Lesson 9. Foundation

🎙 The Time Smith Podcast

Forging identity, faith, and resilience from life’s hardest lessons.

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts — caught in randomness, memories you didn’t invite but can’t seem to shake? The Time Smith is a guide into that inner world. Through vivid storytelling and powerful metaphors, this podcast takes you into “the forge”: the mental and spiritual space where pain becomes purpose, and brokenness becomes foundation.

In each episode, The Time Smith invites you to walk through the rooms of memory, climb the stairs of self-discovery, and lay the stones of your own foundation. You’ll hear honest reflections on identity, trauma, hope, faith, and the process of rebuilding a meaningful life from the rubble of the past.

🛠 What you’ll experience in this podcast:

• Stories of overcoming childhood wounds, confusion, and self-doubt
• Lessons on building a strong foundation with principles that last
• How to turn life’s “stones” — insults, failures, burdens — into pathways forward
• Encouragement to find clarity, peace, and hope no matter where you are on your journey
• Reflections on faith, purpose, and becoming who you were meant to be

"If you feel unloved, you are loved. If you feel lost, you can be found."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness? A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they held on? Let's talk about that. Hi, I'm the Time Smith and welcome back. I hope you had time to listen to the last lesson, identity. Did it provide any clarity as to who you are? I hope it did. Well, today I want to talk about foundation, that which is principle. But let's step into the forge and let's have a seat on the couch. I mentioned the flooring. When I look at this, I see stones, some large, some small, different shapes, all coming together perfectly. Let's step down into memories. Let's just walk over to the stairs. Grab onto the handle. You don't have to rush it. Let's find the door. Foundation. Here it is. Let's open it up. When I look inside this room, I see dirt, I see an evening sky and nothing else in here, but a younger version of myself just standing there, confused, empty, feeling alone, wondering what is to come. What will happen with my life? What am I gonna build? And I looked around and there was nothing to build with. I've always wanted to be resourceful and I needed something to build with. And that empty feeling was what I lived with. The trauma, the bad decision making, the anger. This was the space that I would come into. I have hopes for myself that I could become something. The ideas wouldn't come. The creativity was stunned. And I felt that I was not able to advance. And I'd be very hard on myself. Even the smallest of insults would be magnified. But yet, it still felt like I was having stones thrown at me. Pebbles, rocks, the part that made living difficult. The problems that I had internally. My mind, my heart, the confusion, all of it. And this one time I was praying and that's where this memory is at. That as I stood there, I got down on my knees and I began to pray. And I asked God, why did you give me such a hard life? Why did you make things difficult and challenging? Most people would think that we're not supposed to question God. But in the same respect, we're asked to pray to bring our cares to him, our anxieties, the things that ail us. And what was ailing me was that I felt that there was no future. As I've stated, I didn't think I'd make it past the age of 18. So as I knelt there and I prayed and I cried out, I thought to myself, what will I become? But those stones began to get thrown on me. And I'm not sure if you've ever felt being pegged with a rock or a stone, something heavy. And one by one, these stones began to just peg me and I was being pummeled with them. Each one of those stones had a name, insult, anxiety, anger, abuse, all of it. Substance abuse, verbal abuse, mental abuse, lack of confidence, some stones larger than the others, and all this while I prayed. Well, by the time I was done praying, I felt so buried with all my problems. And I did cry out to God to help me, to see. And I thought to myself about a verse I remember, that the steps of the righteous are ordered of God. I'll let you look that one up. But my steps were ordered, but yet there was this vast emptiness. There was no escape except to build. And how? Well, as I laid under those rocks and I thought to myself that I had to be resourceful, I grabbed each and every one of those stones and began to push them off of me. And I rose above those stones and those stones were beneath my feet. And I looked ahead of me and I saw a vast space looked down at the rocks again and I said I'm gonna create a path to that space so I grabbed each stone and I laid it down ahead of me one by one I had enough problems to probably make a road well what I did was I created a path and I walked on top of all my problems I was on top of it I looked back and I saw more stones some Large and small and some that felt too heavy to carry. Some of our problems were just that. They're burdensome. But with all my might, I lifted it up and laid them right in front of the path. And I made a large square, a foundation. As a believer, I'm taught that Jesus is the cornerstone. And so even though I had the stones to be resourceful, But I needed something large to secure everything in place. That was the cornerstone. I had to ask God to help me. I needed direction. I was already beginning to fabricate, so I understood laying a foundation and keeping things square, keeping things straight and level and balanced. And he brought that. Well, this took a lot of time to build in my life. This wasn't just... Something that was at the age of 14, 15 or 20 or even 30. This was something that I needed a complete task to be on top of it, to have mastered what had happened. Again, average is not mastering. And it was exhausting. It was tiresome. And the building showed me that I eventually needed rest. I wanted to keep going with the layout. and make it larger. There were certain areas that I wanted to spend more time because I wanted it to look perfect. Well, I still didn't have the wood to build the building, the shovels to dig into the lower floors. I didn't have any of that. All I had is that I had turned my problems into the path that I was gonna walk. I had to be on top of it. I had to take responsibility for what had happened the way that I responded to all my problems we can always find somebody that will justify what we do but morally there is a right and there's a wrong we do see now in our culture that there's things that are acceptable that are not morally acceptable and in order to build our life correctly we must build our life morally Correct. How else can we build a foundation? How else can we leave a legacy? How else can we show those around us the evidence of change? Where some still saw me buried in my problems, no one saw what I was building. I was building a foundation for my life, something that was stable. Upon this rock, he built the church. And upon those stones, I built my life. Let's step out. When I look back inside and I look around and look at these rooms and I look up at the ceiling and it just keeps me thinking. It's amazing to me. These are events that I never thought would happen. That there would be some comprehension to what was materializing as I was living. That it wasn't just something that was in my head and it wasn't just an escape. It was the truth of what was happening. That those stones were brokenness. Let's walk and talk. Let's walk up. That brokenness is what brought me here. I hated it for a long time. It hurt me. It damaged me. It kept me suffering. It felt that the reward for those things was nothing but pain. That there is no way and that it is impossible for those events to happen and for something good to come. That was the doubt that was in me. But hope showed itself. When I was 16, hope came into my life and presented the idea that I could overcome. Well, this is 30 years later, and I'm starting to see that that hope has come alive. That just the way when I walked into that room, there was nothing. And you might feel that there's nothing good that can come of your situation. But we are not the designers of this. We were just living. We were given resources. For some, they're given stones. And for someone else, they're given iron and wood. Well, for some, they're given encouragement. and for others they're given hope clarity genuineness a good heart in the midst of the chaos that's what this is foundation how will you build your life will you build your life crying will you build your life being angry or will you build your life being hopeful I choose to build my life being hopeful I choose to build my life being encouraged. The past, to me, only matters if I can find the lesson. But talking about the past for myself is not profitable. If I can look into the past and see that there's a lesson in everything that I've lived, then I've achieved something great. Peace. In the chaos, in the abuse, In the sadness, in the depression, it's hard to see that if we are resourceful, that will take us to peace. Do you have peace? Do you look at the emptiness and still have peace? Well, the peace was that cornerstone. Knowing that everything I build will be kept together and that it will not collapse. It will not crack under the pressure and that it will be held together as long as I'm alive. Foundation. We need a strong foundation. We'll leave it there. I have a few ideas about what we should talk about next. And I'm thankful for those that are listening as I've been asked to speak about what family trauma is does to the family also confession um what it looked like when i finally told my mom about what happened and lastly i was asked to talk about trust after trauma in the link of these podcasts you can click there and it will send me a text and you could just tell me If there's something you would want me to speak about And appropriately I'll set it up and I'll do it Anyway Thank you for always coming back And I hope this is helping you And please feel free to share it You can grab the link and put it on your social media You can send a text And I hope that we do gain new listeners People are listening And I hope that lives are changing. Remember, if you feel unloved, you are loved. And if you feel that you are lost, you can be found. God bless you. I am the Timesmith.