This is our story! It was 22 years ago that Sandi and I attended a Steven Curtis Chapman concert that changed the trajectory of our lives!
What a journey God asked us to travel on!
Turns out that what I "thought" was happening was really different from the plan God had for us to happen.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Speaker 1:
And one day Sandy comes to me and she says I feel that we are called to adopt, and I said I don't get the we part because I'm not hearing that message. I was young, in my legal career, four children and a dog, with a lot of things going on. I said no way, we're too busy, not equipped. No, and Sandy said okay, and God said I'll be patient. Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass, and welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. This is gonna be a very special edition. I don't have a guest to interview. Sandy and I have been married 43 years. We have nine children, four of whom were adopted from China. I've often told bits and pieces of the story at our conferences, but recently I was asked by our church to give a short talk about lessons that we learned from that journey. As I was going through the journey, I thought the call was all about caring for children. Turned out it was all about what these children could teach Sandy and I about living. So there's three big lessons that I think are universally applicable. The talk runs about 10 minutes and I hope you get something out of it. So the prompt we were given was think back on your life to a time where you now see that God was working in your life, but maybe at the time it was going on, you couldn't figure out what was going, what was happening, and the best way I can think to describe this phenomenon, which happens to everyone, is God's plan for us is art, and God is the great artist. It doesn't matter how great or famous the artist is. When we look at art, like, how we interpret that art depends so much on our mood and on the lighting and our experience, and we can look at art by a famous artist and go I get it. That's really clear. I understand exactly what the artist was doing and you can look at it and go what was that? I don't get this right. My name is Ben Glass and for my wife, sandy, and I have raised our nine children in this church. In fact, we did some math recently and Sandy and I have spent more than half of our lives out abiding presence. But the cool thing about nine kids they don't all come at once and there was a time we had four children and a dog, and one day Sandy comes to me and she says I feel that we are called to adopt and I said I don't get the we part, because I'm not hearing that message. I was young, in my legal career, four children and a dog, with a lot of things going on. I said no way, we're too busy, not equipped, no. And Sandy said OK. And God said I'll be patient, I'll wait.
Speaker 1:
And it was about eight years between the time our number four was born and our number five was born, and in that time I had quit my law firm job to start my own practice. We had moved into a larger house because we had more kiddos under roof, and it was shortly after our number five was born, matt Sandy comes to me and she says I feel it again. We're being called to adopt. And I said you don't get it. We were busy a long time ago, it's busier now. There's no room. At the end we're not equipped. The answer is no. Sandy said OK. God said I'm going to send you to a concert and through a real confluence of you could look at this and go.
Speaker 1:
A real confluence of coincidences exactly 22 years ago, this Friday, march 8, 2002, we end up at a Stephen Curry's Chapman concert held just down the road In Woodbridge. Now, mind you, at that time Sandy and I knew nothing about the Christian music genre. We did not follow any artists. We thought it was a little bit weird that you would be singing praise and worship songs in a place that wasn't a church and Sandy says we have nothing else to do. How long could this be? 45 minutes. It was a three hour concert and that was Friday night. On Sunday morning I come to church and pastor Bailey we have a hall named after him pastor Bailey is greeting us. His pastor Meredith does every Sunday and I said to him I said, pastor, I don't know if you've ever actually felt and experienced a true God moment. I think I just had one and it just never. I don't know where this is going to go, where it was.
Speaker 1:
18 months later we were in Beijing, china, adopting our first Chinese child, kevin, who was adopted at 18 months. Several years later got the call again. This time I'm not resisting at all. We're back in China, our second trip to adopt Emma, who's here? Emma was six and a half years old and a couple of years later it happened again. Again, I'm not resisting, and this time there were two children who were drawn to us Leah and David. Leah was 11. David was 12 at the time, and now we really feel that, but there's no resistance at all. Our lives have been changed Now.
Speaker 1:
Mind you, at that time in China there was a rule you could not adopt more than one child at a time. The artist tells us just ask and let's see what happens. And China said yes, and so over those next 20 years or so, bringing us through to today, we thought that the plan was and the ask was for Sandy and I to care for God's children. I thought God was using us to care for these children. What we've caught in those 20 years a lot of light and a lot of happiness and many challenges. Frankly, what Sandy and I both believe now is that, as we have stepped back because, see, the challenge is when we are living in the muck of life and dealing with humanity and we're standing. The problem is we're standing so close to the art that we can't see the big picture and it takes drawing back from the art, usually over a period of time, to see okay, now I get it Over those 20 years what we see now very clearly. A couple of things, but one is God was using these children to change us.
Speaker 1:
Sandy and I fundamentally changed our DNA, how we deal with the world through our children. Everything we thought we knew about parenting we had to relearn. We made friends all over the country, we talked to experts and went to conferences all over the country to learn how to communicate better. We learned how to communicate between ourselves. We learned how to communicate with the world. And now, as I step back even further, sandy and I both believe that the plan was for us to be able to tell as many people as we possibly can about the learnings from that journey.
Speaker 1:
And there's three big learnings that again fundamentally change our lives. Number one yes, there is evil and malice in the world. For sure, we don't deal with evil and malice here in Northern Virginia. We don't encounter it by and large. We encounter people who irritate us, who disappoint us, who make us angry. One of the things that we've learned, the big lesson, is most of these behaviors, when someone says or does something that offends you or hurts you and this is we've been talking about Lent and forgiveness all Lent is that these actions are driven by one of two very powerful emotions they're driven by fear and they're driven by shame, and we could do a couple of days on those two topics alone, or the people who make us angry or upset or disappointed, they're making simple human mistakes. So the person who's serving you behind the counter at the local coffee shop, who's maybe going too slow or doesn't get your drink right, or whatever he or she, they didn't decide, they didn't wake up that morning and go 9.30, this guy's coming in. I'm going to screw up his day. They make a mistake and knowing that and now viewing what happens to us through that framework leads to this second point, which is this we don't have a lot of control over things that happen to us in our lives.
Speaker 1:
You look in the evening news they only talk about three things bad weather, bad politics and bad wars. We have zero control over any of that. God has given us absolute dominion, power, control. You guys note this because this is really important Absolute dominion, power, control over how we respond to the stimulus. And we believe, and I certainly believe, that most everything we know about Christian living and living as a child of God is embodied in that time space between the time something happens to you which is adverse somebody says or does something and the time that we respond to that. Living as a child of God is about that space, and it's as simple and as complex as that. And that doesn't mean that it's easy. It's not easy at all, but we have total power over that.
Speaker 1:
The other thing is when? So who are the people that offend you, make you angry, upset you most? Right, it's the people that you know. It's your loved ones. Right, it's the people that you work with, the people in your neighborhood, usually not anonymous people. Those people who offend you. You are usually going to need to have a healing conversation with them, and that healing conversation we learn through our children has to take place when neither brain is on fire, which lays to rest that old brown-eyed that never go to bed angry with each other. That's wrong. You can go to bed angry with each other because healing conversations take energy and the new day gives both brains a time to calm down, not be on fire, so that you can have that productive healing conversation.
Speaker 1:
Now let me ask you this, because this is I didn't realize this until I went back and looked on the internet to find Stephen Curry Statenman's tour schedule, but it was March 8, 2002. This Friday is March 8, 2004. We're seeing him Friday night. We have backstage passes, tickets to go see him, and that's either the biggest coincidence in the world or that's art. Last point, the most exciting thing and I think this happens to everybody is I think there's more to be seen. There's more drawing back from the art to be seen, and that's both scary.