#116: Divorce (on Restore the Glory Podcast)
Today we’re sharing a podcast where I was interviewed by two therapists, Dr. Bob Schuchts and Jake Khym, on their podcast, Restore the Glory. Joey especially opens up about his struggles in his relationship with God, plus they discuss:
When we don’t face our wounds, we typically try to outrun them.
Since divorce is a wound of broken love, the antidote is authentic love.
Why it’s so helpful to spend time with a couple who has a healthy marriage.
Meet with Joey for Restored’s Donor Pitch
Listen to the Restore the Glory podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
Today we're sharing with you guys a podcast episode in which I was interviewed by two therapists, Dr. Bob Schutz and Jake Kim on their awesome podcast called Restore the Glory. And in that conversation we especially talk about my struggles in my relationship with God. I open up a bit more than I usually do on this podcast in this interview that you're about to hear.
We also talk about things like when we don't face our wounds, we typically try to outrun them. Since divorce is a wound of broken love, naturally The antidote is authentic love. We also touch on how consuming great content about healing and trauma is really helpful and even healing in itself. Why it's so helpful to spend time with a couple that has a great marriage, a healthy marriage, especially if you didn't see that growing up.
And finally, we hit on how it's so tempting within marriage, whether you're married now or not, once you are married, it's so tempting within marriage to just close off your heart, to harden your heart, and obviously we talk about the antidote to that. So, lots of great stuff ahead. Stay with us.
Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents, divorce, separation, or broken marriage. So you can break the cycle. I'm your host Joey Pontarelli, and this is episode 116. Today's episode is sponsored by Dakota lane fitness. If you've ever felt intimidated by working out, by eating healthy, or perhaps you've even tried to work out programs or meal plans that just didn't work for you.
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And through studying to become a priest for a little while a few years ago, and his time at Franciscan University of Steubenville and the Augustine Institute, he developed The belief that to be fully human, to live a fully human life, really involves not just growing in one area of your life, such as your spiritual life, and neglecting the rest, like your body.
He says that we really need to care for our bodies and restore that body soul relationship so that each of us can have, uh, you know, more virtue, can build more virtue and be more free to love. And finally, Dakota's mission is really to lead people to experience the highest quality of life. through intentional discipline and treating their bodies the way that they were made to be treated.
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Look, no further. Dakota Lane is your man. If you want to see what Dakota offers and the amazing results his clients have achieved, just go to Dakota lane, fitness. com. You could even Google that Dakota lane fitness, or just click on the link in the show notes. With that, here is my interview on Restore the Glory podcast.
Welcome to Restore the Glory Podcast. My name is Jake Kim. Bob Schuetz And I'm Bob Schuetz. Jake Kim We're two Catholic therapists sharing what we've learned personally and professionally to help you on the journey of restoration.
Hey, Bob, good to see you once again. We just finished up our series on adoption. And now we're diving into another series that has impacted, I think, a lot of people. And we have a special guest with us. Bob, why don't you introduce our guest and if you want to say anything else about our topic, and then we'll get into it.
Yeah, I think there's a real connection between adoption and divorce in the sense that I think they both mirror the fall. Interesting. You know, it's like we're adopted children of the father, but we had a broken relationship, and same thing with divorce. It's like there's a covenant. It's shattered, and everybody's heart on the human side is shattered with it.
The person we have on today is somebody who's dedicated his life and career to helping people who have gone through divorce, particularly children of divorce, and I get to know, it's Joey Pontarelli, and, uh, Italian pronunciation of that is probably Pontarelli, huh? Something like that. I met Joey because he invited me to be on his podcast as a child of divorce.
I actually have been on a couple times. And just have always felt a kinship. Not only because of going through the same experience, but because of his heart for Jesus and just the way that he's just offered his, his own suffering and everything that he's gone through as a gift to the church. So, Joey, welcome and, uh, maybe you can add a few things about yourself, family life right now and all that.
Yeah, so honored to be here with you both and love the work that you do as, as you know, we've sent a lot of people your way through my ministry. I can't really top that introduction, especially the Italian. I love it. But I, yeah, no, I'm a Catholic man, husband, father, author, speaker, ministry leader, business leader.
I have a baby in heaven, a two year old daughter, and my wife and I are expecting another baby as well, which is super exciting. So we have to have many children. And in addition to that though, I went to Franciscan University, I know Jake and I share that in common, which I, I loved. And through there, I really got to see how beautiful and how effective different ministries can be at just helping people transform their lives and become saints.
And so that's what, you know, we'll get into later, but we're trying to help young people from broken families to, to do as well. Yeah. And your ministry name is similar to our podcast name, right? It's restored. Yep. Yeah, restored. The website is restored ministry.com. And uh, yeah, we help teenagers and young adults who come from divorce or broken families to, to heal and build virtues.
They can break that cycle in their own lives. Hmm. What an interesting ministry. Like, I used to work at a parish in Denver, Colorado, Littleton, to be technical, of St. Francis Cabrini. So, hey, any listeners that are there, shout out to St. Francis Cabrini in Littleton. And I remember doing the RCA, then now called OCI process, for people who are becoming Catholic.
And the dynamic of divorce, the reality of divorce, Came up a lot because it brought up this thing about divorce and remarriage and then people and annulments and all of that But beyond that something that I noticed it just moved me I remember one gentleman who was on our core team who was divorced talk about his experience and the Isolation he felt in our parish community, which was pretty well known for being good at doing community It's always struck me how he said, I wish there was ministry to those of us who are single now after being divorced and even annulled.
And it's just, it was like, he felt like he wore this scarlet letter. And walked around. He's like, I know this shouldn't have happened. I know, you know, it was like, and I just, man, I had a lot of compassion for him, but I didn't, I didn't know what to do. Right. This was way before being a therapist and even being a therapist, you know, in the community.
So I'm just grateful for the ministry that you do just to begin to start with, like, What are things that you notice, you know, statistically, we could go into all that stuff, but I think maybe in your story or in your ministry, how does divorce impact people? And then maybe we can get into how do we experience healing with it?
Yeah, no, great question. I'll start with the story of a woman who reached out to me not long ago. I call her Mary, she said that when she was a little girl, she would watch her parents fight all the time. Their marriage was a mess, and they really needed help, they needed healing, but they never got the help that they needed, and so the dysfunction just continued on for years.
Fast forward to when Mary was in high school, her mom approached her and she said, I want to divorce your dad. Mary didn't really know what to say to that, so she told her, I just want the fighting to stop. So her mom goes through with the divorce, which honestly, it seemed like a solution to a really bad, messy situation, but it just made things worse for Mary.
It was just one trauma on top of another, just added more pain into her life. And she told me that at that point, like, she didn't really act out. Up to that point, she didn't really act out. She held her pain inside, but that all changed when she went to college. She got into the party scene, she started drinking heavily, that led to dating the wrong guys.
She ended up marrying one of those guys who was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and their marriage was obviously a mess as well. Before long, they get pregnant. And because Mary was terrified that her baby was going to grow up in that dysfunction, that hell, she got an abortion, which obviously brought a ton more pain into her life.
And following that, she divorced her husband, repeating that cycle started by her parents, which is super common. Some studies say like two to three times more common if you come from a divorced family to get divorced yourself. And once the dust settled, she fell into a deep depression, still wrestles with some emotional issues today.
And whenever, you know, I think of her story, which I do think encapsulates this problem, I can't help but think like, what if, what if someone was there to just help her, to walk with her, to get her professional help, to teach her how to deal with her pain in healthy ways instead of unhealthy ways, to show her what to look for in a spouse and how to build a healthy relationship.
I'm super convinced, I know that she would agree with me, that if she had that help, her life would not have become the tragedy that it did. And so, pretty dramatic story, but that really encapsulates the problem that we're trying to solve and the person that we're trying to help. But what I see again and again is that young people who come from broken families, from divorced families, separated families, or families with just a lot of dysfunction, They, you know, carry all these wounds, and in response to those wounds, they, you know, often develop bad habits and all these other problems, emotional problems, relationships, struggles, all these things.
And because they don't get the help that they deserve, because resources just are so few and far between, they just continue to perpetuate this pattern in their own lives. And then it just continues for generations. And so I think that at the root of the mess in our culture today, I mean, John Paul II said, you know, as the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
At the root of all of our problems, I'm convinced. is brokenness within our families. And so the idea is if we can begin to solve that, we can begin to solve all these other problems as well. So I'm happy to get into my story, but I'd love to hear if either of you have anything to add to that. What prompted my thinking after you said that was the second part of your ministry, which is you, you now work also with young people with sexual brokenness because you've seen such a correlation.
And, you know, I know you both, you and I have experienced that in our upbringing, you know, just what a mess my family was in after that, when you take Parent out of there, and there's just a open field for sexual brokenness as well that then perpetuates itself. You want to share some about that? Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Patrick Carnes is an expert on sexual compulsion and addiction, and he says that about 90 percent of people with a sexual addiction come from a broken family, essentially. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that, when I heard that statistic through Jay Stringer, who's been on my podcast, love the guy, like so, so good.
When I heard that, I was like, my goodness, there's a clear connection here. And so a little bit about my story, which I'll tie into what you said, Dr. Bob. When I was about 11 years old, my parents separated and later divorced, and it just shattered my world. It brought a bunch of pain and problems into my life.
And I remember the day that my mom broke the news that dad would no longer be living with us. In fact, they were getting divorced. As an 11 year old kid, I didn't know what to do with that news, and so I just hid in the closet and, and cried, and sitting there in the closet, I couldn't have put it into words then, but I felt abandoned, I felt unwanted, I felt like I just wasn't good enough, and in the months and years that followed, I dealt with all sorts of pain and problems, I dealt with emotional problems, like I You know, anxiety, depression, loneliness, a lot of anger for me as a boy, I dealt with relationship struggles.
If someone would have told me all the ways in which my parents separation and divorce would impact my future relationships, everything from friendships to dating relationships and even my own marriage now, I probably would not have believed them. But it's so true. I remember, you know, I know you guys talk about kind of the vows we make, um, as a result of the, the wounds that we are inflicted upon us.
One of them for me was You know, I said I will never get married like if this is where if this is where marriage leads Why in the world would I want to put myself through that? and so that was my you know stands for the longest time and just a huge fear of love and Relationships and just feeling truly lost like I didn't know what a healthy marriage looked like I didn't know how to go about building that and so just a lot of struggles when it came to relationships and finally bad habits So get to your point.
Dr. Bob around the time when my parents split Buddy of mine, Schwarz, buddy of mine, introduced me to pornography. And, and that really became my, my drug of choice. And it snowballed into other sexual sins as well, which just brought a lot of shame and, and struggle into my life. And so it was, uh, in that brokenness, that messiness, that emptiness that would result, you know, in the moment it felt good, but afterwards I felt so miserable and empty.
And as a boy, I knew I wanted to be happy and porn wasn't making me happy. And so I needed to change. And two things really helped. One was. I heard Jason Everett speak. If you're not familiar to all the listeners, he's a chastity speaker and author who is just incredible at what he does and just super inspirational.
I took his advice, consumed his content, got porn out of my life, started living a pure life that helped a ton. Aside from that, I got new friends. The sports buddies I was hanging around with weren't good for me. These new friends were really joyful, happy people. And again, I wanted to be happy. And so whatever it is that they had, I wanted.
And it came to light that it was their Catholic faith. And so I started to just be like that. And I certainly faked it for a while. But I started to pray to build virtue, to learn my faith, and just seek out God's plan for my life. And that helped a ton too. But going into high school and into college too, I still felt broken.
And so I realize this principle that I think is true for all of us and that is, after sin, the thing that holds us back most from becoming the best version of ourselves is our untreated brokenness. And so I knew I needed heal, but I looked around for, for help, you know, and I was just shocked to find that there was really nothing practical and specific for a young person like me who came from a broken family.
And the reason it shocked me was because I looked at my siblings. I saw how they were struggling. I looked at close friends of mine who were going through their parents divorce, and I saw how they were struggling a lot of times in serious ways. And in the years that followed, I just started reading the research and just understanding this is a huge problem, but for some reason, no one's really doing anything about it.
And as a result, this group of people is being hugely neglected. And like I said before, they end up just repeating that pattern of, you know, trauma and brokenness then into vice. And then that traumatizes them more and then back into, you know, more brokenness. And I mean, you guys know this better than I do.
And so, yeah, the sexual component, I totally see a strong connection there. And it really was for me, just this way of numbing my pain, numbing my pain. And, um, there was some other components to it as well, but that was such a big thing for me. And I definitely see it in a lot of the, the young people that we work with.
And again, that, that statistic, like 90 percent of people who struggle with a sexual addiction come from a broken family is, is mind boggling. Joey, as you're talking, my mind's going all over the place and I want to, Roll with me here, Bob and Joey, I want to see if we can do a simple little task that I think would, for me, I think it would bless the audience.
I think this will work. So you guys are describing things. And as I'm hearing it, I'm going, you're labeling the anatomy of a wound, wounds, beliefs, and vows. And I'm wondering if we could just for a moment tag team here and just kind of throw on the table. What happens with divorce? This is the category we're in, and I just keep hearing the anatomy of a wound over and over, and yet I imagine it's nuanced for, you know, when you mentioned Mary and Joe yourself, Bob, I know your story, let me kick it off, and then maybe we can just label it so people can go, Oh, wow, I see the larger picture, because I feel like we're going to be touching on these elements throughout the conversation today.
So, If you would indulge me. So we have wound beliefs and vows and Bob, we talk about the seven deadly wounds and all those kinds of things. So I already heard separation and abandonment. Maybe those would be the same, but I'm thinking, of course, of course, that's part of the wound of divorce, Joey, you mentioned a vow and you labeled it really well.
I will never get married. And I just thought, yep. Wow. That is a strong dynamic. But when you link the idea that you just did of what JP2 says about the family and your vow, wildly, that simple vow seems to be going like to the heart of all of existence in a way. I will never get married says something cosmically, not just in your little world.
It's almost like saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't trust relationship. I don't think love works. It'll be let down, you know, I don't know what we would nuance there, but holy smokes, it starts to make a lot of sense about the impact of divorce. So let me throw it over to you guys. What do you guys see in the anatomy of a wound, wounds, beliefs, and vows with divorce, like maybe in your experience or in your ministry?
So Bob, how about we'll go you, then Joey, we'll go you, if that works. I was listening to you, Joey, and I could identify, I heard powerlessness. Yes. Can't do anything about this. And I heard rejection, what's wrong with me, that my dad wouldn't want to be here, or that my parents don't want to be married, which then becomes shame.
You know, so it's, I don't feel loved, and I, I take it in as shame. There's an element of hopelessness. I'll never have what I want. There's fear because I can't trust, you know, I can't trust love. So there's a wound of fear there. There's confusion. I don't understand. This doesn't make any sense to me. I think they're all there.
The beliefs become connected to that. I'm alone. I'm not loved. I can't do anything about it. And it's up to me to make it all better, which is where the vows come from. And it's interesting, Joey, your vow was the very opposite of mine, which is I will never get divorced, like my parents. Wow, yeah. I was going to get married, but I wasn't going to get divorced.
And I didn't, but my vow almost Kept me in fear about that for a long time until that was healed just to interject really quick with Joey before we go to you I think this was the point I was hoping for is because I've heard this a lot Oh, you know and my and you know, my parents got divorced when I was a kid, but you know that happens It's really common and then that and people just hop over this experience because it's common It's like You know, in our world, this is going to sound weird, but you know, everybody has their left leg amputated, you know, it's just normal.
It's just what happens. And so we all hop around in one leg. And so you go, oh, right, this is, but what, what if we were always supposed to have two legs, you know, and what's the impact of that? It's a silly example, but I'm like, holy smokes. And then. Do you guys had the exact opposite vow, but had the same experience?
That's fascinating to me. And I think this is my point to, to draw people in to go, man, okay, maybe I wasn't, didn't experience divorce, but whoa, you can have these experiences. I love what you said, Joy. After sin, untreated brokenness is the most important dynamic in life. And I'm going a important thing to address, man, is that ever.
True. We would argue, Bob, your sin and your brokenness are connected, which I'm sure Joey, you would have seen that as well. So Joey, jump in here with us. Like, what do you notice in the anatomy of a wound dynamics here? No, there's so much I want to say. Uh, first to touch on the vow that I made a little bit, Jake, you gave me insight here.
I didn't think of this before, but it's almost like I was saying, I will never love, or I will never be vulnerable. Yeah. You know, marriage was maybe the vehicle or the thing I was like attaching it to. But. I certainly saw that play out and especially in my teen years and even into being a young adult, you know, just kind of keeping people at arm's length.
I remember my first serious relationship, just get a little bit more tactile with how this played out. I remember just being terrified of letting her in, just like I remember going through a lot of anxiety around the time that we were dating and I just, I didn't even have the language first. to talk about.
I didn't even realize I think I was dealing with crippling anxieties, and that's maybe another topic for another time, how important it is to put our brokenness into words. But man, I just kept her at arm's length. I remember at one point we were like, maybe talking like once a week. It was really bad. And to me, that felt like all they could do.
I couldn't truly let people in because the fear underneath it all, and this goes back to like that. I don't know if it's a wound or a belief. Of just being unwanted like feeling unwanted like so much of my struggle with pornography was like I just wanted to feel wanted Yeah, but these other sexual sins too It's like I just had this feeling of even though it's fake and I kind of I knew it was fake I at least felt like I was wanted and so Underneath a lot of that or maybe the result of a lot of that was that I felt like a gift that wasn't worth giving In a lot of ways I was able to maybe like package the gift make the bow look pretty the wrapping paper But once someone got inside of it, I was like, they're not going to want to stay.
That they're going to see that there's not much here that's worth fighting for that's worth staying. And I would see that as like a direct extension of my parents separation and divorce. And so there's a lot there. I want to touch on the point, too, of kind of walking around with these undiagnosed wounds.
I think this problem of brokenness within our families is the biggest undiagnosed problem in our culture right now. And that might sound like I'm overstating it, but the U. S. Census says that every year there's over a million American children who go through their parents divorce. Wow. If you just take the 90s alone, that 10 year span, That's, you know, over 10 million children.
That's more people than the size of New York City than are populated in New York City. This is a massive, massive problem. And I think for a lot of us, it's so massive that we just kind of like turn a blind eye to it. We don't want to really talk about it. And so for young people or anyone who comes from, you know, a divorced family, so often they go through a few things.
One, the experience is so tumultuous and dramatic that they don't want to add more to the problem that they don't want to rock the boat. And so they just kind of deal with it themselves. They bury their wounds, they develop these unhealthy ways of coping and to them, it almost seems like, well, I'm just helping my parents in a sense.
Cause I'm not bringing up more problems. Another thing too, is like, you know, if you wear your sunglasses on your head for long enough. You're going to kind of forget that they're there. If you carry around a backpack for long enough, you kind of just feel like it's a part of you. It's similar with this.
It's like, yeah, my family is super broken, but it's always kind of been this way. And so I don't really even notice that it's there. And so those are a couple reasons. But I think the biggest overall is that as a culture, we don't see divorce as a problem. We see it as just like, like you guys said, this normal part of life.
And some people try to sugarcoat it, too, saying, well, your family hasn't ended, it's just changed, and now you have, you know, twice as many homes, and, you know, twice as many Christmas presents in two homes. And, I mean, we can talk about how damaging that is, but, as a culture, we've really made light of this problem, and as a result, We are even, the young people who go through this, we're even tempted to think, well, oh, it actually isn't a problem, my parents are happier, so I should be happier, even though I do feel hurt by it, and it was really difficult to go through, and I'm, you know, struggling with all these different things.
So, I know that's kind of a mouthful, but just a few things I felt like sharing, and we can go deeper into the anatomy of a woman, because you're right, there's so much there. Wow. Gosh, okay, I don't want to derail the conversation. So here's what I'm imagining. I'm imagining a person right now driving in their car, they come from a divorced family.
And they're going, what, what, you guys just pulled off the bandage that I've, like you said, a backpack, you know, I've been so used to this. I can imagine somebody being their mouths on the floor. Another person's just like, guys, stop, stop it. Like, stop over embellished. Like you make so much about whatever.
It's not that big of a deal. I think some other people are going, don't go there. Don't like, don't go there. How rude of you. Why I spell out those various dynamics is I'm inviting all of us to notice how we react to the various things that have impacted us. Usually, a strong reaction means there's a strong dynamic that's being touched on.
And it's indicative of this, like, oh gosh, this really mattered. So the point of all of this that we're saying is not to go, ha ha, you are broken. The point of it is to go, the The brokenness is real. How about let's be honest about it because we're, we're going to go here in a few minutes is, and what do we do about this?
How, how does one heal and recover and restore? Cause it's doom and gloom if we just label, yeah, it's awful. Should have never happened. You're pretty messed up because of it. Good, good. Go have a good life. Hope it all works out for you. Right. That's just like hopeless, you know, and obviously both of you having that's been your experience.
There's healing that can occur and fruit and God can do amazing things. I like that we're pressing in. Because it's honest. And this dynamic, take away divorce and put anything in there, the biggest temptation, again, you know, like you were saying, Joey, after sin, untreated brokenness are the things that, you know, are most important to address.
I don't know about you guys, but my sin and my brokenness are the two most common things I like to avoid, and I don't want to address, because they just expose stuff. They expose all kinds, like, Is God going to actually do anything? Do I actually believe that God is good? Is the cross effective? It just, it can get big, messy, quick.
So we cope, right? The potato chips and cookies go a long way to making somebody feel better, but they just, but they don't, you know, they leave you empty. As I'm trying to cushion some of this is to, I'm trying to be sensitive to the person out there who's going, uh, I didn't expect this when I flipped on a podcast about divorce because, oh yeah, my parents are divorced.
I wonder what these guys are going to say. I want to be sensitive to that, that it does impact and it's potentially impacting us more than we realize. And there's hope. Is there any more comments you guys want to make about the impact? And then I'd love us to shift over and start talking about how does, how does healing and the journey go?
And we can get into Joey, maybe what your ministry does and what you've seen. So Bob, any thoughts there about the impact before we go into the healing? Definitely. I think one of the things that happens when a wound is this big and this deep is denial. And I think that's part of what you're addressing.
And I was in pretty much denial for 20 years. in terms of the impact of my parents divorce on me. I was in my early 30s before it all came to a head, probably my late 20s before I started having an inkling. And, you know, I was not dysfunctional in a public sense. I was married, Had children, had a career, helping other people, didn't have any serious addictions or compulsions.
You know, I was functioning well, and so I thought I was fine. And yet, everything that Joey's saying was my experience too. It's just, I wasn't in touch with my experience. Maybe because I'm part German and Irish, and you were Italian, Joey, you had to start there. The denial of that was strong because the pain of that is strong, you know.
I started having anxiety later, and that anxiety was that surfacing, and it was the anxiety that led me to start to deal with it, because I thought I was fine, and I thought I was just there to help everybody else. Joey, turn it to you on that. Yeah, so good. I've never heard it said like that. Dr. Bob, that's, that's really insightful.
And a couple of things I would say, one, do you want to be well, you know, do you want to be whole? Like the question that Jesus asks, like echoes through centuries, right? And if you do, there's no way around dealing with the messy, ugly, dirty parts of ourselves, right? We have to go there. It's not easy. It's painful.
It's something that doesn't resolve itself immediately. It takes time, but there is freedom. There is a joy and a peace that are better than anything you've experienced waiting on the other side. And to me, that's worth fighting for. Is it hard? Is it difficult to hear? Absolutely. Do a lot of us deny it?
100%. But if you had cancer silently growing in your body, would you want to know that? I would. And then I want to do everything within my power and hopefully even things out of my power with God's grace. To heal that cancer and to, you know, restore health and wholeness. And so that would really be my challenge is like for anyone listening who's kind of thinking, well, yeah, my parents were divorced.
I saw some effects, but I'm good now. And maybe you are, maybe you're in a good spot and that's awesome. But I would challenge you there a little bit. Like, are there things that are hidden in your life that are, you know, really holding you back and keeping you from becoming the person that God wants you to be?
Because I've seen it left and right, like so many of us who come from broken families, and this is true for other ones as well, but so many of us, like, just play it safe in life. Like, we truly play it safe. And I've seen this with a lot, you know, I've done dozens of interviews in our podcast talking with young people from broken families.
And I see this trend, like, like we don't feel safe making risks, taking risks because we don't have the safety net to fall back on that people who come from functional, healthy families have. And so we go through life just like scratching the surface of our potential. And to me, that, that is a tragedy.
That is a tragedy. I, I forget who said the quote, um, maybe it was Thoreau who said, you know, most men, you know, go to their grave with their song still unsung. It's like, and maybe I'm butchering that quote. It's so sad that that's tragedy to me. And so, yes, if you want to put the past in the past, I get that.
But what about the present and the future? And I would challenge people and say that the key to unlocking like the joy, the happiness, the freedom that you long for. Lies in in the healing and building that virtue. And so I hope that's helpful. But yeah, I certainly can relate to some level of denial. And I think so much of healing comes down to connecting the dots.
You know, Dr Bobby, I've heard you through your books and podcasts and take you to just talk about this, like going back into our childhood. Some people may think it's just like this unhelpful thing that we shouldn't really ever talk about. But it really is. There's a purpose to it. It's not to get stuck in the past.
Yes. But once we connect those dots and say, wow, this addiction I'm struggling with, this compulsion, this unhealthy way I have of relating to people, this anger that just takes control of me in these situations, it's intimately connected to the breakdown in my family, to that trauma that I endured as a child.
And so if we want to, you know, resolve those things, we need to go back into the past. But it isn't easy. It's not. Hmm. Joey, something that I have started saying because I think it clicked for me and I think it clicked for other people is everybody's life actually makes a lot of sense. I have the utmost confidence to walk up to anyone and go, you make total sense.
Even in the most craziness of what they feel or experience, Oh, it makes sense if you're willing to connect the dots. If you're unwilling to connect the dots, it's craziness. But if you, if you're willing, Oh, it makes complete sense. And I think another thing that Joe, you're alluding to, which I just want to make explicit.
If there's no hope of transformation, I don't have much else other than denial or avoidance or addiction. Wow. That's the best option. And so, I think there's this hidden message that goes on in so many of our hearts and in the culture and in the world, which is, I actually don't think things actually change.
And because I believe that, I can't really say that out loud. Am I allowed to say that out loud? Or it's just assumed that isn't that the case? Cause look, the world doesn't change. It's just going to hell in a handbasket faster, faster every day. So if there's no transformation, porn makes sense. The remedy makes sense because I'm in so much pain.
I want to be loved and wanted. How can I do that? And trying to relate to. Someone else to be in an intimate relationship where maybe our sexual life is actually fulfilling and expressive of something good, true, and beautiful, that's too damn hard. I don't know how to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't know if I've said it like this, but Joey, what you're saying is inspiring me to just say, you know.
If we don't believe transformation's real, all of these idols make sense. They don't work, if we're willing to be honest, but they make sense. And so, I think something we're doing right now is we're at the threshold of transformation and healing. I'm hearing us say a couple things and then maybe we can keep walking into this space of what healing looks like.
Number one is, am I willing to be honest? About the reality of what's going on. And that sometimes is very hard because if I have no hope, I'm just setting myself up for more disappointment. That's silly. So step one, am I willing to be honest about my experience and what happened to me and how it impacted me?
And if that's okay, yes, I'm willing to be honest then. Now some people, uh, understandably go, Don't leave me here long, cause this is stinking hard and painful. Somebody come in and tell me what to do. How do I make this stuff get better and go away? So maybe we can take that next step with them. What happens next if I go, Okay.
I am broken. My parents divorce really rocked me. What now? Let me ask you, Joey, to make it personal, and just by identifying what Jake said. So, that attitude that you conveyed, Jake, was hopelessness. That's the wound of hopelessness, right? Things will never change. And so I'll just go to my addictions, right?
For you, Joey going to porn. But what happens is that becomes hopeless, more hopeless, right? I'm now not just bound up here in this pain, but I'm bound up in this addiction. So now I've increased the hopelessness and added a greater degree of my shame a hundred percent. I couldn't have said it better. So my solution has really become a deepening of the woundedness.
Hmm. And hopelessness that anything can change. So I'm going to give that to you, Joey, and talk about that in relation to Jake's question, which is, how does that shift? Where does the hope come from? Where does the freedom come from in your own life, you know, as you were in that place? Yeah, no, 100%. One thing I wanted to say first was, I think so often what happens is we've dug such a deep hole of vice because of our brokenness that we feel like it's hopeless to get out of that hole.
Yeah. And that's what, you know, we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Which I totally get, and I've certainly have felt that, you know, at different points in my life because I think when we go into new chapters in life are broken to surface in new ways, and I've heard Dr. Bobby talk about that a lot, and so I totally have felt that experience, whether it was, you know, as a 11 year old, 12 year old, 13 year old boy, Who is turning to lust as some sort of a, you know, pacifier for everything I was going through, a painkiller for everything I was going through.
And it just left me feeling completely miserable, even to the point, I don't talk about this as much, but even to the point where just like, I just wanted to die. Like I never was at a point where I was like, can I kill myself or anything like that? But I certainly did not want to live life the way it was going.
And so. Transitioning into kind of what you were saying, it truly was seeing people who were joyful, happy people that gave me hope that moved me from being hopeless that man, if life is going to feel like this all the time, why in the world do I even want to live like this is if relationships fall apart, even if they're good for a time, if I can't trust the people that I thought I could trust the most, then is life worth living?
And I know Fulton Sheen, like that, that was the title of his show, right? Life is worth living, which is beautiful. And so I think more than ever in our culture, we need to hear those and hear those stories of like hope. But before we get to that a little bit, I just wanted to say one thing. There's this powerful analogy.
I heard a woman. use when it came to outrunning her brokenness. I think it's a fascinating idea. She basically said that, you know, she would just really struggle to kind of face herself. I think that's the hardest person to face in our lives is ourselves and our past. And so she said what she would do is, it was almost like it was in water, imagine a, a lap pool, you know, your swimming laps and her brokenness was like her hair just kind of trailing behind her.
And as long as she didn't stop, it wouldn't catch up to her. If she kept moving, it would just be trailing behind her. But when she stopped, all that yuck, all the messiness, all the brokenness would just be, you know, surrounding her and her face. And I think that's so true for so many people. And Jake, to go back to the point that you were talking about with kind of people's reaction, I think that's part of the reason why we don't want to face this stuff, is we've figured out some way to kind of outrun it.
Um, but eventually one, it will catch up to you. I've seen that in my own life. And two, uh, you're made for more than that. Like there's a better life that's waiting for you. And so when it comes to transformation, the hope and healing, like it's so, there's so much hope. And I think one of the things that have been, has been the most hopeful for me, and then I want to hear what you guys have to say is.
Just my relationship with Jesus and it's come in different forms and there's been different seasons of it and certainly a lot of struggles I won't sugarcoat it at all Jake what you said like I've really had that conviction in my relationship with Jesus that He gets me like he understands why I sin in this way or that or why I've struggled with this or that It's not a surprise.
It doesn't scandalize him at all. When that came to me in prayer once, I was like, wow, okay. I feel like something about that made me feel so much more loved and gave me a lot of freedom to even walk away from things that I was struggling with. Cause it's like, okay, this isn't random. Like it makes sense.
Everyone makes sense. Like you said Jake. And so I think, um, for me, that was one of the pivotal points that God, God loves you where you're at. He loves you in all of your brokenness. In fact, you know, like, I think it was St. Faustina who said, like, basically, he loves you because of your brokenness. He loves you more.
He wants to come to you more and to rescue you. And so, that was really, that was one of the key things for me among a lot of other things which I know we're going to get into. One thing that comes up for me, this is a silly analogy, but I say this, uh, in various settings, which is how many people Have fallen in love with the McDonald's drive thru person.
And there's a point to the story, which is when we just want what we want, we go to places where we can just get what we want. And the giver of those things usually is transactional as opposed to a long term loving relationship. And so we often treat healing like a McDonald's drive thru. Maybe if we shift the analogy to a mechanic.
If I go to the mechanic and the mechanic's like, Yeah, I'm the best mechanic there ever was and I know exactly how to fix your car. Would you like to come in? Do you want to talk? Do you want to hang out? We're like, No, I just want you to fix it because I got stuff to do. Okay, yeah, okay. Then there becomes a tension.
Because if the mechanic wants relationship and we just want to drive away, now we have a dilemma. And I think something that is actually ironic is we think fixing the car is the ultimate solution instead of the relationship being the ultimate healing. And Bob, this is something that you say a lot, we say it a lot.
Love is actually what heals. And so one of the, I think, dilemmas that we can, we have to be careful about when we talk about healing is to go do these six steps. And then you're healed and that can be really misleading because it can lead to a transactional relationship with God and that will slow down the healing process because what he's ultimately after is us.
If you really, really like someone and you want to spend time with them, you're kind of like, man, if I do this, then they're just going to leave. And I know, one, that's not best with them, and two, I don't, that's not what I really want. Like, I, I want to be with you. Like, I like you. And so, as we get into healing, I know for me that's a big deal.
I struggle repeatedly with, just give me the steps, Jesus, stop playing the I love you game. I'm like, oh right, that's the point. What am I going to do in heaven? Am I going to like it there? Because, you know, it's only hanging out or whatever, you know, I'm undermining the theology of heaven for a moment. But I think the point I'm trying to get at is how we approach healing is a significant influence on the healing that might or might not occur.
And God is masterful. He's masterful where he knows maybe the tire is leaking air and yeah, he'll fix the windshield wiper so you can see, but he might not heal the tire at that moment. Because he knows you're going to circle back around and go, Well, my tire's broken. Yep, I, cause I wanted you to keep coming back.
You know, that's the point, is the bond, is the relationship. I would agree with you, wholeheartedly Joey, that relationship is the primary healing element and agent. If we lose sight of that, healing starts being diminished. I think it's the efficaciousness of these things that we do go down. It says it explicitly, I think, in James, like, what will you do if God answers your prayer?
I'm butchering the quote, like we will spend it on our passions and desires, James, he pushes right into that dynamic. And then he goes, and so God therefore doesn't do what you ask him to, because he knows you have ulterior motives and he's trying to purify the motive as well as heal the dynamic simultaneously.
And now we're like, whoa, you're doing way more than I signed up for. You actually. really want my transformation, not just my surface level feeling better. There are strategies and the three of us could list a ton of things. You need to do this, you know, dress this wound. You got to renounce this. You got to do that.
You need to go do some of that and this and that and all the techniques, but if it ultimately isn't at the service of relationship and love, there's going to be a big slowdown and kind of dynamic that I think Jesus would work with. But. It'll affect it. Bob, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, the wound is a wound of broken love.
So the healing can only come when the medicine reaches the wound. And so just what you were describing, Joey, and all of that, is here is a person who's not going to leave me, Jesus. That's confronting my fear. When I believe that he's going to be there, my heart still doesn't believe it yet. And so now I've got somebody to test it out with.
That's going to be stable to allow me to be afraid and not trust that he's going to really be there, and I can press that with him. Here is somebody who's going to look at me without shame. He's going to look at me without condemnation. But I have so much self condemnation. And so much shame inside of myself that I've got to bring that place of my heart to him constantly to have that result.
Here's somebody who's promising me redemption and hope and change and healing. This place in my heart doesn't believe that it's for me, that there is any hope. Look at all my history and look at all the things I've struggled with for so long. And so it's that collision, if you will, between true, powerful, Generous, merciful love and all these places of my heart that don't believe and don't trust and don't believe that I'm able to receive that are capable of it.
Wow. So good. I love how you put that. And one of the things, um, just tagging onto this whole conversation and the analogies we're using with kind of like wanting to stay where we're at and not really go deeper, there is comfort Stringer's awesome book, Unwanted, he says. One of the most maddening dimensions of your life when you're struggling with a sexual compulsion or addiction is your fight with freedom.
Truly you fight against freedom because there's comfort, there's pleasure in your misery. And I think like so many, all of us need to address that in our lives. It's like, yeah, we need to push through that. And I think like you're saying, we can't do that alone. We need Jesus. And so Father Mike Schmitz had this awesome, awesome quote that has stuck with me.
He said that, Sometimes, God's only response to our pain is His presence. Sometimes, God's only response to our pain is His presence. And if we're honest, for so many of us, like, yeah, that's not good enough. Yeah. Yeah, great, you know, take a look at what you're saying, Dr. Bob. Like, this is not enough. I wish you would just kind of come in, do the repair, and then just head out, and I'll be good.
And then I'll call you again if I need you to come back and do another repair, but otherwise, I'm good. But like he said, and be healed, Dr. Bob. I forget what expert you were quoting, but something along the lines of, um, you know, at the root of everyone, almost everyone maybe we should say is a deprivation or distortion of love.
And so the antidote, like you said, is love, is authentic love and starting first with God. And so that's always been something I've loved chewing on in prayer is like, sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence. And the question, the follow up question is like, why isn't that enough for us?
Yeah, man. Wow. Can we for a moment for, I'm, I'm thinking maybe now of myself who's like, okay, okay, please just give me one practical. Can you please just give me one? Okay. So yes, we will, Jesus does this too. He's very kind. So the practical that we're saying right now to make it explicit is consistent time I call it the, the red phone to heaven.
Everybody uses that analogy, the red phone to heaven. My, my silly analogy is actually do you know who runs that service is AT& T. And here's what the AT& T stand for, attention, time and trust. What you're doing when you're going to be in prayer is you're giving God your attention. You're giving him quality time, and you're doing your best to trust him.
That's what we mean by being with God. So, chunk of time, attention, time, and trust, that's the red phone. There's the connection spot. And it might not be super, like, fireworks or whatever, but that's where the trust kicks in. And you're not distracted on your phone. You're giving him attention. And it's not for a second.
There's a little, there's some time that's there. All those things come together to make a nice connection. So. Beyond that, maybe we can circle around now and talk about what are some things that can help in the healing journey in addition and supplement to this primary relationship. And I'll share one for me that's been huge and then we can maybe go around and maybe we'll land the plane after that.
I would say for me, and Joey, maybe I'm stealing your thunder here, but I would say other people Other people have been a huge part of my healing journey because I can really struggle to see the face of God clearly. I'm excellent at seeing a distortion of him. And so I need people to help me see him clearly and help remind me of him to help purify my sight.
So in my own struggles in recovery, like I can just go through people who were the face of God for me at a particular time. Paul even says, I'm an ambassador for Christ. And if you understand what an ambassador is, it's I'm representing the authority of the country I come from and I bring his face and authority to this country.
So that's exactly what an ambassador is. And in some ways, we're all called to be ambassadors for Christ. And there are some people who have done that exceptionally well for me, and they were a huge part of my healing journey, and I put all those people together, and I call it my mosaic. Put all these little pictures, you know, of these people together and look at it with faith and trust, and I, there's the face of God.
Ah, they showed me his patience. Ah, they showed me his mercy. Wow, they showed me his humor. They showed me, there we go. Now, those interactions can be very healing in my, in my. distortions of God can be restored. Now my prayer makes more sense because, yeah, I'd spend 20 minutes with so and so. I love being in their presence.
Well, they're actually just a little glimmer of Jesus. So keep going there. Keep moving there. Bob, what would you say, like, if you were forced to kind of give a practical? B. Yeah, well, I met a couple of those people when I was in Denver. R. You did. B. And we took a picture for you. Those were your spiritual parents when you were living in Denver.
Right when I was going through all of my sexual addiction, they were a huge part of that. Yeah. I would say something that I'm not particularly good at, uh, it's taken me a long time to cultivate this, it's just being emotionally honest. And I think part of that is with security. You know, it's like when you come from a divorced family, there's a loss of security.
There's a loss of attention to your needs. So you're talking about the AT& T. There was nobody there to give attention. There's nobody there to give time. And there's nobody there that you could trust. And so in the absence of that, the emotions go underground. At least they did for me. And so being emotionally honest.
which is, this really hurts, or I feel alone, or I'm angry about this, you know, and bringing that both in my relationship with Jesus, but also in my relationship with other trusted people. And, you know, having prayer that isn't just formal prayer, but prayer that's coming from that place of my heart. It's still an ongoing struggle.
Can you go one step further? What would that look like, to pray with emotional honesty? I think it's in light of what we said. It's, Jesus, this place of my heart doesn't trust you. This part of me that was shattered. and left without any attention. I just want to be in control here. I just want to take care of myself here.
I don't, I don't want to open this up. I don't want to hurt like I hurt in that place of my heart. I don't want to trust you here, because if I trust you here, you're going to bring me into more suffering, and I don't want to suffer anymore, because I've suffered so much already. So it's easier just to trust myself rather than to trust you.
Even though I know you're good, doesn't feel very good to me to suffer more by opening my heart here. Let me ask you the question, Joey. I can imagine somebody going, that's not allowed. You're not allowed to be that honest with God. You're not allowed to say that stuff to Him. So, Joey, are we allowed to say that?
And then secondarily, what would your practical be? Not only are we allowed, I think that's what God wants us to say. It sounds blasphemous, right? It sounds like we're being disrespectful or something. But what I always come back to is Jesus knows our hearts. He knows what we're thinking. So we're not telling him something he doesn't know.
Father Mike Schmitz, again, said something like this. We're giving him something he doesn't have, which is our hearts. And so, yeah, I think we not only are allowed to, we should be honest with him because you both know so well that the foundation of any sort of intimacy is vulnerability. So we need to be vulnerable with Jesus.
And again, because he's God, he already knows it. So you're not really telling him anything new. So yeah, absolutely. I know it gets a little bit muddy when we maybe start casting blame on God, like theologically, that's maybe not intellectually correct, but I think he can handle that. That's what I always tell the young people that I mentor.
It's like, yeah, God can handle your anger. He can handle you maybe casting blame on him. He can handle all of that and just like bring him all of that. Cause what I say with young people is like, There's so many of them who will reach out to, you know, me and my ministry who just like want nothing to do with God because they see that, well, he didn't really do anything to help my family.
And that's something I had to wrestle with too, just picking up on what you said, Dr. Poblick. I had to really ask this question for years through a lot of prayer, a lot of spiritual instruction, a lot of adoration of like, God, where were you when my family was falling apart? Where were you? The answer did not come at once.
I wish it did. That would have been nice. I wish I could tell you guys this like really neat story, but it didn't. It was really over time where I heard him say, like, I was not just on the sidelines because what I felt was I felt like he was on the sidelines, just watching me get my teeth kicked in on the field.
And I was like, where in the world were you? And so what I heard is that, you know, I wasn't just sitting on the sidelines watching, like, You know, apathetically, I was right there in the midst of it with you. I was with that 11 year old Joey sitting in the closet, crying to saying like, I hate that this is happening.
It's not supposed to be this way. And so that's where, you know, like we said before, sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence. That's what I've learned. And so. In those moments when we're tempted to push him away, we need to really hold on to him tight as opposed to just trying to be self sufficient, which is something that, in the young people that we work with, that fierce independence, Dr.
Bob, like you said, is something that I think all of us from broken families struggle with, because we've learned this lesson that I'm on my own. I have no one I can trust to fall back on. But when it comes to the practical, to tie this up, so um, It's kind of funny that you asked this question because my whole ministry is built around like making healing really tactical and practical.
There's three things that have really helped me. I'll try to like tie them up quickly. One is just like consuming great content when it comes to learning about trauma and healing, you guys being one of those sources. And so that, that's been really, really helpful. Like I've learned way more about myself and about my wounds and been able to heal and move forward in life because of that.
One of the tips that I learned from Adam Young, who runs the awesome podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves, he said, like, each of us have a story, right? Our lives are a story like a novel or a movie. And one of the things that you can do is just actively reflect on your story. And, you know, to think back to all the ways in which, you know, the people in your life, the ways in which you were harmed, especially what your relationship with your parents were like.
And he says that By actively reflecting on it, by, like, doing that act, whether it's writing it out or just thinking back, um, it's actually healing for your brain. Neurobiologists have found that, you know, if you look at your brain as, like, a big web, the act of reflecting on your story makes, increases neural connectivity, which makes your brain healthier, and thereby you.
healthier. And so that's one of the things that has always been really, really helpful for me. But yeah, consuming great content, um, is huge. The next one I would say is coaching. So this is by far, whether it's through a therapist who's trained to do that, a spiritual director who can help you navigate your spiritual life, or just a mentor, like probably mentors in my life have been the most helpful.
Um, I think of one who just loved me where I was at. An older man who, you know, married, has a family, and I was able to open up to him about so much of that I've been through, and he was able to just like, not be scandalized, not, you know, look down on me, but really just love me in the midst of it, and so that, that I would say, and so my challenge, I guess, for everyone out here is like, if you have no one like that who You can open up to seek them out, ask God for that too.
And it's possible they're already in your life. You just need to take that leap of saying like, Hey, I've always looked up to you. I'm going through some stuff in life right now. I'd love your advice. Would it be okay if I like grabbed coffee with you or something like that? Taking that little risk I think can, can go a long way.
And it has really, really paid me back in so many ways by being more forward and just doing it in a respectful, healthy with boundaries way, but, but kind of seeking that, that coaching. And so. Aside from that, um, we already touched on like relationships and community, but in relationships where people have been through what you've gone through, there's something just so helpful and healing about that.
When no one can relate to you, when no one really knows what you're going through, it's very isolating. Even if the people are great, they're not doing it. to hurt you. It's nothing they're doing wrong. It's just, they don't know what it's like to go through what you've been through. And so I would say that is, uh, that's been incredibly helpful for me as like the community.
Um, and especially my deep friendships have been so healing. So again, the content, consuming great content, coaching. So like mentors, spiritual director, therapist, and then also a community, just deep friendships that. That's what I would say. And I would say to everyone listening to if, um, you haven't really seen an example of what a healthy marriage and family look like, one of the clear patterns we've seen in our ministry is like, if you can just spend time in the presence of a healthy marriage and family, that will be so healing for you.
That has been for me. So very practical and tactical. Um, and I'm happy to go into that further if you want to. So hopefully that that helps. That's really good. Could you, just a little twist on that, can you describe both how your marriage has helped heal you and how your marriage has also brought out your woundedness at a deeper level?
Yeah, great question. I could talk about this for hours, but the quick version would be, my wife would say something early on that was really helpful. She would say, I'm not going anywhere. To me, that was almost like foreign, like, really? Like, are you sure? Because again, Dr. Robert, like we were talking before, so many of us just kind of have this belief that yeah, maybe love can be good for a season, but eventually it will crash and burn because that's what we saw with our parents.
And so I think just hearing that and knowing that and seeing evidence, proof again and again that that's not going to happen, um, you know, has, has been healing. When it comes to the struggles, oh my goodness, like there's so much there. But I think John Paul II said that the number one thing missing in marriages is tenderness and I have found that to be so true.
There's such a temptation in any intimate relationship, but especially within marriage, to harden your heart, to close yourself off from the other person, to not be vulnerable, to not show them your brokenness because you hurt each other. And that thing that you share May come up in an emotional argument and be used as a knife against you.
And so that's, I think, part of the reason why we kind of have these protection mechanisms. And so that, that's, I think some of the, um, struggles I've faced have been related to that, but overall, sometimes I felt like a bit handicapped when it comes to intimacy. I haven't studied this a lot, but there's this idea of intimacy aversion.
I guess it would go along with like an avoidant attachment style, which is what I have. And so I have to really, truly kind of work through that. And so that's been some of the main challenges. Those have been some of the main challenges for me when it comes to marriage, but there's, there's others as well.
And then how has marriage helped heal those places? I think, you know, seeing the consistency of my wife and seeing not just our love in itself can be this perfectly healing thing, but it actually can be a vehicle into going deeper in our relationship with God as well. Because I think, I think married love is, like you said, is actually like really beautifully healing.
And like I mentioned before, just hearing from my wife that she's not going anywhere that has been really healing. Seeing the consistency of like, okay, she keeps showing up. That has been really healing. And then, yeah, kind of how that can be a vehicle to bring those things to God. So, you know, just the feeling of like, this may be going a little bit of a different direction, but one of the things that have surfaced for me is that there were these wounds that I didn't even realize I had related to femininity.
And that has forced me to start addressing them. It's forced me to see, like, okay, are all women controlling? Are all women, you know, I did experience that with women in my life who were very controlling and overbearing and always nagging and things like that. Is that, you know, true for every woman?
Because in some sort of knee jerk reaction, I've gone through life thinking that that's the case. And so therefore reacted and built relationships with women with that in mind. And so, um, challenging that I think has, that's been a really healing part of marriage. Cause I, I don't think I would have fully realized that if I didn't, you know, have the marriage that I'm in now.
And so that's been, you know, kind of taking that deeper in my relationship with God, talking with my spiritual director and mentors. It is a beautiful thing. It's a painful thing, but I think it can lead us to, um, you know, a lot of, a lot of beautiful realizations, but not just realizations, like truly closing chapters in our lives and moving on.
And I think Jason Everett said that, you know, marriage and especially parenting, having kids can be like the sandpaper of sanctity. You can just like, it will, it hurts at times, but when you look back, it's, it's worth it. Yeah, that was one final question, was how have becoming a parent brought healing to you?
I'm gonna answer this in a way that might sound blasphemous, but it actually really challenged me at the start, because I, um, man, becoming a father, I thought I would, like, have this intimate, like, connection with God the Father, thinking, like, oh yeah, like, You know, now I get it. It actually brought a lot of anger and like disappointment for me because I was like, I don't actually think it's too hard to be, you know, a good father.
Like you absolutely have to put in the time and the attention. But it brought me to this place of this question of like, God, why don't you make your love for me more obvious? Because when I want my daughter to feel loved, I will do that in a number of ways. I'll spend time with her. I'll play with her.
I'll tell her that I love her. I'll tell her that she's beautiful. You know, I'll give her gifts, like all the love languages. And with God so often, it seems like it's so cryptic. And, and so I had to wrestle with that. Sister Miriam and I actually talked about this on an interview I did with her on my podcast.
And the, the ending of the story is basically that so often I was pushing God away and I wasn't allowing him to make his love obvious for me. And I had this like kind of crazy story where I was just really wrestling with this. I was in Denver. We were living in Denver at the time. I was on a walk with my daughter.
Uh, she was sleeping. I was listening to something on my phone and I'm a tech guy. I'm like in business and my phone just like oddly like malfunctioned and put on this song that I hadn't heard in years. Like it was like, again, I know tech, like this shouldn't happen. I was like, where in the world did this come from?
And, uh, it was like exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. It was almost like God was like speaking to me through this song. And so that was like really, really beautiful of him, you know, kind of being a little bold from what I understood of like saying, no, no, I'm here. I want to make my love more obvious for me, but you put up so many darn barriers that I can't really do that.
And so that's been one of the things, but to go beyond that. It's just been really, really beautiful to see that what was once super broken, my sexuality can become so beautiful and life giving and my daughter and our future children and our baby in heaven as well. It's like, wow, this is like, there's just, I can't even put it into words how beautiful it is to be like a dad and to just the amount of joy that she brings us.
Like it's, it's unbelievable. And so I think, um, That's been one of the things that's been so healing for me. And then also most of all, which are my whole ministry is geared towards this, is that we want to break that cycle of dysfunction and divorce in our lives. And so it's cool to be able to be on that path of, you know, I'm never, we'll stand up and say, I've made it.
Um, I'm certainly on that path, but, um, it's been cool to be able to see, like, I don't have to pass on the brokenness that was given to me. I can write a new story and I can see it in her eyes, like the light in her eyes, like just the joy in her eyes, like I've seen just being in like a healthy, functional family.
When we're operating in that place, it's just so, it's so beautiful and rewarding. So that's what keeps me going with this whole ministry is like trying to help young people to, to break that cycle and to build healthy relationships, strong marriages and holy families, and that's what's gonna transform our culture.
That's awesome. Joy, tell us where can people find you? Like websites and any social media that you have. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity. So, uh, restored ministry.com. Ministry is singular restored ministry.com is where you can find everything. We're on Instagram, TikTok, you know, YouTube at Restored Help on social so you can find us there.
But we have a number of resources. I'll just mention them briefly. And if you want more, go into the website to find them. We have a podcast called Restored Helping Children of Divorce. We bring experts on, you know, like yourselves to just talk about different pain points, problems that people like us face and offer solutions, really practical solutions to those.
We also bring people on to share their stories about, you know, what they've been through in their broken family, how that affected them and then what they did to deal with it and heal from it and move on in life as well. So that the podcast is our most popular resource. Aside from that, I have a book.
It's called, uh, It's Not Your Fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and the problems from your parents divorce. And so it's just 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges that we've identified through research and talking with a lot of young people that, that they face, young people from broken families face.
That book's on our website too. It's like, at this time, it's like 10 bucks on Amazon. We try to make it super affordable so people can. You know, give it to young people or use it themselves. We have some free courses on our website too. There are two hour courses. One is with a trauma therapist who's been treating trauma for 17 years.
And so we just talk about like, what is trauma? How does it affect you, your body, your mind, your relationships? Um, and what can you do to heal from it? I did a course as well for anyone listening who, um, you know, wants to help someone who comes from a broken family. We did a course on, uh, essentially it's a guide, there's like 10 main tips about what you can do, what you can say and do, and what you can, should not say and not do in order to help someone who comes from a broken family.
So any parents listening especially, I know I didn't make this shout out, it can be really heavy listening to everything that we've said, and you can feel kind of hopeless. But I just want to encourage you and say, you play a key pivotal role. Your children need you. Even if you've made mistakes, maybe the divorce shouldn't have happened.
Maybe it should have. I don't know your particular situation, but you've seen the devastation in your children's lives. Like, have hope. There was a study they did in Turkey on high school students, and they found that the kids who came from broken families, parents divorced, they were much more likely to experience loneliness, anxiety, depression.
If they had a good relationship with one or both parents, they were much less likely to experience loneliness, depression, and anxiety. And so you play a pivotal role. And so that course will be really, really helpful in knowing what to do and what to say. And so those are a few of our resources right now since, you know, we're recording around the holidays.
We have a guide, a free guide. It's um, on navigating the holidays. It's titled, Five tips to navigate, uh, the holidays in a broken family. And so it just gives some really practical advice on like what you can do around this time of the year to make the holidays less stressful and challenging. Cause they're just, it's difficult, it's complicated.
And so we give some pointers there as well. So yeah, those are the main items. We have some new stuff coming out in the new year, but I'll save that for later. So hopefully that's helpful. Oh, super helpful. Joey, you are a fantastic example of what the Lord can do with pain and woundedness. And it's almost like, I know this was your story, the Lord saying, and I'm going to work and love you through it so you can go back and love people right in the same places that you were hurt.
It just feels like a theme that the Lord does. So just, I want to affirm you for all the Stuff that you've worked through and gone through to bless a lot of people in this area. So that's awesome. We're super happy to have you on and we'll have links to all the stuff that we've been mentioning in the show notes from Jay Stringer and all the, you know, Jason Everett's work and Joey, all your stuff as well.
So thank you so much again for being with us and listeners. We hope this blessed you and we will talk to you all again soon. Always a pleasure to collaborate with Dr. Bob and Jake. Make sure to check out their awesome podcast, Restore the Glory and even the JPII Healing Center by clicking on the links in the show notes. And if you want to help this podcast, the restored podcast to grow, to, to build better resources and to reach more young people, help more young people who come from divorce and broken families.
My team and I would love to partner with you. A donor actually came to us recently and offered a 50, 000 matching gift. The deadline is March 15th. Again that's March 15th. It was a bit earlier, uh, but people actually asked if we can extend it and the donor approved that he said that was okay. So if you feel called.
Click on the link in the show notes so you can either meet with me or just make a donation yourself if this podcast has blessed you and you want to help us to reach again more young people from divorced and broken families so they can break the cycle. So donate today or schedule a meeting with me where I'd love to tell you more about the future plans that we have.
That wraps up this episode. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Honestly, take like 30 seconds now if you want to message them and say, hey, I had listened to this podcast. It really helped me. I thought it might help you too. In closing, always remember you are not alone.
We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life. And always remember the words of C. S. Lewis who said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
