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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Jesse French
Hey guys, my name is Jesse French and welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast brought to you by Restoration Project. I'm joined today by my good friend, Mr. Chris Bruno. Chris, hello and welcome.
Chris Bruno
Hey, Jesse. Good to see you, good to be back. I know.
Jesse French
it's good to have you here and excited for what we've got on deck here today.
Chris Bruno
I know, I'm excited.
Jesse French
Yes, tell us more. Where are going?
Chris Bruno
Well, you guys, as we are in the season right before the Restorative Manhood Digital Summit, we are really excited about the speakers that we have, the whole diversity of voices that we have gathered to talk about what does it look like to be a restorative man in a whole bunch of different categories. And so today, Justin and I are gonna talk about our friend Mark Batterson. I met Mark several years ago in...
Mark has done a lot of work in the space of men and men's ministry and all of that. And so I was invited in to participate in this small cadre of ministry leaders that included Mark and myself to talk about how can we partner together? How can we link arms? How can we not recreate the wheel all the time, but actually like leverage the kingdom resources across various spectrums to come together to really do some things well together and not independently. And so.
over the course of the last several years have had many different interactions with Mark in person and not. He was gracious to endorse the sage book and like things like that. So it just has been fun to develop a relationship with Mark and then also to have him as a part of the summit because he's well known for a whole variety of reasons. He's got like 15,000 books that he's written. One of them was called play the man. And then I've just known his heart from men and men's ministry. And so
We invited him on to speak as a part of the summit. And so today we're gonna tease up just a few second snippet of that conversation that Jeremy, who is our staff guy when he was having the conversation about the summit, they got into some things that we thought it would be really fun to bat around and riff off of for a podcast episode. So Jesse, are you ready to play the clip?
Jesse French
Ready to go. Here's the snippet from our conversation with Mark as part of the summit.
Mark Batterson
a non-anxious curiosity. And so what we've learned to do, and I wish we had done this when our kids were younger, because we would try to swoop in and course correct them or even solve things for them. You know what we do now? We're like, tell me what are you thinking? How are you processing this? Now if they ask for parental wisdom, we'll give it, but
We really try to approach our kids with non-anxious curiosity. So we ask questions and then we say, tell me more. Sometimes we're like internally, you're fighting the battle, like what were you thinking? Are you losing your ever-loving mind? But there's something about that non-anxious curiosity that it's helped our marriage, it's helped parenting.
Jesse French
There it is.
Chris Bruno
All right, we're cutting him off there. He has many things to say, we're gonna stop there. So here's where I want to start, Jesse. Mark said something there and he's like, I wish we had done this when our kids were younger. How many dads, how many of you guys listening right now have said that very same thing? Like, oh, if we had only known or if we had just started this younger.
Jesse French
Yes, thousand times yes.
Chris Bruno
I don't know how many times I've said that. I love that he actually, ⁓ yeah, you're just a guy like us. And so here we are. I do think that there's something really valuable, even just pausing there for a second, really valuable.
Jesse French
like normalize that? Okay.
Chris Bruno
I love even how he acknowledges that and then gives himself a little grace. Like I've learned some things through the fathering journey and I'm wiser now than I was back then, but he didn't go to like condemn himself for how he was or what he didn't know or what he didn't do. You know, I wish I would have known this earlier. Yes. Thousand times. Yes. Just like you said, but he doesn't go to condemn. So
If you guys are finding yourselves listening to this right now, the podcast, you're going to be part of the summit, whatever it is, just take a deep breath and recognize it's just moving forward, right? What do know now and how can I implement now what I know versus live in the space of regret for what wasn't?
Jesse French
Right? Yeah. Like you're saying it's actually a faulty goal to try to regret proof and mistake proof all of our living. Right? Like this is yes, let's be wise and be intentional, but whatever bar says we're not going to make mistakes is so
Chris Bruno
Yeah.
And you know, like when your kids were first born and they were first showing up in your house and they were young and whatever, you were a rookie father. So let yourself be a rookie father. And even if you're a rookie father right now, let yourself be a rookie father and just, you know, you put some reps in and you just put some time in and you grow and grow. So that's where I wanted to start when I first heard.
Jesse French
That's a good point. ⁓
Chris Bruno
Everybody take a deep breath. Yeah. The second thing, obviously, he's talking about non anxious curiosity. And I want to get into that. But Jesse, how how would you how would you characterize the opposite of that? Because because I think if we we start with a non anxious curiosity, it's all this like great, you know, concepts. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But that supposes that there is an anxious curiosity. And I want to talk about that.
Yeah
Jesse French
Yeah, that is a good question. It's so interesting. We at Restoration Project love that word and that posture curiosity and sometimes we'll even compare that to judgment and how curiosity is very different than judgment. But even this piece that Mark brings up around anxious curiosity is an interesting one to think through. Putting me on the spot. But I feel like the anxious curiosity is...
Chris Bruno
You
Jesse French
Like the word that's coming to mind is connected to the anxious pieces. There's just like this frenetic unstable feeling in the interaction. So yes, there's questions maybe being asked, right? By the person, but the source of that, like just feels shifty and unstable in the, like, I can't totally get a sense of some of why you're asking this or I don't feel.
Like you're, you're dialed in, right? Like those are some of the things that come to mind as I think about the flip side, the foil of that.
Chris Bruno
Yes. Anxious guess. Well, he kind of alludes to it, I guess, a little bit in that little snippet when he said, you know, what in your ever loving mind were you thinking? Here's where I would go with that, Jesse. And that is that anxious curiosity has to do with you and non anxious curiosity has to do with your child and training your child. And I feel like the anxious curiosity, when I think about the times that I've been that it is like, what are the ramifications for me?
of what you just did. Or, what does this do for my reputation? Or now, based on what has just happened, what does this say to me about how awful of a child you are? It's all this anxiety that's coming out of me that has to do more with, what am I left with here? Right?
Jesse French
What am I now having to navigate?
Chris Bruno
And I'm actually like projecting, bringing out, it's not actually curiosity about what's happening. It's I'm projecting the, I'm vomiting out the anxiety inside of me all over my child when it's not actually like from them in the first place. They're not anxious about it. So it's all about me. Yes.
Jesse French
I think that's well said, Chris, and again in the vein of giving ourselves like some modicum of some grace like. As you're talking about that and the non-literal vomiting onto our children, like it happens so fast, right? Like even this morning as my kids are getting ready to go out the door onto the bus to go to school, child number two has an argument with child number three, right?
Chris Bruno
Yes.
Jesse French
And just instantly it is like without thinking there just is that response from me around like, did you not think about this? Like
Chris Bruno
What are you doing? You know, you can...
Jesse French
Right? Like that is the response. So it just happened so fast. And so I again, in that chain of or in that space, like how do we even begin to pursue something like some sort of response that is more settled as you're talking about that isn't anxious.
Chris Bruno
Yeah, well, I wish I had the...
Jesse French
Tell me the answer, Chris. I love you.
Chris Bruno
excited about the formula to make it all go away. I think where I will start, Jesse, is that snap response inside of us is going to happen, has happened, does happen almost every day for all of us. And I just want to remind us that it is not the rupture that we need to worry about in the relationship with our children. It's how we go about the repair.
And so even if we have anxious curiosity, even if I have puked all over my child, right? It's not a matter of like, ah, that was bad. And now I have to go to a place of shame and now I have to, it's, hey, that wasn't right for me to ask for me to come at you like that. And I am so sorry. I need to own that. Cause I'm also in my repair with them, training them how to repair with other people and also recognizing
that I am human too and that allows them to be human. And so there's this like permission giving of like dad's, dad's got stuff he's working on too and so when I've got stuff, I can bring that to him. Like there just creates that. So not to mention the relational rift that occurs when you fall over your children and now you need to come back to like, let's clean up and get back on the right road together. So I just wanna say that first.
Jesse French
It makes total sense. I want to ask like, give me your brief definitions of rupture and repair.
Chris Bruno
Yeah. Well, rupture is anything that seems to create disconnection or distance in a relational way. So it can be rupture in like we're talking about with our kids, like, hey, we're going to yell at them or snap at them or something like that. But it could also just be silence. It could be a face of disappointment. My wife has been telling me that my face is really loud and I have really loud sighs.
You know this, you know, you know, the experience, the other end of the experience when Chris Bruno has a side, there is a lot communicated in that side. So there's something in his. I'm going to keep talking so that you know, it's great that you don't see any more about my size. Okay. Everyone listening, just know that Jesse is laughing right now out of extreme identification with what I'm saying. so there there's that rupture is anything that breaks connection.
Jesse French
Sorry.
Chris Bruno
Okay, and then repair is the work, and I wanna use that word work, the work of reestablishing that connection. And I say work because it takes work. It's not just like, hey, I'm sorry, and you go on. It's not flippant, it takes the slowing down, the recognition, the ownership of what you have done that has broken the disconnection, the sadness that you're experiencing as a result of that.
and then the desire to go and say, hey, can we come back together? Can we reconnect? So that's what repair is. And if you think about repair, even in welding, a repair is stronger than the original material itself. So when you weld two pieces of metal together, it actually has a strength to it that is greater than the original piece of metal itself.
And so I think that's true for relationships too.
Jesse French
Intrude to the metaphor of the work piece of it, right? I'm like, there is work to this.
Chris Bruno
Yes, yeah, and you as the father, you as the parent, it is best for you to move into the work before you expect your child to enter into that work. It is an invitation of the father to repair. And like, I love it, I have loved it when my children come to me for repair, but they won't know how to do that unless I have done that first, okay?
So, and I wanna say that for your children, I wanna say that for your spouse, I wanna say that for your friends, I wanna say that for your business, right? Pursuing repair is actually what Jesus has been about in the entirety of the scriptures. There is disconnection with God and he is about repairing that disconnection and he goes first. So let's be like him in that.
Jesse French
I think that's so helpful. And it just gives great language and a great practice of this notion that we're talking about of like, who is the restorative man, right? In lots of ways, right? We're trying to put in the summit is part of this, right? Is to like, Hey, let's put more meat on this bone of what, who is that man? What does he market by? Who is he and how is he? And what does he do? Like to begin to engage in those questions and what you're just talking about of the man who is willing to engage rupture in the pursuit of repair. Like,
Chris Bruno
Yes.
Jesse French
That is the restorative man who is willing to own and to do the work and to engage that messy piece in the pursuit, in the restoration of connection.
Chris Bruno
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Jesse French
And it's so good that you said, right? Like it is not only about the direct relationship in which that is happening. It is the teaching, right? It is the like, this is what happens in the family, in the workplace, in the neighborhood, like whatever the context is, like this is informative for the context that the man is in. Yeah.
Chris Bruno
Yes. And so, back to what Mark was saying about non-anxious curiosity, I want to say one thing about anxious before I finish that first sentence. Anxious curiosity is going to bring my shame and my contempt to the child or to whoever it is. It is my shame. What is this going to mean for me?
And then it's my response. Anxious curiosity has an edge to it. Anxious curiosity is louder. Anxious curiosity has like a lot more energy to it. And so that energy is the energy of contempt, right? You have done something to me. You have shamed me. You have hindered me, frustrated me. You have, I'm worried about my reputation, whatever it is, that's my shame. And therefore I need you to feel the burn of my contempt.
so that you now start to feel shame about what you did. So that the shame is no longer in me, the shame is in you. And now you start to feel the burn of my contempt for that, okay? So I wanted to say that first because non-anxious curiosity has phrases like what Mark says, tell me more. Tell me more about what you wanted. Tell me more about what you were thinking. Tell me more.
about what you were hoping for. And it's that slowing down, getting down onto their level and just recognizing like, hey, something's happening here. Tell me what's happening for you.
Jesse French
Yeah. And that phrase, like, tell me more, right? You said it at the beginning. is sort of shifting the plane, right? To this inner focus of our own shame, our own contempt of the implications for us. And it is saying, no, the focus of this actually is the other person. And so there is space and desire to hear more and give them room to be able to unpack that more of that.
Chris Bruno
Yeah, and if your child is five, they're not gonna be able to tell you much more because they don't actually have language for much more. But if your child is 15, or if you're talking to your wife, right, there's going to be more capacity and more language to populate what's going on for them. And I will say almost every time, there's more. Yeah. There's more. Yeah. That has.
triggered them for that. There is more that has caused them to do, say, be whatever is happening. And so for you as the father to have that curiosity allows for them to then color the lines in so that you have a sense of what you're actually looking at. And, you know, a child like you were saying about your morning this morning, you know, child number two is doing something to child number one and there's, whatever. And it causes you to be like, ah, what's going on? What are you doing? Yeah.
The reality is they are going to also then be experiencing some shame like, well, he did this and she did that and whatever. But again, when you can bring it back to you and how did that make you feel? When they did that, how did that make you feel? And what do we wanna do with those feelings in the future? Right, do you wanna have those feelings? And this is not the actual conversation you're having with your child. Like this is the gist of it. Do you want those feelings to move you towards hitting someone?
Right? Or are there other options? Yeah. But you have to get to the curiosity to get them to name the feeling that they had before the action that they did in your non-anxious curiosity in order for them to be trained what to do with that in a more appropriate, safer, healthy kind of response.
Jesse French
Right. For sure. Right. Because the other side of it, again, if the positive is instructive, of course the negative is too. Right. So like my, my response in, if it's one of anxious, you know, response to them, right. Is then informing them. Like when I am faced with my own shame and my own sense of discomfort, like, well, I guess that's what you do is you, know, find some other recipient. Right. And so, so either way it is, it is instructive.
Chris Bruno
And we've said it before on the podcast that our goal, our job as fathers, as parents is not to fix our children or to prevent harm from coming to our children or even to correct our children. That might be a sticky point for some people. Okay. We can come back to that if we need to, but our job as fathers is to help our children navigate their internal landscape and the external landscape of the world.
What will you do with your own heart? So when you are feeling frustrated with your sister, how will you navigate your frustration? It's not for us to correct the frustration, it's for us to help them navigate the frustration. Or they didn't get what they wanted for lunch, or you're putting a curfew on for your teenager, and how will you navigate what's ahead? That is what our task is.
Jesse French
Okay. So you teed it up and I'm just going to go there. I would imagine for people that sense of like, Hey, our job is not too correct. Unpack a little bit more of what is missed when we simply view our role as parents as like, this is one where we're in constant correction mode. And that is sort of the central piece when we miss helping them navigate the landscape of their heart and their life.
Chris Bruno
Yeah. so much we could say about this, Jesse. I feel like, I mean, God did not populate the world as fathers to be police officers. And if we see our home as a correctional facility, then basically we're asking our children to live in prison according to some, some rules and regulations that they have to abide by. And when they abide by them, then they can have greater freedom, which again, that doesn't
train the child to know how to navigate their world. It just trains them how to obey rules. And so when all that we are doing is offering correction and here's the thing, I want to be clear, like it is good and necessary for us to be really clear. Like that is wrong. Okay. That is wrong. Hitting someone else is not allowed in our house. So I don't want to say like,
to not offer guidelines and directions and guardrails and to even say, so as a result of that, you're not gonna be able to do what? Punishment, like those kinds of things. But when it's a home filled with correction and punishment and hoping that those, the punitive measures that I take are going to shape the heart of my child, that is the antithesis of what God says. Like even the law of God did not shape the people of God. And so, and he's God.
And so how do I expect that my law is going to shape the heart of my child? So it is the kindness of God that leads us. It's the love of God that overwhelms us. It's the invitation of God that draws us. So when we can have those kinds of postures with our kids, far more than correction, that I think is gonna help them again navigate a world where they're gonna have all these feelings and know what to do the next time they have those feelings. Rather than just correcting them for hitting.
If we only correct for hitting, we miss the heart of the child for why they hit. And that's that non-anxious curiosity to get at why did they hit their sister to know what to do with their emotional state, to know what to do with their relational frustration, whatever it is. That's not correction. That's navigation. Navigation goes far beyond what correction ever could.
Jesse French
And I think it's so helpful to hear that reframed. And I think also some of the, I guess, sober reality of like, hey, what non-anxious curiosity requires is a lot more, right? Like, curiosity, what were you thinking? Those responses, they require so much less of us in the moment, right? But to really sit across from someone and say, tell me more.
What was the feeling behind and realizing where that will go or where that could go in terms of length and depth and significance, right? Is like, is such a generous thing to give and a needed thing. and actually a brave thing.
Chris Bruno
Yes. Well, and it trains our children to own their agency, which is their ownership of their own lives. Right. It trains our children to own their dignity of you are a human and you, you have value and identity and dignity that is given to you. And so I'm going to treat you with dignity and believe that there is something behind your actions that you're just not like,
wantonly doing whatever, there's something more under the story, you know, underneath the surface here, more to the story. So if I'm going to treat you with dignity, that that actually trains them to hold their dignity as well. all of that.
Jesse French
Man. Okay. I want to ask, and you could answer this a bunch of different ways and even maybe in some ways responded around, look, our, our own shame, our own contempt, right. Can be this barrier towards non-anxious curiosity. Chris, as you think about the other challenges or the barriers that prevent us from practicing the spirit of non-anxious curiosity, like what other things come to mind?
Chris Bruno
That's a great question, Jesse. I think, the first things that come to my mind are, are you even present to see what is happening? And what I mean by that is, are you physically present? You can't bring non-anxious curiosity. You can't bring any curiosity if you're not physically present, but then are you emotionally present? Do you have a sense of like, you're there, you're engaged, you're watching, you're attuning to your child.
You're aware of even like what could cause frustration in your child because you know your child so well. Are you emotionally present? If you're not present in either of those two ways, you can't bring non anxious curiosity. You just bring none. Right. Right. You just float through the world on autopilot and the kids do the thing. And of course they fight. And of course they get frustrated and all that.
And I just want to say like all of that induces anxiety in them because they know that they don't have an engaged parent. And so they're just going ⁓ to try to navigate the world as best they can with the information that they have because they're just kids. And so they will be childlike in the way that they are because there's no one to help them grow up. So those are the first two things that come to my mind. Are you present? The other thing that comes to my mind is it has to do with our own shame.
But it's like, who am I? Who am I to correct them? Who am I to, I don't have my anger under wraps, so how do I expect my son to, you know, like, who am I to speak to my wife in a way that is thoughtful or curious around her life? Because, you know, I have so many things hidden in mine. I sure hope that she's not curious about me.
Right? Like there's that level of the, am I to say anything or do anything or be anything in this area of curiosity at all. That I think takes a lot of men out. And then the ⁓ next level with that too though is, know, who am I? Just, I don't know what I'm doing. I have no idea. You know, the, whether it's the Eeyore kind of approach or it's the claiming ignorance.
I don't know what to do here. My children are doing things. I don't know what to do. That thing, that doesn't help either. So who am I to try to do this?
Jesse French
Which is fascinating. You talked about it a lot, but it is in the anxious curiosity of the ramp up of energy, right? Not helpful. And in the converse of that, right? The like total retraction, shut down. Also not helpful.
Chris Bruno
Yep. Also not helpful. So those are the first things that come to my mind. That's good.
Jesse French
That's good. Because I think what you're saying, right, is the invitation into non-anxious curiosity and that space in that navigation, right? It is the risk, right? If I am stepping into the unknown territory of someone else's emotion. So that is not simple. That is risky. And yet it is so needed. And again, just like beat the dead horse. The restorative man is willing to throw his hat in that ring, right? To say like that space of presence of pursuit of not powering up.
And not shutting down, but pursuing curiosity out of that space is what is needed.
Chris Bruno
Yeah. And yes, that is what is needed. And I hear you say, throw the hat in the ring and I, you know, jump in the middle. And I just want to like say, like take the first couple steps, take the first couple steps and just try it out with the simple phrase that Mark offered us. Tell me more about what's happening right now. And you might get all the excuses. Well, she did it. He did it. You know, they took my toy car, like whatever. Okay. And how is just tell me more about how that makes you feel.
If you can do those two things, you're stepping into the ring of that non-anxious curiosity. You don't have to be like a curious ninja to do good work in this. It's just those few first steps.
Jesse French
Yeah, still good.
Chris Bruno
So guys, there's more. Come to the summit and sign up. It's free. It's free for you to just jump in. Mark has a great conversation. You just got to hear a few, little minutes of it. So come listen to Mark's, the rest of that conversation. And then like so many more, so many more great things that we are hearing from these amazing speakers from all over.
Jesse French
Yeah, and depending on when you listen to this episode, like maybe there's the chance that the summit has already happened and you can still access all those talks are in the Grove Collective, which is our digital community and connecting place for men. And so all of those are there. So if you're like, man, I want to hear that jump in and join that's where they will live.
Chris Bruno
Yeah. Jesse, good to be with you today.
Jesse French
Good to be with you too. Thanks, man.