This is the point in the journey where you are exhausted.
You are asking, “Will things ever change? Or get better?
I feel like I have put all this work in and nothing.”
In this episode, I want to encourage you to not give up with a simple truth that a friend shared with me.
Transcript
JT (00:53.166)
Hey everybody, welcome to Dad Talks, the podcast where we share stories to inspire dads to become better every day. One of ways we’re trying to do that is just sharing my story as I’ve journeyed through this wonderful thing called divorce with the idea of creating a series titled, How Did I Get Here? Of how did I get from where I was to where I am and the journey that I went through. And the idea is just kind of putting it together.
and hopes that anybody who’s going through divorce, can be an encouragement or a resource for you. So last episode, we talked about embracing our current circumstances as if we had chosen it. This idea that where we’re at, maybe we chose it, know, and getting that piece of where we’re currently at is the idea of accepting reality, beginning to process through it. We had this idea of trying to swim upstream in the Mississippi River.
That’s like fighting against the past, fighting against reality and trying to swim up. It’s exhausting. You can do it, sure, but you’re gonna be worn out. The alternative, the better route is to just float down the river so you can see what’s going on. You can see the dangers ahead or you can see the joys and the sights that are to come. And so the idea is to begin to let go. As cliche as it sounds right, let go and let God. And beginning to pray to Him and allowing God to give you a peace that surpasses all.
All understanding. And so that’s what we talked about last episode. This episode, what I want to jump into is a simple truth that a friend shared with me that as I began to grieve, as I began to process through things and accept reality for what it was, it’s still hard, right? It’s, it’s a process. It takes time. It’s a journey. And I remember saying to my friend,
JT (03:15.49)
I remember saying, it’s all over. My life is over, what’s the point? I’m just gonna be a lonely loser the rest of my life. And as I talked about in last episode, growth is painful because you’re learning something new. You’re being pushed out of your comfort zone. And this is that point in the journey where you’re just exhausted. As I said, you understand this is reality, you get it, but you’re tired. Because you’re asking, will things ever change? Or will…
it get any better, right? You feel like you’ve been putting in all this work and nothing, nothing has changed. Nothing has gotten better. You’re just drowning. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Days seem to take years to happen. You’re just exhausted, right? You’re like, I’ve been, I’ve been putting in the work. I’ve been doing my plan. I’ve been doing the steps, whatever it is to help you begin to put one foot in front of the other. But you go, this is exhausting. I am so
There’s gotta be something different. There’s gotta be some relief in sight.
When we had our first kid, maybe this is the same for those of you who are parents who have kids as well, I remember people saying to us, this too shall pass. It was usually said to us when we were complaining about having to wake up constantly with a newborn to feed them, to change their diapers, or just to rock them, because newborns sometimes don’t know what they want and they’re just upset for what seems like absolutely no reason.
Or there might be colicky or they might just be gassy. We don’t know, right? Their kid, their babies, they don’t talk. They just scream and cry. And remember parents saying that to have like, Hey, this too shall pass. And sure, it was encouraging because you knew eventually they would grow up and you wouldn’t have to deal with these issues anymore. But the other side of that quote too, is this too shall pass. So don’t miss it.
JT (05:10.722)
And you think to yourself going, don’t miss it. Like, who are you kidding? I will never miss those sleepless nights and the diaper changes and the spit up and the throw up and the smells and the, all of it. And like you are right. don’t, well, I kind of miss it. I miss the cuddles, right? I miss the fact that my baby babies are growing up way too fast. Every parent can relate to that.
Sure, you don’t want the diaper changes and the sleepless nights, but you’re like, I do miss getting to just snuggle a sleeping baby. I mean, is there anything better than that? Come on, that is pretty great. And those moments where you can just be with your kid instead of now to where it’s just life is busy and they’re every.
And so what I want to focus on is this idea of to be present in the moment and glean from it all you can. And as I said, I know this moment is painful and you want to just give up. You want to just get out of it. You want to move on to the next season as quickly as possible, right? To where I’m tired of this. I don’t want to feel like this. I just want to move forward. But I want to encourage you to not miss the good that is happening in it.
The good that is taking place in this moment, even as awful as it seems, there is good. And you may ask what good? Because some days feel like there’s no good in your life. There’s nothing good. There’s nothing wonderful. It may feel like it’s been weeks or months since anything good has happened. And we’ll end by looking at how do you begin to find that good? We’re going to get into that. But early on, while I was going through this season, as I I just felt
hopeless, like that kid with a tractor stuck in the mud that’s going absolutely nowhere. as I said, grief is, you know, circular, it’s not linear. And this pain, you know, you have waves, you go up and down. And those of you who’ve gone through traumatic situations or through divorce, there’s days you’re like, it’s great, I’m doing good. And then you just drop to the bottom. And for me, there’s many of those days where I was just like, gosh, I’m so exhausted. I feel like
JT (07:23.564)
I’m getting a little momentum and then just life kicks you in the face and trips you up and you just, you’re down. And so I’m having one of those seasons. And again, this happened numerous times and I’m thankful for friends that stick with me through this. And I remember saying this to a friend, right? That’s saying it’s just over. There’s no point. My life is over. I’m a loser. I hate painting. I hate all this. hate, I just doesn’t seem like it’s worth it. My friend put his hand on my shoulder.
Told me, take a breath. And then he said to me, he said, this is a moment in your life, not your whole life. This is just a moment, not the whole thing.
And I remember just taking a deep breath and feeling a weight lift off my shoulders.
I couldn’t see it because what was happening in my life felt like my life was over. Like this was it. This was my lot in life that all the work I did to get to this point and it’s over, right? Everything I had done up into this point was to get me to that place, right? I went to school to be a pastor. That’s what I want to do. And that’s what I was doing. I wanted to find a wife and I wanted to have kids and I wanted to be married and I wanted to do all those things. Right? I was writing that book and then it just feels like whoosh.
The book’s done, it’s over, it’s cut off. And you go, what? And you’re handed this new blank book and say, begin writing. And go, what? Right? mean, anybody who’s had to start over of writing any sort of paper, right? If you’ve done any of that, you’re like, man, what, do I start? How do I begin? What do I do? And you get a little traction and then you’re just like, I still have a thousand pages to write. And that’s the issue, right? To where you begin to focus so far, right?
JT (09:15.096)
to where I began to think of where I’m at, this is my whole life. I was thinking, you know, 30, 40 years down the road, instead of thinking about what is today and what’s tomorrow look like. And it’s all about perspective. So my son and I play Minecraft and by my son and I play, we’ve played it a few times. He plays away more than me. He plays with his friends, but I remember playing one of the first times we were playing. I played it a little bit as my, by myself, just to try to figure out how to play with my son, but I had no idea what I was doing.
And so we were playing and we’re in, I believe it’s called creator mode, Minecraft people. can again come at me. but we’re creating. So we set out to build this fortress to protect us from the bad guys, right? And we’re building up walls and digging tunnels and putting lava and other things out there. And as we’re building, I was struggling to make sense of it all because I could only see a small section, right? I could only see the little bit that I was working on that I was creating.
And I was like, man, it’s so hard to figure out like, what are we building? What’s going on? Like, I wish I could see more. My son’s like, dude, that like you can just push this button and you just begin to rise and you rise up into the sky and you can see your little fortress and the air around it. Then you just basically see the whole land. And it’s, it was a little overwhelming because you’re like, my goodness. Like this is endless and I can explore. And I’ve made the mistake of like, cool, let’s go up and just.
go this way forever. And I go, I don’t know how to find my son and there might be an easy way. I was like, I’m a little overwhelmed. But the point of it, it became so much easier to build once I could see the whole building area that I could see the whole plan. And isn’t that the same advice we give to others when they’re struggling with an issue, right? It’s to just say, just step back a little bit and try to see the whole picture.
try to see it more than just this little moment that you’re stuck in, in our trials and our struggles, right? We only see the problems. We only see what is right in front of our face. We can’t see how things turn out. We don’t know how things are going to turn out. And that’s where that frustration comes in. go, if I just knew the end, then it would be better.
JT (11:35.138)
But that’s not how life works, right? We want to be in the driver’s seat. We want to know how things will turn out or why things went the way they did. We want to know I turned left, which then created this, which then I went right and it got me to this and this and this. No, we’re in the passenger seat going, I don’t know where we’re going. And there’s not always a why to what is going on, but there’s a what, right? A what can I learn from this? As I said, right? In this moment, be
present and glean from it all that you can begin to learn. Ryan Holiday in his book, The Obstacle is the way he says this. says, the obstacle is the path. The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition. The obstacle in the path becomes the path. And within every obstacle,
Is an opportunity to improve our condition. So you may feel like you’re drowning in the Mississippi river. That you’re just getting destroyed. I think about it. Let’s use the analogy of the river again. back in my youth ministry days, way back when I was just starting, we took, a group, we did a mission trip and I believe we’re in Kentucky and we went white water rafting.
And the year before we went to one in New Mexico, it was great. It was awesome. A lot of fun. This one, we went not so much. And I had the group of kids that were like, we don’t want to do this. We don’t even want to get in the water. have life jackets on, but we don’t even want to be in the water. We’re freaking out. So it’s me and another leader within our guide, you know, helping us out in the raft. And we start, it’s just the very beginning and we’re instantly.
tipped over and the raft is on top of that. remember being falling out. I mean, it happened so quick. We didn’t, I didn’t even know what was happening. And as I was trying to come up, the raft is sitting on top of my head, the outer edge, not the inside. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m at and getting out. And I’m freaking out a little bit because like, I’m going to drink, like I’m going to die. I’m going to die. And I finally get out and I feel something next to him and I pushed them out and I start, you know, popping up, trying to figure out where these kids are and counting heads and we’re missing.
JT (13:57.67)
And one of the kids, I’m like, great. A kid has died on the very beginning of this trip. And we find this kid, you know, find this kid. He’s under the raft, but inside, you know, where the seats are. So his head’s above water, but the raft is on top of it. We’re like, okay, you’re safe, buddy. Just come out, just swim out under it and you’ll be safe. He’s like, no, I can’t, I don’t want to do it. I’m freaking out. He was scared, right? So we had to get on there and flip the raft over to where he could pop up and get in there.
It was awful. We find out the guide was like, Oh, I was just going to tip you all out. And then it went bad and I could have killed him. But the point is you’re in that moment to where you’re like, this is it. And I’m, dead. But I also think of that kid that was trapped, right? He was in the ref and he was fine. He, he could have stayed like that and been fine. Now it’s not comfortable. It’s not wonderful. We wouldn’t want to stay trapped under it, but he would have been, he was okay.
But from where he was, he was like, I am dead, it’s over. But for us, we’re on the outside like, buddy, it’s simple, just flip it over and there you are. That’s the idea here, is that our perspective is so close to the problem that we can’t see it and we need others on the outside to help give us that perspective, say, hey, this is just a moment, this is just a little bit of your life, it’s not the whole thing, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna get through this.
And so in that moment, right, we see the obstacle. can either see it as an obstacle that’s going to ruin everything that here’s this obstacle in our path. It’s over. It’s done. going, okay, here it is. How do we address it? How do we approach this obstacle and create a new path? And maybe that helped us avoid it. Something over here and move on to a new direction.
You’re only seeing part of the problem. You can’t see how it’ll turn out. It’s, it’s like running a race, but you don’t know how long it is, which is just defeating. If you’ve ever done any sort of workouts or running to where you’re like, I don’t know how long this is going to go. It’s hard to mentally just keep going. Cause you’re like, I don’t know if it’ll ever end. Yeah, it’ll end. This too shall pass. So then the question of how do you begin to find good in this moment?
JT (16:15.96)
first one is exactly that of you’ve got to get perspective. You have to be talking to other people, whether that’s a counselor, which I’ve, did a lot of that during this time to have them help me see what’s going on and see the good and see the bad and process through things. Give me perspective to help me begin to move forward. It’s surrounding yourself with a community of friends who can do exactly what my friend of saying, Hey, this is just a moment. It’s not your whole life. You’re going to be okay.
You’re going to make it through this. The other thing is beginning to change your mindset from, have to start over to I get to start over. I talked about this in the last episode of it’s kind of a weird place to be of you get a chance to start again, to do things differently than the time before, right? You think about it of as a dad, I got a chance to kind of reset things and go.
I kind of want to do some things differently, you know, it’s, it’s my house and I’m here and I make the rules and I can change it up or thinking about those, know, if you’re getting remarried of going, Hey, I could do this marriage thing differently. can approach it differently and, and maybe have, you know, some even better memories and even better marriage than before. Like there’s so many opportunities that you get to do that. And, even for me of like business that. I was like, I have to find a new job. I have to start over like.
I was at the career that I wanted and I loved it I was like, I have to start over, but changing of all, I get to start over. get to learn a new skill. I get to learn something different. get to be stretched. Right? Yeah. It’s exhausting, but there’s good within that and you can begin to glean that, right? It’s a chance, as I said, to start fresh. And this is just a moment. It’s going to pass. You’re going to make it, make it through it.
And I’m telling you that as somebody who’s gone through, you’re going to make, make it, make, make it through, make it through it. I’m not going to make it through that sentence. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to make it. And you have to begin to find the beauty within the pain. For those of you who are Christians, right? It’s asking God to open your eyes to what he’s doing in this moment. And I’ve talked about this before, but one of the things I began to do is instead of asking God why.
JT (18:39.182)
I asked God what, instead of saying why did this happen? Why is this going? Why, why, why, and whining? Being to go, what are you trying to show me God? What are you trying to teach me? What do I need to be broken of? What do I need to get rid of? What do I need to learn in this moment to really help me get out of it? Because that’s the idea. Let’s go back to the video game, right? Video games where you have to learn.
these skills or get these power ups or get this weapon or whatever to be able to take on the next stage of life, right? You’re stuck in that moment because you have to learn the tools and the skills to be able to move forward. So that’s part of the frustration you might be feeling is like you’re stuck here. And for me, it was beating, okay, God has me in this moment for a reason. What do I need to learn? What do need to do to begin to move forward with it? Right? What is the life hack that I need to figure out?
that I can take on the next set of challenges because I needed it and every season it led to something new.
JT (19:45.09)
But there’s also another part of this. The keyword is find, right? How do I find the good and the bad? You have to go find it. You can’t sit around your house feeling sorry for yourself. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. It’s no bueno. It does not work out. You’re just miserable. Then you sit around and go, nobody cares for me. Nobody wants anything. Nobody loves me. And you’re like, well, who have you called? Who have you reached out to? Who have you helped?
Right? I mean, that it’s the phone works two ways. So go out, invite your friends to go do something, join a club, learn a new hobby, make memories with your kids. Go find something good. Go do the things that you’ve wanted to do. Go enjoy them. Right? I’m not saying neglect your responsibilities and, know, go eat, pray, love, eat, pray, love. think that’s that book, whatever that Julie Roberts saying, yes, I’ve seen it. Okay. Judge me.
I’m not saying that’s it. Maybe, maybe, maybe part of it, but that’s the idea of going, yes, this is terrible, but you don’t have to just lay down and take it. You can go, okay, this is bad. Address the problems, figure it out, but also find good because you have to have that in order to get through it. If it is just all bad, you’re never going to make it. You’re going to be miserable. And one of the things that I’ve done that I’ll leave you with this is at the end of each day,
Just take a few minutes to think of three great things and three not so great, three highs and three lows. Be grateful for the things that were good, that were great, that happen. Allow that to fill your mind and your heart and be grateful for them. Then look at the three, not so great at the three lows and go, what can I do to make these integrate or to make it to where these don’t happen as often as they did.
Right? There’s things that are going to happen during this time and you look at them and go, okay, what can I do differently next time? To where either I’m ready to address it and it doesn’t knock me down. To whether it’s, you know, you’re having to deal with your ex or situation with the kids or whatever it might be, look at it go, how can I do this better next time? So it doesn’t end as painful as it did before.
JT (22:06.07)
It’s going to be painful. I’ve said this and I’ll say it again and again. It’s going to be painful because you are learning new skills. But as all those seasoned parents said to me, and I’ve probably said to you guys, this too shall pass. You’re going to make it through this. You’re going to be fine, but don’t be in such a hurry to get out of this miserable, painful, terrible season that you miss what is happening right now.
For those of you who are parents, don’t miss your kids. Don’t miss what is happening. They need you just as much as you need them. Right. You shouldn’t say that way. You don’t need them, but
JT (22:58.198)
It’s going to be painful because you are learning new skills. But as all those seasoned parents said, this too shall pass. You’re going to make it through this, but don’t be in such a hurry to get out of this painful, miserable season that you miss the good that is happening during it. The thing for me that I think about that really helped put this in perspective is my kiddos.
I complaining about life and I hated life and it was awful, but I’m a grown adult. My three kiddos, they definitely didn’t ask for this. They definitely didn’t want this. And so for me to wallow in my misery and hating life, what does that do to my kids? And there’s days that my kids were miserable and there’s days my kids were so joyful and they were the good that I looked at and wrote down and said, man, I’m thankful for this.
And they begin to pull me out. Don’t be in such a hurry to get out of this miserable season that you miss the good that you miss your, friends that are showing up to sit alongside you. They’re bringing you meals that invite you into their family dinners, their family holidays, their family celebrations. Be grateful for that. It’s a new season. You’re being pushed out of it. You’re going to make it through it, but don’t miss.
the good that is happening. Thanks again for listening to this episode of Dad Talks. We’ll see you guys next time.