0:02

All right, welcome into the mentor forge Podcast. I'm excited about my guests today, coming from Oregon, but man, he's a southern man at heart. I mean, he is from the lovely village on the plains, he went to Auburn, like myself, so we have that in common. It's funny how the world shrinks these days that, you know, you know, we could probably pass each other a couple of times. But Marcus Farris, I'm excited to mark it.

0:26

He is the author of the book, no less faithful how the scars of divorce revealed the heart of God. Dang, that subtitle nails.

0:32

Yeah. So I'm looking forward to diving into that and hearing your story on that, Marcus. But, man, it's great to have you in.

0:41

Hey, man,

0:43

appreciate it. It's it's a pleasure to be here.

0:45

Yeah. So I got to start with this because it I saw that you're an endurance athlete. And I would love for my audience who knows very little about and this is something that's going on all around the world have championships in Europe, North America. And so I'd love to hear what yeah, what you what got you into that. And what what is that?

1:09

Yeah, so I think what you're referring to is hierarchs, which is a, an event that's called the World Series of fitness racing. And it was founded over in Germany in about 2018. I, when I was in college, and late high school, I got into distance running and running ultra marathons for a little while, and then transitioned over into triathlon, and then did some cycling races. And then was doing CrossFit for about the last three years. And I, I found that for me, like I'm a very competitive person at heart, I had a couple of pretty solid race finishes. And there was a time where I wanted to race professionally in triathlon. And after about six or seven year, seasons of that, I kind of got to a point where I realized I didn't really like swimming that much to keep up that skill level to stay at that level of competition. But I always kind of had a heart to figure out what is that competitive venue where I could compete with the best in the world, or at least the best that I could possibly compete with, that ends up being. And lo and behold, there was this, there's this race series called High Rocks. Now, I was never like the fastest Ultra runner, right, you got the guys who are like, six, three, and 140 pounds that just like fly up mountainsides, and like that, I'm not gonna get there. And then, and then you also got the CrossFitters, who are just monsters at barbell work, and I can, I can kind of hang with them. And then I can kind of hang with the ultra runners. But what I while I couldn't be any individual one at their own sport, I could beat the CrossFitters at running and I could beat the runners, CrossFit. And then hierarchs comes along. And it's basically like if a CrossFit hero WOD had a baby with a 10k. It would be this event. And so the way it runs is it's eight kilometers of running, which is about 4.8 miles and you've got one kilometer loops, and in between each of the eight loops. You have a different functional movement. So we're talking skier dog sled, push sled pull, farmer's carry sandbag lunges, wall balls, and burpee broad jumps and, and row. There we go.

3:10

Okay, so that's a Yeah, it's an event that lasts roughly an hour, a little over an hour, the world record is 54 minutes. I came in at a I did my first one.

3:18

I guess that'd be about a week and a half ago at Fort Worth.

3:21

And that one went really well.

3:24

It was a ton of fun. And I will be doing another one here in a few weeks in Anaheim. So that's how I rocks. Wow.

3:32

And it's is it been one of those things? I know there's a Tough Mudder in the some other stuff that's like the Warrior Dash that came out as if they if they just kind of take it to another level from those or is this something completely separate?

3:47

It's kind of separate.

3:47

We're not really talking about obstacles like you're not throwing spears like you wouldn't Spartan you're not crawling under barbed wire or jumping over walls or anything like that. It's yeah, it's a fitness racing. Racing. Gotcha.

3:58

Yeah, that as you don't necessarily have to have a ton of technical skill. So IE barbell lifting or javelin throw, or something like that.

4:10

It's more like all of these movements are like anybody can pick up a pair of a pair of kettlebells and walk or, yeah, the movements are ideally supposed to be as accommodating to everyone as possible. And half of the race is basically is running which one sport worldwide is more accessible than running? I realize not everybody can but that's that was sort of the idea at the heart of the event.

4:31

Yeah, that's cool. And it sounds like you have really leaned into that that you're you're desiring a higher performance level. So how comprehensive is that? Is that changed much of your diet changed much of your daily routine and, and really training for those events?

4:48

I would say it's more of a slight modification in the way that I approach training. So I've been since gosh, probably 17 years old. I've figured out like oh endurance sports, and athleticism is a pretty fun thing. to do, there's another story about how I kind of got into it. But I've had something like a, an appreciation of that process for quite some time. So I've had 10 competitive seasons of one sort or another before going into this. So in terms of the importance I place on sleep, nutrition, various lifestyle factors that contribute to overall performance, it's all that's already for me had been baked in for so long. It's like sometimes, if you ever, I feel like if someone ever were to tell me all day, and you're just you're so disciplined with just how often you work out and getting up early in the morning and getting after it. And here I am thinking like, Do you realize what happens if I don't do that?

5:37

Like, my like, I just I start hating life if my doesn't get the requisite dose of your medications, and your dopamine and all that from exercise?

5:46

Gosh, that's it. Yeah. That's a message in itself right there. Just your sanity and how really God made us to move and do things and certain hormones to fire that creates that lead to other things and that we most of the world we've missed because of first world convenience, right?

6:08

Yeah, so Marcus, I'd love to kind of hear more your story.

6:11

And you know, really what led to the book. But you know, first off, I mean, I know you, you help veterans with mission 22.

6:18

Y'all could check out more than a mission twenty.com I mean, it's really great, what Marcus is doing help out veterans, but you're a veteran and yourself.

6:25

And so I love what, you know, what initially got you into the ROTC and then then eventually led you to, you know, to joining the army.

6:33

Yeah, that's, well, let's see, if we rewind the clock back to my junior year of high school. I had just moved back from London after having been there for two years for my dad got this job opportunity.

6:42

And we went over there. And while I was there, you know, being 1516 years old, I was as socially awkward as humanly possible. The observer might have labeled me somewhere on the autistic spectrum just because of how let's just say it was hard for me to make friends. But what I would for some reason I kept wearing like camo pants to school. I don't know why it was just the little boy in me who wanted to go off and do things.

7:06

And then I moved to Huntsville, Alabama, in 2006, and discovered the Junior ROTC program there.

7:15

And they had what was called the The Raider Challenge team or we called it locally the military skills team and that I saw one sort of, I guess, promotion video for it, and saw these kids out in the woods wearing their camo and, and, you know, Holon ammo cans around and jumping over obstacles. And immediately I was like, yes, that's for me.

7:32

It's interesting. Are you wonder, like, do we pick our interests? Or do our interests pick us? And so I sort of I saw that and it resonated immediately. And it was like, yep, that's, that's the thing.

7:46

And from high school, I applied for an ROTC scholarship at Auburn because almost all of my family had been there. I have other family members who had been in the military and it was just it seemed like a natural progression for me. So I did ROTC at Auburn for a little over four years, got an engineer degree headed off to Fort Leonard Wood for my engineer basic course. And then they shipped me off to Alaska, where I was stationed between jayber which is an installation in Anchorage and then I was up at Fort Wainwright and Fairbanks for another two years, doing active duty Army stuff. And so now I'm in the reserves.

8:20

Wow. So I heard you serve a little bit in Alaska.

8:24

That's right. Yep. I was an airborne unit in Anchorage for a little while at Fort Richardson and then got an assignment up at Fort Wainwright as a contracting officers representative with the Corps of Engineers. So it was a good breadth of experience of what all the Army's up to.

8:40

Yeah. I had a being in Alaska, man. I imagine that was quite the experience.

8:44

Sorry. Yeah. So you know, what, really? Being in the military, you know, I imagine and then leaving the military, what what made you want to start serving veterans that are coming out?

9:01

Yeah, I would say it kind of got its origins in my time doing some work with the US military endurance sports team, which is a nother nonprofit that basically aids veterans active duty or otherwise, get into endurance sports with a little lower bar to entry. So triathlon, for example, is a very expensive sport, so a cycling and that the charter of that company was to facilitate that process and make discounts available, make training camps available. And I, after a couple of years of being on that team, became their triathlon coordinator. And so I got to basically assist with major focus events around the world around the United States. And that like really spoke to me it was like, here I am being able to combine two things that I really love and I'm good at.

9:47

There's that Japanese concept of E key guy where it's like, what are you good at? What does the world need and what can you make money doing and I had to have those three down with US military endurance sports team, so the world needed help with veterans get into triathlon. I really love that sport and that particular demographic, but it wasn't paying the bills. And while my career progressed in a way that maybe we'll talk about this a little bit more, but I got to a point where I found mission 22, which does a lot of work with veterans in the mental health space, looking at a far more ecological approach to care after post traumatic stress or after combat trauma or after moral injury. And that all it all just sort of dovetailed into this one collective thing, but And what ended up happening was like, I went from getting an engineering degree at Auburn to now I'm pursuing a Master's in Counseling, which are sort of two ends of the spectrum in terms of, you know, one's career trajectory. So what's happened?

10:41

Now the I have to fit that as another thing, but I'm still exploring, but at any rate, that's where I am now. And to be able to sort of integrate all these things has been pretty phenomenal.

10:52

That is really, really cool. Just, that is a pretty, I mean, engineers, pretty black and white. You know, this works that versus me, as a counselor, you're, you're embracing a lot of nuance and human beings that are complicated. And, and that's fascinating. And I'm still I'm still trying to get over sinus infection. So excuse me, I'm still going a little drainage.

11:15

As you I'm sure you don't miss any of the pollen down south right now, because it's it's pretty bad. But yeah, so I mean, so you lived in in Europe, you went to Auburn been in military kind of engineering background?

11:35

I'm curious. Just what's your faith background is where was God and what your relationship with God admits that? Did you grow up in a Christian home? Did you become a Christian later?

11:43

What was? How was God part of your story?

11:47

I grew up in a Christian home from from birth my family was they had their roots in Southern Baptist, Southern baptism. Is that the right way? Yeah, there we go.

11:57

That is, um, although I was baptized in the south. But anyway, I've pretty much since I was like, three, I had some type type of orientation toward God.

12:06

And I really don't know a time in my life where that wasn't a part of who I was. Although in, I kind of elaborate on this in the book there, there definitely was a point where I had to come face to face with something that was happening in my reality against a worldview that I thought was fully explanatory of how humans behaved. And when those two things come together, and they're in opposition to each other, that's when somebody experiences a moral injury. And so I had over the course of about a year and a half a process of just like re orienting myself to how it is that Christians operate in the world, deeper meanings of what we're told in the church and maybe take for granted to to a degree. We can explore any one of these things, but it was, it proved to be a net positive, by a longshot of my understanding of how it is exactly that Christ works and such a broken world and how someone who is sort of the pure, spotless lamb can take on filth, right, the the crossing over of the innocent child with the filth of the world, and I kind of experienced that story firsthand. And that can that can do a lot of people in because you take for granted how it is that when Christ says you will have suffering in this world, it's like, bro, until you're there, you just don't understand what that means.

13:24

Yeah, so I guess that's a good transition.

13:28

You know, I would love to hear just the origins of the book, which you can buy now on Amazon.

13:30

No less faithful. Yeah, what?

13:36

Yeah, what I would love just kind of get, you know, how you and your wife, your ex wife met and how the relationship transgressed and what led to the divorce? And, yeah, and then and we'll obviously I love to hear, you know, why you felt it was great to write a book on it. So

13:54

yeah, I guess in in college, I had always had trouble, like, finding dates.

13:57

And with you know, I was never in any kind of serious relationship in college, or even casual relationship for that matter. And that that kind of weighed on me a lot. And that started to develop this sort of voice that just kept reminding me like, Look, your track record is terrible. Women are not interested in you get over yourself, this and that. And it was it was pretty distressing for a little while there. We're talking like early 20s. When I moved to Alaska, I was about 23.

14:23

And I kind of I finally was I felt like I was able to sort of come to terms with like, look, this is not the truth. This is not who you are. You need to get that voice of despair out of your head, like in Christ's name, leave. And after that experience. Within a month, I met this girl at a triathlon and I just felt like, wow, okay, cool. Things are lining up. Like I've sort of shrugged that off.

14:49

Here's this new, exciting person. She's actually interested in me, this is great.

14:51

And the relationship kind of went from there. And there were a couple of early warning signs.

14:59

but I just didn't have the wherewithal to take them as seriously as I should have.

15:02

Because here I was having never really experienced the excitement of meeting someone for the first time and being all, you know, just beady eyed for them. And I kind of ran with it. I was like, This is great.

15:16

Yeah, these warning signs, but we'll figure it out, you know, God makes all things new. And then even the, after the wedding ceremony, there were some, let's say, signs, where I just sort of it was just like, this is all lining up, this is gonna be great. Again, there were warning signs even up to that point. But it was like, Well, I guess God's making anything out of this is this will be cool. Like to the point where the sort of signs that I'm talking about were so specific, it was like I'm being seen right now. And this is we're gonna be good. And we weren't so about, I don't know, three and a half, four years later, was when things started to deteriorate, where she basically recognize that she had a pattern of, well, what you would consider a codependent personality disorder. And so what is that that's basically it's a description of someone who outsources their personality to whoever they're with. And they basically, are serial relationship jumpers, where it's like, I'm not going to deal with my own stuff, I will just acquiesce to the next person in line. And awareness of that I certainly didn't, because I was just sort of naive and how all these things operated. Again, like my low resolution worldview did not account for the fact that people can go from behaving in one way and then realizing it's a facade and then behaving in a totally different way, very quickly. And my curiosity of how it is that that progressed, that got me into counseling in the first place. So I learned that she had committed adultery at a point where, let's just say I was not at all ready to hear that. And I knew that there were some things that were kind of going downhill, but that revelation about Debian. And so the way I was trying to make sense of it was just to write, that's kind of my default, I don't paint I don't draw, I write. And so I just started writing and writing and try to making making sense of this stuff. And after a little while, I kind of got to the point in my manuscript, where it was like this is, I remember looking up on Google, like how many words is a book, and then I did a little word count on my manuscript, I was like, Oh, this is not that far from a book. And I talked to one of my mentors at the time, actually the CEO of mission 20 today, and he encouraged me like, you should look into publishing this. And so I got to a point where I start doing some research on it.

17:30

And lo and behold, one of my old friends from Anchorage, that was in a small group there is now a J owns a business for publishing. And so she basically had all the resources for me, she helped me edit, and I went for it. And it just as during that, so I was separated for about a year and a half, in hopes that God would restore and God would make all things new.

17:51

And it's great that, you know, there are all these other stories in the church of people who commit adultery, and then the relationships actually stronger as a result. And I was believing for all of this stuff.

18:05

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that that was not going to happen. And I had a hard time accepting that I had a seriously hard time accepting that. And the book was kind of the this way of putting all of that to rest. And I have discovered that in that whole process, that story, that type of story, a is not uncommon for a young Christian male to experience, someone betraying them out of nowhere, or seemingly out of nowhere, anyway. And B, there was just not a whole lot of stuff out there to assist and tell that story. And I found a couple of relationship books and how Christians deal with divorce and so on and so forth, that were sort of limited in their scope of usefulness. But there's nothing specific to what I was going through. So I wrote this book as a way to talk to myself.

18:48

And, man, I'll tell you what, like that. There was there's a section in there where I talked about how do you know that individually, you've sort of recovered from that whole betrayal process. And it's, my conclusion was that you don't resent other people's marriages.

19:08

And that when I kind of got to a point where I was like, wishing well like close family who are getting married, and like looking that not through the lens of my hurt, but through the potential of what their story could be, like, I saw healing in myself there. And there's, there's a small degree to which that voice is still sort of there for many of us at a cousin's wedding actually, just last weekend, and I started hearing that voice. So like, Nah, man, that's not that's not true. And like, I recognize that was there and just committed to, like, not going down that path because that that voice of resentment, and bitterness is a vicious monster that has a certain degree of truth and logic to it. But that's not the whole truth. And so, yeah, you have to, once you're once you're betrayed, it's very easy to think, to think about things in terms of very black and white terms, right because then it relieves you of the Cognitive strain of thinking and nuance.

20:03

However, it's like obviously, black and white thinking is what we call in psychology, a thought distortion by cognitive behavioral therapy. We'll talk about that being one of the ways that it's basically like you discount the good. You say like, well, because of this event now, this is my destiny in the rest of my life, like, Yeah, I mean that it's a data point, but it's not the whole truth. And that's why stories are so important because you start to realize that look, if you're betrayed, if you're, if you've experienced a moral injury, where you witness something that you never had a context for, hey, congratulations, you're now on the hero's journey that Christ went down. And you have to understand the nature of sin, the nature that love allows other people to choose and why that is so painful, because that allows them to choose good or ill, and ultimately allows you to nest your story within Christ story in a much more profound, close way.

20:58

Man, that's good. Man. It's something I talked about. And I think it's hard to relay it's important sometimes, but just the power your story and realize, yeah, that I'm not defined by a one event by one feeling when one emotion. Man, that's really good, Marcus, man, I appreciate you sharing that. So yeah, I mean, my next question really is is so it says, you know, you put in the subtitle that reveals the heart of God, what in this journey? How did you? What did you find out? What did you discover about the heart of God?

21:30

Well, one moment really comes to mind that was that was when we had maybe two or three therapy sessions afterwards to try to sort out what was going on. And it became apparent through those like, there's she there's no coming back from this, like, I kind of knew deep down like, Wait, all you want, she's gonna leave. And indeed, she was the one who ended up filing and moved away. And who knows. But anyway, so I was coming back from I was coming back home driving by myself from that particular section. And I got you so I was on my way home from one of the counseling sessions.

22:21

And it it was just so clear that this was not going to fix itself. Like, unless something there was some sort of road to Damascus moment, this relationship was over. And so I remember very specifically where I was, I was stopped in traffic light, and I yelled out loud, like, God, why should I have to suffer so much? Because she's messed up? Yeah, right away. It was like, Dude, that's what Christ did for you. Dang it.

22:48

And, you know, there's so that that kind of led me down the road of like, a lot of self evaluation of like, Hey, man, where, like, you didn't do anything to cause her to do that. But what choices did you make? Do you need to take ownership of now that this happened? It also, did you follow all of the strictures which you supposedly adhered to in the early days of the relationship, you are not paying attention to red flags, then you ask God to bless this or tell you tell for him to tell you if this was a bad idea, but you're not in a place where you'd be willing to listen, because you're just sort of overcome with all this excitement. So how did it reveal more of God, it was like, understanding what the heart of love means and realizing that love. Agape love is one where you fully allow the other person to freely make whatever decisions they want, no matter how destructive. But that also is the best and only shot that we have for lasting good relationships in the future.

23:45

Yeah, so it really taught me a lot about the nature of, of God's love, and the difficulty with which I have to, to actually live that out, right?

23:58

There's a mentor once kind of said to me something along the lines of You never want to have a mission in life where you could hypothetically do it by your own power, right? And so to be able to love somebody else, in that way, is something that, like, what brings me to the feet of the cross of like, I can't, I just can't do this, like, and I know it. And that's exactly where Christ wants you. So the whole recovery process too, and getting my book out and all of that, like, so many things came together, and that's a well, maybe not short amount of time, but right when it should have for that to happen. So it was just again and again and again.

24:35

It was like God was reminding me, you can't do this alone.

24:37

Like you can do certain things alone if you want to. That's your choice. But that's what like if you if you do it my way, and you surrender that that's that's the most powerful place you're gonna be on,

24:52

man. That's good. Gosh, yeah, that or something. Yeah. You said that I think is interesting just in my coaching with some men and It's like, even if someone was mainly at fault there that they they the one messed up that really hurt. There's still some level of ownership and peace that you can take. You're not 100% powerless in that. So how Yeah, what was some of the the self talk? What was some of your conversation with God and really your reflection of like, okay, she's really hurt me she's the one really destroying this and pulling away. But what do I need to learn? Or what do I need to own in this process?

25:31

Yeah, I think one of the, if anyone's ever read the book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, there's a, one of the Four Agreements is don't take anything personally.

25:41

That's, you might think, like, well, in a case of an adulterous situation, how on earth do not take that personally, doesn't that other person? Aren't they like intimate with you? Don't they know you? Like nobody else knows you? And it's like, well, hang on. No, that can't be right. Because to take someone personally, something, personally, is to take what the other person said to you or did to you. And appraise it as, okay, that's an accurate reflection of who I am in my totality. Like no less, unless the thing that created you is saying that it doesn't reflect all of who you are. And so, so no, it wasn't, it wasn't me, she betrayed it was herself. And in the early days of my of that relationship, it wasn't, it wasn't what there was a sense in which I betrayed my own values early on. You know, maybe not to such a salient degree. But still, it was like, listen, people do things out of the depths of their own heart, always 100% of the time. And it's only God who has the right to tell you something personal.

26:47

Other people cannot. Even with compliments or insults, none of those things are ever 100% accurate of who it is. You are in your entirety.

26:57

Hmm. Man, that's good. Man. Nice. Sit on that for a second. That's really good. So one of the things you also talk about with the book is the, you know, the marriage ended, but his purpose did not.

27:11

So what do you feel like God is through the struggle through the hardship that he's really redeeming, renewing and pulling in and really giving you purpose in from from this horrible thing that really happened to you?

27:28

Well, I alluded earlier to this idea of the hero's journey, if anyone's done any reading or watching of Joseph Campbell, he does a pretty good job of kind of articulating what that is. And you can start to see it and all of the most popular movies that I've ever come out. And there are a couple of different story arcs that are kind of embedded in there. But it's a it's a pattern that has been there since the beginning of human existence. And we can see it in so many different religious stories and mythologies, and all of that.

27:54

And I started to see my own story within that particular journey. So in other words, the the proverbial descent into the underworld and an encounter with a monster at the depths of the sea started to make more sense.

28:07

And it was like, Okay, that's all right. That's the moment of crucifixion, Christ went down to hell to redeem centers. Okay, that scene in the Pinocchio story where it goes down to the belly of the whale, that's the scene in Degas on Star Wars where he goes and sees himself in Darth Vader, right? It's confronted, that's the idea of confronting the shadow and integrating the shadow. What else that's the Chamber of Secrets where Harry Potter goes into the depths of Hogwarts and confronts the bass list. Let's see. That's, that's Weathertop.

28:38

in Lord of the Rings, where Frodo first gets stabbed, that's moral injury. And so it was like, oh, that's, I'm not alone in this. This is a thing. This is like a feature of our story.

28:49

It's not like something went irrevocably wrong. And then, yeah, it's there's that quote by I think it's the row who says, All of us are broken, but some of us are stronger in the broken places. And it was that whole process of working through that that made me understand, like, oh, there's a pattern to this.

29:05

And then I saw that and in the story of, especially Vietnam veterans, but also in our current cohort of, of service members, where it's like, oh, how can I teach that same story to them? And my approach, I guess, in therapy, I'm not quite a therapist yet. But, um, well, let's say my approach in counseling and doing coaching for veterans, when it comes to dealing with things like moral injury, how do I how do I teach the Christian story to them, but meet them wherever they are, whatever the relationship is, with with Christianity, and you have to really you got to go to the depths of understanding what they've gone through. I mean, not fully you want it there, but like, I've talked to veterans who you wouldn't believe like, you know, if you've got some guys out on patrol, and then like, you know, 10 meters away somebody steps on a mind And you didn't. And you just saw them vanish. Like, okay. What sermon and my Southern Baptist Church taught me how to deal with that.

30:06

Right? It's like, oh, nine. So then well, how do you meet someone who maybe had a split with God after an experience is as just profane? Is that? And my answer so far, and I'm still, you know, I think I could work on this for a lifetime and not fully come to, you know, be learning new things about how to approach this best, but has been to point to those types of stories. And like, Hey, man, like, yes, you're right, like you did experience the depths of profanity. And I can understand your reason to default into nihilism where nothing matters, and your worlds blown apart, and all my friends, you know, died downrange, and my life is worthless. And that that whole spiral, like, I can understand that man, like the when we look at the shadow, and we look at the abyss, like it is a deep, dark place, but check it out.

30:57

The remedy to that is experiencing something sacred and set apart and holy, that can't be touched by profanity to the world. So how do you do that? You have to make sacrifices in the way that you live? No. So. So like that's, that's sort of an excerpt, I guess, of the type of language that I try to use to explain this process of, like, okay, what are your choices now that you've experienced something that shattered your understanding of how humans operate? Are we going to go down the path of everything's meaningless? And who cares anyway? Or are we going to try to tease out like, what is the purpose behind this? What is the meaning here? How can I take the raw material of things that have been broken down and turn it into, like, use that turn it into growth? Yeah.

31:41

Man, Marcus, you are spitting some good stuff here, man. So how to Yeah, I mean, right now, just from our audience, I mean, you know, even some men out there who haven't?

31:51

Aren't veterans haven't spirits, the trauma of war, you know, what's something that you could you would advise them to help them understand more their story and unpack some of their trauma?

32:00

And really, like you said, get that redemptive arc back in their life and spirit, something sacred and holy and good?

32:09

Yeah, well, I would ask, well, well, a couple things there. So all of us are going to make mistakes. And the product of those mistakes are what we can take to then create our world. So what do I mean by that? When I first learned what the word demonstrate meant, it kind of blew my mind and really helped me to understand the process whereby you take mistakes and use those mistakes to make your future and not in a way where it just permits you to just make mistakes on purpose, obviously. But so the word demonstrate, it means to D monster, a monster apart into usable pieces. At French the word is monta, which means to show which is rooted and Monster, right. Okay, so monster is the thing that you confront when your worldview is really getting challenged when your faith let's say, is, is under pressure. Okay, so you take that moment, and you d monster, it, you take it apart into little pieces. What happened here?

33:12

Where are you responsible? Where did other people make decisions that made you feel this way? How is it that you're reacting to stimulus that's outside of your control? Are you seeing the line between things you can't control and things that are out of your control? And then you what, break all of those down into little pieces of, let's see, I can actually control my behavior here. My visceral response to this thing that another person did is actually on me to take responsibility for they don't cause me to have that reaction.

33:40

I choose to have that reaction.

33:40

Right. I'm putting my therapist hat on here. But it's, it's a process of seeing like, hey, look, Jesus isn't judging anymore. If you've accepted him and accepted His forgiveness for your mistakes, he's not sitting up there like scowling, right?

33:56

But he invites you to take a hard honest look at where you've been at what you haven't taken responsibility for. And from that extract, ways of updating your worldview such that you can live in the world in a way that is sort of shrewd as serpents but innocent as doves, if you will.

34:18

Yes, man. And that those two things holding those intention is such a needed thing. As man how do we walk in that because I think we do we struggle with it. The world struggles with nuance in general, right? They'd love to live in that black and white that that's the word I'm looking for binary thought process.

34:37

Yeah. So yeah, um, well, Marcus, man, it's been great having you on man. You've really brought some good stuff. I'm excited to share this with my audience.

34:48

What? Yeah, I you know, I gotta ask you this question. I asked this one a lot. And it's once again you kind of hit on it already. But you know, what would you what would you tell that 25 year old self If you could speak to them, what message do you share with them?

35:06

Don't assume things about your future, we have a tendency to operate in a way that assumes that the things that have happened in our past are predictive of the things that are happening are going to happen in the future. And that's absolutely not true. I'm reading a book right now called antifragility by Nassim Taleb, same guy who wrote The Black Swan, for anybody who's familiar with that. And he kind of takes a business like statistical view of it, where he, his, he has this thing called the turkey fallacy, where it's like, the turkey assumes every single day, like, oh, the guy who's feeding me is my friend, and I going really well. And then, you know, there's one bad day, right. But I would say, like, look at the reverse of that, like, man, things have been going kind of bad for a little while, it just seems like, I keep trying for this thing. And it doesn't happen. And I'm trying the same thing. And it's still like, I just can't break through this thing. You got to make room for the miracle, right? I mentioned before, that a lot of things came together that were out of my control, that sort of came to me at the right time that provided for me to be able to move forward. And it's often the case that God's gonna have you grinding away at something for a while to teach certain lessons.

36:15

And then something just sort of mysteriously sort of opens up, there's this sort of provision of Mana, that that falls in your lap one day, when you're sort of in a posture to take it. And yeah, so don't don't assume that the things that have happened to you or your destiny, it's easy to say but man, it's, it's something that can be really difficult to shake off.

36:38

Yeah. And well, Marcus, it's been a pleasure, man. I really appreciate man, you just coming on Sharon, sharing your story, man, that's like that's so impactful. I mean, it just really does show just all the healing and redemption that that's come from really dealing with something that's really hard as divorce. I appreciate you sharing this man. And so yeah, I would love for you just kind of give a plug for the book. And also Yeah, we're some my listeners can find you and connect with you.

37:05

Yeah, so again, the book is no less faithful how the scars of divorce revealed the heart of God available on Amazon. You can find me on Instagram at Ultra unfairness where mostly you'll see me posting things either about my dog or my race performances. I have a blog that is linked in the bio of my Instagram. And

37:22

awesome. Well, Marcus, thanks for coming on, man. It was great.