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Tomorrow can be different from today.
Our lives often leave us feeling hopeless—like nothing will ever change. But perspective is everything. When you know where to look, hope can be found in the spaces and places you least expect.
Join Jason Gore (Lead Pastor of Hope Community Church) for a fresh perspective, practical steps, and weekly encouragement that hope really is possible… even in real life.
Hey, I need something from you giving her a purpose
and then saying, by the way, I see you.
I know you. Yeah. And then saying, I love you.
And then saying, Hey dude,
there's another way you could do this.
Right? Yeah. And I think doing it in
that order would be pretty compelling for
people struggling all over the country.
Welcome to the Hope and Real Life podcast with Jason Gore.
Our team is passionate
and committed to bringing you more hope in the everyday
real areas of your life.
If this conversation and content is valuable for you,
please do us a favor, like, subscribe, and even share.
You never know how valuable it could be
to share a little bit of hope as someone else.
Let's get the conversation started.
Hope in real life family.
We are back with our second episode with Dr.
John Delony, which is really a part of the same episode
that we just broke into two
because the conversation was going so great.
We wanted to keep it going. Thanks for tuning back in.
Let's get it going. You say regularly,
and this kind of piggyback on what you just said,
you're worth, you are worth being.
Well, and which is, you know, that's kind
of the next step into like,
you think leaving is better for other people.
And I'm a guy that's, um,
I've experienced suicide from people close to me.
And which does it rocks you in a way. Yeah.
'cause you do, you go down that road of like, oh my gosh,
how did you get number one, how did I miss this?
But number two, how did you really get to a place to
where you thought we'd be better?
But how, like, what, why do you think we lack
that basic belief of like, Hey, no, we're just worth being.
Well, and we actually are worth knowing that we do add value
to, to those that are around us in our lives.
I mean, it goes back to that earlier.
We, we just live in a culture of disempowerment.
I mean, people lose their livelihoods for thought crimes,
for thinking the wrong thing.
Yeah. Right? Oh yeah.
Um, people lose, like, there's no place for
to ask questions for discourse.
Um, you Jason, you could get up on Sunday, this Sunday
and say, Hey, I've been wrestling with X, Y, and Z recently.
I'm gonna do a study in my house.
And they might fire you, right? I mean, yeah.
This is our lives. This is all of us. Yeah.
And so the easiest thing in the world to do is
to just be quiet.
Yeah. And, um, if I'm looking at somebody
and saying, Hey, losing 40 pounds is gonna be really,
really hard, real hard.
Alright, she cheated on you
and y'all been married for 19 years.
I think this thing is worth saving.
And it's gonna be real hard.
'cause y'all gotta build an entirely new marriage.
'cause what you had is over now. There's no reclaiming.
It's over. Y'all gotta build something new
and it's gonna be real hard.
If you don't think you're even worth the
effort, then you're not gonna do it.
Yeah. And nothing of value is, doesn't,
is is accomplished without effort.
And so I think I say that all the time
and I've got some buddies, like military
dudes who gimme a hard time about it.
They're like, bro, okay, I'm worth being.
But at the end of the day, Jason, you had
to believe when the doctor looked at you like,
Hey, your heart's great.
You're gonna have to change how you live. Yeah.
And you had to at somewhere way down inside believe,
I don't even know what this means,
but I gotta go sit in front of a therapist.
What the world? And I can't flex my way out.
I can't bench press my way out.
I can't single leg my way outta this one.
I just have to Right.
That you have to believe you're worth that effort.
'cause it's gonna be hard. Right? Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
And so, I, i I just say it over and over and over again
because I think most people don't believe I'm even worth the
effort it's gonna take to have a more peaceful,
um, healthier life.
Uh, I'm gonna throw one other question out at you
and then, uh, I'm going
to dig into something else a little more fun.
But what would you say to someone who, um,
is experiencing a like a debilitative anxiety,
but at the same time would would also say,
I have no idea where it's coming from.
Um, I go back to the great David Kessler,
who I think the world's greatest, um, wisest voice on grief.
And he says, grief demands a witness. Hmm.
It has to be heard. It doesn't have to be fixed.
In fact, you can't fix grief.
And I think the same applies for anxiety for OCD,
for depression, for anything you're wrestling with.
The human experience demands a witness.
Every theological practice of in human history, Christian
or not, has a communal aspect where people get in in front
of each other and it's called confession of some sort.
And I think we've wrapped our head around confession,
say all the bad things that you've done.
I don't think that's the origin. I think theologically the
origin of confession is sitting in front of somebody
and saying out loud, and as the great CS Lewis says,
the definition of friendship is, oh, you two, right?
Yeah. Um, I, I think you sit down in front of somebody
and you say, I'm, I'm so scared I can't breathe.
My body keeps acting like somebody's coming in the front
door with a hatchet and I know nobody's coming there
and I don't know what it's trying to get my attention.
Can you help me? Or will you sit there?
Can I just talk through some things?
And I mean, that was the point of the book.
Here's a roadmap. Yeah. Here's a roadmap.
If your body is reacting in a way that is debilitating
with anxiety, it's probably trying
to get your attention in one of a few areas.
Let's just start poking around and see what we find.
Um, and I think the overarching thing, Jason,
we gotta stop going to war against our own bodies.
Yeah. Our bodies are pretty amazing.
They're intuitive, they're designed well.
Um, it's when we have pathologized every normal experience.
If your husband leaves you, you're supposed to be sad
if your daughter gets her heartbroken by some punk kid
and it, you'll go to jail if you hit him.
So she's gotta kind of take it.
Um, you're supposed to be heartbroken with her. Right?
If your wife got laid off and she's terrified
and she's kind of taken it out on
you, you should be sad, right?
Like, yeah, these are normal human experiences.
These is the way we're supposed to live.
We're not supposed to race off and try to solve it.
So let's get some people in our life, one person,
two person, five person, a good pastor, a therapist,
if you got to, let's begin speaking
some of these things out loud.
Yeah. That whole concept
of actually engaging your feelings and and sensing them
and owning them for what they are has probably been the
singular, singular most beneficial thing
for me in walking through counseling.
I, I don't, I don't have any desire, um, to, I think just
because it's, I mean, I've gone through some hard things
and so what you learn is you just turn that dial off
and you just don't feel it,
and you stuff it and you don't deal.
It's like, no, I, I don't feel that.
But what happens is when you do that,
you don't feel the good either.
You don't feel the joy either. And, um, but what
I, the joy and, uh, joy
and anxiety are on the same switch.
You flip the whole thing off. Yeah.
Or you can take meds and turn the whole thing off
and it'll shut off the anxiety,
but it'll show off the reason for being alive too.
Yeah. And what I'm learning is our feelings actually show
us what our real need is and,
and how we can turn back to God
and how he can meet that need.
Yeah. Um, you mentioned your book, you know,
you try to set out a roadmap.
So, um, this is the, the brief cliff note.
You still gotta buy the book, but uh,
No you don't, man.
You can get it, you can get it all here.
So you map out six daily choices, right?
So the cho choosing reality, choosing connection,
choosing freedom, choosing mindfulness, choosing health
and healing, choosing belief.
Um, could you just, just briefly unpack that
and then I'm gonna dig down into a couple of them
that I think will be fun, but could just briefly unpack what
that means to choose those things over
what else might come natural to us.
Yeah. I, um, I, I look at it like putting on deodorant
and brushing your teeth, um, if quickly.
And, and the longer you do this,
I've been doing this for a decade now.
So the longer you do it, it just becomes really rapid fire.
Um, but you gotta be honest about your baseline.
Is your job gonna go away? Is your wife in your marriage?
Is is are you just having a rough day
or is your marriage in a tough season?
You don't need to sit down and discuss this.
What's the state of your finances?
It's this idea of choosing reality
and understanding that you live,
that we live in a culture designed to distract us
and pull us away from our own bodies.
And so, um, are you truly, really, seriously unlovable?
Really, really like let's choose reality.
Let's ask that question. Um,
when your body knows you're disconnected from reality,
it will sound every alarm.
It's got to bring you back to baseline.
'cause your body's always in reality. Yeah.
Um, the second one is connection.
We've created the loneliest generation in human history.
Yeah. We talked about it earlier, but if you don't have
anybody to hold your arms up when things get sideways,
if you don't have someone to call
to pick up your son while you're sitting
with your wife in the er, your body knows you're responsible
for provision protection for the front,
the back, the flanks.
It would be failing you if it let you sleep all night. Yeah.
Your body would be failing you if it let you have a deep,
connected, intimate moment with your wife or husband
because it's not time for intimacy.
It's time to not die. Right.
And that's how we live most of our lives.
The loneliest generation that's ever lived. Yeah.
And especially, it doesn't count if it's on phones.
Um, or if you're just nodding at little league dads along
the sidelines.
Those aren't your friends,
those aren't your ride or dies, man.
You gotta have some people. Um, freedom goes back
to who's running your life.
Um, most Americans can't come up with five
to a thousand dollars, 500
to a thousand dollars in an emergency.
You may be cool with that.
Your nervous system is not Mm-Hmm.
Um, if you own a mortgage and you own car payments
and you own credit card payments, your body knows you
are not in control of your life.
God is not your priority that day.
Lexus Motor Company is,
Chevy Motor Company is the one telling you, I don't care
how you feel, your butt's going to work.
I don't care how abusive that boss is, you're going to work.
I don't care how sick your kid is,
find some way to keep 'em.
You're going to work. And we've created lives.
Um, debt used to be a way
to capture a whole group of people.
And that's just the way we live now.
And we can come up with all the great payment plans.
And I got to, and this, we had a bigger car
and a faster car, whatever.
Cool. But your nervous system knows if you say one wrong
thing and you lose your job, you lose your house,
you lose your car, you lose your food.
And again, it would be failing you if it let you sleep.
Yeah. That's, that's just basic human biology.
Um, calendars we're, we're, we're enslaved to calendars
that are so packed if you're 10 minutes late
to on a Monday meeting your whole week's shot.
Um, clutter. We we're surrounded by stuff.
How many of our mother-in-laws are still running
our lives Right.
Forcing us to go on vacations that we can't afford. She
Might, she might be listening to this. So I'm not
Your mother's ama my, not me, my mother-in-law's amazing.
Yeah. It's my mother-in-law's. Amazing. We're
Not talking about ours. It's um,
You were talking about yours before we started,
but I'll lose that Between y'all two
Hope and real life family, I want to take a moment
and let you know about a resource that we have for you
for your own personal development, spiritual enrichment,
and really a way for you
to find a bit more hope in real life.
We have a tool for you called the Hope in Real Life app.
It offers things like parenting tips, financial resources,
marriage insights, uh, if you're looking for it,
there's even Bible reading plans in there.
And there's a community
where you can even share prayer requests
and know that someone is praying for you for whatever it is
that you have going on in your life.
It's available right now in the Apple App
Store or in Google Play.
You can search hope in real life in both stores.
Or you can use the download link that is in the show notes.
Remember, tomorrow can be better than today
and hope is possible. Even in real life
Choosing mindfulness.
Here's all that is. Um, Jocko calls it detachment it,
it's this idea that I don't have to respond.
Yeah. I don't have to respond to my 6-year-old
or my sixth grader when he goes,
you pick up your clothes, I don't have to respond.
Yeah. Sometimes the greatest response
is to just say nothing.
When that guy cuts me off in traffic on the way to church.
I don't have to scream and yell
and let the international wave of I love you,
that only has one finger on it.
I don't have to do that. Yeah. I don't have to respond.
And mindfulness is simply lengthening the gap
between stimulus and response.
The thing that just happened. I don't have to grab my phone.
I don't have to grab a drink, I don't have to respond to
that coworker's text that just came in.
She laughs at all my jokes
and she makes me feel a little bit more alive.
I don't have to respond to that.
But I do need to ask myself,
why am I even tempted to respond to that?
I've been married to this other person for 15 years. Right.
Mindfulness is simply deciding I'm gonna take ownership
of my actions and my thoughts.
I'm gonna practice it over time.
Real hard to do, um, health and healing.
If you're not well, you're not whole.
If you haven't dealt with those childhood traumas.
If the things that kept, uh, I'll say it this way.
The things that kept you safe as a kid, if you knew
as a kid when dad got home,
you should probably just lay low,
go in your room and shut the door.
Or it was your job to get between dad
and mom when he got home.
'cause he was angry and he, and
he wouldn't hit you as hard as her.
Those same things will,
those same responses will destroy your adult relationships.
And when your wife drives up, you'll head to the bedroom.
And when your wife walks in the door, you'll,
you'll be geared up for a fight.
And our nervous system remembers those things.
You gotta heal those things
or you'll cont that's how stuff gets passed generationally.
Um, you gotta take care of your physical body.
And I think as a church, we need
to swan dive in the middle of that one.
And it's uncomfortable. Um, there's a lot
of conversations in the Bible about gluttony, a lot
of conversations about physical health
and body being a temple.
And we like to make the bodies a temple be about not saying
bad words and looking at pornography,
but man, if our bodies
aren't healthy, our minds aren't healthy.
Right. Um, there's, that's a curse of the modern time
that we've divorced mental health from physical health.
It's all health, man. Yeah.
If I wake up and I'm, I, last night I went to a dinner,
just father's son dinner.
And I got off the rails, dude off the rails when the,
when the woman came and said, Hey,
I don't figure you two guys want dessert.
And I was like, I don't know about this guy, but I do.
My son's eyes got as big as he was like, what?
And I was like, oh yeah, Jason, I was
so uncomfortable last night.
Yeah. I felt terrible.
I felt like I'd blown up a balloon inside my body.
It was awful. Yeah. This morning I woke up,
skipped my workout,
I just start eating garbage this morning.
I'm grabbing candy outta the candy dish here.
I had a pizza for lunch.
Like, it's like, here we go, we're going old John's back.
And, and I don't think, right. I snap at my team.
I'm a little bit short with my kid. Right, right.
It all works together.
And so I have to choose, I've gotta choose health.
And that's scary and shameful
and has a whole bunch of baggage to it.
But it is what it is. The last one is, um,
and this was the hardest chapter for me
to write 'cause I didn't wanna write it.
I wanted this book to be very scientific
and very mental healthy and yada yada.
And all the psychological literature, faith-based and
otherwise all of it, dude, points to the fact
that you have to plug into something bigger than yourself.
Yeah. Period. There is a God,
as much as you don't want there to be,
and all of the data says a religious practice,
a belief in something bigger than you gives you a better,
more peaceful life.
It gives you better relationships.
It, I hate to r oi it like this,
but your finances are better.
Like every metric is better.
I had a mentor of mine once, um, who had us meditate on the,
um, sermon on the Mount for, uh, uh, years
and just a sermon amount,
just sermon mount, just sermon on mount.
And he said, if Jesus was truly part of trying God,
then he's the smartest guy who's ever walked the earth.
Let's read his, uh, review his review packet for how
to live a good life and let's,
and like, let's stamp that on our souls.
And so I like that idea of, now I'm not just here doing this
for fun, like I'm doing this
because I want you to have the most peaceful,
or as he says, fruitful life.
Yeah. And here's the path, man.
If you don't lie, you don't have to,
you don't lose sleep
trying to figure out what the truth was.
If you don't kill somebody, you don't have a whole bunch
of people at your door trying to kill it.
Right. You's the path towards,
'cause by the way, here's the whole picture of the book.
This doesn't inoculate you from the call
that your mom's gonna have Alzheimer's
or that dad got cancer
or that your buddy just died by suicide
or that your friend just cheated on his wife.
And y'all are all a friend group.
And you know, this just blew up everything.
What it does is it gives you margin and it gives you thought
and it gives you peace for when those moments come.
Yeah. And you find yourself face down on the garden saying,
God, can it please not be this way,
but if so, here we go.
Right? Yeah. And that's, that's what this is for.
Yeah. I, I still connect with that because,
and we were talking about this a little bit
before, um, we jumped on here.
But that's a large part of why this podcast exists.
I mean, we have a team of people that, uh, deeply believe
that there's a world full of folks that don't have hope.
And, um, we wanna do everything
that we can do to bring them hope.
Now, look, I I make, there's, there's no, like,
there's nothing hidden behind the curtain here.
I deeply believe that that happens
once we do start understanding there is something bigger
than ourselves, I believe that just so happens to be the son
of God who is Jesus Christ.
And I believe we find hope in his life, death
and resurrection, the life that he calls us into.
But man, we know that less
and less people in today's world are waking up on Sunday
morning and saying, you know,
I've been watching the news a lot lately
and I think what I really need
to do is I just need to find a good church.
Like, that's just not happening.
And so we're doing everything. That's what this is about.
And it's why I appreciate your work.
It just, we're trying to get into the spaces
and places where people are, where we can say, Hey, listen,
you might not believe all this stuff today,
but I want you to know that you can get on a road
that will ultimately lead you to hope.
Well, let me, um, and
again, you can edit this part out too.
'cause I know it's a little bit inside baseball.
Um, I went through a period several years.
I was the dean of students, um, at a faith-based university.
And atheist is probably too strong a word,
but I was profoundly agnostic.
I I was like a, a fish ate a dude.
Like I'm done with this story. Like, come on.
And I, I was just out
and my wife, um, who is, she was Dr.
Delony way before me. She said, I get it. Totally get it.
And one of our core values in our home is curiosity.
We're always allowed to ask any question
and kind of fall any rabbit hole
and we don't, uh, hold each other that tightly to,
to, to certain beliefs.
And she said,
but you know, as well as I do the literature,
the scientific literature, 'cause we were both nerds.
If you go to church and a family goes to church
and a family has lunch together around a table
and a family shows up and shows up
and participates in service, that every part
of their life has improved.
So there was something powerful about, even in those years,
I didn't believe any of the stuff being said.
And I sat there with my arms crossed,
pulling apart everything the pastor was talking about.
Um, that the practice itself was restorative
and healing and valuable.
And I've, I I was really challenged recently when somebody,
um, I was talking
to started laughing when I was talking about
the decline of church attendance.
And he said, he goes, dude,
church attendance in the United States is not declining.
It's the opposite. It's going up.
And I looked at him funny and he goes, yeah,
they're just not meeting at your dumb building.
They're meeting at the CrossFit gym
and they're meeting at bar class
and they're meeting at, like, I went
and spoke to a bar class the other day
that was doing a book study after class.
And I thought, oh, this is what, this is church.
They're doing this here. Yeah.
And it occurred to me, I think that
the greatest gift a church could give people now is, um,
a conversation about life 1 0 1.
I think, um, I I I need a church to tell me
to gimme a path forward.
And I don't care about your
politics, I don't care about yelling.
I don't care about who we hate.
Will you please just tell me how to be a good dad?
I don't know how to do it and I don't
wanna do it like my dad did it.
And I don't know how to be married surrounded by pornography
and, uh, an egalitarian work system.
This has never happened in human history.
Can you just teach me how to do this instead
of just yelling at me every Sunday?
And I can almost guarantee you that a church
that opened its doors and said, us too, come sit down.
Yeah. Um, would be so overwhelmed with people showing up.
Um, and it's not a watering down of the gospel.
I think it's Jesus going to, um, the woman at the well
and seeing her and violating all social convention
and saying, Hey, I need something from you giving her a
purpose and then saying, by the way, I see you.
I know you. Yeah. And then saying, I love you.
And then saying, Hey dude,
there's another way you could do this.
Right? Yeah. And I think doing it in
that order would be pretty compelling for
people struggling all over the country,
Hope in real life family.
I wanna pause for a moment
and let you know about an opportunity
that I believe can help you find a bit more
hope in everyday life.
Listen, I know a lot of our viewers probably aren't a part
of a church, or maybe you gave up on the church a long time
ago and, and believe me, uh, possibly for good reason.
I understand. Uh,
but I don't want you to miss out on the hope
that you can actually experience by journeying along side
of a group of people that really are seeking God's
best for their lives.
If you are the least bit curious, uh, we try to make this
as simple for you as we possibly can, wherever it is
that you digest digital content podcast, you can go
to the podcast store, you can check it out on YouTube
and just search Hope Community Church.
You'll be able to find our messages
there and check those out.
Or if you actually want to tune in during a service time,
uh, you can go to get Hope TV at four 15
or 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time,
or you can tune in at nine 30
or 11:15 AM Eastern Standard Time.
Again, that's at Get Hope tv.
We hope that you'll take a chance with us
and experience what it is God has for you in your life.
You're gonna find practical messages
that will help you find hope in
the everyday moments of your life.
Hope you'll check it out. I want to,
I wanna jump into one other thing here.
We'll have a little bit of fun before we have to sign off.
Um, out of all the choices here, um, you know, the, the six
that you mentioned, some of those
come easier for other people.
Um, man, my i the health and and wellness
and the, the side of, Hey, I'm gonna step into the gym
for 60 to 90 minutes.
That's like the world's greatest therapy for me.
And I know, I know spending time in the gym
is something for you as well.
Talk a little bit about, you know, just, just what
that means for you, having some time to jump into the gym,
what you like to do, and how you find that that actually
adds value to your, not just your mental health,
but your overall holistic health.
Um, I that's a great question. Um,
What's your favorite thing to do to stay in shape?
Very few things. Give me as much peace,
and I wish I had a different word from that.
I wish I had like a more hardcore word than that.
Um, few things give me more peace, make me a better dad,
allow me to be a more present husband than going down
and lifting really heavy for about an hour.
Yeah. Um, I like Jiujitsu. I like rolling around.
I've gotten into Rucking a lot the last few years.
And, um, my wife's kind of sick of me coming up
with new fancy backpacks, um, filled with shenanigans
and trying to get her to walk
down in the woods with me. But
She, she should call my wife.
She'll probably feel better.
Geez, we got so many gadgets.
I got a new red light the other day
and she's like, wow, that's,
that's exactly what I was thinking.
We needed something.
Um, but, uh, I like those practices,
but there's something about now that it's not pathological.
It used to be un I was unwell
and it was me versus me in an unwell.
Like I was working from a place of you're a piece of crap.
As my therapist once told me, John, your ticker tape
that runs underneath the story
of your life is that you're a piece of crap.
You're a piece of crap. You're a piece of crap.
And, um, I developed a close friendship
with a guy named Sal, who works with, he is one
of the hosts of the Mind Pump Show.
This guys are great, they're, it's a fitness, um, health
and fitness podcast, but off air.
We were talking and he looked at me
and he said, John, if you're always walking into the gym
to workout because you think you're disgusting,
you think you look gross.
He said, you'll work out, you'll overwork out.
You'll go too hard, too quick, and you'll quit every time.
That's a recipe for quitting.
He said, if you open your eyes every morning
and say, I'm gonna go be a great dad,
I'm gonna have an awesome day and I'm worth an hour.
Yeah. Where I just go invest in me so that I could,
this is my time in the, in the,
this is my time when while while my,
my buddies are like, right, this is Jesus.
And the apostles are falling asleep
on him and he's going to pray.
This is like, you get an hour, dude. Yeah.
So that you can go be who you need to be.
Um, and you do it as an investment in yourself, not
as a way to punish yourself.
Yep. For whatever reason,
that was like a light switch came on for me
and it has become one
of my greatest gifts in the morning to myself. I just love
It. Yeah. Um, either
Hailey
or Elena, uh, one of the ladies in our team here asked me,
we had a guest on, or we filmed another episode earlier
and, uh, the, the woman was,
is very involved in Burn Bootcamp.
And so it was either Hailey
or Elena asked me, so Jason, you do, um,
you do the Burn bootcamp thing, right?
Which I'm not sure if you're familiar with Burn Bootcamp.
It's, I don't know what it is. It's kind of like CrossFit,
but it's largely for women.
Uh, and it's, look, I think there's some guys that do it,
and if there's a guy listener that does it, that's awesome.
I said, no, no, I don't, I don't do burn bootcamp.
And she's like, what, what do you do then to stay in shape?
And my answer was something along the lines of, I, I like
to lift heavy circles so that,
So that exactly. So
that I can lift heavier circles.
And, uh, that's kind of my, my therapy for myself.
So yeah. I mean, I just,
No, I love it. Love it, man.
Um, well listen, I know,
I know we're coming up on time here.
I I want to get you back on the show at some point.
'cause I, we didn't get a chance to get into
what I think a lot of a conversation that needs
to be had about how we just don't want to do hard things
and how we were made to do hard things
and how that, I think our men, we're constantly looking
for the easier way.
We're constantly looking for the easy way out,
not realizing it's, it's destroying us
and it's destroying our ability
to face anything that pops up.
And so I'd love to get you back at some point,
and maybe we can chew on that a little bit. And, uh,
Any, any time, man, I'm really, um, honored
by your mission and what
y'all are trying to do out in the world.
I think that's amazing. And then, um, for those
of you listening, if you're like, dude, I don't,
I appreciate the insights.
I don't buy any of the,
of the Harry Potter, Ty Boogey stuff.
Like, just know I'm with you. I've been there with you too.
Just hang there, hang there.
Keep showing up and keep showing up.
Um, I don't know how to say this in a
less delicate way, but God's real.
Yeah. And, um, there is a piece
so you plug into something bigger than yourself, man, that,
uh, just transcends everything. Yeah.
John, last question for you really quickly.
I try to ask every guest this,
but what are you most hopeful
for in your life over the next five years?
Oh boy. Um, my,
my wife came home.
I worked through Spring Break this year,
and my wife took the, our two kids to Missouri
for a thing they do every year with a group of our friends,
big, big group of friends.
And my wife got home, my son's 14,
he's finishing eighth grade and she looked at me
and she said, Hey, you've got four.
And I was like, for what?
And she said, you have four more spring
breaks and he's gone.
And my heart dropped.
I was like, and she goes,
I hope the work was worth it this time.
And I was like, no, it was terrible, man. Like, no.
Anyway, um, I started a practice back when my son was in
fifth grade that we would go
to breakfast every Tuesday morning at, we go real early.
And because we live out in rural
Tennessee, we go to a waffle house.
That's the only place we got.
So I'm, I'm getting connected to my son and diabetes.
It's every week. Um,
but, um, I hope in five years my son
will be a freshman in college.
My daughter will be heading into high school.
And I hope that my home continues
to be a place that I continue to be, a place
that when the world gets sideways,
my kids drop their shoulders
and they go, I'm gonna go see dad.
That's good that my home continues
to be a non-radioactive safe place
where they can anchor into so they can go out in the world
and do the crazy things that need to be done out there, uh,
to help heal this madness.
Love that. John, thank you
so much for spending time with us.
Greatly appreciate it. Uh, look forward to having you back.
Uh, to our listeners, listen, we all know
that we know folks in our life
that are struggling with anxiety.
I can't encourage you, please do what you can.
Just, it takes 10 seconds to take an episode
and to share it with somebody else.
You never know how much your hope you're gonna actually be
able to bring to someone who desperately needs it.
We'll have all the links to the things that we talked about,
including a link to be able to pick up John's book.
Uh, building a non-Anxious Life would strongly recommend it.
Incredibly beneficial for me. John, it's been great.
Thank you so much for the time.
I'm grateful for you, man.
Let's hang out in person someday.
Yes, sir. Alright, see you guys next episode.
Thanks for tuning into this episode
of The Hope in Real Life podcast.
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