Pints With Aquinas - From Cocaine to Christ W/ John Edwards

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

John Edwards shares his powerful life story of finding mercy and God's forgiveness. John's ministry: https://justaguyinthepew.com  FREE E-book "You Can Understand Aquinas": https://pintswithaquinas.com/understanding-thomas/ SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd Ethos Logos Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/ This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer co-producer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd 

Stone Cold Steve Austin great to have you on the show. Thank you. I'm glad to be here I'm gonna kick Neil's butt here in a minute in front of the camera and everything else Did you watch WWF growing up? I did I did a little bit my dad I mean, I'm from Memphis, Tennessee So there's a lot of wrestling town Jerry the King of Waller all those guys. So yeah, I jumped off a lot of furniture Suplex the dog every once in a while things Did you notice I called it WWF. Yeah, it's WWD now.

You and I were kids and being Australian, we even watched American sports and wrestling. Yeah, I think it was what, there was a animal worldwide, animal association or something that was WWF and that's why they changed it. But just the other day I was with a mate and we were watching the rumble, what's it called? The Royal Rumble. The Royal Rumble where they all get into the cage. Well, not the cage, but every five minutes or 10 minutes they release a new wrestler.

And you've got to throw them over the top ropes. Yeah, to get them out. But yeah, I watched an old one from back in the 90s. I mean, compared to what's on the TV today, it felt really wholesome. I was like, I want my son to watch this. Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Bret the Hitman Heart. Look at the way the guy took the chair to the face.

That's just magical, right? That's just beautiful. Wholesome. It was a wholesome way he took that, yeah. I remember my cousin and I would wrestle on the bed and we would agree beforehand who would win. Right. Like, I'm going to come on really strong.

I'm going to allow you to win at the end. That's right. You're going to be the heel. I'm going to be the hero, right? You're working it all out. Next thing you end and that's what you're going to do. That's right. You're going to be the heel. I'm going to be the hero, right? You're working it all out. Next thing you know, somebody's in a figure four and screaming. I remember where I was when I found out that it was fake.

It was almost as traumatic as Father Christmas. Yeah. I was with my cousin, same cousin I used to wrestle with. Someone said it was fake and my cousin knew that it was and I didn't and I just it was crushing That's right. He didn't think it was fake when the guy hit him with a two by four for telling it was fake, right? Why do people like that I don't know I don't know I just those guys whether it's fake or not They're getting hit with stuff and falling off stuff. So you got to give them that but it was entertaining I wanted to be Hulk Hogan when I was little, I wanted to be Moncho Man, oh yeah brother,

all that stuff, and The Rock, all those guys. Now I couldn't tell you who's on there, because I grew up matured and stuff. You know what I mean? Meanwhile I'm like, maybe tonight I could watch it with my son. That's right. That's right.

That's where Hulk Hogan would do the finger. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he'd do all that, oh yeah, all my Hulkamaniacs out there. It's so American. It is. Yes, yes. All my hook-o-maniacs out there. It's so American. It is. I don't know if you know what I mean by that

because it's almost like telling a fish about the water. It's like, I don't understand. What do you mean? But like in Australia, if you try to get something like that off the ground, we're just a lot more subtle. Americans are much more colorful, much more loud.

Donald Trump. Yeah, that's a good much more loud. Um, Donald Trump. That's a good one to pick. He was on the WWF. Yeah, he was, he was on there a lot. And like I said, I'm from Memphis. And that's where a lot of that started like Hulk Hogan. And a lot of those guys would come through town when they weren't Hulk Hogan. They were like Terry, the terrible or something like that, you know, or the rock had some, you know, crazy, you know, curl thing going on in pink pants. And they turned into these bigger characters later, you know, or The Rock had some crazy, you know, curl thing going

on in pink pants and they turned into these bigger characters later. But that's where Andy Kaufman came and did all that stuff with Jay Lawler where he went on the late show and they, you know, he slapped Andy Kaufman on TV and it made wrestling popular at the time. I have to look that up. Yeah, it's funny. It wound up being a bit, but Andy Kaufman, he was a funny, and he wouldn't wrestle the men. He only want to wrestle the women It's so it's sad because today you have yeah men who say they women who are

Only interested in wrestling women. Why did you have to go? I know Man it's great to have you on the show. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks man. I love you and I love being here with you, so thank you for the opportunity. So for those who don't know, you run a podcast called Just Goin' The View. That's right. Cool. Found everywhere, YouTubes.

Yeah, on everything. We'll make sure we put a link in the description. Oh, look at that. How good is Neil? It's there already. Give him a dollar. All right. That's very demeaning.

That's right. He pays me in beers. Yeah, there you go. People knew that. He's already living Give him a dollar. All right. That's very demeaning. That's right. Boom. That's Tazemian Beers. Yeah. There you go. That's right. Yeah.

People knew that. He's already living high on the hog. Yeah. But you gave a talk last night at Franciscan. Yeah. First time you've been there? Yeah, it was the first time. I've heard so much about it.

And obviously, seeing all the people that I've looked up to for so long, you and Stefanik and Dr. Hahn and all these different people. And so it was awesome to get to go there, you know, it was a real privilege to speak to the students. And I want to say something nice about Dr. Hahn just because it's nice to say nice things about people behind their back. You and I went to Holy Mass at four.

And Dr. Hahn goes to Holy Mass every day. He's either at the noon or the four. I'm always seeing him there. And him and Kimberly always sit together and it's just beautiful to see their affection towards one another So I think as we were walking out, you know, he's got his arm wrapped around their heads are together. They're clearly praying together Yeah It's such a beautiful witness to college kids who may have had a broken family or something like that that they can see this Guy's the real deal Yeah, it was because I mean sometimes you see families at Mass and they're sitting like three feet

apart but they were right there together and you just tell them something special in their life and it is a great example. I was thinking that, I went to the University of Memphis and there was no Catholic stuff really around and I was sitting there during Mass with you and just walking around the campus and stuff going, man, how different might my life have been if I was in a place like this. I think it was before Father Scanlon took over Franciscan University of Steubenville, this university was in the top 10 party houses in Playboy Magazine.

Oh wow. I believe I've got that correct. Top 10, I believe. Wow. Listed, yeah. So it was an absolute crap hole. Yeah. And I think if memory serves, Father Scanlon

was sort of brought in maybe to kind of begin to close it down, but he totally revivified it. He had this sort of awakening and the charismatic renewal. And he turned like the frat houses became like men's and women's households where they would pray together. Sure. Yeah. Jesus became just the center and look at it now. I never knew that. That's crazy that on a Catholic university that there is. Well, it's not that crazy.

I mean, most Catholic universities are garbage. But you grew up Baptist. Yes, I did. Both your parents Baptist? Yes, yeah, all their life. They were born and raised in a small town in Mississippi. I mean, when I say small town, like 600 people. And you had a couple of different Baptist churches strewn around on the way to town

or whatever. They dated since the seventh grade, moved to Memphis. And we found a church, Union Avenue Baptist, right there in the middle of town. And that's where I grew up and really had all my friends. I went to an Episcopal school, but I never was a guy that was real popular there. It was a school with means. A lot of people had a lot of money, and we didn't have – we weren't rolling up in a Mercedes.

We were rolling up in a 1978 Ford Explorer pickup truck. So it was a little difficult there, but I found this church and had friends. When you go look in a photo album and you see me and my sisters and the kids we grew up with at four, at eight, at ten, at twelve, and all the way up to eighteen. And that's really where I fell in love with the Lord. I loved – you're doing all the things that you do in the Baptist church, going to mission trips and evangelization, walks through the neighborhood, inviting people to church,

vacation, Bible school, all of that stuff. And it's really where I developed a relationship for the Lord and just a love for him. I wanted to bring him to other people. Darrell Bock And were your parents equally as involved as you were? Scott Cunningham Yeah, I mean, it was a little different. They were older than most parents, so I think my parents had me when they were like 37, so I probably wasn't on purpose.

I'm just kidding. Darrell Bock But seriously. Scott Cunningham But seriously. But I'm still dealing with it. But no, they had me when they were 37. And so a lot of the kids my age, their parents were younger. So they felt awkward going to these groups where people were 10 or 15 years younger than them.

So they would more drop us off to Sunday school, and then they would come back and we would go to the service together and sit through the service. And so that's how I grew up with it. But my mom and dad, I mean, they both were very spiritual people. My mom was always talking about Christ, my grandparents. They were the type that were like, no working on Sunday, you can fish or whatever, but no cutting the yard, no doing anything, you're going to sit in here and just appreciate what the Lord's done for you.

So that's really how I grew up, and it was that way until I was 18. We just were friends for life at that point, at least I thought. And then I live in Memphis, which is surrounded by all these SEC schools, and people's parents went to school at all those places, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Arkansas. And so all of a sudden, where I hadn't really thought much about what my life was going to entail after all this, all these guys sort of moved off, you know, and said, I'm going to go to Auburn because my parents did, or I want to go to Tennessee or wherever. And one day I woke up and all that was gone, you know, and I didn't realize how much it

meant to me, man. I was really lonely and Did you ever get baptized? Yes. How old were you? I was about 10, I think. So it's crazy in that world. You see all your buddies doing it and you never know, like, am I going to do this because

... I'm sorry. I'm going to laugh at this. I just chucked a coke all over myself. Is it sticky or... Yeah, it's kind of gross. I have to wash that. But you see all the people that are going up there, and as a kid, you always want to do what your buddies are doing. So you never know, is this really Jesus moving me to give my life to him, or am I just like, Tommy's up there and he likes he-man and I like he-man

and I want to go up there too? That kind of thing? Now, did you, because Baptists have that tradition of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Is that something you did prior to being baptized? Yeah. Well, that's actually what happened was we had a church camp every year that we went to for a week. It was down in Mississippi, and it was some of the best memories of my life. And again, I saw many of my friends, the pastor would always come down one night to give a

sermon to everybody, and there were always kids that would wind up crying and walking up there. And just the feeling of being with these kids and just experiencing God for a solid week together all day long. There were many times where I felt that, but I didn't because I was like, I don't know if this is real or not. Like, I don't know what this feeling is. I love that. I love that even at that age you wanted things to be real, not a show. Right. So I wound up one day, the pastor just said something to me and I just felt myself get up out of a chair and walk up front and with a tear in my eye I said, �I want to give Jesus my life.� You know, I love Him.

At the time I probably didn't even know what that really meant, but I was like, �I just have this feeling that I'm supposed to do this.� And so a week later, we went back to the church and that's when you get in your nice clothes and then they call you up front and announce to the church that you're going to be baptized. That's beautiful. Yeah, shortly after that, I think another week, I'm sitting there in a robe, you know, walking down into this huge tub of water and hoping my robe doesn't come up so the girl behind me doesn't see my super-annundies or whatever.

And then, you know, we get dunked and come up and that was it, man. But in that moment, it's one of my favorite moments. And I have some Sunday school teachers and things that follow me on Facebook and they'll reach out and see some of the things we're doing today and say, �This is the person that I kind of thought you might grow up to be,� which is a great compliment. One in particular tells me about how there was a lot of kids at Vacation Bible School again that wanted to do the things their friends were doing and how I walked over and had conversations with a lot of them about like, are you sure you want to do this for you?

Are you doing it because of them? So I don't know for whatever reason, but I always felt that that needed to be serious and not what somebody else is doing because you don't want to just jump into something because everybody else is doing it. It needs to be a change in your heart. So yeah, at that point in my life It just I felt like Jesus was my best friend, right? And that's all I wanted to do was just so many concerts and things like that Some of it designed to elicit some of these feelings out of you

But there's some of my favorite memories, you know just of being there with people that you know It's those times your life where you're like, I hope this never ends Hmm, you know and then when you went to college, you said these friends, most of them moved away? Yeah, they left me like a bad habit. They all left to go to pursue, you know, what they wanted to do and follow in their parents' footsteps. And I was never a guy that knew what I wanted to do with my life, right? I wanted to play basketball.

Me neither. And, but I knew I wasn't, you know, wasn't going to be a guy in the NBA or anything. Love the University of Memphis. My dad used to take me to their basketball games all the time. And so I just said, I'll go to school there. It was a local commuter school. So I start going and I'm on campus and I'm thinking, this is awesome. There's all these people I've never met.

But no one spoke to you a lot. If you didn't know people, then they just didn't talk to you. And I'm an extrovert, obviously I like to talk, so I wanted to meet people and I would try and try and try and it was the loneliest I felt like ever in my life at that point was what do you got to do to make friends? And I quit going to church a lot because no one was there anymore. At that church, the next oldest group would have been the group my parents didn't want to go to.

So I was out of a youth group to like 35-year-olds. And so there was no place for me. And so I'd still go to the service on Sunday, but I started looking around and one day I was obviously noticing there's all these pretty girls on campus and I'd like to talk to one of them, maybe have friends with one of them, maybe kiss one every once in a while, something like that. And so I would go out and try to talk to them and they just wouldn't, they're like, yeah, okay, and doing their thing. And obviously they didn't realize how handsome I was.

I guess they didn't, yeah. But one day I walked up to this girl in particular and she was really good looking and I just wanted to talk to her and she kind Of said no You know I've got a boyfriend whatever was guy walks in the room later And he's got on this fraternity shirt and all these girls start talking to him. He's walking around the room like he owns the place I don't even think he was in our class I'm gonna talk to these babes for a minute. You sit over there, loser, you know, that kind of thing.

And so, you know, I thought, well, I should probably get one of those. I mean, it seems like that's the secret, right? Get one of those shirts. So I knew one guy I left in Memphis that had gone to my church and we'd gone to high school together. He was a couple of years older. And I knew that he was doing something with the fraternity. I didn't know a lot about fraternities.

My dad wasn't in one, anything like that. So I called him. He said, you know what? it's fall and we're about to start rush and you should come out. We're going to be at this bar, you know, come out and hang around with the guys, see if they like you. So you get a bid and all that, you know, this process where you're basically challenged. Explain that to me, the bid, because I mean, not ever, I never went to college until I forgot married in America. So, and there was definitely no frat houses for me when I was married with kids. Sure, it's weird. What's a bid?

You're literally, it's what they say, we want you. Oh, I see. It's really kind of a weird deal because you show up and you, like you know there's people watching you and wanting to know if you're cool or not, which is completely degrading now that I think about it. It's like, I'm trying to prove to you

that I'm worthy of you kind of thing. Yeah. And so you kind of go and you try not to act like an idiot or be a fool or you know admit how probably insecure you are in yourself and things like that and Eventually you kind of wait around and then you get a bit You know they have this week where you go around all the fraternities and they start saying well You know we want to look at this guy and they invite you back And it's kind of like going on a date two or three times and deciding if you like each other or not.

So I got one of those to Sigma Chi, the fraternity I was in, and it all started. You started pledging and you're going to school trying to keep your grades up, all those things. They had all kinds of stuff. You had a black book, you had to get so many signatures, you had links that they had and if you screwed up, they'd take your link. If you ran out of links, you were out. All this kind of stuff. See, now, links today take your link if you ran out of links you were out Links today mean a link to a website

What do you mean? Like chain links like you would chain a dog to a fence They give you like so many of them and if you made somebody mad or like you were an idiot or embarrassed them or we smoked Yeah, they would they would cut one of them. This really does sound like a cult a cult made of women beer and drugs does sound like a cult. It really is. It really is. A cult made of women, beer and drugs. Like most religious cults. Right. That's right. Don't drink the purple Kool-Aid.

But no, there was a time where I was just excited to be involved in that. But what happened next was, man, you know, Matt, and I say this to a lot of younger folks when I give talks at high school and college and stuff, is I walked away from the church the day that I went into that fraternity. It was like this whole world opened up of my kind of closed, baptised, no drinking, no dancing, no any of that stuff. And now all of a sudden there's a lot of drinking, a lot of dancing, and just this whole other world and quickly you can get pulled into it.

And so all of a sudden I was looking for people to have a community with again in my life to really like me and to have the friendships we had. At the time I had been working at this job since I was 16 selling auto parts at Napa Auto Parts and I'd worked my way up a couple of years and was making decent money. By the time I got in I was making almost $30,000. I was a college kid that had virtually no bills and so people found out I had money and so I had a car that was paid for. I had virtually no bills, and so people found out I had money. And so I had a car that was paid for.

I had money to put in a gas tank. I could buy booze and get people into clubs. And so all of a sudden I had a lot of friends, right? And I thought it was because of me, but honestly it was because of what I could do for people. And that's what I would say to people that might be listening or younger at this point was, I didn't know who I was. The day I walked away from that church, I walked away from my identity as a beloved son of God and I started trying to be something else to anybody else because I wanted to be

included. So there were a lot of nights where I did things I wasn't proud of and just really did whatever it took to get involved with people liking me. So I mean I was drinking tons of beer, getting hammered, driving every night, not worrying about getting a DUI, paying for people to get into places, all of that. And I started hanging out with everybody. I started getting real popular.

And then there was, one night I was hanging out with some guys and they were smoking pot and I started smoking pot. Then they started taking pills later and I started taking pills. I don't wanna make it like it was all their fault. I made choices, right? It was just around.

Next thing you know, LSD, stuff like that, it was around and I took that and ecstasy and all of that. And next thing you know, I walked away from everything that I was. So this one night in particular, I was over, it was a Sunday afternoon actually, I was over at a buddy's house. We're watching NFL football games all day and drinking beer and just doing what you did in college or at least what we did and

Been a lot of pot smoking all of that. Well, it gets to be late a lot later than I intended to stay It's like, you know, eight thirty nine o'clock at night on Sunday. I gotta work the next day go to school And I realize I can't drive at this point You know I've had too much to drive and this was way before for all you young people that might be out there. This was before Uber and whatever the other ones are. Come get me app or whatever they call them. There was none of that.

Memphis didn't have cabs. I started getting up and walking around and looking for guys in the house. Hey, is anybody okay? Drive me home or at least take my car home and follow me. I hear these voices in a room, bedroom, the door kind of cracked. so I open the door to go hey guys to ask them what I was gonna talk about you know a ride home and there's lines of cocaine on the dresser I never seen cocaine before other than in movies Scarface stuff like that you know and I just went oh wow you know that was always the drug that you just you don't

want to do right you do that when you're done right you're hooked and one of the guys saw me said well you might as well come on in here now you know we've been doing this forever and you didn't know about it we didn't want to tell you you know we still didn't trust you that much or whatever at the time so I wound up you know walking over there looking at it and had one of those moments where like I had a flashback to my parents car where I'm telling them I'll never do drugs I, I'll never drink, I'd broken all of that. But for some reason in this moment, this is like you're making a choice in your life here that this alarms went off.

But because I was intoxicated and wanted to go home, I've been over and took a line. And it felt like my body was going to explode. I never felt anything like that in my life. My heart started beating heavy. I felt like I could run through a wall. Finally, I sit there now on the couch for a while because I'm just literally a paranoid person at the time looking at everything. What does, I mean, as somebody who's never done hard drugs, what does coke do to you?

Is it the same with everybody or do different people have different reactions? Different people have different reactions and sensitivities to it like anything else you would take, but I just remember the first time it's just like jumping out of an airplane or something. You're just like, whoa, and your body's coursing, your heart's beating heavy, you get a hot feeling. Yeah, you want to just talk 90 miles an hour. Yeah, because with pot, which was my only experience as a teenager, you would just sort

of sit around and just talk slowly and listen to music. Sure, yeah. Eat a lot of stuff. Yeah, exactly. If people sit in a room doing coke, what's the energy? How are people interacting? Usually you have somebody who's got cigarettes everywhere and people are lighting cigarettes like they didn't just smoke one. Okay.

It's just you always, you want something to do with your hands. It's nervous energy. You're basically like people that take Adderall and things like that. It's basically it's an upper So your whole body is just sitting around doing nothing isn't what you do after cocaine then well people did it because you couldn't go outside and act like a Running in place outside people might find that like a little unusual in your front yard. What's Johnny doing? You know, there's even not even a treadmill there So you just you you sat there There's not even a treadmill there.

So you sat there, but it was just – I remember it was very uncomfortable because people would talk and then you'd go through times where nobody would talk and you could see people looking around to see who was going to say something. It was just weird. Whole scene. But your body immediately craves it. You do one, you want another after the walk. Because you go up and you come down.

You go up and you come down. So that's how you wind up at eight in the morning when you were like, I'm just gonna do one line and 12 hours later You're sitting there with you know bloodshot eyes and staring out a window with the Sun up, you know And so that's how that started, you know, I got home that night And I told myself I would never do it again. You know, I was like, that's it like I that was dumb I'm at a job where my dad works and I get drug tested. What's that going to be? What would that mean for him and how embarrassing it would be?

But then next Friday night, I was hanging out with the same guys and I walked into a different house, but same guys. It's out there on the coffee table now. They weren't even hiding anymore. They were like, come on in, man. I sat down and I was like, I really probably should go, but I didn't. I bent down and I took another one. I did a lot that night. I told myself when I woke up the next, but I didn't. And I bent down, I took another one, and I did a lot that night.

And I told myself when I woke up the next morning, I wouldn't do it again, right? And how many times have we said that in our life, a porn or anything else, right? I won't do this again. Well, I made these rules up in my mind, like I won't buy it, right? I won't have the guy's number.

I'll never do it by myself. I'll just keep this to myself and do it when they have it. And that'll keep me insulated Yeah, didn't work that way You know we would go over to this guy's house And we'd sit there and you know we have Beale Street in Memphis where all the bars are downtown and the girls would want to Go down there listen to music, and then you'd hope that you'd leave with one of them You know we were all promiscuous at the time you know we were doing all this stuff

And so that's what we'd say we go there and go hey. This is it. We're gonna. We're gonna sit here We're gonna do some of this, we're gonna drink, the girls will go out at about 11, we'll go meet them and then see what happens. Very quickly it became sitting there all night. We just quit going. And we all started developing a problem. People in the fraternity pulled away from us,

they kinda got wind of what was going on. You know, these guys are doing that thing. And so anyway, it got to the point where very few of us, there was only two or three of us left. And I was doing it in my life all the time. I was successful in my job. I moved up to being a salesperson. I was making over six figures at like 24 years old.

I dropped out of school. My dad basically said, yeah, no more of these goose eggs. I'm not paying for them, right? So he said, you go to work full time. I quit hanging around the fraternity because I kind of aged out. Nobody liked the tall older guy in the corner that was hanging out with the 18 year old doing the same thing. So with all the coke mouth jacking around and all that, it was just kind of creepy looking. So I quit

going to that stuff and it was a very lonely time in my life. I didn't really have many friends anymore. I was doing this on my own all the time. I was living with my parents for a little while and I was doing this in my bedroom. So you were buying it at this point? Yeah, I was buying it. Buying it, I had the guy's number. I started breaking all of those things I said I wouldn't do. Well, the thing about that drug is it's so isolating.

You're one paranoid You think you're worried everybody's gonna find out and so the worst part of it is just the lying that's involved You're always lying to people. You're always hiding something which means you're also pulling away from people. You're not going out You're not doing things you're isolating which is exactly where the devil wants us in our lives You know is away from people and on our own we're easier to take out that way But you know, I hadn't had a girlfriend in forever wants us in our lives, is away from people and on our own. We're easier to take out that way. But I hadn't had a girlfriend in forever, and I was really lonely in that regard. And I started praying to God at that point.

We still had some sort of conversation going. I wasn't going to church anymore, but I still talked to him. And I said, please put somebody in my life. Well, this one night, my sister's in town. We go to a bar, and I'm hanging out with those guys again. And for some reason that night, all of them are going to leave at like 6.30 at night. I got my bag of Coke, I'm ready to party, you know, and wait for my sister to leave so we can start the fireworks and all that stuff. And all these guys want to leave. Well, I'm sitting there going, well, what am I going to do? And this girl walks

in the bar, who I'd known in college, actually dated one of my really good friends at the time for years. She dated a friend of yours. Yeah, yeah. She dated a guy for five years. I thought they were gonna get married. And so she was always just my boyfriend's girlfriend. I said that really backwards.

I don't have a boyfriend. Sorry, that's weird. Please hear that again. I do not have a boyfriend. Your friend's girlfriend. Excuse me, wow. It do not have a boyfriend, but your friend's girlfriend It's funny sometimes you'll catch yourself You just have to say something wrong and then you you're aware that there must be a lot of times that you say something Wrong and not catch it and then you become terrified of all the things that are now Please don't put memes out there with me and I'm saying boyfriend or something like that. But no, you know, she walks in

Knockout girl, you know, I'd seen her a couple weeks before in a restaurant with my parents. Now I'd filled out, I had a crappy goatee at the time I think. I looked a lot bigger than the bean pole kid I was at the time in college. So she didn't recognize me. We were at this restaurant and I said, hey Angela. And she just kind of looked at me like, why does he know my name? And she came by the table a couple of times and I said something to her again. And she just kind of looked like, who's this weirdo that knows me and I don't know him? Well that night she walks in the bar and we're playing gold and teagolf or something, me and all the guys, and she says hi to every one of them but me.

And I'm starting to get angry at this point. I'm like, what did I do to her where she just doesn't speak to me? So I go sit down, my sister leaves and this girl that knew me comes over and says hey the girl there the table wants to talk to you Of course, I was angry because she never spoke to me I was like why what does she want? but she never speaks to me and now she wants to talk to me and she was You know her I go. Yeah, tell her it's John Edwards and so she goes over there and I see my now wife Angela's eyes get this big and

You know the girl comes back over and says she wants you to come talk to her and I'm like about what what does she want to talk about I'm a complete idiot at this point I get up I go to the table I sit down we start talking and one of my only buddies that was left in the bar comes over and says hey man we're going over this other bar yeah I was like cool man I'll go with you and he's like no you need to stay you know she's over here he's over here and I'm here at the end of the table. And I'm like, why would I stay? You're leaving. What is there here for me to do? Like I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be pretty lonely and bored and

these drugs ain't going to do themselves. I need somebody to help me with this. Right. So he says it again and he starts like nodding at her, you know, like, Hey moron, like follow my head. And I look over and she's looking at me and I said, do you want me to stay or something? She's like, yeah. And I went, oh, oh, oh, and then all the, this is my friend's ex-girlfriend, like all that went through my head. But we had a wonderful conversation.

We hung out all that night and just, I never talked to a girl like her, you know, just the conversation we had. And so we wound up going and meeting them at the other bar, having a couple drinks, went home and the next day I asked her out and we started dating. I still couldn't believe that she was interested in me. But we dated for a year and we decided we wanted to get married. And at this time, Matt, I was fully doing cocaine. When I was around her, when I wasn't, it had become like somebody going home and opening

a beer to me, except I was opening a lot of beers at that time. I was drinking heavily. She had no idea I was hiding it well. Are you dating at this point? Yeah, we're dating. Not married yet? No, we're dating at this point.

We decided to get married, and I'm thinking this is it, right? This is the time of my life. This is one of those moments where you gotta grow up, right? Kids gloves off, time to grow up and become a man. And I surely thought I would do that, but I didn't. I didn't. I was doing it right after our honeymoon, right when I got home. Hiding it from the outside looking in, I was a guy that had the world by the tail.

I had a beautiful wife, big house, nice cars, plenty of money. I was a chameleon among men, if you will. I could be anything to anybody at any place. That's how I was a good salesman, you know, and, and. What was your relationship with Christ like during this time? It was not good. It was not good. I can tell it wasn't good, but were there little sort of prayers you made occasionally?

Was there a desire to go back to church, to read the scriptures, since you had such a profound experience of that as a young kid? Sure. Well, first of all, the reason I'm Catholic now is because my wife was a cradle Catholic. And so she said in a conversation sometime, like, the man I'm going to marry will be Catholic, and so I was like, well, I guess I've got to do that, right? Because I love this woman. And I thought it was very chivalrous of me to lay down my faith that I wasn't even participating

in, you know, to show my love for her. And so I did that, and she took me to Mass. And I guess I always had the ringings of all the Baptist stuff in my head, like they worship Mary and they worship statues and Catholic Church is the devil and that kind of stuff. And so I had some of that. My mom was so sweet. She was just like, I just want you to go back to church.

So if it's there, then I'm happy for you. So Angela and I would go to Mass and after a, that phase kind of wore out where you're trying to impress everybody and you start being yourself again. You just sort of let old habits creep in. So, it always was a fight to go to mass. I didn't want to go. Most of the time I was hungover. All that stuff.

After you got married, was there a period in which you tried to quit the cocaine and drinking? Yeah, there was a lot. What was that like and how did you slip back into it? It was hard, man. Honestly, I was listening to Howard Stern one time because I used to listen to him all the time and there was a guy he had on there, Artie Lang. He was a heroin addict.

He was multiple, multiple times and problems with it. He asked him one time, he was like, why can't you stop? He said, my normal, I'm trying not to mess this up. I wanna quote him right. He said, your normal is my feeling sick. Right, when I'm not on this drug, I feel like I'm at my worst. I feel like I'm gonna die.

I feel like I'm gonna vomit. And that's when you've done this so much, like your body just gets attuned to it and it wants it. Like I could go to work, I could stay up all night long. Like go to bed at 4.30 in the morning, had 20 beers a night before, smell like the pack and a half of cigarettes I smoked, brush my teeth, take a shower, get up, put on my clothes and go to work and sell stuff all day long. But at 4.30 or 5 in the afternoon, my body started just craving it.

Yeah, craving it. Like coffee in the morning. Right. I just go like, I got to get out of here. I got to go get this and how much do I have at home and I'm gonna stop on the way Sorry, I just can pay coffee to cook clearly. It's a lot more intense No, but it literally was that like I would feel sick I would tell myself like I'm gonna go home and be a good Husband and I we're gonna watch a movie. I'll make dinner Yeah

And I'd get like halfway the house and my body would just start retching. Like it just, my stomach and I'd go like how am I, and the thoughts, like nine in a nothing. What are you gonna do? What if you don't have this? And like what do you, all you do is drink and smoke cigarettes and all those things. What are you gonna do when you get home now? And how's this gonna go down? And what are you even gonna talk about?

And just like that, I'd go okay, I'm gonna turn around and I'd go get the drug. So you never could get over it. And I would have those moments where, to answer your question, I go like, Jesus, I know this isn't what I'm supposed to do with my life. And I really feel like I'm getting a little bit far beyond my own control. Like I'm buying this every day now, right? There's no – and I was hiding it, right? Because I ran the bank accounts.

My wife never did any of that, so she didn't see the $40 coming out every day. Or if she did start looking at it, then I'd go to Walmart and I'd start buying something, get cash back, and start hiding stuff. But I prayed a lot, but I don't think I really meant it. I don't think I really wanted to give it up. So Hanzel and I, we're married, we're going about life, and pretty soon she tells me we're going to have a child. This is something I look forward to in my life.

I wanted a son, and that's what I got. My son Jacob, he turns 12 this Friday. Joy of my life. I always wanted to be a dad. My dad was a good dad, but he was a real strict disciplinarian, worked all the time, taught me how to do things, but didn't continue doing them with me. And I kind of always grew up going, when I have a kid it's going to be different. I'm going to do everything with them.

And so I thought this is it, right? Another one of those moments. I'm a dad now. I can't be doing this stuff. Didn't stop. Shortly after that, my mother had found out a couple years prior that she had contracted cancer, breast cancer. And for a couple years, she'd go in.

It was an remission. She beat it. They would take out a spot. Then it went into her lymph nodes, you know, and I didn't know a lot about cancer, but I knew that's not a good place for it to be because it'll travel other places. But she always seemed to be doing well. Well around that time after Jacob was born, she was going to the doctor one day and I just had this inclination to go.

It was like I need to go meet her. They'd driven up to Memphis to go and I'd never been to a doctor's appointment with her before. My mom always wanted me to stay late for Thanksgiving and Christmas but I always had to get back to the party. I didn't want to miss anything. And so I go to this doctor's appointment. I don't even know if they're still going to be there.

I walk in and my mom and dad are in the room and they're like, what are you doing here? And I told them I just felt like I needed to come be here About three seconds after that this female doctor walked in that had been my mom's doctor the whole time and she looks up And she says I'm sorry to tell you all this but it's moved from your lymph nodes into your lungs and now into your brain and you have You know to two weeks to a couple of months to live and Man, I just I'll never forget that day. It felt like somebody stabbed me in the heart. Here's my dad, this man that I never saw cry.

I never showed a lot of emotion, just break down. All the times that I avoided spending extra time with my family for drugs and alcohol and partying, I just realized I'm never going to be able to get this time back. That I took for granted for so long. This wonderful mother I've had has begged for my attention and I haven't given it. And so they load up and they still had a house in midtown Memphis they were about to sell. They built a house down on a farmland we have where they're from. And so my dad said, we're going to go back there and pack up for the weekend.

And I followed them. I didn't know what to do. I was just coming in between work calls, you know, sales calls. And so we go to their house in midtown and pull the driveway. My dad goes in and he's getting their stuff and my mom's in the car. And I just opened the car door and I'm like, mom, I I've been thinking about what to say. Right. The whole ride over there. Right. What do you say? And I start crying. I was like, mom, I love you.

And I'm so, I don't want you to die. You know, all that stuff. And you feel so helpless. And at the same time, I felt myself like craving to do drugs, right? This whole time I'm trying to be like this just irreplaceable time I have with my mother and in the back of my mind I'm still thinking about I need to get home and do drugs. But I'm sitting there talking to her and my mother loved Jesus, right? And she's like, John, I've been preparing for this ever since the day that they told me I had cancer. I knew there was a chance of this and everything's going to be all right.

You're going to be good and your sisters and your dad are going to be good. And I'm just like, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that, right? I don't want to be good. I don't want to be without you, right? I was so angry and she just said I don't want to be without you. I was so angry and she just said, John, I know you're hurting. We're going to go to the farm.

My dad had gotten back in the car at that point. He's just a mess. He doesn't know what to say. I'm afraid if I say something to him, he's going to rip my head off because he's dealing with it too. I just said, bye, Mom. She said, would you please tell your sisters? So now I've the way to tell her my sister is that my mom's gonna die You know

So they pull out the driveway and they this big tall porch of the center block kind of decorative stuff on the bottom And I just remember running up and kicking the porch as hard as I could which was not smart It's obviously center block has a lot. You know better than my 16 foot is but harder So after I got over the initial stupidity of that, I looked up and I was just like, God, I hate you. You know, I hate you. That was the end of my relationship with Jesus for 10 years of my life with God, the Father, all of it.

I said, if this is the type God that you are, I don't want anything to do with it. Why does a scumbag, lying, loser, drug addict, cokehead like me get to live? And someone like that who has loved you without fault have to die. If that's the type of God you are, I will never worship you again in my life. And I'm in every word of it. And Matt, I thought it was bad before I fell into a spiral. I didn't know how to deal with my emotions because I love my dad, but he was from a farm

raised family, six kids that were basically farm hands, a lot of hugs emotions because I love my dad, but he was from a farm-raised family, six kids that were basically farm hands, you know, won a lot of hugs and I love yous and I'm proud of yous. So there was never emotion. It was always met with like, why are you crying? Why do you need to talk about this? You're a man. You're going to be a man.

You need to figure out how to deal with things. People have their own problems. You need to work hard, never complain, put your head down, all that stuff. And so I didn't know how to deal with it. So what I did was I dove even further into the drugs and alcohol. And the only time I would ever – Angel would ask me all the time, are you okay? Do you need me? I'm fine, I'm fine.

I don't need anything or anybody. You know, Mr. Tough Guy, one man army crap. And so the only time I would ever get emotional was like I would get in the shower in the morning and turn up like the speaker and I would bowl my eyes out and I would punch the tile of the wall and just curse God and all this stuff. And it just got bad, really bad, man. At that point I was staying up until like 2 o'clock at night every night. My wife and I's relationship just went to nothing.

It was like I would come home, cook dinner, do things so she wouldn't gripe, play with Jacob for a couple of minutes, but then I'd be onto the lines and hide in the bathroom doing them, coming out, drinking, you know, 18, 20 beers a night, you know, all this stuff. And she came to me one day and she said, you know, I'm pregnant again. And you know, I always had the concern in the back of my mind that here I am doing these drugs and what kind of effect is it going to have on my children. I was so lucky once with Jacob, but now she called me one day. I was at the zoo with Jacob and we were looking at gorillas or something and he was three.

She had told me, she works at St. Jude's Children's Hospital, and she said, there's a friend of mine that's going to do an ultrasound that day. I forgot about it during the day and she called and said, hey John, I got the results of the ultrasound. She said, there's two heartbeats. I said, yeah, yours and the baby. She goes, there's two heartbeats. I said, yeah, yours and the baby. And she goes, no, that would be three. We're having twins.

And I think I said, you know how much daycare is going to cost. So it's like my response immediately, you know? And I just went, oh my gosh, like I'm going to be a father to twins and I've got this little boy who's now like 40 yards off because I'm so dazed by the fact, like, you know, Jacob's going two, two. He's in the gorilla pen. Yeah, it's like, yeah, two gorillas, you know, Jacob's going, two, two. He's in the gorilla pen. Yeah, it's right. I'm like, yeah, two gorillas, you know. It's all I was thinking about.

So I get home, I apologize for, you know, talking about daycare and all that and just tell her how happy I am that this is going to happen, but still a concern, right? What are they going to come out like because of what I'm doing? And they come out perfectly healthy. Allison and Caitlin, my eight-year-old, you know beautiful red-haired blue-eyed girls Joy of my life and I thought this is it again, right? This is it. I'm gonna be done with this I'm gonna I've got three kids now like angel has a full-time job. She can't handle all this herself This is my reason to stop. I didn't stop. I was so selfish man. That's the thing like we're all innately selfish I mean, we all know that you know

We want what we want and when you start doing things like drinking all the time like I was, snorting coke all the time, it just feeds that selfishness. Everything else goes by the wayside. It's like you feel yourself, I want to be a good man. I want to be this husband, but I also want what I want. It was a little thing. It's like we're going to go to the restaurant I want. We're going to watch what I want.

It's my money in the bank account. Why did you spend $100 at Target when I was spending $250 a week on cocaine? Just that sort of stuff. Yeah, I heard you say that the worst part of the drug addiction was the lying. Talk to that. Yeah, it is.

Imagine being in a glass cage where everybody can see what you're doing, but you're constantly trying to make up something to show them something different. I had the pressure of work with all these customers I'd built up. I was a 100% commission sales guy. So at any time I could lose everything I had and we would lose our way of life that we'd built up and all those things. So I was always having to lie to them

in days where I would feel like absolute garbage and I'm going in there and having to put up this false front there with friends that could tell there was something different about me. But I was always having to lie to that. Ansel would always say to me, "'Why aren't we always sitting on the couch watching TV?

"'We never go do anything anymore.'" And I'd say, "'Well, I don't need to do anything. "'I have you and I have this.'" But I'd say, well, I don't need to do anything. I have you, and like, I have this. But it was also afraid that if I went out somewhere and I was doing drugs, I might be like, what's the matter with him? Or my mouth would twitch in a weird way, or my pupils would be huge,

and people would start to catch on to what was going on. Did Angel have any idea during that time? No, she knew something was going on, but in a way, the devil provided a perfect cover for this with my mother dying because she just thought like he's really messed up over his mom dying. And you know, that's why he's drinking the way he is. That's why he's just rude and he's angry and he wants what he wants.

And that's some of the stuff I was most ashamed about. I was like this wonderful woman and I treated her like garbage, man. Like I just the way I talked to her her, she just didn't have any sense. Why are you asking me something like that? You already know the answer. I was a terrible husband and still expected all the other things that you would want from a wife to be treated the way I certainly wasn't treating her. In my kids, I was a good father when I wanted to be, which was

very rare because I was still concerned about myself. So she knew something was going on, but she didn't know what. And so, man, there was this one night I'd started praying a little bit again, which I didn't like doing. I felt like, what are you doing? You hate God? What has He done for you? What's He going to do for you? But it was more of like something or someone helped me stop this, because I started to realize I couldn't stop on my own. You're sitting there at two in the morning, you realize you have a problem, watching some replay of ESPN that you're not even looking at. At that point I developed a problem of pornography too, because with cocaine it has different

reactions on different people, but when you're doing a lot of it, a lot of your bodily functions don't work the way that you would want them to, but it also feeds the inhibition of wanting that to happen, the desire there. Gotcha. So you're in a crazy place with that, and I was afraid that I would go back to the bedroom and wouldn't be able to perform, if you will,

and my wife would be like, what's the matter? Why does this keep happening? So I just retreated into pornography because I still had the desire, right? I want to be satisfied. And so I found myself a lot of nights at 2 in the morning in a dark room in my house watching porn and hoping, like one eye down the hall, hoping my wife wouldn't come down and catch me. So one addiction into another.

And I was just in a terrible, terrible place. There was times where I contemplated suicide. My kids and my wife deserve better than this. You don't think about what it would put them through because again, you're selfish. So one night I'm sitting there like two in the morning and I'd have some customers calling all night and telling me they're going to quit our business because they looked at a price sheet wrong or something. And I had that pressure.

And so I was just throwing myself into the drugs even harder than normal. About two in the morning I got up and I went back to bed. And you know, you ever done cocaine? It's like impossible to go to sleep on. It's just ridiculous. That's the worst part of it. You're laying there in the bed for hours

after you laid down and you simply can't go to sleep. It's like your eyes have toothpicks propping them open. It's horrible. So that night, for some reason, I could go to sleep really quickly. I passed out, and man, like 20 minutes, 30 minutes later, I felt myself come up out of bed and my heart was just doing this. And I realized, oh my God, oh my God, I'm going to have a heart attack. This is it. All these after-school specials you see this is the moment like I knew this was coming

I knew if I mess with us this long and now I'm gonna die I'm gonna die right here in my bed and and I looked over and Angela hadn't woken up So I kind of rolled out and landed on the carpeted floor and you kind of looked up to see if she you know Should see me because again, I was concerned about losing everything and so the fact I was going to die. So I crawl into the bathroom and I crawl up on the commode and my heart's just steadily doing this and I'm rocking back and forth and going, man, I can't go out like this. My kids find me like this, my wife. And I felt like I needed to tell her to call an ambulance.

And I just said, no, I'd rather die right here than have to deal with everything that will happen. You know, I'll lose her, lose the kids, lose the house, I'll lose my job. Because she'll find out you're an addict. Right, and she'll leave me. She'll leave me. She'll finally have her answer, right? She'll put the finger on what she's known as wrong. So I felt myself, one part of myself, going, I need to ask God. I need to ask God for help. And then the other side's like, no, don't ask that you-know what, for anything. And so I grabbed the towel, I put it on my face and I remembered some after school special, like, you know, one of the more you know things,

like if you're having a panic attack to control your breathing. So I put a towel on my face and all of a sudden I slowed my breath and I thought, okay, this is it. I'm done with cocaine. I'm never doing this again, I crawled back in bed, counted my blessings, if you will, that my wife didn't find out, got up the next morning, threw out the drugs, went to work, 4.30 that afternoon, I was back buying them again.

My body was literally retching, like I vomited out the side of the car because of how bad my body was wanting this and me telling myself I was denying myself I wasn't gonna do it, it wasn't having any of it. So I went and I got more. Same thing, two in the morning watching my porn, go back to bed, fall asleep quickly,

same thing happens again the next night. Heart's doing this, I fall out of bed, same scene, get in the bathroom except this time I go, all right, I don't know how many strikes I'm going to have. Like generally you get three but I don't know, I hadn't been a very good person. I might have two and a quarter or something, you know? And so I just say, �All right, God, like, I'm not happy with you, and I'm not saying I'm going to give in to you or surrender to you, but I need some sort of help.� And there was a men's conference, a Catholic men's conference in the Diocese of Memphis coming up that weekend. I had an uber Catholic father-in-law that was always like shoving Catholic stuff in

your face, and he was like, �Oh, look, squirrel.� There were different books he would give me. I went once five years before, and Father Larry actually spoke then. We were talking about that before the show. He had all that yelling and like, �Be a man� and all that, and he spoke to me. I thought it was going to change my life. He gave me a book, and I underlined three pages of it and put it down and went back to the drugs back then. Well, I remember that that was coming up and I thought, �You know what?

I've only been to confession one time, but it seems like that's a place to start.� At this conference. Yeah. And I was afraid to go to my parish because I didn't want the pastor. I didn't really understand that priests weren't supposed to say anything and all that. My RCI class was terrible, you know, and So, you know I go and I don't remember who was speaking. I didn't care I didn't go for that I want to just go to confession. So I'm walking down the hall and I'm doing the walk of shame

You know, you're all the names like no, I know him. No, he's friends with my father-in-law No, no, no, you know, and finally I get to some name from someplace in Mississippi that was out of town I was like, all right, I'll go in there. So I opened the door and there's this like kind of heavyset, older crotchety looking priest. I look and he's facing the other way and he's kind of grunting a little bit, you know? And I was like, I'm not sure door number one was the right opportunity. But I walk in and he's facing, there's two chairs facing each other and I go sit down and he's like, begin, you know? And I'm going, all right, this guy's not about small talk or anything. He just wants to, you know.

So I start pouring out my, you know, everything. And this was the first time, Matt, that I told anybody the truth. And I can't explain the feeling of it. Like, it was just like somebody opened a floodgate and I just poured everything out. I was crying and just couldn't really get through it. And he's sitting there the whole time,

just kind of like, you of like taking it all in. And I get to the end and I say, look, I want to stop all this. I want to be the man I should have been, but I don't want to get in trouble. I just don't want to get in trouble. And man, he went off. He's like, what do you mean you don't want to be in trouble? Are you here for Jesus' mercy? Are you here for absolution?

Are you here for forgiveness? He's screaming at me and I'm like, hey man. I said, I remember. Maybe he just watched a father Larry Richard's talk this will be my new stick that's right I was just like Jesus was much nicer the one time I went before you like I don't remember meowing at me like this but I got it I was like all right man all right I want forgiveness yes I want it I'm sorry for what I said and he said if you're serious

I'll give you absolution so he did I went home that night I felt like there was a bunch of stuff that had been lifted off of me and I was like, all right, I'm going to be a different man. And I went out and I poured the beer out. I flushed the cocaine down the toilet. And Angela must have been like, I don't know what the heck they did at that place, but it seems to be working. And it lasted for four days.

That week I'd been waiting on this big purchase order at work, $200,000 sale to come through. And for some reason that week I got the call and the guy was like, John, you know, come down here. I'll sign the paperwork and, you know, congratulations. So I go down and I'm going to make more money on that sale than I've made in a year, you know, and my bosses are going to be like, you're the hero and all this stuff. There's going to be accolades and all these things. Well, I go do that and then I'm driving up the interstate back to Memphis and I'm

thinking I should celebrate. Right now, I've promised in that confession that I wouldn't do this anymore, right, that I'm done with it. And so I call this dealer like 30 times and he won't answer. And I'm almost on the way – I'm supposed to go get my son Jacob for my father-in-law's. So I'm almost out there on the other side of town and he calls back. And I turn the car around like the Dukes of Hazzard, you know, like just full spin and there on the other side of town and he calls back. And I turned the car around like the dukes of hazard, you know, like just full spin and headed back the other way.

And I run in, I get the $40 and only got, and I come out, I look down, I'm on zero on my gas tank. I'm not in a nice part of town as you can imagine. So I'm just hauling tail down the street to get into a gas station. And I pull up to the pump and say like, okay, great. I'm not going to run out of gas. And I hear this whoop, whoop, and I look in the rear view mirror and there's a Tahoe in the DEA.

He's filing out of it, you know, both sides of the car. They come up, rip me out of the car, throw me against it. I'm sitting here in my work uniform. People are watching everywhere. I got phones up, you know, and they throw me in handcuffs. So, you know, where are the drugs? If you don't tell us, we'll tear your car apart. They were in my sock.

I told them. They reached down there and grabbed them. Next thing you know, I'm face first into the back of a Tahoe. You know, it was going 100 miles an hour down to the organized crime unit, sliding back and forth, risk getting cut by the handcuffs, all those things. They take me in, they chain me to a bench, you know, by my feet, and I'm sitting there going, what have I got myself into? Where's my life gone?

But I'm still thinking I'm going to get out of this, because I'm a salesperson. I've talked my way out of everything. So I'm thinking, I'm going to get this guy in here, I'm going to make a deal, I'll be out here in 20 minutes. I'm not even thinking, my car's impounded and all this other stuff. So they come in, they shake me down, they start asking about who the guy is and all this stuff Tell me they'll let me go if I say something

Well, they didn't do any of that right this other cop comes in he puts me in a cop car to go downtown I said, where are we going? He goes you're going to the jail. You're not going home tonight. What are you thinking? So I'm sitting in the car in the back and they pull in to drop me in in downtown Memphis now that Memphis is You know always in the top five of murders in the country. It's just a rough place in a lot of parts of the city and you do not want to go to jail there. Not that you want to go to jail anywhere, but I certainly would avoid that one if at all possible.

So, I'm sitting in this patrol car and there's this long line and the cops are now mad because they were about to get off work and now they've got to wait for how many hours it takes to get in in line. So all of a sudden this officer, he's a young guy, looks in the rear view mirror and he says, �Hey, you� because there was another guy in the car� and he says, �You look like you've never been in trouble in your life. What's your deal?� And I'm sitting here going, �Should I say anything?� because I don't want to incriminate myself or anything like that.

I said, �Man, I've never been in trouble in my life, right? This is the first time I've made some bad decisions. I'm so sorry about it. All I want to do is call my wife. It had been three hours since I've been arrested. By this time I knew that she had to be worried where I was and Jacob didn't get picked up and all these things. And so I said, I'm just worried about my wife. And he goes, well, we're going to be here a minute. I can put it in part. Get your phone out of the trunk and I can call her for you. I can't uncuff you. I'll put it to your ear." And I'm thinking like, what kindness this is in a moment, but also I go, I don't know

what I say to her. And he looked at me, I'll never forget those eyes in the mirror looking back at me, he goes, man, is this about you or about her? And I realized that moment how much of my life had always been about me. Like our whole marriage had been about me. This is 11 years into my marriage. This is 17 years of me doing cocaine, something I thought I was going to do once. So he calls her, puts the phone in my ear, she answers, �Oh my God, oh my God, where are you? Where are you?� And next thing I know, I just tell her, �Sanangela,

I'm in the back of a police car in downtown Memphis about to go into jail. I've been arrested on a felony charge of cocaine. And I hear silence for a second. She says, �I hate you. I hate you. I hope you rot in there.� And I start crying, and she hangs up, but I also understood. Like she finally had her answer right, that missing piece of the puzzle, and she was hurt. And I was honestly selfish again, worried about what was fixing to happen to me when I went into this jail.

And so they finally get to the spot, they let me out, they go in and take all my personal belongings and put you in this big drunk take room with all the people who have gotten DUIs and just it was terrible man. I saw people fighting, I saw I got stabbed by another guy, there was just people beating up each other, it was horrible. Four in the morning they come get me and like this is when it started to get real. I've got like the whole mugshot thing going on and started to realize this is going to get out there. People are going to know there's no way for me to hide this from my job or anything. So they take me back to get scrubs on and all

that stuff, the jail outfit and stuff you can have, toilet paper, toothbrush, all that. They give me another phone call. I call Anne's at four in the morning, and she goes, I don't care, John, I know you're in jail. I've gotta take the kids to school in an hour because you're not here, and hangs up. So I go get the stuff, I go change into the clothes, which is amazing too. I wear a size 16 shoe, so I was nodding,

so I was like, what are you guys gonna do with that? Like, gonna sew something together, or duct tape them or whatever? And next thing I know they come out and they're like, here's your shoes. And I'm like, you have size 16 Crocs? And the lady's like, yeah. And I forget that I'm in jail and all this stuff. I was like, that's amazing. I can't go to Target and buy shoes, but where do you guys shop?

You know, that kind of thing. So it was a little bit of joy in a very, very dark place in my life, you know, feeling great in my 16 Crocs walking around jail, like I ran the place. But we get in this line and we started to go down the cell block. And this is when I'm like, Oh man, what is this going to be? Am I going to be in one with somebody, you know, all this, I haven't slept in like 24 hours, had anything to eat. And so my mind's on, am I going to be in there with somebody I got to keep an eye on and not go to sleep? You know? So luckily I was in a cell by myself. They line us up in front of the cells and you're sitting at this door and it's

starting to get real. You're just carrying like the four things you can have in your life and the door opens really slowly. So you say inmate walk in and turn around and face the door. And then I watched this thing. I could replay it in my head right now. Just this very slow, just wrought iron door boom boom boom boom boom and then that lock hitting and just boom it's over like for the first time since I'm a kid like I can't go anywhere if I want to go to the bathroom it's run of God

and everybody I can't eat I have no power in my life to do anything other than to sit in that room I'm six eight guy you know I'm gonna have six by six cell or something like that. I turn around and look and there's a bunk set of bunk beds. And they're disgusting. The mattresses are just like, I didn't even know, I didn't wanna know what was on there. And so-

Do you guys have fresh lemons? That's right. You had crocs, so you'd not have a pillow or something or like a maid service. So then I put down this one blanket and I lay down and thinking like hopefully this is enough of a barrier for whatever's going on in there. I lay down face first and I pulled the other one because we had two over me. And by the grace of God I passed out.

I had no idea. You don't have a watch, there's no clock. I wake up, I don't know what time it is. I'm still face down and I'm thinking, oh God, what a nightmare. Right? Like thank you so, for saving me for this. Like, Oh, you were thinking it was a nightmare. I thought it was a nightmare. I thought I was facedown under sheets. I thought it was in my own bed, you know, I mean, minus the gross stains and stuff.

And so I was laying there and I literally sat up like, enjoy going, man, I will stop this. Like, thank you for this like you know What's the guy on the Christmas Carol like Scrooge like has the night? So what it felt like and so I sat up and all of a sudden my head hit something metal And I went wait a minute like I don't have anything above my bed I look around and there's this yellow like center block wall is far from me And I start to look around see the stainless steel toilet I see the guy with this guy had a like half caved in head across from me and I start to look around see the stainless steel toilet I see the guy with this guy had a like half caved in head across from me he was a homeless

guy that I used to see on the streets of Memphis and he's sitting there just staring at me and like all this is just coming to reality and so I throw my legs over the side and it felt like I did before with a heart just oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god this is for real I'm gonna lose everything like I'm never gonna be able to hold Jacob again Ansel will take them from me I'm never gonna be with her again I'm gonna lose my job everybody's gonna know I'm gonna be embarrassed my family's gonna be embarrassed I'm gonna lose everything in my life I'm gonna be 37 and alone and at that point I started to look around the room for something sharp

because I wanted to kill myself you know I. I thought there's no way out is probably a pretty coward thing to do, but I was like, I don't see a way out of this. And so I'm sitting there and I'm still shaking and rubbing night and nothing and just one after another, the things I'm going to lose in my life, my dad's respect, my sister's love, all that stuff. And then all of a sudden this crazy feeling comes over me man, and like I can't describe it to this day accurately But I just stopped moving and this piece came over me That shouldn't have been there. I mean jail like right and I'm sitting there And it felt like the way the world fell off my shoulders and all of a sudden out of my own

And it felt like the way the world fell off my shoulders and all of a sudden out of my own voice, like I don't remember saying I'm going to say something, like my own voice comes out of nowhere and says at least now I don't have to lie anymore. You know, at least now everybody will know who I am. And that's where the peace and the relief came from because that was, as I said, the worst part of my life was how I'm tired of trying to keep all this up. People would come to me and go, hey John, remember when you said this? I'm like, what did I say? What did I say? What was about is it something important? What if I told him this and now I say this and and so the relief that came from like now

I don't have to tell anybody everybody's just gonna find out And so I started to just think okay. I can't get out of here on my own right like I'm here Don't somebody decides are gonna let me out So what can I do? I could start praying and hoping that I can become the man I was supposed to be, and I realized, no, I can't because I told God I hated him. I walked away from him. I've scoffed at Mass. I've, you know, all these things. So I started to look at my life, and I realized that's when everything went downhill, was the day that I joined that fraternity, and I walked away from Jesus and my life. And so I hit my knees in that jail cell and I just said, Lord, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry. I've blamed you for all of this, but it was me. I made the decisions. I'm the one that walked away from you. If you'll have me back, I'll do whatever you want. I just want my family, I want my wife, I want my kids. Just give me an opportunity to do that. And I didn't know what it meant. It had been so long since I had a conversation with him. I couldn give me an opportunity to do that. And I didn't know what it meant.

It had been so long since I had a conversation with them, I couldn't even remember how to do it. I just kept saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And I felt that peace again. And I just said, I'm going to start thinking about what it means to be a man. Well shortly after that, the cell door opens and nobody's there. So I'm like, what's going on? Like somebody, is this a jailbreak?

Should I run? Should I stay still? The cell door opens and nobody's there. So I'm like, what's going on? Like somebody, is this a jailbreak? Should I run? Should I stay still? And all of a sudden the bailiff comes down and says, you know, you got 30 minutes, make a phone call, take a shower, whatever you want. You know, when I heard the shower part, you know, I've seen a lot of prison movies.

So I was kind of like, I'm good on that. Like I just, I'll take the phone thing. Like I'm pretty sure I want to stay, you know, I want to stay away from the shower. So unless you have soap on a rope or something like that but no seriously I just sat there and I said I'll take the phone call because I wanted to talk to somebody human and like I didn't realize I was claustrophobic until I was in that jail and then all of a sudden I'm just like I gotta get out of this place right like I can't stand this and so they take me this phone it's a box with speaker holes in it no headset so I'm just like, I gotta get out of this place, right? Like I can't stand this. And so they take me to this phone, it's a box with speaker holes in it, no headset.

So I'm like, how do you use this? Like how do you, there's people yelling and screaming at the cops and all the terrible stuff, you know, and so it was impossible. I'm just dialing someone, asking the bailiff, they won't tell me how to use it. I'm like, this is worse than hell. Like I have a way to get out right here

and I don't even, I can't use it. It's like having a key that doesn't work. And so all of a sudden this arm comes out and there's a cell right beside me which I hadn't even noticed and there's this African-American guy that sticks out this toilet paper roll and I'm thinking like, what is that? Is there like a ship in there too? And he hands it to me and he says, put your ear to this and you'll be able to hear. And I look back through the story and just the kindness

that this guy was in jail, I don't know what for, but he wanted to help a guy he didn't know. And he handed me this toilet paper roll and I start calling everybody I know. All those brothers for life, all the guys I spent all the money on and did all these things for, nobody answered the phone. It was the most lonely I've ever felt in my life.

I was like, I'm never getting out of here. Because Angela said she wasn't coming, right? So I called family, they wouldn't answer. Finally, I got a hold of my sister at my dad's house. And she says, John, I know where you are. We know where you are. Angela's across the street trying to bail you out, which really surprised me, you know,

because I just didn't think she was going to do it. I thought she was done. And she said, she's not going to let you come home. She's going to go to her parents' house with the kids. You'll be able to go home and get clothes, because you'll have court Monday and all this stuff. But I'm going to come get you and take you down to the farm where Dad and I are.

All I heard was, you're getting out of here. So I was kind of celebrating. I did wind up taking the shower. Also, they were individual, one-in-a-person times. So I cleaned up. And I went back to the cell. And a few minutes later, the door opens again. And they said, you have a visitor. So I was pretty sure it was going to the cell and a few minutes later the door opens again And they said you have a visitor so I was pretty sure it's gonna be Angela

I walked down there's the law and order scene the glass the payphones and my mother-in-law's there and she's crying I wasn't sure if it was tears of like anger and hate or Sadness for whatever and and because she knew and had witnessed how I was treating her daughter You know verbally and things like that in my life at the time Angels crying she's crying, I'm crying. I'm just saying I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, and she says stop. She said, look, I'm not going to divorce you, but it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the vows I made to God in the church that day.

What a woman. I know. I mean, to this day, I still can't – the mercy she showed me in that moment and the grace that God poured out through her. And it was just like being set free. I was like, okay, I don't have to worry about that. And I just started – I'll be better. I'll do this.

And she said, John, I paid your bail. You're going to be out here at 9.30 at night. Your sister's going to come get you. Same thing my sister told me. And I said, I love you. And she just kind of turned around and looked at me and just nodded and walked off with my mother-in-law. I made my mind up right then and there, like, I'm not going to get another chance.

I don't know what it means. I don't know how to be a good man. I'm so broken. I'm so selfish and so lost. I don't know how to find my way back, but I'm going to do my damnedest to figure it out. So I go back to my cell and I sit there and I pray and I have a conversation with Jesus all day long.

And he's showing me who I was when I was a kid and how much joy I had found in that. I started to realize how much of my life and how different I had become and how much I missed him. Right? How much I missed him. And so we have those conversations. It gets to be about 9 o'clock at night. It takes us to get all our personal belongings.

I walk outside expecting to see my sister and it's not. It's my dad. And I'm thinking, oh, you know what? It's like I'm a four-year-old kid again or eight-year-old kid that broke something in the house. I'm way bigger than my dad now, but I'm thinking what's waiting for me when I get down to that car? And he's standing there and he's looking at me and I walk up and I'm like, dad,

I, and he just grabbed me and he pulled me to him and he hugged me and he said, I love you, John, I love you. And I'm so sorry this happened. And he just hugged me and man, Matt, as a kid, I would have killed for that. Like so much of my life, you know, he taught me how how to play basketball but I want him to be out there playing with me every day you know it just he was busy and he was taking care of us and I get it but like I would have killed to hurt I'm proud of you any of that stuff in that moment he tells me he says come on this let's get you home let's get you

you know clothes and I looked down at my phone my job had called like 57 times and I thought great now I gotta call them and and thought, great, now I got to call them. And he told me, he said, John, you got to call them. They're going to find out one way or another. You've got to be a man and call them. And I was like, well, Dad, it's 10.30 on a Friday night. Surely they're busy and they don't want to hear from me. He's like, cut the crap and call your boss.

So I call them and my boss just said, look, I heard something happen. What happened? I told him. He said, all right, well, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I heard something happen. What happened? I told him. He said, all right, well, are you OK? And I said, yeah, I'm fine. We're friends. And he said, I hear you have a court date Monday. I said, yeah.

And he goes, you need to come see us after that. I said, OK, I'll be there. So my dad takes me to my house. I walk in the den where my kids are normally playing and nobody's there. And I'm just longing for them, right? This time that I'd walked past so much of my life, you know, and just thrown to the side because I wanted to do drugs. And now they weren't there.

I could see literally like almost images in my head of them playing in there. Go back, get a suit, my dad, you know, and some clothes, and we go down to my farm. And it was the realest conversation I ever had with him. You know, he starts asking questions like, is this my fault? You know, did I do something wrong? Was I not a good dad? And the weight of that was crushing, man. I was just like, dad, I'm a grown man. I made my own decisions, you know, like this isn't your fault. Did I do something wrong? Was I not a good dad? And the weight of that was crushing me. I was just like, Dad, I'm a grown man. I made my own decisions. This isn't your

fault. And he started talking about my mom and the pain of losing her. And we just had conversations about stuff, that tough guy mentality that we hadn't had conversations about. So I really cherish that time with him. And I get up Saturday morning, by the way I didn't mention this yet But this went down on Holy Week like I was arrested on Holy Thursday and I came out of jail on Good Friday So don't think that the gravity of that passed up on me when I was in jail, right? It's so we're sitting there on Saturday and my aunts are showing up and they're like 81 and they're wondering why my family's not there

For Easter and I told Jesus I wouldn't lie again Saturday and my aunts are showing up and they're like 81 and they're wondering why my family's not there for Easter. I told Jesus I wouldn't lie again, but I didn't want one of my 81 year-old aunts to have a heart attack when I told her I have a huge coke problem. They just started falling out like dominoes in there. I didn't want that on my conscience. I just told them, I was like, Angela's got the big Italian family and they wanted to be there and I haven't been down here for Easter and forever so I just made the decision to come down here.

The next morning I get up, it's Easter morning and I just have this desire to go to Mass. All I can think about is my wife is going to go to Mass with my children without me. She's going to be there with her family, right? This huge Italian family, they're going to all be in the kitchen like they always are. It's a five-foot kitchen but 30 people will be in there and she'll open the door and all that noise will go, because everybody knows it'll be the elephant in the room and she's going to have to face that all by herself. And so I just, I wanted to go to Mass. I was like, I can't think about any of that. I just want to be with God. So there's this small Catholic room in this town of Bruce, Mississippi.

It's got like 600 people in it. And we had gone one time, like five years before, you know, I demanded to go to our families for my family for Christmas that she said only if we go to Mass at that That Catholic room that's really what it was like a room in a building. Well, there's a priest there at the time Said hi to us that night. Well, I go for Easter, you know, I go to Mass I show up the same time borrow my dad's car, I pull up and no one's there. And I'm going, are you kidding me? Like, God, this is the first time in 11 years I've wanted to go to Mass and I can't go. Like what is going on?

I start beating the steering wheel, I'm angry, I'm like smashing stuff in my dad's clean X-box, you know, slamming it. And all of a sudden this Jeep pulls up and it's this nun that gets out and she would do services when the priest wasn't there, you know, she had communion service, things like that. And so she gets out and I'm like acting like a maniac in the car and she looks over and she's like, what's the matter with you? I'm like, I want to go to Mass! I'm screaming.

And she's like, son, there's too many people. It's Easter. You know, everybody's down the road at this 4-H club, you know, it's an agricultural building. Do you know where it is? And I said, yeah, we had a family reunion there a few weeks ago, and so I'm just overjoyed, right? I'm racing down this highway and pull in and go inside, and there's all these families in there.

You know, there's a big Latino population down there, and they were there with all their families. And I go in and I sit down, and it's rough, man, because all these kids are climbing all over their parents and I'm just missing the stew out of mine. And this same priest walks in. He was a traveling priest, so you never knew if he was there or not. He worked like four different parishes on different weekends. And he gives this homily that's just amazing, you know, and the whole mass in English and

Spanish. And I get up. They'd say they're having a potluck after, and I'm like, no way I'm staying for that. I'm going to leave. I don't want to be around all the families. It's just hard. And so I get to the door and there's a hand on my shoulder and I turn around. It's this priest.

He's like, �Who's touching me? I don't know anybody in here.� And he goes, �Hello, John.� And he remembered my name from like five years before meeting me one time. And he said, �I don't know why your family's not here or where they are, but God wants me to tell you that everything's going to be alright. I can't tell you what that felt like. How could he know? Why would he even come say something to me?

But I got in the car and I made my mind up. I was like, this is it. I'm changing my life. I don't care what it means. I went back to my dad's the next morning. We drove to Memphis. I went to court. I was put on diversion.

There's a Catholic judge in Memphis that believes in giving people chances instead of just continually sending them back to the same stuff. And so I would go and take drug tests every month, and as long as I was fine with that, then it would be off my record. I went next to my work and went through a litany of all these HR people. What was that like walking into your place of employment, seeing people knowing they know? It was hard, first of all, because my father worked there for 45 years. So it's not just me walking there.

My dad's driving me there. And I'm thinking not only have I ruined my life, but I've embarrassed my father, right? All these years of hard work and so many people respected him. And I said that to him in the car. I was like, Dad, you don't have to go in. Just stay in the car. And I don, dad, you don't have to go in. Just stay in the car. And I don't want you to have to deal with that. And he's like, son, I worked here 45 years,

and my reputation speaks for itself. This isn't on me. It's on you. And if they have a problem with that, then I don't care. I'm going to be here for you. Good for him. So we walked inside. And I go in this room, and you're

surrounded by all these people with legal pads and somebody on the phone that I can't see that's questioning me and all this stuff from headquarters. It's just, did you do it at work? Have you ever done it with a customer? Have you done it with all that stuff? And I'm going, yes, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no. And they stop in the middle and they're like, you have to be somewhere? Do you realize you're going to lose your job?

Why do you act like you don't care? I said, there's a behavioral science center about two miles down the road. And I'm going there as soon as this is over because I want to prove to myself, I want to see how far I�m going in this, but also I want to prove to my wife I�m serious.� And they said, �Well, is this court ordered?� I said, �No, I�m doing it on my own. They didn�t make me go to this.� And so I said, �So I�m sorry. You can fire me if you want. I�ve never been in trouble.

I�ve never been written up. I�ve made you a lot of money, and I�ll continue to do if you'll let me have a job, but I've got to go take care of this." And I got up and I walked out of the room and left, and my dad took me down the street and man, I've never been to one of these places. Darrell Bock What are all these, like a rehab or – Scott Cunningham Yeah, like behavioral science. There's one in Memphis called Lakeside, and it was crazy because when I was a kid,

in the afternoons I was watching like cartoons and Three Stooges and stuff, and these drug rehab commercials would come on in the middle. And I'm like, I'll never wind up there. Well, here I was walking to the front door of one of these places 30 years later. And my dad's with me again. I go in and I just start to see the condition of the people that were coming in. And I told my dad, I was like, Dad, I want you to stay in the car. I don't want you to see this. And so he did. He went and stayed in the car. I walk in. They take me to another waiting room. And I'm sitting there and there's this door over my right shoulder. And these people just come in and they've got their sons and

their daughters and they're methed out and they're scratching themselves and bleeding because they think there's bugs on them and stuff and heroin addicts. And they've got them by the seat of their pants and their t-shirt and they're just like, take them. This is 15 times, I'm done. I'm done. He broke everything in the house. He stole my car. I'm done with him.

He's yours. I don't want him in my life anymore. And one was worse than the next. I was sitting there just in tears looking at these guys just sitting on the floor and their families abandoning them in there. And so there's this newspaper sitting there. I pick it up and I cover myself with it. I'm like, I don't want to see any more of this. And people just keep coming in, keep coming in. Well finally the door

opens and nobody walks by. Like the paper doesn't ruffle. And I was like, what happened? And I lower the paper and my wife's standing there looking down at me. And we hadn't spoken since she was in jail and got up and left the payphone window thing. And so I first went, how does she know I'm here? And she's standing there and I said, Angela, what are you doing here? And she looked at me and she goes, I'm mad as hell at you, but I can't let you go through this alone. Oh, Angela, you beautiful woman.

I'm sitting here going, I have mistreated and I have done more things wrong in my life to her than I'll ever be able to make up for. And here's this woman who, when I'm scared to death and I have no idea what's going to go on in my life and she's standing here saying, I'm not going to leave you. And so she sits down with me and we start talking and she's like, look, I'm still mad at you. Don't get that messed up, right? Like I'm hurt, but our children need you.

Allison, which was one of my three-year-old twins, asked me yesterday if you were dead because it had been five days, six days since they'd seen me. I'd never been gone like that. And we go back to get assessed and they decide I need a 30-day outpatient program, which Angela completely disagreed with. She was like, no, put him under this place. Is there like a room like below the concrete and there's like torture devices and things like that Can you beat this out of him like something like that?

And so I'm like, I think the lady knows what she's talking about. She's got a degree. She's professional like I would just trust her So we you know, we get out of that we start walking back to the car I'm looking for my dad right because I'm just thinking I'm not going home and feeling horrible because he's going to have to drive me two hours each way every day to get me up here, which I know he would willingly do, but I didn't want to put that burden on him. And Angela said, where are you going? I said, I'm trying to find my dad. And she goes, I told him to leave.

You're going to come home tonight. And I couldn't believe it because I just felt like I'd never be home again, right? Like home seemed like a foreign thing to me now. And I got in the car and I started showering her with like, why are you doing this? And she said, John, I need you. The kids need you. Like I can't do my job and take them to school and pick them up and you're going to be out of work.

You can't go back to work until after your court date. So my father-in-law, he's not happy with you, but he'll let you borrow his car to drive the kids around until you can figure out yours. So we get home and man, I open that back door and there's those kids in the den. At this time, they're not very old. They're little toddlers. Man, I hit my knees on that floor and those kids tackled me and were rolling around. They're daddy, daddy, daddy.

I'm crying everywhere and I just thought like how could I have ever, ever taken this for granted? Like, right? I just, I didn't want to let go of them. Like I literally had to sit there for like 30 minutes with them just in my arm and they're craned around going, why are you looking at me? Let me watch Barney, you know, or whatever. I'm like, I'm never going to let you go again.

Well, you know, that night, Ains Angela told me on the way home, she said, look, don't mistake this, when you come home, like, I'm not gonna be able to sleep in the same bed with you, we're not okay, like, I'm hurt, and so I'll be sleeping in Jacob's room. Well, Jacob's room was across from ours, and on my side of the bed, I could see directly into it. So that night, the kids are in bed,

and I find myself, like, overjoyed to be home again. I think there's air conditioning. There's not some weird guy staring at me. You know, there's a bathroom where I could shut the door and you know, just it's wonderful joy. I can go make a sandwich and not have to eat pig slop or whatever it is. And so I'm thinking like, yeah, I'm king of the castle again. And I look over and I see this empty spot in the bed and I'm like, you son of a,

you know, you idiot, like here you son of a, you idiot. Here you are rejoicing because you have these things around you and you're not going to do drugs and drink like that anymore. But you have to be different. You can't be okay with your relationship being like this. So I look across the hall and I see the shape of my wife. I used to say, the lump of my wife, and she wasn't very appreciative of that and asked me to change that.

So the shape of my lovely wife under the covers, and I thought, �I've got to be different.� So what did that mean? In my life, all I had as a way to change my life when I was younger was Christ. So I started immediately looking for scriptures because I was a Baptist growing up, and that's where I found Christ the most in my life. So I started looking for a Bible, and I looked on my side of the room, so I looked on hers because there was probably like 60 of them stacked up over there. But I opened the drawer in, that book from Father Larry Richards I mentioned was in the

drawer. What was the code? Be a man. Really great book if you're a guy out there struggling with what it means to be a man. It's real authentic masculine spirituality, man. It's great. So I picked it up and I see where I stopped like five years before on the underlining. I said that's not going to be me again. And so I read that book from cover to cover, like

six in the morning, Angela gets up and she's like, what are you doing up so early? And I said, I never went to sleep. You know, I can't be the person that I was and I know you probably don't believe me and I know you're hurt and I don't know how to fix this, but I'm going to do everything I can, you know, and I know you're hurt and I don't know how to fix this, but I'm going to do everything I can. And I know you're not going to forgive me overnight, but I'm going to do my damnedest to be the man that you deserved all this time." And she's like, yeah, okay, whatever, because she just hurt. And so that book showed me that I needed Christ in my life again.

And so I was taking my kids to school one day. The world started crashing. People started to find out about it, you know, just people gossiping. There's this one guy at work that saw me in like the Just Busted magazine, which you know, that's not something I'm proud of, but I did make Just Busted magazine, so you can go back to your local gas station and see my smiling face on the front. But people found out, and next thing I know, I start getting texts from customers, like you son of a this, you piece of this, F you, what a piece of garbage you are, I'll never buy anything from you

again, I can't believe you lied to me all these years. Everything I'd done in friendship and relationship went out the window for a lot of them, not all of them. I had some good ones that were very loyal and stuck with me through it. But I'm at school that day and I drop them off and all that comes in and I'm crashing them down, I'm in my father's suburban and I'm thinking, my life and I drop them off and all that comes in and I'm crashing them down I'm in my father's suburban and I'm thinking my life's never gonna be good. So you were fired from your job No, no, so I was still in this 30-day window

Okay, I had to wait until the court decision of whether you know I was I pled not guilty but you had to wait 30 days and then they gave a decision and all of that so I'm sitting there in the car and I'm like, my life's never gonna be different than this. I'm always gonna be the guy that did Coke and I'll never get away from that. And all of a sudden as I'm starting to kind of

go down a downward spiral, I see this pastor of my church walk across the parking lot, Father James Martel. I didn't know him that well. You know, he'd come over and baptize my kids, had a beer and left, and so we didn't really have a real relationship. I go to that church, I open the door, I walk in, and I feel like the biggest hypocrite

in the world, you know, because I'd never been to Mass. I was scared that I wouldn't know what to say, and it was going to be obvious. I'm six foot eight. I stick out like a sore thumb, so that doesn't help. So I go in there, I'm on the Joseph side, I kneel down, I start praying, and for the first time in my life, there was like three old people in there and me, and I heard every word of the Mass, like every single word. And I started realizing how much Scripture was involved.

I started realizing the beauty of everything that I had taken for granted for so long, being obstinate, like, I'll come to this, but I'm not really going to give my life to it, you know? And so he gets up, he gives a homily, and the readings are speaking to everywhere I am in my life in that moment moment and I'm starting to cry. And by the time he gets to the homily, I'm full on waterworks over there, like disturbingly bawling over there. People are looking at me.

You can hear the hush of what's the matter with them and all that stuff. And so we get to the consecration and I'm thinking, I'm not going up there, right? I'm not going up there. I'm not worthy of this. I haven't been to confession. And he's looking at me and I'm in the front on the Joseph side, and he starts waving at me to come up. And I'm like, no.

And he looks at me, and he's like, come up. And I'm just bawling. I'm like, no. And he looks at me again, and he says, come here. And I thought he's not going to give up, so I got to go. I'm holding up the line here. So I get up, and I go up there. And I'll never forget, I put my hands out out because I was never comfortable taking it on the tongue.

And so I put my hands out and he just looked at me and he said, �This is the body of Christ.� And he put it in my hand and as soon as I touched my hand, I don't know how to describe it, but there was a feeling that went all over my body and I was like, �This is God. This is God. This is the God that has put me back with my family. This is the God who loves me.� And I didn't really understand the extent of how much, but I was like, He wants me here. As much as I don't want to be here or I don't feel like I should be, He's calling me here.

So I took it. People may say it was unworthily, but I was doing what I was told at the time. He points to the blood. I walk over there and I'm like, no. He starts the yes again. I partake in the cup and I go back there and I'm like, no, and he starts to yes again. So I partake in the cup and I go back and man, I just prayed. I couldn't tell you what I prayed, but that was the hardest I've ever prayed in my life. It was probably a bunch of thank yous and I'm sorry and thank yous and I'm sorrys.

And I'm kneeling there and I'm just bawling. I'm not even trying to hide it anymore, just this feeling I had all over me. And I prayed so hard and mass was over. I didn't even get up again. Like I didn't realize that they had processed out or any of that. And I feel a hand on my shoulder again and it's this priest and I look up and he says, �John, what are you doing here?� Which was a valid question because you didn't see me at Sunday Mass a lot and certainly not at Daily Mass. So he takes me back to the confessional. I

see we're tracking there and I'm like, �Where are we going?� He's like, �Confessional�. Last time I went in there I went up and went to jail. Like I don't know that I really want to go in there and I'm like, where are we going? He's like confessional. Last time I went in there I went up to jail. I don't know that I really want to go in there. Thank you, Luke. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a jail free card just in case? So I go in there and we sit down and we start going through it. And man, I want to beat myself up. And I'm sure there's plenty of people that have watched this and they know the feeling of going to confession and you just feel dirty and so undeserved of any mercy and you start just beating yourself up with a hammer, you know, getting your own stick and just tearing yourself up.

And every time I would say something, Father, you don't understand, right? I did this. I don't care about that. We've talked about that. God's going to forgive you for that in a minute. You need to get past it. You know, well, what about this? Don't you see how terrible I am?

Don't you see how undeserving I am? And he kept saying, John, stop. We're here to receive the Lord's mercy and we're not going to dwell on these things. You're going to be a better man.� And he kept telling me all of that. And we get through and he gives me absolution. I get him to leave and he's like, �Where are you going?� And I said, �I'm sorry, but I've only done this twice, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to leave now.� And he said, �Sit down. I'm not through talking to you.� And he said, �John, you told me that you're going to be in this program, so you're not

going to work for another 25 days or whatever it was at the time. So I expect you to be here at 815 Mass every morning. Did you notice I read my own readings? I'm going to need you to lecture. And I said, okay, great. What the heck is a lecture? And he's like, you want me to give a lecture? What is that?

I don't know anything. And so he says, I'm going to teach you. I'm going to teach you how to read, and youre going to do that until I tell you any different.� And then he said, �And you�ll be here every Friday after I�m asked to get a confession. Save my life.� That priest caring about me. And man, this is a side note, but I don�t know that we do a good enough job taking care of our priests. They�re like a drive-through window to us.

Father baptize my kid. Give me this, give me that, give me that. Very rarely do we say, Father, what can I do for you? How can I be your friend? What do you need? Just as a side note, that relationship showed me that there's a way that our priests need us. He's one of my best friends.

He's over every weekend. I love him to death. So this goes on and he starts encouraging me, and I find the Lord in the mass and in the sacraments in a way that I never did before as a Catholic, if you want to call me Catholic, you know, I used to say like I was Catholic for 11 years before I was ever Catholic. And I wind up just putting myself in the scriptures every single day. I'm reading hours on in at night. I'm praying my bed at 8 o'clock so my kids find their dad praying and they see that example.

I'm trying to worry about making Angela forgive me, but the Lord kind of made it pretty clear like you can't worry about that. I'll handle that. You know, you worry about my opinion and what I need you to do. So all of a sudden I started remembering all this, all the Bible sword drills we did in vacation Bible school. And the scriptures started coming alive, man. And I'm like feeling things in my life and I'm knowing where to go to deal with them

and just going, oh yeah, I remember this. And then I start being able to quote scripture. And I mean, I haven't picked up a Bible in 20 years or whatever, 17 years. And I'm just falling in love with the Lord. Like there was nights where I'd fall asleep on my bedroom floor just praying with the scriptures open and the crucifix in front of me. And I started having this desire where I didn't want to go to my job anymore. All I wanted to do was just like learn about God and love God and be a husband.

And I was leading my family to mass, all these things. And Angela kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, right? Like, when's this going to end? But long story short, I went to that same men's conference a full year. I read like 65, 70 Catholic books that year. I was running through them, Rome Suite Home, all the way to anything I could get my hands on that somebody said, read this. And so I go to this thing like ready to receive in its fullness.

I think Father Mike Schmitz was giving the talk and he was great. And then there was a focus missionary that got up there and was the witness speaker and poured his heart out about DUIs and Coke and all this stuff he'd had in his life. And it just, the courage he showed just, it blew my mind. So I found him afterwards and I was like, dude, let me tell you my story. And I started sharing with him and he's like, man, that's incredible. You should really open up to some people. And I thought, no, I'm not doing that.

I'll lose everybody in my life. That night there was something in my parish, a fundraiser function, a basketball three-point shootout, which I went to win. I did not win. I overestimated my skills. I forgot I was 37 and not 18. But I went in there and there was this guy

who had been at the same conference that day and apparently he went to confession for the first time in 23 years. And this dude was running around like, oh dude, he was? Yeah, I was like, is he? But he's jumping around and he's like, dude, I feel so great. Like I just, I went to this thing today and I talked to the priest, I went to confession and woo!

And he's just, some of the things he's saying, I'm like, hey Jay, X-Nay on the shower, eh? Like you gotta cleave some of this part of this, women and children in here, right? You gotta calm down on some of the things he's saying, I'm like, hey, Jay, X-Nay on the shower, eh? Like, you've got to cleave some of this part of this. There's women and children in here, right? You've got to calm down on some of what you're saying. So he comes up and he's like, I don't understand why I feel this way. And I said, dude, you've had a Holy Spirit moment. And he goes, I'm cradle Catholic. And I still don't understand what he meant by this.

But he said, I'm cradle Catholic. I know who God is and Jesus, but I don't know what the Holy Spirit is. And I said, well – and I started talking to him, and then all of a sudden the devil hit me with a hammer, man. It was just like, what are you doing? You cokehead, been arrested, spent time in jail, you basically abandoned your family for 17 years, and you're going to tell somebody about Jesus? I originally just right away thought of that scripture in Revelation chapter 12 verse 10

where Satan is referred to as the accuser of our brethren who accused them day and night before the throne of God, and he was cast down. Yeah, that's exactly right. I talk about that all the time when I'm speaking to men about this because he is and the father of lies, right? He's building those lies and accusing you of all those things. And so I stopped, you know, and he's like, well keep going. Why are you stopping?

And I said, Jay, there's priests here. They're busy tonight, but you can make an appointment with them tomorrow and they can tell you all about it. But no, you're telling me this in a way that I understand. That's part of my problem is I've listened to this teaching and I don't get a lot of it. It's over my head. And I said, you know Jay, I can't help you man.

I'm sorry. And he said, why won't you help me? And he just kept following me around and finally I said, dude, either I'm going to punch you in the face or I'm going to give in. So I said, man, either I'm gonna punch you in the face or I'm gonna give in. No, I'm just kidding. So I said, no, I said, man, what do you want? He said, well, can I take you to Mellow Mushroom or something, pizza place, and take you to dinner? I said, yeah, sure, if you'll just leave me alone.

I'm like, I gotta go out here and rain down three pointers. And then I'll be, and then I'll go with you to dinner, right? And so, which is not what happened. I could have built a house with the bricks I laid down. Nothing but rim. That's right. I actually swished as I walked out the door. It was a mic drop of my own making.

So we go to eat pizza that night. I go home Sunday and I tell Angela, like this guy wants me to share with him and I think I'm going to have to tell him my story. And she's like, yeah, don't do that. That's not just you. This is me too. And I'm like, yeah, don't do that. Like, I don't – that's not just you. This is me too. And I'm thinking, well, what am I going to do? So I go home after Mass that day and I'm like, what a moron.

What do I know about the Holy Spirit? And I start just opening Father Larry's book and I start opening the Bible and next thing you know I got like six pages of – legal pad pages of stuff on the Holy Spirit from the breath over the water and Genesis, you know, the Ruah all the way through Pentecost and beyond. And I'm like, I don't know that I'm the one that should be doing this, but I'm going to go, you know, I told him I would. So I show up, and he shows up, and I've got books and legal pads everywhere, and it looked like a lawyer.

I'm like, let's go. You know, you're going to be Holy Spirit-ed for hours. And so he sits down, we order beers, and I remember the waiter walking by, I go like, what the heck is going on out here? Because I'm sitting there like proclaiming the good news at the table and ordering beers at the same time. And so, and I'm in Memphis, which is predominantly Protestant, so we probably just threw the guy for a loop.

But I just start sharing with him, and I tell him all that, and at the end of it he goes, man, this is incredible, you should start a men's group. And I said, dude, no, I can't. Like, I told you I'd do this tonight, we're done. Like, you know, there's a couple books you can read and it'll help you and he said man No, dude, you need to start a men's group Like you explain this in a way that like again was very relatable and and he just kept on and kept on and kept on And I said Jay, I can't do this and he said why why do you always tell me no? And I just felt convicted about his spirit and I just looked at him as a jail.

I was arrested on a felony charge of cocaine. Like a year ago, almost lost my family, my job, everything in my life, and I'm not the right person. I'm not the right guy. Find somebody else, man. And I expected him to be like, okay, check. Like I didn't realize who I was eating lunch with or dinner with.

But he sat there and he said to me again, he looked dead in the face, he goes, wow, that's amazing, you should sort of insure. But I was like, he looked dead in the face, he goes, well, it's amazing. You should sort of unscrew. But I was like, you got a lot of issues, man. You know, and he convinced me. So about a week later, he said, I know people, you know people. You call the guys you know, I'll call the guys I know.

No one in my life knew what had happened to me, other than my wife, my immediate family, and my job. So no one but Jay now. And we called a bunch of men that were in a fundraising group we had at our parish that did great things. They built baseball dugouts, and you know, you bring cooler beer, we'll do whatever you want. And so, but we never talked about God, like ever,

unless the priest was there to bless the food, which wasn't very often. And we called them together in a room, didn't tell them while they were there. Jay convinced me to do this, and I didn't know at the time that Jay was perpetually late everywhere that he went, but I show up to this room and it's the time of year where it's dark outside, you know, early, and all these men are in there. You can tell they're kind of clamoring around like, why are we here?

Where are they? All that. So I'm going, great, they're already worked up. And I go to open the door, as soon as my hand hits the door, the devil comes back again. He's like, what are you doing? What are you, an idiot? You're going to lose everything, right? You own that door and you do what you're about to do, all your friends are going to leave

you. They're going to see you for who you are. They're going to kick your kids out of the school. They're going to kick your kids out of the parents. Think about what's going to do to your wife. Think about how embarrassed she's going to be to be the wife of a cokehead, right? All that. Just I'll let go of the door just like somebody had been standing beside me yelling it in my ear.

And so I started walking back to the car and I get about three steps. And it's like the Old Testament, right? Like God's in the whisper, He's not in the earthquake and the storm. I got about three steps and I heard, John, when you left that prison cell, you told me you were going to be different. You told me you were going to basically give me your life. I want you to open that door. And so I turned around and I go open the door and I walk in there and these guys are like, �What the hell are we doing here? Why are we here? Where's the

beer?� And I'm like, �Where's Jay? What a jerk.� He comes sloshing in with the cooler and hands out beers and they calm down. I just stood up and said, �Look, we have this great men's group. We do a lot of good stuff for the kids, but we never talk about Jesus. And let me tell you what can happen in your life when you never talk about God, when God's not the singer of your life.� And I went, �Blah.� Really? And I told him everything that I just told you here for however long we've been talking. And I was crying, man.

I was like snotting. It was gross. I mean, full on just scared to death, talking in front of a bunch of men. Their eyes were getting bigger and bigger and bigger as we went along. I kept waiting for them to get up and leave, and I finally just got to the end of it. I said, �That�s my story. I think we need to meet as men. I don�t know what I�m doing, but I think we need something to where we have Jesus at

the center of our life. And if you want to stick around, stick around. If you don�t, I realize you didn�t know why you were here. No hard feelings if you want to leave.� And I around. If you don't, I realize you didn't know why you were here. No hard feelings if you want to leave. And I just planted myself in a chair and put my head down and continued to cry. And the guy stands up next to me and it's Jay, the guy I've been talking about. And I'm like, you son of a... Hopefully you're not the one leaving. If you leave, I'm going to be so mad right now.

And I look up and he's crying. And he just says, I'm a terrible father and a terrible husband because I spend more of my time worrying about money and work than I do my family. And he sits down sobbing. The next guy gets up and he says, I'm so stuck in porn, my wife's about to leave me. The next guy gets up, I smoke pot, my wife's about to leave me if I don't. One guy got up and said, I'm drunk right now, I Ubered here. I have nine kids.

Me and my wife fight all the time. She likes to fight. I like to escape. I've been in a hotel room. I've had a case of beer. She thinks I'm nine kids. Me and my wife fight all the time. She likes to fight. I like to escape. I've been in a hotel room. I've had a case of beer. She thinks I'm at work. Work thinks I'm at home, sick. And he said, I thought we were coming to drink more beer.

That's really what he said. I was like, I'm sorry to disappoint you. You know? Ben Stuart This is the wrong place for that. Matt Buechert Right. And so it was like pistons in an engine. All these men just got up all the way around the room. And that's when I realized, Matt, like we all walk around the world thinking like we're

the only alcoholic or the only person struggling with porn or we're the only person with a drug problem or an anger problem or whatever your sin is, but we're not. And God showed me that one man, whether it was me or somebody else, standing up and saying the hell with this definition of vulnerability the world has where you're weak and you're less masculine and all that stuff. The hell with that.� There's another definition that's God's. And he tells St. Paul, you know, and St. Paul's complaining about the thorn in his side, right? And he says, �Remove this three times.� And God says, �No, my power is made perfect in weakness.� And then St. Paul goes to learn and later on says, �If I'm to boast,

let it only be my hardships, my difficulties, my burdens, because when I'm weak, I'm strong. And it's like in that moment, I realize we become vulnerable, we become humble, we realize we need God, and when we can share that with others in that way, it opens your life and you're no longer in this cell. I tell people that all the time is you may not even realize it, but you're in a virtual prison cell. You're made up of walls of your own sins and failures and mistakes and your own thoughts

about yourself and the identity that you've mistaken for yourself. And I am this because I did that, that we all do in our life. And every time you go to reach for that door like I did in the room that night, the devil shows up and he starts poking and prodding those wounds, right? Well, you open that, they're going to figure out about your porn problem. They're going to figure out about your drinking problem. They're going to know you're not the guy you say you are. And so you are a woman and you let go of the door and you stay in that place because he

convinces you that all the pain and the torture and all that stuff's outside. If I go out there, I'm going to lose everything. And so we sit in this cell and we torture ourselves all our lives, but when we become vulnerable like that with God, obviously with yourself, I've got an issue. I don't care what sin it is. You don't have to have a crazy cocaine story. I don't recommend getting one. Just stick with what you got.

But in that moment, when you become vulnerable, you open that self up. You say, I have an issue. I'm going to deal with it.� You take it to God in the confessional, and then luckily the way I did, you find other people in your life you can trust, and you find you're not the only one. And so you get the courage to open that door, and when the devil comes back and he goes to start poking and prodding, you go, �Yeah, it doesn't hurt anymore, right? I've come to grips with that.

Yes, I was a cokehead, but I'm a beloved son of God, right? I'm not that anymore, and you have no power over me in that way. Well, what about your porn problem? Yeah, I've told my wife and I've dealt with God on that, and my brothers hold me accountable. You have no power over me over that. All of it. You take that power away from the devil. Now, he's always going to torment you all your life.

He hates you. But now you can say, I have done those things, but I know who I am and I'm not those things. Right? I'm a beloved son of God who is worthy because God says I'm worthy, not because I do or anybody else. And when you can live your life that way, you find that peace and the freedom that Jesus talks about all the time.

Right? That peace I wish to give you because you now realize you live for Him. He's everything in your life. He's the reason for everything in your life. Then you start to look at everything as a blessing. And you're not carrying around the weight everybody carries around. Like we spend our life white-knuckling the steering wheel of our life trying to control everything.

Like I'll give God this and this and that, but not this, not my money, not this. And we're trying to control everything and act like we're fine all the time. Right? I hate that picture. I was talking to you about this last night. That picture at Christmas with all the people in the elf outfits and they're all smiling. You can tell the dads, like, I hate this so much. They're all in these Christmas clothes and they're going, all right, just yelling, screaming at each other and it's like, smile.

And you have the picture. And that's the big you see. Yeah. Right. That's it on Facebook. We're perfect. Everything in our life is perfect. It's such crap. We're all broken and we know we're all broken. So why spend the energy trying to act like you're not? Just come to grips with what's going on in your life and

find people that love you, you know? And that's what we try to do, you know? We try to start men's groups around the country and appearances and stuff. But that's what I come to find out, Matt, through all of that story, is that I became vulnerable. God loves me no matter what I've done. He doesn't turn away from me. The devil tries to convince you that he's got his back turned towards you and all those things. But it's like the prodigal son.

He's standing there down the road waiting for you and waiting on you. Sorry, Matt. Keep going. This just struck me. I was just thinking of that verse in John, but because I'm a good Catholic, I can't quote it verbatim. I just thought it was boring. No, you weren't at all.

You started to look for squirrels or something. Yeah, yeah. This, in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. The true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, he was in the world, and the world was made by him him and the world knew him not. He came unto his own and his own received him not." I'm looking for that bit that talks about the men didn't want to come into the light

because their deeds were dark, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I can't remember the verse though, so apparently I'm not as good of a Baptist as I once was. Yeah, let's just keep going because this really does speak to it. I can't remember the verse though, so apparently I'm not as good of a Baptist as I once was. Yeah, let's just keep going, because this really does speak to it. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. To them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh,

nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory The glory is of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth Man amen It's like that light it's like you're convinced it's gonna kill you Yeah it's like we're all in this great banquet hall and The candles are lit and the feast is laid and we're all in this great banquet hall and the candles are lit and the feast

is laid and we're all in the corners. I can't go out there because look at me. And it's like the devil is trying to convince us, yeah, you're right, stay here, don't go out there. Just like you kept saying, you know, like if I go out there, they will see it. I will be rejected. And it's like it's been said, you know, prior to a sin, when we're tempted to engage in something like that, the Lord says, remember my justice. And the devil says, remember God's mercy.

But then after you've given in and you sin and you're ashamed, God says, remember my mercy and devil says, remember his justice, you know, he's trying to condemn us. And yeah, just this idea that the same God that forgave Moses the murderer, Rahab the prostitute, David the adulterer, Peter the denier, Paul the persecutor, you know, John the coke addict, Matt Fradd the porn addict, and whatever else I'm dealing with, it's like, he'll forgive you too. Yeah. Yeah.

It is. It is. And he wants to keep you out there. He wants you to – and a lot of times because of the relationships we have in our life, if you had a domineering parent or a judgmental person in your life like that, you just sort of project that onto God, that that's who God is. I think about that a lot in the way that I interact with my children is I don't want them to like – if I'm very quick to lose my temper and angry and judgmental and punishing, that that's the way they're going to see God the Father. And that's the way I think I did a little bit because my dad was sort of like that growing

up. And then I think what happens though is when you do fail in those areas, the temptation is then to hate yourself because of that, which only compounds the problem. So it's like even in those areas, you have to be gentle with yourself. Yeah, you have to forgive yourself. And people worry about forgiveness as like, I've got to forgive this person who offended me, and that's obviously a huge part. But you have to learn to forgive yourself too.

How have you done that? How have I done it? With Angela especially and with the kids. Yeah, well, you know, in the very beginning I beat myself up really badly. No matter what I was doing and I'd be happy in a moment with something I'd done spiritually, I would just go, yeah, but you're never going to be anything than what you were. I'd just hear that. And I got to the point where I just had to start believing that God was who He said He

was, right? Like that He's not this domineering person. And so I just, every time that would come, I would do sort of what Jesus did in the desert when the devil would show up and He'd start to tempt them and He'd start to tell them, you know, why don't you throw yourself off of this temple? And He would say, you know, do not put the Lord your God to the test. I'd start meeting Him with those things. No, God loves me.� That's not true.

What you're saying isn't true. And so I quit worrying about who I was and started saying, �Who can I be through God?� Right? Who does God want me to be?� And so I started searching for that. Scott Horrell How did you deal? Because many people have this sort of epiphany moment where they make the decision to be better and they are becoming better. But we're not saints yet. And so there's minor falls and major falls. Yeah.

How do you maintain that enthusiasm to be better as you see your brokenness day in and day out? You know, like it wouldn't be great if you just said to Angela, I'm gonna be a better man. And then you were a saint and then you died. But that's not true. You know, it's't be great if you could just say to Angela, I'm going to be a better man, and then you were a saint, and then you died. But that's not true. You know? It's like we fail, we get angry, we might yell, we might look at porn. We go back and like a dog to its vomit. How have you personally sort of maintained that peace as no doubt as a human being you

may have had these setbacks? Darrell Bock Sure. Well, one, I started to understand that I don't need to condemn myself. That's one of the worst parts is to start saying you're not, oh there you go, you picked up your phone again to look at Facebook, but that ain't what you looked at and you looked at something you shouldn't have. And so instead of just, the way I started talking to myself nicer I guess you would say.

Like I quit hating myself and those things and saying, look at you, you're no good, you make all this progress and you backslide, that's all you're going to – and I just started saying, you know what, you messed up. You messed up. And I'm sure God's disappointed. I'm disappointed in myself, but He gave us the confessional, right? Like God wants a personal relationship with us, like in the sacrament show us that. Like think about that.

He put someone in a box, in a confessional, in a room so that someone could physically tell you that he forgave you. Think how powerful that is. He loves you so much, he wants no doubt in your mind that he forgives you. Is he disappointed? Yeah, I'm disappointed when Jacob acts out. I'm sure my wife's disappointed when I'm a jerk. But we love each other and there's forgiveness there, right?

And so we have to understand God gave us this gift. It doesn't mean go do whatever you want and then go say you're sorry. There has to be a repentant heart, right? It's what Jesus said first in the Bible, repent and believe in the gospel. So what I started to do was not beat up on myself so hard about the fact that I fell and I started saying, how am I going to keep from doing this again? And when I went to confession, it wasn't just to grab some cheap shot of mercy and walk out and feel better about myself.

It was, Lord, I fully repent. I turn, right? That's what repent means, to turn away from. I fully repent in this moment, and I'm trying to do everything I can to not do this again. And so I started just trying to do that, and then I started thinking, man, if I don't want to live a life of vice, then I need to start looking at living a life of virtue. And how do you do that? And so I just started doing things in my life like setting up prayer time, you know, making God the focus of my life and not the last thing I do every day. So first thing in the morning,

hit my knees and pray, Lord, thank you for waking me up. Thank you for allowing me to breathe. Thank you for these beautiful children and this beautiful wife that I get to spend my life with again because you're merciful, right? And help me to be the man that you call me to be. You've given me gifts. Help me to understand what they are so I can glorify your name now and for the rest of my life, you know, and I do those things. And then I spend time in the Word and I go to Mass. You know, daily Mass is the greatest gift, you know, because the Eucharist is there and you can take it in. And that's one of the greatest forms of strength in, because the Eucharist is there and you can take it in.

And that's one of the greatest forms of strength in my life is that God makes Himself small so that He can give me the strength to do the things that He asked me to do. Again, He wants a personal relationship with you. He says, here is my very body, because I've asked you to do things that I know are hard, and there's everything in the world that's trying to pull you to do everything else and to be bad and that's easy and to fall to these things. I know they're the enemies there trying to lay a snare at your feet every time, but I'm giving you this.

I've given you the Holy Spirit, but now I'm giving you my very body so that you have the strength to do what I've asked you to do each and every day. And that's why I go to Mass every day I can, and that's been one of the stalwarts in my life is when I don't go to Mass, I usually have a bad week. And it's because I'm starting to fall back into what John wants, how John wants it, all that stuff, instead of combating it with the most selfless person ever that ever lived in Jesus Christ. I love that.

You said after prison you went back to your house and you were kind of saying, here I am, king of the house, you know? And then you were saying you can't congratulate yourself on no longer doing evil. You have to put good there. It's like that nature abhors a vacuum sort of thing. Yeah, sure. I love that. It's not just about not being vicious.

It's about how do I actively pursue God? Yeah. Right. That's what it is. And then just putting other people first in your life. You know, your mutual friend of ours, Bill Donahey. What a guy. Yeah, he's amazing.

And I worked with him at RISE, you know, like I did with you, or not RISE, but Cardinal. And you know, I fell in love with the Theology of the Body because of him and the gift he has at teaching it. And I asked him one day, I was like, you know, I don't really want to read that 738-page book. And like, I don't know that I would understand at all. Like, could you give me the abridged version? You know, and he's like, be a gift.

Just be a gift. And that's what I try to tell myself each and every day is like everything that I have a motive to do. Am I doing this for like me or am I doing it for somebody else? I mean that's why I do these men's groups. That's why I'm involved in one at home outside all the speaking and the other stuff we do in the ministry is because I need it to. Right?

Like those guys will come to me and I'm sure you get some of this because of the stuff you do. They'll be like, John, you've helped me in my life. You've changed this. And I just – I get teary-eyed every time. I'm like, you have no idea what you've done for me. Right? Like I am able to be the person that I am because of you.

Because you show up here, you want to walk this path too. And you give me some people that make me – you give me the idea that this can be accomplished because there's people walking shoulder to shoulder with me doing it. Right? And it's just so shoulder to shoulder with me doing it. Right? And it's just so important in our life to have that. And so often, especially in these days, we want to isolate social media and all these things just kind of put you on your own planet, your own realm. And that's the other thing I do is I surround myself with good people that want to go to

heaven, right? That want to be good fathers. That guys that want to put their phone down and go outside and throw the ball with their kid, you know, and still want to have a good time, have a beer and a cigar and all that stuff, and realize you're not one extreme or the other, right? You're not super evil or super good. There's just being human and that we have to work at being what God calls us to be. I mean, he never said, �Hey, I'm going to come down here and down a cross and everything's going to be easy for you, Right? So we�d cakewalk, I�m taking all this on, yes, it hurts, all this stuff. No, he looks at you and he says, �People, I

hate you because they hated me.� Right? �You�ll be persecuted because they persecuted me.� He�s not promising you, he�s like, �Pick up your cross and follow me.� Right? We all have whatever it is in our life. It�s not an excuse to not deal with it. It�s to pick it up and to figure out how to deal with it in our life. We need God, we need other people, we need the sacraments, we need the full gifts of everything the Catholic Church gives us to be the man that God calls us to be. But Matt, that's the thing. So many people, out of God, I was telling you this other day, you know, I spoke in Indiana

and I gave my conversion story and he stood up at the end and he said, well, I don't have some crazy heroin story. And I said, well, you should get one, you know? I was trying to break the ice, you know ice because he seemed a little angry for some reason. And he looked at me and he said, �I�m 31 years old. I�m an accountant. I go to work every day and I don�t really like my job. I take my kids to school, go to work, come home, kiss the wife, look around at what�s

to be done, pour myself on the Netflix or a couple of stiff stiff drinks and I get up again and I do it the next day. Is there not more to life than this? Right? I mean it's just the mundaneness of life when you don't have a purpose. And so this is the thing, like as men especially, we're told like, all right, you've got to check all these boxes. Like go to high school, check. Excellent sports, check.

Go to college, check. Meet a girl, check. Have 2.5 children. like go to high school, check. Accelerate sports, check. Go to college, check. You know, meet a girl, check. Have 2.5 children. If you're Catholic, have 9.7, you know, and all of these things. And then you get to the point in your life where it's like, all right, I'm in my 30s and where's the next box? Right?

What's the next thing in my life? And so – Midlife crisis, check. Right, that's right. Do you want me to go? No, I'm just kidding. So there was – but you come to realize like the reason that life feels that way is because we don't have Christ at the center of it, right?

That He's the one who tells us who we are. And for so often in our life, we try to white-knuckle it and force our way, because that's kind of how we were raised as men, is you figure it out, tough it out, don't have emotions of things I was talking about earlier. But the thing is like we all have gifts, right? And that's what I came to figure out. I was a good salesman because of the gifts that God gave me, relational things. I had empathy.

I cared about people. You know, I put them first. That's why I was successful, because if they were successful, I'd be successful. Not in a selfish way, but if I took care of them, then I figured I'd be taken care of in the process. And it showed me that those gifts were meant for something else. And I got to the point in my life where I was just like, I wanted Christ at the center of it.

So I walked away from that job and was offered a job by Cardinal and that lasted a little while and then started the podcast and did the nonprofit. My wife comes to me again, the saint of my life. I lose my job three days before Christmas because they were going a different direction and couldn't use a salesman at Cardinal. I'm sitting there in tears because I'm like, what have I done? I left my job and all this stuff, and now I'm going to have to go tell my wife. We had three kids home, all of them with the flu that day.

I'm like, she's not going to want to hear this. She comes walking through the room, and I've got a tear in my eye. She's like, what happened? Is something wrong with your dad? I looked at her, and I've got a tear in my eye, and she's like, what happened? You know, is something wrong with your dad? And I looked at her, and I just said I lost my job, and she hit her knees, and she goes, you know what, maybe God's calling you to start that nonprofit. I love your wife. She's terrific.

I've never met her. I can't wait to meet her. Oh, I can't wait to bring you guys together. She's amazing. But in that moment, like, I was like, how am I going to do this? And I started to examine my gifts, and I went into scripture again. Then I started to look at what St. Paul says, and I believe it's in wisdom too, where they start naming all the different gifts.

And I'm going, well, what do I have? Do I have a gift of prophecy, of wisdom? Does it seem like I have a lot of wisdom? Maybe a little bit of knowledge, like what are these different ones? And then I started to look and go, okay, I have gifts. I have an overall singular purpose that we all have, which is to bring people to Christ, right? Go and make disciples and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.� But within that purpose, we all have a unique purpose.

You found yours. You�re doing this, and it�s changed the lives of people all over the world. I�ve found this, and I�m doing it and helping men. Tim Cynova Tell people about it. Just a guy in the pew. Again, there�s a link at the top of the description below to all those who are checking out who can find your podcast. But one of the things I was really impressed to see is that you have these monthly prayer journals, masculine prayer journals that you send out. You showed it to me before and it looked really great.

Tell us about that. Yeah. So it's the narrow roads, what it's called. And Ryan Foley helped me put that together, a mutual friend. I was sitting there looking at the ministry, the podcast had started, and all we were doing was really talking about the sins we struggled with in our life. I had no idea how to do a podcast. There was a deacon that was on EWTN, Deacon Jeff Terzemski, lives in my town.

He said, �I love the stuff you're doing with men. You show up, I'll hit record, and you start talking.� I had no clue what I was doing. But we had a bag of what I called the bag of sins. So in the beginning, some guys were embarrassed and wouldn't talk about things in their life. So I took a bunch of pieces of paper and ripped them up. And one night when everybody came in, I said, write down what you're struggling with in a couple words. Don't write a dissertation, just porn, whatever it is.

And we picked those out and talked about them. And guys would feel they'd have the ability to speak about them because it wasn't me standing up going, �I struggle with porn� and all that so they could speak freely about it. So when he asked me, I said � he goes, �Well, what would you talk about?� I said, �You know, I got this bag of sins. I mean, a lot of guys are struggling with this stuff.� I'd pull them out, and there was like 18 of them that struggled with confession or something like that.

So we started doing those shows. And through that, the ministry started growing. I started getting asked to speak. And we had the men's group that started at my parish that night, still meeting every Wednesday for six years since then. Praise God. Being there for each other. Well, there were guys in there that would show up and we kind of dump our dirty laundry

like, I mean, I suck this week and here's why. And eventually got to the point where, okay, we can't just talk about how bad we are, how terrible we are, like, that's not good for anybody either. Yeah, like, it's my turn to hit myself in the head with a hammer, you know? But we had to move on. So I thought, okay, discipleship is a big part of what Jesus talked about, so how do we become the men that we need to be? So I had the things that you asked me about about I was doing in my life that kept me moving

in the direction that I hoped was towards heaven. And some of the guys in the group would call me during the week and they'd say, man, I know it was their Wednesday night and it was great that night, but man, my life sucks. My wife's mad at me. My daughter's angry. I might get fired, you know. And I'd listen to it for like an hour or whatever during the day. And this is what I was still working at the auto parts place at the time.

And this one guy in particular, he knows who I'm talking about, I told him this, he calls me every Monday and I finally get to the point where I'm like, dude, wait, before you start this diatribe, like, you know, have you been to Mass? No. Have you prayed? No. Have you like gone to confession or. Have you prayed? No. Have you gone to confession or adoration or anything?" And he's like, no.

And I said, call me back when you've done any one of those things. And so they get mad and hang up the phone and cuss me out. You're not supposed to help me. I'm Jesus' guy, you are. So anyway, they'd call me back the next day and they'd say, dude, as mad as I was at the time, I went at the time, I went by the church, I sat for the tabernacle and things were better. I was like, yeah, isn't that funny how when we do the things we know we need to do, our

life gets better? So that narrow road was basically putting together an opportunities for grace chart with like, hey, you want more of God in your life? This isn't commitment because God's hate the word commitment. Right? You're just like, hey, Matt, you want to come to this in two weeks? Ask me the day before. You know, none of us want to do that.

But you had all these things like morning prayer, daily mass, confession, adoration, time with my wife, time with my kids, and guys can check what they're doing every day. I love that. It's so beautifully laid out, too. How do people get it? They get it at justaguyonapute.com. So they can sign up there. There's something at the top that says join our community.

When they do, they sign up. They get the book. It's I think 25 a month. They come to their door, there's something at the top that says join our community. When they do, they sign up, they get the book. It's I think 25 a month. They come to their door, beginning of the month, and then it's got reflections, five reflections. You work through a virtue, a different one every month. Perseverance, patience, gratitude, generosity, humility, whatever it is, and you work through it in the four main relationships of your life.

You gotta say all the time, I wanna be virtuous. And they're like, when's it gonna happen? Where's the virtuous bolt coming from? And it never happens like that. So we have to actively seek it. So each week you live it in those relationships. And so it's making you like, how did I live perseverance in my relationship with my life today?

So you have all that. There's prayers in there that help you with the virtue. You sign up for it. It comes to your door at the beginning of the month. We have parish options where guys and groups can get into it. We have videos we make that go along with it. There are eight to ten minutes that kick them off in a meeting. There's hundreds of guys doing it.

I got a picture of a guy in Scotland the other day holding it up and there was a narrow path he was standing on, this grass. He's like, I'm on the narrow road with my narrow road. I'm like, all right, that's cool. So that's what we've been doing and that's all I want to do, Matt. I didn't get into this to be on a stage or anything. I just want to help people find what I've found, that we have a merciful God who loves you and can do amazing things with your life if you let him.

What I want to do is just take a break for two minutes and when we get back, I want to ask you about your 30 days of rehab and what that was like, and then we'll take some questions from the live chat and from our patrons. So if you're here, please stick around. We'll be back in two minutes. All right. live chat and from our patrons. So if you're here, please stick around. We'll be back in two minutes. Right. All right, I want to say thank you to Ethos Logos Investments for supporting this show, elinvestments.net slash pints. I guess when I was a bit younger, I thought that investing was something that only rich people did, or old people did, or rich old people did.

I didn't realise it was something that I should be looking into as well. And when I began looking into it I realised I don't want to invest in companies that are doing immoral things. And that's where Ethos Logos Investments comes in. They were founded to work with individuals and institutions within the United States that seek to infuse their morals into their investment portfolio, with portfolios that adhere to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Responsible Investing Guidelines. You can be sure that you aren't

profiting from intrinsic evils like abortion, embryonic stem cell research, pornography, or human trafficking. Please go check them out. Ethos Logos Investments is what they're called. elinvestments.net slash pints. There's a link in the description below. elinvestments.net slash pints. For employers, they offer socially responsible and Catholic 401k and 403b options as well. So yeah, go check them out. elinvestments.net slash pints. Securities offered through Securities America Inc. Member FINRA SIPIC.

Ethos Logos Investments and Securities America are separate entities. Advisory services offered through Securities America Advisors Incorporated. Yes! The second group I want to thank is Halo. Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W.com slash Matt Fradd. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. Halo is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate. It's not like new age mindfulness apps that lead into wrong ways of thinking. This is a hundred percent

Catholic and it's super sophisticated. If you go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up there, you'll get a few months for free before deciding if you want to pay a minimal amount every month to have access to their entire app. Now you can download the app right now and you'll get access to certain things for free. So be sure to check that out if you just wanna, you know, play around with it and see what they have to offer. But if you want access to everything that they have, like sleep stories and Bible studies

and all sorts of beautiful things like that, you have to pay a certain amount every month to get access to that. If you want access to everything for a few months, just go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd, hello.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up there. Thanks. Okay, we're back. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do It pints. This is amazing. We have like 400 people chilling.

Amazing. So before we get to questions, and Neil, maybe you can keep track if we get any super chats or something, but I wanted to ask you about the 30 days of recovery. What was that like? Because you never got into that. It was crazy, man. Honestly, I never been, you know, I was embarrassed obviously. Um, it was, it was, it was weird because there was a lot of young people,

like I was sitting there thinking I was terrible for like the Coke I was doing, but there was a lot of kids that like were in there their fourth time and they were 19 and they were heroin addicts. And I didn't realize at that time of my life, like heroin is such a big deal. There was these, and the young people would come in and like – I would be in the group session with the counselor and they knew each other like on a first name basis because the kids just kept coming back in there, you know? And so it was very hard because I was trying to seriously like – I want to change my life, you know? I want this to – I want to – I had my notebook and I was doing all

the things they asked me to do and reading the books they suggested, which some of them were not very Catholic. They were very kind of Eastern spirituality stuff. But I tried yoga and it just hurt a lot. I'm big and not flexible. But no, we would sit there and it was hard because Anselm Island weren't a good place. I was going in and out of there. I didn't feel like there was anybody I could relate to, because they were either alcoholics,

which I mean, I'm drinking a beer right now to explain that to people. Like, Coke was my problem. I drank beer to offset the Coke. I don't have a problem with drinking. But it just was hard to identify with anybody. So I'd read these books, and I looked at one the other day, and I was like, man, I'm glad I did not go down that path, because it was really contrary to what the church believes and things like that. So that was hard.

But I just took it seriously. I went every day. I fought the shame that came from I'm in a rehab place and all that. Just thought, no, I'm fixing my life. I did go to AA. People ask me that a lot. I didn't care for it that much. I went to NA and I really didn't like that.

I felt more comfortable at AA. But- Why is that? I don't know, it was a different feel. It may have just been the meeting, you know, because they had different people leading the meetings. But I went to AA and it became sort of like

a crutch for me a little bit. I would go just to get out of the house And have somebody to talk to because Angela and I obviously weren't really in a great place at that time And I noticed there was a lot of men Like there was these two old men they'd sit there every day and they like I went to a park bench today And I looked at the sky and the kids walk in and I didn't have a beer today You know and I was just like I'm so glad they found a place like this But like I want my life to be joyful.

And right now, and I'm not knocking AA, please don't anybody think I'm doing that. But I just wasn't finding it there. I've really found it in the church. But it was hard. I mean, going every day, constantly admitting yourself you had a problem. The hardest part was getting Angel to go to Al-Anon, to go to those, to go to those meetings on Saturdays. She was – because she would just – I guess it made it real for her. You know, like, I'm in this place with all these people that have problems. Yeah, like admitting it, isn't it?

Right. And I'm here because of you, you know, and so Saturday mornings were never that pleasant after that meeting, you know, obviously. But she stuck through it. She kept her book. How did you deal with the retching? You know, earlier you were saying your body would physically retch wanting the cocaine. How did that? Well, it was hard. I just had to get used to it, you know. I just had to deal with it. And there was a lot of times where I just would try to work out or something to like

offset just to do something other than sitting there feeling sick. You know, I would oftentimes when it came on, I would go to the church to pray and just offer it up, like, Lord, this is for all of us that are suffering and haven't found you. That kind of stuff. Because I mean, you said you had made a thousand promises and went back. Was there a time that you were like, crap, I'm going back again. This is crazy.

Yeah. After that really conversion moment, after being in jail, was there a point where you thought you might go back to it? No, and people ask me a lot too. They're like, how do you go from doing that much cocaine to does it ever bother you? And I mean, yeah, if I hear Eric Clapton's cocaine come on the radio, there might be a hair on the back of my neck stand up or a movie like Blow or something comes on. I'm changing the channel and I see it.

But this is going to sound like a corny answer. But when I'm in the car and that song comes on and I look in the rear view mirror at my three beautiful kids and I look at my wife and the place that I have that God's grace is the only reason I'm here and I wouldn't throw that away for anything. There are real relationships I have in my life, like real friendships. The people that love me, that I love, guys like you and other people that I really just – I stop and every time that comes around, I start to count my blessings.

And I start to go, yeah, when you were doing that, you were lonely, you were addicted to porn, you felt like crap all the time, you had two surgeries on a deviated septum because of the damage I did to my nose. Really? Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I don't want that anymore. Here I have a wife who loves me, we're equally yoked, to have children that love to be around me and I love to be around them and have the greatest friends I've ever had in my life and have a purpose.

So when the devil comes and he starts pulling on that thread, I just cut it off and I look at the gifts that God's given me and say, I'll never give this up. I'll never give this up. Ben Stuart I want to just looking in the live chat right now. You're not boring me. I've got one eye on the questions coming in. Well, I don't care if I'm boring you.

I have a microphone. JW says, �Does confessing to your brother matter? I found that telling people about your sins, especially your loved ones you need forgiveness from was essential to restoration.� You? So that was his experience. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. forgiveness from was essential to restoration. You? So that was his experience. Darrell Bock Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

Like you have to – I mean, you find that in any sort of AA or any sort of 12-step deal is you have to make amends with the people that you've hurt. It doesn't mean that they have to accept it. That is an often-time mistake where we get really upset because someone won't take our forgiveness that we're so freely giving. But it's not about that. It's about going and doing what you're asked to do is asking forgiveness. You can't control whether they forgive you

or not. But what you can do is go and be repentant and to be sorry for what you've caused. That's what I found with Angela. As many times I said, �I'm sorry.� It didn't matter because she wasn't in a place to forgive me. And the devil would use that, right? Like, see, no matter what you're going to do, she's never going to forgive you, your marriage is always going to be terrible, you're always – and I had to understand, like, I can't command her, I can't make her forgive me. All I can do is go with an open and honest heart and ask for forgiveness with my whole heart. And eventually, you know, you change your behavior, you change the way you are, and you have people in your life that are accepting and loving like Ansel was, then those things

sort of fix themselves. Did you ever go back to some of those guys you were doing Coke with and reach out to them? Yeah, I mean it was kind of after the jail bell got wrong, a lot of them just kind of disappeared from me. I see them at football games when we go to the University of Memphis games and stuff like that But I think it was a wake-up call for a lot of them, you know

And they just kind of said like god it wasn't me But you know, I moved on in my life everything that in that time of my life I look back and like I don't really have memories of college a lot of people like oh college was the greatest ever I'm like I it was one of the worst times of my life. So I kind of move away from that I see them. I'm cordial to them. Some of them go to my parish and it's not like I don't like them. It's just I kind of separate myself from anything that was in that life. Yeah, that makes sense.

Chekub Makolo says, John, have you ever considered adding the rosary to your spiritual practice? Yes. And then did you? Darrell Bock Any further? No. Yes, I have. And somebody asked this the other night. It's something I was doing. And I don't do the rosary as much as I should.

I should do it every day, I know, and Mary said too. I have other forms of prayer that I feel closer to Jesus in really, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Rosie. I hope to grow in that relationship more with her. Is this why you gave me a rotary? I did because I didn't need it. I don't use it, so I gave it to you. I said he'll use it.

No. Let's see here. Do you have an Elliott Brubaker? Thanks for being here, Elliott. He says, �Does your experience shape your opinion on the politics of the war on drugs?� Do you have any strong opinion on that? Darrell Bock Well, I mean, obviously drugs are bad and we don't need them.

Like, I mean, yeah, I think it's the worst thing, one of the worst things in the world. I mean, porn's up there too, but with the way people are treated and all those things. But yeah, I mean, just for this stuff to pour in our country and all the kids are doing stuff bass Salt's all that kind of crazy stuff. I mean, yes, it's that stuff needs to be Taken care of and our country needs to be clean of it I don't know that wherever ever will be but I don't know that there's more things out there that tear apart a family quicker than that Jay

Scoffman says I'm a husband and a father of three and I�m awaiting trial. What are some things that can help me get through this?� � need to spend some time with the Lord in prayer, with a priest and some other people that can help you understand what your identity is now. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest problems we have in the world is it's like I said before, we identify with what we've done and the devil keeps us in that place. So you need to start understanding whatever you're facing, whatever you've done, that God isn't sitting there looking at you and accusing you of that. He's like the father and the prodigal son.

He sees you coming on the horizon and he can't wait to embrace you, to give you his coat, to give you his ring, all those things. He doesn't care about the pig slop and the mess that the prodigal son had on in the story. He embraced him anyway, and it's the same thing with you, man. Like you – That's beautiful. I didn't ever make that connection before, it's not like the father said go wash up and I'll give you a good hug. Here's the hose you money scrubbing, you know, whatever, you wasted everything.

Now he comes home and that's, I love that parable because it shows us humility, vulnerability and all these things. The son finally is flopping around in that pig slop and he's eating, he won't even eat the pods, they won't give him the pods, they're feeding the pigs he's eating – he won't even eat the pods. They won't give him the pods. They're feeding the pigs. And he's saying they won't even give me those. And one day he's sitting there in that mess and he says, even my father's servants are

treated better than this. That's the moment of humility, right? Like I've got myself in this mess. I can't get myself out and I need someone else. I need to go home to my father. And so he goes and then when he gets there, I can't remember all the verses, but he basically starts spewing all his father up, wasted what you've given me up. And the father's not sitting there with a raised hand or someone waiting to torture

him or to do something to him. He's sitting there facing him and he takes his finest robes, right? His finest robes, his finest ring, calls for the finest calf, and he puts it on this pig slop pig dung covered guy. And he never once says, �You know what? You shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't have done that.� He receives him and even tells the brother who's angry

about it, �You should be rejoicing because our son was lost and he's come home.� Right? I mean, that's my answer to that. Start building a relationship with Jesus. You do that through prayer, through the scripture, through the mass, and through the sacraments, because you're going to need it through all the hard times you're going to go through. Thanks to Deborah R. for the super chat. She says, �Does John's wife ever give her testimony as a spouse? Would love to hear it.� Yeah, we've been talking about that. Andrew, I don't mean � God, second time I've

had to like � I've got a boyfriend! That's right, geez. God, people are gonna be like, all right, I'm done. We just went to 100 viewers. No, I'm just kidding. Now Angela. We'd love you anyway. She is. You and Andrew. She's, where do you look good together?

No, sorry. She's an introvert, and so we talked about doing it one time and it was still sorta like sore. So I've actually thought about having Deacon Jeff come on my podcast and like I'm not on it and let him interview her You know if you were ever interested in it, she'd love to talk to you. I'm sure my wife too would be yeah Yeah, but now I'd love her too and she's at the point now where she is it we started that men's group and now she started a her to, and she's at the point now where she is. We started that men's group, and now she started a – what is it called – walking with purpose group, and there's 35 women meeting.

So she's really – she was always a better Catholic and a better Christian than I ever was, even to this day. But she sort of found herself in all of this, and we're really equally yoked in a lot of this, and so she's willing to do that. I need to figure out how to do it that gives justification to it and not justification but gives her the best opportunity to really share her heart the way I've been able to share mine. We have a let's see cyber girl who is also a patron thank you very much. She says a wife and mom here. I'm dealing with a hair trigger tempter temp Tempo Oh temper. Okay

I've been dealing with a chronic pain condition and I'm exhausted from suffering bless you bless you bless you It's any program for women. She's saying I Mean, there's plenty. Oh, we just mentioned walking with purpose Yeah, I wonder if she's talking about a program to overcome anger. Oh, anger, yeah, yeah. Sonia Corbett's got something for that. Does she? Yeah, go look up Sonia Corbett.

It's called Rest, I believe, and it's all about anger, anxiety. She did like a 15-part series, and it's free on her website, which I think is BibleStudyEvangelista.com. So she's a friend, and she's awesome. She's coming to my parish every week. That's great things. Yeah, Neil, let us know if that's right.com. So she's a friend and she's awesome. She's coming to my parish in a couple weeks. That's great things. Yeah. Yeah, Neil, let us know if that's right. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, check that out. God bless you, you beautiful woman. I mean, yeah, you know, when you're a kid and you wonder why old people are grumpy, and you just had no idea how much pain they're

in just from being kind of older. Yeah. You and I are getting older and like we have back aches and knee aches and things like this and as you get older, that just can get worse. And if you're in chronic pain, it's understandable. You know, you'll be angry and lashing out, but it doesn't make anything better. So check out, yeah, that, uh, yeah. I'm sort of an Adonis, so I don't have those problems.

Cyber Girl Neil will put a link in the description below to that and to anybody else who's looking to kind of try to overcome anger Let's see Okay, here's a funny story before I mispronounce this person's name I'm really bad at names and that's probably cuz I'm from Australia. Yeah, John and whoever Bruce Yeah, but I was in Canada and I was leading this small group and they kind of give you a list of the kids that were going to be in my small group, you know, so I'm reading through it and you're like, John, a with me. Um,

Jack use Jack. Oh, Jacques, my bad. All right. So, so with that, Jacques is Philippe. Yeah. Oh Jacques, my bad. All right, so with that, with that in mind. Jacques is Philippe. Yeah. That's right. Guillermo says, sorry mate if I messed that up, this is such a moving testimony, he says,

not directly related, but what's one piece of advice you would give to men that are about to enter fatherhood? That's a good question. Man, honestly, come to grips and start to realize how selfish you are, because it's really hard. I always tell people all the time, you want to figure out how selfish you are, get married. And then have kids. Yeah, and then have kids.

Amen. So just start to realize, there's a life that I'm going to be responsible for, right? And it is the greatest gift that the father could give. There's so many people that can't have children and things like that, and that I need to get rid of some of the things in my life. And there's going to be a change, right? I kind of thought, well, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. I'll keep going to the bar on Tuesday night and meeting my buddies and all that stuff.

And so I would simply just start to focus on where in my life I feel that I'm putting myself first and start trying to remove some of that stuff and get ready because this kid is going to be the greatest gift in your life, other than your wife. You need to be able to be prepared to give your whole self to him. Yeah. I just feel like I want to say this to all those who are watching right now. Maybe you're watching this after the fact. I know this sounds like a shameless plug here, but if this if this

Testimony from John has impacted you, please share it on Facebook Please like please comment help the algorithm because I really think that this is a story that's actually going to change people's lives You know, I just had a pints with Aquinas patreon conference last last week and just meeting people who because of the interviews I've had like I just became Catholic, I was a Protestant professor or I was doing this stuff. And then, so it is remarkable. I mean, you sit here in cyberland, you're probably the same, you run a podcast and you forget that there's real people, flesh and blood, who are being impacted. And I have no doubt that this story is going to impact a lot of people. So please share it.

Give us a thumbs up. You know, leave a comment and let's try to get this out there. Nate Noble says, should everyone with a powerful conversion share their story or is it better to just ponder these things in your heart like Mary? That's a good question. You know, I would say that you have a story and you need to tell it. Not everybody, you know, I never asked to be on a stage or any of that stuff. It's just what's happened with all this. But, you know, and I'll murder this quote, you probably know it. But like, I think it was Pope Paul VI said something about

like they're good teachers, but only when they're first witnesses or something like that. Yeah, people listen to witnesses more than teachers and if they are listening to teachers it's because they're first witnesses. Yeah, that's it. Something to that effect. Yeah, you had to show me up, whatever. You're welcome. I'm just kidding.

So yes, that was it. And I think it's the truth. Like people ask me all the time, what can I do? I feel like there's nothing I can do. Or like the guy says, I don't have some crazy coke story. No, but you have a story. And Jesus has touched you individually in some way, and there's going to be somebody that benefits with that.

You know, oftentimes people – I hear it all the time, I don't know how to evangelize. I know we're supposed to, but I don't know how to. And you think that you've got to be able to quote Aquinas or to be able to quote the church fathers and say something that's just ridiculously intelligent at any time. But a lot of times what changes lives is just saying, like, look, I was here and now I'm not. It's one of my favorite lines from The Chosen, right? And I think it's the second episode with Mary Magdalene, and Nicodemus is coming back trying to figure out how she was healed.

And he says, you know, was it me, was it me? And she said, no, it wasn't you. And he finally – he says, well, what happened? And she said, there was, it wasn't you.� And he finally, he says, �Well, what happened?� And she said, �There was this man and I was one way.� Yes, that's right. And then he came into my life or something like that and now I'm completely different and so I will know him for the rest of my life. Every one of us has that story, whether it's porn and things you dealt with matter, it's

drugs and what I've dealt with, whether it's a loss of a parent or something, you have a story that's going to affect somebody. Again, you're not the only person that's gone through that thing in your life. You're not that interesting. Right. You're not that – you're unique in a way that's beautiful, but you're not – your sin isn't what makes you special. Right. And so you share that, and you don't know how that impacts people. I wouldn't be sitting here today if it wasn't for that young focus minister.

You know what? I to – sorry, mate. No, you're okay. Just to cut you off. But to go along with that analogy we talked about earlier about this banquet and there's light in the middle and we're all off on the peripheries and the darkness afraid to come out. Sure. It's almost like you're by the table being like, no, no, come.

Come. Like let me tell you, I was as gross as you think you are, but he loves you. Yeah. That's right. You have this invitation. You're just not – you're not opening it. That's the real issue. That's right. You have this invitation. You're just not opening it. That's the real issue. That's a good way to put it. Jordan Oreck says that he is a non-denominational charismatic pastor who is now half-elic,

meaning half Catholic, because Bishop Barron started showing up on my YouTube feed. So he says sharing links can really help people. So again, don't think that your little share of this video isn't going to impact people. It very much might. Thank you, Jordan, and God bless you on your journey. Yeah. Oh, here he says, the same fellow says, �I'm currently attending RCIA classes every week as well. I'm not full-blown Catholic at the moment, but down the road we'll see. Yeah, bless you brother. Wait till they get to the fathers.

That's right. Yeah. Ryan says, I'm definitely suffering with addiction. Addiction to rage, distraction, porn, lust and gluttony. I know that much of it is due to the internet, but I'm struggling to quit. The internet has led me back to Christ and also keeps me from drawing closer. Ooh, what a beautiful line. What a beautiful line.

Yeah. Yeah. That's tough. I mean, it is definitely a double-edged sword. You know, there's good things in, bad things in it. Yeah. I mean, I – I mean, one of the ways I've tried to kind of regulate my internet use as everybody knows by now is by getting rid of my smartphone. It's not like I'm off the internet, I'm on the internet. But when I go home, I don't have any computer I can access there. We have a desktop, but I just had my wife change that password because it's not even because of porn, it's not even because of temptation to porn, it's because of, oh, I've

just got to go check that thing. And then three hours later. And even if it's not three hours later, it's like five minutes out of every hour. It just takes my time away. that thing. And then three hours later. And even if it's not three hours later, it's like five minutes out of every hour. Yeah, sure. It just takes my time away. So, you know, I see what this person's saying and it does bring you closer, but maybe there's a way you can regulate it like that.

Because now when I go home, sometimes I'll wonder like, oh, I wonder if that guy emailed me back. I really want to get that email. I wonder, but I can't do anything about it until the next day. Sure, yeah. So it's just a way to sort of regulate it because I do think smartphones, so-called and smart watches, God have mercy, why you would want to tether yourself to the internet boggles my mind.

These things I think are often smarter, quote unquote, than us. And we think we're smarter than we are, but they actually are smarter. So anyway. I was waiting for you to look at me like that. I was trying to get the eye stare for a minute. I just don't like the fact that I can't send you gifts. Like I have to draw pictures and mail them to you because you can't get them on your phone. That's right. You tried sending me a gift the other day and I just got it. I was like, you know, it was a glorious Dwight from the office gift.

I really thought that through and you're like, sorry, I can't see them. By the way, big thanks to Dez Farrell who sent us a super chat just saying good job. Thanks a lot, man. Thank you. Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ. As we wrap up here, tell people how they can get involved in your ministry. Actually somebody asked that Ryan Pope. He's like, that's exciting.

He wants to learn more about Just a Guy on the Pew. Is he the one that was at the weekend? Yes, yes, good memory. He gave you the trophy from the office? Yes, yes, yes. Hey Ryan, it's good to hear from you. Justaguyonthepew.com, everything's there. We've got the podcast, we've got about 150 audio episodes, but we also do interviews. Matt's

gonna come on here on mine here soon. So we've had you know Sonic Corbett and people like that on. So you can see all that. If you want to sign up for the narrow road you can do that at justguyonapu.com too. Those will be mailed out to you monthly. They'll focus on a different virtue. Really help you out in your life if you're wanting to start habits in your life that keep going the right way. And then you can book me for all sorts of things on the page too. So if you want to start a men's group in your peers, that's what I'm really passionate

about Matt, we were talking about that. I'll go and give a talk, but I would much rather come and help build something that'll last. I love that. Start something that'll last. You don't just kind of come in, hit people with a Jesus stick as you say, and have them crying and leave. That's right.

Mic drops and you'd be better. You come to set up something, which is just so terrific. Right. Well, I know I've seen the need of it for men. So like it's a real vulnerable, authentic sort of place where you can take the mask off, leave them at the door and be yourself. That's what most men are looking for. I just want to be myself, right?

I'm tired of acting like all this other stuff. So you can find all that just go to the pew.com, conferences, parish missions, all those things there. Good stuff. And again, links to just a guy in the pew, that's at the very top of the description below. So I just ask everybody, please click that out, check out the great work that John's doing.

And John, thank you very, very kindly for coming all this way and being on the show. This has been awesome. Oh, dude, thank you. I really enjoy your friendship and the opportunity you give me, man. Thank you.