Ep 19: Your Amazing Story

While Richard is off on his honeymoon, Pat talks about and illustrates how everything you've come through and overcome in your life is actually pretty amazing, and that each of us have an amazing story whether we realize it or not.   

Transcript

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Two unlikely Christians podcast. I'm comedian Pat McCool, and today we're actually just going to be one unlikely Christian because Richard, is on his honeymoon with his new bride as of last week. So we hope all's going well with him. So. Today instead of talking to Richard, I am going to be talking to you and we're gonna be talking about your amazing story because most of you don't realize it, but you do have an amazing story and you're living it right now, and I'm gonna try to illustrate it for you and to do that. I'm gonna start by telling you a little bit about my story, which, uh, I wrote a book called Bonsai. Wasn't really that big of a hill, and the subtitle is One Man's Walk Towards God. I'm not trying to get you to buy it, but it's available in Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, Kendall. Uh, just anywhere, uh, books are sold, but. There's a reason why I'm reading this because I want you to think about something. So I'm gonna read, um, about eight paragraphs of the first chapter. So stay with me. So here we go. Chapter one. Actually the first chapter starts off with, and here we go. I didn't know at the time why I did it. I just remember looking at the sinks in the bathroom of my first grade class in Fort Lee, Virginia. I walked over the first sink, put the stopper in the drain, and turned the water on. Then I did the same to the four remaining sinks. I strolled back into the classroom, sat down at my desk, and went back to coloring monkeys. About 10 minutes later, my teacher GL glanced towards the back of the room with a concerned look on her face. Water was seeping under the door into the classroom. She walked to the bathroom to find five overflowing sinks and the floor covered with water. It didn't take them long to clean it up, and for some reason there was no intensive manhunt to find the culprit, so I got away with it. This was not good. A couple of months later, a letter arrived in the mail. It was a letter that would change my life. We all have moments that change our lives, and they usually don't happen at a preconceived time or highly anticipated event. They happen on a random Tuesday at four 30 in the afternoon when you're not expecting it. The letter was my father's new assignment. He was going to Vietnam. We were going to Mississippi. Packing up and moving is a common occurrence for a military brat. It's just what you do. You live on one post for a year. You make friends go to school and get adjusted. Then, boom, you pack up the station wagon, wave goodbye to your friends and head across the country. We would stop at a roadside park for a sandwich, pull over on the side of the highway a couple of times, so my dad could beat the fire outta me and my brother Mike. Then roll into the next town. By the time we left Virginia, I had lived in Fort Benning, Georgia, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and bad kissing in Germany. I had ridden the gondolas in Venice, climbed the leaning tower or pizza. And well, that's Pisa and pose for a picture wearing leader Hoing in a sailor's hat in front of Michelangelo's statue. I wasn't nearly as amused by the things I had seen and their cultural significance as I was by my grandmother turning purple and throwing up in the gondola or my grandfather ordering food in an Italian restaurant. He glanced at the menu, written in Italian, looked up at the waiter and said, I'll have a bologna sandwich, and Sally here will have a milk of magnesium. We moved to Moss Point, Mississippi, where my dad grew up. My parents, aunts, uncles, and all of my cousins and my dad's side of the family lived there. It was a sad time because my dad was on the other side of the world, but living in Moss Point was a blast. My grandmother, Sally McCool, was the funniest woman I've ever known. She was a large woman with the vocal cords to match, and my cousins Ricky and JJ could make a funeral service burst into laughter. Spending a year and a half around these people removed any mystery of where my sense of humor came from. We moved into a house my grandmother had picked out Forrest in downtown Moss Point. When I first laid eyes on this thing, a shiver went down my spine. It looked like the house they used for the original set of the Bates Motel. It was an old Civil War era, house creaking, wooden floors and hidden walls in the attic. A perfect place for spooks where I was sure were there to hide while they waited for the sun to go down. If that wasn't enough to keep the covers over my head at night, the abandoned house across the street, formerly the home to Carl E. Lee, Robert e Lee's brother, had broken windows and was covered with weeds. I was certain that Satan himself had spent time there. I would lay in bed all night with my Wi Eyes wide open, waiting for the creature from the Black lagoon to crawl through my window. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one who was freaked out by this. My mother didn't put her foot down often, but when she did things God handled. After two weeks in that horror house, she told my dad, max, this house is giving us the creeps, and if you don't get us another place, we're going to a hotel. Two weeks later, we moved into a brand new house in Riverwood subdivision. Two weeks after that, mom and dad loaded me and my brother Mike, into the station wagon and headed for the airport and mobile something. It was odd about this because mom was driving. She rarely drove If my dad was with us, it wasn't until we got to the airport that we figured out why he was in the passenger seat. She stopped the car. They both looked at each other with a look of seriousness that I hadn't seen before. They stared at each other for a moment until their eyes started welling up with tears. He looked back at me and my brother and said. Now y'all behave yourselves and take care of your mother. He hugged and kissed her and said something under his breath we couldn't hear. He straightened himself up and said, okay, Polly. Then got out of the car, walked through the fence, leading to the plane that would take him away. That's when it dawned on us. We wouldn't see him again until this time, the following year. Now think about what you were doing when you were my age, when you were a child, when you had a moment such as the one that I just had. I had a moment. My dad was leaving. Kind of pretty traumatic to me, but a lot of you who are listening had things that were far more traumatic. Maybe you had a divorce. Maybe you changed schools, lost friends, felt rejected, lost someone important to you. You know, maybe you had a lot of friends. Maybe you were the goth kid that had to live in their head. Um, but think of how you handled all of that when you were young, because a lot of you forgot about it. You've all come through a lot of things and you've all been, very interesting people along the way, whether you realize it or not. As a matter of fact, as I mentioned with the Goth kid, some of the most interesting people I've met were people that, that had to live in their heads because they think, and they keep things to themselves. And a lot of you are the same way. You've gone through a lot of amazing things, a lot of challenges through your life, and you've handled them all. And just what age. Think about when you were young and when you were growing up and the things that gave you a punch along the way and how you got through'em and how you got over. I mean, what age did you discover that? Life really ain't that easy. I don't know if any of you ever read a book. There's a book by f Scott Peck called The Road Less Travels, and it pertains to everybody that's listening to it because the point is. Of each of you figured out that life is not easy. The start of the book basically says life is difficult, and the sooner you figure that out, the better off you are. Well, a lot of us take a long time to figure out that life's difficult, but the point I'm trying to bring home to everybody that's listening. Is regardless of what age you figured it out, you've dealt with all the difficulty in your life and you've lived an amazing life.'cause people think they have to do something extraordinary to be considered amazing. But what you're doing, just living life is very amazing. I mean, I've known a lot of, celebrities. Uh, I've known one very well, spent a lot of time with almost a couple of the formative years of his life when he was becoming famous. And what I found out was what was amazing about him wasn't the talent that was given to him. It was the things he was overcoming in his personal life.'cause what people don't realize, celebrities are just like you. They have a talent, they, whatever they do is in public, so everybody thinks, oh, that's great. They might be a sports figure, which this person was one of the most well-known sports figures in America. They may be an actor or somebody that people see, but they're just average people just like the rest of us. I mean, just like every everyone else, what they go through in life and what they overcome is the real amazing part of what they done through life. And if you're listening to this and you're an adult, you've overcome some incredibly amazing things to get to where you are. You've had punches in the face, you've overcome difficult things. And the main thing is a lot of people don't make it. A lot of people haven't made it to where you are. They haven't accomplished and done the things that you've done. And the accomplishing of the things is the stuff that you do on the a regular basis. It's just getting up, living life, taking care of business, and dealing with all the things that have come your way. Like I said when I was talking about. Childhood. A lot of times people forget that and they go through life and they forget all the little things they've overcome. You know, did you overcome a parents that were a, a divorce, moving away from home, losing friends, losing important people in your life? I'll guarantee you, uh, people out there listening to me, you've dealt with that and you've overcome it and it's made you what you are and it's been part of this tapestry of your amazing story. And you do have an amazing story and you've had things in your life that you've had to overcome and you just don't realize it. I'm, I was talking to a guy the other day and he was, he's a student at the University of Southern Mississippi and the guy's really stressed out. He's a senior in college and he's just wanting to get through his,. Degree, and get on with his life. And he starts telling me, well, I said, well, well you're doing this and you're almost done. And he said, I'm trying. Well, yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying. Well, he's not trying just like none of you guys are. Trying, you're doing it. You're accomplishing things on a daily basis. Everything you've done to get to this point in life. Navigating whatever you navigated in childhood, navigating all the punches that were thrown your way, navigating all the changes that have come into your life and you're still getting through it. Now, some of you might be struggling right now. Some of you might be doing very well. But the fact is you're leading an amazing life and you don't really realize it. And it's very interesting and far more interesting than you think it is. And I always tell people, like, I told that kid as he starts telling me, well, I'm trying. I said, no, you're not trying. I said, you're doing it. If you're already a senior in college, look what all you've gone through. And then he started mentioning all the places where he lived and his family and how they moved around and all the different things he had led to that point. And that's an, it is really an incredible story. You didn't have to go out and do a lot of the stupid stuff I did to, people think what, you know, that I had this interesting life because of all the things that I had gone through. But, a lot of the most amazing things is not going out and doing crazy things, but living life, taking care of business, doing what you need to do, and overcoming all the things that you overcome. Making a difference in people's lives and family, and people don't realize. How interesting and how unique they really are.'cause in the Bible it actually says, if you think about it, in Psalm 1 39, 2 4, God says, you know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways before a word is on my tongue. You Lord know it completely. I mean, throughout this verse, it's clear that God sees each person as an individual created in his image for a purpose that is specific to them. The verse points to the fact that each person has unique gifts and talents and has a role to play in a world like anyone else. And what I'm trying to tell everyone that's listening. You're playing that role whether you realize it or not, and it's pretty amazing how well you're doing it. Whether you realize it or not. You see you, the average person, well, I don't wanna say average'cause nobody's an average person, but you think you're average, but you don't realize that you, we rarely see ourselves as other people do. We rarely see the impact we're making. We rarely see what other people are, are, are thinking. And as a matter of fact, you know, we don't even really know what we look like because all we ever see is a reflection of ourselves. So we have this image of what we're going through life and what we're doing or, or not doing. As a matter of fact, studies have shown that the average person is four times more attractive than they think they are. Because when all we look in the mirror, what do we do? We always think of the negative parts about us. We think of either what we haven't accomplished, what we didn't do, or how we look. As a matter of fact, I hate watching myself, when I'm doing comedy skits. When I've had an agent or so say, Hey, pick out a few clips and I gotta go back and watch one of my shows. I don't wanna watch it. All I see is in there. I was, oh my gosh, look at my pants are sliding off. Geez. I didn't realize how fat I was going. Uh uh. I was getting, geez, look how old. You know, it just all the negative things. That's what we put into our minds that we think about ourselves, but that's not reality. Did for example, did I, when my book first came out, this girl had messaged me on Facebook that I went to high school with, had never seen her since, was never really friends with her. And she said, I, I read the book and it was, you know, as was just talking about the book. And I responded to her and we had a little conversation. And she said, I always wondered, I'd always look at you and your friends and wondered what it was like to be one of the cool kids. Well, I mean, I was always getting in trouble, so I garnered a lot of attention. And what she didn't realize, it was so ironic that she said that, because I remember looking at her thinking she was very quiet. She was a pretty girl. She just took care of business and went on her way. I was looking at her thinking, wow, what would it be like to not be in trouble all the time? To be the person that doesn't always have to try to act like a fool to try to get attention. The point was, I always admired her while she's looking, overthinking, I'm living some special life'cause I'm always getting in trouble or I'm, I'm always kind of making a name for myself doing nefarious things. I'm looking at her with admiration, thinking, wow, I admire the person that's living the life that she's living and. She was, li was living a more amazing life than I was at the time. If you ask me, and people a lot of times don't realize what all they're doing. For example, I did a show in, Lexington, Kentucky a little while back, and I flew into Cincinnati, which is about an hour and a half north of Kentucky. I mean, um, Lexington, where it's. Uh, the church is called Old Paris Road, church of God, pastored by a fantastic pastor named Joseph Grant. So he drove up to pick me up because it was the easiest way to get into to Lexington with the flights coming outta New Orleans. And on the ride down we start talking about me. He's read my book and he's asking a few questions about it, and I, you know, I'm kind of preparing for the show and that type of thing. But then on the way back, uh, we started having a conversation and I started asking him about his que about his life. Like, where did you, where were you born? Where'd you grow up? Because I find everybody's story amazing. I find it amazing that a person was born here and moved over here and changed schools there, uh, overcame a parent's divorce, and then all of you've lived through, not divorced necessarily, but many of you have, but. Uh, all the changes in life, all the different things, all the times. You were a kid that you had to move and you had to adjust to things and you had to learn to things or you got rocked outta your, comfort zone. And I just find people amazing. So I started asking him this question and he starts telling me this story about, uh, he was living in Georgia, I think outside of Atlanta. His father was a Church of God pastor. He's a Church of God pastor Now. And his, uh, mother and father divorced. That had to be a punch in the stomach. Especially to a kid growing up in a pastor's family, church of God's family. Your whole world gets rocked. But, but he keeps the faith and he goes on to school and then when he gets outta high school, he decides he wants to go to a bible college. And I don't remember the name of the college,'cause I'm having to, to a little sketch on some of the details, but he goes to a college up north. Turns out that college wasn't really. For him and he leaves and goes back to West Georgia College and he goes through school graduates, becomes the youth pastor at their church, and he's doing a fantastic job as the youth pastor, as the church. They, he's hired on full time. He wants to begin his ministry. Everything is going well, and one day they come in and they tell him they're replacing him as youth pastor, even though he had gotten all kinds of plots and everybody loved him and they were replacing him with someone else. And the truth was there was a very powerful man in the church of God that, uh, either had a son, a relative, or somebody that they gave the job to. And so Joseph was pretty much devastated by this. He loses the job. But he stays with the church and one day he ends up, uh, doing something else. He gets involved, he gets involved with, with the church not being the, that youth pastor takes him to, uh, somewhere in Texas where they're having a conference. He's at this conference, and while he's at the conference, he meets this girl, the girl, he ends up marrying the girl, Heather. She ends up becoming his, his wife. They now have two children, and so he meets his wife because he lost that job and he, he lost that job and he was devastated by it. But in those changes, he overcame those changes. He does something different. It ends up being a better path for him, but he meets his wife, and then a couple of years later, he goes back to Georgia. He gets a call. From the man that got, that cost him his job. I joked with him about, yeah, you know that guy's the one that got you, that got you fired and got the other person's job. He said, well, I don't really think like that. And I'm like, yeah, well, I'm a little more seedy than you are, and this is what actually happened, Joseph. Well, it did happen, but it turned out that guy knew that there was an opening coming up for a pastor. In Lexington, Kentucky recommended him and ended up getting him that job As the pastor now, he's the pastor of this thriving church, two beautiful children, beautiful wife, and they're making a huge difference in people's lives. And if you look at all the little things that led up to him, the divorce in his family, moving two or three times, all of that to me is means he's had an amazing story in his life. And if most of you think about what I'm talking about, you've had things like that that have happened too. You've had setbacks, you've had things you've, you where you've been punched in the face that you've overcome, that you've dealt with that. That has taken you to, where you are now and it's an amazing story that, that you live. It's just like the kid that was going through, uh, trying to get his degree at Southern Miss. He'd had an amazing story. He's had an amazing life and he's about to get his degree and he was telling me. That when I, you know, I asked him how he's did, he said, well, I'm trying. Well, he is not trying, he's doing it just like all of the rest of you aren't trying. You're also out there doing it. You're taking care of business and you're building the pap, the tapestry of an amazing life. And I can tell you, you've also made a bigger impact in people's lives than you think you have. I promise you there are people that you touched along the way that you, that your footprint has made an impact on all throughout your life. You know, as a matter of fact, I think about, uh, started to do this podcast. I met Richard and, you know, we decided we wanted to encourage people and we wanted to make a difference in people's lives. And so we started doing the podcast and. I have a way of looking and seeing that where everybody listens from and we're in like 120, cities around the country. We're in about 17, 18 countries, countries I didn't even know existed and. You can look each day or at the end of every week and it'll tell you where everybody's listening from. And we have some that just kind of come in and might not stay.'cause you know, of course I ain't for everybody, but we have what I call repeat offenders and that's people that continue to listen and continue to log back in. And some will pick up three episodes and then they'll come back and get. Two more and that type of thing. But some were very consistent when we first started doing it. You know, I'm thinking, okay, Richard wants to do this, so we're going to do this and we're gonna see, see if we can't make a difference in people's lives. So I was paying attention to these towns and I noticed the ones that consistently, and there's a number of them out there where people consistently listen to what we're. Uh, what we're doing and one of them stuck out is a place called Born Texas. Now, whoever is in born Texas, I hope you're listening right now, because I started noticing that when I would post a new, uh, we would publish a new episode, one of the first people that came in. Born Texas. Now there's numerous cities out there that do that, but I noticed that one'cause I'd never heard of it, but it's obviously a place a little north of San Antonio. And each week, when we would work to do the podcast, sometimes it's not easy to squeeze'em in. I'm traveling doing shows. Richard's got his work over there, but we continued to force'em in and I would do'em and I would turn that on. And within about 24 to 48 hours, I would look over and think, Hey, look at that. There's born Texas. So whoever you are, I don't know if you're a man, woman, I don't know if life's going great for you. I don't know if you're going through struggles. I don't know. Uh, what it is, and I don't know if you tune into this for encouragement, but I just want you to know that every time I looked on there and saw where you had listened to what we were doing, you were actually encouraging me so you didn't know it. But you were making an impact by picking up your phone or your computer and just clicking on this. You see how easy it is to make a difference in people's lives that you don't know. And most of you out there are doing that throughout your lives. You're impacting people, you're impacting your family, you're making a difference, and you are living an amazing life and an amazing story. You've overcome a lot. You've been punched in the face a lot. And you're not trying to do anything. You're doing it. And your God in heaven, the God that created everything is watching everything you're doing. He knows every hair on your head and he sees you as a very unique and special person. And I guarantee you that you're living an amazing life in his eyes and in the eyes of a lot of others. And I just wanted to point out today that you ought to stop, take the time and realize it. So when you get up in the morning, when you look in the mirror, when you go to work, when you're tired, whatever you do, when you see that reflection,'cause that's all you really see is your reflection. You don't see what everybody sees back. But when you look in that you should tell your yourself, I'm living an amazing life. I am creating an amazing story. God is watching me. God's loving me, and I am making a difference in life. And you ought to realize that, and you ought to realize the amazing things that you're doing in life just by living life, just by taking care of business, just by doing all the things, getting up every day and handling everything in life that comes at you. And everything that's going to come at you in the future. So I just wanted to share that with everybody and just wanted to remind you all that you all are living an amazing life and thanks for listening and hope to see you next time. God bless you and take care.