Why God, why don't I have a dad? Why am I looking at all these other kids that do? And as I look back as a 40-year-old, and I think like, man, Uncle Wayne was still in my life. Man, my Scoutmaster, Mr. Mike, was still in my life. My basketball coach, Eric. You know, my Sunday school teacher, Anthony. My youth pastor, Masel. My Young Life leaders, Jeff and James. I had all these men showing up in little, small ways, earning the right with me, showing me who I wanted to be, and apprenticing me.

Those men, God sent my way. I was lacking a father, but man, I got 10 or 15.

I was introduced to Tom by Thomas from Season 1. I dubbed Thomas, "Chosen Dad," because one of the key things that he shared with me was the concept of chosen family, the people who aren't biologically family to you but become your family through the power and constancy of their presence in your life. Tom and Thomas became chosen family to one another through Young Life, a Christian ministry for teens where Tom, in his capacity as Young Life staff, mentored Thomas. If you're confused at this point about which one's Tom and which one's Thomas, that's totally understandable. In fact, maybe that's the point, because their stories are like the shards of a once-broken object, their jagged, imperfect edges coming together to redeem the wasn't-supposed-to-be-this-way wounds of childhood into a meant-to-be miracle. In our conversation, Tom shares great wisdom and insight on two demographics that are especially pertinent to us dads: teenagers and middle-aged men, the two constituencies that he's ministered to in his 20-plus year career as a pastor. He also shares candidly about his pain from childhood, the healing he's received, and the growing up he still has left to do.

One more thing to introduce this interview: I looked up the origin of the name Thomas and its shortened form, Tom, and it turns out that it's an Aramaic name that means "twin," so you might say that this episode pretty much named itself: Tom, Chosen Dad.

Tom: Shawn, how are you? I'm sorry. I just had a home emergency. We had a snake in the basement.

Shawn: Are you experienced?

T: Yeah, it doesn't faze me, but my wife handled it pretty well for how she handles snakes.

S: On the relative scale of how your wife handles snakes, this was pretty good.

T: Yeah, she called me, came home, got it out of the basement, so...

S: Look at that, just another day.

T: Now we're here.

S: Thank you for doing this. I'm excited to have you because every dad, at some point, I ask him, hey, do you have anybody you could refer to the show that you would like to see on the show or to hear on the show? And so Thomas referred you, and mentioning just how much you've been a presence in his life and an influence in his life. Source of wisdom, he said. Is that true? Are you a source of wisdom? Can you confirm or deny that you're a source of wisdom?

T: (laughs) Whatever wisdom I have was handed to me. So no, I am not a source, but I do enjoy trafficking. I can't think of the proper word there, but part of my call is a pleasure and a deep sense of purpose around taking time to listen and seek out wisdom, spiritual truth, and then make it digestible for folks who don't have the same call or opportunity or time or whatever it is, what have you.

I would call myself something of a pastor in a non-traditional context. And there's a great Brennan Manning - are you familiar with Brennan Manning? Author, priest, alcoholic, just an honest soul. He has this great comparison between what he calls pioneer theology and settler theology. He's really setting up settler theology to feel very safe and tame and pioneer theology to be out on the trail, adventurous. And in settler theology, a pastor is someone who makes sure all the townspeople are following the rules. And on the trail, in pioneer theology, he says the pastor is just another pioneer who learned to cook. All I do in men's lives is cook the meat that's already been furnished.

I like that picture. I feel joy when I think of serving in that role.

S: Introduce yourself. Tell me your name, how old you are, how long you've been married, your kids' ages and genders, what you do for a living, as well as any other hats that you wear or commitments that you keep that are worth mentioning.

T: My name is Tom. I am 41 years old. I have been married to my wife, Kristen, for 20 years this fall. High school sweethearts. So we've been together for two thirds of our life. You would think that that would make us really good at this, but we're still very much figuring out how to do life together. We have two beautiful, wonderful daughters. They are 10 and 13.

The special thing about the ladies in my family are that they all share a birthday. So everyone will turn a year older next month in May. And just age and stage-wise, they are finishing up elementary and middle school and looking toward middle and high school, respectively, next fall. So we got a lot of milestones coming. 20-year anniversary, high school, middle school, all starting up here pretty soon.

I've spent the last 20 years working with a ministry called Young Life here in North Carolina, and recently stepped away from that career to pursue a new opportunity really in leadership development and men's ministry. So it's fairly entrepreneurial, kind of figuring it out as I go. Got some really great people around me helping me do that. I feel honored to do it.

S: Got it, got it. That's awesome. I don't wanna overlook one really interesting fact that you said very nonchalantly, but all three of the ladies in your life, your wife and your two girls, they all have the same birthday.

T: Same birthday. My wife has given birth twice on her birthday. So I know the follow-up questions that are coming, so let me just go ahead and answer them for you.

S: Not that kind of podcast!

T: Everyone gets - no, no, no, I didn't mean that. Although I will say that my birthday is three months after that, so you can do some math. Now you know what I get every year for my birthday.

And so what Young Life is great at is showing up, which I would say is 90% of being a dad, being a person of faith, being a good human. Anything you want success in, the biggest battle is showing up.

S: So when it comes to what you did at Young Life for 20 years and what you're doing now - it's funny, actually, Young Life has been mentioned by two or three of the dads that have been on the show. Obviously Thomas and my mailman, actually, Carlton, he was the fourth dad that I interviewed and he mentioned Young Life as well. It feels especially meaningful to actually have somebody who has worked in Young Life in that ministry to be on the show. One of the many reasons why I'm excited to have you. And so I wanted to ask you a little bit about Young Life and also about your ministry now. So Young Life is a ministry for teens, I believe, correct?

T: Correct, yes.

S: And now you're doing a ministry for men. So I just was curious to know, what's similar about ministering to teens and what's different in terms of ministering to teens versus men?

T: Just larger teens. Just larger. The stakes are a lot higher, you know.

Young Life is just fantastic, man. And really there's nothing special about Young Life except that they've done a great job of holding on to how Jesus did it. Again, Young Life doesn't have some code cracked. If anything, they've just stayed anchored in relationships. And to be honest, what I'm doing today is very similar. Different age group, but same principles.

And so this biblical metaphor of putting new wine into old wineskins doesn't work, right? So we're putting new wine into new wineskins. But it's still wine, right? We're still taking the same fruit and making the same product. And so what Young Life is great at is showing up, which I would say is 90% of being a dad, being a person of faith, being a good human. Anything you want success in, the biggest battle is showing up. What's the differentiator there is that Young Life leaders and Young Life ministers don't wait on kids to come to them. We show up on their turf and initiate. And so that's still what I'm doing. I'm still showing up on guys' turf and showing up at their office and where they like to have coffee.

But one of the fun things about what I'm doing now is that it gets to a deeper space much quicker. Guys kind of know what I'm about. I kind of know what they're about. I just left a meeting this morning - and I want to be careful not to overshare any break any confidence, because that is one thing that's really important to me, that men feel safe to share things with each other at our groups and myself. But I just left a meeting of a guy that I have just met in the past month, and he just went through an interesting life event and called me up and just wanted to go ahead and dive in on it, right, over coffee. That is refreshing, a little bit of a shortcut.

But in my Young Life days, there's real power in earning the right to be heard and earning the right to listen. It seems that a lot of people in ministry, church, et cetera, want to skip over that and just get right to the place where I give you this news, I give you this life perspective, and I give you this kind of belief system and want you to have some kind of lightning rod moment where you just accept it all and then move on. And now you're counted as a disciple of Christ or a follower, a member of this church or whatever it is.

And I love that there's people out there that are going to a world of hurting, overlooked. I mean, when you think about teenagers, everyone kind of has either an internal or an external eye roll. Yeah, I'm a Christian. I think if Jesus came back today, and I believe he will come back one day, I think the first place he would go is the high school. They didn't have them in the time of the Gospels, but he went to where there were broken, sinful, disregarded folks. And I think if you had to pick a cross section of America, which is my context, where that's the most prevalent, I think the adolescent years are it. That kind of season is filled with brokenness, filled with wondering, also filled with opportunity. It's funny, a lot of us look back at that time as either the worst time of our lives or the best time of our lives. But clearly the wavelengths are bigger during that season, right?

Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, said that in the seasons of life, adolescence is the springtime for the flowering of faith. And so it's a place that makes sense to spend time earning a right and showing up. And I got the opportunity to do that with Thomas, who you met with. I did life with him for three years and it was really special and changed me.

People tend to, I don't know if this is just on American or Western thing, but we tend to just look at the programmatic aspect of something and say, oh, that's what's working. But those are just vehicles. The 80% of the iceberg under the surface is relationships. That is the living, breathing heart of relational ministry. It's earning the right. And no one wants to trust anyone else with these deep life, faith, God, big conversations and questions if it's not somebody who has context and availability for their lives.

S: At least for the benefit of the audience who doesn't know about Young Life. Can you describe Young Life, how it operates?

T: Sure, a group of adults in a community typically would band together. We call them a committee. They would pray and pay for raising money and bringing a staff person or a team of volunteers towards building a Young Life area, which would then show up with volunteer leaders, adults, people that would be willing to show up on their turf, earn the right to be heard.

The nuts and bolts of it are kind of, we say the four C's. You have club, which is your kind of weekly or biweekly big group meeting, fun, neutral turf. If you went to that meeting, you would not know that it was a meeting with any kind of gospel-centric or Christian message until the last few minutes, one of those leaders who has earned the right with kids is going to get up and share a devotion, a talk. It's typically going to be directly out of the gospels. It's not going to be a Christian or discipleship development talk. It's going to be straight up, here's Jesus and his interactions with people. That's the bigger meeting - club, number one C.

Number two C would be campaigners. Campaigners is a little more small group, usually each leader individually doing small group, Bible study, discipleship with a group of kids. I'd have a group of senior guys that I would meet with weekly. I'd have a group of sophomore guys that I'd meet with weekly, something like that. That's campaigners.

And then the real gem is summer camp, week-long summer camp. It's just fantastic. Young Life does a really great job of making sure that teenagers feel like, hey, this place was made for you. And I think in a world that gives them hand-me-down cell phones and hand-me-down basketball goals, and you walk into a Young Life camp and you feel like you're walking onto a resort property and it's just for teenagers. And every bit of the detail was designed to wow them.

So club, campaigners, camp, those first three are really the programmatic side. But the biggest one is what we call contact work. And it really is showing up in the lives of kids, showing up in the lives of the people you wanna impact. Lots and lots of time wasted. Just being around, being present, listening, supporting, being the only person other than a parent at a JV girls volleyball game. And those JV volleyball players notice that.

And so that is the big piece under the surface. So when I say that the differentiator with Young Life is that we show up and we have relationships, and it's similar to what I'm doing now. It's principles, it's not Young Life. People tend to, I don't know if this is just on American or Western thing, but we tend to just look at the programmatic aspect of something and say, oh, that's what's working. But those are just vehicles. The 80% of the iceberg under the surface is relationships. So you can take away campaigners for a season or club for a season or camp for a season, and you still have Young Life. You can't take away contact work. That is the living, breathing heart of relational ministry. It's relationships. That's what it is. It's earning the right. And no one wants to trust anyone else with these deep life, faith, God, big conversations and questions if it's not somebody who has context and availability for their lives.

S: What does it look like to earn the right to be heard with a teenager? And what does it look like when you start to see those barriers come down? And if you can connect this kind of with us as dads, because my little kids will be teenagers too, so this may be useful for me just as a dad too.

T: Yeah. Teenagers are just trying on who they are by trying on who they're not. So they're on a mission to figure out who they are. And they probably can't articulate that. But they wonder all the time, what am I gonna do? Who am I gonna be? Who am I gonna marry? How much money am I gonna make? What kind of car am I gonna drive? Where am I gonna live? They're answering all these massive questions without anyone really asking them any of them, except for just, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And nine times out of 10, that goes from something like fireman or astronaut when they're in first grade to whatever makes the most money by the time they're 17.

So they're trying on this lifestyle of like, do I wanna be the guy who parties really hard? Do I wanna be the gal who always has a boyfriend? Do I wanna be the person who gets incredible grades and valedictorian, salutatorian, goes to the right school? Do I wanna be the performer? Do I wanna be the artist? Do I wanna be the partier, the comic? And I don't mean those as professions. I mean those as personalities and professions. So they're trying on all that.

And most of the world is disappointed with them as they figure that out. Their parents are disappointed and also just trying to keep them alive. Right. Maybe emotionally and spiritually healthy as well, but mostly just physically alive.

S: Just alive, let's start there.

T: From what I understand of my friends who have raised teenage sons, they're just trying to keep them alive to 22. But yeah, it's patience. And the only reason you would stick around for somebody doing stupid, stupid things while the gray matter in their brain is getting sussed out, right, is because you love them. And if you love them and you're patient, then you'll let them make those mistakes. And if you are confident in a God who created them in the imago Dei, in the image of who they are, you love the process of them getting closer and closer and closer to that original creation of they are, right?

For me, it was, I'm gonna try everything. I'm gonna try to be all of these things that I imagine will bring life to me and joy to me. And God was one of those, right? It was like, I'm enjoying this weed right now. And it seems like the people that are enjoying God are having fun too, so I'll try some of that also. God, you know?

S: This is your personal story.

T: This is my personal story, yes. Having someone stand by you and listen to you and be willing to talk to you and not just like pummel you with their agenda for what they want you to become, but let you discover for yourself who you are and guide you maybe. And really, it's just the power of having, well, I'm gonna get John Mark Homer on you a little bit, but just the power of being an apprentice and not knowing you are one. When you are apprenticed to someone, when someone is your teacher, when someone is your role model, when someone comes alongside you and loves you too much to let you stay the way you are, but also loves you just as you are, that's an attractive, intriguing kind of relational context that just bears out real fruit.

S: Do you feel that this is something that in a way you have to be not the parents to be able to do this? Do you anticipate having a harder time doing this with your own girls?

T: Yes. I think it's not a one or the other, but I'll take both, please. I want that kind of relationship with my daughters. Certainly, if you removed the parent relationship, I think that's the most detrimental. But certainly, if you supplement a healthy parent relationship with other mentors, young life leaders, youth pastor, Sunday school teacher, coach, this whole new idea of young men and boys really suffering, all the research from what I'm hearing points to the lack of mentors, the lack of role models.

I was blessed in the sense that the greatest curse of my childhood was my father never becoming a father and never being engaged. So I just didn't have a father in my life. I mean, I knew him. We would see each other a couple times a year maybe. And I remember my big question in life as a seven, eight, 10-year-old was why me? Why God, why don't I have a dad? Why am I looking at all these other kids that do? Why didn't my dad love me? But really, it's just a simple like, why me? Why am I going through this? And as I look back as a 40-year-old, and I think like, man, Uncle Wayne was still in my life. Man, my scout master, Mr. Mike was still in my life. My basketball coach, Eric. You know, my Sunday school teacher, Anthony. My youth pastor, Masel. My young life leaders, Jeff and James. Like, I'm like, oh my gosh, I had all these men showing up in little small ways, earning the right with me, showing me who I wanted to be and apprenticing me, right? Those men, God sent my way. I was lacking a father, but man, I got 10 or 15.

And certainly, what would have been best would have been a father and those 10 or 15.

S: Right.

T: So yes, do I love that my daughter has a relationship with her WyldLifeleaders? Absolutely. To the freaking moon, I love it. And I want that, and I don't feel competitive in that, or like a sense of territorialism, like I need to influence my daughter more than, no. Like, she's not mine, she's God's. Doesn't belong to me.

Kids that are at risk don't need a mentor.
They need seven mentors.

S: When did you go from the "why me" question regarding your dad not being around to seeing that actually I had all these men in my life? When did that happen? Was it a specific moment when that realization hit you?

T: It definitely was. And I remember that moment well. And I will say, that has continued. I just listed for you the people from like the age of 10 to 15, I think, right? But I could still pour off names to you right now of guys that are still investing in me in adult development, which is a new concept to me. I heard a therapist recently say like, development as in middle life. And I'm like, oh, wait, we're still developing?

So yeah, that moment I was at a breakfast banquet fundraiser for a ministry here in town that Young Life was deeply partnered with for a quarter century, it still is, called Neighbor to Neighbor. And Royce Hathcock is the director of it, does incredible work in the most under-resourced part of our city. One of the paradigms that shifted for me was, we're not doing ministry to under-resourced kids in Southeast Raleigh. Like we're putting people that have affluence and have resources and people that don't together, and it's helping both. So this balance of, hey, maybe I'm getting more as a mentor at Neighbor than the kids I'm mentoring, right? God is doing more in me than through me. But he shared kids that are at risk don't need a mentor. They need seven mentors. And he had data to back this up, right? Like he had data to say like, it's not a one-on-one, it's a seven-to-one.

And then he asked, he prompted us, I still do this with men today. He said, I want you to write down the people that made you who you are. And then imagine how many people it took to make you who you are. And can you, and imagine the advantages you already had. Now take those advantages away. How much more do these kids need more than that, more mentors than one person pouring into them, right?

And so I think that was the moment where I listed out those names. And I don't know if I wrote it on paper or did it in my head instantly, but the idea that that aha for me, that we're an amalgamation of these role models and mentors as we start out in life and then we find our own way. And at some point there's a pivot to where, okay, it's time to pour back in. And there need to be more of us pouring back in, or I'm going to need to pour into more lives than just one in order to achieve that ratio right now, but I'm on the other side of it, right? And so this society, this world, God, whatever mixture of those things poured into me like crazy for 20 years. And thank God I was a marked target. Like, I'm sure that my scout master heard from my mom, like, hey, Tom's dad isn't in his life. Can you, like, I'm sure that he was thinking like, okay, that kid needs a little bit extra, right? I'm sure that my uncle Wayne was thinking, okay, well, Tom's dad didn't step up. And so I'm going to step in a little bit here. So what started off as a curse, I really look back on and think like, thank God.

S: It's how God's grace is, right? Like the things that were bad were curses - and I can't imagine myself any other way. So thank God, like I couldn't go back if you gave me the power to do that, to go back and rewrite the script, take the other side of the fork in the road. I wouldn't have the guts to do it because I can't imagine who I would be without that curse. When you were asked to list those names, did it feel like the curse was lifted, so to speak, or had you already kind of been realizing a leading up to that?

T: Oh, I don't know that I could articulate that or remember that well. I think the best way to characterize it is instead of a wound that hurt, it became a scar that I was proud of. And it still hurts. There's still a massive piece of me that is looking for that validation that I never got. And a lot of what I do is motivated by that. And I don't think that's a healthy motivation, right? Unfortunately, it leads to self-centeredness and real mixed up stuff, especially in ministry, right? For 20 years. I consider it a joy that I'm aware of it, that I'm battling against it. Maybe I'm in middle life right now, and I think I'm just now becoming aware of all my addictions and idiosyncrasies and needs for validation and how that fleshes out. Maybe by the time I'm in the golden years, I'll have felt like I started to make some progress.

S: Is this a bleak or optimistic assessment? I'm not sure.

T: I think it's just a realistic this life isn't like the full story for me, right? And so all I'm doing is preparing for the next big leap into true life. And so if I arrive at 80, 90, and I start knocking on the pearly gates, and some of the little dark places of my heart and the people that I'm leading and loving were resurrected and redeemed in those 80, 90 years, gosh, hopefully, 80, 90 years. I need to lose a few pounds if I'm gonna make it there. Hopefully, I got to do some resurrecting work on this side of glory, right?

God sends everyone he loves into the desert because it's the only place he can starve our idols out. And the difference is Jesus chose to go to the desert first, right? He starts his ministry by going into the desert for 40 days. I'm trying to get to a place where I choose the desert sometimes instead of having it forced upon me.

S: That's beautiful. I love that perspective, that eternal perspective. So I wanted to jump back to your current ministry because you gave some really interesting insights into the mind, the psyche, the struggles of teens. So now turn it to us. What do you know about men or what have you learned about men? Like, what are we doing? If teenagers are trying on all the things that they're not gonna be, what are we doing? That we're trying to work through?

T: Shawn, it took me 20 years to become aware and then sort of be able to articulate in a simple way that season of life. And I've been doing men's ministry for six months. I do think there's a fair amount of just, we're just big, fat teenagers with bigger roles and higher stakes and mortgages to pay and people depending on us.

But I know what I've learned is, gosh, I make mistakes every day as a father and as a husband. I know that those mistakes are often compounded when I make a mistake with my wife and my kids see it, right? I think that if my kids, I'm ashamed to say this, but I think if my kids had to characterize me right now, they would certainly say that they know I love them and they would certainly say that I'm fun.

I think somewhere pretty quickly in that list of top three or four characterizations of dad, that they would say disappointed.

S: Really?

T: Yeah, yeah. That they would say dad wants more from me or wants me to be more responsible around the house. I think one of the biggest mistakes I've made, and again, I don't wanna mischaracterize it, but it's in the context of love and in the context of figuring out how to raise a human that's out of your control and not really yours, belongs to someone else, right? Children are a gift from God, not my property. So I've gotta figure out how to help Ava unfold into the human that she is, right? And I've gotta help Kate do that. And in some ways, I've gotta help my wife do that. And my wife's gonna help me do that. I make mistakes at that constantly.

And I'm constantly living in a tension of, is this a moment where I teach them about taking out the trash and being a good housemate, roommate, partner, community member? Or is this a moment when I do it for them because I want it done? But often as a dad and a performer and somebody who's been seeking validation for a large part of their life, I want the people around me to do the same.

And in my household, personality-wise, I am the driver, right? And everyone else gets made into the striver. I'm looking at our refrigerator, it's got a list of to-dos from this weekend. Like, Ava, you're gonna do these chores and knock out these things. And I wrote that list up there. So I'm trying to raise good humans that can function self-sufficiently and relying on God. All these things are in tension and I'm screwing it up constantly. I do think that I have grace for that more so than I used to. And I think it's balanced. I certainly would like to rebalance the scales in an atmosphere, in an environment of extreme affection, love, acceptance. Yeah, but that's hard. It is hard. My role as a parent is to graduate them out of your home. Yeah. Ready, right? Gritty, responsible, capable, some level of confidence.

S: Don't forget sensitive. You gotta care, too.

T: Sure, sure, sure.

S: All that stuff. (laughs) No, no, just get stuff done, actually.

T: Yeah, right, right. Feelings. So what am I trying to do as a dad? What have I learned that men are struggling with? I think admitting that that's a real thing, that all these tensions we feel, whether it's provision or parenting or whatever it is, I mean, and it's multiple, that that's okay, that we're not alone in that, and that God's doing something in my life as much as he's doing something in the people's lives who I'm loving and leading, right?

And so I love this idea that I've recently been pondering on of Paul Miller says in his book, I think it's called A Praying Life, that God sends everyone he loves into the desert because it's the only place he can starve our idols out. And the difference is Jesus chose to go to the desert first, right? He starts his ministry by going into the desert for 40 days. I'm trying to get to a place where I choose the desert sometimes instead of having it forced upon me and knowing that God refines me in that and that I walk out ready to minister to my family and to my community better once I've gone there.

As I interact with, for a long time, teenage guys and now early adult and mid-adult guys, I'm always asking myself, what's his big question? And I think for a lot of guys between the ages of 25 and 45, their big question somehow falls under this umbrella: Am I doing it right? Is what I'm doing the right thing to be doing? It's all orbiting that idea of purpose.

S: You are, to me, somebody who is really, is and has been living from a place of calling. And I think that's really remarkable because I think so many of us guys in middle age, we are not living from a place of calling. We are feeling like we're doing a lot of stuff. We're certainly, in terms of caloric output, we're doing a lot, but do we feel connected to the things that we're doing? Are we moving with conviction? And so as somebody who, I think I'm rightfully identifying as somebody who has been living from a place of calling and is living from a place of calling, can you unpack what that looks like so that those of us who are not doing that or who would like to have that, like what should that look like? How do we get there? What does it feel like? All those things.

T: That's a big question. As I interact with, for a long time, teenage guys and now early adult and mid-adult guys, I'm always asking myself, what's his big question? And I think for a lot of guys between the ages of 25 and 45, their big question somehow falls under this umbrella: Am I doing it right? Is what I'm doing the right thing to be doing? It's all orbiting that idea of purpose.

And I think that's very intentional on God's part. I think that he made us to want purpose and he made us to want relationship. That's not just wired into our DNA as a creator, but that's wired into our DNA as a reflection of God. You think about who God is, as triune. Relationships, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, interacting with each other, purposeful, intentional, working, creating for six days, resting on a seventh. The principle of work is good, rest is good, relationships are good, purpose. These are good things that every human has desired. Men, in my experience, men wanna be good dads, good husbands and good workers, purposeful in what they do. I am working out of a sense of calling. I am blessed to do that. I don't know that you're not. In fact, I might say the opposite. I might say that there's those of us who are so weak-willed and needy that we had to do this kind of work. I wouldn't have the ability to do what you do, but what you're doing for your family, that is purposeful.

Walking in and sitting with a coffee with a guy and inviting him, a lot of what I'm doing is just holding space, and then it's up to him whether or not he wants to use that space. And if we don't make some massive life-affirming wisdom paradigm shift, that's okay. Life's not a bunch of mountaintops.

A lot of times in the old days of Young Life Camping, we would take kids out to Colorado. We'd hike this Mount Crystallite, and we'd hike a, I don't know, 12,000-foot peak. Pretty challenging. And for this week, kids would kind of get this sense of like, oh, I can do this life with God. This is good. I like this. This is attractive to me. I want this.

And we get to this top of this mountain that's really hard to get to, and you see the world in a new way, a new perspective, and then you start to pivot into like, okay, we're going home in a day or two, and this has been a great week. Like, I'm going back to a life waiting on me that is probably gonna invite me back into the same old addictions and sinful patterns, and this idea that, hey, growth happens in the valleys. Right, the mountaintop view is beautiful and perspective-giving, but it's the everyday that changes you.

I have this perspective on, for somebody who's not engaged in walking with God, I think their biggest hurdle or hang-up typically tends to be the lies they are believing. I think this money will give me life or joy and satisfaction. I think this sexual encounter will provide what I'm looking for. I think this will fill my well. Oh, no, it didn't? Okay, I'll go find another thing, right? But I believe a lie, and I pursue that lie until that lie comes to bear, and I realize it's a lie, and I'm gonna go seek another one.

For the believer, the biggest hang-up and hurdle isn't the lies they believe. I think it's the half-truths they're believing, these ideas around their theology or how they interact that is, okay, well, you have part of the truth, but you are not walking all the way into it. And so, similarly, like, you're living a relationship that's all fluff, but you never get to the good stuff, or you're going to work just to make money, but you never get to the purpose behind the work.

So for a lot of us, just because we have achieved this mental ascent of knowing the big, giant gospel truth of sinful man, loving God, sacrificial lamb Jesus, just because we know that big universal truth, we think everything else we're living out is also true in some ways. Like, we're a little bit arrogant in that way. What we need to do is take all these half-truths that we're living and purify them with whole truth.

Oh, I believe that I'm supposed to be a good dad. Well, that's only half of that truth. I'm supposed to be a great dad for them, right? But the whole truth is you're supposed to be a great dad for them, and because it makes you redeemed and resurrected and brings joy to your life, right? I'm supposed to be obedient or do the right things because it'll make me better. Well, yeah, kind of, but also to redeem the world.

But the problem, we all know this, the problem with, at least the Christian faith, is Christians, you know? And we're walking around living a bunch of half-truths.

And so, gosh, we really, I mean, I think your original question was how do you walk into something like that with somebody who doesn't believe what you believe? And the simple answer that I should have said without all the words is you just show up and be present. Bob Goff has this great line, when love has an agenda, it stops being love. So I can show up to coffee with a guy or beers after work with someone. I'm changed by that, even if they're not. I've been obedient and faithful to what I was called to do today, and that's doing something in my life. I believe it's doing something in theirs too, but if I don't see the fruit of that ever, that's okay.

So when is enough gonna be enough and when are you gonna shut up? Those are the two big questions that I'm trying to keep front of mind.

S: Some of the things that you were saying earlier about your background and biography remind me of things in my own too, things that I've been also realizing embarrassingly late in life.

T: So many people, so many men especially, go their entire lives without ever having the courage to even wonder if there's things they're missing. I think that my journey inward that began probably through some of the hardest times in my life and career the last six or seven years, I'm grateful for it, right? Like we all know that like, okay, I am my mistakes and my past, but it also left some marks.

But this idea that I'm really wrestling with the past couple years is like this inward journey of, yeah, healing and vulnerability and honesty and sensitivity, but I certainly need more gentleness and tenderness in my life, especially how I treat the people around me. But this idea that, okay, let's take prayer, for example. Most of my life I've said prayers, or at least since I was a praying person, I've said prayers. But if you asked me to define prayer, I would say it's a conversation with God, right? Well, when does God speak? Is the question that one of my mentors asked me When does God speak? Like we keep on going to him and telling him all these things and saying all these things and asking for all these things. Well, when does he speak? We're not trying to like put a drop of God or a bucket of God into our lives. We're trying to completely dump out the little container of life that I have into the ocean that is him. And so when am I gonna be still and listen and get away from the noise and hear God speak? Because so far he hasn't done much yelling over the noise of my life.

So I think part of this journey is not so much like to discover myself or be more vulnerable about who I am, but just let him speak to me. And it takes getting out of my own way to do that, to listen and be still before him and surrender my thought life, my anxieties, my addictions, my needs, my control. So that's a practice that I feel like I've been going from charismatic faith and ministry and life to contemplative.

You know, there's a scene in "The Abyss" where they're basically underwater astronauts and they've made suits for diving underwater that they have oxygenated liquid. And so you get in your suit and you have to breathe the liquid again and your body violently reacts to it. But it's like, hey, you did this. You did this for nine months. You can breathe liquid oxygen, but it's so revolting. And so that idea of, okay, let me get back to the way I was created to listen to him and let him work on me and breathe in the liquid that I know will actually keep me alive. But I've been doing this life, breathing on my own so long that that feels really violent to switch back into it.

S: Yeah. And definitely appreciate you sharing kind of how that has felt unnatural. And I wonder also, do you have any thought as to like how this personal inward journey is gonna change how you are with your family as a husband and as a dad?

T: Well, yes. I think that it's taken me a long time to arrive at some of the right questions. And I'm hopeful that some of them will start to have answers as I continue to ask them.

So the big question for me that I couldn't have articulated until the past few years is, again, I told you, like I think about what's his big question. Well, mine is, a couple of them are, when is it enough? Is any of it enough? Can you be content? That's a big one for me. It has to do with my validation and my personality and my addictions and desires and control.

But like, yeah, I always wanna make it better, make it more, have more words, more perfection, more doing. You know, when is it enough, Tom? And you'll find this greatly ironic as we've spent almost two hours, mostly me just blowing hot air. But when are you gonna shut up?

S: Don't worry, this is by design. I have every intention to make sure that you're doing 95% of the talking. So as far as I'm concerned, this was your purpose today.

T: Yeah, and my wife is probably so thankful that I'm gonna get all these words out with you instead of her today. Yeah, when are you gonna shut up? I mean, you know what I gave up for Lent, which I'm doing a weak-ass job at, is saying things out loud that I know will lead to my wife and I arguing or my wife having to just like let it ride.

S: Absorb.

T: Yeah, absorb it. That's a good word for it. Yeah, she's absorbed so much from me over the last 20 years, 27 years, something like that.

So when is enough gonna be enough and when are you gonna shut up? Those are the two big questions that I'm trying to keep front of mind and begin to process and maybe hopefully, arrive at answers again sometime around 80 or so. It'd be nice.