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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.
You know, some people make fun of those people
that just go to church at Easter at Christmas, uh,
and make a joke about that I'm the complete opposite.
If somehow, for some reason,
your life has got you into a place that you haven't gone
to church all year long,
and it's Christmas Eve, for goodness sakes, go church.
Yeah, I, there's nothing better that you could do.
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 with someone else.
Let's get the conversation started.
Hope and Real life family.
We are here, uh, with Bradford Mitchell. Hello.
Welcome again. Thank you.
Uh, man, got a few episodes here,
just all about the holidays and the craziness they bring.
How do we navigate It?
Just spent our last episode in case you missed it,
talking about, uh, everything from olives
to politics when you get together
with family and Hallmark movies.
And Hallmark movies. Yeah.
So you should go back and listen to that.
We're gonna talk specifically this time,
which I don't know if we talk specifically about anything,
but we're gonna try to talk specifically about, uh,
It's a show about nothing. Gift,
Gift giving. Hey,
gift giving at Christmas, gift giving
around the holidays, uh, how to navigate.
And, uh, so man, that let's, uh, let's jump in.
A lot of pressures to come along with that.
Oh yeah. I mean, we'll get there.
Uh, Jason, do you like getting gifts though,
or are you more of a gift giver?
You know, people, you know, you know
how they have the five love languages Uhhuh,
and then people are like, so what's your love language?
I'm like, Uhhuh. All of them. All of them.
I feel love in all ways. I just love to be loved. That, that
Sounds like, that sounds like an
answer I would give too. Uh,
I'm just being honest. People wait,
But you said you love to be loved, so you're a words
of words of affirmation person.
Right. That's what that has to mean then if you
Yeah, I am. So it's words of
affirmation is,
is right up there at the top and
then, and then physical touch.
Uh, not from you don't touch me. Nope. I'm the same way.
Okay. No, but I am a wrestler, so don't worry.
I mean, that doesn't bother me. Worry. I was
about to say though, that's a why I wrestle.
Uh, but then, but then people were like, it's not, it's not,
it's not Merry Christmas. I'm sorry.
That got me. You just like,
you felt like you had the insert that, you know,
When you do it your whole life, people are like, oh,
why do you wear, like, to wear the, okay, what
we can decide in post-production
if we want to take that out or not.
I say Don't Merry Christmas girl.
Uh, but it's like gift giving.
I'm like, ah, that's a good one. Acts of service. Sure.
Come on. Yeah. Uh, what's the fifth one? What am I missing?
Words of affirmation. Quality.
Quality Time. Quality time. I was guilty.
That might be a problem.
Um, so just
because that's my, that's my wife's top gift, so I is
Quality time. Yeah.
Yeah. So, okay, so back. Do I like giving, receiving?
Do you like Yeah, I do. I do like receiving gifts.
Uhhuh, I don't like receiving gifts though
that aren't practical.
Mm-hmm. Like if there's something
that I'm like really hoping for
and that's really practical, I'm, I'm down.
I really do. Even some people that are like,
uh oh, don't do gift cards.
Don't ever do gift cards, do. I'm like, no, man.
If it's a gift card to something that I'm trying Yeah.
Gift card. Yeah. It's great. Yeah.
So yeah, I'd be so,
but I do, like, if I know someone wants something,
needs something specific, um, has a, a desire
for if I think something will actually bring someone joy.
Um, I really get down on that.
I, I get excited about that as well.
I think I'm the exact same way.
My wife views gift giving as like a sport.
Like she is, she, she loves like, when she nails it,
when she's like, I picked out this gift for you.
Like, she got me like this, uh, you know,
Chemex like a pour over coffee kind of thing.
Uhhuh and it was an automatic one and she, I opened it
and I was shook.
It was the coolest thing I've ever seen. Yeah.
And it like, it wasn't like cheap,
but it wasn't like she dropped
like several hundred dollars on it.
Right. And I was like, to me this is a little bit of both.
Like, she was like, she loves gift giving.
I only wanna do it if I can nail it.
'cause otherwise I feel like an idiot.
And I, my wife will tell you
I'm not good at getting her gifts.
Is she though? 'cause like some people are good at doing
the things that they wished everybody else was good at.
Mm-hmm. Does she also have an expectation
that maybe you would be just as good
as she is at giving gifts?
No. I mentioned I was the hopeless romantic
in our last episode.
Yeah. My wife does not care. Like,
I also, not only did you mention it once,
you mentioned it three times and now we've been on the air
for this one less than five minutes.
And you mentioned it again. I was
Just bringing it up to try to connect everything
to make people wonder what was going on. That's right.
Okay. Click Bait. Okay. Alright.
Uh, no, she, she no expectations.
She's, she's like that, like, she likes to,
she's really good at gifts and like, I,
so my wife will tell me, she's like, I love vacuuming
because I love like around Christmas time.
'cause I love the sound that's vacuum
makes when it goes over the needles.
I'm like, oh, okay. I get that. That's cool.
That's satisfying. Yeah.
Like, I love when my carpet,
like has the vacuum lines on it.
She's really into that. I'm like, okay.
So I got her a vacuum brush
or No, a carpet brush so she could
put the lines in the carpet
and she was like, no. And I was like, why?
Yeah. So, so I'm bad at it. I'm bad at it. So,
Um, one moment.
Hope in real life listeners, Hey Bradford,
don't get your wife anything that has to do
with cleaning as a gift.
I got her a handheld of wireless Dyson vacuum though.
And she told me she's never loved me more. Okay.
See why I'm confused. Okay. That's fair. I'm confused.
That's fair. That's fair. I don't know. I don't know.
I thought the Dyson home run the carpet brush.
Uh, I was like,
but that seems to be like, like if you like the vacuum,
You're welcome to join us back next week. Week
Next week. We're talking about
marriage. Yeah.
How, okay. So look, you,
I mean you mentioned a Dyson man, those aren't cheap.
Uh, but if your wife really wants one, we kept spending
Cheap money on the really inexpensive wireless ones.
And I kept breaking. Yeah.
I was like, now it seems like we're spending more money than
if we were to just have bought the Dyson to begin with.
So how do you manage though?
Like, because you know, a dyson's
a gift that costs a bit more money.
You mentioned the coffee thing, you know, wasn't that much.
How do you manage, like, 'cause financial stress,
Christmas comes in, right?
You got a young family. Mm-hmm.
How do you kind of handle that?
How do you decide like how much is enough money to spend?
How much is too much? Do you guys talk about
that? How do you navigate that?
I think my wife is very uh, uh, make sure,
I hope she's okay with me sharing this.
Um, she would say her, her biggest point of like, stress
and anxiety would come from finances.
Yep. Um,
and it seems like, like that,
like Christmas is only gonna amplify that for her.
Um, we talked about in like our holiday episode
that we just did, we kinda talked about more like hanging
out with family, being around family, just like
how to manage expectations.
So, you know, that that's a, we talked about there
like having a plan when it comes to just visiting family.
It, nobody wants to do this. I don't wanna do it.
My wife doesn't even wanna do it.
And she loves this kind of thing.
But like, you can buy a present in July
and it still be good in December.
Yeah. Like, and that's, that's hard.
And like if not, you could like set money aside. Yeah.
Um, and I think like that's what we had to do.
'cause when we first got married, I was like,
I was not paid very well at all
by the establishment that I worked for.
Like teachers got more than me,
which is saying something for North Carolina.
Yeah. Like teachers in North Carolina need to be paid
Like a, like an outta work musician.
It is.
I was one of those. Yeah.
Um, but we just had to be, even then we were intentional.
And I know for her and I, it's kind of like this give
and take thing where it's like,
if I'm not gonna find something that's a home run,
she would rather me just not just wait.
Yeah. And just like at any point she's like,
at any point in time you can buy
me a gift if it's a home run.
But like, if I'm just like trying to find something,
I still think we've been married 10 years this year.
I'm still waiting for like,
have you been messing with me this whole time?
And like, I've been a terrible husband.
Like I'm still not a hundred percent sure. Yeah.
That, but like, I believe her, like,
she does not care about gifts for herself from me.
She's like, I'd rather you spend that money on
any number of more beneficial things.
I believe you. And that's why we're gonna bring her on the
show we're gonna talk about. She
Would hate That. You
know what, what's interesting though,
and I think part of the reason why it's so hard is,
is things do get made about, so much gets made about gifts.
Mm-hmm. You know, and, and I think that's important.
I mean, it's important if this is a tradition that you have
and in your family and,
and it really does recognize, I mean,
I I believe in part it's symbolic.
One of Jesus Yeah.
Coming to earth thought that's where you were going, a gift.
But then also with, um, you know, you've got, um,
people traveling from afar to bring Jesus gifts
and to lay gifts at his feet.
Um, you know, to, to celebrate.
You know, that, that the Messiah has come mm-hmm.
That, that a king has been born.
But you know, the Bible tells us in Matthew six,
like it talks about what it actually means
to lay up treasures in heaven instead
of gathering things here you on earth.
And I think if we can get that perspective
and then say, okay, what does it,
what does it really mean to do that?
And as a family? And so for us as a family, like, hey,
yeah, we're gonna get each other gifts.
We're gonna spend some money, but like,
what does it look like for us
to actually build up treasures in heaven?
What does it, what does it look like for us to go
and help other people experience
God's kingdom here on Earth?
Which is really what Jesus came
to set in motion when he was born here anyway.
And so I think there's something to, one thing that
that kind of eases some of the financial stress
for us is just realizing, hey,
spending money on gifts isn't really the only way.
Um, we can actually go and serve.
We can actually go and model what this season is about
and help other people experience it. Yeah.
Yeah. So what about, so you have,
or all, all three of your kids are high school?
So I have two that are 16 Uhhuh at the moment.
They're both sophomores in high school.
Okay. That's right. Yeah. And then my youngest,
uh, is 12.
He's in the eighth grade Okay. At the moment.
And we're thinking about maybe him like going
to a private school to do eighth grade over again.
He's so young. He's the youngest person in his class.
Ah, he got a like a September
fall birthday, something like that.
Uh, July. July. Okay.
Yeah. So yeah, we started super early
and um, but he's so smart.
Um, but yeah, we're just thinking, you know what,
maybe giving him an extra year might be good
emotionally, physically.
Yeah. But yeah. So all that to say Yeah.
Two in high school. Yeah. One in middle
School. So what is it,
what's like Christmas and gift giving?
Like with three kids that are, I mean, yet, I mean that's a,
that's a, they're they're closer in age,
but they're like, they're teenagers. Yeah. Yeah.
So my wife is very good.
Diana is great at what you just talked about.
She kind of buys stuff throughout the
year when they go on sale.
Mm-hmm. Fun things that are just gonna be fun to open up.
Um, and then I'm a little bit more towards
like, what do they really want?
Yeah. Right. That's me. Yeah. What
Do they, what do they really want? Let's,
That's what I think that's what dads do.
Let's just go find a way to do this. Yeah. Yeah.
She's like, no, we have all of this stuff already. It's
Just been done. That's right. You could have
helped if you wanted to. That's
Right. You had, I'm like, I,
and no very, I don't do anything eight months in advance.
No. I, I don't, it's just not, I ain't got
Time for that. Yeah. Um,
I mean,
if I have pretty systematic daily rhythms,
but if it doesn't fit it, but like,
Christmas shopping is not one of those things.
So Yeah. For us it kind of, it's kind of this mixture.
You know, she's usually way out ahead of the curve.
And then as we get closer, I'm like, okay,
what's really gonna make 'em light up?
Mm-hmm. And then, you know, we go back and forth over it
and then, uh, you know, we,
we will see where the plane lands.
But we, uh, you know, we have Santa every year brings,
uh, a bunch of stuff for stockings
and uh, you know, that's kind of like the smaller
fun trinket stuff.
Mm-hmm. And then, uh,
we've got some gifts under the tree for mom and dad.
And then Santa normally brings, you know,
a couple other things that kinda leaves out on the
couch. Yeah. So
Yeah, it's, it's, uh, we're trying to figure out
that stuff with like the plus
to having like a four and a half year old.
And then, I mean, my daughter's eight weeks,
so she's, that's a different thing,
Dude, that's such a funny age. So all, both
Of them It is. She's like, like
both of them, like four
And a half. Especially though
Christmas,
He's a fireball man. Yeah.
Like his sister coming into the world, he's just
full bore, like even harder.
But like you, you don't, he doesn't know
what presents cost so whole.
Like, he sees 30 presents
and they're all from the Dollar Tree.
He's just stoked. Yeah. He's like, whoa.
But like, he'll also randomly point
to a toy at the store as I want that.
I'm like, bro, that's $300. Yeah, that's right. No concept.
Yeah. It doesn't matter how cheap. How expensive. Yeah.
Yeah. So we're, we're trying to figure that out.
Like, my wife
and I were talking about the idea of like,
there an experience, it also kinda, kinda offset.
It's like, Hey, we're gonna take you to this thing.
And it's like, but we don't have
to pay for that until like February.
So it's kind of smart,
but at the same time it's like,
we wanna give like an experience.
Yeah. You guys do anything like experience gifts
or like taking 'em to a place or something like that? Yeah.
No, we do. I, I think I
mentioned something of the last episode.
We try to do things whether it's um,
like the Polar Express Yeah.
Getting on that train,
you know, that's something that we do.
And then we go and see, uh, lights every year.
We, we kind of do the thing when they were younger.
We do the thing where like we say, okay, uh, time for bed.
And they go get in into bed and they're in their pajamas.
And then we kind of break into room
and say, Hey, we're gonna go out
and get hot chocolate and look at lights.
And then we drive around and look at Christmas lights.
That sounds awesome. And so now they're a little older
and they're like, okay, which is the night gonna be
that you've bust in the room
and tell us that we're not really going.
They've gotten wise to the
Trip. They, yeah, they have. But,
but it usually,
we either make hot chocolate at home
or, you know, stop by your local Starbucks
and we'll pick up some hot chocolate and a cup of coffee.
There you go. The older I get, the harder that is for me.
I'm like, it's nine 30 at night
and we're driving around looking at lights
and this is, I'm ready to start going to bed.
Yeah. But it is, man, there's just,
there is something special about that for our family.
And we are very fortunate.
My wife's parents live in Hendersonville,
North Carolina, in the mountains.
And that's just a big part
of our family tradition is just being in the mountains at
some point during Christmas.
That is, without a doubt,
one of my favorite times of the year.
And I just can't explain it.
I don't know why it's so peaceful. Yeah. It's so joyful.
I love my in-laws house.
It's, it's an older house that was, it's right in the middle
of like 15 acres in the mountains.
Mm-hmm. You know, there's horses there.
That's the dream. It's just, yeah.
That's awesome. Yep.
I, okay, we're gonna have to, I'm,
I'm gonna refocus myself at least because that sounds great.
I see, that's what I mean. Like that to me, that
to me is like why I'm the hopeless romantic.
Yeah. I like, I want to, I want to go to the mountains.
I want all the Christmas lights. I want the
pajamas in like, you know, Jay
Jennings pointed out. But,
uh, which you all can't see Jay,
but Jay is in the studio.
And Jay, Jay wears many hats around here,
but he actually said,
because you've mentioned, which by the way,
if this were a drinking game
and you had to drink every time, he,
I was just trying to Find an opportunity.
He's worth six now. I was trying to find an opport
At to explain It.
No. There's six shots deep of eggnog in this episode.
We got, but, but you mentioned the Hallmark movie again.
No more. No. Jay said, you actually kinda look like the guy
who comes into town
during these Hallmark movies who's like the country boy
that like, ends up the woman who's just been hurt.
And then they're like, so it's a good thing.
And they're like, oh, that would never be a pair.
And then somehow they end up Yeah. The
Woman who like works for like a law firm
and she works too hard and she never tastes
Christmas off and then she meets the brawny guy
and the flannel with the big beard.
I'll make sure I tell my wife that. Yeah. Alright.
She'll love that. Okay.
Uh, okay, so this
derailed squirrel
Hope in real life family.
We just wanna take a moment
and let you know about a resource that is available to you.
I know a lot of our listeners aren't necessarily active in a
church, might not even be a Christian.
We are still thankful that you're spending time with us.
However, we do get asked regularly,
how can we find out more about your church
or even just about this Jesus guy.
And so if that is you, I want you to know you can tune in
to get Hope tv.
We have live services on Saturday, 4:15 PM and 6:00 PM
or on Sunday at 9:30 AM
or 11:15 AM Those are Eastern standard times.
If you can't tune in during those times,
we will drop our YouTube link as well
as our podcast link down in the show notes.
We would love to have you join in with us.
Let's keep sharing some hope.
Um, we're talking about presents
like, I think it's in one thing.
I one reason we wanted to talk about that is
'cause that, that's for a lot of people,
that is what Christmas is.
Um, and it's like, sure, we spend time together as a family,
but then we give each other gifts and like, that's about it.
But there's so much, there's so much more to it.
And like, I think some people just need help getting a
little push, being reminded of that.
And I think in the last episode as well,
we talked about like, hey, just getting into church
or inviting people if you need to.
But, uh, a lot of business
and we can lose sight of what it, it really is you and I
and you know, our, our team.
We hold fast to the idea that Christmas is about Jesus.
What would you say in the middle?
Especially for people with kids.
I really think, 'cause it's interesting dynamic here.
I'm, I'm learning from you like how you lead your family
with your kids as I have, I know I have two.
I feel like that's a different dynamic obviously, than one.
But like, how would you say
that you keep things Christ centered with your kids
and like also being a pastor of a church, preaching,
being, being at services.
There's a lot like, uh, I,
I wanna make sure Hailey is recognized for this.
She wrote in our show notes, like the idea
of being faith over festivities.
I thought that was pretty good. So Yeah. That is good.
I wanna make sure I didn't come up with that.
That was Haley. Yeah. But what would you say?
So I'm gonna give you an answer
that I'm gonna give two answers.
Okay. And the first one, you
Can do whatever you want. That sounds great.
Your name's on the show. You know what I, it's ridiculous.
We, uh, This one could
seem a bit without hope if someone is already down the road.
Mm. But, um, there's also some people
that could be listening that could be
just starting out in families.
And for those that might feel like it's helpless at first,
I I'll answer it a little differently,
but man, I am, I'm
so fortunate, I am so blessed.
I have a wife. Our, our spiritual beliefs are the same.
Um, when we got married, we were following Jesus.
And when we decided to have children,
and when God allowed us to have children,
'cause it was a time where we were like, Hey,
this might not even happen.
Um, I said, man, we're going to, like,
that's gonna be our first priority together.
And so raising them in a way that they understood
who God was understood about, God understood
how God loved them, understood the lengths that God went to
for us, because of his love for us,
and how that culminated in with Jesus, um, being born
and living and dying, being raised from the dead.
And then like they've just, somehow we've managed to keep
that at the center of our family.
Uh, that when we get to Christmas,
it's not a shift.
It's not like I see, okay,
how do we make sure Christ stays at the center?
Yeah. And like by God's grace and mercy.
'cause we ain't perfect. I really do believe that my family
understands and believes
that Christ is at the center of what we do. So
It's not a, it's not a one time a year thing. It's
Not a one time a year thing.
Yeah. And so when we get to Christmas,
it really is a culmination of this thing
that we've been living and talking about
and thanking God for and praying God to all year long.
And I'm so careful to say that.
'cause I don't want that to sound like a cliche answer.
Like I could get emotional. Like that is a blessing. Yeah.
Um, we've gone through some hard times recently
and I've had to say a number of times, if I got 99 problems,
which I'd probably do, my wife
and kids ain't one of 'em right now.
And I know they're only 16 and 12,
and who knows they could go awry
and who, but man, they love the Lord.
And like my 16-year-old son, eight,
and they was probably a, I mean it probably still
here today, but from the time he was like eight
until he was like 12 maybe, like,
he preached the gospel in our
family probably more than anybody.
That's awesome. And so when we get to Christmas, man,
it's like, huh, this is what it's really about.
Mm-hmm. So I would say that, I say that to say
how you invest in your children
and what you put at the center,
it really does hold up over time.
Yeah. And so for young families out there
that might be listening to this or for young guys
or young moms, it might be thinking, okay, what do we,
I'm telling you it's worth it.
Like, don't just wait till Christmas time.
Find a way to make this what your family's about,
and then you're gonna get to a Christmas season
and it's gonna be a lot easier Now it doesn't matter.
Be like, well thanks a lot jerk.
My kids are 16 and we don't really
talk a whole lot about Jesus.
And so to that, I would say, man, it's,
There's a guy that I I I do respect, um, in, in, in a lot
of ways that said for a long time,
it's never too late to start doing what's right.
And man, you mentioned advent,
like there's advent devotionals.
We try to make sure that's a part of our rhythm at Christmas
where you just start on December 1st
and you start going through and you read a story
and you're reminded of what this season is about.
And it culminates on the 25th.
I think a lot of people hate things like that
because you think, well, if there's something
for every day, uh,
That could be a commitment, that
Could be a commitment, or I know I'm probably not gonna
do it, or I miss two days.
So I guess that's out the window.
Perfection shouldn't be the goal.
Consistently should be the goal.
You can go back and catch up.
Or if you can't keep your kids still
for 20 minutes now, just read the one.
It's okay. Yeah. And
so I think you can find little things like that, um,
to, to really help out.
And then I'll just tell you, you're not gonna go wrong
by making sure you're at a Christmas Eve service somewhere.
Yeah. And I don't want it.
You know, some people make fun of those people that just go
to church at Easter at Christmas, uh,
and make a joke about that.
I'm the complete opposite.
If somehow for some reason your life has got you into a
place that you haven't gone to church all year long
and it's Christmas Eve for goodness sakes, go to church.
Yeah. I there's nothing better that you could do.
Yeah. That's what the old man says
to Kevin on Christmas Eve.
He said, there's not a better, if you're feeling bad about
yourself, there's no better place you can be.
Yeah. We, we, it's funny, we talk about Christmas.
We didn't bring up like any Well, we talked
about Christmas vacation.
Yeah. So you know what, you know what, uh, uh, uh,
you know, what they say in Die hard at Christmas time.
Uh, I'm just kidding. There's things we
can't say, I can't say,
You know, I've never actually seen Die Hard.
I think if you watch it on Made for TV movie,
I think it's yippy ca Mr.
Falcon. So he says
he'll probably have to edit that one out too.
I'll have to, I've made a
commitment to try to watch it this year.
Okay. So you've
Never seen Die Hard? I haven't
did that just hit you? Sorry.
Oh my gosh. His whole view of me down
Crashing down. Probably have other stuff
you wanted to talk about, but No,
die Hard is is I
It can be anything. Yeah. Yeah.
He gets you right here. I,
I would say on a si similar note,
I think Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas
movie. It's not a Halloween movie.
I think I saw that one a long time ago
and I don't really remember it.
It's, it's weird. It's the big tall,
It's, it's out there.
Skinner man. Pumpkin
Skeleton. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. He's, uh, it's a, what's his name?
Tim Burton movie. Yeah. So it's weird. Okay.
But anyways, okay.
So we're, we're talking about Christmas here, finding hope.
I think you know, you, you
mentioned a Christmas Eve service.
Hey, if you're in Raleigh area, central North Carolina area,
uh, we're at Hope Community Church.
We'd love to have you, but honestly,
like if we can help you find something, let us know.
Yeah. Man. But I'll tell you, our,
our Christmas Eve services are special.
They are. And for whatever, for, you know,
for whatever reason, it's just a very
special intimate time Yeah.
Coming together and remembering what the season's about.
Yeah. Um, we'll, uh, in fact, we'll,
we'll drop our Christmas Eve services times
in the show notes and Yeah.
If you can't make it in person, you can check it out online.
Yeah. And, uh, we do stuff
for kids in middle service too, so everybody's welcome.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's the one thing you're saying all that
and you're, I was asking about your family
and the thing that I think is, is great is like
if you are trying to lead your family
and all this, if you make it important now,
if you make it important for your family,
they'll know it's important.
Yeah. Um, I don't think it's an accident, uh, that I feel
so passionate about being in church and serving Jesus
because my parents made it a big deal.
Yeah. That's not to say that
that's the only way to make that happen.
Yeah. But even when we were really kind of wandering
and lost and not fully understanding what the hope
of Jesus meant, I still, from a very young age,
I was in church all the time.
I remember telling my parents one time, I was like, seven
how ticked I was that I was in church all the time.
Yeah. And like, that's always stuck with me.
Funny enough, I don't know why,
but like my mom was like, don't you talk like that?
And like, I was angry. She was angry, he was at church.
I still remember this, but like,
it stuck with me to be reminded.
My parents still put us in church
and instilled those values in that.
And that's more of like a religious kind of approach to it.
It's not as much about this faith
and relationship approach as it is for us now.
But just to encourage and kind of like echo
what you're saying is like, if you make a big deal about it
and your kids see that, like,
this could be your tradition too.
Your tradition can be serving in church,
attending a service Christmas Eve.
That's Yep. And that, I think that's a lot of things.
People, they, they don't think about like, well
what about our family traditions?
Make serving a family tradition. Yeah.
Like make, helping people have hope somehow.
A family tradition, soup,
kitchen, whatever. Like we talked about,
I don't know what you, you know, our listeners to know.
We people able have people
that believe all over the spectrum.
But I mean, you can believe whatever you wanna believe,
but at the end of the day, do you want your
Christmas traditions to be something
where you were serving other people,
where you were remembering what the season was about
and you were having some
good positive memories with your family?
Or do you want it to be about hustle and bustle
and shopping malls and getting in and out and running back
and forth from party to party
and, uh, not being able to wait until December 27th,
December 26th when it's all over.
Mm-hmm. Like, man, that's just not,
no, I don't wanna sign up for that.
No. I mean, I don't know.
Does anybody go to shopping malls anymore though? Okay.
They're all closing everywhere.
I'm older than you are. I probably just have
more memories of shopping malls.
I I love malls. But they're all closing.
They are all closing. Yeah.
If you need something, you gotta wait two days for it now.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, um, after Christmas comes New Year's, yeah.
I think we want to, we wanna camp
out on that in another episode.
'cause we could talk about that for a while. We
Can't. And I
mean, so for our listeners, Bradford
and I talked about this earlier, both of us,
big goal setters, uh, love spending time in the gym,
but for different reasons, not just to, you know,
be in better physical shape Yeah.
Involves other things, but there's all kinds of things
that you can, uh, that you can do.
But a lot of times around the new year,
that's when people start putting into place New year's
resolutions, new goals, new plans between the two of us.
We got plenty of thoughts on all that. Yeah.
What's good, what's bad?
Uh, what probably doesn't matter all that much anyway,
but probably a different episode.
I think I work out to cover up the ugly, so, oh God.
I think that's, Jay said you fit in a
Home, a home alone movie.
I'll take that. Which 1:00 AM
I, which 1:00 AM I? One of the
Sticky Bandits? One of the sticky bandits.
We're gonna sign off. I have no idea when you're listening
to this episode, if it is
around the Christmas season, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, man. Enjoy some time with your family.
And also, I know Christmas can be tough.
Look, I, I've got, uh, I'm entering into a Christmas, um,
with one less family member
that meant a ton to me in my life.
And so I know the holidays can be hard as well.
And if that is the case, um, and I do wish you
and will pray for you
to experience peace in spite of the difficulties.
Um, one of the things
that helps me in those moments is actually ensuring
that I'm living the life that I know
that family member would've wanted me
to live, uh, for other people.
Hmm. And so, hope this episode has brought you some hope,
has, has brought you some peace.
Uh, we would love it.
One of the things that helps us continue to do this stuff is
by you all liking, subscribing, sharing with other people.
But if there's also anything else that you'd like
to hear from us, uh, please don't hesitate
to drop a comment wherever you're seeing this.
If it's a clip, Instagram, YouTube,
or whatever, all the places.
All the places, then let us know.
And we would love to do what we can.
Bradford, thanks again man.
Thank you for being here. Merry Christmas to you.
Merry Christmas. Alright. We love you guys
and, uh, we'll see you on the next episode.
Thanks for tuning into this episode
of The Hope in Real Life podcast.
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