Dustin Bailey Testimony

A quiet house. A car pulling away. Knees on the doorstep and a prayer that finally surrendered control. That’s where Dustin’s story turns—not from pain to perfection, but from isolation to honest recovery, from “fix it myself” to “Lord, I can’t.” What follows is a courageous, practical walk through mental health, marriage, parenting, and faith that refuses to label people as broken and instead calls them designed and worth stewarding.

We unpack a childhood of giftedness inside a loud, loving, inconsistent home; sports and music as lifelines; and a faith that started with facts before it became relationship. Dustin names bipolar without euphemism, explains why meds can be mercy, and shows how sleep, routine, and movement stabilize chemistry. He shares how Celebrate Recovery and a single blue chip rewired his life, why hearing your story come out of someone else’s mouth unlocks healing, and how covenant love means “marrying” your spouse again and again as both of you change.

We also go deep on technology and identity. Dustin researches nomophobia—the panic of losing your phone—because our selves now live inside devices. Instead of shame or confiscation, he points to stewardship: teach healthy use, build real belonging, and aim tools toward God. For students and families, he imagines accessible care in evenings and weekends, church-led spaces where it’s safe to be human, and a three-part healing that aligns body, soul, and spirit so capacity grows and callings can breathe.

Come for the testimony, stay for the tools: spoons and coins, dopamine and serotonin, liturgies for your phone, rhythms for your day, and grace for your story. If you’ve ever felt defective, this conversation invites you to trade shame for stewardship and start again—today.

Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and drop a review with your biggest takeaway. Ready to lay something down so you can pick up what’s next?

Chapters

• 0:18 New Year, New Guest: Dr. Dustin
• 2:34 Honoring Time And Opening Prayer
• 5:52 Why Speak Life Exists
• 11:35 Childhood, Family Dynamics, And Giftedness
• 27:26 Bipolar, Undiagnosed Struggles, And Mom’s Health
• 43:31 Faith In Facts: Savior vs. Lord
• 51:31 Sports, Music, And Escaping Pain
• 1:06:33 College Collapse And First Diagnosis
• 1:19:09 Marriage, Military, And Meltdowns
• 1:36:20 Codependency, Manipulation, And Control
• 1:53:45 The Doorstep Encounter With God
• 2:06:45 Celebrate Recovery And Honest Community
• 2:22:36 Parenting, Generational Healing, And Epilepsy
• 2:38:12 Stewarding Bipolar: Not Broken, Not Defective
• 2:53:30 Phones, Nomophobia, And Belonging
• 3:05:40 Youth, Technology, And Church Solutions

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:17

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Speak Live A Z podcast, testimony of Jesus and everyday people. I'm your host, Eddie, and with me is my son, Rowdy.

SPEAKER_07: 0:26

Jesus!

SPEAKER_05: 0:26

What's up, bro? Man, dude, 2026. Come on, man. Let's go, buddy. It was a nice little break, bro. I'm not gonna lie. I enjoyed it. I've rejuvenated and I'm ready to rock and roll and let 2026 just yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 0:39

It's gonna be a good year. Speak Life A Z podcast. Be its own thing, bro. Come on, buddy.

SPEAKER_05: 0:43

Yeah, man. Do it, God. God is good, bro.

SPEAKER_07: 0:46

How's your day? It's busy. Friday. That's Friday, baby. Hammered down, dog. Come on, bud. You? Oh, yeah. Hammered down. Amen.

SPEAKER_05: 0:55

I'm excited for this one, brother. Yeah, this is tell the people who you brought with you.

SPEAKER_07: 0:58

Dude, we got a brother Dustin. What's up, man? Hey, this is awesome. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03

Let's get it right. It's Dr. Dustin.

SPEAKER_07: 1:05

Dr. Bailey. Dr.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06

Bailey. What are you having your family? Hey, it's Doctor now. Ironically, the only people that I ever use that for is when I order like fast food at like the kiosk to make the Burger King guy say Dr. Bailey. And I'm like, I'm limiting myself. Otherwise, that's the only people. Amen, buddy. That's fantastic, man.

SPEAKER_05: 1:24

So, brother, when uh God gave us this man and we started doing a video, he made it very clear to us to honor his sons and daughters for uh like we prayed just now, man. Time is not a commodity that we can resource and have more of. We're only limited to a certain amount on this earth. So the fact that you gave us some of yours, brother, we're we're appreciative and we're so honored that you would uh take a little piece of that away from your family and the things that you have going on to come share with us, brother. So we honor you for that, and we just thank you so much for your time, brother.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51

And I appreciate it. And I appreciate the chance just to come out and hang out for a little bit. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_07: 1:55

Yeah, that's right, buddy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56

I'm sorry for spilling your soda, bro.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59

That's a sign that I probably need to back off the guy, Dr. Pepper. That's really kind of a those who don't know, man.

SPEAKER_04: 2:04

When he came in, he had a soda. I went in for a monster hug and soda everywhere.

SPEAKER_07: 2:08

It's okay. We know the guy that cleans. So didn't make it. Take care of that mess, buddy.

SPEAKER_02: 2:14

And the people that know me know that I probably have a serious problem with guy Dr. Pepper. It's actually good. This is actually very good.

SPEAKER_07: 2:21

Uh for me, Dustin, bro, just having you when we connected and you're yes, um, being willing to come on and share um with CR and the stuff that we do in the CR ministry. Yeah, um, it's really a blessing to be able to um have a small part in helping people's lives change and getting to watch that. Yeah. Um with you, my brother, you were uh you were like the first, one of the first ones in the CR ministry um that I kind of uh was around. I think you were one of my first small group leaders. Yeah. Um and now to be where I'm at and doing what I'm doing within the the ministry, um, and to see you with where God's the doors he's opening for you. Yeah. Um, you just got your doctorate, man. Um it's cool. It's cool to watch uh the journeys with Jesus go. Come on, man.

SPEAKER_02: 3:17

Well, what's fun about it is seeing that the um that the world is simultaneously getting bigger and smaller. Yeah. Uh being able to see these opportunities pop open, the things I would have never dreamed of uh 15 years ago, I would have been lucky to get to the end of my own day. Right. And then being able to walk alongside folks from, you know, I had a a call with a really good friend of mine in Australia last night. Wow. And just talking about how we can better help people with mental health there too. And she's amazing. Um so it's like uh that's not something I would have ever dreamed of. But at the same time, I'm walking alongside people that I've known forever and seeing their their world's open too. Yeah. So it's amazing what God does. He keeps the world big for you.

SPEAKER_05: 3:54

It's funny to think that in your own struggles, you probably never thought that there would come a time when you I find it funny that God know already, you know what I mean? So he allowed you to have those struggles, and now here you are able to go back. I always tell people whatever you're going through, be prepared to go back and help somebody. Come on, he used you for. Yeah, it's our it's our trial, if you will, of experience. You know, people say in recovery, you're like you never had no, you're not a doctor, you're not like, brother, I have 20 years of experience. I've been a drug addict for 20 years. I think I'm pretty qualified.

SPEAKER_02: 4:26

Put it in my 10,000 hours. I promise you that. I promise you that. Right, right. Yeah, and it's it's uh something that I always reflect on is that it's so amazing how God takes that one thing in your life that's caused you the absolute most pain. Come on, buddy. And then he uses that to be the connection point that he uses you to help him find his children come on. That's right. It's so it's so good. Amen.

SPEAKER_07: 4:46

That's all it's only a God thing there, man. Do your spill, man. Do your spill, bro. Uh so let me pray real quick, man, then we'll kind of get into this thing. Thank you, Jesus! Man, thank you, Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord. God, we just thank you for what you're gonna do on this recording uh tonight on this podcast. Um, we just thank you for your son, Dustin. Yeah, Lord. Um, and just the vulnerability, the openness, God, to share his struggles in the hell that at one point he was walking in. Thank you, Lord. Um, and that you literally walked him out of God. Um so I just thank you, Holy Spirit. We just uh pray for clarity, God. Um, we pray for an anointing because it really is the anointing that breaks the yokes, God. Thank you, Lord. So I pray for whoever's watching this or listening to this, God, that they just can hear you and see you and feel you uh in this recording because really it is all about you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Um so just have your way, Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Um so Dustin, when God gave this to us, uh it was COVID 2020, and it seemed like a lot of people started podcasting COVID, man. Uh, we weren't obedient to what he told us to do in the beginning. Uh, we were setting up a studio in my bedroom. We're gonna break messages over Facebook and it wasn't until uh 20 the end of 22 when we finally sat and we're like, what are we supposed to be doing, man? And God was like, Hello, speak life az podcast, the testimony of Jesus and everyday people. Um it doesn't like it, it doesn't matter if you're like dad and you're over at the car shop welding on cars and cutting up metal and all the good stuff, or like myself, here cleaning up spilled cokes and floors and washing windows and toy, or like yourself, bro. Um, on calls, helping people, man. We've all we've all come from somewhere, we've all got a story. Um, and when we we encounter Jesus, he really does give us a testimony, man. Um and it don't matter if you've been in church your whole life or if you ran the streets like dad for 20 years. We've all got a story, and we've all got a testimony. Um, so what we want today from you, Dustin, is we just want to know um who Dustin Bailey is. We want to know where you were born, um, what what childhood was like for you growing up, uh brothers and sisters. Um what was your relationship like with your mom and dad? Yeah, um with God. Was God in the home? Was church something you guys did? Um but I think the cool thing is working within CR and um with where we are in life now, um, we're able to talk about the things that really screwed us up when we were kids, man, and messed us up. Um, because we've got some healing. Yeah, we we've gone through the journey with Jesus a little bit in our our recovery process, and now the the things we used to keep secret and not tell nobody, we're able to talk about those things now because of the the process we went through with Jesus. We get to glorify Jesus again. Um what does it say, man? We we share our we boast in our weaknesses because he is made strong in it. Um, but so we just want to know what your childhood was like, Dustin. But I think the coolest thing we want to get today is your encounter.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 7:57

Um, everybody's encounter with Jesus is so personal and so unique to what that person needs. It's like God just drawing each one of his kids to him.

SPEAKER_05: 8:08

Um sometimes it's a process, sometimes it's a burning bush moment. A day.

SPEAKER_07: 8:13

I I mine was a day. I was marked August 26th, 2014. I'm a little stubborn. It took a little longer for me. But dad was he was in a prison cell in Tucson, bro, in a lockdown unit. I was in a rehab in Team Challenge at in front of the altar. I remember where I was. We want to know your encounter and what that looked like for Dustin and how God showed himself to you. It really does show that God is so personal.

SPEAKER_05: 8:40

So personal. It really does. I mean, I I think that's the coolest thing about getting those moments is it shows that he's not just some big mystical god in the clouds. That he literally cares about you. He knew the moment, the time, what it was gonna take, what was going on, the same atmosphere, everything it was gonna turn to get your attention.

SPEAKER_03: 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 8:59

If that ain't personal, I don't know what is, brother.

SPEAKER_02: 9:01

And it's laying that down from jump. Yeah, and that's a hard thing for me to to to have wrapped my head around. It took me a while to get there. Yeah, that there's things that were occurring in my life at the age of one and two and three that were setting a table for me that I hadn't had no idea I was at. And then it's even today, I kind of I I'll I'll roll into something, yeah, and I'll I'll look at something, I'm like, how come, how come I know about this? How come this is familiar to me, or how come this is interesting to me? And it's because of stuff that happened 50 years ago in my life that have now made their way into my to my perfume now, yeah, but not 20 years ago when I would have messed them all up in the moments where okay, now I'm ready for you to have this nugget. Now I'm ready for you to have this breakdown. And so I think it it does all connect. And God's aware of the whole road. Yeah and it's not to say that he does things to harm you, he doesn't, but everything that occurs in your life, he uses that to bring you closer to him so that you can help bring people closer to him too.

SPEAKER_05: 9:59

Right now we're at our church, we're in the Bible recap. We're doing the Bible recap for the year, and we're just going through the book of Jobs right now. Just finished it. And it's so like I don't know. It's so it's it's phenomenal to see that God's like, yeah, mess with him. Go ahead, just spare his life, you know what I mean. So I don't know. I think that's kind of cool that he allows us to be tried like that.

SPEAKER_02: 10:23

You know, and we're gonna come back to that too, because um one of my my favorite verse in the whole Bible is in Job. So yeah, we'll talk about that long. That's in the business what we call a teaser. We'll come back, we'll come back into that a little bit later. Amen.

SPEAKER_07: 10:34

But so um after after uh you kind of get into your encounter at um at the how your life changed, um, the transformation in your life. Uh dad always talks about if you read the Bible, um, anybody that encountered Jesus, things changed when they encountered him. So, what what that looked like, um, how your life started to change, and then at the very end, um, we want to get what you're hoping for, buddy. You're still young, you still you're just getting started in ministry, you just got your doctor. I mean, the world is your oyster. So we want to know uh what you're hoping for, what you're believing for. Um, if there's ministry, if there's uh any uh business, just things that maybe haven't manifested physically that you're waiting for them to. We want we want that because we want to pray for you, and then we have listeners that are faithful and they want to pray for you as well.

SPEAKER_05: 11:30

Yeah, amen. I'd love to have that verse so we can use it. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 11:33

Amen, buddy. So, what was it like growing up, Dustin, brother? Well, I'm one of those few folks that there's there's uh there's more and more of us these days, but uh that was born and raised here. I was born and raised Mesa. Religion? Mesa Arizona, where'd you go to high school? Red Mountain High School. Very first year. You're probably Mountain View, aren't you? Mesa High. Okay, that's okay.

SPEAKER_04: 11:50

We're not far enough down the road, but it's not that we're gonna talk about toros, but I'm with you on that weekend.

SPEAKER_02: 11:56

Uh uh, but no, I was uh Mormon boys.

SPEAKER_04: 12:00

Good football team.

SPEAKER_02: 12:01

Their campus smells like they're mascot for some reason. I've never figured that out. But um no, it's uh I'm born and raised here in Mesa. Um dude. And um There ain't many. There ain't many, but that's the truth. Yeah. Um we bounced around a little bit. Uh class 91. Ooh, I was one ahead of you. There we go. Yeah, I was 90. There we go. And then and then I won't I won't pick on you, but the it all went downhill from there. You're good. No, but it was um I grew up in a loving but strongly dysfunctional family, I guess is the best way to say it. Yeah. Like we um uh my mom and my dad were were excellent people, and then there were moments that had terrible moments. Yeah, of course. And I think that's the best way to describe it. And that's and and getting to to to not understand that that differentiation between a good person having a bad moment and a bad person having a good one. Yeah, you know, trying to figure out what that is, uh kind of consumed a lot of what when I first grew up. Yeah. Um we were, like I said, born in Mesa, uh, raised here for a little bit, but then bounced back and forth to the White Mountains. I got family up there, up in Pine Top Lakeside area and Sholo. And so we um would go where the work was. My dad's a uh general contractor in construction and eventually um became superintendent on a lot of build sites, built a whole bunch of every time we go through Mesa, he's like, I built that building, that one there, you know, and so we get a chance to see some of that. Um but that's one of those ones where you follow the work. Yeah, and he and my dad is amazing. He's uh he's quiet and he's strong and he cares about people and he wanted us to care about people. So he taught us how to do that. He taught us how to if you have something, you know, and and someone needs something and you have anything at all you can spare, spare it. Yeah, and if you don't think about how you can spare it. I love that. You know, so if if there was ever anybody like a friend or a friend of the family that was on hard times, we usually had somebody sleeping on the couch or we'd made up some space for them all the time. And I saw that growing up. Yeah, yeah. So even though we were living um pretty poor at times, yeah. Um well it's feast or famine. It's kind of like um if you've ever, if you work in the trade, you know that like you're gonna be. Good seasons, it's great, great jobs, and you're having steak dinners and life is great, and then you um two weeks later that job's over, and now you have a dog and ramen. Ramen rules the next time around. I know how to take tomato sauce and put it on regular noodles and make that work. Hot sauce. Exactly. They're gulage. Yeah, the mystery thing of whatever's in the kitchen. But yeah, that was that's how it was. It was like we we kind of went back and forth. And so Were you an only child? I was not. Uh it came from a a a brood of of brothers. There's a band of brothers. Oh, the boys. Yeah, so there's my I'm I'm the second of four that were in the house. I'm the youngest of four. So it's just yeah, and then and it's it's a dynamic, it's weird. And we were all about four years apart, except my youngest uh brother and my younger brother were two years apart. Oh wow. So we kind of had these these kind of related situations. That's pretty spread out. It is, it is, and it's it's one of those things where we're just close enough to kind of connect, but far enough away to where there's some dynamics that get real interesting.

SPEAKER_05: 14:54

My three older brothers are like a year and a half apart.

SPEAKER_02: 14:56

So they all went to school together.

SPEAKER_05: 14:58

I'm five years later. Yeah, and he's like the baby. Well, that but it was also like the outcast. Right, right. I wasn't involved with the things that they got to be involved with because of the age difference. He's too young. Yeah, I don't know. I I get that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:12

And that's how that's how it was a little bit for me and my older brother. Yeah. My older brother, um, I was the tag along that he had to watch all the time. So free babies. Bring him along, you know. And so um, and so I got I I hang along much to to um uh much to his disappointment. So a lot of times I got the gruff of that from him and his friends. And I was always determined to not be that. So for my younger brother, I was like, hey, come with me. Yeah, he's like, Yeah, so he he and I are we're still he's still one of the not my best friends outside of my wife. He's my best friend right now. Nice. And it's just it's maintained itself over the years because of that. Yeah. Um so I mean, and then that also extended to my youngest brother, but there's a little bit more of a difference there. Yeah. Um, the thing about being four years apart in school, though, is that like just enough time for your older brother to break every teacher's opinion of your family name. Oh, wow. And you get a step into it, yeah. And they're like, oh, I know, I know who you are. They are probably it's not me.

SPEAKER_05: 16:03

And then another McCurdy boy. That's it. I used to get, are you are you related to Fred McCurdy? I'm like, yeah. And they're like, oh God, here we go. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_07: 16:11

This can be a lot of me.

SPEAKER_02: 16:15

What was good for me though, and uh this is kind of foundational for me, and kind of God designed for me, is that he made me smart. Yeah. Like uh smarter than the average bear smart. Um my parents had me tested when I was younger and found out I have an IQ puts me in the top two percent globally. Oh, come on, buddy. Sounds cool. Yeah, but that in five bucks I get you bowl of soup attendees. It doesn't do anything for me. No, not at all. But what it did for me was it it gave me a sense of of um an understanding of something I had that was uniquely me uh early on. Yeah. And it also helped explain a lot of what I what I did. Yeah. Um older brother that was very um domineering and bossy, and um, and we'll talk a little later about you know abusive in a lot of ways. Yeah. Um, but the uh the one that whenever there was a question that was asked, of course, he answered it for both of us. Yeah, yeah. My mom told me that the first thing she remembers hearing me say was when I was three years old. And I said, Can I have a glass of water? Yeah. That's my first word. Wow. So it wasn't like, you know, mommy or daddy was because I had plenty of time to practice by myself because he was doing all of the live and form on the front end of it. Wow. And so I mean there was there was concern that I wasn't develop hitting developmental milestones, they were worried about that. And so you just never had the opportunity to speak for yourself. Yeah. Oh wow and so when I did, um the doors opened. And then I started talking a lot. My grandma said it was like talking to a little man. So I'd be four years old and we'd sit and we'd talk and I'd have adult conversations with people about you know topics and whatnot. Um, it just kind of um opened that door. It was a combination of being um intelligent and then being a sponge for all this stuff. Because um, even though I wasn't speaking, I was learning. I was like, did you like reading? Did you read? I did a lot, um, which is interesting because I have dyslexia and I've had dyslexia my whole life. Oh wow. But I read at a different level for people. I I read Tolstoy when I was six. I read through um one of my favorite um books uh as a as a as a kindergartner was Friends, Kopficus and Metamorphosis, because he turns into a giant cockroach. I thought it was cool. You know, but I understood I I read classics early on. Um my first book that I owned for myself was Isaac Asimov's The Complete Robot, which is the complete um stories, a short story collection for Isaac Asimov, who shaped how modern robotics works now, but did so in a way that was like um one step of elevated um comic books and graphic novels. But he kind of told science fiction stories, and then they eventually we made them into science fiction science fact. And so that's kind of where we've grown. So that was that was um. Oh, I have no idea. There's there's there's great stories. There's one of my my first story in the in the first story on page seven of the book um is uh about a little boy who lives on a colony in the moon, and he's out playing with his robot Rex, and the robot Rex is his dog, and he goes and fetches and everything is great, and him and Rex have a great time and they're playing, and dad and mom call him in and they say, Hey, come on over, we have a surprise for you. Um we won a lottery. So four months ago, we bought you a brand new puppy. And here's your brand new dog. He's a real dog from Earth, and you can have him. We gotta turn Rex in because you're only allowed to have one. But here's your real dog. And um Asimov tells a story about how devastating that was to the boy. Wow. Which e even when I was five, I got the point, which was what is really you know, is it does it have to be flesh and bone, or does it have to be the robot, or where where do the feelings fit? Whatever you can make a connection with. Right. Yeah. And so that that helped inform me as a five year old in figuring out how am I making my connections with other people.

SPEAKER_05: 19:46

That makes pet rocks come to life.

SPEAKER_02: 19:48

All day. Like if seriously, if you had a choice between having a pet uh a pet lizard and a pet rock, if you've had a pet rock for five years, I just remember when we were kids, they used to sell bags of pet rocks. Oh, yeah. I I remember that.

SPEAKER_05: 19:58

But now I'm not. Say that I'm like, oh, I get it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:01

I mean, if you're a good thing.

SPEAKER_05: 20:02

Kids are alone in this room, might be able to make a connection with that pet rock.

SPEAKER_02: 20:04

It starts off as a joke, especially considering if you were in a room like I was in, where there was a lot of volume and a lot of of um in the bad times, it was bad times. My my um my mom's personality falls into there a little bit. Yeah, but there was a lot of arguments that went back and forth that we would go back into. You know, I had a special spot where if I stuck my head just right under the pillow, I couldn't hear it. Oh nice, you know, yeah, yeah. So that was my spot. Yeah. And um, I th uh and I think a lot of people have maybe grown up in similar circumstances where you get that going on. Wow. It's um if you have that pet rock that's inside there that listens to what you have to say at a low volume, sometimes that's better off than having the cat or the dog that's afraid and under the bed with you too. And now you're taking care of them instead of having that connection, wow. So there's there's that. I mean, and and like I said, my dad really cared about people, um, did his uh his level best, uh, but he also had that whole man up, stick your your troubles in your in your heart, don't talk, don't share your struggles with other people. Stop it. Right? Yeah, take care of other people, but don't ask. Don't ask, you know? And so, and even though he wasn't necessarily this is what you should be doing, shaking a finger at me, kids notice. Oh, yeah. I take you're watching.

SPEAKER_07: 21:10

Yeah, I'm learning and you're smart.

SPEAKER_02: 21:11

Yeah, I'm learning what it means to be a man from this man that's the the the big one in my life. Yeah, the heavenly, the earthly version of my heavenly father. Yeah, so whenever I'm starting to learn about God, I'm also learning what father looks like through this. Yeah. Now I'm blessed that I had a I had an excellent role model, but I had an imperfect role model. And um coming to terms with that has been has been part of the part of the ride. Uh my mom. My mom is um was incredibly intelligent, um, was uh incredibly gifted in a lot of ways um when she passed. Um and we had her um she's very clever in the in the fact that when when she passed, she arranged the um the little notes to the different people in her life in such a way that they didn't kind of connect with each other. Oh wow. When we all came to the memorial service, she actually painted a full picture of her entire life with the different people and what they she asked them to share. Oh wow. So my mom was the mom for the sports teams that always brought extra oranges and cheer for every kid that was there. Wow. She's also the one that lobbied Congress for a um um additional funding for a program for youth that my youngest brother was involved in. Wow. She also led a uh custodial crew at uh Gamage at ASU for 15 years. And so she was the supervisor boss in that point. Yeah, she also sang in the church choir and led the things that were going on. So she had these pockets where people only knew her from these areas. Wow. And so when we all got together, we got this whole picture of mom. Wow. And which which was an amazing picture. But um, I picked up on it as a.

SPEAKER_05: 22:36

You guys never had a preview of these different things as growing up?

SPEAKER_02: 22:39

I saw them. Yeah, um, a lot of folks didn't notice them. My my older brothers and my younger brothers, they didn't they they were kind of doing day-to-day. Yeah, I was picking up the pieces as we were going. Wow. So I did see the point where mom was the the one that would when we didn't have any money because with the jobs were were lean. She was going out and working two or three jobs trying to help make the ends meet. I I saw the part where she was um dedicated mom for us when she was home, um, almost to that over the top version of mom that was that was there. It's weird being Gin X and having a mom that um simultaneously was it's Saturday morning at nine, get out, come back at the street lights, you know. That whole commercial where they have to remind you that you have kids. Hey, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? We just talked about that the other day.

SPEAKER_07: 23:21

Do you know where your kids are?

SPEAKER_02: 23:22

They had to bring in celebrities to get their attention to do it. Um but that at the same time of of a mom that's like was was aware when um somebody was doing something school-wise where they were were I would get in disciplinary trouble when I was in second and third grade because I was bored. Yeah. I was like, okay, we've we've done this. We're talking about multiplication tables. I learned that between kindergarten and first grade. Yeah, yeah. Next. Yeah. You know, and so I'm just like, you know, churning wheels in the back of the classroom, trying not to bounce off the walls, and then having the school say, you know, you have a problem, child. And she's like, No, you've got a problem presenting information to my keeping, keeping him. Let's let's figure that out together kind of thing. And so she was so she was aware of your genius. Yeah. She was she was she and she f she fostered it and at the same time kind of squashed it. Yeah. Like she was like, okay, we want to make sure you're getting into good programs and you're learning the stuff, and you're in the the gifted program, which in Pine Top Lakeside at the time meant you went and played Oregon Trail a couple extra hours and you played a fellow and answered extra stuff, and you went into this room where you got to read a lot. Um but at the at the same time, she would tell my teachers, don't let him stay in and read books. Make him go outside in the playground. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he needs to be able to add to people as well as to to brain. She was trying to keep it balanced. Right, as best as she could. Amen. Now, one of the things about my mom is that I firmly believe um she was undiagnosed with my diagnosis. So I'm diagnosed bipolar type one. Yeah. Okay. And it causes, um, for those that don't know, bipolar disorder has a a change in your mood regulation where you might be feeling anxiety and mania and accelerated feelings where you get uh racing thoughts and racing heart and everything's upbeat beaten. Speed up to the point where it becomes almost uh destructive. Yeah. And can be destructive because then it becomes uh all-consuming. And then you swing back to a depressive state where it's so low that you lack uh the ability to do things and your body feels like it's been hit by a truck, and you can't there's no motivation to it. There's a lot of physiological to it too. Your highs are bigger and your lows are low. All on and all off. And you're riding that ride. Yeah, there's Jesus. Um I get to wave it normal on the way by every once in a while. Bye. This is nice. I'm like, you know, and so so my mom had a lot of that. So if you combine But you said it was undiagnosed.

SPEAKER_07: 25:35

It was undiagnosed. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: 25:36

In retrospect, I'm able to see this, and a lot of the training I have now, I'm able to see this, but at the time, nobody even thought about that.

SPEAKER_05: 25:41

In the 70s, 80s, that wasn't even something they were thinking about.

SPEAKER_02: 25:45

Right. In order to get that bipolar diagnosis in the 70s or 80s, you had to be so um dysfunctional that you had to be institutionalized. Yeah. Wow. So I mean you had to it had to serve the impact to the point where you couldn't function. Yeah. And so meanwhile, there's there's still the same number of people then as there are now. Yeah. Um I uh we talk about autism and we'll go a little bit later because that's the latest on my my list of neurospiciness. Come on. Is that um it's always kind of been there. Neurospiciness. We haven't been good at it at figuring it out. Like my my my grandma, the the the common meme is my grandma, it says there's not been um autism in my in our when we grew up, and then you go to her house and these are her special spoons, and you can't touch her special spoon. Here are the plates all in certain order, and don't touch those plates. You know, these are all of the little thimbles that I have of small things that are all lined up over here. And that's mom's chair, and that's dad's chair, and that's grandpa's chair. We'll sit in grandpa's chair. It's gonna be the same way. It's always been there. It's just a matter of just being aware of it. So what we did in in the past of only looking at mental health challenges in terms of um them being debilitating to the point of not functioning, now we're becoming aware that that there's a much broader um influence. Yeah, and so from in retrospect, I can see that influence in my mom. And so what that would be is anytime there was anxiety and mania and those upswings, coupled with um some periods of time where there was not a lot of financial stability, that would be hard to agitate her, which would cause massive conflicts. And the mom I knew would be a different mom in that moment. Oh wow. And then when mom was struggling through depression, and the house would be from like immaculately kept and perfect to there's piles. Yeah. And it it would be a month or two swing between those. And it's because, well, two things. Number one, um, mom wasn't doing the things she could want to do because of depression. And number two, she had four lazy sons that didn't have to clean up a lot from themselves. And they just kept making more clothes. We didn't care, you know, so it's kind of like that. Um so it was it it was seeing that. And so when I talk about my mom's um I talk about my mom, mom's undiagnosed condition, um, it comes from not just a place of familiarity from my own experiences, but also some of the clinical markers that um one of the blessings of my life is being able to study mental health and become become versed in it. Yeah. And so being able to recognize uh clinical diagnostic criteria and being able to see that, although you're never supposed to diagnose yourself first or your family second, you just just don't do it. Um, but it's uh it's still very easy to see those influences. Your mom die young? Um she did. She died when she was 59. Oh, really? Um, she died of well, it's hard to say. She had two different kinds of cancer. So she fought breast cancer twice and then metastasized kind of everywhere. She had um two strokes, she had um uh heart conditions with heart bypass surgery. Um, she had a ton of things, and she still kept plowing forward. She is a fighter. Like it was one of those points where a doctor would come in, look at her chart, then leave, call another doctor to look at the chart, and then look at her and be like, What is she?

SPEAKER_04: 28:40

What do we do? Wow. You know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02: 28:43

And so she she um she battled on for about five additional years from where any measure of health should have been for her. But um, yeah, she passed when she was um when she was 59. Oh man. And so it was and and at my age right now, I'm coming into I have to think what the the numbers say, 50 what two right now. I'm trying to figure out what that looks like in the next seven years. Yeah. Because I'm seeing um there'll be there'll come a point where I've um outlived the experiences my mom had on the planet. And so it w it's giving kind of perspective to that.

SPEAKER_05: 29:13

I'm there too. My mom my dad had a stroke at 44, and my mom died of an enlarged heart at 65. So I'm like right in the middle of both of those ages. And so for me, it's like very heart health conscious because of the stroke with my dad and the enlarged heart with my mom. So like I'm trying to find people to help me or you know, I'm on blood pressure medicine, things like that. So I'm like just I don't know. That's that's my concern. Heart health is my family, it's heart health. Yeah, so I'm like very aware, probably a little too aware of paying attention, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 29:53

And being aware of it's nice. Um being um fearful, fearful and obsessed into it. Yeah, and I know what that's like because my uh diabetes was another one of the things my mom struggled with. Yeah, um, well, it's just maybe she didn't struggle with it. She had no problem being diabetic. Like she uh she would she would get a bowl of ice cream and then dose up with uh with insulin to bring that back down, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas when I had my diagnosis for diabetes now, I became very militant. I mean, how many how many carbohydrates are exactly in this and I can only have this certain number, and the sugars have to be a certain kind in a way. And so I became very regimented, which feeds into both the autism and the bipolar in being able to fixate on things.

SPEAKER_05: 30:32

So I'm gonna take the soda thing as I saved your life today.

SPEAKER_02: 30:34

There we go. It was diet. Yeah. They say diet's worse than regular. I'm just kidding. I don't know, I don't know if this is entirely appropriate for our but I'm gonna tell you a tiny story about that. The reason it's diet Dr. Pepper is uh I I I kid people, I say it's because of the sweetener that they use. Yeah, there's one sweetener that is known to cause um brain tumors, yeah. And there's another sweetener that's known to cause tumors in like the the kidneys and liver. And so I was like, do I want to think and not pee or pee and not pee? And I got to thinking, you know, if I could think and not pee, all I'd think about is not peeing. But if I could, you know, I'm a lot of older people and young people that pee and don't think and not pee. So I'm I went with I went with uh I went with um pee and not think because a lot of older people and young people are real happy doing that. And so that that shit might be.

SPEAKER_04: 31:21

You're the best. He gotta go pee.

SPEAKER_02: 31:23

There we go. See, I've spoken that into into into into the room.

SPEAKER_04: 31:26

You see his bottle, the dude drinks water like a camel, bro. It's a good thing. You just don't hold it like one.

SPEAKER_02: 31:31

No, it's uh it's this um awareness of health. Yeah. My mom's health struggles were a big part of that, and I'm I'm bringing them into my life now at the same type of age, so I'm I'm hyperaware like you are about what that health looks like.

SPEAKER_05: 31:44

Did your parents have you and you guys was in church? You said your mom was in the choir, so obviously you guys were the church goers.

SPEAKER_02: 31:49

It was um it was a church was always a part of our life. Now, what happened um this is uh this is a kind of the backstory for my my older brother. Yeah. Um my older brother um had it was was always connected to to drugs and to the lifestyle. Yeah, yeah. I used to kid him, uh kid people and say I couldn't do drugs because my brother did them all. I had to wait till he died, smoke his ashes because that's the only place we were at. Um, but no, it was um it was it was big in his life. So he he he had that lifestyle going. And my dad grew up as kind of like the laid-back counterculture guy that would long neck bottles of of of bud and throw in dicks.

SPEAKER_05: 32:21

Did you have a lot of family in Mesa?

SPEAKER_02: 32:23

Um I did. We had a fair amount of family here that split time between here and also in the White Mountains.

SPEAKER_05: 32:28

Because I knew some Bailey's growing up. So we're remembered Bailey's machine shop?

SPEAKER_02: 32:32

Uh not us. I know I know one you're talking about, but he stuck out forever out there on that street corner, not letting them have that place. Yeah. I appreciated it. Yeah. But no, we were we were predominantly up in the in the White Mountains doing construction stuff. All right. But it was but we had a few uh family members that are here. Yeah. Um, we um we went through this time um where uh growing up I was aware of of Christ because my mom was very big into church. But my dad was very big into just laid back, spend my Sundays, yeah, do whatever. And so he would um that kind of rubbed off on my older brother. Yeah. And um I remember my dad made the promise to my older brother that says, Hey, look, if you'd stop getting caught with this stuff at school, when you're 21 years old, I'll go out and we'll have a beer and we'll smoke a bowl together. You know? And of course my dad, my dad found Christ right around the time my brother turned 16. So that didn't that didn't walk out as well. I think though to some degree, my brother always felt like that was probably something that that was kind of a letdown for him.

SPEAKER_07: 33:26

We're never gonna smoke our bowl, Dad.

SPEAKER_02: 33:28

Exactly that kind of thing. Meanwhile, mom was was like, okay, you guys are coming to church, we're coming with me. And we grew my my grandparents uh Baptists up in the mountains, um, and then came down here. We were whatever church was closest to the house. Oh, right. We actually landed at a specific church in Apache Junction while we lived in Mesa. Nice. So we would drive down about 10 miles in the morning and go to church. She volunteered and then eventually was on staff as being a custodian for the church. So even when the doors weren't open, we were still there because she had keys. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah, that was it. And I was a brainy kid. You guys are coming with me. Exactly. Help me clean. Yep. At the very least, go in the gym and you know, shoot a basket or go over here and sit in the youth group room so you don't break things at home. Right. And so um, for me, I was a brainy kid. So I if I was there all the time, I was learning all the time. So when I was in um junior high, I was teaching elementary school Sunday school classes. Nice. I spent um about five years in my summers up in Prescott um at a youth camp working on as a staff member at youth camp. So I knew all of the chapter and verse of of um facts and factoys of God and how who Jesus was in every part of the Bible and how it all worked out. And it was very intellectual. It was very fact and just a matter of fact, but it wasn't very relational, yeah, because there wasn't I didn't make that connection yet. So um I knew chapter and verse. I was able uh to talk about my story. I tell people that I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was five, I accepted him as my Lord um on uh in in 2011, on May 27, 2011, 515 p.m. Yeah, and that I became a Christian at 8 o'clock this morning. Because and I'll do it again tomorrow. Yeah, you know, so that's good, Dustin. That's my that's my thought process. When I was can you elaborate why those two things? Sure. Um when I was five, brainy kid talks like a little man, wanted to get baptized because I knew that was the next logical process step in this this this uh this process. And the pastor's like, I'm not gonna baptize a five-year-old. And they sat and talked, and we talked for an hour in his office. He's like, Okay, I'm gonna baptize a five-year-old. You you understand and know the things. And so it was that at that point where I just accepted logically that God was in my life. Yeah, that um Christ was saving.

SPEAKER_05: 35:38

Did you understand that he was real?

SPEAKER_02: 35:40

Yeah, and that yeah, I I I accepted his reality much the same way I accepted Abraham Lincoln's reality. Come on. You know, very much factual person, even real within my life, but historical historical person with these facts, and this is the thing that happened. I did the next thing, and now I'm I'm walking in that um step-by-step process out, but not necessarily in relationship.

SPEAKER_01: 36:02

Come on.

SPEAKER_02: 36:02

So that's where that started when I was five. And that stayed for a while in my life. Yeah, um, that stayed in my life um right up to the point where uh pretty much everything fell apart. And um at my lowest moment, God reached out to me and said, Look, um, I'm here for you. I'm right here with you. You're not alone. It's okay to ask for help. Yeah, and I'm gonna get you plugged into people. Come on. And that's when I'm like, okay, God, I'm so tired of wrecking my life, burning it down to the ground. I don't think I could survive this again. You gotta do it because I can't. Yeah. And that's when he came alongside me. Come on. And that's the moment where where um he became not just my savior, but my lord. Yeah. I'm like, you get to you get to call those the shots. I'm I'm tanking it. So yeah, I'm not gonna be here tomorrow if you don't do it.

SPEAKER_07: 36:42

There's a big difference, ain't there? It's huge. There really is. It's huge.

SPEAKER_02: 36:46

It really is. And then learning over the that time frame from 2011 to now to have gratitude in not having to, um, in mental health, we call it the spoons. I don't know if you don't know the idea of spoons, you only have a certain number of spoons you can spend every day in energy. And so if you waste them all in the front, you don't got nothing in the back. Nothing in the back. So we have spoons.

SPEAKER_04: 37:05

Somebody said coins. Coins, same thing. Coins. Same thing.

SPEAKER_05: 37:08

They said they said uh what is it? Uh every encounter. An introvert has five coins. They start each day with five coins. An extrovert, our job is to gather coins.

SPEAKER_04: 37:16

I have no coins, I need your once an introvert gives out his five coins, he's done. They go back to you.

SPEAKER_02: 37:23

What I've learned is that I can I can let God do the things in my life that will save me those coins. Yeah. So I don't have to be the one doing them. He's got those things. I've also learned that there's things he's asked me to steward in my life. Yeah. You know, maybe if I plan to have breakfast approximately the same time and have the same nighttime ritual when I go to bed, I don't have to think about what's for breakfast. That saves me a coin. Yeah. So it's it's being able to steward some of the decisions that are. For me, sometimes that's all that's left.

SPEAKER_05: 37:55

Literally, when I stop and get my breakfast, they're like, if you don't show up, we're gonna think something's wrong with you. And I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 38:00

Okay, I got people. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's good. No, I mean, for when you cut when you couple that with uh bipolar disorder and now uh the most recent diagnosis of autism, some of my breakfast makes sense. Where for a year and a half it was exactly the same breakfast, cooked it exactly the same way in exactly the same pan. It takes 17 minutes, I could walk you through it right now. And then we did it all the time with only two very or three variations inside of it. But that was comforting.

SPEAKER_07: 38:25

Yeah, it's what you needed.

SPEAKER_02: 38:27

It's not and I don't have to think about it and I don't have to worry about it. I mean, I find myself right now not in that rhythm. And I I and I have a little bit of anxiety every once in a while when I go open the refrigerator. What's it gonna be? You know, so I uh if there's a little bit of a call to say, hey, let's get back into a pattern on the things that can become a pattern. Yeah, yeah. And then let go of the things that aren't and let God do everything through all of it. Yeah, because he's giving me rest in the patterns and he's giving me opportunities in the other spaces. Come on. So that's that's um that's new information for me over the last few years that I'm kind of processing.

SPEAKER_05: 38:57

So when your mom So I wanted to I guess what I want to know is is that did your mom exemplify Christ in the home?

SPEAKER_02: 39:08

As best as she could.

SPEAKER_05: 39:09

Because a lot of times we know that people who grow up in church, it's Sundays, it's Wednesdays, but at home there's nothing. There's no praying, there's no reading, there's no we did our checks by going to church on Sunday, we did our checks by going to youth on Wednesday, but at any other time we're just normal people.

SPEAKER_02: 39:24

My mom my mom very much did in every way she could. Yeah. But again, she did her best. She's struggling with um um with an undiagnosed uh bipolar disorder, which means at some points there's just nothing there, and other points there there is. Amen. And it it kind of um at an earlier age left a mixed message for me. Yeah. Where okay, mom is on fire, we're going down to VBS, we're doing all the things there, she's plugged into the things, we're praying at home. Um, she's got the world's largest Bible that's right there with everything in it, yeah. Right there in the front, you know, and then we we can talk about it, and then there's there's another month or two where. She's not there. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not there. And we're not. You know, I'm still going to youth group, but um catching a ride with my friends at youth group, I'm not going down with more. Wow. Yeah. So it's and there was a how much of this is a consistency thing and how much of this is a capacity thing. Yeah. And I didn't understand that in the moment.

SPEAKER_04: 40:16

So in the knowledge you have now, do you look back and do you appreciate the good times? That's when she was on fire.

SPEAKER_02: 40:22

I appreciate the bad times. Yeah. One of the things about one of the things about not having her with us right now is that I remember some of our very best fights. Yeah. You know, the part some of the times where she got on me and I had she had no business getting on me for what she was getting on me for. I remember a particular time where it was one o'clock in the morning and me and my best friend had just gone to sleep and she got mad and she got kicked the door open and started swinging a broom handle and threw water on us because we didn't wash the dishes like she said before we went to bed. And I'm used to this. My friend's like, what's going on? I'm like, just roll with it, dude. Just let's get the dishes done. And so, you know, it's good, it's it's that, that kind of thing. So I'm but I I I I love that part of her every every bit as much as I love the part that when I'm wrestling in junior high and there's this one person who's four foot eleven and about as about as as as wide as she is tall, and she's laying belly down on the ground, slamming her hand on them on the the the uh floor of the gym while I'm wrestling to try to get the guy to call the pin for me. Um because she loved and she loved me and every other person on my team that way. Um, those are both the same person for me. And when I learn to love both those things, I also get to learn those, learn to love those things about myself. Come on. So when I'm struggling, when I'm at my worst, I can still say there you are, God, in my life. Come on, and there's there's this is part of the design you made me into. So let's understand what it's for. And I think it's for giving grace to people and from to myself.

SPEAKER_07: 41:45

Yeah, but you're helping people right now, buddy. There's people that are gonna listen to this that you're helping them find some grace for themselves.

SPEAKER_02: 41:53

Well, let's spend let's let's let's talk about that for a second because one of the biggest uh revelations of my life that God gave me um was that I'm not broken. Yeah, that I'm not defective. Yeah, that I'm um the word disorder just means something's cluttered. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's broken, it doesn't mean it's it's um wrong. Yeah, yeah um I believe that um I tell people that I'm learning to steward the bipolar disorder that God created in me on purpose and for his purpose. Come on, buddy. Because I believe in a God that says I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Yeah I believe in a God that says I'm his workmanship and his masterpiece and the God that doesn't make mistakes.

SPEAKER_05: 42:29

God truly doesn't make mistakes, then those things are there for a reason.

SPEAKER_02: 42:32

And he designed them in my brain. It's not like I woke up one day and signed up for bipolarism. Oh, I want this, I want this, I want to think like this. And I and I didn't accidentally trip and fall off my skateboard and bump my head into bipolar source. This is a design by God. So if my God doesn't make mistakes, then he's designed this for me and he's got purposes for it. Yeah, and it's been it's been the real um blessing and joy of my life to learn what those per some of those purposes are.

SPEAKER_07: 42:55

Well, look, now you're you're literally a regional state, your mental health ambassador for celebrate recovery and so much more. It's I mean, it's one of the things and one of the lanes that God's using you and how He made you to help other people.

SPEAKER_02: 43:14

Oh, exactly. It does two things right off the front. First off, it reminds me that I can't do this by myself. Come on, but this is a team sport. I need people on my and I need people on my team that not only uh I need people on my team that love me. Yeah, I need people on my team that that care about me but don't love me. Yeah. Um I have one of the people that comes to mind is I pay a counselor who has a nice, comfortable couch and lets me talk about things and helps me find tools. She cares about me, but she doesn't love me. Yeah, that's good. That way she's given me straight without any of the other stuff that comes along with the baggage that's not. No emotional attachment. Right. Yeah. Um, I need people in that on my team that have um white lab coats that make these wonderful medications that fill the gap where my brain doesn't. You know, I have a hard time making a certain uh combination of chemicals in my brain, which is what causes this nice little ride to go on.

SPEAKER_05: 43:59

And for you religious people out there, let's talk about it. It's okay to take medication.

SPEAKER_02: 44:05

Yes, God made doctors too. If you're willing to take insulin, if you have diabetes, and if you're willing to take heart medication because your heart's there, your brain's just another organ. Everything psychological is biological.

SPEAKER_05: 44:15

Everything you see these stories on the news, and I haven't seen one in a while, but you got these super Christians who sit there and watch as their kid dies. Right. Because God's gonna heal them, God's gonna touch them, and refuse to use medicine, refuse to use. I'm like, I mean, I get faith and all that, but when you're trapped on top of a house in a flood and a boat comes by, get on the boat.

SPEAKER_02: 44:45

Get on the damn boat. Get on the boat. You know what I mean? And it's um lost on a lot of people that God's method of healing somebody is not necessarily removing their ailment. Yeah, yeah. And um the healing that comes a lot of times is in becoming a whole person, including the ailment. Yeah. And God's method for healing people, more often than not, is his people. Yeah. It's Jesus and skin moments.

SPEAKER_05: 45:07

There's three ways God heals you miraculously, medicine, and death. Yeah. That's it. That's the only three way God heals you. So you can get rid of the one, and you're definitely gonna get the other, you know, one or the other two, which if you get rid of the one which is medicine, you're gonna end up with the last one, which is death. So you're gonna get your healing one way or another.

SPEAKER_02: 45:28

And no matter what, life is a fatal disease, man. Oh, yeah. You know, it all ends the same thing. We're all gonna die one way, every knee's gonna bow. So why not live in it? Why not live while you're live while you're dying? That's right.

SPEAKER_05: 45:39

We were talking beforehand. I was telling you about my my scoliosis, right? Yeah, and I I'm doing things right now, physical therapy, things like that, to help strengthen my back. I believe God wants to heal my back. Every time my back gets on fire, I'm like, God, is that you? Amen. But I'm not so naive to know that I there's things that I need to do to help strengthen that area so my nerves aren't getting pinched all the time. You know what I mean? And so it's common sense, it's reality. Do things that are gonna help you that doctors and people are prescribing to you while you're waiting on your miracle from God.

SPEAKER_02: 46:14

And the thing about it is that um God's.

SPEAKER_04: 46:16

And if he doesn't, yeah, he's still good.

SPEAKER_02: 46:18

He's gonna tell you no sometimes. Oh, yeah. Like I've I've had that prayer a lot. Oh yeah, you know, or in my life of the God, let's let's just get rid of this bipolar. Just make me normal, God. He's like, and his answer is normal as a setting on your dryer. Yeah. Oh wow. It is the only thing normal is it's a setting on your dryer. Everything else is just where you're at along the ride. He's like, I'm not, I'm not done using this. Yeah, and you're you're not done with it either. Come on. Amen. Um, the healing I need is not to have bipolar disorder removed. The healing I needed was to learn how to submit and steward. Boom. It's really good. And so I was given um That's really good. The Evan Almighty movie where he builds the art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this wonderful clip in the middle where his wife is struggling, and then Morgan Freeman as God comes in and says, you know, do you think when people pray for patience, God gives them patience or does he give them opportunities to be patient? Opportunities to be patient. I'm I'm given an opportunity to be healthy. Yeah, not health. Yeah. So now my opportunity is how do I how do I manage this in a way that glorifies God and respects myself because I have a lot of my life where I didn't. Amen. And learning how to do that in a way that shows an shows an example for my kids. Yeah. Shows an example for anybody I bump into that says, hey, this is possible to do. Yeah. Um one of the um one of the the interesting ways God has done this in my life is that um I struggled through the uh a long time in the wilderness of being undiagnosed myself. Yeah. And if you're a NASCAR fan, there's this thing called trading paint where you're driving, you're racing and you're rubbing with cigars. Yeah. Yeah, I was trading paint with life for a while there. And um, it was not doing me or the people around me any favor. Yeah. And then I finally got into a place where I got some health. And I started to learn more about it. And I started to to submit this to God and say, what are you gonna do with it? And then and and watch as he's already been doing it the whole time. But you're gonna do another thing now that you know. Now we're gonna try the next one now that it's like. How old were you when you got your diagnosis? Um, it was in uh honestly, I was my very first diagnosis was probably when I was about 30, 35. And then I'd ignored it completely. The first thing I did was like, nope, not me.

SPEAKER_05: 48:19

So let me ask you this growing up as a kid, say 15, 16, 17 years of dealing with this, was there episodes as a kid as well where you were having episodes like your mom did?

SPEAKER_02: 48:35

Well, w the way it works for me and the way it works for a lot of people, and I'll I'll get slightly scientific and back away from it afterwards, is um there's this this um part of your prefrontal cortex that develops in your brain. There's a uh a neuroplasticity that that um formulates between the ages of um 18 and 22. Um it's that place where um abstraction develops, where you know that things are gonna happen longer than just right now. That there's a five years and a ten years down the road kind of thing. When your brain is making those decisions, a lot of times um that's when people f have their first real uh experiences where it slams in their face, the bipolar part of it. Now you'll have anxiety moments, you'll have depression moments. But a thing that helps when you're younger is that your body uses those chemicals, the the brain chemistry sometimes a little more efficiently. Yeah. I was involved in every sport known to man. So I was I was constantly in shape from the time I was about 10 to the time I was about twenty two. Yeah. So I didn't notice too much of it. And it wasn't until um when I was in the military when I was well, actually when I went to college first, when I was 18, 19, the wheel started falling off the bus. Yeah. But I didn't understand it. And then when I got in the military, they kind of ramped up a little more of the the physical activity of it and the regiment of it, which helped the wheel stay on a little bit, but then they fell off again. And that's when I started realizing something wasn't quite right. Yeah. And it took from that point until I got to my early 30s to actually to ask somebody about it. It took a failed suicide attempt for me to realize I needed help. Wow. And but God uses that. God uses that moment where he's like, okay, now that I have your undivided attention, we're gonna go talk to somebody. Yeah, yeah. So it's um as a child, a lot of the autism stuff was still very much there and a lot of the brain need that went along with it. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of the emotional stability um was present just because I was either uh physically fit in the time where it was starting to wane, and then active in being young, yeah, um, which allowed that. A lot of times you won't see a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in somebody that's under the age of 13. You'll see something like they have anxiety. Yeah. With I think the the way it's phrased sometimes is acute anxiety with chronic depression. Or the other way around, where they'll they'll talk about both sides of the coin. ADHD or whatever. Yeah, you'll live on this part of the coin, and then every once in a while you'll jump in here. Yeah. And then that diagnosis can then becomes when it starts to become cyclical.

SPEAKER_07: 50:45

What do you think that the the sport or the exercise or the physical release or the working out actually has an effect of helping the depression or the the lows of um What I'll say is everything, like I said before, everything psychological is biological.

SPEAKER_02: 51:02

Now, can you work out enough to not have bipolar? Probably not. Probably not. You know, but what you can do is give your body a fighting chance to use the chemicals it does have. I have um that's a problem with a chemical that's called serotonin. Okay. Um, they've got this, I have a shirt that says dose, which gives you the names of the ones you have to use. And dopamine and serotonin are the two big ones, they're the only two things that ever technically ever make you happy. Right? Yeah, dopamine is that thing that gives you that sudden burst of ooh, this is awesome. Yeah. And then serotonin is that nice, satiated, just had Thanksgiving dinner, sitting back on the couch and unbutton a button and just relax and kind of feeling right. That little lean-back feeling. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 51:36

Um turkey coma.

SPEAKER_02: 51:37

That's it. Um for me, serotonin is hard to come by sometimes. Really? I explain my dopamine and serotonin levels. Um, like uh, I use the analogy of washing your car in the driveway with a garden hose. Oh, yeah. Like, you know how you kink the garden hose and there's a little dribbling out there, and you open up just a little bit and it just comes out like a super spray. Sometimes my brain chemistry is just dribbling and sometimes it's firing out of there, but rarely is it just flowing. And so, what my treatment's about, the tools that I've developed, the medication that I take, the the team approach, including diet, exercise, including sleep, which is huge. So good. All of that is designed to help spread out when it's thin and pull back when it's too much. Yeah. So it helps me manage it. So and without sleep, for example, then I get that super tired angry, that cortisol-filled angry that lets me not use that little I got at the moment or that too much I have the right way. Um that's part of it when I do the the the proper eating. Um, if you've if you've known that's seen the Snickers commercial, you know, you're not yourself, you're not angry. Here, have a Snickers. Um for me from diabetes, if the sugar's too high or too low, I'm a different person in my mood. Yeah, and it impacts my mental health. That's real, man. So there's yeah, it all fits together. I mean, God's God's built a very intricate little system and He gives it gives us opportunities to take care of it in a lot of different ways. Yeah. And for me, part of that is listening to people that are gonna help me find tools that help this make sense. Sometimes it's taking medications, sometimes it's hey, it's 10 o'clock, why aren't you asleep? Yeah, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. That help me in in these processes for doing it. And I do it well, and then sometimes I don't. Amen. That's why I keep saying that I'm a Christian since eight o'clock this morning. Just like everything else. When I wake up in the morning, I can choose to do it or not. And if I don't do it well today, no sweat. Yeah, tomorrow's gate o'clock. And if it doesn't come around tomorrow, then I've already finished up what I need to do here, and I'm right where I need to be anyway. Amen. So it's it's just uh reassuring to know that there's not a weight of this that carries. Yeah. So you managed to graduate high school, obviously. I'll try. Oh no, I did, I did. I actually did well. Yeah. Um, when I grew up um in my family, I talked about my older brother. Yeah. Um, when mom was out and working stuff, and when dad was out doing the jobs he was doing, he was our de facto babysitter, but he was also my primary abuser. Yeah. So he abused me every way possible. Um, I like to say that his verbal abuse was surprisingly good given his grades in school. So he came up with some some singers. Um his uh physical abuse was a big deal because he was four years older, foot taller. He could just kind of beat me on whatever he'd get his hands on. Emotional abuse, he'd trap me in small spaces, threaten to harm me. Yeah, yeah. Um, there's a sexual abuse aspect of it where he would um go and do things with other neighborhood kids and then drag me along, and I'd have to see all that. And then he'd force me to participate in it so I wouldn't tell. Yeah. Which then shaped a lot of my own behaviors. Growing up. You know, so it's like I became um more aware of uh of what sex was early, yeah, and it cascaded through way too early in my life, which created a lot of my own high school behaviors, and and so it create and created some struggles. So to grow through that process, um I launched myself into being brainy and trying to make sure that um I was doing things that were getting safety and approval and the congratulatory things. You're so smart, you're doing great. Yeah, yeah. My dad played guitar. He had a chance to play for Wayland Jennings, but then passed on it when he was 16. Thanks, Dad. That was a great decision on your part. We could have had a way different life. Yeah. Um, but no, it's uh but no, that so he's a he's a good, he's a gifted musician. My mom sang in the Phoenix Philharmonic. So she was of an excellent singer. Wow. And so I threw myself in music. I played every 11 different instruments, I got on a stage every chance I could. Um, everything from um metal and punk bands to singing in the church choir, whatever there's a stage, I was doing it. Yeah, yeah, you know, because both my parents liked that. And so they would reinforce that and then reinforce worth, and there'd be some safety to it. Um, that's where sports came from. Yeah, it's a very easy stage to get on when you know starting with wrestling because we were poor, so all you have to do is get someone to get you a pair of shoes and you can go. Yeah, you know, so it was like that was it. If you wanted to be a golfer, you had to have like a whole other side of it. So yeah, as for the rich kids. So I played, I've played, I played football, I played uh uh um I played baseball brief briefly when I was younger, but then you know, focus more on football because they gave you the pads and the whole uniform and cross country because it's running shoes. Same thing, same shoes for track, yeah. You know, so those worked out wrestling in the middle, and so it was um just doing doing those sports and then doing the music and then getting it. Yeah, all of it. Really? Oh wow, so it was I was a runt of a kid too. Like um I play at Red Mountain, uh, I I played under Coach Jones. Yeah, and he had a rule that for me, I don't know if it was for everybody, but because of who I was, I had to weigh at least 135 pounds in order to play. Yeah, otherwise he was aware I'd get broken. So it was like I had to beef up for that because then I wrestled at 112 pounds. Oh wow. So I'd have to cut that weight because we were always just good enough when we started to get in the playoffs and lose the first round. So then the seasons overlapped. Yeah, so then I'd have to lose all of that weight to get down to wrestle. Wow. You know, 20 pounds lighter, and I do that in about a week and a half to two weeks. Oh wow. So we would do that on a loop. Wow. And so yeah, I letter um lettered in in everything that I tried. Come on. Because it's not hard to letter when you know how when you when you brain how the system works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I show up to practice every single day. I do exactly what the coach tells me to do. I do that thing, and every once in a while I get to go into the game. And if I get in the game enough times, I'm good. Yeah. And then in wrestling, it was just a matter of just showing up, and I was it was something I was actually naturally good at. Wow. So um, those were the things that drove me through high school that helped me get to the end of it. Because the schooling, the academics was already very boring. Yeah. I was already I had already I had already done the academic stuff um going through it. I have one um particular teacher in high school who made one of the biggest differences in my life because she taught me um that I need to be the person that sets the standard for whether or not I'm being challenged and I'm learning. Right. Because every other standard that's gonna be put out in front of me is kind of gonna not gonna cut it. You're either gonna show up here, get bored, get through, and get your check mark, or you're gonna learn something if you choose to. Yeah. So are you brave enough to choose to? Oh wow. And she's she shaped my thinking and got me all the way to where I'm at now. Yeah, yeah. And so it's do you remember her name? Yeah, Valerie uh Warnicky. Wow. And she's um uh I actually thanked her in the um acknowledgments of my um my dissertation, my question.

SPEAKER_06: 58:01

Oh, bro.

SPEAKER_02: 58:02

For that very thing. And we're still friends today. Really? That's amazing. She's she's an amazing author. She's done some some some excellent work writing. Um, there's two books that she's that that she's predominantly known for. One of them is Risk of Sorrows, which is a book that she uh wrote about the life of a woman that survived the Holocaust and went through um uh concentration camps and that experience, making sure that her story wasn't lost in time. Wow. And then the other one is um a story that she wrote with her walk with her daughter through um eating disorders andorexy bulimia. Oh, wow, which as a mental health uh professional is one of the scariest in the world, it's because it got the highest mortality rate. Almost 40%.

SPEAKER_05: 58:37

God bless you, ma'am.

SPEAKER_02: 58:38

Yeah, and fantastic. And then and and she she made a difference in my life that made a generational difference in my life because it taught me how to teach my children how to learn. Wow. Come on, man. And they've carried that. Come on. Um, one of the things that God made clear to me early um when I became a dad, and we started working this thing out, and it started to become a relationship, was that um everything I need to know about my relationship with God, I'm gonna learn from my kids when they're little. Yeah, you know, yeah. I'm the I'm the kid with God that doesn't want to hold his hand while we cross the street, and I want to do it myself. And so whenever I'm walking my two-year-old across the street and he's yanking around or whatever else, all of a sudden it's very clear to me I do this to God all the time. I maybe need to think about that. You know, and so there's these moments. That's great. And then there's these moments that come on the other side of it where I get the opportunity now to speak into my kids' lives based on the experiences that I'm learning about my life with God. I get to speak into them, generationally changing them. Um, let's talk about bipolar for a second. I didn't have anybody that even knew that was a thing when I grew up. Yeah, so I went through life kind of um slamming into walls and messing this all up. Well, when she turned 19 years old, my oldest daughter at home, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She had the same type of meltdown that I had when I was in college at first. Only she had a dad who understood it and could say, No, this is what's going on, and this is what you can expect. Now, our relationship, which went from here's my dad who's not checked, and his making the life miserable, and I don't like him too much, to this is a guy that's helping me navigate this thing because now there's forgiveness that exists in a relationship that wasn't there before because she's experiencing it. And I have the chance to redeem some of those painful points to help be uniquely qualified to help my child walk through them.

SPEAKER_07: 1:00:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:24

It's and God does that in everything. Yeah. So it's if you would never experience that, you would never have that for your daughter. Right. My my youngest daughter um has um a lot of folks that that know us know my youngest daughter has had epilepsy since she was four. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:00:38

And she had Is this the one that is going to the children's hospital? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:42

So that's our that's our one. And Olivia was uh four when she had her first um seizures. And she had and those happened by the way, about um three weeks after um my low where I met Christ. Yeah. And so but yeah, May 27, 2011 is when I met Christ. She had 108 seizures on July 4th that same year. Wow. So within a month, we we were um starting this journey with her. And she's had um she's had a couple of brain surgeries that have helped. This last brain surgery actually has alleviated all of the seizures. So it's just been a miracle that God's put in place. But I mentioned this because my wife has training in um forensic science, and she's got anatomy and physiology, and she understands the way that the body works as part of that training. Wow. And I have training in psych in forensic psychology and counseling and the mental aspect of things. So we are uniquely qualified to ask all the right questions about our daughter's brain when it goes into circumstances. And neither of us were on this path until after this all started.

SPEAKER_06: 1:01:42

Wow. So God is like God knew. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:45

And so when you start to see those things happen in your life and you can you recognize them in other people's lives. It's why whenever somebody talks about some opportunity that they have and some struggle that they have, I get excited for them. Yeah, I I I hurt when they hurt, but I also get excited to see what happens with it. Because God's doing something. God's gonna use this, and it's amazing. He never waste a hurt. And and not even that, he makes he gives you your 10,000 hours of expertise so that you can stand in the gap with people. The two things my bipolar disorder does tell me it's not a team, it's a it's a team sport, I can't do it by myself. Uniquely qualifies me to connect with people that have the same struggle, give them experience, strength, and hope that there's something on the other side. For them. For them. Yeah, and that that this can actually be a thing. Um, my daughter Olivia, she also struggles with depression. Um, she struggles with um chronic depression with acute anxiety.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:34

So you mentioned that earlier.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:36

We'll be back to this to that diagnosis in a little bit. She's just turned 18 um a few a few months ago. But um at the time, that was she when she first got her diagnosis, she she hated the idea. And so she sat on the front porch. And it was like one of the five days that it rains in Arizona. So, you know, we're sitting there, and the rain's coming down, and she's it rains more than five days in Arizona.

SPEAKER_07: 1:02:57

Six, you're exactly right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:59

No, no, but exactly about 40. So you've got you've got this time where she's in she's just in junior high. Yeah, which if you're familiar with most school districts, that's the last bus that comes to school. Yeah. You know, high schoolers start, then we get the elementary school, and then the junior high. So um she's sitting on the front porch at eight o'clock in the morning in traffic is whizing by in front of our house, going to work, people late. They're they're just flying by in their cars, getting ready to go to school to work, and she's sitting on the front porch and she's crying. And I come out, I'm like, what's going on? She's like, I don't I don't want this. I don't want to be this. This isn't fair. I don't know why why this? And so I'm looking out at my front yard, and we've got this tree that's out in the front yard, and it blocks about half the view of our front yard of the tree. And I'm like, uh, what do you see in the front yard? And she says, uh, I see a tree. And I say, look a little bit closer, what do you see on the tree? And she says, I see I see leaves. I said, okay, now look a little bit closer, but what do you see on the leaves? I see raindrops. Look as close as you can inside what do you see? She says, I see rainbow, but it's like water with a prism. Uh-huh. I see a rainbow. I said, the true superpower you have with the depression is you're going to be able to experience the world at a pace where you can see the rainbow and a raindrop while the rest of the world flies by. This is where it's good. Um it's not gonna feel good all the time. Uh but there is to some degree a superpower that's given to you in all of these things. And the real challenge, um, the real challenge in life is to figure out where the blessing God has put in your life for the thing that doesn't feel like a blessing. When you find that superpower, that blessing that God's put there, then you get to use it. Wow. And then God gets to say, okay, now that you're aware of it, I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do with it.

unknown: 1:04:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:44

And that's been the experience of my life. Um I'm watching powerful. I'm watching her walk that out. Um she had brain surgeries at Phoenix Children's Hospital. What else she did? She was on the the telephone and talking and doing giving an interview so she could talk on television to encourage people to give. She's done radio interviews, so she's told her story. Yeah, it's it's amazing stuff.

SPEAKER_07: 1:05:04

Um 987, Wolf and the Guy, they had they had her on, man. Well, that was one of the stories. Yeah, Olivia. Olivia. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:12

Yeah, it gives her a perspective now that this is so much bigger than who she is. Yeah, and that she gets to use it. Wow, and that God will do things in it. Come on. And I think that that once you start to see that the points of your life that cause pain are actually things that God's using to connect us all together, to hold us all together, yeah. Um, to be his literal hands and feet. Come on. I think that's the place where you start to realize that this not only is it not so bad, but it's kind of exciting to see what happens next. Yeah. And that's where I get my joy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:42

That's pretty cool. That's really good. So you say you went to college. Where'd you go to college at?

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:47

Um, briefly, briefly went to college at Ozark Christian College in Scenic Joplin, Missouri. Really? My college selection process was the stupidest in the history of school. Well, why'd you pick the Ozarks? Well, that's exactly why. Umbody in my family had ever gone to college. My dad had some college credits once he got out of the Navy in Vietnam and he went to um Northern Pioneer College and took a couple ski classes. Ski classes? Yeah, he took the ski classes and he took an uh an architecture class. Loved architecture, loved skiing more, and then that was it. You know, my mom went to Lambs and Business College for one semester to learn how to get a certificate for typing so she could get a job in an office, and that was it. That's the extent from both sides of my family for as far back as we have them of anybody that ever went to college. Wow. So we had no idea what we're doing. So I sat cross-legged in my bedroom when I was 18 after graduating high school, and we're talking this is the end of July, beginning of August, and school starts in three weeks. And I stacked up all of the recruiting flyers that people had sent me, and whoever had the most got me. Oh, wow. And there was this one very um very gifted recruiter from Ozark Christian College um uh named Melissa.

SPEAKER_07: 1:06:56

What were they recruiting you for?

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:58

Just to come, just to come. Oh, no sport specifically. I had some people that had had recruited. I had uh Mesa College recruited me to wrestle, but I uh injured my knee um uh right around Thanksgiving one time, and so I was out, and so I was able to eat Thanksgiving dinner once. And I'm like, hey, this isn't bad. Eating is nice. And so I decided I'm not gonna wrestle anymore. I didn't eat. I had a scholarship offer for Old Roberts University to be part of their television production program, primarily because that five years I spent in youth camp was doing video production for that camp. Oh wow. Um, kids were bringing their parents camp quarters and playing like like wiffle ball with them. So they're like, You guys owe us a camera. I'm like, no, you need to stop bringing them. So we made a compromise. And we filmed camp and sold the the deep the VHS tapes at the time to the to the families. Nice and they're like, we need somebody we can pay in candy bars. And so since I was like 14, I'm like, sign me up. I get to go to camp all summer, and all I do is do video stuff. It's the best. And so because I had done that and I'd had the exposure to that, it helped me do some other things in high school. I started um Red Not in High School's um video production where they did video announcements, and then it became a video crew thing. Yeah, wow. And so um I uh me and two friends um started RMTV. And so, because of that, uh, and the librarian being a very nice person, she sent that out as an as a note to somebody, and I said, Hey, you want to do this? The problem is this is exactly the same time that the pastor who oversaw that university said went to a tower and said, God will take me away if you don't get me two million dollars. And I'm like, every Christian I know would be like, keep your money, have a nice day. Yeah, the next prophet's coming, the next verse is coming, I'm heading home. Goodbye. And so it that one kind of went away. And I and I got a third one uh scholarship for Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, um, for doing um graphic artists because I I had some skill in that as well. And um that scholarship was seemed awesome. It was$25,000 in 1991. I'm like, this is great. And then that figured out that was like the first year. I'm like, and that's out of the Ozarks. So I stacked up, and this is because um of those those um weeks in youth camp. Every week a camp team would come from a different Christian college and would help out for a little bit. And so I filled out the little card that said, I'm interested in going to yours. And I was interested in being a camp team guy that came back later. And so they sent me some flyers, and she made some phone calls, and they had like this many flyers they sent, and ASU had about two or three, and a couple others had like none or one rather. And then I had a little list of guys that I had asked, and they never went through. I'm like, okay, fine, you get me. And so I packed up my stuff, got on an airplane, flew to Joplin, Missouri, had never been there before, no money in my pocket, no idea how far the airport was from the school. Oh, wow. And so I realized it was like 20 miles, and so I was like, I'm that's a long walk. And the guy at the enterprise mural car thought he's like, get in the back of my truck, I'll drive you there. I'm going by it anyway. So we go back over there, we sit down. But that was my my my university experience. And that's also when bipolar hit me the first time. Really? So remember, Brainy Kid remembers everything. School is really easy, all of a sudden, was thrown out of Bible college after two years with a 0.78 GPA. Cumulative. Wow. You have to try to not put your name on the paper to get that low. Yeah, you know, it was it was because I just couldn't anymore. So all I would do is I'd stay up all hours of the night. I wouldn't be able to focus on the school part of it. I would either go through mania where I couldn't write or depression where I couldn't get out of bed.

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:16

Were you drinking or any drugs or anything? None of that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:18

And see, I was always I was always adverse to drugs and alcohol because I had an older brother abuser that did that as a lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason that my favorite team was the San Francisco 49ers was twofold. Number one, Arizona didn't have a team at the time, and number two, his was the Dallas Cowboys. So, you know, my family love the Cowboys. I was a Niner fan. So my brother's favorite color was was was red, so obviously mine was blue. And that was the way my life worked for a long time. It took me a while to unpack a lot of my preferences just because they were always set in opposition to him. So I was never gonna be that substance guy because he was. And so uh rather than that, I tried to get um most of my uh brain chemistry hits from being on stages, from performing things, from that type of thing. Excitement. And then when all of that stuff dries up when you're no longer eligible to do it. Yeah. So what was it about being at the college that triggered your just the age. It was just I turned 19, 20, that part where the brain starts to shape over, it just happened to hit me like a truck at that exact moment. Wow. Um, I did really, really well for about four weeks in school, and then after that it all fell. I didn't get to the first um semester to complete that, and then it just got snowballed downhill. Yeah. And so it was it was that. And I think that um, you know, in retrospect, I can see that, and I um I don't hold anything against myself anymore about that. But for the longest time, there was a tremendous amount of guilt and shame associated with that because I was supposed to be the brainy kid that cured cancer and world peace and all those things, and you know, couldn't even get through the first semester. All right, I'm Dr. Bailey right now, but I was supposed to be that in 1995, right? And so I spent a good portion of of my life either ashamed of not going back to school, because I didn't go back to school and until 2011, when I hit the very bottom rock bottom of God said, Okay, now let's start sending you back to school. So everything that I've done academically has been since I've been walking with Christ. Is that why you went to the military? Because you the school thing? Well, yes. Um, yes, and I met a girl and we had gotten engaged uh because I was a heck of a salesman. And so the the very best representative of me was able to convince her that this is a good idea. Yeah, yeah. And her very best representative was equally good. So I needed a job. Yeah. And so I went to the Air Force, and because I contest really well, they said I could have any job I wanted in the Air Force. And I picked the job that was the closest to her with the least amount of travel, that was the shortest school because we couldn't possibly be apart. Yeah. And even though they then offered me the j the chance to move into um legal network and also air traffic control, I passed them both of those guts more school. We gotta get to where we're going right now. Yeah. And even though they offered me a uh station at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, um, she didn't want to be that far away from her family. So that's how I ended up at Offat Air Force Base in Cenic, Omaha, Nebraska. Really. I traded her that across the board assignment with somebody else. And we spent um we spent our time together in the military. Um and that was. She was not. She was not. She really liked the idea of the structure of having the rest of the life kind of planned around. Yeah. Um, but we were not great together. Um, she has a series of at the time that were undiagnosed and are now diagnosed mental health challenges as well. And so her her um flavor of crazy and my flavor of crazy kind of formed the stew of insanity that could only be described as legendary, man. It was just we were we were very unhealthy. Wow. And it it caused um it caused that to fall apart. She eventually um she eventually, when we got out of the service, um, she uh filed for divorce and I started out on my own again. And then right right after getting out of the service and I was like, what's that? Albury. Wow, that would make me. How long were you in the service? I was always in for four years. And I went when I was uh my 21st birthday was in basic training, so it was water for everybody. Okay. That's my tree. Yeah. So we um I'd have been 25. Wow. When that when I went down, and so it reset my life for a little bit. And I think probably in a good way, ultimately, uh God's use does all things. Yeah, you know, works all things for good. Yeah, yeah. Um, but in this one, it was probably what was keeping me alive. Yeah. And I just wasn't aware of it at the time. Did you leave Nebraska and come back to Arizona? Oh yeah, we did this thing called a partial diddy move, a partial do-it-yourself move in the military, which means we'll come to your house in the military and we'll pack everything up in a semi and we'll bring it to your new home. You don't even have to pack the boxes, they'll just show up and do it. Yeah, yeah. Or you can take some of your stuff and put it in a U-Haul truck and you can have some stuff while you're waiting for your things to be delivered. Well, when we we did a partial Diddy, her family was from Louisiana and mine was from Arizona where we were coming back to. Yeah. It it didn't occur to me that all of her stuff ended up on the stuff the U-Haul truck that went to Louisiana. Oh wow. And all of my stuff went on the truck that went to Arizona. Oh wow. And it never occurred to me to look at the box to see what was going on. But that's exactly what happened. Over the course of time, she just decided that was the break point for her where she was gonna go home, move back in. And she's she's since remarried, had some uh a couple boys, and is living a good life. And we've we've had our moment of of reconciliation uh where we were like, okay, we're not holding each other over anything, we're forgiving each other, we're probably not ever gonna be friends. Not for animosity, just because we're just not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and we've come to that point. But um that was she made the decision to file for divorce, and um, I got the papers when I got home. Yeah. So it was um it was get into the military to get a job. The job and the military was fantastic because I could do all of the things and know all of the things, and I went into the Air Force, which meant it was all about what you knew. That's right. And so I was able to to know very well, yeah, and um was promoted quickly. I um I made staff sergeant by the three years, three and a half years. Wow. So it was like I was promoted below the zone, uh, came in with a couple of stripes, and then I passed out my first test. So it was like, all right, this this seems to be it. But then I had a boss who thought that anybody that was junior to him couldn't balance their checkbook. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:16:05

And so I was like, I this get those guys with rank, man.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:08

And so I was like, if this is gonna my first shirt said, hey, look, this is um this is gonna be more often the case than not. So if you want to stick around, you might want a commission. So that's that's why I got out was to come back to Arizona, go to ASU, do officer training school, and go back in. Okay. Of course, when I got here, I opened up an envelope of papers and I didn't need that job anymore. Yeah. So then it became why why go back in? Let's see what the next thing is. Amen. And what was the next thing? A lot of floating. You know, a lot of floating.

SPEAKER_07: 1:16:36

I um You're 25. Single, where'd you where'd you move into? Oh, this is good times.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:42

I moved back in with mom and dad. Okay. And mom and dad had mom and dad living with him when you're 16. It's hard. It's hard to live with mom and dad when you're 16. It's way hard to live with mom and dad when you're 25. You know, I they had a little construction trailer that was it's better when you're 40. Oh, I'll dig the hole with the shovel and then I'll hand you the shovel and then it's the ironic part is my dad now lives with me, and so now the tournament is. That's exactly it. But no, I mean it was one of those things where it's like It's hard to live with your son when you're 70. It's it's hard, it was hard for my mom. I I feel that. I look forward to that. I look forward to being exactly the experience I'm experiencing now. It's gonna be excellent. But no, it's gonna spin everywhere. But no, it was this thing. And this trailer was like a construction trailer, like this little one by eight by whatever that they had set out right next to the pool in the backyard because they had moved into a house that had a pool. And it sounds fancy. We were never fancy. So it's this nice little grotto thing. And then we used to call it the trailer by the sea because that was, you know, and I lived in this little got a single air conditioner in the window trailer by the sea through the summer of Arizona, and then I'm like, my mom was every single day trying to help me.

SPEAKER_05: 1:18:05

Was it was it set up for living? Because when your dad traveled to sites or something?

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:08

No, it was just something that got pulled off of an office trailer that had a one restroom in the back and it had a wall that used to be this is the this is the boss's office and this is the reception, which became this is my living room and this is my bedroom room and the shower curtain that pulls my bathrooms on the other side of that. But it was hooked up. But it was your own little place. Right? It was and it was free. Yeah, it wouldn't be the price. But mom was really interested in my life. Really interested in my life. And um that makes it hard. It was very hard. Was it the oversee mom? Okay, I'm sorry you're going through this. Let me introduce you to nine girls I know. Or hey, how come you're not out and about doing this thing and oh but and then she was still going through the bipolar cycle as well. So she was struggling with sometimes being completely engaged and sometimes not. Completely engaged. And yeah, I love my parents, but I wanted to love them from a distance. Yeah, yeah. And so um, I had a friend. Especially when you already had some freedom and away time. And I I I was used to you know, mm um living a life. Yeah, and all of a sudden I'm I'm kind of living in this shell of one, yeah, which was really starting to cause me to regress as well. Yeah. Because now I'm starting to fall back into what's easier to act like an 18 or 17-year-old than it is to have a future I'm moving towards. That's real. Oh wow. And so I'm and I'm aware of this. Yeah. So I have a friend and she's living with her mom and dad, and the only thing that we disliked more than spending five hours together is our our friendship was a five-hour friendship. It was like we were really good for about five hours, and then you're at each other. Let's go, you know, figure that out. But the only thing that both of us uh and and I would never say uh an ill word about my my in-laws. Um, but I will say this: the only thing that that um she disliked more than staying at home um and living and hanging out with me was staying at home. Yeah. So we're like, let's go get um a place. We got we got an apartment that had two masters, one on this side, one on that side. She worked nights, I worked days. There was a little line down the middle, I had custody of the kitchen. During the nighttime. You know, she had the television for the daytime. And that's great. You know, we'd we had a little envelope where the where the rent went in, and every so often we'd hang out for an hour or two or watch a movie, or and then she'd go and do, you know, her life, and I would do mine. And that was working out well. Well, her younger sister um was about uh had a baby and had a fiance. And the fiance's exact words were, I don't want to be an adult. Oh god. So he bounced um immediately after the baby was born. Dead, which leaves, which leaves and and he's he had struggles. He had his own struggles and stuff, and it's it's taken a while to get to the place where you where you you have forgiveness for him too and you understand for him too. Um, but it's he had a hard time with a lot of that. He came from a very strong Mormon family that was disowning him in the process because of all of it, and so everything in his life was falling apart if he didn't, you know, act the right way. Yeah, yeah. And so he was a combination of rebelling and figuring that out. But that was all his his journey. Meanwhile, um she's there with the baby and the in-laws, and it's like, I don't want to be here at the house either. So she'd come over and hang out with her sister in the daytime, and then she'd ask if she could stay and hang out in the nighttime to maximize the amount of time that she wasn't there, yeah. Which let us meet each other and get to know each other, and she let me become friends with Hayden, who was the who's uh her son. Yeah, and we developed a relationship and then we were married. Oh wow, really? So that's how I met. That's how I met Hyde. That's your wife, that's my wife, Hayden. Oh, really? Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_07: 1:21:27

So it's so she is the sister of the lady who you guys had the place together. Right. Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:34

And we still her sister and I's relationship has always maintained kind of that same consistency. She uses a really different for about five hours. I have some of my best conversations with her, and then there's a line, and then we both go, okay. We're done. But but God bless me. God bless me with Heidi in such a big way. Wow. And we started um our family. So it's been um uh we have three daughters between us.

SPEAKER_07: 1:22:00

So hold on, you got out at 25.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:02

Right.

SPEAKER_07: 1:22:02

And when did you 26?

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:06

Okay. It was fast. Okay. It was fast. Um, it was kind of like uh I my lot my life was very much dependent on on two things. Number one, my ability to talk fast, and two, hi's real poor choice in men, you know, because that's how I landed uh in the relationship with her. I was like, uh actually, she actually has excellent choice. We just you know, I had to we had to I had to basically keep her before she got away. So she would not be the one that got away. Yeah, yeah. And um, that's that's where we started and we started raising our family together. We have three.

SPEAKER_07: 1:22:34

Did you know that you wanted to marry her and and like she was the one for you soon?

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:42

The very first time I saw her, she was celebrating her birthday at TGI Fridays. It used to be on the corner of Power and Baseline. She was sitting in the third table before it gets to the very end of the restrooms as you walk by. She was wearing a pair of overalls and she had her hair done in uh pigtails, and she had a helium balloon tied to one. She was about uh, I would say she was probably about seven to eight months pregnant at the time. I met her and her parents, and her sister was there at the time, and I would happen to go to this place because I didn't want to be at home, and they cooked appetizers that were cheap. Yeah. So I happened to walk by, saw them. That's the first time I saw her. I could tell you everything about what she was wearing, how she smelled. She she made an impression. We'll say it that way.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:19

That's all you'll know, bud. That's it. That's all you'll know, man. It's and but it's when you can come home and tell me, Dad, she was wearing this and she smelled like that, and her hair looked like this.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:30

I'll also tell you, I'll also tell you that it wasn't easy. Yeah. Um, it's very, it's it was very convenient and very easy when I met and married my my first wife. It all just seemed naturally, hey, we we met, I had a cool line, she had a counter, cooled line, we started hanging out, started dating, got married, everything was great. And then it wasn't. Yeah. For Heidi, it wasn't easy when we started. We had to navigate life, we had to navigate the realities.

SPEAKER_07: 1:23:53

Well, she had this this baby that was pregnant, and the dude was just gone.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:59

And I'm I was well, he was gone until he wasn't. He was gone. He was gone until I was there. Yeah, and then he was back. And now he was there. And but then so there was there was that to navigate. Okay. There was um, how do we navigate family in all of this? Um, two very different family styles. Yeah. Um, I come from, like I said, four brothers or three brothers, four boys. My dad, technically a fifth boy in the process. And so, and we're Irish, and so everything is very loud. We fight for sport, we don't mean it. Yeah, you know, there's whoever's what we do. Whoever's fork was fastest got the biggest steak, you know, it was kind of like that. Yeah, and so that was kind of the arguments. Um, my wife grew up in a family where um we kept the peace no matter what, because if people raised their voice, people got hurt. Yeah, and so here I am loud, and here she is shutting down. Oh, because the louder I get, the scarier it is for her. And I don't understand that. I feel like she doesn't care because she's not engaging. Yeah, and so there's a dynamic we had to figure out our communication. There's a dynamic we had to figure out when we put those families together in the same space. There was like there's a lot to navigate. Yeah, and it took us a while to figure out how to get into a rhythm for a lot of that. Plus, a lot of my choices in this season of my life weren't regulated. They were well, you were undiagnosed, right? So there'd be times where I thought, I hate Texas Hold and Poker is so easy. It's all in math. I can be a professional at this. Let me go online and do this. Yeah, and that works until all my savings is gone. You know, and then she's gotta she's gotta work through that. Have I ever gave I been addicted to gambling? No, but in that season, that was the thing. Yeah, and every year, year and a half, a season would roll around, and sometimes those things weren't great. Um, a lot of my old exposure to sexuality started rolling into that, and I started making real bad decisions as far as you know, flirting people up and talking online and then you know acting out on these things. She had to manage that and a growing um family with four kids under the age of seven. Wow, you know, so it's like we had all of that going on, sometimes five kids, depending on it. Are we are we can with Jake or not? So we had all of that. Um the navigation of that, plus the tremendous feeling of being isolated from a person who either can't wake up to talk to you or can't slow down enough to be with you.

SPEAKER_07: 1:26:07

Is that you or her? That's me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:09

That's you. That's me. Wow.

SPEAKER_07: 1:26:11

For her, it's a lot of she's wanting to talk and you can't, right? Or she's wanting to slow and you're freaking off the wall. It's like all of that. Wow. And then she has her own struggle. She has her own struggles as well.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:22

She has um what's called social anxiety disorder. And that's a feeling that when you're in public, there are far too many people that are all judging you. And they're all telling bad things about you, and you are the object of scorn and ridicule when you're outside. So you don't go into large public spaces for that. So her ability to go to church and meet people and build a community wasn't there because that's the most terrifying place on the earth can be. So now you have this isolation you're working through with all of it. What do they what do they do for that? There's it's a combination of um different types of therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy, where you start to talk about the thoughts, actions, feelings, and beliefs behind what you're doing. Um, sometimes there's other therapy models as well. There are things that can help with anxiety medications that can help you reduce um those feelings of anxiety that cause the fight, flight, freeze, fall on experiment uh relationship. And then there's some maintenance things you can do, like diet, exercise, yeah, buddy. So there's there's all of those types of things. And she's she's amazing at taking care of that. She she knows her world and she she manages her world pretty well. And I I do my very best to keep my hands in my pockets and stay out of it because it's not my job.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:26

So you know, so smart man. I think my daughter may struggle with something similar to that.

SPEAKER_07: 1:27:33

So that's why I'm asking because how specifically the social anxieties, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:38

So, how do you, as her husband, friend, life partner, how do you help her navigate that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:47

Sometimes you gotta be willing to spend an extra half hour in the Walmart parking lot until it's less peoply-right. Sometimes you just make the trip for her. And then what's been great about that, how God has used that, is that before she was aware she had that circumstance, I was unchecked and bouncing into the world. And when we found out it was a bipolar disorder, she didn't understand a lot of that. She thought it was a lot about choice. She thought it was a lot about motivation and character, none of which mental health challenges aren't about your character. They're not nobody signs up to choose to do this, right? You know, there's no. In fact, the choices are opposite. I used to tell people that the way I best described uh my motivation in depression was you could take my very favorite thing in the world and put it right in front of me, put a million dollars on the other side of it, a gun to the back of my head, and tell me if you do the favorite thing, you keep all the money, but if you don't, and I still wouldn't be able to because I couldn't will myself to doing it. So it's actually the the lack of ability to choose. But that was it's hard to see that in another person when you're feeling the pain point of it. Right. So if you're the person caching the pain check that they're writing by their life, it's real hard to understand that this is not anything more than hurts. But what's happened similar to my my daughter and her bipolar disorder diagnosis, my wife is starting to understand her circumstance better, which helps her understand mine better. Right. She's not choosing to go out into the world and feel this way. This isn't a um defect of her character either. And so because I understand what I've gone through in my life, I can see I can I can honor her struggles as well. So it's a matter of being able to say, this is something that I can walk alongside and do a thing. Yeah. If I can do it, I do it. If I can if I can't, I get out of the way. That's really good, Dustin. Thanks for that. Yeah, yeah. That was that was our experience. I think we we rode this ride for a while. When when I was manic, I would um so from from 25, well, 26.

SPEAKER_07: 1:29:48

So 25 you get out of the air force. By 26, uh, in 25, you have this little the what did he call it? The the what the trailer? Something down by the sea. Yeah, the little trailer by the sea. That was the that was the before we were buried, but so by 26, you now have Heidi. And we have our apartment. And you guys have an apartment and you start and you have her son.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:11

And I are still very, very close today. He's one of the he's our son. He's our son. We don't we don't use the phrase step or the idea of step ever. It's my son. Right.

SPEAKER_07: 1:30:20

There we don't step on people, and they're not half of a person. Exactly that. Exactly that. Um So, and then from 26 until 32, you guys have four kids.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:33

Uh we have, yep. We've got um, well, we have three daughters between ourselves. I had a son, I have I have a son, um uh Jake. From the first marriage. Um from between the first marriage and the relationship. Okay. It was one of those, one of those things I had done to job other people in relationships. I had a friend of mine flip that script, which is fair. Totally fair. And I'm blessed because she's still friends of mine. Uh she's still our friend. I was the I was the officiant at her wedding. Amen. Um we're very close together still. Um Heidi and her get along. I think they were stepsisters in their first one of their step studies. So we're we're still very much family connected family. She has a son, you have a son, and you had three daughters together. Exactly. Nice, and so depending on which weekend, we either had just the girls or we had both the boys, or we had one of the boys, and so there was always navigating that and navigating all of the Maricopa County family court that goes along with that, trying to figure out who has adjustments in time parenting time and adjustments in yeah. So we got really good at that for a while. Um, but it was uh because even though we get along, there's still the the navigating of all the rest of it that has to happen through so we um we had that going from that point from 25 to about 32, where she was sometimes on the hook for um seven-year-old Hayden and six-year-old Jake and four-year-old Eliana and three-year-old Gabby. Wow. You know, and then later on in 2007, Olivia comes along. So she's having to navigate all that stuff on her own. And that's that's uh with her own struggles. Church. Yeah, we would we would do do church but as the God fix. You know, you know, I don't know if you know the god fix. Oh yeah, things this is crazy. We need to get to church. Uh life sucks, let's go to church. You got got God, if you just I'm having all these problems. If you just please just fix my life, I'll do this, and he does, and you don't. Oh, yeah. That's kind of basically it.

SPEAKER_07: 1:32:19

That's how that's how it is in jail.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:21

Just get me out of here, I'll never do it again. That that. But at the same time, we still had good community with people. We we attended um Sundial and Gilbert and had a process when we were there, plugged in, and our kids got an exposure to um what it was like to be part of of youth programs. Um they had that it different iterations of our life as we went through. And we talked about it. Our my my worldview, my Christian worldview has always been in place. Um it's been informed and grown and refined along the way. And in the last in the last 10 to 12 to 15 years has really kind of grown leaps and bounds. Yeah. Or it's become um contextualized to relationship. Relational. It's it's become um breathing, you know, as opposed to just doing it's not a it's not a thing I am, it's not a membership card I carry. It's part of the breath I take in. And how I interpret the things around me. Yeah. How view social justice or injustice based on the way Christ would. How I parent based on the type of grace Christ would show, as opposed to the type of obedience my parents would expect. So there's there's learnings involved in all of that. Um how God chooses me, so I'm gonna choose my wife the same way. One of the most frustrating parts for her, I think, is is when I came to that realization that it's a line in the sand, I put my toes on it and I don't move, and that's it, because I choose. And it has nothing to do with her, everything to do with the way that God chose me. Because it stops that really irritating conversation that has, would you still love me if I was you know, and then insert this or that, all that goes away. Yeah. Because the answer is, well, yeah. Why? Because I said so. Which is a frustrating answer for anybody to get, but it's the reality, it's the truth.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:01

I have a good friend I was having a conversation with the other day, and I was venting a little bit, and he's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know what I mean? And I'm like, I think the misunderstanding that I'm talking to him, I think I think the misunderstanding that you think that you may have is that I'm not married. I'm in a covenant. There's a difference. Marriage is something that people throw around and just can get rid of and whatever they want. I made a commitment before I made a covenant before God to love my wife to have death do us part. I don't care how bad I think it is or how much I think it sucks. I'm tied in. I'm not going nowhere. We'll figure it out, we'll work it out. Like you said, we'll navigate through whatever it is we're in right now. But the D word is not an option, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:46

I'm in a covenant. And it's it's a it's a container, it's the larger container to the smaller puzzle, too. Yeah. Um, the conversation I had with Hayden when he was uh about two weeks from walking down the aisle. I got a chance to be the efficient at his wedding too, which was fantastic. Nice. Um, but we were talking about it. And the first thing I told him is that you know, marriage is awesome and weddings suck. Yeah. Weddings are terrible. The worst of everything comes out from people that want the flowers to be a certain way. So don't let that be your opinion of what being married is. I said the second thing is you got to be willing to marry this woman about seven or eight more times. Yeah. I've I said, I'm I've married your mom about 10 times. Yeah. Because if I'm still married to the same 19-year-old I married, yeah. That's that's she's no different and I'm no different. That's that's rough. That's really good. There's a wow. Let's let's let's steal the Ario speed wagon lyric from faithfully. I get the joy of rediscovering you, yeah, is the line. And that's it. I I get to learn who Heidi is now, yeah, and then I get to work my butt off to to to to um court and marry her again and find out about myself and see how I best do that. Yeah, because it's not about getting her to say yes to me anymore, it's about making sure that I'm the right person that can be alongside her. Wow. Am I equipped enough to do the thing to steward the relationship God's given me with her? And if I'm not, let's get some better tools. That's really good.

SPEAKER_07: 1:36:09

That's really good.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:10

And that is not not easy to do.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:12

There's a lot in that. Yeah. There's a lot in what you just said, brother. There really is. Because one, you're saying we change. People change, we evolve as we get older, uh, our our wants, our likes, and everything begins to shift as we become more mature and more older. If we're still like stuck here, still looking there here, we end up with a bad situation where you're wanting to get out because I married this, but now you're trying to instead of saying, Hey, I see that you have grown and matured, and I'm gonna try to adapt and learn this new you and grow with that, right? Then good Lord, that's that's that's two becoming one.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:52

Right. And it's re it's it's it's iterative. That's the the doctoral word for it, iterative, which means we're gonna go back to this a bunch differently and doing it again, and we're gonna refine it again and we're gonna refine it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:03

But what do you see in a lot of like divorces? Why marry this?

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:06

Yeah, you're not you're not. You change, you're not who I used to do. Yes. The red flag I catch a lot of times, and I talk about this when I talk uh about marriage counseling and premarital counseling, things like that. Um, the red flag is if you ever catch yourself saying, Um, you're not how you used to be. Yeah. I'm you're not the person I married. Yeah. If you're saying that with some kind of disgruntled feeling, yeah, it's a red flag for you. Wow. Because of course they're not that same thing. They've grown and make sure. Or maybe they haven't. What another thing that's happened is maybe they've been broken by life in a little bit of a way that they're still mending. And you have to incorporate that into your love for that person and the way that you not not in your love for them, but that the way that you care for them. What is what about what about this?

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:51

What about the way that you treated them? Right. And you heard them has made them change, broken. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:37:56

And so it's not their fault, it's yours because you were douchebag and treated them like crap. What's the new reality? Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:02

What's the new reality? The new reality is now I have a person that has a brand new scar that I helped develop or caused. Yeah. And I'm the person that when the loud noise happens when you walk in the room flinches. Wow. Um, here's a here's an example. What is the reason I say that? Um, my kids have no frame of reference to what a snapping belt means. Wow. There's two sounds that I can make that that my wife and I get that they don't know if that thing cracks, it doesn't mean anything to them. We're like, whoa, for us, but your kids aren't there's no fear in there. It means the same thing to me as the Gen X, or as the sound of a playground ball slapping a hand reminds me of wow, bad dodgeballs. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It's just pain's coming. Yeah, yeah. And they don't have that. Yeah. Wow. And so I've created through my actions or hers or a combination of both, yeah, or just life in general, there's a new sound now that has that flinch. Wow. So how do I work through and around that sound to either find ways to health to create healthy incorporations of how we walk together to where it's not so flinchy? Wow. And it's definitely not painful anymore. Or how do I set that sound down and move forward without it? Wow. And that takes time. That's what from recovery, that's the kind of thing you you start in recovery. I I I went into recovery for codependency and control because that's what like 95% of the people I know that go in, or sometimes it's its substance or its codependency and control. For guys, it's anger and control. And eventually you figure out what caused the anger and why do you want to control. Right. And then that onion peels back. Ultimately, for me now, part of the peeling of that onion is figuring out what am I trying to live around or through or with that I don't get hung up on. Wow. That doesn't, I don't allow it to hurt me anymore. That I don't try to soothe some other kind of way, but I surrender it. So that it doesn't have the hurt, it doesn't have the hang up, it doesn't have the habit. It has something that I'm doing intentionally to be healthy, to honor the other person, to glorify God, and to get better. And that's that's something that I don't want. Do tomorrow. You know, so tomorrow I might not do it well, but I'm not a bad person at the end of tomorrow because I didn't do it well. I get another chance the next. Amen. And I get to keep surrendering and keep growing and keep moving. It's uh it's it's forever active. Yeah. And I think that when you do that, that's what it means to um pursue court and marry a person multiple times. And I'm terrible at it. Let's let's let's be very clear about this right now. People listening, I am it might sound easy. I am not good at this more than I am good at this. Yeah, you know, this is one of those things where I'm I'm you've learned the hard way, I think. But I've given myself grace. I've given myself patience to say I'm I'm not supposed to be good at this sometimes because I have to grow at it. It's okay.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:42

This has really opened my eyes a lot. I hope you know that. I'm just it's really good. There's things that I need to go myself and slow down, check myself, and kind of yeah, just restudy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:58

It's I'm I'm I'm blessed. We talked about living with my dad living with me. I'm I'm kind of blessed in that because he's saved my marriage a few times and my bacon more than that. Yeah, yeah. Um, Heidi and I will be having what the older gentleman in my church called spirited fellowship. You know, get a little spicy around. We're going back and forth a little bit, right? And I'll be saying something I think is so clever. And then my dad will walk behind her where she can't see him, but I can see him, and he'll go, shut up.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:26

And then he'll walk off. Yeah. And so I'll bring it back a little bit, and then later he'll be like, what part of what you were saying did you think was making that better? Yeah. You know, so he'll he'll give me that buffer that kind of helps along that. And I think that that having having those moments, having some people alongside you that are that are also helping you along that ride. Um, maybe you're not spoiled like me to have someone that lives in the house that also makes a bigger mess than you do sometimes, so she can get mad at his mess and not mine. You know, sometimes that's good. Um, but there's also um, but also someone walk alongside you to help you figure those things out, is is most of the tr of the struggle. Because I don't know what I don't know. What I have learned is that one of the great joys of my life, and this is counterintuitive, um, one of the great joys of my life is being wrong. Yeah. Is is failing and being wrong. Yeah. Um, because this conversation we're having right now, if I'm right about all of it and I go and get my car and I drive home, I'm no different than when I started. Wow. But if I get to be wrong about something or learn something or move something or fail at something, I get to be different. I get to grow a little bit, I get to be better. Part of the the iterative nature of all of it. Like in the in the doctoral program that I just finished, they emphasize that it's an iterative process. What that means is that they will review your paper a million times, and right when you think you have it right, you'll turn it in and more red ink will come back. And you just keep doing that until they can't chisel anymore, and that becomes the work. Well, our lives are that way. That I love the iterative nature of being able to be better um equipped for my life that God's given me tomorrow than I am today because I failed, because I'm broken, because I've had to patch and heal something. And I think that once I stopped fighting that and starting to think I have to hide that part so people wouldn't like me, and instead embraced that part and said, This is the thing that makes me stronger, then grace comes with it. Then then the excitement of being wrong comes and the excitement of Well, we learn and grow more in failure than we ever do in success. Sure, sure. Success is just practicing the thing you already knew how to do well. Yeah. You know, yeah. Failing means I get a chance to correct it. To learn. It's um it's kitsakuri. If you know the the the art form from Japan where you have a pottery uh piece where it's uh maybe it's a bowl that's has no is that where they crack it and put silver or gold back into it? Exactly. It's it's it's this bowl that had no value at all. Grandma's grandma's grandma's bowl that's 15 cents, and you dropped it and it means a lot. So you bring it to them and they they melt gold and they put it together, and two things happen. Number one, it becomes uniquely beautiful because of the cracks in the gold. Yeah. And number two, the gold adds an actual value that wasn't there before that wouldn't have happened if you didn't break. Wow. So how much more valuable can I be can can I be to the kingdom of God? Really good, to the people around me, to um to selfishly enjoy watching things go well sometimes. If I don't if if I don't allow myself to break, I I rob the opportunity to be mended.

SPEAKER_05: 1:44:29

So many people miss out on the opportunity to fail for fear, fear of failing. Right. So they never try. Right. And they're robbing themselves of so much in that. Life. So you know, they think failure is like such a horrible thing that it's like it's like it's not. You tried. And if you're smart enough and you pay attention enough, you're gonna learn something in what you just did or what not to do the next time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:56

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:56

Guys that go to the gym and really love it, love being sore. Yeah, it's not enough to love wanting to be bigger. Yeah, you gotta love being sore. Oh, yeah. Because that's where you're getting stronger. Um, yeah, the the number, you know, the max rep, the um the um number on the scale, yeah, the number on the measurement around your waist or your bicep, yeah, those are byproducts. Those are those are anciliary benefits that come to something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:45:21

Of being sore. Of being sore. That's so good. You've got to love being sore.

SPEAKER_02: 1:45:26

And if you can do that, if you can do that, then you get the chance to forever grow because then you it's the difference between um moving from being afraid of failure to moving to accepting failure as accepting hardship as a pathway to accepting to accepting this is how I get there. Come on, buddy. Yeah, to getting excited for opportunities to fail. Yeah. I mean, I get juiced. Yeah. I get excited. I get excited if I'm like something wrong, it's fantastic. Bring it on. Bring it on, bring it on. And then and then the fear goes away. And then if it goes well, is no longer the measurement. Yeah. If if I go well after becomes the measurement. Yeah. That's good. Because then even if I fail, and even if I'm sore, and then I let that soreness keep me out of the gym for a couple weeks, that didn't go as well. Right. But then that in itself is also a failure that I can learn from and grow from and move forward. Wow. It's good, buddy. It's I'm not trying to make everything sound like sunshine and rainbows. It's definitely not. Of course. But it's okay that it's not. Yeah. Because there's value in it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:32

If everything's sunshine and rainbows, then you're lying. Because it ain't real. It's good. You're living in a fairy tale.

SPEAKER_07: 1:46:42

Fantasy. Come back to reality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:46:44

Or you're numb and high and drunk. And what you're doing is distracting yourself from the fact that your legs still hurt. You just can't feel them at the moment. But tomorrow they're going to hurt twice as much, and you're going to have a headache. You're going to be walking with a limp. You're going to pay good money to feel worse. Yeah. You know, whatever you're doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:47:01

So you talked about in 32 or 33? 32, 33. 32, 33 when you were at your lowest in 2011. Um, do you feel comfortable talking about that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:47:16

I would actually say I was probably closer to 38. So 32, 33 is when I got my first diagnosis, and I promptly ignored it. Oh. What I did was what a lot of people do. I is that they'll they'll get a diagnosis, they'll be scared, they'll make a change. I had a doctor explain this is called bipolar disorder, explained how it worked, gave me a wonderful book. I read the book, gave me some pills, they made me feel better. I started sleeping, I started exercising. My life started doing great. And I'm like, hey, my life's doing great. I don't need these pills anymore. Oh no. Which is what a lot of people do. And so when you do that, all of a sudden you stop taking the pills, then you stop sleeping, and then it all goes right back where you're at. Even worse. And worse sometimes. Because um, if you if you're familiar with with psych meds, sometimes it's like um a horse you can't get back up on. You you take it and it works really well, but then your body develops an understanding of how that medication works. So when you go off of it and come back, you don't often have the same reaction. So it's a matter of finding what works and sticking with it. So um that's what happened with me is like it all fell apart faster, and then I found myself right back in the same um repeated bad decisions and repeated bad consequences.

SPEAKER_07: 1:48:20

So you you you noticed that 32 or 33, something's up. Right. I need to go talk to somebody, I need to go get some help. And so you step into this season of trying to figure this thing out and what this looks like.

SPEAKER_02: 1:48:35

And what made what made you make that decision? It was a failed suicide attempt. I had actually decided that um and and and and it's important to understand this. A lot of people feel like suicide might be something that people experience because um they're tired of living. Yeah, and that's not true. Yeah, they're tired of hurting, yeah, but they're just tired. Yeah, and that was me. I was tired of pain and I was just tired, and I needed uh I wanted to rest. Yeah, and so I did all of the things, you know. I had the family going someplace else and had um all of the possessions in a bag and the closet and the tarp laid out, you planned stuff. I had it all laid out. Oh wow, it was it was up to the point of doing something. Wow. And at the 11th hour, um, got a phone call from a very good friend of mine who out of the clear blue sky hadn't called me four or five years, just saying how I'm doing. Shit. And I was like, I'm not.

SPEAKER_07: 1:49:29

Are you serious?

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:30

You're literally getting ready to do it, and you get this phone call? I'm like, I'm fine. He's like, you're not. And I'm like, what if I'm not? He said, I'll be there in five minutes.

SPEAKER_07: 1:49:40

Damn, dude.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:41

And this is a dude I hadn't talked to in three years. Wow. Oh man, he is still he is still arguably my oldest best friend. And if he's listening, you're the oldest best friend I have.

SPEAKER_07: 1:49:50

But no, he's a thanks for the call, man.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:53

But no, it was it caught me. And so I realized that I need to do something. I got scared enough to do it. Of course, the first thing I did was unpack the bag, put away the tarp, get all the stuff taken care of before the family came home. You know, so nobody had to you know find out that was what was going on. But then I went down and talked to the doc. And that's when we found out, and then that we started this process. Uh I started this process of getting healthy.

SPEAKER_07: 1:50:13

Did you share with Heidi? Eventually.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:15

Okay. Eventually. But not at the beginning. You, you, that was I didn't share that. You know, there's one human being I shared that with, and he forgot it promptly when he walked out of the room. And even if he remembers it today, tomorrow if I asked him, he'd still forget it. Right. So it's he's he's that friend. Wow. So I I walked out what I thought was health. And then at the certain point, I was like, um, I didn't recognize I was getting unhealthy again. Because that's that that's the part of it, is when the medicine goes away, you don't realize that you're right back in the worst of it. Yeah. Then come the bad decisions, then come a few more years of packing that through. So from the time I'm 33 to the time I'm maybe 38, 37, 38, um I'm just setting small matches and small fires in my life and not realizing that they're causing large scars and large damages. Wow.

SPEAKER_07: 1:50:57

And you're raising a family.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:58

Trying. You've got little kids, and what are you doing for work? Um, I'm still at the time I'm working as best as I can in different corporate environments. I'm um teaching technology to wherever I'm at, kind of thing. Um sometimes Did it affect your employment? Um, that was the thing, is I spent all my coins and my spoons at work. Oh, wow. So that I could keep the job.

SPEAKER_07: 1:51:17

So when you went home, you didn't have nothing left to give no.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:20

They got they got the crap. Right. And then even then, you know, even when you think you're doing well, everybody around just still knows you're not doing well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:26

Yeah, but you would your wife ever approach you and say, hey, what the hell's going on?

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:32

Right, but she did, but it was all from a position of why why are you choosing to be this way?

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:38

Oh you're hurting us. Yeah. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:40

You're you're this, it's it's a it was quality statements about the person I was without an understanding of the condition that today. Wow. And since I didn't have this is it was it's funny because for a person whose brainy wants to learn everything about everything that happens, I was blissfully unaware, uh unaware at first. Yeah. And then at to some degree uh intentionally retracted from the data. I wouldn't, I wouldn't look too much into it because I didn't want to be that. When my daughter said she didn't want to be that on my porch swing, I remember what that felt like. It was that season.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52:09

When you said you had these moments of, oh, there's normal. Bye. In those moments, did you ever think I'm having the same experiences I'd seen my mom have?

SPEAKER_02: 1:52:19

I never connected my mom into it until I started to get healthy enough myself. All right. And I started to go through the process of recovery where you start unpacking your life. Oh, wow. You start looking back. Then you started. And you start I started to see those things. And the more I started to really understand what I was experiencing from my own mental health challenges as well as my own life, I could start to see what was being installed. How old were you? When we started that process, 38 years old. It was um finally uh May 27, 2011, 5.15 p.m. Heidi had had enough and she left. Oh wow. Took half the kids and bolted. And she was done. I mean, don't get me wrong, she'd routine, we were married. She'd routinely left me before the one I'm talking about. It was like, oh, we're through. And you slam the door and you're like, two hours we'll pick this fight up at three in the morning. Um, and then there's the one where it's like every hair in the back here next stands up. Yeah, yeah, this is the thing. Isn't that true? This was that one. Yeah. It broke me. And I was like, I didn't know if I was gonna survive it. Wow. And now this is me that the entire time I had admitted I had a problem, but it was very much a textbook medical problem when I went and got the doctor's pills and did the thing back um when I uh in 2007, 2008. That was the that was the clinical, just dealing with the way you would deal with an ingrown toenail or the way that you would deal with uh, you know, hey, you're a high blood pressure. This is this is what the book says to do this. Yeah, I'm gonna walk out the book stuff. Okay. Um this was the first point where it started to really hit to the point where I'm like, this is going to end me. And and I had not shared this stuff with other people. I couldn't share my stuff, you know, man up, put it in your pocket. Don't tell other people your problems, help them. Yeah, don't don't do you. Be strong. So this is the first time that um that I'm I'm I'm broken at this point.

SPEAKER_07: 1:53:58

This is 2011.

SPEAKER_02: 1:53:59

This is May 27th, 2011, 5 15 p.m. Even it's a Friday. Damn, bro. Um she's driving off and she's going up to her parents who now live in the White Mountains.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:08

And um just out of curiosity, do you remember what she was wearing?

SPEAKER_02: 1:54:11

Yeah, I do. I love you. Yeah, I do. I knew you did. That's why I it's a very specific I'm sorry, I don't know. No, no, don't be. It's a very it's a very specific green floral uh shirt that she has that she doesn't have anymore, which I really appreciate because every time I saw that shirt for a while, you're bringing up bad memories comes back. Yeah, you know, yeah, but I remember that, but I also remember what that was like um on kids. No, no, no, no, it's okay. Trust me, I'm the person that there's very little in this that holds that hold that holds weight. Yeah, um I'm not supposed to carry that weight anyway. God carries that weight. Amen. So I I'm exper I'm experiencing this devastation. Now let me back the clock up for a second. This is how cool God is. Um when I was younger, I would always treat my pain and the stuff going on at my my my house. I didn't take drugs, I didn't drink. It was always sex and relationships. Yeah, and I was devastated by something and had slept with a uh a neighborhood girl, a girl in my neighborhood that was uh a friend, and she got pregnant. I oh wow. So in October of 2010, this is seven months, you know. We talk about May, October to May, right? So my math is bad that I think that's seven months. So we uh maybe eight on the dot. Um we had moved to Queen Creek after my mom had passed, and my dad had used the insurance to buy a house, and we moved into the house with him so that he could function. Yeah. Um and we're getting ready to take the kids trick-or-treating. So we we load the kids up, and the kids are all elementary school age to junior high age at the oldest. And um we go one street over and one street down, and we knock on the door, and a 16-year-old female version of me answers it. Oh wow. That's how I met my daughter Abby for the first time. Really? Yep. Wow. I look I looked at her and I looked behind and saw mom and recognized her and like those whole cartoon things. My eyes went and so did hers. And that was that's how we met. Oh wow. And you see, God, God put Abby in my life the exact right moment. Yeah, because had she been there five minutes, five, five years earlier, I would have been the most damaging thing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there wasn't gonna be a later. Wow. So I'm sitting, Heidi's driven away, and I'm trying to walk back into my house, and I can't. So I literally fall to my knees on my doorstep. Okay, hold on a second. What happened at this door with with your daughter? Well, well, that was it. We eventually slowly developed a relationship. We got to know her. Was there hey? And we saw each other, and then later we I came back around later and we talked.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56:32

And so But at that moment it was just recognition, and I'm out kind of like.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56:37

And we're gonna yeah, we're gonna step away from this and come back into it. All right. Um, we developed um a decent relationship. Um she um Abby's mom ran out of daycare. Um our Olivia started going to that daycare and made friends with all of them. She was their sister and accepted and loved. Um, Heidi and um got uh built a decent relationship um with her as well. Wow and with my daughter, and we were like we always do, we're just an incorporated family. Um so Heidi's driven away and I'm devastated, so I fall on my knees on my doorstep because I can't move. And I just cry out to God, I'm like, please do this because I'm so sick and tired of trying and failing. You know, God whispers in my ear audibly it's okay, right here with you. Wow, you can ask for help.

unknown: 1:57:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:57:28

You know, and I feel God with it. Remember she's a street over and a street down? Yeah. She drives by my house coming home from some practice for some things she was doing at school. She she drives by, I think it was like playing for the graduation that was gonna happen to you that night or the other way. She drives by my house. And um she pulls into uh her driveway and she calls me and she's like, Dad, are you okay? And for the first time in my life, I said, No, I'm not okay. Even with my friend back in 2007, 2008, I said, So what if I'm not? You know, I never said I wasn't. I'm like, because I wouldn't. Um I'm like, no, I'm not okay. And she's like, Man, I I you shouldn't be alone. I'll I'd be there with you, but I can't because uh I'm doing this thing with the with the uh children's ministry at my church for this thing called celebrate recovery. Why don't you come? She shouldn't be alone. And so I'm like, okay. So I show I show up. They've got she's got she's got um the girls, like the the two girl, the two oldest girls stayed with me. Yeah, and the youngest and Hayden went with with mom. Yeah. Um late years later, we find out that they just did math and were like, okay, if two go with mom, two go with dad. Ready? Break. And they stay together. So that was that was the decision making. It wasn't like I was great, it was just that they just, you know, they wanted to stay for that reason. Yeah. Um, and so um they go to they go to church and they hang out with with Happy, and I go into the world's smallest celebrate recovery with like 14 people in it. Wow. And I'm sitting in the back, as far back as the back gets, and I'm like, these people are weird. They're happy and excited about being in pain, and I don't get that. I'm leaving the first chance I get. And so they stand up and they do this um this thing where they give out chips for various lengths of victory over their hurts and their hang-ups and their habits. And everyone's standing up. I'm like, this is my chance, I'm gonna go. And I turn to leave, and a guy my age starts walking right towards me. And I'm like, dude, don't talk to me. I'm getting out of here. Please leave me alone, man. I want to go. Yeah, yeah. And he doesn't. He turns on a dime, walks to the front of the room, takes a chip, says hi, gives his name. He says, I'm here because I have bipolar disorder, I don't know what to do.

SPEAKER_07: 1:59:32

Oh my god, dude.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59:34

What are the odds of that, right? Oh my god. Guy on his first night, my age, my problem, only he was willing to walk up and get a chip. Wow. And so I did too. Oh wow. And that's when it started. That's when my that's when I started to heal. How was May 11 May May 27, 2011? At that point, it was about 735. Wow. Yeah. It happened quick. Wow. And God started to use that to restore our relationship. Because that's for the first time, eight. For Heidi? For for Heidi and I. What what ended up happening was um most of our fights in the past were would be I will show you that I'm good enough for you to stay. Yeah. And so I would be good enough for you to stay. And it would fall apart. Just clean up just enough. Or or just try to convince you, which I learned is um I had a wonderful counselor that explained it to me as butterflies and snowflakes. Butterflies, wings, and snowflakes are beautiful. Yeah. And you really want to hold them. But the second you touch them, your oils get on the wings, they don't fly the same, and the snowflake melts. So when you want to touch things to make them better, to make them work, all you're doing is wrecking it. You gotta let things be and learn to walk alongside them and not try to manipulate the change. Which includes yourself. I'm not gonna pretend to be or convince myself that I'm a different person than I am, so that I can touch the butterfly wings enough for her not to fly away. So I had to learn.

SPEAKER_07: 2:00:54

You're helping me right now, buddy. It's it's hard. This is good.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:58

And and it's and this is very hard stuff to do if you have a lifetime of being really good at it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:01:02

Yeah, especially being a man. We want to fix everything. Hands off.

SPEAKER_02: 2:01:07

I used my brainy skills to learn how to be a manipulator early on. Oh wow. Um I used to tell people that my one true talent was letting other people have my way. Because that's how it worked, man.

SPEAKER_07: 2:01:17

Letting other people do what I want them to do.

SPEAKER_02: 2:01:20

I'll put an idea out there, and eventually they'll suggest we do it. I'll be that's a great idea. And I use that too smart for your own good, but that was the thing is I would use it for like for like uh acceptance and and and food if people were giving out food or friendship or whatever else. Um that's how I tried to influence control over my life. What it does though is it introduces codependency because in order for that to work, I gotta care way more about what you think of me and who I am. Oh wow, and so everything goes through a filter of how can I be the best version of me that you will like. For people out there. And so that's that's the thing. I mean, people talk about codependency as drinking cough syrup because someone else has a cough. It's a lot like that. Really? It's doing things in the context of other people's lives. I'm gonna live my life in your context. Really? And so that's what I did. That's what manipulation hit. And this was the first time where I was giving everything to God so he could make me be able to stand up, be able to be strong enough to live. Wow. And it wasn't to convince her to stay, it wasn't butterflies and it wasn't snowflakes. It was okay, if you see this and it's going on, great. And if you like it, great. But if you don't, I'm still here doing this, not for you, but for God. And that showed her that I was capable of change. Wow. And not just change for her sake, change for for for getting healthy. Where was that CR at? Uh, that CR was in Santan Valley in a tiny little place that was called Santan Christian Center, which has now been renamed to Ascend Church. But that was uh a tiny little place that saved my life. Wow. And I've I've still got I've still got people in my life that walk through that with me that are that are close to me to help me out. Amen. But that was how it started. And it couldn't have started any.

SPEAKER_05: 2:02:59

Not on Arizona, Arizona Avenue, Arizona.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03:01

If you take uh Barnes Road, if you take um uh Ellsworth Road, all the way down until it's starts bending into Santana Highway. And you instead of going with the bend, you head off into the desert. It's up on the side of the mountain on the hill of the room. Right. Like I said, it's a pretty small place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I didn't even know there was a church back there. Yeah, Pastor Billy got there, he's excellent. Wow, man. And was really patient for me. Yeah um and helping me walk along some things as long as as well as the leadership at Celib Recovery gave me a chance to get strong and to help other people. Amen. So that's that's how you kept going back. Oh yeah. I went back the next day. I would have oh wow, I would have stood on my head in the corner if they told me it got closer together. I didn't care. You were willing to do whatever.

SPEAKER_07: 2:03:38

You were really at your bottom. Yeah, I went to that small group? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03:44

I walked in and I shared everything that was going on in my life in exactly three to five minutes. No, oh no, no. It was it was bad. I busted open like a pinata, it's like stop bubble crying. It was bad. Yeah, and then I was terrified. Yeah, because I just I just told them every cry. And I've spent my whole life having to not share any of the things that go on in me. Yeah, you know, and I just told them all. And now what are they gonna think? And how am I gonna ever be I can't come back here? And then the leader just the leader just looked at me and said, thanks.

SPEAKER_07: 2:04:14

Yeah, amen. Next. Amen.

SPEAKER_02: 2:04:17

Um if you're if you're needing a place to be safe, if if you need if if you've if you um need a place where you can can be completely held and safe, you'll never find a safer place than celebrate recovery on those share group rooms. Yeah, this is a room full of people that are are broken like you and they're willing to love on you.

SPEAKER_07: 2:04:33

Stay for the small groups, yeah. So important. Are you gonna tell them or am I here?

SPEAKER_05: 2:04:39

Well, check this out. I had so back in was it probably 16, right? 1516, I had this friend Terrence who would go to celebrate recoveries over at Really? Broadway Christian, right?

SPEAKER_06: 2:04:51

Way back then.

SPEAKER_05: 2:04:52

And he was like, come with me. I was like, all right, I'd go.

SPEAKER_06: 2:04:55

Whoa.

SPEAKER_05: 2:04:56

We'd go, we'd do the worship. Thought it was kind of cool. I seen people get around tables. I'm like, I'm out. I'm like, I don't know what's going on over there, but I'm I'm good, you know what I mean? And I went a few times with him, never really thought much of it. You know what I mean? And so then my pastor's recommends Celebrate Cover to me, right? So I start going to Sun Valley.

SPEAKER_07: 2:05:18

He invited me and I don't go with you.

SPEAKER_05: 2:05:21

So I go to Sun Valley and I'm like, I go to, I think I go to one and I'm listening to these people, and I'm just like, holy, I'm not talking about my stuff, you know what I mean? Never went to a small group again, right? For the longest time. Me and him go to the valley. All right, let's go. And we go to the worship, chip celebration, all that stuff. Cool, we go get in the car, car won't start. We're like, I'm like, I'm a man.

SPEAKER_07: 2:05:50

I'm like, God, you just start the car and stay for small groups next week. I was like, well, it looks like we're staying for small groups next week. And I'm and I best decision ever.

SPEAKER_05: 2:06:01

Man. But the one I remember the most was at Rock Point.

SPEAKER_07: 2:06:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 2:06:05

That's where I started going by myself to Rock Point. And I sit in a small group. Because I'd give them to me and I'm like, I made it, you know, struggle with whatever. I mean, I wouldn't really like open up. I would just kind of say the basics just to say something, and I pass. I go to Rock Point. There's this guy, I'm sitting in a circle, tattoos, scrappy, looks just like me. You know what I mean? And gets around to him, and this dude breaks. And I'm looking at this dude who, in my eyes, according to his appearance, is a tough dude. Early, tattooed, looked like he might have been a biker. I'm like, I kind of dude, you know what I mean? He breaks. And I'm like, oh wow. This is where we can be like that. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, came around to me, man, and I was honest. Not gonna say I cried or broke down or all, but for the first time in a small group, I was honest.

SPEAKER_02: 2:07:07

Honest. What I saw um in my time working in prisons in Subway Recovery Inside, uh, went to um uh a yard out in Eloy. Yeah. In a uh private prison there. It's a California yard that was there. Hawaiian one? Yep. Yeah. In in well, no, no, no. This is this is Eloy, this is in Florence. This is like this is uh CCA La Palma. Yeah. So we're we're there and I've got 30 guys that are in the circle with me. And um, you know how it goes. A lot of times, can I get out of my pod?

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:36

Yeah, yeah, that's all it is, man. Can I get can I get in the in here? I can't tell you how many times I got baptized just to get out of my pod. That's kind of it. That's kind of it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:07:43

And and we we do this thing in celebrate recovery where we introduce ourselves as a grateful believer in Christ, where our identity comes from. And I got this one guy that's sitting over there that's leaning back. He's like, I don't know if I can believe in God at all. I'm like, cool, well, welcome to the but of everybody in that circle, even the ones that were the most devoutly on fire for God, he was the one that answered every question, honestly. Wow. And I could see changes happening in his life. And he started to come around. Yeah. And it was just it was amazing to see him honestly look at how his choices in his life and the things that have happened with him, how they they they meant something. Yeah. And that they were now at his feet. What is he gonna do with it? Yeah, and I think I think even if you have if if if you have doubts, even if you have questions, if you just if you're honest with it, yeah, that's that's the place where where God can meet you and work with you. When because you can't like we we have a lot of sayings in recovery, one of them is you can't heal a wound by saying it's not there.

SPEAKER_07: 2:08:36

So you've got to say God can't heal what we keep hidden. And that's it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:08:40

Only sick is our secrets. You've got to have that out there. Yeah. And the other thing is that he'll bring sick people alongside you because there's no other kind. Yeah. And I think when you start realizing that, then it takes the pressure off. And then finally, the one thing that um why it's so important to have this conversation. Yeah. Um, when what you do with um Speak Life is so amazing and and necessary, yeah, is because um I tell people confidently that my my recovery didn't start till I heard my story come out of somebody else's mouth. So good, buddy. It has to. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, and I mean that at every stage. The guy that walked up in the front on that first day got me going down the road. But then as I got there, I started to kind of peel scrub the top of the onion and not really scrub it too hard, but you still do the stuff, you know. And then I heard a person tell their to tell my story again. Yeah. I heard a person talk about what it was like to really hurt through the process of burning down your relationships in a bipolar disorder. Yeah. And then over the course of time, I started to tell my story. Yeah, come on, baby. And I tell my story very specifically about um not just struggles I have, not just, oh, it's hard sometimes, but very specifically giving it a name, saying, I'm working through stewarding bipolar disorder. I'm working through mental health challenges. Because people need to hear that it's not just the four or five most common things you hear in the circle, depression or sexual integrity. And beyond that, but if it is that, and if that is you, and that is your issue, being honest and open about it, you're gonna be able to find that story more often. Oh, yeah. Telling the stories you don't hear every day becomes the lifeline people need to be able to tell their story, and then it just cascades.

SPEAKER_05: 2:10:17

I think the hardest thing for me was my first sponsor would tell me your story's not unique. I would get mad. I'm like, I would. I asked Braddy, I'd come home and I'm like, dude, this guy told me this. I'm like, I'm like, it may not be unique, but it's mine. You know what I mean? And it took a long time for me to realize my story's not unique. Yeah, we're all just alike, man. There's so many people out there that hearing your story. There's things that you talked about that I'm like, that I've been through. And I I've never even been married. You know what I mean? And it's like, get your hands off of it. And the more I kept hearing my story, like you said, coming out of other people's mouth, it made me realize I'm not alone. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because I wanted to be so alone in my struggle that nobody could understand my struggle because it's mine. Yeah. You don't know how bad it is.

SPEAKER_02: 2:11:10

It's so much easier to protect it that way. It is.

SPEAKER_05: 2:11:13

And it's so easier to hold on to it as I'm not gonna let go of this because it's mine.

SPEAKER_02: 2:11:18

And it's because you it's it's part of that cycle too when you start to get through this healing process is you deny you're in any pain at all. Yeah. And if there is no struggle, yeah. And then congratulations, okay. There's a struggle, and I'm now you're in denial. And now now I'm finally admitting that there's a struggle. Yeah, but now I'm starting to heal and feel better because I've admitted it. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of times, uh most times, people will put their arms around that struggle and say, the struggle is what's healing me. As long as I keep the struggle in front of me, I get better. Wow. And I can't sacrifice the struggle. And you're never meant to live in the struggle. Yeah, it's supposed to let it, it's it's letting go of it that makes you healed. And then you get to find a whole brand new thing that's under your little orange in this iterative process of getting strong. You protect the struggle because you put your identity in the healing you find from it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12:09

I think, damn, for myself. I think I just can't have a revelation for my own self is that my struggle has been my identity for so long. The mat that I've used to that I've talked about it enough, but never really healed from it because if I heal from it, then what am I gonna what do I have to work on? What do I I'm no longer hi, I'm Eddie, I struggle with sexual integrity. What will I be now? What will I be now? Because for three years in a circle I'm Eddie who struggles with sexual integrity, and if I let this go, what will I what will I be? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 2:12:47

I do. And before you before you said, uh hi, I'm Eddie, I struggle with sexual integrity, you were saying, hi, I'm Eddie, and you were struggling with sexual integrity. Yeah. And so the identity was the you that didn't talk about the struggle. Yeah. Then the idea identity became the you that did. Yeah. And then what happens is there's also the small part in the back that knows exactly what comes next. Yeah. So if I set this struggle down, if I get past this struggle and I let this be something that I steward and work through and live, it may never go away, but it's a part of me that I'm surrendering to God and honoring him with it. Yeah, there's another one. Yeah. Just as painful. And my legs are gonna get sore at the gym again, lifting this one up again. And so now I got it. That one was hard enough to walk through last time. But then what you what you figure out is you start getting good at being at failing. Yeah. To loop it back again. You start to get good at failing and struggling and and to the point where you look forward to the chance to do it. And so when you when you can start to fall in love with with that struggle again, and so what what's the next okay, bring it? Let's let's be honest, let's walk through this one all the way through. Let's let's give it to God. Let's let's let's give it to um my accountability partners and my sponsor. Let's um own it myself, and then let's figure out what it takes to set it down so that my hands are free to pick the next thing out and hand it over. That's good. And you'll never get to the bottom of that list. Oh, absolutely. Um here's the easiest way. Uh I've talked I talk sometimes, I get a chance to talk sometimes in front at Celebrate Recovery during the chip celebration. When I introduce our day one chip or our blue chip, which is the moment where you surrender something to uh Christ care and control, you say that you you come out of the Nile and you step into doing something about it. I I tell people that that the blue chip is for anything that even creates the tiniest little space between you and God, and whatever just flashed through your head is the thing you need the chip for. Wow. That's good. We have one. Yeah, we all have one. And and so when you realize it doesn't have to be this mountain of a thing that that's there, it can be a thing that's holding you back. Just flash through your head. That's it. That you can't cast away and run the race that God has put before you that holds you back. You're supposed to throw that back, even if it you feel like it's small. Because um another analogy, I I I tend to think in them. Um I've woken up at two o'clock in the morning, turned the corner, jammed my big toe into a table, and busted the nail open and it hurt real bad, right? But it healed. Yeah. You know what doesn't heal? When I do it to the little toe, and it doesn't bust open, but it gets that tiny little fracture that lasts forever. But more often than not, the little thing is the big thing. Wow. It cascades through the rest of it. So something you can recognize is a really big thing in your life and you can hand that over. But those are usually things that that are you want out of your life. Yeah. And you and you you struggle, they cause you so much pain that you you have to. Um, those are the things that land you in in places like recovery in the first place. Yeah. People go to recovery a lot of times not because they see the light, but because they feel the heat.

SPEAKER_05: 2:15:49

You know what I mean? I think my new prayer is God help me to lay this down so I can pick up the next thing.

SPEAKER_02: 2:15:54

Right. And then when you I don't think I've ever asked them for that. And it's but the best part about that is that if you get good at picking up and putting down, yeah, then you become the example that you can show yourself when it's struggling, people around you when they need it. Wow. It's just like we talk about with my kids. You get the chance to go through a thing so you can demonstrate what it's like to get through a thing. Wow.

SPEAKER_07: 2:16:16

It's really good, Dustin. Man. Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this podcast, God. I know you're helping a lot of people.

SPEAKER_05: 2:16:25

You know what's crazy, bros? We do a lot of these. You're you're like 101, right? And it never fails. Each one, I'm like, I get something out of it. Right. You know what I mean? And here I am thinking we're doing it so other people can hear testimonies. And God's like, This is for you, buddy.

SPEAKER_00: 2:16:42

I said here. And it's the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_05: 2:16:47

I forget that sometimes is that is that I'm not just here to capture people's stories, I'm here to grow. I'm here to heal, here to better to get different insight and perspective on on how people heal and what it takes to heal. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 2:17:03

And if these microphones were gone and and nothing was being recorded, God would still be incredibly honored by the fact that that um God would be honored in your healing. Yeah. Because you did. Yeah. Because and it's not because of any magical anything. This is none of this is is is rocket science. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 2:17:22

The cool part is we have these conversations with people on Monday nights. Yeah. After when it's all said and done and we're sitting in the lobby, we have these kind of conversations with our brothers and only our brothers.

SPEAKER_07: 2:17:35

And guys with guys and girls with girls.

SPEAKER_05: 2:17:38

So it's not this is unique in the fact that we get to capture your story and we're recording and all that other stuff. But these conversations happen away from these microphones, away from the recordings, too. And those ones are just as valuable and just as important and and matter just as much in my process.

SPEAKER_02: 2:17:55

They can crush you. I mean, if you've ever had that throwaway line that a person throws out in the middle of a conversation that wrecks you for a year, yeah. I've had that. I had a guy that said um early in my recovery, he said, Um, I've got to stop talking bad about myself to other people because when I do, um, I'm saying that I know more about who I am than God says who I am. And that's blasphemy, and I can't do that. And I'm like, what? And then he went on his merry way and lived his life. And I spent a year in just I spent a year in my step study trying to lift it up the idea of can I see myself um in the eye through the eyes that God's given me. Yeah, instead of the way that I see myself. And the answer was it's who cares what I who cares was the two words. A lot of times two words come out, a lot of times. Um who cares was the thing. Who cares what you think? Yeah. Um, God thinks. Yeah. His opinion matters, yours doesn't. That's right. You're the least qualified person on the planet to give an opinion of who you are. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_05: 2:18:54

You made a statement a minute ago that's in the serenity prayer, and one of our brothers came to me one time and he said, I'm finally beginning to understand that the what is it, the pathway to hardship? Yeah, he's like, I'm beginning to understand what that means. And for like a couple months after that, I'm like, like, or we're just thinking about it. I'm like, what does that really mean? You know what I mean? And it's conversations. Sometimes it's conversations, it's the hard conversations that we gotta have with ourselves and with people that need the peace. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 2:19:27

Yeah. It's it's things for in seasons like right now, um the world's in a really yeah, it's crazy, crazy place. Jesus. It's in it in an upset down place. It's there's a lot of things that people hurt with. Um I'll tell you a little bit about my particular flavor of autism. Is that it, I have um a sense of justice, an over an overly driven sense of justice. So when I see injustice, it physically and emotionally and mentally wears on me. Yeah, I carry it. Yeah, and and that's I that's hard when you Have no agency to do anything about it. And so I have to go back to the prayer where it says, taking as Jesus did the sinful world as it is. Not as I would have it. So it's like I I have to remember that Jesus did that. There's this part of me that wants to say that Jesus came and he didn't accept the world as it was, he changed it all. And the reality is he didn't. He asked He asked you to change you. He said, He said, Let let me live in you so that you don't have to be of this world. You know? And that that's that's the thing that's hard sometimes. And so if there's resp if there's rest, if you're like me and you struggle with what do I do with injustice, if you struggle with what like what do I do with uncertainty, with pain. Um to accept the world as as Jesus did, yeah, in a way that's that it is as it is, so that you no longer have the responsibility of changing the world. Yeah, you only have the responsibility of letting Christ change you. Yeah. And that's much lighter. Yeah. And so it's there's those moments inside inside the serenity prayer. There's those moments inside the conversations that stay with you because they're supposed to. Yeah. You know, that become a part of your of your mantra, become a part of your uh of your worldview, the lens by which you see the rest of the world as what is true and how does it work. Yeah. And um, I will tell you that there's not one Christianity, that there are about as many Christianities as there are Christians on the planet. Because it's about a relationship that's personal with Christ. Everybody's is different. And and Christ wants me to see the world a certain way so that I can be the best version He created of me in that world, but not of it. Yeah, so that I can be in Him. Come on. And I think that that when I when I try to extrapolate what I think is the right way to do a certain thing and make other people have that, that justice part gets flared up a little bit. Um, and that's that's not the job. The job is the job is very simple. I'm gonna love the Lord my God with all my heart, my mind, soul, and strength. Yeah, I'm gonna love my neighbor as myself, which means I not only have to love my neighbor, I have to learn how to love myself the same way. Some people are really good at the love yourself part, some are good at love. I'm really good at love the neighbor part. Yeah, dating myself. It's gotta be it's gotta be equal. Amen, buddy. Yeah, it's remembering the way that when my friends fail me, how I I still love them and how I still care for them, and I still offer them grace, and I still allow them to be human, and then allowing myself to extend that same thing to myself. To myself, that's good. That's hard.

SPEAKER_04: 2:22:27

It is.

SPEAKER_07: 2:22:28

That's what I I have learned in the CR, and I never would have imagined that I would have lost all this weight with CR. I didn't have any, I just wanted to quit looking at porn. You know what I mean? But God was like, hold on, bud, you gotta learn to start loving yourself. Yeah. And CR has learned me to learn to love myself and show grace to myself and uh accountability. And I'm still learning, I still got a lot to grow in, but I never, yeah, I I had no clue that CR was gonna help me lose weight.

SPEAKER_02: 2:23:05

The big message is is is why you do. The why you do what you do is always more important than what you actually do. My grandpa said a broken clock is right twice a day. Twice a day. You know, you can accidentally fall into doing the right thing. Yeah, I have a I have some of those that happened in timely places in my life, but when you when you look at why you're doing it, yeah, then all of a sudden the what you do makes uh it makes it easier to do those things. Yeah. Um it makes it harder, then easier to do those things, let's be honest. But that's that shapes the outcomes for the rest of your recovery. What does it mean to be closer to Christ and to steward the gifts he's given me and to and to use what I have for his glory? What does that really mean? Yeah and what and what is what does glory really mean? It just means that recognition where God, where people see God as who he is for a moment, and if they can do that, because I went through a really traumatic 15-year period of my life where I didn't think it was gonna make it, yeah, and then I went through a 15-year period of my life where God's grown things. Okay.

SPEAKER_06: 2:24:01

Wow, that's literally what whoa, 2011 to 2026.

SPEAKER_02: 2:24:07

It's but it's the it's there's a lot of there's a lot of mirroring that's right.

SPEAKER_06: 2:24:10

96 to 2011. That's crazy, bro.

SPEAKER_02: 2:24:14

Yep. And it always, it it will always it will always find a way. Um, there's there's there's there's a lot of really cute things that are really fascinating and amazing things like that parallel that live out there that every once in a while God will just kind of get a little wink in his eye when he says, Oh, check this out. You like patterns, check this, you know, that kind of thing, where it's like, oh, that's nice. That's nice. It's like this has been a lot better 15 than the last 15. He's like, and I'm just getting warmed up, which makes me which brings me to the where's the next 15 go? Yeah, come on. What's coming next? Can I tell you I care less about that than anything I've ever cared about in my life? I love that, buddy. Because I don't need to. Yeah. I cared so much about I cared so much about being uh the parents my parents weren't for me at times that I was not the parent I needed to be for the kids I had. Amen. Wow. And then I learned how to to say that again. Okay, I cared so much about being the parent my parents weren't for me, but I wasn't the parent I needed to be for my kids when they were there. That's real. And you learn, you learn to soften. Um there's a there's a lyric for an artist, and I won't throw that all out here in this one. You can look it up at home. But one of the ends of his song, he talks about how his dance with mental with mental illness, his dance with uh with this challenge was um hard because he was rigid and stubborn and he fought it. And the more that he tried to do this dance um with his rigid steps, the more clumsy his steps became. So he learned to soften and he learned to to slow and he learned to to f to accept the fact that it's gonna move. And it made the dance a little easier, even though it didn't make it go away. And I think the rigidity that I had in my dance going up for the first 15 years and then has slowly been chiseled away in the last 15 years has been that I've felt the responsibility of being the one that dances better. Wow. Instead of the one that just relaxes and moves with the music. Um you know, let God lead. Yeah, that's good. And so that's that's for the next 15 years. I'm I'm feeling pretty good about being able to let God lead things. I just don't know what those things happen to be. I've just I've got I've got ideas.

SPEAKER_07: 2:26:27

Yeah, do you got so up to this point, man? We've got quite a bit. Um, I feel like you have you've helped me. I'm pretty sure you helped him. I'm pretty sure you're helping some other people. Um, we've got so your encounter when God was real to you. Right. Is that your low point? That was my point. That was my point.

SPEAKER_02: 2:26:55

When I felt God's presence in the exact real physical moment of my life where I knew that I didn't have to do this anymore on my own than he had it. Um it's hard for me to describe it as my low point.

SPEAKER_07: 2:27:07

Yeah, because how could you? It's literally the king of kings.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27:11

It's my start point. Yeah, right? Come on.

SPEAKER_07: 2:27:13

So good, buddy. It's it's this it's this chapter that you're gonna do. Is that when you're on your doorstep out front, and you're Abby drives. Wow, dude.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27:22

That's exactly it. Wow. And it's so I mean it's it's hard to talk about because uh because if I I could throw a rock and skip it across low points, you know what I mean? I can a low point in my garage in 2007 where a friend steps in for me. Yeah, a low point before that where I'm um receiving a packet of paperwork, you know, from what I thought was a forever relationship. Yeah. Um there's um there's a lot of them, but it's hard to do it's hard to qualify that, even though that was one of the most painful times of my life.

SPEAKER_07: 2:27:51

Um, you said it perfect. It's your starting point. It's a start point. That's so good, buddy.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27:56

And I get more of them. Yeah. I get a start point every single time that and I'm starting to realize this. That's that I get I get a start point every time I get ready to set something down and pick the next thing up. Yeah. I get a start point every time I'm wrong, and I get to be better because I learned. Making a man.

SPEAKER_05: 2:28:11

I think your moment I think your moment iterates the fact that dang it's usually in our brokenness that God becomes evident and real.

SPEAKER_00: 2:28:23

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 2:28:24

Because up until then we're trying to do it in our own, we're trying to manage our own thing. But it's at that moment when, like you said, you were on your knees and you gotta do something, dude, because I can't. That's when he's like, hi, been here the whole time, man. Just been waiting, you know what I mean? And I I I love that he meets us in those moments. The um you ever try to teach a teenager how to drive?

SPEAKER_02: 2:28:45

Yeah. So when you're when you're driving 35 miles an hour straight into the roundabout, and we're not we're not turning, and we're not slowing, and we're getting closer.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29:01

You know.

SPEAKER_02: 2:29:02

My daughter, my daughter needs to be, needs to be weak enough for me to be able to grab a steering wheel and pull us on two wheels this way and back on that way, or we're dukes of hazarding it over the medium and landing somewhere into a ditch. Yeah, um, I'm weak so that he can be strong. Yeah. And like I said, everything I learned about my relationship with God, I learned through my kids a lot. Yeah. It's because it's it's it's those moments, those, those moments where I have learned so much from God over the course of what he's taught me that I don't know. Yeah. Um Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of my favorite quotes. Um The real danger is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right, but not enough about a subject to know you're wrong. I don't ever want to be the person that stops at the I think I'm right. Yeah. Because eventually I'm gonna figure out that that thing I thought was so right about things, I'm wrong. There's so much more to it. So much more. Keep learning. Yeah. And I think that only happens by failing. That only happens by trying, and that only happens by vulnerability. And the best part about it is that you never fall farther than God's hands in any moment in your life, even if it feels like it's a buildings are falling off. He's let you go. Yeah, he's got you. You're never you're never as far away from God as you are in this exact moment because you're never as close to God as you are in this exact moment. He never goes anywhere. Right. Amen. You just don't notice. Yeah. So notice.

SPEAKER_03: 2:30:26

That's good.

SPEAKER_07: 2:30:27

So what do you got? What are you uh what are you hoping for or believing God for in the future, my man? Go back. What what does he put in you?

SPEAKER_02: 2:30:35

Well, one of one of the things that's with it's awesome is I get a chance to use uh my experiences in mental health to help other people find Christ and find healing. I'm a the uh a mental health advocate team lead, um, which is a regional leader for mental health in celebrate recovery for the Western United States. Come on, buddy. I got me and another colleague, SJ, who's amazing. And we get a chance to talk to um churches across our our area to say, hey, look, you're thinking about mental health wrong or not at all. Let's be intentional about it. Come on. Let's let's talk about the fact that four out of every ten people in the church on Sunday will have a mental health challenge that could be actively treated by a professional right now. Wow. Because frankly, hurt people come to church because that's where there's some healing.

SPEAKER_07: 2:31:18

You you you are the actual testimony that is the reason why when I get up, hi, my name is Rowdy. I struggle with not loving myself, I struggle with mental health, I struggle with a food addiction, I struggle with sexual integrity, but you are the testimony, the reason why I specifically call out mental health.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 2:31:37

Because I never did before, but you staying, I was like, oh, gotta give people like I struggle with mental health. I struggle with it. And I there has to be somebody that what if they've never heard, oh, I struggle with mental health. Oh, wait, that's okay. I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31:54

That's what I mean when I say that my recovery never started until I heard my story come out of someone else's mouth. It's that specific though. You've creating an environment where it's okay to not be okay in every way, amen. Including mental health, and especially mental health. When you talk about recovery rooms, the number's 50%. Come on. Co uh co-occurring disorders, comorbidity, basic comorbidity. Easy for me to say. It's when um two things happen at the same time. 50% of all people with an addictive or compulsive behavior also struggle with a mental uh with with substances and a mental health challenge. Likewise, people, 50% of all people with mental health challenge struggle with an addictive or compulsive behavior. So whether you have a substance, for example, in your life that's changed your brain chemistry that's created something, or you have something that you're self-medicating, the number's 50%. So we've been doing this for a while. Coming up on 35 years for celebrate recovery has been walking through mental health. We're just doing it on purpose now. Yeah, calling it by name so people can feel comfortable enough to talk about it. Talk about it. And that's when you don't have to keep it a secret, you can give it a name, that's where healing starts. Yes, sir. So I get the chance to do that right now and work not just with churches, but also help understand how we're going to do this from a programmatic standpoint, how we're going to do this from uh an international approach to movement. And this is this is because God said talk about it. Yeah. That's it. That's right.

SPEAKER_07: 2:33:13

Because it's not it's not just Americans that are struggling with it. No matter Africa, Asia, China, wherever. There's a CR dude. There's people that are people that are struggling with mental health.

SPEAKER_02: 2:33:25

I have a friend of mine uh named Wendy in Nairobi, and she's a mental health champion. She's fantastic. Um, again, we talk about Carrie. She's she's holding it down for all of CRI or CR International, but also um holding the fort down for us in Australia. We've got um going to the summit for Celibate Recovery, where if you don't know Summit, it's uh the world's biggest recovery party where about 3,500 people show up from all over the world. Um I was talking to people about mental health and from all corners of the world. And what I'm hearing is the same stories. Yeah. I'm hearing the we don't I I have I have pain, but I can't talk about it, or I don't understand it, or I'm ashamed of it, or is this really something that I can recover? I'll tell you this mental health isn't something you recover from. I'm not in recovery for my bipolar. Come on, buddy. And the reason being is because remember when I said I was fearful and wonderfully made and I was designed by God to have this in here, and he doesn't make mistakes, why would I be in recovery for something that's not a mistake? Instead, I'm in recovery for the same reason every other person is. You're only in recovery no matter what your issue, because of choices. That's right. God gives human beings one specific purpose that no other creation on the world has, and that's the ability to choose. And so we're here to choose. So what choices I make are why I'm in recovery. Do I choose to ignore that I have a problem? Do I choose to not take care of myself the way I should? Do I choose to have shame and guilt? Do I choose to surrender and learn to use these? Those are the choices around mental health. So you're you're in recovery, not because you have depression or schizoaffective disorder or borderline personality disorder. You're there to choose how you make what you what are you doing about it? Just like it's choices about substances or choices about what you do about uh past abuses. You're not in recovery because you were abused, you're in recovery because you have choices to make now based on how you live your life out. And then when you realize that, that's when you realize that your story is not unique. Right. We're we're walking through how to choose. And so I get to have that conversation with people. Um, I love the one thing that came out of uh my doctoral program um is that I love research. I've always loved research since I was little. Yeah, yeah. I'm just now realizing realizing that that's what this was actually called, and there's a way to do it. There's whenever you see somebody online that says, I did my research, they did a Google search. You know, they they asked Chat GPT something, or they looked at a meme and they saw an answer. Real re uh actual research is a process, there's a scientific process that goes through it, and it's very thorough and unforgiving, and and it it lands when you're when you're honest with it, it lands on um recognizable truths and facts you can work around and through that help establish things. And those facts are evident everywhere. So I love the idea of researching types of things that get in people's way that maybe they don't think about. I have a friend of mine, um a real good friend, who's in recovery from his mobile phone. Good. He spends a lot of his time on it, he spent a lot of his time on his phone and away from his family and away from his finances, impacting his life. He went away from that. My dissertation topic deals with this thing called nomophobia, which is the negative physiological and psychological experiences people have when they lose battery signal or access to their phone. Oh yeah. If you've ever reached in your pocket, it's not there and you're free. Oh, yeah. So that can really impact some people's lives. And so my research is in that area. I'm curious to continue to research what things like that do to our mental health and our spiritual relationship with God. Because I think there's I think there's a world we can talk to and there in the world. Correlation there that allows people to heal in a way maybe they haven't had a name to. Just like when I say bipolar disorder, I start to heal when someone else says it. Maybe I start saying I'm healing from the scars of not belonging. So I belong to this particular group of people on Facebook that believe and think and act and feel the same way as me because it feels good to be part of something. Yeah. When the reality is I've always been part of something, which is God. So I'll rather put my identity there than in this philosophical group or this this um particular um social media movement. I'm gonna let go of all that and I'm just gonna belong to God. Amen. And then maybe that sense of belonging and attachment and togetherness that is available in Christ and in his body is sufficient. Because it because we know it is, and it's we gotta we gotta make choices about it. We can let we can set down our dependence on these artificial things that might hurt us that are technology based. But to get there, I gotta research how that works and maybe understand better what that's like, and then find some more information about the the actual mechanisms behind it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:37:53

I think so the co connection I see and from my understanding, not that I didn't research or anything. No, no, no. I just Google searched it. No, just from my own personal experience, right? Sure. The the same benefit you're getting from this is the same high you're getting from drugs, alcohol, anything else. That's a neurological hit. It is that dopamine. So when you're taking a phone, you ever you've seen videos of parents who take their kids' phones away and they freak out. Well, there's more to that. They're the same way as if you were taking a bottle away from an alcoholic who needs their who at that moment needs a drink, how they would freak out and throw things and become irrelevant and just irritated, and it's the same concept.

SPEAKER_02: 2:38:37

Part of my research is actually exactly as to why that works. And what I discovered is there's this thing. Um, there's a theory that was built into marketing called extended self-theory. Yeah. And this guy named Belk, he created this thing um back in the 80s to explain why the Camaro guy was the Camaro guy. Yeah, yeah. You know, the guy that has the Camaro jacket and the Camaro, and you don't put your dirty feet in his car and it's his baby when he drives down the road and they're like, hey, you're the Camaro guy. He's like, Yes, I am, that kind of thing. Yeah. You have a general possession, just something you own, and then you put a little bit of your identity into it, and it becomes very specific. Yeah. And you value that possession more when people recognize you in it and say, Hey, and give you compliments, you get a little bit of a reward from that. Yeah. We literally put our identities into our phones with our picture and our name and our social media presentation and our chat and our chatting with our friends and the friends groups we have, and we we put our identity out there through this device. So when you take a phone away from a kid in class, thinking that you're taking away a distraction, you're taking their identity, and you're creating a bigger distraction because they've lost it. Wow. Coupled with the fact that 94% of all uh adults in the United States are within three feet of a cell phone right now, us included. Wow. Um, it's the single most ubiquitous tool that we have. It's everywhere. Every single day, adults use this tool every day for various things. From how do I get to the gas station to all of that math I've got to ordering groceries?

SPEAKER_07: 2:40:04

How do I get that math on the recipe?

SPEAKER_02: 2:40:06

Pay attention to how many cups are in a gallon, that kind of thing, right? Wow. Well, all of that is the most used tool on the planet. Yeah. And it's it we use the internet, but we use the mobile device to access it. Yeah. So when you take that away from a kid in a classroom, why are you removing the single most used tool in human history from a child instead of teaching them how to use it responsibly? Right. That's good.

SPEAKER_07: 2:40:27

You know, it's take some responsibility.

SPEAKER_02: 2:40:30

And help them regulate their identity out of the device into themselves. Wow. Um the problem to make the choice as opposed to remove the choice. Yeah. It's just easier to create a pouch you hang on the door and make everybody stick their stuff in there than it is to figure out how to do this this other way. And so what you end up with is um um not just um adolescents um or preteens or younger kids, but um who've always lived in technology. So they've always expressed themselves through technology. They're called digital um natives. They live in the land of digital. Yeah, we're called digital immigrants. We moved to a land of technology from a land where you had a a analog. Yeah, you had a phone with a very long cord that mom could bring from different rooms and talk and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_06: 2:41:10

Get off the phone!

SPEAKER_02: 2:41:11

Yeah, try to be on the internet. So all of that, all we come from a we we come from a place where we have perspective between the two. And we are more apt to do the old man on our porch. Back in my day, we did it right, you guys did it wrong. Yeah, which isn't the truth either. Yeah, it's just we're moving to a different way of using it the same way that people did in previous technologies before us. But we have to be able to figure out how to do it in a healthy way. Yeah. And the question that a lot a lot of people are asking is how do I incorporate technology into my life that in a way that honors God? Yeah. People will say people will say, let's put, let's put um uh TripleX church or something like that. You know, let's put uh let's put filtering software out there. And that's a good way to address a negative aspect of it, but that's not what said. Yeah, I said, How do I use my technology to honor God actively forwardly put God in my life? And there are a lot of ways to just take this tool that's there and make it God-centric in your life. It's really good. So it's no longer the thing you have to recover from, it's a thing you can lean into. Most things you find in recovery for those choices are relatively healthy. Yeah, there are people, I'm sure there are people in the world that can have an uh an alcoholic beverage and be okay and just live their lives. Oh, yeah. And I know there are people that cannot. You know, I know there are people that cannot. Yeah, you know, there's it's like everything else. Um, it it's it's either the moderation or the proper choice and use of it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:42:31

Have you ever considered how to integrate CR and mental health into like a youth movement, like in the schools or something like that?

SPEAKER_02: 2:42:44

Have you thought about how to so being able to use the concept of the landing, um, which is supposed to be a safe place for kids to land with the rest of it. Yeah. And and use that in schools. I've seen that happen in a few places, but the struggle you have is the same struggle you might have had for some institutions for celibate recovery inside. Yeah. Is that there's a very hard line in faith and secular building. Um Rock Point's a great example. Rock Point has a seminary. Yeah. So kids from the high school that's right across the street can come over and have the seminary and have those types of experiences where they get um um uh mentorship and sanctification happens in their in their building. It's the same type of seminary that you see a lot of times with Mormon seminaries where they have one there. But with Christian, that's great. Um, a lot of uh when you go to certain parts of Phoenix, there's a lot of of of um of mosques that do the same thing. There's a lot of tabernacles that do the same thing. So it's the ability of being able to incorporate that kind of faith structure and celebr and celebrate recovery's already got curriculum designed for it. The struggle you have is being able to find the the the right uh combination of being able to leverage that in an environment where we've separated those things.

SPEAKER_05: 2:43:48

With your approach as far as I'm not broken, there's nothing wrong with me. It's got design. How do you how do you I guess we're seeing it more nowadays with younger kids being diagnosed with different types of mental illness? How do you how do you how what's the approach to get these kids to understand they're not broken? Yeah, it's that they can see. You know, it's not something to be ashamed of, it's not something that people, you know, should be or you're what's wrong with me, you know what I mean? Or how do how do we get the youth to understand that this is not something that's it's not such that's not necessarily it's not a bad thing, but it could be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02: 2:44:25

Well, the the thing that's interesting to me, and this is a challenge to you, is that the youth right now are already there. Yeah. Um when people are looking and talking about their autism or ADHD or aw DHD, which is the combination of those for neuro neurodiversity, or any number of other diagnoses, they're very much recognizing themselves in the symptoms and also in the behaviors, and they're doing it in an accepting way. So if you were to go on TikTok right now and pull it up and look for um ADHD talk, you'd see advocacy for yourself. Yeah. You'd see this is what it looks like, and this is why you feel this way, and because this is why you feel this way, this is what you do about it. They're kind of already there. Come on. We're not. Yeah. We are we're the the half generation back and before that are still and and that's because we're just not it's not something that's hit our radar. Yeah. And so what I would say is that I'm not watching kids make videos about their things, you know what I mean? I'm I'm I have the the blessing and the privilege of having uh 25-year-old, 24-year-old, and an 18-year-old at home, all of which have different mental health challenges and all of which are integrated into their social media, which is how I landed in my research in the first place. And so um I I that all started because of a Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving dinner, I walked into the living room and saw the tops of everybody's heads and the blue of the screen on their faces. And rather than do that, put your phones down and act like people thing, I stopped and and watched. And they all laughed at the same time, and then they looked down and then they all laughed. They were having community, they were sharing memes and talking in the same room. They just preferred to do it with their thumbs instead of their mouths. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, you know, it's just a matter of communicating. It may not be the way that I prefer to communicate. I get much more out of this. Yeah, but that's the way if the worst thing I could possibly do to my kids is call them and talk to them on the phone. It better be a text, you know. So why are you calling me? You know, it's that kind of thing. So there's a comfort in uh in that. It's just a difference in preference. So when I stop the urge to be on my my front porch shaking my fist at the world, and I take as Jesus did the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, then that also includes taking the people in this world as they are, not the way I want them. So it's not my preference anymore, it's a ability to see them in theirs. So we're already at a place where that the reason you're seeing more diagnoses is because you're seeing people more willing to get a diagnosis. Um, whereas mental health was like this albatross around your neck, you can't have that. No one will hire me and my friends won't like me. Every movie I ever watched that had talks talking about somebody that has um that's a psychopath is always a killer. And that's not what you'll find is the majority of CEOs in this country are psychopaths because it has to deal with the ability to to manipulate to recognize and process emotions of other people as a factual as opposed to an empathetic. Amen. So um I know what it looks like to um I know what it looks like to act the right way whenever you're feeling really bad about things so that you feel comfortable. So I'll do that. Not necessarily I feel your pain. Yeah. And so um the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy, and there's a lot of other ones, but is is the organization of it. Yeah. So when you think of a sociopath, you think of a person that's just going rampidly all over the place hurting other people. And the reality is they're just rampantly going all over the place. That's the kind of the line that's there. Um when you think of bipolar disorder, a lot of people represent that as being dangerous to other people. And I'm here to tell you that people that have mental health challenges, the person that's most at risk in that environment is the person who has the challenge. Yeah, me. They're six times more likely to become the victim of violence, and they're um, I think that that the instances where a mental health challenge actually was the predicator to public violence is probably uh what the last number I saw was one out of every 25 instances had any connection to mental health challenge whatsoever. That means 24 of the 25 instances, and if you're really good at math, and I'm not what I should be because I'm a researcher, that's 96% of the time. 96% of the people times that you have those those instances in in public life where there's public violence, it's not directly connected to a mental health challenge, even though it's convenient to say so. Yeah. We say so because it's a way of pushing the arm out to the stigma thing. Forgetting 40% of us at church are on the inside of those arms, not on the outside. And so it's uh this generation's seeing that. Yeah. And we're we're getting better at removing the stigma around it. And I think that we're we're being able to see that. It's hard for some folks to accept that the reason that there are infinitely more autism diagnoses is because there are infinitely better autism tests. Yeah. And our understanding of what autism isn't just the stereotypical person with the headphones and the fidget spinner that's nonverbal that uses cue cards to and uh AUD devices to discuss. Um, it's rather the um a person like me who is very well practiced in understanding what this is supposed to look like visage-wise, in order to make you comfortable enough to let me be around you. And and imagine how many spoons, how many coins it takes of energy to change your behavior around the rest of the world just enough to where they like you enough to let you be around to be there in the first place. Yeah, versus people that don't have to do that, that have all the energy in the world that are doing something else. Wow. That's the real struggle that sits behind mental health. That's a lot letting people be people that don't have to mask. Yeah. And then when you create that, you're in a good environment. We've been having a place where they can be themselves. Right. We've been having this conversation the entire time. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been doing this with my ring. Oh, yeah. It's a fidget spinner. Yeah. Oh, okay. My ring is a fidget spinner because it helps me self-soothe and self-stem whenever I'm trying to process thoughts or going uh one direction or another in them. This helps me. Yeah, yeah. So it's incorporating that into my world and having it be accepted in the world around me. And I think that's where the call of the church is at. Yeah. That's good. Like I said, be it's okay to not be okay in every way.

SPEAKER_05: 2:50:07

So when you look forward, what kind of things has God put on your heart that you're believing him to kind of manifest in the later times of your life? Do you have dreams? Do you have things God put on your heart?

SPEAKER_02: 2:50:21

I do. One of the things I want to be able to do is have these conversations that heal people that don't normally get the chance to have them. Yeah. Um, if you all my kids had to go to counseling at one point or another and then got to go to counseling, there's a difference. Yeah. Gosh, man, I have to go. And now it's, hey, hey, look, I got an appointment next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they get through this process, but that usually means pulling them out of school. Yeah. That usually means they miss some other thing they have to do because uh the nine to five is convenient for adults, but never for kids. Yeah. I I want to be able to create um space where kids can find help with mental health challenges or addictive compulsive behaviors that don't take away from their time. And that's gonna require me doing things maybe in the evening or on the weekends. Why can't they have something like that at the school? Well, the school was a nine to five place or seven to three place, depending. By 3 30, every teacher's off campus, unless they're doing a sport.

SPEAKER_05: 2:51:09

What if a kid say a kid was in the middle of the day and they're having a moment where I mean, I know that probably cost a lot of money, there'd have to be funding for that, but where they could have a mental health counselor. And many school and many schools do, and a lot of them do. My daughter, for example, qualified though, or are they just like the counselors we had in school were like, hey, yeah, you're good, take us take an aspirin and go back to class.

SPEAKER_02: 2:51:32

Most of my counselors were guidance counselors, their job was to guide me to a college or a job. Yeah. Um, the the mental health counselors we have in a lot of the programs are specific school psychologists, psychiatrists that do provide treatment. Yeah. Um, and yeah, it's it's budget dependent, and there's usually one of them, and the school has 1300 students in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And remember that number where I said 40%. Yeah. 40% of those kids could probably use a conversation right now. And so it's not something that the scale is even or the scope is there. Now, what are we doing in our our development of education? We're working in um mental health and wellness as part of the understanding. Since students are more accepting to it, we're giving tools. Um but it's not it's not enough for folks that need um time. Like, for example, if I send my kids to to a youth group and there's a hundred kids in youth group, there's no way that five youth pastors can deal with a hundred kids in a depth in the depth that they need to, that the kids might need. That's why things like the landing and celebrate recovery are good. That's why the counseling is good, that's why these other options are there. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to find a way to incorporate not just the ability to provide that, but to be able to provide that um by marrying the concept of Christ and technology and mental health into one world.

SPEAKER_05: 2:52:43

Um I wonder if you could write a curriculum that could be educational and helpful at the same time that it could literally be a class at school where kids can come in, learn about mental health, discuss mental health, have group conversations, you know what I mean? It should just be health. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:53:07

It should be PE, because mental health is health. Yeah. You could do that in a PE class in a heartbeat. Well, think about it. We used to be able to sign up for PE or all these uh Sex Education.

SPEAKER_02: 2:53:16

Oh, what do they call them? Electives?

SPEAKER_05: 2:53:18

Electives, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 2:53:19

You could work it into the required curriculum and probably have a unit that talks about basically recognizing these things and knowing when to ask for help, and it would probably take about a week in a normal curriculum. Now it's great if you could go into in-depth um uh discussions of it. For example, my daughter's one of her elector electives is psychology this last year, so she's um had a chance to talk about all the different schools of psychology and how these things work. Um, but it's a like you said, an elective class. You you can do this in about a week, and you have a group of students that that understand it. Yeah. But the problem isn't the understanding, the problem is the long-term how you walk it out. It's the difference between having the sermon at Celib Recovery in church and attending Celib Recovery for a year. Yeah, yeah. So that's that's the place where I think that the that that we can do something. That's a place where I'm I see I see a place where we can integrate the way that the church um can stand in a gap uniquely for people that are hurting um in mental health struggles and use technology to do so, specifically targeted for youth. And if I were to draw a rope around all of my passions, that would be all of them all in one spot. That's great. And so that's that's one thing to to look at. Yeah, do it, God. And the other one is just understanding, creating creating the ability to have an open conversation where we get off of our porches with our fists shaking and we recognize that we're in a slightly different world every little bit. How does artificial intelligence lead people to Christ? How can it? You know, that's that that's probably gonna trigger some people. Yeah. Because some people have believed already. You know, but it's it's just like every other tool in the world. You can't can you can you find ways to help walk a person?

SPEAKER_07: 2:55:04

There are literally a group of pastors in the valley that are talking about how AI is gonna help the church. That they're literally doing it right now. And there's a few of them, ours is one of them.

SPEAKER_02: 2:55:18

And you're gonna continue to see as more technologies are are brought into our world, yeah. Um, there's a thing called Moore's Law. Moore was the guy that was the CEO of IBM back when they started making transistors and and and processors, and it says that they half in size and double in capacity every two years. And there's this nice little arch that shoots up that shows you that happening in real time. Technology is gonna keep following this increasing and and my my passion is to help people feel more comfortable with the technology and more comfortable with themselves, yeah, so that they can start having those real conversations that ultimately lead them to a healthier place, and especially if that especially and importantly that it's it's cornered and founded in Christ. Yeah, it's great. And that and who knows what that looks like in five years. Yeah, you know, but I'm I'm for it. Yeah, and I think that that um I don't want to put parameters around it. I mean, when I start to drill what I've learned in my life is that if I if I put the dream out there for the thing, I'll focus on accomplishing the thing and not the dream. I'm gonna let God steer this one. But this is what this is the neighborhood I want to live in, and this is where I want to keep putting that's what I want to keep putting uh the talent Scott Game in.

SPEAKER_03: 2:56:22

Thanks for sharing, brother. Yeah, yeah. Really good, Dustin. That was one of the better ones we've had. We actually I feel like we got some good. We help some people. We helped me.

SPEAKER_07: 2:56:33

So help me, but keep your hands off of it, Raddy. You're just gonna dirty the wings and break the snowflake.

SPEAKER_05: 2:56:41

We've had people come here and share, and they walk in looking one particular way, and when we're done, like the headphones come off. They look like they're not hell. No, they look different. They look different. Some of them look dishevil like they just went through hell, but some of them you can see a face change. There's a bro, there's a something that changes. Yeah, it's crazy. We had one guy that had this weird glow about him. You know what I mean? Things happen, you know what I mean? Yeah, and it's just I don't know, it's so I don't know. It's interesting to see how God uses this. Yeah, because he does the healing that takes place when we open up and share, the things that we grow from. I mean, and uh you literally get to see someone be transformed right before your eyes. They walk in one way, they leave looking a different, and that's pretty damn cool. Yeah, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02: 2:57:32

And I appreciate the fact that you have me here so I get to experience it firsthand. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_07: 2:57:37

I I just and we get to grow closer together, yeah, yeah, as our brotherhood, man. Yeah, yeah. For us, it's about getting to know our brothers. You know what I mean? Anyone who comes and sits in that chair, it's relationship. Yeah, yeah. That's what it is. We're getting to find out who you are.

SPEAKER_02: 2:57:53

And there's uh there's a thing about being able to talk through who you are, yeah, that is freeing in the moment. Yeah, it reminds you of who you're not.

SPEAKER_07: 2:58:02

Yeah, I think that's why so many people tell me no. It's because they can't actually do that. Yeah, yeah, and it's because they haven't processed and gone through uh healing and recovery.

SPEAKER_02: 2:58:15

It's a practiced skill. It really is, and it's one of those ones that I mean, when you start to understand how, like, for example, we both come from that celbert recovery background, we'll all come from that celbert recovery background. Um, that's the muscle that you're working out. Yeah. Um, somebody told me that the way that they get better at shooting free throws is shooting a thousand of them. Yeah, and that's wrong. Because you can get really good at shooting a terrible free throw by shooting a thousand terrible free throws. A thousand grannies and you'll get that shot. It just won't be any good. What's great about recovery is you get a chance to watch people do it well. Yeah, and then you get a chance to to to emulate that and to do that. And I'm I'm learning to do it well by showing up. I'm learning to do it well by by talking with brothers that do it well. And I think that when when I walk in today and the world is going kind of sideways, I think I shared that the last thing I had to do before I could come to this meeting and get off the clock was write my annual performance evaluation, which is always great, you know, right with right with uh root canals and you know doing your tax audit. Um but it's like I had that to do that, and so I've been I've been grinding away all day at this just kind of tedium thing. And then the weight of of of health issues and the weight of of um a lot of different things that are going on in my world right now is is is grinding on the daily to get a chance to come in and talk through what God has done in my life reminds me that it's not that bad. Bad was over there. This is actually pretty good, this is actually a pretty cool place to be right now. These are catalog upscale problems.

SPEAKER_07: 2:59:50

I have to tell you, you're not allowed to wear that shirt anymore because it's a lie. Wearing a shirt that says, I'm a doctor, but not the kind that helps people. You help people. I appreciate it. You help people.

SPEAKER_02: 3:00:01

I have MD friends that I'm not sure about the same thing, but no, no, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_07: 3:00:06

Yeah, you're it's sometimes this is the biggest help in a person's life, bro. Changing this thing can change all the physical stuff a lot of the times, man. They're stinking right now.

SPEAKER_05: 3:00:20

And God made it very clear that us being a three-part being.

SPEAKER_07: 3:00:26

Bingo, that's the transformation.

SPEAKER_05: 3:00:28

There has to be healing in all three areas. That's right. You can take a person who, because we're we're we're a soul, which is our mind, will, and our emotions, we're spirit that lives in a body, right? Yep. So if you can take a person and you heal hear their heal their soul, but their spirit is still dead, what have you really done?

SPEAKER_07: 3:00:47

Or they're alive and on fire with Jesus and in recovery, but they're fat.

SPEAKER_05: 3:00:51

Or if you take a person who's right with God and unhealthy, but they're unhealthy and they're eating and their heart is still wicked, what have you really done? So God's made it very clear that when we do start these homes, it has to you have to focus on all three areas. All three. Physical, so there has to be some physicality to get their bodies right. There has to be spiritual, which is church and Bible studies, and soul, which is mental health, get them to celebrate coverage, get them to the doctor, get them whatever they need to get them right. And if you can get all three of those areas to come into alignment, that's a transformation. Now you have a person who's been restored, and you can put them back with their families and their their hopefully will thrive in a in a healthy environment. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 3:01:36

One of my favorite things I've heard um a coach of mine say in the past is that the the most important ability you have is availability. Yeah. So you if you're not, if you could be the best of what you're doing. But if you're on the bench in street clothes, no good, right? And so that speaks to capacity. Yeah, that speaks to the actual physical availability to take what what good things are happening in your life that God's put together and being able to put them out and use them and be them. And so that's where your body comes in, that's where your mind comes in. You're building the capacity to use the gifts God's given you to be capable of doing it. When I'm not medicated, I'm not capable of thinking clearly enough to articulate what I need to do for the next day. Which means if God is giving me a gift of being able to articulate ideas and I'm not taking care of the ability to have the capacity to do it, yeah, what good is that gift doing sitting buried in the ground? Amen. You know, or rotting in storage. Amen. The talents, the parable of the talents. That's it. Yeah. And so that's to your point, when those homes start, you've got that built in not just as uh not just as a pillar of who uh of humanity, yeah, but also just as the simple ticket to ride. Yeah. You know, before you can get out there and do these things in your life, basic requirements, you've got to be able to breathe in and breathe out. Yeah, yeah. And it's gotta work well enough to where you can do it again. You know, that's kind of and that's sometimes it's physical, sometimes that's weight, sometimes that's um uh mental health, so which is also physical health. Yeah, um, sometimes that's just can you sleep at night? Yeah. One of my experiences of being a um um substance abuse counselor for um uh I had a uh time to be a substance abuse counselor for in intensive outpatient um for 13 to 18 year olds that were court mandated. Oh wow, and so I spent it's four nights a week, four hours a night, and you you you talk about it. Wow. Um where at Canyon State? No, no, this was I worked for a place called Open Hearts Family Wellness as part of my practicum hours for when I got I have a master's of science in addiction counseling. Okay, and part of earning that was going through services. Yeah. And so when we went through that, um, I didn't hear a lot of stories of people that said, I I use drugs because I love it. Yeah, because it's a great time. Yeah. Most of the stories were I I I I smoke or I drink because I don't want to listen to my parents fight. Yeah. I'm too hungry to sleep if I don't. Yeah. I'm damn it's cold where I'm at right now because we can't afford to turn the heat off. Um I can't stop remembering the thing that happened to me. So it's um That's real stuff there, buddy. To be able to have the capacity, the physical ability to be able to move forward sometimes means I'm warm enough and I have food. Yeah. And then I can start letting some things go that I don't have to use other stuff to to work through. Come on. So I think that I I think the the the the three-pronged approach is super important because it treats a whole person and gives people the basic requirements to try. Yeah. You have to have you, it's one thing to want to. Yeah. You know, I've got it's another thing. I've got a daughter, I'll pick on her for a little bit. Um, she um went to NAU and graduated with a bachelor's in microbiology. She's brilliant. Yeah. And she has a condition called POTS, which does not allow her to stand up or sit down too much without her blood pressure and heart rate jumping up or falling down. Wow. She has to sit in the shower, um, in a shower chair, otherwise she could pass out and we could have problems. She's 24. Wow. Um, she's would love nothing more than to be out on the front uh cusp of microbiology changing the world. And she can't drive her car for fear that she might black out. Yeah. And she's 24. Wow. And so it's it's all of the knowledge, all of the ability, all of the desire, and none of the capacity. Wow. Wow. So it's the capacity that's missing. Yeah. And I think if you protect that, if you start there, then the rest of it just kind of blossoms out of it. You give people the ability and the capacity, starting with the availability to it. Can you do it? Let's get you there. Wow. And then we'll let you do it. And then people will like this call, like this chair, like what you're doing. People will shine. Yeah. They will thrive when they have a chance to be who they are, and God has created them to be when they have the capacity to do it. Wow. So good.

unknown: 3:05:57

Man. That's really good.

SPEAKER_03: 3:05:59

I love you, buddy. Yeah, I love you, Dustin.

SPEAKER_07: 3:06:02

Thanks, bro.

SPEAKER_05: 3:06:03

Let me pray for you.

SPEAKER_03: 3:06:03

Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_05: 3:06:05

Heavenly Father, Lord God, we just thank you, God.

unknown: 3:06:08

Man.

SPEAKER_05: 3:06:09

Oh. You really are just an amazing God, Lord. And we just sit here in awe of you. Lord, I just thank you for the mighty work you've done in Dustin. God, I Lord, I just thank you that the way that He approaches the mental health, Lord, is just I personally have never met someone like that, God, who doesn't see it as a debilitating thing, God, that sees it as an opportunity for you to grow and to work and glorify you in it, God. And so, Lord, I just thank you for just the points in his life. He said they were skipping stone points, Lord, because those points are evidently what led him to fall to his knees and cry out to you, God. And we thank you for that encounter, God. We thank you that you are close enough that when we are broken, God, that you hear us and you call out to us and you you're right there beside us, God. So I thank you for that, Lord God. Lord, I thank you for just his heart to want to help people that are in the met that struggle with mental health, God. They're in this realm of people who may be dealing with uh bipolar or anything else, Father God. Lord, I pray for just opportunities, doors to open, God, where uh he can step in and shine bright and glorify you in it, God. Whether it's to help children uh understand and and and see that their thing is just it's not a it's not a debilitating factor. It's something that can be good if we look at it in a different light, God.

SPEAKER_06: 3:07:38

Thank you, Lord.

SPEAKER_05: 3:07:38

So Lord, I just thank you for those opportunities to arise, God, that he can uh be a beacon of light and a voice for those people, God. And Lord, I know this is not something that he mentioned, God, that he's looking forward to, Lord, but I thank you that you are the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow, God, that you are still a God who heals. So, Lord, I heard him mention uh his daughters who struggle, God. Lord, I just pray right now by the power of your spirit that you just reach out and you touch his daughters. Hallelujah. Lord, I speak healing to their bodies right now in Jesus' name. Lord, I thank you that he said that it's the ability, God. So Lord, I pray that you create an opportunity for the ability for his daughters to shine, to do the things that you've called them to, God.

SPEAKER_07: 3:08:28

Thank you, Lord.

SPEAKER_05: 3:08:29

Glory, God. Do it in a way that they'll know it's you, God. And they will glorify you in it. So Lord, anybody else out there that's struggling, Lord, I pray that they feel seen. Feel that they pray heard. Lord, I pray that you put people around them to help them see, to help them navigate this journey, God. And I thank you for the way that you opened my eyes to see it as well, God. Thank you, Lord. I thank you for what you're doing, Lord. I thank you for saving your son, Dustin, God. Just the way that you just work in him, Lord. To hear his knowledge, his passion for the way he talks about mental health, God. It's just God is such a passion there, Lord, that I've never heard anybody talk about it that way. So I know you have great things for me. Thank you, Lord. So do what you can only do, God. And put him in places where he can shine, where he can just be a bright light for mental health, God. Do it for your glory, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_07: 3:09:34

Hey Dustin, can you do us a favor, bro, and pray for me and dad and pray for Speak Life?

SPEAKER_01: 3:09:38

You got it.

SPEAKER_07: 3:09:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:09:39

Father God, thank you so very much for who you are. And for allowing us to be who we are for you.

unknown: 3:09:49

Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_02: 3:09:51

Lord, I just want to lift Speak Life up right now. Lord, I want uh these these brothers are just they've got a heart and a passion for being um in the gap. Standing in the gap for people that sometimes can't. They want to make sure in their heart of hearts that they're glorifying you in everything they do. But I know I I I just thank you so much for the gift that you've given of a ministry that they can share everyday people's experiences and everyday people's stories of experience, strength, and hopefully, and how you've worked in lives and how you move forward and everything. Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_06: 3:10:29

Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_02: 3:10:29

So that so that anyone listening, people that need to know that that they're not alone in their experiences, but they're also not alone in in their need for hope, and that hope is always there. Thank you, Lord. Lord, I ask that you bless both of them, you keep um them feeling renewed and refreshed. That um that strength comes when the strength is going away. That as as the the legs get tired or or the back gets sore, that that you are there. Okay and that you pick up that love and that it can be physically felt. Thank you. Lord that that as this ministry continues and as it grows, that that you're in front of it, that you're making the path straight and clear and so painfully abundantly obvious that it's hard to miss. Um that ye that in everything um that they do, that you are in the foreground of it. Lord, you're already there. It's just we I pray that you make it so abundantly clear to everyone else that it is you centric in the front of it, that any obstacles that rise up in the way fall away. Thank you. And that there are opportunities for others to be able to find you through this ministry. Thank you, Lord. Um, grow as they start moving into um the approaches to be able to come along, people and all three pillars of their of their of their personhood and then getting them um the ability to be strong and stable and secure so that they can grow and flourish and point light to you. Lord, just take everything you have for them in that aspect and just put it in front of them and show them how it all fits together and give them the courage and the hope and the strength and conviction to continue moving forward and knowing that you bless all of it. Thank you, Lord. That you're that it's all about you. Thank you, Lord. And Lord, just in everything that we all do, please just make us more and more like you. Yeah. It's in your son's name. We pray all of that.

SPEAKER_01: 3:12:24

Amen.

SPEAKER_07: 3:12:25

Amen. Thank you so much, Dustin. It's been an honor, buddy. Hey, everybody. I don't know uh where you're watching or where you're listening from, but if you're on YouTube, hit the bell, subscribe to the channel, follow us, man. You'll get all the future up uh notifications of upcoming episodes. Um maybe you yourself got a really good testimony or you want to come on and share, um, reach out through Facebook, Instagram, Speak LifeAZ, all one word. Uh send me a message, man. I'll get back to you. If God's blessed you and you're able to support the show, um I'm Bud Sprout. You can become a monthly subscriber. Uh, if you could please, wherever you're at, man, go on there and just uh leave a review. Five stars, comment, even one word. Jesus. It helps so much with the algorithms and all the stuff in the background. Until next time, we're gonna continue to speak life, easy. God bless you.

SPEAKER_03: 3:13:14

God bless you guys. Jesus.