Lesson 9. Foundation

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🎙 The Time Smith Podcast

Forging identity, faith, and resilience from life’s hardest lessons.

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts — caught in randomness, memories you didn’t invite but can’t seem to shake? The Time Smith is a guide into that inner world. Through vivid storytelling and powerful metaphors, this podcast takes you into “the forge”: the mental and spiritual space where pain becomes purpose, and brokenness becomes foundation.

In each episode, The Time Smith invites you to walk through the rooms of memory, climb the stairs of self-discovery, and lay the stones of your own foundation. You’ll hear honest reflections on identity, trauma, hope, faith, and the process of rebuilding a meaningful life from the rubble of the past.

🛠 What you’ll experience in this podcast:

• Stories of overcoming childhood wounds, confusion, and self-doubt
• Lessons on building a strong foundation with principles that last
• How to turn life’s “stones” — insults, failures, burdens — into pathways forward
• Encouragement to find clarity, peace, and hope no matter where you are on your journey
• Reflections on faith, purpose, and becoming who you were meant to be

"If you feel unloved, you are loved. If you feel lost, you can be found."

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Forged in thought. Built in Truth. Spoken from experience.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:09):
Have you ever been lost in your thoughts?
Randomness?
A thought pops into your headand you don't know where it came
from.
Many times it's your past.
Things that have happened thathave not let you go.

(00:32):
Why have they held on?
Let's talk about that.
Hi, I'm the Time Smith andwelcome back.
I hope you had time to listen tothe last lesson, identity.

(00:54):
Did it provide any clarity as towho you are?
I hope it did.
Well, today I want to talk aboutfoundation, that which is
principle.
But let's step into the forgeand let's have a seat on the
couch.
I mentioned the flooring.

(01:16):
When I look at this, I seestones, some large, some small,
different shapes, all comingtogether perfectly.
Let's step down into memories.
Let's just walk over to thestairs.
Grab onto the handle.
You don't have to rush it.

(01:36):
Let's find the door.
Foundation.
Here it is.
Let's open it up.
When I look inside this room, Isee dirt, I see an evening sky
and nothing else in here, but ayounger version of myself just

(01:56):
standing there, confused, empty,feeling alone, wondering what is
to come.
What will happen with my life?
What am I gonna build?
And I looked around and therewas nothing to build with.
I've always wanted to beresourceful and I needed

(02:18):
something to build with.
And that empty feeling was whatI lived with.
The trauma, the bad decisionmaking, the anger.
This was the space that I wouldcome into.
I have hopes for myself that Icould become something.
The ideas wouldn't come.

(02:38):
The creativity was stunned.
And I felt that I was not ableto advance.
And I'd be very hard on myself.
Even the smallest of insultswould be magnified.
But yet, it still felt like Iwas having stones thrown at me.

(03:00):
Pebbles, rocks, the part thatmade living difficult.
The problems that I hadinternally.
My mind, my heart, theconfusion, all of it.
And this one time I was prayingand that's where this memory is
at.

(03:21):
That as I stood there, I gotdown on my knees and I began to
pray.
And I asked God, why did yougive me such a hard life?
Why did you make thingsdifficult and challenging?
Most people would think thatwe're not supposed to question
God.
But in the same respect, we'reasked to pray to bring our cares

(03:46):
to him, our anxieties, thethings that ail us.
And what was ailing me was thatI felt that there was no future.
As I've stated, I didn't thinkI'd make it past the age of 18.
So as I knelt there and I prayedand I cried out, I thought to

(04:06):
myself, what will I become?
But those stones began to getthrown on me.
And I'm not sure if you've everfelt being pegged with a rock or
a stone, something heavy.
And one by one, these stonesbegan to just peg me and I was
being pummeled with them.

(04:27):
Each one of those stones had aname, insult, anxiety, anger,
abuse, all of it.
Substance abuse, verbal abuse,mental abuse, lack of
confidence, some stones largerthan the others, and all this

(04:48):
while I prayed.
Well, by the time I was donepraying, I felt so buried with
all my problems.
And I did cry out to God to helpme, to see.
And I thought to myself about averse I remember, that the steps
of the righteous are ordered ofGod.

(05:09):
I'll let you look that one up.
But my steps were ordered, butyet there was this vast
emptiness.
There was no escape except tobuild.
And how?
Well, as I laid under thoserocks and I thought to myself
that I had to be resourceful, Igrabbed each and every one of
those stones and began to pushthem off of me.

(05:33):
And I rose above those stonesand those stones were beneath my
feet.
And I looked ahead of me and Isaw a vast space looked down at
the rocks again and I said I'mgonna create a path to that
space so I grabbed each stoneand I laid it down ahead of me
one by one I had enough problemsto probably make a road well

(05:58):
what I did was I created a pathand I walked on top of all my
problems I was on top of it Ilooked back and I saw more
stones some Large and small andsome that felt too heavy to
carry.
Some of our problems were justthat.
They're burdensome.
But with all my might, I liftedit up and laid them right in

(06:21):
front of the path.
And I made a large square, afoundation.
As a believer, I'm taught thatJesus is the cornerstone.
And so even though I had thestones to be resourceful, But I
needed something large to secureeverything in place.

(06:42):
That was the cornerstone.
I had to ask God to help me.
I needed direction.
I was already beginning tofabricate, so I understood
laying a foundation and keepingthings square, keeping things
straight and level and balanced.
And he brought that.
Well, this took a lot of time tobuild in my life.

(07:05):
This wasn't just...
Something that was at the age of14, 15 or 20 or even 30.
This was something that I neededa complete task to be on top of
it, to have mastered what hadhappened.
Again, average is not mastering.

(07:25):
And it was exhausting.
It was tiresome.
And the building showed me thatI eventually needed rest.
I wanted to keep going with thelayout.
and make it larger.
There were certain areas that Iwanted to spend more time
because I wanted it to lookperfect.

(07:46):
Well, I still didn't have thewood to build the building, the
shovels to dig into the lowerfloors.
I didn't have any of that.
All I had is that I had turnedmy problems into the path that I
was gonna walk.
I had to be on top of it.
I had to take responsibility forwhat had happened the way that I

(08:09):
responded to all my problems wecan always find somebody that
will justify what we do butmorally there is a right and
there's a wrong we do see now inour culture that there's things
that are acceptable that are notmorally acceptable and in order

(08:30):
to build our life correctly wemust build our life morally
Correct.
How else can we build afoundation?
How else can we leave a legacy?
How else can we show thosearound us the evidence of
change?
Where some still saw me buriedin my problems, no one saw what

(08:52):
I was building.
I was building a foundation formy life, something that was
stable.
Upon this rock, he built thechurch.
And upon those stones, I builtmy life.
Let's step out.
When I look back inside and Ilook around and look at these
rooms and I look up at theceiling and it just keeps me

(09:14):
thinking.
It's amazing to me.
These are events that I neverthought would happen.
That there would be somecomprehension to what was
materializing as I was living.
That it wasn't just somethingthat was in my head and it
wasn't just an escape.
It was the truth of what washappening.

(09:36):
That those stones werebrokenness.
Let's walk and talk.
Let's walk up.
That brokenness is what broughtme here.
I hated it for a long time.
It hurt me.
It damaged me.
It kept me suffering.

(09:57):
It felt that the reward forthose things was nothing but
pain.
That there is no way and that itis impossible for those events
to happen and for something goodto come.
That was the doubt that was inme.
But hope showed itself.

(10:18):
When I was 16, hope came into mylife and presented the idea that
I could overcome.
Well, this is 30 years later,and I'm starting to see that
that hope has come alive.
That just the way when I walkedinto that room, there was

(10:39):
nothing.
And you might feel that there'snothing good that can come of
your situation.
But we are not the designers ofthis.
We were just living.
We were given resources.
For some, they're given stones.
And for someone else, they'regiven iron and wood.

(11:00):
Well, for some, they're givenencouragement.
and for others they're givenhope clarity genuineness a good
heart in the midst of the chaosthat's what this is foundation
how will you build your lifewill you build your life crying

(11:23):
will you build your life beingangry or will you build your
life being hopeful I choose tobuild my life being hopeful I
choose to build my life beingencouraged.
The past, to me, only matters ifI can find the lesson.
But talking about the past formyself is not profitable.

(11:48):
If I can look into the past andsee that there's a lesson in
everything that I've lived, thenI've achieved something great.
Peace.
In the chaos, in the abuse, Inthe sadness, in the depression,
it's hard to see that if we areresourceful, that will take us

(12:10):
to peace.
Do you have peace?
Do you look at the emptiness andstill have peace?
Well, the peace was thatcornerstone.
Knowing that everything I buildwill be kept together and that

(12:31):
it will not collapse.
It will not crack under thepressure and that it will be
held together as long as I'malive.
Foundation.
We need a strong foundation.
We'll leave it there.
I have a few ideas about what weshould talk about next.

(12:53):
And I'm thankful for those thatare listening as I've been asked
to speak about what familytrauma is does to the family
also confession um what itlooked like when i finally told
my mom about what happened andlastly i was asked to talk about

(13:18):
trust after trauma in the linkof these podcasts you can click
there and it will send me a textand you could just tell me If
there's something you would wantme to speak about And
appropriately I'll set it up andI'll do it Anyway Thank you for

(13:41):
always coming back And I hopethis is helping you And please
feel free to share it You cangrab the link and put it on your
social media You can send a textAnd I hope that we do gain new
listeners People are listeningAnd I hope that lives are
changing.

(14:02):
Remember, if you feel unloved,you are loved.
And if you feel that you arelost, you can be found.
God bless you.
I am the Timesmith.