The Gift of Redemption Part One

In this episode we sit down with author and theologian Dr. Chad Bird to explore what it means to walk with God through failure, loss, and the painful aftermath of divorce. Drawing from his books Night Driving, Limping with God, and Untamed Prayers, Chad shares how Scripture speaks honestly about broken lives and wounded disciples. Together we discuss how men can face face regret without despair, rediscover their identity in Christ after divorce, and learn to pray again when faith feels fractured. Using stories from the life of Jacob, the raw prayers of Psalms, and the hope of the gospel, this conversation offers a powerful reminder that God often does His deepest work in our darkest seasons. If you're a man navigating divorce, carrying shame, rebuilding fatherhood, or wondering whether God still has a future for you, this episode will remind you that redemption is not reserved for the unbroken. Sometimes the men God uses most are the ones who walk with a limp. 

Resources: www.MensDivorceRecovery.org 

Finding Forgiveness Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-forgiveness/id1615813073?i=1000590135292

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the force recovery podcast, where we do help men rebuild their lives with truth, courage, and faith after divorce. And I'm your host, Dale Brown. Chris is not going to be able to join us today. We're recording during the day, and Chris is busy with his job. But today's conversation really is special for me. I met Dr. Bird, Chad Byrd, several years ago when I was reading some books on divorce, and his book, Night Driving, came to my attention. And wow, his story is quite amazing. He has definitely lived this experience, as we like to say. I don't know, Chad, I always think of the words lived experience as a little redundant. I haven't had a debt experience lately, but you know, what can you say? Gotta say all this politically correct stuff. But Dr. Byrd is a scholar in residence at 1517, which I would love you for you to explain more about that, but really an amazing uh scholar of the Hebrew, the entire Bible. He has written multiple books. A really unusual writer in today's you know space. I really appreciated his uh his willingness to to come on and actually speak at a at another ministry I was reading, uh running several years ago. Um, but he has agreed to come on this podcast. I'm really grateful for that, and just a great, uh, great author and just a great man. So I did read Night Driving. I am in Untamed Prayers, your devotional on Psalms. I'm actually reading Psalms and then using your devotion and then Tim Keller's devotion alongside it and stuff. So I really appreciate the the uh the parallel stuff going on there. But Chad, you really do such a great job of getting bringing the Bible and really bringing Christ into every single thing you write. I mean, it's all pointing to the gospel, but anyway, that's enough of me. Uh and this introduction, you are amazing, man. Can you just share a bit about your story and you know as much as you want? You know, you told me just a minute ago before we started the recording, that's 20 years ago. That is a long time. For me, it's 10. You know, I'm still a little bit raw. And guys, we talk about this. The long divorce recovery is a long haul. It is a, I think, about a three to five year project, depending on the circumstances. But anyway, thank you for being on there, Chad, for sure. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, of course, Dale. Well, thanks for having me back, and it's good to good to see you. Uh, it has been a few years since we've actually been face to face, so it's good to good to reconnect. Yeah, as you were just saying, it's been uh 20 years. So 2004 to 2006 is really when my my life started to just completely implode, um, which resulted finally in in my divorce. And at that time I was a seminary professor. We had uh two young children, son and a daughter. And uh, you know, I had somewhat of a a a public uh a public face because I was a profess professor. And yeah, when everything uh when the proverbial stuff hit the fan, it was just a terrible mess. I I lost everything, didn't just lose my my marriage, but I lost my job, I lost my career, I lost my reputation, I lost most of my friendships. It was just a just about as bad a situation as I could imagine that that I that I was in. And uh, you know, it was it was a long process, you know. You you mentioned it takes a while. Uh, it certainly did for me. It was a multi-year process of not just kind of uh come to terms with the divorce and all the fallout from that, but just you know, all the personal trauma that that comes with that. Figuring out, oh man, you know, is is there hope for the future? Who am I now? How do I understand myself? Of course, you're dealing with guilt, regret, shame, anger, all the, you know, just that terrible toxic mixture of stuff that haunts you know day and night. So, you know, any all the guys who are listening out there, I I have been there, I understand it. And even though 20 years have passed, I I get it. I know exactly what what what guys are going through. And I also know because I'm on the the far side of it, that yeah, there's definitely hope. You know, you might feel trapped at midnight right now, but dawn is coming. It it does. Uh the dark the darkness will not win in the end. There there is light. It's a it's a long slog to get there, but you definitely will.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

That's a that is a great point. That you know, unlike other life situations, then we always say that uh for divorce men going through divorce, it's a pretty sure thing that you're gonna get through it, you know, if you especially if you if you don't self-destruct in either suicide or other self-destructive, you know, behaviors and stuff. But unlike saying something like, uh, the Cowboys are gonna win the Super Bowl this year, I guess we've been saying that a while, that's that's a long shot. Uh, or or just think if you get a cancer diagnosis, uh, you know, depending on the cancer, you know, your doctor maybe you'll say we have a 50% chance of you living five years or something like that. Unlike those uncertainties, I mean, if you we've worked with divorcement a long time, and if you hang in there, you will get through it and get to a different, a much better place. It's it's almost guaranteed, I would say. The traps are self-destructive behaviors, you know, of suicide being the most destructive of them all. And then, you know, drinking drugs, continuing on in those addictions that may have led to the divorce in the first place. But yeah, you were um, you know, you're in a unique position. And actually, it's kind of interesting because we had on a theology professor here in Austin, Dr. Anthony Baker. Uh uh, he's with Seminary of the Southwest. Uh, he went through a divorce about 10 years ago, kind of parallel to me. Um, and it's interesting as a theology professor, his take on being a professional theologian, and he is, he's amazing. Um, but you know, you are a good Christian man. I mean, to the you know, to the hilt. Um, all of us, I guess, experienced some of that spiritual disorientation, but for you, it must have been really disorienting. Um, and if you guys want to read that story, it's in the book Night Driving, which is truly uh an incredible book. For you, what did that, you know, what did that feel like? Um, you know, I guess we have guys listening from all walks of faith or no faith. I mean, we do we are a Christian podcast, we're not uh we never apologize for that. Uh, but a lot of guys that come to us, Chad, are the cohort of of men, of divorced men who uh this wasn't chosen. They have a wife that was narcissistic or borderline or something, and they're a bit shocked. Most of them have a real passion for their kids and a passion for their faith. Um, but that spiritual disorientation, what is that kind of what what happened in your life with that?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah, so I was uh, you know, you're in my particular case, I didn't really know what to to think about my own future or who I was and what God thought of me. I mean, all those are elements of my disorientation. So I I had in my particular case, so I I had an affair. Um, my adultery led to the the breakdown of my marriage. And you know, when when that happened and I lost everything that I had that I'd worked for for my entire adult life at that point, then I lost all the things by which I identified myself. So like if you'd have, if we'd have had this conversation back in, let's say, I don't know, 2004, before all this happened, and you'd had said something like, Hey, tell me about yourself. Well, I just started to list my achievements. You know, I wouldn't have put it in those that you know blunt of terms, but I would have described, well, you know, I'm the seminar professor and I'm a I'm an ordained pastor, and this and this and this and this. You know, I like a lot of guys do, I tended to define my identity, what made me important, what made life worth living by all those things that I had done, all those, all of my accomplishments. Well, all of that was gone. And so I no really had no longer had any means by which to identify who I was. You know, why even stick around? Why, why is life even important now? So that was part of the disorientation. Kind of uh just in the mirror, kind of like looking at myself, who are you now and why are you important? Now, on the vertical this dimension, uh, I was like, I don't I don't know what God thinks of me anymore either. You know, is he is he about ready to take a bat and and do me in? Is he that mad at me? Or perhaps even worse, is he just done with me? He's like, gave you a chance, and and he kind of walks away. Uh so is he apathetic? Is he apathetic toward me? Or, you know, is he at work in my life? Is he trying to kind of break me down and put me back together again? I didn't know. I do now, but I didn't know then was very disorienting because I didn't know what to think about myself. I didn't know what to think about God. It's like, where do you go when you're when you're in that situation? So uh I I entered into what the Bible would refer to as kind of uh an exile or wilderness period where you're surrounded by chaos and confusion and a spiritual drought and just tons and tons of uncertainty about who I was and God's perspective toward me at that point.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, that's a you know, the desert exile experience. I we have those come in our lives, right? You know, I'm sitting in the middle, literally, of 2,300 inmates, and we always say to them there, you know, God put you in a desert for a purpose, but it is definitely stripping away. I cannot even fathom, you know, that sort of stripping away for you. I know for Dr. Baker, he he had a community, the seminary community really, really came to his aid and supported him through that thing. But for you, you write in your book um that you everybody just scattered from you. Yeah, that must have been. Did anybody show up at your doorstep and say, hey, brother, God's grace is big, his arms are wide, you can't outsend his grace, you can't outrun his arm of mercy. Were you what was that? Because we're always telling our guys, right, to build that team. You've got to build the team for support. Isolation is the thing that kills you, Proverbs 18.1. So, what was that like for you? I would imagine that would be yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

I had uh I could count on one hand the number of guys who who reached out to me. One of them was a former student of mine. Actually, no, two of them were former students of mine. And one, as time went on, was a colleague of mine. Uh, but at first, yeah, basically one person, maybe two people uh kept in contact with me. And uh, you know, I don't and I don't want to like cast complete blame in that direction because I at the same time was isolating myself. You know, I was I was dealing with huge amounts of shame because of because my sin had become known publicly, and you know, I felt like I was an abject failure because of because of this. And so to deal with my shame, I just hid myself away and uh tried my best just to you know hole up and lick lick my wounds. So it was it's kind of a you know, it was a uh a double-edged sword kind of deal where I did most most people did quite actively shun me, uh but at the same time I shunned others. So it was a double problem, not a yeah. So one of the things I've all I always tell divorced guys, you know, whether they're going through it or have just gone through it, is don't make my mistake, don't shut yourself out from other people, because it is so crucial that we maintain some kind of community so we don't make more dumb decisions, so we don't end up prolonging our healing, uh, so that we don't get trapped in our own head, you know, which is a big part of the problem here. We need people who are gonna listen to us, talk to us, walk with us through this, and give us give us hope, you know, and sometimes just kind of speak the blunt truth and say, listen, you gotta stop that. Yeah, you're not going down a good road here if you want to get to a better place. Uh so we need that kind of brotherly correction, admonition, and encouragement. Uh, being alone is not not the place to be when you're going through something like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

That is, you know, this is a critical thing that I think that we uh that men experience already. Uh, we we talk a lot about uh the loneliness epidemic among men, especially older men, and the suicide rate among older men that is uh that definitely has spiked in the last 20 years. Um, in that isolation is a is a big piece of that. And you're I'm sure you're familiar with that Harvard longitudinal study over many, many years, like decades, where they follow these guys. Most of those guys have uh died off now. Um graduating class of like 1940 or something like that. But the one thing that was a sure sign of their happiness, it wasn't education, it wasn't their educational achievement or their uh or their jobs that they got, it was the relationships that they built over the years, was the trend or for was a best indicator of their long tree long-term happiness. And these were Harvard grads from way back in the I want, like I said, the 40s or 50s, and and most of them have died off, but that was a big thing. Um, and so guys, we always tell you don't isolate yourself. In your case, Chad, you you you're angry, hurt, you know, kind of like a cornered animal, I would think, in a sense, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Yes, very much so.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

I had a guy, you know, reach out to me, and we start off on a you know, friend from years ago, and when I first went through this, and and then he's a pretty blunt guy, but it would after about two or three texts, and he said, Well, you know, Dale, you know God is sovereign, and and you know this is all gonna work out for the good. And then my literal text back to him was, if I didn't believe that, I would have a 40 caliber bullet through my head. And so the few people reached out to me, sort of didn't do that in such a great way, and I responded in kind, and he never texted me after that again. If you're listening, sorry about that. But but you're so wounded that I do think that the people that reach out to us, we can really lash back at them. Um, so gosh, if you're listening, you're in that place. Anybody's reaching out to you is they may not say it all right, you know, like this guy didn't say the right stuff, but you don't push them away um when they do come come to reach out to you because it takes a lot of courage to reach out to a divorced guy. You know, there's a lot of loneliness there because men uh people don't know what to do with us when we're divorced. They don't know whether to congratulate us or console us. You know, hey, congratulations, you're free of that woman. Or I'm so sorry, your life just fell apart. Uh, because of that, they tend to, we just don't they stay away as opposed to like the death of a spouse. We often talk about that. But I I just pulled up uh Proverbs 18, one, which says, um, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire, he breaks out against all sound judgment. So you know, he who isolates himself seeks his own desire. You know, you get in your own, just like you said, you're in your own head, and if you're if things are going badly, then you're just it's just stuck in your head. And then somebody comes to talk to you, then he breaks out against all sound judgment, you know. And so there's a lashing out. Man, I'm so sorry you went through that.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Um I was just thinking that that that's uh yeah, that's so true. Uh especially, you know, the way that you responded to the guy who texted you. I mean, I did I did that same kind of thing too. And it it's uh it's part of being when you are wounded like that, you tend to you tend to reach to lash out in a wounded sort of way. When I was when I was growing up, my dad, uh my dad was full of proverbial advice, and one of the things he told me uh more more than once was, you know, son, if you if you come upon a wounded animal, I don't care if it's our family dog, do not reach down there and touch it. Because even the friendliest dog in those situations will turn around and bite you. Uh because something is happening to him which provokes a reaction from him that is completely out of character with the way he would ordinarily be. And we're kind of like that a lot of times when we're going through a divorce. And so it's it's a good thing to remember, uh, especially if you're trying to help somebody, you know, if they do respond in an aggressive, non-typical sort of way, well, you just kind of got to shrug it off and say, Listen, I I get that. I know, I know why, where you're coming from, and so I can understand why you would reach out in that way. It just I think a lot of it's just letting them know you're there for them. Anytime you want to talk, I got a ear. Uh you don't want to be job like Job's three friends. You stirring up to uh to cues and be terrible comforters and uh and all of that. So simply being there and saying, Hey, you want to hang out, you wanna you want to talk, uh I'm I'm here for you. That that that goes a long way.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

That goes a super long way. So I remember a friend of mine, uh uh Mark Krumpler, and he will not mind me use his name. We went through the PhD program together. Then six months after we first talked after the divorce, I knew I was getting divorced, and then he called me six months later. I remember exactly where I was when he called me too. That's how important it was. And and he just said, How's it going? And what he what that was communicating to me was this is a long, hard road. I recognize that, and I'm checking in on you. It's not over and done in a week. Um, so you know, guys, this is really important that uh you do find a couple of friends, we say it all the time, that are willing to listen to your story over and over again and willing for you to push back on them. But if you're if you've been through divorce, then be that guy that reaches out. Look around for the guys that are kind of have their head down like a Joseph in the prison. Look, notice their countenance and what's going on with you. We just don't do that in this culture. And and if we don't, then men will take this pathway oftentimes to isolation and get in their own head and even to suicide. So uh, I mean, both Chad and I can say we were we were pretty touchy when we when we guys reach out to us, but uh just to be there and to listen to the stories over and over again and absorb some of that pain. It's not cool. Wow. You mentioned guilt and shame. What is in your opinion? I know this is sort of a cultural uh issue now, you know, the difference between guilt and shame. And of course, in our culture, you cannot be well, shame is still there for all the wrong reasons, right? You know, if you it used to be you got shamed for you know sexual misconduct. There's a place for that, maybe, but but shame is definitely taking on a different uh kind of role in our culture. What how would you explain the difference between guilt and shame, especially related to maybe your vertical and your horizontal axes that you were talking about earlier?

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Yeah, I think the I mean what you'll hear a a lot of times these days, and I guess it's pretty accurate, is that we feel guilt concerning the things that we've done, but shame is more like who we are, you know. So I and I think I that's kind of a simplistic definition, but I think it does, it's helped me anyway to kind of think about the impact, uh the different impact that shame makes on me. Because guilt is one thing. Uh for me anyway, guilt was easier to deal with than shame was. It just shame had tended to just get its claws deep into me. And uh just was a it was really what made me want to hide. It wasn't the guilt so much as it was the shame. It's like I don't want people to see me, uh, especially people who have known me in the past, uh, because my per now I'm not saying this is true, but my perception was whenever they see me, uh they're gonna they're gonna see me as you know, damaged goods, uh a failure, uh a person that you know just you don't want to be around, uh just you know, a complete failure of a of a human being. That was my perception of how people would look at me. And so uh because of that fear and shame, I yeah, just kind of hide myself, hide myself away. And it wasn't like the guilt didn't go away. I mean the guilt was still there too. It just there was something more powerful about about shame uh in my own life than than the guilt was. And it took me at least a lot longer to kind of get past that.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

It would be fair to say guilt is more vertical and shame is horizontal. And guilt is is what God places upon us, and and how did just we'll get back into the shame piece, but how did the your relationship with God, how did you find that forgiveness from God, which we all talk about and preach about, you know, all the time. Uh for you personally, though, that's like it's one thing to preach about it, but another thing to live it out.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

So yeah, for sure. I think one of the things that helped me is uh, and I talk about this in my book Night Driving, I kind of had this perception that forgiveness was uh you know something I needed to earn. Uh that you know, if I and in in my case, my earning of forgiveness, and this is the completely wrong way to think about this. I'm just kind of telling you where I was at. Back then I thought, okay, I need to kind of earn God's forgiveness by beating myself up. You know, if I if I feel bad enough for what I've done and confess enough and repent enough, and just can keep adding to that list, you know, this enough and that enough. Eventually, then I will have done enough to where God's going to be like, okay, okay, I forgive you. You know, and uh what I began to realize, uh, thanks to just thinking about who God is and what he's done for us in Christ, and beginning to study the scriptures, is that well, no, forgiveness is entirely God's property. And he's not waiting for me, he's not waiting for me to finally produce enough acts of repentance where he's gonna say, Okay, now you've earned forgiveness. He just gives it up front, free of charge. Well, I say free of charge, Christ paid for it with his own, yeah. To us, yeah. So it's free to us, it costs Christ everything, a price he was very willing to pay because he loves us. So once that crystallized in my mind, and I realized, oh, God has already fully and freely forgiven me in Christ, and he's not waiting for me to do something to make myself worthy of his forgiveness, he just waiting for me to believe it. Once I grasped that, I was like, that lifted a tremendous weight off my shoulders, and at the same time allowed me to also forgive other people, which was another big component of this. To forgive other people freely, you know, instead of asking the same thing for them, okay. I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna I'm gonna forgive her, I'm gonna forgive him, I'm gonna forgive them once I see that they have earned my forgiveness. No, that that that had to go out the window too, because that's not what that's not that's not how God dealt with me. And so I can't turn around and deal with other people that way either. So forgive as I have been forgiven. Um so that was that was the way that the forgiveness worked in my life, just finally grasping the fact that it is completely paid by Christ and given freely to me by grace.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Well, you stepped on my toes there a little bit there, you know. On the forgiveness piece there. Uh, you know, Christ does make it clear. Uh you've been forgiven, so you must forgive others. And uh anybody that's thinking about that's listening to this, we did have uh uh Dr. Worthington on here, uh kind of a foremost Christian specialist, the professor in forgiveness. And that podcast is way back, probably two, two, three years ago. Maybe we can throw the the uh link down there. He does he makes a great distinction between decisional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness over that time. But that's related more to us forgiving others who have wronged us. But with you, you know, to experience that forgiveness is from God and to own it is that's a huge thing. But that just makes the grace and the price Christ paid, I'm sure, super amazing. We should all feel that because we're like I tell the all these guys here and gals that are here in the in the jail, you know, they've done some or you know, committed some horrendous crimes. I mean, you know, murder and you know, all kinds of things, every kind of crime imaginable, but no one can out sin God's grace. Um, and that's a big thing to remember. If you don't forgive yourself, then you're really emptying the cross of meaning. You're just saying, well, Jesus, that didn't really happen. So it's it's a how long did would you say just was that a year-long process or six months? Or well, multiple.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

I mean, you may not remember the process for me, really. Yeah, it took it took several years, and it is kind of one of these things too, where you know, you I like that that distinction between um decisional and emotional forgiveness to kind of uh to apply that when I think about God forgiving me. Of course, God forgives me completely, right? It's it's not like any multi-stage process, he just forgives me completely. But the way that impacted me was okay, I I did believe it for sure over time. I did I did come to believe it, but the emotional side is still like trying to catch up. Like you believe I believe God has forgiven me, but there's still that lingering doubt, or just you know, is it is it really true? Can can this wonderful news actually be true? And so there was that emotional lag, and it finally caught up, finally caught up as well. Okay, but we're but we're a lot, yeah, we're talking about uh a lot of years of God doing his work on me and just breaking down all those various barriers that I had erected around my heart to finally get that forgiveness in me. So that now, I mean, you think about it. I'm sitting here talking with you, and uh, we have uh you know thousands of people who are going to listen to this. And I'm talking about my divorce. I I I mentioned that it was through adultery that led to the divorce, talking about my shame, all of that. And I can do this with without any hesitation whatsoever. And the reason I can I can talk about this is uh is remarkable when when I think about who I used to be, because I never talked about my failures. I didn't, I never wanted to live up to my failures, never wanted to talk about things that I'd run wrong. But I can do that now, and I've done it, I've wrote I wrote the book about it, I've done this in person events multiple times because the forgiveness of God to be in Christ is so fundamental to my understanding of who I am that I can I can walk into a room and talk about my past failures because I know that they're forgiven in Christ, yeah, and I can do so without being nervous because I know that uh the sacrifice of Christ covers my sins. And that anyway, that for me was such a liberating moment when I no longer had to fear somebody bringing up my sin because I could say to them, Oh, that sin. That's right. Jesus took care of that. You know, it's not even my property anymore. I committed it. Yeah, wow. But Jesus took it away, and it's so it's and he's not giving it back. It's it's his now. Uh so yeah, I mean it just led to a lot of comfort and liberty when I was able to to finally get to that point.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

That's I love that image of it's his property now. He he he paid the price for it and owns it. I you know, last Sunday had an inmate ask me, we had a little question answer. He said, Um, did King David commit murder? I heard he committed murder. And and so we the answer to basically is yes, he did. And really, when you look at the Bible, and we can get into this with your Jacob story, but our book, but you know, the way the Bible looks at it is it's not hagiography. I mean, if you're writing a actually, you know, the embarrassment argument for the authenticity of the Bible, that if you're writing a hero book about heroes, earthly heroes, then you don't put those kinds of stuff in there, you know, you're writing here about yourself. I'm not gonna write, I'm not gonna say all the good stuff, but it really is our failures, God's grace, and then all that points to God. And all of us are our failures in a cajillion ways. So man, I appreciate your honesty and and vulnerability um dealing with that. That's uh that's a good thing. I mean, Jesus, I I think that when Jesus said to the man, take up your mat and walk, he could have just said, throw the mat away, but I think that guy went into his house and tacked it on the on his wall, you know, a stinky mat. And somebody came in there instead of having a picture of you know beautiful horses running the chariot races in Rome, then he has a mat, and somebody says, Wow, what is that? And he'll say, Let me tell you about my mat. I was on it, and now it's on my wall. So uh it's something to throw off. It's uh pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Well, man, that's all the time we have for today. Please join us again in a few weeks when we hear the end of the interview with Chad. And guys, I just want to remind you that Dale and I do offer individual divorce recovery coaching. Guys, I just fought my last boxing out. And I gotta tell you, I could not have learned how to box from YouTube. I needed a personal trainer to help to walk me through it. And sometimes in life, you you're you know, you you can't you you need a doctor, you need a lawyer, you need a coach to walk you through some of these really tough uh situations in life. So feel free to reach out to us guys at www.men's divorce recovery.org. We'd be happy to help you out. We look forward to hearing from you, and uh, we look forward to uh talking to you again in a few weeks.