Fatherhood- Responsibilities, opportunities and dangers After Hours

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Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina. Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here, now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. And if you missed a regular show, man, you missed a great show.

Well, I don't know. I thought it was good. Robby, did you think it was pretty good?

Yeah, it's absolutely great. We anted up to the mics and everything. Andy, dandy, you know, whatever. Anti-Andy, maybe that's what I'll call him. And speak of anti-Andy, he's not here. He's going to have to Andy up next time. Yeah, and it was kind of just a cryptic, I'm busy, can't make it.

There wasn't really any explanation. It was like, I think it's, you know, I want to grab some Bojangles and just sit at home and watch TV. And Andy, yeah, that's directed right at you, my friend. Anyway, we've been talking about fatherhood, right? And the opportunities, the responsibilities, I think I had that backwards, the responsibilities, the opportunities and the dangers of fatherhood. And where it kind of came from, I was trying to catch up on some TV shows that I hadn't watched in a while. And just, it seemed like all the different shows that I had watched, there was something to do with The Father Wound. It just, I don't know, it happened to be that week, you know, that I'd missed or whatever it was. But then I just started thinking about all the movies, you know, and I just watched a movie over the weekend that was all about The Father Wound.

It's called Kodachrome on Netflix. It's got some pretty harsh language and deals with some pretty difficult topics. But it's, the whole show is about The Father Wound. Yeah, it's actually, Rodney took Robby's mic, and so he just responded that there was nothing there to make a sound. We're professionals. Robby, if you make a sound in the woods, nobody's going to hear it, apparently.

You know, we've proven that fact. I was just thinking, Sam, it's like, you just got to stop watching TV. Oh, I like TV. I don't watch it all the time.

But you know, there's times I like to relax and kind of chill out and watch it. I know, when you're talking about, well, I got all this Father Wound stuff coming out. It's like, wounding, wounding, wounding. It's like, danger, danger, Will Robinson.

It is, it is. But you know, I think that's, if we were honest, and had the opportunity to share openly about our life and had the context to share openly about our life, I think that would be most people's stories. You know, there's a Father Wound in there somewhere, and a Mother Wound, and some other wounds, you know, along the way. But you know, you can't escape this life without getting it at some point, right?

Yeah, and giving him, unfortunately. And unfortunately. So when we left off from the show, we were talking about opportunities. And Harold, you didn't get a chance to share about opportunities.

So I'm going to go ahead and let you share that before we move on to dangers, if you'd share that with us. His opportunity is, it's Halloween, and he gets to dress up like Princess Leia. It's kind of a Yoda-Leia kind of thing. Yeah, you're right.

It's got the Yoda-Leia combination. Yeah. YOLO. YOLO.

YOLO. I like that. The thought that has occurred to me here in the last few minutes of all this stuff going on, we're like the seven stooges tonight.

Mo, Curly, and the rest of us. I think opportunity is one of the things that is the strongest that we have. Most of us can look at the responsibility for providing for our family and those kinds of things. But one of the things that I just, I have such a great relationship with my son who lives here locally. And I think it's because I took advantage of opportunities when he was young, growing up, to develop a relationship with him that identified us as, yes, father, but also buddy. He and I, for many years now, have had a close relationship like two best buddies. He always treats me respectfully, like you should treat a father. But also, he's free to joke with me and to have fun. We do things together. And, truthfully, outside this group, he's probably the closest buddy I've got.

You guys come close, but I'd have to say y'all are still second place, as much as I love you. But that's the one thing I would encourage fathers to do, is to take advantage of our opportunities to develop that other relationship with your child. So how did you develop those opportunities? I mean, what types of things would you do to foster that? Well, go to ball games, go to movies, listen to, I used to listen to music videos when they were growing up.

It wasn't exactly my preference, because I'm a jazz fan. But ZZ Top was great, and so we had a lot of opportunities that I took to be with him, doing things that he would like to do. And we developed a really close relationship, and I think that many fathers don't have that. You know, one of the things that I think Heidi actually had suggested to me when Caleb was little, or I got it from Wild at Heart, is what it was, was we would do every, you know, six weeks, every couple months, something like that. I would put a note underneath his dinner plate, you know, and when he'd go to clean up, you know, there'd be this note, and he'd say, we're going on an adventure, right?

And I would never tell him what the adventure was, you know, I'd just tell him, okay, this is what clothes you need to take, or whatever it was. And, you know, one time we went to a Colts training camp, you know, and watched it. We just did all sorts of stuff, you know, fishing or whatever it might be, but it was a day that I would go spend with him, you know, a good portion of the day, and I continued that with Eli, you know, and I think the signal that was there is your priority. You know, I'm going to schedule something with you, and I'm going to surprise you, right? And not at the time I didn't think it was going to have the fruit that it did, but I think you have that, and I think just having real conversations with your kids. And conversations is a two-way thing, you know, not trying to convince them to your way of thinking, trying to help them to think for their own, right? How to critically think, you know, and that's easier said than done, but I think that that's a big opportunity just to kind of listen and find out where their heart is, and when they know you listen, there's definitely some deposits made there in that relationship.

Yeah. Jim, did you want to share something? Well, I was just going to say that you just touched on danger, which is I think the next one, and I was feeling pretty good until you started talking about how great a dad you were, and I think in the first one I was saying that I was going to do Cats in the Cradle, but I couldn't have taken it because that was how I felt about my parenting. And then I got to thinking in the break here, well, you know, I did scouts with my boys, and I coached their basketball team, and I was trying to pat myself on the back until I realized that quite often what I was doing right, you know, both the responsibilities and the opportunities were coming out of my own selfishness. So I did not feel like I was a good father, and one of the things that I felt was my responsibility that fit in well with being selfish is I was preparing my children to be on their own, because I didn't want them in the house after they were 18. And I was successful with that responsibility, but it came at a price of having them not out of my life, but there have been long stretches, especially with my boys, of not talking. I had the opportunity to have a great conversation with one a couple weeks ago when we went down to visit him and actually got to talk to my other son, who's too busy, dad, you know, can I borrow the car key. I mean, it really was hitting home some of the lines in the song, but when we did the father wound, and I'll shut up after this one because I probably won't be able to talk too much longer, one of the things I did out of that is I went to my boys and apologized for the wounds I know I gave them, and neither of them said they weren't wounded, but they both said that we knew you loved us and we're doing out of that, so that would be the success. But if you want to see your kids later, you might not want to push them out the door as fast as you can.

Yeah, no, that's tough, Jim. Thank you for sharing. We are going to move more into the danger part, and this particular clip is from a TV show called Ted Lasso, and in this, it's about a football coach that's coaching soccer over in England. We used a clip last week, I think, from it, but he's so nice to everybody and really invests himself in their lives, and you don't know what his story is, and so they bring in this psychologist to work with some of the team that's struggling with their performance and just helping them work through issues so they could perform better on the field and be happier individuals and that type of stuff, and so the psychologist starts saying, hey, Ted, when are you going to come meet with me? And he's putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, and so they've met a few times, and he kind of refuses to go very deep, and then she opens up and shares with him some stuff about her life. Well, fast forward.

They play this big soccer match. I don't remember whether they win or lose, but the first call he makes is to his psychologist, his counselor, and wants to share with her some of his story, and so you have the beginning of this clip where he's sharing, and they're on a phone call doing it, and then later, we come back, you hear some music playing, and that's when they're in the session, and she's kind of helping work through it by asking the question, what was it that you really loved about your dad, right, and it helps him move towards some healing in it, but I want you to hear the power of a grown man in something that happened at 16 years old when his father committed suicide that he carries with him every day. My father killed himself when I was 16. When I was 16. That happened to me and to my mom. I'm so sorry, Ted. And look, I don't know if that's where maybe some of my issues stem from. No, it definitely is.

Right, that makes sense. Do you want to talk about it now? No, no, not right now.

I need to get back inside of the team. I just wanted you to know. He was a good dad. And I don't think he knew that. I think he wouldn't know how good he was at stuff he didn't really care about being good at.

I don't think he would have done it. And I wish I would have told him. I wish I would have told him more. I was just so angry at him because he was always gone at work and just out with friends or something like that.

And then he was gone. I knew right then and there that I was never going to let anybody get by without understanding they might be hurting inside, you know, in life. It's hard.

It's real hard. Thank you, Ted. I don't know if this is illegal or something. I have a hug. Are you going to charge me for this session? Of course I am. I appreciate your integrity.

You're welcome. That's probably why I like the show so much. It's got some serious topics, but there's always humor right behind it. But you definitely have this man who's made a vow that he's always going to let people know where they stand and he's always going to love people well. And that's really affected a lot of lives, but it's not led him to healing.

And that's a problem with a vow. They're not necessarily always negative. They're not necessarily always something that's evil or I'm never going to trust anyone again.

So you get in your shell. Sometimes they can be really good things, but they don't lead to healing. And so Ted's starting to find some healing as we find there. And he's able to start forgiving his dad at this point. And that's one of the dangers is we can hurt our kids with something we think, and killing yourself is not a minor thing. I'm not saying that, but we could do something really minor. And we don't think it's a big deal, but our kids carry it for a lifetime if we're not careful. And then fast forward, if it's something big like that, oh my gosh, there's no answered questions or all these things.

And of course Ted's going to struggle, anyone would. Yeah, clips like that and going to the boot camps. It's where I learned, I didn't know anything about a father wound.

I'm going to leave from our talk this evening and drive home thinking about things like that. But boot camp was a big part of that, getting me to deal with those things. Wounds that I didn't realize I had for my dad. That's kind of similar in terms of the suicide, but I had a lot of verbal abuse and I didn't realize how much of that carried over into the anger that I had growing up.

But because of those things and because of these clips, the things that we talk about in the boot camps, keep going back to boot camps, you should come to boot camp. But because of those things, it actually made me a better father with my son. I've got four kids, I've got three girls and a son, he's five years old, he's the third child. And I'm doing things very, very different with him. We are, at five years old, we're best friends. I come walking in the door, he comes running up to me and punches me in the stomach. That may sound weird, but we wrestle, we play, we have a lot of good times.

And I look for the teachable opportunities. He brought a sucker to me the other day and wanted me to open it and his sister's right beside him and it's the last sucker. And I said, Jacob, is that the last one? Well, yeah, daddy. Well, okay, but your sister wants it. What do you think you should do? I want the sucker, daddy.

I understand that, but what do you think you should do? Well, it's the last one and she really wants it, so I'm going to give it to Sissy. And I was like, I'm proud of you, buddy. Give me a little fist bump there.

I love you, bud. So using those things as teachable moments. Now the daughters, that's like playing Russian roulette.

That's a little different. Again, I'm blaming the boot camp because going after the heart of your daughter, um, you know, I tend to over-correct and end up wrecking the car anyway, and, you know, looking for ways to, to, to, to fix some of those things along the way. How do you love them in the midst of, you know, my oldest is 14, you know, she's a teenager and I remember the heart she had when she was little. And I still want to try to teach, you know, I still want her to be that little girl that loved her daddy.

And now it's, you know, all you can do to get them to say hi and give you a hug. Right. I mean, it's, it's a different world. So, um, the dangers, you know, we were talking about the dangers of, of rearing our children. Danny, you mentioned, you know, teach the child and the way they should go and they won't depart from it. And as hard as we try, while that is a promise in scripture, it's not always reality.

You know, you look at even scripture and you see a Hezekiah, the greatest King who ever lived, but he still had a very evil son. So, you know, we can tend to beat ourselves up and think we could have done better. And sometimes we've done all that we can do, you know, just like us, you know, our kids have their own minds. They get to, they get to make a choice. Um, so yeah.

They need you have something. Yeah. Kind of a story is kind of recent, but, um, the emotions have been raw in my family.

Yes. Mom passed. I was having a conversation with dad a while back, and this is kind of a threefold deal. It was kind of cool. And I was talking about dad never been an emotional guy.

I'm just the opposite. I cried, drop a hat. But I asked him about the thing. I said, you know, we'd look at you growing up and you were like the, I remember when his dad died, we're sitting in the funeral.

I'm 18 or something. And I'm looking for somebody and I'm thinking, I can look at dad. He's strong and he's weeping.

I'm going, Oh, the rock has melted. And so we were talking about that. And he said, you know, he said, I tried to bottle everything up. He said, I shouldn't have done it. He said, but I felt like I had to be strong.

And I thought, wow, there's a perspective. If I'm looking at you like you're the man I'm not, and it was a wound that actually came out. And I was talking to my daughter about the same thing. She said, dad, she's always appreciated the fact that you did show your emotions. She said, I actually look at that as a strength.

So kind of some healing that happened. You know, as I sit here and listen, and I'm just asking God, you know what, I've got anything to offer here. And I feel like the one thing that has really come through for me is I just keep praying, praying, praying. I love my kids.

I love them my whole heart. And I keep praying, God, show me a crack in the armor somewhere where I can get in as they get older, you know? And I was, you know, and I did, that's my constant prayer.

And I was listening to the ransomware podcast, or maybe it was a good soil podcast, one of those things from wild at heart. And Morgan's daughter was like 15 or 16. And he was going to give her a promise ring. But the promise wasn't that she wouldn't be, you know, not promiscuous or whatever. But the promise was that he was going to give her this ring that he promised that he would love her forever. And that's what this promise ring meant from him. And I was, it just broke my heart because I thought, man, would that have been cool to do for my daughter when she was that age. And God just said, you know, he didn't hurt her and all that.

And he said, well, what about now, Robby? I mean, why can't you give her one now? And I was like, wow, maybe I could, you know, maybe I could. And so I told my wife, and oh, she was like, oh, that would be so cool. And I think it was a couple Christmases ago. And we went out and got the ring.

And I just can't even begin to share that that was a jink through the armor, right? That here's this struggled relationship. I made all these mistakes. You know, she was strong willed.

I was harsh, all those things. But God continues to give us opportunities if we love and we pray. And we're just looking for that little crack somewhere where we got an opportunity to go in there. And actually, with both my daughters, I've had some of those in spite of so I hope that you have hope out there. Listen, that even if you're in the boat where I am, like, wow, I'd like to figure out a way to get back. And I mean, I think if you, for me, if I really, really continue to love and continue to pray, God's going to give me opportunities, as I listen to shows like this, and I try to try to learn.

Dr. Jon Olin Yeah, I was able to take that idea and did it with my youngest daughter around a fire pit one night with a lot of loved ones around. And, you know, it just meant a lot to her heart, you know, and because she was a kind of, she saw me doing the adventures with my sons. And from a distance, she was already in college, you know, at that point, and I think there was something in her that kind of wondered, okay, why didn't you really do that with me?

We did father daughter dates, but it wasn't as intentional, you know, and so it was an opportunity to kind of speak back into her life. One of the things I wanted to share about the power of the boot camp is I probably wounded my kids the most over a wound that I had, right, which was, you have nothing to say, no one's going to listen to you, you know, and if you've listened to the show very long, that's one of the longest wounds that I've had for my oldest sister since as long as I can remember. And God's really worked on it. But before I came to boot camp, you know, my kids wouldn't listen, I would get into a very, very irate place quickly.

Right. And I never knew why it just made me so mad until I went to boot camp. And God helped me unpack that wound of, you know, I got this thing over, you're going to listen. One way or another, you're going to listen. And whether they were, you know, three or they were 13, you know, they were going to listen, right to them and grounding them, whatever it took, right.

And as I got more healing in that, it allowed me to have more grace with them, you know, and I didn't have to, I could still want them to listen and to show me respect, but I wasn't going to get to the point where I was so vocal or so angry, or whatever the case may be, or overreactive. Right now, that doesn't really work, I guess, with a restaurant and a pickle, because it still kind of makes me mad when I don't get to pickle and I've asked for it, you know, like every week, but God's still working on me. Maybe this boot camp will get the pickle breakthrough. We all got pickles at dinner tonight, just so you know. Yeah, you do when I'm not there. Yeah.

So I just ordered meals without pickles now. You know, Wayne, you want to add something? Just, I mean, Robby, what you were talking about there, just going to God and asking him, what am I supposed to do? Because if we do it on our own, we are, we're going to mess it up. And, you know, I just recently found something where, you know, I wounded my daughter in doing some things that I saw needed to be done, some things that needed to be taken out of the house. And, but it did, it hurt her heart because she had spent so much time on some of these things.

It was part of her identity and who she was, but there was darkness there that needed to go. And when I found it, I did, I wanted to address it right then and there. I wanted to go and have a talk, sit down and, you know, more of a, you know, why do you think daddy's toxic kind of thing.

Let's talk about this. And God said, no, no, not right now. And I, and I got really still and I did, I asked him, you know, what do I do about this? And he said, just leave it alone.

It'll take care of itself in time whenever I let you deal with it then, but not right now. And then I could have, I could have made things much, much worse. It could have betrayed some things with her in terms of her privacy and things like that.

You know, in the way that I found it in cleaning up a room, I found a writing that she did and I read it. And so it could have, it could have put another wedge in between us to where she wouldn't talk that much more. But that same night, we ended up playing Yahtzee at the table with the family.

And, you know, it was a great time. Again, this is my oldest daughter. We, it's hard to get her to talk to me.

She's 14 years old. And, but at the Yahtzee table, at the game table, everybody's having fun, everybody. And what my wife and I will do, we'll just start asking them questions while we're playing and get them to kind of open up about some things. They don't even realize they're doing it. It's really cool how that works.

Yeah. I found from my youngest son who can now drive, if I have him drive, he will talk, you know, cause he can't look at his phone. And so he'll talk, you know, the whole time he's driving. If I'm driving, there's no conversation, you know? And so I'm like, Hey, you want to drive bud? You drive this first part, man, I can just ask him stuff. He'll share with me. He'll talk, you know, he'll throw things out. Cause he's got nothing else to do, but drive. Right.

And so he's willing to talk. And so see, it's interesting you mentioned that because my, you know, she's at the age now where she's going to start driving next year. And my wife, you know, she's, she's starting to drive the four wheeler around the property. She's starting to drive our car up to the barn to take care of the chickens.

And my wife is like, you know, maybe you should take her out and teach her to drive and out in the world, you know, kind of like, you know, my dad had me driving when I was 12 years old, you know, by myself and driver's seat up down. So yeah, probably not recommended. No, no, no. I wouldn't recommend that. Yeah.

We would go to the school parking lot. You know, I hate to admit, I showed my kids how to do donuts in North Carolina police departments. He's lived in Virginia. Don't worry about it. That's true. That's true. And we won't tell you his last name, so you can't really go look that up. But I know we've talked a lot about the bootcamp.

That was not really our intention going into the show. But when it makes such an impact in your life, you just want to share it. And all I can say is just please really consider coming to the bootcamp coming up November 18th through the 21st. We're going to have it in a beautiful place in Moxville.

Yes, there are beautiful places in Moxville, and we're going to have it out there. masculinejourney.org. This is the Truth Network. Say what would you do if you were a new Christian and you didn't have a Bible? It's Michael Woolworth, by the way, from Bible League International. And you'd probably say, well, I'd hop in my car. I'd go to a Christian bookstore or have one shipped to me.

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