I Grew Up Without a Father — Here’s What It Cost Me (Christian Rasmussen)

What happens when a boy grows up fatherless, afraid, and surrounded by violence — and then God interrupts his story?

This is Christian Rasmussen’s raw and unfiltered testimony of healing, identity, and manhood restored.

In This Podcast:

• Growing up in chaos without a father
• Abuse, poverty, fear & generational brokenness
• The moment God showed up
• How Christian learned to walk as a man of integrity
• Breaking cycles for his future family
• The gospel in the simplest possible form
• Real hope for every man who grew up without a dad

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Uh my dad um he left when I was seven. Every time he left, just super sad, like felt like the end of the world every time. There was a lot of domestic violence, there was a lot of women's poverty, and I've never had an example. Didn't know what a man looked like, didn't know what it meant to be a man. It broke me and like in that moment I knew, I said, okay, like this is real. Like, don't this is 100% real and 100% God. And I asked God, I need you to follow me. I need you to teach me what it is to be a man.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

My life was just by rolling downhill depression, alcoholism, incarceration, death's about as fair. One guy who showed up is just me. If you can give a man clarity and community, he can start to live out his purpose and you can break the generational curses of alcoholism.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Welcome to Dudes Without Dads, the show that trains men how to become the dads they never had.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah, Christian Rasmussen from a small town in eastern Colorado. Grew up there, spent my entire life there until um till I was about 38. So about seven years ago, moved out here to left Colorado, left everything I knew, came out here to Tennessee, and started over. Um, really followed the call of God out here, and um yeah, it's been amazing. It's been fun, fun ride for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Awesome. So we've got 30 years worth of history in Colorado that we get to work with today. And so what I want you to do is I want you to take me back just to maybe childhood. Um, let me know what it looked like, what your experiences were.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. So I uh so I was uh had a single mom, uh seven kids. So there were um oldest and youngest were girls, and then there were five boys in the middle, um, and uh two different dads, but uh we all grew up together just with a single mom. And uh my dad um he left when I was seven, moved out to Washington, DC, left us in Colorado, and didn't really have from the time I was seven till about 20, didn't really have uh connection with him a whole lot. We'd call him about once a year, and then we'd see him at Christmas. Most Christmases he'd come out and he'd spend about a week with us, and then we didn't hear from him again all year. And um, yeah, grew up a small town in eastern Colorado, single mom. She was a cocktail waitress. So it was uh she, yep, living in poverty, like it was it was rough. We didn't have much, and she uh she worked from like 2 p.m. till 2 a.m. for most of my childhood. So we get home from school, nobody was there, and then on Friday and Saturday night, she was working, so it was pretty much just a free-for-all for us seven kids. It uh yeah, it was it was rough, and it was and it's funny because we joke about it, but it wasn't fun, and it wasn't it wasn't um, you know, we had a good there were good times, but it was it was rough and it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing at school. It was um, you know, we didn't have a car for a lot of the time I was growing up. We didn't have a phone the entire time I was in high school, you know, plywood floors, um yeah, just messy, messy house, chaos. It was grown up in chaos, and it wasn't um it wasn't fun or glamorous, or you know, people talk like oh rough times and went through rough time in childhood. It it sucked, like it was it was, yeah, there were things that were that were hard about it. My mom got remarried when I was in high school, but guy moved in with us when I was a freshman and he was a drug addict, and um, yeah, there was a lot of domestic violence, there was a lot of um, yeah, just ugliness and poverty and shame. And um, yeah. And I was like, I was a good student in school, right? So I I kind of lived at school because that was there was peace and there was structure, and there was it, um, it was good for me, you know. Perfect at near perfect attendance at school. I, you know, me and my my one of my brothers, we were athletes, so we you know played football, basketball, and baseball, and kind of um, yeah, I that's where I got my identity was with it was in school. So yeah, on a roll, all that stuff, right? Like I I was and I knew something inside of me knew I had to do well in school in order to get out of where I was, and um, yeah, that's always been super driven.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Let me ask you, let me go back a little bit. You you said a lot, let me dig into it a little bit. Um, your dad left at seven. What memories do you have of your dad or with your dad before seven?

SPEAKER_02 4:58

That is a great question. There's very few. Yeah, not a lot. My dad before seven. I remember a couple times I remember him coming home from work. Um not many. Yeah, nobody that's a great question. Nobody's asked that before, right? You know, one or two times him coming home from work before before he left. I don't have any.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Any emotions? Do you have any emotions prior, you know, with your dad at seven? So let's say you can't remember any events, but do you remember any feelings or emotions that you may have experienced before you know he ended up leaving?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah, so I I do remember the day that my parents sat me and my older brother and sister down at the kitchen table and told us he was leaving. And I was confused and I didn't really understand it. Um, but it um yeah, broke it like yeah, like broken. And I remember and and I don't know that this really answers your question completely, but when he left, like I remember every time he left, I just super sad, like felt like the end of the world every time he left. And it was like that, probably from the time I was seven till about 15. It was yeah, just wanted to be with him. And I spent and I say that I did go out and spend a summer, you know. I spent like four weeks with him a couple times. I'd go out there for the summer. Um, that happened a couple times, but even then he was working and I didn't see him a whole lot, and it was mostly me and my brother hanging out, but um yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt. I there's a lot to process when we take time to just process and try to remember events, and the longer we sit in that, sometimes we do uncover some events where we're like, okay, I remember when. Yeah. Do you remember why or what the reason your mom said that your dad left?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Yeah, so um, so there's it's kind of kind, it's a little bit complicated, but there's seven of us. And so um, the first three were from my dad, and then my mom had an affair, got pregnant with my brother. Um, and then he was born. My parents reconciled and then had another child together. My so number five was together, and then um when they got divorced, she got back together with the guy that she had the affair with, and then they had twins. And so when my dad left, that guy moved in, and that was a very short period. I remember one instance. This was kind of the last time we saw that guy, and this this is kind of an important part of the story. Um, my mom kicked him out after he had lived with us for a while, and he came back, and there was uh one one instance where um we were my mom, my wife mom woke up one day and just told us we need to be afraid of this guy, like this guy's dangerous, and um yeah, be weary. Well, he showed up at her house one morning, and my mom yells at me to lock the door and runs to the phone and calls 911, and he comes and I locked the screen door and not the big door. And so he just ripped that screen door open, came in and started yelling at my mom, grabbed her by the hair, threw her down some concrete stairs, broke her arm, and started banging her head on the concrete. And my sister, who was 11 at the time, I was about seven, ran out there and started hitting him, beating him with a plastic toy. And there was a cop who lived across the street who came over and kind of stopped this whole thing. And my mom beat up, and cop showed up. He was in jail and he got out on bail the next day. Uh, but my mom, I mean, beat to crap and broke an arm. And and from that day on, my entire childhood, I was afraid of this man, and I was always afraid he was gonna show up, always afraid he was going to yeah, come get us. And there was a couple times throughout my childhood where he would show up, where he'd send something or he'd make a phone call or something, and it was just complete fear. And really, I used that. I was a cop for 13 years. I was a detective and a SWAT operator, and really I feel like a lot of that was from the fear. I want I didn't want to be afraid anymore, right? So I I took that kind of um yeah, just that I I wanted to be the man who took care of everybody else, right? I wanted to be the opposite of what I was afraid of, and so that um yeah, that's kind of really defined my adulthood is running away from that fear, not being afraid of anything.

unknown 9:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

What was your real quick? Do you have a story of growing up without a dad, or you had a destructive or distracted father? If you think it would be a value to share your story on the Dudes Without Dads podcast, I want you to pause, go to the link inside the bio, and apply to speak on the Dudes Without Dads podcast. And then if you know somebody that would be an incredible guest, please share this show with them because we can do more if we do it together. Now back to the show. You know, so we'd say that your biological dad, the relationship was absent, and then with the dude who stepped in, it was violent. When you look at your relationship with your mom during childhood, what kind of relationship did you have with your mom?

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Yeah, my mom's a tough one. Love my mom to death. She's um, yeah, she uh she had a very broken childhood, so I'll give her that. And I and I and I want to honor her and all this. She very, very, very broken, um, poverty mindset, like you know, um, victim mindset. And um, and she she was given what she had, you know. So she um, yeah, she came from a place of abuse and and violence and all that stuff, so that's all she's ever known. And she never really dealt with any of that. And so, you know, it was really my dad what you know was absent. And she talks about domestic violence when I was younger, but I don't remember that. Um, I don't remember any of that. But then that guy came and you know, tried tried to kill her that day, and then she another guy moved in with us when I was a freshman in high school, and that was a lot of domestic violence. I mean, I remember you know, loud screaming at night in the basement and getting up and going downstairs and just blood everywhere and just violence all the time and in drugs, and so um, yeah, and she was a cocktail waitress, right? So rough crowd, very rough crowd, and um yeah, that's yeah, that was it. Like the bar scene was my childhood.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Prior to let's just use graduation. Prior to graduation, was there any dude who stepped into your life that seemed to be a good role model role model for what a dad was supposed to look like?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

That is a great question. I will say, I would say probably not. Um, there were a few guys who um yeah, I I knew nothing about being a man, didn't have a real good role model as a kid. It wasn't until I came to know God and um when I was in my early 20s when I learned about being a man, and so it was um very, very broken, uh, very right, like so. When I was a teenager, lied, cheated, stole, right? Like I knew nothing about integrity. I knew nothing, it was very much like, oh man, this world's not gonna take care of me. I gotta do everything I can to make sure that I'm taken care of. And so I did. I, you know, I cheated a lot in school. I had I I stole from places and things. I remember at one point, you know, our basketball team, and I'll say this you asked about my relationship with my mom. I never had a parent come to a sports game, right? Like all my my brother and I yeah, they just never came, right? Like parent appreciation night, I was standing out there by myself, and it um and when I and so I'll say when I graduated, still knew nothing about being a man. And when I got saved at 23, when I had a huge encounter with God, that was when I learned how to be a man. That's what I write, and um talk a lot about it today, what it means to be a man, and that everything that God's given us, all of our strength, all of our money, all of our wisdom was given to us to be used for the benefit of others. Anything we spend on ourselves is wasted. And so um I went through the uh a period of probably two to three years when I was when I was 22, 23, where God fathered me. And I asked God, I need you to father me, I need you to teach me what it is to be a man because I don't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Awesome. So I do want to get into that, but before we get into that, what was your identity or idea of what a man looked like prior to coming to know God?

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

I didn't want anything to do with them, right? I didn't want so all of it was yeah, men were worthless. Right? It was my mom was taking care of it, so it was a very skewed. Um I didn't I didn't know. I had never had an example, didn't know what a man looked like, didn't know what it meant to be a man, and so yeah, it was I didn't I wanted to be yeah, I had no idea, no clue what a man was, and it was all about just it was survival mode. It wasn't trying to grow, it wasn't trying to do anything, I was just in survival.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

For many, they start following what we call influencers today, but back then they would be celebrities or folks you'd see in the movies, or there'd be folks that you we would listen to where where we start listening to certain influencers who sit who make songs, you know. Was there anything there? But did you ever say, hey, that's what I want to be when I grow grow up as a man? You know, was there anything that you were trying to, and I'm not trying to lead you, I'm trying to just I'm trying to unpack. Um, I hear you not wanting anything to do with whatever a man looks like, but did you ever catch yourself trying to become something before knowing what you're actually supposed to look like to begin with?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah, so I would say um there were glimpses. So there was one teacher in particular, uh, name was Kent Peterson, Mr. Peterson, and he was my math teacher, and he was a former cop who became a teacher, and he was um great teacher. We never he was the women, he was the girls' basketball coach, so it's not like I had a whole lot, but he was my math teacher from about seventh grade till about 10th or 11th grade, and um he was fun, he was energetic, he was smart, he was good at teaching and good at repetition and fun. And so that guy, and then my uncle was a cop in a nearby city, and I didn't have much of a relationship with him, but I got very into um yep, I got it like I like the police, the detective movies, and so those guys who weren't afraid or who faced fear, that was something that I aspired to because I was sick of being afraid. Yeah, that's that's the best I think I can answer that. Because I don't I don't recall ever like having a good mentor, right? My yeah, it it was a very feminine feminine culture, and I ran from that in my early 20s.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Did you ever turn to things like addictions, angers, gang, unhealthy relationships, or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 17:53

I would say the biggest like I I never I don't have a real addictive personality, not super addictive. I you know, I struggled with you know like eating disorders, like bulimia for a while, for a long while. Um yeah, because I would just I I I think I comforted myself with food. But other than that, like I yeah, never, I mean, we I drank, you know, and and yeah, but never got into drugs, um, just alcohol. But it more of that was like a cultural thing. That was all right. We were in high school and we were all athletes and drinking on weekends and partying afterwards, much like um some of those movies from the late 90s, early 2000s, where all the high school kids are partying after football games and stuff. It was that crowd. But uh addictions never other than food, it was never yeah, and I wasn't and I wasn't heavy, but it um yeah, because I would throw it up. Really, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

So are you saying you did have a I think they call that either bulimia or you'd eat and chuck food?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, yeah, bulimia. Yeah. Struggle with that, and it was and it was because I was malnourished, right? It was we were feeding ourselves, eating whatever at um I didn't eat, I didn't even I didn't know the first thing about eating well. And there was nobody there to monitor food intake, so it was whatever you got your hands on, and then yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Have you processed where that thought came from where you first started to to induce you know vomiting?

SPEAKER_02 19:45

No, it started out as a party trick, right? I was able, right? Like it was uh I could make myself throw up without gagging myself or anything like that. And so we'd be drinking and you know and having a good time. And it was like, oh, look at this.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

I can Hey, I'm gonna interrupt the podcast. Hope it is adding value to you. And let me introduce myself. I'm Joshua Brown, founder of Dudes Without Dads. I'm a dude who grew up without a father, and he actually offered to pay for my abortion, not be in my life. And so this podcast is birthed out of my desire to be the dad I never had, and then encourage other men to become the dads they never had. And just to be straight and to be blunt, I need givers. I need individuals who believe in this ministry that believe that helping men become the dads they never had is a worthwhile pursuit. And I've got a giving link. You should just see a QR code on the screen, or you can go inside the show notes and just become a monthly supporter of the dudes without dads. For your gift of anything over$20 a month, I'm gonna send you our season one uh Dudes Without Dad shirt. Just let us know what size you wear and I'll mail it uh to you. But that's all I've got, and I again appreciate you taking time to listen to this podcast, and now back to the show.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Just make myself throw up, and then I throw up, and everyone, oh that gross, you know, and so it started out like that, and just silly. I mean, just silliness, like it um no direction, yeah, just impressing my friends, stupidity, and then it got to where the what I could control, right? I had no control over my life, no control over anything other than going to school, playing sports, and the food that I ate. So I think it and I still think it was a control thing. I could control that when I felt out of control, I would just eat. And yeah, yeah, weird thing. But I was yeah, yeah, it was a weird thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

What would you say would be your rock bottom moment in life? Yeah, just when you're looking back on the story before you come to know God as a heavenly father, often. Before there's a massive peak in our lives, when we look back, we can see there was a huge valley that led us up that peak. Can you look back and say, Man, I remember the moment when blank happened, something had to change.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yeah. So I will say this right before, right before I came to know God, um, I was 22 years old, and I had met a girl. I was in, I was engaged to get married to this girl. And she was a city girl, she was very fast. Um, she was um, yep, she she was she was uh gorgeous. She was a model, right? And she but she was broken, very broken. And I was engaged to get married to her, and um and I had I was having a conversation with somebody one day, and I was working, I was drilling wells at the time, finishing up college, and so I was drilling water wells and I was out with a guy working, and we were having a conversation about God and the Bible, and he was telling me how it was all crap. And and we were, I mean, I went to a Lutheran church occasionally when I was a kid, but um, I always said I believed in God and I knew Jesus, but I didn't know what that meant, didn't really have a relationship, never really read the Bible. And he was telling me, Well, you know, in the Old Testament, he said they used to they used to sacrifice animals for their sins. And I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Nobody's ever sacrificed animals for sins. Like, that's not that's not part of the Bible. And he was like, Yeah, and of course we looked it up, and he was right, and I was wrong. And I'd always kind of been halfway in and halfway out, and I was getting ready to get married. I mean, we were months away from the wedding with this lady, and I was like, and she wasn't um, she wasn't saved or anything, wasn't really a believer. And so I was like, all right, I'm gonna figure out if I'm gonna be in or out with this thing right now. Like, either I'm all in or I'm all out. I'm not sitting on the fence anymore. And so I just sat down and read the Bible cover to cover, like just starting with Genesis and just started reading it. And I had nobody to guide me, nobody to tell me what it meant, nobody to to unpack it for me. I just read it. And the whole Old Testament, I was like, this is all bull crap, didn't buy any of it. Noah, no one, the, no one the whale, all the stories, right? Moses going up on the hill, I was like, Oh, this is crap. I don't believe any of it. And when as I was reading it though, when I got to the New Testament, when I got to Jesus, like something flipped, and I knew I was like, something is different about this guy. This guy knows something that nobody else knows. And all the people who wrote the Old Testament, yeah, I'm sure they were great guys, Jeremiah and all the prophets, I'm sure they were great guys, but they're just as broken as I'm and they don't know anything else that I don't know. But when I got to Jesus, I was like, man, this guy, this guy had it figured out, and in in it, I could feel it. And so after I finished, I was I was going out and I'd been laying water line out in the middle of nowhere by myself, Leader, Colorado. You can't even find it on a map, I'm guessing. And I'm driving out there and I had been laying waterline all week by myself. I was the only one out here, it was middle of a field, and hundreds of feet of waterline I'd been putting in. And so I was driving out there one day, and uh and on my way out there, I said, Okay, God, like put putting it all on the line. Today I'm gonna I we got all day. If I don't hear from you today, I'm out. Like today's the day, I'm either gonna be all in or all out. And and I said, I got all day. There's no gonna be nobody out there. I'm just gonna pray and see, see if you show up. And so went out there, and as I was pulling up to the house, there was a truck there, and I somebody else was there, and I was like, Oh, this is weird, nobody's been here all week. This thing, and I was like, Okay, God, we'll do this tomorrow. I, you know, this guy's gonna want to talk to me. We'll we'll do this tomorrow. I'll start over. And this guy comes up to me and he says, Listen, he said, I I've I've seen you at church a couple times, and um I had my mom, I'd gone to church with my mom a couple weeks before, and he was like, I saw you walk in with that girl on your arm. And he said, I don't know why, but I feel like God's telling me to tell you, you need to get away from this girl. It's not about the prize on your arm, it's about him, and you need to let him go. And it um it broke me, and it was like in that moment I knew I said, Okay, like this is real, like don't this is a hundred percent real, this is a hundred percent God, and got it in and I and that was at 23, so that was yeah, maybe 22. That was 23 years ago, and I haven't stopped since. Like, I've been completely committed all in ever since that day, and that changed everything. And then a few months later, I mean, I called broke off, yeah, called off the wedding, and then I was pretty much became best friends with the pastor of the church my mom had been with, and went through, yeah. And then I met my wife shortly after. And yeah, life-changing.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, so powerful. Um so you just shared that it it was not like necessarily a pastor or church or a message, but it was a conversation that God was having with you, and he was leading you to him the entire time. And you said, Hey, if you show up, I'll give up everything. In that moment, you you you changed directions. What are some of the steps that you took to break the cycle from the past?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

It's a great question. I would say so. I right after right after that day, a couple months later, I met my I let I met my now wife. I was 23 and she was 19, and we dated for just a couple of months, and um, I had been praying about it and felt like I was supposed to break up with her because I wasn't ready to get married. And so I told her that I said, listen, this isn't headed towards marriage, so I don't want to waste your time and I want to honor you. And it was a good and it was a fine breakup. It was um yeah, it wasn't uh we weren't mad at each other, we went to the same church, but after that moment, I said, Okay, God, I'm not ready to get married. I know nothing about being a man, I know nothing about manhood. I need you to father me. I've never had a father, I've never known what it meant to be a to be a man or to to have any kind of integrity or anything like that. I had none of it, and so I asked him to father me, and it went through so I would I pretty much got married to the church. So I was in church on Sundays, I was in church on Wednesdays, any kind of anything they had going on. I was if the church doors were open, I was there. And then I read every book I could get my hands on about masculinity. Um, read Wild at Heart by John Elbridge. That that book changed everything for me. Uh Raising a Modern Day Knight by Robert Lewis, uh Richard Exley, who is a pastor from some rural town in Missouri. Um, you know, just books about manhood. Everything I could read on masculinity, I was reading it. Um, became and uh started leading the men's ministries at the church, right? Like everything masculine I could get my hands on, I was in it. And it really, really, I mean, for two years I did that. It was all about growing as a man and learning about integrity, boundaries, Henry Cloud, um, integrity, all those books. I just, yep, I just I was reading and in the word every single day. And it um, and then two years later, reconnected with my wife, and at that point, I was very much ready to be a husband. And I I remember praying one instance in particular, it was Fourth of July weekend, and I'd been in this for about two years, and I was ready to get married, and I felt I knew I knew I was ready to get married, and I was supposed to go on this Fourth of July trip that I went on every year with my friends from high school, and it was you know, we'd go to um I forget the name of the lake, McConaughey, Lake McConaughey in Nebraska, and we'd go every year, and it was a big party scene drinking, smoking, right, hanging out. Um, it was just a party scene, and we were getting ready to go to this, and I and God, and I felt God tell me, don't go. And I said, and my pastor invited me to some pastor racetrack thing that weekend, and I was and didn't seem fun at all, but I felt like God was telling me to go to that. And I said, Okay, God, if I'm gonna skip this trip to Maconhey and stay here, like I want you, I want to meet my wife. Like, if you if you let me meet my wife this weekend, I'll skip this trip. And so um, I skipped the trip, and then I was supposed to go to this pastor's race at this racetrack in Colorado, and um, and I didn't end up going like last minute I just canceled. And got I heard I I knew God tell me, like, you don't, I'm not gonna just give you a wife because you tell me to, right? You get me. You skip that, you skip that trip, all you get is me, and I want that to be enough. And so um, yeah, and it was. And what's funny is my my now wife was at that race, she was at that pastor racetrack. She went there that day to see the pastor, but I skipped it. But um, yeah, we yeah, but I think we literally got together, so that was in July, and then we started dating again in October.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

It's so much like God.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Were you gonna say something?

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Um, I want to say something now, is just something, and I and I don't mean to I don't mean to turn the tables, but when I talk to you, when I see you, I can tell that you spend a lot of time. I can tell you spend a lot of time with God because you sound you sound like her. Like when I talk to God, when I hear the voice of God, he sounds a lot like you.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

May it be so. You're a father now. Is that right?

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Um are there things that you do differently that were done to you that you're intentional about today that you don't do and that you do do pursuing to be a gobbledy man?

SPEAKER_02 33:00

I I'm not sure I get the question, but I think I get where you're going.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Let me let me re-ask it. Now that you're a dad, are there things that you do that breaks the cycles of things that were done to you?

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Great question. I would say everything. Everything I do is is the is everything I do is with intention with my kids, right? So I tell my kids, first I right, I apologize to him often. And I tell my I tell my kids, my kids are now 18. Well, he's gonna be 18 in a couple weeks, 16 and and 13, and I tell them, like, watch me, like, watch how I do life, watch how I treat your mom, watch how I treat other people, watch how I do business, watch how I live my life, and then follow me, right? Because I'm following him. I don't have all the answers, and I'm not gonna do it right, but I'm following him. And if he and I'm gonna and I'm and I'll lead you to him because that's who I'm following. So if you follow me, and then that holds me accountable, because then when my kids see me losing my temper or anything like that, it's um which happens, and it's uh yeah, it it's it's it's a good reality check. And and and then I tell him, I say, listen, you're watching me, you're not, it's not saying that I'm not gonna screw up, it's just saying that when I do screw up, I'm gonna apologize quickly, and I'm not gonna screw up all the time. I'm gonna get it right most of the time. Sometimes I'm gonna get it wrong, and when I get it wrong, I'm gonna apologize. Um, yeah, and and yeah, I hang out with them. I like very much like this family family teams. I know you're you're a part of it, and the it the integrated group of men, um, very much about integrating your kids into your business and into life. Um, I don't know why, but uh I I just always did that. Even when I was a cop, I would bring my, you know, to swap training days, I'd bring one of my kids or you know, my court. And when they were younger, it was a little bit harder. And I and I investigated homicides and sex crimes for a long time. Like that was hard to bring my kids, you know, to get my kids involved in that stuff. But as soon as I got into real estate, you know, my kids are going to closings with me, they're showing houses with me, they're coming to meetings with me, like they're a part of all of it. And it um, yeah, they they see it and they live it. And now my son turning 18, he'll get his real estate license and start, you know, and he's got other things he wants to do. And I tell him, like, you're not, you don't have to do what I'm doing, but but they know it and they can do it if they want.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Let's imagine there's a dude who grew up without a dad that's listening to our conversation, but they've never had the experience that you had or an encounter with God. What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_02 36:15

I would say invest in yourself. You have to take right, put your own oxygen mask on first. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anybody else, right? So it's being being intentional. And the way that I found that is in the morning, right? Taking a couple hours every single morning and I take care of me. And that's getting up, getting up early, taking care of myself, so that by the time my kids are up or my wife's up, by the time seven, eight o'clock comes, I've already I've already won my day, I've already done all the things I need to do to take care of myself. And the rest of the day is to serve others, whether that be my wife, whether that be clients, whether that be people on the street, I'm out serving and helping other people because I'm already taken care of, because I've gotten what I need here with God, because God's already filled me up. Now I've got something to give. And if you wake up in chaos when your kids wake up, and you wake up and it automatically people need stuff from you, your your tank goes empty very, very quickly, and you're running on fumes all day long. Versus wake up early, spend time with the words, spend time in gratitude and yeah, in silence, so that when it's time to serve, you're ready to serve.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

If someone were to come to you and say, Christian, in its most simplest form, what is the gospel? What would you share with him?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

The gospel is the good news that we're all alright. God love God, love your neighbor. Jesus said who Jesus was who he said he was. That's it. The rest of this Catholicism, Protestant, Baptist, Assemblies of God, Evangelical, it's all noise. Love God, love your neighbor. Jesus was who he said he was. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

So good. I thought you were gonna go back to what led you to the Bible was that thought of animal sacrifices.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Right. Well, you gotta sacrifice a goat every now and again.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

I thought, hey, let me let me show you my backyard. Yeah, so you don't have to be sacrificed anymore. You know, this is good news is there is the greatest sacrifice on the planet has already been offered up for the forgiveness of every sin in humanity, and that includes your sin. And so that's why I thought you were you were gonna go with it. But it's so true that seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. I want to get you to reflect, and these are your final thoughts for today. If you could sit across from your younger self, you know, like literally like today, you're transported back in time and you're in front of your a year an eight-year-old self, what would you tell yourself about the future and today?

SPEAKER_02 39:44

I would say I would say you're okay. It's okay. All all the struggle is okay and it's worth it. And I'm a firm believer that my parents exactly what you said, they can't give what they ain't got. They gave what they could, and I'm grateful for all of it. So be I'm gonna for I will rejoice in my suffering, for suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint. Rejoice in your suffering, and anything you don't deal with, you will pass on to your kids. You deal with the hard stuff, you deal with the pain, you deal with the hurt, you deal with this, with the with the theft and the poverty, you deal with all that stuff so that you don't pass it on to your kids. Because it is very much generational patterns. And I don't know, I'll tell you this. I wrote a letter to my dad a few years back. Um, and I don't know where I got this. I got this out of some book or some conference or something, but wrote a letter to my dad because I was angry with him for a lot of years throughout my 20s, just mad at him. And now we have, you know, yeah, now still in a relationship with him, it's fine now, but I was angry with him for a long time. And I wrote a letter to him, a couple pages long, all the things he did right, and all the things that I was blessed with because of him. And I was grasping for straws, right? Like it was, it was not an easy letter to write because I write I had to really think about that kind of stuff. But I heard, I think it was Tony Robbins said this, but he said, and like if you're gonna, if you're gonna blame your parents for all the bad stuff in your life, you got to blame them for all the good stuff too. Thankful for my childhood because without that, without the struggle, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I wouldn't be right, I wouldn't be the father that I am today, wouldn't be the husband that I am today. All all the people that I serve every single day wouldn't their lives would not be impacted had I not gone through that. And I'm grateful for all of it. And you can be grateful for all of it and grateful for your parents, no matter if they were good parents or bad parents, if your dad's beaten you or your dad's gone, or your dad's drunk, or your dad's a workaholic, you can be grateful for that because you can use that, you can rejoice in that suffering and use that to change it for your kids.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

That's the same thing. The letter that you wrote, was that to the the the dude who who came back and abused your mom, or is this the one the your biological father?

SPEAKER_02 42:45

That is my biological father who is um yeah, who's still in the picture? And yep, um, the other two guys, he the other one, the one that came back and tried to kill her, he ended up um, he disappeared. I haven't talked to him in 20, 30 years. And then the other one who lived with us during high school, he ended up having a heart attack and passed away. I mean, he was he was young, like four years old. He had um yeah, that was my biological father who um yeah, I'm actually taking a trip with him this weekend. Uh, gonna do like a drive from Colorado back to Tennessee this weekend with him.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

So this is my final question for you, and and I so much appreciate you being a guest on the Dudes Without Dads podcast. Um what's at stake for those that hear your story? They they see that you've reconciled, you've offered forgiveness, you live in a position of gratitude. Let's say the person there's someone listening that's like, Man, you just don't know my story, you don't know what my dad's done or not done. I just can't forgive. And there's no way I can be grateful for that dude. What's at risk? About remaining in that situation for anyone who might be listening.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

The kingdom, the entire kingdom of God is at risk. You you don't you know people if you're angry at him, he he's he's yeah, that's forgiveness. You don't do it for him, you do it for you, you do it for the kingdom of God, and he's a part of that kingdom of God. And if he's 98% evil and two percent good, you connect with that two percent because that is the truth of who he is. The 98% is a lie that he believed. So you find whatever that 2% is, or 1% or half a percent, or something good inside of him, you find that, and that's what and that's what you focus on. Because the kingdom of God, Jesus said over and over in John 14, as I'm one with God, so I'm one with you. We are all one. We are all a part of the kingdom of God. God is everything, God is in everything, and we are all a part of that kingdom. And if you're holding on to that anger or bitterness or anything, it um it's not who you are. It's a lie. And you're a part of you're a part of that problem that you're mad at. That unforgiveness is a part of the problem that you're angry with, it's a part of that abuse, it's holding on to that abuse, it's holding on to that, you know, abandonment. And the sooner you can let that go and forgive, the sooner the kingdom of heaven can start to grow.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

I want to make sure that our listener who is who may be contemplating this thing, forgiving something doesn't mean you're saying what they did was okay or right. It's letting go the anger, the bitterness, the grudge, and letting God take over and let Him be the one that justifies. Um, you know, so Christian, thank you so much for being a guest again today. Your story, I believe, is going to change many others and lead others into uh a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so just thank you so much for being here. You've been a pleasure, and and uh I look forward to seeing what God chooses to do with with your testimony in your life.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

Yeah, Joshua, thank you for having me on. It um yeah, I love what you're doing here, brother. You uh can't wait to uh yeah, I think we're getting together next week. I mean, I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

And and hopefully many more after that. And until the next time, I love you and I'll see you in the future.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

Love you too, brother.

unknown 46:49

Bye.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Forgiveness is more for you than them. I had inner peace for the first time in my life. It's just Jesus. Just Jesus.