Speaker 1: This is already going to bed, y'all. I've convinced my
Speaker 1: brother in law, Willie Powers, to come on my midweek
Speaker 1: Mom and dad. We've changed it podcast because we're in quarantine, y'all, Corona.
Speaker 1: So we have quarantined together. My sister has been married
Speaker 1: to Willie for how many years? Now? How did you
Speaker 1: ask me trick questions? We have been married for fourteen years.
Speaker 1: So Willie is really Willie is really like my brother
Speaker 1: because he has been with me through all of my
Speaker 1: adolescent phases where I was a hot mess. We could say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we could definitely say that Willie quarantine quarantining
Speaker 1: together for a long time. Willie has taught me why
Speaker 1: did you drop your diet coat? Everything's fine, Everything's fine.
Speaker 1: It's a fine um. When I was in the midst
Speaker 1: of I mean, what crisis is? Have you helped me navigate?
Speaker 1: You can be honest, I'm very real on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I mean, we rescued you from Spain. Oh god, it
Speaker 1: started back and you hated my guts. Oh I hated you.
Speaker 1: Tell everyone how I hated you. I was such a
Speaker 1: little brat. Well it wasn't your fault. I mean your
Speaker 1: sister and I were that I was such a brat.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, puppy love. We were calling each other nicknames,
Speaker 1: and you just had like mad, I know you're you
Speaker 1: and will you and Kat were like, hey number one,
Speaker 1: Hey number one, there's my number one. Everyone was sick
Speaker 1: of it. Y'all were so goo goo gaga and love.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was anti love at that point too.
Speaker 1: I've never been in love, and I thought love was stupid.
Speaker 1: And now all of a sudden, you, I think you
Speaker 1: were taking all of my attention from Catherine because used
Speaker 1: to dote on me, and now she could have given
Speaker 1: two cents about me. She is the ultimate caretaker, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you had had um had the blessing of that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I she only ruled my life. She
Speaker 1: made my college schedules for me. She cooked me every
Speaker 1: dinner I would take. When I went to Baylor for
Speaker 1: a year, I would take my laundry over there. She
Speaker 1: would do on my laundry. Haven't I came up? We're
Speaker 1: now that we're quarantined together again. We shared laundry. We
Speaker 1: did all our laundry, and one she had everything folded
Speaker 1: up perfectly like it was on a display at buckle, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean that she she does it all day long.
Speaker 1: I don't know how she keeps up with it all.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yes, I'm sure I stole a little bit
Speaker 1: about from you. Back then, I was just jealous because
Speaker 1: y'all were cute. We were pretty cute. Anyway, that was fun.
Speaker 1: We went and picked you up from Spain Compostella at
Speaker 1: San Jose, Santiago de Compostella, and you had been eating potato.
Speaker 1: What are those things called little sandwiches? So here's the
Speaker 1: thing in Spain, a sandwich they have espanola, was it?
Speaker 1: It's my favorite they have. They sell cookies everywhere you
Speaker 1: go with fiber in them because the food is so
Speaker 1: constipating in that country that you have to eat these
Speaker 1: fiber cookies just to process at all. But that was fun.
Speaker 1: We went and ran with the bulls. You ran with
Speaker 1: the bulls, ran from the bulls. I wish I would
Speaker 1: have had more consciousness at this time of my life.
Speaker 1: I was so insane in my head. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to think straight. I don't even know what I
Speaker 1: was trying to think about. So I don't everything's a
Speaker 1: big giant blurred Are you suggesting something's changed about this.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have much more focus now. Back
Speaker 1: then I probably was focused on like I was boy crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I was so boy crazy. You have
Speaker 1: been through a lot of my boy craziness, all the boys.
Speaker 1: Willie's like a good judge of character. I always start
Speaker 1: trying to kind of date someone, especially when I was
Speaker 1: living in Austin, and he'd be like, m hm hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, then you met a man. But you
Speaker 1: knew Michael first part time, the first halftime show and
Speaker 1: second halftime show. You've noticed the whole time I did.
Speaker 1: And he made a lot of sense to me the
Speaker 1: first time around, and made a lot of sense to
Speaker 1: me the second time around. I think it's so great
Speaker 1: that you guys have ended up together. And uh, most
Speaker 1: notably because Sunny is so cute. She's really the reason.
Speaker 1: Back to running with the bulls, what was that experience? Like,
Speaker 1: it was really crazy. You know the year that we
Speaker 1: did that, um, so a lot of new laws went
Speaker 1: into effect. Your dad, this is a this is kind
Speaker 1: of a cutburst family thing. Before we went, your parents
Speaker 1: had planned the trip. We were all going to go,
Speaker 1: but your parents had been on a bunch of trips
Speaker 1: and I think they'd had some some of your dad's
Speaker 1: dentistry courses back to back and they were blown out
Speaker 1: of traveling and they elected to let us go. Um,
Speaker 1: we were not married at this time. You and Kath
Speaker 1: were not married, and I was like twenty I wonder,
Speaker 1: wonder what year that was. You all got married with
Speaker 1: Ka was twenty five, so y'all were probably twenty four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we might have not even been engaged at No, y'all
Speaker 1: were just young love kids floating around the world together.
Speaker 1: It was me, the angry, grumpy sister, and two keep
Speaker 1: people madly loved sharing a hotel room in Spain, traveling
Speaker 1: around together. Oh, I could have just thrown up, Well,
Speaker 1: such a brat. I think I probably did throw us
Speaker 1: after drinking they had they sell that rio ha. It
Speaker 1: was like dr pepper and red wine mix together. I mean,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. But anyway, we had read your your
Speaker 1: dad had read this book. We're sitting around reading this
Speaker 1: book about how to Run with the bulls. He googles
Speaker 1: a guy's name and calls four one one, which probably
Speaker 1: none of your listeners even know what that is. But
Speaker 1: you can dial four one one on the phone and
Speaker 1: you could say, I need the phone number for x
Speaker 1: y Z person in x y Z City. We called
Speaker 1: the guy at his house and um, I'm getting instruction.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't. We just kind of this. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to do this, and we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about the safe word. What's the safe word? Um? What
Speaker 1: should it be? Well? I use the really offensive ones usually,
Speaker 1: I mean, we can go with mistletoe this time. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll go with mistletoe. All right, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: We're really like, he's like, listen, what are we gonna
Speaker 1: talk about? Like, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine,
Speaker 1: everything's gonna be fine. Well, it's fine so far. We
Speaker 1: got missiletoe if we needed so. Anyway, he calls the guy.
Speaker 1: He tells us how to do it. But when we
Speaker 1: get there, they have changed the rules. Now they had
Speaker 1: you had to enter the street at one side and
Speaker 1: run all the way down to the Colosseum. And if
Speaker 1: you got to the Colisseum before the bulls, the locals
Speaker 1: would pelt you with rotten tomatoes for being a coward
Speaker 1: and because you need to hang with the bulls. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. The Wooseys are the ones who got to
Speaker 1: the colisseum first, and they would just rock you with
Speaker 1: with rotten fruit. So but I didn't care. I ran
Speaker 1: as fast as I have ever run in my life
Speaker 1: as soon as they let the bulls on the streets
Speaker 1: because the bulls buck people, they actually kill people. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not safe. No, this is totally not safe.
Speaker 1: Locked into the streets, it's not like you can take
Speaker 1: a lift if you get nervous. They have these huge
Speaker 1: barriers keeping you on the street and there are people
Speaker 1: above yelling at you. This isn't really insane thing. People's
Speaker 1: streets are slippery, it's wet and soggy, and everybody's drunk.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a lot of fun and leading up
Speaker 1: to this, Katherine Willie and I. You wear these white outfits,
Speaker 1: so you have like white pants and white shirt and
Speaker 1: a red sash so you tire around your waist. Everyone
Speaker 1: in the entire city, what's the city called pop shoot mistletoe.
Speaker 1: So you're wearing these red sashes around this white Pamplona
Speaker 1: white outfits and everyone's drinking sangria and they're like there's
Speaker 1: like people just holding pictures in Sangrea. You walk by
Speaker 1: on those port in your mouth, like it was just
Speaker 1: wild on the streets. We were in this wild part,
Speaker 1: we would have all had coronavirus, oh for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: And then you wake up. You just drink all the time.
Speaker 1: Everyone's hanging out, and then the running of the bulls happened,
Speaker 1: so everyone's drunk, which is totally extra and safe. Man. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I got to the I've ran down that street, got
Speaker 1: to the Colisseum. We're so happy to see you. I
Speaker 1: turned around because I wasn't going to run through that
Speaker 1: tunnel until there was bulls, and so I just waited
Speaker 1: and waited and waited until the first bull came around
Speaker 1: the corner and I started running, and so he and
Speaker 1: I entered the stadium simultaneously knocked me over on the ground.
Speaker 1: The bull knocked you over. Well, it's hard to explain,
Speaker 1: but it's just a massive human beings. There were forty
Speaker 1: or fifty people at that same time with the bull,
Speaker 1: and so I don't know. Anyway, it was really fun
Speaker 1: and it was a great baptism into being a member
Speaker 1: of your family. Because since then I've done about seventy
Speaker 1: six other in the same things. But it's never thought
Speaker 1: I would do. I mean, we have hiked the We've
Speaker 1: hiked all over the place. I mean, my family does
Speaker 1: not get together wearing matching puffy jackets and matching hiking
Speaker 1: shoes and trudge over mountains, but your family does. And
Speaker 1: so we did in Milford Track in New Zealand. That
Speaker 1: was beautiful. Um. We were talking, Katherine and I were
Speaker 1: talking about that yesterday, going to do that again at
Speaker 1: some point with Genevieve maybe. Um. And that's where we
Speaker 1: hacked like seven or eight miles a day, thirty five
Speaker 1: miles total. But it was really nice, Like the lawnmen
Speaker 1: flew helicopters up and down the trail keeping up with it.
Speaker 1: And you didn't have to pack water. You just had
Speaker 1: to pack a cup and you could scoop it out
Speaker 1: of the rivers. That was so cool. And then we
Speaker 1: did the Inca Trail. That was a whole different story.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that one, Willie will This is in Peru.
Speaker 1: The Inca Trail was did not have a helicopter clad people.
Speaker 1: They were like, it was the rivers are dirty, the
Speaker 1: water is dangerous, the food is treacherous. And I think
Speaker 1: day three of that hike, I came down with the
Speaker 1: most awful stomach disorder that a human being can get
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere. You cannot get out. We
Speaker 1: are in the we are three days in, so we're
Speaker 1: probably almost thirty miles into the middle of nowhere, way
Speaker 1: to Machu Picchu and halfway back home. There's no getting out,
Speaker 1: and there's nowhere to go to the bathroom, and you
Speaker 1: to keep going. You gotta walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 1: I was doing everything you can do when you have
Speaker 1: one of these stomach disorder, and to miss the top
Speaker 1: of all. The first night it hit me, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into any too many details, maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of details, but I'm in a tent on
Speaker 1: the mountain side and I go, oh, my goodness, us,
Speaker 1: I've got a problem. I ran out of the tent
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. I get there, there's four
Speaker 1: of these, the porters that came along with us, who
Speaker 1: carried all the food and things like that, and they
Speaker 1: have this in the restroom they have it's just basically
Speaker 1: a room, and there's a hole in the middle of
Speaker 1: the room, and on either side of the hole they
Speaker 1: have salt saltillo tile floors. But the two holes next
Speaker 1: to the or the two tiles next to the hole
Speaker 1: have footprints in them to show you exactly where you're
Speaker 1: supposed to stand. Oh my gosh. Anyway, it's just a
Speaker 1: hole in the ground to go to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: send some time in there. Well, there was five guys
Speaker 1: in front of me and I had to wait for them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't good. It was not good. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was throwing up. We had to go get some medicine
Speaker 1: from our guide in the middle of the night, and
Speaker 1: the next three days were really rough. Your dad came along,
Speaker 1: you know, like to get that. I think we were
Speaker 1: we were either and you were engaged at this point.
Speaker 1: We weren't married. I don't think your dad came up
Speaker 1: to me and I was still like, he's doctor cut werth.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got a lot of respect for him.
Speaker 1: He is all my friends warn me when I started
Speaker 1: dating your sister. He is gonna climb up a tree
Speaker 1: you shoot you in the middle of the night. He's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Watch out for this guy. And he came up to
Speaker 1: me and he put his hand on my shoulder as
Speaker 1: I'm crouched throwing up over the side of this mountain,
Speaker 1: freezing cold, wet, sick. You know, this is my hundredth
Speaker 1: mile to hike with your family. And he said, you
Speaker 1: are right, and I said, get your epping hand off
Speaker 1: of me, and he said I understood, and he kept walking.
Speaker 1: He just knew I needed some piece and quiet to
Speaker 1: just to be there on the side of the hill.
Speaker 1: But he really cleared the way from Michael. He has
Speaker 1: had it so much like I feel like you really
Speaker 1: had to break the ice of like coming into our family.
Speaker 1: And then Michael's just gotten to float right in. He
Speaker 1: owes me big time. He totally does. I really took
Speaker 1: a lot of the took a lot of that. You're
Speaker 1: a good sport Willie. Yeah, And here I am. We
Speaker 1: still together. Fourteen years. You've been married to Catherine. You've
Speaker 1: been through the many phases of mind sanity. When you say,
Speaker 1: I've kind of started leveling up. You're awesome, You're not insane,
Speaker 1: You're not you are you are spirited than you. I
Speaker 1: think you've described yourself as somebody who has different versions
Speaker 1: of yourself. You know, when it comes to um emotions
Speaker 1: and perception. You know, some days you wake up and
Speaker 1: it's you're rocking and rolling. Some days it's you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at it a different way. But you have
Speaker 1: always been kind, You have always been sweet. Beginning been
Speaker 1: funny once I got to it. Even then, you know,
Speaker 1: that was that was explainable. It was understandable. I'm dating
Speaker 1: your older sister. Of course at point, well, it's okay,
Speaker 1: I was. I didn't take it that way. I just was.
Speaker 1: I laughed it off. I thought it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was a completely acceptable response to what you were
Speaker 1: dealing with. Well, And I used to be a lot
Speaker 1: more like angry and upset too, because I was so
Speaker 1: just lost and trying to navigate and find footing, as
Speaker 1: you do. Everyone does it in different ways. I was
Speaker 1: a little more like angsty. Isn't it surprising that you
Speaker 1: when you're a kid, you think, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: be an adult, so I'll have everything figured out. And
Speaker 1: then you know, Bethan's figured out. It's all the same.
Speaker 1: You know, you're still you still have to wake up
Speaker 1: and work through you know, everything, work through challenges. What
Speaker 1: have you learned about life? Because I feel like you're
Speaker 1: someone who I always think is really wise, Like every
Speaker 1: time Michael and I are stressed, or like Michael's going
Speaker 1: through something, he's like I just gotta call Willie. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna call Willie and get his opinion on this,
Speaker 1: because he's got such a great opinion. And I feel
Speaker 1: that way about you. I feel like you always are
Speaker 1: able to have a good, clear, well rounded opinion. Well
Speaker 1: that's really sweet of you to say that. But I, um,
Speaker 1: I am human just like everybody else. You know, I
Speaker 1: have to think through things and find a way to
Speaker 1: I can't take a lot of credit for that. I
Speaker 1: think I was born naturally wanting to be happy. I
Speaker 1: wake up every day trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: be happy. And I'm about logical and so I can
Speaker 1: use logic to get there and and leisure to get there.
Speaker 1: So I, you know, the logic side of me spends
Speaker 1: a lot of time wondering about the math that's going
Speaker 1: to take to where I don't wake up in a panic,
Speaker 1: you know, like during this this coronavirus thing. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you keep your house in order so that
Speaker 1: when I'm in the oil and gas. But this and
Speaker 1: it is very mercurial. I mean you We've had years
Speaker 1: where we've made lots and lots of money. We have
Speaker 1: had years where we made zero money, and so the
Speaker 1: logic side of me says, the year the zero years
Speaker 1: are coming again and there lots of lots of years.
Speaker 1: Put it away and be ready for that. Um you
Speaker 1: know so I think there. I mean your question was
Speaker 1: what have I learned about life? Life is just going
Speaker 1: to be up and down and over. I mean, you
Speaker 1: just gotta be ready for the ups, have fun when
Speaker 1: it's up, rein it in when it's when it's down.
Speaker 1: Like this week, we ain't ordering everything off Amazon this week.
Speaker 1: You know we're not. We did eat at the nicest
Speaker 1: takeaway from the nicest sushi places. We had to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that they're offering take away. I'll
Speaker 1: pull in there. I pulled in there with a trailer
Speaker 1: and a lawnmower on the back of it side by side.
Speaker 1: Probably not their standard customer, but anyway, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you just uh if if you are finding yourself unhappy,
Speaker 1: for me, it's usually because I'm not doing something engaging
Speaker 1: or I don't feel good. And so I would say
Speaker 1: when you're when you're in that state of mind, go
Speaker 1: for a walk. You don't have to lose twenty pounds today,
Speaker 1: just go for a walk. It's your blood moving. If
Speaker 1: you ate a bunch of cookies yesterday before you eat
Speaker 1: all the cookies today. We're having to do this in
Speaker 1: in Wuarrantine. By the way, we have so much good
Speaker 1: food here. Pepper for breakfast sharing is the world's most
Speaker 1: wonderful um supplier and caretaker and quartermaster. This house has
Speaker 1: probably seventeen thousand rounds of ammumunition and a bunch of food.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you think about coming here to
Speaker 1: get any of that, you won't make it through the
Speaker 1: front gate. Very good with our rifles. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have been hog hunting every night. Last night Michael and
Speaker 1: I go outside to sit on the front porch and
Speaker 1: Willie's out there on the side by side, which is
Speaker 1: full of inner tubes because they're floating down the river
Speaker 1: like siding in a hog barefoot. Well, great, when they
Speaker 1: run past, that's when you got to shoot them. I know, um,
Speaker 1: but no, we uh, I think that, you know. I
Speaker 1: have had it made a conscious decision to eat some
Speaker 1: carrots before I eat some twigs. And that's too because
Speaker 1: I want to feel good, you know. And and so
Speaker 1: when you're feeling good, you can think good. When you
Speaker 1: think good, you can be emotionally good and so I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's I just try to stay feeling good
Speaker 1: and and do things that don't get me in trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that's I don't want to be in trouble.
Speaker 1: I don't want to boon in trouble. Where does that
Speaker 1: so from not wanting to be in trouble? I was
Speaker 1: born that way. I hated being in trouble when I
Speaker 1: was a like, you know, they would write your name
Speaker 1: on the chalkboard when you're in trouble. Oh man, just
Speaker 1: seeing my name on the board if that ever happened,
Speaker 1: and it was never my fault. Mom, uh, the other
Speaker 1: kids were talking to me. But um yeah, I just
Speaker 1: never ever wanted to be in trouble. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: And it's probably, you know, the deeper side of that
Speaker 1: is an ego thing or you know, you just want
Speaker 1: to be looking like you're doing a good job. And
Speaker 1: it's uh, do you I mean, do we talk about
Speaker 1: the angiogram? I'm number seven? I don't. I've never read
Speaker 1: the book. I've just been diagnosed as this by you
Speaker 1: and your sister. Well know, we made you take a test.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right out here. Actually, so my I mean,
Speaker 1: my pursuit is leisure, right, I'm always looking for a
Speaker 1: good time, and being in trouble is an interruption of that.
Speaker 1: And so I don't want to live in the dold rooms.
Speaker 1: I don't want your sister to be mad at me.
Speaker 1: I don't want my parents to be mad at me.
Speaker 1: I don't want my teachers to be mad at me.
Speaker 1: And do you just want to stay lighthearted? Yes? And
Speaker 1: you can't do that if you're if you're doing stupid suh.
Speaker 1: That's very true. So you kind of always just gravitated
Speaker 1: in that direction selfishly to keep the party going. I
Speaker 1: want everybody to be having fun, you know. In Michael's
Speaker 1: seven too, And I feel like y'all he'll get a
Speaker 1: little he doesn't care for people about us at at
Speaker 1: him a little bit less than you do. I say that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean he's a little he's a little more fine
Speaker 1: with He's a turist too, so he's a little more
Speaker 1: bullish sometimes. Oh oh wait a minute, we're going to
Speaker 1: do that. But no, but y'all get oh yeah, what
Speaker 1: is your sign cancer? You you're a crap. No, I'm
Speaker 1: a that's for sure. Tiger tiger king, the lion king
Speaker 1: is everybody watching Tiger King. Oh my gosh, oh man,
Speaker 1: it is something else. Thank God for Tiger King. He
Speaker 1: really has has saved the world. Know, we've all got
Speaker 1: something to talk about, uh huh that we all can
Speaker 1: laugh about and relate to. So tell me about your childhood.
Speaker 1: What how did you get shaped by your childhood? Because
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of y'all and y'all grew up on
Speaker 1: a farm and you did crazy things with like knives
Speaker 1: and things. Y'all were like always playing with dangerous tools.
Speaker 1: I mean I have lived a charmed lifestyle life. I
Speaker 1: mean as a kid, I had parents. I think this
Speaker 1: is this weighs into everything you know, because it shapes
Speaker 1: who you are. Eventually, he's going to give some parenting
Speaker 1: advice to all the dads there later on. I'm almost forty.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite old enough to give advice. Your dad
Speaker 1: said fifty was the year you could start. When you're fifty,
Speaker 1: you can give advice. But then he turned sixty and
Speaker 1: he said you have to be sixty give advice. It's
Speaker 1: a rolling number. Um. Yeah, I know. I had a
Speaker 1: wonderful childhood. I have uh five great brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: who there was the older crop of four than there
Speaker 1: were nine years. Then I came along and then my
Speaker 1: parents had Tim the play friend for me. So Tim
Speaker 1: and I kind of had our own thing going in childhood.
Speaker 1: That that age gap obviously has gone away at this
Speaker 1: point we're all in the stride of of life and
Speaker 1: working together on things. But the yeah, we had a
Speaker 1: cool Well you said I grew up on a farm.
Speaker 1: Really I we we have a family ranch. It's a ranch. Like,
Speaker 1: what's the difference in Texas between a farm and a
Speaker 1: ranch is a farm is where you grow crops and
Speaker 1: a ranch is where you raise animals. Now there's there
Speaker 1: may be people who refute my definition on that, but um,
Speaker 1: we have a farm and a ranch. But but I
Speaker 1: was shaped by our time spent out there. We actually
Speaker 1: lived in the city in Corpus Christie Proper in a neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and we lived right across the street, directly across the
Speaker 1: street from my grandparents and down the street from my
Speaker 1: aunt and uncle, and so we were surrounded by family.
Speaker 1: We were very family oriented. Coronavirus is going to cancel
Speaker 1: our family Easter party this year, which is um a
Speaker 1: great sadness because it's when we all get together. My
Speaker 1: grandmother's sisters families, there's a hundreds of us now were Catholics,
Speaker 1: so we have lots of babies up and yeah, we
Speaker 1: just we lived right across from Corpus Christy Bay, so
Speaker 1: we would get up on Saturday morning and walk over
Speaker 1: there and have go fishing for a few hours and
Speaker 1: go to the ranch. And my my parents were just
Speaker 1: perfect parents and continue to be perfect parents. And your
Speaker 1: mom is so witty and funny, she's awesome. And your
Speaker 1: dad's just so chill and sweet. Yes, he's Papa Bear.
Speaker 1: You know that nobody's going hungry. As long as he's alive.
Speaker 1: He takes you know. I've always had that in the background,
Speaker 1: like I I don't have to worry about anything. He
Speaker 1: would come and save me. My mom would come and
Speaker 1: save me. You know. I think that's that would be
Speaker 1: my parenting advice is if you can create a scenario
Speaker 1: like I had where you your kids know you're devoted
Speaker 1: to them at all costs. Uh, it really does create
Speaker 1: a sense of foundation that I've always had under my feet.
Speaker 1: And I felt it back then. It was so fun.
Speaker 1: We just I loved my childhood. I would go back
Speaker 1: to it. It just we had a ball. We were
Speaker 1: always making things, tinkering with things, exploring. What's your favorite memory? Oh, um, gosh,
Speaker 1: this first one that comes to mind that doesn't do
Speaker 1: his favorite the first one that comes to mind. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of h or you can spice a
Speaker 1: few together. I mean, my my very favorite thing to
Speaker 1: do was to go to the ranch. We had a
Speaker 1: house there in a little swimming pool, and there was
Speaker 1: this bridge. I'll tell you this is a good one,
Speaker 1: so you could walk to this bridge and go. We
Speaker 1: would go fishing and catch It was freshwater in salt water,
Speaker 1: so you could catch alligator, guards and redfish all in
Speaker 1: the same place, which was super cool. My little brother
Speaker 1: and I were fishing. I don't know how old I was,
Speaker 1: maybe seven, he was four. Um, and I got my
Speaker 1: hook stuck in the tree and I was yanking it
Speaker 1: trying to get it out of the tree, and it
Speaker 1: came flying back at me and stuck in my thumb,
Speaker 1: deep deep, deep in my thumb, and I cried. I said,
Speaker 1: go get helped. You know, we were out there with
Speaker 1: my dad by himself and my This will show some
Speaker 1: good parenting too. So Tim sprints back to the house
Speaker 1: gets my dad. My Dad comes driving down and takes
Speaker 1: and cuts the string, takes me back to the house
Speaker 1: and sits me down on the back porch, and he says,
Speaker 1: all right, we've got two options here. You can I
Speaker 1: can pull this hook out and we can stay here
Speaker 1: at the ranch for the rest of the weekend. Or
Speaker 1: I can take you into the hospital and they can
Speaker 1: wash it with some alcohol and and cut it open
Speaker 1: and pull it out the right way. I said, we'll
Speaker 1: just let's stay here. Let's stay here. Of course, I
Speaker 1: don't want to Hey, I don't want to interrupt my
Speaker 1: weekend and be exactly yeah, b I don't want to
Speaker 1: be cut open. And you know he stitched in that
Speaker 1: it was not going to be cool if we went
Speaker 1: into the hospital. He goes over this pine tree in
Speaker 1: the yard, snaps off a limb, brings it over to me,
Speaker 1: gets a rusty pair of pliers. Um, My dad never
Speaker 1: had good tools. He always had just whatever was left over.
Speaker 1: He's he gives me a stick and he says, bite
Speaker 1: down on this stick, and he holds my He grabs
Speaker 1: my hand, grabs the hook with the plyers and pulled
Speaker 1: and it doesn't come out. And I snapped the stick
Speaker 1: in half. And I just had I mean my eyes
Speaker 1: were just red and watery and I'm trying not to cry.
Speaker 1: And he looked in my eyes and he said, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I promise I'm gonna get it next time, and he,
Speaker 1: I mean put all his My dad is this mighty guy,
Speaker 1: six ft three, huge, just like that unintentional muscle, you know,
Speaker 1: And he just jerked it out of there and it
Speaker 1: came free. I still have a scar on the thumb ringer.
Speaker 1: Did he cut? It made a crunching sound when it
Speaker 1: came out. No, that wasn't an option because it was
Speaker 1: a treble hook, which all the real fishermen are. They
Speaker 1: got three hooks on it and all the tremor gone
Speaker 1: and what a chump. But anyway, um, wow, that was
Speaker 1: not comfortable, but got the weekend kept going and and
Speaker 1: so we had fun this day. We got a story
Speaker 1: and and a lot of our lives was like that.
Speaker 1: Just was the one with the parachute and Tim oh Man, Well,
Speaker 1: my brother Edmund had bought a parachute. Yeah, at a
Speaker 1: yard sale. Oh here's a parachute. We can think it's
Speaker 1: something fun to do with that. And so down on
Speaker 1: the Gulf coast where we were the ranches. It's windy
Speaker 1: all the time, and this was a particularly windy day.
Speaker 1: We find this thing in the back of my brother's truck.
Speaker 1: We were probably teenagers at this point, and all we
Speaker 1: had for a rope was a lasso, and so we
Speaker 1: got a core piece of corrugated steel, basically a giant knife,
Speaker 1: and we were gonna sit on this thing like a
Speaker 1: sled and let the parachute pull us down the road. Well,
Speaker 1: we just put the lasso part around my brother's stomach
Speaker 1: like a loop a noose. Perfect, And I said, all right, great.
Speaker 1: He was always the guinea pig. Tim if you're listening,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I owe you whatever you need, just
Speaker 1: I'll give it to you. But anyway we go. He
Speaker 1: sits on this tin, He's got the loop around his stomach,
Speaker 1: around his waist, and I grabbed, I stretched the string out,
Speaker 1: grabbed the parachute, and I flap it up into the
Speaker 1: wind and it instantly goes and fills with air and
Speaker 1: sucks that cinches the rope down off his stomach. He
Speaker 1: looks like a cartoon character with his eyes bulging out
Speaker 1: of his face because he's now being cut in half
Speaker 1: by this rope. And it goes and it's dragging him
Speaker 1: across the field and I'm running behind him, you know,
Speaker 1: probably barefooted through these thorns. We have these terrible thorns,
Speaker 1: called him skeet. He's getting killed billy thorns. And finally
Speaker 1: I catch up to him and I'll grab him. But
Speaker 1: all I'm doing is putting force in the other directions.
Speaker 1: So I had to run finally and run all the
Speaker 1: way and tackle that tackle a parachute and uh, we
Speaker 1: looked at each other like, well, we did it again,
Speaker 1: survived another potential injury. So, oh my gosh, your mom
Speaker 1: is the saint for having all those kids. Don't know
Speaker 1: how she's still kicking because she's so Your mom has
Speaker 1: got such a spunky personality. I love your mom. She's
Speaker 1: a blast. She has been the perfect mom. We we
Speaker 1: talk at least once a week, um and and really
Speaker 1: more than that three or four times a week, and
Speaker 1: we just have very um similar you know, brains and
Speaker 1: y'all both enjoy humor a lot. Oh yeah, y'all are
Speaker 1: good at make king. She's a little naughty, little edgy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are good at making situations feel find a humor
Speaker 1: in them even when things are sad. Like you, you'll
Speaker 1: be sad and you'll feel feelings, but yet you can
Speaker 1: always bounce out of it with some humor. And your
Speaker 1: mom does that really well too. Definitely, definitely, it's a
Speaker 1: great way to just get through things. You know, if
Speaker 1: you can't laugh at yourself, we are all going to die.
Speaker 1: That is a guarantee. And if you can stitch that
Speaker 1: belief into your life, um, we're you can laugh off
Speaker 1: these things that happened, because things are gonna happen. Um.
Speaker 1: And I remember my grandmother. We had something happened in
Speaker 1: the family and my mom went to tell her. She
Speaker 1: was ninety one years old, and you know, she had
Speaker 1: to share some bad news with Granny and she said, Mom,
Speaker 1: I am, I am so sorry I have to tell
Speaker 1: you this. And she said, I'm the perfect person to
Speaker 1: tell I'm ninety one years old. I've seen it all.
Speaker 1: I know these things happen. And that was a great perspective,
Speaker 1: and I think she you know, my my grandmother was
Speaker 1: very stoic. She never got worked up about anything. Stoic
Speaker 1: to the point of like almost emotionless and um, and
Speaker 1: we've kind of rebounded in the other direction in our generation.
Speaker 1: So but she was a wonderful you know, kind of
Speaker 1: give you that perspective, like you can tell a joke
Speaker 1: about this because tomorrow's coming and yesterday's over and let's
Speaker 1: keep on going. So what has your perspective been now
Speaker 1: that your husband, your father of a nine year old,
Speaker 1: you're almost forty, what is your kind of life perspective? Like,
Speaker 1: how have you navigated these are chapters? Well, I love
Speaker 1: being a husband. Your sister, it is we are yin
Speaker 1: and yang as you know, your sister and I she
Speaker 1: is taype a, you know, very ducks in a row,
Speaker 1: very organized. I am half the time she tells me something,
Speaker 1: she has to tell it to me again because my
Speaker 1: brain was thinking and I didn't even hear what she said,
Speaker 1: you know, like I am just distracted and I'm always
Speaker 1: thinking of new ideas, creating, and she's always organizing. So
Speaker 1: we have been a perfect match because she doesn't I
Speaker 1: think she would she would own this. She does not
Speaker 1: have a lot of novel ideas. She's not a creative
Speaker 1: person by nature. She is a good organizer, but she
Speaker 1: doesn't have she's not making new things, organized things and
Speaker 1: get them like in perfect condition. Right, And so if
Speaker 1: which sounds terrible to someone who's always creating things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care, I want, I mean, but it's great
Speaker 1: you need that person. I am a tornado. I mean,
Speaker 1: I leave a pile of debris behind me everywhere I go.
Speaker 1: And but I'm also self aware and I try not
Speaker 1: to be you know, problematic about it all. And she
Speaker 1: is also very self aware too, So we've been able
Speaker 1: to blend that. You know, we started a business together,
Speaker 1: and I can kind of see the future and she
Speaker 1: can take care of the present. She has been so
Speaker 1: so really, marriage is just great. I mean I'm married
Speaker 1: obviously really really well. Um and definitely I'm married above
Speaker 1: what I should have been able to expect. And so um,
Speaker 1: I love marriage. And then fatherhood is just incredible. We
Speaker 1: have a nine year old daughter, Genevieve, who is um
Speaker 1: we call her the great enthusiast. Everything she does she
Speaker 1: does with gusto and she has been, uh, the perfect child,
Speaker 1: a real blessing, and so um, I have no complaint.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't have it couldn't have worked out better
Speaker 1: for me at this point, and so I love it.
Speaker 1: And I feel your your sister makes me feel the
Speaker 1: way my dad and my mom makes me feel, you know,
Speaker 1: just very sturdy. I know that when you're when you
Speaker 1: are a man, when you're working, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: do a good job in the world, do a good
Speaker 1: job for your family, kill stuff and drag it back
Speaker 1: to the cave. You know, you have fear, you worry
Speaker 1: about not doing it that well. And anytime I feel
Speaker 1: that fear, I think about the reality of my life,
Speaker 1: which is if we went broke, your sister and Genevieve
Speaker 1: would help me start a taco stand. And you know
Speaker 1: they don't care. They love me, and so it does.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, do that for your for your significant other,
Speaker 1: Let them know that no matter what happens, that you'll
Speaker 1: be right there, and that that's the greatest thing in
Speaker 1: the world is to know that you'll always have companionship.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna abandon you. You know your parents have
Speaker 1: done a good job making that a mantra of their lives.
Speaker 1: Your dad has always said, Sharon, you can leave me,
Speaker 1: but I'm coming with you. Yeah, you know he's just
Speaker 1: trying to divorce me. I'm going to pitch it in
Speaker 1: the front yard. I'm never leaving well. And what he's
Speaker 1: saying is I need to know that you're not going anywhere,
Speaker 1: and I know that and it's just great. So um
Speaker 1: so yeah, marriage to Catherine has been a continuation of that,
Speaker 1: that foundational feeling I've always had. It's fun and we
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun together. I mean, we backing
Speaker 1: an rv R. We travel, we go all over travel
Speaker 1: with your rabbit, your hamster, and your dogs. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that that your sister's type a personality
Speaker 1: cannot stand as a blank calendar. So she she sees
Speaker 1: a box on her calendar that doesn't have something to
Speaker 1: do in it. She's got a She fills our dance
Speaker 1: card pretty good. She keeps me going, which is good
Speaker 1: because I would be a homebody without her, and I
Speaker 1: never would have seen the things that we've seen or
Speaker 1: done the things we've done. And so yeah, we bought
Speaker 1: an RV. I mentioned it, that's joke to use it
Speaker 1: as a ranch house, and uh, we bought it. Put
Speaker 1: it at the ranch to have a place to sleep
Speaker 1: out there. And finally she said, you know this thing
Speaker 1: has wheels on it. Should we go up pull it around?
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we've we've been doing that. The last
Speaker 1: few years are like looking up r V parks all
Speaker 1: over America, like, oh, this will people well where we
Speaker 1: will RV this year. I love it And now I
Speaker 1: want to buy on Harvy Park or build one. I've
Speaker 1: got that in my mind. You know, Michael's aunt owns
Speaker 1: an RV park right outside of Charleston. It's called Tacha.
Speaker 1: I think she'd sell it. It is truly heaven't Like
Speaker 1: I had never been to an RV park and we
Speaker 1: went and stay it out there with an RV man.
Speaker 1: There's a little store. Everyone's so nice. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: Like some people live there full time. Other people just visit.
Speaker 1: R V parks are where it's at. It's the soft
Speaker 1: underbelly of the United States that you know, you drive
Speaker 1: past these things, your whole life going on. You know,
Speaker 1: RV park right, you pull in there and and it's
Speaker 1: this whole little microcosm of life and awesome. We love it.
Speaker 1: We love it. So that's been fun. We go all
Speaker 1: over the place. We go to the Bahamas together every
Speaker 1: year a couple of times. Um, it's fun. Tell me
Speaker 1: when Michael and I were first parents, we set out
Speaker 1: by the fire actually here at holl Creek. Thing was
Speaker 1: ever Christmas, drinking some wine me having full blown anxiety
Speaker 1: attacks and Michael being calm, and you're giving us parenting advice.
Speaker 1: And you gave us some really good parenting advice. And
Speaker 1: I would like you to share that with us here. Um,
Speaker 1: do you remember it, because I don't. One time you
Speaker 1: said always smile, that's definitely tell me about that. Well,
Speaker 1: when you have a baby, if it sees you smile
Speaker 1: every time you see it, it's gonna smile back. If
Speaker 1: you're frowning at it every time you frown, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be one of those frownie kids. And I wanted a
Speaker 1: smiley kid again, going back to desiring everything to be
Speaker 1: happy and being a party. And so if you smile
Speaker 1: at your baby every time you see it, it will
Speaker 1: smile back at you. And if you surround yourself with
Speaker 1: smiley people, you're gonna be smiley. So better start with
Speaker 1: your kids. Um. And so yeah, just we did that
Speaker 1: as we were intentional about that, although that wasn't hard
Speaker 1: because if you can't look at a baby and smile,
Speaker 1: you know they wear you out. It is it is
Speaker 1: mind boggs. Yes, um, she she she was not a
Speaker 1: good sleeper. And Um, when you don't get enough sleep,
Speaker 1: here's another piece of advice. If you're not sleeping, you're
Speaker 1: not thinking right. If you are worried all the time, man,
Speaker 1: you need some sleep. Because I started thinking the sky
Speaker 1: was gonna fall, you know. I was standing over her,
Speaker 1: worrying about things in my business, worrying. You know. I
Speaker 1: just had these irrational fears. But I think that's really normal.
Speaker 1: I had like panic attacks. I've always been kind of anxious,
Speaker 1: but like they went to a new level in pregnancy
Speaker 1: and having a baby. Well, now because you've got somebody
Speaker 1: is responsible for you. The scariest day of my life
Speaker 1: was the day that I found out Catherine was pregnant
Speaker 1: with gene View. We had come home from a weekend
Speaker 1: at the ranch and I heard her scream in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: I went in there with my flip flop over my
Speaker 1: head because I thought there was a scorpion or something
Speaker 1: I was gonna go kill it, and she was holding
Speaker 1: a pregnancy test. I fell back on the bed and
Speaker 1: the ceiling was spinning because I realized in that moment
Speaker 1: I had done everything I could do to control the
Speaker 1: outcome of the situation. I can't pick the gender, can't
Speaker 1: pick what kind of kids you're gonna get You can't
Speaker 1: make it healthy, you can't give it ten toes you are.
Speaker 1: You've lost control, and being out of control is an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable feeling. And kids take over a huge part of
Speaker 1: your life because they want to be fed, like almost
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, and so you really I had this
Speaker 1: this crazy thought that I when I when we had
Speaker 1: a baby, we gonna hold it with one hand and
Speaker 1: do the rest of my life with the other hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's false, That is stupid. They need a hundred percent
Speaker 1: of your attention. And so um yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just so heavy. It's so but it's so amazing. I
Speaker 1: get now why everybody says it's the greatest thing you'll
Speaker 1: ever do. But it's also like the hardest and scariest thing.
Speaker 1: It's totally all those things. It is. And as your
Speaker 1: kids because get older, it it finally starts to get
Speaker 1: back to you. You know. I can remember the first
Speaker 1: time I woke up and Genevieve was on the couch
Speaker 1: eating a waffle that she had toasted for herself, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my gosh, there is a light at
Speaker 1: the end of the tunnel and it's not an oncoming train. Um,
Speaker 1: we are going to get out of this. You know,
Speaker 1: she she eventually will take care of herself, and boy
Speaker 1: has she? Um? So yeah, it's but kids make you better.
Speaker 1: They make you a better version of yourself because you know,
Speaker 1: if you just try to live a life of m h,
Speaker 1: you just can't be selfish when you're keeping another human
Speaker 1: being alive. I mean, who when do you have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to stand over a crib looking at something's little
Speaker 1: chest going up and down, realizing you're responsible for keeping
Speaker 1: that life going. It's scary, and it it forms you
Speaker 1: into a better version of yourself after time. UM, I
Speaker 1: love it. I love being a dad. It's really cool.
Speaker 1: You're a really great dad. You had a really good
Speaker 1: We've learned a lot from y'all. You are really good
Speaker 1: at letting Genevieve figure things out on her own, and
Speaker 1: like she you let her lead with her curiosity a lot.
Speaker 1: And y'all don't ever like yell at her, get or
Speaker 1: get frustrated with her. You always are good at explaining
Speaker 1: the situation like it's making her a really great thinker.
Speaker 1: You well, you know, when it comes to like the
Speaker 1: safety aspect or letting letting her do things, we didn't
Speaker 1: really have any control over that. We went. We took
Speaker 1: her to visit my parents when she was very young,
Speaker 1: and came back in the room and my mom had
Speaker 1: her cutting paper with scissors, like sharp fiskers scissors. And
Speaker 1: it was a test. I think mom wasn't a test um.
Speaker 1: It was a test to see if Catherine would let
Speaker 1: my mom you know, my mom. That's how we ran
Speaker 1: our childhood. We just there. We wanted a lot of rules,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't With six kids, you don't have
Speaker 1: time to administer all those rules, and so you can't
Speaker 1: police and six kids, you just have to trust them
Speaker 1: and let them get hurt and all those kind of things.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, it started early, and I was the
Speaker 1: same way my you know, same philosophy, like let her
Speaker 1: run down the driveway. She's gonna smash her face, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be the end of the world. And
Speaker 1: she did smash her face, which she does have a
Speaker 1: toneil that's messed up because it got smashed um under
Speaker 1: a skateboard that I was sitting on. And I mean,
Speaker 1: talk about responsibility, I mean just that those things happen,
Speaker 1: and but you just gotta you know, scars or not.
Speaker 1: The end of the world getting hurt, it's good for you.
Speaker 1: Um any kind of experience that lets you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna make it is great. I remember when we walked
Speaker 1: to the Milford Track in New Zealand. I had never
Speaker 1: done anything like that. Your family is good about you
Speaker 1: know these adventures. Dad wants to be dropped off on
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain and survived for the rest
Speaker 1: of our three You your little butts off a roof
Speaker 1: when you were kids, and taught you how to hit role.
Speaker 1: He read a newspaper article about these kids who had
Speaker 1: perished in the fire because they were too afraid to
Speaker 1: jump off of a roof of a burning house. I
Speaker 1: was not going to happen to his kids. So he
Speaker 1: took a ladder out, made you climb up on the roof,
Speaker 1: jump off and hit and roll. And that's one thing
Speaker 1: about Dad I will always give him credit for he
Speaker 1: always was he let us have total freedom and like
Speaker 1: pursue or whatever. It was a heart desire, but he
Speaker 1: was like, we're going to know how to survive and
Speaker 1: we are going to know how to think for ourselves. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there are two two parenting styles. One you
Speaker 1: can work really hard to protect your children from everything
Speaker 1: that might happen to them, or you can give them
Speaker 1: the tools to um deal with the things that are
Speaker 1: going to happen to them. Kids are going to get hurt.
Speaker 1: Um Trying to protect them from every injury isn't realistic.
Speaker 1: It burdens you unfairly as a parent, and it runs
Speaker 1: the risk of leaving them ill prepared for for dealing
Speaker 1: with hardship as they grow up. So it's your kind
Speaker 1: of opportunity to let them crash and burn a little bit.
Speaker 1: But it is scary. I mean, Jenevy broke her arm
Speaker 1: last year. Scared the heck out of me. You know.
Speaker 1: It just you don't want your children to get hurt,
Speaker 1: especially an injury that you know that we see people
Speaker 1: having to deal with. You know, there are injuries that
Speaker 1: you can't recover from and they can happen to anyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no protecting yourself. You just have That's
Speaker 1: the part that I struggled with so much for a
Speaker 1: long time of having It's like terrible anxiety with that
Speaker 1: it can happen to anyone. It happens to the best people.
Speaker 1: It's like that's the part of being a parent. But
Speaker 1: how did your faith come into play with that? Well,
Speaker 1: of course, of course, I mean that is the foundation
Speaker 1: of my life, a belief in God and a belief that,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of my grandmother's philosophy, like, look, you
Speaker 1: live enough life, you're gonna see some stuff. You're gonna
Speaker 1: lose people who are important to you. You are going
Speaker 1: to lose things that are important to you, abilities that
Speaker 1: are important to you, you know, And um, so definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you, if you, you've got to have faith,
Speaker 1: and that faith is a really challenging thing. As if
Speaker 1: you're if you're mildly intelligent, it's hard to believe in
Speaker 1: something you can't see. Period. If you if you know science,
Speaker 1: if you know the way the world turns, believing in
Speaker 1: God is a challenge and so you have to have
Speaker 1: a capacity for mystery to get there. Um. I am
Speaker 1: tempted all the time by my own knowledge base to
Speaker 1: say it's not possible. We're just a little twitching bag
Speaker 1: of chemicals. And the reason I believe in God is
Speaker 1: that my you know, the the ancestors who believed in
Speaker 1: this stuff also formed themselves into little groups and they
Speaker 1: were successful, they lived, and now I'm still here. You
Speaker 1: know you can, you can get real smart and talk
Speaker 1: yourself out of out of belief. But I pent of
Speaker 1: the time, I'm a firm, firm believer in a God
Speaker 1: who loves me. What has that felt like in your life?
Speaker 1: I always like to talk to people about feeling God
Speaker 1: actually like personally because we all have different experiences than
Speaker 1: I think. Whenever you actually do feel God for yourself
Speaker 1: is when it makes it easier to believe in God.
Speaker 1: At least for me, that was how it went. Well.
Speaker 1: You know, like I said, I've lived a wonderful life
Speaker 1: and I've always felt hashtag blessed, you know, like I so,
Speaker 1: but that's not real. But you also it's your perception
Speaker 1: because you've had heart to happen to you. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I choose happiness that we talked about that, but I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, God doesn't promise you sunshine and rainbows. That's
Speaker 1: not the promise of God. The promise is that he
Speaker 1: loves you and he'll take care of you in his
Speaker 1: own way. And I think the very best thing that
Speaker 1: has happened for my walk with faith is becoming a father.
Speaker 1: Because you hear about God the Father, he is our
Speaker 1: father right in in the Christian Bible, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I never really focused on that side of God. He
Speaker 1: was more like God the ruler and or God the creator.
Speaker 1: Once you become a father or a parent, a mother,
Speaker 1: you understand what that means to be to be a parent,
Speaker 1: you know, like your child is safe, they can do
Speaker 1: no wrong, they can you'll the story of the prodigal Son.
Speaker 1: I was revisiting that last week, and you know, you're
Speaker 1: always wanted, You're always welcome back home, like come on home.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is the joy of God,
Speaker 1: like that no matter what's going on in my life,
Speaker 1: he wants me. He wants me. I am desired to
Speaker 1: buy him. And that's a what a great thing, you know,
Speaker 1: what a cool concept that there's some this you know,
Speaker 1: huge being that wants me. I mean, that's cool, and
Speaker 1: that everything that's happening is for your greatest good ultimately,
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't feel like that. Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you believe in if you believe in heaven,
Speaker 1: if you believe in the Bible, the world is not
Speaker 1: where we're headed. This is a place for us to
Speaker 1: be challenged. This is a place for us to choose
Speaker 1: um and so he's not promising You're not gonna getience.
Speaker 1: There is no faith, no healthy faith, no healthy religion
Speaker 1: in this world that says if you do everything, your
Speaker 1: life is going to be perfect. That's not that, that's
Speaker 1: not his promise. And no life. Have you look at
Speaker 1: any life out there? No life is perfect. And there's
Speaker 1: been stuff happening in the world for as long as
Speaker 1: it's been around. That's it. Yeah, they're famine. I mean,
Speaker 1: look what's happening right now. You cannot control these things,
Speaker 1: and we choose to believe in a god who allows
Speaker 1: these things to happen. We can't understand why, you know, you, um,
Speaker 1: you don't know why children are allowed to get cancer.
Speaker 1: You don't know why young people are allowed to die.
Speaker 1: We have that That goes back to the capacity for mystery.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to be open to understanding that
Speaker 1: he loves you and all of this is part of it,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Yeah, I love feeling sturdy in my faith.
Speaker 1: I love feeling loved and protected and and knowing that
Speaker 1: there is this great thing waiting for me if if
Speaker 1: he lets me in. Fingers crossed, I think you're going
Speaker 1: to get in, Willie. Oh man, I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna wrap up. This is really fun talking
Speaker 1: to you. Documented this conversation too well. We always have
Speaker 1: these conversations by the way, sometimes by the fire. We
Speaker 1: had a little uh late night glass of wine. Man,
Speaker 1: I drank a whole bottle by myself. Well, you don't
Speaker 1: have to admit to volume. You know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell how much purple teeth in the morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's strong because I'm sharing a room with Sunny. So
Speaker 1: I came in there with my purple teeth and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go brush them away with purple teeth.
Speaker 1: And also I probably just was really ready to go
Speaker 1: to bed. Yeah, you always give me good brotherly advice.
Speaker 1: I never had a brother. You give me a good
Speaker 1: sister leaveing. I love your perspective of the world. Taught
Speaker 1: me the younger sister version. You know, had a younger
Speaker 1: sister sister never did. Never did. You got two wonderful
Speaker 1: older sisters who are awesome. I talked to with them yesterday.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it's uh. You have been a wonderful
Speaker 1: little sister. It's been fun. And even when you didn't
Speaker 1: like me in Spain, I knew you'd come around. So
Speaker 1: I always end with leave your light and it's really
Speaker 1: wide open. What do you want people to know? Just
Speaker 1: very wide open. Just the first thing that comes to mind. Man, UM,
Speaker 1: just find the best way to be happy in your
Speaker 1: own version of that. Find a way to feel safe
Speaker 1: and happy and to also, UM, one of the best
Speaker 1: ways to get there is to provide that feeling for
Speaker 1: somebody else, whether it's a parent or a sibling, or
Speaker 1: an old neighbor or a child. UM, find a way.
Speaker 1: If you can find a way to give that away,
Speaker 1: you'll feel it yourself just in doing that. So man,
Speaker 1: just be happy, smile, smile today. This is a fun time,
Speaker 1: what a crazy time to be alive. And know what
Speaker 1: are your thoughts about navigating this in the world. I
Speaker 1: don't have a care in the world, you know. I
Speaker 1: think it's UM, I'm gonna be smart. I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: with you and Michael in the middle of the country,
Speaker 1: and we're doing our best too. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get sick. Mostly from the functional standpoint, I don't believe
Speaker 1: that I would die if I got coronavirus. But UM,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be trapped in some hospital that
Speaker 1: they're not letting me out of or something like that.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to stay healthy. Um, but I don't
Speaker 1: I don't fear this at all. I've lived through h
Speaker 1: one in one stars, bird flu, swine flu, y two K.
Speaker 1: I mean there's always some thing coming at you. So
Speaker 1: it's just wild. Just it's just as a wild time. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: these times. Come pay off your debt, y'all, hear me.
Speaker 1: Go look at Dave Ramsey. I mean I love Dave Ramsey.
Speaker 1: You love Dave Ramsey, and uh yeah, I go. If
Speaker 1: you don't know who Dave mv is, go find him
Speaker 1: because when if you if you don't have those pressures,
Speaker 1: if you can find a way to get your financial
Speaker 1: financial house in order, um, everything else becomes easier everything.
Speaker 1: Buying a new tahoe will not make you happy. Having
Speaker 1: the money you spent on that tahoe in your bank
Speaker 1: can because it keeps you safe in these times. You
Speaker 1: don't have to uh to worry. So that's it. There's
Speaker 1: my light. Stay financially strong, because that's kind of a
Speaker 1: that's a thing in this in this world, money can't
Speaker 1: buy you happiness, but it sure is fun to cry
Speaker 1: in a ferrari um stay happy. Just stay happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go make somebody else happy and it will make you happy.
Speaker 1: I love that. Thank Bro for recording your life with
Speaker 1: me on my podcast. Didn't even have to use a
Speaker 1: safe word. Oh yes, love you to