Leap of Faith - Bryan Jernigan

We have we just jumped both of us not knowing really what was you know at the bottom of the ledge that we jumped off of but we just jumped so it was great at first we've had some turbulence at times and it's been rough you know there having having your own businesses is it's a character builder it's a character revealer maybe there's probably nothing better for personal growth than then owning your own business you find out a lot about yourself with owning your own business but it's been good that God has God has been faithful through all of it I'm Brian Jernigan husband founder a square space web designer a social media coordinator a Jubilee church in Bangalore and I can't wait it's had a really story welcome to faithfully stories the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life join us as we delve into their challenges moments of encouragement and answered prayers the faithfully stories podcast is brought to you by faithfully an online community committed to empowering church leaders pastors staff and volunteers learn more at faithfully.co get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the frontlines of ministry on the faithfully stories podcast let's start with like did you grow up in a Christian home or you came to faith another way like how did you come to faith okay got you so yeah I grew up in a Christian home I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church so my I guess I'm kind of like second generation maybe somewhat part like my dad's dad was the Southern Baptist preacher so my my dad was a preacher's kid and so you know he grew up in church all the time you know whenever I was growing up we when I was young we were there Sunday not Wednesday not Sunday not and so I grew up in church I I was saved whenever her I was 12 at a revival and my church bad times the following Sunday I remember a lot of the feeling that the Lord was pulling at me and it was a so like like I talked about my wife she's she's very extroverted she's very like doing something like being on a podcast is second nature to her like she lives for that kind of thing I would rather be on the other side of the camera and so I don't want to go in front of a room and talk I don't want to do that type of thing so even the the whole you know the altar call of coming up front and everybody watching you walk up front and whatever like I was battling that big time I knew that the Lord was calling it like Brian you know you need to do this you need to I want the Lord was calling me and I kept just putting it off putting it off putting it off and this is probably over several months time at this at this revival like it was just I guess it just got to the point where it was like okay this is not going away and I know I need to do this I know that this is the step that I need to take I know the Lord's calling me just go just step out into the aisle and walk to the front like you know it's the whole profess you know with your mouth like you you gotta you have to say you can't confess your mouth you can't keep it to yourself it's a it's a profession of faith so I mean you have to you have to go and you have to you know you can't hide it so so that was you know I guess that I got bad ties the following week you know that that whole public thing of baptism and things were good I was young whenever I got a little bit older and became so my parents at that point were divorced and they've been divorced a couple years prior before that I think it was 12 and I got saved that was 10 when I got divorced and so I live with my mom most of the time went to dads on every other weekend and do you mind if we get into that a little bit sure I only mentioned it because like the last three podcasts yeah it's been coming up a lot so I was just curious because you said your dad was a pastor's kid right he's a PK how did that affect your faith when your parents got divorced well I don't know that it necessarily affected my faith when they get divorced it may have it probably did actually have an effect on my faith on down the road like once you're in it once you're living the life of my parents are divorced my parents don't live together anymore I have two separate households that I go to now I don't have a dad in the house I don't have you know another male role model around all the time to to for me to see that type of thing so I think you know and just maybe even to hold me accountable of like hey you need to be in church I don't know how that would have affected me you know that's something that I don't know that every kid who's the product of a split household thinks about like you know how would things have been different if my parents had still been together probably pretty normal thing to think about but yeah I don't know I'm not sure how that would have affected if I would have you know because one of the things that I just mentioned like was talking about how one of the reasons when I stopped going to church was because of not wanting to be like a lot of the people who were at church that I saw as hypocritical somewhat like to live one way Monday through Saturday and then there were a different person on Sunday mornings and so I didn't so I don't know like how much you know it probably if I'd had someone to talk to about you know that that's why hey I'm not going to church this is why I probably could have bounced that off of them and probably gotten some wisdom at that point of why you know hey you know that's maybe not your best route to approach this problem or this thing that you're going through but it happened thankfully the Lord had grace for me like it's because like I said it was about a 10 year period there where I didn't go to church going off to college graduated college started teaching and coaching and then so I was the teaching and coaching job that I got at the time I was still in the same town where I had went to college at about an hour down the road from here and this for here here's home for me this is where I grew up at so so whenever I finally get a job back home and get moved back here to where all my families at hey Brian do you want to come to church with us okay yeah I'll go to church and man from that so much has happened I met my wife at church you know and none of this stuff like I wouldn't even be talking to you right now if not for that go back to you know I think it was in tooth it's like August now is at the end of July in 2000 and I met wife we both thought there's you know someone had tried to set us up my elder brothers wife my sister-in-law had set us up I'm thinking there's we have an 11 year age gap between the two of us and so at that time you know right now I'm about to turn 44 and she's 32 so we got to it's 11 in a little bit a few months but whenever you say we would have been 33 and 21 the time it's a lot different than 44 and 32 and it says like there's no way this is going to work and then we went through that for about six months you have a lot you and your wife have a lot of great story so I'm gonna cut you off because I want to go a little bit deeper on what made you want to go back to church right like compelled you and then to okay like what is the thing you are working out with the age gap because that's some yeah that's a very interesting story right there yeah so what made me want it so I can say I grew up Southern Baptist and it was very traditional service it was I was bored just and it's kind of fit to say that but it was it was the same thing every week you know the order of service was the same it was the same songs it was the you know singing from him or the back of the pew and it was so like you know to be honest like on top of the you know not wanting to be like anybody else that was there shouldn't say everybody else but that's what my mind was that's why I was thinking that's why I saw it that was that was my rationalization for it when reality it might have been just laziness but I rationalized it into into something else but on top of that it was this is the same old same like it I'm saved you know I've got Jesus why do I need this but then when I got when they invited me to church it was a non-denominational church it was more of a like the praise and worship was completely different the message was different you know it wasn't it was no longer you have to get dressed up to go to church it was a come as you are I mean it was a lot of the seeker friendly stuff and it was seeker friendly it was it was friendly to what I was you know and it it pulled me back in and so you know I think that was that was a lot of it it was I found faith I found all this stuff it became interesting again it was there was a different aspect a different way of looking at it as an as an adult because you know like the 10-year gap had gone from I'm a kid to now I'm an adult there's a different perspective there at that point I look at things so that was a lot of it so going back to I meet my wife she's 21 I'm 33 I had so I'm 33 years old and still single never been married and that's because I easily found something wrong with everyone that I dated and I think a lot of that goes back to having parents that were divorced so my and not just divorced once and both of my parents at this point now have been through multiple divorces and so and just see that that's what I saw that's what that was the example that I saw of marriage and it was all just like how marriage doesn't work it's like man I don't I don't want to go through that myself I sure don't want to have kids and then put them through that and I was immature I wasn't ready for marriage I think I knew that deep down if I get married and I'm ready for it then nothing to be a very good husband and so I think it kind of got to a point in life there where I was I was no longer dating to date I was dating because I did want to find somebody to marry I didn't want to find someone to spend the rest of my I didn't know how I was gonna do it because I don't know how to do it I'm very lucky that I found her because she like so her mom and dad are there 20 plus years of being married they're not perfect many means they fight they don't get along all the time and whatever but getting to know her and getting to know them they were a great example to me of like hey it can work you can go into a marriage of like hey we both are going into this thing with the understanding that divorce is not an option and so it's like I think I can do this whatever and so it was kind of it was getting past some of that for me it was also getting past the age difference like okay she isn't we spent like the whole first six months of our dating or courtship of both of us I think just trying to find reasons why it wouldn't work and then at some point at one point in there you know about five six months in we said what if we just give this a chance when we just try like and see what happens because we just we keep trying to break up anyways and we then we never do we just keep going you know yeah I don't think this is gonna work anymore and then like the day later hey what are you doing later can we end up hanging out again and then it's like okay this is point one we just actually try and so both of us just kind of getting over some of that I think the age difference was I mean obviously it wasn't just a big deal for me it was a big deal for her too and so there was even some of it for me of like why does her dad not like me like he shouldn't like me like what is this you know 33-year-old guy won't with my 21-year-old daughter and he was never like that and it was like why why why is he not like that but why am I not getting grief from him but that never happened I don't know like I don't know what they saw in me or whatever but I guess it was halfway decent and they wouldn't let me stick around as long as I did but yeah so it was a lot to get through and I think I mean even today in my marriage the coming from divorce it affects that but I've got a wife who's very she's patient she gives me a lot of grace and we just kind of like we walk through it together there's a lot of times when we fight that whenever we fight I want to shut down I don't want to talk and she like nope we're not gonna do that eventually I have to just cave and we talk about it and we communicate and we work things out whatever but that's you know that's helped us a ton is that we we actually do fight things out we do you know respectfully and you know with love but we fight we have to you know you you have to get through those things but you don't do it by avoiding them for sure that just leads to resentment I think and we shouldn't leads to nowhere good so I'm definitely very blessed I have a question that I've found her yeah good um did her parents also go to your church yes yeah so that you're talking about the one where we met at yes so they saw you right yes yeah yeah so I'm just thinking maybe like they saw you in church and they thought oh he's a decent guy so let's give him a chance maybe you're not some stranger off the street yeah right yeah that's true I only bring that up because I think church is the perfect place to find people to get married with and become friends with but in most urban settings it's like the complete opposite because if you date somebody and you break up you can leave the church which I think is ridiculous it's like being an adult it just didn't work out you know but yeah so that's the only reason why I bring it up yes I see that some with the the whole you know it for sure happens with the marriage if the marriage ends a church will okay with which one of them does the church get to keep it's almost like who keeps the baby you know top deal and yeah I mean like I don't know it shouldn't I get that a little bit more with with a marriage ending for sure it shouldn't even have to be that way with that I mean I don't know why a church would have to feel like that they have to pick one person's side together because both parties are probably equally you know are both parties are at fault I mean it takes two to make a marriage work it takes two to make a marriage not work obviously you know the actions of one could be worse than the other but it takes it takes two in a relationship on either end of it so yeah so how do you you said you knew a little bit of building websites like how did you get into that and what did you learn and like where are you in that process like do you feel like you're a pro now or you're like oh no I'm still like figuring stuff out okay um so probably the the biggest thing here recently for us has been in April of 2023 so just this last year I resigned job school ball coach and teacher for the last for the previous 19 years and the year before I started getting it started getting this feeling like I needed to get a coaching aspect have a wife and in three daughters and they were they're all young now there's six four and two and with coaching there's some and so much time that that I missed at home so much time that you know so many days during my basketball season which is November through March that there be several days in a row where I wouldn't see them awake like I'd see them in their bed maybe in the morning before I left and I would see them in their bed of sleep whenever I got home and that and that had started to started to wear on me and here having to hear you know the things that had happened to them in their days from my wife now and she was she was great to the whole process she was a great coach's wife she had any of the games that we played at home and a lot of them that were on the road she loaded them up and she brought them to the games and before my game happened and after it happened you know in the stands would be a lot of the time that I would spend with them during during those months every year and it just got to where that wasn't that wasn't enough my time had become more valuable I was secure in my job in the the amount of it made a good salary and the the job was pretty secure in that you know there's we're going to need always going to need teachers and coaches and I didn't have to worry about that aspect of it a whole lot I was except I was an assistant coach at the high school level and so there's not a lot of you hear a lot of the stories and in coaching and stuff where where coaches go to follow don't go find any job from from winning and losing and that didn't that wasn't really a at the high school level and being an assistant I didn't have to worry about that a whole lot that didn't that didn't have any of you you lose your job at that level for for a lot of that mean could be a lot of other reasons but not not for winning and losing so I was pretty secure in that and so it was it's tough to leave but probably so I had started looking at getting out of getting out of the coaching and trying to stay in teaching and that was my plan can talk about God has plans for you and everybody thinks they have their own plan for their lives and that was what where the plan that I had come up with and I'm okay I'm going to get out of the teaching thing and and and then I can have a whole lot of my time freed up because the coaching thing's not happening anymore and then I'll you know still I have the security of the paycheck every month I'll have the security of I know I've got retirement come in I have the security of insurance been taken care of and all these other benefits and it was you know I thought that had the perfect plan built up and the that transition just kept hitting roadblock after roadblock after roadblock and so that first year that I had asked out of coaching it didn't happen as I go okay well I'll stick it out one more year see what happens at the end of that year and it was in so it was in this this past year in January it was probably in January that uh so about a year ago now that I just felt like the Lord was telling me I've got something for you Brian but in order for me to give it to you you've got to let go of what you have and I didn't even though this stuff was kind of going on at the time I didn't really even know what that was about at the time I was still in the process where I was thinking that I was going to just be able to get out of the coaching and keep teaching and I so this sounds kind of goofy but we were trying to figure out at the time like of how we were going to get some new bedroom a new bedroom set and it's like well we don't have the money and it happened like I felt it really that the Lord speak it to me when I was in my bedroom I'm thinking is about that and okay uh maybe we just need to sell all this stuff and to put the sleep in the floor on the couch or something for a while we'll do that and it's like okay and I just went on about it and then I kept hitting these roadblocks kept hitting these roadblocks and it's like I got to a point where I knew I didn't know where I was going to go where we were going and people and that's where you know I know like so for the for people watching my wife was on your first episode and she talked about in there about how um about this a little bit but we I knew that I had to do something different um so I had told her when we were going on a spring break trip because it was to the point where these coaching changes and stuff like this usually happened and throughout the you know in the year they usually happened a certain time and it wouldn't gonna happen and I was like Jessica I think I'm I think I'm just gonna resign I think I'm just gonna and I don't know what that and I told her that I don't know where I'm going I don't know where we're going but I can't stay here we have to do something different and so she was kind of taking it back and we talked about it over spring break and we were going on a trip and we're going to a place where we didn't like we had no cell phone servers and not going to be no distractions and stuff and we could just you know have time to think about it and have time to talk about it and it never went away it was like yeah this is what we've got to do um and so I resigned uh and I had been doing Squarespace website on the side and as we kind of the plan parting with like the teaching thing I was gonna continue teaching and just do this on the side and it was like that's gonna be the plan I'm gonna do that whatever had started been because she has a publishing company and she needed me to build website and that was probably two or three years prior and I was like okay I think I can figure it out I've always been kind of inclined to that kind of thing and uh I had done that with my coaching job like we had activity pages on our school districts website and I put those together and stuff and so I figured out how to build her website and the next thing I know I had um and this is still all while I'm coaching and teaching I had another business in town that wanted me to build a website for them and it's like I think I can make some money on that this and at the time I was just thinking it's gonna be on the side but um like we're just gonna do this and kind of pretty shortly after that she decided to quit the job that she was doing on the side and go up full time you know all in on her on her publishing business and so we have we just jumped both of us um not knowing really what was uh you know at the bottom of the at the bottom of the ledge that we jumped off of but we just jumped so it's been um it has you know it was great at first and then it you know we hit some we've hit some turbulence at times and it's been rough uh she's had to talk me you know down a few times I've had to talk her down a few times but it uh yeah it's it's been uh it has been you know there's having having your own businesses is um it's a character builder it's a character revealer maybe um there's been there's probably nothing better for personal growth than than owning your own business you find out a lot about yourself with owning your own business but it's been good uh god has god has been faithful through all of it you know it's one of the things I had to figure out how was going to approach this whole thing was am I going to try to be someone who can build you a website on any platform you want to be built on and I was like now this is something brand new for me if I want to be good at this I probably need to pick one and get and and learn it inside and out and so that's what I did when I went all in with Squarespace and so then there's multiple reasons why I did that whatever that's not for here but so I just decided to go in and it and I mean you can learn anything on YouTube you can learn anything on you know research and through blog and reading blogs and this and that that's was so crazy like this even the timing of this there's no other time in the history of mankind that this could even be a thing like if you go back to whenever I went through college if that's what I decided I wanted to do I couldn't have just dropped out of college and decided to be a web designer I would have had to have you know gotten a degree in that and learned you know I was able to you know this last year resign my position at teaching and coaching and go all in on building websites based off of what I had learned in my own research on the internet um but yeah so it started with with building her website for our publishing company and I so I just said it kind of happened by accident like I have always been kind of technologically inclined and so like you know for the longest I've always been the the person probably since the iPhone came out I've been the guy in my family who everybody comes to when their phone doesn't work hey Brian how do I fix this and because I just naturally I just naturally him inclined to research those things and figure out the ins and outs and again I used to going back I was single back then it's in a way more time with my hands but like when the newest software come out of the iPhone that was research like every new thing that it did I knew the ins and outs and they worked and I just have always found that kind of stuff interesting whenever you know in in in coaching whenever um what you had on your school district website became more and more important and they've started making it to where like hey we need you guys to have an activity page for for basketball we need you to have an activity page for your senior high basketball team and your junior high basketball team and it's like who's gonna do that and most coaches aren't wired that way but I was and so it just kind of naturally happened that I was the one who got that responsibility and I didn't like it wouldn't just something that I had to do I wanted to do that and so um you know generally speaking the the basketball activity page other than there was another guy that our soccer coach he was kind of wired the same way he was kind of inclined naturally inclined the same way so like our two activity pages look like professional websites and then some of the other ones it was like uh what happened here you know so um it's just starting to do that and I think that led to whenever my wife started her publishing company she had known what all I had done through uh my school's website and plus are running our social media accounts on that stuff and she's like Brian you can figure it out like when she did some research and figured out and said in that uh there's a we have a friend who is a graphic designer and he had previously also done web design and he just kind of got out of the web design part of it because he didn't like it as much and he was making enough money just doing graphic design and so I talked to him a little bit about the process and what are some resources where I can find and stuff out whatever this and so it was it was a learning it by doing it and so I just jumped in and figured things out uh here recently I think one of the things that has really helped catapult me into um really being able to just just in the business aspect of it to being able to make a little bit more money more money at that doing this uh and this was kind of I really feel like a god thing too like at the at the beginning of the summer after I've resigned I was like I'm going to have to kind of invest in myself a little bit here and do some sort of further education here on in this area so that I can you know if I'm going to take myself serious and expect other people to take me serious as a web designer I need to be able to do this right away and so I started looking at different things I was in a square space community's on Facebook and everything kept coming around to this guy named Sam Crawford like oh he's about to start a course you should look into that whatever and so I went to his website and like signed up for his newsletter and uh a long story short I ended up getting in on his course for I think I paid five bucks for it and it has been unbelievable like the the way he has everything laid out there was like 70 something video lessons in there about how you do everything from your customer management software to you know revision software that you can use and this is how you use it and this is how you keep yourself working and this is how you stack clients this is it just kind of lays it all out like a you know you do this and you're going to be successful like and then all about treating clients the right way and a lot of that's going to go a long ways into getting them to come back and award a mouth them spread the word that you're doing it and you do a good job and you're going to get more business from that but yeah I got in on a five-hours and I think he's charging thirty from for it now I got in at just the right time because it's one of those things like if it had if this all had happened a year later I probably wouldn't have done it because I don't know man I can't afford this whatever but it's and he's been great he's helped me out personally a few times when I've had problems with websites and like hey man just give me the login to it whatever and I'll just write some code for you oh wow really what like and say he just it's been it's been a blessing for sure but um so it's uh I just jumped in it was kind of like I don't know what my next step is but I'm gonna you know like okay that's probably the next step okay one step you know one step at a time figuring out as I've gone along but it's um that has been there has been a lot of faith that has been involved in that and it's been a lot of man what there's been times where it's like what am I what am I doing here like this isn't you know the whole imposter syndrome thing of really like you're you know you were a basketball coach whatever that's you know you're not a web designer what are you doing um and especially in those months where it's the business is slow and like what have I done to my family here and then I had you know my wife has to remind me like hey you heard from the Lord like he's not gonna like this is where the faith comes in you know he's not gonna lead you somewhere that uh that it is bad if you're for you know when you when you follow what he has asked you to do and so you know we were big Dave Ramsey people like we we when we when we gosh I think when we got engaged we started the financial peace class and it was probably like our plan when we got married was okay we're gonna get out of debt before we ever try to have kids and so I think it was like a year into our marriage we actually became debt free went to Nashville did the debt freeze cream that whole thing um had you know the the three to six month emergency fund built up and then that that had kind of I almost feel like here recently like I've had this feeling of that had almost become a God that had almost become an adult somewhat like that was our security not God but this emergency fund that we had built up and through this transition of careers here that emergency fund has dwindled and we've had to go and we've had to dip into it quite a bit in months and so when we've got to the point where it was like okay it's almost gone it's almost again like another word from the Lord like you were you were putting this thing up on a pedestal and it's you're you're gonna like I was kind of taking back the story of Abraham whenever the you know the other kings tried to bless him with money and and and livestock and all this and he says no I can't take it because then you know you or I won might think that it was you that made me rich and it wasn't it was God and so it's like it almost like that had to completely go away and it did at the end of December it was gone and December was a rough month zero zero income and January happened after the emergency fund was gone and like my business this month so far has been crazy like so many leads every week projects finished new projects started like it's wild like it's it's amazing how like I said whenever I resigned like God has always taken care of me and I have no reason to believe that you know 43 years in my life at that point that after 43 years worth of it that he's gonna stop now like especially whenever this is from him this is what you know he told me you I have something better for you like he's God's not a liar so it's just crazy to see that play out all the time I was gonna say isn't it because I'm 40 gonna be 41 and it's interesting the first 40 years I feel like was practice because it's like I wasn't really learning and afterwards it's like oh when you actually learn how to start from scratch with literally nothing but God it feels scary but like going through it and then like you said one step at a time you gain confidence to a point where you're like oh nothing scary anymore because no matter where I am God's gonna bless it as long as I trust him right and I feel like that's what you were going through and that's such an amazing story for a lot of people who because one thing I realize now is like we've been I feel like we've been lied to by the world like oh if you want to be this one thing you got to go through this one path but in life like you can reinvent yourself all the time right for me it was like I had no idea what I wanted to do and then I went to seminary and I thought I was gonna be a pastor forever and then I quit and I was going into tech and I thought I was gonna be like a Google engineer but like I met Alicia and so like all these zigzags right but at the end of the day the one thing that kept consistently the same was no matter how terrible or how great things were in my life I always had to remind myself God is good all the time and all the time God is good and that just kept me together man and yeah like even if I lose everything I feel like as long as I have that I I've started over like three times already in my life so it's not a big deal even even even the little reminders that we get he's even good and even though you're doing what he's actually doing you get to these places where you feel like what am I doing you doubt yourself was that really God he's good enough even to give you these little reminders along the way of like yeah even if it's not necessarily like oh you get a big paycheck or something like that but just these little reminders of like hey I got you I got you um I remember I'm reminded of we had a so at our church we just recently this year this school year started a private school it's kindergarten through fifth grade right now and so they're going through some of this because you know they're they're having to trust that donors are gonna happen they're having to trust that they're gonna be able to make payroll they're gonna and so like I was talking to the head of the school at church one Sunday she's like hey brine I don't know why like how she was asking me about how business was going I was telling her it was in December whenever everything was so rough and I was telling her a little bit about it and she's like I feel like I should tell you that I don't know really why whatever but she said that she had come across something and she is a good reminder for her because they were wondering how they're gonna make a roll at the time I think it was you know all the stuff we need somebody to step up and one of our donors to step up and so it did for her but that was after the fact but she'd tell me I had someone remind me that God is planning and there is no plan B she's like I don't know why I need to tell you that but I just felt like I should I should tell you that so we leave church that day me and my wife and we're going up to Northwest Arkansas it's about an hour drive more on the interstate and we're going to see my little brother in his family like we're gonna he has two little girls that are very close and aged to my girls so we're gonna go to a museum up there with all the kids and we're on the way up there and I think I was on the phone actually with my father-in-law who's the pastor at our church and I can't realize talking to something about you know probably the sermon or something because I'm handling the YouTube channel for the church anyways um my wife goes blind and look you're not gonna believe this and I look up car in front of this shoe polish on the back glass of the vehicle it says God is plan A there is no plan B like what in the world like I'm even thinking to the point of like are all these other cars around us are they even seeing that is it just being shown to me and my wife why would anybody put that on the back glass of their car like when's like how often do you see that it's like oh my gosh you're gonna be kidding me um but just a little reminder like they didn't do anything for us financially or anything but it it's strength in our faith it's a reminder that God is good it's a reminder that God's got you um and so just little things like that all the time um when we're going when we're trying to decide if we were gonna actually even make this jump we'll go to prayer at our church and we have prayer on Monday nights and he's at the very end and I think my father-in-law had asked if anybody had word for anybody and my brother-in-law who played he leads worship and he'd been up there he's playing the keyboard and he's like I've been fighting this the whole time I've been fighting this you know the whole the whole church our whole the whole service here and I didn't want to say anything because I'm so close to the situation but it's about it's about Brian and Jessica and uh it was the whole thing of that we had been feeling of like you you can't I don't I don't know where I'm going but I can't stay here and he said we hadn't told anybody but didn't told any of our family that we're thinking about doing this and he says I just keep getting this like Abraham I don't know where I'm going but I can't stay here and like made my wife for both sisters tears like oh my gosh like and it's it's just something like that all the time but even again if it's not the blessing of of actual financial difference it's it's those reminders that let you know that hey you're doing good you're you're okay you're going the right direction God's got you and and if God's got you then it doesn't really matter where you go as long as you're with him you're going to be fine by appreciate you're thinking process because a lot of times part of this whole journey of faithfully in the podcast was to help people realize like whatever you're going through someone else is probably going through something very similar right and when we realize like oh we're actually all the same and we all want the same things and a lot of times when we get into conflict it's just a misunderstanding right because we think the other person is getting in our way when really like no it's not so yeah it's refreshing and so we yeah the whole rehearsal not against flesh and blood yeah yeah there's you know and I think that's what's so great about especially which are doing with the podcast here is that like you said like where so many of us are going to the same things and probably one of the number one tactics of the devil is to keep you isolated and to make you think that you're alone and that there's not anybody else going through what you're going through you're the crazy one for what you're thinking or feeling and that's just not true there's nothing true about that at all God is not a liar but the devil is so I mean but yeah it's this creating just awareness of those types of things and letting people see other people's stories is this doesn't do anything but strengthen people going back to the day where I'm saying stuff like one of the things we always did when we were going through the process of trying to get to encourage us was to watch other people's different free screens like okay you know they were in like five times as much dead as what we had if they can do it you know we can't do you know it's it's just hearing those things it helps it does I have one ignorant question to ask and then I have some fun questions to ask okay have you ever lived outside of Arkansas thank tooth that so tooth I moved away and it was a 10-year gap so I moved to Russellville, Arkansas which is like an hour down the road one way and I was there for nine of those years and then part of that being college and part of that being my first teaching and coaching job and then I moved an hour up the road from here the opposite direction to Salam Springs and I was there for one year and then back back home down so yeah everything has always pulled me back here I said well and then I lived in northeast Arkansas until I was four years old my family moved to where we're and when I was four so we lived over there from 19a to 19a so everything that I can remember for the most part has been here other than that 10-year gap the reason I ask is I realize depending on where you are and where you grow up you think that's like the world right and so like a lot of urban cities like I grew up in New York like I'm a New Yorker I thought every city was like New York City and I realized no other city is like New York City right best so you being you know like a native Arkansasian I don't even know what you call it but what is your thoughts arcans in there you go yes I visited a friend who lived in Omaha and she moved from New York and I visited her and her family and life out there is so different you know like it gets dark and like because the sun's going down on the plains but everything's flat so like you see the sun go down so I'm just curious as to what rural people think about people like in the city um so Omaha I've been there awesome town love Omaha but it's very but it feels familiar though it's it is somewhat like here now it's bigger it's a it's a by bigger city than what I'm even from this where I live is five and people um that's the so that's the population within the city limits um in Arkansas so our biggest city is Little Rock but it's five and people so I mean you're thinking of that as a small town that's you know that's a drop in the bucket to New York City and so you know I've saw visited Chicago Dallas Atlanta some of these places and it um yeah it would be completely different it's a completely different way of living and then like listen to my wife's when my wife was on this she talked about having to have a car just talking about the story about giving her car away whatever and like I've got to have a car there's no public transportation it's you have to have a car to get around from one place to the other I guess now it's kind of changed a little bit with that you can get an Uber or something like that but you're probably gonna be waiting a while and you pray it's gonna be a good 30 45 minutes before you know for any Uber to come to where I'm at um and so there's a lot of things like that it just be completely different like it it feels like a like thinking about living that way it just seems completely foreign the whole idea of walking everywhere you go picking up groceries on the way home from work like on your walk and just carrying what you need like for that day not having a car all those things it's almost like a different world to even think about 10 acres you know so because completely different completely different way of doing everything which can't help but change probably outlook on things but you know there's there's this perception I think in rural America that the big cities that just pretty much everybody there's just just crazy like like the whole because you see so much of the news coverage whatever and what does the news cover bad things that happen right because there's more people in big cities more of the bad stuff that happens is probably gonna happen in big city and it's just one of those things like what people in big cities think about people in rural America is a whole different stigma too but everybody in rural America is not like that either you know so it's everybody it's one of those deals where you have to judge everybody just based on them it can't be you know but the whole but the stigma that goes with it like I have shoes on right now I live in Arkansas but I do wear shoes even even in my house I have shoes on so it's a you can't trust a lot of the stereotypes for sure it's it's a they're generally based in something but probably far from true still so thanks yeah I just wanted to give perspective to people because again I'm talking to people all over and I'm just fascinated that like well and I think we need to be a lot more humble about different perspectives because like we don't know until we live their life and that's what I'm learning more about like the beauty of like being a Christian it's like you can be wildly different on everything right but when we start talking about faith and how good Jesus is it's like it breaks every heart of a Christian and I just find that beautiful that we only need that one coming ground right it can break down all the walls yeah for sure I mean it's all it's done since the beginning it's break down walls so yeah it's one of those things definitely one of those things that I shouldn't even say one of those things it is like the thing that can bring anybody together of no matter what you know where you live what socio-economic you know spot you find yourself in life race gender like anything it's all it's because we're all you know made in the image of God we all have that same we're all drawing the same to God you know even though some people don't realize it they don't know that that's what's missing in their life it's it's present in all of us it has to be you know so we have way more in common than we do different for sure last few questions when was your I know she's the one moment so this is this is pretty easy so she comes she had never had that moment of stepping away from church she's been solid her whole life so when she was first the whole idea of being set up with her was introduced to me I thought yeah she's probably like a goody two shoes never set a bad word never whatever you know if she even knew half of this this stuff that I've done like she's gonna be gone and so when we get serious I was when we got serious enough to the point where I was like okay like it's getting there for me like I don't want to do this anymore if when she knows everything about me she's gonna just leave I'm not gonna do that to myself I'm not gonna do that to her and I'm gonna do it to myself and I don't want to put anybody through that and so I was like I'm just gonna spill it to her and this is probably I don't think we this is probably a couple three months into once we decided to actually give it a chance and I just laid it all out for and I really I didn't know what she would do and she was just like okay okay thanks for telling me like this is one of those things like you don't want it's like when you when you do something bad you're probably better off if you go tell your parents yourself than them finding out from somebody else like I didn't want that that to ever be a deal where it came up like we go ahead and get married and then three years down the road she finds some stuff out about me and it's like why didn't you tell me that like that's obviously gonna create trust issues and now we got big problems and so I just laid it out there and she didn't run for the hills and so it was like man if you know if if she can give me that kind of grace and still be okay with it and like she knew that I wasn't the same person at that point and so like thanks for telling me I'm glad you told me that now I don't have to find out from somebody else if it ever does come up for whatever reason and that was that was freeing to know that man I can tell her anything then I can absolutely tell her anything I don't have to be anything but myself man like yeah that was it a founder I love that story and I hate you because I'm so jealous I'm editing that out so it's all right how would you like to be remembered how would you like to be remembered by your daughters oh wow um don't try to make me cry aren't you how would I like to be remembered man just someone who's tough man I want them to know that I love them I want them to know love their mother and hope that they know that we do anything with them for them it reminds me like my father always tells us a story and he gets stuck inside room with somebody and this person they was with and I didn't have the grandstrelationship with his dad and they're way on down the road somewhere that we're going to trip and he calls his dad to come up and out and this guy's like why are you calling me dad for it he's like because I know he's going to come I know he's going to be here I'm in trouble and he's my dad's going to show up and this guy just couldn't get that and it's like one of those things we're like yeah everybody doesn't have a dad like that I was lucky that even though my parents were divorced I have my dad is that way I know like I could be 10 hours away and if I called him and said I'm stuck on the side of the road and I don't know what I'm going to do did he'd take off and he'd find a way to get there to help me out and like I want that for my kids I want them to know that that I've always got their back um but I hope that they would think of me as someone who who led them well I think that me and my wife have our hope we are doing a good job of showing them that you know what a relationship with Jesus looks like and that you know that he loves them even more than we do that's hard to admit sometimes as a parent like man like you know we'd dedicate our children in church whatever it is like man you you give them over like there's nothing like being a parent with of making you realize that you really don't have any control like you have no control over things like there's only so much you can do to protect them and then you have to becoming a dad and starting my own business there's been nothing that has ever in my life stretched me in my faith in so many ways as those two things but I just hope that they that they they think that I led them well and that they that they just understand exactly how much that I love them and I and they probably won't get that until they have their own kids because you can't until you have your own children it's hard to comprehend thank you what are you hoping for at faithly so man I really think what y'all are doing is obviously it's you know you all kind of market yourself says that the LinkedIn for ministry type deal right um and that's that's such a great concept because churches I think can be isolating at times of you don't go outside of the walls of this church for help with anything or how do you deal with a certain problem like you have to talk to other people in your church like we're all in the same team we're all I think one of the things that that we do in this world that would probably does upset the Lord the most is the division in the church we're all part of the church right and church is not even building since the body it's Jesus's followers we're all supposed to be on the same team and churches get caught up in competition so much I know like especially in small towns probably you know not probably the number one way that a church grows is from the decline of another church it's and that's it shouldn't be that way you know like but it's just a way to like and with what I'm doing specifically like through the with my web design like and it hadn't come through faithfully yet but I think I'm on my third yeah so I just got a contract for my third church for building a website for them and I don't go to church there but I want to build a website that's going to help their church and so like in the but then also like so the stuff that I do through social media through our YouTube channel for the church and things like that being able to reach out to other people that do those similar things at their church like what do y'all do like your churches YouTube channel is successful what's been kind of the secret what's been the what's helped y'all the most that type of thing but just creating a y'all having a platform that connects people from different churches together to be able to discuss those things that would have never happened otherwise especially whenever you're talking about you know I can I can be speaking to somebody that's at a church in New York City all the way down here in Arkansas so it obviously would never happen and so that's just that's a great great resource a great tool to have and just helping to use it for those for those reasons and then how can we be praying for you and your family oh probably so the number one thing would be just that we have direction continued you know hearing Lord what is what what is what does God say about this next step what does this type of thing like those just the remains and stuff that we want to to to have your ears turned into the Lord to be able to hear those things because I don't know you know you guys don't have to pray for him to speak to us he's always speaking to us but maybe more so for us to be able to hear him so just for direction and for for continued like being able to hear the Lord and you know just you know protection from anything outside you know there's the devil's trying to tear the family down all the them it's the the number one you know that the nuclear family is probably the the best form of governance the world's ever seen and so if we can tear that apart then say just protection over our family the protection over our marriage that's how the thing would be would be great we can always never take too many people praying for us for those things thanks Brian this was great and man I want to visit you and your family yeah anytime man anytime just come on down to Arkansas you catch a flight to catch a flight to Fort Smith and go see U.S. Marshall's museum and then you come on come stay at the house with us thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast we pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey the Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithwick an online community committed to empowering church leaders pastors staff and volunteers the Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space remember to subscribe great and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly podcast stay bold stay faithful and 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