The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Journey to Freedom serves as an exclusive extension of the Living Boldly with Purpose podcast series—a platform that inspires powerful transformation and growth. Journey freedom is a podcast hosted by Brian E. Arnold. The Journey to Freedom is an our best life blueprint exclusively designed for black men where we create a foundational freedom plan. There are five pillars: Identity, Trust, Finances, Health and Faith.
The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Finding Purpose Beyond Performance: A Conversation with Alan C. Paul
Get ready for an engaging episode where we dive deep into the journey of fatherhood with Alan C. Paul, a musician, podcaster, and devoted family man. This episode explores what it truly means to be a dad in today’s society, as Alan shares his personal struggles and triumphs. He reflects on the importance of fighting for your children, the various identities we claim as fathers, and how our relationships shape our understanding of success and fulfillment.
Discover how Alan transitioned from a rising musician to a dedicated father, navigating the complexities of parenthood. He discusses the significance of modeling love and respect in a marriage, and how these values are crucial for children witnessing these dynamics firsthand. As he recounts his journey through the joys and heartbreaks of parenting, you’ll find inspiration in his insights on perseverance and commitment.
Join us for this heartfelt conversation that resonates with anyone seeking to understand the value of fatherhood beyond the surface. Don’t miss out on this enriching discussion! Subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts with us!
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I won that competition. I got to play with the Tampa Bay Symphony at age 18. That's when I realized the value of pushing forward with what I wanted in my life. Not just what my parents did, not just what my grandmama did. I wanted something for myself.
Speaker 2:Okay, welcome to another edition of the Journey to Freedom podcast, and I am Dr B, I am your host and I'm loving being a host, and as I continue to develop me and my skills and the gift just seemed to get better and better. Not that the ones who started out were not really good, I just think I wasn't better and I didn't have the ability to ask some of the questions that pulled out some of the best in people, and so I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I got Alan C Paul here today. We are going to have to talk. He told me in the sorry about that I got a little bit of a cold. He told me in our green room before that he is an empty nester. And for those of you who said, well, I don't know that term really well or I'm not familiar, it means your kids get out. That's what it means. And it means that they go try to find something new to do, and I've tried to be, I've been trying to be an empty nester a few times and they come back and I sent them back out again. They come back. A different one comes back right, and so we are.
Speaker 2:Actually I can say at this Point we are empty nesters. There's nobody. For the last year now, you know, it doesn't seem like anybody's coming back. However, I do have a grandchild that shows up every day, monday through Friday. She's three now, so we got about another year of her when she gets preschool and then, man, we will truly be like what are we going to do every day, all day, if we're not taking care of people? But that's just the fun part of life, right? Because we have kids, because we get to enjoy them.
Speaker 2:We don't have kids because they come out the womb and they know what to do and they don't need us, right? The younger they are, the more that they need us. And then they act like they don't need us and they become teenagers and they tell you every day how much they don't need you. And then they get to be adults and then they need you again. So it is a fun cycle, one that many of us and we talk about a lot on this show. You know what we get to do as we're parents and what do we get to do, and the joy of being a dad and a father, and I can't wait to talk to you about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Journey to Freedom again, we are just doing episodes. We are interviewing black men and finding out what is it that makes the folks that we have on successful. And then that term successful can be interpreted so many different ways. Right, it could be in happiness. You know, sometimes we think of success as the monetary amount of money that we have in our accounts determine how successful somebody is. But I know a lot of wealthy people that aren't very happy and they would tell you well, yeah, I'm successful in my business, but I don't know if I'm successful in life because, maybe I have a terrible relationship.
Speaker 2:I've had five or six different spouses over time. I don't know if that's successful, or my kids hate me and they won't talk to me.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if that's successful either, and so we are finding people who are doing the things that they need to do in order to become what God put them on this earth to be.
Speaker 2:And if you're willing to serve, you're willing to serve others, you're going to do well at being successful. And so, al, thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for taking your time to be here as we're interviewing. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you and I'm going to have you start out with your story, and you know, sometimes you'll come to these podcasts and people just give you their bio, right, this is what I do, but our story gets to tell about who the Christian is and who they are and the character of who they are. I just got back from Alabama and we were doing and we're in Black History Month right now, right, so we're thinking about, you know, dr Martin Luther King and Black History Month right now, right?
Speaker 1:So we're thinking about.
Speaker 2:You know, dr Martin Luther King and I was at the 16th Baptist Church and he always kept talking about the content of the character, more than you know. As being said, that's what he couldn't wait for seeing the character. So thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for again being on the podcast first.
Speaker 1:Well, dr B, I got to tell you this is an honor. It absolutely is a pleasure to share with other people who, again, like you just said, who care about what the story is, not just what we do, but who we are. And if I have to tell people who I am, I'm definitely going to do more than just four. What was that guy? There's only four words. If it's on my tombstone then I'm going to feel comfortable with them remembering only four words, and those four words are this husband, father, creative, forgiven, because if you know those four things about me, then you pretty much got the entire story. Now here's what's in between the dash. I'm not trying to get morbid, but you know whether my last dash or whether my last year is. Here's what's between the dash. Uh, the husband, part husband of one amazing woman, leah paul, who somehow couldn't send it to marrying me 28 years ago. Don't know what got into her, but I'm glad she lost her mind and decided to get connected with me. So leah and I have been married 28 years, father of three kids, um, all of them amazing. Two of them married now. So now that went from three to five Marcus, christopher and Naomi Creative. That's basically my entire life.
Speaker 1:I started piano back at the age of three, according to my mother. I don't remember it, but she says I started playing piano at the age of three. She was a music teacher over in University of Pennsylvania. Well, my dad was at University of Pennsylvania going to dental school. My mom was a music teacher and that's where they had me. So I was born actually in Philadelphia, pennsylvania, really outside in the suburbs, and my mom says I started playing piano over there just trying to reach the keys when she was playing and teaching music, and ever since then I've been a creative.
Speaker 1:I've been a musician. I've been playing in church my whole life. I've been doing all the things right, but that's the creative side. I'll get into that. And then the forgive and the course means that I've made a lot of mistakes and I realize the only reason that I am still here is by the grace of God and that he gave me chance after chance after chance after chance, forget second chances. I've blown all those. So I'm on whatever chance it is that God has got me on. He's still forgiving me, he's still giving me a grace and a space to share what I share. So now, okay, with all that said, I have to start the story honestly with where the story kind of takes the turn. So I'm going to give you kind of like the preview right.
Speaker 2:There was a moment in my life where I handed my then-Bout.
Speaker 1:Ball senior pastor, my resignation letter as he was handing me my promotion. So, yeah, so now I have to explain how I got there, right? How in the world do I get to a place where I'm basically telling somebody yeah, I know you're about to promote me, but let me just tell you that that's my last day here, right? So I mentioned at the beginning that I started as a musician, right, piano. So that took us from Philadelphia, age of four. I didn't really remember anything with that.
Speaker 1:Get down to Pensacola, florida, where I grew up. My parents are all in the South. You mentioned before in the open that you were in Alabama. My mom grew up Georgia, columbus, georgia. My dad's Dufuniat Springs, ponce de Leon, we're talking about the Panhandle, we're talking about one stoplight, one school, maybe one, you know, policeman, right. So that's my area of growing up is Northwest Florida. I call it East Alabama. Really, it's just, it's the South, south, right. So I grew up there. Of course, it's the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, so it's not you know the segregation that my parents grew up with, but it's still, it's the south right. I'm just as comfortable with black power fits as I am with confederate flags, just because that's what I saw. I'm comfortable with. I just that those, those are the rednecks over there. They leave us alone. We don't, we talk. My dad treats them in his dental practice. We're good right. So I didn't have any of those effects of the racism and all that kind of stuff that my parents had. But I knew about it. So I was growing up in this kind of cocoon of the new south right and what.
Speaker 1:The reason I mentioned that is because my parents and my grandparents all have a very deep rooted sense of who they are. You mentioned the story. My grandmother was a fifth-year sore of the akas right Alpha Kappa, alpha Kappa and was one of the first black Tuskegee not Tuskegee the Muskegee County. She was one of the first social workers to be able to manager, to be the manager over that and put me through school with her retirement. And when she passed away my college education, my mom, my sister, my brother, like about five people, went to school on her retirement and her savings.
Speaker 1:So this is what I was brought up in. I was brought up in you go, work hard, you build something based on who you are right. You always do it independently. You don't do it because someone else told you to do it. You do it because that's what we do. So that's the kind of work ethic that my father raised me in. My father still has his dental practice up in Pensacola, florida, still working at 70, 80 years old. He won't retire. This is the environment that I'm coming up as a musician. Okay, so my mom is the music side and then I got the work ethic side right from my dad.
Speaker 1:All that to say, I got all the way through high school and I realized, man, it's fun to play piano, it's fun to do all this classical stuff, but these people are good around me, the ones that are actually going to school for this. I started getting into jazz around 14, 15. I was just playing my classical and playing in church, but right around that time I was like you know, I really want to win. I don't want to be just a guy that you know, the guy that has a color like me, around the other ones and not being able to like win these competitions. Problem is the people that win these competitions were all pre-med and music. They were all brilliant, they were geniuses and I'm like, I'm not going to be valedictorian, so I might as well win this competition. So at the age of 17, I finally just got serious about it. I got this Gershwin concerto Gershwin, you guys might know, george Gershwin was the guy that kind of combined classical and jazz. So this is where my life started to take a turn in terms of my music and I won that competition. I got to play with the Tampa Bay Symphony at age 18 and play the entire Gershwin piano concerto.
Speaker 1:That's when I realized the value of pushing forward with what I wanted in my life, not just what my parents did, not just what my grandmama did. I wanted something myself and that's where I pushed into it. That for forwards me into the university of miami where I got my degree in jazz, performance and music education, because I realized, yeah, performance is kind of a hard thing to make a living doing, right, yeah, so all that kind of like put into my college years. I enjoy jazz, I enjoyed playing all this stuff, but I was still trying to figure out how am I gonna make a living? Well, at the other time I was also still a Christian and learning how to play this church music thing, but I did not grow up with gospel. You know how some of these people grew up on like the organ, the hammer b3. I didn't grow up with that man. Pensacola, florida. I was at Jehovah Lutheran Church.
Speaker 2:So we're talking, yeah, I told you I started that man pentacle florida I was at jehovah lutheran church.
Speaker 1:So we're talking, um, yeah, I told you I started classical, right? Yeah, exactly exactly. You got to be able to go in both directions, man, I got to be musically you know, musically uh, adapted all these areas. So that was my experience. So I had not played in like a black baptist church type situation. Okay, so get me down in miami, florida, and this pastor asked me what's your favorite hymns? And he wanted to know about the james cleveland. He wanted to hear the mahalia jackson. He went here and I was like, um, I don't know what I said, but it was not a hymn he had heard, so, so, so my my church ministry life really started when I got out of school in Miami, right, when I said, okay, I need to be in a place where I start to learn this whole gospel kind of world. That was my first church. That's the church I stayed in for 15 years. Okay, so I'm teaching. Now I'm Miami, I'm teaching Get married. I'm teaching. Now I'm Miami, I'm teaching Get married. Now, the whole marriage situation, as you can probably figure out, if you see my kids are basically look like me and they are seem like they're super young and I look super young. Yeah, I started everything the wrong way, man. I did the exact opposite of what the church teaches when it comes to having kids and starting your family. But again, what I said grace, right, chance after chance after chance. So now I'm married, I got my kids, I'm working in this church and I'm working in this school, I'm teaching, I'm doing all the things.
Speaker 1:The problem is number one. My son is over there with me now. Marcus is about six, seven, eight grade I'm sorry, six, seven, eight years old and he's having trouble in school. He's acting up, he's smart as a whip, but the teacher keeps saying he won't shut up and she keeps coming to me in the classroom saying you need to come get him. I'm like I'm teaching my own class, I can't come help you. So eventually I said you know what? Maybe God is calling me out of the classroom, maybe God is calling me to lower my class size. So what happened, dr B, is that I became a homeschool dad for about four or five years, came home and was not the sole breadwinner. I was the main primary homeschool teacher for my kids from pretty much all the way through high school. Wow.
Speaker 2:So you had to learn some stuff, yeah yeah. It wasn't the year in high school. Home school is way different than I got to teach you three plus yes yes, yes, that's a whole other story.
Speaker 1:I'll get to that. I'm just trying to set up how I got to this situation. But yeah, so now ministry is like my main gig. That's what I'm saying. I left the school system because I just felt like, ok, you know all this stuff, I really just want to focus on my kids. So I left the school system by state of ministry, and so the ministry is where I now. This must be where God wants me. You know, I'm doing all the choirs, I'm doing all the stuff. Those who are not familiar with the church yeah, the minister of music is the minister of everything Right, minister of parking, minister of of sound, minister of ushers, minister whatever the pastor says, armor bearer, all those things. I was doing all the things and about a year before this whole transition happened, god kind of like just spoke, and I don't say god spoke, okay. I usually don't try to do that, because we people be blaming god on all kinds of things.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:But I, up to this point, as clear as I've ever heard him. Let's put it that way. He said you need to start getting ready to go, and I said no, and he's like okay, well, fine, but it's going to get real difficult for you while you fight me. So, sure enough, more issues in church, and y'all know about church drama, yep, all of it happened Pastor's wife, this pastor's wife, that he didn't play this, he didn't show up there, fight in the parking lot, All of that. So finally, he's like. I tried to tell you.
Speaker 1:I said no, I don't feel like I'm supposed to do this. So he gave me a date June 30th Maybe that'll help. So on June, the week before June 30th, I said okay, this is it. So that is the date that I said to my then executive pastor hey, I'm sorry, I got to go, I got to be obedient, I don't know. I have no job. I've already left the school system, yeah.
Speaker 2:My kids.
Speaker 1:Right. But here's where people ask okay, well, why would you do that parachute kind of jump, not really know where you land? I wasn't confident. I was convicted. There's a difference. Ok, convicted, don't matter whether you're guilty or whatever. You convicted Period Like it's a sentence. I was convicted even though I wasn't confident. So I just knew this had to happen. My friend, three days after I handed that resignation in, I got a call from my next church which said hey, we're looking for somebody. Remember I had no job, looking for somebody just to do part-time. But hey, can you, can you come in?
Speaker 1:I was like well yeah, y'all are multicultural church. I've been raised in the south where I've been used to every kind of cultural thing, so I I can switch, I I can switch code, I can do all that I can do. I can do the the hill song and the and the rock and the pop and all that I can do. All of that, let me okay. So I went in and did that. That's the church that I currently play at now. But here's the big thing Now. I got part-time job but I got full-time bills. Yes, you do. What am I going to do for the rest of my income? Oh well, you know, I did get a jazz degree. I did used to play this music before I got churchy, churchy, churchy. Let me figure out if I can still go. So I'm in there playing in a blues club in Miami South Miami for $50 and some fish dip, trying to figure out how to get back into the music industry that I had left for the teaching and for the ministry. That's where I'm at now, 15 years later full time musician, podcaster, playing secular music. I haven't gone to hell yet. Jesus has not struck me down for playing some Luther Vandross songs, right? So that is where I'm at now.
Speaker 1:God really used that moment to shift and change all these things about me. I was still about faith. I'm still about family, because that's what guided me through those first crazy 15 years was faith comes first. I ain't leaving that. My family comes first. So if my job gets in front of that, nope, sorry, we leave and we're going to go homeschool. We're going to do whatever we got to do. We will change our environment to fit what will help my family and my faith. The environment has to shift right.
Speaker 1:So three times in my life I've shifted the environment because the faith and the family came first, but the career all eventually filled in the gaps. So as long as I kept on doing crazy stuff like leaving my jobs right and trying out new things and going back to what I was built to do, which is still teach, play, perform, write, create it all worked out. But I'm telling you I did not have the end of the story at the beginning. All the walk I just told you about was a bare knuckle. Lord, I have no idea what I'm doing here, but I'm going to trust you. So I guess that's my story.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I love it because you're following. Not only are you following your passions, you're following the things that you love, You're following your God, who says this is where I want you to be on purpose. This is what I have for you. I'm going to use you in this way.
Speaker 1:And sometimes we don't know.
Speaker 2:We really don't know, like you know, when I think of Journey to Freedom and this podcast that I'm doing. You know I went to an event. It was. A guy named David Horsager has his bent on trust. And he said this is how you lead with trust. And you know there's a lot of research and says the trust is the number one thing that we don't have. That if we could lead with trust your rest of your life will be good, because you don't work with somebody you don't trust.
Speaker 2:And I'm here at the seminar and it's some really good information. I mean, he's breaking it down, I mean like into the microcosms of what trust means. You know the word tea and half a tea and all that. And I'm sitting in the room and there are 400 people in the room and I'm looking around because one of our themes that we have on this that ends up being on the shows. We try to find people that look like us, do the same thing we're doing, so that we know that we can do it at least close to what we're doing. Uh, I said, oh, that's not me, I don't need to see anybody. And yet I'm in this room counting, right, there's one, there's two, there's three, there's four, like through to myself that, yeah, I'm just like I'd like the rest of us. So there's 30, there's 30 black men in the room that I know that I can see.
Speaker 2:I'm going out of 400 and as black men in the room that I know that I can see I'm going out of 400. And as black men, do we trust? We don't trust ourselves, we don't trust our wives, we don't trust the family, we don't trust the white folks, we don't trust anybody, because we have a lot of us, have just not figured out how to just trust. You know, we I hear this a lot when people talk and they'll say you know.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to trust you till you prove to me that I can trust you. And then the other side of it says I'll trust you a little bit, but I'm going to trust you with a lot of. I can tell you stuff, but I'll just trust you. You know, you can come over. So I get back home and I say God, I want to bring this to people of color. Get back home and I say God, I want to bring this to people of color, I want to.
Speaker 2:This trust thing is something that is so good. My community is not getting it. At least they're not getting it from this source. I don't know where they're getting it, because I'm like how do we do that? And so that became. Well, let me start a program and end up being Journey to Freedom. And then how do I start getting people? Well, I'm going to start interviewing these black men. I'm going to start doing. Literally last weekend I was telling you we took 23 black men down to Alabama and we went to civil rights tours. We started in Birmingham, then we went to.
Speaker 2:Selma and then we ended up in Montgomery at the Bryan Stevenson Museum, and so it's all part of that trusting I'm like God, I don't know, I don't even know if I want to work with Black men. That's something that's you know. But, like you said, you hear it, you know it's not like he spoke to me audibly and you know the sea parted. It was like trust me and you need to go down this road and you're going to be all right and so, and so far, the last year we did I said I got a new 100 black man. We did 105. We already got 25. That I've done this year. Um, and it just continues to grow and it's just by, like you did, where you follow what god has for you, and then you just sit back and watch and let I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, you got to be a participant, but you let him lead, I guess, is what I'm saying. Part of that is your identity, and so that becomes hard sometimes is the identity that you hold for yourself, and maybe you can walk us through some of those identities, because I can imagine when you leave and you decide to become homeschool dad, that has an effect on the identity that you were probably holding for yourself.
Speaker 2:Right, because that's not that's not the norm right that's not what we hear all the time, so kind of talk about your part, your progression of identity and maybe even who you are now I love this because, yes, that is, as I mentioned at the very beginning, like you mentioned, about being the whole empty nester thing.
Speaker 1:The father provider, whatever you want to call our role in the home is, has. I want to say I want to blame it on the external, but it's really not, it's really internal. I started with my father, right, seeing who my dad was. My dad was absolutely the most still, probably I would still say the most educated man I've ever known. I mean going to Ivy League, you know Ivy League, dental school and medical school in the 70s, like like that's I know my stock, I know it. My honor lien on my mom's side, you know we got, we got black history professors and people like physicists all in our family tree. So knowing that education and knowledge and being that kind of person, that's like a bulwark in your family. That was already ingrained in me as identity. So when I had to then say OK, who am I outside of just what I provide mentally, who am I outside of being the you know the force, the man that knows all the answers? Right Now, homeschooling is not about knowing all the answers. Homeschooling is about coming home and being present. And I say a lot of times when people say, oh well, you know homeschool dad. That's kind of weird because you know you're around all these ladies all the time. Now, of course, we're 20 years later. Now it's definitely advanced, but back then I was the creepy dad. I was. What is he doing here? Because even in those circles it was unfortunate. And, by the way, I want to quickly still shout out to all of our Black homeschoolers, because my aunt, my cousin Belinda, has actually wrote a curriculum for Black homeschoolers on culture and history. I think it's called Our Story, his Story, h-i-s in big letters.
Speaker 1:So I got a lot of. I had a lot of resources that a lot of people didn't have. But yeah, you're right, my identity had to shift from provider, from musician only right, teacher, provider. All those things were all about what I do. Musician only right, teacher, provide all those things were all about what I do. But it's who my kids saw me. My kids really saw me grow up in front of them. They saw me evolve. They saw me have to shift. They saw me get confused. They saw me get frustrated with who I was, because I couldn't rely on all the things that made me special or unique or whatever.
Speaker 1:Back in those other areas where I was teaching and that kids just look up to you because you're a teacher, right? Or ministry, where they look up to you because, oh well, you're playing the piano and you're this choir director. Well, at home I'm just home, I'm just dad and I don't want to do this homework. Dad, now you don't have to listen to me. I don't want to listen to you and I don't. You know what I mean. It's just where I had to really center more on who am I as a person? What kind of person do I want my son to be and forget what he does? What's his character going to be like? How can I show him that doing this work has nothing to do with him learning, but more of him being faithful, being willing to do the hard thing? Those are questions I had to answer for myself first, right Now, in this second season, I guess you could say, now that the kids are out the house, it's shifted again.
Speaker 1:I am always going to be a dad, but dad is not my primary focus anymore. So my identity can't be based on just what do I do for them. Now. It has to be what I do for me and my wife right. How are we building our relationship? What is it about me that makes her want to hang out with me when I'm just being annoying and looking for things to do, when she doesn't want to have anything to do with all this online stuff? She just wants me to sit and relax and put the phone down and watch the movie so that's, all right look quality time.
Speaker 1:That's her love language man. So that part of my identity has shifted as well. I'm blessed to be in a men's ministry in my church that absolutely focuses on this part thank god, because I know some men don't have this. But I have the guys that got in my face. I have the guys that took me off the grid and said who are you really? And if it's not someone you like, guess whose fault it is you. So I've had that kind of like come to Jesus moment with myself where I did almost lose my marriage. I did almost lose myself because I thought the things I was doing was enough. Right. But the things I'm doing don't make me who I am. They tried to mask who I am because I'm doing so much, and so my identity has had to shift from what I do to who I am. When the lights are off, when no one's looking, am I still comfortable being me? One thing I'll tell you, dr B and I hope it's not coming to a therapy session, because I will go one One thing I've done recently is I've learned that for me to say I am happy and men aren't taught this I need to remind myself that I don't know what happy is until I name it.
Speaker 1:And so just yesterday I'm walking down the street, I told you it's like beautiful out here, it's 70 in Miami, we get to enjoy this and I'm walking. And I realized that I get to go a little walk in between my you know my take a break from work at the office and I walk outside do a five-minute walk. And I just looked up at this clouds and I said you know what I'm happy I'm naming this. This is happy because if I keep looking for the thing to happen to make me happy as a man, well I'm going to be chasing it for forever and then I'm going to die and never realize I already had it. So that's been my struggle of identity is realizing that I can be who I am without relying on what I do, even if those things are amazing, and those things are blessed. That's where that's that's where I'm getting my identity now and just knowing that I am blessed, no matter what's going on around me. So I hope that answers the question.
Speaker 2:Oh, it does so helpful. And I love where you're talking about, you know, naming, being happy, you know, and not being. You know, one of the things that I try to do in my coaching and stuff is help people become the person they need to be in order to do the thing that they were put on this earth to do. But we spend so much time doing that we never become, you know. You know God calls us human beings right, not human doings, human havings. You know, human beings right, not human doings, human havings, you know. And so just the way that you're articulating the fact that, hey, my identity isn't in what I do is so huge, and I think we miss that so much because we keep trying to do things that will make others, whether love us or you know, and we don't find that in ourselves because we're spending so much time doing, because I don't know if you can get the enjoyment unless you get to start doing stuff in purpose.
Speaker 2:Yes, maybe we can talk about purpose a little bit in and finding purpose, because I think a lot of folks think that this is like you can go and just say, okay, dear lord, you know, help me find my purpose and all of of a sudden boom, boom, boom, the cloud comes out and all of a sudden you do your purpose and then you get to go walking and you become happily ever after, but until you experience a whole bunch of different things and seek God and go back and forth and go. I don't know if it's easy to find purpose, but once you do like now, I'm going to be 60 years old. I just started Journey to Freedom a year and a half ago, right, so you know. But I think I've been in purpose several times during my life. I think my purpose can change.
Speaker 2:And maybe you can speak to that a little bit, because I don't think our purpose is just this one thing that we're going to do our entire lives and we just get better at that one thing. For some of us, it is exactly that. Let's say, I know my purpose is to be a minister, let's say that is going to start a church, and then they just become better ministers throughout their whole life and then they die because they have these churches. That were phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Not necessarily in size, but just phenomenal in the gift that they were giving to the community and that was their purpose for their whole life. But for some of us, I think, it might be what's your thought on purpose?
Speaker 1:well, I love this question because it goes well. I'll tell you what's fresh in my mind is the interview I literally just did. My last podcast that came out was with a young lady, uh, living in columbia now. Her name is Melissa, and she talked about this because her purpose, her ministry, her mission had been shifted drastically when she moved from Miami to Columbia. The way she said it was like I've never heard it this well articulated. So she was talking about mission and assignment. So slightly different words, but still talking about purpose, right, the mission that you're on, the assignment that you're on. And she said what freed her was stop thinking about purpose or mission as one thing. When a military person gets a mission, it has a start date and an end date and when the mission is done, the mission is done. It's not a life's mission, it's a mission that you're going from here and here. I now have a son-in-law who's in the military, who's literally on assignment right now overseas, but thank God we know there's an end date to it assignment, but at the time there's a purpose to it.
Speaker 1:Decide, I was gonna say, is what you said honestly when you said that you kind of, instead of finding your purpose. You would, you, you, you were in it for four seasons, right, and what popped into my head, even as you said that his purpose is not found? Purpose is experienced. Uh, purpose is what you find on the way of doing, not by looking for it and then doing right, like it would. It would be like, it would be like saying that I'm not going to drive, like I'm just picturing this in my head. I'm like this is making sense. If it makes no sense, please shut the shut it off right now, y'all. So so I don't confuse you, um, uh, I feel like. I feel like purpose is where we are trying to find that you know that destination at the end, but we ignore all the signs in between on the highway, as if they are not part of the purpose. Every single sign is part of the purpose. Every single turn is part of the purpose. It's not just the end goal, it's all the things in between.
Speaker 1:And so what I feel like in my life, I can say honestly, you could say I found my purpose in ministry, right, yes. However, to say that I could not have fulfilled my purpose had I not been in playing music in a church to me, that's where I think we lock God into a box that he doesn't want to be in. Say that I could not have fulfilled my purpose had I not been in playing music in a church. To me, that's where I think we lock God into a box that he doesn't want to be in. I can still fulfill my purpose. If I was a janitor. I would still be able to fulfill my purpose. If I was a dentist like my father, I would still be able to fulfill my purpose, because, at the end of the day, it's to glorify God and to make good things.
Speaker 1:Period, all right, that. That that's all of our because, because he wrote it for Adam, fill the earth to do it, be fruitful and multiply purpose boom. I don't need to complicate that by adding the thing that I accomplish my purpose with, by conflating it with the purpose of right. So I just feel like and again I'll go, oh, please stop me, because I will riff on this forever I do feel like one of the things that we do have to do I have to do I shouldn't say we, I have to do knocking on the stuff that I have to do is really focus on what is the goal right now. My purpose right now is accomplished by loving my wife, building a podcast, building my church ministry. That is accomplishing the purpose of which, again, the of part, providing for my family, which I'm commanded to do, being a good person, which I'm commanded to do, exercising authority over being a good steward. You see what I'm saying, but all those things are just means to the end, and the end is not that complicated, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe you can answer this part of the thing. Can you be in purpose and not serve others?
Speaker 1:part of the thing. Can you be in purpose and not serve others? This is a great question and I'm only going to answer it in my first pop, my first thing that said no, like that was my first answer, right, like, and I guess it depends on are we going to define purpose as always being something beyond yourself? Because if your purpose is to serve yourself, the answer is yes yeah, that's why I?
Speaker 1:think we would all run into that same thing, as Solomon said, which is all his Like. I think that's what he ran into. He ran into I got everything and yet I feel empty, right. And you just said it earlier about like people who have all this stuff, they're rich and everything and they're just not happy, right. So we kind of know implicitly I believe this is kind of like where theologians would call it general revelation we all know there's something beyond just making a couple of bucks. We all know it on the inside.
Speaker 1:Some of us take longer to figure it out, but we all know on the inside. Nobody wants to go in their deathbed and say, yeah, man, check out that bank account. We all know, at the end of the day, there is more to our lives than just serving ourselves. I think how we figure that out is the grand is, is the grand class of life, is the grand is the grand scheme of life is what is that in between, like you said, like what are those twists and turns when you decided to start this podcast, when I decided to write my book? Like what are those twists and turns that you decided to start this podcast? Or when I decided to write my book? Like what are those twists and turns that say I have no idea if this makes any sense, you know. But like I said, I think we find purpose on that journey. The the.
Speaker 1:The thing I just wrote today in my journal and writing up my next devotional was where Genesis 1 and 1 it talks about the earth was formless or second. You know, the second second was formless, or the second verse formless. That's the way I think sometimes we walk into this stuff. It has no formation, no structure, no, nothing, and somehow we're supposed to do like God, say okay, no, we're going to put this here, we're going to put this here and we're going to put this here, and then we're going to put this here and meanwhile all of a sudden, oh, we got a world, we're good, we got structure, we got a formation, we got something to stand on. But it can feel at the beginning, man, like you said, like it's just like swimming and treading water in what feels, like you have no which way you're going. But we find our purpose as we paddle.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the purposes that I know has been a big part of your life is family and the black family as I see it, right now is in crisis. I'm doing a.
Speaker 2:Sunday night podcast that is called why Love Waits, and it came from the premise that 50% of black women over the age of 40 have never been married and 75% of them have at least one child. And so we that and that. Statistics from the sixties and seventies is up from 18 or 19%, all the way to and and how important the family unit is. And now you're what God commanded us to do, and that we need each other. But when I talk to black men, you know one of the things is being a dad, and one part of it is we know children need a dad. We know children.
Speaker 2:You know statistic after statistic shows that children that have fathers do better in life. There's all kinds of things, not the ones that don't, can't, and not the those that have, um, you know, been raised by single moms, haven't been accessible, but overall, the ones that have dad as part of their life tend to do better throughout their life, with less, less things. But what we don't talk a lot about is what it means to be a dad, and we know that you need to be deaf. But how does it change who we are, whether it's our identity, the way that, being that protector, being that provider. When we can't do it and we have kids, what goes through us and our ability to? So maybe you can just talk a little bit about what it means to you to be that dad Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow it, I'll just again. It's easier to go off the top of the head and to try to try to get, try to get so deep into it, because it means everything, but at the same time, right now, what it means, right, the very first thing that pops into my head is it means that I have the greatest privilege, short of again marrying my wife wife, because that's how I got them right short of marrying my wife is the greatest privilege any human being could ever have. It is the. It is the one thing that I could say, no matter how many mistakes I've made, that god must have seen something in me that was worthy. There's no way that he lets me be a dad and not see something in me. Yeah, you see what I mean, and I'm being very careful about this because again, I feel like I got somebody. Oh well, you know. No, I don't know how they see it. I see it as there's a worthiness that is equated to being a father. Now, whether we walk in that worthiness is a whole other story Whether we show ourselves to be faithful when we have this goal and this dream of being a dad and we actually follow through with it and we actually nurture these children and raise them is a whole other thing, but that's the first thing that pops into my mind. It is a whole other thing, but that's the first thing that pops into my mind. It is a privilege when I think of my daughter right now, 25 years old, up there right now, as I mentioned, married now with her husband who's in the service, and seeing what she had to walk through and you know, daddy's little girl is always daddy's little girl. And I got two more, I got my two boys.
Speaker 1:So, knowing what she had to walk through, and seeing that as a father I can't answer all the questions a young lady has to go through, I can't, I can't, I could not tell her how to handle being a teenage girl dealing with all the hormones and all that stuff. She, you know, I said you go talk to your mom or whatever, right, but I still had to be that person that she could say, hey, when I eventually find a man, I want him to look like him or act like you. Right, that part I had. No, I don't think any of us are born with that fathering gene, even if we had amazing fathers, which I had. We all learn as we go. We all realize that at some, at some point. Like I said, and this is the one that hang my hat on my kids watched me become a man. My kids watch me learn how to have character, how to not lie to myself or to them, how to have the same standards I asked them to have I had to have for myself. So being a dad is a self-discovery. Being a dad is saying, if this is the person that I'm going to be, then I can't ask my kids to be someone that I'm not and then being able to walk it out when I watch them become their own individual people.
Speaker 1:My son right now gets to work with me every day at the same church that I work at. I mean, how privileged am I. I get to see him every day now with his wife. He works in HR. I'm working in the music ministry. He's literally doing the same position that my wife used to do in our old church. So I've got a legacy standing next to me every single day that I'm at the workplace, single day that I'm at the workplace.
Speaker 1:I mean, so I can't look at this dad thing and not say, okay, lord, I know I started it off crazy. I started it off the wrong way with two kids. You know, two kids not having them with their mom yet. Right, not being married to their mom yet. And then, all of a sudden, it's like you know what I made and it sounds so braggadocious, but it's true, because all the dads need to listen to this, because you get beat up so much. So I want to encourage them. Right, Make more good decisions than bad ones. Period. I just made one more good decision than bad. That's it. I'm winning the game because I'm one point ahead Is that's all I can say when it comes to being a father, because I have made so many misses, so many clanks, so many bricks, but I've made one more shot than I've missed, and that's why my what is this?
Speaker 2:Got couple of questions on this because I think you're going to answer them perfectly.
Speaker 1:So far I already answered you, ted.
Speaker 2:It's just been amazing If you were transported, because hindsight is 20-20. Right now, both you and I have a hindsight of our kids are grown. We've at least seen the process of being a dad through the formative years of their lives Not that they're not formative now, but the more formative when they needed us to survive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you were to get transported into a room full of, we'll just say, black men, for instance, that are struggling with being a dad because of whether it's a court system that's, you know, making it hard for them to be dads.
Speaker 2:It's a partner that is making it hard, that doesn't want them around, which is, you know, making it hard for them to be dads. It's a partner that is making it hard, that doesn't want them around, which is, you know, the distance, whatever it is, that has been transported in their life, but they think they want to fight for their kids. Knowing what you know now, what would you tell that group of men about how important it is to fight to be that dad?
Speaker 1:Okay, you just really want to hurt me now. Okay, because I, because this, this, this is a, this is an area that I probably still need to keep working through, but I can only say number one it's worth it, and I'll tell you why it's worth it. Because that oldest child that I was mentioning it's Christopher, my 33 year old was born when I was 17. And when you wanna talk about a fight, oh yeah, oh my God, from him growing up with his mother to us coming down to Miami, where my father basically said you need to get an education or else you can't even take care of this kid. So you're not staying here and going to Pensacola Junior College, you're going to go to the university. Because I thought my job was to stay there and work for eyes to take care of my son, and my dad said, no, you're going to get this college education. So my father had to get to my face and say you can't even start this process of fighting unless you have something to fight with, right. And so that was the hardest part was realizing out. Yeah, so now I have like I said, it's a little bit PTSD, but yeah, court, every court case, every restraining order, every pass off the kid from you know, from the middle of, from Ocala, go driving halfway.
Speaker 1:I did it. I did it, I did it and it's crazy that I'm saying it now with this podcast. I probably said it maybe five times in the last 20 years that I've told people that this was my battle of fighting for my oldest son. My oldest son now is on his own enjoying life, made his own decisions with his mother, made his own decisions, not based on me trying to punch or kick or scream or fight her right. Made his own decisions on how that relationship was going to work out. So that's my only word, man. I can't go any deeper because I'm like you can see like I'm getting emotional.
Speaker 1:It's worth it, it's worth it, it's worth it. It will not be easy. It will look strange, it will look like you're crazy and no, the system is still not in your favor, no matter what the laws say. But it is worth it. Just get some advocacy on your side. Yes, I will say it. Get yourself a bulldoze, a bulldog jewish lawyer, because that's what we did. Okay, just gonna be straight up, right? We got a guy that was not taking no for an answer. But then, after I got the advocacy on the legal side. I had people who were like, yes, we're gonna surround you, we're gonna get you, you're doing the right thing. I have people who are like, yes, we're going to surround you, you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 1:When my son got out of pocket, they didn't say you need to send him back. You know what I mean. Some people would be like, oh, why are you even doing this? Why are you doing this? Because he's my son and it's not his fault. The drama he didn't ask for, this drama I did. So that's where I come from it, man, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to even go there because, like I said, this is literally. I can think of the amount, on one hand, the amount of times I've got to share that part of our fatherhood journey. Thank you for sharing being vulnerable, because it is so important.
Speaker 2:It's so important that the people who are watching this get to hear that and get to see that. And then for the ones who are saying I'm not sure we have somebody saying it's worth it. It's worth it, it's worth it which?
Speaker 2:is which is so cool. Second question is you said you've been married for 28 years, right, yeah, so you're. Some of your kids got to see that relationship. Even your son is 30, 30 years old, 32 years old, got to see that, that relationship. But I guess the question is what gift do you think you gave them by allowing them to see you love their mom?
Speaker 1:God, you have some great questions. You have some great questions. I would have to say the biggest gift is them seeing the beauty and the value of being, not when we both deserve to leave each other. They didn't actually see that interior part, right? So it's not even saying, oh, be faithful to your wife, or being faithful to your spouse is what they see. What I think they see is the beauty in that struggle, even though they don't know the back end. They see the beauty of mom and dad care enough about each other that they're not going to let us run their lives. They're going to have their own lives. They're going to continue to grow and evolve as people.
Speaker 1:So now that my two younger ones are married right, I can see that they learned that lesson, because I see how they treat their spouses, I see how much they valued marriage. Because it's not. I know you're looking at the same stats I'm looking at. Marriage is not cool, all right. Marriage is no longer like the thing that people aspire to. People are assuming that there's no good men, there's no good this, there's no good that, or they're looking for the perfect this and the perfect that and everyone's these crazy standards right.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, like I said, my wife and I, literally coming out of college she only had two years of college, I didn't have a job yet, but this baby's on the way, so we're gonna do this shotgun and we're gonna make sure we make this work like that is no longer the case. And so that fact that my parents, my, my kids got to see their parents say, yeah, like again, marriage in itself is a beautiful thing. And then, because it's a beautiful thing and they're going to work at it I guess this is you know what it's like. It would be like watching somebody I don't want to say like a dish or something, like a cook.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of something a little more valuable, like forming a diamond or a watch. You watch somebody toil over the actual watch. You watch somebody like laser cut the diamond for hours and hours and hours and hours, and hours and hours, and eventually you're like that joker must be pretty expensive. You know what I mean. Like if you watch somebody build something, at the end of the day, you, you're like that's valuable. And that's what I think the gift was. My kids got to see how valuable it was because you know like.
Speaker 1:I said you know, 30, 20, whatever many years you do it that your kids get to see it before they decide to enter into it. Right, that's what they're going to decide based on how valuable was it to you. And I'm not saying that if you got divorced, that your kids can't have a wonderful marriage. I'm just saying, in our case, that's what I think it built. It built this value that they saw in finding the right person and, thank God, like I said, two of them that were praying for the third one, two of them found it already.
Speaker 2:Nice, I love it. Well, thank you for just being willing to share who you are, not just what you do, as we've done. We have about 10 minutes left. I'd love for you to talk about all the things you do. You know the books that you've written, you know the music that you play and whatever we didn't talk about that you want to make sure that our listeners get to hear.
Speaker 1:Man. See, this is such an amazing forum because I appreciate again the freedom and the journey of the freedom, right? The freedom I feel now in sharing what I do is based on all the stories that we just got to share. Was that we just got to Kansas year? That that I do have now this place where I have fought for my family and I fought to keep the faith in a ministry and in a world that oftentimes, you know, musicians get really messed up, even in church world, especially in the church world, right. So this is not a place that, like always, values family and values what we're talking about right now, but kind of like to go. What do I do now? It goes back to that story that I just ended, where I handed my papers over to my pastor, right, and I did at the time. I got back into the, the music industry, playing gigs, and I was like how do these people do this? And so I had a chance to sit down with.
Speaker 1:Some people might remember take six. They still, they still perform. But, uh, take six came down and we got a chance to meet one of the members of take six. He took me in the back of the hotel. We were talking, we were just relaxing, and he's just like, he just broke it down. Man, it's like, here's what I do. This is how I produce, this is how I'm getting making sure I'm staying with my new wife. This is how I'm like. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like he just said, this is the real, the real story of what musicians do outside of these four walls of church, and I was like you know what? I should write this down. So, long story short, I started to write down these seven letters service, stay connected to god, establish your priorities, respect the business, visualize your goals if invest in your craft. And then I almost forgot the v, the last V, no, challenge yourself to grow and then evangelize through your gift. So that spelled out service that's what my book is all about. How Christian musicians can succeed without sacrificing their faith is God and gigs. God and gigs became the linchpin of my platform, which now is for all creatives, not just musicians, is now been a podcast that has over 300 episodes, and now it has been basically kind of like my life's work in terms of helping not just musicians again, starting with musicians but creatives to become and I heard you say this almost literally verbatim become the creators that God created them to be. So that's what I do now I also write. I have my podcast, not my podcast. I have my devotional, your Art, god's Heart, and I also have devotionals now on YouVersion, which is really exciting. So I'm going to be writing for not just creatives. I'm going to start writing these devotionals on YouVersion for pretty much anyone that has a creative mind, because I want people that are outside, you know, of the creative space to also enjoy these devotionals. I produce four podcasts now, two of them for my church, one of which is top 50 on Spotify in the religious category. So podcasting has become a huge part of my what I do now. So I also am going to start coaching people, because I feel like I'm holding back. How did I have, you know, a thousand episodes and I'm not sharing what I know. So that's a new part of what I'm doing now. And yeah, by the way, still playing music Got a Valentine's concert next week in South Florida here, the lyric.
Speaker 1:I'll go ahead and do a promo here. The historic lyric theater in historic Overtown, which is the Harlem of the South, as they might say, used to be where all the people came when they came to Miami and they couldn't go play on Miami Beach. Sam and Dave, marvin Gaye, aretha, they all came to the Lyric. So I get to perform next on as we're recording now. I get to perform on Valentine's Day in that same venue with four vocalists doing a Valentine's Day concert. So I still perform, I still gig, I still play jazz. So yeah, I'm all those places, man. That's all the doings. There's a lot of doings going on, but they all again center around faith, music, creativity.
Speaker 2:What's so cool is when you think about like, be, do, have and becoming a person. If you become the person that can do those things, you automatically do them. You don't have to work at doing it, you just get to do it because you've become that person who gets to do it, which is so cool to watch. And I think about all the stuff you do. How does one so? This may come out and then, probably five years from now we're in 2025, now that somebody's watching this, how will they be able to get a hold of you? Because they won't be the Valentine's concert you're probably doing next week, because it might be September of 2020.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:How do they get in to find out all the things you're doing?
Speaker 1:I would say, the easiest way, and I'm trying to make this a one-stop shop because, as you can see, I'm all over the place, but I'm going to pretty much try to keep the hub as alancpaulcom because that way they can find God in gigs, if they're interested in creativity and faith and how to make it as a Christian entrepreneur, musician, artist, or they can find my books that, again, are going to be more toward other creative spaces, other Christian creative spaces, just whatever that's going to be where the hub is AlanCPaulcom. You can find that as well on all the socials Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm there. I'm very active on LinkedIn now and, yeah, that is where people can find me because, you know, I love this platform, because it is really what I'm trying to do with my platforms as well.
Speaker 1:It's put like a big tent where all the people who are doing amazing things, like the people that you're profiling, they feel like they're at home, like they don't have to pick one or the other, like they're a father. They're a dad, they're an entrepreneur, they're a businessman, they're a leader in their community, right, and so I'm just glad I have a space like yours. So if you haven't already subscribed to this podcast, please do so right now, because this guy has an amazing platform, an amazing podcast, so I appreciate that as being a place where I was able to share today.
Speaker 2:Thank you and Alan, like I said, it's been a pleasure. I can't wait to see what you're doing, get more involved in your life and the things that you're doing, because if their success leaves clues, you guys have seen the clues that are there. You have seen the things that you can do to be better, and if we're all striving to be better, you know I always say that God wants to love you if you allow him to and you can become the person you need to be if you're beginning to work at it. And so, again, thank you for being part of the podcast. Again, like he said, subscribe, get notification. There are some interviews on here that I promise you you will resonate with. I promise you that we'll be able to change your life. This is one of those, and then we'll look forward to seeing you. See you next one. You guys have an amazing, incredible day today.