When Loved Ones Disappoint After Hours

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology. And we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. 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 we are excited about the topic this week for a lot of reasons. One, it's a good topic. One, it's a good topic.

I could say one singularly, not plural. One, it's a good topic, right? Two, it's Art's topic, which is awesome. This is Art's first topic that he's done for the show.

So, Art, why don't you tell us a little bit about your topic? Yeah, I came, I finally came up with one. Yeah, you did.

I did. It is, the topic is, when the ones we love disappoint us. And it's, it came to, came to being, but in the meetings that we have after the show, we, we discuss such things as being disappointed by someone in our family, usually, who maybe is not following God's way.

Maybe they're, they're being self-destructive in ways, but that's where it came from. Well, thank you. Yeah.

And it's, it's a topic that I think everyone out there, if you're honest with yourself, can say, yeah, I've, I've dealt with that or I'm dealing with it or I'm constantly seems like I'm dealing with it. Right. Just kind of fill in the blank.

And so, Danny, welcome. We haven't talked to you yet. You've been here for most of the first show, but we didn't say anything to you. Yeah.

Nobody would even look at me. I don't understand what's going on. You have a mirror, right?

I set that one up as a high volley right there. Touche. Yeah. I wasn't going to go there, but you gave me no choice.

Yeah. I knew who I was dealing with. Well, I had a choice.

I just didn't choose to take it, but yeah. Welcome. We're glad to have you here. Glad to be here.

I'm glad to be a guest like David. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you actually have the first clip in the second show. Yeah.

So, um, clip is from the Andy Griffith show. Wow. Yeah.

Never used those very much. Shocker. Yeah. Shocker, man. It's the first time. That's the first, that's the first it's the first time it's from, it's from season two is Opie's charity and the whole, the whole show is good, but we can only use two minutes. So, you know, um, but, um, what has happened is, is that they've taken up a collection at school and Opie give three measly cents as Andy says in a thing. And the clip comes from an interchange where Andy is just ranting about how he's disappointed in Opie because of he's the sheriff's son he's over the thing and we get into all that, but his disappointment, but the, the, the healing comes from the end of it where he finds out why Opie did what he did. And I cut it out, but the end of it was Andy has the eat some crows.

So you can play the clip son of the sheriff. And he gives the least amount that boy's going to make me the life and stock Mayberry will you just stop and listen to yourself? Oh, you've been talking, but you haven't been listening. Oh, you know what a good little fellow he is.

And just because he doesn't give enough to a collection, you're ready to forget all that just cause you're afraid of what folks might think. You, you know, something may be no, not yet. I don't. You're as right as rain. I just hadn't thought of it that way. It's true.

I know my own little boy and he's a fine little fellow. And if he decides to hold back once in a moon, why ain't no harm done. Good. Now call him down for supper. Yeah. Well, you have to call louder than that.

Yeah. Opie, you can, you can come on down. We'll, we'll just forget about what we was talking about and, and we'll have our supper. You like me again, pa?

Son, I never stopped liking you. You, you know that. And we're going to forget about raising your donation at school and about breaking into your piggy bank. It's all right. It's all right. You're saving to buy your little girlfriend, Charlotte, a toy. That's all right.

This time I expect. No pa. Or if you, if you want to take her to the movies and buy her $2 worth of popcorn, that's all right. I'm going to buy her a coat. After all, it's your savings and whatever you, you're going to buy her a what? A coat. The one she's got's kind of wore out.

It is, huh? When I asked her how come she didn't get a new one, she said cause her ma didn't have enough money. Well, Opie, you never told me that's what the money was for. You never asked me. Yes, I didn't, did I? You know, last week I think our topic was expectations and you know, sometimes our disappointment in folks is our false expectations. And that's what I saw here. Immediately when we talked about this topic, I thought about this clip because you know, Andy had this expectation of Opie and he was disappointed when he didn't meet him, but Andy didn't know the whole story.

And as Opie pointed out pretty clearly, you didn't ask. And you know, so many times in my own life that I've been disappointed in folks, but didn't know the whole story. And you know, I've been on the receiving end of that as well. And you know, that's kind of, you know, kind of in the midst of some of that as we speak, but the, that's the whole thing is that am I willing to, as Robby said earlier, you know, die to self and maybe dig in a little bit and see what the full story is before I label somebody or disappointed in them. And the other thing I was thinking about was that, you know, a lot of times there's a whole difference between being disappointed and labeling somebody a disappointment because you're taking a snapshot out of somebody's life. And I love the way Aunt B laid that out was that, you know, Opie, good little fella, and just one little snapshot was, was creating a whole chaos. And that's, that's true in life, lots of different ways.

Yeah. I'm reminded of a couple of things as you were speaking. I remember one time with my oldest daughter, I made the statement to her, I'm disappointed. And she started crying, you know, very hard. And she was like, I'm a disappointment. You know, unfortunately she vocalized it. You know, because then I could say, no, no, you're not a disappointment.

Right. What you did disappointed me, that action disappointed me. You're not a disappointment.

You're the furthest thing from that, you know, but what people hear and internalize is, is totally different a lot of times than what's said. And the second thing, you know, one of the books, I was with a company that eventually brought me down to North Carolina to work. But when I was with that company, they made us read books. And I wasn't real happy about that most of the time.

But some of the books were really good. And one of the books that I enjoyed more than what I thought I would was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You know, and one of the ones that was in there, and I've talked about on the show before, but is the statement he made was to seek first to understand and then to be understood. And I find that when I live by that, life goes a lot better. Because once I try to understand where somebody's coming from before I try to be understood, and in Andy's clip that we heard and in the last show, it was all about, I want to be heard, right, which is what most arguments are about. But when you can stop and flip the script a little bit and say, okay, I want to understand and really have a heart to try to understand it, that changes the whole dynamic of the conversation, but also puts you in a different place to where you have more of the information. Right?

And I can see more of the story. Darrell Bock The other thing that I really love about it, Danny, is that really something I never heard of until I started hanging out with these guys is the idea that they knew that Opie's heart was good. He's got a good heart. And so just literally trusting someone's heart in spite of whatever their actions are is really a helpful thing. I mean, in a lot of situations, it opens the door to saying, well, I know that Sam's heart's good towards me. Like, what's up with what he's saying?

What am I hearing that may not be true? And just getting at the heart of the matter is to know that Opie's heart is good, which is what essentially Aunt Bea points out to Andy so beautifully. Don Bea Well, that points back to as you were talking, Robby was thinking about how often do we misunderstand God, because we know from scripture and we know from his character and his nature, his heart is good. And as Sam points out, he's he's loved, so he has to love us. But the thing that is going on right now may disappoint me, may, may shake me to my core, but I should know that his heart is good. It's called faith. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. And, and, and actually it speaks to, to my clip because, you know, a lot of people may be familiar with the movie Mary Poppins, or they knew it from their listening with their grandkids or whatever, but you don't necessarily get it in all that much context until you go see the movie Saving Mr. Banks, because it's the story of Walt Disney and the lady who wrote Mary Poppins. And when you get to the heart of the story was, you know, here was a deadbeat dad to some extent, a wounded dad, that was a very broken dad and a daughter that dearly loved him, not unlike the, you know, um, trouble with the curve. And her heart was trying to figure out, you know, how can I save my, you know, my dad or how could I have done it? You know, how could, how, how could God have done that? And it's really cool when you think about God allowed those situations in your life, that dad, he allowed that sister, he allowed that brother, he alert, he allowed that situation for some reason that had a really tremendous value to it. And for me personally, he allowed that to happen in the lady who wrote Mary Poppins life.

Cause I really need to hear this story at the point I heard, I heard it. So one day I'm going to Florida on a trip with my kids, you know, Disney world and they're playing Mary Poppins in the back. And as this scene comes on that I'm a fixed to play this clip from Mary Poppins, I realized that Mr. Banks, the saving, Mr. Banks at the movie, saving Mr. Banks was me that like my father before me, actually, I was so caught up in my identity, my idolatry actually that my image of being a car dealer or being a car, whatever you want to call what I was, that that was all tied up. And because that's where I got my support inside of me.

It's really cool. Andy, this leads to fatherlessness because I'm not, I don't need to hear from the father because I'm hearing from my identity of being a, of being a banker in this case of Mr. Banks is my case of being a car dealer, but he got his whole identity from being a banker. And so in this particular scene, they are going to disrupt him big time and it caused by his kids. His kids go to the bank with him on a holiday that Mary Poppins actually set up and they were set up that they got to go feed these birds in order to feed the birds. They got to have some tuppence. Tuppence is money in England.

And so they need some tuppence to buy this bird food. Well, you know, the banker is trying to get him to put his tuppence in the bank and Michael wants to feed the birds. And so the cause of big shenanigans, the bankers chasing Michael over the bank and everybody's like, he can't get his money, you know? And so they have a run on the bank, which you know is a horrible thing. If you're a bank, there's run on the bank. And so now they're going to fire Mr. Banks, which is hilarious. His name is banks.

Okay. So as they're going to fire Mr. Banks, not only did they fire him, but if you were ever in this point where, you know, you, the hat you wore had to be a certain hat, right? It's your, uh, what was your jacket?

Your members only. You know, all it has to do with your image, right? Is it, you're being supported by that hat.

You're being supported by that umbrella that they turned upside down. They're doing all this stuff to totally disrupt Mr. Banks. The cool thing about this scene is right in the middle of it because he's just getting fired and he's, he's got, he doesn't know what to say. Like, can you imagine you're getting fired from the dream job you always hope for and he doesn't have any idea to what to say. Well, all of a sudden it comes to him that what Mary Poppins had been teaching all the way through the movie is, you know, when you don't have anything to say, there's a perfectly good word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, right? And so when he realizes that all of a sudden, here's this breakthrough, like, wait a minute, none of this is real because when it comes down to it, our jobs are not necessarily real. And so he tells the head of the bank who happens to be Dick Van Dyke, um, that as a, as a matter of fact, there's no such thing as you and you can hear him get giddy and almost crazy over the whole situation.

But what's actually happened is he's gotten freedom from his, from his broken identity. So go ahead and play for it. So go ahead and play for it.

There has not been a run on this bank until today, a run so caused by the disgraceful conduct of your son. Do you deny it? I do not deny it, sir. And I shall be only too glad to assume responsibility for my son. What are you waiting for?

Get on with it. Yes, father. Well, do you have anything to say, Banks? Well, sir, they do say that when there's nothing to say, all you can say is...

Confounded, Banks! I said, do you have anything to say? Just one word, sir. Yes? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. What? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Mary Poppins was right. It's extraordinary.

It does make you feel better. What are you talking about, man? There's no such word. Oh, yes, it is a word, a perfectly good word. Actually, do you know what there's no such thing as?

It turns out with due respect, when all is said and done, that there's no such thing as you. Impertinence, sir. Speaking of impertinence, would you like to hear a perfectly marvelous joke, a real snapper? Yes, sir. There are these two wonderful young people, Jane and Michael, and they meet one day on the street, and Jane says to Michael, I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith, and Michael says, really?

What's the name of his other leg? The man's gone mad. Call the guard!

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I'm feeling better all the time! Banks, don't you dare strike my father! There's the Poppins, the wonderful young man. Banks, don't you dare strike my father!

There's the Poppins, the wonderful, faithful, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Poppins. Guard it well. Goodbye. Banks, where are you going? I don't know. I might pop through a chalk pavement picture and go for an outing in the country, or I might seize a horse off a merry-go-round and win the derby, or I might just fly a kite.

Only Poppins would know. So, it's a fascinating... If you could picture this scene, it's comical in my mind, of Robby Dilmore just going down the highway to Disney World, bawling his eyes out, as I realize that, oh my gosh, I'm Mr. Banks. Like, I've put all this value in what I think is my identity, and it's absolutely not real.

I mean, and the behavior of Jane and Michael obviously caused a disruption. In other words, and I see it clearly in other things that have happened to me, to your point, Danny, right now in my life, some really, what would be, you know, really disappointing things out of people in my family. However, because I know their hearts are all good, and I know that God's heart is good, clearly, you know, this suffering is actually a picture of death. And sometimes we have to watch some other people suffer in order to see what love looks like. And, you know, it's got purposes that are above my pay grade, and, you know, like you said, like Andy said throughout the show, is to walk with God. Suffering is part of any family life.

I don't know of anybody that isn't full of it. When you get down to it, and if you get the real story, you're like, man, there's a lot of pain down in there. And it's right there usually at this point of fatherhood, right? Either you being a father, in our case, as all of us in the room are right here, or your particular father, but quite often Satan goes right at that particular thing because where he really wants, what he wants is that orphan spirit, right?

That I'm not listening to dad, I don't need any help from anybody else. And so, so many of these things that look like just unbelievable disruptions are aimed at trying to God using those to try to dismantle our false self, is what it is. Or farce self. Or farce. May the farce be with you.

May the farce be with you. Rodney, you had something you wanted to add? I think what Danny hit on earlier, and Robby kind of actually explained it more drawn out there, is just the word no or knowing. And there at the end, Mary Poppins would know. Well, what do we know?

That's where you have to start. But what we usually start with is feelings and emotions and what we think and all this other stuff that we've been drummed into us by the world, that when we start with that, we go off on tangents. We get disappointed because we're just upset about everything. When you just come back to like you just said, Robby, starting with God's heart, and you know what God's heart is, it's described to you very eloquently, very succinctly in the Bible, and it comes out very clear. There's many, many statements that are very, very clear in his heart and what it is for you.

And what he's doing is absolutely working all things for good. And it's like, okay, how do I rest and be secure in those moments? Because it's so easy for me, I know, just to jump off and take off on a tangent and tear somebody down without thinking about, well, no, they really do want the same thing I want here. They want it to be right. They want it to be good, whatever it is, relationship, work, anything else.

They want the same thing I do. Now how do I work with them in that and come to that point of understanding? Yeah, there's a lot in this topic, and I think we'll spend some of the rest of the time talking about, okay, how do you navigate it?

How do you navigate through these situations? I think one of the things that Darren helped me see better than probably anybody was that we're really good at assigning motives to other people's actions. Making judgments really is what we're doing. And when we don't know the whole story and when we don't focus on, okay, I know their heart's good or, God, I need you to lead me in this, we're open for all the enemy's false evidence. Even if it feels like real, false evidence appearing real, another word for fear, he's good at false evidence.

Oh, good one. And so he hits on our fears. And so he's right in the midst of that, and he's called the accuser of the brethren because he's good at it. That's what he does. That's what he's always done. He's much better at it than we'll ever be at not being bad at it.

I mean, he's going to be good, but so how do we combat that? I love what you said because what happens to me is my mind will start running scripts. Man, I needed to say this, and I needed to say that. All of a sudden, my mind can't go anywhere but scripts. And it's like for me now, having walked with you guys for a while, because I know I'm running scripts, it's like the check engine light flashing.

Robby, you need a father here. You've heard enough of what you think. It's amazing how that, oh, I think I've heard enough of what I think.

Why don't I check with the big guy? All right, yeah. Back to what Art said, lean not on your own understanding. There you go.

It's true. One of the things that I think God's been pointing me toward is, and we talk about it a lot at boot camp, is am I living in the smaller story or am I living in the larger story? Because if I'm in the smaller story, I stay disappointed, and I don't see the other information we've talked about. But if I can just stop and be still long enough to maybe let God show me the bigger picture and see what Opie's heart really was or what Robby's heart was and know that the people around me, my children, my wife, my parents, my siblings, their hearts are good. And so it takes away the scripts, if you will, because you're not the only one that plays those.

I play full movies sometimes. Oh, yeah, I'm judged your everything. I've got it all worked out. Jailor, bailiff, that's the main reason I can't sleep at night, because all of a sudden they start running.

That's the time for me that they just have to hit, is right when you're going to bed, everything's calm, and it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, one thing after another. We call it the committee. I am legion. So what advice do you have when you're in the midst of it?

I'll throw something out there. Obviously, you're going to get back to the Sunday school answer of Jesus. It always comes back to that.

As much as we talk about other things, it does come back to that. And walking with him, just as he never healed the blind the same way twice, there's no cookie cutter answer for the situation you're in. There's only his answer. And any other answer is going to be wrong.

And you have a good chance of misunderstanding his answer, quite honestly, that you're not always going to get that right, but you always start with going to him. With things like, look, I know this person's heart is good. I know I'm not feeling that right now. I know it doesn't feel that way.

I know there's a whole lot of evidence that feels different. But God, I need your eyes to see this. I need some perspective here.

Help me walk through it. And not entering into some of that stuff unless you absolutely have to until you've gotten that. Sometimes the urgency of things demands our attention now, and you don't always have that option. But more times than not, you have an option. Just saying, okay, I want to walk with God in this and let him lead me through it, because maybe this is a situation where they need grace.

Or maybe it's a situation with trouble with the curve where there needs to be direct accountability talk. Only God knows that. The interesting thing that I came across just recently, in the 23rd Psalm it says, My rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Those are connected, interestingly, to your soul and your spirit. One of them kind of guides your soul, and one of them kind of guides your spirit.

Or the one that guides your spirit is the rod, and it has to do with your tribe. And the idea is, when it comes to somebody like, honestly, if art really upsets me, you know, I might just say goodbye to art. But if art is truly my brother, I can't say goodbye to art because he's my brother.

Are you following me? Like, if he really is my brother, then I can't say goodbye to him. I mean, we're related.

I mean, you know what I'm saying? And so it's interesting to me that one of the things that should guide me is the fact that these people truly are, they truly are of my tribe, and they truly are my brother. And if this is going on, it's not something I can let go of. Now, obviously, many choose to let go of me, as I've experienced all the years.

I mean, it has happened. Like a hot potato. Yeah, like, oh, man.

However, as far as my role in that, I want to remain open. I want that to always be what you said or somebody said, maybe it was David, that, man, I love you. Your behavior is driving me nuts over here, but I love you, and I will always love you. That actually was me.

It was. You're exactly right about me. You're exactly right. I think it's important, from my standpoint, again, me being, you know, obviously, faithful. But I want to be faithful to people that I love, that I love them regardless of what that is, because I know that that's just what we've talked about, that their heart is good towards me. Well, while we finish that thought up, even though that is who you are and you're wired to be faithful, if God said you need to let this one go, would you let it go? Yeah, I better. Yeah, right, because he's going to tell you. All right, so sometimes it's going to go against something that we may feel, right, but always check with Scripture, always check with him, get confirmation. But, you know, sometimes the right answer may be to break a relationship for a period of time. Oh, yeah, well, there's no doubt there's times he tells me to, and sometimes he didn't tell me.

Yeah. Well, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you next week, and we'll have a new topic. Not sure what it is, but we're looking forward to talking with you next week. Enjoy it. Go to maskandjourney.org. Enjoy the weather.

It's supposed to be a nice weekend. This is the Truth Network.