152 | Navigating Grief and Identity After Life's Unexpected Changes with Sports Chaplain Roger Lipe

Summary

Podcast Summary: Becoming UnDone

Episode 152 | Navigating Grief and Identity After Life’s Unexpected Changes with Sports Chaplain Roger Lipe

Host: Dr. Toby Brooks
Guest: Roger Lipe
Date: March 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this deeply personal and reflective episode, Dr. Toby Brooks welcomes Roger Lipe—sports chaplain, mentor, and the show’s first repeat guest—to share his journey through grief, loss, and rediscovering purpose following the illness and passing of his wife, Sharon. Through vulnerable conversation, they explore how identity, faith, caregiving, and self-reflection transform when life upends every plan. Drawing from Roger’s decades serving high performers, the discussion illuminates how the principles we teach others about resilience and identity are truly tested when we ourselves become undone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life Changes in a Moment: The Power of a Single Text

• Roger recounts the life-altering morning when, during a work trip, he received a message from Sharon: ”Can you come home? I feel like I need to go to the emergency room.” ([07:00])
  • He describes the rapid progression from inconvenience to crisis, culminating in a cancer diagnosis for his wife ([07:21–09:35]).
  • Quote:
    “It really did turn our world upside down because after we got to the ER...the doctor says, ‘This is what I see. This is what cancer looks like.’ And that was our first indication this might be our battle for the next months...It did turn everything upside down immediately because I knew from that moment, this is going to be a hard fight and I better be ready for it.” – Roger ([07:21])

2. From Caregiver to the Cared-For: Receiving Ministry

• Roger discusses the stark shift from being the support for others in crisis to needing support himself ([10:06–11:32]).
  • Past experience with athletes and coaches in crisis gave him insight into grief, but experiencing it personally was “way, way more personal.”
  • Quote:
    “Having walked with [others] through cancer and grief...they did inform my mind as to the process I’m walking into now. So I can see it coming. That training really did help a lot.” – Roger ([10:30])

3. Confronting Inadequacy, Control, and Vulnerability

• Roger reflects on his self-perception as strong and self-reliant, now upended by total helplessness during Sharon’s decline ([12:49–15:22]).
  • Quote:
    “How can I, a man who prides himself on self-reliance, achievement, and strength, be so utterly inadequate?...I was in a spot where I couldn’t control anything. That partly frustrated me but also revealed my terrible penchant toward control...I’m just dragging through this thing because it was way beyond my control.” – Roger ([12:49], [20:33])
• Toby observes that high achievers are often more compassionate to others than to themselves.

4. Making Hard Choices: Career & Caregiving

• Roger details a stepwise process of stepping away from his role at Nations of Coaches, taking a leave, and ultimately retiring to care for Sharon ([16:38–19:10]).
  • Leadership’s support helped him focus where it mattered most: “She is your ministry presently, she is it. That’s all.” ([16:38])
• They discuss the complexity of leaving one’s life’s work and the guilt vs. clarity of focusing singularly on loving, caring, and being present with his wife ([24:26]).

5. The Logistics & Emotions of Transition

• In under six months, Roger experiences a cascade of life changes: Sharon’s diagnosis, his retirement, selling their longtime home, and moving closer to family ([21:23–25:30]).
• The loss of career role was overshadowed at the time by the all-consuming needs of caregiving, which brought new focus and awareness.

6. Navigating Grief Intentionally

• Drawing on past encounters with grief, Roger intentionally allows himself time to grieve, reflect, and process—eschewing the temptation to “distract and deny” ([26:15–29:56]).
• Quote:
  “I wanted to take enough time to process the stuff, to walk through the ugliness of it and deal with it...Stoic German boy, to deal with all the weeping days and...some other significant moments...I was going to feel that as deeply as I could because I knew it was part of what it takes to heal.” – Roger ([26:15])

7. Identity, Faith, and What Remains When it’s All Gone

• With the loss of both career and husband roles, Roger shares how he navigated the question, “Who am I, now?” ([31:20])
  • Having spent years teaching athletes they are “more than their sport,” Roger applies that lesson to himself.
  • Quote:
    “None of those things ultimately define me. My life in Christ defines me most permanently, most satisfactorily, without change, without...I start being well pleasing to him, not because of performance...just who I am as a person...That really helps me be buoyant. I have a sense of joy from day to day that is not overrun by circumstances.” – Roger ([32:56], [35:48])
  • Toby and Roger reflect on how this ‘anchoring identity’ enables movement forward, instead of being weighed down by loss.

8. Redefining Love at Life’s Endings

• Roger describes how intimacy and love deepen and change across decades, especially while caring for Sharon as her illness progressed ([37:38–39:38]).
  • Quote:
    “In those last months, she had nothing to give. So it required me to give selflessly, to love extravagantly...I had to do it then because it was important for me to protect her dignity...and that led to more eyeball to eyeball...‘I love you, you can trust me’ intimacy than maybe we ever experienced.” – Roger ([37:38])
• Toby shares how Roger’s writing about commitment and sacrificial love challenged and inspired him, even while his own opportunity to act differently still remains.

9. What’s Left Undone: Finding New Purpose

• After a period of deliberate waiting and reflection, Roger shares what's next ([40:24–43:14]):
  • Sensing a “brain drain” in sports ministry as seasoned leaders retire, he feels called to mentor, coach, and support leaders in sports, leveraging his decades of relationship-building.
  • He is launching his own website and will provide training, coaching, and mentoring to sports leaders as they navigate their own seasons of change: rogerlipe.com
  • Quote:
    “I won’t tell you what to do, but I’ll help you think about it and help you arrive at a good answer. I’d love to be of service to people and can’t wait to do it.” – Roger ([40:24])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I am Roger Lipe, and I am undone.” — Roger Lipe ([11:11], [45:11])
• On caregiving:
  “There were so many things I could not do if I wanted to...it stripped away some of that bravado that I normally have, some of that natural arrogance that lets me BS my way through a lot of stuff.” ([20:33])
• On grief:
  “I processed a lot...in my phone, in reflections, just trying to make sense of what am I experiencing here...Am I normal or am I a freak? It doesn’t really matter. I need to express this somehow.” – Roger ([29:02])
• On love’s evolution:
  “I think looking at it now...my relationship with her, my love for her, became, I think, purer...required me to give selflessly, to love extravagantly...It was important for me to protect her dignity.” – Roger ([37:38])
• On legacy:
  “Saluki football put the SL sticker on their helmet for the whole season...she was just what they needed...in many cases was a surrogate mom. And we made a pretty doggone good team working together...” – Roger ([44:25])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Receiving the life-changing text: [07:00–09:35]
• Transition from chaplain to recipient of care: [10:06–11:32]
• Wrestling with inadequacy & vulnerability: [12:49–15:22]
• Retiring and shifting roles: [16:38–19:10]
• Selling home & moving near family: [21:23–25:30]
• Intentional grieving and reflection: [26:15–29:56]
• Identity after loss: [31:20–32:56]
• Faith as identity anchor: [35:48]
• Redefining love and intimacy: [37:38–39:38]
• New mission: mentoring and coaching sports leaders: [40:24–43:14]
• Website for new work: [43:14]
• Honoring Sharon’s legacy: [44:25]

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Episode Tone and Language

• Deeply honest, humble, and vulnerable.
• Theme of being “undone” (breaking apart, humbling) leads to a truer, purer sense of self and purpose.
• Faith-infused reflections—unapologetically spiritual, centered in the Christian tradition, but broadly resonant in grappling with suffering and transformation.
• Roger’s language filled with gratitude, self-examination, and warmth.

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Memorable Closing

• Celebrations of Sharon’s impact on hundreds of athletes; recognition from the SIU football community ([44:25]).
• “I am Roger Lipe, and I am undone.” ([45:11])

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Resources & Next Steps

• Connect with Roger or learn about his new mentoring/coaching work: rogerlipe.com
• Past episode (Ep. 40) featuring Roger’s earlier story: undonepodcast.com/ep040
• Podcast website for notes & links: undonepodcast.com/ep152

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This episode is a living example of how coming undone is not the end of the story—but the beginning of something greater. Through Roger’s journey, listeners are invited to reconsider their own definitions of strength, success, loss, and what lasting identity is truly built upon.

Transcript

[Toby Brooks]

This is becoming Undone.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah. That morning I was in a hotel in downtown Chicago, was preparing to spend the whole day with DePaul basketball. So I had taken the train up there, had a great day with coaches on the previous day. That morning I got that text. Type A in me is going, come on, babe, I'm in Chicago. I'm taking the train home tomorrow. I got stuff to do. Then. The more I looked at it, the more I talked to the coach, I'm thinking, I think I need to go home. And so we made the decision to do that and flew home. And it really did turn our world upside down. And then he comes in the ER doctor and says, what I thought I saw on that first one. This is what I see. This is what cancer looks like. Once we got to the end of those infusions, we could tell things were not getting better anytime soon. So that's when we began to discuss, is retirement the right thing to do? And the more we talked about that and finally landed on a date being May 30, I said, yes, that's it. I am Roger Leip, and I am Undone.

[Narrator]

Hey, friend. I'm glad, glad you're here. Welcome to yet another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely risk mightily and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, a speaker, author, professor, and performance scientist. I spent much of the last two decades working as an athletic trainer and strength coach in the professional, collegiate and high school sports settings. And over the years, I've grown more and more fascinated with what sets high achievers apart and how failures that can suck at the moment can end up being exactly the push we needed to propel us along our path to success. Each week on Becoming Undone, I invite new guests to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. I'd like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my role at Baylor University, but it's my attempt to apply what I've learned and what I'm learning and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers. Welcome back to another episode of Becoming Undone. And today we're talking about what happens when life changes with a single text message and nothing is ever the same again. My guest today is Roger Light, the first repeat guest in the history of this show, and it's fitting. Roger was the FCA director at SIU Carbondale when I washed ashore nearly 30 years ago as a mid semester transfer my junior year. With a broken heart and broken dreams, he and a really special group of friends were instrumental in helping me put my life back together. And it was an honor to have Roger aboard for episode 40 of this show. You can check that one [e-mail] EP040 when Roger and I first talked in that previous episode, we discussed calling ministry and the lifelong work of pouring into coaches and athletes. But since then, Roger's lived through a season that brought everything into sharper focus. His wife Sharon's cancer diagnosis, the long road of caregiving, the grief of losing her, and the disorienting transition into a completely different chapter of his life. And yet, even in the midst of all that loss, Roger's story is not one of despair. It's one of honesty, surrender, faith, and the slow rediscovery of a purpose, both the familiar and the new. Apologies up front that I had an unknown microphone failure at the time, so the audio quality on my end of the conversation is not up to my standards. But I want to ask for your grace and understanding, and I humbly request that you stick it out because this interview is one I'm particularly proud of with a guest I love with my whole heart. This is a conversation about what really matters when strength fails, plans collapse, and love is asked to become something deeper than words. I'm grateful that you're here for it. I hope you'll enjoy my conversation with Roger leip in episode 152. Let's get into it.

[Toby Brooks]

Greetings and welcome back to Coming Undone as a podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mildly and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks. Joining me today, I'm happy to say you are our first repeat customer, Roger Life. Thanks for joining me.

[Roger Leip]

My pleasure. Thrilled to be with you.

[Toby Brooks]

Well, Rog, we connected last week. You were in town. You're. You're in the. The phase of life where your schedule is flexible and you can come and go kind of as you please set your schedule. And you'd shared with me that this wasn't necessarily the season you would have chosen even a year ago.

[Roger Leip]

No.

[Toby Brooks]

But you've navigated through that and you've got a purpose left undone. And I can't think of really a life being lived in a way that's better reflective of the theme of this show than what you're doing now. So I'm excited to get into your story.

[Roger Leip]

Thanks so much. Appreciate it. And I've got to say, honestly, hearing, I mean, every single episode of your podcast has been a tremendous encouragement to me in this whole process of rethinking and becoming undone and, okay, what's next? And how do we move ahead? Those things have been incredibly informative and sometimes challenging and always encouraging.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Your first episode, we really kind of went way back. We talked about your ministry at Southern Illinois University and how instrumental that was for me personally. And at that moment, you had made a big shift to nations of coaches. And so for those, for those who haven't heard that episode, Roger Life has spent much of his life serving in sports ministry. He's worked aside alongside athletes, coaches, teams through triumph from, you know, very successful men's basketball comes to mind. Football was certainly very successful other other sports programs at nsaurus. But since we last talked on the show, you've been navigating a deeply personal season after the loss of your wife 50 years. So even in the midst of that grief, you have, you've processed, you've emerged, and you have come out on the other side. We'll say, but you sent me, prior to our show, prior to your visit in Waco, reflections that you had taken. You're a prolific writer, as you say, you process through writing. And I was excited to see that you had actually kind of written it on your phone, as it were in. In some of those meetings. So I want to pull a quote from what you sent me.

[Roger Leip]

Okay.

[Toby Brooks]

Early in your reflections, you described getting a text from your wife, Sharon, that simply said, can you come home? I feel like I need to go to the emergency room. And he wrote, that moment changed everything and set the course of our lives for the next several months. And I apologize, this one's going to be impossible for me to get through. When you think back to that moment now, how did that single text reshape your perspective on life and on ministry and what really matters?

[Roger Leip]

Yeah. That morning, I was in a hotel in downtown Chicago, was preparing to spend the whole day with DePaul basketball because coach Mullins, who had been with us at Southern Illinois, was now an assistant at DePaul. And we talked to him the day before, as well as to some other coaches in town. Coach Mike Lightfoot, formerly of Bethel University in Indiana, he and our colleagues within nations of coaches. So I had taken the train up there, had a great day with coaches on the previous day. That morning, I got that text. Type A in me is going, come on, babe, I'm in Chicago. I'm taking the train home tomorrow. I got stuff to do. Then. The more I looked at it, the more I talked to the coach, I'm thinking, I think I need to go home. And so we made the decision to do that. He drove me to o' Hare and I bought a plane ticket and flew home. And we had sharon in the ER by 11:30 in the morning after that 7am text message. And it really did turn our world upside down because after we got to the er, we did all this stuff that comes. If you have shortness of breath, they start ruling out various things and chest X rays and blah, blah, blah. CT scans. And ER doctor looks at the bottom of this chest CT scan and he says, there's some stuff here at the bottom I don't like. Let's get a CT scan of your abdomen. And so they go do that and come back. And we're sitting in. Now we've been in the ER room for maybe seven hours and I'm. I'm just ready to go home. I'm tired of the whole process. Makes me feel like a jerk now. But we're dealing with this. And then he comes in the ER doctor and says what I thought I saw on that first one. This is what I see. This is what cancer looks like. And that was our first indication that this might be our battle for the next months or who knows what. And so it did turn everything upside down immediately because I knew from that moment, this is going to be a hard fight and I better be ready for it.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. You mentioned to me when we were chatting that you've spent the bulk of your career being a sports chat. I think a lot of people don't really understand the nature of the job. Yeah, it's Bible studies for teams when things are going good. But you're also the guy that people call when things don't go so good, when, whether it's tragedy or a big injury, anything that really kind of rocks the team, you are there for crisis assistance.

[Roger Leip]

Yes.

[Toby Brooks]

This was really the first time you had been on the receiving end of that aspect of ministry. If you will talk me through a little bit about how your experiences on the delivery impacted your ability to be on the receiving end.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah.

[Toby Brooks]

When it was you in the midst of grief.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Roger Leip]

Because I've been in lots and lots of emergency rooms. It was not with my wife. It was with many other people. And most of the time was a broken leg or an ACL tear or something else like that, a concussion a couple of times with coaches with real issues. But this was suddenly way, way more personal than that. But at the same time, having walked with Dan Callahan, baseball coach at Southern, through his cancer battle and eventually his hospice days and his eventual death and Walking with his team through the grief process afterward, I walked through a bunch of these things together with other people. And really they did inform my mind as to the process I'm walking into now. So I can see it coming. And having been equipped for that helps me be a little more aware of where we are today and what's coming. What am I experiencing now? How do I make sense of all this? Those that training and experience really did help a lot.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. I know for myself, being in healthcare, that makes me. I've got just enough information about the process to be a really bad patient. And my, my patience oftentimes with healthcare is really slim. And working in athletics, we kind of see how the system can work.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Toby Brooks]

When it's optimized, athletes get better healthcare than just about anyone.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah.

[Toby Brooks]

There's rarely a delay, there's rarely an expense spare, and it's just not like that for the rest of us. So having that insight sometimes can be good, but sometimes it can be bad. In one of your reflections, you wrote something that really resonated with me and it was just part of the, the vulnerability that, that you wrote there. And I'd like to share. How can I, a man who prides himself on self reliance, achievement and strength be so utterly inadequate? So for someone who spent decades ministering to athletes and coaches, people who live in that culture, what did experience teach you about weakness and faith?

[Roger Leip]

That's been the hard thing along this process. Because I'm usually the guy who's trying to have perspective. I'm usually the one trying to be steady, trying to have myself under control. And I've got this together and I know what to expect and all that. And suddenly I was in a spot where I couldn't control anything about this process. And that partly frustrated me, but it also revealed my terrible penchant toward control and all that stuff. And I'm like, you're a jerk.

[Narrator]

I've known Roger for three decades. The guy was at my wedding. He was there in some very dark days of my life before then, when I'd transferred to SIU from Anderson University. At the time, I'd finally given up on my dream of playing college basketball. And I'd experienced a breakup at the end of a two year relationship with my then fiance, all within a few weeks of one another. It was hard. But seriously, I thank God that I met Roger to help me through and friend. I can tell you this, Roger Leip is nobody's jerk. But what I hear now, whether in jest or not, is Roger call Roger a jerk. Twice. He's looked back on this past year with a critical, even damning eye toward himself. And he's judged himself pretty harshly. Within our conversation are the words of a man who in just a few months went from a single text message to losing his closest friend, his companion of half a century. And as you'll hear momentarily, he stopped his work. Moments after that fateful text message, he suddenly retired. He sold the house. He moved to be closer to family and caregivers. He upended everything at a moment's notice to care for his ailing wife. To that I'd offer you, if those are the acts of a jerk, then what chance do the rest of us have to offer the world? What I'd also say is that it's easier to be understanding of others. For high achievers, it can be nearly impossible to be understanding of ourselves. That very same gene that insists that we scrutinize every behavior and critically assess every act can lead to an unrelenting compulsion to beat ourselves up for what everyone around us is probably being inspired by. In hindsight and with time, I think Roger can see that he did everything he could to help his dear bride in her time of greatest need. But even so, that didn't make it easy.

[Roger Leip]

But it just made me stop and take a hard look at myself and know there's most of this I can't control. She doesn't need me to control it. So what can I do to serve my wife? Well, well along this process. And so it was a real self awareness moment of I don't have to be in control, I don't have to run the thing. I just need to care for her.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. And along with that, I kind of want to pull at something. I think that's, it's, it's important for all people, but for men especially, like, I was raised to be a provider for my family. My job is an important way in which I serve them. You had just taken a new job, massive career pivot. I mean, yeah, it's still the same amount of work, but you're kind of a new guy and hadn't been there that long. And then suddenly you're faced with this reality that I've got to cut this visit short. But after that, I don't know that I can continue doing what I'm doing and serve my life well as a leader. So talk me through what ultimately led to you making the decision, tough decision, to actually retire at that time and remove yourself from your role with nations of coaches.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah, it was A multi step process, frankly, because when we first went to see the oncologist in St. Louis, I was in communication with our leadership at nations of Coaches about, okay, here's what's happening, here's what I think I need to do. And they said, you, you look, you take all the time you need, will manage all this stuff, you take care of her as your first priority. In fact, I remember Tommy Kyle telling me she is your ministry presently, she is it. That's all. And so that was immeasurably helpful. I'm so glad I was where I was with the people I was because they had a singular focus on that depth of care that really did help a lot. And so that was early on. And then I continued to do work along the way until Sharon had had some complications, problem with a heart valve that was going to require six weeks of infusions of antibiotics. And that meant three times a day I was going to need to be there to infuse her with these antibiotics. And so the second step was talking with my team and I said, guys, please, I need to take a leave of absence for this many weeks so that I can deliver all this care for her and please don't pay me, but I need to do this. And they said, well, we're going to pay you anyway, but please take the time and do that. Okay? Once we got to the end of those infusions, we could tell things were not getting better anytime soon. So that's when we began to discuss is retirement the right thing to do? And the more we talked about that and finally landed on a date being May 30, I said, yes, that's it. Because for me as type A boy, I had to figure out she needs me more than I need to work. Part of that's a matter of station of life. She had been retired for long time already and I was old enough to retire. And I thought, she's very security conscious, I'm much less so. But still, financial security is an issue. And so I thought, you know what, hang it, this is the right thing to do. I don't care what it costs, this is right. And so we made the decision to do that and that those decisions plus others are why standing here almost eight months from her passing has me with no regrets whatsoever. I know we did the right thing at every stage along the way.

[Narrator]

We'll be back after this quick message. Have you ever looked in the mirror

[Toby Brooks]

and thought, what in the hell just

[Narrator]

happened to my life?

[Toby Brooks]

When the career shifts, when the relationship

[Narrator]

ends, when the identity you've built your whole life around disappears overnight, that's not failure. That's what I call a purpose storm. Most high achievers aren't prepared for it because no one ever taught us how to train for a comeback. I'm Dr. Toby Brooks and I built the Science of the Comeback for people who refuse to stay broken. Inside the app you'll find research backed resilience training, daily prompts and guided reflection tools, performance psychology frameworks, identity rebuilding exercises, and personalized structured pathways to move from burnout and confusion to clarity and momentum. It's not hype, it's neuroscience. It's performance science and it's hard won experience. If you're listening to Becoming Undone, I created a special offer just for you. For the next three months. You can get full access for just 49 bucks for an entire year or just 5 bucks a month with no obligation. And you can cancel at any time. That's less than the price of a cup of coffee to start rebuilding your life on purpose. Your comeback isn't accidental, it's intentional. Start yours today at Science of the Comeback

[Roger Leip]

again. In my relationship with other people, I always feel a sense of responsibility that I need to help carry them. I need to be for them what they can't be today or whatever else it is. But in. In this situation with Sharon, there were so many things I could not do if I wanted to. It's utterly helpless. And to me that feels like inadequate at the same time. And it's just a bear. It just assaults my soul. And so it stripped away some of that bravado that I normally have, some of that natural arrogance that lets me BS my way through a lot of stuff. I usually lead with my chin and my chest. And here I was just like, I'm just dragging through this thing because it was way beyond my control. And so I had to trust that God was going to carry me through this stuff that I'm just clueless as to how to handle.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. And ultimately led to two huge transitions really if we think about it. You left your position with nations of coaches and also moved. You vacated your house of many years, your home of even more years in Carbondale and the SIU community and move closer to your son. So talk me through kind of that progression and how you went from a text message on a random weekday to being in a new state, in a new home as a widower less than six months later.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah, we had paid off our home in January. I can't remember if it was before or after the diagnosis. But we were thrilled. We got the mortgage off of us. Done. That's good. We had thought about someday, maybe if I ever retire, maybe I would. Maybe we would move down closer to the kids. Because being 75 minutes away is not nearly as good as being 10 or 5 or 15 minutes away. So we thought about that in general terms, but suddenly it became reasonable in, like in April to think about it in. In concrete terms. What if we did this? Where would we go? And I. So I started looking in earnest because her capacity to deal with that stuff was just about gone at that point. And so we looked at that moving process that made sense. I thought, this gets her in a position to be better cared for. That's. That's why it's a good move. So getting ready to sell a house and all the stuff that goes along with that. And then as things continue to get worse, even after all those treatments, because during the treatments for the infection, the cancer went untreated. We didn't get chemo, nothing. And so it. It was metastatic cancer. And it grew rapidly. And toward the end of that leave of absence, we started discussing maybe the right thing for me to do is to retire so the work can continue without me and I can continue to care for Sharon in a full time basis. Because. Just because that's right, that's another part of responsibility. That's the right thing to do. Let's do it. So that's what we chose to do. And I retired and we moved on May 30 to a villa in Jackson, Missouri, just 10 minutes from my son's house. That's what made it the right place to be.

[Toby Brooks]

Right. Well, I know the emotions there had to be tremendous. When we interviewed the first time, the excitement and the newness of that opportunity was clearly in the windshield, so to speak. And you were doing great things. And I think it's human nature to grieve that loss. But at the same time, I have to feel like there would almost be a guilt associated with that. Like, I'm supposed to be here for my wife. How can I be selfish in this career thing right now? How did you navigate that transition? Or were you just 100% all in on the caregiving and the processing came later?

[Roger Leip]

Yeah, pretty much. I stayed so locked in on taking care of her that that occupied all my time and energy and focus. So the loss of work didn't come nearly as starkly as I thought it might. Across the last number of years, probably the last five or so, I had started giving away Responsibilities to other people for different sports, chaplaincy roles at the university, and other things. So I'd been kind of taking incremental steps away from things anyway and had found that it was easier to lay those things down than I expected it might be. So that was less painful than it could have been had it been a sharp like, no, you can't come back anymore. That would have hurt a lot more. But because I didn't burn bridges because we left, well, that was pretty good. But I think you're right that my being able to focus so tightly on care for Sharon, frankly, she needed that. And there just wasn't any more space of mind or time to do anything else that allowed me that singularity of focus.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. Well, I know this. This past fall, when you came out and spoke at the conference hosted here at Baylor, the emotions were just beneath the surface, like you were doing great things, but it was still really fresh. And your message to me then, or your answer to me was, I'm just going to take some time. I'm still grieving. I'm not going to jump into anything. And that's exactly what you did. And before we get into what that had undone is talk me through that space. Going from losing your wife literally a week after your anniversary, to intentionally taking time to reset and to recalibrate.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah. Again, having been around a lot of grief over a lot of years, having grown up in a very big extended family. I mean, I grew up in funeral homes. That's where we saw our cousins and all that. So that process was not foreign to me. But this, the depth of this was certainly foreign to me. But still, having buried my dad three years ago and my wife's dad two years ago and others like that, you're going, oh, this. So it's lived in grief a lot. And frankly, I've seen it done badly enough where people either pretend it's not happening, they shield themselves from it, or they deny it, or they rush right back into the things they were doing and they haven't taken any time to really deal with the loss. I wasn't going to let myself do that. I wanted to take enough time to process the stuff, to walk through the ugliness of it and deal with it and stoic German boy, to deal with all the really weeping days and just being kind of really undone on her birthday and some other significant moments through the fall and the winter, I was going to feel that as deeply as I could because I knew it was part of what it takes to heal

[Toby Brooks]

so much wisdom in that I think a temptation would be to throw yourself fully into something else, to take your mind off of it. But there's wisdom and there's healing in allowing those emotions to kind of settle on you. And I know when you were here, like you said, being the strong man and all those things, we don't love the fact that we're emotional, but it's human. It's. It's part of. Of who we are.

[Narrator]

The upheaval and the turmoil in the life's lives at this point was tremendous. Roger had just departed a position he'd held for decades as a director of the Southern Illinois FCA for a role with nations of Coaches. Then suddenly, just a short while later, Sharon gets a cancer diagnosis and he takes a leave of absence and ultimately retires. Then the house is sold. Then they move out of state, leaving the community, the university, their church, family, and the lives they'd built in Carbondale. In moments like these, it can be absolutely overwhelming. Some turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, others, unhealthy relationships. For Roger, he turned to something he'd long enjoyed as a means of processing his emotions. He wrote, and through that writing, he was able to sort through the sometimes overwhelming flood of emotions that came with this tumultuous season of life.

[Roger Leip]

I processed a lot of the stuff I was dealing with in my phone, in reflections, as the process was going along. Just trying to make sense of what am I experiencing here and how do I. Am I normal or am I a freak? It doesn't really matter. I need to express this somehow. And then I went back and wrote the narrative after Sharon had passed. But through the we, you know, just plain old gut level, I'm just going to tell you I feel terribly inadequate today because I can't control this stuff. I'm going to go ahead and say it rather than pretend that it's not true. Nah, just be real. That helped me tremendously to process grief all along the way. That helped me on the back end. I think I was farther down the. The track by having done that all along the way than if I had just waited and been run over by it at the end.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah, I don't know about you, but in teaching and coaching roles, there's. There's nothing I really say hate, but, man, it's like the ouch, Hallelujah. Where something I've taught gets sent back to me and now I have to deal with it and show whether or not I really understand it. And I've talked a lot on this show about identity and about how for athletes, oftentimes they are, there's. If you ask a Division 1 athlete to describe themselves in two or three words, it's not uncommon to hear, I'm a softball player, you know, or I'm an athlete. I mean, that's common. And in sports ministry and in. In life, really, we. We try to kind of coach that out of people. Like, you're more than just your sport. You're more than your performance. You're more than 15 points a game and five rebounds. In particular. In ministry, who you are in Christ matters most. Within the span of less than half a year, you were stripped of your career and your position as a husband. And those are two big definitions that we would use. Talk me through the identity piece of this and when you lost Sharon, what that meant to navigate that space of being retired and widowed, as opposed to new job and husband of 50 years.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah, I mean, I was one of those guys for years talking with players about, no, you're more than this. This thing doesn't define you. What you do doesn't and all that. And I. But I genuinely believed it and embraced it all along the way and had to really deal with myself in those things because I could feel it on game days when we won. You know what? I felt really stinking good when we lost. I felt personally responsible, and it's painful. I hated every minute of it. But I had to keep looking at myself in the mirror and dealing with that tendency. Slowly, over time, I was able to cook most of that out of me to where I rested more and more of my identity in, yes, I love what I do. Yes, I love the relationships I have. Yes. But none of those things ultimately define me. My life in Christ defines me most permanently, most satisfactorily, without change, without. You know, people say, can you find yourself in the Bible? And for me, it's. When Jesus is baptized in Mark, chapter one, he hears the Lord, a voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Well, that's what I can hear God saying about me, that every morning I start that day. That way I start being well pleasing to him, not because of performance. I just got up. There's nothing done but who I am as a person. I start that way, and now I get to choose all day. Behaviors, attitudes, speech that's either pleasing or displeasing to him. I get to choose.

[Narrator]

This right here is so powerful. It's so life changing, really. The notion that, as Henry Ford once said, whether you believe you can or you believe you can't. You're right, but with an even deeper spiritual connotation. It's a lesson I've had to learn more than once in my life when I was at Liberty University as a head football athletic trainer. Every day we'd begin our coaching staff meetings with prayer and Bible study. When I arrived on campus, the staff was going through a book called Priority Tired of Trying to Measure up by Jeff Van Vondren. Highly recommend, Subtitled Getting Free from the Demands, Expectations and Intimidation of well Meaning People. Then we went through a book called the Rest of the Gospel. When the Partial Gospel has worn you out all the while, we were also doing an inductive Bible study in Romans 7 and 8. I tell you all that not to overwhelm you with details, but through the process and through the study, I came across this idea that who I think I am influences me more than I could even dream of. For years I'd been taught that I was an am, a sinner who as a believer had been saved by God's grace. The idea here is that you will screw up inevitably and when you do, God will forgive you. But you're still at your core a sinner. You're still flawed, you're broken. And what I wasn't really ready for in that time and what rocked me was this idea that was supported in scripture. In Ephesians 1, Paul writes Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who were in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, not to the sinners of Ephesus, not to the awful human beings, not to the filthy pagans, to the the saints. If I can believe that God has made a new creation like he promised in 2nd Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. If I can believe that I'm new, that I'm different, that I'm a saint, then just as Roger points out, my day actually starts and stays better. Whether you think you are or you think you're not, you're probably right. Now that doesn't mean that I'm flawless. That doesn't mean that I won't screw up. But for Roger, that got him free from the idea of identity and career, even identity in relationship, and helped protect him from the self inflicted wounds of someone who would struggle for purpose after his world had been so mightily rocked. It would take time and prayer and lots of writing. But eventually that new purpose began to come into view he'd been undone, but he was becoming undone.

[Roger Leip]

But it's. It's always based on a static line of I am always pleasing to him because of who Christ is in me. That's a big deal. And so that stuff really helps me be buoyant. I have a sense of joy day to day that is not overrun by circumstances. It hurt badly losing Sharon, really badly, but it didn't sink me because I'm carried along. I'm buoyant because of my life in Christ. And so, I mean, that sounds preachy, but frankly, it's the. It's just a fact that that's how I'm able to keep going and shortly find a forward look.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah, that's such a healthy perspective. That is fuel to get you through. It's not baggage that's dragging you down. Like thinking about what we're not anymore as we're trying to become. What's next is, you know, the logo of Michael Jordan. He's not wearing cuff weights on his ankle when he does that move. Right. Like, he is liberated and free to fly.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah.

[Toby Brooks]

And I don't know where that analogy came from, but the point is fitting. A lot of times our mental space can be baggage, and it's. It's unnecessary weight that we weren't meant to carry. And I love the fact that you were able to rest in that identity in that time. One of the most powerful reflections you wrote described how intimacy changes across the lifetime of marriage. From youthful excitement to caring for a spouse and illness, and preserving her dignity and affirming commitment to. For life. How did walking with Sharon through that season redefine what love means to you?

[Roger Leip]

Well, as our lives went together and continued to grow and good times, bad times, all that stuff, relationships change over time. And the last, because, I mean, one, she had rheumatoid arthritis for the last 19 years of her life, really severely. So life was painful for Sharon. I wake up, I feel great every day. She woke up in pain every day. And so that changed a number of things about our relationship. And thankfully, I think looking at it now in retrospect, my relationship with her, my love for her, became, I think, purer late because there was no more, hey, I'll do this for you if you'll do that for me. In late, in those last months, she had nothing to give. So it required me to give selflessly, to love extravagantly. And that's stuff I talk about all the time. But I had to do it then because it was important for me to protect her dignity when she was in public to do things that helped her maintain who she wanted to be and that sort of thing. I'm not going to just treat her like some. Some pitiful person. No, no, no. I'm going to protect her dignity. I would care for her. And that led to, again, more eyeball to eyeball.

[Toby Brooks]

Simple.

[Roger Leip]

I love you. You can trust me. Intimacy than maybe we ever experienced.

[Toby Brooks]

That was a beautiful passage of the book. And I sent it to my wife shortly after I read it and, and said, first of all, like, I'm sorry, there's some. Some conviction layered in there that, that, yeah, these are the reflections of a man who's lost his wife. I felt guilt in knowing that I've still got some time to fix some stuff and hopefully do it better than I've been doing it. So I thank you for that.

[Roger Leip]

Yeah. That. That stuff helped strip away selfishness from me in some regards. And there was plenty there to strip away. Yeah.

[Toby Brooks]

Well, I want to focus on what's next because it's exciting you. Your 40 days in the wilderness was six months of taking time, being deliberate, praying over what's next for you. I know you're right in the middle of this launch and this reveal of your next season of life, and that's to come alongside those who are coming alongside athletes and those that are physically active sports persons, we call them. So tell us a little bit about what's next. What's left undone at this stage.

[Roger Leip]

You know, being at that 4th Global Congress on Sport and Christianity at Baylor back in late August, early September was really helpful because that kind of launched my period of reflection and, okay, where are we going? Lots of assessment and trying to listen and pay attention to what's happening. I also stacked up other travel to see friends in college football and friends in pro football and friends from having worked with me in FCA years past and a bunch of other things like that that kind of started to put some dominoes in line, if you would, where I could see things are beginning to line up a little bit here. I went out to British Columbia and worked with an athletic department and they're sports chaplains, and that was rich. And some other things like that started to line up. And I'm going, maybe this is what I should do rather than work for someone else. Maybe I could just make myself available to leaders in sport and leaders in sports ministries. Because, Toby, what I'm seeing is happening is there is a terrible brain drain going on now as baby boomers like me retire and exit organizations Often the history of the organization goes with them. The values that built it go with them. A lot of the other factors that are part of how they shaped the organization are gone. And those old knotheads travel off to the villages or wherever and play pickleball every day. But they're, they're not available for that staff meeting. When they say, hey, what is, let's ask. He's not there anymore. You can't ask that guy. And somehow they're just like off the map in a sense because nobody calls them. And so it's this brain drain. Hopefully I can fill the gap for some folks where they say, could we sit and talk with an old guy and think some of this stuff through? I'd love to be that guy. I won't tell you what to do, but I'll help you think about it and help you arrive at a good answer. So I'm looking at doing some training, some coaching and some mentoring with leaders in sport or sports ministry because that's what I've worked in for 31 years. And I'm great at long term relationships and really short term projects. And so if we fit in that kind of profile together, I'd love to be of service to people and can't wait to do it. And trying to prepare things to be able to make myself available just for that.

[Toby Brooks]

Yeah. So if folks are interested, hopefully they're listening right now. Maybe some things are forthcoming. But if you're listening to this a week or a month down the road, where can I send them? Where, where can they find out more information about what you have to offer?

[Roger Leip]

This website is going to be crazy complicated. It's rogerlike.com R-O-G-E-R-L-I-P-E.com and there will be a web or a email address. Roger. Rogerlight.com is going to be really complex, but that's how I'd love to have folks engage me. They'll be able to see what we're doing, how we'd like to serve you, and then how we put it together. You could, you'll be able to find kind of groups we've worked with in the past and can't wait. I think we'll make a bunch of resources available and mostly I want it to be a landing spot people can come see. Okay, that's what I want. And then let's look to connect.

[Toby Brooks]

Roger, I can't thank you enough. I know Ms. Sharon is beloved and missed. SIU honored her with decals on helmets this year. And a number of other things. So yeah, she's definitely missed. But I'm so thankful for you and your heart service. I'm just terribly sorry that you had to go through this, but I know the world's place because of the work that you're doing. So thanks again for coming on the show.

[Roger Leip]

You're kind. I was so proud of Saluki football for putting the SL sticker on their helmet for the whole season and during the SIH blackout cancer Saluki's blackout Cancer Day, they did a nice tribute to to Sharon during halftime and all of that was so honoring to her because of her depth of 19 years of investment in young men's lives and their families and she mad so many of those guys and would wag her finger at him. You better get the classroom. I'll call your mother. And she was just what they needed in many cases was a surrogate mom. And we made a pretty doggone good team working together in that environment.

[Toby Brooks]

So many lives changed between the two of you, for sure.

[Roger Leip]

I am Roger life and I am undone.

[Narrator]

I don't know what part of that conversation hit you the hardest. Maybe it was the text message that changed everything. Maybe it was the honest about feeling inadequate. Maybe it was the picture of love, not as convenience or comfort, but showing up over and over when there's nothing left to gain. Here's what I keep coming back to in my conversation with my friend and mentor, Roger. The most powerful moments in life aren't always the victories that we celebrate. Sometimes they're the quiet decisions nobody sees. The decision to stay, the decision to serve, the decision to let go, the decision to keep going. And Roger's story is full of those moments. I'm thankful to Roger for dropping in and I hope you enjoyed our conversation. For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com ep152 to see the notes, links and images related to today's guest, Roger Leib. Some quick updates about the show. We are currently tied for the best ranking in both education and self improvement categories and show history. We're sitting at number four right now in the world around the globe. Number four. Super stoked about that. At the same time, across all categories, we're at number 124 in Apple's top 200. If you want to follow along and see our progress for yourself, you can now go to undonepodcast.com rankings and cheer me on. Last month we had more than 12,000 listens and to date, this blew me away. We've been heard in a staggering 3,146 cities around the globe, all from this borrowed room in Martin hall in Waco, Texas. But I'm not done yet. If you'd be so kind as to share the show with a friend, leave a comment or a review that would be most sincerely appreciated. Before we wrap, I want to introduce something new I'll be doing each episode. Moving forward, I'm calling it the Teal of the Week. If you've listened in to my multi part Larry Johnson series, you heard my deep love for Teal. It's not just a 90s staple to me, it's become a bit of a trademark. It's my signature color. And if you're watching the video, you'll notice that not only is my new studio space brimming with teal, I'm almost always wearing teal. And that's not an accident. This is a little bit of a hack that I've come to embrace and I wanted to share it with you this week so I would consider myself a performance scientist and I try to let the data do my deciding. And over time I've learned that the environments that we create, right down to how we decorate our space, the lighting that we choose, even what we wear, can influence how we show up. For me, teal has become a cue. It represents clarity and energy and focus. It's a small but consistent way that I can signal to myself that it's time to be present, it's time to be intentional, and it's time to do this well. So each week I'll be rocking a different Teal shirt, usually tied to a team or a program, just as a way to keep that rhythm and that consistency. So this week, little bit of info. I'm rocking the Orlando Pirates. It's an arena football team in the ifl, the Indoor Football League, and the Pirates are a team that are stepping into a new chapter themselves. They've relocated in the off season from their previous home in Massachusetts. I bought a Massachusetts Pirates shirt like a week before they announced the move, but the one I'm rocking in this episode is is from the new Orlando identity. But honestly, you know, that fits what we talked about today. New seasons don't always come the way we expect, but it's how we show up in them that matters. So shout out to the Pirates for a successful upcoming season. Know that I'll be clapping for you from Waco, Texas. Coming up on the show, I've got former Baylor Baer and author of the book the Leftovers, Baylor Betrayal and Beyond. He's now head basketball coach at Midway High School in Waco. Matt Saman Then I've got former Division 1 strength coach turned past Chris McCormick joining me from Indianapolis. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. Becoming Undone is a Night Tribe creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. Tell a friend about the show and follow along on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becomingundonepod and follow me at Toby Brooks, Ph.D. on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out my link tree at linktr.ee.tobybrooksphd Listen, subscribe and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Till next time, friend. Keep getting better.