right, it drives me crazy that he leaves his socks out and we are fighting over, not you, you don't leave your socks out. I'm just saying in general, it drives me crazy, whatever he does that makes me think I should trade him out for somebody else. But the truth is, when you have something that happens to you in your life that is a 42, that is life-altering, it causes you to value. If it's a divorce, you start valuing marriage from a different perspective. You start valuing that person that comes into your life instead of saying, I've made this mistake and I've ruined my life. No, you haven't. You have an opportunity right now, you're at the fork in the road at the 42 to say, now I know no blind spots, no walls. You talk about walls in here that are so powerful. What we learned about ourselves more than just food, food was one of the blind spots. But what we what we took away from it is so invaluable. We're still living that out every day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, the 15 years of our lives that you see from heart attack day one to today, we're not the same people. Spirit, soul, and body, we are not the same people. I think our kids are a reflection of us making sure we're gonna live our lives well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna live what we believe, we're gonna say what we believe, we're gonna nurture what nurture what we believe, we're gonna love our family. When it's just not going to be what we say. Now we have an urgency to really do that at it full capacity. And the fruit is there.
SPEAKER_01And babe, it's not talk anymore.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01You know, talk is cheap.
SPEAKER_02No, it's not talking.
SPEAKER_01You gotta walk this thing out. Yeah. You know, my sister. Yeah, my younger sister was there the night of the heart attack. My older sister didn't even come into town till, I don't know, weeks or so later. Um, and everybody was in crisis mode, you know, they all wanted to do their part along the way. But I asked uh my older sister to write a little uh forward to help me out. Not a forward, but but just to ignore endorsement, thank you. And uh she I sent her the the early copy, and just so she can get a read on it and so on. And she and I think she even says it in her comment. She goes, I didn't even know this was this troubling to Steve.
She didn't know the details of what the heart attack meant for us.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01You know, she's on the west coast of uh of the states and in California.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01She wasn't even aware that we spiraled out like we did for a period of time and needed so much time to get back up on our feet, partly because my mom just came off cancer treatments. But the the point of saying that is I I don't think when you're coming back from your 42 moment and you're aware of your blind spots now, you know, talking about it is one thing, but doing something about it is totally different. Absolutely. It's not good enough just to say, I'm not going to eat junk food anymore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now my gosh, I see a cheeseburger and it's like, are you kidding me? El Diablo, the devil.
SPEAKER_03I know.
SPEAKER_01Poor McDonald's, man. They got they got a bad rap. I get near it, and I'm like, you guys are jacked up. You're killing me, killing people. Uh I'm just so anti that, wanting to make sure we're eating right and putting, uh, not for just the waistline, but putting the right things in my body. It um it's walking it out. Yeah. You know, not just saying, hey, babe, I'm not gonna treat you that way anymore, or you know, kids, I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna be home more. It's not just saying it. It's it's not empty promises, it's really making a commitment with yourself. Right. You you gotta get to yourself and have that hard conversation. Um, that that happened once, you know, shame on you. It happened twice, shame on me. I'm I'm just not gonna let that. I can blame the devil one time, but I can't keep blaming the devil for all the time it happens if I'm the one in the middle of this making decisions. So a blind spot should only be a blind spot one time, but after a while you see clearly, you're no longer blind to that particular thing that may have attributed to um you having a 42 moment. And yeah, I I'm a better human uh now, after that stupid heart attack, than I was before.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And I thought I was pretty good then. Matter of fact, that was my struggle with God after the heart attack. It was like, God, what was I doing wrong that you needed to get my attention?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And in all of my prayer time over the years, I can't tell you God ever said to me, This is something you needed to change. It I can't say I needed to be conviction. I I I didn't have all of that. I I will tell you, uh, when I went to my camp, you know, we have our good fellas camp. When I went to my camp, and I'm out in the woods going through something, my own spiritual journey at my camp in Texas. And um I would there I was saying, God, what what was that heart attack about? Why did I have to go through it? And if it was anything, then I'll all I could say was, and I hope I can even articulate it right, and I hope it makes sense. But I thought back to the hurt that I had to put you through and the kids through. And I had to put the church through. And I thought back to that and I thought, man, I don't want to ever do anything again in my life that would bring that kind of hurt to my wife and my kids and my church. And as a man, I'm thinking, of course, screwing up with a woman, messing up with the finances. Um that that would bring so much hurt that the only kind of hurt that I can compare it to was the hurt that I felt I put on you and the kids in the church because I couldn't take better care of my health.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um, so if if there was ever a lesson, it was on the not so much, you know, because I was doing something wrong, it was Steve, you better keep doing things right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Don't mess up, stay in, stay, stay on point, stay connected with God, stay disciplined, stay in your Bible, stay, stay real, stay transparent, keep being the guy that you you you you say you are from the pulpit. You better keep being that guy. And whatever you do, don't you slow down, don't take your eyes off of the prize. You you keep being a better version of yourself, a better human. You you keep doing that. And that drive uh is is what I think then is allowing us to finish so well at these this season of our lives and to continue saying, all right, we're running the race, we're running as fast as we can, but hey, we're slowing down a little. We're getting to the end of our race. We're not gonna be running like we did in our 30s and 40s, yeah, and even 50s. But um,
you know, if anything, it would be that. So does a 42 moment help you? As painful as it was, yes. You've got to endure the manure for a while. You gotta work a little harder, but you can recover from your 42 and be better.
SPEAKER_02You can. And there are people that don't. There are people that stay in a perpetual cycle of having many 42s, more many opportunities to wake up and they don't. Um, I think that's another podcast we've talked about before when you have people that just don't know how to get out of conflict. But I do believe that it is our responsibility, not only as Christians, but as those who are family members, it's it's your responsibility, it's just as it is mine, to be healthy. We are obligated to be healthy for the people in our lives, whether that's emotionally, spiritually, or physically. And you know, you have um an advantage. You hate this advantage, but it's an advantage. And that is proof of evidence because you have pictures of yourself before your heart attack. And then after your heart attack, you can look back. I mean, your kids, when we go through old photos, they're like, My God, I know, so embrace it.
SPEAKER_01So awful.
SPEAKER_02And and you can't use them because, you know, they don't look like you want to look and they're pre-heart attack. But the truth is, it it should be somebody else's wake-up call. You know, hopefully there are people that will read the book, will look at the circumstances and see for themselves, they'll hear that little voice going, okay, this is you. Pay attention before the 42 comes. Because not everybody has to have a 42. You can get right up to having one and reverse course. So hopefully that the book is not just for those who've had 42s, but for those who would like to avoid the pitfalls of a 42.
SPEAKER_01Why? Why are you? You just have to bring up how big I was. That was terrible.
SPEAKER_02You should have put pictures in this.
SPEAKER_01No, I'm so glad. We got one picture. And I won't tell you about it, but uh, it's pretty cool because it does talk about the future. Here's what it says on page 133 of the um book. It says 42 moments aren't just singular events that make a blip on the radar. They are things that when you look back, you realize they changed your life. Yeah, I'm not just a guy who had a heart attack a few years ago. I'm a changed man because of that heart attack. That's right. Your life doesn't become about the event. The event reminds you to be about life since those 42 moments of hovering near death. My commitment to the legacy I come from, and the legacy I'm building has been validated. That's awesome. We have blind spots. They hit us. You have them, you experience them. But we hope today, and even as you read this book, 42, that you can pick up on Amazon if you do so. We
pray that it'll help you deal with the setbacks and the failures of your life that should not define who you are as a person, but instead refine who you are and make you a much better human. Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00You've just enjoyed another episode of the Family Business Podcast with the Alesssies, and we can't thank you enough for being a part of our podience today. Now that you've learned more about us, here's how you can join in in the family business. First, make sure you're following our podcast right now and download this episode so you can hear it at any time. Second, think of someone you know that might need or enjoy this episode and share it with them. You'll be helping them and helping us to spread the word about the family business. Third, go to AlesiFamily Business.com and tap the Ask the Alessies button. This is really cool. You can use it to record a voicemail comment or question, and we can add your voice to our conversations. Finally, while you're on our page, tap the reviews tab and you'll see a link to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We love reading your reviews and we might even share them on the show. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time at the Family Business with the Alessis because family is everybody's business.