David Brent Dowlen | Running from God, Hitting Rock Bottom, & Answering the Call to Experience Healing

EPISODE OVERVIEW: 
Son of a domestic missionary, this week’s guest talks about becoming a sociopath. How he could completely divide his emotions in any scenario and live two separate lives. By moving often while growing up and experiencing different things, a dichotomy in his life was being developed. Listen or watch now to see how the military, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicidal tendencies lead him to rock bottom. More importantly though, how he found his way out, and we can too. All this and more in this week’s episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the David Brent Dowlen story!

“One of the hardest paces to be is in the waiting time between the waves of life.” – David Brent Dowlen

GUEST BIO: 

My name is Brent and I am the Host of The Fallible Man Podcast and a YouTuber. I have taught and lead my whole life. I am a preacher’s kid and a former youth minister who has dedicated a large portion of his life to working with teens in some capacity. Over the years I have seen a growing need for positive male role models as the idea of masculinity and the value of men has been skewed. I started The Fallible Man because my wife and I have seen the need to affect men in a positive way. To encourage them and support them in their own personal journey’s to become the men the can be. I started it for my daughter’s and my nieces to help men to grow to be someone worthy of them one day. I have spoken to small groups and large audiences over the years as well as writing blogs, bulletins, copy and educational documentation. I have been married for 20 years and have 2 young daughters who are at the root of all I do.

EPISODE PROUDLY SPONSORED BY: 

• Hanging Out with David Pasqualone & Friends Podcast

SHOW NOTES, GUEST CONTACT INFO, SPECIAL OFFERS, & OTHER RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Guest Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thefallibeman.com
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFallibleMan

Guest Special Offer(s):

• Free Ebook at https://thefallibleman.ck.page/

Resources Mentioned: 

• The Fallible Man Podcast

Transcript

David Brent Dowlen | Running from God, Hitting Rock Bottom, & Answering the Call to Experience Healing

Hello friends. Welcome to this week's episode of the remarkable people podcast, the David Brent Dowlen story. In this episode, Brent takes us through his remarkable journey. He starts as the son of a domestic missionary. He talks about becoming a sociopath where he can completely divide his emotions.

From the scenario he's in how he can live two separate lives, how he grows up moving and experiencing different things. But there's really a dichotomy in his [00:01:00] being. Then he talks about going into the military, his journey there of alcoholism, drug abuse, suicidal tendencies, and then how he gets out and not only talks about how he was running from.

How he hit rock bottom, but how he found his way out. And we can too. So all this and more in this week's episode of the remarkable people podcast, the David Brent dowel and story. So grab your pen and paper unless you're driving, take notes and then most important, don't forget to apply them to life. So at this time let's meet our guest friend and remarkable here.

David Brent dowel and.

INTERVIEW E86 David Brent Dowlen Running from God Hitting Rock Bottom abd Answering the Call to Experience Healing.mp4: Hey, Brent, how are you today? David's going to see again, man has been too long, way too long. I love talking to you in our last conversation and our listeners. I just kind of prep them about who [00:02:00] you are and what you're doing. So they're super excited to hear your story. So at this time, my friend, let's just jump in.

We're going to go through the past the present and then we'll transition into the future. So where were you born? What was your upbringing like, then bring us through any highs, lows, or in-betweens your life that you feel led to share. And then if you can, we're also going to break it down into the practical steps.

So not only is this what bran achieved or what he overcame and learned, but this is the practical steps of how you did it. So we can to sound good. Fair enough. We can do this. Awesome man. So where are you from? Let's start with that. Where were you born and raised? I laugh about that because I was born in ADA, Oklahoma, but I only lived there, I think maybe the first nine months of my life.

And it was kind of an accident. I was born there. My parents were getting ready to transition back to Texas cause my, my [00:03:00] whole family's native Texan and they just didn't get the transition done as fast from where they were at the time as they had planned on. And so I'm, I'm like the one-off and the family.

I'm, I'm an Okie, but my brother tells me it's okay. Cause that's just north of. Mine's a texting, right? So, yeah, I was born in Oklahoma, but I don't actually say I'm from anywhere because my father was a domestic, domestic missionary, a minister, and he worked predominantly with small churches. So I have actually between that, and later years of my life, I've literally lived from coast to coast.

We were talking about it when you and I talked before. I mean, I've lived down in Florida by where you're at. I've lived in Virginia. I live currently reside in Washington and had been back and forth here several times. I went to high school in Wyoming. I graduated from somewhere. I've never been in a Mississippi.

So where I'm from as kind of my kids like to tease me, actually, because it's left [00:04:00] me with this weird trait of, I don't have an accent, but I pick up every accent I'm around. So last night I was watching, fighting with my family, with my kids and I sound started sounding very British throughout the rest of the night, because the longer I'm exposed to an accent, the more I pick it up.

So I don't actually have my own accent because of it. Yeah. You learn to adapt and overcome to your surroundings, whether it's conscious or not. Right. It's and I don't have any control over. I don't try and do it. I actually get a little self-conscious. People were like what's with the accent. What accent you've got this.

Oh, yeah, I was just watching this. Right. So w because my dad was a domestic missionary, we moved around a lot and I'm actually grateful for it. I was very when I was younger, I was very upset about it because we had to move [00:05:00] and I left a lot of friends behind, over and over again, had to start over, over and over again, but it gave me a lot of exposure that I've learned as an adult.

A lot of people don't get we have a lot of very fine cultures inside the United States. People think of it as one place, but really there's just a ton of different cultures domestically inside of the United States. And people don't even realize that they are as different as going to a different country sometimes.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think there's at least six, maybe more major regions of the U S and everywhere you go has its own mindset and culture. Oh yeah. I am down to the way they talk, the foods they eat the way they live their day to day life. So it's actually very, in hindsight, it was a good upbringing because it gave me a lot of exposure and made me very capable of adapting to where I am.

But we went to high school. Our went to all over the place, like I said, [00:06:00] Missouri, Wyoming. I loved Wyoming. It was during very formative years of my life. I have a lot of fond memories. Wyoming definitely was cowboy culture. I actually worked on a ranch when I was in high school. Legit like worked on a ranch pushing cattle on horseback gun, lasts out the whole nine yards.

And so I've had all these adventures moving around that have really shaped me, but I was also a really klutzy kid. Like I have really bad sinuses. And so I've racked up more than my fair share of injuries. Over the years, my, my head is quite lovely. I've got some closeups on my website. It's very topographical.

It looks like a topographical map. The places

I've racked up easily over a dozen concussions over the years. Probably way more than that. Those are just diagnosed, [00:07:00] but yeah, moving around gave me this whole different perspective on life. You know, I don't know how, how detailed you want me to get in some of this? No, no. I mean, there's people from over 90 countries listening to this, some get it, some have been there, done that.

Got the t-shirt some have only lived in one spot their entire life. So let's just break this section of your story down quickly and make it easy. You've said some of the benefits of moving a lot and relocate. Is, you know, you made friends, you learn how to make friends quickly and easily adapt to the environment.

You talked about how it accelerated your maturity and your growth. You used different words, but that's, I believe what you were expressing. What were some of the things that were hard, but that you learned to overcome? Really, it was very difficult to one of the benefits is I'm very tight with my family and that's because that was the constant in my [00:08:00] life. So we have a very close knit family and picked up. I picked up an adopted brother along the trip, but one of the drawbacks was I actually I tend to keep people at an arms length. I have to now work to let people into my inner circle.

Because as, as a kid, it's really hard to process having to say goodbye over and over again and making those friends. And then the reality is when you move around a lot, you know, I've heard it said, if you, if you can count your close friends on one hand at the end of your lifetime, you're blessed. You have a really rich life to be able to number five, super close friends.

But as a kid, you don't quite understand that, right? So leaving and starting over, over and over again has its traumatic downs. I started having really hard [00:09:00] issues connecting with people sometimes because I knew I was going to turn around and say goodbye in two or three years. And I also knew that no matter what they said, the majority of those people, I would never speak to.

Again, I had so many friends over the years that said, Hey, you know what? We'll write you, we'll call you this, this won't come between us. And I never talked to him or saw from again, I might talk to him once or twice, but the truth is you go your separate ways, like right. Life keeps moving forward. And so it got to where it was very difficult to let people close.

I tended to put up a facade and keep people at a safe distance because I knew I was leaving again. It was just the way life was. Yeah. And this was before cell phones and internet, when you and I grew up that didn't exist. I mean, we maybe had phone calls and we saw long distance charges. So it wasn't as convenient to [00:10:00] keep a relationship going long distance.

I, I paid a lot of long distance bills over the years which is a funny concept in the modern age. Yeah. People are like what? Like some people have no idea what we're talking about long distance was we used to have phones on the wall and sometimes we actually call an operator or four, one, one to get someone's phone number in our town or in another town, and then they'd connect us.

And if it was outside of a little geographic region near where we live, they charge us per minute of very expensive rate, like a dollar dollar back then was a lot more than now. So, I mean, I guess equivalency when we were kids to now has at least $5 a minute, maybe as high as 10. So it's pretty pricey.

Yeah. I racked up my wife and I rack up a lot of phone bills before we got married, but that's farther along in the story. So yeah, there are those definitely those drawbacks. You learn to be very [00:11:00] superficial to protect yourself which has taken a lot of years for me to get past, to be honest. I mean, I'm 42 now it's taken a lot of years for me to get past that where I just kept people out here and I'm still very slow to let people into my inner circle.

So that was a drawback for sure. So is that something you want to discuss now? How you overcame that? Because it's natural. Like you said, it's not even conscious as a child to keep people on the outside because you don't want to let them in and be hurt you don't, you know, you're leaving. So when you leave, it hurts more.

If you care about them, so you keep them up. So, do you want to discuss now tips and tricks and tools, how you overcame that? Or do you want to wait to further in your story? Well, I'll say it's still a process, so it's up to you. I'm still really in process on that. That's one of the last guards I'm really trying to let down in my life is letting people in and I made progress on it.

And so we can definitely look at that insight and we can do that now, or lay there in podcasts, whatever you want to [00:12:00] do, man. Yeah, let's do it later in the podcast, people are sticking around. We get a lot of listeners to go right through the end. So if you have walls in your life, stick around and Brent's going to teach you how to help bring him down.

And he's learning too. So maybe you can write him and help him. So we help each other. Right. Okay. So pickups, you're moving around a lot. Your fathers are domestic missionary. What else was it like growing up? Like what, were there any lessons learned that you were really like, you know, this was tough or I really learned a lot that I'm using today in life.

I learned to communicate with people really effectively along the way, because there was so much change and so much transition. I had to get really good at learning to communicate with people from the get, go, getting people to give you that chance, right? When you're new, when you're different, when you're coming from outside their world, take some very forward motion on your part.

And so it, it [00:13:00] really made me increase my communication skills early on and my interpersonal community. I also got really good at just adapting my perspective along the way, because of all those transitions. And a lot of that, because I was very blessed to have a really amazing family where we're all very tight, still.

I have three siblings and they are still the, some of the closest people in the world to me. My mom actually lives with my wife and I and our kids since my dad passed on. So there there's a lot of pickups, but there were a lot of a lot of physicalities overcome. I damaged my knee when I was still, I think 12, I started wrestling in junior high and had a bad wrestling partner, really tore up my knee.

So at 12 years old, I started developing [00:14:00] severe knee pain. My dad would actually have to pick me up and carry me into the house after wrestling practice. I'd tough it out walking to the car in front of the guys, but my dad would actually have to pick me up and carry it to me in the house. And I'd spend the next, the rest of the night was just my, my knee ice and stuff like that.

That's funny you say that because like in anything jujitsu, any kind of martial arts wrestling, you don't get hurt when you're competing with high quality individuals. It's the people who don't know what they're doing to injure you and I had the same thing happened in high school. To my knowledge to date, I had zero knee problems and this kid karate chopped the side of my leg when he shot in, I sprawled out, blew my knee out.

And then after that I had both knees go out like over 10 times total. So it's crazy how one injury can set you in a path. And you were 12 when that started. Yeah. I, I had a partner, the only guy who wrestled in my weight class, on my team, [00:15:00] he had his single like take downs for bad and he would just jam his shoulder into the side of my knee as hard as possible every time.

And you know, in wrestling practice, right. You just, it's repetitive. You keep doing it over and over again. Keep drilling that same move. And so you, you might switch left knee or right knee, but you keep hitting that same takedown over and over and over. And he would just jam his shoulder into the inside of my knee every time.

And it, it added up for sure. I wrestled in sixth grade and I actually had to quit the team in seventh grade because my knee had gotten so bad. I just couldn't couldn't do anymore. Yeah, it's crazy. And he wasn't doing it on purpose. He just didn't have talent. Is that what you're saying? It wasn't conscious.

He was trying to hurt you. Right? That would be my opinion. We, we got along outside of there. So that, that would be my opinion. This is just his understanding of how it was supposed to go was that's what you did and I'm [00:16:00] sorry. So yeah. In school, you're wrestling. You're 12 years old. You're moving around a lot and you already have this part of your life.

Kind of like, I can't do this anymore. So taken away almost as a kid, you look at it. Where do you go from there? Brain? That one, I actually, that was not my big problem there. I was the fat kid. I grew a foot between my sixth and seventh grade year. Like it was incredibly horrendously painful summer because I grew a foot in three months.

Yes. Muscle cramps, spasms, all that. Right. And with my knees already achy, but I did the Butterball thing. Like I was, I was the chubby kid who was pretty hefty and then I shot up a foot, but I was still pretty heavy. I mean, at sixth grade I was wrestling at like 1 75. I didn't look super [00:17:00] fat, but I was a heavy kid.

So I was already picked on a lot. I was accepted on the field because I could perform, like, I was a starter in all of our sports. And so that got me some acceptance, but I also got a lot of re ridicule. Right. They call me big D it wasn't just because I was bigger than they were. It was just, I was bigger than they were.

Right. And that actually started building to a lot of anger because I felt like I just couldn't get away. Even if I, as I leaned out a little bit and got more athletic and junior high. Seventh and eighth grade, I started getting just really angry because I felt like I couldn't ever get out of that fat kid status.

And that's just who I was. It actually had a big role to do with us moving at the end of my eighth grade year is my parents knew I needed a new start. I could not get out of that there. And I was, I was coming home every day and like chopping wood and I had pallet strung up [00:18:00] on the side of the house and a big, like, you know, heavy steel pipe.

And I just sit there and shatter pallets. I'd string them up on strings and just sit there and break the wood over because I was so angry all the time. My dad was trying to keep me from taking out on other people. And so yeah, by between my knees getting injured. So I had a drop-off passport and trying to just outlive the fat kid status.

Junior high was a little rough, you know I made it, but yeah. Now did you learn in high school how to overcome this, or again, is that later in your story and we'll touch back on it? The white thing is something that I've always started with because I'm a bigger kid. I did learn to start paying more attention to what I was eating in high school.

I also, part of it was just, I lost a lot of the extra chubbiness by eighth grade, but I couldn't get out of that shadow. Sometimes you have to have [00:19:00] that change of plan. Right. Sometimes you can't start over where you are and get a clean slate. That's one of the things I really feel for some of these people who have not moved around is they've never truly know what I was like to have a blank slate.

Yeah. And just to clarify for individuals, you haven't had that opportunity. There is a difference in brand. I think you can expand on this or agree or disagree running from your problems. Never works. You problems catch up to you in the worst, but reconciling where you're at and getting a fresh start.

That's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And a great solution many times. So is that what you're referring to? You had a fresh start, a blank slate, but you weren't running, you are just understanding, growing, learning, and then saying, okay, this is how it is, but now I'm going to restart here with more confidence and not take so much crap.

Absolutely. You know, my parents kind of proactively helped me [00:20:00] into that, right? They, they saw their son growing up. They saw me making different choices and acting different ways. They seen the physical changes, but I couldn't stay with people who were boxing me into this idea because no matter what changes I was making in my life, I was still, this kid is like, I joke about the fact that, you know, my brother, my brother.

49 I'm 42. Yeah. My brother is 49. He's seven years older than me. And when he looks at me, he tries to treat me with the respect of an adult, but my brother also sees the 11 and 12 year old boy and always will because his life branched vaguely because in a large way, because of the age difference about the time that I was going into sixth grade, my brother left the Navy.

And so his life with me in a full-time basis was over. And so [00:21:00] I'm always kind of in that place with him. And my brother treats me really well. You know, we, we get along great. I love my brother. He's one of my heroes, but he has to work sometimes because he still wants to see the little brother instead of the man sometimes just because, you know, he's always going to be my older brother, right?

My mom is 70 years old. She stands in the middle of my chest. I'm always her baby. Right. She respects me is as the man I am, but I'm always her baby. This is, but you don't get that with other people. Sometimes, sometimes you kind of get pigeonholed into one idea and so you can make your changes, but sometimes you just have to go somewhere else to get away from the people that are keeping you from being able to become who you want to be a hundred percent.

I agree with you completely. And then do you find yourself also to this day? I wouldn't say my self perception [00:22:00] is what other people see. So if I wrote down a description of who I am, I don't think it, like now I'm learning that it doesn't accurately reflect who I am. And it's definitely not who other people see because I had this childhood instances like you and you get this negativity that seemed jams in your head and he wants you to believe the lie.

So how did you start break? And even if we jumped around the story a little bit, we'll go back to when you moved here and you're in high school, but to help our listeners who have this false image, it could be false image of himself as a whole. It could be just a false physical image. I've known like people who are fit and they look at themselves in the mirror and they still see the fat kid.

So what did you do to work yourself, to reprogram your brain? I know it's always a work in progress, but what are some of the steps you took that our listeners can do to get started healing? Yeah, I feel like I had an unfair advantage when it [00:23:00] comes to this subject because of the family familial support I had.

And for me, I'll always go back to family. Right? Family is such a huge thing for me. I have a very loving family, so my parents were very supportive. And so my parents always saw me in my best light. Whether I saw myself that way or not. So, you know, finding somebody in your life that sees the best version of you is something that everybody really needs in their life.

Right? You talked about those four or five people you absolutely need in your life. Just I mean, there, there are four or five critical people that you just absolutely need in your life. And one of them is that friend who sees the best version of you, period. You know, I've had some friends, I even had clients.

Like, [00:24:00] I wish I could help you see yourself through my eyes because you're still stuck in the past on this. And I've seen the progress. I wish I could get you to see yourself through my eyes. And we all need that friend who sees the best because having that support gives you a stable place to work from even when, when you don't believe in yourself, having somebody in your life who sees the best version of you, no matter how you're seeing yourself is a huge benefit.

But part of it is to start to get out of that. Right? You have to decide that you had the power to write your story. If you want to get out of that negative perception of how you see yourself, You have to a take ownership first, you got to take ownership and decide, Hey, I am in control. I am the final say in how this looks for my [00:25:00] life.

And once you start to take the ownership of your life, you can then go, this is how I want to see myself. This is what I want to be. And you can start mapping that out in your head are on paper, if you need to, but you can start mapping out that image of this is what I want to see and start taking the steps to get there.

Right? But you got to come from a place. I have ownership of it first. This is my life. This is my story. I'm the one who writes that good, bad. I'm the one who decides that. And then you can start to look at where you want to go and start making those steps and go, okay, well, this is how I was perceived or how I perceived myself.

How do I change that? Do I need to learn how to change my relationship with food? Do I need to learn to change my relationship with exercise? Do I need [00:26:00] to learn to look for a different kind of relationship in my life? Right? Do I need to find better friends who make me better instead of friends that drag me down, but it all starts with ownership and then deciding where you want to.

And from there, you can start to unbox yourself. And there's always going to be some things that you're going to have to learn to forgive yourself for and say, yes, I was this right. I was that fat kid. I don't want to be that anymore, but I'm okay with that. That was a portion of my life. And I've got to move forward from that.

That's not who I am. That doesn't define me. That's not the future of my story. That was a chapter. I don't know if that answers the question. No, I think it makes a lot of sense. And again, we're looking just to get people, they see your [00:27:00] results and you being transparent. You're still on the journey. So it's how did you get started?

So hopefully they can do, and I believe everything you said is true. So for our listeners, they're going to see what connects with them. And they're going to run within, like our slogan says, we don't want to just listen to your great content. We want to do it repeated each day. So we can have a great life in this world and attorney to come.

So working on that mental image everyday, like if you like, you know, if someone heard I'm a P you're a piece of crap you lose, are you fat? So you know, all these things that you and I heard growing up, we could be in the best shape. Of everyone around us. And we still wake up in the morning, see a fat kid in the mirror.

So the mental process, it's not overnight. Sometimes people have a and it's boom. You know, like it does happen. I had an epiphany in my life. How was introvert till I was in my junior, senior year, took a trip to California, saw the world was different than Milford, Massachusetts. [00:28:00] And after that, I was like, I don't care what anybody thinks.

I care about God things and what I think. And the rest is gravy. If it works out and that changed my life. So there are apifany moments, but typically it takes time. And with that deep pain, sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it takes a year. So thank you for sharing your journey and how you're, how you recover and how you still are.

I think you hit on a, an important factor there and I care what God thinks, and that was very foundational and it has been very foundational in my life. I really, I don't know how some people transpire through the difficulties in life without a faith are without that relationship with God. I can't imagine going through some of the things I've gone through in my life without having God in the base layer of everything.

Right. I just can't imagine what my life I actually, I, there are a few people who have imagined what my life would be like without that guidance. And [00:29:00] that is just foundationally. I don't know. I could have gotten through some of the struggles cause I've been in some dark places. And God has always been at the foundation of coming around on that.

so you're in high school, your parents see the pain you're in your dad decides to wrap up the, see what junior high, junior high. So he sees opinion. And one thing you said that we didn't touch touch on there's people who falsely believe that if you destruct things and if you box and hit a heavy bag, oh, that's so carnal and that's so bad.

No way. If you take your aggression out on an inanimate object in the right context, that's the best thing I think you can do. You're focusing your energy, you're focusing your attention. You're venting. So then when you're done and exhausted, you left it all in the ringer, you left it all in the bag or you left it all breaking those pallets [00:30:00] you're done.

And you walk away with a burden off. Is that how you felt? Because that's how I feel. Oh, whale on a bag to the point. I've knocked it off the hinge a few times, but when I'm done, I'm like, okay, I'm done. My dad actually introduced me to weightlifting during that time period as well, where I met. Former golden gloves boxer who taught me how to hit a heavy bag the right way, because he saw me just over there, wailing on the bag.

He's like, son, you're going to, you're going to break yourself, break your wrist. Yeah. You can easily break a wrist for life. And you know, he, he asked my dad, cause my dad was there with me and Gabe got permission and put some gloves on me and actually taught me how to punch correctly. But I think it kept me out of between that.

And like, and I went from breaking pallets to, I started splitting wood something a little more constructive than leaving shards of wood all over, all over the lawn. But I think that's honestly what kept me out of more fights. I ha I had a [00:31:00] couple of fights that fizzled out, you know, junior high fights, right?

Come on, man. You know, everybody yelling at each other big group of kids fight, fight, fight, right? All that nonsense where, you know, basically only one guy ends up taking a swing. Maybe two, maybe two blows are thrown. I was like, oh, that's a fight. But it kept me from taking out on the kids who upset me.

I've always been very aggressive. It's part of my nature and is something I had to learn. My dad taught me early on. It's like, you're going to have to learn to control this. You are going to be a big guy. You're going to physically intimidate people and you're going to have to control that physicality that you're going to have.

And so. You know, he gave me outlets. He provided that outlet for me. He didn't like the whole shattering pallets, but until he found a better solution for me, he kept supplying me with pallets. Right. And until he gave me other options to [00:32:00] get around that, but it kept me focused on the fact that I was letting the aggression out, but I wasn't hurting anybody.

And I think our, our movement towards, oh, that's not okay. Actually has a lot to do with some of the problems we've seen in schools. Right. We've seen school shootings, school shootings. One of the thing when I was in school people weren't I went to high school in Wyoming. We had guns in our trucks out in the parking lot.

And that was okay because we were all going to the ranch to work afterwards. It was just part of life. We were con guns were a tool and no one was worried about someone coming in and shooting up the school. But we all have very physical habits and jobs and I'm in a high, junior high. That was I wasn't going to go around and beat up everybody in the school or shoot somebody because I was getting that out.

When I came to school, I didn't have that demon. I was fighting at the time because I had [00:33:00] worked at all out on the bag. Yeah. 100%. The Bible says be angry and send. When you're beating the bag, you're not sending you're, you're emptying yourself. You're working through the therapy physically, emotionally, spiritually.

You're getting it out. So I'm a big, strong believer in hitting the heavy bag. Cause if I'm hitting the heavy bag, I'm not hanging the guy who pissed me off. Right. The blunt mixer, that therapy for me sometimes. Yeah. And that's it. You can, you can like underwater basket weaving. I really don't care what you like, but do something to get the aggression out in a healthy way.

So that's awesome. So pick up in high school, you guys move, it's a, where do you move at that point to, to central Wyoming? I went to high school in Riverton, Wyoming in Fremont county, which is larger than Rhode Island with twice as many horses as people and three times as many antelope as horses. It's one of the only [00:34:00] places I've ever lived, where you can drive an hour and not see another soul.

It is, it is a cowboy town. It is natural gas and ranches. In fact, all the adults. That's, that's why I said we all have guns in the trucks and stuff like that. Cause the kids were the ones who ran town during the day or during the afternoon stuff after school because parents were out, either on the ranch are in the natural gas fields are going farther south to like the uranium mines and stuff like that.

And so like all the, all the businesses in town. We're high schoolers as managers and stuff like that. Everywhere I went, it was like, oh, Hey Cindy, Hey, so-and-so, you know, I, I knew everybody who worked everywhere because I went to school with all of them. And that was a very different, like, it freaked me out.

When we moved there, the day we rolled into town, my best friend were coming from Northern [00:35:00] Washington over on the coast. I was in Skagit valley as far the north in Seattle, but I lived in that area before, but we were pulling into town and my best friend had driven down with us and me and her looking out the window.

And we're like, dad, dad, dad call the police because we saw this kid, walk it into a store with a gun, like big guns slung over his shoulder. Right. We're like, dad, call the cops. They're gonna, they're gonna roll somebody. My dad just died laughing. He was like, no son, he's probably just going to get a gun worked on.

I was like, now that's not what's going to happen. Of course, thankfully I was wrong, but it was such a different culture shock from being out here on the west coast. And you know, before I went to sketch valley, I've lived in town where, I mean, we had major gang leaders in our church. They brought their gangs to church with them.

Like our church was a [00:36:00] neutral zone in Tacoma. And so I grew up around gang bangers. I was used to gang violence. Thankfully. I never spent a lot of time in it, but I, it was common. It was around it was a culture I was very familiar with. And so, you know, Wyoming was such a culture shock to go to this cow town that like was legitimately at cow town.

There were guys drive around, they got trucks, they got dogs of X truck. They got sidearms on their legs. Like, you know, gun holders, I'd only ever seen like a movie. And so that was a huge culture shock there. Very cool place. Yeah. So did that free you up to kind of see the world's different and I can be me.

How did that affect you growing up? It actually had took a really weird turn for me because so I'm, I'm 42. As we talked about, I was, the nineties was a very big part of my life. [00:37:00] Right. I grew up, I was listening to Nirvana when they were garage band. Right. You know, I w I was in that very influenced area by the birth of grunge and the Seattle bands and stuff like that.

And so when I went to Wyoming, I showed up for freshman orientation and I'm wearing like Levi's jeans, silver tab jeans that are sagging with combat boot style shoes. I've got. Flannel tied around my waist and a white t-shirt and my dad's old army jacket on. And John Lynn is on glasses, but I walked in like 10 minutes late here.

How big two at this point? Like six you're a big boy. I'm six foot at this point. I'm a 180 5 or so. And so I walk in 10 minutes late with the principal addressing the incoming freshmen [00:38:00] class, who I knew nobody with except for one or two kids from my church. And so I walked in, it was instantly a scene because I'm interrupting and I dress very differently than everybody else around me.

And so, you know, not wanting to waste the attention or the scene, I strolled across the bleachers in front of everybody interrupted the entire thing, walk to my own section of the bleachers, stomped, halfway up and just flop down. A girl from my church. I started dating over the course of the summer and like, I got an earful from her cause her best friend's little sister was in a freshman class and she heard all about the spectacle I caused.

But from that day on, everybody caught that I had moved from Washington and you know, you've traveled enough, you know? Right. If you live in Florida, you must be from Orlando or Miami. Right. Because that's all that's in Florida. Right? [00:39:00] If you live, if you live in Washington, you're from Seattle, it doesn't matter where you live in Alaska.

You're from Seattle. You know, most people don't even realize there is a Northern California. It's incredible. The mindset people have. Yeah. And did you notice to Olympia, to Seattle totally liberal for the most part, the rest of the states completely conservative. Yep. It's a, it's a limp to smokey point at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's been legislation put up that people want to separate Washington into two states so they can actually have a state that's functional and then let the liberals die off because they're crazy nuts. So what type of legislation it was all is gathering signatures. Yeah. I signed all those.

Yeah. I remember I lived out there when Dino Rossi ran against Christine, Greg guar, and she stole that election. Had people recount three times the ballots, every time she got more votes and then he's like, [00:40:00] okay, I want to recount. And she said, oh, what is it a Mulligan? Like when I play golf with my husband, I mean, completely liberal out of their mind mindset.

And if I'm offending you, sorry. Tough freaking luck because yeah. You know what I'm talking about, it was totally stolen and listen rights, right. Wrongs, wrong. The best person should win. The best person should be in all. And that place you have Olympia to Seattle. It's completely liberal. The rest of the state is sane and conservative.

And just the shenanigans that happen are like what we're seeing today in America, completely out of people's mind stuff. We wouldn't even imagine what happened 10 years ago. And now it's mainstream. So if you haven't seen Seattle, don't judge the whole state of Washington based on that infrastructure.

Yeah. It's like San Francisco and Pelosi complete garbage, but the rest of California is gorgeous. Right. I actually love [00:41:00] San Francisco, but I'm just saying the politics is garbage. Yeah. It would break your heart. Seattle would break your heart, whether they've done to it. Oh, I moved in 2007 and it was still a gorgeous city.

Is it? Say it again is seriously not even safe to go downtown at this point. Yeah. That's just insane. And famous stores that have been in downtown Seattle forever are closing their doors and leaving Seattle. It's a fish fish market's still open or is that closed Pike's market? I don't know. I know it's still there.

I don't know how well they're running, cause I just won't go over there at this point. But places that are historic, like downtown square, red square and stuff like that, there's there's homeless. And to everywhere there are drug deals going down in the street, they're passing out needles, passing out needles.

So the drug dealer to the drug. W we'll go on the hang. I have another podcast hanging out with David passcode and friends. We'll we'll shelf this conversation manual. We'll have that show, but let's [00:42:00] focus on your story. Cause my blood purse has grown up and I've taken an extra blood pressure med here.

But to wrap that up, listen, if you were supporting liberal politicians, liberal, meaning they support everything basically against God and the Bible and sanity. I'm sorry, please open your eyes. It's like right now we're recording. It's like March 21st, 20, 22. I might be a day off, but fuel prices are out of control.

The economy is out of control. The borders out of control. The ports are out of control and the cash price has been going up steadily for entire year. Coincidentally, since this administration took office, right? And somebody said, oh, it's cause of Russian conflict the other day. I'm like, do you read, watch TV?

Do you ever think maybe to use this thing called a calendar I'm like gas price was going up way before the Russian conflict. Plus the Russian Ukraine conflict is complete crap. We can't believe anything. We see on TV [00:43:00] because Ukraine, isn't a bunch of angels. Like they're making it out. Not that I advocate what's happening to their people.

The Ukrainian people are good people. The Russian people are good people. American people are good people, but the scumbag elitist in office who care about no one, but them. Are running us all in circles. It's like the war and COVID to figure a figure eight. We're never getting out of the war on COVID.

Cause it makes them too much money. Yeah. We could go off a long on your other polygons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go. Let's go. So let's get back to Brent. So you move from there. Vinyl land in Nirvana, the band, not Nirvana, like great. And you move into Wyoming, which is beautiful. Beautiful, but cowboy central.

So what's it like there? Well, so I'm the new gang banger in school by proxy because I moved from Washington. So everybody was immediately terrified at me. Like, and apparently people in Wyoming cannot whisper. Like I went to go open my locker first, got my locker [00:44:00] assignment. Right. And there's these two kids leaning around the locker bay and they're like, Hey, Hey, see that guy over there.

And they're talking to each other, like, I can hear them. Like, that's the new gangbang or dude he's from Seattle. Like I was, I was trying not to die laughing. And so, you know, just to add a little punctuation to, I slam my locker real quick and turn on them and they go running down the hallway was hilarious.

I thought it was great fun, but it completely changed where I'd come from. I went from being that chubby kid that could not grow it to all of a sudden I'm the new gang-banger, which just blew my mind. And so I started over and I started finding people who didn't fit like. We ended up by the time I left that high school, I had a group of about 20 friends and we didn't belong to a specific click.

We belong to each other, and everybody was very unique. About half of [00:45:00] us had moved in from out of the area. One of my best friends was from Riverside, California. He did move from gang land, you know my adopted brother, the man who later became my adopted brother literally is, you know, have been in Cincinnati, Ohio.

We, we had all transplanted. And so we made our own little group and we picked up some other people along the way, but I'm actually friends with a lot of those people. They became my core and we developed a really like my high schools. My high school experience was amazing. I was very blessed to make some great friends who are still friends to this day and have kept up with me all over the years.

As we moved all, I've moved all over the country and we all moved on with our own lives. And so my high school was an amazing, amazing turnaround for me. I mean, there, there was always the meathead boneheads, whatever you want to call them at some point, right? The guys who, because I'm bigger, [00:46:00] one, just start a fight with me, right.

That I'd never go far, but I kind of collected all the people who didn't quite fit somewhere. And a high school became an amazing experience for me. So it was such a change because I got to start over now. I got labeled and eventually that, you know, I managed to shake the whole, oh, he's a gangster thing.

Cause that was just hilarious to me. It's like no, no, really, no, but I really that's. I grew a lot in high school as a person because I had a supportive group of friends. That's awesome. What a change from the last location, right? So what about your spiritual walk at this point? You went you're from a family in the ministry.

Your father went from ministry to ministry, helping out that says his calling. Where were you at? Cause a lot of times, like there was times in my life. I don't feel like I fit in with [00:47:00] people who don't believe in God. And I don't feel like I fit in with the people who do supposedly believe in God. I felt like out of place.

And that's what it sounds like. You, you got your core group of people who didn't fit, but yet you fit together. So where were you spiritually at this point in your life? Spiritually was interesting. Because we had done so much moving. I was so good at putting on a facade that I actually kept my church life and my spiritual life, a hundred percent set, a hundred percent separate from the rest of my group, the rest of my life, you know, obviously around my house.

My, my father, my father was one of the most devout Christians I've ever known. Like, not like holy and Val, Val, like humble, gracious, like, like what the Bible talks about. My father never met somebody. He didn't care about and love. He cared for [00:48:00] everybody. He could, he always had time for everybody. And genuinely, like I literally had seen him in man weep over the idea of people being lost forever because it pained him so much the idea of anybody being lost from God.

And didn't define that. Let's go deep into that. Cause that's the whole purpose of this podcast is to help people grow. And the most important point and growth is a relationship with God. We have listeners in over 90 countries, like I said before, and many times I'm so thankful, but the term lost, saved.

People don't even understand what that is. So if you were to break down what you're saying, what was the message that your father was we're sharing. Okay. You know, we, I grew up at a non-denominational Christian Church, right? There's it's the churches of Christ they're non-instrumental there is no head body.

There's no governance. Every congregation has governed locally [00:49:00] and it's just Bible based Christianity. They're not perfect. I don't think they have everything 100%. Right. But I don't think anybody does, but their basis is what does the scripture say? Right? The Bible is the living word of God. And so that's the foundation of where we come from now, according to the Bible, right?

God makes man manga separated by their sin from God. God sends Jesus to be the sacrifice essentially to bridge the gap created by sin between man and God. Okay. And you have to choose that God willingly gives that away. God willingly wants to have that relationship. God wants to be in your life. God wants to connect with his creation.

It's foundational belief for me, because I believe that everybody is, I'm doing a live stream tonight, actually talking about everybody has a purpose. Everybody was born with a [00:50:00] specific purpose and a specific abilities and stuff like that. And so God makes some, everybody very individually, very purposefully.

It's not an actual. But then since separates us from God, the idea of doing things that are abominable in the sight of God or unholy in the sight of God, right. And sin ranges from, you know, lying and sexual morality to murder and theft, right? All the, all the big ones we're familiar with with the 10 commandments and stuff like that, that are fairly universal.

You see those in a number of belief systems, but saved is choosing to dedicate your life and the way you live to try and be like Christ making the choice of yes, I want God's love. Yes. I want God in my life and I'm going to make the changes to try and live the way God would have you live as a person, [00:51:00] right?

That's a really simplified version of it all. But I think that's what we're going for at the moment, separated from God is the idea of rejecting God's love and rejecting what God wants for your life. React to projecting what God says is the right way to live your life. Right? And really what always baffles me is what the Bible truly outlines as the way to live your life.

It's really just a moral and ethical life. I think mark Twain said, said, you know that even if you were wrong about God, there is no downside to living a life devoted to. Because it is a moral and ethical life. Right? Very, very human wholesome. And so the idea being lost is rejecting that and not embracing that.

And [00:52:00] then if you believe in the Bible, the Bible says that when we're in loss or hell or whatever you want to call it, which is, there's a lot of pretty pictures, right? We all think about fire and damnation and all the movies and junk like that being lost as being separated from the love of God forever.

Yeah, I agree. And what you said, I mean, it says it's appointed unto man once to die, then the judgment. So when we use the term, if you're listening and you're not familiar with the terms and Brett and I are talking, when you're lost, it means, like he said, you don't know God. And then when you die, you're not with him.

And instead of being internety with peace and joy and love and contentment with God, you're in the lake of fire forever where the worm, dieth not where the fire is not quench or you'll be tormented day and night, forever, and ever. And that's old Testament, new Testament, everything in between the Bible talks about that.

So to be saved, you're legitimately, literally being saved from that torment [00:53:00] when we trust Christ and again, old Testament, new Testament, every generation, the recorded six, 7,000 years, 6,000 years, we've been in existence as a civilization. It's by faith. When we put our faith and trust in God and say, there's nothing I can do.

I don't deserve to be with you, but please save me. Not those exact words, but you get what I'm saying. That's when we're saved, that's when we're with God returning. And that's where we're at. We're sealed with his promise and the holy spirit indwells us. So when we're talking about this to us, growing up and becoming Christians and trusting Christ ourselves, I don't ever want to take that too lightly or flippantly.

So if this is all new to you, reach out to Brent, reach out to me and we can discuss this more because it doesn't matter if you're sick or healthy. It doesn't matter if you're fit or fat. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. It doesn't matter if you're known or unknown. We're all statistically here may be 75 years.

And after that's attorney and a grain of sand of a grain of sand, of a grain of sand, doesn't [00:54:00] compare to the massive forever here. I hate. So that's why this is the most important thing. And what Brent said is his dad devoted his life to telling people about that. And we all do in our own way, but his dad did it full time every day, sold out for Jesus.

So is that correct? That's correct. And I, and I can tell you, let me give you guys just the point blank, blank when for this one. Okay. My father passed back in may. Last may

we S we celebrated it at his Memorial service. We celebrated his life. My mother is not devastate. My family was not devastated by the loss of our father, because not a, one of us had any reaction other than, or sad that we don't get to see him anymore. But all of us, when he he's, he's reached this reward, this, this is a win for dad.

He's crossed the finish [00:55:00] line of his whole life's work of his whole life's devotion. He's crossed the finish line and he's sitting at the footsteps of God now. So like my father passed, he was not a devastating event for our family. My father had been going for while been dying for several years, but it was kind of up and down, up and down.

And, but it wasn't a hugely devastating moment for us because I know you'll see them again. You'll see, forever attorney is your brother. And for him, it's, it's this reward he's been working towards his whole life, right? This is the finish line. And you know, being my dad, he couldn't die until after church.

It was hilarious. It was actually in a medically induced coma and we had church services going in his room and even in a medically induced coma, he was doing the hand thing. I don't know if you're seeing someone lead scene. They do their hand thing to keep time in a medically induced coma. He [00:56:00] was doing that with the worship and then after worship, he just drifted off.

It was so characteristic. My father was like, no, you can't die. Dear. In church, you got to wait till after church. That's awesome. And he sold out for gone and what matters. So if you're listening to this and you're like, what are they talking about? Or you want to learn more, again, reach out to Brent RI because he's going to finish his story.

But the story that matters is yours and what Jesus did and how much God loves you. And, you know, nobody has done anything bad enough. Quote, unquote, if you're not watching, you know, that you can't be forgiven and loved and to be with God for tourney, there's nothing that can't be forgiven except for jacking him, blast me and the holy spirit.

So reach out. So he picks up, say what that's actually where the story picks up, do it, man, continue from [00:57:00] there and high school. Right. I, I became a teenager and I became typically interested in teenager things. And so, you know, I made a lot of from, from a faith perspective, a lot of wrong choices in high school.

You know, I of course became very, I was already interested in girls at that point, but I was very interested in girls in that point and started making some choices with my girlfriends that were not wholly that were not in alignment with my beliefs. And so I actually started living two lives.

Because being a preacher's kid, what you do is not taken out on you, what you do is taken out on your father. It didn't like, like I honestly, there are times in my life, I feel like I could have like killed somebody and the church would have been like, well, Dave, why didn't you do better with your kid?

It wouldn't be the [00:58:00] fact that I made a bad choice. It would have been my dad's fault. And so I got very good at concealing my indiscretions from the rest of my life. It's interesting. You say that and you bring it up with that perspective, because so many times you hear the PKS, the preacher's kids complain and bitch and moan about, oh, I grew up and I was in a bubble.

It was in a fish tank, which is partially true. And I don't not feel bad, but there's so many jobs out there where the parents and the kids are connected because we are connected. Right. But for you to bring up the proper perspective, but it's not your being judged by your father, but your father is being judged by you.

That's a huge discernment and a lot of wisdom that whether you had it doesn't sound like you had it as a team, but you have it. Now. That's a great perspective what the kids do reflects on the father and the family name and ultimately on God. So that's really, I'm [00:59:00] really glad you brought that up. Well, I was actually, I was actually very utterly aware of it as a team.

I worked very hard to conceal that life from our church, from my parents. I did everything I could to build walls. I carefully tailored my friendships. I was not close friends with any of the church kids. I was friends with them. I did things with them, but they were not my inner circle. I had one who actually finally, eventually breached that and she understood that I was going to make my choices and they were on me, but I kept them in this very facade.

I was a good church kid and I went to church and I went to Sunday school and I went to camps and I played all the games seemingly well, because I'd had a lifetime of training on it. And I was shaking hands on Sunday morning and helping out and volunteering and leading this project or that project. But I kept my life really separate because [01:00:00] I knew I was making my own choices.

I had amazing parents who love me, supported me, encouraged me, empowered me, but some of the things that choices I was making, I knew they wouldn't approve of. And I knew it would look good on them. And so I felt like I had to fight. And my siblings and I have talked about this over the years, we were all very, very cognizant of trying to keep our choices from ever blowing back on our parents.

Because we knew we were doing things that they didn't approve of, that they didn't teach us to do. They taught us not to do, we were making our choices. We didn't want that to burn them because we felt like that would be, they should not have to pay for our choices. Right. I believe very much just like the Bible tells us that God gave us free will.

Right. That's why sin exist is we, we get to make our own choices. We don't [01:01:00] have to follow God. And so, you know, just like, I wouldn't want my choices to blow back on my God. I didn't want my choices to blow back on my dad because I knew I was doing things he wouldn't approve of. And so it was something we were, I became very double, like living a double life.

And then we moved again. It just, we moved my senior year. I started my top and it happened to my brother too. My brother had to do his senior year in a whole new place. Is that an I that actually that tells me, sent me in a tailspin pretty bad. I was very seriously involved with a young woman. At that point, I had a full-time job on a ranch.

I actually almost stayed in Wyoming. I had a place I could stay like my own house on the ranch. The only reason I moved with. [01:02:00] Was, I didn't want to break my mom's heart and tear the family apart, but I had the opportunity and the option to stay because I had a place to live and I had an income, but it really shook my world foundationally because I had worked really hard in high school by my junior year.

I only spent three hours of the day at school. I had front-loaded all my hard work, my early part of my high school career. So my junior year I was teaching for the first hour and a half at a fourth grade classroom. I came up to the high school. I did an hour and a half a class. How lunch did an hour and a half a glass.

And then I went to work study. I had no intention of going to school. Full-time my senior year ever. And we moved. And the place where we moved was like, oh no half. You only have one credit left to graduate here, but you have to go a half a day all year. If you can find a job, we like, and if you can't, you got to go full day all year, even [01:03:00] though you only need one credit to graduate.

And so I started making some drastic choices back then and I told my mom was like, look, I can homeschool myself and be done before Christmas. This is stupid. I have my parents, like I said, always empowered me. You're like, well, public school is free. Homeschooling is not. So you want to do this, you got to pay for it.

And so I paid for my schooling, my senior year. Worked a full-time job in construction. Well, the year started and it turns out Missouri and recognize homeschooling at the time. And so I had to go adjacently and worked through a school in Arkansas. Well, the credits were different in Arkansas. So I picked up a few more classes.

I had to take halfway through that year. They sold out to a religious academy in Mississippi and all of a sudden I'm in my last half of my senior year. And I'm having to take four [01:04:00] years worth of religious studies on top of my past class curriculum in the last half of my senior year. And did that at that point in your life, were you like, ah, I don't want anything to do with the religion or are you just like I'll just pound through and what was your attitude towards that?

I was more frustrated in anything, you know, I went the route because it's like, I worked really hard to not have to do this and not have to go full time and not have to. My senior year was supposed to be easy. And I ended up doing years of work in the last half of my senior year, like literally a couple of years worth of work to make up for the fact that my school sold out part of the way through the year, make up for the fact that Arkansas and Mississippi both have different requirements.

And I was already pretty, had gotten pretty good at living two lives. Right. I live my church life. I lived my regular life. But when I was in Missouri, [01:05:00] the church where you're at, if you go to a lot of small churches, you find out not many people are actually actively doing things. And so like our family was the show at the church.

My dad preached, I led worship and taught children's church. My mom and my grandmother both taught children's classes during Bible school. And so like, I would lead worship on Sunday morning, up until time for the sermon. And then I go teach children's Bible school during the sermon. Well, I was also the oldest teen at the church.

So I started running the teen group as well. And within a year of being there, I'm unofficially the youth minister because all the other teens I have are junior high age teens. I'm teaching church are teaching children's church preaching every now and then when my dad's out of town and leading worship every Sunday, right.

I'm, I'm full blown into [01:06:00] ministry while working a full-time job, trying to complete school. And I'm still not entirely,

I have my faith, but it was on the back burner for me. And I felt my life heading in a direction when all these people was like, oh yeah, chip off the block. And to be just like your dad, huh? I'm going to go to the ministry. Dude. I freaked out, totally freaked out. I'm working construction. Full-time I'm through my senior year and now I'm trying to get all of my life.

I'm trying different jobs. I had already passed on multiple chances to go to college. Cause I knew I didn't want to go to college. I passed I, there are times I feel guilty about the fact that I actually passed up probably more opportunities to go to school than a lot of people ever get. I passed up a shot at Julliard for theater.

I passed up a full ride scholarship for a [01:07:00] local college in Wyoming for theater, but school just wasn't the right choice for me. And I knew it. I knew if there wasn't someone making me go to school, I wasn't gonna go. But I'm in this rhythm of working and helping at the church and being the youth minister and all of a sudden this became a reality of, oh look, I'm going to be a minister.

Like my dad, I don't want to be a minister at that point in my life. I resented my dad for moving us around the country. I hated I was so, so angry about my senior year that I, I hated my dad for moving and traveling the country to some extent I wouldn't say so. Hey, it's probably a strong word. I was always angry at my dad.

I never hated him, but I was always angry at my day. Meanwhile, I had already actually met the woman I was going to marry because that year, when we moved to Missouri, I was so [01:08:00] angry that my mom didn't know what to do with me. And so my brother was like, Hey, send him out. Spend the summer with us. You know, we wanted to have him out or settled, sent out to have the summer with us.

I went through this as a senior myself, so I understand what he's going through, sitting out here. And so I had gone and spent that first summer with my brother for part of it and met the woman. I would later marry at a church, youth retreat while I was staying with my brother, the highest all things work together for good to those who love God.

Right. It was this crazy. And we had no idea that's where life was going. Like she barely would talk to me cause I had long hair at the time I had a goatee I've had to go T since I was 15 years old, but I had a goatee and I had hair down the middle of my back. And like, she was raised very conservatively and one, nothing to do with me.

We ended up [01:09:00] only talking because we got stuck in the same car on a long ride. And my sister-in-law kicked off the conversation about the fact that I had been a ranch hand and she was in the horses and that was our first real conversation. But I had no idea. Right. So I went back to this, my world, the Missouri.

Over the next couple of years, going out and busy, my brother doing church stuff. She kept coming back into my life at these church events. And just before I turned 20, I was up in the Northwest doing, and I was actually teaching and children's program at this massive church event was a big multi-day conference and she was the teacher's assistant and the fourth and fifth grade classroom I was teaching during this event for two, three days, two days.

And we, we just hit it off conversationally. Right. [01:10:00] We ended up talking halfway through the night, the last night of the event, her chaperones came to find her because she's two years younger than me. And they found her talking to me like, oh, you're a brand is okay. Right. No one worried about it. I was, I was Dave's kid.

It was cool. And when I drove away that day, that next morning she asked me years later, it's like, what was that? Look? Because I was looking out the back window, the cars were driving away. And in that moment I went, if I don't marry this girl, I'm an idiot. I knew right then. And there it's like, if I don't marry her, I am a complete idiot.

This is who I need to spend my life. I was still 18 or 19 at the time, but then life moved on and I decided that I was heading down this path and I didn't want to be preacher. I didn't want to be a youth [01:11:00] minister. I wasn't going to do it. It's just hell no. Right. So I kept trying to put away money so I could go either back to Wyoming or maybe go out to the coast.

And every time I put it away and start to get enough money to put back so I could move, my car would break down. I lose everything or something like that. Right. So I had a panic attack one day and joined the military. I'd always wanted to join the military. I'd always thought about joining the military.

And I had this panic attack because I just had to dump my bank account again because I was trying to leave. I was not going to become a minister. And so I went and joined the military.

Jonah had a fish. I had the us air force.

That is the next huge segway in my life because I was in the military for a year. And it was the worst year of my life. [01:12:00] Talk about that. What did you learn? I always I'm laughing on the side of the camera because I know so many people personally. I don't want to go this path, or I don't want to listen to my parents or nobody knows what they're talking about.

I don't want to be told what to do. And then they joined the military and I'm like, are you not paying attention to reality here? So keep going with your story, Brett. I had always loved the military. Okay. I grew up with a deep love for the military. I still have a deep love for the military. Both my brothers served in the military.

My father served in the military. My grandfather served in the military. We're a military family. And so for me, like it wasn't even like a hard option. I was already thinking about it. Anyway, this just compounded it. The only reason I hadn't gone in the military yet was it's like, oh, well, you know, I'm doing okay this way.

Do I maybe, maybe I don't need to go that way. And [01:13:00] so I joined, I joined the air force only because I went into a multi-office recruiter and they were the only ones that were open. So many people ask me over the years, like why the air force? They, they all expected me to go like, try to go to the Navy and go to the Navy seals or something, or maybe go in the army.

So many people why they were open, honest answer. There were three offices in there. They were all closed except for the air force. That's how it happened right there. And I went in. With the pure intention of going into special forces. In fact, I've told kids for years, even before that point, I told kids never go in without a locked in contract, never, ever joined the military without a contract in writing about what school you're getting and what you're doing.

And I wouldn't even take one as, because in the air force you have to [01:14:00] try out for special forces. There's no guarantees, right? No guarantee that even got a shot, you get to try out for, to basic. And I was so confident cause I'm all or nothing kind of person that it's like, you know what? Nope. This is what's gonna happen.

And he's like, well, let's get you a, a school just, and you can still try out for, I was like, no, it's all or nothing, man. I'm all in. That's just the way I go. So I went in with no contract, which meant military air force. What means I would have been the SPS, which is the air force version of the MP, right?

Military police is the SP and the air force. So I would have been SP but ID fault. That's what you went to. If you didn't have a MOS already picked out and keep in mind, I'm going to the air force because I'm running away from God. At this point, the, the direction of my life was [01:15:00] so crystal clear. You know, God might as well hit me with a giant glowing neon sign.

It was utterly clear where I was going and I ran away to the military because it was my last, no, God, absolutely not. This is what I'm going to do is my life bad choice running from God doesn't work. The Bible gave us the example of Jonah. Well, God made it a little more clear. In basic training, I actually got recycled or rolled back my first week of basic training because I challenged the TEI.

They put me in charge of a squadron of guys and I told him at the time I was like, please don't he's like, you're, you're the oldest guy here too. You're the old man. You're 20 years old. I was like, please don't make me a leader. Just, just let me do basic man, leave me alone. He's like, Nope, you're going to be a squad leader.

I was like, you're going to regret [01:16:00] that. Sure enough a week into it. One of the guys I was in basic training with who was in my squadron, had screwed up and okay, that happens. He was being stupid. He was getting yelled at no big deal. But RTI went a little too far. In my opinion, he started talking trash about the guy's wife and kid and stuff like that.

So that blows up and they throw him. I was like, go to the hall. You're out of my unit. Get out. Tia comes back into the day room is like this. Anybody else got a problem? It's like, man, you had to say. Because I've always taken leadership very seriously. And so it was like, no, I can't in good conscious sit here and ignore that.

So I stood up and I was like, sir, Edmund Allen that, that wasn't right, sir, you went too far. This big Tia gets in my face. Right. And I've always been hyper aggressive. And so I got this guy and he's [01:17:00] closing distance and it's like, oh man, here we go. Get in my face are screaming. Oh, is that what you think?

Blah, blah right. Starts freaking out at me. I stepped into him like chest to chest, stepped into him, close distance, looked him square in the eye, said, take a swing mother effer, give me a reason to put you in the hospital tonight. Like it, he immediately realized the situation. And I didn't appreciate this at the time, but you know, he showed some professionalism, immediately realized the situation had escalated farther than he should took a step back from me.

And I was like, 20 Dalen, go, go join your friend. You're you're done with me. Right. Deescalated it. Cause I, I was, I was, we were, we were going right there, man. I would have put him down so hard. [01:18:00] My adopted brother and I used to spar every day after school. That's that was our stress release for years, like full contact, mixed martial arts before there was really mixed martial arts, including weapons, combat like baseball bats, legitimate swords.

I have scars from our sparring matches. So I was, I was already scrappy. And I was, I was ready to put that man down. So once you disrespect a superior in the military, you can get discharged for that. What happened at that point? I, I, so they, they were, would have been perfectly in, right. Cause I didn't threaten the man.

And so he actually recycled me. He sent me back a week and training that's that's what happened before they throw you out? The air force is more gentle soul. So before they throw you out, they moved me back and basically started basic training all over again for me. [01:19:00] And they put me in a basic training unit with a brand new drill Sergeant, the air force, their training instructors instead of drill sergeants.

But they put me in a unit with a brand new team. We were his first unit and he was not happy about me getting stuck in his unit. And so he met me when they walked me into the office with him and he looked at me. According to this file, which I have not read yet. You are a dirt bag. Are you a dirt bag? And I said, I don't know, Sergeant, are you a leader?

And he just grinned, do you like, God, this is great little grin on his face. Like, okay, he's got some spunk. He said, I'll tell you what, we'll both find out. He pulled out his bottom drawer and just dropped the file. He said, I won't read that. You show me what you are and I'll show you what I am. I ended up being my saving grace.[01:20:00] 

He's one of the few men in my military experience. I have the utmost respect for at the time he was tech Sergeant. He went on to master Sergeant after I was in the school, talking to guys, coming into the school, master Sergeant Henry Parker. And, and this is 22 years later. I can tell you the man's name.

He made that kind of impression on me, just utmost respect for him. Very honorable man. And the day I graduated really graduated basic training because you have the unofficial graduation. The week before the official graduation, he handed me my airman's medallion medallion. And I said, I read the file air medallion.

You were right.

And I was kind of taken back a little bit and he grinned. And he said that my biggest dirt bag turned out to be my best airmen. I mean that. Years later has this huge, like I still smile. You can see me if you're on the video, what [01:21:00] just grinning ear, because it was such a moment in my life. And of course that's an excellent example of leadership.

I hope so that, you know, it was, I warned them when they started as like, if you make me a leader expect this is what's going to happen. And so it was nice to feel very vindicated cause I still had the other Sergeant messing with me every now and then in fact, I got into graduation week in which you changed from BDU to dress blues.

And he saw me going through the channel line and call me to the snake pit, which is the table at the end of the chow line where all the sergeants sit during chow. And he called me over to the steak pit. And I was like, trainee, Dalen, look at you. And your blues graduation week. I said, beg your pardon, sir, that'd be a airman.

Dalen is like, oh, airman Dalen. Now you're graduating. [01:22:00] Like the dude was trying to make a show of it. And my Sergeant walked over. I said, Aaron medallion, you may proceed with your chow. You're dismissed. And I started walking away. I think Sergeant and the other guy started to be like, but, but I was, and my Sergeant, I glance back over my shoulder.

My Sergeant just drug his fingers down as strike. And pointed at the other Sergeant, as, as a count, my stripes count yours, you know, a looked at him and said, you dismissed him. You kicked him out. He's mine stay away from him. It's like he had great moment. Yeah. By the hair of my teeth, gotten into special forces training at that point.

So then where, where does it go from here to make sure we're, I don't want to miss anything in your story, but I want to make sure we get everything in this episode, that's going to help the [01:23:00] listeners grow. So from that point in your story, where did your military career go? Well, let me, let me speed this up because I know I can get along with it on this.

So I went to special forces training. I did not qualify for special forces training. In fact, I asked the recruiting Sergeant. I was like, why me? Because I didn't physically compete the requirement, complete their requirements. And when we were running veteran two miles for a certain amount of time on the last half mile of that run, I mean, guys were dropping left and right.

Were puking off the side of the track. Like I had just thrown up off the side of the track while I was around. And we in the last half mile, like the last, our quarter mile, last quarter mile, you could see the last leg of the track, right? And this due to the whole way started to quit. And I grabbed his shoulder, even [01:24:00] though I was struggling, I grabbed his shirt and started dragging him.

Like we are almost there. You're not stopping now. And I drug him the last quarter mile. And the Sergeant said that I can't teach that I can make you stronger. I can make you faster. I can't teach that. That's why you're going. When I got there long, long story short, I ended up splitting my leg from my knee to my ankle, the front bone in my lower leg and my left leg.

I started with what was, I guess, shin splints that they went to a stress fracture that went to a full-on fracture and split the front bone in my lower leg from my knee, all the way to my ankle. Ouch. By the time it was diagnosed, I had been running six miles a day, five days a week for two weeks on a broken leg.[01:25:00] 

I was in excruciating amounts of pain, but I was not going to quit our fallback. And I was only a couple of weeks into training. I became a human experiment for the next five and a half. I mean, my world just got rocked. I was on crutches. All I could do with CQ duty, I became a human experiment was doctor's appointment after doctor's appointment because in the military, if they can't clearly figure out why something happened to you, they don't care.

They want to know because they want to make sure it doesn't happen again. Right. They're more concerned with the why than the injury. It wasn't healing. And so I eventually got medically moved and I was my doctor trying to medically discharge me. And the orthopedist that had taken over my case was the commander of the hospital.

And he wasn't about to have a medical discharge on his record. And so they dope me up [01:26:00] on coding and pushed me through physical therapy. Cause if you can get through physical therapy, you're better. So I was taking insane amounts of coding. Like they actually had scratched out the number on the bottle and it said take it when it hurts.

I was taking 32,000 milligrams of Motrin every day, Tylenol would coating and a high dose Neproxin for anti-inflammatories every day and drinking to deal with. And I'm sure your stomach felt fantastic after all that, too, right? Oh God. It's amazing. I have liver in that time. I tried to kill myself. I ended up slipping my wrist on duty.

I don't think, I don't think I was trying to kill myself. I think it was a subconscious thing. Cause I didn't realize I had done it. I [01:27:00] was playing with a knife and one of the guys took it away from me. I was like, what the hell are you doing? He's like, what are you doing? I looked down at my wrist or bleeding, so I hadn't cut them very deep.

Right. Like I said, I, I don't think I was consciously trying to kill myself, but it was enough cause a bit of a fiasco. So, and then I'm in counseling and going to doctors I threatened to kill two psychiatrists because they threatened to lock me up for my own protection, which then escalated the situation.

Eventually they cleared me medically, but not to go back to special forces, but onto another school. And my life went downhill from there. The commander of that school hated me from the day I walked in and he promised me when I got there and I would never graduate. His school, took away all my privileges took away all my freedoms and I got screamed at every morning.

What did you do last night? We're going to find out you might as well tell it at that [01:28:00] point I had developed a drug problem. I was drinking a fifth of Tila every night because I was self-medicating. To get up for the drug problem and try not to kill my instruct my commanding officer, because I was just angry, bitter and violent at that point.

And they busted me out of school. Like I self identify in the military and if you do that, you're supposed to be okay. So I came forward and asked for help, said I had a problem with the coding and they wiped out my medical file when I transferred. Cause I was on a special forces base. So my, the record of my injury didn't exist.

They couldn't even, they were like, why do you have this coding? Why do you have a prescription for this coding? You're not hurt. You never were like last five months of my life disagrees with that. So I was spiraling pretty bad. They pulled me out of class. They penalize me. [01:29:00] They started separating me out from everybody else.

Like I was on a downhill spiral and then they told me I had to go, go to lockdown rehab, not for the coding because they got an E one to rat me out for having a beer. I was 20 years old. I was like two and a half months from 21. And they busted me out of school to go to alcohol rehab for a beer because the guy was trying to get rid of me and I just spiraled bad.

My dad had tried to help and I wouldn't let him. And finally I told him, I was like, okay, you can try and help. Well, I refuse to go to rehab, which is the same as failing rehab. So they were boot me out of the military at this point. And they called me into their office one day, like my discharge was almost done.

And they told me the building in Texas where the discharge paperwork was being processed, burn to the ground.[01:30:00] 

I went through the roof, man. I blew up and I went into the woods next to the base with a bottle of tequila. And my options were, I managed to kill myself that tonight, just drink myself to death.

And for me, there was no other option at that point. And I hit a wall and instead of hitting the bottle, I dropped the bottle and I hit my knees. I said, okay, God, you win. I'll quit running. I'll stop you when just I did this to myself, but get me out of here. Just like Jonah. Three days later, I was in the way I don't want to bus my discharge paperwork that had taken them two months burned to cinder, just gone.

But within [01:31:00] three days of hitting my knee, And giving in and saying, okay, God, I get it. I'll stop running. At this point, I was on my way home

and my life changed radically. I realized if I become half the man, my dad had was, I was a good man. I had done a good life. So where does your life go from there? You're running from God. You hit rock bottom. And now you get another chance. Talk about that, Brent. So my fiance, this point was still with me.

We, we had, so my wife and I, our relationship was forged on opposite sides of the country. We've never lived in the same place. At this point. We went from really good friends, and this is the girl that I was like, I need to marry this woman for three years. She had, we'd been friends. We called back and forth.

We [01:32:00] had seen each other a couple of times and all through my choice to go to the military, we had kind of escalated to a more romantic relationship, but it was more of a core teen relationship because she was in Washington and I was at Missouri. Well, then I was in Florida and Texas and Virginia and all over the place.

Right. I had told her on the phone, I was like, look, this is, this is where my life is right now. If you want to walk away, walk away, you, you owe me nothing. I brought her to Florida when I was a special forces training to propose to her. And so she went through this whole drug addiction and alcohol and getting kicked out of the military with me from opposite sides of the country.

There were, there was no commitment other than she has said yes, but she stayed and she stayed. So when I got out life just made sense to, in fact, they had me go into a [01:33:00] psychiatrist last couple of weeks. I was in because they were really worried about me, either killing somebody or killing myself. And after our first session, he was like, wow, you've had a rough run of it.

So my job is just to get you out of here in one piece, keeping you from going to prison at this point, because you do something stupid between here and now. And he figured out the Sarah was the key to everything. We talked about Sarah, every day. That's all we talked about because it was the one place in my mind where there was peace.

So when I get out, I ended up moving to my brother's house in Illinois because he wanted to help me get back on my feet. And Sarah came out for Thanksgiving that year. Cause I got out right at the knock of I was on a bus home, October 20th, our sorry, October 31st, 2020 leaving the military. And so I brought her out to have Thanksgiving with me and look at the area so he could decide, you know, [01:34:00] Wherever we wanted to live after we got married and she decided she hated where we were.

So then I went out to Washington a couple of times to see if I could find a job out here. And yeah, eventually I found a job in Washington. She paid for me to make the trip out and just move out and look for job. Once I got here, she borrowed money from her grandparents to pay for me, to make the trip from Illinois to Washington.

And we ended up getting married in April of 2021. And that was almost 21 years ago, or, yeah. We're getting ready. We're approaching our 21st anniversary and life has been wild, man. If that was the tame part of my life that you got through, I saw what, how you do these is like, man, you, my story is super complicated and long.

No, man. That's what we're here for. It's it's a long format podcast is [01:35:00] we're here to, like I said, and help each other grow and learn from each other and glorify God ultimately. So you get married now when you and Sarah married in 2000, obviously, like you said, your 22 year anniversary this year, What between, when you were married and today, do you want to talk about that?

You think is important to represent you and to help our listeners grow? So this is where we jumped from. We got married in 2001 and it didn't take long to figure out we weren't making enough money to live where we were working. So we moved to Missouri, I got a job. My sister got me a job where she was, and while we were there, lo and behold, we get involved with this church that I have connections with because when I was doing youth ministry with the small church, my dad was in the same area.

I interacted with this youth minister all the time. And so when Sarah and I started going there, we started volunteering with the youth [01:36:00] group there. And after a couple of years there after about a year there, I actually started a drama program for the teens. Cause we had all these super creative teens with no real outlet to use their gifts in the church and for God.

And so I created a drama ministry there. During that course, I had an accident when I was setting up for a show and fell 21 feet from the church ceiling where I had a zip line set up and landed on church pews and broke my back. I did not know. I broke my back until three years later when I was a youth minister in the Northwest.

I woke up one morning, I've been a youth man. I had gone from that church. I recovered from that injury, or I thought so, and had realized that, you know, I was doing youth ministry full-time I just wasn't [01:37:00] getting paid for it. And that's what I wanted to be. That's where God had been moving me to. And so I took a job as youth minister up here in the Pacific Northwest and had been a youth minister there for a couple of years.

And that was coming, had come to an end and I woke up one morning. I couldn't walk. I couldn't feel my legs. And it was the most terrifying moment of my life. It turns out I had fractured my L three vertebrae on that fall and it wasn't staying in place anymore. And it was cutting off my spinal cord so that, you know, men move into a time where I was homeless because the church job had ended.

They couldn't afford to keep a youth minister anymore. And we ended up having to move in with my parents. And now I'm fighting a back injury and trying to figure out, you know, what, where I'm going to go is looking for a job as youth minister. [01:38:00] And eventually that ends is out where we are. And before you go on with the previous addiction to coding and the drugs they gave, you did this open up any cans of worms with drug addiction or D where you pretty solid there?

I was actually pretty solid there. They kind of cold Turkey forced me when I came forward and identified self identified for help. Instead of sending me to rehab or taking me to the hospital where they could monitor me or anything, it was the weekend. They didn't really care. Basically. They took all my drugs away and told me I could stay on the phone as long as I wanted, but I couldn't leave the building.

And so they literally just crashed me cold Turkey off the drugs. And I spent that entire weekend on the phone with Sarah getting the shakes, getting the sweats you know, skin. I don't know if you've dealt with addictions like that, but it's it's [01:39:00] unpleasant to say the least to go off at cold Turkey.

Generally, if you're going to do that, somebody they do it under medical supervision. It was, it was not a pleasant experience. But the medication once I got enough days through it that, and they didn't realize I was self-medicating with alcohol at the time to get past the crashing off the drugs, which is not a good solution for all of our listeners.

That's, that's not a good solution, guys. Don't please don't do that. You just compound the problem so much worse. But I was forced through that. So by the time I got through that to this day, I stay away from pain meds. I have a ridiculous high tolerance. They don't work very well because I've been addicted to them.

And that was not the first time I had dealt with that. So I don't stay on drugs very long if they, [01:40:00] because lower dose painkillers don't work for me because I do have a resistance to them. If I get seriously injured at this point, they have to give me things like morphine because nothing else even touches it.

And so like when I fell at the church there in Missouri, I was on coding for two days out of the hospital. They had me on morphine in the hospital and discharged me and I went home and it was B oh man. I was beat up. I stayed on coding for two days after I got home and I made my wife flushed. Nothing but Tylenol.

I had to make sure there was no alcohol in the house. And I got through the rest of that injury, taking Tylenol and drink a Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper. It's the right to right solution. Right. So [01:41:00] I I've had several injuries since then. And like, they're just flabbergasted when I'm like, Nope, don't need it. Nope.

Don't want it. I don't touch it. I broke my neck since then. They're like, oh, here's the pink and Nope, I don't want them. Yeah. It's not worth opening the candidate. Pain's temporary to get readded is not worth it. So, so you are, you brought us up to almost today, a year ago. So from a year ago, when all this happens, should you move in with your parents?

Where does Brent's life go from there? So my dad closed the church. He was at the small church. He was at, they decided to close the doors, liquidate the building because there were several other churches in the area. And that church was just not, they had grown old, no one was coming there. The neighborhood had changed.

And so they liquidated the building and gave the funds to another church, to replant a church in the area in a better location at another time. And so we're living at their house and [01:42:00] all of a sudden they're moving. So. And we ended up in Eastern Washington where I am now and I needed work and wasn't finding anything in as a youth minister.

And so I took a conjecture, a construction job, and my wife took a job as security at the construction site where I was working. And we've been here for 15 years now and it took me a lot of years of being here to realize that I was in a rebuilding period. The church I left, there was a lot of politics.

It wasn't just the money. Things went very, very badly. I felt very betrayed and hurt by people. I had trusted and loved and it almost destroyed my marriage. And I just, I tell spin bad when everything went south, right. I've followed God's plan. I followed God's idea [01:43:00] and that came to a crashing burning halt.

And I, I felt slighted. You know, I, I had followed what I thought was the plan I had done what I was supposed to do. And I honestly felt slighted by God. Like it really injured my faith. I never lost my faith, but as I always say, you know, God, and I took a time out, well, God, didn't take a time out. I took a time out from God that that's accurate.

God, didn't take a time out for. But I felt very slighted and I hit, it took a lot of years out of being here, working construction and getting involved with the church out here. I'm not, I do some AB for the church, but I, I turned down an opportunity to help with youth team here. Cause I just wasn't ready.

And I've got my daughters now and I'm going to focus on them. And so, but it took several years of being in a [01:44:00] healthy church and just being nurtured there for me to realize that I was really angry and bitter at God for what had happened at the church I had been at because I mean, I changed the entire direction of my life because I went where God showed me to go, well, God never promised you safe harbors.

God promised that you will not take more than you can take, but he won't take you in anything more than you can handle. You may not think you can handle it, but God knows you better than that. And it, it took several years of being here in a safe Harbor and being away from it to realize like I've got a lot of bitterness and resentment about how this all went down.

I was betrayed by some very, very close people. Who've been in my life for a long time to the point where, I mean it in a badly it an L very bitterly. I almost destroyed my marriage in the process. Like [01:45:00] I said, sorry, it was. It's taken a lot of years to heal from that. And then we hit this point where I'm here and I've gone from construction and I'm working it.

And about two years ago, God came knocking again. And I mean, I spent weeks praying and pleading with God. 'cause like, no, now I'm not ready for this. Again. I know things are better, but I'm not ready for this again. And it was so clear. So utterly clear for me what was next. And I run from God. I learned, I am a little thick.

Sometimes God has got to hit me with a Bricker three, but I, I, I knew better than to try and run. Now I've got daughters and he's like, Nope, [01:46:00] I'm not putting them in that, in that path. And the fallible man was born before you get to the fallible man where we are today. I want you to go back and talk about how did you reconcile your relationship with God?

So the bitterness is there. The anger's there, the betrayal has happened. And some people know exactly what we're talking about. Some people have not had this happen to them. Most people have, so we have quote unquote, bad things happen to us. And somehow in our perverse selfish man view, we blame God. We've got only has good for us.

Now. He sometimes allows bad things, quote unquote, bad things to happen because ultimately they will be good for us in the future and eternity. But how did you learn to reconcile man? Bad. God good. [01:47:00] My journey. Straight ahead. How did that happen? Right. I've always been more of an intellectual than emotional person.

I'm I don't I've I've never been very emotionally drilled. It driven. According to the psychiatrist in the military, I'm actually a full-blown sociopath. I'm like, I can completely turn off my feelings. I don't feel it. I don't have emotional responses to things I don't have subsequently also I don't have very emotional connections to most things, including people.

The military call that morally flexible and depending on which side of it, you're on, that's a good thing or a bad thing. A healthy psychiatrist would say is a bad thing. Military special forces went, oh, Yes, you can follow orders and kill people and, and not lose sleep over it. That's [01:48:00] good. So depending on which side of that you land on, I'm, I'm either, you know, qualified for special forces that way, or, but I may have failed mentally the other way.

But because of that, and a lot of that has to do with me shutting myself off over the years from moving so much, I got hurt so much moving around. I just learned to turn it all off and my younger years and not attach myself to places or people. And so on a intellectual level, right. I, I used to be youth minister I'm I'm very school.

I am an ordained minister. I've spent a lot of my life studying the Bible and teaching the Bible. And so intellectually, I always knew that a God didn't do this to me B it wasn't [01:49:00] really his fault, but I did not want to deal with the blame. It was just easier to blame God at that point for me, because I know the Bible well enough, you know, God doesn't promise easy.

In fact, if you read the Bible, it's very clear that it's not an easy path to follow God, and there will be difficulties and there will be. And so I had to get out of my own selfish space with that and start looking objectively and intellectually at things because dealing with an emotional pain because of my mindset was very difficult for me actually having something emotionally wound me was almost a very new experience for me because I managed to shut off my emotional reactions things for so many years and step into just that intellectual [01:50:00] plane that I had no idea how to handle an emotional slide of this level.

And so that's been making that transition has been a lot of love and support from my wife in a big way. Sarah is the center of my world. I, I struggle with that in my relationship with God of God first and my wife second, because the demonstration of God's love for me has always been my wife.

Sarah has always been my safe Harbor since the day she said I do. And that's where I see God the most is. Looking at my wife and the way she sees me, she accepts me warts and all. So to say so it's taken a lot of years of that. Honestly, my children were the biggest [01:51:00] difference because once my first daughter was born, it is the first time in my life that I can actually remember having an emotional connection to something.

And because of that, it made me re-examine how I felt about what had happened and what was ailing me about what had happened, because I was now confronted with the fact that I had an emotional connection to things. Even if I learned to control it unify, I learned to shut it off. There was still a very deep, emotional possibility that I hadn't dealt with at this point.

And so once I had this epiphany of wait, I do have emotions. I, that means that I have to allow for the possibility, this hurt me at an emotional level. And that's why I still have all this anger and resentment is not something intellectual. It's not something that I can think my [01:52:00] way through, which is very uncomfortable for me.

It was something I had to start accepting that there were some emotional implications. And once I did that, I could start healing. You know, it started with some humility and having to stop intellectually, look at it and go, okay, if I can have an emotional responsibility to this, what really hurts me about this?

What am I actually feeling and why? And then took some humility to go and take the first step and go, God, I know you didn't do this to me. I know this isn't your fault. And I know that you've never turned on me but I had to get to that point of accepting.

There was some variables I wasn't dealing with because I didn't know how to deal with them. Once I did that, healing could actually start. I [01:53:00] could start saying, Hey, I know this wasn't God doing this to me. And once I took that blame off God and started actually realizing that it was an emotional hurt for me, that had driven this wedge between me and God.

I could start to deal with that. And the love I have for my daughter and for my wife started driving home the need to he'll emotionally that loves started overriding other things. But even as that was starting to grow there, there were some, you know, moments with God is like, okay, God, this isn't your fault.

That doesn't mean we're friends now, you know it, it took some time I had to work back into really kind of reanalyzing my whole outlook on a relationship with God [01:54:00] and what that meant and what that used to mean to me. And, you know, I had gone from, I was working with teenagers, telling them about the love of God, but in all this, I had never forgiven myself for this.

I felt like when I lost that, all the pain came back from the failure in the military, into compounding too. I felt like I had followed this plan and now I failed as youth minister and I just, everything felt like I just failed everything and I couldn't forgive myself. I couldn't forgive God. And so it came with I don't have room in my life to love my wife and my daughter the way I feel like I need to, the way I feel like I should, if I'm harboring all this anger and.[01:55:00] 

And so I, I started to have to move. I started to have to change, and I realized at that point, how very stagnant I become in my life. I just sat there and festered in pain and an anger and it wasn't healthy and it wasn't anything good for me. And it was keeping me from things that did mean everything good to me because I looked at my child and I looked at the way my wife looked at me.

And I thought, if, if that doesn't tell me that God has a bigger plan than nothing will.

So with that, we've had a great time together today. So much to cover. So exciting, lots of stuff we even skipped. So people can reach out to you. Maybe one day, read your book. But for right now, where's Brent today. Now that God's brought you [01:56:00] to this place, where are you today? And where are you heading? So we can hopefully help you get to the next level today.

I'm I'm at a much better place. Like I said, this, this turned around with after years of being in that way in place and healing. And I had no idea that's what was happening at the time. And I'll, I'll tell your listeners guys, that is one of the hardest places to be is. In the waiting time between the waves of life that hurry up and wait, the military loves to use that in-between right.

Our world tends to work some peaks and valleys, and we don't do well in that waiting time. But you need that waiting time sometimes to rebuild or to heal. And so I had no idea that was what was happening. And then the fallible man came at [01:57:00] me like there wasn't a choice for me. I knew it. I knew what I needed to do and where I was going and that it was what I needed to do.

And so I'm at a place now where I'm back to, I don't associate the fallible man with any religious organization, even though we teach a lot of very biblical principles and morals and ethics because men are turned off by that. A lot of times there are a lot of men who have just are turned off by the thought of God because they haven't breached that yet in their life.

And so I keep it generally separate from that because I want to be able to reach out to all men, but foundationally, if I look at everything behind it, this is where I'm supposed to be. And I don't entirely know where this is going to be honest. I know I'm on the path I'm supposed to be. And I. Connected with [01:58:00] God in that I know clearly this is his path for me.

I can't tell you what the end of the journey looks like, because it's not my journey alone. I'm just doing my best to recognize where God is taking me with this now and stay with that. Because now it matters even more to me that my daughters see that, that my life reflects that. And then my wife and my children are seeing that's where I'm going, because that's what I want for them.

I know that's what's right for them. And so going forward, I'm in a good place with God because I'm at a place where I can go, Hey, you know, God, this is your direction. I don't know where it's going. And it'd be really nice if you'd throw it, throw a few hints my way, but I'm okay with not knowing the end, because I'm confident that I'm on the journey.

God put me on at this [01:59:00] point. And that feels like I'm in the right place again. So where a guy goes with this next, I got no idea. I don't duck away from the fact that I'm a believer and a Christian or that the backbone of this is all built around my face. I don't push religion in what I'm doing with the foul man, but I don't shut away, shy away from either.

Like I said, I want to be able to reach as many men as possible, but the honest truth is this is the path that God is taking me on. I believe that with all my heart and I believe that's why I'm at total peace with having no clue how this is going, how am I going to pay for things, how I'm going to accomplish things, because I'm trusting that God has got this plan and I'm just get to be a part of it at this point.[02:00:00] 

Amen, man. Amen. Just enjoy the journey and do your best. And like you said earlier, the people who are right with God, a lot of times it's a struggle most of the time, but it has the beautiful eternal blessings that go along with it. Then you have the people who aren't right with God that, that runaway like Jonah.

And you said you, but God brings you back and love. So neither, neither path of life is sometimes easy. I've only people I've seen who have easy lives are the people who have nothing to do with God or doing nothing good with our life. And Satan's using them to waste their life, you know, sane as two objectives, right?

One to keep you from trusting God and the other from keeping you. Helping others to trust God. So he either wants to keep you from trusting God or make you so useless and such a hypocrite that you don't tell people about God, because nobody would listen to you anyways. So he's a scumbag, he's a liar. And his old job is just to hurt people.

But it's so awesome to hear your story, Brent, [02:01:00] and to see your journey isn't over, but it's, we're at this midlife part, right? And there's so much more to it. So if someone listening in our community wants to get to hold a you Brent, what's the best way for them to reach you. If you go to my website, www.thefallibleman.com there are pretty much there's links to pretty much everything I do there.

There's my scheduling calendar is there for phone calls. I talk to people I'm almost done with my personal training certifications actually. So I'll be starting to do a physical coaching, but I also do just conversations with people. I put, I have content there. I'm all over YouTube. I have nine social medias guys.

I'm at the fallible man, pretty much every major social media platform. But if you go to my website, you can get to most of it there. You can hit [02:02:00] me@infoatthefallibleman.com. I check all my emails. There's a phone number on the website. That's I'm, it's the center hub for everything, or at least I'm trying to keep it the center hub.

I gotta clean it up. Some I'm feeling pretty, pretty bombed. It needs some work that when you're doing all of it, it's hard to keep up with some of it sometimes. Yeah. Just keep taking, you know, how do you mean elephant one bite at a time? So I'll put those links in the show notes. So if you're trying to get ahold of Brent, we'll help you get there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But Brent, it's been a true pleasure. My friend, and from your birth to today, is there anything else we missed or a parting thought that you want to leave with our audience before we close shop for today?

You never past finding a solution, whether it's your relationship with God. Our, whether it's something more trivial, like physical, like I said, I broke my back. I also broke [02:03:00] my neck two years ago. And I'm still up in kicking. There's never too late. There's never too far that you can't come back to where you want to be.

So many people think they can outrun the grace of God or they can just, you know, fall too far. They can get too heavy. They can get too out of shape. They can get too old. They can make too many wrong decisions. You are never too far to come back to the person you want to be the life you want to be in your relationship.

Amen. Well with that, Brent, thank you for being here today. You truly are a remarkable man. I appreciate your friendship. And I look forward to continuing in the future and hopefully meaning in person someday soon. Thank you, David. Thanks for having me. Yes. And to all our listeners, again, check out the show notes.

If you want to reach out to Brent or I, if you want to rate, review the podcast, we'd love it and appreciate it. Check out the fallible man [02:04:00] podcast. If you have any questions, again, reach out to us, but please share this episode. Not just so we get more popular in more countries, but so people can be helped.

And like our slogan says like all knowledge, all knowledge, all truth comes from God. Right? But we can't just listen to it. We've got to do it. We've got to repeat it so we can have a great life in this world and attorney to come. So I'm David Pascoe alone. This was Mr. David Brent, download, check out this episode, share it with your friends.

And if you need anything, please reach out to us. Have a great day and we'll see you in the next episode. Ciao.