Mother's Day Honor After Hours

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A 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 we are excited about the topic this week, but this is a very important eve, and I know we covered it on the last show, but if you didn't listen to the last show or if you're listening to them out of order, you can't miss this eve, can they, Robby? Now, it's Mother's Day Eve, meaning that tomorrow it's Mother's Day, and so that does include, in case you're wondering, your own wife who might be a mother, and from what we understand from Jim, saying that you're not my mother is not a good answer. That'll make them for a mother of a day. And then there's daughters, and sometimes even granddaughters, but the chances are there's somebody in your life that would really love to be honored for what they're doing as a mom. Maybe a sibling, right? You could have a sister that is a mother, and so you have all that. Anyway, aunts. I mean, we could keep going now, though, as nieces. I mean, there's others, but we could keep going. Andy, you want to tell us about the topic that we're talking about today? Well, y'all are about to destroy it. Let me guess, is it about mothers?

It might be. Let's just say, since we've opened it up beyond mothers, but just the whole female gender, right? If they're a mother, that's the whole point. A niece can be a mother. My niece is a mother. We're going to honor females, but we're going to honor mothers, for sure. I was talking about mothers that just so happen to be female, which would go with the mother thing. Well, we talk a lot about masculinity, so we are talking a little bit about the impact of femininity into our lives, our mothers in particular. We've done other holiday shows, and you guys may have done it before I joined, but I can't remember us doing it.

My mom's had a lot of input into my spiritual growth and life, and I just thought it would be a good thing to do to honor them. We talk about the father wounds and the blessing of the father and finding God as the father, and there's aspects even with God, a motherly aspect, but sometimes I just don't think we talk about it amongst ourselves. I thought this would be a good topic for the show. Are you done? I like to give everybody … I want to make sure everybody knows what the show's about. Yeah, you covered it well. All right, so I have a clip. It's a 16-second clip, and as we talked about … Good thing, because we don't have much time left.

Oh, no, it's … yeah, I'll rush through it. As we talked about in the last show, it was very difficult for a lot of us to find clips on our mom. Unfortunately, Robby had a clip of his mom talking, which makes it a lot easier in that regard and a lot harder in other regards. But I really struggled. I thought about this topic.

We've known about it for a few weeks. And I struggled, and every mom that I could think of in a TV show or a movie may have an aspect of my mom, but it was not my mom. And I didn't feel like saying, this is my mom here.

And so I just was kind of prepared to not have a clip. And then I was looking up some stuff today at lunchtime and found a clip from an interview. And it probably was for a church, I'm guessing, but it was asking all these young kids, elementary-school-aged kids, about their mom asking questions. And I settled on this question that you'll hear right away. It's just the one question, what did your mom always say to you? And so we'll come back and talk about it. What is something your mom always says to you?

Be good to your friends. She usually says, clean up my room. How was your day whenever I get home from school? She says, she loves us. She loves me.

I love you. For me, the last three answers was my mom. I thought it was interesting, there were six answers there and half of them were, I love you, or she loves us. And as I think back at my mom, and I lost my mom the same year that Robby lost his in 2016. We did do a show at Christmas that year on surviving Christmas without a loved one.

But other than that, we really haven't talked a lot about it, Andy, to your point. For me, my mom was always about love. It does help that I was the youngest of six kids, and so she had a lot more patience with me than she had with the others. Hearing stories of my brothers, that mom was quick with her backhand and would use it. I didn't fortunately get it very much, or if I did, God's sparing me from that memory because it wasn't the most important thing.

A, I probably deserved it, or A, I really did deserve it if I did get it. But it was more her desire to always know that regardless of what was going on, regardless of what we were going through, she loved us. Back in the time when I lived in California and I couldn't call her because it was long distance.

It was back in the days where you actually had long distance and couldn't do. When I would call her, she'd always go, she always knew. She'd say, what's wrong? You haven't called me in a while.

I know you don't call much, but you usually call and say, I love you, so what's wrong? She had this intuition that she would draw things out of me and then just love me through it. Growing up, I don't remember my dad ever saying, I love you.

I didn't realize that until about seven, eight, nine years ago, something like that. I asked mom about it because she was still alive. She said, he probably didn't ever say it because he never rarely said it to me, his wife. And just growing up in that, probably the last thing I'll share on that, is it was so important to my mom for the last four or five years that she was alive. She had told me about four years when she first started doing it, she said, I'm going to make sure I'm the last one to say anything when we're talking and I'm going to say, I love you.

Because if that's the last words that you ever hear from me, I want you to know I love you. And even when we were with her in the hospital and she got to the point where she was unable to talk before she passed away, she would sign in some way, I love you, to all of us. And so for me, it's a legacy of love. Mom wasn't perfect, nobody's perfect, but man, love makes up for a multitude of things.

At least I heard that's in Scripture somewhere. And so she did love me well. Yeah, I think I echo the same thing when you started talking about that. I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to think of my dad, is he ever, you know, like a hug? I love you or anything like that. No, but like for mom, oh yeah, constantly. You didn't get out of the house, you didn't get off the phone, you didn't get anywhere still to this day, you know.

Fortunately, I still have my mom and yep, I love you, I love you. It's always there, it's so constant. And you know it's genuine and it's basically, like you said, unconditional. And it's like for all the things that I did not to deserve it, I still get it. It's wonderful.

Yeah, it is wonderful. You know, it really speaks to, you know, George Floyd's last words. I've thought about it all week for some reason that, you know, here he was and what did he cry out for, right? He was crying out for his mom. In those last moments and, you know, that idea that comfort that's available only, from my perspective, from mom.

You know, that was just, that was the very unique thing that she had for you and always did. But, you know, in Danny's case, he has the story. And so, you know, we need to hear the story.

So we don't get out of this after hours, you know, without hearing the story. So here you go. Well, Danny, yeah, you can take it down a notch. Take it down just a notch.

Just a notch, yeah. Well, we were talking about, you know, mom being loyal and somebody mentioned, you know, you protect your kids. And mom's always loyal to us. But there was an incident after my first marriage went down where my mother, who was five, six, maybe 130 pounds, soft-spoken lady.

Anytime you'd meet her, just sweet and everything, was talking to my ex-wife on the phone. And all of a sudden there was a six foot eight grizzly bear mama on the phone. Let me tell you one beep thing. You beep.

If you come over here, I'll beat your beep. And I went, that's my mama. Did you doubt it in any way, though? That that's what would happen if that- Oh, beyond a shadow of a doubt, somebody was getting buried on that property that day if she showed up.

I was pretty sure of that. And my mama was going to go fix dinner and we were all going to sit down and have a meal. Exactly, exactly.

Jim. I was going to respond to, I mean, having a parent, either one, say I love you is wonderful. I didn't get a lot of that when I was a kid, but I was shown it by my mother and father. And I knew I was unconditionally loved because I did all I could to challenge that. And they came through every time. I don't know if you want to get to the fingerprint.

Go ahead. Or we won't. When you said that, my immediate reaction was she never left a fingerprint. She'd leave that to dad to use a switch print. But my mother grew up like Robby's in the Great Depression. And there was nothing so messed up that it needed to be thrown away. It wasn't hoarding.

She could lay her hands on everything in the house. But anything that had a chance of being useful was kept. I'm not quite a hoarder either, but I'm not nearly as neat. And when I need something, I can't find it. So I go buy more and then I've got plenty of it two days later. But I am exceedingly frugal.

And for those of you that need to look that up, which I know I have several friends here that do, the better word is cheap. Yeah, that word I actually do. So that was one. The question I'd asked before we left the other show, the radio show, was, you know, where can you see your mom's fingerprints in your life? And so that's part of some of the same stuff. But before we get to that, David, you wanted to share a little bit about your mom, didn't you?

Yeah, you said about the fingerprints of life. And I've been sitting here thinking about, you know, the impacts in my mom. I'm a mama's boy.

And looking around the room, it looks like pretty much everybody else in here is a mama's boy as well. But, you know, the impact that my mom does on my life daily is currently, you know, with my wife and my daughter. My daughter is from my first marriage. My wife is obviously not her biological mom. But she can see the unconditional love that my mom has continued to give me throughout my entire life, which in turn makes her give Ashlyn unconditional love. So, you know, my mom has prayed for me my entire life.

I had problems as a baby and then growing up. And, you know, just ultimately, you know, she just had not an impact in my life but an impact on my life and continues to do it. So that's pretty much what I wanted to share about that. Well, thank you, David. I appreciate that.

Robby. So I have a story. I know you're shocked. Well, I was – we moved to Chicago from Colorado and I was wearing blue jeans and that kind of thing. And as a result, I got picked on by the gangs of, you know, the area of Chicago and got beat up quite a bit, which my mother did not take nicely to.

And she was, you know, trying to figure things out or whatever. But anyway, one day Billy Kilmer – you may have heard this story before. He was not the quarterback. This was the Billy Kilmer that got – that was the bully in the school at that time. He squished my lunch. And for whatever reason, even though I knew he was the head of whatever gang, I decided that I wasn't going to take that anymore and I punched him right in the nose.

And as a result, it started to bleed a little bit. And it was right before we got on the bus that day and there was a lot of snow on the ground. And everybody was like, oh, fight, fight, you know, Kilmer's going to show, you know, Dilmore or whatever, you know, as soon as we get off the bus. And so, man, like the entire school, Lincoln Junior High there in Naperville, Illinois, was waiting for this huge fight between Dilmore and Kilmer, whatever the situation was. And I remember thinking, I am fixed, dude.

This is going to be bad because this is supposed to be the one of the toughest kids in school. And so we get off the bus and I'm just thinking, well, I know that his nose bleeds pretty easy. And so, man, I just started punching for his nose. And every punch just went right to the nose. And just as predicted, man, he was covered in blood before he could.

And the snow was covered in blood. Well, just as about this scene was looking pretty gory, Billy's mother shows up. And, of course, she, you know, quickly throws me and Billy in the back of her car and takes us over to my mother.

A trip I'm sure she will never forget. It was my mom, yeah, yeah, my mom was waiting on, you know, Billy was covered in blood, right? And I'm standing there and my mom was like, finally, is this the little boy? And she takes off on Billy, then she takes off on Billy's mom, and then she takes back off on Billy's, you know, and then she takes off. She tells, and you won't even clean him up. And she goes and gets a rag. She's cleaning up Billy.

Like, what kind of mother are you that you would just let yourself? And the net result is like you said, Jim, I mean, I just remember sitting there being so proud of who my mom was in the situation. She still loved on Billy. You know, in spite of the fact she told him everything she thought about his program and told her mom, you know, his mom, but still, you know, she was her. She was herself.

And she rose to the occasion. You know, it's one of those things left an imprint in my life that, you know, that you just don't ever forget that stuff. I was just thinking how bad it would have been for if you would have had the banana pants then. I thought that's where you were going to. Yeah, you had jeans on. I'm like, jeans?

Wow. The banana pants? I probably don't blame the guys for doing all right. I would have joined them.

If you don't know what the banana pants are, you'll have to listen to some other shows because that's what we talk about. So, fingerprints. I remember my mom. I was being picked on. And I was quick to fight. You know, I know you guys are not real surprised about that probably, but I was quick to fight. And so, I'd been in a lot of fights and I was supposed to try to not get into any fights. And I had this one kid that was kind of picking at me and stuff. And I was talking with my mom and she's like, well, go talk to your teacher. And I'm like, eh, okay, I'll do that. And then, you know, that didn't really produce anything. And finally, after about the third time, she's like, just sock him in the nose. Just to end it.

And so, like, all right, I can do that one. You know, but my mom had a, she had a, my mom didn't become a Christian until I was a teenager. I had become a Christian before my mom did and before any of my family did. And, but my mom was always so full of grace. And she really just demonstrated that to people. And she had this way about her. She wasn't raised in the Depression.

She was born in the beginning of the Depression, but my dad had grown up in the Depression. And so, man, you can make meals out of anything. You know, and you can use that same piece of bone for about four meals, I think, you know, because it ends up being soup, you know, way down the road.

You know, after you've ate all the meat off of it, eventually you have some type of soup, you know, at the end. And just the way that she loved on us with the little we had, you know, it was a testament to her. I think growing up, I didn't know I was poor because I never felt like I was poor. You know, we had to live off government cheese.

We had to, you know, do some stuff. We didn't make much money. We only had her income. My dad was disabled at that point. But I don't have memories of being poor as a kid because you never got that feeling in the house.

You know, and if people came over, there's always food for other people, you know, that type of thing. And just her grace, you know, and I didn't get a lot of it, but I think the little bit that I did get, I got from her. Probably the other thing I'd share about my mom is my mom hated sports, and I've shared it with her on the team, but she loved the Indianapolis 500. And when you grow up in Indiana, you can't watch the Indianapolis 500.

It's blacked out. And so my memories of the Indianapolis 500 from as little as I can remember is listening to it on the radio as my mom would pick Memorial Day weekend to paint because she would paint a room in the house, and it's the only time I saw my mom drink. And she would drink some beer and paint and, you know, listen to the race. And so, you know, one of my traditions that I like to do is listen to the – now listen, I watch it now because I can watch it because I live in North Carolina – watch the race, work on a project around the house, you know, at that same time. And it's – I won't miss the 500. I don't follow any other race. I could care less about the circuit, but I am going to watch that race every year that I can because it brings back such warm memories of my mom and time spent with her.

That's right. I mean, I remember last year you were talking about that. I'm going to watch race.

I'm like, you never talk about race, and what are you doing? And I think you shared that story with me. That's cool. Yeah. I will watch it.

I will log on to an Indianapolis TV station and watch the pre-race stuff starting about 7 in the morning, you know, and it's just such fond memories of my mom during that day. Definitely a fingerprint, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting, yeah, because for me there's so many small things.

It's like you said, fingerprints. There's just so many small little things over time when you start to think about it. Like you're saying, racing. Well, my dad was into racing. My mom was into racing. My mom still watches races.

She watches more than I do now because I've got so fed up with stupid sports and stuff that I turn a lot of it off and just kind of find out what goes on through her. But that brings back so many memories of us as a family. We'd go to races and do some things like that, or some of them I'd go with my dad, but even there it's like sharing that with my mom was huge. This is what we did.

This is what went on. She would go to all the races that were close, but there's only a few that we traveled to that were kind of far away where she wouldn't go. But her and my dad would go to Daytona 500 together and do all kinds of stuff like that. All those little things that I was doing stupid human tricks, mostly on snowmobiles.

That was usually what I was crashing and wrecking the most. She never would get upset, just took it all in stride, and I wasn't really in trouble. Things that I did that I'm still today, I'm like, does she know how stupid I was and what I was really doing? But she was just so kind-hearted for me. I've always kind of had that instead of being the aggressor, kind of the peacemaker, trying to keep things calm. I also have the other side where it's like, yeah, I do that for a while and then it explodes.

The court blows off and then I go. But just all those times when she's just so loving and warm and gentle about things where I'm like, how do you do that? When it seems like that's a situation I wouldn't have been that kind in.

Agreed. Yeah, I would say mom would be called a peacemaker. And she, at all costs, is what we used to say, because she wouldn't let a family riff happen. And I learned after she passed that she had some trauma in her childhood that I had no idea.

So she truly lived out of forgiveness and peacemaking. And I think that has been a fingerprint in my life. And my mom was a race fan too, Rodney. And once a year, years ago in Rockingham, two weeks before the race in Rockingham, they had an open house. And you could take your vehicle out on the track.

And I could tell you what was going to happen before we ever got there. We were going to make laps around the track in whatever dad was driving. And mom was going to say, we can go around the track, but don't get up on the turns. And we would make two laps and stay flat. And on the last lap, dad would bank it out on the turn and she would scream like a banshee.

So we knew that. That's funny. A family tradition.

My clip was going to be from my mother's recording of her time in World War II. Both of my parents were very type A, got things done. And both of them were in World War II. That's where they met.

While my father was a dentist and was drilling teeth, my mother was following the troops a couple of weeks behind the invasion of North Africa, went through that Sicily into Italy. And she was setting up camps. And one of the stories she loved to tell, and I was going to have it with her voice, was that she had assigned to her a group of German POWs. And she was older than most of the other people there.

She was in her late 20s where most of those over fighting were 20s down into teens. But she took command. And they sent their lieutenant, who was the ranking member of the contingent assigned to her, to go talk to my mom and said, and I'm not sure what he called her, but it was probably Mrs. Dinh or Miss Dinh. But he went up to her and said, my men really have a problem with you. He said, oh, what is that? And he said, well, they don't like taking orders from a woman. And her response was, well, that's too bad or that's unfortunate because that's not going to change.

And he kind of wandered off with his tail between his legs. My mother was fierce. I gave my parents the test Smalley.

Did I get it right that time? Gary Smalley. Gary Smalley. Both of them were such strong lions that I wondered how they lived together. And they would fight. But they would go to their bedroom, close the doors.

They'd be muffled and controlled. But taking the test was a funny thing because Dad says, he looked at the question, I'm not going to answer these. And Dad actually liked that sort of stuff, so that surprised me. But my mother said, you will answer those, your son asked for you to do that. But I was the son of two lions, and I guess that's why I'm a golden retriever. Sure. Anyone else have anything they want to share? I'll throw another story out there.

But if anyone else has something they want to share, they can. I just think back on even like grandmothers. And all my grandparents died when I was fairly young except for my mom's mom. And she was just the sweetest lady.

And just wonderful. And then eventually she ended up living part of her last years with my mom and dad at the house and stuff. But just that whole personality, I can see that in my mom where she's just got that same temperament.

She can put up with so much from so many people and yet doesn't get mad. My grandmother was like that. So even there just thinking about how much I enjoyed at least having one of my grandparents live for quite a while. And it was a huge influence on me too, just how sweet and wonderful she was. That's great. I guess mine, I shared the story earlier about how I came to the Lord and how Mom had a spiritual influence. But just as part of life, I was just thinking back, I've got a bunch of stories. But really just the consistency of being there for whatever the need was. I mean, Weebillows I think is what they were called.

You got into going and playing sports. She was a taxi cab driver. She probably would have loved the idea of Uber back then.

They'd take my kid off. She was always there. Whatever I was into, she was into, whatever gifts I desired for birthday, Christmas or whatever she did or whatever she could to give me those. But there was just a consistency I heard, I love you, but she showed me that she loved me as well.

Yeah, it's amazing. Quick story, my mom worked at the college that I went to and I had to see her every day because I delivered stuff to her. And she was so gracious even though I would be out a lot later doing things I shouldn't do. The only thing she'd just look at me and say, rough night, son? Like, yep. And she'd say, okay, just don't do it too much. All right, Mom, love you. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for boot camp. Talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.