EP8: "I Can’t Fix It… But I’ll Sit With You In It"

This one’s for the dads who feel broken, tired, or like they’re not enough. In this raw, faith-filled episode, we talk about the pressure to fix everything—and the healing that comes when we admit we can’t. You’re not alone, brother. Let’s sit in it together.

Transcript

Speaker A: 0:02

Hey, brothers, welcome back to the Grateful Dad Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan, and today's episode is one that's been burning on my heart. And honestly, it might be one of the most important ones we ever do. The title, I can't fix it, but I'll sit here with you in it. And I know if you were dead, a husband, or just a man trying to hold it all together, you already know what that means. See, somewhere along the way, we inherited this unspoken job description. Fix it. Fix the leaky sink. Fix the broken toy. Fix the finances. Fix your kid's tantrum. Fix the marriage. Fix yourself. And for a lot of us, it's become our identity. Daddy can fix anything, my son Carter says. And, man, part of me swells with pride every time he says it. But the other part, the other part knows the truth. I can't fix everything. And sometimes I'm the one who needs fixing. Let me take you back to a moment not too long ago. Our house had just flooded. I mean, flooded. Water pouring out the front door like a busted dam. I'm sucking up sewer water with a shop vac and pushing it out the back with Carter's sandbox shovel, trying to stay strong for my pregnant wife and my little boy, trying to be the hero, the handyman, the rock. Deep down, how is breaking? I didn't cry then, but I cried later. Alone. Because no one ever tells the fixer that he's allowed to fall apart, too. This episode is for that version of you. It's for the dad who feels like he's failing even though he's giving it everything he's got. It's for the man who's silently screaming for help but doesn't know how to say it out loud. It's for the brother who doesn't need a solution right now. He just needs someone to sit with him in the mess and say, you're not alone. So today, we're going to talk about the pressure to fix. We're going to talk about brokenness. We're going to talk about what it really means to be present when there's nothing to say. And we're going to remind every single man listening, you don't have to carry it by yourself anymore. There's peace on the other side of surrender. There's healing on the other side of honesty. And there's a brotherhood right here ready to sit with you in it. So let's get into it. All right, brothers, before we jump into the big mindset shift, I want to share something with you. It's a true story that stopped me in my tracks this week. And it's our dad News you can use. It's about a man named Dave Cummings, a retired military veteran and longtime pastor. But this story isn't about his rank or his resume. It's about a moment that changed everything for someone else. Because he chose to just sit. A young man named Ben, in his early 30s, lost his wife to cancer. It happened so fast. She was diagnosed and gone within four months. They had a two year old daughter. And in the weeks that followed, Ben wasn't eating, wasn't talking, couldn't sleep, couldn't function. Everyone around him tried to help, but nothing was getting through. Until one day, Dave showed up at his house. He didn't bring a casserole. He didn't bring a sermon. He walked in, sat down on the floor next to Ben and didn't say one word. Not for 10 minutes, not for an hour. All night, Dave sat there until the sun came up. At one point, Ben finally said, I don't even know what to do. Dave just looked at him and said, you don't have to know. I'm here. I'm not leaving. That moment didn't fix the grief. It didn't erase the pain. But it gave Ben something he hadn't felt since the day his wife died. He wasn't alone. To this day, Ben says that was the moment that everything started to shift. Not because someone gave him the right words, but because someone was just willing to sit in it with him and brothers, that's what I want you to hear loud and clear today. You don't need a toolbox to show up. You just need a chair and the courage to sit down in someone's pain without trying to fix it. Because love isn't always loud. Sometimes it's just quiet. Presence. Sometimes that's all someone needs. So whether you're the one grieving or the one sitting next to someone who is, know this. Your presence matters. And you are never too broken to be a blessing. Mindset. Shift one. You weren't meant to fix everything. Let me hit you with something that might go against every instinct you've had since you were a kid. You weren't meant to fix everything. I know that feels wrong just to say out loud, doesn't it? Especially as a dad, a husband, a man. Like, from the moment we're old enough to hold a wrench, the world teaches us, if it's broken, fix it. Toys, fix them. Toilets, fix them. The wifi. You better fix that fast before the whole house falls apart. And somewhere along the way, that message stops being about things and starts being about people. Our kids bring us pain. And we think, I need to fix this. Our wives are hurting and we think, I must have done something wrong. Let me fix it. And when we look in the mirror and don't like who we see, we think, I'll just fix myself. But here's the truth that will set you free. God didn't design you to be the fixer. He designed you to be a father. Let that sink in for a second. Because a father isn't called to have all the answers. He's called to show up, to stay in the room, to sit in the mess with his kids, not scrub it away the second it appears. When Jesus came across people who were hurting, what did he do? Sometimes he healed, sometimes he taught. But always he saw them, he sat with them, he loved them before anything was ever fixed. Brothers, hear me on this. Your presence is more powerful than your solutions. We think our kids need us to solve everything. But most of the time, they just need to know that they're not alone in it. And the same goes for you, brother. If you're listening right now and your heart is bleeding, if you're carrying more than you can hold, you don't need to fix it today. You just need to sit with it and know that God, your Father, is sitting with you too. He's not asking you to have all the answers. He's asking you to bring him your broken pieces so he can be the one to put them back together. Shift 2. You can't heal what you won't admit is hurting. Alright, this one's going to cut a little deeper because I've lived it. Let me say it, plain and simple. You can't heal what you won't admit is hurting. And I know it sounds obvious, but for men, for dads, admitting hurt feels like weakness. And weakness, that's the one thing the world tells us we're not allowed to be. Somewhere along the way, we got handed this unwritten code that says you don't cry, you don't complain, you. You don't talk about the past. You don't talk about the panic attacks or the fear or the doubt. You suck it up, slap on a smile and fix it. But let me ask you something. How do you fix something if you won't even look at where it's broken? I remember when I was in the middle of my worst panic attacks. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't Even want to believe it was happening to me. Because to say it out loud felt like defeat. I thought, what if I'm broken? But that's the lie the enemy loves the most. The lie that your pain disqualifies you. Here's the truth. Pain doesn't disqualify you. It reveals the areas God wants to redeem. He already knows you're broken. You're not hiding anything from him by pretending it's not there. What you are doing is you're keeping yourself from the healing he wants to give you. God doesn't need you to be polished or buttoned up and Instagram worthy. He wants you to show up with the duct tape still holding your heart together and say, God, this is all I've got. These are the pieces. Here they are. And you know what he'll say? That's all I need. Because he's not intimidated by your pain. He's drawn to it. He runs toward it. Let me challenge you with this. What pain have you been silencing? What wound have you been hiding? What would happen if instead of hiding it, you held it out to God because you can't heal what you won't admit is hurting. But the moment you speak it, the moment you bring it into the light, healing can begin. And if you're afraid, no one will understand, I promise you this. I do. God does. And you're not alone anymore. Shift number three. Being present is more powerful than having the answer. Let me ask you something heavy. When was the last time you sat with someone in their pain and said nothing? When was the last time you let someone sit with you and your pain? As men, especially as dads, we're taught that being useful means being able to fix something. If we can't fix it, then we feel like we're failing a broken appliance. We Google it. Busted toy. We grab a screwdriver, leaky pipe. We go full YouTube university and crawl under the sink hurting loved one. We freeze because we can't fix them. Here's the hard truth. Not everything can be fixed. And not everything should be fixed by you. Sometimes your wife doesn't need a solution. She needs safety. Sometimes your kid doesn't need a lecture. They need your lap. Sometimes your friend doesn't need a motivational quote. They need a quiet place to fall apart without being judged, quoted, or quick, fixed. And listen, I get it. We feel useless when we're not doing. We feel powerless when there's nothing to solve. But let me tell you something that changed the way I show up in people's lives, silence isn't weakness. It's sacred. Let me take you back to the shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. He knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. But what did he do? First? He wept. He cried with the hurting. He didn't rush to the fix. He entered into the pain with them. And if the Savior of the world can stop and sit with us in the mess before performing a miracle, why do we think we need to have all the answers before we show up? Let me say it again for the dads who are carrying the pressure of everyone's problems on your shoulders. You don't need to be the hero. You just need to be here. That's it. Be here when your kid's world is falling apart. Be here when your friend is cracking behind the smile. Be here when your wife feels like everything is too much. Because here's what I've learned the hard way. Fixing is temporary, but presence is eternal. That moment you sit quietly with someone in their grief. That moment you let the tears fall without rushing to wipe them away. That moment you offer your shoulder instead of your opinion. That's the moment people remember forever. And dads, let's not forget this. We don't just need to be the ones who sit with others. We need to let others sit with us too. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to cry. It's okay to say, I don't know what to do right now. You don't have to be strong all the time to be a strong man. So if you're in the middle of the mess right now, if you're breaking, silently holding it in so you don't freak your wife out or lose your job or confuse your kids. Let me say this as clearly as I can. You don't need to fix it right now. You don't need to carry it alone. And you are not a failure just because you're feeling it deeply. You're not broken beyond repair. You're not disqualified from love. And you are absolutely not alone. So let me speak this over you. I can't fix it, but I'll sit here with you in it. And I'll keep sitting until you're ready to get up again. Shift number four. You don't have to fix yourself before coming to God. Let's clear something up right now. You don't have to clean yourself up before you walk through the church doors. You don't have to have it all together to have a relationship with God. And you sure as heck don't need to be perfect before you're worthy of peace. Some of us are walking around with this idea that God only wants the best version of us. The polished, well behaved church on Sundays version. But hear me on this. God doesn't want the filtered version of you. He wants the full you. The broken you. The exhausted, doubting and limping you. The late night, can't sleep. God, are you even real version. The version buried under the shame of your past. The version snapping at your kids because you're carrying too much and don't know who to talk to. That guy. That's the one God wants. That's the one that Jesus died for. We think we have to fix ourselves to get to God. But the truth, the only thing we need to do is fix our eyes on Him. Let me paint you a picture. Imagine someone walks up to you, puts their hand on your shoulder, looks you dead in the eye and says, hey, all those burdens you're carrying, that weight in your chest, that guilt, that fear. Hand it over. All of it. I'll take it. I'll handle it. You don't have to carry it another step. How would that feel? That's what Jesus offers every single one of us. Not some of us, not just the church kids, not just the ones who look like they have it all together. Every single one of us. He says, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Not a self help course, not a checklist, not a subscription to a spiritual success plan. Rest because his burden is light. Not because the world is easy, but because his shoulders are stronger than yours. So stop waiting until you're ready. Stop waiting until your finances are fixed, your anger is under control, your marriage is healthy, or your past is forgotten. God isn't asking you to rebuild your life alone. He's asking you to hand him the pieces and let him show you what restoration really looks like. You want to know what it feels like when you do that? It feels like peace. It feels like freedom. It feels like the first breath you've taken in years without the weight on your chest. So if you're hearing this and you've been trying to duct tape your soul back together on your own, let me say this. You don't have to fix it. You don't have to fix you. God's not waiting for perfection. He's waiting for your permission. And the second you say, okay, God, I'm done doing it my way, take it. That's when things start to change. So Shift your focus. Fix your eyes, not your image. Let God in and let peace in with him. Man, I've been called a fixer my whole life. Broken sprinkler. I got it. Internet's out. I'm on it. Toilet's leaking. Let me grab my tools. Carter actually says, daddy can fix anything. And I love that. I love that my kids see me that way. I love being able to step in and solve problems. But sometimes life hands you something you can't fix. And for me, that moment came when our house flooded. It was about a month before Taylor was born. I was working late and Shannon's brother was coming over for dinner. Just 10 minutes before I was supposed to head home, I get a call from Shannon. The house is flooding. What? Yes, the house is flooding. And not a little leak, not a puddle in the laundry room. I mean flooding. Water pouring out the front door like a river. Sewer water through the floors, into every room. Furniture, clothes, baby things, everything. And I knew exactly why it happened. It was a drain pipe. An old Orangeburg pipe that I had known was an issue for years. I kept putting it off. I'd patch it, have it snaked, get it flowing again. I'd cover it up. But I never really fixed it. Sound familiar? We do that, don't we? With our past, with our wounds, with our sins. We patch it. We cover it up. We pray it holds a little longer. Until one day, it all floods out. So here I am, standing in my house, ankle deep in sewer water, trying to keep it together while my pregnant wife watches me with tears in her eyes. And Carter's grabbing his toy shovel. I hoping he can help, although I won't let him because it's sewer water. I wanted to scream, cry, break something. But instead, I did what I always do. I started fixing. We dried the floors, pulled out the baseboards, set up fans, moved in with my dad. But then we found mold everywhere. Inside the walls, under the tile, in the cabinets. And suddenly, this wasn't a flood cleanup. This was a flood. Full blown gut job. Insurance wouldn't cover the cost to fix it all. And I couldn't afford to hire a crew. So I became the crew. Me, a pry bar and a prayer. Every day I work 15 to 18 hours balancing managing the business and rebuilding the home. Drywall, plumbing, tile, electrical doors, baseboards, everything. And in the middle of all that chaos, Taylor was born. This beautiful, tiny baby girl comes into the world. And I'm not even done building the walls to the nursery. She spent some time in the nicu. Shannon was recovering. Carter was trying to make sense of everything. And I just kept grinding, kept fixing, kept pushing. But let me tell you what no one saw in between the tile and the drywall. I cried. Behind the locked door of an unfinished bedroom. I broke down on my way to the hardware store. I asked God, why me? Why now? And it wasn't in a sermon or a song that I heard his voice. It was in the stillness when I finally stopped and said, God, I can't. That's when I realized something I'll never forget. The flood didn't just reveal the damage to my house. It revealed the damage in my heart. I had been trying to fix everything except myself. I had been trying to hold it all together for everyone, but never letting anyone hold me. And that's where God met me. He didn't come with a checklist. He didn't come with shame. He came with peace. And he came with grace. He came and sat with me. And slowly, wall by wall, room by room, he started rebuilding me, too. To this day, when Carter tells people my daddy fixed our whole house, I smile. Because the truth is, I didn't fix that house. God did. He used my hand, sure. But he rebuilt more than drywall and door frames. He rebuilt a dad who had forgotten he didn't have to do it all alone. So to the man listening right now, thinking, I'm not enough. I can't fix this. And I'm breaking, Brother, I've been there. And let me be the one to say it. You don't need to fix it all today. You just need to stop patching the broken pipe and invite God in to start the rebuild. And if you don't know where to begin, I'll sit here with you in it. All right, brother. Let's land this plane. This episode was a heavy one. But if you're still with me, it's because something in your soul needed to hear it. So let's revisit what we've uncovered together. Being a fixer isn't your identity. It's just one of the ways that you love. But love, real love, isn't about fixing everything. It's about being present in everything. It's about showing up, even when you don't have the answers. It's about sitting with someone in the dark until they can see the light again. You are not broken beyond repair. You are not weak because you are hurting. You are not alone just because you feel alone. Sometimes the greatest strength that man can show is the courage to say, I can't fix it. But I'll sit here with you in it. Let me ask you some questions to sit with this week. What are you trying to fix in your life that you haven't handed over to God, who around you is hurting? And instead of fixing it, maybe they just need your presence? Where are you hurting? And have you let anyone sit with you in it? What would it look like to finally let go of the fixer role and start letting God lead? This week, I have a challenge for you. Don't reach for a solution. Reach for someone's heart. Reach out to a man or a dad in your life. Someone who might be going through a silent struggle. It doesn't have to be dramatic and it doesn't have to be deep. Just say something like, hey, brother, I don't know what you're carrying right now, but I want you to know you don't have to carry it alone. I'm here to sit with you in it. No matter what that message might be, the moment someone's been waiting for. And if you're the one who needs that message today, let this episode be it. You're not alone. You don't have to be fixed to be found. God's with you. I'm with you. And this brotherhood is with you, too. Okay, okay. We've been swimming in the deep end long enough. Let's come up for air real quick with another saucy dad joke. So here it goes. You know, I once tried to fix a broken pencil, but then I realized it was pointless. Yes, and I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses, brothers. Thank you for trusting me with your time, your heart, and your story. If this episode hit home, I want you to do three things. Share this episode with another dad who might need it. Don't assume they're fine. Share the seat. Hit that follow button and turn on notifications so you never miss a message meant for you. And join the movement. We're not just dads, we're grateful dads. And this community is just getting started. Until next time. Keep loving your people. Keep walking with God. And when life gets messy, don't try to fix everything. Just show up, be present, and sit with someone in it. And above all, stay grateful.