In this episode you’re going to hear the powerful story of a woman who was rejected by her father and learn her pathway to finding healing and forgiveness as well as finding her identity and purpose. She will also share some gold nuggets that will not just help you be an amazing dad but build a legacy too.

Lisa Schafer is a podcaster, author and the founder of Christian Drama Queen Solutions. She’s also an entrepreneur of several businesses.

My website and blog: www.christiandramaqueen.com

My podcast: The Chronicles of the Christian Drama Queen available on most podcasting platforms or https://www.buzzsprout.com/2181999

Free resources and joining my email list: https://freedom.christiandramaqueen.com/

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/lisacarringtonschafer

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechristiandramaqueen/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@christiandramaqueen

Email: lisa@christiandramaqueen if you’d like to buy a spiral bound copy of the following books available on Amazon:

Discarded: a daughter’s journey to reclaim freedom and forgive the father that left her behind

https://amzn.to/41j5QCw

The Christian Victims Guide to Forgiving the Unforgivable: A Biblical Journey to Break the Bondage of Bitterness

https://amzn.to/4i2MozB

Special thanks to Smile Online Course & Books for sponsoring this episode. To learn more visit: https://thefatherhoodchallenge--smileteenskills.thrivecart.com/social-career-skills-accelerator/

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Transcription - What Abandonment Looks Like

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In a few moments, you're going to hear the powerful story of a woman who is rejected

by her father.

You'll also learn her pathway to finding healing and forgiveness as well as finding her

identity and purpose.

It will be an amazing journey so buckle up.

This program is made possible by financial support from Smile Online Course and Books.

Smile Online offers online courses for teens and young adults designed to help them

master social and career skills.

It matter includes customer service skills, job interviewing, electronic etiquette, and managing

stress.

For more information, visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers

are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I've asked Lisa Schaefer to join me and share her story with me.

Lisa is a podcaster and the founder of Christian Drama Queen Solutions.

She's also an entrepreneur of several businesses, so she's quite busy.

Lisa, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Lisa, let's start with your story.

Take us into your childhood and from there, your journey to finding forgiveness as well

as your identity and purpose.

Well, I was raised by my mom primarily most all my life.

My father left us when I was almost two years old.

He was a country musician and so he was just given to a lot of excesses back then in the

'60s because that's when I was born.

It was real common for these entertainers to be deeply involved in drugs and alcohol

and flandering and all of that.

And he was just no exception.

And so I think my mom being very innocent, she was a beautiful woman.

But she was very young and gullible and she thought I think that she could love enough for

them both and it just didn't work out that way.

And when he began to get violent with her and began to abuse me physically, she said that's

it.

And so they got divorced.

I never had a dad.

I was probably 16 years old by the time my mom married a man that thought he could be

a father to me.

But most of my experiences with the men in her life were really poor.

And so I spent most of my teenage years realizing that moms and dads actually come to the kids

events at school and kids events at church and he was never there for that.

And in fact, it wasn't even that he wasn't there.

He was not in any way shape or form interested in having a relationship with me.

He never sent me a card or a letter.

You know, exactly where it was, my mom was very good about just kind of making sure that

my grandparents on that side of the family knew where I was.

They never acted like they wanted to have anything to do with me either.

So evidently that kind of neglect and discarding just ran in the family.

And so by the time I hit those teen years and all the hormones kicked in, I was looking

for love in all the wrong places.

And I spent most of my mid to late teens and very, very early 20s trying to develop relationships

with all the wrong people.

And my self worth and my value and all of that was impacted by him not being around.

Later in life, I was probably 26 or 27.

I tried to reestablish a relationship with him thinking that, you know, I had some sort

of romantic idea that he would have a good excuse for not being a part of my life and not

being around.

And there was nothing.

He was the same liar.

He was the same philanderer.

He was the same abuser.

Nothing had changed.

And even when we got to a place later on where, you know, I was the oldest daughter and

therefore contacted when he became ill, he still had the audacity to say he had never

regrets for the things that had happened or really had not ever really happened in our

relationship.

And yeah, he just, he had no interest.

Oddly enough, he fathered nine children with nine different women.

And so I have siblings all over the country.

I don't even know them all.

I've not even met them all.

But I'm quite sure that we all tell similar stories.

Some of them were given up for adoption by the groupies that he was, you know, impregnating.

And some of them, I have some relationship with.

We've actually had conversations, why not?

But he was not a father to any of us at all.

So that abandonment really played a strong role in my life.

And it's what led me to do the writing that I've done where I have to address those things

that being unloved and unwanted and unprotected and all of that that happens when there's

no daddy around to let you know your worth saving or let you know your worth protecting.

So, so that's kind of, my childhood was, you know, we were impoverished.

There was no, listen back then.

There was no force in some dad to pay child support that went, if he didn't do it, he didn't

do it.

And so my mom worked really, really hard to take care of me and my younger brother.

And she took every job she could.

She was one of those women that broke through all of those barriers, you know, she was one

of the first female insurance agents in the country back in the 70s.

She became a collector.

She picked a very difficult job, but she was really good at it.

So she went to these finance companies and made their accounts better.

And so she was always getting a promotion, which meant we always moved.

I was, you know, I think I had 14 places to live by the time I was eight years old.

So there was a lot of insecurity with that.

And yet, you know, I look back and I realized how hard she was working just to try and take

care of us.

And that was the, that's what she had to do.

So, so between the lack of, of being wanted and the lack of input and protection and the

insecurity, by the time I hit my early 20s and was getting married, I took a lot of baggage

into my relationship with my husband.

And we still do with that.

We've been married 40 years, but it's, those are some mountains that you just keep

climbing.

What do you know about your own dad's generational history?

Well I know that he had a couple of sisters and three brothers.

I know that his father and mother were not strong Christians.

They were churchgoers, but they didn't, they didn't really have a strong faith or certainly

not a strong, active, obvious faith that they were living.

But they went to church and, and in fact, when I was trying to rekindle my relationship with

my father in my late 20s and trying to make something out of nothing, he was, it was quite,

he made sure he talked about Jesus like he knew him, but his actions speak far louder than

his words.

And so he was still devoted to deception.

He would try to tell me stories about things that I knew did not happen because my mother

was there.

And she would say that, that didn't happen.

Or I was there and I remember those things.

So they're just, he just was in, he was in bondage.

And now I look back and I think, and his, his, some of his siblings dealt with drug abuse

and that sort of a thing and alcoholism.

So I think there were some of that going on in, in, in most of his, in, in a lot of his family.

But like I said, I didn't get to spend any time with them growing up.

I didn't meet my grandparents really and have any kind of conversation with them until they

were having their 60th wedding anniversary.

And I just popped in to see if my dad was there.

And, and that was all because it was in the paper.

Otherwise they would, they had no idea was, you know, they had a relationship with me.

So I didn't really know a lot about them.

But little bits and pieces have told me there was a lot of dysfunction there.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of a father, my father had.

But he seems to me to have been probably very distant and very cold.

And, and that may have been due to substance abuse.

I don't know.

I'm not certain.

But I do know that, that, that his brother, one of his brothers was also given to excess

and alcoholism.

And I also know that they were kind of, my father had a car accident when he was very young.

And I don't know that maybe that created some head trauma and brain damage or something

that maybe had impact on his mental ability to deal with fathering.

I don't know.

But I do remember that because of his close call of death, his mother was very, very careful

to spoil him.

She protected him from just about everything.

And I think he just became, you know, expectant.

He kind of had this mandate.

Everybody was supposed to cater to and watch out for him and take care of him and his issues.

Sadly, regardless of his great talent, I mean, I've been told you look on the backs of those

old country albums back in the 60s and 70s, his name is there.

He was a studio player.

But he was poor, his whole life, his whole life.

And, and I have a feeling that, that his inability to control the substance problems was part

of that.

He just never could get out of that.

What lies did you believe about God as a result of being abandoned by your dad?

How did you find the truth?

About three or four years ago, I actually came home feeling like God was calling me to write

a story.

And we, I've dealt with a lot of things in my life.

I've had infertility issues.

We adopted three children.

We were an interracial family.

We've dealt with, I mean, a homeschooled kids for 25 years.

So when I came home between all of the things that I've been experienced with and, and

even things like what my kids were going through because of their abandonment issues and

being adopted.

I thought that that's what God was calling me to write about.

But when I sat down alone with him in front of the computer, that's not the message I was

getting.

It was like I just could not start the story.

And he said to me, this, this is the story I wanted to tell.

I want you to tell them how I redeemed you from your place of bitterness and bondage

to that bitterness, to a place where you could not only forgive your father and your abusers.

But you could actually find a way to love them and love me even though I was around and

allowed those things to happen.

And it is the subject that people do not want to talk about very much because one, it's

kind of ugly and painful.

And two, sometimes when we're talking about dealing with abuse, some of our abusers have

been within the body of Christ.

Now maybe they're redeemed now and they've repented and they've got their second chance.

But they don't want to talk about this and they don't want to hear you talk about this because

they've moved on.

They've got their second chance, their redeemed.

They've walked out of the past and that's all well and good.

But for someone who's lived through abandonment and abuse, you've got to get to a place where

you can, number one, stop believing the lies that you were not really wanted because God's

proven He wants you.

Stop believing the lies that you are unloved because He's loved you from the beginning.

You have to get to a place where you get to know the character of God so much that all

of those lies are seen for what they are and they're just ways of keeping you distant

from the Father.

So what I began to do took me 40 years but I began to see God's word ministering to those

emotions of feeling unseen and feeling unprotected and trying to understand how a God who says

He loves me could allow things to happen to me that were so bad.

How do I forgive the unforgivable?

And so that process, I had to start putting down on paper.

That's where the discarded Bible study and the forgiving and forgivable Bible studies

came from walking through God's word and getting close enough to the character of God that

I could see Him as a really loving Heavenly Father because there was a huge gap.

Even after I became a Christian and was in the Word and was going to church and was becoming

friends with other believers and we were good Christian people.

We didn't smoke.

We didn't drink.

You know, I'm saying I go down a whole list of legalities.

But there was a huge disconnect between what I really believed about who God was and what

I was experiencing.

And so I had to reconcile all of that and that just meant getting deeper and deeper in

His Word and getting closer and closer to Him, trusting Him to be loving and protecting

and cherishing me and wanting me and all of that.

But there was a, you know, it finally hit me.

You know, I was thinking that was just, I was having some mental problems not getting close

to God.

And why did I feel so distant?

And it was me.

It was me believing He was like my dad.

Why you calling Heavenly Father?

Father.

It's right there in the description.

So when you only, the only experience you have with fathers is bad.

Then you kind of naturally, you keep hearing Him called Father.

You assume He is as distant and as detached and as unwanting and going to be disappointed

in what you've done.

And we just developed that really artificial relationship with Him.

I, it's the honesty of His Word in my life that changed my point of view.

And when I sat down to talk about what I was going to write, that's where He said, you

need to let people know there is a way from being in the bondage of bitterness to a place

where you can forgive others.

And because you learn how to do that, you're learning to have the mind of Christ.

So that's kind of where, how I got from there to here.

Why is it critical for dads to learn and understand their generational history, both good and bad?

What's that line?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

You know, for my father, I can't speak for everybody else's dad.

You know, so it's like, and I'm not really sure I can speak very well for my own.

But as I look back now, because he's deceased, he passed away five or six years ago.

But as I look back, I think it really would not have mattered what he knew or didn't know

about who he was supposed to be and where he came from.

I think he had a mental, I think he had some mental illness that he just never dealt with.

It was a, it was a special kind of narcissism.

It really was.

Now, my own, I will speak on behalf of my own husband.

He knew very early on that it was important for him not to be anything like his father.

He knew how he felt, you know, he wanted, he wanted to have a home where the children

wanted to be there because he knew growing up he did not want to be there.

So he had his own, you know, he had his own generational history that he had to deal with

and to get past.

And he would, I think he would say for him, once you know that you're supposed to have

this relationship with God that's authentic and forgiving and redemptive, you want to create

a place in your own home where your children want to long for that.

But if they didn't see it in their own father or grandfather or great grandfather, they're

not going to develop.

And I think he felt responsible for presenting this authentic life as a believer, which was

just something he never saw.

Now, oddly enough, he does have men in his life that stepped up when he was younger and

he realized, okay, that's what dads are supposed to look like.

Not what my dad looks like.

And I think that unless, you know, it is real important for men to know from when they came,

so to speak.

But if they're not open to the idea, I think that God, the Spirit gives them that guidance

and says, you need to long for something better than what you saw if what they saw was a

poor representation.

It just took me a long time to realize that not all daddies were like my daddy, including

God.

He was not like my daddy, but it took a long time.

It took a long time.

And it took a lot of, you know, there's just guilt and shame attached to victimization.

There's guilt and shame attached to being a bound.

And you think you did something wrong.

Eventually, you have to take your eyes off of you and look at him and realize who he really

is based on his word.

But I'm not sure if you're not open, it's going to matter.

And that's something God has to do within you.

There's a guest I've had on his name is Chris Bruno and he used the analogy of a generational

train knowing what's on the train, knowing who's on the train.

How long is that train?

What's in the cars?

How far back does it go?

And what's pulling it?

That was a critical game changer for me to understand that.

And through time and through a process where the Holy Spirit walked me through and taught

me how to forgive.

Once I got past that, I was able to go to a place where I was ready to explore the

generational components of what happened.

When I was ready to explore it, it was probably one of the most healthy experiences for me

because I came to realize what I was up against in my own personal life and my own development.

I cannot recommend there be enough.

But that was a game changer for me for understanding what I was likely to do if I didn't become

aware of it and stop it and seek God for an intervention.

If you could go back to when your dad was alive, what could your dad have said to you or

done for you that would have made you feel valued and loved?

Well, I will tell you, you might be the first interviewer that makes me cry.

You might be the first one because nobody's asked me that.

When we got to the place where my dad was dying and he was on hospice care and there

was a nurse in his house all the time taking care of me.

I was called to come and see him about just every few days because of course we were getting

to that place where they were saying, "Okay, it's probably almost time.

If you want to see him come now."

Then he'd rally and he'd get better and then he'd get bad again.

One day, I had it in my head that I would just spring a visit on him.

I would just go in and when I got there, I found him naked on his bed with no sheets,

wearing an adult diaper, no blankets, air conditioning cranked up because it was August and it

was hot.

No one was there with him.

He was left there and he was shivering.

I will tell you, I had been a caregiver, worked in medical profession for almost 30 years

by then and I was floored.

I rang up a friend of mine, she lived about 20 miles away and I said, "Please come because

he's a big man.

I can't do this by myself.

I need some help."

She dropped everything she was doing, God love her and she showed up and she helped me put sheets

on the bed and make sure he was clean and getting covered up and turned down the AC and all

of that stuff.

I had some genuine sympathy for him at that moment.

I made arrangements for a nurse to come.

I made arrangements for someone else to show up another family member to come and make

sure that someone showed up from the nursing facility or wherever the hospice center.

I was probably two or three hours that I was there and then I got my car.

There was a huge struggle within me and I write about this in my book.

There was this huge struggle because I felt such great pity for him at that moment and

immense anger.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Why didn't you want me?"

If he had ever shown and said to me, "Well, I did want you, but if he had had an explanation,

but just acknowledged that he wanted me, I think I would have been able to deal with that.

I think if he had said, "Well, I really wanted to take care of you, but I never had the finances

or I really wanted to see you more often, but I was working on an oil rig in the ocean."

I mean, I would have taken almost any explanation if he had just acknowledged that he wanted

me.

But I knew that was not the case and I knew that based on the lives of nine other siblings,

it was not the case.

They did not have relationship with him.

He had never been a father to them either.

I think every child, and I know for daughters with daddies, that if those fathers do not express

the daughters need to be protected and that they're willing to take that security on.

If they don't say to them, "You are worth preserving, protecting, watching over.

I'll fight for you."

I can remember time when I was nine or ten years old and I just had the tar bead out of

me by some big kid on the school bus.

My mother was living and of course she did everything she could when she found out that this had

happened and so did the teachers and guess what?

The kid never rode the bus again.

But I remember distinctly thinking if my dad had been here, he could have protected me.

Of course he wasn't.

He never was.

If he had just said to me, "I really did want you."

But unfortunately, clear up to the last lucid conversation I had with him, he was still

saying things like, "Well, you know, I've lived a weird life, but I've got no regrets."

I was like, "Really?

You've got no regrets?

Not what you can't say just one time.

I wish I had more to do with your life."

It took a lot of me convincing myself that he missed out.

I was a good kid for the most part.

I was in junior miss.

I was in performing arts.

I got scholarships to art schools.

You know, there was all these good things in my life and the only thing I really wanted

was a dad.

But it took me a long time to realize he was the one that missed out by not wanting to

be a part of my life because for the longest time, it was all, I thought I was missing out

on having a father.

Obviously I was, but that was having far greater impact than the truth that he was really

the one missing out on our relationship.

What lies did you believe about yourself and how did God reveal what was true about you?

Of course, I believed all of the things that I've written about.

I was unloved, unwanted, uncharish, undesirable, unworthy, unprotected, unseen, all of those things.

I believed all of that to be true.

And I didn't, you know, I know some people have experiences where the Holy Spirit hits

them on the head and all of a sudden they believe all the truths and they're good.

I didn't, that didn't happen to me.

I was sitting in a service one day after we had started going to church as a married couple

of my husband and I.

And it was a father's day sermon.

And at the time my husband and I were dealing with infertility.

So we didn't have children.

Fathers day services were hard for both of us because his father committed suicide when he

was young and my father was just not around.

So we didn't have good experiences with dads.

And so I was sitting in this father's day service and it was the first time I'd ever heard

this verse about God being the father to the fatherless and it zoned in on my heart.

It was like, I know you don't believe it because you haven't seen it and I know you're mad

at me because you were molested when you were four.

And I know you don't think that I can forgive you even though I keep telling you as far as

the east is from the west.

That's how far your transgressions have been removed from me.

I know you don't believe that but I am telling you you've never been fatherless because

I have been your father.

And that's when my journey started to really get clarification about who he was and

what he really saw in me.

And so the lies and believe me when you have 40 or 50 or 60 years worth of history being

a discarded daughter or an abuse victim, you don't get over those emotions just because God

all of a sudden says you should.

They revisit.

So I know I'm loved but I still have days when I don't feel very loved and I know I'm

seen but there are times when I think he didn't see what happened to me.

You know, there are, you know, this is just part of the growth process for you to have two

steps forward and one step back in those areas.

That's just normal.

And you can't carry the guilt of not accepting everything all at once like a hurricane.

You know, like there was no tidal wave of truth that swept over me and man, I just soaked

it all up.

And now I'm walking with Jesus loved and precious and cherished and worthy and all of that stuff.

It didn't happen to me that way.

It took time for me to see God's word applied to all of those lies and my life.

So that sermon started it for me.

That, listen, he really is the father to the fatherless and understanding I was never without

him.

I just thought I was without him.

That's kind of what's that that set me off on the journey of battling all the untruths.

How can listeners reach out to you, learn more or listen to your podcast?

My Bible studies are available on Amazon.

Discarded, a daughter's journey to reclaim freedom and forgive the father who left her behind,

which is a very long title and my writing coach said you really want to shorten that, but

I haven't done it.

And the other one is called the Christian Victims Guide to forgiving the unforgivable.

There's also a planner on Amazon that let that you walk in the word and memorize scripture

as you go through the studies, but they're undated so you can use them whenever.

So those are all available there, but what I tell people, shoot me an email.

Lisa at Christian drama queen.com.

Lisa at Christian drama queen.com.

You can buy those all of those books for me and I'll spyro bind them for you.

People can ask me there or they can go.

My podcast is available on, on almost all podcasts platforms.

It's called the Chronicles of the Christian drama queen.

And of course, I have a website, Christian drama queen.com that they could go to.

There's even some free assessment tools there where they can find out.

Maybe they think they've dealt with all that bitterness, but if they've got some certain

behaviors, rage that seems uncontrollable or self-doubt or the need to finish every

argument with resolution, never being able to walk away from an argument having to

be right.

All the time, there are just several things that are kind of part and parcel to being someone

who's still bitter.

And so that assessment's free and it's available if they go to the Christian drama queen website.

And of course, you can find me on YouTube if you just want to see where this gorgeous voice

is coming from.

You just go to YouTube and you look up Christian drama queen and you'll find my podcasts

there.

So I have a video for pretty much all of my podcasts, audios.

So.

Just to make things easier if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com, that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com.

If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description and I will have all

of the links posted there for convenience.

Lisa, as we close, what is your challenge to dad's listening now?

Daughters are born and built with a deep seeded need for fathering, parenting, yes, but not

just parenting, fathering.

Daughters that see them as the priceless, precious, jewel and princess that they really are.

And if that is not taught to them, the world is going to teach her enough that she's not

good enough, that she's not the beautiful, that she's not precious to God because there's

a daddy-sized hole in every daughter's heart.

It's up to our daddies to make us feel like we're precious princesses.

Lisa, it has been an honor having you on the fatherhoodchallenge.

This has been a very, very important conversation that I wanted this audience to hear and you

were the perfect person to deliver that message.

Thank you so much for that.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it, I do.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in

this program or find out more information about the fatherhoodchallenge.com.

Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com.

[ Music ]

Most of the episodes of The Fatherhood Challenge talk about what men contribute to fatherlessness physically, emotionally and spiritually, because it’s true. Men do have a role in the fatherlessness problem. But men aren’t the only cause nor are they the only solution. My guest Carrie Ann Barrette talks more about this with me in this episode.

 Carrie Ann Barrette is a Mental Health Counselor, an author, speaker, elder and discipler of countless women. She is also the founder and CEO of Kingdom Life Advisors, a ministry and service that has helped countless women heal and find their true identity and purpose.

To learn more about Carrie, visit: https://carrieannbarrette.com/

To learn more about Kingdom Life Advisors, visit: https://kingdomlifeadvisors.com/

To get Carrie's book Put Your Crown On, visit: https://amzn.to/4hK9niC

Visit Carrie's YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@CarrieAnnBarrette

Special thanks to Smile Online Course & Books for sponsoring this episode. To learn more visit: https://thefatherhoodchallenge--smileteenskills.thrivecart.com/social-career-skills-accelerator/

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcription - Men and Women Fighting Fatherlessness Together

---

Most of the episodes on the Fatherhood Challenge talk about what men contribute to Father

Listeners physically, emotionally, and spiritually because it's true.

Men do have a role in the Father Listeners problem, but men aren't the only cause nor are

they the only solution.

My guest is here to talk more about this with me in just a moment, so don't go anywhere.

This program is made possible by financial support from Smile Online Course and Books.

Smile Online offers online courses for teens and young adults designed to help the master

social and career skills.

Subject matter includes customer service skills, job interviewing, electronic etiquette, and

managing stress.

For more information, visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere to

take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers

are to the stability and culture of their families environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me.

My guest is mental health counselor.

She's also an author, speaker, elder, and a cipler of countless women.

She's also the founder and CEO of Kingdom Life Advisors, a ministry and service that has

helped countless women heal and find their true identity and purpose.

Carrie Ann Barrett, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Oh, it's good to be here.

Good to connect with you, Jonathan.

Carrie, please share your story with me of how and why you started helping women heal and

connect with who they are.

Yeah, I feel like the Lord has always had me helping people since I was young.

It's very strange.

Even my teacher wrote down in a report card that I was her counselor.

So I don't know.

I've just got this gift that God gave me and I don't know why, but he's using it.

But my story a little bit is that I tried to build a castle of my own and it just didn't

work.

I went in, I was trying to go to college, to get my degree, to build this empire of a job

that I thought I was going to have when I was trying to find the husband that I was supposed

to have, to build this family that I was supposed to have and I was trying to build and build

and build.

All I did was make a mess.

I say that when I was 13, I found my ticket to heaven because I was afraid of dying and

so my mother called the pastor that asked him the questions of figure out why I couldn't

sleep.

And when he came, he shared the gospel and I said, all right, I'll take that and I take

his a heaven.

I don't have to worry about going to hell.

I don't have to worry about what dying looks like, but I also didn't get discipleship.

So as I was building my kingdom, I didn't have Jesus.

I didn't know how to build.

I just was trying really hard.

I did kind of read the Bible here and there and so forth.

But it didn't go well and I made a lot of mistakes.

And one day, I just thought of just ending it all and when I did that, it was so terrifying

to think of doing that.

I actually called on the name of Jesus and he came in the room and he asked me this one

question, which was the most poignant question anyone ever gets asked and it was he asked,

are you ready to follow me?

And that was my spirit changing, my life changed question, everything.

And I said, yes.

So when the Lord is in the room and he asked you to follow him, what are you going to do?

Say no.

I mean, I'm sure some people do.

There was no other answer to that question.

So I was following him and ended up just as I was building that kingdom and I'm losing my

job.

But within 24 hours, I knew that he wanted me to go back to school and to study his words.

I went to seminary and got some degrees.

I tried to be a pastor.

And then I didn't work out because Greek and I don't seem to get along me and grammar

who don't seem to get along in Greek.

And so working with professors, they say, if you want to really help women, why don't you

go into counseling major and so I switched over and all the rest of history just been helping

women ever since then ministering to them, helping them to understand who and whose they

are so they can be set free and walk with the Lord.

So that's my story in a very, very short nutshell.

The father had challenged can sometimes be strong about holding men accountable and often

men and women are the source of fatherlessness and they are also the solution.

But maybe just maybe I don't have all of the pieces to the problem or the solution.

So what do you see from your perspective?

It's both and I want to go back to the garden of Eden and talk about how things were

supposed to be different because if you really think about it, there's one big thing

that if Adam had done it right, everything would have been different.

I heard somebody say, and I wish I could go back and remember or figure out who it is that

said it.

But the person said, you know, if Adam had not the apple out of that Satan's hand and

said not today Satan, that's my woman.

I'm helping her.

I'm protecting her.

I'm taking over because I'm the rule and reign righteously upon the land.

Everything would have been different.

And you know what, women still want that.

Now we'll do it on our own.

We'll push men out.

We will do everything we have to do to control life and to be safe and feel secure.

But quite honestly, there is no woman that I've ever known that would not want tarzan

to swing in and protect her and make everything okay.

You know, sweep her off her feet and say how wonderful she is and how he's going to take

care of her for the rest of her life.

Like that is actually what we want and that is what the good father does, right?

This is what Jesus says.

He takes care of us coming in, being albe, your protector, albe, your savior.

We all want that.

Like that's what women really want.

And in part, that's what men really want.

They want the father to come in and take care of business, take care of them.

But I think if we go back to that, that is where the whole riff began.

That is where women started to not trust men.

Women weren't allowed to be who they were meant to be.

They were meant to be the easier or the helper and we weren't allowed to do that.

And things got all messed up.

So it's just a trickle down from there.

One way I've heard that described is replicating the curse of the garden.

When we read what happened and what God's response was to the sin and the excuses, God

pronounced judgment and said that the man will rule over you.

And so what we do is when we read that, we interpret that as that's the way it's supposed

to be.

No, that was the consequence of their actions.

Exactly.

That wasn't that that was never how God wanted it to be.

He didn't want women to come over men.

We were meant to walk beside men, but men were created stronger.

And I hate women hate to talk about this, but let's just be real.

Testosterone is real.

And men were meant to be stronger and women were meant to be more empathetic and more caring

and loving.

And so that's how we were designed.

We don't have to like it.

You don't have to like it, but that's how we were constructed in humanity.

And so that was how God designed it to be.

I always like to talk about the lions and the lionesses.

And God uses the lions as a way to talk about us anyway, but the lions are roaming and taking

care of the land and they are strong, mighty warriors, right?

And the women are home.

The lionesses are home.

They're taking care of their young, but they can still kick the butt of.

Many hyena that comes near their baby like they are strong too, well, they're not weak.

You know, they can both take care of business, but they have different roles and we have different

roles.

It doesn't mean one role is bad, one role is good and I doesn't mean a woman can't go and

work.

We can.

World War II proved it.

World War II made sure that we know that we can go out and work and we can go ahead

and build a company.

That doesn't mean it's the way it's best.

It just means we can.

We can do a lot of things.

They can say to Jesus, he could do a lot of things, but we have to know who and who's we are

and that yes, of course, we can do that, but that doesn't mean we have to do that.

We're okay with the three in one concept, but all of a sudden we have a problem with it

when it comes to how genders relate to each other, but that's exactly what the image of

God means is that there is that equality.

Yes, different.

God made male and female different on purpose both strong and different ways and even stronger

together as a result.

If we're willing to come together in humility and love and purpose together, yes.

Is there a link between feminism and fatherlessness and if so, what is it and why?

Absolutely, there absolutely is and we can talk about really far back history or really

recent history and see that play out.

We can talk about the timeline of the world and watch it.

One specific area just to talk about recent history is I mentioned World War II.

In World War II and even before then, in World War I, there was a great depression.

A lot of men lost their jobs, their livelihood, their loss, their identity and women started

to wrestle with men because women started to understand that they had lost their identity.

They had lost their drive and their vision of capability to be able to take care of the

home, to care the family and then it started to shift the relationship.

You can see it even stronger in World War II where women went to work.

You can see the poster of the woman with her strong muscle and she's like, "I can do

it.

I can do anything you can do."

That doesn't mean you can, but you can, you can step out of the home and you can go to

work and the men come home from war defeated.

There's this relationship where everybody is broken.

Men don't have the job, they don't have the funds, the women who have the job, they have

the funds and everything gets flipped upside down.

Nobody is in the home taking care of the children.

Nobody is in the home.

Then we do even further more recently after we've got the sexual revolution and we've got

all the feminism that comes in.

We've got women that are completely outside the home, not only do they not need the man

working because they can work, they don't even need the man at home and the divorce rate

went through the roof.

We don't need a man.

We can do everything.

We can be the father, we can be the mother, we can be the provider, we can do it all

in what happens to child at home, the latch key kid has no vision of what a true father,

mother relationship should be.

They have a no idea of what an honoring relationship between man and woman is because they don't

number one have them in the home and they don't have that ideal that the two can love one

another in this unified relationship.

You can see that played out really strongly in the child of the eighties and you can see

it extraordinarily played out in the eighties where almost every program shows the man is ignorant

and stupid and the woman needs not that man except for a sexual interaction where they

feel good and they leave and go about their business when they're done.

I mean that is what I was programmed into.

I watched soap operas, I watched Dynasty, I watched these shows like the only one that

was actually a good guy I think was Michael J. Foxx and that was why he was like the poster

child for the boy in the eighties because he was not that kind but the men were either

stupid or they were womanizing and the women were either the housewife that was looked

down upon or she was out in the working world where she had it all together and she used

men like a tissue.

Like this is what we grew up in but you know it's crazy is this is nothing new under the

sun.

If you look back if you look back and study Ephesians and the book of Ephesians was written

into the church of Ephesus, women were in charge, women were gods and that is why he wrote

I will have you teaching none of that.

Like I will not allow a woman to teach that and that's the that they were talking about

if you read Dr. Kroger's book, talking about that.

He talks about how women were teaching that they were gods.

Like they were all we don't need a man in fact you're the slaves in this town you get out

of here right and going to rule the roost and I make the decisions and that is what we've

kind of getting we're getting back to we're getting back to this where we're idolizing

the women and the men are stupid and if they're not stupid then they're just useless and

it's just broken.

How do we raise little boys?

How do we raise little girls to understand right relationship where the man is not honored

as good it's good that he's strong it's good that he can take care of the home and how

if we women aren't letting the man take care of the home.

If we're doing it all ourselves how are we raising men and women to first fall love each

other.

Second of all come into what is supposed to be a marriage of oneness where we help each

other and lift each other up and respect each other.

How do we do that?

I think it's really really broken.

What you actually do for a living is you deal on a daily basis with the consequences of

this broken system.

A lot of broken women who are victims because of this false ideology of the way it was meant

to be is it a long process to get women restored back to the way it should be?

Well that's a two full question in part it can be fast to get a lot of the healing because

the Holy Spirit does most of the work but it can also be a long process of reprogramming

and most of the women that I work with there's the sexual abuse of some sort.

The whole abuse is such a big deal that most people don't understand so it's like 90% of

the women in the world have been sexually abused in some way, shape or form.

It used to be 70% that they used to talk about but really I would say it's 90% is reality

which is a really horrible number but most of the women that I meet with there are some

sort of traumatic whether even if it's not sexual it's some sort of family of evil that

was going on in their house you know their parents got a divorce their parents were fighting

you know there's something going on that I help women to detach from like because usually

they're still a hook in them from whatever happened when they were three five ten whatever

and fifteen maybe you know and they're still kind of hooked in that and so they're still

bleeding and they're still struggling and they're still still stumbling so what we can

do is we can the Lord I partner with the Lord so that he can unhook them from that

set them free from that so even though it's true it can be thought of differently so that

the pain isn't so resonant there and they can go forward without that pain so it doesn't

change the fact that things actually have it but it changed how it impacts them going

forward and how they can think differently because God says you know you will know the truth

and the truth will set you free so if we can understand the truth of what really happened

or how God saw it and how God wants to deal with it then the women can be set free and I

got to tell you sometimes it can happen in just a few hours sometimes it takes a few

years sometimes it takes months for that to happen but usually the Lord brings the women

back to an understanding of that experience that is different and they're understanding

of the same thing is different because they he talks about who we are in him how we

are daughters how we are loved how he created us to love us and how his love is perfect

it's not like the love we've experienced on this planet so a lot of that reprogramming

is what sets the woman free and it's really the Holy Spirit doing the work that is the

Holy Spirit will bring to mind things that set that woman free and I'm just here as a

partner of him to do that.

A woman who is restored to her true identity and purpose and understands her value and

her worth eternally spiritually is a powerful force.

There's nothing like it.

There's nothing like it and this is what I think that everything from the Gen X and the

generations that follow are so starved for my generation I'm a Gen X or I'm a latch key

kid that's the way I grew up and so I grew up with this mindset that I don't need my parents

right.

I can raise myself and so I'm going to go flip into a very uncomfortable conversation and

that is pornography so you mentioned the way women are just like okay so I can just go

use this woman for my pleasure and then I'm done with her and then I move on.

Women learn I can use that for power to get what I want.

Oh you nailed it absolutely.

The women have used that for power and then we make the man feel guilty because we used

it for power.

Woof.

And it's all about power because in pornography you can take a fantasy and in that fantasy

through pornography you can make a woman do whatever you want her to do.

So the blunt word for it is she is now your slave.

Instead of your easer she is your slave.

Right women get the message that they are not valuable they're just property they're just

a piece of meat for someone else's pleasure so then there's the devaluation of God's creation

that happens in that entire process.

So the both sides are doing the same thing both sides want to be worthy and we want to have

power because we have fear that we are we are not covered by anyone and we're not valued

by anyone.

So we'll do whatever we can to build our own kingdom to build our own tower to build our

own identity because we don't have those things instead of working together in pure unity

to build together something that will stand.

Yeah that's exactly it.

It's a war for power and when that war for power happens it means that there's a vacuum

of something else that should be there that should have been there and is not the only

solution and not to sound stereotypical.

The solution is Jesus.

But is he's the only one who can fix this broken system.

Everyone both sides both men and women have to come back and learn or in some cases relearn

their true identity and purpose for which they were created for before they were even conceived.

And I think the part of the missing piece is that we know we need Jesus to get into heaven.

We don't understand that we get Jesus to get unity with the Father and to get in that

perfect sonship that we've been looking for that perfect approval and love that acceptance.

If we can get that approval like every little boy wants approval from their Father.

I mean by on anything if they can get that approval from a perfect loving strong Father that

is like everything to them and it still is you can take a 90 year old man and they still

need that acceptance that approval from a perfect Father that said well done my son well done.

And that is what we're all searching for women too.

We are looking for that well done.

We just need to know that we are daughters and sons of the king and already accepted,

already loved.

He calls us beloved like we are already loved and the only difference is the lie and the

sin that severed our relationship with the perfect Father.

If we can bring that understanding in as we can understand that you know under the blood

our relationship with that perfect Father is in fact restored then everything else is

a done deal.

It is literally like the matrix one of my favorite movies it is like the matrix if we can just

understand the reality of the kingdom of heaven that is now and the reality that we

are sons seated on a throne of glory in heaven even now that is life changing.

And if we can walk in that reality we can enter we talked about before the video we can

enter his rest and we can just relax and not think we need to build and do and control

and be afraid you know what none of that is reality that's all a matrix of Satan who is

trying to break us from the reality that we can have this relationship with the Father

and a guard relationship with man and woman we can have that oneness if we will stop fighting

to control and to build and to be afraid if we will stop all that and we can just rest

like you know what we are here together we can build together I can respect my husband

he can love me I love that book love and respect.

Okay we can love each other but he is going to respect I am going to respect him and he is

going to love me and we are going to be good.

I think there is this aspect of reality and this is why I love that you brought the matrix

up because the story of in the matrix is all about reality coming back to pornography

pornography is all about removing you from reality it is about disconnecting you from reality

God is all about being present with you in reality which is the way it was supposed to

be so when we have these relationships restored between husband and wife between the way

we see others around us and we have these healthy boundaries healthy respect in the relationship

and marriage relationship this healthy love reality is beautiful.

You will find it will be like stepping out of the matrix everything is is sunny again the

colors are greener everything is so much better and the best part about it is it is real.

Yeah because you don't have the faith in anyone else.

Yeah I am not looking for my husband to fill my cup he is not looking for me to fill his

cup because Jesus fills our cup and we are full so we are not vying for anything we are

just in good relationship together.

When you both have full cups you can drink from each other's cup you can spill over it

you can have fun with it and it never runs out because you are not the one filling it

in your spouse isn't filling your cup either.

That takes so much pressure off so you can actually enjoy each other.

This is what I think of as returning back to Eden the way God meant it to be.

You know I was thinking this morning the Lord showed me a verse I was about he spoke excuse

me he was speaking to Moses and he says my presence will go with you and I will give you

rest and that's what we need in our marriage right that's what we need in our relationships

his presence to come with us and he will give us rest he was about to enter the promise

land in fact he didn't get to but he you know if we we go and bring his presence we can

in fact enter the promise land the promise land is actually our relationships it's actually

our family the family is the promise land it's not about the land the earth we already

roll and rain over the earth by the way we are already supposed to have dominion take

the land that's already done deal we are lied to that we don't actually own this land

and don't run this land rule this land or supposed to do is rain in our family he said

we're supposed to be fruitful and multiply that family is the raining that family is the

the truth of what we're looking for about it's so broken that you know we're we wrestle

with having one child not the 14 that our ancestors used to have because we're so broken

and we just need so much healing the Holy Spirit wants to do it he's very very focused on

doing that and healing our families but we got a long way to go.

Rulkin dad's play and truly being a solution and not a problem.

Yeah there's there's two things I was thinking about this one is this is really hard for a man

but man needs to empty himself of himself and fill himself with Holy Spirit because I think

a man is trying so hard to be something and it's all broken you know and then if you can

empty that and say you know what I can be humble when I say got nothing but Holy Spirit

help me and Holy Spirit will then rebuild right he will fill up and rebuild so that you can

go do the things that you're called to do and then I saw recently that one of the best

movies I've ever seen it was the Forge I don't know if you've seen that Jonathan I highly

recommended but it's about becoming an example to then make examples so becoming the disciple

the to then disciple so because if you're a strong man of God and I mean that in a good

sense I don't mean you're beating your wife on the weekends I mean you're a strong solid

faithful peace filled man of God then you can then be an example to your own children

to other children that is what discipling is to being solid in the faith and the peace

of God that you don't need anything else to fill your cup except for Jesus and then you

can go ahead and disciple other men of God and if we can do both me as a woman and and

Jonathan you as a male if we can do this we can replicate what we were supposed to replicate

from the beginning which is ones that honor each other honor God serve God serve each other

and build each other up into the fullness of discipleship where we can be the free children

of God and walk in this land as we reign and rule instead of Satan who's prowling around

like a lion looking who he can devour like that is what we need to do I'm actually creating

a women's group in New England to do that but I think around the world we need to start

replicating what was seen in the movie The Forge so we can go ahead be honorable men and

women of God and then replicate he's been really showing me the Lord's been really showing

me that now is the time that we need to activate those people that are strong and honorable

men and women of God because if we don't start changing things now it's not going to get

any better up now at the end it's not going to be pretty anyway but we need to be ready for

the harvest that he's bringing because there's so many loss that he wants to bring in right

now he's like get ready because it's coming get ready now so that you can bring in you

can't go fishing until you've been cleaned up to go fishing for men right so man you need

to be cleaned up with him with the word with the truth with the Holy Spirit dwelling

in you so that you can go fishing and every man likes to go on fishing is very human and

don't like go fishing but you're going to be a fisher of men so you have to get cleaned

up first and that doesn't mean you have to be like oh I'm not good enough you know you're

not good enough Holy Spirit's good enough let him in you you can be good enough to tell

me more about kingdom life advisors and how listeners can find information absolutely

there's a couple different things that I do and so I've a book called Put Your Crown on

which is all about our identity in Christ for men and women is about how you can understand

and then walk in the truth of the kingdom the truth of your role and identity as a son of

God there's also videos on my YouTube channel Carrie and Barrett and you can listen to all

the interviews about their story for God's glory of how God intervened and interceded in

people's lives and then yeah the kingdom life advisors is the one and one coaching that

I do I mixed counseling coaching and ministry altogether in a new package called the kingdom

life advisor where I help women to be set free of the struggles that we talked about today

all those things that get in the way of us really being strong women of God and I don't mean

that in the in the controlling strong I mean in the peaceful restful strong and how we can

move forward in victory so that's kingdom life advisors dot com and some you can go and

apply to work with me you or or your wife because most of the men are listening so your wife

can go apply and work with me so they can be set free.

Carrie as we close what is your challenge to dad's listening now two things one is watch

the forge and just understand that whole concept that really will bring you to a deeper understanding

of what God is calling people to now and then it is take I challenge you to enter his rest

the word says that we are to strive to enter his rest when we enter his rest we stop striving

to do all the stuff that we've building and we just enter his rest that he's going to take

care of us he's going to walk with us he's going to help us to win the battle he's going

to be our victor because he's already won the victory and if we can enter his rest we

stop all the striving so just I encourage you to spend the next year as I've been the

last two years entering his rest and that way you'll stand in victory and you'll no longer

have to fight.

Carrie it has been an honor having you on the fatherhood challenge thank you so much for

sharing all these truths with us and sharing about what you do thank you Jonathan it's been

great.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the fatherhood challenge if you'd like to

contact us listen to other episodes find any resource mentioned in this program or find

out more information about the fatherhood challenge please visit the fatherhoodchallenge.com

that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com

[MUSIC]

At the time this episode was created it was estimated that over 3 million children have been stolen and forced into sex and labor trafficking. You’re going to meet a man who’s mission and purpose is rescuing those children and restoring them back to their God given identity and purpose in love. He will share his experiences in rescuing over 11,000 children.

My guest is author, pastor and modern day child slavery abolitionist Troy Brewer. Troy is also the founder of Troy Brewer Ministries, an organization committed to rescuing, nurturing and sheltering trafficked children.

To learn more about Troy Brewer Ministries or to get involved, visit: https://troybrewer.com/

Special thanks to Smile Online Course & Books for sponsoring this episode. To learn more visit: https://thefatherhoodchallenge--smileteenskills.thrivecart.com/social-career-skills-accelerator/

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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Transcript - From Child Sex Slavery to Freedom

---

At the time this episode was created, it was estimated that over 3 million children have

been stolen and forced into sex and labor trafficking.

You're going to meet a man whose mission and purpose is rescuing those children and

restoring them back to their God-given identity and purpose in love.

He will share his experience in rescuing over 11,000 children in just a moment, so don't

go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important

fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone, thank you so much for joining me.

My guest is author, pastor, and modern day child slavery abolitionist Troy Brewer.

Troy is also the founder of Troy Brewer Ministries and Organization committed to rescuing,

nurturing, and sheltering traffic children.

Troy, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Jonathan, what a great privilege it is.

Thank you so much for having me, my friend.

Okay, here's one of my favorite questions to start off.

What is your favorite dad joke?

I have some, I have some awesome dad jokes because we actually send out a dad joke every

single week on a, like this robo call thing, but you know what, I don't know that this is

a dad joke, but it's something I say all the time and it's so real is I used to be extremely

fat.

I used to be like 400, between 400 and 500 pounds and I used to tell everybody I was

worldwide before the internet.

That's what I tell them.

That's true.

It's absolutely true.

All right.

Well, Troy, what is your story behind why and how you were called to start your ministry

as a pastor and rescuing children?

Well, you know what Jonathan, I didn't intend on rescuing kids.

It was just something that God just brought me off into what I intended on doing was building

food banks all over the world.

And I have an act for building food banks.

I played in a Christian rock band from 86 until 91 and we traveled the world.

We did all kinds of cool stuff and my favorite thing was actually doing the gigs where we

were feeding people.

And so I started a food bank here in Johnson County, Texas, which I know that you're very

familiar with.

You grew up in keen.

You were telling me before we went on air, which is crazy.

I mean, we're both Johnson County boys.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We grew up about 10 miles from you in keen.

I grew up in Joshua, Texas.

And that's also where our food bank is.

And the people that were giving me food and asked me, I started asking or they started asking

me, Hey, man, do you do a work in Central America?

And I was like, well, no, not really.

But I could and they're like, we would give you food there if you would start a food bank

there.

So I went down to Costa Rica, started the food bank.

We went into the trash dumps to feed everybody and to invite people to start coming and

getting food from us.

And while I was there, a lady tried to sell me two little Nicaragua and refugee girls.

And she walked up to me and said, Hey, you want to buy these kids?

And she was talking to Spanish and I was thinking, I'm not hearing this right.

You know, I'm not translating it right.

And sure enough, that's what she was trying to do.

And then she said, you could make a movie.

And when she said that, I was like, wow, my first reaction was I wanted to run off screaming

like, you know, my head was on fire.

But I didn't.

I stood there and looked at her and I said, yeah, I'll buy them right now.

How much?

And she says $60.

Wow.

And I've reached in my back pocket and I pulled out 120 bucks and I bought those two little

girls and literally walked across the trash dump with them holding their hands.

They were both nine or 10 and a little bitty skinny things that were starving and they just

went with me and I went and took them to my wife and said, look at this and told my team.

So this actually just happened and we got to take care of these kids to make a very long story.

Short, we got them into a home and then every time I went into a trash dump, I just started

looking and they were there.

And before long, we had four, then we had 10, then we had 20 and now we have raised thousands

and thousands.

We've rescued over 11,000 kids and that was 30 years ago.

So yeah, that's how I got all got started.

Your believer, I'm a believer.

We have been redeemed.

We have been saved.

We've been pulled out of the trash dumps and given a different life, you know, and that's

what Jesus does.

So to me, it's a perfect demonstration of Jesus and his kingdom and I, it's a joy.

It's a joy.

It's not always a joy, but it's always a terrible privilege.

And there are times, you know, that it's very difficult.

There's been a very difficult challenges through the years.

There's always difficulty in funding this thing because, you know, raising kids is a money

pit.

And I have four biological kids and then I have over 4,400 kids that are in homes all across

the world.

And it's just a huge money pit.

So it's one thing to rescue a child.

It's another thing to actually raise that child and to put them in a home that you would

put your own grandchildren in.

And those kinds of challenges though are actually the least of the challenges that we

have faced in raising these kids.

And so it's a lot.

I would say the majority of the cases that we have throughout the world, it's actually

the parents that are actually trafficking the kids.

And so you cannot send them back.

You can't take them back.

You can't be a part of it.

And so there's no cookie cutter way to rescue kids and erase kids.

Every single one of them have a specific need and they have specific challenges and you

have to be willing to be like simple gumbee, you know, through the whole thing.

You know, you got to be always ready, always prepared to be flexible concerning the needs

of every single child and what their situation is.

We love stories on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Please share some stories of some of the girls that you have rescued.

I would say one of my favorite rescue stories is one of the first times I rescued somebody

in India.

I had a driver and his name was Prakash.

And Prakash's job was to get me five different churches on a Sunday starting in the morning.

And they just work you like a government mule when you go over there to India.

They line you up with 2000 gigs and they just, I literally would have to get an IV.

I would be so dehydrated.

It was so hot.

And I've learned since then, no, no, no, I'm not doing that anymore.

Back in the day when I was still young, Prakash was taking me to five different churches.

We were on our third or our fourth church.

I would say actually our second or our third or our third church, we were headed towards

our third church is what it was.

And he just non-shallotly as we passed this building, he said, that is a house of ill-repute.

Which those are not terms that I would use, you know, I was like, and his accent was so

harsh, he's like, this is a house of ill-repute.

And I was like, what?

And I was like, repeat that, repeat that.

Repeat that.

He told me that that's a cat house and he said, they are not having cats there.

And I was like, I know what, I've been growing up a long time, Prakash.

I know what goes on in there.

And instantly, I just, I call it, I'm just going to weird out.

So just, you put up with me, okay, Jonathan?

I had the Lord show me three things like flashcards.

And it was little girl.

But there is a little girl, she is a little girl and she has been abducted and you're going

to walk out with her.

And I just told him, I just instantly thought that, boom, boom, boom.

And it was like three things in a row.

And I went, turn around, I want to go in there.

And he said, no, no, no, it's a turnaround.

I want to go in there.

And so he turned around and he was thoroughly discussed with me, thinking, oh yeah, the

great American pastor.

He's got to stop by a cat house, you know, in between churches, you know.

And I told him, keep the car running.

So he just put it in park and I went in there.

Well, they had a bar and they had a bar.

The first part of it was a nice room.

There were some couches in there.

There was some young girls in there, meaning late teenage girls, early 20s and they were

in there and I walked in there and I'm just going to tell you and tell your audience,

I went straight up to the bar and started talking to everybody in there.

I'm like, hey, what's going on?

I'm from Texas.

Where are you all from?

Hey, and I'm just, I got that kind of a personality and I'm just trying to see is it possible?

It was, is there actually a child that I can rescue here because I felt like that God had

shown that to me.

And so I asked him, hey, do you have any little girls?

And they said, well, how little?

And I said, do you have any, any little ones?

And they said, yeah, well, we actually have two girls and a boy and the one of them is sick

and so you can't see her.

And the other two are in school.

Now school only goes to the seventh grade.

So these are six graders or below.

And I'm like, well, what about this sick one?

What about that one?

And they're like, well, she's not prepared and she hasn't been here very long and she hasn't

learned the proper protocols.

And I'm like, oh, you got a difficult one.

I want to see this difficult one.

And I'm just talking to him and there went, okay, so they're going about 15 minutes.

They come back.

They walked me down this hall and Jonathan, I'm telling you right now, I was horrified.

When I left that room, they took me down a hall and then I went down another hall and this

other hall was dark.

And I am passing doors that have padlocks on the outside of the doors and I'm thinking,

okay, there is three guys with me now.

And one time I'm thinking, I can take this guy.

I can break his jaw.

That's what I'm thinking.

The next guy, I'm like, I don't know.

And the third guy, I'm like, I'm running from that dude.

I'm going to have, these guys are going to kill me.

And I'm like, I'm just a pastor.

I don't even know what the heck I'm doing.

This is 20 something years ago and I'm like, this is craziness.

We get all the way down the hall, the very last door, all the way down the hall, which

was considerably, you know, was a long ways to me.

The door was open.

There was one light hanging down from the ceiling and it was a blue light and the reason why

it was blue was because this little girl was so beat up and this little girl was so sick

and she was so starving and she was so, they didn't want me to see how bad she looked.

And she was wearing a white dress and she was sitting on the edge of this little bitty,

tiny, caught bed with her hands like this and she was just sitting here just in her hands

like in the way that you know, you would hold them in prayer perhaps.

And I said, oh, so there she is.

And I was like, so I started talking to him and I was like, and they're like, okay, well,

we'll leave you.

And I was like, no, no, no, I'm taking her with me.

I'm taking her with me.

Let's go.

And they're like, no, no, no, you're not taking her anywhere.

I'm like, yes, I am.

I'm like, this place is filthy.

I'm a guy with money.

I have a nice hotel.

I'm taking her with me.

And they're like, well, that's not possible.

I'm like, it is possible.

Like, here it is.

Like, how much?

I just start forking out money.

Forking out money.

Forking out money.

And by the grace of God, they just said, yeah, give me that water cash.

And you can take her and like, when will you be back?

You know, we'll send somebody with you, of course.

Will you be back in two hours, three hours, four hours?

And I said, I'll be back in four hours.

And they said, okay, I walked out with her.

And I got to the car.

They didn't follow me immediately.

They were like holding this, there was like this wild thing that happened where they were

just kind of standing there looking at each other like a couple of drunken hillbillies

over this water cash.

And they're looking at like, kind of like laughing.

And I, oh my gosh.

And dude, I just walked out with her and I went out, got in the car.

Procesh would not allow me to get in the car when he saw that I had this girl with me.

He's like, no, no, no.

I'm like, yes, yes, yes.

He finally opened up the door.

I said, let's go, let's go, let's go.

My heart was about to literally jump out of my throat.

We drove off and the guy didn't follow us.

And I had Procesh translate for me.

And I said, do you, is that your family that's in there?

And she said, no.

And I said, what, what are you doing in there?

And she said, I came to clean.

They came to my village and they said I was going to clean.

She said, but I haven't cleaned anything.

And I said, how long have you been in there?

And she said, she didn't know.

And I said, it's been a day.

Has been a month.

She just kind of shocked her shoulders.

And I'm like, tell me how long you've been here.

And she said, she didn't know.

She didn't have any idea.

We're talking like a 10 year old child, you know?

And I said, well, you're going to remember this day for the rest of your life.

She's not saying anything.

Procesh is translating.

I said, do you know, do you know who Jesus is?

And she said, no.

And I said, well, he knows you.

And he sent me from the other side of the world to come over here and to get you.

He's been watching you for a long time.

And he sent me over here to get you.

And I just got you.

And I'm going to take you to a home where nobody is ever going to hurt you again, ever.

And I know that you're sick and there's going to be a doctor there.

And we're going to eat.

Nobody's going to hurt you.

And she didn't like, oh, yeah, I mean, she didn't know what to think about any of it.

She didn't have a clue.

I mean, she just like, whatever.

Procesh took me to a home that we have.

It's a transition home when kids get out of high school and when they get in the college,

we have a home in Vyshika, Kappatnam or outside of Vyshika, Kappatnam, India that has these

college age girls in it.

And I want to tell you, Jonathan, those girls love me.

I've known them since they were a little bit.

And when we pulled up there, I went in there and they were so excited.

I was there and I told them, hey, you're not going to believe what I just did, which was

crazy.

And I said, and that little girl's in a car.

And she is terrified.

She's been traumatized and we got to help her.

And I said, I want her to have her own bed and they're like, okay, and I was like, I want

you to treat her like a queen.

I went outside to the car when got her, brought her into the house and all those girls.

These beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, 20, 21-year-old girls, 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old girls

in these beautiful sari's and they all started clapping for her.

They were all clapping for her.

And that was the first time that I saw any life in that little girl.

And they were all hugging her and they were all talking to her and saying, no, no, no, you

listen, we know Papa Troy and you're going to live here with us and it's going to be okay.

You're going to be okay.

You're not going back.

And she was asking, I'm not going back there and they're like, no, you're not going

back.

You're going to stay here with us.

And so I left.

And we had a doctor come, all those kinds of things.

I came back about five days later, seven days later, something like that because we, I traveled

the whole country on the way back as I was flying out.

We stopped at there and I went, I got a check on that little girl and she came out and she

hugged me and would not let go of me.

And she asked me in Telugu and all the other girls started laughing and I said, what did she

say?

And she said she wants to know if you're Jesus.

That's probably my favorite.

She saw Jesus in you.

Yeah.

She's cool girl too.

She's married and grown up now and she's cool.

She's, I haven't seen her in probably 10 years.

But that, you know, man, I got on a plane and I was just sitting on the plane, man, the whole

way just going, what have you done, God, to put me in this position?

Number one, I was happy I didn't get killed because I was way out of my league.

I'm not like, Mr., I get all this credit for rescuing all these kids.

I don't actually rescue the kids.

I rescue the rescuers that rescue the kids.

That's what I do.

But in this case, I actually rescued this kid and I'm, they're, I've rescued some kids, but

not, not like what everybody else does, but I'm, I didn't go in there and rescue them

by kicking down the door, beating somebody up or, you know, walking right in there with

a gun.

We just did some business.

You could just do some business.

And I mean, you can buy a human being for $3,000 every single day of the week.

I'm talking about, I'm talking about you can go into a room where they bring in

girls and you sit in there and you got as much cash as you can carry on.

Did this in Northern India, right on the, right on the NAPA lease border?

And everybody in there has got a phone.

Everybody in there has got, got FaceTime and they got an Arab on the other, on the other

end.

And they're bidding on these girls and they, they give you a piece of paper and it's

like a car market.

It says, this one is 14 and she has hazel eyes and black hair and this is her way and

this is her height.

And this one is 17 and this is, I mean, it's literally like a car market and you just bid

on them and you're just hoping you don't run out of money and you do and you do run out

of money.

And then you leave there knowing there was a bunch of more people I could have rescued if

I had the money or this that, you know, yeah, we did that.

We did that for, we did that for years and then a word got out, you know, what we were

doing.

And then because those girls that we would rescue, they wouldn't know where other kids were

and then we started working with governments and then we started working.

We had literally started hiring security teams and then I started building my own security

teams and building my own security companies and like and Uganda, I have a security company

and we had to put all that stuff together.

So, so going back to that one story, I, I, when I came back after rescue in that little

girl, I was like, this is all I want to do for the rest of my life.

Is it?

I had no more ambitions.

I had no more aspirations and whatever I was going to do, I wanted to do it to create

awareness and to fund rescue and kids.

I know there's another side to this.

What happens to the traffickers?

What does justice look like?

And how has Jesus been involved?

Well, depending upon which country that they're in, people deal with trafficking differently.

So like in Nepal, for example, you have to pay a prosecuting attorney to actually prosecute,

you have to, you have to pay for it.

And so like the victims have to pay a prosecuting attorney.

They of course they have a constitution, of course they have a rule of law, but the prosecution,

the prosecuting attorneys are paid for by the victim.

And that's one of the reason why people come from all over the world to snatch kids out

in Nepal is because the poor people that they are molesting will never be able to hire

a lawyer.

They'll never be able to defend themselves.

So a ministry like mine can come in and say, I got a lot of cash and I say we throw these

jokers under the bus.

And then you do.

And they everybody starts freaking out.

Like why would you come over here and pay for the justice of somebody you don't even know?

Well, because you don't know Jesus and we do.

And this is what he does.

And so like all of our, not all of our funding, but a lot of our funding that goes to Nepal

actually is to pay for the prosecution.

Closer to home like in Mexico and in places like Belize and Nicaragua and Colombia and

Peru and Brazil.

You have to develop and you have to develop relationships with prosecuting attorneys.

And then hopefully you can get to the attorney general.

You can get as high as the attorney general.

Last week I had a conference when we had the attorney general of the state of Durango, Mexico

was actually here.

She actually came up here and she's a godly woman.

She's incredible.

And she is the attorney general.

Okay.

Well, let me tell you she has an agenda to stop cartels and to stop trafficking.

And so it's super important that we as Christians support those people in government positions

that are willing to actually risk their necks in fighting trafficking.

So now that I've said all of that, tell you that I am for it 10,000%.

I am for the prosecution and also too, if I can just say this, honestly, don't think that

rehabilitation should be an option to someone who must have child.

I just believe that you go, "Bibble, I'm all about cement shoes."

Now that I said that, that's not the option.

What is the option is to make sure that they are separated from society and they never

get a chance to hurt anymore children ever again.

And we have to support those people that support those laws that are in government places.

How can dads keep their own children safe and/or the kids that they may serve in other

settings such as church and other organizations?

How you protect your kids is number one, you are highly involved within your kids' life.

And you can smell out a red flag just if you're really involved.

If you're not really involved, I want to tell you, these guys are going to be smarter in

you and they're going to get them and you can't let them get them.

You've got to be involved.

You need to have some simple policies just because your kid wants to be on the internet

all the time.

Doesn't mean that you have to let them.

Just because your kid wants to have their own this and their own that or whatever it comes

to their accessibility to the web doesn't mean that they just get to have those gates open

in their life because their friends have that.

I know exactly what fuels child trafficking.

I know exactly what funds child trafficking and I know exactly what builds the market for

child trafficking and it is pornography.

That's what it is.

And there could be no place within our own sexuality as dads privately that we give

place to pornography and it's going to be hard because we have the need for instant self-gradification.

And you're going to have to fight that and you got to teach your kids to fight that and

you got to tell them, you know what?

Dude, you're going to be an alpha male.

You're going to be married one of these days.

You're going to have your sexuality is awesome.

I don't hate your sexuality is awesome.

But this right here, this pornography thing, that's a no.

We're not doing that.

And then to actually because I know what pornography is because I rescue kids out of pornography.

I know what it is.

I also know this too.

Every bit of trafficking is funded by pornography because of monetization.

So we think, you know, hey, look, I'm not buying anything.

I'm not participating.

I'm just a dude and I'm looking at these images and yeah, that's awesome.

I'm sorry, but I really like that.

I'm a guy and I like that.

For every second that you spend watching pornography, you are literally funding a crime scene.

That's what you're doing.

And the word of God says, not only do those who do such terrible things receive judgment,

but those who take pleasure in it.

That's what the Bible says.

It's like, you can't say I'm against trafficking, but I think it's very entertaining and gratifying

to watch a slave be treated like that.

You're like, well, they're not slaves.

Yes, they are.

Yes, I know what I'm talking about.

There's not a single little girl on the planet earth that says, when I grow up, I want to be

a porn star.

They're slaves and they're drug addicted and they're this and they're that and there's

all those those kinds of things.

The other part of that too, Jonathan is that, you know, since our borders have been

open, they're closed now.

But for the past four years, our borders have been just completely open.

They have the open borders is not just that people can get into the country.

Open borders is there's no accountability of what goes back and forth, what goes back and

forth.

And that's something that people just don't realize.

I realize it because I do work on the border and I know what it is.

So a big part of open borders is this, if you stay addicted to pornography long enough,

you will be led to lusting after children.

It leads you down that road to actually viewing children and actually being a part of that.

That is the road that pornography takes every single human being on.

You stay in there long enough.

Then you know what you do, you also learn how to surf the web and you learn how to get

into the dark web through pornography.

That's how you learn.

And then after a while, you learn how to find the dark web on your apps and then you have

something like Instagram and then you get to viewing a child, you get to like in a child

and then somebody contacts you and says, come down here in MacGalen, Texas and be on

the border and be within a mile and contact us.

Go down there to the border and you sit there, you get on Instagram and they say, you like

this little girl, you like this little boy, you like this and you say, yes, I do.

And then they come across the border, they pick you up, they take you across the border,

you lay your money down and you spend the day molesting a child.

And then you come back.

All of that is pornography driven.

Every single bit of it is porn oh driven.

And pornography takes advantage of everybody's vulnerability, everybody's.

So if a guy goes down to the border, Jonathan and if a guy actually does that and he gets

proficient enough at surfing the dark web who he was introduced through through pornography

and now he's actually lusting after a child and he's intrigued with the sexuality of a child

and then he actually makes the journey.

I promise you, that's not the last time he's going to go down there and he's going to

do that.

What's going to happen is studies have shown that person is going to return 70 more times

70.

That's the average.

So it's got to be stopped.

Somebody has to stand up, somebody has to intervene.

And in tool, we actually recognize that pornography is after our kids until we actually say, let

me tell you what it's actually all about.

It is not about adult entertainment of considering adults and like, you know what, that's just

kind of a cool.

That's not what it is.

If that's all it was, it would shut down the entire porn, the entire porn industry.

It's a lot like abortion clinics.

They're like, well, actually we're all about family, health and all that and then we do abortions

on the side.

Okay, you take abortion out of abortion clinics.

They all shut down.

You take child sexuality out of pornography.

I'm telling you, you shut down pornography.

How can dads learn more about Troy Brewer Ministries?

Get your books or get involved?

Well, you can just go to Troy Brewer, just Troy Brewer dot com and that's probably the easiest

way and I want to just encourage you guys to do that.

Go there and check us out and we got rescue stories and videos.

It will direct you to other sites that I have and just just get plugged in.

It's pretty easy.

Just go to Troy Brewer Troy Brewer dot com.

Troy as we close, what is your challenge to dads listening now?

My challenge to dads is just, is just this.

I would just say this.

You know what, our God, it's God's idea for us to be a father.

It's his idea for him to be our father and there is no way that you're going to reach your

kids for Jesus if you're not going to be a father to him.

Your kids are going to be like, yeah, that's a cool scripture, but you're a terrible dad.

What's real is any single one of us on any given day of the week, we can decide today's

today.

I'm going to be a good dad.

Today is the day that I'm going to be selfless concerning my kid.

Today is the day I'm going to be a leader when it comes to my child.

And today is the day that I'm going to recognize everything in the kingdom is relational before

it's functional.

And I'm going to make sure that my relationship with my kid is right.

Troy, this has been a powerful conversation.

You're a very busy guy doing incredible things, doing God's works.

I appreciate you taking the time to be on the father and challenge.

Listen, I'm proud of you, buddy.

Appreciate your mission and I'll stand with you.

God bless you so much.

[MUSIC]

Dads if you want your church or Christian community to be a safe place for your kids, this is not an episode to miss. There are things every dad can and should do to protect their kids as well as others and you will learn what those things are in this episode.

My guest is the founder and director of Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma. He also has a book out called Safe Church which we will talk about in this episode. This is Dr. Andrew Bauman's second appearance on The Fatherhood Challenge.

You can order his book Safe Church here: https://amzn.to/4hbn22a

To learn more about Christian Counseling Center visit: https://christiancc.org/

Special thanks to Smile Online Course & Books for sponsoring this episode. To learn more visit: https://thefatherhoodchallenge--smileteenskills.thrivecart.com/social-career-skills-accelerator/

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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If you've been the victim of trauma or cruelty of any kind and you're struggling to heal, this episode reveals the pathway to healing. Mark Sowersby is a sexual and physical abuse survivor and he's a pastor and author of Forgiving the Nightmare and co-author of Letters to the Weary.

You can find Forgiving the Nightmare here: https://amzn.to/3E2Bf2X

You can find Letters to the Weary here: https://amzn.to/3WjCxgj

To learn more about Forgiving the Nightmare Ministry or see the film, visit: https://forgivingthenightmare.com/

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https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcript - The Healing Power of Forgiveness

---

Today we are tackling a very difficult topic. We're going to be talking about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is something that can be an uncomfortable subject for most of us. It not only can

affect our health, but it can also affect our spiritual walk, and sometimes it can

interfere with our ability to be able to hear God clearly. So it's really important for us to be

able to understand what forgiveness means and the freedom that it can bring. And I've brought a

guest on our program to talk about this, and he will be with us in just a moment, so don't go

anywhere. Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire

fathers everywhere, to take great pride in their role, and a challenge society to understand

how important fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero. Greetings everyone. Thank you so much for joining me.

I brought a guest on. His name is Mark Sowersby. Mark is a pastor and also the author of a book

on forgiveness, and we're going to be talking about that book later on in the program.

Mark, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

It's an honor to be with you. Well, let's not waste a minute. Let's jump right into your story.

How does your story begin? Well, our story, our topic today is about forgiveness.

And in my story, there was an offense and abuse and a sorrow. And that's what I'm going to share

with you right now. I'm going to share with you what it's like for me when I grew up in a,

in a home full of abuse. You know, it's a subject that many men don't want to talk about. We,

we kind of run from it. We kind of hope it goes away. We, we get busy with other stuff, but, you know,

when I was seven years old, my mother would marry a man 20 years, her younger, and he would come into

our home and he would groom me. He would abuse me. He would molest my body. He would stab me and burn

me, summon the other men for their own sexual pleasures. And this was the atmosphere that I lived in

from the time I was seven to 14 years old. So that was my trauma. That was my nightmare and the pain

that went with that, the sorrow that went with that, the ugliness that went with that that trapped me

for many, many years. I'll just share this as much as I can remember that first night when he came

installed my innocence for me. I can remember the crackle of the threshold and the weight of his body,

the smell of his breath. And as much as that hurt his evil and ugly as that was, he left me with even a

deeper wound when he finished his abuse. He, he told me it was my fault. He told me this is what I,

I deserved it that no one would ever believe me. And even though the physical scars is ugly and as

deep as they were, that emotional scar lasted far longer than the physical one. So I had to go through

this journey that I learned to forgive. So I wasn't going crazy insane. I was angry. I wasn't just,

just lost all the time. And that's what I share about in our, in this story about forgiveness.

How did that shape your view of God? Well, it was a child in those early years. We didn't really

grow up with any kind of religion. My, my family was kind of like, well, be good and God's good and do

your best and God. So there really wasn't a religion standard. It was just we knew Jesus, we knew

Christmas and Easter. But we didn't really have a religion. So I didn't really think much about it.

You know, and those years when I was being abused, I tell everybody those seven years was,

I was just trying to survive. I wasn't trying to figure life out. I wasn't trying to thrive.

I, you know, I just had to survive to the next moment. I would say the next day, but if anybody's lived

with somebody that was, was an abuser, there was somebody that caused pain, you know, as somebody

is affected by that, you're just trying to figure out your next move. It's like playing chess. It's like

walking on eggshells. You never know what's going to tear them off or what's going to happen next.

So those seven years that ugly seven years that I experienced, it really was just survival.

I was just, I tell people, I didn't learn how to read. I learned how to duck. You know, it's just,

how do I get to the next day, get through the next moment? One of the things I know is common with

people who've gone through that is they need something to really numb, something to really forget

what, what it happens for some, it's alcohol for some, it's drugs. Was there ever a path like that for

you? Oh, sure, sure. You know, I would say that in those seven years, that's exactly how I felt.

I felt numb. That's exactly how I had to live in my mind if you would. Again, I didn't know these

terms or understand them when I was a child. I was just going through, but I became numb. The pain

was so bad. It was so horrific, so ugly, the lies and the attacks, I just became numb. And yeah,

as an adult, when it was all over at 14 years old, and I'll just share the rest that 14 years old

two things happened. I fought my attacker off. It wasn't a Mike Tyson moment. It wasn't a rocky

Val Boa, but you know, it wasn't MMA, but I pushed off my attacker and I ran. But also, I found a

leveled in my family who believed me. And they believed my story. They believed what was happening.

So they were able to protect me with their might and their power. So at 14, the abuse never took place.

It was over physically, but now I live with the scars and the pain of that, for the rest of

them for about 30 years. And as you said, when did I gravitate to it? I didn't gravitate to alcohol.

I didn't gravitate to drugs, but I gravitated to donuts. You know, and I found my comfort in food.

I found my comfort, my security, my blanket, my friend in hiding behind the refrigerator,

if you would. So that was my coping mechanism that I ate too much and talked too much. And that's

the journey that I think we're all on. You know, the the weight issue, the donut, the cake, the pizza,

was always lying to me. I was always waiting for the perfect one. You know, the next one will be

the perfect one. The next one will make me feel good. The next one, it's like any drug if you would.

It was always saying to me, look how good I taste. And don't worry about the cholesterol,

the blood pressure and everything else. So, you know, just like any, any habit, anything that's

destructive, a lie to us, to tell us it's good, but then leave with, leave with pain and sorrow.

But what happened to me? How did I find my way out? Well, after the abuse ended, I never wanted to

be at home. You know, the hell full of chaos. So I was the kid that was always out of somebody's,

always had somebody's house. I stayed too late. I ate over somebody's place. But we had to pool

in the apartment complex. We lived that. And I was about 15 and I said a prayer that I would come to

know as the sinner's prayer. Lord, forgive me my sins come live in my heart. I was only a kid.

And I probably didn't know the depth of that prayer, but God knew the depth of that prayer. He was

faithful to it. So what happened for me is the church. And again, I'll tell you the church is not full

of perfect people, filled with forgiven people. But the church for me truly became a sanctuary.

And I don't just mean that word in a holy sense. I mean that word in a protection sense.

So that kid who never wanted to be home, I was always at the church. I was every meeting. I think

what the adult prayer meetings, I went to, you know, the senior prayer meetings, I went to ladies

prayer, I went to mom's prayer. I just always was at the church and there's where I started to work

on this journey of hope to find my way out of this pain. Where was God during the abuse?

That's a great question. And I think anybody that's gone through trauma has asked themselves that

question. Everyone who's gone through a pain or abuse has to be intellectually honest with yourself,

God, where are you? We know you could control all things. We know they are in charge of all things.

Then why did these things happen? Why? And that's a hard journey to go through. That's really like a valley.

And like David said, I walk through the valley, but I'll fear no evil. And in that place, I will say God

gave me a perfect answer for me. And I want to underline that word for me. I wish I could give a perfect

answer for everyone. But that's not how it works. God gave me an answer to that hard question that

satisfied me. Now my answer is not going to satisfy anybody else. But you know, the Bible says

that we'll know his voice, the sheep know the shepherd, the shepherd's voice. And we'll know

his voice. So when God spoke to me in my heart, it was an audible. But when he spoke to me in my spirit,

my prayer closet, and I cried out, God, why? Where? What? When? And with a with a fist that was shaken,

God gave me the answer that was enough for me. And if I gave my answer, a lot of people would say,

well, that's not a good answer. But what if the answer I got was good enough for me? When I was a

kid and I first walked into a church and my faith was new and young, I didn't seek forgiveness. I

didn't even have to stay with that man. I sought the Lord. And then the Lord would eventually,

years and decades later, help me forgive those who trespass against me. But there's three things that

I learned that were very important to me during that time. And the first thing I learned is that

forgiveness is not approval. You know, I think there's a part of me thinking, if I forgive, I'm saying

it's okay. I'm saying it's right. No, what happened to me and happened to others is evil or wrong against

the law of bad. And you know, I don't approve of it. I don't accept it. I don't like it. But because I

forgave the personal abuse me does not mean I approve of what he did. So forgiveness is not approval.

The second thing I learned is that forgiveness is not a one-time event. You know, it's constant. We live in

a place of forgiving, being forgiven and forgiving others. You know, his mercy is made new every day.

The Bible tells us. And then I would say the third thing I learned was I could have my boundaries.

You know, I didn't have to have Christmas morning. I didn't have to stick my head back into the

lion's mouth. I could say, God, I forgave. And now I can have, I'm going to love this person because I

love them so much to put them in your hands. And that's what it meant to me. God loved the enemy. I'm

going to love as much. Lord, I can't spend time. There's still, there's still hurts and pains and

triggers. But I'm going to let this go. So no longer is the worst part of my life. Have to be the

sum of my life. So when that answer came, it came in waves. It came in pieces. It came in facets.

You know, it wasn't all at once. But as I grew closer to God, the answer became clearer and clearer.

And it was hard. It wasn't always, you know, this could be my moment. It was me wrestling myself

with my past, who I am, what I wanted to be, why it if and how. But eventually when I learned that I

could forgive because Christ first forgave me. And as God gave, brought me closer to Him, my perspective

changed. See, the abuse gave me a perspective, her shame and pain. But as I grew closer to God,

there was word in His Spirit, my perspective changed to love, mercy and grace. You know, I was being

jackal trapped bound to my abuser even years after it was over, even years after I saw His face, even years

after I heard His voice, I was still being trapped every day because of the angst and the pain and the

anger. And I wanted my pound of flesh and I wanted my revenge and I wanted, I wanted what I wanted.

But I learned what I could give that to Christ when I gave that to the God, when I said, Lord, you

are in control. That when I released that to God, I really got set free. I got set free because,

you know, I was carrying this, this yoke, I was carrying this pain, I was carrying this weight around

me all the time. And you know, when, and we think sometimes we can bury our traumas. We think sometimes,

well, if we don't talk about it, we can, we can kind of put in that nice little box with a bow

around it and just kind of forget about it. But pain always comes out. Pain always breaks something.

And ask the people you love, you might think you have it in this nice little place and you're not

going to think about it, but you know what, a lot of times our hurts are like the rudder to our life

and they gravitate us to things and they, they retreat us from other things. So, you know, those pains

that we think are put away and no one knows and, you know, they would be shocked if they ever find out,

let me tell you, it may not be coming out directly, but it's coming out somehow in self-medication

and easily fits of anger and just fears and anxieties. So, where did I find my freedom? I found it by

giving it to the judge, by giving it to the king, by giving it to the Lord, by giving it to my Savior.

Now, when I did that, I just said, you are in control. I'm releasing this. I'm letting it go.

What you will do with my abuser, you will do and you will be just, you will be right, you will not

be mocked, you are holy, but I have not in the place and I'm carrying this pain around too long

and I don't want to pass it on to my children. I don't want to live it, have it in my marriage

and I don't want to live it every day. And in that moment, I got said free. Like I said, I didn't

know what the worst part of my life to be the sum of my life. What are the generational consequences

or curses that can potentially rise up from generation to generation by not us individually

dealing with our unforgiveness? Well, I think that sometimes we pass that down, not intentionally.

Of course, we never want to, but our children see the way we respond to trauma. The children see the

way we talk. The children see the way that we handle things and they repeat it because that's

what we do. We raise them up. We train them in the ways. We chain them in good things and we train

them in hard things. And when we don't deal with our trauma, there may be an unspoken thing that

we're saying, "Hey, you don't have to deal with your traumas." You know, there's an old story about

two brothers and both of them had the same dad and the dad was an alcoholic and one became an

alcoholic and one did it and they asked each brother why and their answer was the same. The one who

became the alcoholic said, "My dad, the one who didn't said my dad." And what's that story telling

us that we pass on behaviors unintentionally, mostly. I know I'm passing down bad habits to my

kids. They watch too much TV. They eat too much snacks. Just ask my wife, but the big things of anger,

the big things of control, the big things to say, "Hey, it's all right to confront, not not in an

angry way, but let's not live dysfunctional. Let's live in function. Let's not have a, you know, this

kind of look out that, "Hey, I'm just going to be quiet and hold it all in, but I'm going to let it

out and let God lead me in that. You get in a place where you stop trusting anybody. I was in that place,

you know, I was in that place where I didn't trust anybody or anything, including God. And really,

that's one of the first things God had to teach me before he could teach me to forgive. God had

to show me how to trust Him. And that happened slowly and lovingly and compassionately and mercifully.

And as I learned to trust God in His ways, He came great my ways. And it gave me that

a perspective of the kingdom, you know, looking at the person and looking at the people and looking at

the hurts through the cross of Calvary, not just through Mark's revenge. But when I look at

Proverbs 3, and I think we're all familiar with that very famous scripture in Proverbs, "Trust in

the Lord with all your heart and lead not on your own or your standings." But in all your ways submit

to Him and He will make your past straight, where the first two things are very hard, right? Trust

in the Lord with all with all your heart and lead not on your own or your standing.

You know, my understanding was to take care of me. My understanding was to to get what I wanted. My

trust was in what I could do. But the Lord tells me to trust in Him. And I only and then Him,

that only comes through relationship. That only comes with knowing His Word and knowing, not knowing

a religion, but knowing Him in that relationship I learned to trust in Him. And then to submit,

right? Wait a second. That's the last thing I want to do. The last thing because last time I submitted,

I got wounded. Last time I got submitted, I got hurt. But the Lord tells me to submit all my ways

unto Him. And then the promise He gives me there in Proverbs is what? He will make the past straight.

When I received the detailed answer, it still was not a comfortable answer to hear. It was true.

It was right. I knew the answer was correct. And I could not argue with the answer. But it still

made me a little sick to my stomach. And I had to pray about it. And I had to get take some time to

actually process it. The answer I got and it was more like if you can think of it in a conversational

form, imagine me asking God, where were you when the abuse was going on? You could have stopped it.

You could have interfered. You are all powerful. So what was your excuse? What was your reason for not

stopping it? You could have destroyed the person or people actually several people involved.

You could have destroyed them all. So why didn't you do it? And the answer I got back was because

if I destroyed them, I would also have to destroy you. And that was that answer made me sick to my

stomach. And the reason why is because I knew what that meant. At that point, I saw so many of my

sins flashing before my eyes. And yes, a lot of those sins were a result of the abuse.

And when it comes down to it, the finger ultimately, when everything when this all shakes out,

when everything comes down the pipe and the end comes, the ultimate blame does fall on Satan.

Satan is the scapegoat. He is ultimately the source and he will wait. He will bear it all ultimately.

But again, justice is justice. We still have our responsibility. There are sins I participated in.

And it doesn't make any difference if what perpetuated me to commit those sins was anger from the

abuse doesn't make any difference. Sin is sin. I still committed the sin. It points back to me.

There is no getting out of that. It is what it is. And the penalty that I should have received

before it is being destroyed. The same is my abusers. The scales are equal. So if we want justice,

that's what true justice looks like. And that's the part that will make you sick to your stomach.

Now, the other part of the story is the plan of redemption. We have Jesus. We have His blood

that covers us. And ultimately, the point where I realized I had forgiven them is when I saw a

setting where there was a scene where I'm at the gates of heaven and there's God. There's the Father.

There's Jesus. There were my abusers. And the question was asked of me, what should I do with them?

Should I send them to hell? Or should I let them into heaven? And the question was given to me.

The GABA was handed back to me and I could choose. I realized I had forgiven them when I finally said

I know what I'm going to do. And I pointed to them and I said, if they are comfortable spending

eternity with Him and I pointed to Jesus, then I am comfortable spending eternity with them.

And that was my answer. That's when I realized I had forgiven and the GABA was right back into God's

hands. I just want people in the audience to be discouraged if you don't get the answer right away.

It isn't because God doesn't want to answer your question or because He won't. He will answer your

question. Believe me, if you ask, He will give you an answer. Are you ready to receive the answer?

The true answer. And that is a big determination. And when you get the answer, how you get it,

whether you get the answer in one piece or not, or the means by which God chooses to answer you.

That's also a factor. It's into your readiness. God is very careful. He's very gentle with us. He's

merciful with us. And He knows when and how we're ready. So trust God on that. Amen. Amen.

Good word, man. That's a very good, strong encouragement. My miracle, like your miracle, it sounds like

didn't come in a twinkly of an eye. It came through a journey. It came through walking and trusting

and going forward and trusting and believing and crying out. And there's good days and there's

hard days. And days where you had to deal with ugly stuff, days where you just got to say, God,

I don't want to deal with it at all. But in that process, you know, you and I've got our miracle.

You know, I wish somebody, hey, I went to church. I said a prayer and that's it. If that's their

story, amen, I'm going to rejoice with them. But I think more, more times than not, when people go

through trauma, it's the, it's the process. It's the journey. It's walking through the valley,

if hearing, no evil because that was with me. It's the process to know that as we grow as we go

through that refining fire, as we go through those seasons of testing, as we go through those times

of being a strengthened and you're right. I loved how you said that the answer came at the right time.

You know, when I was 14 years old and the abuse ended, I would never been able to hear or understand

the answer that I got. You know, God had it, but I would have been too angry. I would have been too.

No way. I would have dismissed it, but somewhere on that journey as God became greater and the pain

became less as God's mercy became stronger and the fear became less as the lies became quiet

and God's words became greater. And that journey is when God spoke to me. And like you, I said, God,

where were you? And he said, Mark, I've known you from your mother's womb. I was born from the fair. My

my birth father was married to another. It didn't really get to meet my birth father. So I was

45 years old, a lot of confusion, a lot of hurt. He said, Mark, I've known you from your mother's

womb and yet the enemy has tried to sift you since the moment you were born. And that was my answer

that I know from the moment I was born. I kept saying, why? Where? But now what the enemy has meant for

evil, I'm using for good. So even though I had to carry this cross, even though I had to walk through

this ugly stuff, and I'm not saying God did it, but God's using it. God's using this testimony,

using the story of me, forgiving my nightmare of me walking through my trauma of me. So I'm able to

share around the country. I'm able in my book and in our ministry to be able to share people

that have walked through traumas not too long ago. I was in Ohio and I was preaching,

like we're talking today about overcoming in the blood of the lamb. This woman came up to the

altar and she had to be in her early 80s. And all she said, me too, pastor. So it was the first time

in her life that she spoke these words, me too, meaning that I too went through abuse. Her husband

didn't know. They were married over 50 plus years. Her children were grown. They didn't know she had

grandchildren, the great-greater and so for almost 80 years, she carried that inside her. And when I

came to speak, not because of me, because of the word of God, because of the spirit of Lord,

she was able to begin to confess or begin to speak or begin to share. And in that moment, I watched

her children rally around her love and prayer and so many people love God. They had Christians.

They give, they go, they pray, they read, but yet they bury the shame down. And they say, Lord,

I just take it away. And yes, that's what we all want. But sometimes we've got to be willing to walk

walk through that journey. And I think like you said, you had to come to that place to say,

if they could spend their time with Christ, then I could spend eternity with them. And that's

what it's about. God is the judge. He is the one that's right. He is mighty and he is compassionate.

He is merciful and he is strength. And that's what we trust in. And that's what, that's what pulled me

out of my myri clay. So I am no longer trapped in this anger, this fear, this confusion, does it rise

up? Sure. Do I have my triggers? Of course, there's certain smells and sounds and places bring me back.

Yes. But those are the days when I remember, Lord, I forgave in you. I stand in your promise.

You know, I remember when my son was born, the first time became a father. And as my son came into

the world the usual way and they put in my arms, 10 fingers, 10 toes, my wife and I were happy. My

wife was healing from giving birth. At that moment as I held this little boy in my hand that the enemy

was lying to me, no one ever loved you that much. No one ever took care of you this much. No one

ever wanted to sacrifice for you as much. But in that moment, I didn't want my abuse to still

enjoy of my father. Boy, I, you know, the nerves, the, the, the, the, the, the old nerves, the what ifs, the

how it comes? Boy, I'm, but I had the joy of being a father for the first time. But yet that moment,

the enemy tried to bring up my past, bring up my fear to steal that moment. And that's what I had to say,

I forgave in Jesus name. I didn't feel it. It wasn't warm and fuzzy. It wasn't like, you know,

hallelujah music was playing in my ears. There was an angel singing, but yet I knew that I forgave

because I forgave in Jesus and I could stand upon the rock of Jesus Christ and enjoy that moment.

And that's what, that's what forgiveness. That's what life more abundant looks like. And I'm glad

that you had your moment where God gave you the hard answer, the ugly answer, but it was at the

right time. God gave me an answer. It was hard, but it was at the right time. And I know that it's

God does want to answer. God was wants to speak to us. His word is there for us. His spirit leads us

and those that have gone through trouble and say, why? Why? God wants to meet you with that why because

he is the I am. I am your God. I am your Savior. I am, I am the one who died for you. I'm your healer

and your Redeemer. So God wants to meet us in those places. So Mark, you've written a book about

forgiveness. Tell us a little bit about that book. Sure. Yeah. We wrote the story again. We just kind

of scratched on it a little bit today, but we wrote the story called forgiving the nightmare.

And I wrote not just my story, but I also wrote some principles and some practices. I didn't just

want to write a story. Hey, I'm an abused guy, but I wanted to give some tools. I wanted to give some

from some support. I wanted to give some principles on how I overcame those things. And it was by

dying itself and getting ahold of Christ. So my book's called forgiving the nightmare, forgiving the

nightmare. And yeah, we have a ministry call for giving the nightmare. And the book was last

a couple of years ago. We got actually got a new book coming out. It's a it's a devotional.

So I get to wear the pastor hat a little bit more. And it's called letters to the weary. So my book

for giving the nightmare, which is out right now, go to Amazon, go to forgive the nightmare.com,

our devotional, which is called letters to the weary. And this again, kind of sin, genre of encouragement,

support, and principles to help people through those traumas of life. I'm also going to post links to

make it easier for you to find marks books. So if you go to the fatherhood challenge.com, that's the

fatherhood challenge.com. If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description, I will

have the links posted there for your convenience. Mark, as we close, what is your challenge to that

dad listening that is struggling with his own history of abuse? My challenge would be to let him know

he's not alone. You know, the enemy loves to separate and isolate. And our traumas love to do

the same thing. So sometimes we really think we're the only kid that ever grew up like that. We think

we're the only person that ever had to deal with that. We think the only person or individual that

had to deal with that kind of junk, that kind of family, that kind of father. But I'll tell you the day

that's a lie from the end of this countless people. They're not perfect people, but the people who

love God, the people who can support you in your journey. There's a community out there that says,

"Hey, you're not the only one." Mark, thank you so much for sharing your story with us for giving us

hope and resources to be able to help you. Now it's out there who got through this, actually heal.

Thank you. Thank you as my honor and God bless you guys.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge. If you would like to contact us,

listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information

about the Fatherhood Challenge. Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com. That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com.

[music]

How much screen time is too much screen time for your kids or teens? How do you teach your kids basic social skills for things like making connections, finding a job or managing relationships? We will address all of these questions in this episode. with Kirt Manecke as my guest. Kirt is an award winning author and founder of Smile Online Course and Books, helping parents teach their kids social skills & career readiness for teen success.

To learn more about Kirt and his curriculum visit:

https://www.smilethebook.com/

To purchase Kirt's latest book visit: https://amzn.to/3DT8Axm

Here is a link to the Thomas Kersting book mentioned by Kirt in this episode: https://amzn.to/3Pu6jLq

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcript - Raising Teens Who Are Confident at Life

---

How much screen time is too much screen time for your kids or teens?

How do you teach your kids basic social skills for things like making connections,

finding a job, or managing relationships?

We will address all of these questions in just a moment, so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role, and a challenge society to understand how important fathers are

to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone, thank you so much for joining me.

I'm excited to have Kurt Manecke with me.

Kurt is an award-winning author and founder of Smile Online Courses and Books, helping parents

teach their kids social skills, career readiness, 14 success.

Kurt, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

You're welcome, Jonathan, thank you so much for having me.

Okay, here is my favorite part.

What is your favorite dad joke?

I love this dad joke.

What did the Buffalo say to his son on the first day of school by son?

I've always loved that one.

Yeah, I love it too.

I think I've heard this one maybe once before, but it's been so long.

It's still funny.

It is.

I remember it from like 20 years ago, so when you asked me to come up with something, I had

to remember.

I knew it was about a Buffalo, and then I thought, "Oh, that's right."

I was a bison, so I thought there was kind of cute.

Thank you for sharing that.

Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you.

Kurt, what is the story behind why you founded Smile Online Courses and Books?

That's a great question, Jonathan.

Years ago, when I got out of college, I was partners in a startup, especially retail business,

and it was very technical.

That was when Windsurfing was popular in line skates with roller blades.

Everything was technical.

And a lot of teenagers wanted to work at our store because they thought it was the cool

place to be.

What was a business?

And I had created a six-week training program to give the employees confidence, and they

had to go through that before they were allowed to interact with customers.

And it worked very well.

We had a very successful store because of these great teenagers.

They were very friendly, very knowledgeable.

But we'll fast forward years later.

I noticed a lot of companies.

As you probably do, too, weren't training their employees.

They weren't greeting people properly, not answering the phone properly.

So, my first book was based on my training course.

It is called Smile, Selmore with Amazing Customer Service.

It's a 60-minute crash course in customer sales and service.

So then I wrote my next book that we're talking about today.

Smile and succeed for teens.

And it kind of came about because of all these moms and teachers saying that the kids don't

have the people skills.

I also noticed it when I'd go in businesses, I'd notice, and I didn't blame the teenagers.

But I would notice that the teen, and I could relate to this, wouldn't say anything to the

customers.

And I knew that he had not had the tape of training that I provided to give him camera

her confidence in my retail store.

So it came about from that.

The online course came because of COVID.

I'm a big proponent of kids having a physical book in their hand to read.

I shouldn't say kids, young adults.

So that's kind of how it all started.

And the teen book is done really well.

It's helping a lot of kids, and I'm thankful for that.

Why are teen years such a critical time to master social and career soft skills?

Well, when you think about it, their next step is to either go to college or go get a job.

And if they don't have these soft skills at that point, it's going to be difficult for

them in college.

They're not going to make a lot of friends.

And if they do get a part-time job, or if they go great from high school to college or

college to work, I mean, I'm sorry, high school to a job, they've got to have these

soft skills.

That's what these employers are looking for.

And when you look at surveys for employers, that's exactly what they say.

That's what I looked for.

When I had teens coming in my storage, I didn't have a job position available.

If they had good people skills, I would ask them if they could, I'd say, do you have a minute

for a quick interview?

If they made good eye contact, we're just friendly because I hired for attitude, trained

for skill, as they say.

And if they were friendly, I was always thinking, oh, I could trust this person with Jonathan

or my customers.

And that's how employers think.

So that's why it's so important.

I'm a big proponent of having them learn this as early as possible, even kindergarten

first grade, but it seems like high schools, when most educators and parents are using these

materials.

So it really sounds like in the interview process, a lot of times we think, oh, the interview

actually begins when we sit down in an office somewhere and then the questions begin, the

interview is started.

And for you, the interview starts at the very first meeting, at the very first instance of

eye contact, the interview has officially begun, whether they realize it or not.

Well said, that's spot on and it's funny you said that because I'm looking at, remember,

on the back cover of my book, I have make a powerful first impression.

And that's what it's all about.

Are teens better or worse now than previous generations at social and career skills?

And what are the differences from generation to generation?

You know, I would not want to be a teenager these days.

I think it's a lot tougher on them with social media and the bullying and the phones.

So I think, and this is nothing against the teens.

It's not their fault.

I think it's harder for them.

I think they're worse off now because of that.

I mean, think about it, somebody post a picture of you online and last forever.

So the differences now are, you know, kids are dealing with social media pressures, bullying,

peer pressure, the screens, the phones.

And because of that, they're losing, they're not getting the social skills practice.

So I think there were so before, like my generation, I'm a baby boomer, we didn't have any

that.

Because we, I didn't have to worry about phones, you know, employees with phones, which is

great.

That started with the next generation, which I don't know.

I should know this.

I think it's the millennials.

But so that's the difference.

I think they're worse off now.

And I just, I feel bad for them.

That's a lot of, a lot of pressure.

I agree.

It is.

And that leads me to wonder what is so addictive about phones that is causing teens to just

stay there and locked into a whole different world and they can't interact with the real

physical world.

That's another great question, Jonathan.

You know, I'm fortunate enough because of my book, I'm connected with a lot of psychiatrists

and counselors, school counselors, social workers across our country.

So they're really the experts with this and they have taught me that, you know, this addiction

you're talking about is the same thing as when people go to casinos and pull that lover.

You know, they get a burst of dopamine and the same thing when these young people are

and us too when we're on social media, you know, you look at something you like it, then

something else comes up similar to it because that algorithm knows what you like.

So they'll keep those young people on there as long as possible to get the ad revenue

in the eyeballs.

That's what makes it so addicting.

And that's the problem with just giving somebody a phone.

It's not that the phone is bad.

It's just they'll get on there and they'll be on there for hours.

And then parents allow it.

So our parents just clueless and they're not aware of what's going on and they're not

aware of the addiction or our parents mindful of it.

And there is there some reason why they allow their kids to be on phone so much or screens

in general.

I love that question.

I've often wondered that too.

And I just had a great meeting last week with a group of experts, child psychologists

and social workers, counselors and people that work with parents and they have a better answer

than even I do.

And they basically said it's fear of missing out, you know, they call it fomo.

And they said, you know, what happens with a lot of parents, they're afraid of not giving

their child a phone, but they don't understand the consequences.

They don't understand the brain development and what actually happens like you talked

about the addiction.

So they're not understanding that because they've never been exposed to it.

And one of the parent coaches brought up a good point.

She said, you know, a lot of the parents unfortunately, why don't avoid conflict.

They don't want to have the know from there.

They don't want to have to tell their son or daughter know they're almost like being their

friend.

So she has to tell them, well, you avoided conflict.

So now you have to deal with the consequences.

Now we have to fix what's happened to your young adult and why they're not doing well

with social skills.

So I think it's a whole combination of that.

Those are some of the things they've told me and they've just basically said, you know,

you've got to be their parent.

You're doing them a favor by saying no to these devices and social media, especially.

A lot of the experts I have spoken to and some of them are authors who have written great

books.

They've said, give it a week or two.

It'll be hard, but your son or daughter will actually be really relieved and happy

that they don't have it.

They don't have all those pressures.

And think about that time that we all spend on screens that can be used for, you know,

being out in nature and other activities that kids can do to enjoy themselves rather

than, you know, what do we really get?

What are the really the benefits of a teenager being on the screen on a screen?

I don't think anybody can give me like one.

There really isn't.

There are other elements that are important to consider when it comes to giving phones

to teens or preteens.

And that is trafficking.

This is where a lot of trafficking instances begin.

I've actually had guests on the program, parents who have experienced this with their team.

And thankfully have rescued their team from a trafficking situation in the nick of time.

So this is where this begins.

So kids are being exposed to pornography at earlier ages than what has been in the past.

Access to it has become easier.

And when kids get into, once they get exposed to it, once they see it, it's hard to turn

back from it.

It can ruin their perception of relationships of what a good relationship is.

And the social skills at this point, everything goes out the window.

So there's so much damage that just makes it not worth it.

I'm glad you brought that up.

There's a great book called Disconnected by Thomas Kersting.

He was a school psychologist.

Now he's in private practice.

But what he basically says is, you know, and I don't blame the parents.

This is a really tough time to parent.

He said, you know, he gets so many questions from parents.

What is the right age for me to give my kid a phone?

And he says, when you want them to be exposed to pornography.

And what you said about the predators on there and the trafficking, it is terrible.

And I forgot what they call it, but it's where, you know, they trap that individual into

thinking it's a young lady, his age of it's a, if it's a male teenager.

Oh, send me some naked pictures of you.

I'll send you something.

Me.

And then they say, okay, get us $10,000.

We're going to post these publicly.

So like you're saying this, this, this, it's not worth it.

You know, again, what benefit do they get from a screen?

And I know it's tough.

It's peer pressure, but I think it's an easier life for teens if they have limited access

to it or maybe no phone for a while.

So let's flip this around a little bit.

What can dads do to connect more with their teens without screens?

I think there are so many activities, you know, take the dog for a walk, go out in nature.

You know, kids love it.

Once kids get outside in the woods, they may kick, you know, kick and scream against it.

But once they get out in the woods, if there's a local park or, you know, a state park or

something, get them hiking, get them out in trails, go to sporting events, you know, when

you go out to a restaurant, don't have your phone out as an adult and don't allow your

kids to have them out.

Have a nice meal together and talk and find out what your young adult, maybe they have

a passion.

Maybe there's something they would like to volunteer as a family together and, and go do.

I mean, I've gone to Pet Smart on the weekends.

They're always looking for volunteers and it's fun.

There's nice people, there's animals, you know, kids love teenagers, love dogs and cats.

I would recommend that go with your, go with your, if you're dead, go with your sons, hey,

let's go help out.

Let's go help out this week or let's go go for a day and walk the dogs.

I mean, I'll tell you these young adults love being around those animals and it feels

good to be helping also.

So those would be a few things I would recommend.

Now let's go shift a little bit towards skills.

What are some things that dads can teach now?

So maybe some tips from your book, obviously read the whole book because you're not going

to get everything here.

But what are some simple tips, things that dads can do now to help their kids improve their

social skills and be prepared for job interviews and, and see results right away?

A few things.

I think it's really important that if you go to a restaurant with your family, provide

the example first.

The first time you go, you tell your son or daughter, you know, that, okay, I'm going to order,

but next time we come here, I'm going to have you order.

And then you do that.

You show them by example.

And then the next time say, okay, Ted, you know, go ahead and as your dad, I'd like to

see you order.

And they can talk to the waiter or waitress, make the order or if you're calling to order

a pizza, have them make the phone call.

A lot of young adults are not comfortable calling.

The other thing I highly recommend is either go to a farmer's market or be a mystery shopper

and go shopping at your son or daughter's favorite store and ask them, okay, let's see

how, why don't you tell me what the people are doing right and what they could improve

upon as far as social skills were you greeted when you walked in that business or walked

up to that farmer's market booth?

Was the person on their phone or were they paying full attention to you?

Did they say please and thank you?

And then have your son or daughter practice these skills when they go into an establishment.

Just practice, just practice, make, that's the first page in my book.

Smile and say hello, where if they're at work and you can do role playing with this or

have your, if you have two teens have them role play, just practice when somebody walks

in saying, hi, how are you today?

That's a big advantage over a lot of unfortunate so simple, but you walk in all these places

and nobody says hi to you, so get them, get them started doing that.

And I've got mock interview, you know, you can do mock role playing for job interviews.

I think that's really important where the dad can be the employee and the son or daughter

can be the employer and then switch it around.

Get them really comfortable with, you know, some of the common questions, tell me about

yourself, you know, why do you want to work here?

Things like that.

So those are some ways I would start and just make sure that even as a family, they're

saying, please, and thank you.

And when somebody says thank you, they're answering with your welcome, not, yeah, not no problem,

but you're welcome and good eye contact and a good smile and good body language standing

up straight.

Talk a little bit about feedback, accepting feedback.

That's really important.

It's funny you mentioned that, John, and because just yesterday I saw something in an article

that said, if you can't, if that, if you can't accept feedback graciously, you will never

be successful.

And I think we all have problems with the challenges with it, but I think of a young adult can accept

feedback.

And if it's given in a positive way, and a young adult can realize that it's not criticism,

we all need it.

And it's to help them get better at something and feel more comfortable.

So I would, when I had my retail store, for instance, I would tell my teens, I'm not criticizing

you.

You can tell me things that I can improve them on.

This is to make you feel more comfortable, but give it a try.

And then they'd come up and say, oh, you're right.

That made me feel so much more confident with the customer that I asked them.

I listened and I asked them, what will you be using these roller blade skates for?

So it's helpful.

It's not something that's criticizing.

How do you prepare a team for a hostile conflict?

What we used to teach in my store is, first of all, say, I'm sorry.

That's huge.

I'm sorry.

I had a problem the other day with a business, and the woman never said, I'm sorry or anything.

And I didn't really mind, but it would have been nice if they said that.

So the first thing I taught my staff, which were mainly teenagers, just listen.

You know, respect that person, say, I'm so sorry.

This happened.

Why don't you tell me what happened?

And then tell them, again, I'm so sorry to happen.

Make good eye contact.

And depending on what the situation is, you could ask them, what, what, what, what do you feel

would be a fair way to deal with this?

And if you're not, you know, if you don't have the authority to do anything about it, you

can say, you know what, I'm so sorry this happened.

Let me go get my manager who can help you and deal with it that way and make sure you're

saying, please, and thank you.

A lot of times when you just listen and they vent and they get it out of their system,

and you say, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry this happened.

Let's make sure we can get this corrected.

They're usually fine.

I mean, people I've dealt with, if you don't do that, then it just, you know, I'm sorry.

It just explodes and it snowballs into a huge problem from a minor little fire.

So that's what I would role play a lot of times with my staff as situations.

But I'll tell you, John, we never had many problems because, because people would come in our

business and immediately we'd say, like, hi, John, I'm the new radio today.

It's nice to see you and all of a sudden they're happy.

So a lot of it is the attitude of the employee from the very start, making that great first

impression.

And that diffuses most people.

You know, a lot of people walk in and they're expecting a problem.

They're thinking, oh, nobody's going to say hi to me.

Nobody's going to help me or they're going to harm me.

This is not going to be a good experience.

And if you pleasantly surprise them, the problem they had all of a sudden isn't that big.

So let's talk about a phone customer service role.

Sure.

If the team is already used to being on their phone a lot, does that necessarily mean that

they will have the skills to be able to manage a customer service role that is just phone

only?

Not at all because most teams, as you know, don't talk on the phone.

You know, they're texting, you know, using it for social media, taking pictures.

But no, they're not.

Most teams have napkin taught what we used to do is a lot of role playing and dads can

do this with their son or daughter.

They can be the dad can be the employer and the team, you know, the team can be the customer

calling in, then switch roles.

So I used to teach them, you know, it's not, it's not, hey, you know, John's, John's

skate shop.

It's good morning.

It's John's skate shop.

This is Tim, how may I help you?

Whatever the business is, you're greeting that, you know, your, your smile shines through

the phone and your positive and upbeat.

I used to get people want to answer the phone that way, they'd say, oh my gosh, what a difference,

you know, I never, it's just, the team will get confidence because the customer is going

to say, how nice, what a nice welcome.

But they don't, they usually don't have those skills to do that.

On your website, you have a lot of curriculum.

So tell me about your curriculum, explain a little bit about what a dad would get out

of taking that course and how it would help them navigate this process of preparing their

team for life socially.

I have the main book, which, and the differentiator with my products is their quick and easy to read.

I spent a lot of time for my smile and succeed for Teens book.

I spent nine months meeting with teenagers, even though it was based on my first book,

which also I spent a lot of time getting rid of any wasted words.

So they're low-reading levels for comprehension.

The team book is a fourth-breeding level.

It doesn't mean that it's dumbed down.

It just means we got rid of any words that get in the way of comprehension.

So it's quick, easy to comprehend.

But what they get is the book, which is a crash course, and there's a parent's guide available.

When you get those two, it's called a teen success kit.

So the teenager gets the book.

The parent has the parent's guide.

So they don't have to go through the book and try to make up questions.

All the work is done.

This was suggested to me to create by parents.

And they can do mock interviews with their son or daughter.

They can do the customer service scenarios.

I also have a teaching guide if they happen to be a teacher.

I have classroom packs.

But for most parents, I recommend the teen success kit, which is the book and the parent's

guide.

Now if they'd rather be online with it, the online course is the exact same content

as the smile and succeed for teens book.

We just poured the words right into the online course.

So the online course is great if the young adult would prefer to do it online.

And then I'd still recommend the parent's guide, the physical parent's guide for the parent.

The online course is the same as the book.

Other than we added curated videos to reinforce the concepts because it's online and interactive

questions and answers.

So I also have an audio book version of it and an ebook version of it.

So I tried to make it so that the teen or young adult could digest it in whatever way they

prefer.

But the parent would definitely want the parent's guide no matter how the teen is digesting

smile and succeed for teens book.

If that makes any sense.

I've hit you know on my website if people go there, there's a testimonials page and I have

over 200 testimonials on from teachers on, you know, on the book.

I had a young lady that when we first made the online course, she's in Southern Ohio and

she's a student and she was actually helping us test the course.

My friend, Diane, was a principal in Southern Ohio.

Now she's a teacher and she knew this young lady who was in the 11th grade and she went

through the course and she said, oh my gosh, I wish I would have had this and, you know,

I wish our high school had this because I'm not ready for jobs.

But after going through your course, I'm really confident.

And I think I could go get a job in a minute and I do really well at it.

So it's just the basics, but a lot of these young people, they don't have confidence.

It's high anxiety with their mental health.

And every sentence I wrote in my solutions, I thought, oh, this will give that young adult

confidence because I remember being a middle schooler and not having confidence.

I didn't have these resources available to me.

So I have had a lot of just a tons of great testimonials, people telling me stories.

I had a woman that runs a restaurant in Greek town and she was going to fire one of her

waitresses because they weren't being nice to police officers.

They didn't like police officers.

Greek town is a big area down in downtown Detroit where they have the casinos and the Red

Wings play.

So she bought three of my books for her waitresses and then came back, this was at a local store,

she bought them.

So I'm hearing this story from the store owner and then she went back and bought seven more

and she said that next morning the waitress got a $20, that same waitress, she was going

to fire got a $20 tip from a police officer the next morning.

And so she said these, wow, I would pay the store owner said the woman said to her, I

would pay $1000 for this book.

So those are the kind of success stories and from schools I usually get a lot of teachers

that will just say I'm already noticing the kids are more comfortable.

They're making good eye contact.

They're standing up straight.

In fact, I had one, it was funny.

There was one teacher that said she used the book in her school and at graduation when

the principal was shaking the kids' hands, the student's hands, the principal came up

to the teacher and said, I expected Lucy, Lucy handshakes and poor eye contact.

They all had great handshakes, great eye contact and they were standing up straight and the

teacher said it's from the book.

So it's full of great testimonials like that because I had a lot of people help me write

the book, moms and teachers and teenagers.

It's not just me.

I knew the basics from my store or the training program, but you know, a lot of people

gave me great input to put this together.

How can dads learn more about your course or get your books?

They can go to my website, www.smilethebook.com and there's the online course there and if they

click on books, they can pick whatever book they want.

There's also the teen success kit in the drop down menu under books so they can go that way.

My books are also on, the online course isn't but my books and audio book and ebook are

on Amazon.

Just make sure if you get the book, it said it's sold by Amazon and printed by Amazon,

ship by, I'm sorry, sold by Amazon and ship by Amazon.

I only say that because they just found a couple of counterfeiters that are taking my ebook

very, and they're selling print books on there.

So it wouldn't be under Amazon's name and they're very low quality because the ebook doesn't

print good.

So I don't want people to get a low quality book.

So again, sold by Amazon, ship by Amazon, not sold by Riley and company and shipped by Amazon.

So just so they get a good quality.

Just to make these easier, also if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com, that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com.

If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description and I will have the

links posted there for your convenience.

Kurt, as we close, what is your challenge to dads listening now?

Three things to start.

Have a family meal with your son or daughter.

One day a week where there's no phones or if you go to a restaurant and have a family meal

with your no phones with where there's no phones and just talk to them.

Ask them, you know what, how was your week?

What do you like to do?

What are you looking forward to?

Things like that.

What are you passionate about?

Are there causes you're interested in helping within the world?

Things like that.

The other thing, if they do have grandparents or if they can visit a senior living center,

take them to the grandparents and no phones.

Have them get used to talking to other people face to face and doing that in a way that's

going to help the other person too, like the grandma and grandpa or at a senior assisted

living center.

I mean, a lot of those people never get to see anybody.

So I think it would be great to arrange a situation where you can go in and just talk

to some of the residents that are just relaxing, you know, there's usually a living area,

kind of a living room area in the center.

I would do that.

And I want to reiterate that that mystery shopping experience, once you go through the

techniques in my book with your son or daughter, then take them into a store and say, okay,

tell me, you know, and there's a there's a sheet you can print out on the parents guide

that's got a mystery shopping experience.

Just fill that out, just see what type of service you had when you went in this store.

The other thing I would say is let your son or daughter get a part time job.

That's so important for so many reasons.

Even if it's four hours a week, kids are not working part time jobs now.

They're losing that confidence.

They're afraid to make mistakes, high anxiety because of this.

This will lower their anxiety.

It will let them learn.

It's okay to make mistakes.

They can practice their social skills.

That would probably be my number one tip.

And if you don't want them to get a part time job, go volunteer with them somewhere with

a local rotary club or like I said in PetSmart, but get them out using practicing those social

skills.

And even if it's just a simple skill is okay today son, let's just go and we'll both practice

saying, saying hello to somebody being a good icon, Tim.

Just that start with that.

If there are more advanced than go into the more advanced techniques in my book.

It has been absolutely honor having you on the Fatherhood Challenge.

I've learned so much from you and I know the audience has.

So thank you so much.

Oh you're welcome, John.

And then thank you very much for having me.

I really enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in

this program or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge.

Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Have you wondered why God feels like he's a million miles away? Have you ever wished you could not only be heard but actually hear him talk back to you directly? Strahan Coleman will share tips with us on how to pray effectively, how to experience God personally and how to hear his voice clearly.

Strahan Coleman is a musician and the author of several books including his latest book Thirsting. He is also the founder of Commoners Communion.

You can get his latest book here: https://amzn.to/40ewXy9

To learn more about Strahan Coleman or his music visit: https://www.commonerscommunion.com/

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcript - How Dads Can Encounter God

---

Today we are talking about identity and purpose, specifically how you find your identity

and purpose through prayer. And I have brought an expert with me on the program who is built an

entire ministry and even written a book specifically about prayer and how to connect with your

creator. And he will join us in just a moment so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Father the Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers are

to the stability and culture of their families environment. Now here's your host, Jonathan

Guerrero. Greetings everyone, thank you so much for joining me. I have a guest on the program,

his name is Strahn Coleman. Strahn is an author and he is also an expert in helping people connect

personally with their creator. Strahn thank you so much for being on the Father the Challenge.

Hey Jonathan and absolute pleasure thanks for having me my friend. Strahn what is the story behind

how you got connected with God? What was your first experience and really understanding who God is

and inviting him into your life and to a relationship? Well I kind of had a few experiences

kind of notched along my life that I think probably transformed my understanding of God but

I think just as a kid I had a real openness to the love and the life and the hugeness of God and so I don't

it's not a particular memory so much as a residing sense of this world is massive and it was created

by a massive God and that God is beautiful and good and loving and I don't really know where I

got that from. I think my mother probably installed that in me she was a praying one but I can remember

thinking that way from you know seven eight years old so it wasn't such a particular experience so

much it was a residing acceptance in the wonder and the beauty of the cosmos and the God who made it.

So you mentioned that you experience God's love how do you experience God's love what does that

feel like to you? Well you know sometimes it is a feeling you know sometimes I can spend time with God

and feel just I guess what we might say emotional love or feelings of love but a lot of the time

what that sense of God's love is for me is actually mostly about an acceptance so I open myself

up to God and one of the things I do when I'm praying that's really really important is I focus

on receiving God's love because when God revealed Himself to Moses most of the show me your glory and

what did God say? He appeared to Moses in his full glory and he said the Lord the Lord gracious and

compassionate, slow to anger and a bounding instead of us love. That's his character that's who he is

and so when I when I come to pray I'm like I need to to kind of bring my mind into submission of

that reality which I don't always I find that difficult to do you know I've got parts of myself

that I don't think are very lovable I do things that are not very lovable and so in prayer when I

want to experience God's love I fix my mind on him as a loving person and I meditate on that and then

I think what does it feel like to receive that love into my body and and sometimes that love

feels like a piece sometimes that love feels like a stillness other times that love expresses in me

crying and confessing and feeling comforted and God's presence and his compassion towards me

and sometimes it's a feeling of emotional love but most of the time it's me slowly every day bringing

my body to the reality that he loves me and whether I feel something or not just kind of allowing my

mind my soul my nervous system my body to kind of relax and exhale into that experience.

The answer that you gave seem very very nebulous and so what I get out of that is the fact that

it has to be it makes every sense that it is because the reasons why you need God's love

are different from every single time you are reaching for it yeah and so the way God responds

to you and offers that love is custom tailored to that specific need at that moment is that

it sounds correct yeah this correct and I think I think too it's really hard for us and we think of

the love of God it's hard for us in our sort of cultural moment where we we really see love as a

heightened romantic emotion which isn't actually true of how people have seen love for you know

thousands of years that really is quite we've got a Hollywood version of love and so when we say

receiving God's love a lot of people imagine an overwhelming feeling of romantic or romantic

emotional sensation but biblical love is far wider and deeper than that and so I like every day when

the sun rises if I feel the sun on my skin I am experiencing God's love because God causes the

sun to rise on the good and evil as friends and as enemies because why he loves them and so part of

the reason I gave such a nebulous answer is because I wanted to flate this idea that experiencing God's

love is always a kind of hyper-emotional romantic kind of experience but we can't live that way we

don't live our marriages that way we can't live without children that way we can't live with anything

in life that way depending on an emotional romantic love for something sometimes love is gritty

sometimes love is kind of forcing yourself to do what you don't want to do precisely because that

person or this thing is of greater value to yourself so I think in prayer what I want to say is

is if we think experiencing God's love always has to be a felt emotional thing then we'll see so much

of our prayer as failure but if we can see love as a sort of showing upness and a receiving and

upbringing ourselves to each other and sometimes that's really amazing and quote unquote spiritual and

and exciting sometimes it's hard work then either way we can see we have an experience of God's

love and that's what matters is that we begin to see God's love expressed in all of these dimensions

and not just in the emotions so I realize my answer was probably a bit vague but I'm trying to

yes suggest that we have to move beyond just an emotional love and into a deeper kind of soul level

embodied love with God if we really want to know and experience it yes yes it might seem nebulous

but your answer is very very real I think about practically you know if if all we experienced was

this romantic sensation that can be quite honest that can be exhausting on the nervous system

the other thing I want to touch on is is listening to God and hearing God so what is the listening

like I've heard some people talk that a good practice is journaling sitting down quiet in yourself

the meditating like you've talked about meditating on God's love

as you quiet down sometimes it's scripture you scripture to do that and if you calm yourself down and

you go into this deep meditation of God and who he is to you does he talk and is it a good practice

to journal when he does yeah I love journaling I mean journaling has been a really kind of

rock bed foundational practice in my life and for me when I pray journal by the way it's like I'll

usually try and journal in the morning first thing when you know to get my fresh thoughts in there

and I'll start by saying good morning father always father because that's the context in which Jesus

called us to pray and he said always pray within the safety and the security of our father

because when you say good morning father you begin the conversation and acceptance

so I start that way good morning father and I might pour my heart out to him and say this is my

emotions of feelings sometimes I'll just say speak Lord your servant is listening which is a

quote of Samuel the prophet or I might say speak Lord I'm listening we son is listening

and then I try and just you know if I sense him saying something I'll just start writing

and I don't try and filter it too much you know I can figure out later if it's just my weird brain

making something up or whether it's God but and then I kind of converse with him and I found

that to be really really amazing in the beauty of prayer journaling isn't so much in the one day

it's in the one year two years three years ten years where you slowly begin over time to see oh I

can see when God is speaking and then when I'm interrupting and I'm I'm discerning His voice and

midst my own and I think that's been really key for me you're right about scripture God speaks to

us so beautifully through scripture he speaks to us and you know in the New Testament

uh in Acts 2 Areed in Dreams and Visions so in pictures in our minds or um in the night if we're

listening and I think he speaks to us just in the in the depth of us you know I think one of the

things we we often undervalue is just the quiet pinch of something on our conscience like I shouldn't

have said that or sometimes the quiet little sense of I should just tell him that this person

you know I'm still going to someone the other day and I just I just felt to say to him man you

look good he goes to the gem a lot I know he's conscious about his body is like you're looking really

good he said no I'm over I feel terrible and I be am eyes out of way or something and I said no

and I looked him in the eyes and I just said mate you look good dude you're looking fit you're looking

healthy you should feel great and that was the leading of God as well and speaking to me to kind

of share with other people so sometimes it's just a little a little nudge in the very depth of

ourselves that we can't often tell if it's us or God until we act on it so there's there's lots in

there there's scripture there's journaling there's the little nudges there's dreams there's pictures

there's sensations and stuff and I I think we just we want the whole sorgas board you know I want to

fill our lives with as many little points and places as we can but I think the the main way that I

listen to God is just by sitting and just allowing his love peace patients gentleness self-control

the fruit of the spirit to fill my being and he speaks to me in his nature he communicates to

me through peace or stillness and in that it's like a hug with it's like an embrace with God it's

like body language it's it's less informational and transactional it's more we are with one another

and I'm just totally transformed by that it's such a beautiful experience the experience you

described is very very different from let's say new age for example I look at things like creation

and you when you mention creation new age is also about creation but the difference is that

in a lot of new age and spiritualism thought processes nature and creation is a God

yeah and instead you are experiencing God through nature so when you're in nature it's the other way

around you are actually moved to a desire to worship the creator of that nature

and that's where the difference lies it's like when you're in nature it's like your home because

you're in you're among the very things that the same God that created you created

and so there there is a sense of of attachment just because you're you're around you're surrounded

by his creation yeah all that does is make you feel closer to him you doesn't make you feel closer to

nature it makes you feel closer to the creator yeah yeah that's so good and I think too as well like

we live in a world that's full of kind of mindfulness and meditation and you know where I live I've

got quite a few friends who are getting heavily into ice baths and they do these aren't believers and

they go on weekends to take sort of a kind of a mushroom and go on trips to encounter themselves and

and I think what I said that the biggest difference you know they'll say what's the difference

between meditation and prayer you know in terms of them they're just kind of sitting there trying

to reach nirvana and for me it's like the biggest difference between say meditation or Buddhism

or New Ageism and in what we're looking for is we are looking for a personal relationship with a

person we are not trying to reach a just state of love or state of peace or state of nirvana and

we're not looking for like you say God in creation like creation isn't God it's sort of as a means to

which we experience in a minute's beautiful but when when we come to prayer when we're talking about

experiencing love and peace and kindness and gentleness these are not mindfulness states this is

an experience of the person of God and I think that's why prayer is so difficult because if it was

just meditation we could kind of force ourselves into it whenever we wanted right it would be we

would just kind of pull the levers and meditate and do the different things and we would kind of

reach the quote unquote state but we don't believe that as Christians we are encountering the living

God and so at least half the relationship I would argue the majority of it is God engaging with us

interrupting speaking you know withdrawing his presence so we would cry out to him loving us filling

us and so we this is this is vital and alive and exciting because we are not in control and so when

that's why for me when I come to prayer it's like I want to understand that I'm experiencing God no

matter what I think I'm experiencing because he's a person who's engaging with me as he desires

and you can't you don't have that same exciting generative relationship with the living God

in the new age or in sort of Buddhism which is primarily about reaching a nirvana or mindfulness which

is just about calming yourself we're moving beyond that into a a relationship with God as a father

which is so beautiful in the dynamic a very common question I hear from people when it comes to

hearing God's voice is how do you know the difference between when you're hearing your own thoughts

you know and by the way on the same exact theta wave that God communicates Satan can also

communicate on that same wave so can other non-experience so how do you know it's not a

demonic experience and or your own thoughts that's such a good question I I am I mean there's no kind of

simple one trick hack on that and and if you read the church throughout history they've offered a

few different ways but a couple of them are really simple you know scripture we always bank things

against scripture the only slight issue there is that even the devil knows how to wield scripture

do you know what I mean like and in some ways you can you can almost make scripture say whatever you

want it to to you and and people have throughout history so it's got to be more than scripture also

has to be community we have to work out okay is this voice correct against the truth of Christ

and the truth of scripture and does that is there consensus amongst Christian community so

that means community present like the church I belong to in my spiritual leadership but it also

means like the church historical you know it has the church historically understood this scripture

or this truth this way is another another safe place and and then thirdly for me I think it's just

practice you know I think we have to practice hearing and she hearing from God and shearing it

and hearing from others okay this didn't this now this was a bit off it really does take time we

have to be patient with ourselves which is human you know me we're figuring out this stuff and I

think we have to be patient with ourselves to say I'm going to vulnerable share what God's speaking

to me with others so I can be safe you know reading in scripture but I am gonna act on it and I'm

gonna see the fruit of those actions if the fruit is love joy peace patients kindness gentleness

and self-control if it fruits goodness in the kingdom of heaven then it was God if the fruit is

pride and fear and anxiety and broken relationships and withdrawal from God's people

then it's then it probably wasn't God and I think a lot of the time if the fruit of the

voices anxiety fear and condemnation we can say that's not of God but if the fruit is love joy

peace patients kindness gentleness and self-control and the desire to give oneself away more we can say

oh yeah that's that's the familiar voice of God one meditation I like to focus on is the concept

of the good shepherd or read scripture I will think about my relationship with my father and focus

on that and then as a quiet myself my thoughts will I let my thought drift over to to Jesus

and the common thing I hear is that I am the good shepherd my sheep know my voice and then

is usually where that conversation starts to happen and right after that that's usually where

I hear God's voice talking one of the things that you mentioned I think is so important to understand

is that you you've said at least twice maybe three times in this conversation we're having

that it takes time getting used to the voice of God I've heard him often through thought

I have heard him powerfully powerfully through scripture a handful of times and dreams

and many times through other people there isn't just this one magical formula or way that God speaks

and you said very correctly you said he's a person yeah just like you have your own ideas and

preferences and things that you prefer to do the same thing with God yeah and it's a real relationship

and that's what a real relationship looks like there aren't these predictable patterns to go off of

that's why I love what you said about the different way how we understand when it's him when it's

his voice that we're hearing and the other thing is this takes time yeah and I love that you know

and it changes over time you know I love your kind of reminder he's a God as a person

and you think about like a child right how a child hears and understands their parents been

there a baby it's like go go go go it loves a cuddle you know what I mean it's like parents are like

doing all the work and communicating and they're being kind of you know express so much attention

but then in order for the child to grow up the parents has to change their communication styles and then

things change and then the language enters them and then it's okay like this and then and then as the

child grows into an adult it's like things change again and I think one of the things we need to settle

into in life is that our relationship with God is not some static thing whereas the way we heard God

yesterday is going to be exactly the same in 10 years and the next you know I've been through periods

where the predominant way that God has spoken to me has been in dreams and visions

you know and and lots of it and then I've gone through periods of time where I haven't had a single one

for like five years and God's spoken to me through prayer journaling and then that's shifted

and it's shifted again and you know it's not they're not clear boundaries but I think we have to be

prepared for God to change how he speaks to us as we change and we grow and we become ready to hear

and see him in new ways too so I think one of the things I've had to let go of in hearing God's

voices the idea that it's just the same all the time and I've tried to be flexible and say God you show

up however you want and there are definitely ways in which that have been consistent through my life

but there have been plenty of times where I've just not heard God for a long period of time in any

kind of conscious way and yeah I've had to go to scripture I've had to listen to to God's people

I've had to really pay attention to the stillness and so I think that's okay too and it's kind of fun to

just think how out of control we are in this you know how we really have control kind of we're just

the big learners you know yeah we are absolutely not in control and even inside of one specific

way that he communicates it's not always the same going back to journaling using that as the example

I've had cases where I've journal pages of information that of what I'm what God is saying to me

and I can hear his voice clear is a bell yeah and everything makes sense and I had one instance where

I came prepared excited waiting to hear God's voice yearning to hear his God's voice

and he spoke but it wasn't in in a page long speech or however you want to look at it it was short

it was just a few lines that's all he had to say and in that specific moment that I'm recalling

all God said was go back and read the very last thing that I said to you go back and read that

read it several times that was it that's all he had to say to me amazing and so I went back and I

read it and that's where the experience was when I went back and read it it was like reading it for

the first time the words felt different everything felt different and everything felt relevant to where

I was in that moment of my life so stront I want to really talk about your book thirsty and you just

wrote a book tell me about thirsty what is this about and why would dads want to read this first

thing is a book about really about desire to book about what it means to be people who ache and long

and how we live in that ache and longing with God but I also tell the story of that the origin of that

longing and the longing and desire of God and so I think there's an important emphasis in the book

that God actually longs for and pursues us as a father as our father he doesn't just kind of sit back

and wait he pursues us he has like a vital longing aching love to be with every human that he's made

and so I kind of suggest that man if this is who God is then desire is really good

and we have to figure out what it means to bring ourselves to God in that same way to know him

and so I kind of have in the book I have these kind of three sections one is it's based on the

scripture that Jesus said if anyone first let him come to me and drink and so the first is if anyone

firsts and it's about recognizing the different ways in which we are dehydrated by the world

and the different ways in which we spend our desire and our longing on far less of things than God

and and what we do about that the second is let them come and it's about what it means to live a life

shaped by communion with God what it lives to live a life of fidelity to understand the depth of our

soul and and how God longs to live with us there and the invitation to be sold equal God

and then the third part is come and drink and it's really about how do we actually drink God

during because it's a quite a fanciful idea we say this kind of stuff all the time so oh I long for God

I desire God I want to go God you know we can come and drink him but what does it actually mean and so

I actually get into some vulnerable stuff of of what it really means to open up and be to be seen by God

to be known by God and in return to actually enjoy his presence there and I think what's critical

about that for fathers what's critical for me as a father and as a husband is that it helps to

unlock these deeper parts of me that I can then offer to my children to my wife that I can live

from a place of deeper acceptance and if I can live from a place of deeper acceptance and communion

with God then I'm exemplifying a kind of a peace and a love and a stillness to my children and to my

wife that that is otherworldly and I can be for them who God has been for me they can experience

that me as a pursuing loving father that accepts them and all of who they are and wants to go deep

with them so yeah so that's that's kind of the heart behind my desire behind this thing.

You're also the founder of a ministry called Commoners Communion what is Commoners Communion

and why did you start it? Commoners Communion actually started out of my when I got really sick

and I'm a musician so I've been touring for years but I couldn't do it anymore I couldn't sing

couldn't write so I started sort of writing blogs and podcasting a little bit for other people who

were trying to reckon with God in the in the in the liminal space like how do we know God when

when when we kind of feel like we're struggling in the gap in the walls maybe through suffering maybe

people who are experiencing difficulty in the world and are just connected with people and so I

started writing prayers and eventually ended up kind of teaching people about prayer and about

communion is something more than just conscious mental dialogue but an actually you know full

body experience of God in our daily lives and and I've I discovered really a lot of people don't know

how to pray and so for me it was like yeah okay let's explore this together and that's Commoners Communion

it kind of just was a happy accident that has kind of kept going which I feel really grateful for.

Strang how can dads listening learn more about what you're doing maybe learn more about

Commoners Communion and how can they get thirsty? Well you can find thirsty wherever kind of books are

you know if you want to sort of go deeper in in this kind of prayer also have written prayer books

so they're like one page a little prayer I sort of one paragraph devotional thing to kind of help

people leap into a deeper experience of God so I have three volumes of prayer books that you can

engage with but otherwise you know anywhere you'll find Commoners Communion you'll find my work I do

a podcast called the Beholding Prayer Podcast and it's just guided meditations on prayer for people

who really struggle to pray and that's available resource too so all of those places you'll kind of

hopefully find some ways to engage with God. And just to make things easier if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com

that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com if you go to this episode look right below the episode description

I'll have all of the links posted there for your convenience. Strahan as we close what is your

challenge to dads listening now? Ooh yeah challenge to dads my challenge would be to be the eyes

the voice the face and the arms of love to our children. I don't mean just in what we say but I mean

in the embrace in the way that we look at them that when they look into our eyes that they would see

the love and the peace and the compassion of God. Easier said than done you know with children

but I think I have not seen anything transform my children more than a loving godly temperament.

Strahan as we wrap things up would you offer a prayer for dads now? I'd love to yeah it's praying.

Father first of all we thank you for being a good involved present and willing father you've loved

us and so I pray now for everybody listening to this conversation to everybody who can hear my voice

that in this moment in their minds and hearts they wouldn't counter this you God the God of Moses

the Lord the Lord gracious and compassionate abouting instead fast by the slowdown.

May they have a full body experience of who you are that they would be rec- that they would receive

the grace to awaken you with you day to day not just for them for their wives for their children

for this one and Jesus name. Strahan thank you so much for that prayer thank you so much for being

on the Father and challenge and I enjoyed the conversation and I know that's there too. Thank you

Jonathan it's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fatherhood Challenge

if you'd like to contact us listen to other episodes find any resource mentioned in this program

or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com

that's thefatherhoodchallenge.com

In this episode you’re going to hear the story of Joseph Belfield a dad who found his identity and purpose through childhood trauma and abuse. His story has inspired many towards healing and realizing their own identity and purpose.

You can get Joseph Belfield's book here: https://a.co/d/9YCknw4

To connect personally with Joseph Belfield you can reach him at:

https://www.facebook.com/joseph.belfield

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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Transcription - Severe Trauma to Identity and Purpose

---

In a moment you're gonna hear the story of a dad who found his identity in purpose through childhood trauma and abuse.

His story has inspired many towards healing and realizing their own identity in purpose.

You'll hear his story in just a moment so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere, to take great pride in their role.

And a challenge society to understand how important fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm joined by Joseph Belfield who's an author and a dad and is here to share his story so we don't want to waste another minute.

Joseph, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Thank you for having me.

Joseph, let's start with one of my favorite traditions. What is your favorite dad joke?

How did Joseph prepare his coffee? He brewed.

[laughs]

I love that one. I love it.

Joseph, let's start from the very beginning. What was your childhood like and how did your life change from there?

I grew up in a broken home. My parents were divorced. I was the second of five kids.

I grew up in very abusive relationship with my dad.

I learned at a young age to take the abuse and just to use that abuse to spare my four other siblings.

But as I grew up into a young teenage, it turned into a sexual abuse by my dad and my brother.

So from there I've just turned into a life of drugs into my later teens and later years.

I mean, it was just a very rough start in the whole time going up. I always dealt alone and just not able to understand why things were happening.

At the whole time I kept searching for God and wanting God to help me.

But in praying and praying and it seemed every morning I'd wake up right back to the same misery and the same pains.

But to grow from there I've learned to now accept God and accept you at times where you are going to be asking for his help and his salvation and his love that I might not see it right away.

But if I allow myself, I will find it and it's there for us at all times.

And what about your dad? How did your dad grow up?

My dad grew up in a very apparently abusive relationship, relationship family dynamics.

Not so much on my granddad's side but for my grandmother's.

They were like 13 siblings in a two bedroom house.

Apparently the sexual abuse was very rampant in that lifestyle back then.

And it was his philosophy was you know what just happened back then. It happens now.

But that's how he learned how to deal with things and do things. So he just continued that cycle of abuse and he was a drunk and his parents were into alcohol as well.

So it was just one cycle after another.

How many generations back does this go at least from what you're aware of?

From what I'm aware of at least three generations.

Bruno is a guest I've had on at least three times on this program and he speaks often of what we call the generational train where within our family there are certain addictions that can go several generations back.

And the turning point is when we become aware that first of all we're on this generation train and we understand what car we're writing in.

And how far back that train goes at least from what we can tell or what we see and know.

And that tells us everything we need to know about what preparations we should make maybe what changes we should make in our own life to protect ourselves and to protect the next generation from writing that same train.

So I think that's powerful that you were aware of that and that you understood that.

And it was like like I said even growing up as a kid you know you always heard well my parents did that to us you know if I said this or did that my parents would do this so it's like it was ingrained in their psyche that you know what.

It was acceptable abuse and it was acceptable to do that because that's what our parents did.

I think that's so important for the audience to understand is that you know we we might be quick to point fingers but every parent can probably admit if they're really honest with themselves.

There is no manual first of all and so oftentimes the only thing we have to go on is our parents if they were physically around then our parents become the model for how we're supposed to parent.

And if our parents aren't around we either come up with our own system which actually is just based on observations we see around us what we see other parents around us doing.

So we followed those trends because we have there's nothing else to go on then that's the thing there is no like you said no manual they don't come with the manual like a car does you know you get a child and you have to figure it out and you have to either help your ask your parents for help to figure it out or figure it out when you're own a lot of these things these TVs shows that people try to portray families are not realistic.

It doesn't happen like that in a real world.

That's a really important point because there's a lot of a lot of people like to sit down and watch these families sitcoms and so we get this idealistic model of what a family is supposed to look like and sometimes we watch these as a coping mechanism to not have to really deal with what's going on in our own homes.

And so true I mean best best thing you can do is just do what you feel is best and pray that you're doing the best.

In my own family experience I grew up as a kid around a lot of trauma I experienced a lot of trauma and I experienced a lot of abuse one of the hardest things for me to face is the idea of forgiveness forgiveness was a very uncomfortable topic and very uncomfortable conversation for me and I avoided such conversations I ran from them I just didn't like them.

The idea of forgiveness hurt my head to just to think about it.

What was that experience like for you?

It was very hard for me at first to forgive my dad and my brother which my dad had passed away and he never admitted to anything so it was really hard to forgive him.

But as I was struggling with it and I was actually driving down the road the one day and it was on the radio and no matter how I tried to change the radio I kept coming back to that one station and I was talking on forgiveness.

And it just kind of dawned on me it made me realize that you know what I had to be able to forgive my dad and my brother for what they did in order to set myself free.

But I also had to learn to forgive myself for allowing that stuff to happen because at a young age I did allow things to happen I did not speak up I didn't say anything.

But and I've learned and like it says in Matthew 615 you know but if you do not forgive men their trespasses neither will your father forgive your trespasses so I had to forgive them in order to get my own forgiveness.

How long did it really take you to get to that point where you were finally ready to forgive?

Several years I mean that was probably two years ago I finally learned to say you up I give them the forgiveness because I did hold that bitterness in my heart.

So forgiving them does that mean that all of the emotions associated with what they did to you does that magically go away when you forgive is it supposed to go away.

For me it didn't take the emotions away but it made it easier to accept as far as they did what they did and it was not my fault it was their fault I did not have to carry that with me for the rest of my life in time God forgives me and forgive them as well.

And it's not for me to judge them for what they did.

From what you've learned forgiveness isn't just saying oh everything is okay because it's not the truth is it's not okay all forgiveness is is saying you know what I'm not going to judge anymore I'm a human being I'm not qualified to judge I'm not qualified to judge those who have sin against me.

I'm going to give the gavel over to God and I'm going to let God judge be the judge in this case and I'm going to free myself from that responsibility.

Right and as humans it's so easy to say hey we should forgive and forget but it's so hard as humans to forget because the only one that can is God and Jesus because they have that blind eye to towards sin once we accept salvation.

And they forgive us our sins and as humans we do hold on to we forgive but we're going to hold on to it and use it as a later date and we should not do that.

I think that's powerful to understand and that's kind of where some of the freedom and healing lies because it really sends us into a place where we now have to go back yes we we let go of this responsibility of judging but now we have to go back and deal with our pain and there there is no running from that forgiveness doesn't necessarily.

For you from that and that becomes a second process on the other side of things as far as the offender is concerned forgiveness does not absolve the offender but they are now accountable to God and God is a God of justice he demands justice and so there is still the responsibility on the offender the offender is now accountable and responsible for making things right for

reconciliation they bear that that they bird they bear the full responsibility of that burden and they are not absolve from that just because we forgave them or just because you forgave them and I truly believe that because you know by me forgiving puts it on their plate to say hey,

what do you do with it can you make the men's or you just continue in your lifestyle was there ever reconciliation in your story no like I said when my dad passed away we were I guess estranged we didn't talk so there was no hey I'm sorry for what I did at one point he did try to apologize to my wife for what he did to me but also turned around said well I just

hit behind the bottle and blame did all on the alcohol it was not the alcohol it was him to there was no resolution to the situation with them and my brother still to this day will not admit to anything is it hard to just move into a healing space with that part of it unresolved or how do you come to a point where you just let go of that reality that you may not ever get that apology you may not ever get that

admission of guilt and responsibility as hard as it was through the forgiveness part it is a healing part or my end as well you know like to say you know what I forgive you I'm gonna try to let this go and heal from the pain inward for myself and rely on God to help me through those tough times and when those times of you know what emotional and remembrance and thoughts is like you know what I do not know what I'm doing is not right.

It's like you know what I just give it to God because I can't deal with it because if I do then there's the hate and the bitterness comes right back so I give it to God and let God deal with it.

So what I'm gathering from this is the healing process and the forgiveness part of this is not really truly possible and fullness without God it really takes a super human effort or power involved to be able to reach that place.

Especially when you have a situation where the offender is has died and you're not ever going to get that apology at least on the side of heaven is just not going to happen and at some point you can't change that you can't change them you can't change that part of the story but there is power there is the option there is the ability still for you to be able to heal and to be able to move past that and then you can't change that you can't change that you can't change that part of the story but there is power.

And the only way that is truly possible in completion is by the power of God.

Yeah and truly and you know even if it took me while to realize even if my dad and my brother was to say hey sorry I did these things and I'm sorry does not take that pain does not take that and grow away that's always going to be there.

So realizing you what even if he's never apologized and acknowledged it God knows and they know and I know that God will take that away from us and he will be the one that deals with it.

One of the things that changed my experience was when I had to come to this realization okay at some point you know there there is going to be a judgment and so I imagine the scenario where it's judgment time.

And I am I am before the father and Jesus is there the Holy Spirit is there and so so were my abusers and we're all standing there in a group and my accusers can't hear what is being said but there is a very personal conversation happening between the father and I where the father asked me so Jonathan what should I do with your abusers do you want me to send them to hell or do you want them to go to heaven.

What is your decision and I came to a point in my life where my answer would have been very very sure my answer would be I would point to Jesus and I would say if they are comfortable spending eternity with Jesus and they are comfortable with that then I am comfortable spending eternity with them.

That is my answer I am not qualified to know if they are however so that is your decision and whatever is decided I'm at peace with and that was the point where when I realize that that would likely be my answer in a scenario like that I'd realize you know what I think I've reached forgiveness.

And for me I had to look at it when it comes that time of being in front of Jesus in front of God to accept our sins in whatever in our acceptance into heaven.

The fact that you have been learning that there is no more pain no more sorrow in heaven that I will no longer remember those times and I will no longer have that in my thought process in brain in heaven because God would have taken that from us.

I've got a very difficult question to ask it's a question that I have wrestled with for a long time and the question is where was God during the abuse while it was happening.

Oh my at the time I didn't see it God was there with me and he was holding me and comforting me but at the time like I said I prayed so many times you know God please end this misery God are you if you're there please help me and I wake up the next day and right back into the same situations the same abuse in the pain and misery suffering was always there.

And it wasn't until like I said probably four or five years ago when I finally started to wrestle with salvation and really accepting God was realizing without that pain and that suffering that God had allowed me to go through and was with me the whole time I would not truly understand his grace and his mercy.

I've heard you say in your answer several times that God was right there with you and I have to I would have to say in my own experience that would have been and still is my answer to that as well I believe the same thing I believe God was was not only present in the abuse but God was also experiencing the abuse in us and that's a powerful thing when you think you know we're all centers and I remember I was.

And I remember I was in a conversation with family over this everyone was was just wondering you know well how can you forgive and and I said you know what sent sent a sin I'm really truthful and honest about I couldn't have said this back then but this has been a lot of study and this has been a long journey in my walk with God to come to this point where I can say this because it's not a comfortable it's not a comfortable truth.

And that is you know what I I am just as bad as they are as my abusers just because they abused in this one specific way does that make does not make them worse than me just because I send in different ways sent a sin so if God went into full judgment mode and executed my abusers he would have to execute me as well maybe not for the same thing.

Not for the same things but surely for other sins to we're all in the same boat when it comes to that so God's mercy is the same for everyone and he wants everyone to have an opportunity to be saved and then there still is choice everyone has that autonomy that power of choice to choose which way they're going to go.

And so even when we come to that truth and that realization that we are also centers it brings us to a different attitude about our abusers of a place of compassion it doesn't mean that we're feeling great and wonderful about what happened we aren't.

But it just means that we understand that they need salvation as badly as we do and instead it drives us back to our heavenly father not only for forgiveness but a determination to walk closer with him and then it hits home because when we mistreat someone God is experiencing that mistreatment through that other person as well.

So it's the same as mistreating God himself and that's a very sobering reminder to us.

Right and like I said I mean during the whole of Houston one thing that does stand out to me is like one time when my dad it taken me to a rock that looked over top of a freeway and told me you know he could just push me off there it will look like an accident.

And what it was God that was there that stopped him from actually doing it and used it as a threat towards me and spared me my life then so God had a plan and a use for me I did just did not see it then.

That brings me into my next question when you look back on your life experience how has it helped you find your identity in purpose for me it has helped me to do especially now to realize you know what the things that have happened to me.

And as traumatic and as painful as he were that I am able to now to be able to use those to be a better person instead of allowing that same cycle to happen to break that cycle to say you know what just because my parents did this to me I don't have to be that person God does not want me to be that person and I think it is through God that I have been able to realize this just because my parents did it and he does not want us to be that way.

He wants us to be better people and to be more fruitful than what we were so what is your purpose now in life my purpose now in life I mean yes I'm a father and I'm taking care of kids plus I'm also taking care of other people's kids because their parents aren't around their the one is deceased the other ones is in jail and they're there are great nieces and it's my job as a parent and as a child.

God to instill that into them to say you know what look here's a nice loving home you don't have to do the same things that your parents are doing here here is a place that is safe and it's my job to take them to church and it's my job to teach them their proper way to be and to let God use me as a vessel to do that as a vessel to help others to heal from their pains and sufferings as well.

Do you ever have imagined that your life would be used to reflect the image of God no at a younger age and growing up middle age no I would never have figured that because growing up you always heard God was so loving and so caring so if he was why would he allow that to happen and now it's like I realize why it happened because he had that use for me this others are going to be suffering and painful that you know what I can be a tool in instrument of God to help them through their pains.

There's a promise that God restores our loss have you felt that experience happening in your own life I believe I have because like I said I have been blessed many times over through the different through the children that I do have now you know what it's a blessing for me to have them in my life because without them you know what I'd be in a lonely spot and it allows me to continually to see the love of God through these children.

And to what it would just transform into young adults as well one of the things that every dad that at least every dad that I know wants to do is to leave a legacy behind and what you're doing is leaving such a powerful legacy good legacy behind for many generations to follow so not only have you been instrumental and completely breaking a generational cycle.

And a generational cycle and a generational curse but you have turned it around and through the Holy Spirit working in you you are leaving a changed legacy for many many generations.

I guess I never look at it is I was leaving a legacy other than the fact that you what I was leaving hopefully leaving some wisdom within these children and within other people by seeing the transformation that I used to be to what I am now.

Say you know what I would like to be like that that's all I can ask for is you know what to have somebody to say you know what I want what he has and not so much as in a materialistic thing but in in the attitude and the kindness that I have.

You've written a book about your experience tell me about your journey in writing the book and how has it helped dads going through the same experience.

First I was just writing as a journal type thing to help myself heal and to deal with the stuff but then through the power of prayer and through my journey with God.

God I guess spoke to me and said you know what I need to write this book you need to write it and have it released out there for others to see it.

And it is helped others and it's going to help others that have gone through the same situations or similar situations that at the time back to come back in our days and you know what you didn't say a word about things that happened to you know what to say you know what it is okay for me to speak of what happened to me it's okay for me to allow others to know something happened to me that I am broken and that I am able to find a path in a way out of that.

And through the brokenness I can turn to God and God will heal me and make me whole again and I've seen a few that have taken this book and transformed their lives to say what I don't have to live that like any longer.

What is the title of your book and how can dads get get a copy the title of my book is God are you there.

And it is available on Amazon.

Barnes and Noble and iTunes just to make things easier if you go to the fatherhood challenge.com that's the fatherhood challenge.

And it is available on Amazon.

How can dads get a hold of you they can message me on Facebook I open and willing to talk to anybody about this.

So if there's any dads out there that would like to talk I'd be willing to talk to them.

And I'll include the link just below the description.

Joseph as we close what is your challenge to dads listening now.

My challenge to dads I would have to say would be to to acknowledge our failings because as humans we are going to fail.

And as fathers we're going to fail no matter how hard we try.

But to accept that failing in those use them as learning tools to teach your children one is okay to fail because we're going to fail.

But when we do fail pick yourself back up attempt and try again and not to let yourself get down too far.

But to also let God work within you and to acknowledge God whenever you can and to allow God to be a tool in your life.

To not turn away from him even in your darkest times.

Thank you so much for that wisdom Joseph.

Would you close this out with a prayer for dads?

Have any father I just asked that you be here with each and every one of us and you know with Jonathan myself and all those listening and that those dads that might be struggling with anything in their lives that you are God.

You'd be there for them and to help heal their pains, to help heal them and to make them better fathers.

When dads are better husbands at the same time you know what that they may be better people.

May it be the tools that you want them to be.

Jesus name of her name. Amen.

Joseph thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge and for sharing your story with us.

Thank you for having me and I look at 4JNB that would like to speak and hopefully maybe in the future right in another book.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us listen to other episodes find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to visit the Fatherhood Challenge please visit theFatherhoodChallenge.com. That's TheFatherhoodChallenge.com

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Someone once said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the creator." I’ve brought a dad and husband named Jo'mel Powell on the program to share his story of how he found his identity and purpose.

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcript - Filling the God-Shaped Hole

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Someone once said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator."

I've brought a doubt on the program who understands this truth well and he will share his story with us in just a moment, so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere, to take great pride in their role,

and a challenge society to understand how important fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment. Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm joined by a dad named Jamel Powell who is here to share his story of how he found his identity and purpose.

Jamel, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

I appreciate you having me here and you are a blessing to me for allowing me on your platform.

Jamel, let's jump right into your story and journey of how you found your identity and purpose in life.

I want to say around the age of 19, that first year in high school, I was just trying to find my way.

So, you know, I thought I could find my way, you know, by giving me a girlfriend and by finding ways to make money hustling in the streets,

you know, being around the wrong type of crowds, but I want to say within that first year of high school, I found out quickly

that the road that I was going was in the route. I found myself in a lot of gyms and a lot of hard situations

and then a lot of confrontations with a lot of people that was much more powerful than me.

And they let me turn around and get down and pray and call on God and then being lost out here trying to find my way

is what made me get down on my knees and pray because it was rough for a young man in my neighborhood to make it, you know.

I'm from the city of Detroit, Michigan. A lot of our young men in Detroit, Michigan, we are influenced by our environment.

And our environment is full of people that sell drugs, you know, people that commit violent acts,

and even gang culture to a certain degree. So, when we not getting what we looking for at home, we look to these things,

to get the love that we looking for. But I thank God because, you know, I was trying to sell marijuana.

I got caught in a bad jam, you know, trying to let that lifestyle. I realized it wasn't for me because

you have to be an aggressive individual to be a hustler, you know. You have to be a violent individual to survive

because you constantly get tested over and over again and you have to be assertive.

And I realized I didn't want to go that route. Through those struggles and trials, God revealed himself to me.

And when God revealed himself to me, I turned away from all of that and I never went back.

Through all my journey, I probably have struggled with sins and I have backslap,

sitting multiple times, but I have never turned my back on God and I have never went to that lifestyle.

And when I say I never turned my back on God, I mean, like completely given up on God and completely lost

God out of my mind because I had many, many bumps along the road. I got in the church at the age of 19.

I was a licensed minister by the age of 20. And you would think things would go smooth in the church,

but I found myself struggling with identity again in the church, even becoming a minister.

I still was struggling with finding myself then influenced by others, you know, that was still

trying to find their selves. I had some disappointments and let downs in my first experience in ministry

in the church. So then I went down the whole, another rabbit hole, you know, especially after my mother died.

When my mother died, I went on the journey of a sexual sin with women that wasn't of God.

Just kind of out here a little bit. I caught myself trying to get back into the church and

trying to get back into ministry. That's when I met my wife. I met my wife when I was like more focused on

getting my life together, more focused on expanding and my knowledge of God. And she was like one of the

best things that happened to me. She was like a breath of fresh air because I hadn't had anyone like

showed that much love and concern for me in a while. Like, I don't know. It's like God

shined the divine spotlight on her when she came into my life. You know, that was one of the most

pleasant experiences that I had. Even though that was one of the most pleasant experiences that I had,

we started going through struggles within our marriage, you know. I want to say like about four or

five years in, we started going through some struggles. I'm going to say a lot of it was our flesh,

but I do believe that this spiritual workshop is well. So we're not going to turn the blind

into that. Yeah, it just was a rough patch, you know, we got to the point where we had to separate from

each other throughout our separation. We stayed in that connection. We didn't get ourselves involved

with anybody else or anything like that. We were just trying to take a step back and see what we could

fix and see how we can man our relationship because I know we really did love each other.

And through that process, she became pregnant. So this made us even want to work on our marriage more

and more. And with her becoming pregnant, it was just time to get things right and get things

in order throughout that process. Right before my daughter was about to be born, my wife contracted

the COVID-19 virus. Man, this just had me questioning everything, questioning my purpose, questioning

my decisions, questioning this guy really with me, but little did I know that the journey ahead

would be what reveals to me more of what my purpose is and more of what my identity is. This struggle

ahead revealed to me things about myself that I did not know about myself. Good and bad with my

wife, contracting the COVID-19 virus. I took it to the hospital because she couldn't breathe.

And this was in the ninth month of pregnancy. I just didn't know that that would be the last time I

would lay eyes on her for close to two months, you know. I'm just thinking I'm about to drop off

at the hospital and they take care of her for a few days and won't be back at it again, but no,

it was a whole other journey that I wasn't expecting. A three year journey to this day to be exact,

three year plus journey. My daughter was delivered through C-section and my wife was still in the hospital

on the ventilator and medically induced coma. So here I am again, like, you know, feeling like,

like, Lord, you took me away from the lifestyle that I was trying to go down in the neighborhood. I

went to the church, had some disappointments in the church, met my wife and I'm thinking things

going to get better than we started going through struggles in our marriage. They got me questioning

everything again. Then we have a child on the way. Now we're trying to work on our marriage. And now you

hit my wife with COVID to the point that she's on the ventilator to the point that she's in the hospital

for months. And now while she's in the hospital, I got to take my daughter home myself and try to figure

this out. So I was really, really questioning God. You know, I found myself praying and I found myself

fast and I found myself hurting. I found myself alone. I found myself not really knowing what to do.

But one thing's for sure, I knew I knew I was in about to leave my wife and I knew I was not about to leave

my daughter in limbal. Those are the only two things I knew. And though I didn't know how I was going

to continue the journey, though I didn't know how I was going to carry on, I knew that I was going

to continue the journey and I knew that I was going to carry on. Going through this with my wife and with

my daughter brought out more of who I really was, brought out more of my purpose. You know, it showed me

that I really did love my wife and it showed me that I really did have the ability to be a father to

a child, things that I didn't know. You know, they say God knows our hearts and I'm a foreign believer

there, but God knows the good in our hearts and knows the bad in our hearts. But to this situation,

God brought out some good out of me that I did not know was there through this bad situation. He

worked out so much good in our lives, even though we not in the perfect conditions that we would like

to be. He worked out so much good, you know, in our character. The pastor of my church, his name is

pastor Ken Snaggrass. One of the things that I heard him talk about when I first started going to

the church is that sometimes when God doesn't change your situation, he uses the situation to change

you as a person. I feel like everything that we go through as individuals is what moses and shapes us

and character to be the person that God wants us to be. You know, I think about the story of Joseph,

a whole lot. I talk about this all the time. My friends, my family, brothers and sisters in

Christ, they all know I talk about this a lot. Joseph saw the dream of what God was going to do with his

life. He had to understand that God was going to do something great with his life, but he didn't know

it'd be a 13 year journey, a 13 years of affliction that would be what that would be the avenue which

God used to bring the dream to pass. I felt like, you know, when we go on through her times, we just have

to keep in mind, you know, Romans 828, all things work together for the good to them that love God,

to them that they call the court into its purpose. So everything that's going on in the life of a

child that God tragic situations, loss of love, struggles in your personal life, struggles in your

finances, fault loss with individuals like anything you can name like God uses all things to work

together for our good. And that is something that I constantly stress to myself to keep myself motivated

because I'm still dealing with my trial right now. I just want to tell any any father out there this

struggling with fatherhood, struggling in the family and struggling to be a provider, keep

your head up, my brother. The word says all things work together for the good to them that love God,

to those that are called according to his purpose. Everything that you want to do is going to work

out for your good in the end. God knows what's best for us. You know, sometimes we try to go go different

routes with our lives or we have a plan for ourselves, but God has a plan for us this way better than

what we could imagine. You know, I went to be where God wants me to be instead of going where I want to go,

but you know, I mean, it can be it can be her for you know, it's her for when you're dealing with

struggles and situations that you feel that's not fair, but you got to keep your head up, prevail,

fast, pray and continue to fight. You know, I've been in my journey for over three years like I said,

but I've gotten stronger. I've gotten wiser. My relationship with my wife has gotten so, so much better

because I see so much good in her. She sees so much good in me and though we not in the perfect

conditions, though we not in the perfect situation that we would like to be in, we were God wants us to be,

and we on the journey to God's plan being fulfilled in our lives. That's what I want to tell you. It might

seem like you courage sometimes, you know, we go through so much bad. We be like, feeling like, man,

my courage store has God forsaken me or like, I love everything that I love and gave my life over

the God and not seem like it got worse, but there is purpose and everything, you know. See, I feel like,

I feel like this, I feel like the struggles is what develop our character. So if God put us in

high positions or put us in places that he showed us that we're going to be immediately when he

showed us without taking us to a process of character building, we won't be able to stay there,

but the struggle builds character, noble character. Someone God puts you in certain positions,

you have the wisdom, you have this of this of plan, you have the fruit of the spirit exhibited.

I just feel like, I just feel like, you know, though we go through struggles and though it's hard to

stay positive through struggles, the struggle is needed. Talk about that moment in your life when

you first understood and realized that you were born with an identity and purpose at the age of 19

when I heard the voice of the Lord speaks to me. I had left my neighborhood and I was at my

grandmother's house and I was fast and in front. I never forget one of my aunties her name is Brenda

Boom. She gave me a phone call during this time. I was out in California and I got slipped some drugs

and I was so embarrassed about it that I said I wasn't going to tell anybody about that. Like a

bottom-up later she reached out to me and she let me know that the Lord showed her a vision about me

and she said that what the Lord showed her is that you know basically somebody had given me something

that I wasn't used to taking and she just warned me about you know doing those type of things

and that led me to just open up to her and let them know that I look I got slipped some drugs

when I was out in California I said I wasn't going to tell nobody but

I told her because I knew God had spoken to her. So what she said to me is

look she taught me how to fast and pray she fasted and prayed with me for a few days that week

and during one of the nights of the fasting and prayer I was laying across my grandmother's bed

and I froze still on the bed I couldn't move with my eyes open

in the words do as you're doing my son and you shall prosper. Came into my spirit as I was sitting frozen

on the bed and then when I finally got to lose it it was a lot of fear and anxiety on me when I finally

got to lose I said you know what from this day four like after after perceiving that the Lord has

spoken to my spirit that made me want to see God more that made me want to become more of a God

wanted me to be and I feel like that's the moment when I found out that God had a different identity

for me than what I thought so during that process I wasn't even in church it um I started feeling

convicted about things that I was in the consistent pattern of doing uh just second nature I started

feeling the conviction about smoke and I started feeling the conviction about drinking I started

feeling the conviction about pornography I even started feeling the conviction about the language

than I was using and this is when I knew like God had a whole different identity and purpose for me

this is where I knew the start of a new identity was here. Now talk about the moment that time in your

life when you begin to really understand that God is your heavenly Father when did you start to really

feel him in that role as your father? You know at first at first I started at damn rejected by my

own father you know I was in so much trouble in the city of Detroit Michigan that I called on

and I said look that um I got some people after me you know and I just need somewhere to come for a

little while you know because uh I knew the situation was gonna blow over but I just reached out to

my father and said like can I just come and live with you just for a little while

till we get things off he lived in St. Louis, Missouri. He said I call you back

when he called back he gave me the coldest no I ever heard I had never heard of that call towards me

ever and uh from that point on uh I had made up in my mind at that time that I wasn't gonna talk to him

again which I didn't stick to of course but from that point on I started thinking about that script

trying songs that says when my mother or my father forsaken me then with the Lord taking me up so

that's when I started even that made me even more want to seek our heavenly Father being forsaken by

my earthly Father and when I tell you my Heavenly Father took care of me he took care of me by even

through my lack of faith he took care of me through the provisions you know it was times that I deeply

desired things within my heart and didn't even say it to people and my Heavenly Father will bring

what I desired in my heart you know like through the discipline of God that's what that was

experience in my Heavenly Father uh when I when I stepped out of line the the correction and discipline

but I'm thankful for the correction and discipline of our Heavenly Father because

hey that that moses and character too it does it sounds to me like your relationship with God

became so close that you really did not feel like you locked for anything oh yeah I got I used to wake

up around the beginning stages of my walk with grace I used to wake up every day just just like

I wonder what God gonna do today like it'll be little things like I might I might be thinking like

man I would really like some piece of the day in my within my mind and then my I'll see a stop by

the house and have some piece of weather and something like that like like God God uh God is good

God is good and I'll tell you this I ain't nothing like I heavenly Father.

No there is absolutely nothing like him there's another scripture verse where he is referenced as

the Father to the Fatherless yes and that that is very very true this isn't just flowery speech

it is very very literal God will step into that role and he is happy to fill that role coming back

to identity purpose I it was a game changer for me when I understood that in heaven there are

scrolls written about each of us before we were even born before we were conceived God took the time

to purposely write about each of our lives our identity and our purpose were written in those scrolls

and Psalm 139 references that as well and that has become one of my favorite bits of scripture

even in your walk today you know talk to that dad that is struggling with trying to parent a son or a

daughter and they still have that void in their own life from growing up fatherless or in fatherlessness

can be defined two ways it's a father that is either physically absent or physically present

but emotionally absent and unavailable that is also a definition of fatherlessness so talk to that

dad that grew up fatherless and struggling with that emptiness inside of them and they're trying to

raise a son or a daughter one of one of the things I would say the first thing I would say is

you know pray pray the God to give you the wisdom knowledge and understanding on the correct way to

do things in a way that to be effective in a way that the influential to your children in a positive way

but one of the things that I did which is the second thing I would say

everything that I felt like I missed and didn't have that's what I was going to give to my daughter

and that's what I've been trying my best to give to my daughter like like you know my father was in

around throughout all of my elementary and most of my middle school years so we probably would see

him like once a year of that so you know like I just always wanted to know what it was like to have

my dad in the house or have my dad take me to a boy game where you know have my dad sit and watch

TV with me and things like that with me and my sister didn't get that was fueled to my fire to

be what we didn't get be who we didn't have to my child you know like everything that I feel like I

miss everything I feel like I deserve I said I want my daughter to have all of that you know I want to

be at the school on the road assembly I want to be at the winter concerts or when the class is

come together and sing at the school and programs you know I want to be there if she's into sports I

want to be at the sports games you know having an absent father should sparking you don't want to be

a present father having a father that was uninvalled emotionally that caused us girls should make us

want to be involved emotionally to eliminate the scars from our children and that was just my method

pray to God and to try to give my daughter what I didn't get to give her a better start in life you

know missing a missing a prominent male figure or missing that male figure in your life

says you back a lot you know because you started to look to the to the wrong type of male

male figures you know you you start to look to male figures they might not be so much of a good

figure to look to I just want to say you know give give to your child what you didn't get

and give your child that extra boost and that extra start that you were missing.

Jamel as we close what is your challenge to dads listening now I just want to I just want to

challenge you to do your best I know sometimes it's a lot of pressure on fathers and sometimes we

fall short of our goals we fall short of our financial goals we fall short of our parent and goals

and we just fall short in the glory of God but my thing is do your best every day do your best

shoot for the moon if you miss you still amongst the stars don't don't allow yourself to

feel like a failure you may have failed in certain areas being the father but

get back up and try again our failures is what makes us better when we use our failures as learning

experiences we know they expected to know everything and do everything the correct way 100% but we are

expected to give the best that we can give and that's what I want to tell you like give the best

that you can give do the best that you can do Jamel would you offer a prayer for dads listening

now yes yes I will heavenly Father we humble ourselves before you and Christ name

we thank you for grace mercy and forgiveness but we actually don't forgive us for our sins and our

thoughts we actually don't forgive us for our sins in action and the sins in our word but we know

your gracious and merciful and we believe that we are forgiven through the blood Lord as we

humble ourselves before you Lord I pray that you look upon us all all of us families but we have

weaknesses we have struggles but we pray and Lord that you help us to overcome all our weaknesses

struggles and use our failures as learning experiences but we pray and Lord that you help us to

stand in the position that you want us to stand we pray that you help us to be a positive

influence in the lives of our children and in the lives of our family members

Lord the areas that we not doing so great then Lord help us to do much better the areas that we

already doing better and Lord help us to be humble and continue to maintain that greatness

but we pray and Lord that we don't be those fathers that's absent we don't be those fathers that's

there but emotionally absent but we pray Lord that we be the fathers that you call for us to be

we preach we be the husbands that you call us to be and Lord it's all the single fathers out there

Lord get them comfort get them strife and help them to continue the journey Lord

we have to fight against Satan we have to fight against demons we have to fight against sin and

we're still expected to be men sometimes we hurt sometimes we struggle but we still expected to be

men we're so we proud of what they've come and crowned to you and we get back in this world and fight

and Christ's name we pray and amen thank you so much for that prayer and thank you so much for coming

on the Father and challenge and sharing your story we know it will bring a lot of hope and do a lot

of dad's listening now so thank you thank you thank you for having me and I appreciate you

thank you for listening to this episode of the Fatherhood Challenge if you'd like to contact us

listen to other episodes find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information

about the Fatherhood Challenge please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com that's thefatherhoodchallenge.com

[COVERSATION]

If you or one of your children has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I brought a dad on the program diagnosed along with his child with bipolar disorder. George Brooks will share his experience and insights with us about living and functioning daily with bipolar disorder and the challenges of raising a son with the same diagnosis.

To get help or advocacy support for bipolar disorder, call the Meta Association at: (214) 810-6518.

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

https://zencastr.com/?via=thefatherhoodchallenge

Transcription - A Dad Navigates Bipolar Disorder

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Did you know that if a parent has bipolar disorder, the child has a 10 to 25% chance of developing

bipolar disorder? If you or one of your children has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder,

I brought a dad on the program diagnosed along with his child with bipolar disorder. He will share

his experience and insights with us in just a moment, so don't go anywhere. Welcome to the

Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere to take great pride in

their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers are to the stability and

culture of their family's environment. Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero. Greetings

everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. My guest is George Brooks. I asked George to come

and talk to us about his life growing up with bipolar diagnosis and then raising a son with the

same diagnosis. George, thank you so much for coming on the Fatherhood Challenge. Thank you. Thank

you for having me on. George, let's start with an explanation of bipolar disorder. What is bipolar

disorder? Well, bipolar disorder is characterized by mood swings. Those mood swings can go from

extreme depression to what's called mania. And when you're in a manic state, you're very high energy.

You usually have a sense of elation. During that time, I just want a lot of people find themselves

getting in a trouble because your impulsivity is really bad off. So when someone's manic,

they really have to be watched and monitored. But it can fluctuate between a depressed state to where

you can't get out of bed, to a manic state to where you could be exhibiting risky behavior and things

like that. So that's typically what bipolar disorder is described as. I know back in the 60s,

they call the manic depression. So it's the same thing. But it's just characterized between mood swings

that can be controlled or not controlled with medication. How many people do you think

approximately might be undiagnosed just because of how the definition changed from the 60s till today?

I don't think the I think the verbites change. However, I don't think the definition changed

all that much. Now, the thing with diagnosing bipolar disorder is that it can it can look like so

many different things, so many different physical conditions, mental conditions. I mean, if you have a

bad thyroid, some of the symptoms from that could look like bipolar. So in order to diagnose it

accurately, there really has to be a thorough, thorough medical exam, physically and mentally to diagnose it.

But I think people are being misdiagnosed, yes, only because like I said, it massed so many different

illnesses. So if someone thinks they have it, it sounds like it's important that they don't try to

self-diagnose. And instead, they seek professional help. So to get a diagnosis or confirm a diagnosis,

would they go to a psychiatrist for that? I always urge people to go to their physician also.

I get a physical check out to go ahead and rule that out is being a possible cause or any symptoms.

Then of course, follow up with a therapist and a psychiatrist and get help for that and get an

examination and see if you can get an official diagnosis. Also with that diagnosis, you may find that

is not bipolar. It may be something else that's unrelated that you can get treatment for as well.

And if it is a diagnosis, bipolar disorder is treated with medication and therapy or how do

what does the outcome look like for that? Well, see that's the thing. When you're bipolar, you really

have to individualize your kid or what's going to work for you. And it's so many different variables

that go into it such as your age, your economic situation, what stage you are in life, what stage you

are in your illness. So, it will work for me because I also had a concurrent cocaine addiction.

So I had to treat both of those at the same time. But my formula was the therapy, which

I ignored for a long time until I actually got into therapy six years ago and realized the value of it.

And I combined that with my medication and holistic approaches such as making sure I do my self-care,

making sure that I'm taking time, taking breaks. So that in combination with the medication

and therapy does help give me balance. The thing is, even if you're treating bipolar disorder,

you're still going to have fluctuations, you're still going to have ups and downs. But the

medication, the therapy and the holistic approach can help keep you balanced to where you can kind of

minimize those. And at the very least, if you have a good support system, and I don't want to leave that

out, it's key to have a good support system because people can also tell if you're starting to go

into a manic state and he'll intervene. They may say, "George, you know, I know as you're a little

ratted today, you okay." And sometimes they can go a long way because that's what I've done with my

son, Joshua. He was diagnosed about 8/7 and we sort of feel that role with each other. So there's a

lot to treating bipolar disorder. There's a lot to managing it, managing it, but the thing is, it can

be managed. What is your story of being diagnosed and growing up with bipolar disorder? Wow.

I started to own symptoms about 8/7 when I was about 7 years old, which is coincidentally the same

age my son was diagnosed. He was diagnosed with 7 and I started to own symptoms at 7.

Growing up with it was very, very interesting in the sense that my parents were not to norm in terms

of many black parents because they believed in getting help. They didn't say, "Well, you're not going

to church enough, but that's not real." They said, "No, it's something going on. We need to treat it."

And you can't just pray this away. So they really started my mindset to be active about my treatment,

but due to the extended circumstances through adolescence, you know, it was not easy for me.

dealt with a lot of trauma in my early life dealt with family issues, dealt with health issues,

chronic health issues from about 8/7 that still are on me to this day.

dealt with the pressure of being an adolescent, dealt with an eating disorder where I was obese,

most of my teenage years. So you add all that in and then you just suppose that with a society that

does not understand mental illness, especially in a black community and you're going to have a problem.

So it was very challenging coming up. It was very challenging dealing with things, but I made it through.

And I think in age 46, I formulated a system in a way of living with my progress order that's been

beneficial to myself and my son. So it sounds like the deck was really stacked against you as far as

figuring this out. You have so many different challenges going on in your life and this comes back to

understanding what you said earlier. When I asked you, you know, as the treatment pretty straight

forward is it just pop a pill and and get therapy and that's it, you're good to go and

and you said no because everyone's circumstance is so different. And so what is required to manage it

likewise is very different. And when you explain some of the circumstances that you were going through,

that was really complicated. How long did it take them to figure out something that was going to

work for you? What day is it? Because here's the thing, typically about polo disorder,

when you get your official diagnosis, which I was given mine at age 25. It typically takes, and I've

heard different numbers on this, about 10 years to fit them to find a cocktail of medications that's

effective. I've been on so many different medications since, you know, all my life trying to find

a routine that works. You may find three or four cocktails that make a cocktail that may work

beautifully with your bipolar. For six months, four a year, if you're lucky two years, but your

body chemistry changes, you know, you're dealing with the chemical imbalance and you're dealing with the,

you know, external stem-alive real life. So things are going to be changing so much and there's

so many new drugs and they have so many different effects and things like that is really tough to find

a combination that works. Now they typically go with an antidepressant, a mood stabilizer,

and something for mania. That's usually what they do. They usually give three. For a long time, I was on

lithium, which if you know anything about lithium, it's extremely, extremely effective, but the side

of fix is so bad, I can't take it. I wish I could, but I can't. So that's one of the challenges too is that

they're being an effective medication, but you can't take it for whatever reason, whether these side

effects or availability or cost. You know, that's a crime of kill this you're being bipolar. We have

state meds every day, usually multiple times a day. And that's something to manage too because a lot

of times you're insurance will not cover it if you have insurance. So there's so much that goes in

a managing it just from a pharmaceutical level and from a therapeutic level, but the life management

skills was really, was really important. This one thing I speak on is to overall life management

and people management and time management that goes into the bipolar disorder because it's a constant.

It's always there. It's always there. And the sad thing is that oftentimes you can't even have a good day

without questioning am I manic. If I have a good day, I'm so worried if I'm having a good day because

I'm really having a good day or am I having a good day because I'm manic or it's just real. So that's

something I encounter all the time. So that's another part that makes it a little bit difficult to deal with,

but it can like I said, it can be managed as long as you have the right, you know, right,

apparatus, apparatus in place and you have the right support system.

You mentioned your son was also diagnosed. How early did you say he was diagnosed and what were some

of the signs that you picked up on that was your clue? He's 19 now. So he was diagnosed about 87.

Some of the symptoms I saw were mood swings, being very overly emotional. I just felt it. I just

felt that my wife at the time really saw it too. And we got him diagnosed and everything. Now he lived

with his mother. He and his mother are now not together. He lived with his mother. She had primary

custody up until a certain point. And one of the things that raised the child about polo disorder

is that unfortunately sometimes you have another period to deal with. You have their family to deal with.

And especially if you know how ignorant they are, they may fight you on getting your child here.

That's what I deal with. I couldn't get my son all his medications like I wanted to because

I was come back, you know, had a combat of relationship with her and her family. So that got in the

way a lot. But I was given, I went and fought for custody. I've him was given custody of him.

And even then it's still a challenge because he has his own ideas about his treatment, especially as a

teenager. You know, I don't think I need medicine. I don't think I need this. I think I need that.

And that's another challenge. And raising a bipolar child is that you do have to educate them,

make them feel safe, teach them how to manage, but also there'll be times when you'll butt heads with

them over their treatment because you may be older and have experience and know what's best,

but at the same time you have to individualize that for your child. So it can be quite, quite complicated.

Was it helpful at all for your son to understand that you're going through and have gone through

the exact same thing and you're walking this journey together? I think it's one of the things that's

really, but we've always been extremely close, but it's a bond that we have because if I'm manic or

if I'm having a good day, he'll tell me, dad, I can tell something's wrong and we kind of keep

each other in check like that. So he, I think he understands what I go through. I definitely, especially,

not only the fact that we're both bipolar, but I'm his father, I can pick up on his moods.

I can look at him and tell, okay, this is going on and that's going on. And what I do at that

point, what he'll do at that point is that we'll pull each other inside and we'll talk about it.

We'll talk about what's going on. We'll talk about the medication. That's been such a fortunate

thing for me to have that kind of relationship with my son. What are some of the stereotypes associated

with bipolar disorder and how does that contrast with the truth? That is somehow a character flaw,

especially in a black community. You're seeing his last thing. You can tell him, you drown a

bag of puppies. They won't say a word, but you tell him you have mental illness and I swear they

will, they won't run from you. What the truth is is that it's just an illness, just like anything else,

it's just like my diabetes, it's just like my heart defects, it's just like other things I have going

on would be physically, which is a lot. I just have to manage it just the same way I would

anything else, just like I have to take my moods, they belong to my hand, or the person.

Two or three other men's I take from my bipolar, I have to take my insulin. So a good hour,

two couple hours of my day, every day is just managing medications, managing how I'm feeling,

managing my health care. That's the thing that people don't think about. They just think,

"Oh, he has a mental illness, he's somehow a character flaw, he's somehow deficient, or he's somehow

incapable of doing the same things I can do." That's not the case.

So your lifestyle, other than treating the illnesses that you have, doesn't really differ from

really anybody else. You are not limited, you can participate in the same activities that everybody

else does. Right, well, sometimes, now with special accommodations given sometimes, because it is

the bipolar, is the debilitating mental illness. It really is. So, you may not be able to work a

nine to five. Most people with bipolar aren't going to be able to work a nine to five effect,

now without many accommodations, they aren't going to be able to do a lot of things to the, to the

fullest extent of everybody else without taking the consideration of their illness. So, that's the

only thing about it, but I've been able to function pretty well on my own. Pretty much no meat

doing a regular nine to five is never going to happen, just because of health reasons. So, I'm trying

to find other ways to generate revenue for myself. And so, I've taken that path in life.

As far as special accommodations are concerned, does that fall under the Americans with Disability

Act? Yes, but I feel like we need to expand it to include more mental health specific protocols,

such as time off, break time, things specifically geared toward mental health, because, you know,

in terms of physical health, that's easier for people to see, most of the time. But you're dealing

with something as abstract as mental health, and especially from a legislative standpoint,

it's hard to mandate things in place to deal with mental illness when you can't see it.

Or people still have such a stigmustized concept of what it is to have a mental illness.

It's funny because it's the one thing that truly does affect everyone at every race and color,

but we all aren't dealing with it the same way. All of us are affected by mental illness either

directly into regular. But the thing is, is we're still having overcome stereotypes, we're still

having to have these discussions. In my hopes in the next twenty-thirty years, we can ease up a lot

of a rhetoric that's involved with these conversations and seek out real care, but as far as accommodations

might be work from home, might be, I need time off, maybe I need to work in a different department,

or maybe you can't deal with people. But, you know, as long as the accommodation doesn't affect

the profitability and efficiency of the company, I think they should be adhered to when it all

possible. So the bottom line is, if somebody's diagnosed, they really have to advocate for themselves,

because the education to the general public just isn't there to really understand what's going on.

No, and I, you know, I started non-profit about six years ago called NetA association,

and what I do is I advocate for people. So, you know, even if you can't advocate for yourself,

then maybe it's time when you may be sick and you can't. So make sure you know of an advocate

that can come in and assist you, especially dealing with mental health because that extra support

is going to go a long way, especially if you have any cognitive deficiencies because of the mental

illness, or if you have any communication problems, or when you're in crisis, you can't communicate

the same way. And so, I strongly, I'm a staunch advocate for advocates, myself included.

How can a dad best support their spouse or child who has been diagnosed? And let's say this is a

very new diagnosis to them. Educate themselves and get into support groups and practice self-care.

Educate themselves, get into support groups, practice self-care. Those are the three best things

you can do. Educate yourself so you understand the illness. So you have a concept of what it is,

what kind of medications are used for their particular illness? How can it affect them? What are

the side effects? Get into support groups just to support yourself and get experience and hear

the stories from other people because for one thing, that'll let you know you're not the only one.

And, you know, the thing about being a parent with a mentally ill child is that sometimes you feel,

so isolated, you feel as though you're the only one. But not only that, there's a lot of self-blame

involved. You know, you ask yourself, well, what did I do? What's wrong with me that I passed this

down? And all things just happen. My bipolarism and my family is genetic, okay? And I didn't have

anything to do with me getting it or him getting it, but we have to deal with it. So that's part of the

where the support system comes in. And third is self-care. Understand that you can't run yourself

ragged to take care of anyone and think you're going to do them any good. So take time off, do self-care,

get in therapy yourself. That's another tremendous asset. If you're a caretaker of a child or anyone

with a mental or any illness, get in therapy, get into a place where you can top those things out

because they will come up and they will build up. So just to reiterate, it's going to be self-care,

it's going to be educating yourself and it's going to be support groups.

So when you get a therapist, one of the things to expect and a lot of it, maybe this was the same

with you, a lot of therapists will actually screen for that in their application process. They will

ask that at some point for medical diagnosis like that because it does change what they do for treatment,

how they treat you in therapy. Right. Especially in terms of medication, because I have to get blood

work every month, just because the medication I'm on and my health issues may affect my internal

organs or something like that. So yeah, they really, and they get a lot better about it in the past

few years, really kind of coincide in your physical health, your mental health and making sure

that you're on the right medications that have cost you as few side effects as possible.

Now as far as a single parent situation, is it helpful to have an advocate that works with that

specific situation? As far as being a single parent, what's really important is to advocate for yourself,

advocate for your child, but have resources in place, have your therapist on speed now, have the

school counselor on speed now. Try to surround yourself with people that really care about you in the

child, that aren't going to bring any drama to it. Being a single parent is really about who you

surround yourself with. You really is, especially when you're dealing with a child with a mental illness

or another health crisis. So, and one thing I'm seeing with a lot of people that are also

pairs there with mental ill children, they did have a support system, so that affected them to

their detriment. But it's important to build that support system and build your advocate team,

having to have a plan for when someone does get sick to go inpatient, have a plan if anything

happens. Treat it like it's a fire hazard. And that's really how you have to address your

mental illness. You have to have things already in place that you can do, should something go wrong.

What role did faith play in helping you just to maintain your stability and helping you to just

survive from day to day? Add a tremendous effect for a long time. I ran from God. I ran from spirituality

up until about six years ago when I decided to get off the cocaine, get off the drugs and try to fix

myself and heal myself. I began to talk to God, but God lives in me. So, I spent all my time

praying. I do all that, but I believe that my faith is important to me because I have my own personal

relationship with God that's not dictated or predetermined by anyone else or where they're standards.

And until I learned that, something was missing in my relationship with God. But when I learned

it's my relationship and it didn't have to look like your relationship and it didn't have to be

like your relationship in this unique thing to me and my spirituality in my heart,

that's when I found a great sense of peace. A lot of times we think that we are alone with

dealing with some of the stuff and you're absolutely right. Faith looks different for everybody and

it should. My faith should not be yours or it's not really faith. Walk us through that process of how

God really transformed your life, specific things that he changed in you.

Starting on the path of healing myself, realizing that therapy could be beneficial to me,

taking a lot of accountability for things in my life that I was the cause of. Before we try to heal

or recover in life, we have to look at the mirror and acknowledge what we are responsible for

in terms of our lives being at that point where we need to recover. And the reason I say that is

there's often a way of doing things where we put it on everybody else. Well, Max White did this and

my brother did this and well, first you have to look at the mirror first before you can hold those

people accountable. And one thing that God allowed me to do was allow me to accept the fact that even

though I'm holding those people accountable, I can't expect them to respond the way I want them to.

I may want closure, but maybe what I got is just what I got in terms of closure. So my relationship

with God taught me to accept a lot of things, taught me to kind of harden my heart a little bit,

not be so trusting, you know, and a lot of that comes with faith. I think for me the biggest

game changer was forgiveness when I really learned to forgive. And that doesn't just limit to human

beings. You can forgive situations, circumstances that were put on you, deserving or doesn't

deserve me. It doesn't make any difference, but there is a power in forgiveness and one of the

greatest definitions that I heard about forgiveness is that it's like walking into a courtroom

and you have the gaville and you decide you're done. You don't want to judge anymore and you walk

up to God and you hand in the gaville and you're just saying, I'm done here. You judge. And that there is

a freedom in that. I wonder if that's a little bit of a taste of kind of what you went through spiritually.

Yeah, yeah, learning learning to trust God and have faith in their faces built over time.

It's not like you wake up one day and you talk to God, oh, okay, I have faith. No, it's built over time

and it has to be tested otherwise not faith because faith without being tested is nothing but obedience

and dogma. And that's not what you want to believe, you want to have faith. You want to really

believe you don't want to do something just because, okay, the Bible says I should do this, so I'll do

this and not feel it. And I think this is what a lot of so-called Christians do is that they

quote, Bible, scripture, all day, when it comes to the real work or the real living with God, they don't

do it. They can't do it. They don't know how to do it. They know how to make it look good, but they

don't know how to do it. So, you know, it's not how loud you shout and poop is not how how how how

hard you bang your 10 brain is when you're long and going through it. How earnestly do you talk to God?

What are some resources for dads facing bipolar disorder? My nonprofit meta association, you

can reach as a 2148106518 as far as resources. It's not really a lot. There's really something right now

and resources for men and things to help men because I think for a long time, we've ignored ourselves

and we've been ignored, especially black men, especially. So we're looking at ways to build resources

to where we can't have things to where we can't get the help we need without having to wait on someone

to do it for us. So, you know, the greatest resource is just going to be, you know, just hunting out

different nonprofits, different men's groups. Facebook is as good support groups. Just try to make your

way right now while we try to build up what we need as men for ourselves, just like the women have

to support themselves. We have to build ourselves. No one's going to do that for us.

Just to make things easier, if you go to thefatherhoodchallenge.com, that's thefatherhoodchallenge.com. If you go to

this episode, look right below the episode description, I'm going to have the organization that George

started. I'm going to have his organization posted right below the episode description for your convenience.

George, as we close, what is your challenge to that dad listening now?

I challenge you to grow. I challenge you to be patient with yourself, to treat yourself like a seed

that you have to water, that you have to cultivate, that you have to nurture, to get the, to reap the

harvest that you want to reap from yourself. The thing you have to keep in mind when you plan to see

this dark is wet, it's cold, it's unpleasant, but this part of the growth process, you have to understand

the same process that we go through as men. And find support systems, find healthy ways to deal with

things, find positive things, try to keep your heart young, especially your parents, spend time with

your kids as much as you can, just try to live life, but try to live with a sense of purpose.

And even if you're not a believer, believe in something, something other than yourself,

and try to follow that. And once you define your purpose, pursue it with your whole heart,

regardless of anything. And I think that's our purpose. This means to have our purpose in

and pursue it. It's not to sit up during getting married and pay bills, it's not to do this, it's not to

do this, but to pursue a purpose, not a dream, not a ambition, because dreams are temporary, dreams of

fleeting. You can achieve a dream in one day and then what? What is your purpose? Because the purpose

is one thing that cares you throughout your whole life, part of my purpose is being a father,

and I'm proud and happy to be born. So the overall theme here is that every, every father, every

dad must know and find their identity and purpose. That is the number one priority, without that you

are not complete without that you don't know who you are. Yes, George, it has been absolutely an

honor having you on the father and challenge. Thank you so much for sharing your story with dad.

Thank you, thank everyone, Matthew, too. I really appreciate you all taking the time to listen to me.

I appreciate you doing nothing but blessings in the very best.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fatherhood Challenge. If you would like to contact us,

listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information

about the Fatherhood Challenge, please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com. That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.