← Them Before Us Podcast
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- [00:01]
Sam Deloach
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Jen
Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. We have a very special Father's Day edition for you. We have a few interviews a here for the comments segment, talking about dads in the media. And in case you missed it, in our Mother's Day edition, we have our staff joining the podcast to talk about the impact their mother and father made on them growing up. We start our episode with an interview with Robin Porter, who works for an organization called Love Life here in the Seattle area. And Robin came out of Christian ministry. He was the lead pastor at a church in the Seattle area, and he interacted with Love Life about two years ago, and it really just changed his trajectory. He left the church he was working for eventually and transitioned into ministry with Love Life full time. And he also has a really compelling personal story about his father growing up and what he's learned about being a father to his kids. So hope you enjoy this conversation with Robin. Hey, Robin, thanks so much for being here.
- [00:58]
Robin Porter
Oh, thank you for having me. It's an honor.
- [01:01]
Jen
Yeah. So because of Father's Day and because we got to Katie and I got to hear your story when we were just meeting up locally, we would just love to hear a little bit from you about your experience growing up, because in hearing your story, I just. There are so many themes that show exactly what the forest talks about. The importance of a dad, the harm that a dad who has not been able to kind of deal with his own stuff, the harm that he can do, but also the redemptive arc of your life and how the things you've learned and how you've grown and then the father you've become. And then we'll finish with talking about Love Life, which is the organization that Robin works with and the awesome work that they do across the country. So, Robin, can you just get us started with, you know, where were you born and just describe a little bit your early years with your family?
- [01:49]
Robin Porter
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to share my testimony with you guys today. I was born in Southern California in 1977, and my family, we, we grew up regularly attending church, you know, kind of on Christmas and Easter type thing. But religion wasn't really, like huge in our, in our family. So I didn't, I didn't really grow up in a. A church. Churched house. What I did grow up in was a very volatile home that my, my dad was very abusive to both me and I have a younger sister. And there are lots of scars that I have both on my body and in my heart that, that have been issues that I've had to deal with over the years as I've just continued to reflect on, on my childhood and the time that I did have with my family. I, I think that one of the things that was just because our home was so volatile when I was growing up, my, my mom and dad would actually send my sister and I away over the summer to spend time with my grandparents. And I think that was largely, I think my mom was doing that to kind of get some space and, and some calm in the home, even just for a few weeks or a couple months, depending on how long we, we ended up being with my grandparents. But there was just a lot that was going on with my, in my childhood. I lived in Southern California until I was nine. When I was nine, we moved from California up to Boise, Idaho, and we lived there almost exactly a year. I look at that time, I look at that trip that changed, that took place in my family. I think it was my mom and dad's kind of like last ditch effort to try to make things work in the home. And it turns out that wherever you go, there you are. And so the same volatility, the same anger, all of the things that were, that were present when I was really young in California were just as present in Boise. And it was, it was when I was 10 years old living in Boise, that my mom finally made the decision to leave. And that came about because of a, one of the most volatile circumstances where I ended up being thrown by my dad across our basement floor and I had a picture frame that was sticking out of my leg and just a lot of things that were, that were really, really unhealthy there. And so just that's a snapshot basically of my childhood, things that I have, as I've shared with you over lunch, things that I've had to work through as a dad myself. You know, getting married in 2000 and having kids, starting it in 2004. There were things that I was faced with as a dad that I never really, I had never thought I would be struggling with as a, as a father myself. And, and they turns out they were directly tied to these fatherhood wounds that I had from, from my childhood and things that the Lord in his grace, showed me ways in which I was, I was parenting in a way that was really out of pride, really directing all of my energy to just not be like my dad. And yet in all of my attempts to try to not be like him, I found myself being more and more, more like him than I wanted to be. And, and The Lord just showing me how I needed to address those things with him, with my heavenly father, but then also directly with my earthly father as well, to just have hard conversations and to talk through those, Those wounds that I had as a child and to really offer my dad forgiveness. And when I, when I stepped into that space of obedience, understanding that, you know, I'm not a perfect person, my dad, I know he's not a perfect person. And that's where the gospel really shines, you know, that it's. It is in our weakness that the love of God steps into and brings hope and help and healing in a way that there's no other source that can bring the true, like, transformation. And so, yeah, just. I hope that gives a good idea of just some of my story.
- [06:45]
Katie Faust
Yeah, for sure.
- [06:46]
Jen
Thank you for sharing that. I was wondering what you think about your dad as you look back as an adult. And I know sort of in modern psychology we do a lot of, you know, you kind of rehearse negative things over and over. And there will be people who have a pretty generic upbringing with their parents that will end up, because you can rehearse hurts and misunderstandings, all these things, and end up cutting off your family. And there's a lot, you know, there's kind of those extremes in your case, you're completely justified with if you were cutting off relationship with someone who's, you know, mistreating you in those ways. But I'm just curious, how have you been able to. Or how maybe have you processed as an adult, looking back and seeing your dad, maybe why he might have been doing the things he did, the tools that he had or didn't have from his upbringing, were things like that helpful as you processed? Not to justify anything.
- [07:44]
Robin Porter
Yeah.
- [07:44]
Jen
But for you to have an adult understanding of an adult, like, he should not have done that to me. But also, you know, his dad did this as this, or I'm just curious if. If you were able to do any of those. That kind of thing.
- [07:56]
Robin Porter
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's, It's. It's always helpful to have context to why people do the things that they do. As you said, it's. It's not an excuse, but it does, it does help give understanding. And so, yeah, with my dad, I mean, he grew up in a very volatile home himself and his. Both his mom and dad were severe alcoholics. And so that was a huge dynamic. Now, thankfully, that was not a dynamic in my upbringing. My dad, I think, because his parents were such severe alcoholics that my dad would not even touch alcohol, which just revealed that, you know, while alcohol can be a driver, it can be, you know, a source that just amplifies. But that's what it does. It amplifies what's already inside our hearts. Right. And so my dad, I think he. He really struggled with not really having the tools that he would need as an adult, as a father himself, to then recognize why. Why he was so angry himself and why he. He was getting to the point where he was lashing out as an adult towards his kids. Right. And so I. I think he is, even to this day, really kind of struggles with that. And there's just a lot of. Kind of stuffing that takes place, you know, just kind of keeping things just at a level where you. You kind of have. You feel like you have a certain amount of control.
- [09:36]
Roland C. Warren
I can.
- [09:36]
Robin Porter
I know in my own life as I was growing up, I had to face all of those realities and seeing that even in me was that same wound, that same potential to just be driven by rage. And. And it wasn't until I came to faith in Christ that the. The chain of that. That anger in my own heart was truly broken. I remember when I. When I truly prayed to put my faith in Jesus, it was like this weight was just absolutely lifted from my life. And it's not as if I've. I've never struggled with sin or anger even in my life, but it does not control me. Right. And. And, but then even as an adult, like, I was. I became a Christian when I was a teenager. And so I've already shared that. Even as an adult, when I became a parent myself, like, I still started to see these things in me. And it wasn't until I actually faced my dad and had, like, stepped into having the hard conversation with him about my experience as his son and the, The. The trials, the ways that I was just struggling as a. As a parent and seeing how it was related to this, these interactions that I had with my dad, with my dad when I was. When I was young. I mean, I. I had to just vocalize. I, like, I understand what it means to be broken and I forgive you, right, for, like, honestly, truly forgiving him for even all of those atrocities. It doesn't, it doesn't wash it away. It doesn't mean that they never happened, but it means that I'm. I'm not going to now lord it over him and. And demand something from him that I may never get. I may never get an apology. I mean, even when I had that conversation with him, I was not met with any form of remorse. It was really even how, like when you asked that question, like, you know, like, are there ways in which I think you, I think you, you asked whether or not you remember everything correctly. Like, I know as a kid there was a way that I interpreted things that isn't 100%, you know, like, there are things that I embellished, you know, actions and even conversations and all of those types of things. I know that those are like my, my memory is not 100 perfect, but I do know I have scars, I have wounds, literal body wounds. And, and there are things that I have continue to. To face as an adult just with the, the struggle, like just the memories of things that. That did happen. And so just. But then having those conversations with my dad and letting him know that I forgive him, just as Christ. I know Christ has forgiven me, I forgive him. And that, that really just opened the door for us to have a relationship again. And whereas leading up to that, we really didn't have much interaction, much conversation at all. And. But it was after that that I felt like I could really. Yeah. Be around him without being, you know, weighed down by all of that, that childhood trauma that I had experienced.
- [13:21]
Jen
Even in the secular world, when it comes to psychology and mental health, there is a notion that the things that you don't process, deal with. If there's not forgiveness and, and being able to move on, you will be stuck and bound to that thing. And so then when you intersect what we know from psychology with the Christian message. I love that you said forgiveness doesn't mean pretending it's fine or I'm just going to have completely fine relationship with this person who really significantly hurt me and damaged our trust. But I do. It does sound like forgiveness, the way God intends it for us is really to free you from any sort of bitterness or hanging on to something. And like you said, your dad did not. He didn't act like he had anything to be forgiven for or, you know, there'll be people you interact with that kind of maybe gaslight you like. Yeah, it wasn't that bad. You're not remembering it properly and. But I'm really thankful for that part of your story because it sounds like then God is able to free you from things, convict you of the things that he needed to work on in you. As you then consider what does it mean to be a husband and a father? Not repeat the spectrum. You'll hear people too. Your parents go so hard one direction. Well, I'm never going to be like them and then you just err really hard in a different direction. And then your kids are, you know, so it's not like your kids are going to get messed up by you too, only because you're a sinner. And we're all in the same boat in that. So that was. I'm really thankful you shared that. I was just thinking as well that, you know, a child would experience. Would experience even a level of anger and frustration from a dad, probably much differently than the dad would remember it. And you're talking about actual physical violence and like you said, scars and things you can. These are definitive things you can put your finger on. But I was just thinking about how in the Bible it talks about, men are supposed to be understanding, not exasperate their children and be gentle with their children and wives because they're. Again, it's a physiological thing. Generally, men are bigger and stronger, a deeper voice, a more confident and strong tone. When they tell the kid, go do the trash, it's kind of like, look, you. You sit up straight and you go do it. It's a different tone and expression than a woman. And for men to be flippant about how they come across to their children and white, yeah, I think is a big deal. Obviously, most people maybe aren't crossing into the physical violence and those sorts of things, but, you know, I think I've experienced fear from men who were not taking into account their tone and how they were coming across. Because just a woman, it's something you feel more conscientious of, like, oh, is this like a dangerous situation? And so that's, you know, something for people to consider if they're listening. Yeah, you're not abusive. But do your children feel scared when you walk into the room because you're too abrupt or too gruff? Domineering when it doesn't need to be so, because there might be a time and a place for someone to be strong and scare off a bad guy, but that's different. I did want to ask too, your thoughts. You're sharing a little bit about your faith and coming to know God. Many people will say the way they think of God often connects to their connection to their earthly father. So heavenly father, earthly father. Sometimes that can be hard for people to resonate with God as a father when our fathers are so broken with sin. So did you grab onto God as a father? Have you thought a lot about that? Has that changed over time?
- [16:59]
Robin Porter
Yeah, I would definitely say. I mean, when I was really young, I mean, my concept of God, I mean, I mentioned traveling with my grandparents or being sent to my grandparents and we would travel together. And so they took me around the United States and had, I had the pleasure and blessing really of being able to see what many kids don't, so many beautiful places in our country. So I knew like traveling, seeing so much of creation, I knew that God existed. But my concept of God bound up. Like you were saying so much in my relationship with my dad, my, my understanding of God was that he was just this taskmaster. He was just, you know, waiting for the next reason to just squash me, right? Like that. Like I, I knew, like God is, He is powerful. He's created this universe that we observe that is so beautiful, but also powerful and terrifying at times. And, and so I had this concept of God that He was just this angry taskmaster just writing down each and every bad, wrong thing that I did or thought or whatever. And so trying to un. Ravel, you know, just my own understanding, my relationship with my dad, but then hearing, when I finally started hearing the gospel message of this God who did create all things, who is a just all powerful God who will judge all sin 100, but that also he is meek, not weak. Like meekness is strength under control. Right? And so like trying to, trying to understand who God is apart from the broken relationship that I have with my own father, like that's, that's an ongoing process. I mean, it's, it's that unfortunately it's not something that has ended just because I read the Bible one time and all of a sudden I have perfect understanding. And you know, I, I don't have, you know, misunderst, you know, misunderstandings anymore. You know, I think that, that, that has just been an ongoing thing in my life of just untangling my own self from who God has proclaimed Himself to be through His Word and who he has shown honestly, who he has shown himself to be as this loving and gracious heavenly Father that, that wants to give blessings, give new life, give hope and purpose that is born out of brokenness, right? When he. Because he does, he exposes who we are, like our, the depth of our brokenness and our sin, our guilt before Him. But then instead of just condemn, condemn condemnation. He ex. Like he extends love and grace and another, another second chance, second chances and third chances and on and on. Right. And so it's. Yeah, it's. I wish I could say it was just like a one time. Yes, I, I acknowledge that my earthly father is different than my heavenly Father and that there was, there's Never been a, a way that, that that's been messed up. It's not, it's just not the way the faith is. It's a continual, like even just forgiveness, it's not just like a one time deal. Like there are things that happen that continually bring this. Do you continue to forgive? Do you can. Will you continue to, to let this go? Or will you allow this to be something that you hold on to that just grows like a, like a cancer and becomes this, this weight in, this anchor in your own heart and your, your mind?
- [21:09]
Sunny
It's.
- [21:10]
Robin Porter
Yeah,
- [21:12]
Jen
that's so good. Robin, what would you say is your kind of primary advice for. Maybe there's young men that are thinking, I can't do it, I can't be a father, I'm too young. You know, people are getting married and having kids later and later, and I think some of that is the fear of I can't do it, I don't know what I'm doing. So do you have any advice for men who maybe want to be fathers, but they think I can't do it, I'm too young, or my dad messed me up, so there's no point in me having kids? And then do you have some advice of just the things you've learned as you've, as your kids have grown up, even as you're parenting adult kids, that maybe you're making decisions you don't agree with all the time? What, what are some things you would want to encourage people with?
- [21:55]
Robin Porter
Well, I think the first thing that comes to my mind in, in all of this is you can't do it alone. You need community. You need a community of people who are open and honest about life, about faith when it comes to issues of marriage. Like, just because you're a Christian doesn't mean that you don't continue to contribute sin and brokenness into relationships. Right? And so we need to be in community with people that, that, that we can be honest with and that can be honest with us, that can, that we will allow to speak into our lives to, to be refined, to be molded and shaped hopefully more and more into the image of Christ. I think that that's, that's probably the biggest thing. Like I know that many men try to just figure it out on their own. Like there, there are so many men and I was one of them. For a long time, even as a, as a pastor inside the church, there were, there were things that I, conversations I was unwilling to have with other people because I thought, well, if I really let people know that I was struggling in this way, they would think so much less of me. They might not, you know, trust my leadership. Like, but this is what God calls us into, he calls us into community and, and we need to trust. It's not that you have to wear your emotions on your sleeve with everybody that around you, but you, you need to find a group of other like minded believers who you can truly share life with kneecap to kneecap, face to face, right? And just be transparent with and be honest with and, and, and opening up the scriptures and seeking to know who God is and to allow him to, to, to speak to you, to, to reveal Himself to you and then receiving his invitation to, to trust him to, to live a life of, of obedience that brings him honor and glory as, as he continues to reveal those areas that we fall short. But then again he's just saying he shows us those things so that we can address them and, and have them healed in him. Right? So I, I would, I mean I think probably like if there's one piece of information is be in community and, and, but then community that like for me it wasn't until I was actually going through a Bible study with other men as we were, we were addressing issues that men deal with. When I heard about the fatherhood wound, I was like that, I have that in spades, right? Like I just, I, it's something that I've carried around with me. And so when I heard, and I was led, I was, when I heard that message and I was led through the scriptures and I was praying in community with others, I was like, I need to face this issue. And so in sharing that with other men, that gave me courage to then not just talk about it, but to then actually step into the hard work
- [25:31]
Roland C. Warren
of
- [25:34]
Robin Porter
having hard conversations with my dad to talk about it with my sons, to, to confess to them, to confess to my own sons how I had fallen short in my love for them and my, even my portrayal of who God is like knowing that I am, I am contributing. I have contributed so many of the things that I wish I didn't contribute to my sons that, that I know they are going to have to work through as they enter into adulthood. And, but I hope what I have given to them is a picture of what it looks like to, to be in community, to be able to confess and admit when you've done wrong, like to seek forgiveness, to actually repent to those that you've, you've wronged and, and just acknowledge I sinned against you for. Will you please forgive Me for, for that. Right. Like, I've tried to really model this, this lifestyle of confession and repentance when I've fallen short and then. But then also showing them, like, like I have a community of people that are. Are encouraging me, they are strengthening me to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better father and, and ultimately Son of God, to, to reflect my heavenly Father. And so, yeah, I think that that's probably my biggest point of encouragement is be in community. Don't. Don't be an island to yourself.
- [27:23]
Jen
Yeah, yeah. So good. Yeah. I think, you know, women, maybe it's easier in some ways to feel like we need each other and relational and emotional and let's talk a bunch. And men might think you're supposed to be doing it on your own. You're supposed to be leading and figuring it out. Just you have the go be a man thing. And like you're saying, men need community too. It might look different from the way women tend to do it, but you still need guidance. You need young men under you, you need older men leading you, and you need people you can share with honestly and be learning and growing from. That's great. Okay, to close. Robin, can you just share a little bit about Love Life, the organization, what you do, and then just if people want to get involved and find you guys where they can find you.
- [28:06]
Robin Porter
Yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, the work that I'm doing with Love Life. I mean, our mission as an organization is to unite and more mobilize the church to create a culture of love and life that will bring about the end of abortion and the orphan crisis. Right. God is not silent. He has not been silent throughout history. He has told his people time and again the things that matter to him and how he wants his children to live in this world. And one of those things that he has repeated time and time again is. Is love. The orphan, the fatherless, the widow, the stranger that is among you. Right? Like this thing, this statement that God has. Has recommunicated over and over throughout history to his people. Right. And so the fatherless, I mean, when you think about abortion, when you think about the orphan crisis, like we have, like the fatherless epidemic in our society is at an unprecedented level, really. And one of the things, as I was think, as I was reflecting on our conversation today, the. One of the things that we are finding when we are do having conversations with women who have an unplanned pregnancy, when they are asked if your partner were to support you in keeping your child Would you? Instead of getting an abortion, nine times out of ten women say yes. And so as an organization, we say, like, abortion largely is a man's problem because we want to call up men to see themselves as the providers and protectors of women and children rather than the abusers. Right? And people who are. Who are coercing women to. They're. They're using them and then coercing them into getting an abortion because it's. It's something that is inconvenient. And so as an organization, we are doing everything that we can to come alongside the church to help them, give them tracks to run on, to know how to have a conversation when it comes to life issues. Right? We want it. We want to see abortion be ended. We want. We want. Want to call the church to be salt and light, to see itself as the means of solving the greatest moral issues of our day and then creating a culture. When we say creating a culture of love and life, we want to help the church to be known as a place where people can run to instead of away from when they are faced with life's most challenging issues. And right now, when we're talking about the issue of abortion, I mean, it is the leading cause of death in our city, in our nation, actually, in our world, there's. There's nothing that compares to the loss of death. And I know that you guys, the loss of life through this, this culture of death, and I know that you guys are doing it then before us. You guys are doing such tremendous work of exposing the realities around this with IVF and, you know, all of, all of, everything that's going on. And so this is the work that we're doing. We're coming alongside churches, we're leading prayer walks. Our ministry is based off the story of Nehemiah. Hear, pray. Go connect. We need the church to hear about the leading cause of death rather than just being mad about it. We want to lead the church to pray, praying prayers of repentance. Forgive us for the ways that we have abdicated. We have not been a voice to the voiceless. We have been silent when we. When we should have been vocal. We need to. We want to take the church to where the devastation is happening because we want to take it out of the realm of the conceptual into reality and show them where the devastation is happening in our city. And then we want to use that opportunity to invite them to ongoing engagement in standing for life. Based on the story of Nehemiah. We use the language of being on the wall. We are Rebuilding the moral walls of our city brick by brick. And we need each and every Christian. This is not just one person. It's not just one group. It is the body of Christ finding their place on the wall to help rebuild what has been lost in our society, the moral fabric of our of our cities.
- [32:38]
Roland C. Warren
Right.
- [32:38]
Robin Porter
And so we want to see the body of Christ step into fully its identity of being salt and light and offering the hope and help and healing the hope of the gospel, the help of the local church when it comes to the issue of abortion and the orphan crisis.
- [32:52]
Jen
Yeah, that's amazing. Well, we love it. We love having another Christian partner doing pro life, pro family work in the Seattle area. So Katie and I, Robin is local to us. So yeah, go to Love Life. We'll put the website down in the show notes so you can go find it. And yeah, if you're in the Seattle area, get involved, but you'll be able to find it pretty much no matter where you live. Robin, thanks so much for sharing your story. Encouraging people whether they're a dad or not, but encouraging especially dads. And happy Father's Day, even though it's coming up.
- [33:21]
Robin Porter
Thank you very much.
- [33:23]
Roland C. Warren
Thank you very much, Jen.
- [33:35]
Katie Faust
Hey, everyone.
- [33:36]
Jen
Welcome back to the Them Before Us podcast. Today's conversation we have Roland C. Warren. He is the President and CEO of Care Net since 2012. He's an author and a nationally recognized speaker who's focused on faith, family and life issues, drawing on decades of leadership experience across major organizations like IBM, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs. He now leads efforts to support men and women in choosing life and building strong families. Roland, thank you so much for joining our podcast.
- [34:07]
Roland C. Warren
Great to be with you. Great to be with you.
- [34:10]
Jen
We're going to get into some of your educational experience, your career experience and talk some more about the books that you've written. But I would love to hear just from you, where did it all start? Not, not necessarily the hospital you were born in, but just tell us a little about cabin.
- [34:27]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah, it was very hot, very cold.
- [34:31]
Jen
You had to walk uphill both directions in the snow.
- [34:34]
Sunny
Walk.
- [34:35]
Roland C. Warren
Who could do that? Crawling.
- [34:36]
Jen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just share a little bit, your origin story and the family that you grew up in.
- [34:42]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, because it's interesting because it's really very much connected to, you know, what I do and how I think about the life issue and family issues and things of that nature. Most of the things I'm kind of working on, I've sort of been a part of or have affected me in some Way, shape or form. And certainly when you talk about my family of origin, it's the same kind of thing. I grew up in Toledo, Ohio and you know, my parents divorced pretty early. My mom was essentially a teen mom. She had my older brother when she was 16, 17 years old. My parents got married for a little bit and then got divorced. So most of my childhood I grew up in a home with my father not present on a physical basis, although he lived in the town, but he didn't live with us. So father absent home, sort of in the classic, in the classic sense. So yeah, so that for me, the importance and centrality of family, the impact of father absence and the role that men play in terms of the well being of children is something I experienced personally. And then kind of coming through college, I became a father fairly early in life. We could talk more about that. I became a father when I was 20 years old, which is connected to the life issue. And so because, you know, I could have understood that. So it was a guy grew up without a dad, became a dad fairly early in life. And then, you know, after spending about 20 years in the business world, God called me from, I was working at Goldman Sachs at the time, but called me from Goldman Sachs to an organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative, which is a national nonprofit that's focused on helping men be better dads. I was president there for 11, 11 and a half, 12 years or so. And really focusing on turning the hearts of fathers to their kids and then came to care net and then brought that fatherhood perspective, like the role of the father and the connection that Venn diagram between the impact of the father and the life decision. Those two things are interconnected, but are interconnected in terms of what actually happens and the causes of abortion, but aren't necessarily connected in terms of the movements. So one of the things I transcend movements. So there's the fatherhood movement, there's the marriage movement, there's the discipleship movement. You know, there's a pro life movement, all these different movements. And when I kind of look at things and I kind of from a theological perspective, there's a unity of all these things. They're all interconnected. You see the fatherhood story in the birth of Christ, you see the marriage story in the birth of Christ, you see the discipleship in the birth of Christ, you see the life issue in the birth of Christ. They're all interconnected and they all come together in the person of Jesus Christ. And so these movements that kind of operate in silos at times, in my view, it impacts their effectiveness of actually accomplishing what they want to accomplish. So anyway, so God kind of gave me that kind of synchronization, if you will, of these issues together both with my life experience and then what he called me to, from a, from a worker ministry perspective. And I kind of bring all that back together in terms of how I kind of view the life issue. So that's me.
- [37:57]
Jen
Yeah. It is always interesting to see folks how, how God prepared them for the things he ended up calling them to do much later in life, often in childhood because of their experiences. So what was it like for you to have divorced parents? I mean, was your. We, we talk about how once your parents divorce, your time with your parents drops off significantly. At best case scenario, maybe it's 50, 50, but for a lot of kids, the dad is not in their life even 50% of the time. Did you get to see your dad fairly regularly? How was, how was he involved with you? You know, what was your experience with this is what it means to be a dad just when you were still a kid?
- [38:36]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah, no, it's, it's, you know, it definitely changes the dynamic. I mean, God has a design for family, right? He has a design. You know, there's a role for the mother, there's a role for the father, you know, in God's design for family. And so when there is a divorce or when there is out of wedlock pregnancy, all those things, it, it breaks God's design for family. And there's an impact. Whenever you violate quote the design, if you will, then you're going to have impacts. And I certainly experienced that in my own life. You know, my father lived in the same town, but I candidly, on a week to week basis, I really didn't spend very much time to him and didn't really talk to him very much. He wasn't really, I wasn't really emotionally connected to him. He wasn't involved in sort of the messiness of that, that is sort of adolescents and teenage years because of, you know, you know, it's like one of these things, you know, one of the things I always tell people when I was, I always would tell people when I worked for National Father Initiative because they wanted to work on the fatherhood issue in isolation. But I always tell like fatherhood, like father involvement, there's an equation. It's participation equals motivation plus location. So in other words, if you want a highly involved father, then he's got to be motivated. Well, he's got to be motivated Then he's going to have to have skills, right? So if you don't have skills, you're not motivated. Like me, for example, I don't play golf. Why? Because I stink. Now, if I spent a year with, I don't know, Tiger woods or some other great golfer, we just play golf every day. Guess what? My skills would improve. And guess what? My motivation will probably improve. So. So if you have motivation, which is part of it, it's great. So we'll help them get better skills. But there's another piece that's important, which is location. Location. So great skills playing golf, but I'm not around any golf courses. Guess what? You're not going to get a lot of golfing. So if you've got great skills as a father and you're not around your kids, you're not going to get a lot of father involvement. So the location piece is important. So that's where it gets a little tricky when you think about the culture, because there's a specific. There's a specific institution that is designed to put children in the location of their fathers, in the home of their fathers. There's an institution that links that together. It's what, marriage. So if you want to work on the fatherhood issue, separated from the marriage issue, then you have a problem because the marriage issue defines location. And so that's kind of what I experienced, right? So even if my dad was involved and wanted to be more involved, the fact of the matter was he couldn't technically bed because he didn't live there. He couldn't hear things in real time because he didn't live there. And so there is an institution that's designed to put mothers and fathers in the home, right. Together with their children. And that's the other piece, why marriage is important. Because if you want father involvement, who else is going to be, quote, in that home while the mother. Well, what's the relationship supposed to be with between the mother and the father? You want them to kind of like each other? I mean, what do you want? How about like each other a lot? Okay, how about love each other? Okay, how about love each other a lot? Well, okay, for how long? Well, for a week, two weeks? Forever? I mean, you start walking through, well, gosh, there is an institution that's designed to put mothers and fathers of their children in a home, loving each other long term, forever. It's called marriage. So all. That's why I talk about all these different movements. They're interconnected, right? And so if you want father involvement, you have to have marriage. And what do you see in communities that have very low marriage rates, like the African American community? You also have high out of wedlock pregnancy rates and high father absence rates. And therefore there's an impact on the children as a result of. There's something that they miss because of that, either physically, emotionally, spiritually, or socially or financially because of the absence of the father. And some of that stuff is very much connected to some of the most intractable social ills that we talk about. Low academic performance, incarceration, teen pregnancy, drug use, all these things. There's a Venn diagram that connects them to father absence, even when you control for race. So by the grace of God, I kind of got through that perspective and kind of move forward. But God never let me forget that history because it really shaped it. Gave me a passion around the work that he was calling me to later.
- [42:45]
Jen
Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing. I was just thinking, how did you avoid the pitfalls that so many young men who don't have their dad being really present and really leading them? How did you avoid going down those routes? And I mean, eventually you went to college, so you started going down the, you know, the education and being really successful in business. So who do you kind of credit with helping you stay that. Stay that course?
- [43:09]
Roland C. Warren
I get that question a lot. And it's, it, it's just to me, you know, it's kind of like cliche, but like, so God is your father, you know, kind of a deal. But I really kind of felt that quite a bit. And I do think my. The role that my mother played in a couple of key areas made a big difference. Like, one of the things she didn't. She never did was she never really sort of criticized my father. She never talked my father down to me, you know, eventually I got to see who he was, which kids eventually will figure that out. But she didn't do that. And I think that was helpful because when you do that to a child, particularly to a boy, like, he can't disconnect himself from his dad. I mean, like, you're trying to criticize the dad, but in some ways it gets reflected. It gets reflected on the child or the child can embrace that in terms of a reality. My dad ain't no good, so I'm gonna be no good, that kind of thing. So I think that was part of it, and I think a lot of it was that really helped by the grace of Go was just sort of the faith component that I experienced as a young person helped move Me in a direction. So, you know, I didn't start off all that great because I went to four different schools by the time I was in 5th grade. But by the time I was in fifth grade, I went to this great Catholic school and I started to have more. As you talk about spiritual formation, right. So I started to learn more about God. And I certainly. And that gave me sort of a moral perspective that really, in a lot of ways was an anchor, was a. I don't know, a protective mechanism, I would say, from some of the most intractable social ills that were there that I could avoid. Not that I avoided all of them. Because we will see. Because there's a part of me that is part of, like the statistic, if you will, that you would see for someone who comes up in my environment. So I think that was. I think that was a part. That was a part of it. You know, I think I got very much involved in sports, and so I wanted to participate there in sports. And so I think that helped a lot, too. But it's a tough dynamic. I was basically one degree of separation in many cases from something that could have taken me in a very different. Down a very different path. Because I didn't really have those protection mechanisms that two parents can provide. I mean, just practically and just turn to like, I spent a lot of time as a young person, as a latchkey kid, watching my brothers and sisters and things of that nature. Those are difficult periods. But my mom was a single mother. She had to work and so
- [45:42]
Sunny
could
- [45:42]
Roland C. Warren
have gone the other way, but God has different plans. But I always tell people when they think about this issue, because they say, oh, you grew up without a father, you're going to have a jail. No, it doesn't mean that at all. But what it does mean is that you're at higher risk. It's like station I always use with people is like, we tell children not to smoke. What's the point? Most people who smoke don't end up with cancer. They don't. Right. But they're at higher risk for cancer because they smoke. So therefore we say don't smoke because it increases your risk. Well, father absence works the same way. You're at a higher risk of that kind of thing. And certainly from a societal perspective, we want to protect people from the risk of cancer. Well, shouldn't we want to protect them from some of the intractable social ills that are very much associated with father absence as well? Well, we should. Well, there's a way to do that, which is Obviously work to connect fathers to kids, heart to heart, which means, again, kind of where I started then you've got to work on building a culture that embraces marriage and the role of a father and mother in that construction. So, so I think that was, that was a, that was a big part of it as well. But there's one issue I did not avoid, which we can talk about that kind of leads me to this, the place I am now as well.
- [46:59]
Jen
Yeah, I was just thinking about how within the Christian context, parents can sometimes err on the side of they're going to talk about all the bad things, like don't do bad thing, bad thing, bad thing, bad thing, because all this bad stuff will happen to you. And I do wonder if it's. It's better for kids to hear or just if you take religion out of it, even secular society, it's better to hear the good thing. The good, true and beautiful promote marriage and talk about how it helps lead to human flourishing. It's the ideal for children. It's not just if you don't get married and you have a child now you're going to be in poverty and now your kid will have juvenile diabetes and on and on. Like you said, it increases the risk for those things. But that's not the main reason to not get divorced or to have your children within marriage. It's the flip side. It's all the good things that it can provide for children, the stability, the health, the daily connection with masculine and feminine, the two people that made them. Okay, well, jump, jump us ahead. And I think that's probably what you're referring to. You, you became a father at 20, which for people, if you're in college typically is right in the middle of the, you know, 18 to 22 is where people are typically in college. So share a little bit about what happened there.
- [48:11]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah, yeah. There's something that makes babies, apparently I learned when I was 20. And yeah, so I got my girlfriend pregnant when I was my a junior in college and she was a sophomore, we were both undergrads at Princeton, we got pregnant. And so then I got introduced to fatherhood pretty quickly and you know, the Venn diagram with the life issues that, you know, when she went to student health services to get the pregnancy test, you know, she gets the test, test is positive. The nurse is like, well, of course this is negative news for you. So of course you're going to have an abortion. And my girlfriend, now my wife for 43 years punchline here said, no, I don't Want to have an abortion. I want to get married. I want to have my baby. Nurse is like, gosh, how are you going to graduate from Princeton with a baby? You know, it doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense. What do you want to do when you graduate? My wife says, well, I want to become a doctor. My gosh, become a doctor with a baby. Doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense. Abortion seems like the. Really the only choice or the smart choice. Anyway.
- [49:10]
Jen
We didn't.
- [49:10]
Roland C. Warren
We got married. You know, she was 20, I was 19, and we got married. So kind of started our life together and actually had both of our kids at Princeton. She had. Both of our sons were born there. She graduated. Excuse me. She graduated, went on to go to college. Excuse me, go to medical school, became a doctor, practicing medicine, you know, over 30 years. So, you know, I kind of saw firsthand, you know, the impact of that. And I think in a lot of ways, I mean, in terms of how I got there, I mean, essentially I did what my father did, you know, that kind of a thing. I didn't really have any. I mean, although I certainly had a Christian understanding of, like, God's design for sex and all of that. But there weren't really the guardrails there. There weren't people that I was talking to about that kind of stuff. But, you know, by the grace of God, you know, even though my mother, you know, you know, wasn't married for much of my life, she never talked marriage down. So I didn't have a view of marriage that was negative. And to me, fatherhood and marriage were linked. And it's kind of funny because people ask me, how did that happen? A lot of them, I think back on, it was actually a lot of stuff that was even happening in the media, on TV at that time. I mean, the shows that were on the Brady Bunch and, you know, Good Times, I mean, these different shows that were on when I was a kid, they had fathers and mothers and they had married families. And I. And I. That was aspirational for me. And then also what I saw in church. And so when I got her pregnant, the thought of being a baby daddy didn't even cross my mind because I'd seen these images, if you will, of what fatherhood and marriage and husbandhood looked like. And so that was something that made a difference. And also, since my mother didn't talk marriage down, if you will, which happens in too many situations, I had a perspective that was positive about marriage. And then my kind of Christian perspective, even though we're Christians at the time and we were doing something we shouldn't have been doing as Christians, that was still there. My wife came from, you know, a married family. Her parents had been married for many years. So we, you know, kind of moved into that. And then of course, I saw what happened as a result of that. Right? We had both of our kids, we both graduated from, from school. She went on to medical school, I went on to business school. You know, both of our sons have kids. You know, neither of them had kids out of wedlock. And so in one generation we were able to break, by God's grace, we were able to break a cycle in my family of out of wedlock, pregnancy. That for me and for my dad, you know, in one generation, what's the key? Faith and family, like those two things together, you know, helped break the cycle there. And then both of our kids went on to college and now I got grandkids, you know, so that's why I'm so passionate about, you know, God's design for family. Because I've seen how when you follow God's design for family, the flourishing that comes from that, economically, you know, socially, spiritually, you know, I've seen it, you know, and that's why I'm so passionate about, like trying to help other folks understand that, you know, that if you really want that for your children, if you really want human flourishing, you know, the best way to make that happen, the highest probability way to make that happen, is to build a high quality, low conflict godly marriage. Not going to be perfect right this side of heaven, but a high quality, low conflict godly marriage. And guess what? On average, kind of like with smoking, on average, your kids are going to do better. Across every psychological, social, educational and economic measurement of child well being, I've seen it, the data shows it, I've lived it as well. So that's kind of how I kind of got to that perspective.
- [52:56]
Jen
Yeah, that's so good. I'm wondering if you could share a little bit those initial moments when you learned that you guys were pregnant and then maybe just connect that to your work at Care Net. Because so much of what we talk about in sort of the pro life versus abortion space is the concept of the unplanned pregnancy. And like you described your, your wife, your now wife being advised, hey, your whole future is going to be ruined if you have the child. And thankfully, she had a different perspective. She could see that maybe there's going to be struggles or it might be harder in some ways, or there's going to be financial, different finances attached, but we can do it. And you guys decided to do that together. And I think a lot of people that come to Care net probably feel like we have no other option. My life is over. Either I'm going to get in trouble or, you know, I have all my plans for the future are ruined. So can you just help us? You know how you felt in that moment? Why did you think it would be okay and that there would be a future and that you could push through? And then how do you, you know, at Carena, how do you guys advise the folks who come in feeling those same kind of feelings?
- [54:10]
Roland C. Warren
Well, you know, I could say probably as a 20 year old, I don't know that I had had all of that perspective. I think I had a clarity around one thing, which was that we didn't want to complicate one sin with a second sin. I mean, I didn't necessarily. I don't know if I even knew what abortion was like in a. And I knew what it was in terms of like the word, but I like what it was really not sure I even had thought very much about it, but I did know that. And I also knew with certainty that there was a life growing inside of my wife, my girlfriend and my wife. And I think that the call in that moment is that you have to have that clarity that it's not a life worth sacrificing, but rather a life worth sacrificing for. And so that became sort of the perspective there because we frankly had no visible means of support at that point. Our parents both cut us off and said, hey, you guys gonna be married? All right? Be married now you gotta act like married folks. So we had all the reasons to have the abortion. But I think that clarity around that this was a life not, you know, sort of imago dei, although I probably didn't even know that term back then. That was something that God had written in our hearts. And we understood that this was one of his image bearers. And so from that perspective, sort of had a faith, if you will, that God was going to work through that. But I think as it connects to the life issue, you know, in my view, probably the biggest challenge is that people, in my view, don't necessarily ask what I call the central question. And I would say this. And looking back on our situation, I feel like it was kind of. I kind of had this central question, if you wouldn't necessarily articulate the way I'm going to articulate it now, but if a woman came to you and she was facing an unplanned pregnancy and you could change everything except the fact that she was pregnant, what would you want for her? And better yet, what do you think God would want you to want for her? I used to ponder that for a second. Okay, so she's facing unplanned pregnancy. I can change everything except the fact that she's pregnant. What should I want for her? Okay, well, all right. Typical pro life response. Well, I want her to have the baby. Okay, great. Is that it? Check. So she'll be a single mother with a baby. I mean, that. Well. Well, there's a guy. Yeah, she got pregnant by a guy. Okay, so what do you want him? What's his role? Well, maybe he should be involved. What baby daddy that brings diapers? I mean, what do you want? What do you want? Well, he's not a great guy, but you can change that. You can change everything. So you just start going through. You say, yeah, I want to have the baby. Check. I want the guy to be involved. Check. Not as a baby daddy who brings diapers, but as a husband to her and a father to the child growing inside of her. So I'd want her to be married and then what else? I'm a Christian. Well, gosh, I want that child to be raised to be a disciple maker on the fear and admonition of the Lord. Great. I want them to be a married couple who's raising their child. And then, of course, I want them connected to a local church, to be disciples who make disciples who live and love like Jesus. That's what you should want. That's what God challenged us to want for ourselves in the midst of that. Well, that is actually not pro life what I just said. That's what I call pro abundant life. Right. Because saving the baby and helping the mother, which is how the typical pro life response is framed, like love them both is a typical pro life narrative. But that what I just explained to you is not about loving them both. It's about loving them all. It's about those not yet born and those not yet born again.
- [57:40]
Jen
Right.
- [57:41]
Roland C. Warren
It's about a baby being saved now and for eternity. It's about a couple becoming disciples of Jesus Christ. That's expansive. Now, the key to that is not just marketing spin. And actually, it's what saves babies from abortion. I lived it. See, 87% of the women that have abortions are unmarried. Let that settle in. So when you walk and operate in the silos, we got the Marriage movement over here, the pro life movement over here, the fatherhood movement over here. All those things interconnect to save the child. If you interconnect them, why was my wife less likely to have an abortion? Because she had a guy said, I'll be a husband to you and a father to the child growing inside of you. So she could see when you think about the abortion decision, a woman makes the abortion decision from conception to birth, but that's not what she's thinking about in that moment. What was the nurse talking to my wife about after birth? How are you going to. How you gonna. How you gonna. It's all this, what I call missing support. And I have a great graph of this whole perspective in the book the Alternative to Abortion, why we must be pro abundant Life, which folks can get on Amazon, where I walk through this pro abundant life perspective. That's what the nurse was talking to my wife about. This issue is about nine months in one second. And if a woman can't solve that next that one second, she's much more likely to have an abortion. Now how do you solve that? Well, one of the ways is encouraging men to step into the role to say less, I'm going to, at a minimum, be a father to this child. But certainly being a husband and a father is the kind of glue that really helps solidify the thing for her. So helping to build a high quality, low conflict godly marriage. Guess what? Less women have abortions when they had that. But the pro life movement says, well, this is about, you know, love them both or saving the baby and ain't trying to engage the guy when he actually is the most influential person in her decision to abort. We did a national survey and we asked post abortive women who was the most influential in her decision to abort. Guess who it was. The father, far and away. Then we did the same survey of men who had participated in abortion and we asked him who was the most influential in her decision to abort. He said, I was. So the women who have the abortions and the men who participate were both saying, he's the most influential. And we built an entire movement that actually doesn't include him. And then we wonder why we're having challenges. See, when Mary faced an unplanned pregnancy from a human perspective, what did God do to make sure that her unplanned pregnancy wasn't a crisis pregnancy?
- [60:24]
Jen
You got Joseph on board.
- [60:26]
Roland C. Warren
So Joseph be a husband to her and a father to the child growing inside of her.
- [60:29]
Sunny
Yeah.
- [60:30]
Roland C. Warren
And when Mary was at risk to be, you know, at risk because Jesus was going to try. They're going to try to kill Jesus. Who did the angel go to? Joseph Providing to protect. One man, two missions. Husband to her father to the child growing inside of her. One man, two missions to provide and to protect. See, there's always been a design that includes men in this. And oh, by the way, the first thing the angel told Joseph to do was not to protect the Christ child. When the angel comes to Joseph. If you read the read, it's in the first chapter, the first book of the New Testament. First thing he said, do not be afraid to take Mary as what? Your baby mama?
- [61:05]
Jen
Yeah, right.
- [61:06]
Roland C. Warren
Your shorty, your boo, your wife.
- [61:08]
Jen
Yeah.
- [61:10]
Roland C. Warren
The first thing the angel does, it affirms the sanctity of marriage and family. Right before he even talks about the sanctity of life, of the child growing inside her. We lost that narrative in the pro life movement. So we focus on trying to save the baby and help the woman when what God did was very different from that. So going back to the central question, when you think about the central question, Isaiah 7:14, it says, Look, a virgin will conceive and bear a child. So God locked himself in with his word and then he comes to Mary and he says what? I can change everything except the fact that she's pregnant. What does he do? He creates a family. He creates a family. So Care Net's ministry model, that's exactly what we're doing. God's design for family. So our network of 1300 plus pregnancy centers, we're trying to encourage them to bring the fathers into the picture. Not just to be baby daddies, but also husbands and fathers. Right. And then God's call to discipleship, which is the second pillar of a pro abundant life perspective, is about helping that family connect. Move from the pregnancy center to the church for ongoing support and discipleship. That's very different from pro life. That's pro abundant life based on John 10:10, when Christ said, I came to my life and had that life abundantly. Well, how does that happen? Well, God created two very important institutions. God's design for family and God's call to discipleship. The local church to help that abundant life move from heaven to earth. And that's really what Cainet's about. The ministry is about being pro abundant life as opposed to being pro life. And that's what I walk through in the book.
- [62:48]
Jen
Yeah, that's so good. I know Karen, that and you can talk, maybe tell us a few more practical Things that Care Net offers, the folks who show up. But I know that you do parenting classes, I believe, for both men and women, and you have mentors for both the men and the women. What are the things that Care Net offers? You know?
- [63:07]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah. No. When I first started at Care Net, I mean, a very small percentage of pregnancy centers had anything for men. Basically, the guy sitting out in the parking lot smoking a cigarette next to the guy who was. Had his girlfriend going into the Planned Parenthood. They're both in the parking lot smoking a cigarette because neither. Because neither side wanted the guy involved because they say he's an impediment, right? Her body, her choice. So we don't need him involved. But unfortunately, the pregnancy center kind of perspective had a little bit of that, too, because it's kind of like, well, this guy is just going to be one who's going to be an adversary. He's not going to. He's not going to help her bring the child into the world when the reality is he's the most influential. So we want him out of that car in. In the pregnancy center. And then what's happening across the country with CARE and affiliated pregnancy centers is they have coaches, guys who are working with the guy while they're working with him, and then bringing them both together, like, for example, to see the ultrasound. He sees it, she sees it. And what we know is when he sees that ultrasound with her, they're much more likely to have the baby because men are visual. Like when a woman gets pregnant, everything in her body changes. She may say she doesn't want to have this baby, but she can't say, I don't want to be a mother. She's already a mother. It's happening. But for guys, nothing happens after when she gets pregnant. So the ultrasound, him seeing that, visually seeing that has an enormous connection. And that's why the evil one doesn't want him involved, wants him to make, like Adam, just stand there silently while she. My body, my choice, my fruit, my choice, while he sits there and then she gives him a bite. That's what this is about. So our work is really focused on really that broader perspective. So a big part of our work is really fatherhood support, bringing the men into the picture, getting him not to be an adversary, but an advocate for the life of the child and the better job he does in that regard. It happens. So we have resources like Dr. Dad, which is a curriculum that we have that we offer through our pregnancy center network that trains fathers on infant and toddler health. And safety, all these things to start to prepare him to be a father. And as that happens, guess what happens? Her confidence grows because this dude is starting to get prepared for the child to come and to basically be a part of addressing the missing support from a parenting perspective. So we do that kind of thing. And then of course, a core piece of what we want to do is move that couple to the church for ongoing support and discipleship. We have a ministry component called Making Life Disciples. Making Life Disciples that folks can find@makinglifedisciples.com and the goal of that is to create small groups in churches that can receive folk from pregnancy centers to minister to them, disciple them to become disciples of Jesus Christ in the midst of this pregnancy or someone who's in the church facing an unplanned pregnancy. There's a ministry component in the church so that that woman never thinks that Planned Parenthood or an abortion pill is a compassionate alternative to the body of Christ. So very practical things that we can do. But that stuff doesn't happen. In my view. If you don't have a pro abundant life perspective, because if you have a pro abundant life perspective, you know, I got to engage the guy because I'm trying to build a family, because I'm trying to answer the central question. If you have a pro abundant life perspective, I got to connect him with the church because I'm trying to answer the central question, right? If you have a pro life perspective in the way that's classically portrayed, save the baby, right? Help the woman, maybe. But the problem is that too often we see those women coming back with new pregnancies and new guys. So it's check, check, check, check, check. But the reality is that she's still very much at risk, because unless you can meet all that support need that she has, then maybe she'll save this one, but she'll abort the next one. So we don't want to have a series of transactions. This is about a transformational ministry based on the perspective that you see in Romans 12:2, right? Where it says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Right? That's what we want. Transform, transformation. And God's design for marriage and God's call to discipleship are transformational constructs that help people not only bring their children into the world, but are focused on not just those not yet born, but those not yet born again. And that's how you break the cycle of abortion.
- [67:13]
Jen
That's so good. For just your final thought, Roland, what would you say to maybe young men they're not married yet, but they look at marriage and family and they think that's going to put a damper on my life. That doesn't sound very fun. You know, I'd prefer to be doing traveling or focus on my career, do those sorts of things. What are the best parts about being a dad? Is it worth it? Do we need young men to step up and be husbands and fathers? You know, what's your encouragement?
- [67:40]
Roland C. Warren
Oh, yeah. I mean, to me, in so many ways, I mean, how young men go on this issue, it determines how society goes. I mean, the fact of the matter is that, you know, if men are, look, men, we're wired to either be providers and protectors or perpetrators and predators. And one of the things, and one of the reasons why this is so important is because, you know, fathering and husbanding, it causes men to be other centered in a way that nothing else does. Like, women are kind of wired. Even your biology, a woman's biology is kind of other center because you learned early on, hey, I have a period. Why am I having a period? Because I can bring life into the world. That's an other centered perspective. Men don't have that kind of rite of passage physically, right? So it's critically important that more and more of our young men understand the importance of fatherhood, importance of God's design for sex and the role of that and the role of husbandhood as well. But I also can say this to guys. Look, I was a young guy too at some point. I was married very early and I've talked to him. I'm not a young guy anymore in that context. But I can tell you that the most satisfying thing that I have in my life, I did a lot of stuff. I got an MBA from here. All these different things. It's my sons, it's my kids, my relationship with my wife, it's my relationship with my grandkids. I mean, it brings me a measure of joy that I can't even articulate. It's better than the best latte or the best PowerPoint presentation or whatever. And that's why you see so many guys, right, who maybe have not lived out that perspective. Now they're older or on their deathbed, what do they have regret? What they weren't able to do that next PowerPoint that they. No, that PowerPoint ain't gonna be at your funeral. Most of your work colleagues are gonna be at your funeral, right? They're not gonna be holding your hand in the hospital. They're not. I mean, they're it just. So you're really selling yourself short. I'm not saying that every guy needs to be married or any of that, but. But my point is a lot more of them do. And, and when you do, there's a joy that comes from being other centered in this way, then that doesn't come from other things. We're wired that way. We're wired for connection, we're wired for community. And that's where human flourishing happens. And that's why God started with a family in the garden. And interestingly, when you think about even more concretely, here's Adam in paradise
- [70:09]
Jen
and
- [70:09]
Roland C. Warren
he's still like, I done named everything. And then he sees woman and he's like, whoa, man, we're wired for that. God has a design. We're created a certain way. And certainly when you live that out, there's obviously human flourishing, a joy that comes from that that can't be replaced by other things. And that's really the design. So if you're a guy out there, be thinking about that and be praying about that, because the reality is that it's a joy unspeakable. And I can say that as an older guy who maybe didn't even appreciate it as much when I was younger, but absolutely can see it now that I'm older and I don't want to guys who should have it to miss it, I guess I would say.
- [70:55]
Jen
Yeah, that's so good. Well, thank you, Roland, so much for your leadership, especially of Care Net saving lives like we talked about. That's the quote. Pro life movement is saving the babies, but transforming entire families and integrating them back into discipleship and community where it just does. It doesn't end with one baby being born. It's transforming entire generations and those in those next steps and for the books and resources that you have.
- [71:21]
Roland C. Warren
Yeah, well, Jesus wasn't pro life. Jesus was pro abundant life. How do you know? John 10:10. I came that you might have life and have it abundantly. You can be an atheist and be pro life. You can't be an atheist and be pro abundant life because you're focused on God's design for family, God's call to discipleship. And so I just encourage folks who have that perspective. Unplug yourself from that pro life perspective as it's classically designed and plug yourself into the pro abundant life perspective because Jesus was pro life and he's called us to be pro abundant life as well.
- [71:54]
Jen
That's awesome. All right, everyone, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Roland Warren and we will Put all the links. We'll put your books into our show notes. So make sure you go check out Karen and Roland's other work. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Here for the Comments. A Them Before Us podcast series where we dive into the comments and questions we get online and unpack the channel. Children's rights perspective we use to answer them. I'm your host, Jen, and I'm joined by Sam. And we are here for the comments. We are going to talk about since it's Father's Day coming up this weekend, depending on when you're listening to this, we're going to go over some of our favorite dads in media, TV shows, maybe books. And Sam and I both kind of made a list of the ones that we liked. And so we'll just bring them up to each other and see how much time we get and talk about dad. So start us off. Sam, who's a dad in literature, TV shows that you liked growing up or maybe your kids are watching.
- [73:00]
Sam Deloach
Okay, so I didn't. I was just kind of thinking, like, randomly. So this is not in any order. These aren't like the top ones that I have, but just ones that came to mind. Old TV show that I used to watch, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, they had Philip Banks. And I like that one because you get to see him, like, as a dad, but you also get to see him, like, in a fatherly role to somebody who's not his son. And I feel like that's such a dad thing to do is like, also be a father for. For people who don't have fathers for kids who don't have fathers. And yeah, I just. I really liked that show growing up. So I felt like that was a good one.
- [73:37]
Jen
I remember a scene where Will Smith's character, his dad is coming and going or something. I don't know if he comes. And Will Smith thinks, like, I'm gonna get. He's gonna take me with him or we're gonna kind of have this restored relationship. And I think the dad, like, either asks for money or is ready to leave. It's like, okay, bye. You're having a great time. And Will Smith, his character, I don't even know his name in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Fresh Prince, he's like, kind of lamenting to his uncle, like, well, first he starts off like, I don't even care. Whatever. It's the same difference to me. I don't need a dad. And then he starts crying. He's like, why doesn't he want me? And his uncle Just like takes him in his arms and is acknowledging his loss, his grief. The uncle knows I can't replace what you're missing. But he does take on himself to be that figure for Will Smith. So that's an awesome, awesome one to start us off with. All right, this is a pretty easy one for people who are into like the kids movies or group watching this. But Marlon from Finding Nemo is such an incredible picture of a dad. Actually, he kind of avoids the trope that a lot of the movies and TV shows do that make dads look really stupid. They make them kind of look subservient to the mom, submissive to the mom, pathetic. They don't know what they're doing. Marlon is not a figure like that. Marlon becomes a single dad because the mom dies tragically. It's portrayed as a tragedy. And would it be a Disney movie, would it be a Pixar movie if a parent didn't die? I blame Disney for my separation anxiety and fears about parents dying growing up. But Marlon is caring for his son as a single dad. He's very involved. He's, you know, helps get him to school. He's helping, trying to alleviate his fears. And then when something happens to Nemo, Marlin's the entire story is this journey of Marlon going to find his son. And, you know, super wonderful. I mean, it's when you're lost. We see a lot of movies where the kid is trying to find the parent. It's actually really cool to see that flipped. Like, the parent loves their child so much, they're doing everything they can crossing oceans to find them.
- [75:49]
Sam Deloach
I like that one that you picked because obviously, like, I would watch Finding Nemo as a kid and you would relate more to Nemo and be like, oh, that would be such an adventure. And like, know you, he just wants to go do whatever he wants to do. And like, I get it. And then you watch it as in a grown up with your kids and you're just like, oh, the dad's always right. Why are these parents always right? Okay. And if we are talking about animation Pongo from 101 Dalmatians, that's the top of my head. I thought he was such a good. Like, both of the parents were just like ready to do whatever it took to save their kids. I loved Pongo. I feel like he was just like a good dad. And remember, like, when one of the puppies just got really cold and didn't want to keep walking and he just picked him up and he was just carrying him. It Was so cute. Yeah, that's a good one.
- [76:37]
Jen
Can you imagine having a hundred kids? Oh, my gosh. Okay. Another animated one that, I mean, everyone loves, especially if you're a millennial, is Mufasa from the Lion King.
- [76:50]
Sam Deloach
King.
- [76:50]
Jen
I think what's awesome about this is he's portrayed as this very fair, good hearted leader, very strong. He's in charge. Like, there's no question of him being weak or not. That his word isn't the law for, like, this. The, you know, he's the king, obviously. But he's also portrayed as very loving and kind and fair, like in how he treats his brother.
- [77:15]
Mary Kovach
Right.
- [77:16]
Jen
Scar, who's trying to take over everything and sacrifices his life for his son. You know, so there's obviously this beautiful picture of parental fatherly love and sacrifice. And it's kind of reminiscent of what's the movie, Black Panther. When they go, the sons go out into the nights and kind of try to interact with their father in the night sky. Like they're still longing for him even though something has happened. Happened to him in his dead.
- [77:45]
Sam Deloach
Yep, that is a really good one. He's so majestic. Another one I had listed. Okay. My first exposure to trans ideology. You're like, where is this going, Mrs. Doubtfire? So the dad, not really trans, but the dad, Mrs. Doubtfire. I think it was Daniel Hilliard in. In the show. I think his name was Daniel.
- [78:10]
Jen
He played by Robin Williams.
- [78:11]
Sam Deloach
Yes. You know what?
- [78:13]
Jen
Like, why does he do that?
- [78:15]
Sam Deloach
What is it? Why does he switch? Oh, you don't remember?
- [78:17]
Jen
Okay, I don't think I've seen that movie.
- [78:19]
Sam Deloach
Okay. Okay. I have a lot of thoughts about this movie. So basically he's a dad and he's just. He goofs around too much. All right, the mom is correct in this where he takes things way too far and he's not, like, reliable and that kind of thing. So, like, I guess her final straws. He threw a party for his kids and. And invited a bunch of, like, farm animals and, like, animals. And they live very, I think, in Seattle, but, like, on a very busy street. And so, like, you have like this. She's trying to do pony rides in the middle of a street and the cars are honking at him, trying to get by, and it's just like, chaos. And there's animals all over their house. And she walks in and the wife is like, I want a divorce. And he was obviously traumatized because he was in love, he was happy, he loves his kids. But, like, I guess he was just really immature. So they Get a divorce. She leaves him. She takes the kids. And then, like, they basically decided that, like, he didn't have a good enough situation where he was living and stuff to keep the kids because he didn't really have a solid house and things like that to care for the kids. So then basically, she wanted full custody. She felt like he was, like, you know, just not reliable or safe. And he was so heartbroken that he basically decided he's gonna dress up as a nanny so he could go spend time with his own kids. She hired him. And then it's like this goofy plot line. And I will say I might be controversial, but, like, he was immature. I totally understand that aspect of it. But, like, she was so cruel to him. And, like, she just, like, was just like, I want a divorce. And it's like, what? Like, you don't leave somebody over them being a little too goofy. Like, work it out, you know? But anyway, it was just the idea that, like, time with his kids was so important to him that he was willing to do, quite literally, whatever it took to get it. And I thought that was. That's a good dad.
- [80:09]
Jen
Yeah.
- [80:10]
Sam Deloach
Well.
- [80:10]
Jen
And we're not excusing actual irresponsible behavior that we see in the movies, but it is an interesting thing to consider that dads are more likely to play with kids. They're probably more likely to be goofy, to be engaging in the actual game or climbing the tree with them or hanging off the balcony or doing whatever. And moms. We talk about this a lot. Moms are more likely to try to make sure you're safe and be playing together. Make sure you're in the yard where I can see you. No, I do not want you playing with fire, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
- [80:44]
Sam Deloach
Yeah.
- [80:45]
Jen
I don't remember if we told this story on the radio before, but when Katie was in Pennsylvania speaking at a school, she was talking to elementary kids, and she asked the group, it's few hundred in the. In the gym. She asked them, you know, why? What's different between a mom and a dad? Like, why are moms more likely to tell you to eat your vegetables? And a little boy said to Katie, and then she repeated into the microphone, he said, dads are for fun, and moms keep you safe. And she's like, there you go. You summed it up into, like, what a PhD is trying to study. And she's like, dads are the ones at the pool trying to see how far they can launch you, how high they can launch you, how far. Flipping you throwing you over and over and over. Moms are the one making sure you don't drown. So that's the difference. And the compliment of a mom and a dad. They're working together. And that's not to say dads don't want to keep you safe, but I think they're also looking at external threats. But they want to push you, challenge you, they want competition, et cetera. And we need the balance. That's why a child deserves both mom and dad, because you need that balance.
- [81:51]
Sam Deloach
I also think that their version of keeping their kids safe is them being like, oh, I want my kid to be ready for anything, especially a dad with boys, where it's like, I need them to grow up tough and strong and they can take it because life is hard and I want them to be prepared. So that's his version of, like, keeping them safe. Because I'm definitely like that. I told him, I said, I'm not teaching our kids how to drive. It's not happening. I'm too stressed. You're. You're gonna have to do that. And he's, like, excited for it. So.
- [82:18]
Jen
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. Another one I thought about was. I don't know if I can say his name. Karatekus Potts. Do you know who that is? Carrots.
- [82:28]
Sam Deloach
Is that from Harry Potter?
- [82:30]
Jen
No, that. This one is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Is this like a millennial movie?
- [82:37]
Sam Deloach
Yeah. No, no. Chitty Cheating is an old movie. Like.
- [82:40]
Jen
No, I know, but like, I grew up watching it. Have you seen it?
- [82:43]
Sam Deloach
I did grow up watching it because
- [82:45]
Jen
my grandma see another. Like, we have this on vhs, I guess. Pretty sure. So it's another old one where it's a single dad because the mom dies of tragedy and he really cares for his children. But it's also a free range situation. But the thing that's great about him as a dad is it's more of the imagination, the whimsical whimsy. Ness of it all. And really pushing them to think outside the box, to be challenged by new things. And then he's like, you know, they go on these grand adventures together, which is pretty cool.
- [83:20]
Sam Deloach
Love it. So I actually just thought of the best dad. It's gonna top all of them. And I. I will be disappointed if you don't know this quote. Are you ready? I will find you and I will kill you.
- [83:35]
Jen
Do you know what that's from? I've never seen it. But it's Taken.
- [83:38]
Sam Deloach
How have you never seen Taken?
- [83:40]
Jen
I have a very special set of Sk Yes.
- [83:43]
Sam Deloach
I'm so glad you at least know the quote. But that speaks to how great this dad is that you literally know this dad outside of seeing the movie. Brian Mills, he's the dad. And taken his daughter called him from. I think she was like in. In France or Paris or somewhere across the ocean. And she basically, somebody had broken into their flat because she was being very unsafe and gave her address away to strangers. And they came and they abducted her friend first. And she watched it happen through the window. She's on the phone with her dad and she said, they're coming for me now. And I guess he has like a background in. I don't even know. Again, this is why I can't watch movies because I'm like the FBI, the police, I don't know what. He's in Secret Service. He's in something very important. And yeah, he basically just like listens as his daughter is taken and he's telling her, like, I want you to yell out as much of a description as you can, like what shirt, what does he look like, what is he, any marks on him, things like that, tattoos. And so she's just like screaming and the phone's under the. Under the bed. And then the guy, the bad guy gets the phone and he lifts it up and this dad is like, oh, gosh. I feel like that deserved so many awards because it's like every parent can relate where it's like, I mean, I don't have a special set of skills that could find my kid, but I would make those skills. I would find them. So, yeah, that's. That was like one of the best dads. You've got to watch that movie.
- [85:10]
Jen
Oh, man. I don't like scary stuff.
- [85:13]
Sam Deloach
I mean, it's scary, but it's not. It's more of like a, like a thriller or an investigation. It's not like, like, boo. Scary. You know, nothing's popping out at you.
- [85:24]
Jen
Yeah, I like the Incredibles dad.
- [85:28]
Sam Deloach
What is it? That's a good one.
- [85:30]
Jen
But it's kind of like we talk about. They really do make him look pretty inept in a lot of ways. I mean, he's stuck in a dead end job. He's used to being a big superhero, but I think he learns they kind of have him grow over time that, you know, taking care of your family is being a superhero and. But they get to do it together. I think is the main cool thing about the movie is that as a family, they're serving together. And I loved the Incredibles.
- [85:54]
Sunny
It was a good movie.
- [85:55]
Sam Deloach
I love the Incredibles.
- [85:57]
Jen
It's definitely that depiction of a dad that's, like, sort of like, chill. And the mom's just the one who always knows what's going on and is bossing everyone around. And she made it into our moms and media post last time as well. So one final mom. Dad.
- [86:11]
Sam Deloach
One final dad.
- [86:13]
Mary Kovach
Oh.
- [86:14]
Sam Deloach
So Darth Vader. I don't know anything about Star wars, to be honest. All I know is, Luke, I am your father. And I'm pretty sure he's actually a bad dad. But you said he comes back around, so you're going to have to explain to the audience that doesn't know this.
- [86:27]
Katie Faust
Yes.
- [86:28]
Jen
So someone actually, he was in our little clip about sons searching for their fathers that we played earlier at Father's Day week, and someone was like, oh, how dare you put Darth Vader in there? Because Darth Vader's the worst. And. Well, the answer is, it's not that Darth Vader's not the worst. We're not even. Just like, he's conflicted. Whatever. No, he's the worst. He's like a genocidal maniac. The point of that little clip was Luke still wants to know who he is. Luke thinks, remember, he's told by Obi Wan Kenobi. Maybe you don't know this. He's told by this old guru guy, darth Vader killed your father. So that's what he goes into the scenario dealing with him. And then Darth Vader basically says, no, I didn't kill him. I am your father.
- [87:13]
Sam Deloach
What a twist.
- [87:14]
Jen
Yes. I mean, the twins are taken away to protect them from him. But what I'm saying, how it comes around is once Darth Vader knows who Luke is and Luke knows who he is, Luke's refusal to turn to the dark side, Darth Vader brings him to the Emperor. Come on. Like, turn everything over and take the power. Let's go. We can rule the universe together, father and son. And Luke refuses to do it. The Emperor is killing him, and Luke is calling for his dad to save him. And Darth Vader turns. I mean, he's been dedicated to this Emperor guy for, if you're into the prequels, almost his whole life.
- [87:52]
Mary Kovach
And.
- [87:53]
Jen
But because his son is being killed by this guy, Darth Vader sacrifices his own life, kills the Emperor, and dies in the pro. I mean, gets fried in the process to save his son's life. So it's a redemptive moment in a pretty bad arc of this guy's story. And then I guess he ends up in Jedi heaven because he is like standing there glowing with all the other Jedi who've passed on. So I don't really know how they're atonement situation works. But he turned to the good side at the end.
- [88:22]
Sam Deloach
He's the thief on the cross.
- [88:23]
Jen
You know, he wraps up our fathers in media, not because he was good all the time, but he did sacrifice himself in a final moment for his son.
- [88:32]
Sunny
So.
- [88:33]
Jen
All right, well, that's all the time we have. Thanks for joining us on here for the comments, talking about comments, commentary, things we see online. But for a special Father's Day edition talking about fathers in media. Hope you enjoyed it and we will see you next time. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. And this is a very special treat because you're basically getting an inside view into what our staff calls sort of look like other than we're not always necessarily like in a six, like three by three block paying super close attention to the screen. So this, that's a special treat.
- [89:13]
Mary Kovach
But basically never.
- [89:14]
Jen
Basically never. But we all wanted to get together and share a little bit in honor of Mothers and Father's Day, a little bit about the mothers and fathers that made us who we are. And so we're all going to share just a little bit and you all who are listening get a little bit of an insight into the staff who work for them for us. So we're going to start with our illustrious leader, founder and president Katie Faust. Tell us a little bit about your mom and dad and yeah, something you loved about them, appreciate about them growing up.
- [89:42]
Katie Faust
Okay, so my mom was crunchy before crunchy was a thing. Like we didn't have sugar in the house or chocolate in the house. We had carob. Do you know what carob is? Yeah. That's because they made something up for people to give their children instead of chocolate. It's, it's terrible. And so the sweetest thing in the house was molasses. So I would climb onto the corner shelf like the, the like Lazy Susan in the corner and like spin it around until I got the molasses and
- [90:13]
Jen
then I would just eat it straight.
- [90:15]
Katie Faust
I still love molasses. But like she was just like super healthy, like very, very focused on like real food. So when a lot of friends, like they would eat canned soup, I was like, we, we didn't have any cans of soup in the house at all. So I just, I appreciate that so much. She was just so serious about like the whole family's Health and making sure that everybody's eating well. And I totally, like, brought that into my own children's lives as well. I'm like, no, we're just gonna cook everything from scratch. Not that it's, like super high end. It's not all organic all the time, but there, yeah, we don't have any, like, artificial blah, blah, blah in the house. So I'm so thankful that I didn't have to, like, learn that on my own. I just inherited it. And then my dad, he had this car when we were young, when I was young, and it was a Volvo 1800. And I don't know if it didn't have a muffler. They're just noisy cars. But I could hear it coming from five or six blocks away. And so wherever I was in the house, in the neighborhood, like upstairs in the basement, I could hear them coming. And I would have about a minute to get from wherever I was to the place where the dining room hardwood floor met the living room carpet. I would stand there with my toes on the line and I would wait. And I could hear the car pulling into the driveway and then rattling off. And then I knew that it was about 15 seconds before the door was going to open. And so the door would start to open and my dad would have just enough time to put down his black metal, pale lunchbox and catch me. Because by the time the door cracked open, I was launching like I was running. So he would have time to drop the lunchbox and catch me midair and throw me up in the air every day. And it was like. It's so emblematic of dad, you know, like play excitement, rough housing and. Yeah. Sweetest memory ever.
- [92:03]
Jen
I love that.
- [92:05]
Sunny
That's cute.
- [92:06]
Jen
And Katie got that car, that same car, recently. She shares about that on Substack. Longer Firm. Oh, you wrote. You wrote for some car magazine about.
- [92:15]
Katie Faust
Yeah, Rolling. Volvo's official magazine.
- [92:17]
Jen
They published it, which is pretty cool. To get the car that you have so many memories of your dad.
- [92:22]
Katie Faust
It's pretty neat, I tell you then. And the nostalgia. I'm like, why do I love the car? I'm not a car girl. I am not a car girl. I'm a that car girl because that was my father's car. And there was so much. There's so much nostalgia and connection and association. I love the car because I love my dad.
- [92:38]
Jen
Yeah, it's so good. Okay, next we're going to hear from executive director Josh Wood.
- [92:46]
Josh Wood
I'll start with my dad.
- [92:48]
Robin Porter
I loved.
- [92:50]
Josh Wood
He worked most of my life Only on Monday through Thursdays and everything else, like, Fridays. He would typically take me to the gym with him in the morning. And when I was really little, it was questionable. He used to just give me, like, 30 quarters, and I would get to play the little arcade games that were in the gym. I'm like, would I give my kid that right now? I don't know. But I used to love it. I used to play pole position, if you know that game. There was also Centipede in there. And over time, once I could finally work out, I was old enough, he would let me start working out with him, and then we would always go do brunch as a family. Super fortunate. You don't realize adults work on Fridays. I just had no clue. I'm like, no, they don't. I'm pretty sure everyone has Friday off. But that was just my experience. And he put a ton of time and effort into as I got older, teaching me how to lift and work out. It was something he was good at and loved and enjoyed. He worked out his entire life, and so he passed it on to me, and I loved that, especially as I got more and more into athletics as I got older. My second thing has always been my mother. She made a deal with me when I was a little kid that if you read the book, I'll buy you the book. And she put no cap on that. Sometimes they were used books, sometimes they were. You know, that has turned into a lifelong love of learning and reading. Anybody that knows me or even if you follow any of my social media, I try to read maybe 80 or 100 books a year. And that came from that. From my mom. I used to. You know, it was a little joke. Like, I was gonna cost her so much money, I'd bring another book down and slam it on the dinner table and say, done. So I got to go pick a new book. But the flip side was, if I didn't finish the book, then I couldn't buy a new one. And so I, even to this day, as an adult, can't stop a book like I have to. And so sometimes I'll start it and I'll go, oh, no. There's like 200 pages left of this thing. But it was just this. I didn't get to buy a new one until I got all the way through it. And so it was two. The love of learning and the love of working out. Just totally different things that they brought to my life. And it was so fun because I would talk about the books with them. Like, I Talk about my workouts with my dad even, you know, into adulthood.
- [95:09]
Jen
So good. It's. It is really crazy just to see the connections of, like, the things our parents do so dramatically, like create who we are in a lot of ways. For good or for bad, maybe. So we'll.
- [95:20]
Sam Deloach
We'll hop.
- [95:21]
Jen
Well, I'm saying down, but we'll hop over here to patient Sunny. She's our engagement director, so she's doing a lot of the legal and policy work that you guys only hear about when we have a big win and then we share it. So she's a little less on the camera with us all the time. But now you're here. So tell us about your mom and dad.
- [95:39]
Sunny
Yeah, so actually similar to what Josh was saying, with the. The love of learning and love of books that I got from my mom, my mom homeschooled all of us and was really great at just instilling in us a curiosity and the tools to go find answers to questions. You know, I remember her teaching us how to use an encyclopedia and a dictionary back in the days of Dial up, and then later teaching us how to safely use a Google search in order to find things. But also every evening she would. She would sit down and read out loud. And not just when we were really little, but, you know, into high school and even in my college years, I remember sitting down and listening to mom read, usually to my younger siblings at that point, but books that were so familiar and so loved and so much a part of our family because, you know, we would kind of have a cycle every so many years. She read through Lord of the Rings every so many years. She would read through Little House. And that was just such a great part of my childhood, my growing up years. And my dad grew up working in a family owned bike shop. And that was something that he really carried on and wanted to pass along to his kids. So, you know, he, he made sure that we all learned how to ride a bike. He was taking the training wheels off as early as he could. He was actually ahead of the curve on the balance bike, if you've ever heard of that. He actually knocks the pedals off of a bike and was teaching one of my younger siblings how to balance without pedals. And he would also. It was important to him that we learned how to take care of our bicycles. We each had a bike and I remember, you know, 8 years old, learning, you know, here's how you take care of the chain, here's how you change the tire. And just having that knowledge was such A great thing. I remember actually teaching a college classmate how to take care of their bike better when they were using it as their. Their primary way of getting around in school. And it was like, oh, I'm so glad that my dad passed this along to me and that I have the opportunity to share it with someone else.
- [97:38]
Jen
We're just seeing too, like, the values, the things your parents value end up being the things that you learn and value as well. Just amazing. Okay, we are moving on to Mary Kovach. She is our administrative director. Did I say it wrong? You're muted every.
- [97:53]
Mary Kovach
Every time, Jen.
- [97:54]
Josh Wood
It was clovic, like, until two days ago. In your phone.
- [97:57]
Jen
It says right there, kovach. What is Kovac?
- [98:02]
Josh Wood
It's Croat. It's Croatian. You gotta, you know, make it sound gut.
- [98:07]
Jen
I was trying to hide your. See your identity from people, though, with
- [98:12]
Mary Kovach
my name on my.
- [98:14]
Jen
Well, the name won't show up on the thing, but I am saying it out loud. Okay, well. And if you've ever emailed them a press or if you've ever tried to schedule any of us for anything, Mary is the person organizing so many of our lives, managing so many of our projects, keeping all of our plates spinning. So, Mary, I'm curious to know if your parents had anything to do with some of your personality there or maybe. But yes, tell us about your mom and dad.
- [98:37]
Mary Kovach
Yeah, that's actually a really good tee off for me. My mom was basically raising the four of us kids because my dad was working full time and she, she just can do it all. She is a phenomenal cook. She taught us to absolutely love being outside. Anybody who's ever worked with me knows that if it's even slightly sunny and warm outside, I would much rather like, be in the sun the entire day than inside. She taught me to think and to critically evaluate everything that I was faced with. I think that she really instilled a value of appreciating truth for me from a young, young age. And yeah, she just like, she never stops working, but it's not from a place of unhealth. It's from a place of wanting to serve everyone that's around her. And I, I definitely have taken that into as many spaces as I can. And I would say the one of my favorite things that I've learned from her, which I really hadn't noticed until the last couple of years, is my love of being a mom. She just made being a mom look and sound like the most fun job that you could ever have in the world. And I Didn't fully grasp that until I became a mom a couple of years ago. So I've been really, really thankful for just all of the lessons that she taught me about that before I knew I needed them. And then on my dad's side, he is one of the hardest workers that I know. And I would say that my brain functions very much like his, which at times can be really frustrating, but at times is also really helpful. I have not ever met a project management system that I love. Like, give me a blank piece of paper to be able to jot all of my random thoughts on and, like, make sense of them. And I can do that. And I definitely have gotten that from him. And he. I would say from a young age, like, I got my first job at, like, my first official job at 15. I think technically I was too young to actually be, like, officially paid. And so they paid me in cash until I turned 16. And yeah, he just, like, taught me the value of hard work and consistency and just showing up and being willing to learn. And that's something that hopefully I'll be able to teach my kids and has done nothing but serve me well as I've gotten older.
- [101:28]
Jen
I love that. Okay. And I'm not gonna be able to say your last name either. Now we're transitioning over to Sam deloach.
- [101:36]
Sam Deloach
You got it.
- [101:36]
Jen
Deloache, who's social media manager.
- [101:40]
Katie Faust
I've been saying deloache in my mind forever. I cannot believe it.
- [101:45]
Mary Kovach
So ph people, I was like, jen,
- [101:48]
Katie Faust
how could you not know Mary's last name?
- [101:49]
Jen
And I'm like, oh, that's Sam's last name.
- [101:51]
Josh Wood
Okay, I promise we do like each other and we do have regular calls.
- [101:56]
Jen
Well, you don't have to see each other's last names very much though.
- [101:59]
Mary Kovach
Right.
- [101:59]
Jen
That shows that we like each other more, I think. First name Sam. Tell us about your mom and dad.
- [102:07]
Sam Deloach
So my mom has the biggest heart of any person I've ever met. You know, a lot of people will have one or two kids and then they'll start to question, like, if I have more, can I love them the same? Do I have enough love for all these kids? My mom had seven kids, and it didn't stop there with how much she loved each of us individually. We. We had seven kids, and then we had to buy a 14 passenger green bus to drive around because she constantly had everyone's friends with us. So anyone in my life that was like, a good friend of mine, they were always at my house. Especially, like friends who, you know, their mom Works too much, or their dad's always gone, or, like, people who had divorced parents. They were always at my house, and, you know, my mom's there to cook them a warm meal and be that loving, like, you know, solid maternal person for them. And she's just the warmest person I know. She's just the one you want to be around. Even to this day. Day, they beg me. They're like, can your mom please come to my baby shower? I want her to meet my baby. I feel like she's my second mom. And. And so she's just like everyone's mom, everyone's grandma. And she just, you know, if anyone ever questions, if you have so many kids, how can you really love each and every one of them? You got to talk to my mom. Because somehow she pulled it off. And we all feel so loved. And even to this day, she just has such a good relationship with all of us. And then my dad, he is the most spontaneous person. Growing up, he made life just so much fun. I still remember things like, you know, he would wake us up at, like, 4am without telling us why. We'd all load up in our big bus, and we'd just start driving, and. And then we would go see the space launches in Florida. And so it was so fun. Like, the most random things that, like, he didn't even warn us about, you know, random Disney trips and beach trips. He was just so much fun with that. And another story that I love to tell is we went to Disney, and he was hyping up my first time riding a roller coaster, and he finally thought I was tall enough. So, like, we're ready to do it. We're in line. We wait this long line. We get to the top, and they do the height thing. And I'm like. I'm, like, tiniest bit too short, and. And he's, like, trying to deal with this guy. My dad doesn't take no for an answer. He's like, come on, man. Like, she's this. Like, she can ride it. I'll hold her. She'll be safe. Everything's fine. The guy was just, like, not budging. And so my dad takes me out of line, and we go to the princess store, and he buys me princess heels. The little clip once, and we wait in that line again, and we get back to the top, and my dad's like, go ahead, measure her. I'm telling you, she'll. It'll be fine. And sure enough, I was finally tall enough, and we rode that roller coaster. And that was My first roller coaster experience, it was, was the best. It was such a fun, fun day.
- [104:51]
Jen
And so that's such a dad solve like that.
- [104:56]
Sam Deloach
It was the best. And so yeah, that was, that's my dad. Anytime we're having a bad day, he's like, everyone load up in the car. We're gonna go get ice cream, everyone. It was just always, he's always trying to turn things around and show us the fun in life. And so I had the best balance. You know, my mom was just so nurturing, so loving, so consistent. And then my dad was just like, he just liked to spice things up. And so I just appreciate both my parents so much. They're the best.
- [105:19]
Jen
Wow, that's so good. Very. Feels very on brand for who you are too. The combination of those things. For me, I feel like my parents personalities are inverted in some ways from maybe a traditional mom and dad. But my dad was more the homebody and he only left the house to work. He was gone for consecutive days, a few days a week. And then my mom worked outside the home. We did different daycare or different kinds of situations with grandparents and things like that when both of them were working. But what I realized now from my mom is that she was working 40 hours a week outside the home and then homeschooling us and then taking us to a number of the different activities like the wanna and the church youth group and all these things. And then Saturday adventures. So what would motivate a person who's worked hard all week and you have Saturday where you could potentially be doing your own thing or resting or whatever to get your middle school kids each with a bicycle and just decide you're going to go to a different part of the city. Like load your bikes onto a bus, drive somewhere you've never been before. We joke in our family that when she starts chewing on her thumb, it meant we were lost. Like she wasn't exactly sure where to go. And I remember we drove to a. We got on a bus and drove, you know, it was about 30 minutes maybe from where we lived and we were riding our bikes around and we went to an old soda shop and it was like this very fun adventure except it's so gross because it's like doesn't have any sugar in it or something you like. The original soda is like not good. And I remember we're like riding our bikes to try and get the bus. My cup is like dropping down between. I'm like squeezing the top, trying to hold it. It's like sloshing everywhere. My sister spills hers on the bus, so it's empty. And you're going to see the pop going down the whole, like, trail of the. We all are on paper towels trying to, like, paper towel off the bus. And then people who are trying to get home from work had no room on the bus rack, on the bike rack, because all of our bikes were on it. So they're just, like, glaring at us, like, at the bus stop. And they were like, bye and go through. And I just think about all these adventures. There's. It's not like it's a benefit to you, quote unquote. It's actually a lot of sacrifice. Probably dealing with fussing, bickering, being embarrassed because your kids spill something, paying some money, getting slightly lost. And that, like, marked her character for so much of our life would be some kind of crazy adventure. We get a little bit lost. And I just appreciate that from her so much, especially now that I work. And you recognize, like, wait a second, your mom was, like, working or doing something, your dad's working, and then would have to come home and mow the lawn or come home and do the dishes. It wasn't like those things just happened. They had to do both. And then for my dad, I think, like I said, he's kind of a homebody. He's not a super social guy. But I think the thing I realize about him is how safe I felt growing up in the sense of how handy he is, because he actually has a tool for everything. We would. Our cars would break down once a family vacation. One time on every family vacation, something bad would happen to our car. And I remember being out on the underpass again. My mom was feeding us Pop Tarts and just, like, having a good time. I remember it was, like, fun. Our car has broken down. We're on the side of the freeway. And I remember that as a positive memory because my mom is giving us a good. Showing us a good time, and my dad's literally fixing the van. I think they said he did it with, like, a paperclip and duct tape. At some point, he just, like, is fixing stuff. And you recognize when you're driving with someone like that, you kind of don't really worry about what's going to happen to you. Or, like, well, they're going to figure it out. He's like a confident person in that way. And the final thing I'll say about him is, as I grew up, I would. You know, I was doing psychology, and I'm, like, processing my feelings and it's like dad never calls and asks me, like about my feelings or how school going for me or remembering the different things I'm doing. What he would call me on the phone and ask is, how is your car running? Or he'll be, when I would be at the house, he'd say, your headlights look a little dim. Like, oh, let me. And he came up once, it was like a 30 minute drive with his tools to buff my headlights. And there was a recognition from me to be like, you know what? He is not this very sophisticated emotional communicator, but he's trying to say, I care about you and I love you. The only way I can think to come up with that is for me to call you and say, how's your car running? But that's me saying, I love you. Once I connected those dots, I'm like, okay, he does care about me and I can recognize the way he's doing it. So, yeah, it's very.
- [109:48]
Katie Faust
As you wish.
- [109:49]
Jen
Yeah. Which is the Princess Bride.
- [109:52]
Katie Faust
Yeah.
- [109:53]
Jen
Should we put. We should clip that movie for. For something for sure. Well, everyone, thanks for sharing about your mom and dad. This has been very fun. It's. We didn't even hear these stories from each other ahead of time, so that was. That's fun for each other. And then I hope all of you, you know, listening at home appreciated a little insight into our staff. And we hope you all have a great Mother's and Father's Day whenever you're listening to this and we will catch you next time.