Unwasted Pain
Join us on a thought-provoking journey as we delve into the depths of human experience and explore the intricacies of unwasted pain. In our podcast, "Unwasted Pain," we tackle the universal yet often misunderstood topic of pain and provide insights, support, and guidance for those seeking to navigate the challenges it presents.
Unwasted Pain
Finding Hope in the Hardships of Life
Welcome to a new conversation about a beautiful story of healing.
The Conlee’s story is a great example of the truth, God never wastes a wound.
In this podcast, we will talk about the realities of pain in this life but also how God has gently and mercifully met us in our times of need. Undoubtably, you will hear a story of finding Christ in the crisis. This is a story of Unwasted Pain.
Join us in this series as we learn to redefine fatherhood not by our earthly fathers but our Heavenly Father. No matter where you are on your journey with problems and pain in life, you will find solutions and peace are possible.
Welcome to Unwasted Pain with Chris Conley. I'm Karen Conley and this is a brand new podcast with my husband, best friend, pastor, leader, all the things Chris Conley and I'm just honored and thrilled to be able to host this brand new initiative, this brand new podcast. And we can't go very far, chris, without really talking about the name and the title. I know this was a very intentional process to determine what you were going to call this podcast. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the journey you came to to land on this particular title?
Chris Conlee:Absolutely. You know to say Unwasted Pain, I believe grab someone's attention. Because pain is the one common denominator that every single person in life experiences multiple times in life and none of us want to experience pain. But yet in a fallen, broken world, pain is inevitable. And so when you know there's pain and pain grabs your attention. Nothing grabs your attention like pain. No one wants to stay there too long, everyone wants to heal from it, everyone wants to overcome it. But there's this concept of wait a second, it's Unwasted Pain. So how do I allow my pain to actually serve a greater purpose? And in many ways, I think that's what I've learned through my own experience. I think I've learned it through the experience of others and I believe also through this podcast. As we bring in guests, you'll just see how familiar that is in everyone's storyline.
Karin Conlee:I think the phrase that we've used for a long time around here, before the title of Unwasted Pain, is that God never wastes a wound, and my guess is we're going to say that a lot through the journey of this podcast, because it's true.
Karin Conlee:But I think, as you were trying to discern, what is it that I can contribute that's unique, what is it that I can bring to someone on their spiritual journey and even before they start their spiritual journey, what is it that I have uniquely been able to walk through that I might be able to help give someone? So I'm excited because I do think there's something to an offering, a gift that comes from some of the trials and some of the things that you have walked through. I know in a minute we can kind of, for people that aren't as familiar with you or your journey will kind of touch on some of those things. I think it's helpful for people to have context. Nobody really appreciates someone talking about how you should handle crisis in like from your little ivory tower or from your painless life and your white picket fence and I had a little bit of the white picket fence myself and have learned a lot from you through that journey.
Chris Conlee:Welcome to Mary and me. We got you out of your white picket fence, oh, thank you, you said it would not be boring and you were right, I don't know that that's the gift that we don't want that gift to keep on giving, yeah no, let's not pass that along.
Karin Conlee:But before we kind of get into your story, what else, as we kind of set the stage, this is the beginning of a journey that we want to just go along with people, take people along a journey and hopefully be that point of hope, that point of encouragement, that point of, when you're in a wilderness, when you're in a down place, that this might be something that brings hope to you. What are the other things, as we kind of set the stage, before we get to your journey, that you think is really foundational to people saying why should I listen and what would this be able to help me with?
Chris Conlee:Well, a lot of times people are afraid to talk about their pain for many reasons, and a lot of times it's because I feel responsible and there are some pains that are avoidable in life and there are some pains that are unavoidable. Now, the pains that are avoidable, you know, the choices I make are either blessed or have consequences, and so the more wise my choices, the more blessed. The more unwise, the more consequences. And so there are times that, you know, I'm a little bit hesitant to share my pain because I feel responsible for my pain and I know that it was avoidable and it could shine maybe a negative light on me. In this storytelling process of unwaisted pain, we are full of compassion, all right, compassion without compromise. There is no condemnation here. All right, no condemnation in Christ. But then there are those that are pains that are unavoidable and it's just adversity. You know, there's just a set of circumstances that you couldn't control.
Chris Conlee:A crisis came your way and the longer that I live this life, and especially the longer that I pastor and experience what happens in other people's lives, there's a lot of unavoidable pain.
Chris Conlee:But even when it's unavoidable, here's the key how we respond to our pain is the difference maker.
Chris Conlee:And what is tragic is, I see a lot of people, when pain comes, they actually blame God for the pain and they run from God versus running to God.
Chris Conlee:And God is the one that actually created the Garden of Eden and he created this, you know, beautiful place that was without sin, and it was man that actually brought sin into this world, which brought all the adversity, which brought all the crisis, which brought all the pain. And so what we want to do here is we want to learn how to find Christ in the crisis, and when we do that, we'll respond to our pain differently, and when we respond in a way that we can begin to see where Christ is and what does he care about? No parent wants their child to hurt, and anytime we're hurting as a child, we as parents you and I or anytime our children, I should say are hurting, we rush to the scene to do anything that we possibly can to. Now, you know, our kids are now young adults, but even in a young adult category, we rush to the scene to do whatever we can off in the car and drive a long way.
Chris Conlee:That's right to help them to minimize pain, to help them learn from pain, to help them overcome pain so that it is unwaisted pain.
Karin Conlee:I feel like this is something at the beginning that you might want to also address, because, as I'm, you know, as you talk about people maybe hesitating to share about their pain, I also think of you have somebody who maybe feels bad, that they feel responsible for their pain. They made some stupid choices and, well, it's my fault. So, how you know, I just have to live with it. Well then, there's also, I feel like a tendency if maybe you grew up in church or you come from a faith perspective, sometimes it feels like things get a little twisted and it's almost like, well, you must not be a good Christian, so I'm not going to talk about it, because I don't want people to know that I did it or that you know God is good and you know, whatever those all the time and all the time.
Karin Conlee:God is good Like you, just you hear it.
Chris Conlee:But life isn't good all the time. Circumstances aren't good all the time. He is good even when things aren't good. But don't let that negate the legitimacy of how bad pain hurts. And God wants to feel, wants you to feel your feelings. He feels for you, but then he wants to. He is the God that scripture says. He wipes every tear away from our eyes. So we don't want to be so super spiritual that we aren't honest about our pain.
Karin Conlee:And I think that's one of the things that excites me about this is that there are a few people that I have seen model this well. It's managing the tension between having complete faith in God, not blaming God, for when sin happens, when the sin nature of other people causes pain in our life, whatever the thing is, they're not blaming God, but they're also honest. I feel like those two tensions have to exist In order to heal. In order for the pain not to be wasted, you have to acknowledge it and be real and not pretend like it doesn't hurt or you won't heal. At the same time, to keep that, I think you have modeled that really well as long as I have known you since I was 17 years old. So it's been a while now of keeping God God and trusting Him and running to Him, but also being honest and allowing the reality of the pain to not be sugar coated.
Chris Conlee:Well, and I think one of the things, honestly, that's helped me with that is so many people today, in our culture and kind of world view, when a problem occurs, when some type of pain sets in, they just focus on the problem. They're looking in the rear view mirror so much that they never get a view of what's in front of them. And so we've got to find a way to help people take their eyes off the problem, put their eyes on God, who is the one, who's the author of all healing and the author of all hope. And in that, the thing I think is a guiding principle for everything that we'll say in this podcast is that health is not determined by the absence of problems or pain, but it's determined rather by our response to problems, by our response to pain. And so what we've got to learn how to do is, in our response, say okay, god, where are you in the midst of my pain? Let me run to you Now.
Chris Conlee:There's two voices always in the world of pain. There's the voice of the enemy, who's the liar, and he's going to lie to you and he's going to place enormous blame on you and enormous blame on God, and he's never going to shoulder any of the blame, or you're going to say, wait a second, okay, if I need to take responsibility of this and learn, that's fine. We all make mistakes, you know. Did I believe a lie? Okay. Was I deceived? Okay, sure, whatever. But I'm going to believe the one who is the truth, who tells the truth, tells the truth about who I am. I am not my problem, I am not my pain. I am a son of God, you are daughter of God. And then we run to the one or Abba father, who cares more than we care when we're in pain, to get us out of pain.
Karin Conlee:Maybe a couple of last things before we transition. As you talked about Abba, father, kind of two things came to my mind. One is I feel like you know, for the last 20 years, maybe 30 years, the analogy of God as a heavenly father has begun to mean different things, because there are so many broken homes, there's so much more divorce, that the picture of a father isn't always the healthiest, most vibrant one. So for maybe somebody who that's almost a little bit of a trigger you say he's like a father. I hope he's not like my father. What would you say to that person that, just as you make that analogy and as you talk about the intimacy and the love that you feel from our heavenly father, your heavenly father, what would you say to them? To maybe just help them not shut down at the beginning of the conversation?
Chris Conlee:Well, one of the things I would say the reason why a father wound or a parent wound hurts so bad and is so devastating, in many ways is because it was never supposed to occur from a father. When we are hurt by people who are never supposed to hurt us, it actually reveals the divine design that it was supposed to be good, it was supposed to be unconditional, and so the depth of your pain in your heart actually reveals that you know there's something supposed to be so much better. And so I would say, whatever you do, like the divine picture of marriage, don't let human failures of marriage cause you to give up on the divine picture, the divine picture of parenting. Don't let human failures cause you to give up on the divine picture. So learn to redefine fatherhood, not by your earthly father, but by your heavenly father.
Chris Conlee:The reason why I get emotional is I have healed from a father wound, but it creates great emotion in me because there was still pain, even though there's healing. But it also makes me realize how much I want, wanted that relationship to be different as a young boy with his father, and how much I want my relation with my son, my daughter, to be different, and how much, even now, as they're young adults, I want it to be different. So I would just say always elevate fatherhood, motherhood, always elevate the roles that God created and find the divine good, versus allow them to be canceled by human failure.
Karin Conlee:I don't think we said this, but I think you brought me to host because I could keep it together when you were crying.
Karin Conlee:You've been the more emotional one, the one more connected to your emotions over the years but there's there's so much truth in what you just said and I think it's so easy for us to look at the broken pieces and forget what was supposed to be and what is and that still does exist, and so I hope that'll be an encouragement. And you know we we've kind of joked within our own home that you know you have to have a pretty messed up childhood and young adulthood for them to have a documentary made about you before you turn 60 and while you're still alive 60, you're aging me greatly.
Karin Conlee:Well, I mean, I can't say before 50.
Chris Conlee:Well, it maybe started before I was 50,. Maybe was finished at 51 or 52, but don't jump all the way out of 60.
Karin Conlee:Yeah, I'm not trying to remember.
Chris Conlee:It was before you were 50. Yes, it was.
Karin Conlee:But so I do want to let everybody know there is an incredible representation of God's healing through Chris's story and I don't know if you want to give the background in the context at some point, but there's a documentary called Love Works and it is really the journey of healing from Chris's childhood to present day through a father wound and just God's faithfulness, and that will be on Vision Videos YouTube channel starting on Father's Day of 2023, and so we are really excited.
Karin Conlee:It was just such a divine appointment God's story, how it came about, but we're already hearing great, great things about just the Lord using it to give people hope and some tools. And no matter I can literally say, having been, you know, on the front row seat from the time I was 17 I'm now 50 of your relationship with your father in particular, but your family in its entirety I have never seen such a more beautiful picture of God's redemption, and so, no matter where you are and how broken a relationship might be, when we talk about unwaisted pain, it's not from an arms-length distance. It's something that you've experienced, like you said, in those inner circles.
Chris Conlee:I would love and encourage you just to check out that story again at the Vision Videos YouTube channel coming up Father's Day of 2023 and one of the things that was really meaningful about how that story was portrayed is it's obviously about a father wound and then the healing process that occurred not just between me and my father but really throughout my family and holistically my life and what God has done. But the Kendrick brothers, who are incredibly well known in film and movie making, but especially Christian film, have a conference and it's a Christian worldview, you know, conference for filmmaking and they gave it the Honor your Father Award. So where there was an incredible wound, the healing was so significant and so great that they actually gave it a award about. It goes back to, you know, the fifth commandment Honor your Mother and Father and what we pray. That happens for everyone that has some type of wound, but especially a parent wound, a father wound, that we go from healing to honor, not just healing but the ability to honor.
Karin Conlee:So maybe this would be a good time to kind of transition. You know people don't. They want to know a little bit of like. Can you really connect to my pain? Who are you and what it? What has your journey actually look like? We're gonna go, I'm sure, over the lifetime of this podcast we'll take some snippets of those, those painful moments and take a deeper dive. But just this is the first podcast.
Chris Conlee:As we start this out, I think it would be helpful to just give people a little bit of a context of your journey, maybe if we want to just talk, maybe starting with your, your upbringing, teenage years set the stage a little bit of kind of what you're one of the ways that I enjoy setting the stage is I frequently tell people I think that I'm probably the only pastor in the history of the world okay, big statement, right in the history of the world who has officiated his own parents wedding twice not once, but twice. So if that doesn't give you a little bit of insight into, you know, the word dysfunction with a capital D, I'm not quite sure what does, but here's the thing. The reason why the dysfunction was so present is because broken love begets broken love. So my dad was abandoned as a baby. Literally his mom was alcoholic and did not feel fit to raise him and this is back in the 1940s.
Chris Conlee:Literally saw a police car at a diner, placed her baby in the car and left him and he grew up in foster homes and he kept bouncing in and out of foster homes and eventually bounced out at about 13 years of age and just worked and went to school and eventually dropped out of school. So there's a very broken young man. But then my mom her mom dies when she's five and then her dad dies when she's 18, and so a broken man meets a broken woman. They get married and they begin to have broken children, and so brokenness often begets brokenness. In the level, the intensity of that brokenness, it's more caught than it is taught. Of course they tried to be the right kind of parents, but there was a level of brokenness living in their hearts that just overflowed, and in the overflow we were all exposed to it well, and one thing that I would say as you continue in your journey is If people don't acknowledge their pain, then they are going to accidentally repeat it.
Karin Conlee:And so if you're somebody who's been on a journey of pain and just thinks that if you can just push it down and avoid it, that it won't, that you can put it behind you. There really is a process to grieve through and to come out the other side so that you don't have brokenness but getting brokenness. So set the stage. I know that you are the third of three siblings. You had an older brother and sister age gap. Give a little bit of that context and then maybe start with your teenage years.
Chris Conlee:So my sister was nine and a half, basically 10 years older than me. Her name's Lynn. And then my brother was eight years older than me. His name is James Larry Conley but his nickname was Bubba and that's what everyone knew him by. And then I think I was in many ways the unexpected sibling that came along as the baby of the family eight years later.
Chris Conlee:And in that growing up, my sister, my dad, was someone that was a hard worker and he had a great work ethic with someone that was kind of a blue collar underdog, a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, but in a very unusual way you wouldn't expect this, I mean, he was a bread man. He learned the game of golf. That's normally more of a white collar type sport, a little bit more middle class, upper middle class type sport, but he became a great golfer and so he was either working or playing golf. He was rarely home, and with my sister there wasn't a lot of connection with the girl in the family. He and my brother began to connect because he taught my brother how to play golf and play sports and my brother became a great golfer. But my sister and my brother, far earlier than me, would witness a lot of the explosive anger that could come from my dad, and it was mostly fights with my mom, but it was a level of intensity that was threatening, a level of intensity that would scare anyone. And my mom she was not passive by any means. I mean, she learned how to fight by being married to my dad and she became an incredibly good fighter and she fought for her own well-being and fought for us as kids. But I think as the youngest of the family I really didn't know the full extent of all of that until my sister was in high school and, I think, started getting engaged with the wrong crowd and got involved with drugs and eventually just left the house and kind of ran away in 10th grade. And so there was this odd like just disappearance of my sister and not a lot of conversation about it.
Chris Conlee:And my brother was a great golfer and was being recruited to play college golf and all the attention was really being focused on him because my dad was a great golfer and had made a name for himself. But then, tragically, my brother, it's April 20th 1981, and he shoots 64 in a high school golf match and he's excited and he's coming to tell my dad and I. He had gotten a speeding ticket earlier and he went to kind of the town hall the, you know in Carrival, the town square, I should say paid off his ticket, was coming to tell us and was tragically killed in a car train accident on the way. It's been 43 years and it still brings that level of emotion to me because in many ways my brother was, he was a great big brother, but he was actually more of a father to me than a big brother and he kind of stepped in and shielded me and protected me from some of the, you know, dysfunction of my dad, the pain of my dad, those kind of things.
Chris Conlee:And so you've got a sister who's missing, you know, who's having her own struggles, who's running from the pain in many regards, and then you've got a brother who tragically, unexpectedly, has everything in the world going for him in the right direction and on the best day of his life it becomes the last day of his life and that just leaves me and I'm trying to figure all that out. And now, not only did my parents have their previous trauma and brokenness, they now have a new trauma, their grieving like never before. And that's a lot of pain. But I can assure you that when you allow God to be present in the pain, he heals the pain and it's never wasted.
Chris Conlee:And everything I just told you has been used time and time and time again to bring healing to other people. It's been used to call me to the ministry. It set me apart. Now it's also honestly given me a perseverance. There's a strength that lives in me survivors or fighters. Sometimes that fighter part of me I'm not sure what that means, but I'm would express itself in ways that weren't healthy, but through God's refining process, the perseverance, the survivor, the fighter has lived to fight for the right things instead of the wrong things, and I know pain so intimately that I never want anyone else to experience that pain, and so I've dedicated my entire life to trying to give people the healing that God has given me.
Karin Conlee:You referenced that being a part of your call to the ministry. Maybe we can fast forward. I know there's a lot of chapters in between, but I come into the scene somewhere in this next window of time and I watched kind of the wrestling that went on. I know that you had really decided to step into the footsteps of your brother and were pursuing golf and wanted to be a PGA player and pursuing PGA status and so that journey of took you into collegiate golf. Maybe pick up the story there and just maybe touch on a little bit of that. That identity piece because I think that's something everybody can relate to is where is my identity being found?
Chris Conlee:Yeah, I mean, my identity was 100% in my performance as a golfer, and so, you know, a lot of times you'll hear people talk about you know, as Christians, if we're not careful, we'll put on different types of mask, and sometimes it's the mask of performance and we define ourselves through our performance. And that's a rollercoaster, you know, and especially in the game of golf, when, statistically, you lose more than you win, and then there's that mask of pretending, and sometimes, when you quit performing, you start pretending. And so for me, the pressure was layered. So, you know, my dad was trying to live his dreams through me and then my brother's dreams were placed upon me and so in many ways I had to kind of become, you know, a substitute for my brother. And then I put the same pressure upon myself and I wanted to be great and I had enough talent, enough ability that it was possible to be that great. But, honestly, the pressure became so great that I caved under the pressure and it ultimately ruined my ability to perform. But it was in that that God intervened, that as I was struggling as a collegiate golfer, you know God's always present, right, and he's always with you.
Chris Conlee:And I mean the first couple years of college. I was just doing the fun college thing and I wasn't. I was at best a Christmas and Easter type Christian. You know, probably only got one of the two. But one night I walked into FCA, fellowship of Christian athletes. I didn't walk into it intentionally. A friend of mine said, hey, godly, come here a minute and I walk over just to say hello to a couple people and the circle kind of closed behind me and and I was trying to figure out what in the world that I'd gotten myself into and I kept trying to find my you know kind of exit. And by the end of the night they're, you know, nominating and electing officials and I walk out of their vice president of FCA, and it's crazy.
Chris Conlee:And I remember I went down to my dorm room thinking I don't want to do this, and I literally Ran back upstairs to try to find the director to go. You have picked the wrong guy. And Then he was already gone and I came back down and I remember very clearly and I just felt like I Spoke this to myself, but I felt like it was God speaking to me. The last thing I want to be is a hypocrite, and so if I'm gonna do this. I'm really gonna do this, and my first assignment was to lead the group through Henry Blackabees Workbook called experiencing God, knowing and doing the will of God, and it turned my life upside down and it changed everything and, most importantly, it changed my identity.
Karin Conlee:So, chris, you mentioned getting help. You had been called to the ministry, we were married and had children. You were pastoring a lot of things in life. From that point of decision to To lead the FCA went well, but we still needed help. Maybe, as we talk about Unwaisted pain, you know some people might think oh well, if you're doing all those things and you're reading your Bible and praying, I mean surely you're fine. Share a little bit about the help we needed and just some of the turning points that led to a lot of the healing.
Chris Conlee:Yeah, well, because there was fruit in our life, you know, like in that biblical sense, we were abiding and we were bearing fruit, more fruit, much fruit. But To show how strong family of origin issues are, just the, how much it influences your identity and how much is, you know, there's generational sins and then there's generational faithfulness that I was trying everything I possibly could in my relationship with my son not to become my dad and my dad was one of these, you know, sports dads that would try to live his sports career through me and his ambitions through me. And you know, mark was a big young man and he was playing basketball and I love basketball and I would make these agreements with myself that, okay, I won't talk to him about anything about technique, I won't coach him on anything, I'll just talk to him about hustle. And and you know, I would find myself, you know, like, okay, I won't say anything at the game, I won't be the dad that kind of yells anything out, and you know, and and I'll just, you know, kind of wait till after the game and then I'll just ask questions and it'll only be about hustle.
Chris Conlee:But ultimately he wasn't feeling that he was being built up from his dad. He was feeling pressure and things were never good enough and that's broke my heart that no matter how much I was trying to do the right thing, I was still doing the wrong thing, because that was just so hardwired into me. And so I finally just came to a place as you and I would talk and as we were dealing with just other dynamics of. Mark is a brilliant young man. He's grown into, you know, a phenomenal young adult, but he was, you know, a strong-willed young man and, regardless of what someone thinks about, add, hd, hd, whatever it is, you know, maybe I have it right.
Karin Conlee:You know, we're pretty sure. Yeah, we're pretty sure.
Chris Conlee:That there were some of those things at play that we finally said we got to go get help. Now, initially we went because and this is very important Sometimes when people get counseling they'll go once a month or they'll go twice a month and and you share enough to you know, by the time you share your story, you know you share 30, 45 minutes of the hour long appointment and that counsel only has 15 minutes to tell you something. And it's like you rip the band-aid off and you put it back on and then you come for the next appointment, you rip the band-aid off and you put it back on. So we didn't want to do that. We said we want to go get some intensive counseling. So we went to a place called Bernie, texas, all right, just outside of San Antonio, texas.
Karin Conlee:All the other families were taking their children to Disney World and we were on our way to Bernie Family counseling and we were foolish enough to think that.
Chris Conlee:You know the problem was Mark in many regards, or you know the child versus me and you know who we are as parents. But I'll never forget At that time we saw a man named John DeFour and he was in his early 90s, brilliant man, a godly man, and the very first thing he had us do is that we had to get a legal pad out and we had to just write out our life story as quickly as possible and to not try to give it too much thought. And then, individually, I remember we would each go in and he would have us read the story to him and that, as we would read the story to him, he'd make a few comments here along the way. But at the end he said may I see your legal pad? And he took the legal pad and he ripped all the pages out and he crumbled them up and he threw them in the trash can and he said that's part of your story, but it's not the full story. It's the unhealed story, but we're about to create the healed story and I learned one of the most important truths from him ever that has played a role in my healing Is that we've got to understand again we've alluded to this that the enemy's a liar. He's the best liar in the world. What he loves to do is tell lies about God and tell lies about you. Oftentimes, his most effective lies and his most dangerous lies are the ones closest to the truth. All right, if it was just this extreme, outrageous lie, we'd go that's a lie and we wouldn't have anything to do with it. And so he taught me how to recognize the lies of the enemy.
Chris Conlee:And there was this one particular occasion he said to me. He said, chris, he said I want you to tell me all the reasons why you're successful. And he's just, I was silent, I couldn't give him one reason why I was successful and I wasn't. It wasn't a mind game, I wasn't withholding. Like he said tell me why you're successful, tell me all the reasons why you're successful. You know, you know, tell me what you're most proud of. And literally I couldn't tell him anything. And the reason why was because, according to my dad and according to the lie that I believed, I was good, but I was not good enough. So, no matter how successful I was, it wasn't successful enough and I had believed that lie. And the reason why I was silent and couldn't tell him anything is because I was believing a lie, that I was actually good, but I wasn't good enough, and so he taught me to recognize the lie. But then he said, okay, if someone's gonna lie to you, are you gonna treat him nicely? It's like no, like I mean, the enemy is a jerk, all right. And so you don't say politely, you know, would you stop lying to me, you renounce the lie.
Chris Conlee:And so and he was a guy with a great sense of humor and this big Texan kind of remind me like John Wayne kind of thing, and he would just say you got to renounce the lie, take authority over the lie and whatever that lie is, do not allow it to penetrate into your mind and your soul and your heart. And he would say things like this, like it doesn't matter what is said to you. It's not. Let me say this way, let me reverse that it's not what is said to you that matters, but rather it's what you say to yourself about what is said to you that matters. So he would say your dad, in spoken ways and unspoken ways, said this lie to you, but now you've said it to yourself a thousand times over. So it's not what is said to you that matters, but rather it's what you say to yourself about what is said to you that matters. So you got to recognize the lie, you got to renounce the lie and so in that way, like, let's take some authority over it and say I am not going to listen that lie any longer, I'm not going to accept that lie any longer, I renounce that lie and I silence you and I bind you, all right. And then, third, you have to replace the lie with truth, and so that gets into the identity piece.
Chris Conlee:I had to begin to see what God said was true about me and then what, honestly, even my body and the fruit that I have born says is true about me. And then, when I began to do that, it changed who I was as a dad. And when it changed who I was as a dad, it changed my relationship with my son and I began to see even his strengths, his weaknesses as strengths. Because see, one of the things that we did is, you know, when he was just a young boy, we had him take the strength finders test.
Chris Conlee:I remember we read it to him, you know, and he would just give the answers, and his first one was woo, went others over. And then there was one that, like he was competitor, and then he was a competition or competitor, slash competition, command achiever in significance. Well, those are some powerful strengths, but a lot for an eight year old to handle right and incredibly difficult for a teacher to handle in the classroom. But instead of seeing those as weaknesses, we saw those as strengths. We put them up, you know, kind of on a tack board above his bed and we would pray him into his life at night and we would begin to agree with God about who he is. And in doing that, once I knew who God was, then I was able to see accurately who I am. Once I had peace with who I was, then I was able to be the type of father that Mark needed.
Karin Conlee:So fast forward to maybe the last chapter in how that actually ended up bringing healing in your father, because I know from having been a part of that journey that at some point you did come to him and you just said, hey, god's done some great work of healing in me and I want to be able to have help other people experience that same healing.
Karin Conlee:But I really need to be authentic. I want to be able to share a few examples from my childhood, so maybe pick up the story from there in terms of just I want people, as they leave this first podcast, to know that wherever they are, wherever maybe they feel like right now, there is no good that has come from their pain and they don't see through the other side. Sometimes hearing God's resolution and somebody coming to the other side is the hope that they need that they will get there too. So maybe share that last chapter about just how your dad and your relationship actually changed from that point forward, because your dad never got help. Your dad never. There was nothing. Your dad didn't go to counseling, but God still did a great work.
Chris Conlee:Yeah, I remember after one of the days of counseling, you asked me how to go and I said I don't know, but I've said goodbye to everyone I've ever known and loved, you know, because we'd have the empty chair technique and I was supposed to, you know, say goodbye to that person, or I'm supposed to write something and say goodbye to that person. And so by the end of the whole week I remember talk to John, our counselor, about I need to have a conversation with my dad, and he agreed. He said but how you have the conversation is the most important part, and there's this principle that we teach approach Trump's content. And so he said go have the conversation. But this is not a conversation where you go in and tell your dad all the things he did wrong and how hurt you are by all the things he did wrong. That's not going to get you anywhere. He said so I want you to go in and I want you to understand you may never have the father son relationship that you hoped to have as a young boy, but you can have a better relationship than you've ever had before. And so if you'll go into this conversation and say dad, listen, I know you had a lot of hardship. I know you and I have had a lot of hardship and I don't want to necessarily dive into all of that. But what I do want to do is I want to have a conversation, to have as much healing as possible so we can have the best relationship possible.
Chris Conlee:And I started into that with my dad. But because he was so, lived in embarrassment, lived in shame, lived in regret, as I entered in that conversation, his body language just shut down, his shoulders just begin to shut down, his head began to drop and he would just say things I know, son, I hate that, I did that, I wish I didn't do that. And everything was just honestly, kind of going the wrong direction. It just felt like he was just going to give a defeated apology. And some people might think, well, that's good. Well, honestly, the goal wasn't a defeated apology, the goal was a healed relationship, the goal was some forgiveness and healing and restoration. And so John DeFore, the counselor, said he kind of gave me a heads up. He said, if something like that happens he said asking, approach it a different way.
Chris Conlee:And so, as this was happening and my dad was shutting down, I said, dad, let me take this from a different perspective. I said there are certain, maybe, limitations to our relationship and we can still have the best one we have, but maybe there's certain parts of the story we can't rewrite. But I want to give you the opportunity to write a new story with your grandchildren. And I said so can we talk about some of this so that you have the opportunity to have a completely new relationship that's not defined by your past, with our kids? And everything about his body language stood up and everything about his countenance changed and he smiled and for the first time in that conversation he looked me in the eyes and he said I'd love nothing more.
Chris Conlee:And so healing began to take place, because he had hope again.
Chris Conlee:He knew that there were certain things in a fatherhood way that they could be forgiven, but they're not forgotten. And sometimes people say forgive and forget and I would say no, please don't say that. Forgiveness changes the way you remember, and you either remember from a place of hurt or from a place of healing. And because of that conversation I was able to forgive and I was able to remember, and to this day I'm able to remember from a place of healing, but because he had the hope that he didn't have to live with his past and have kind of a scorekeeper but he could become a grandfather that was known.
Chris Conlee:By this point forward, everything began to change and the more I told him I said, the more you'll love my son and daughter. You'll love me when you love them, you love me when you have a good relationship with them, you have a good relationship with me. And ultimately, about maybe a year and a half after that, through that process, my dad trusted Christ and my son had the opportunity to baptize my dad on Father's Day. That's full circle healing.
Karin Conlee:Absolutely, and I have to count the years, but as this documentary goes live on Vision Video on Father's Day, it is a sweet story, but it's more than a sweet story. It really is a picture that it's never too late. It's never too late as the person even if that person maybe who hurts you, has passed. There is still healing available, and so we're just prayerful and hopeful that this conversation is the first of many that you'll join us for and the first of many that you'll just see God's hand on it in some way. That not necessarily something that either you or I say, but something that the Lord says to you through the stories that are shared, through the testimonies of what God's done, not only in your life, in places of pain, but in different guests that we bring on, and so we're just grateful. Thank you for joining us for this first episode of Unwasted Pain with Chris Conley and you. Go to YouTube. Find Vision Videos YouTube channel on Father's Day 2023. Check out the Love Works documentary and be encouraged, and we'll see you next time.