77: From Hopelessness to Freedom: A Forgiveness Story with Rick Underhill

If you allow unforgiveness to go unchecked,

then it does create a bitterness

and a lot of people get hurt

and a lot of bad behaviors happen.

And I had just realized it was taking responsibility,

if you will, for allowing that to happen to me.

Welcome to the Up Your Average Podcast,

where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice

to level up your life.

So buckle up and listen closely to up your average.

Good morning, it's a great day.

I hope everybody is ready to up your average.

We are fortunate today to have my friend Rick Underhill.

Good morning, good morning.

Rick made the journey.

He and Donna made the journey from Heavensville, Indiana

to Fishers and Carmel and just, it's gonna be a treat.

I'm just really honored to get some time with you.

And it's hard to even put into words

the compost fish will get higher.

I don't think either one of us have

really much of an expectation of where this may go.

But I put together a prequel before,

can I tell a little bit about my background

before we cross paths and even before the prequel,

I put some disclaimers together.

So those who are joining us

can have an idea of where we're going with this thing.

The first thing I would tell you is that

I collect unexplainable stories

and that's a way that I just say I live by faith.

I can't explain the things that happen

and that's what happens in my journey.

And then we have a list of five principles

that we talk about at Gimbal that are a big deal.

And the number one on that list of five

is to think differently.

And this conversation probably will

cost people to think differently.

I know I've had to think differently

to even get to this point in this journey.

And it's just really interesting.

And so this conversation today

will probably have two, at least two unexplainable stories

and probably be longer than usual today

because I just want to get our conversation recorded

for whoever it may help in the days and months and years ahead.

It'll be both, I think there'll be some spiritual

things going on as well as some disturbing ideas

that we may talk about.

But at the end, it's going to be an unbelievable story

of what God has done.

And another disclaimer is Malcolm Gladwell

has a podcast out there.

And the one that I want to reference

is called Free Brian Williams.

And Brian Williams, the Free Brian Williams podcast

basically says, you think you know what you remember,

but you don't remember right is what that podcast said.

And so whatever we say today is our best recollection

of what went down because we're talking 30 years ago

up until the day.

And so I'm probably going to butcher some of the history,

but if you'll give us some space to just get it

hand grenade close, that would be unbelievable.

And then the final disclaimer before I kick this off

is that people change any reference to anyone

was a historical point in time.

And I have no idea where those people are

with regards to how this story unfolded

and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt

and so that if there's anything negative

that is implied or said about anybody,

I'm not hopefully mentioning their names

and I'm only mentioning it on a point in time.

And I don't know how they move forward

from that point in time.

So I just want to make that clear

that if it sounds like something negative

coming across about somebody that you don't hear it that way,

it just there was a negative experience.

Yeah, yeah.

And so as I kick off the prequel to the time

that you and I spent together,

what I was thinking of is that your location

influence you more than you ever consider.

Where you spend your time,

where you grow up has a bigger influence on you

than you may have ever given it time.

And I thought it's both the time that you spent

where the place and the culture.

And so for common ground for Rick and I,

unbeknownst to us into our 30s,

we both spent a good amount of time

in Evansville, Indiana.

During the time I was there,

I would say was the most unsettled time in my lifetime.

The 1960s and 70s were very unsettling times.

And so that had an influence on who I am.

Those times.

And then the place that I did it at,

not until Indiana was a unique experience.

And then the culture of Evansville

was a little bit different than some other places I've been.

And so I went back and did a little research on Evansville.

Evansville is an amazing place.

Like it is for the size of it,

it's had some unbelievable things happen there.

And so Evansville is in 1960,

three, a guy named Ray Lowey, I think is his name.

Donated to the Evansville Museum, a Picasso.

19th century, right?

And that thing was lost until 2012.

And it's such a crazy story that I had to go down there,

probably about once or twice.

Once every year or so and go look at the Picasso

because it sat in storage for 50 years.

And sometimes maybe even the message

that we're gonna talk about,

if you allow possibilities,

you might find that you had the greatness

of your self-sitting and storage a long time

before you started learning how great you really are.

In 1973, I would have been 12 years old.

Right.

Me too.

And the population of Evansville

was about 137,000 people

and 10,000 of those people worked at Whirlpool,

which is just mind boggling to me.

I don't, maybe in Washington, D.C.,

you have probably a high percentage of people

that work for the federal government or something.

That 137,000 would be all people,

like it would be kids and stuff.

So families of the adults,

probably took one out of every eight or nine people

worked at Whirlpool.

And that had an influence over Evansville at that time.

The 1974, a guy named Titanic Thompson died.

He heard this name, don't know that one.

Do you want to read about Titanic Thompson?

Titanic would, he would go up and down the Ohio River

on River Boats, gambling, conning people.

He married a lady in Evansville and had an influence.

He had a big influence on some of the culture in Evansville,

his style of things.

And it was definitely a lot of the perception

that my grandfather almost had a personality,

like Titanic Thompson.

And so that book about, there's several books about him,

but it influenced my thoughts about things.

1977,

Well, I would say for me, Washington Avenue in Evansville,

if you go from Washington Square Mall to Haney Corner,

it's called Haney's Corner, right?

Yeah, I think way downtown to the second street.

Yeah, so that was kind of,

I think I don't know when that Haney's Corner

was like a prostitute district in history.

Yeah, and so most of the time I spent at Evansville,

the majority of my energy was spent somewhere on that span.

On Washington Avenue, like I would say 80% of my,

other than high school or whatever,

but my grade school was right off of there.

And so a lot of Washington Avenue.

Did you go to Washington grade school?

I went to Dexter.

I went to Washington grade school until third grade.

Yeah, I've spoken at Washington grade school.

Okay.

And I played baseball in their baseball field.

Yeah, great field.

Yeah, I mean, Washington grade school

is, it's an unbelievable building.

It's just phenomenal.

I've been in it as well.

And I've knocked on the door.

They let me in.

I asked them if I could walk around and see the place.

And I went back to the cafeteria,

sat in the same spot that I sat when I was a kid.

Nothing's changed.

Yeah, it's beautiful building.

Yeah, and all of that influenced me more than I could.

I never, until I was trapped in for our time together,

just thinking of what all went on in Washington Avenue.

Yeah.

There's a fire station right across the street

from Dexter grade school.

It's been a lot of time in there.

They had candy machines.

You can come in there and buy candy and hang out firemen.

We would do that.

Just all kinds of things went on Washington Avenue.

And I would walk from Dexter grade school to Lombard.

You know where Lombard is?

Yes.

Yeah, Lombard was about a mile long.

The south end of Lombard was projects.

You just move a little bit.

A hundred yards from the projects here in Duplexes.

And those were kind of sketchy.

If you let them, I'm just saying that's what it was like

in the sixties and seventies.

A lot of, it was a transient of a,

then you crossed this bridge, not bridge, this ditch.

And we were in about a 1500 square foot ranch house

just north of the ditch there.

On Lombard?

Yeah.

And so then you go north and you cross Washington Avenue.

The road that I spent a lot of time on, right?

Washington Avenue, north of it was two-story houses that were,

I don't know, a couple thousand square feet or something.

And that's where the rich people lived.

With Lombards, pretty, yeah.

Then if you go all the way to the end of Lombard,

those houses, the present of university,

others all lived there.

And there were millionaires that lived

on the far north end of Lombard.

So you go from projects on this mile to two millionaires.

And so in 1977, I would have been,

probably a junior in high school.

I was sitting at my desk.

I was in social studies class in the desk, short.

And one of my neighbors, for which I never knew,

he lived on the north end of Lombard.

Ray Ryan got blown up by the mafia.

I remember that.

That's part of my history.

Like that's in my neighbor.

Yeah.

And imagine you're a teenage year

and you're trying to process all this stuff

that's going on around you.

Trying to imagine that there's mafia in Evansville, right?

Like, yeah, it's just a lot for me to process.

And then that was 1977.

I played basketball, I guess that's what you call it.

The basketball, the fall of 1977, we had a game

and we came, I remember coming out of the locker room

and everybody was traumatized.

And by then, we had moved off Lombard to the north side

of Evansville and I had to drive from Evansville Harrison

to the north side.

And it was a foggy day.

There were like emergency lights flashing most of the way home

because I hadn't drive by the airport

in the University of Evansville's.

I feel myself getting choked up in a sentence.

The University of Evansville, basketball team died

in a plane crash that night.

And there were people on there

that were either friends or acquaintance of mine.

So these are some of the things that influence you, right?

And that was a pretty big deal.

The Evansville, for the size of it,

the sports influence, unbelievable.

There was Bob Grisi, who was kind of famous when I was a kid.

Right.

The guy named Scott Steadwell,

late for the Viking, his linebacker, yeah.

And Scott's family, they fed him to Dexter.

So Scott even come to our little league practices

and things like that.

Who else was?

Don Mattingley.

Don Mattingley.

Don Mattingley dominated me all the way through

high school sports.

And so the influence of sports was kind of a big deal.

Part of my back, it's part of my backstory too.

Probably Jerry Sloan.

Jerry Sloan had him before as well

over at Robert Stadium.

Super nice to us.

And then A. Rad McCutchen.

A. Rad is probably not known by a lot of people,

but he won five national championships.

So like his name would be along with John Wooden, right?

And so Evansville was just a very kind of unique,

diverse place for such, I think for such a small place.

And so when I think back about all went on in Evansville,

one of the things that impacted me

when I think back about it was in the 70s,

central air condition was relatively narrow.

Okay.

Yeah, we had window units.

Yeah.

And so in our neighborhood, you could hear what's going on

because the windows are open.

And today you have a central air condition

so you don't really know what's going on.

In my particular neighborhood,

there was a lot of yellowing going on in houses.

I don't know if that was okay.

Yeah.

So you could hear what was going on in your neighborhood.

And that just kind of,

I don't know how do you even influence me?

It just made me think,

oh, that's just normal people must be a reality.

Everybody.

And it was several houses in the neighborhood

that was going on.

And so it had an impact for me.

My parents would take me to church regularly.

We went to a place called Northeast Park,

Baptist for a while.

Overall, I think it was baking.

Okay.

You know that?

And yeah, my dad was the maintenance guy there.

Like that one of his job,

he was one of the 10,000 at Whirlpool.

And he finally quit going to church.

And mom, I think the same time.

And I was taught through this thing

that was going on in Heavensville

that they probably are going to hell as well.

Cause they stopped going to church.

Cause they stopped going to church, yeah.

And so that would have been in the early 70s.

And so church wasn't really a requirement

or anything at that point in my life.

And I didn't understand until later in dad

and I had a conversation about that,

what really happened there.

But as an adult, what I started discovering,

there was, and this is just my take on it.

Anybody else that was there,

they might have had a different take.

But I felt like there were three influences

that came at me, particularly the place

where we would go to church in Heavensville.

We went someplace different down by Haney's corner.

Once I was about in Calvary 13.

Calvary?

Yeah.

And so there was this seminary up in Louisville

that a lot of those people would come down the river.

They would take the road.

I suppose that they would come

and fill in pulp ads or youth pastor.

Yeah, very common.

Yeah. And so that whatever was being taught in Louisville

would influence what would happen

in the churches in Heavensville.

All right.

Then in those, I forget when it was 1700, 1800s,

there was a thing called Revivalist Movement,

which you would have people like Billy Graham

came out of it later.

But there was Virgin, I think,

and other people that came on.

And I wrote in my notes here,

guy named Jonathan Edwards since 1700s.

He had a famous sermon that said,

and something, well, I can't read my writing there.

The hands of a living in the hands of an angry God

or something like that.

Okay. That sounds familiar.

Yeah. And so this room,

Hellfire and Brimstone influence

from the Revivalist Movement,

because it was trained,

when I take away from the Revivalist Movement

it was transactional.

Like if I could get you to say a prayer.

Yeah.

And that was kind of the highest priority

that I perceived.

That's why I perceived as a youngster.

Yeah.

Another Revivalist person,

so he had Billy Sunday.

It was a baseball player for the Cubs, I think.

He was a Revivalist guy in the more modern days

and in Billy Graham.

And there was a guy that came to Evansville,

probably in the 70s, Bill Glass.

And looked over.

Didn't hear him.

Yeah. And he filled Robert Stadium

and he was, I think he looked for the Cowboys.

He was a footballer.

Yeah.

And he was a preacher.

He was a Revivalist kind of guy.

Yeah. Yeah.

And he ended up doing a prison ministry

around the country, but in the 70s

he was in that whole Revivalist thing.

So I remember mom and dad packing us in the car

and taking us to.

And I was saying Bill, Bill Glass.

And ironically, in my story, a man who had a big influence

on me was close friends of him.

And when he died, Bill Glass came up here

and did his funeral form in probably in the late 80s.

So it was funny how life kind of circled back and around.

So the Revivalist movement, you had the seminaries

from Louisville.

And then there was a thing called landmarkism

that when I researched it again,

it looked like it came up through Tennessee and Kentucky.

And the best I can describe the landmark movement

is that it is like, this is my football.

We're playing my marbles.

I can say that those very church building specific

that we're going to have our own set of rules

and we're going to do it our way.

And all those things, best I could tell

were present in the churches I went to as a kid.

We were on the south side going to church as a kid

and not going a lot.

So we're in a big influence of faith-based in our world.

My mom was a teenage mom.

We had a couple of siblings and we were living day-to-day

week to week.

And so we go to church some,

but not much of an influence.

Yeah.

And when I think about my time at Evansville,

there's a good amount of violence close to me.

And I think it just,

like the yelling that I would hear it as I form a violent

try like, yeah, just, I just thought it was normal.

We had mentioned that Donna works now,

right where my grandfather had a grocery store in Evansville

and he was mugged out there once,

like correcting over the head of the bear bottle

in a similar time, my grandmother.

In the day, in the 70s,

I think that so secure,

it's sent out all the checks the same time.

It's a mail.

And so then the people at my grandma's age

would go to the bank that day

and then they'd have cash and come home.

Well, it might have happened the same time

grandpa had got kind of jacked with the bear bottle.

Grandma was coming home from the bank

and two people, two thugs followed her home

and just beat her.

Just, I mean, her face was black and blue.

So those kind of things happened.

And I was telling me about jobs.

I had as a teenager that there's kind of violence around that,

but none of that stuff really pays me.

It just seemed like, oh, this isn't normal.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so what happened, though,

is when mom and dad didn't make me go to church,

my sibling started going to Calvary

and I went to Calvary and I was this awkward teenager.

When I graduated, I was six foot five, 160 pounds.

I had to dance around the share to get what?

So, I think by college, I was 180.

So I don't have that problem anymore,

but it was just an awkward, you know,

loping around like that.

So that was me in those teenage years,

but I worked into this friend group

where they started partying

and they were,

Evans was pretty heavily influenced.

I think by German Catholic people.

And so since my parents weren't keeping tabs on me,

I would go to the Catholic church on Saturday night.

So I'd check that off my school list.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And in the midst of that,

my social network started building,

but in the midst of all the chaos that was being created

in my life, back at Calvary,

there was this couple,

Fay and Richard, they loved me in the midst of my awkwardness.

Yeah, and Calvary had this basement

with these main geosophas down there

where the teenage is going out.

Okay, I haven't been in there.

Yeah, I don't even know what it is now.

I think it's a development of something or another.

I think it's an office, is it?

Yeah.

So that youth area,

it was just a sketchy little area.

Like, even as a teenager,

I wasn't scared of much,

but that basement down there was kind of scary,

but that's,

but when you would come in there on a Sunday morning,

Richard and Fay would make you think

you were the only person on the plane or.

Hmm.

Yeah.

And I didn't, I,

walking down Washington Avenue,

like from Dexter to Evans to our house,

and the Hellfire and Brumstone I heard

is I just as an eight-year-old,

I thought I need to get this Willy Wonka ticket to heaven.

I need to do this building grand prairie out of hell,

get into heaven.

Yeah, and so,

so we, I remember as an eight-year-old,

I had our pastor at the time,

I was sitting on the piano,

bench at our house,

and I prayed this prayer so I could get out of that thing

and get into it.

So the best thing I knew as an eight-year-old

and that I had done this thing,

but what that,

that meatball of ideas that I had mentioned

that came all over,

I never really knew what that meant.

Like I never knew that was anything.

And yeah,

that couple just expressed this kind of amazing love to me

that just started my soul in a certain way,

but no, I didn't feel any obligation to him

because I was having a good time on Saturday night,

so whether I'd show up on Sunday was an unusual thing too.

And, well, I'm thinking of them at that time,

walking up and down Washington Avenue.

I don't even know if I wrote that one down to my notes.

Maybe 1980.

So like this house I walked by every day home from school,

the mayor of Evansville was assassinated in 1980.

Yeah.

So when I say,

I'm familiar with the violence we had to got blown up

on one in West Street, another guy assassinated.

So all those things,

he just slapped me wondering,

but they in Richard, they were kind.

And one day I went on a retreat,

and I remember Richard,

he was talking about God's Holy Spirit,

and he took a flashlight,

and he took the batteries out of it,

and he screwed the lid back on the flashlight.

He said, there's no power in here,

but if you get the spirit of God in you,

look at the power of that thing.

That was, that had to be in the mid-70s.

And to this day I still remember his love

and passion for us kids.

And so, so I then left Evansville

with the Murray State University,

and while I was at Murray State,

a guy named Aldine Huff,

and I didn't know what I was doing at school.

Aldine Huff was teaching this philosophy class,

and I sat in the back because I just thought,

this is just a screw-off class,

I just sat in the back.

If I can pass this thing,

that's all I cared about.

But he kept asking these crazy questions,

and he would do two things that stuck in my head.

He would ask, what's the purpose of life?

And I'm like 17, 18, I'm like, who cares man?

He drink and be merry, right?

And at the same time,

there were Christians in the front,

corner of the room that kind of thought,

kind of like I did,

but he would poke them,

and challenge their thoughts.

And they would get really angry.

And I didn't really care that much about it.

I just thought, why are you getting that angry with this guy?

But he was challenging them to think,

which is kind of how I started this off,

is that we believe at Gimbley,

you need to think differently,

and Aldine Huff planted a seed in my head,

do you think?

Really, I didn't know it at the time.

And so I went on and left Evansville,

left Murray State, went down to Houston, Texas,

and what I thought when I got to Houston

was that you need to conquer the world

and make as much money as possible.

How'd that go for me?

I mean, it was working.

I mean, I was only there for a couple of years, right?

And there were, I was introduced to people that that,

that they make a lot of all out of money,

and had a lot of power,

and it was just a very fascinating time for me.

But when I was driving back to Indiana from that,

when I knew I wanted to get into this industry,

I just had a, I think an intimate drive,

just thinking about what really matters,

and I hadn't thought about it much.

And so I thought, I had this prayer,

I was like, oh, I'll go to church, God,

when I get to India,

because I wasn't doing that in Texas,

and I'll try to figure out what this stuff is.

And so I started going to this church down here

in Indianapolis, and one day in the parking lot,

this lady came up to me and said,

hey, keep there.

You're very serious about this girl you're dating,

and I was looking at the lady,

I was pretty attractive,

but I go, why do you ask?

She goes, well, my sister's available,

and I'm like, oh, I bet she's attractive, right?

That's for all.

And so I go, oh, I don't know,

I'm always open to possibilities.

And so shortly after that,

I started dating this lady's sister, right?

And so when I was dating her sister,

I was still a knucklehead,

and I hadn't really concluded what life was about.

I still was leaning into that conquer in the world,

making money, and I wasn't convinced that her sister

was somebody I needed to spend any time with,

but I wasn't man enough to say no.

And so one Friday night, I just thought,

I needed to do something.

I can't just keep moving down this road.

So I had decided I was gonna break up with her sister,

and I just didn't have the courage to do it.

So I called her and said,

I don't really wanna go out tonight.

And so I just went back and spent the night at my apartment,

went to bed early, at 10 o'clock,

that night, the phone rang,

and it was my girlfriend.

She was crying hysterically.

A drunk driver had just hit the back quarter panel

of their car, rang them into a southbound car,

and they collided and killed her sister instantly.

And this girlfriend that I had that I was thinking

of breaking up with that night, I thought,

oh wow.

Here we are, and what it taught me,

that event taught me that I need to go back

to what Aldine Huff said and what's the purpose of this thing.

And what am I really looking for?

I agree, yeah.

And so with that, I was just traumatized

thinking through what really matters.

And it really took our Connie and our relationship

to a different thought process.

And so I then asked God,

I don't know about this Jesus guy

that I've been told about in my lifetime.

And so I need you to let me know if Jesus is a roller.

Because I had a computer programming degree

and logic was how I'd fought through things.

And the things I've been taught through that,

Mishmash, the things in Evansville,

was illogical.

It didn't make any sense.

It didn't seem to be true.

And so if this Jesus was true,

you're gonna have to make it clear to me

in the or two parameters.

One was, you're gonna have to answer the contradictions

I've been taught as a kid.

Oh, okay.

And secondly, if all this stuff I read in the Bible

is true, you're gonna have to show me power.

Like there's gonna have to be unexplainable things

in that way.

It's reasonable.

Yeah, it's reasonable.

Yeah, if he's God, it shouldn't just be a little,

we have these old felt boards that they put these right.

Yeah, I want something more than a felt Jesus, right?

I want something powerful to happen.

So that was the late 80s.

The girl I was dating is Connie, we got married.

And I just was chasing whether this is true or not,

it's still Connie didn't, she wasn't necessarily

the same face or place as me.

But I'm just trying to figure it out

because I couldn't be angry at the guy that killed Donna

because I could have been the one that killed her

a month before it was happening.

I was drinking and driving.

And so I didn't have any critical attitude.

I was just humiliated, it could have been me.

I could have hurt somebody.

And so I was just regrouping on all these things.

And so I started getting ideas from different sources

and I started thinking about things.

And then in May of 1992, one day a guy

that I'd spent some time with,

I've been investing myself in the thing locally

called the Christian businessmen's connection

and study in the Bible from 1988 to 92,

but I'm still fighting through these things.

And this guy calls me and he says,

hey Keith, I've met this guy down here

in the Western Part of Kentucky

that his teaching has transformed my thoughts

on what Christian is about.

This guy was a lawnmower salesman

before he was a pastor down there.

And so I knew he was very excitable.

And I've already chased enough radds in life.

So I thought, I'm just gonna give this a year or so

and see what he says.

Like I'm not giving him any of my brain time.

And the very next day, another guy from Amazon, Indiana,

my friend Larry May calls me and says

the exact same thing about this guy.

Hey, Tintinous guy, I'm Western Kentucky.

Yeah.

And so what I would challenge you

that if you're watching this,

I at that point I didn't believe

there are coincidences.

I just, even before I knew much about anything,

I just think you got to pay attention

to things that don't make sense.

And so I picked up the phone and called this guy

and I said, hey man, my name is Keith Tiner.

This has happened the last two days,

line my colony.

And he goes, well, I wrote this,

I wrote this Bible study about the book of Rome.

He was a hung farmer, man.

And I'm like, well, yeah, send me a, I wanna read it.

And so that's when I met my friend, Bob Warren.

And what Bob started teaching me were answers

to the contradictions that I'd seen in my life.

Wow.

Yeah, gave you a place to hang some of this information.

Right.

And then you also, almost anytime I call him,

he had a powerful story that was unexplainable, right?

The one that comes to mind is I had this dormitory

and this guy rolls in on a bunch of red curly hair.

Is that, yeah, I mean, what did he do?

What the guy, he wanted to, he had came

because of a girl at Murray State to the area

and he needed a place to live, he needed a job

and Bob needed a dorm build.

And he was a carpenter, framing carpenter at that.

So he lived on the property for two years

while he built that art, what we call the art.

Yeah.

I mean, and I was even thinking of another story

where they had built, somebody had built all these bunk beds.

Okay.

And some guy rolls in with the exact number of mattresses

for the organization.

I didn't know that one.

Yeah.

And so when Bob would tell me these stories,

I was like, that can't be true, right?

Like he, and it, but that's the two tests

that they're out there to God was helping me

with the contradictions and showing me a powerful God.

And so there wasn't anybody on Central Indiana

to help them in navigate and think through

the things Bob was doing at this point in time.

So we're in the 80s, or in the 90s.

And just a lot of things were going on.

And I got a call, no, no, no, what happened

is my grandma died in probably 95, 1995.

And so I left Evansville basically in 1979.

And here we are in 1995.

I'm at the funeral home.

And I'm sitting in the room they have

with like for the family, people bring food

and stuff.

I'm just sitting in there trying to avoid all the crowd

and this couple comes in.

And I almost get, Terry, I'd say in this,

but it was faith and Richard.

And they represented the same idea

that I remembered from the 70s.

Just the loving kindness that was mind-blowing to me.

And at the same time, I was compelled from the inside.

The next day I was supposed to say

some pretty harsh things to my family.

Like difficult things that some of the things

that had kind of built up inside of me

was because there's an idea in the Bible

that says the sins of the Father will be passed down

to the third and fourth generation.

And there was some evident, evident sins

that it caused a lot of strife in our family.

And so that strife, I realized that as for me

and Connie, we do not want that to go down to our children.

Like we're stopping it here.

And so there's a really, seeing faith and Richard

was a blessing, but then the next day,

I was courageous enough to say it.

And my mom and my aunt got into a rest of their life conflict

the next day after I had said those things.

And so I'm just like, I don't even know what really matters.

She knows what I was thinking.

And so what would encourage me is that the last weekend,

I think it is a April every year,

Bob would have a men's retreat down there.

And at first when I went there in the early 90s,

there might only been, I don't know, 30 people?

30 or 40, most?

Yeah, and I probably went 93 or 94 the first time.

And I don't remember us meeting, man.

We may have, it just didn't stick in my time.

Right, right, we didn't connect.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, so we had seen each other a few times

down there, and it would have been just a weekend,

last weekend in April.

And so, so that's a rare, I saw Richard in faith

and I had no more communication with them.

And then in the spring of 97,

I get a phone call from my sister.

I always forget how hard it is to tell this.

I mean, I was thinking about it yesterday morning

as we were driving here.

And I was thinking, and it was just upsetting again

all these years.

It was still upsetting.

Yeah, I,

Caleb Pry doesn't ever see me get that too emotional,

so my sister calls me and tells me

that Richard took his life.

And I didn't know what to do with that information.

I think somebody, actually somebody on Lombard,

a teenager had done that during my teenage days.

And I, I just played it off.

I didn't, I didn't know.

Yeah.

I just didn't have to think about it.

Yeah.

And here is, from best I could tell,

besides Gary and Don and Donna got killed by the wrong driver.

Here's the kind of the most ideal family that I had known

for what I thought I had known.

And here the husband's gone.

And I just couldn't, I couldn't understand it.

And so I just started praying though,

because this powerful God that deals with contradictions

and solves things,

I'm getting to know who he really is at this point.

And so I'm like, I just tell him,

I don't know what to do with this.

This is, this is a lot for me to process.

I go to the funeral and I saw a lot of faces of people

that I don't even know how to do.

I love the people that were in that room

at that church building with me,

but we were all believe in the same thing.

The adults in the room are believing it,

but nobody in the room was telling me

that the stuff I was learning as a teenager wasn't so.

So I didn't even know what to think about the adults.

It was a really confusing time.

And then as the service was starting,

I noticed the pastor that was my pastor was in there.

And so he was kind of the one that was the leader

of the gang that was teaching this stuff that wasn't so.

And so I didn't appreciate that,

but towards the end of the funeral,

he's doing a so-called eulogy.

And he says something, and again,

this is that Malcolm Gladwell.

I don't know exactly.

I'm just coming from memory that I don't know

whether or not Richard is in heaven today.

And he had been counseling him and just the anger in me,

just fueled up like a, like a mom.

Like I wanted to get him to stand up and yell at him as well.

Well, you know what we were being taught was

that you had to perform a certain way

in order to be acceptable by God,

in order to be willing for God to interact with you.

You know, you had to follow a certain set of rules.

You had to live a certain way to be qualified

for a relationship with God.

And that guy's up there to do the eulogy

and Richard hasn't fit the qualifications in his mind.

So is that the God?

Is that a true story about God?

And that's what you're wrestling with in harsh.

It was harsh for me.

Because Richard exemplified to me

what I thought a man would look like, right?

Up until that act.

But I didn't know that night that Donna died.

I took off the mask that I acted in a certain way.

Prior to that, what you see with Keith is what you get.

I don't really act anymore.

I'm just what you see is what you get.

And so I don't know what Richard was acting.

I know he was struggling, I know.

And so I was really angry.

I don't even remember who went to the funeral with me.

I don't, I just told whoever was there with me

was so angry because the people started,

like they finished it.

It was the worst eulogy ever.

And all these people that I had spent time

with as a youngster are filing out the funeral home.

And this kid, I don't even know how old the kid was.

He gets up in front of the microphone

and starts going, he's 10 years younger than you.

Okay.

So this kid then, I would, he'd been like 25 maybe.

And he starts going, and I bet 20% of people

have already left the funeral home.

Right.

And he starts impromptu,

eulogizing his dad because the guy

that was supposed to eulogizing did such a horrible job.

Yeah.

And I, I was just traumatized.

Well, I like, I fell in love with the kid.

I probably knew him when he was like this high, right?

And like, when I left town,

he probably wasn't any bigger than this.

Yeah.

And, and I didn't even, I didn't,

I don't think I thanked him or anything.

I just, my brain was just overwhelmed by everything.

I just had to breathe in and breathe out and think about it.

And so that was when my friend Richard

and his wife was a mess that day

and she was one of the most tender humans I've ever met.

Indeed.

Yeah.

And so then that was March of 97

and just a few weeks later,

I was going to be leaving an Indianapolis

and going down to the men's retreat and hard and Kentucky.

And my brother went with me.

I don't remember if anybody else rode with me down there.

And I told my brother, I said,

I'm going to pray this weekend

that God would open an opportunity

for me to love on that family.

Somehow for me to minister to that family,

somehow for me to minister to that family,

for which they haven't really seen me for 18 or more years, right?

Like the kids wouldn't even know, right?

Yeah.

And so that's when I'm out in the woods,

get my smile, my air and everything,

that's what I'm just going to spend time talking to Lord about.

And so I, if I recall this, right?

It might have been Saturday.

This was me, this is the end of the prequel.

And we're coming out, yeah, it's Saturday.

We're getting real now.

And so Bob Warren has everybody,

I just remember we're kind of facing a podium.

Oh, it's a surprise, yeah.

And I feel like I'm sitting on the end

and my brother's by me.

I have in my Bible,

I've got the little fun to the full thing

that from the funeral,

because I was going to pray for this guy.

And Bob comes up and he says,

man, this is my recall, never trust,

like with your soul somebody that doesn't walk with a lamp.

And he said, I want to introduce you,

my friend who walks with a lamp.

What he's saying is that you have been,

you've had the wrestlers some difficulties in life

and you just, you have a certain level of humility about it.

And so he introduces his friend, Rick.

And I just remember Rick starting his talk,

your talk, talking about a verse in Hebrews

that says to not let bitterness build up in you

because if you do that, you'll defile many people.

That's the intro blockchain, I remember your talk.

Yeah.

And if you want to tell everybody a little bit about

where you went from there,

and then pause for a minute from me to interject some of that.

Yeah, well, just a few minutes of backstory for that.

As so that March day when Richard took his life,

I got a phone call that day from a family member saying,

you need to look at the obituary.

And as I thought about this yesterday driving again,

there's been one year in my adult life, my career life

where I had a flexible schedule when it was 1997.

And so we talked about God doing big things

and the hand of God that year for me to have the ability

to come and go as I needed to put me in a place

to respond to what was happening to us and us as in me,

but as in you and I and the Davis family.

So I got that call, so he died on a Tuesday.

I got the call on a Thursday, he died Tuesday afternoon,

Thursday morning, I got a call.

I left to go get a newspaper about 10 o'clock

and I opened the paper and I saw a picture of a man

who looked a lot like me and my brother.

And I realized I had made a mistake.

And what I mean by that is my brother and I

are the teenage sons of Richard.

And we had not seen him in over 20 years

or spoken to him except for about six years

before that he called me one day and asked me how I was

and I was 30 years old and I hadn't heard him since

I was six, hadn't seen him since I was six or nine.

And so there's this huge gap and all I knew to do

when he called me when I was 30 years old

was just respond with, are you okay?

I made a polite offer that we could maybe read a book together

and meet and have some conversation around a book.

And that wasn't what he was looking for.

He didn't understand it at the time.

But I had been indifferent to him as my point.

When I said I had made a mistake, I had been indifferent.

So there was a person in my life

that had a ton of unforgiveness towards Richard

and they worked really hard to keep me away from Richard

and they succeeded and they told me these stories

that were terrible and this was a scary person.

And so I allowed their unforgiveness

and their bitterness to create an indifference in me.

And when I saw that picture and I saw that we looked alike,

I knew I'd made a mistake somehow in my spirit.

I had done the wrong thing by not doing more to receive him.

So I got in my truck and I drove to that person

and they were at work and I went in

and I asked them to explain to me their unforgiveness.

And they fumbled around and they tried,

they didn't push me off, but they too were obviously

really thinking about their life.

How they interacted with Richard.

And so that was again on a Tuesday that he passed away.

That was Thursday.

And I found out where he had taken his life that day as well

and it was at a park by my house.

He knew where I lived.

He knew where I went to church.

We were at Grace Baptist Church at that time.

He knew my children by name.

How do I know these things?

He had left a note in his truck

and a handful of pictures of me in his truck and my brother.

And so there was this real sense of obvious

I had made a mistake.

I had allowed someone else's unforgiveness

to create an indifference in me.

That was wrong.

And so that was what I brought to that retreat a month later.

And when you said that, when you alluded to,

that was the story that my dad had died,

I didn't connect the dots right away,

and I'm processing it.

I pulled this picture out of my Bible and I'm like,

yeah, and he just tears began to flow from my face.

Like I couldn't even put, because of the backstory,

I told you of all this stuff that I had seen go on in Evansville,

including Richard's general.

I still was at a place of,

I don't even know what to do with this information,

but to think in anapolis to Harden Kentucky,

I'm praying with this and my friends,

I guess son that I didn't even know was a son.

Yeah, it's speaking.

Yeah, and go ahead.

And so I finished, I mean, I just told the guys,

I had made a mistake and that verse in Hebrews 1215

that if you allow unforgiveness to go unchecked,

then it does create a bitterness and a lot of people get hurt

and a lot of bad behaviors happen.

And I had just realized it was taking responsibility,

if you will, for allowing that to happen to me.

So I mean, I could look at my family member,

which I did go to them that day and say,

hey, tell me about your unforgiveness.

But still, I was on the hook and I was on the hook

because I, this person had reached out to me,

and frankly, I had to actually thought

and I still think things like this and I don't endorse it.

But I'd actually thought they would come a good time,

a right time for me to try to address this.

And so when I finished that day,

talk about unexplainable things that happened.

I don't know if you remember,

but when I finished talking that day,

you came up to me and you asked me to step outside

and we stepped out back and you showed me this picture

and you asked me if that was my dad.

And it took my breath away.

Yeah.

And before, I mean, it was a matter of an hour or two

because what you have said in that presentation

is I didn't really know my dad is what I didn't know.

Yeah.

And I basically said, I knew your dad.

Yeah.

Like I knew as well as any godly man I'd known

is that was a top of the list.

Yeah, which is just breathtaking.

I mean, it literally took my breath.

Yeah.

And so Bob kind of circled the wagons there

and the connection you and I had made

and there was more told to the man that at that time,

there were probably 60 or 70 men there.

Yeah.

And those men, that unexplainable thing,

those men took pieces of paper

and they wrote things on there that like unforgiveness

or bitterness, they wrote things on those papers

and they went out back there and they burned in a pile

and they prayed and asked God to show them

you know, the error of their thinking

and that to set these things right.

And you and I were just really in no position

to give them anything.

We were trying to hold the pieces together ourselves

and that what you just explained,

kind of I didn't realize we'd go there

but when I put that disclaimer is that people change

and any reference to anyone was a point in history

and I started learning that then that people do change

because people could have carried bitterness over a lot

of things over the university or just is bad things happen

on planet earth and it's hard to accept them

when they happen to you.

But there is hope and redemption in God.

So go ahead.

Well, you gave me, if I remember that week

and you gave me phase information.

I did not.

What happened?

How did you give me that?

Yeah, what happened then is the answer to my prayer,

how am I going to help this family?

As I said, I will call the widow.

I will call fate.

Yes, how do you call that man?

Yeah, and my office was over on a keystone down here

and everybody had left the office

and because I didn't want to do it,

I didn't want to make this call with anybody around

because the last time I saw a Fay was at the funeral

and they had to give her some kind of something

to take the edge off of her

because she was so traumatized by this.

And so she saw me at my grandma's funeral

but that wasn't even the best of time just to talk

because I had that in my head.

And so at Richard's funeral, we didn't really talk.

I just gave her a hug and walked by.

But that night I had to call her and settle it

to see if you will meet with my friend Rick.

And it was one of the most intense phone calls

of my life because I only knew this tender spirit of faith

in the anger of what happened to her husband.

She was, she would tell me her opinion about it

and that's why in the prequel of our time together

that that unholy trinity of things

that got into the preaching of who God is in Ellen's Bill,

whether it was, I'm not saying anything negative

about that seminary.

Other than you just, you get whatever flavor

that particular person is bringing down the river

from the low of all.

Sure.

The landmarkism had its negative effects

and the revivalism, what all those things did

has just made people very regimen and not very caring.

And she concluded that the person who is counseling

or husband led him to the place to make the decision he did.

Right.

And there was a lot of anger.

And that's a person she had known for probably 25 years,

a long time and to just give her a place to vent

was humbling to me.

But then the ask for me was, would you and your kids

allow Rick into your house?

And she said, Keith, that is the very thing

that the kids want.

They want to meet their brother.

And so after that call is when I gave you the phone number.

So yeah, that was, I'd say all the crazy phone calls

I've had in life, that was top 20 intense.

It was an intense phone call.

She is one of us.

She will be one of the bravest people always

of ever meant to allow me to do that,

to come into the life of her kids.

I mean, how vulnerable was she at that moment?

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine her children.

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine that happening.

I can only imagine.

And it just, so you gave me the information.

That was early made, perhaps.

So I have the information, but I'm not sure what to do.

And so again, another thing that God I can only explain.

I'm reading my Bible.

June, July, early July.

I'm reading my Bible.

There's one chapter in a book called Obadaya

in the Old Testament.

And a big part of that one chapter

is about the conflict between brothers.

And brothers can help each other,

but a brother chooses not to.

And God responds to the one who won't help

is your guilty as the people who hurt your brother.

You're like that.

And I'm like, really, seriously?

Okay.

And from that, I draw the impression

that I should call.

Because I think, like you,

I've learned a little bit now about who God really is,

enough to share to someone, hope, you know,

and joy and peace, which that's what I want to offer.

And so I call Faye in August, early August.

And had you ever talked to her before that?

I never knew who she was.

You had no idea who this was.

I didn't know who she is.

I didn't know who these children,

I didn't know who these children are.

She was Debbie Baila.

I had no idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You had no idea if she was the sweetest human on the planet.

It has been a cheerleader of my life since, yeah.

Until she passed away earlier this year.

Yeah.

So I call early August and those were the days

of voice mail on answering machines.

And so we played voice mail tag

on our answering machines for about a week.

We totally caught each other.

And she said, yes, I could come.

And so I drove, we had one of those old Dodge Care Ranch,

you know, the Curse of the Middle class,

that some people would call it,

but it was great for us.

We loved it.

And so I drove over there north to central high school.

That's where they lived.

Yeah.

I remember.

I parked about a block away

because I thought, this is the hardest thing I can imagine.

It's like, really?

God, are you sure you want me to do this?

Because I just had that sense.

You know, that was 97.

I had been mentoring counseling people since about 89.

So I had a sense of, while I'd not been in this situation

and not been best of like this in this situation,

you know, not personally attached,

I had a sense that this was going to change lives,

including my, and I had a wife and two sons,

and our life was traveling pretty much in a straight line.

And it was about to blow up.

And I was just like, had that conversation with God

or potentially, you know, it's going to change a lot

when I say blow up.

So I sat there and wrestled with God a little bit

and had banned and decided I would do it.

So I got out, walked the block, knocked on the door,

and I guess for the sake of clarity,

I'll use these expressions, half sisters and sisters

and brother and stuff.

So what would be my half sister or came to the door?

And Jennifer and greeted me.

And I went in and Jeff, my half brother greeted me

at the top of the stairs and say,

and they looked at me with kind of wondering eyes.

And part of that was because I looked so much like they're dead.

And I'm 10, 12, 15 years older than them.

And so we're not exactly peers, though we're siblings.

And so I sit down with them and say,

and it was a really good conversation.

They had such a huge hole in their lives.

I just can't describe it.

Well, Jason came in, knocked on,

now Jason is the one that disrupted the people even.

The 25 year old, he called everyone back into the tunnel.

Jason came to the door with his wife, Amy.

And as they walked up the stairs that split level home,

I saw Amy and I said out loud, Amy.

Are you serious?

Like I'd known Amy for probably 10 years in business.

And she knew who I was all that time.

She knew.

She knew.

But she never spoke, but we interacted in business environment.

So Jason knew, Jason knew, he knew about you then.

He knew who I was and what I looked like.

He had seen me.

I had not seen him.

And all that sounds kind of maybe weird,

but it wasn't weird at all.

They were curious, right?

That's the wife.

Yeah, they're dead.

And so I didn't know, I mean, we spent maybe two hours

together that afternoon and I told them I was available

and told them where I live, gave them a phone number

and gave them the freedom to never call,

but prayed for them a verse from Romans 15

about peace being over them

and hope being over them and told them

I would continue to pray that verse over them

regardless of whether I saw them again or not.

And left to go home.

I'm like interjecting,

like going back a little bit like when I started learning

some of the ideas Bob taught me,

I'd ask my sister if they might let me speak at Calvary

one Sunday night because of the Baptist churches with me

whenever they could get the doors open.

And so she somehow got approval for me to have a pulpit,

which was a really on a Sunday night, on a Sunday night,

but there was still a good crowd there.

In I recall presenting this loving God

to a, I think in the hands of an angry guy,

to people who've been taught the hands of my angry guy.

I'm presenting a loving God.

I pointed to a place that I sat many Sunday mornings

with a hangover saying of the learned about this guy

that that wasn't what he was keeping score on.

He wanted to know me as a friend that I spoke in.

And so people, like a lot of people in that room

would have been at the funeral years later, right?

And I remember fan Richard coming up and just thrilled it.

I think maybe my public speaking is what,

I don't know if he'd grasp what I was saying.

It's okay, but then the pastor came up and he said to me,

if I had known you were gonna say that,

you would not have had an opportunity here.

And I was like, good thing I got it there.

Whoa, but like all the ideas,

I can't imagine those kids now that you're in the house

and you just, you threw the welcome mat out

and so do you guys hug and then you go in your way

as I would happen or politely.

Yeah, I mean, not inappropriately, but just politely.

Yeah, it wasn't anything rude.

Like they were so brave, fey was so brave.

Yeah.

But the emotional hole that something like that

creates in someone.

I just, we just had no idea what might come of that,

but there was a need bigger, certainly,

than I had any idea how to,

or any hope of ever making a difference in.

So we get, we spring forward.

Tell us some of that.

Tell us some of the highlights of things.

Like you and I have been in touch over this whole time

and almost every time you say,

well, you'll say you won't believe this.

So tell us, I were six of you won't believe this.

Yeah, well, I think, you know,

just shortcutting to some of that would be like,

so that was August of 97 in the fall of 97.

I asked Jason to go with me.

Jason took an interest.

Jeff took an interest.

They came to the home.

They came to church with me a few times at Grace Baptist

or church type events.

97 that we wouldn't have been at Grace Baptist.

We've been at Grace community.

But anyway, they participated some.

They took an interest.

That's for sure.

And in August, I, I'd made that open door.

They had, they had particularly,

Jason had taken an interest.

And in October, I asked him to go with me to Washington, D.C.

And there was an event at that time where men had been invited

who had relationship with God to come and pray for the country.

And you could come.

Many one just ran at random.

And he agreed to go with me.

And so so many wonderful things happened in the trip

that he and I laugh about.

But the thing that really locked us together was that day.

So the day we were there, we were on that lawn there

between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument

and Lincoln Memorial, that long grassy lawn.

And we were there before the sun came up

and we were there on the summit down.

So we watched it come up over the Capitol building,

go down behind the Lincoln Memorial.

And what we did that day is we, we prayed.

We didn't eat.

We didn't eat, not being super spiritual.

Just say we didn't eat that day.

We prayed, we hugged, we talked right there on the grass

in like a two foot square.

We just each had our own little square figuratively speaking.

And they've known each other how long, yeah.

A couple months.

Okay.

Yeah, we met in August, it's October.

Okay.

And I had, there was another man who had come with us

who had helped me after you gave me the information

and after God used Obadiah to tell me this was time,

I called a friend named Troy

and had him help me think through this.

Well, Troy was with Jason and I there on the lawn there.

And at the end of the day,

Troy and I stood just shoulder to shoulder,

just as close as basically as we could get.

And we had our hands in the air and we were just,

we were looking at this guy and we were crying

and we were praising God.

We were thankful for our families and our friends

and what we were learning about who God is

and we're praying for the country.

And so we're crying and we're thanking the Lord

and we close our eyes and I feel someone come up behind

beside me on my left side and it's Jason

and he stands up and he reaches up and he's doing

the same thing and I grabbed his hand

and so there's three of us and we're just shouting

and screaming and crying and praising God

and something happened to us that day

that we were very trustworthy of each other.

And we would spend the next 10 years together

meeting at Westman Park once a week.

We'd set up picnic tables or for us to cold or rainy

we'd sit in a car and we just unpacked this thing

for 10 years, what happened to us?

And particularly what happened to him

and what I had done wrong but being indifferent.

And during that time, you know, he went to seminary

and he got his doctorate degree in biblical counseling

and became a pastor.

Well, before that though, didn't he, didn't he,

one of you a chaplain somewhere?

In a, in Henderson, jail, he was a chaplain.

And he was, before he met you,

he was just going about his life.

He's going about his life, man.

So he ends up as a pastor in that 10 years span of life

and certainly just, we just unpacked, you know,

now are you comfortable talking about him becoming a pastor

and becoming an interim pastor,

you're comfortable telling us.

Yeah, I'm going to get there.

Okay, I didn't, I didn't, I was going to mess.

Okay, go ahead, yeah, I was going to mess.

So that's what, now that's like 2007 or something like that

where we're, he's in this role

and Donna and I are on vacation in Alabama.

And we, we, this family member who had been indifferent

and who hadn't fed me this unforgiveness and stuff

who I, by which I had adopted and I had been wrong,

I had done wrong.

That family member was on vacation in Alabama

while we were there.

Okay, and so we went, we, we were, we stopped by to see them

and while we were there, the phone rang.

And so this person answered the phone

and was, was hearing from the, her brother

about this, this pastor in Elberfeld, Indiana

that was changing the way people think.

And then, and I like, those of you

that have never been down to Southern Indiana,

Elberfeld is not like 200 people.

Yeah, it is, it's a pretty small subset on the planet.

So, it's pretty much, and so, so this lady's brother

is calling and saying, you can't, you can't believe

what this young pastor's teaching us.

This is amazing because he's brought this message

of love and identity and grace and peace

and they've all heard this landmarkism

and we know you were gonna tell us that.

Yeah, yeah, they've heard that message,

but here this guy is giving them all these freedom

and so my mom's like, oh, great, well, what's his name?

And, and her brother says, Jason, Davis

and my mom has no idea who that is.

That's so, she, she tells me this story

when she gets off the phone and those were the days

of cell phones.

And so, when we were leaving there, I call Jason.

I'm like, Jason, are you preaching at a church

in Elberfeld, Indiana and he's like, yeah,

I said, is there a Bobby Brown there?

Well, yeah, I said, he's there, John Brown

and I start naming all these relatives

and he's like, well, yeah, who are they?

I said, they're my aunts and uncles.

And he's like, no way.

I said, well, the neat thing about this

is they, throughout my life, said, we will not listen

to you because you're the younger.

Listen to your name.

Yeah.

They're not going to listen to me because I'm the younger.

That's part of that thinking.

But here's a guy that they'll listen to,

who's learned from Rick for 10 years.

And so he's giving them the message

they wouldn't receive from me and they're receiving it.

And so he goes back to Nick and they have no idea.

No idea who he is.

They have no idea that he's somewhat related to them.

Right.

And so he goes back and this is how he tells it.

He goes in the next Sunday and he's,

he's at the end of the service and people are milling around

and he's standing beside my uncle, Bob.

And he says, without looking at him,

there's shoulder to shoulder.

He says, Bob, he said, you know Rick under him?

And Bob's like, well, yeah, he's my nephew.

And Jason said, he's my brother.

Bob's like, well, sure he is, sure he is.

Like we're both believers and there's that.

He's my Christian brother, my Christian brother.

And Jason's like, no, he's my brother.

Like really?

DNA kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my.

And so my mom's there and my mom calls me

and she's like, I had no idea.

And the lady who had created this unforgiveness is there

and she says, I don't know if I can keep going there.

Because every time I see him, I see the magnitude.

Yeah, I see Richard.

And when you go back to the beginning,

this trash that people believe and teach,

when you go back to the beginning,

you have a 16 year old woman,

my 17 year old boy, they get pregnant together.

And the response is you can live behind the house

in the chicken coop with your newborn.

And so you lived in a chicken coop for two years

with my teenage parents.

I don't know.

I know what that looks like.

I just can't envision that that's actually true.

Does that make sense?

I think you're of it.

I have to see that.

I could have brought it with me.

Yeah, that's my in boggling to think about that.

Yeah.

So there were no chickens in there.

There was a pool table and a piece of plywood.

And that's what slept on.

This is what comes to my mind, Rick.

Like, because 1961 wasn't the late 60s,

because by the late 60s,

what happened to your mom and dad,

like a pregnancy out of marriage?

I don't think that anybody cared.

Like the hippies were coming to,

but there was a lot of guilt and condemnation

by it happening in 1961.

And when I was talking about Evansville,

it's hard to tell somebody that's never

looked through the 60s and 70s,

kind of the chaos that was going on then.

But I can just imagine the guilt and condemnation

both your mom and dad felt by all that,

because of the landmarkism,

just the condemnation.

You have to be qualified, right?

Yeah, and a lot of things disqualified you,

which we won't even get into it.

But it wasn't just your behavior, right?

Where you were from, what you looked like.

So for a month here, my family is sitting under Jason's teaching

and they know now,

and they all have to make a decision.

Are we gonna listen?

Are we gonna lead?

And the person who had created this indifference

and unforgiveness chose to stay and listen.

Wow.

And so after about six weeks, Jason calls me,

and we talked frequently in between,

but he called me, he said,

that person wrote me a letter

and gave it to me today after the service.

And the letter was an apology for the way they had treated

his dad and the condemnation and the unforgiveness

and the mean spirit for 40 years,

35 years that they had piled on this man, Richard,

as they now realize contributed to our loss of him,

for him being gone.

And so they wrote this letter of apology to Jason

and Jason read it to me.

And I got off the phone and I called that family member

and I called them by their maiden name,

their childhood name, and they're like,

why are you doing that?

I said, cause you've been carrying this crap for 50 years

and it costs Richard his life.

And you just gave it up and I'm so proud of you.

And she said, you're right, I have been carrying it

for 50 years.

And she said, I told God, if you would let me just let it go,

I'd really appreciate it.

Like, I don't want to write this letter.

That's 50 years ago.

Can we just leave it under the table?

Do we really have to bring this into the light?

And the Lord impressed upon her, the spirit of God,

I said, yeah.

And so I called her again by her maiden name

and I said, you did a good thing.

And she received that and that was,

that was Jason then gets back to me and says,

Rick, if nothing else happened,

if me going to seminary and becoming a pastor

only brought me to this letter, it was worth it.

And that's how he received it.

I honestly don't understand the dynamic of suicide.

The dynamic of suicide.

I have opinions about it.

And I think my strong opinion is that you as a person

who are tempted by that have been told a lie,

repeated that lie, the lie is like a backpack

to just keep pulling your shoulders down.

It just gets, and it stays with you time after time,

and eventually another lie says,

there's an easier way out.

And the lies that get intertwined in people's lives

are just hard to imagine.

And to be a messenger of redemption,

messenger of hope is just a big deal, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So through Jason, I would come to meet Faye

or through Faye, I'd come to meet the kids,

however you want to sort it out.

Eventually, Faye, Donna and I,

we would be in church together.

Jason would now be my pastor,

even though he will tell people that I'm really the one

taking care of him, but he's my pastor now,

and here we are, you know, these many years later.

It's amazing to be a part of this life.

It's an unbelievable gift.

You know, it would be there when his children were born

to pick up those little newborns and carry them around.

And to be given the opportunity to perform the wedding

for his daughter, his son's not married yet,

don't mean that I need to do it,

but just saying, to be part of that kind of intimacy

and now they have a granddaughter

and their granddaughter was handed to me, you know,

as if I'm just another part of the family.

And so there are many other things in that story

we can unpack about how God has redeemed the time,

but it would be, it would be really important to understand

that it's not something we've orchestrated.

It's happened by taking what we thought was God

and moving that direction and someone receiving it

and picking it up.

And we've just found God to be very faithful

to love on us just the way we are.

He is such a good God that whatever I told that

Sunday night service,

I would have used more and more adjectives

back then if I'd have known them then, right?

I would have probably got thrown out forever

because of how good a God he is and what I think.

And the magnitude of how much he cares

and how quickly he'll redeem

and the goodness of the story is beyond my thoughts.

The contradictions and the power of God

is what I said earlier that really,

you're gonna have to show that to me.

This story, I can't even believe this story.

And every time I would see you and you'd add another chapter

to it and it blew me away.

We told it version of this.

You told me last night, 2014, right?

And so that one, when somebody has a suicide

I'll send it to them, to listen to, to say,

there is light at the end of that tunnel.

It's a dark, dark tunnel from what I can tell

and there is light in it.

And one of the guys that listened to this years ago,

that version of it, he was driving up on I-69

and Michigan and his brother had just taken his life.

And he got that to listen to and he called me

and he was just crying and he's like,

Keith, I can't believe what I've just heard.

I can't believe that there is a God that that's that powerful

and that can redeem a horrible story like that.

And I was like, that's him, man, he can do it.

And that guy has started a ministry to men

that are struggling with these sorts of thoughts

here locally and it's had a big influence

over central Indiana.

But what other kind of messages of hope

would you tell people because unfortunately

this is a part of culture that people

are making these decisions.

There's temptations and pressures

but as they walk away from our time together,

I want them to know that there's hope.

Yeah, Jason last year at Fathers Day

and he said, would you sit with me

in front of the congregation and let's tell this story?

And I'm like, ooh, I don't know, man.

Like there's gonna be people in the room

that are part of that story.

And I wanna always tell this with such respect

because again, what we do is not necessarily who we are,

right, and people do learn.

And he said, well, here's the way I wanna tell it.

He said, I wanna tell the perspective of how God,

I lost my father, Richard was out of my life.

He said, you lost your father that way

and yet God provided you Fathers and a man to raise me.

He said, I lost my father and God provided me a father in you.

Wow, so I wanna tell them how God provides Fathers

to men who lose their Fathers.

And so we sat there together and told that story together

from that, we told it from that perspective.

Right.

And that level of hope and confidence,

you know, we didn't have that in 1997.

Right.

When my mom remarried when I was six years old,

I didn't go to the wedding.

She allowed me to stay home because I wanted my dad.

And so to say, you know, there's a lot of conversation

about what does that mean?

What does that say?

But I would say it's a sensible longing

that I had lost a sensible longing.

And when I saw that picture of him, I knew where I belonged.

And so you bring all that forward

and then to have Jason say, hey,

God provided Fathers for both of us.

Let's tell that story.

And he did.

He certainly did.

He raised me with a man, a man raised me.

However, those guys in Western Kentucky, you know,

the Bob Warns and the Johnny Trailers

and the Buddy Moody's and Al Jains

and all those guys we met were like Fathers to us, to me.

And Jason and I saw God do that.

And well, those of you who are wondering about this

and wondering about a hopeless situation.

And hopefully you've heard an unexplainable story,

a redemption story that we're almost 30 years into it.

And who knows, probably the way that I see the world is

this story will be influencing people 100 years from now

and your story can as well.

Like whatever you're struggling through, whatever.

Maybe it's a hit and run car accident

that kills somebody you love.

Maybe it's something else, but there is redemption.

There's a good God.

He's not an angry God.

He's a God that wants the best for you.

And man, anything we could do to cheer you on with that,

we really believe this will help up your average.

And anything else that our friends need to know, Greg?

Steve going, man.

Steve going.

Thanks for hanging out with us today.

It's been a really special time.