Hustle & Flow
Join us for the wisdom, humor and insight from a married couple of 33 years on the hustle and flow of life.
We have worked so many types of jobs over 33 years. We have worked in the service industry, retail, corporate and blue collar work. We have been Realtors for 18 years, managing property, flipping houses and owning short term rentals. We have worked staff work which includes everything from Pastoring to Youth Pastoring to Children’s ministry.
We have been involved in CrossFit for over 11 years, owning a gym, coaching and actively working out. We are involved in Spartan races and travel the nation competing.
We own a Dessert Cafe called Crave in Downtown Tupelo that has been open since 2014. We currently have three locations.
We have raised four children and currently have two grandchildren. Family is of utmost importance to us.
We have a life full of stories that we can’t wait to share with you.
Hustle & Flow
The Family Table: Where Relationships and Memories Are Made
"If you build the table, they will come." This simple twist on a famous movie quote captures the heart of what we've learned through decades of family gatherings. Our tables have never been new or fancy, but they've witnessed four generations of laughter, tears, confessions, and celebrations.
The revelation came during an ordinary family dinner when we looked around at our children, their partners, our in-laws, and grandchildren all gathered together. We realized that throughout our 35 years of marriage, the dining table had become more than furniture—it had transformed into the heart of our family's connection.
Even when financial constraints during our years in ministry made eating out impossible, our table became the place where bonds strengthened. Today, our adult children text to ask what we're cooking, and their friends inquire about invitations to lunch. The table has become our family's gravitational center, with gatherings routinely lasting three hours or more as stories unfold and relationships deepen.
What makes a table special isn't the wood it's made from but the welcome it extends. Our boisterous gatherings of ten or more people have taught our son-in-laws patience and our grandchildren belonging. We've discovered that when people feel truly accepted, they return again and again, bringing new faces to expand our circle of connection.
Ready to build your own table tradition? Remember it's never too late to start, and you don't need culinary expertise or expensive furniture. Simply create space where people feel loved enough to share their lives. When you build relationships around your table, you're creating a legacy that will nourish generations to come. The memories made there will become your family's most cherished inheritance.
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Hey, good morning. Good morning, this is Brad, and I'm with my wife, tiffany. We are the authors of the Hustle and Flow podcast. We're going to talk to you this morning about something that's really important to our family and it's something that lately we've had a lot of conversation about and it just kind of has really taken a thought in our heart and we want to share that with you. This morning. We're going to talk about building the table and so, tiffany, good morning.
Speaker 2:Good morning.
Speaker 1:Tell me, tell me something really, really fun about your life this week.
Speaker 2:Well, we've been traveling a lot because you know we're not going to for a while, since we're starting a new endeavor, so we got to go to Red Rocks for the first time and that was really cool. Yeah, that was a great experience. I don't think we went at the right time of the year, because the weather was perfect, and so that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of fun. So again, we're going to talk about building the table this morning. Where did do you remember where this originated, or do you remember the thought process that we had when we started talking about this?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Not exactly I know the conversation, but no, well, I think we had a family dinner. Yes.
Speaker 1:We actually had family dinner three times.
Speaker 2:Three times in a week.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was like oh my goodness, here they are again. Hey look, there they are again, and here they but and and I'm being funny but one night, whenever we had dinner I don't remember what it was and it was no special occasion. Now we do have special occasion dinners.
Speaker 1:Yes sometimes Most of the time.
Speaker 1:But we were sitting there and I just looked around the table and everybody was here, and it was all of our kids and it was their significant others, and then it was our son-in-laws, and then it was our grandkids, and everybody was their significant others, and then it was our son-in-laws, and then it was our grandkids, and everybody was here, right, and the thought occurred to me from the field of dreams.
Speaker 1:If you've seen the field of dreams, if you build it, they will come. And the thought occurred to me if you build the table, they will come. And we got to talking about how important it has been that the one cornerstone of our life has been that we have always tried to build a table. Now, what that looks like is this we're not talking about physically building a table. We're talking about building a place or an atmosphere to where our kids and people who are connected to them whether it is significant others or whether it is their friends, or whether it is honestly somebody they picked up on the side of the road on the way here that they're welcome at our table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because there's one thing about it you never know who's going to be around the table.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:And sometimes you don't even know until the day of who's going to be around the table. And that's okay, because we've always made sure to have extra seats, Like I actually have. You know, I like everything to look perfect and be perfect, but I actually have a stack of extra chairs, right, you know, adjacent to our dining room and the sunroom, in case we need to pull up extra chairs. So I just have this huge stack of chairs stacked up in there. So, and and and we've we've always wanted that, like however many, whoever, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and and you know what's funny is, I thought about that. So I grew up, it was me and my mom and my dad and my brother, and that's the only people that was ever at our table. Now, we did have, you know, my grandmother or something like that, but we'd never had people at our table ever, Until you and Chad started bringing home girls.
Speaker 2:Probably yeah.
Speaker 1:You were actually one of the first. You probably one of the only real people that ever sat at my table besides my family.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and so we didn't have people at our table. And so what's funny is, uh, as we've gotten, when we got married and started having kids and we started developing relationships with different people whether it was church or whatever we had all kind of people come to our table. And so for a long time it's kind of funny because for a long time my mom and dad would show up and like they'd be this random person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're kind of like not in a bad way all the time, I'm just saying, but they would side-eye like why are they?
Speaker 1:here. You know this is weird. Why are they here? But it was because we've always tried to build a table where people were welcome, no matter what it looked like, and you've been really good at that. One of the things that's your gift is your love. Language is food. You want to feed people, and where does that come from? Is there something that maybe you can think about? That maybe helped you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's really two things that go with that. One thing is that hospitality is my gifting. I believe that, and so that not just out in the world or wherever I'm at, serving at church or serving with an organization or whatever it is, I'm doing, that also, you know, is in my home.
Speaker 2:And so there's that. And then I also enjoy cooking and I mean some people say I'm good at it. I don enjoy cooking, and I mean some people say I'm good at it, I don't know. I'm my own worst critic with that, and so I think that for me that's just natural. But you know, every once in a while I don't cook. It's really hard. But you know, we ordered, we actually ordered pizzas One of those three times that you know they were over here a couple of weeks ago we actually ordered pizza.
Speaker 2:So I don't even, you know, for me I think the table is so important and you don't even have to cook it. I have a friend that says she's not a good cook and so we make jokes all the time about you know, her cooking. She'll talk about her husband hiding things in the oven, you know, and all that kind of stuff, the old jokes. But I know that they still still, you know, are also a table, and I've been to their home and sat at their table, so and with other people that I didn't know. So I know that they're also a table family. So you know, you don't even have to be the cook, but I do think that um, so many important things happen at the table. We've seen that and I'm and we're not judging people who sit in the living room floor or on all the living room furniture, but we are just talking about being older and raising kids and now raising grandkids, like what we've seen at our table.
Speaker 1:Right, because the majority of change and a lot of things that we talk about it happens at our table, right, you know? I mean we have a living room, we have a sunroom, we have different places that you can land an office, things like that, but everybody congregates at the table. Yes, they will stand around the island and munch on things that maybe somebody has brought and if Brianna gets here on time, she gets to have a— she's the appetizer person, but she's never here at appetizer time.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to say that, but not necessarily say that. Bree's always late with the appetizer so we're snacking after, but people are standing around but a lot of change happens at the table and I don't know. You know we talked about this and it originated, I think for us a lot of times is because when we were younger and our kids were small, we didn't have the money to eat out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so well, number one yeah, we didn't have the. That just wasn't. You know, we were in full-time ministry. Some people don't know that about us. We were in full-time ministry a large majority of our life, when our kids were growing up, and so we were not entrepreneurs and we did not have whatever we've got now six or seven businesses, and so we had a set salary and we had to. You know, we had to budget well with that, and so we didn't have money to run through Chick-fil-A and grab everybody a meal, but also because I think the number of kids we had having four kids like that wasn't really also sitting around the living room, you know, in the coffee table, and all that wasn't conducive for eating either. So we were a table family because of you know, in the coffee table and all that wasn't conducive for eating either.
Speaker 1:So we were a table family because of you know a couple of reasons. Yeah, and I remember that, and you know we did have set salaries and we had to budget our money wisely and, to be honest, we have not had a chili dog in a long time.
Speaker 2:We ate chili dogs for a long time. I really do want one sometimes, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't, I don't really want one.
Speaker 2:But you know now, you know we had that huge sectional in there and I sold it because I felt like once we start getting everybody up from our table, if you want to go to sit in there, I feel like everybody starts leaving and going home and we can sit at that table for literally hours I think it was three hours the other day and so I sold the sectional and they were all mad Like that was so comfortable, so, but y'all only said it out on the section like christmas time, like normally, you won't get up from the table.
Speaker 2:So, um, thinking about all the different things that you get to hear and see, and it's such a good, and because it you know they're sitting at the table, after a while people loosen up and they'll start telling you things and you just have to listen and I think about all the fun things, the sad things, you know, all the things I found out at the table. I didn't know that one of my kids, who I thought didn't sneak out, snuck out of her room the other day. I found that out at the table At the table At the table.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, we won at the table at the table at the table. Yeah, thanks, we won't call her name, but she's a young person in our family, but anyway. So, but you're right, joy, sadness, hurt, anger all the emotions have happened at that table right, and and it has been, it's been an amazing ride, because you know, we talk about that and I don't know. You know, for me one of the things that I thought about is one of the highest compliments you can get as parents. For me, this is just my thought process. One of the highest compliments that I can get is that I have adult children who want to come and sit with me at my table and don't despise me. Now, listen. There's a lot of reasons that those relationships break down, so I'm not going to inflect anything other than for me, it's a compliment when my kids say hey, we want to come by.
Speaker 1:What are you doing for dinner? That's their favorite thing, especially our son. What are y'all eating? And he usually wants us to carry him out, but every once in a while he'll like to eat here. What are y'all eating? And he usually wants us to carry him out, but every once in a while he'll like to eat here. But but building a table. Now what that looks like is this is that it? It is a atmosphere that's conducive for you to be comfortable, and I like what you said. People loosen up at the table. You think about when you go out to dinner with somebody maybe you don't know very well as the night goes on, you begin to loosen up a little bit, you take off all the formalities and you put on just a little different idea of okay, I can unwind a little bit, but that's kind of what we're looking at here. So I like this too. Our poor son-in-laws God bless them. They really had no idea what they were getting into. We are loud, we are boisterous.
Speaker 2:We do have a loud table and it's also a lot of people. Yeah, ten is usually the minimum number that's at the table.
Speaker 1:It's loud, yeah, it's loud, and eventually, I think they finally just said okay, I'm just going to accept the fact that I'm in almost like an Italian family and it's eat or be eaten, and so that's just. They've kind of fallen in there. But I think that you know, for us we think it's important to build relationships, and relationships at the table has been one of the things that's been a cornerstone for our family. It has been a pivotal thing and you know, we just want to encourage you. I don't know what your family looks like, but it's never too late to start building that relationship and opening the door to having people around you. And that's just kind of where I'm at with building a table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know. And if you're not a table family, I think if we said something and you think, think you know, and if you're not a table family, I think, and if you, you know, if we said something you think you know, I kind of like that that's a good idea. You know, that's something I'm going to try. It's not too late and you don't have to be a cook. You know, you can pick up a family packet sam's or tziki's or any of these places. Um, but it is.
Speaker 2:It's kind of cool if you do start building the table, if you don't already. And and you know, and encourage people to sit around the table. You know, we were talking that we it's not on it. It's often that we'll have four generations sitting at the table and new people that we can love on and make you know, make them feel like they're, they're part of a family and that somebody cares about them. There's just so many things that can happen at your table if you're open to it, and it doesn't have to be a new table. We we couldn't believe, when we were thinking about it, that we have never had a new dining room table never, 35 years never this one I have now.
Speaker 2:I had bought from um chrissy at crossfit because she was getting a new one and I said well, let's, let's try, let's try that one, because we can't. We keep sizing up, because more people keep getting married and all those things. So there's more permanent numbers, the permanent numbers expanding because we were you know, we were at one in one dining room. We actually had to change dining rooms in the house because of the number, and so it doesn't even have to be. I don't think people care what the table looks like.
Speaker 1:No, and and, and that was when we said that. That was just crazy to me. You know in that that we we've had since 1999 you may not even know this, this is a fresh stat for you. Since 1999, we've only had three tables. We've had the one that we bought at the yard sale, that that we had forever, and then we bought that little round one and then we've got this one. That's it, it's all we've had, and we kept redoing that one. From 1999 we changed the chairs out to, yeah, zebra or whatever, what your your thing was, and but the cool thing is is that we gave those tables. Dixie has one and Brianna has the other, so so the tables that we were building, we've actually passed on to our kids that we hope that they can build their own table, and so, um, again, it's just a crazy thing that we we've never had our own brand new dining set but so maybe now I should put that on the list I don't know.
Speaker 1:But, but again it goes back to this is that it's really not about the table itself you could have a card table and some folding chairs, but it's about what happens around the table and making, um, I think, making a concerted effort that we're going to build relationships and we're going to have a place that everybody is welcome, no matter who it is. We want, we want your friends here, right, we want our family here. We want, you know, we want that random person. And I'll finish with this and I'll give you the last word. Some friends of our oldest daughter said hey, when are we going to get invited to lunch? You know, like, when are we going to get invited to lunch? Because you know we invite people to eat all the time. But that's the thing is that people want to come and spend time at our table, not because of me or Tiffany, but because it's just an open place where you can find relationship and love.
Speaker 2:And I will say this, going back to them coming around as adults you know, if you want that one day, if you want to ensure that your kids will hopefully come and see you start building the table when they're kids or they're teenagers, because our kids will drop by here, but our kids are always going to come. If we're doing something at the table, that's almost a 100% chance that they're going to come. If they're in town and they're not, you know whatever. So you know, build the table and not just they'll come, but they'll keep coming.
Speaker 1:They'll keep coming. Yeah, absolutely, and that's what we're looking for is generation after generation, because I'd love to be a fourth generation sitting and looking at my great-grandkids like my mom and dad and your mom have been to be able to sit with them.
Speaker 1:So, again, build the table and they will come. Relationship is what this whole life is about. It's about loving on people. Loving God and loving people that's the two best commandments you can ever find in the Bible and we want to encourage you. Go ahead and start building the table, build those relationships and you'll see great things happen in your family. Hey, thanks so much for listening. There are two types of people. One of them is the type who talk the talk, and then there are the other type who walk the walk talk, and then there are the other type who walk the walk, and tiffany and I have always tried our best in 35 years to be the type of people who walk the walk and not just talk it. So thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.
