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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the Dad Tired podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Classical conversations. Are you concerned your child's current education won't give them the skills necessary to succeed in every area of life? Consider homeschooling with classical conversations by applying the classical Christian model of education.
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Tired. Last week, Layla came home from the grocery store and was, uh, had just taken out the groceries and we were preparing dinner for the night. And I was in the kind of the corner of the kitchen cutting some chicken up for dinner and she was taking groceries out of the grocery bag and she was kinda showing me the things that she had bought.
And she pulls out this piece of cheese, this like nice fancy cheese. You don't buy in like the refrigerated deli, you know, craft cheese section you buy from like the, the deli. I don't know. There's like an expensive cheese section that's clearly where she got it from. It's like this goat raspberry goat cheese or something like that.
I don't know. Anyway, she pulls this out and I'm like, why'd you get that? We don't like eat that kind of cheese. You know, I want poor man cheese. And uh, and she pulls it out and she starts to tell me, she's like, I know we don't normally eat it, but there's nothing I would, this is how she started the sentence.
She said, there's nothing I would love more than to break open this cheese, open a bottle of wine and in my brain, before she had even finished the thought. Before she had even finished that sentence and my brain immediately started to finish it for her. How I was finishing it was open this cheese crack, open a bottle of wine and sit with you and like watch a movie or something essentially, that we would eat this and enjoy this nice thing together.
And she didn't finish the sentence that way. The way she finished the sentence was, I, I wanna break, open this cheese, open a bottle of wine and enjoy this with my brother, who, her brother was coming into town. Her brother was coming into town this coming week. He actually comes into town tomorrow, and her and her brother are very close.
I love her brother. He and I are really close. Just an amazing guy. And it was 100% innocent, like. We love her brother. We're excited to have him in. She got this nice thing so that we can be good hosts. But for some reason, I had finished that sentence by thinking that it was going to end with me and it didn't, and it triggered it like pricked a nerve.
I. That I didn't, wasn't expecting it to prick. And so I felt some kind of way I felt frustrated, I felt maybe hurt, and, uh, so I just get quiet. I'm bad at like, hiding my emotions and just kind of like I, for better and worse, I, I oftentimes will wear my emotions on my sleeve, on my face, and so I get quiet.
And she clearly didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not like, you know, I didn't wanna be mean to her or say anything. I didn't even know what to say, you know, I was just, I, I, I felt a sense of like, hurt and so I'm cutting the chicken and she said, is something wrong? And I said, no, you know, probably even the way I said no, indicated to her that something actually was wrong.
And so I'm cutting this piece of chicken and I'm feeling a certain kind of way, and she said, are you mad over a piece of cheese? That was her next line, which, that one did make me mad 'cause clearly I wouldn't be mad over a piece of cheese. So she says that, and I don't say anything. I'm just continuing to cut this PS I'm gonna be vulnerable with you guys today.
Real vulnerable. I stay quiet, I'm cutting the chicken. And then she said some, I don't remember everything that was kind of said. The, the moment was tense. She said something again like, are you really mad at over a piece of cheese? Something to that effect. And that actually made me really, really mad. So I aggressively set down the knife.
I didn't throw a knife. That sounds really dramatic, but I aggressively set it down to let her know I was angry. And I kind of, uh, stormed off and went upstairs and that. Triggered like a whole set of emotions where I became very angry. I became really hurt. Now I'm, I, I was feeling, I think I was feeling hurt to start in a certain kind of, you know, emotion.
But then now I'm feeling angry at her for asking me if I'm mad at a piece of cheese, which she knows I'm not. I would never just be mad at a piece of cheese. And this starts a two day fight where we aren't talking to each other, I should say. I'm not talking to her dude. This is. Oh man, I just can't be more embarrassed.
Writing books just came from a speaking engagement this week, couple, two days ago, I'm on a stage with a microphone talking to a group of men about what it looks like to be the husband's, fathers and disciples God's calling them to be. And this was my reality. Uh, last week, but I've always committed that I want to be honest with you guys and process vulnerably with you guys.
'cause I am committed to stumbling alongside of you. So two days of me not talking and just frustrated and mad and awkward and weird and unhealthy emotions that I'm showing toward her. And I start to process in the middle of all this dude, what, as my emotions are settling, I'm trying to be self-aware and like, dude, what are you.
What are you feeling here? Why are you acting like this? It was a piece of cheese. The story that I had written that day was. My wife doesn't, she doesn't want to initiate having these nice or romantic or fun special evenings with me. She would rather do that with her brother. Not romantic, obviously, but she would have, she would rather do something nice that's special with her family.
And the story I continue to write was my wife never wants to do nice things with me. She only thinks of special things for other people. Is that story true? For sure not. But in my emotions, dude, I was writing that story and I was believing it deeply. I. And it caused a whole set of that belief caused a whole set of behaviors that I acted upon as I reflected in spending my time being in silence and really immature in my handling of my emotions towards my wife and my family.
I. As I reflected and just thought, you know, Jared, like what are you doing and why are you doing this, and what are you really feeling? What's behind your anger? I was trying to think through like what happened in the last week or two weeks that like prompted this response from you. It clearly, like, we're not talking about cheese here, so like what's really going on?
And I had reflected back on the week earlier, I was going to another speaking engagement and I was sitting at the airport and I got an email from my publisher that said, Hey, your book sales aren't for the new book. The dad tired mixtape. They're not doing as well as we had hoped. Um, pretty probably standard email that most publishers send to their authors.
Like, Hey, we should be promoting the book more. Let's sell more books. Totally fine, innocent, great, encouraging, whatever, but that email pricked a nerve in me that I kind of silently and quietly hid and pushed down. And that nerve was, Jared, you're, you're not good enough. That was the lie in the story I was telling myself at the airport that day, to the point where I went to a spot in my brain where it's like, why am I even doing that tired?
Like, I'll find something else to be good at. Didn't really, you know, those were just like quick. Fleshy thoughts, sinful thoughts that I had, or I don't even know if they're sin. Maybe they're sinful. They're just, you know, those were my first responses. I wasn't really thinking about like throwing in the Talend dad tire or anything, but my first thought was, I'm not very good at this.
I tried to write a book and it's not doing very well, and I'm not very good at this. I've spent the next few days and week asking myself. Why did those emotions, why did those getting that nerve getting pricked turn into such a big response? I promise this is gonna relate back to you and your story, so forgive me as I.
Word vomit and emotionally vomit all over this microphone today. You've gotta put up with it. I was talking to somebody very recently and we were talking about childhood, and the question came up of does it really matter to explore the pain that you felt in your childhood? We are who we are now. We make the decisions.
What is. I mean, what happened happened, and we don't, we can't control it. There's nothing we can change. And so does it really matter? Like try to unpack it. And there have been seasons in my life where I've felt that, and I would say I agree with that. Like, dude, whatever. It's over. I. What happened happened, and I have to move on.
We can't just wallow around and be depressed all the time and be sad about what happened. What happened, happened, and we have to at some point say, I'm going to move past this. I'd agree with all that at different points in my life. But here's the thing, there are certain things that happened to us that we tried to push down and that we tried to act like didn't impact us as deeply as we thought they did.
It didn't have a big of impact on us as we thought it. Had or should have. And uh, and so we try to move past it, but the thing is when we shove that down, it ends up bleeding out somewhere else. And so some pain that I experienced at some point that is yet to be resolved or healed or that I let Jesus in on.
And to let Jesus start to redeem that that wound has not yet been healed. And so it's turned into a scab and the scab got ripped open when a publisher said, your book isn't doing very well. And I kind of try to maybe put a bandaid over it or ignore it. But then when your wife says, I got this piece of cheese from when my brother comes into town, it pricks a nerve and causes you to react in a way that is not really that logical, but it's because the wound never got healed.
And so then I have to ask, what is the wound? And the wound is, as a kid, I would so desperately long for a man, specifically my dad, to say, son, you have what it takes. You have what it takes. You are doing a good job. Well done, son. The words that I think every man longs to hear, well done. You're doing a good job.
I'm proud of you. Didn't have that. And so I have scrambled my whole life to have somebody tell me you're doing a good job. I found that in sports. I found that when I was, uh. Middle school and high school by getting the intention of girls. I found it in music and in career and now apparently in writing books or a podcast, somebody saying, you're doing a good job.
Well done, and it can last for a while. And if you're talented or you have what it takes or you're good at your job or you're funny, or whatever the thing is, you are, you can kind of ride on that. For a while, you can hear people say, Hey, you're doing a good job if you do a good job at work or whatever, but the second it doesn't because it's sinking sand, and eventually it will fail you.
The second it doesn't. You realize the waters have come up and I'm actually not standing on any solid ground. And then you start to convince yourself that maybe I'm not as good as I think I am, or I hope that was, and you react to a piece of cheese in a way that doesn't really match the context of the situation.
I. I tell you all of that, brother, because I had a friend, I was sitting down with a friend for coffee recently, and, um, he told me about his, I asked him about his relationship with his dad, and he told me that his dad was an amazing manless, like, incredible man of God. He, he said he was like, everything you would want in a dad.
He was up until the age of 15 and it turned out his dad was living like this. Totally double life. Pretty much in an instant when everything got uncovered and brought into the light, everything came crashing down and all of what he wanted in his dad, not everything he thought his dad was, failed him in a really, in a moment's notice.
And I thought to myself, I left that conversation thinking, I don't want to be naive enough to think that that can't be any of our stories at any time. That we don't have an enemy. Again, I don't want to be obsessed with the fact that there's an enemy. I wanna keep my eyes and my gaze on the cross as my pastor Caleb said last week on this podcast.
And as he says, oftentimes I wanna keep my gaze on the cross. My I fixed upon Jesus. Um, but there is an enemy, and I don't wanna be naive enough to think that that enemy is not constantly trying to trip me up, that hates me, that wants nothing more than for me to be far from the Lord. And, um. I think we're a bro.
A few decisions away from life crashing down on us. And so the last week, two weeks, I've thought to myself, man, I, I wanna run this race really, really well. What's the goal for my marriage? I. Well, the goal for my marriage is that we're really old by God's grace and we're, our heads are full of gray hair for me, probably no hair at all, and that my old wrinkly hand is interlocked in between the fingers of my wife's old wrinkly hand and that we so passionately love each other and we love Jesus and our kids respect us.
That's the goal, bro. And if that really is the goal, then yes, it makes sense to go back to some wounds that have yet to be healed, that you have yet to say, Jesus, I'm willing to face this as painful as it is because I want healing. I want redemption so that I can run the race well. So I'm just feeling this deeper sense of commitment to becoming a holistically healed and healthy man.
I've done counseling in the past and I signed right back up because I thought, dude, if I'm gonna lead people and I'm gonna, even if I'm not leading people, if I'm gonna try to lead my family. Man, I want my kids to have a dad who's really healthy, who is not getting really mad and not talking to their mom for two days because of a stupid piece of cheese.
Um, because a nerve got pricked somewhere that I hadn't had the guts to go back and say, man, what am I really feeling here? And a lot of that I had already thought I dealt with, like my identity's not in the world, but clearly bro. Clearly Jesus has more work to do there. And so as the scripture say, I want to take my thoughts captive.
I don't want my thoughts, Jared Lopes thoughts to be run by myself to let myself play out this crazy story in my brain. And here's the thing, dude, you are probably writing some kind of story in your brain today. It might be about your wife, it might be about your boss, it might be about your kids. Most of it, maybe even all of it feels true.
But the question maybe is why are you writing that story? What's behind all of it, and you may be thinking to yourself, dude, yeah, that was my childhood. That happened so long ago. I don't really want to deal with it, bro. You don't deal with it now. It bleeds out somewhere. It turns into you aggressively tossing down a knife and stomping upstairs over a piece of cheese.
You know what I mean? One of my biggest things that I'm trying to do for my son, for all of my kids, but I feel this deeply with my son because I'm a boy and I wanted this, or when I was a boy. I wanted this from a dad, but I'm trying to teach him. Your identity is not based on anything you do, but who you are in Christ Jesus.
Loves you deeply. The father knit you together, son, in your mother's womb before the creation of the world. He knew you every day of your life. He knows every thought that runs through your head. He knows every hair on your head. Every time he thinks of you, it brings a smile to his face. He delights in you deeply, and it's not based on anything you do, but just the fact that he calls you son.
My son played baseball for a little bit and he came home after a game and he's like, dad, I don't think I'm very good at baseball. I'm like, dude, you're not. And that's okay. And maybe that kind of felt against parenting in some ways. 'cause I felt, there was a part of me that think like, well, maybe I should be nice to him, pat him on his back.
But really what I wanted him to do was know who cares, bro? Who cares if you suck at baseball? Who cares because you're deeply loved by me, your dad, and you're deeply loved by your Heavenly Father, and you can fail at everything, and you would still be deeply loved by the God of the universe. You would still be loved by your dad.
This is who you are. You're not what the world tells you. You are what they say you should be. You are loved by the Father, and my hope is. That my son grows up to be a man who doesn't clamor for other things or other people, or another boss or even his wife, to tell him, here's who you are. He just finds it in Christ, in Christ alone.
But I do that best. I raise my son best in that way when I his dad and finding his identity in Christ, in Christ alone. And so as I got that email at the airport and as I blew up in a really emotionally immature way. Recently, and I'm reflecting on all of this, I think back to all the things that kind of trigger that the, the needle that pricked that nerve.
And I asked myself like, why? And so much of it is that deep feeling of I'm not doing good enough, I'm not good at this. I need to accomplish more, I need to have more accolades or more pats on the back. And I feel like through all of it, the last week, the Holy Spirit and his kindness has just reminded me, Jared, it's okay if you suck at baseball.
And that's the thing I would tell you, bro. It's okay if you suck at baseball. It's okay. If you aren't doing as good of a job, uh, at work, you don't have as much money. Your life isn't put together in all the ways that you thought it should be. Now listen, there's some stuff to manhood that we just need to do, bro, like, wake up, go to sleep at an early time.
Wake up early, spend time with the Lord. Confess, sin, pray. Stop watching tv. Stop watching porn. Stop eating crap food. Start taking a walk or exercising like, bro, take some ownership of your life. You're not a victim, right? We want to be men who use this body and brain that God's given us to for all his glory, the best that we can.
But at the end of the day, dude, who cares? Like if, if you suck at your job, who cares if you're not as good as you thought you were? Or you should be, bro. You're just deeply loved by the God of the universe right now in whatever mess you're in, in whatever shortcomings you're in the middle of right now.
Not a future version of you right now. I. You bring a smile to God's face because he's adopted you. And if you've trusted Jesus as savior, if you've been adopted into the family of God, he doesn't see you with any anger or judgment or shortcomings, or man, we just gotta work on a couple things and we're gonna get you good enough.
You're already good enough because you are seen through the eyes of Jesus who is perfect dude. Insane. Insane. The God of the universe looks at you and sees no flaws because he sees you through the lens of Jesus. He's proud of you. Well done. Who cares if you suck at baseball bro? And so with that truth, with the truth of knowing that you don't have to earn your way to anything because you're just a deeply loved son of God.
With that truth, bro, you can have the guts to go face some hard stuff from your past. You can face that past sin. You can confess that past sin. You can go back to that hard trauma, that thing that happened to you, or those years that happened to you, or that relationship that happened to you. Or even that you were a part of that you would love to just push under the rug to kind of push down.
We don't have to deal with that. Who cares? What happens, happens? I am who I am. It is what it is. You can actually go back to any of that because you know, you know what? That stuff doesn't identify me. There's only one who gets to identify me, and that's Jesus. The father says that he loves me and he delights in me because of what Jesus did on the cross.
And so I have the guts to face some hard things because I know that that's not my identity any longer. Jesus is taking all the broken and messy parts of me and he's making me new. I'll just wrap up by saying this, dude, God is so gracious. What's crazy about our God is that he didn't just save you and had you repeat a prayer one time at Church Camp.
30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, whatever. He can just have you say some prayer, repeat after some pastor and just like, all right, bro, we gotta struggle through this. I'll see you in heaven. But God is gracious enough to continue to draw you near to him. Even today. The fact that you're listening to this right now, God is pursuing you, bro.
He loves you enough to say, man, yes, you will be fully redeemed in heaven. One day I'll make all things new again. Revelation 21, there will be no more crying and no more tears, and I'll take all this brokenness and it will be no more. There will be no more brokenness. Praise God. That's coming. But even right now, God says, yeah, but let's start that now.
Your kingdom come. God's kingdom come. God's will be done on Earth today. Just as it will be in heaven one day today. God has redemption for you today, bro. He has redemption for you today. You don't have to suffer through in your soul and just hope that one day, yes, there will be suffering. Always. We're in a broken and fallen world.
Our heart's long for the day that it will no longer be like this. But even right now, we get glimpses of heaven today. God has redemption for you. You can face that thing. You can look at the wound. Because God's grace is sufficient and you can do it, bro, because you wanna win the race. Well, this is a long race, man.
Whether you got the rest of today left, or you got another 50 years left, dude, God is working in you. And so it's okay to face it so that you don't write stories in your head. You don't let the enemy have a heyday in your brain. You don't write these stories. You don't start to think things about your wife and your kids and the people around you that just simply aren't true, bro.
Get healthy. Get healthy. Holistically healthy, get healthy. Chase down the things. Figure out that addiction. Go back to the pain. Face it. Go to bed early, cut out the porn, start eating healthy. Seek Jesus with everything you got so that you win the race well so that you can run towards the finish line.
Well, lastly, bro, who cares if you suck at baseball? Who cares? Look at whatever shortcomings you have today. Look them in the face and just say, who cares? Because my identity doesn't rest in anything I can do. It rests in who I am and whose I am. I am loved by the father. The creator of the universe knows me and loves me deeply.
And bro, as you rest in that, I have a feeling you're gonna become the husband, father, and disciple that you long to be, that Jesus longs for you to be. I love you. We'll see you next week.