

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:00</time>
      <p>
          It&#39;s really cool because when you look back, like I was five years old preaching on a countertop just like that to my parents. They have a video of me doing this, and I say out loud, like, you know, even if I&#39;m famous one day, I&#39;m not gonna think of myself, I&#39;m giving it to God. And so it&#39;s crazy because you look back and like God was doing something, but like why would I even say that? There&#39;s no indication that any of this was gonna happen.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>0:30</time>
      <p>
          Hello, everybody. Welcome to a very important and special episode of Full Fledge. Hello, JC Shire. Hey mom, how you doing? I&#39;m good.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>0:39</time>
      <p>
          Are you good? Oh, I&#39;m great because as as y&#39;all can see, I mean, if you&#39;re listening to the audio, you won&#39;t go see it, obviously. But if you&#39;re watching it, you can clearly see we&#39;re not at home.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>0:48</time>
      <p>
          Y&#39;all know we&#39;re normally like literally at his grandparents&#39; house.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>0:51</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, you live at her parents&#39; house. Yes.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>0:54</time>
      <p>
          And so a lot of y&#39;all suddenly are like, that looks that looks really familiar. It might be familiar because today we are with Christian and Sadie.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:06</time>
      <p>
          Can we please do the theme song?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>1:08</time>
      <p>
          Oh, we&#39;re doing the theme song.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>1:10</time>
      <p>
          Don&#39;t you don&#39;t you even doubt it for a minute? Mom is never gonna miss a theme song. It&#39;s her favorite part of the show. She gets so happy every time we do this.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>1:17</time>
      <p>
          And on one, two, three, hey! Hey! Come on, Christian.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>1:23</time>
      <p>
          Hey, hey!
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>1:25</time>
      <p>
          Hey!
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>1:25</time>
      <p>
          Christian has no rhythm.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>1:27</time>
      <p>
          Hey, you don&#39;t have any rhythm, Christian? I don&#39;t think it&#39;s no zero.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>1:30</time>
      <p>
          Like full on. You said it. Well, you could have like been like, you&#39;re not that bad.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:36</time>
      <p>
          Everyone on Instagram has um encouraged you in your journey that you have grown in the past.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>1:41</time>
      <p>
          I have grown.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:42</time>
      <p>
          You have grown. I&#39;ve watched it myself. But the rhythm verify lacking.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>1:45</time>
      <p>
          It&#39;s alright. It&#39;s alright.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>1:47</time>
      <p>
          Well, when I when I full send it, it&#39;s better, but there&#39;s it still lacks any sort of rhythm. You just have to get in the in the mood.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>1:54</time>
      <p>
          If you&#39;re gonna play a song to help you get in that mood and like you feel it, like what song is that? Oh, that&#39;s a good question.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>2:01</time>
      <p>
          Oh, do I I don&#39;t even know if I have something? I&#39;ve never thought of that.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>2:05</time>
      <p>
          So in the parenting of three girls that poor Christian&#39;s like, um maybe something maybe something by Milana.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>2:12</time>
      <p>
          Right, yeah. Yeah, oh yes, uh surface pressure.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>2:16</time>
      <p>
          Oh yeah, but y&#39;all won&#39;t even know that. That&#39;s where we&#39;re at right now.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>2:20</time>
      <p>
          So poor Christian is the thing that&#39;s tough, is like I I feel like I have really good hand-eye coronation, but I have no dancing rhythm at all. It&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s interesting. It&#39;s a weird way. We&#39;ll excuse you later.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>2:33</time>
      <p>
          Did we do the song long enough? Was it did we get it? It was pretty long. Okay, so let me just tell you why we are on our set today, which they have been so kind and generous to allow this. So we are traveling, our family and our praise and worship team, and Anthony, their uncle, he leads worship, and we&#39;re going to different cities every night for about eight nights. One of those nights um where we&#39;re doing these gatherings, we are in their hometown.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>3:00</time>
      <p>
          Actually, at our church. At their church. This is awesome. Yes.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>3:05</time>
      <p>
          And so when Sadie&#39;s team found out that we&#39;d be around, they were like, hey, can you come over and do the podcast? Which I&#39;ve had the privilege to do before, but that was like probably three years ago.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>3:13</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, and it was virtual. Right? Or did we do it here too? We did one virtual because you were um promoting the movie.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>3:20</time>
      <p>
          Oh, was that virtual? Yeah, girl, I feel like I was with you. I guess. I know we had a great conversation. We did. So that was a long time ago. So her team was like, if you&#39;re gonna be here, could you just come over and do the podcast? And I was like, yep. And then a couple days later, which this is just in the last four days, like this is just the quickest turnaround thing. We just had the thought, wait a minute. Wait a second. Is it possible that we could bring our onesies and just kind of turn the cameras around and interview them for the full-fledged podcast? We didn&#39;t have enough time to get you onesies and know that it is Arva at it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>3:53</time>
      <p>
          And I didn&#39;t have enough time to find my onesie. Yeah, but I&#39;m honored. We are honored to be on your podcast because truly we&#39;ve been cheering you on. I told you we watched from the beginning and we&#39;re like, look at how far you&#39;ve taken this thing in such a short amount of time, really. I mean, it&#39;s awesome. And so honored to be a guest on your podcast.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>4:11</time>
      <p>
          And you should know you are the outside of family members, you two are the actual first guests. Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>4:18</time>
      <p>
          Well, hey, let&#39;s do it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>4:20</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s a huge deal. It&#39;s a big honor. Thank you. It&#39;s really honorable.
      </p>

        <cite>unknown</cite>
      <time>4:23</time>
      <p>
          Thank y&#39;all. Thank you.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>4:24</time>
      <p>
          It was hilarious. Yes, absolutely. What questions do you have from start us off?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>4:28</time>
      <p>
          Okay, starting us off, I I thought it would be really cool to pretend that most of the people watching this episode have no idea who y&#39;all are. Just to start from sort of the very beginning, um, Sadie, with you as well. Like when Duck Dynasty first came out, my boys would have been so young that they wouldn&#39;t have even been connected at all to any of that whole thing that took the world by storm.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>4:56</time>
      <p>
          I literally don&#39;t think I&#39;ve ever watched a Duck Dynasty episode. Like I&#39;ve heard of it, but I just don&#39;t know.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>5:00</time>
      <p>
          So it&#39;s a whole like new generation. Isn&#39;t that so? Like there are people that are 21-year-old, they don&#39;t, they&#39;ve heard of Duck Dynasty somewhere up there, but they don&#39;t really know what that is. So I thought this would be really cool for us to just take a little time to just sort of start there. Tell us just like about your family and how this whole thing sort of started, and then we&#39;ll get into where you guys are now. I love it. But just sort of by way of introduction, how it started.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>5:23</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, so we&#39;re actually in the Duck Commander warehouse, which if if you did watch Duck Dynasty, this is where Duck Dynasty happened, you know? So a lot has changed since you know the show started. A ton has changed. Um, but to go way back, so we&#39;re in Westbinder, Louisiana, we&#39;re in a small town. My parents, um, my dad was the only one of his brothers that like went to college, finished college. But at the time, he was really actually a youth pastor after, and my mom was doing some children&#39;s ministry at our church and all that kind of stuff. But then they both decided to take over the Duck Commander business for my family that my grandfather started. And so, anyways, they were like, Okay, how are we gonna take this business to the next level? And my mom loved reality TV, so she was like, you know what? We need a reality TV show because that could be great for this business. And she told my dad, like, your family&#39;s crazy. Like, y&#39;all&#39;s family are like, because if you&#39;re a reality TV star, it really says something about you, okay?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>6:21</time>
      <p>
          And so, anyways, um also y&#39;all, it your whole family was built around something unique. Yes. When you say duck, like a lot of people are like, What do you what were y&#39;all doing with some ducks?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>6:32</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, okay, good point. So, my grandfather invented the two-reeded duck call, which is basically like the duck call that really sounds like a duck. The double reed. And so, the double read, yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>6:41</time>
      <p>
          And so Is that the one they&#39;d be doing like the little they put their hands together and they you know, just kidding.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>6:46</time>
      <p>
          I don&#39;t know about ducking. No, because the the body&#39;s either.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>6:50</time>
      <p>
          And the double reed, it&#39;s it&#39;s like it&#39;s like a two-flap.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>6:53</time>
      <p>
          And sounds like a duck. So my grandfather, he was like called the duck commander, and they, you know, filmed all these old like tapes of him just duck hunting and using his duck call that he created. And so, yeah, it&#39;s a duck call business. And so we are like from a small town with a small business, have no business being like famous or known by the world. I was in middle school whenever all this started to happen. And so, um, like my how I grew up is so different than I think how people think I grew up, because people have this perspective of like, oh, you grew up famous, and to some degree, yes, but also y&#39;all see where we&#39;re from. We&#39;re very planted here. It&#39;s very chill, very casual. We&#39;d always been from here. And again, we&#39;re a duck call business. We&#39;re like very like, like this is not like fame&#39;s on the horizon. And actually, though, what&#39;s really cool because when you look back, like I was five years old preaching on a countertop just like that to my parents. They have a video of me doing this, and I say out loud, like, you know, even if I&#39;m famous one day, I&#39;m not gonna think of myself. I&#39;m giving it to God. And so it&#39;s crazy because you look back and like God was doing something, but like, why would I even say that? There&#39;s no indication that any of this was gonna happen. And I was actually an athlete, so I was like really serious about basketball, really serious about track, thought I&#39;d go to college for that. That&#39;s what I was like spending my time on in middle school pursuing while my family has this idea to have a rally TV show. And at first they got a TV show on the outdoor channel, which is like the hunting channel. But um, because it was like a family show and they had all the kids on it, is the first time that like families wanted to watch the outdoor channel. Like, it wasn&#39;t just men watching their wives or wanting to watch their kids. So it just broke every chart that they had ever had. Well, that got the attention of like major networks, and so A picked up our show, which was the Duck Commander Family show at the time, and they changed their name to Duck Dynasty, which we thought was hilarious. Which your dad did not like dad did not like, he&#39;s like, that sounds like he always says it sounds like a Chinese restaurant, Duck Dynasty. It kind of does. And then he would shout out to William Robertson. I know. Also, like it wasn&#39;t a dynasty, you know? And so it just like Robert just making duck calls in Western rural Louisiana. Like what? And so, anyways, Any picks of the show, Duck Dynasty happens, and it it still holds the records of all reality TV, you know. And actually, my grandparents renewing their vows is like the most watched reality episode ever. It had like 12 million views, which is crazy for reality TV. And so what year did it start? So it started in uh 2012. Thank you. He was 2012.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>9:36</time>
      <p>
          Well, I did the tour yesterday.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>9:39</time>
      <p>
          2012, I was going into my freshman year of high school. Okay, and then um the show again just took off. And by my junior year of high school, um, dancing with the stars asked for my dad to be on the show. Are you serious? Heck no. Right. And so I got the opportunity to Oh, you on dance with the stars? So that kind of is what made my journey um at 17. Go from there.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>10:05</time>
      <p>
          That is cool. Okay, so I have a question. Um, what was it like from shift from small business West Monroe, Louisiana, to biggest reality TV show ever. Y&#39;all know I&#39;m very curious about the Bible, like super, super curious. And that&#39;s why I started the podcast to ask my mom questions and to ask guests questions so that I can learn about what the Bible is actually talking about. And one of the tools that I&#39;ve been using for the past years has been Logos Bible app. It&#39;s been incredible before every talk that I do, before every podcast that I&#39;m on. I literally go in and use this tool to help me learn and help me understand more things in the Bible. Whatever I&#39;m studying and Bible studies with friends, I can just go in the app real quick and answer it. I ask it a quick question and it&#39;ll give me an answer. And the best part about logos is that it comes from a reliable source. You get to pick the books that the AI source pulls from, which is different than going in ChatGBT because ChatGBT you can just pull from anywhere, but logos actually pulls from its own scholarly sources, so you know you&#39;re getting a reliable answer when you ask it a question, which is so dope. It has been so great for me in my learning, in my studying, and everything I&#39;ve been doing to learn more about the Bible. So, Full Fledge has partnered with Logos to give you our exclusive listeners, a 60-day free trial of the app. So you can go in it, ask it questions, see its features, and I know you&#39;ll be impacted by what it can do because it impacted me and most of my family who use it. So if you want to join and get your exclusive 60-day free trial, type in logos.com slash fullfledge. Again, it&#39;s logos.com slash fullfledge. I&#39;ll put the link right here and below so you can go to it and join and get your 60-day free trial. I&#39;m super excited. I use it all the time. I want you guys to use it with me. Like, you know what I&#39;m saying? Like, what was you as in high school? Because if I got that, oh my gosh.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>12:04</time>
      <p>
          And this is just to be also to compound this. This was at the beginning of the reality TV phenomena as a whole. Like they were at the beginning of this where people&#39;s real lives are put on television like that. So what was that?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>12:19</time>
      <p>
          I&#39;m like, I&#39;m like, if I&#39;m doing that, oh man, oh mom, I&#39;m just saying, you think what I was doing now is bad? Oh my gosh. I would be out there for real, for real. I would be using all of the stuff for the glory of only me, only JC would it be used for. Which is why we will never be on a reality. Not to put me in Sadie&#39;s position. That&#39;s what I&#39;m saying. He does everything, he&#39;s so sovereign. Okay.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>12:45</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>12:45</time>
      <p>
          How did y&#39;all&#39;s life shift?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>12:47</time>
      <p>
          It did. So, you know, at first I always say it&#39;s crazy because as big as it was, we kind of felt hidden from that because we stayed here. We stayed here. And so um my parents just tried to keep as much normalcy as possible. And my mom always says, like, she always encourages other families who, you know, get kind of overnight famous or whatever it is. She&#39;s like, keep as much as you can the same. And I really do appreciate that so much about her. It&#39;s like we didn&#39;t move, we didn&#39;t do anything crazy. Like the kids stayed at school, like we tried to like keep it a little bit normal at first. Um, and it was, but I remember going in because at first at first, yeah, it got crazy. Because it got crazy. Because I I remember going into our local Walmart, and Duck Dynasty was everywhere. It was, I mean, first of all, in the TV section, it was on every TV. We were the first family to ever hit every single category of Walmart men&#39;s, women&#39;s, kids, hunting, cooking, everything. So, like, it just was a phenomenon. And so I remember thinking, oh, this is like really big, but not even really realizing that um until really I was on Dancing with the Stars. And I think that&#39;s because I hit I was under the umbrella of my family for so long and I was just one of the kids. And then it was like, okay, now I&#39;m more personally known. So it didn&#39;t affect my life as much until I did Dancing with the Stars. Um I because it also, whenever we first started, we again we&#39;d go out and other places it was different, but here it was kind of the same until Dancing with Stars. Then I felt like people treated me different, and that was really hard.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>14:20</time>
      <p>
          And I was like, It was also too social media because Instagram didn&#39;t start until like 2012.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>14:24</time>
      <p>
          So you were I was at the like It was kind of beginning of social media stuff. Yeah, my parents didn&#39;t even let us have social media at first, and then we did, but they kind of ran it. But then again, when I went on Disney with Stars, I remember going from I had like 700,000 followers at the time, and within a month I had 1.7 million followers. So my life just like totally changed. Um, but it was hard. I mean, it was really hard because I felt like everything I had been pursuing up to that point like totally shifted. And I know to most people they would go, Oh yeah, but it shifted in a good way. Look at the opportunities. But I loved basketball and I was like losing that. And I know that&#39;s that might seem silly, but that was what I really thought my life was gonna be. So all of a sudden I just didn&#39;t know what the future held and what that was gonna look like, and then I felt like everyone who knew me from when I was a kid looked at me different and I was like, I&#39;m not changing, but my life is changing, but I&#39;m not, and I like tried to keep that, but it wasn&#39;t anymore. So it just was like actually a really lonely stage of life, and it&#39;s interesting because yeah, it&#39;s so interesting because it&#39;s like all these followers, but I felt so like alone in it, and then um you say you you would have done that for the glory of you, but I really didn&#39;t feel that way, but even that confused me because I was like, God, I want to do this for you, but I really don&#39;t know how, and I felt really kind of insecure in that. And so I remember getting these opportunities to do movies, like you know, because it&#39;s like, oh, you&#39;re the kid on the show, so now it&#39;s like, Do you want to do movies? Are you gonna move to Hollywood? Like there was like all this presented to me, and I never felt right about it, but saying no to those things was so scary because I was like, I can&#39;t just go back to school, I don&#39;t have sports anymore. That doesn&#39;t seem like the path for me. So big question mark, what is the path for me? And so it was actually like very I felt like everything I knew got like totally shaken. Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>16:20</time>
      <p>
          So here&#39;s my question to Christian at any of that, or at what part of that journey in her life did you see like you can recall before y&#39;all knew each other, maybe, or before you were connected in the way you are now. What part of that journey can you recall that you watched or recognized? Not even in a romantic way, you just saw and were aware of Sadie Robertson.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>16:44</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s great. Well, I would say most of it was a one-way r uh Romantic way. Romantic way. You can&#39;t even say the word. I was trying to say, well, I was trying to say like romanticize. Uh-huh. But romantic just wanted to keep coming out. Um, yeah, so I was a big fan of the show growing up. My family was. Um I can remember me and one of my friends, it was like every Wednesday, we knew the show was gonna come on. So we were we were pretty, you know, we were we were loyal fans from the beginning. And I don&#39;t r necessarily remember this, but a a buddy texted me this like a week before. We got married, which I&#39;m glad Sadie at the time did not know this, but I guess me too. I found this out before we got married, I was like, that&#39;s I guess at some point in high school I had told my buddies on the baseball team that I was gonna marry Sadie, which I truly do not have a recognition. Are you serious? Yeah, I truly do not have a man.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>17:35</time>
      <p>
          How many years before y&#39;all got married was that? Would that have been?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>17:38</time>
      <p>
          This was that was your freshman year of high school, right? 2014. It was when the show first came out. Because we were both freshman high school when the show came out, or maybe it was your sophomore year or something.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>17:48</time>
      <p>
          It was like 2013. And what year did y&#39;all get married? We got married in 2019.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>17:52</time>
      <p>
          And actually, when I was on dance with the stars, his dad uh my mom was a big fan of the the Dancing with the Stars. His dad was like, Christian, you and this girl would be such a cute couple. So he had been following along my journey. I just didn&#39;t know about him yet.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>18:07</time>
      <p>
          I had been following along the journey. Um and then I kind of saw the shift from Duck Dynasty to then you started speaking. Um and at the time of of watching Dark Dynasty, I was not living the the best lifestyle by any means. Um we can&#39;t wait to ask you about that. Yeah, we&#39;ll get into that. Don&#39;t worry about it. You can get into it. Uh so then for me going into college, getting serious about my my faith freshman year, then I kind of think I started to write to realize all the more spiritual things Sadie was doing outside of just thinking she was really pretty and on the TV show that I I loved watching growing up. Um and then that led to me sending a DM to her because you went to passion 2017.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>18:48</time>
      <p>
          It was the passion, it was the first passion that they ever asked me to be a part of, but it was when Shelly interviewed me. And so I didn&#39;t speak, but Shelly interviewed me and um Christian and all his own.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>18:57</time>
      <p>
          Well, and this story, and this is not his life was like changing. Well, I&#39;m trying to I&#39;m saying this in a humble way. Um, so it was at the time where I think it was the three passions.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>19:07</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, I was.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>19:07</time>
      <p>
          So none of us knew. We thought she might be at the Atlanta location.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>19:10</time>
      <p>
          I was at DC.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>19:11</time>
      <p>
          Okay, I&#39;ve got to pause y&#39;all because there are a whole lot of people that do not know what passion is and what they&#39;re referring to. So passion is a conference, that&#39;s not even the right word for it, but it&#39;s a gathering of like 60,000 young people that are college age. Louie and Shelly Giglio are spectacular. And for basically 30 years, they&#39;ve been gathering together college students, and on this particular year you&#39;re referring to, they had to have three different gatherings in three different states to house all of the young people that were coming to to be a part of this this conference.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>19:41</time>
      <p>
          So yeah, so that was 2017, I think it was moving into 2018. I think so, yeah. So we were at the Atlanta location at the time. We did not know what location Sadie was going to be at. And I was there with like 20, 20 guys from college. We had rented out this Airbnb. Uh I think Airbnb was a thing then. I don&#39;t even know. We rented out this this this this thing. And uh it was the rumor that Sadie might be at this location, or maybe she&#39;ll be somewhere else. But it was the uh this is the humble part I was saying. It was all my guy friends were like, if anyone here has a shot with Sadie, it would be Christian. Um so I was like, So they were like, you should DM her. They were like, you should DM her in case she&#39;s here. So I I sent her a DM and it was a sweet, encouraging uh I&#39;m just gonna I&#39;m gonna shoot my shot.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>20:26</time>
      <p>
          How long did it take you to come up with that message?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>20:28</time>
      <p>
          Like from text message to send. That&#39;s a great take. I that&#39;s a great question. I don&#39;t think they helped me with it, no. Um, but it was birthed out of that idea of like she might be here. Christian, you&#39;re the only one that would ever have a shot. So I was like, okay, fine, I guess I&#39;ll send this. But that was like three months after God had really changed my life. Uh, and then she did not see it for a a while. Like this is a year and a half later.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>20:51</time>
      <p>
          I never saw it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>20:52</time>
      <p>
          So in my mind, I was like, maybe she&#39;ll see this and she&#39;ll be at Atlanta, but uh it was a year and a half went by until she ever saw the DM that I sent.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>20:59</time>
      <p>
          It&#39;s kind of a trend now on TikTok. People are like, I&#39;ll be your Christian of like slide into your DMs. That is hilarious. A passion thing now. People DM girls at passion. Like people have to respond. Okay, so I didn&#39;t see it because I only like look at DMs from people that I follow because it just boundary. And so I never saw it. Well then, like a couple months later, he ends up meeting my friend, and then I think I met I think I met I met your friend that month. Oh, it was that month? Yeah. So he meets one of my friends who was moving to where they&#39;re from. They&#39;re they&#39;re from like the destiny.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>21:31</time>
      <p>
          Her family was retiring.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>21:32</time>
      <p>
          So they were retiring, moving to Florida. So they meet in the airport, then he ends up meeting my sister through her, all this stuff. I hear about Christian, don&#39;t know anything about Christian. So a year and a half goes by, and I&#39;m at the beach where they all live. And uh we&#39;re just on vacation, and his girl cousin like DM&#39;d me and was like, Hey, we know your sister, we&#39;d love to meet you. And I was like, Yeah, I&#39;d love to meet you guys. Like, I&#39;ve seen Bella hang out with y&#39;all. And so, anyways, uh, funny enough, the night before I had actually broken With the guy I was dating, and I had told my friends, like, I&#39;m so done dating, I&#39;ve got to take a break. This is ridiculous. Remember this. Yes. So my friends video me saying all this because they were like, We&#39;re holding you accountable. And I&#39;m like, It&#39;s July 2nd, 2018, and I am done dating. Blah blah. Then the next day.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>22:16</time>
      <p>
          So then you tell my cousin, her and her boyfriend just broke up.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>22:20</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>22:21</time>
      <p>
          So and I&#39;m thinking, like, that&#39;s an why it&#39;s an interesting detail to share. You know, like, why couldn&#39;t you have just said, I can&#39;t tonight, let&#39;s do it tomorrow.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>22:28</time>
      <p>
          Because I&#39;m honest. And he he took that thankfully. I was like, oh, maybe she wants to do that.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>22:34</time>
      <p>
          That was hard to do.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>22:36</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s all he needed. So the next day we&#39;re meeting up, he&#39;s walking this way, I&#39;m walking this way. And literally I see him, and I turn to my friends and I said, Delete that video. Because I was like, dude, he is so cute. It&#39;s so good. So it&#39;s so funny. So we meet that night, and then I followed him on Instagram. And when I followed him, I got the DM, but I thought it was him from like that day saying, Oh, so nice to meet you. But it was from a year and a half before. Wow. And it was like the sweetest message about what God was doing in my life and all this stuff.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>23:04</time>
      <p>
          Said, I think you&#39;re the most beautiful person I&#39;ve seen. I did say that. You did that. You did that.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>23:09</time>
      <p>
          Connective tissue outside of the DM. It&#39;s like then the Lord sort of orchestrated your cousin to meet the sister to meet the person to meet the children.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>23:16</time>
      <p>
          And she followed, well, this all started too because she had followed everyone in my family but me on Instagram because they were all friends with her sister. So she had followed my girl cousin.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>23:28</time>
      <p>
          He&#39;s a guy. I I didn&#39;t want to follow him and be like, I actually had this thought subconsciously when I was following their family and didn&#39;t follow him. I was like, he&#39;s a guy who&#39;s my age, and sometimes he follows somebody at me in something. Like he might read into it, and I want to start DMing, and I was like dating people, so I just didn&#39;t follow him. And so then when I had just gotten out of his relationship and I met him, I was like, I&#39;m gonna follow him.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>23:52</time>
      <p>
          Well, no, I but I said, which is so unlike me, I this which is so unlike me. I said, Do you know that you follow everybody in my family but me on Instagram? Which is still not something that I would usually do. But I was like, This is my one shot, I which is what in my shallow perspective.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>24:07</time>
      <p>
          I was like, this is my one chance to get you to follow me if we can start a relationship.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>24:12</time>
      <p>
          It worked, it did work, you know what I&#39;m saying?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>24:14</time>
      <p>
          Like it doesn&#39;t all that matters is that look at where we are today. You know what I mean? It worked. I think it&#39;s crazy because like I I didn&#39;t realize this until I mean it had to be a few months ago, that y&#39;all were like in your 20s. Like I never I never thought, I never just realized that. I just didn&#39;t know. What what age did you think they were? I thought not because I didn&#39;t like full transparency, I didn&#39;t like follow you guys or anything. So I&#39;ve heard you guys&#39; name, but I never put a face to the name like that or anything. I just was it was whatever. And then so I always thought when I heard the name because of what you guys were doing and all the influence and all stuff, I was like mid-30s, like you know, just grown, grown, grown. Like, you know, like people I&#39;d go to for like ultimate wisdom with no actual relatability in any ways, like ultimate wisdom.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>24:53</time>
      <p>
          Well, because he would hear your name in relation to mine if we were somewhere speaking together. So he&#39;s thinking it&#39;s my mom&#39;s people. Yeah, so I&#39;m like, yeah, you know, they cool, whatever. Like, I&#39;m not in character.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>25:03</time>
      <p>
          It&#39;s like in her 20s, and so even being here, we just filmed with in their podcast, which was amazing. It was so fun. Um, I was like, we have so much in common. Like so much, like that relatability. Your age, yeah, the y&#39;all, like you&#39;re the old one here. And so, like, it was just cool to be like that y&#39;all are, yeah, y&#39;all like we&#39;re like all so. I want to ask a question. So, like all of this is transpiring, right, in your 20s, and then or like early teens, or like late teens, early 20s, and then you&#39;ve done so much like dancing stars, all this, and you&#39;re still like 28 and 27. And so it&#39;s just like, well, how did you reconcile all this stuff happening and God moving at just a rapid pace with everything? And just this this viral duck dynasty stuff happening, meeting your husband, and I&#39;m speaking and all this be in the twin in your 20s. Like most people wouldn&#39;t steward that correctly. So, what conscious decisions did you guys have to make and be like, I&#39;m gonna use this influence for his name and for his glory and be able to not, you know, go crazy almost like I was.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>26:04</time>
      <p>
          Oh, it&#39;s so good. I mean, I think about so many, so many moments that helped in that process. I mean, one thing that I have like a standby is like truly living like where your feet are planted. Um, because if you think too far in the past or too far in the future, you&#39;re gonna get freaked out, but like God really is gonna provide what you need for today. And you can&#39;t even think about the future because you don&#39;t know what the future holds. And I would have never guessed what was gonna happen in my life, uh, nor would probably anybody in what&#39;s gonna happen in your life. I&#39;ve heard you say, like, can you do uh like not think about it for 20 years later, but 20 minutes later. It&#39;s like I&#39;m gonna do like the purpose is what am I gonna do right here right now? And I feel that. So when I look back, I think about um actually passion conference for me. I went to passion conference uh the year before, maybe two years before I was ever invited to talk at passion or anything. And I went because my family got invited because my parents were known, so they invited my parents to come, and then I just kind of tagged along. And Kristen Kane was preaching and she said, if the spotlight is shining on you, the spotlight is shining on you is shining brighter than the light shining from within you, then that spotlight will crush you. And I remember sitting there and being like, it&#39;s crushing me. Like that&#39;s actually happening to me right now. And I was like, I yeah, I felt so crushed by it. I didn&#39;t know what any of it meant. Like I said, I didn&#39;t know what that meant for the future. I didn&#39;t know any, I just felt like God, I actually felt like, why did you do this for me? Because I don&#39;t want this. I don&#39;t want to be famous. I don&#39;t, I did not want to lose all my friends. I actually love the life that I had. Like other people would love this, but why did you choose this for me, you know? And um, so I would not have known that that&#39;s what my 20s was gonna carry, but I started to enter the dialogue with the Lord through prayer, like, okay, God, you&#39;re gonna have to show me what this looks like, you know, and you&#39;re gonna have to step by step like just take me into it. And what&#39;s so cool is during those prayers, um, I went to this conference, not passion is a different conference, thank God for conferences. And um I went and Alex Seeley was preaching. It&#39;s the first time I&#39;d ever seen a woman preach because of our church background. And when I saw her preaching, I was like, man, maybe I could do something like that. Because if if I could use this platform for something that mattered, if I could speak words and use my social media and all stuff for something that mattered that would really impact people, then this would all start to make sense. And so I actually started by I didn&#39;t know what to do with that. I saw it, but I was like, how do you do that? How do you get to that? And so I just made a YouTube video of me. Like I didn&#39;t have, I was not a good editor. I literally used iMovie. It was like three, two, one cartons like went back on this program. And I started to kind of just like encourage people to post it on YouTube, and that&#39;s kind of what started this journey for me of in my 20s.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>29:00</time>
      <p>
          Um that&#39;s still your biggest video you&#39;ve ever done.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>29:02</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, it still is. Um I started to launch things. So I said to say, I didn&#39;t like try to I I couldn&#39;t have made this happen. I wouldn&#39;t have dreamed it up to happen. Um, I didn&#39;t know I was gonna get the blessing of meeting a Christian at the age that we met at or anything like that. Um, but I felt like as soon as I started to tether myself to the Lord and lean into prayer and like ask him to like show me that path, like light up my path, just one thing led to another, you know. Um, and so I don&#39;t know if that really answers the question. It&#39;s hard to it&#39;s hard to say, you know. Yeah, you just keep doing the next thing, the next thing doing the next thing, yeah, just do the next thing, and it led to us doing this. But yeah, if you would have told me all the stuff we&#39;re gonna do in our 20s, I&#39;d be like, Yeah, terrified of that. What how you know? But you just do the next thing.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>29:51</time>
      <p>
          So, Christian, I do want to ask you some questions about your, you know, your history and that sort of thing. And then I have questions that have to do with this dynamic right here. So, first of all, you you alluded a moment ago that you had some some years there.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>30:04</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. Situations. A couple years.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>30:07</time>
      <p>
          Uh huh.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>30:07</time>
      <p>
          Tell us about yourself. Yeah, so grew up um amazing family, grew up in church. Um, everybody in my family uh super involved in church. I led Bible studies throughout um throughout high school. And I was I was even telling Sadie this was funny. I uh somehow our car play on on the car went off yesterday and it was playing like just the local radio station, and it was Lead Me to the Cross from Brooke, which is like an old, old song. And I was like, I&#39;d vividly had these have these have these memories of me like being in middle school, like listening to that song in the shower and like just bawling my eyes out. As if I true I didn&#39;t, you know, fully understand all the ins and outs of what that meant. But my life was it was it was marked by it was I was I loved church, but I also loved sin from the worldly. I I I loved doing things that I don&#39;t even know if I necessarily knew I wasn&#39;t supposed to be doing. I just thought if I go to church, then I&#39;m good. So my life was marked by doing whatever I wanted to, but being involved in church because my whole framework was church is the, you know, church is kind of what it&#39;s all about. And I didn&#39;t have this frame of reference for relationship and and I I I&#39;d had moments of conviction in my life, but not not from the stance of like how that leads to repentance and bearing fruit. And here&#39;s this ongoing sanctification process. Like my idea of sanctification, I guess at the time would have just been, well, I had to be in church on Sunday. Um so for me that led to to really pleasing people. I was uh I played baseball competitively, um, had a lot of bad experiences with with girls, smoking weed, getting drunk, partying, because I wanted this sense of I I felt like I cared so much about what people, what people thought of me. And when people fed thoughts I had about myself that were, you know, you&#39;re good looking, you&#39;re athletic, and I felt I found my identity in that. And I uh yeah, I just fed that. And I remember I&#39;d had these moments in high school, like summer youth camp, and it would be, you know, the emotional, I&#39;m never gonna do that again. And there&#39;d be stints to where I wouldn&#39;t, you know, do these things, these patterns that I had been, I had been um kind of finding myself in. And and it and it really was it was the parable of the sower. It was like immediately you receive it with joy, and then immediately you fall away, whether it&#39;s you know, someone ridiculing you or someone saying, Oh, look at Christian trying to be on the you know, trying to be good. But then they would just take small little ridicules here and there, and I just would be like, Oh yeah, you know, let&#39;s let&#39;s go back and do kind of what we used to do. So going into college, I uh I was like, it&#39;s the best four years of your life, but I also had had this moment and like at the summer camp in high school. So it was like still riding the high of that, but also moving into college and still feeding those early thoughts that I had of like, I&#39;m joining a fraternity, so I will like, well, there&#39;s all these guys from all over the country. So I&#39;m like, well, I want to be the best looking guy in my fraternity, get the most girls my fraternity, be the cool kid in the fraternity, but also want to be plugged in church. And I just I I I just it was like two separate things that I just didn&#39;t fully understand. Like, how if I&#39;m all in here, how does that mean that I can&#39;t still do some of this stuff? And uh so I joined a fraternity, I was a quote unquote dry pledge, which basically means you&#39;re not gonna drink, uh, which basically means you&#39;re like you&#39;re you&#39;re the D D for the guys at the party that are drinking. And um DD? Designated driver. Oh my god. Designated driver. So it means like it means you&#39;re the you&#39;re the good guy in the fraternity.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>33:56</time>
      <p>
          Designated driver. I know what the driver means. It&#39;s the D means the DD part.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>34:00</time>
      <p>
          I was yeah, I was supposed to be the DD, and I found myself drinking, so I couldn&#39;t be the DD. It happened a lot to me too actually. Which I think made guys my fraternity kind of mad because I was like, You&#39;re supposed to be the DD. And I was with them, not you know, I I needed a D D for myself. Uh so one night we&#39;re at a party, and I&#39;d I&#39;d been having these like feelings like leading up to like I shouldn&#39;t be doing this, but I just I cared so much about what people thought of me. And uh, so I was at a party, I was like on I was sitting this lawn chair on a porch at this party, just by myself, just shotgunning these beers, trying to get drunk as quick as possible. And uh this kid walked out, and he was not a I which I haven&#39;t talked to him in probably 10 years at this point, but I don&#39;t think he&#39;s necessarily following Jesus. He he was he was crazy and he was like what&#39;s up, y&#39;all.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>34:51</time>
      <p>
          I hope y&#39;all be enjoying the conversation. But if you want to hear the part two, stay tuned for next week&#39;s episode. We&#39;re gonna drop the part two of this.
      </p>