October 31, 2023 • 50 mins
Pastor Ridley Baron's life took an unimaginable turn when he survived a traumatic car accident, which tragically claimed the life of his beloved wife. As if fate hadn't dealt him a heavy enough blow, another devastating twist awaited him at the hospital when an accidental overdose took the life of his infant child. Ridley found himself a single father and a pastor who had lost his way, grappling with grief and questioning his connection to God.
But in the depths of his despair, Ridley embarked on a remarkable journey of healing, redemption, and unwavering faith. Join us as he shares his story of finding light in the darkest moments, discovering strength when he didn't think he had any left, and ultimately finding purpose in (and through) his trials.
Prepare to be inspired as we explore the depths of human faith, resilience, and the boundless capacity to find purpose even in the midst of the most profound tragedy.
HOST: @LeanneEllington
GUEST: Ridley Barron, Lead Pastor Grove Hill Church // Ridley Barron
You can find Ridley's Book On Amazon HERE!
To learn more about Leanne, head over to www.LeanneEllington.com, and to share your thoughts, questions, feedback, or guest suggestions instantly, head on over to www.WhatsGodGotToDoWithIt.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
If you want to go on a journey. If you're skeptical,
don't worry. Now here to preach, gonn to keep it clean.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And talk to me and recall where faith.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Meets all nature.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Get in touch with your creator with a baking love
and jew She even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
What's done? What's that?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well? Should talking transformation?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's done? Gonzo? All right? Hello, Hello, we are back
for what's God got to do with it? And I'm
here with the amazing Ridley Baron.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We're here in his office at his church down the
road from church, and we have a beautiful testimony of
his that we're going to dive into. But you know,
one of the reasons I tracked him down and wanted
to get him on the podcast is, first of all,
he is a picture of God doing a work in
our hearts and a testament to what can happen when
(01:12):
you come back to faith, even after tragedy, even after
unexplicable grief.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And he'll share his testimony as well.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But also I think there is sometimes there can be
a separation or divide when we think about a pastor's
life and we think like, oh, you know, they don't
know what it's like or if only they knew, And
it's like, no, when you hear your story, you'll know
that you've been in it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You've been in the thick of it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You know what it's like to suffer and struggle and
have that redeemed. So, first of all, thank you so
much for being here and spending time with us.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm excited
about this.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
For anybody listening who's never known you, met you heard
your story, just share a little bit about who you are,
what's made you who you are, and a bit about
the stories that have you know, really tested you and
brought you to a whole new version of yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Grew up in great Christian home all my life, surrounded
by godly people. My grandfather was a free will Baptist minister,
so literally from the day I was conceived, I was
exposed to the Bible and the Gospel, which probably looking back,
might have made it too neat and too clean for me.
So I got saved at age eight, but I didn't
even really fully comprehend all that that meant for me.
(02:19):
I just knew it was a step I needed to take,
and I do believe that was the time I acknowledged
Jesus as my savior and Lord, but again didn't understand
the depth of where I could come from to where
I was now in Christ Jesus. So that was incredible
for me. I was very blessed. I grew up in
a very I would say, even charmed life. I mean,
everything I touched as a kid growing up seemed to work.
(02:41):
I was valedictorian in my high school class. I played
varsity ball for football and baseball for three years in
a row, dated the cutest girl in school in my imagination.
But you know, all those things weren't great. I didn't
even know a personal death until I was in college
when my grandfather died, and that was the first place
I was ever exposed to it. So all through that,
everything's good, everything's smooth, but again probably just a little
(03:04):
bit nice and neat. And if there's anything I've discovered
is that Christianity is not a nice and neat faith.
It takes us through really dark seasons. So fast forward.
I've been in ministry thirty eight years, since it was
very young. I did student ministry for fifteen years and
then was called by God to move into the area
of church planting so my wife and two kids, we
(03:26):
were in Tennessee at the time, moved to Georgia, Southeast Georgia.
We planted a church and served for four years and
just again a great experience, good church, very strong group
of people around us who loved us very well. And
we took a trip to the beach Hilton Head, South Carolina.
It was from the spring break trip and we were
coming back home at the end of the trip on
(03:47):
Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday. My wife was
driving the last forty five minutes of the trip. That day.
I was actually just looking over my sermon getting ready
for Easter Sunday, and the last words I heard my
wife say that Friday afternoon, we're oh, my word. We
were hit by three guys in a Ford Explorer who
were in a stop sign going fifty five miles an hour.
It hit the front left corner of our van. Spin
(04:08):
our van through it, excuse me, spin our van through
the intersection. We tumbled down the side of a rural highway,
probably about one hundred yards before it came to a stop.
I was awakened that Friday afternoon by the sound of
my oldest son sitting in the middle of the seat
behind me, who was screaming at the top of his lungs, Daddy,
what's happening. And I, of course, being knocked unconscious, was
(04:30):
trying to clear my head, trying to figure out what
was going on. Didn't even know what he was referring to,
and I looked to my wife, turned to look at
my wife, and I watched that day as she let
out this really deep sigh. I thought at the moment
was just because she was in pain from the accident,
but EMTs would later tell me that I had actually
watched that afternoon as my wife took her last breath.
And so now what was once a nice and neat
(04:51):
faith has been completely rocked to the very core of
who I was. I remember that Friday afternoon looking through
the broken windshield of the window, waiting for emergency personnel arrive.
At one moment, I'm having a conversation with my kids
in the back seat. By the way, at this point,
we had three kids, because we had another after we
moved there. But I'm having this conversation with my kids, going,
you know, Mommy's gonna be okay, They're gonna come take
(05:12):
care of us. I'm trying to reassure them, and then
turning around and having these conversations with God and going, God,
where are you right now? I need you? It was hard.
I was screaming at God. I was saying things like, okay,
do not let my wife die. I need her. I
can't do this without her. I was negotiating with him.
I said, God, and you know, if anything's going to
(05:33):
happen here, take me because my kids need their mom.
And again the question, God, where are you right now?
I need you? None of those prayers were answered, so
again what was once nice and neat faith suddenly just
kind of fell apart right there in front of my eyes.
My son, my youngest son, who was a seventeen month
old toddler at the time, was in a car seat,
(05:53):
and as the vehicle was spinning down the side of
the road, the seat belt literally snapped and so his
car seat was thrown out of the van and as
it rolled down the road. Emergency personnel would later find
him about fifty feet away from where the van stopped,
and he was lying in the woods, still strapped into
his car seat, but he was unconscious. They took him
from the scene of the accident to our local hospital,
(06:15):
which was a rural Southeast Georgia hospital, flew him from
there to Savannah, Georgia, to a much larger hospital to
get him into better care. He was there for four
days under the care of the pequ unit of this hospital.
I had family members who went over and stayed with him,
but because my injuries, they wouldn't let me travel the
first few days, and we got reports all throughout those
(06:36):
four days. You know, here's what the nurses are saying,
Here's what the latest tests are showing us, those kinds
of things. I finally got to go see him for
myself on Tuesday, got to spend some time holding him
that day, just being in his presence, but also excited
just to talk to the people who were caring for
him and kind of get their assessment of where things
were on, what was going on. I went home Tuesday night,
(06:57):
got up on Wednesday morning with the intent that we
were going to drive back over there later in today
with other family members. The reason we had to go
home was because I had to obviously take care of
some arrangements with funeral home. I had to have surgery
on a broken bone after the accident, so we had
to get that stuff scheduled. But before we could get
in the vehicles and make our way over to Savannah,
(07:17):
I got a phone call that afternoon from an employee
at the hospital saying, we need you to come back
to the hospital. And I said, well, we're coming later today,
but if we need to come sooner, obviously we can
do that. Can you give me any information about what's
going on? And she said no, I can't. And I said,
you can't tell me anything at all? She said no,
mister Baron, we just hip of regulations prohibit it, which
(07:38):
is a stupid comment because I'm the parent, I'm the
person who's supposed to know these things. So I just
told her, I said, listen, I said, I just need
to know something because we're two and a half hours
away by car. I can't just drop what I'm doing
and be there in ten minutes, so I need to
know what's going on. Well, she hung up on me
that day.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So I called back to the hospital and I asked
the lady, I said, can you tell me what's going on?
I just got this strange phone call on the lady
very kindly just said, look, whatever you're doing, you'll need
to get here. We need to have a face to
face conversation, so please get some family members and comes
as quickly as you can. So we did. And to
take a long short story and make it much much shorter,
walked in that day and was told that they had
(08:15):
accidentally killed my son with a medication overdose, had given
him five times the strength of what was needed for him,
and the medication that might have possibly kept him alive
at that point actually stopped his heart immediately because it
was too strong.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Oh wow, so this is I mean so much. We
were already in that place of God. Where are you?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I need you?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And then you think it can get any worse, and
then this happens, like where did you go? How did
you experience that? What version of yourself emerged then?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And there?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Well, it's kind of interesting because I was still pastoring
this church. I tell people in that season, I felt
very much like a hypocrite because I would still go
on Sunday morning and try to preach sermons for these people.
I knew that was my job. I have a sense,
like a real deep sense of loyalty and responsibility, so
I will go and do the thing that I need
to do. But I would come back and at night.
(09:04):
Doctors required me to sleep in a recliner for the
next eight months because I could not get my shoulder
to heal from the accident. So I would sit in
that recliner every single night, Sunday afternoon through Sunday morning,
and just question everything that I'd ever been taught, the
right and wrong of it. You know, God, are you
really there? And if you are, why were you not
there that day? You know, the verses were all familiar with,
(09:26):
like God won't let his you know, his children stumble,
nothing will touch them. And I'm like, okay, am I
not your child? You know? Were you asleep when I
needed you? And I questioned everything? And I would love
to say that, you know, at some point there was
this bright light that shone over me and you know,
angels saying things change. But it was a long journey
(09:46):
of getting back to what I believe was foundational. You know,
you and I talked a little bit before we started
the podcast about this reality. There comes a point where
I think the greatest growth we can have in our
Christian faith is when we have the honest conversations with God.
He knows our heart anyway, And so I started having
those honest conversations with God. And in July, three months
(10:06):
after the accident, I remember in the middle of the night,
I was wide awake, staring out on the field behind
my house, beautiful moonlit night, and I had probably been
crying for a few hours at this point, just questioning
again everything, even little things like hound of the world.
Am I going to take my take care of my
little girl. I'm a single dad. I don't know anything
about taking care of this girl like she deserves. But
(10:27):
in that moment, I just finally said to God, I said,
you know, I don't like this. I don't understand it.
I believe there had to be some other way for
this all to happen. But I still believe you're God,
and nothing about you has changed. So I said, if
you will give me the strength to do what it's
going to take, I'm going to find some way to
bring something good out of all of this. Again, that
was not the end of the journey. In fact, I
(10:48):
would say it was probably the beginning of the real journey,
because it was the night that I was really truly
brutally honest with him.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, what do you think it was that flipped in
you from being immersed in your grief to knowing that
there was something that you could create on the other
side of it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I wish I could take credit for it, but I
started off this story by telling you I grew up
in a Christian homes rounded bout great Christian people, and
between them and a church that loved on me, it
was them.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I mean I had an older sister who one time
looked me in the face one day and she said,
you do not have permission to quit. God has you
alive for a reason. For your job to figure out
now what that reason is.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, And because your life had been so like kind
of buttoned up or with a bow on top before this,
this resilience factor that had to come for you. And
I'm sure in the form of things like depression and
anxiety and you know, questioning, you know, hopelessness and all
of those things. So did you feel like a different person?
Did you feel like you were no longer the same
version of yourself? And do you feel like you've come
(11:51):
back to him or He's or you've recreated Like what
would you say about the identity piece of you with
Christ independent of Christ?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
All the things?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Obviously it's hard to separate the two, but just like
the human inside of you and then the christ centered
side of you.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
A great question. I've never really been asked that, but
I mean, it's easy for me to look back and say,
this definitely not the person that I was, and I
don't want to be that person. God tore me down
in a way that he probably couldn't any other way.
Who knows, maybe somewhere along the way he had tried
using other means and I was just too hard hearted
to get it. But he tore me down and using
(12:26):
people around me, and of course obviously his word and
his spirit, he built me back up into a better man.
And as if I had to put it into any
kind of image, it would be the difference between a
dad sitting on the couch with the son at the
end of the couch and saying, hey, we're sitting on
the same chair, versus pulling him in close and saying,
now we're really sitting on the same chair. You know,
(12:49):
he pulled me in and you know I'm not there.
You know, I would sanctifications a lifelong process, but that
jump started my growth as a Christian in ways that
nothing else ever had.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What do you think in terms of you know, pouring
into other people and the church that you were the
leader of. Do you think that ended up being part
of your healing? Is that part of what? Did you
throw yourself into it? And I know, I'm sure the
human part of you felt a little bit burdened, like
how am I supposed to you said, hypocrite? Like how
am I supposed to show up and talk about the
glory of God when I'm sitting here in the muck,
(13:21):
in the mess?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So what was that process like for you as a
leader and how did your thought process change and how
you wanted to shepherd your church?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Well, it was a very up and down process because,
as I was shortening the story for you, the day
before the accident happened, we actually received a call from
our former church here in Nashville inviting us to move
back to Franklin and start a church for them. So
my wife and I had immediately agreed. We loved Middletonnessee,
we wanted to come back. We were excited about that.
And so when the accident happened, pastor of that church,
(13:49):
he's a dear friend of mine, called me and said, look,
will delay this decision. You know, as long as you
need to. In fact, if you don't want to do it,
we understand. And I prayed for a couple of weeks
and I called them up and I said, look, Jerry,
I said, I really very much appreciate your patience with this.
But here's the deal. God knew this was going to
happen when he gave me the yes two weeks ago.
(14:10):
So we're going to go ahead and make the move.
We're going to follow through. You're just gonna have to
be patients with me as I try to figure out
what this looks like, being a single dad going through
my own grief and trying to plant a church. And
of course they were very, very very cooperative. In fact,
many of the people who were part of that church
plant were longtime friends from years before who surrounded me,
loved me, encouraged me. But I have to go back
(14:32):
to the church that I was pastoring at the time,
because in the four months that I lived there before
I did relocate back to Middle Tennessee, they literally cooked
every single meal that my family ate. There was not
a day that I didn't have a contact from one
of them or a note from one of them, and
even times where I knew in the middle of the
night when I was feeling like really stinky that they
(14:53):
were praying for me.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's an interesting type of leadership because you're still a leader,
but you're now learning how to receive on a whole
new level, which is it's a switch shifter.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You know, it's an identity shift in itself.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Well, you talked about this earlier. Many times today even
there are conversations where in the past where I would go, hey,
I'm a pastor, and people would instantly shut me down
and go, you're a pastor. You can't understand where I am.
You don't know me, you don't know my past. And
when I say nineteen years ago I lost my wife
and my son, it's like I'm a different person almost,
but in a good way. Suddenly walls drop down and
(15:27):
they're going, Okay, maybe it's possible he does understand the
pain that I'm feeling, are the grief that I'm going through.
And you know, if you go back and look at
the characters in the Bible, and I think that's exactly
what happened with them. I mean, you got Joseph, he
was thrown into prison. You got you know, David who
had to hide in caves from King Saul. You've got
all these people who experienced grief and pain, and it
wasn't until they experienced it they were ready to be
(15:49):
what God wanted them to be.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
One of my favorite non biblical quotes is the depths
of your darkness is the height of your light. And
it's like you have to not that you have to,
but I believe you have to kind of know the
depths of darkness to really understand and appreciate and see
the good when it comes, and even to go manufacture it,
like be a participant in actively turning things around, Like
not looking back at your situation and being like, oh,
(16:22):
I'm so glad that happened. You're not like pating delusional
optimism on top of the situation, but looking at it
and saying, Okay, this happened, and this is the worst
of the worst and it's awful. But now, who do
I mean, obviously give yourself that space degree, but who
do I want to become in the face of this?
And I think that's where I really wanted people to
hear your testimony. So before we get into that, talk
(16:43):
to us a little bit about the steps of finding
I hate to use.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The word new normal.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
But you're now a dad of How old was your
daughter at the time?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
She was six years old?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Six years So it was just the two of you, guys.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
After I had another son who was nine years old.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Was he in the car? Yes, in the car so everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But so the your daughter and son survived, So not
just being a single dad, but them dealing with the
loss of their mother and their brother and all the
things that you were dealing with in an adult brain.
But now you know their child like faith.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Was shifted forever.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
So what was it like picking up the pieces, putting
them back together, recreating this new puzzle? But then also
you know, shepherding these two children.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I have to be honest with you. If I were
to write the book on how to do this, I
would tell you not to read it. Yeah, because I
stumbled my way through it. Again. Incredible family that surrounded me.
I have two older sisters, one of them her husband
and their four boys literally picked up and moved back
to Middle Tennessee when I moved here to be near
me to help me with my kids. I have a
huge family on my mother's side, cousins that would call
(17:47):
me and email me and just simply say hey, I'm
praying for you. They were kind of my lifeline in
a lot of those situations. I had members of my
new church you would say, hey, do you need me
to come by and fix your daughter's hair before church
this morning? Or d just need me to go take
her shopping for school, and those those were the kind
of people who helped carry me in moments when I
really didn't know if I even had the energy to
(18:09):
pick up my foot.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You know. And what were your conversations with God liked
during that time? When did you feel like you were
I mean, I don't want to say done being mad
at him. I'm sure it was an ebb and flow,
but like what were your prayers, like, what were your
conversations with God?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And how did so manifest?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Let me be clear to tell you, I don't know
that I'm not still mad at God. Yeah, and I
think he's okay with that.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, And he's here for it. He's here to meet
you in that.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Because I think if it were up to God completely
and he didn't have to deal with my stubborn heart,
he would have not wanted to have put me through this.
But I think it now probably mess up this quote,
but I think it was a w tozer who said
it's it's highly likely that God cannot deal with a
man completely until he has hurt him deeply. That was me.
I needed to be hurt deeply so he could get
(18:54):
my attention. Would I love to have my wife and
son back. Yeah, absolutely, Even to this day, I missed smustling.
I missed getting to see all the experiences that he
would have gone through. I heard from my children that
my daughter graduated kindergarten without her mom around, that she
got married without her mom around. That my son even
to this day, quite frankly, probably still deals with anchor
issues because of what happened. And he's twenty eight years
(19:18):
old now, so there's all these things that were going on,
and you know, if I got it right, I had
to be honest and tell you it's probably by mistake.
But we did counseling with the kids. I did counseling.
We tried to get both of them. I did try
to get them back to normal as quickly as possible,
and like like a week and a half after the accident,
I was back coaching his baseball team, getting back in school.
(19:40):
We were determined that we weren't going to let this
stop us from living life, whatever that life might look like.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, And I think there's so many lessons within that,
like first and foremost the God that I know he
will meet you in all of it, like whether you
are mad, sad, confused, whether it's rational or not, like
he is there to hold space and support you and
love you and meet you there. I've a big believer
that perfectionism is actually like.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
The root of all evil, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
It causes us to feel inadequate and unworthy and all
of that. But I love the acceptance of the lack
of perfection. You're like, you know what, it was a
book that I wouldn't recommend reading, and and you had
to make your way through it because you were finding
your way. It was this puzzle piece where it's like
felt like pieces were missing, And you know, I love
the humanness of it because it shows like we don't
(20:25):
have to have it all together, and the feelings that
we're feeling they might not necessarily all go away. But again,
that is what brought you from having God so far
away from you on that couch to now you're snuggled
up under his arm and you're in communion with him,
you know, So share with us a little bit. You know.
Obviously time went on and you know, the pain didn't
(20:46):
go away, but the life kept going.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And you shifted. And again you said in.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
That moment that the day that you were out, when
the beautiful moon was, you know, shining on your on
your backyard, that there was going to be some purpose
in this.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So can talk to us a little bit about because
I know.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
When we're in the depths of our darkness, it's hard
to think about, like, you know, what is going to
come out of this?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Who am I going to be?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Because we're sometimes we're in a relationship with our with
our fears and our thoughts and our doubts. So for
anybody who's there, like share what's on the other side
of this.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
So in the aftermath of the accident, one of the
things I determined to do was to get my brother
in law actually as an attorney, so he represented me
after all of this. But I asked him, I said,
I want you to communicate to the hospital that I
forgive the pharmacists for what she did. Wow, I don't
want to spend the rest of her life worrying about
what I think about her because as far as I know,
she was the one who kept him alive those first
(21:37):
four days. You know. So even though we communicated that
from the very beginning, and even told the hospital that
I was not planning on suw Indim, I just didn't
want to do that. Didn't want to drag my kids
through court cases and things like that. We just wanted
to move on with life. There were still these conversations
that you have to have paperwork, that you have to sign,
all this kind of stuff. And so we're going through
those conversations one day here in Nashville, and we resolved
(22:01):
all of the things that had to be worked out,
and when it was over with, the vice president of
risk management for the hospital, who was a fellow believer,
looked at me and he said, is there any chance
at all you'd be willing to come back to our
hospital and speak to our staff about what it's like
to be touched by one of our mistakes.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And I remember laughing and saying to him, you think
this is your idea, I said, but I negotiate this
deal with God in my recliner back in July.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Oh my God.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And so in December, eight months after the accident, I
went back into the hospital where my son was killed,
spoke to about four or five hundred people in a
conference that they were having there on the campus, and
honestly got through and thought, Okay, I'm done. This is it.
This is what God wanted to happen. This is where
we bring good from the bad. And as I got
ready to leave, just overwhelmed by the people coming up
(22:47):
and just saying thank you so much. We appreciate you
being so raw and transparent with us, and I'm thinking, Bamn,
this is it. This is God getting glory out of
bad stuff. So went home. Two weeks later, he calls
me back, this vice president. He said, we had such
a great response. I didn't know if you might be
willing to do it again. And I thought he was
talking about and go back to Savannah and speak to
that hospital again. So I said sure, I could do that.
(23:10):
He said, great, I've got you booked for the National
Association of Children's Hospitals in Boston in January. And I
was like, I can't do that. Wow, he said, well
why not, I said, Wayne, I said, I'm not in healthcare.
I don't know the lingo. I'm not an expert on
health care management or any of those things. I don't
know that that's what you want, he said, You're exactly
(23:30):
what I want, because it's not often we have somebody
who's on the other side of the bed from us,
who experience his pain because of our mistakes, and I
think you could be the guy that helps us be better.
And so that first year I probably spoke about five
to seven times at different conferences, and every time I
would come home the same thought, Okay, God, way to go.
(23:51):
You did your part. We brought good out of it,
and the phone would ring again. To the point where
I was back here in Franklin. I was pastoring that
church I had star guarded. I got remarried three and
a half years after the accident. My wife and I
served at that church for total of seven years, three
and a half with her as my wife, and about
the seven year mark, she said to me one day,
she said, this is getting way too big. You can't
(24:13):
possibly serve your church and do this well at the
same time. You've got to make a decision. And so
she and I agreed to pray, and after a lot
of prayer, I stepped away from my church to do
this for a season full time, and to the point
where one year I spoke eighty eight times and it
was everywhere. I literally have been in forty eight of
(24:34):
the states. I've been to Canada, I've been to Mexico,
hundreds of hospitals all over the place. I've been to
a military basis to speak to troops that are coming
home from war for PTSD. I've spoken to corporations, banks
that wanted just somebody to talk about their story, just
all kinds of settings, and every time I kind of
laugh and go, Okay, God, only you could take a
(24:56):
kid from South Georgia and put him in a secular
sight with the attitude that hey, you're going to have
a platform to talk about Jesus. And that's that's what
it's been. It's been an amazing journey.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Wow. So okay, I'm so curious. You said you negotiated
that deal on a recliner. What was your negotiation talks?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Like with God? How did that play out for you?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It just it goes back to that point where I
just said, you know what I mean. I've heard all
the sweet verses and I've claimed him and I've had
them as posters on my wall, but that verse Roman
to date twenty eight You can do you know, you
bring good out of all things, all things for those
who love the Lord. And does it say all things
will be good? It just says you bring good out
of those things. And so I just said, I'm going
(25:38):
to give you this. I'm going to give you every
bit of it. I don't know how to put a
ponytail on my daughter's hair. You're going to get glory
from this.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Absolutely wow.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So yeah, And we don't often think about like you
hear about the mistakes at hospitals, and in this case,
it was a life a life changing, you know, mistake.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But there's humans behind that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That live with that shame and that burden and the
fact of having somebody like you being like no, I'm
not pressing charges. I forgive you, and you actually I
thank you for keeping him alive as long as you did.
Like that is a different kind of human that a
lot of people that don't have the joy of the
Lord and their heart might not get to experience. And
to witness somebody showing up like that, to me, it
(26:18):
would make me ask questions like what does that man
know that I don't know?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I could sit here, I don't know how long you
got for a podcast, but I could sit here and
tell you hundreds of stories where it was obvious my
reason for being where I was wasn't to talk about
health care management or healthcare performance or safe hospitals. It
was to help somebody heal from what they had been through.
I spoke to pharmacists in the state of Texas one time,
a large pharmacist convention. After it was over with, this guy,
(26:45):
probably in his early seventies, came up to me in
tears and he pulled me over in the corner and
I said, what's going on? He said, forty years ago
I committed a mistake like what you talked about, and
no one's ever told me I was forgiven. And he said,
been living on that guilt for forty plus years. And
he said, today I felt like I heard you saying
(27:06):
to me I was forgiven.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And there's countless stories like that where people are walking
around with toxic shame in punishing themselves over and over again.
Absolutely so being in such secular environments. And I love
the boldness in your faith, you know, I think that
is you know, especially this this podcast, there's a lot
of people listening that might be skeptical or cynical, or
have their own stories, you know, and the you know,
(27:32):
the fact that you are a picture of what you know.
Inviting God into our stories can can allow us to
open up. So for anybody that's listening that feels like
they have maybe you know, their past is following them around,
or like, how do I make good out of my past?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Or what how do I find the good in what happened?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Like?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
What would you say to somebody who's still in it?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Well, I would encourage you. First of all, As I said,
I came from a strong Christian background. I had all
those people around me, so I was grounded in something
that held hope for me, and I could keep coming
back to that. There may be somebody who's listening today
who isn't fortunate enough to have that background. I would
encourage you not to give up. I just had a
friend tell me this a minute ago. He said, as
(28:14):
long as you're still fighting, you're still winning, and so
don't give up that search for where hope and meaning is.
It's in this God that we're talking about. He has
it all right there in his hand. I don't care
how broken you are how ugly you are, how nasty
you are, your past maybe whatever you think it is,
but if you put it at the feet of God,
(28:34):
you will find that he can bring.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Purpose from absolutely.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah. Did this give you a whole new way to
connect with the people in your congregation? Just a whole
new level of humility? And have you found that people
are responding differently to you? And I'm more kind of
like off the record kind.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Because there was a young lady
in our church in Southeast Georgia who my wife had
been witnessing to for a while. It had invited her
to Bible studies and stuff like that, was still very resistant.
In the week after she died, she accepted Christ. Wow
again once again. It was just a little tidbit, but
it was kind of like God's saying, Okay, watch watch
(29:09):
what I'm about to do, because this will not be
the first, I mean the last. This will not be
the end of this. But I'm going to use your
wife's story. I'm gonna use your son's story, I'm gonna
use your story. We're gonna find ways for me to
get glory out of all this. You know, at the
end of the day, That's the thing that has stood
out in this more to any more than anything of
the part of the story is the reality that God
did not create us for our comfort and convenience. That's
(29:32):
not what this life is about. It's about His glory.
And so we find much more meaning when we go, Okay, God,
here's all the junk, here's all the pieces, here's all
the ashes. Now, let's see what beauty you can bring
from it.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, and it's not like you went out seeking these
opportunities to speak, It showed up for you and then
you pursued it. So with that, a big part of
your healing journey just be seeing what God was doing
in the in the audience and that man who pulled
(30:05):
you aside like that.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
It was, Yes, it was very much so. And you're right,
we didn't I early on I was asked by people,
do you want to stoo promote you? Do you want
to get an agent? And I was like no, no, no.
First of all, because I was working with healthcare, it
was my belief that until they were ready to ask
for me to come, they weren't ready to hear the
message anyway. So I wasn't going to try to force
my way into any doors or anything like that. We
(30:27):
just let it be organic and it worked out very well.
But secondly, again just this whole idea that there were
people that I didn't know were going to be in
the audience that would hear things in my story and
I would go, how did you even get that out
of my story? So it's almost like sometimes you're speaking
a different language and God interprets.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It for you.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I spoke at Arizona one time, three different times in
one day, and they were doing a video of it.
They had their audio visual department come in and record
it for employees who couldn't make the three sessions. And
after the second or third session that day, I can't
remember which, I think it was the third session, I
was standing there talking to people afterwards, as I always do,
and the guy who was responsible for recording that day
(31:11):
came over to stand next to me, and I thought, oh,
he's waiting to get the lapel mic from the recording.
So after I finished talking to the last person, I
took the lapel mic off, started wrapping it up, started
walking towards him. As I got closer, I realized he
was crying, and I said to him, are you Okay,
is there anything I can do for you? And he
said I wasn't even supposed to be here today. And
I always laugh when people say that, and I'll go, yeah,
(31:31):
you are, yeah, you just don't have Yeah. I wasn't
supposed to be here today. My partner, who works in
the Navy department, was supposed to be but he called
me early this morning and said, can you take this
from me? I've got a sick child or something. He said,
I had left the house this morning and left a
suicide note on the table for my wife and daughters.
And the only reason I agreed to take the job
(31:52):
was so that I could leave them a little bit
more money before I go. He said, can I talk
to you about why you have hope?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
My gods.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
It was amazing night. And we prayed together that night,
and he didn't receive Christ that night or have that
moment of salvation. But I fortunately had an old seminary
friend who lived in town, and I called her on
the way home and said, here's the guy's name. He's
going to be reaching out to you. Can you get
him plugged into your church? And so last I heard,
he was attending church with his family Oh my.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Goodness, yeah, wow, Like the whole family receipt like gets
him back, you know, Like because even when you think
about when somebody's at that moment before they decide to
take their life, like they're not showing up in their
life before that either, like you've lost yourself and to
be found again just because you planted a seat of
hope and then the trajectory that takes place. Then you
connected him with your friend and now their family goes
(32:43):
to church. Like these are the things that could happen.
So when you were having those questions the day the accident,
like God, where are you?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'm mad at you?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And you could go back and talk to yourself now,
like what kinds of messages would you share with the
ridley of them?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Like what did he? What did you? What would you
want him to know?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I do, And I talk about this in my book
when I recounted the story in the in the middle
of all that, because it was a while, they had to,
you know, use the jaws of life to get me
out and to get all the kids out and all
that kind of stuff. So there's a long conversation going
on as I waited for God in that car but
there was a point in the middle of all that
screaming at God that I probably one of the most
real feelings of God's presence, that he actually came into
(33:25):
that van with me through his Holy Spirit and said
to me, your wife is not going to make it,
but you will. Wow, because I'm going to be with
you to this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Wow, What do you even do with that?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I didn't know what to do. Yeah, it was it
was hard. I mean, even to this day it makes
me emotional. Here's here's the most incredible, awesome, powerful God,
this God of the universe, and he's at my car accident.
He's there with me, He's watching me. I even dare
say he was weeping with me in that moment because
he knew what I was feeling. And that happened so
(33:59):
many different times again during those months afterwards, where there
would be a moment where something would happen and you've
heard the stories before, where survivor guilt would come over me,
and I asked the question, what if I had been
driving that day instead of her, or what if we
had taken a different road. The moments where a song
comes on the radio and it makes you think about
(34:20):
what you've been through. The first Christmas we had after that,
my son lost it that day, just went berserk. It
was really out of character for him. So I just
walked into the bedroom and laid on the bell with
him and said, what's going on. Started bawling. He said, Daddy,
I miss my mom. Nothing you can do to prepare
yourself for those moments. So even in that moment, you're
(34:42):
thinking to yourself, Okay, God, if you're not with me
right now, I'm never gonna make it, you know. And
praise God he has been He's more than restored. There's
a passage in the Book of Joelts says he will
restore the years that the locusts have eaten, and that's
kind of been one of the verses I've held onto.
And he has more than restored. I got remarried, like
I said, incredibly beautiful, godly woman, two beautiful daughters in
(35:07):
the process. Now I have five grandkids. He continues to
bless I'm in an incredibly sweet place. And I think
Guy continues nineteen years later to use the story to
draw himself glory.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Wow, gosh, he really has just restore. I mean, that
is such a beautiful passage and you think about, you know,
the version of you that was like where is God?
And what I just heard is you now see like
He was everywhere and like you couldn't have gone through
it without him, and he was there even when you
couldn't even see it in the moments.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
But you also knew.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And so I know that you said that the speaking
full time it was a chapter. But now you're obviously
this is your church, You're back at it. So talk
to us a little bit about how you knew it
was time to you know, there was obviously this purpose
driven part of you now absolute new meeting, new fire
lit under you.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
How is that man now?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
And so first seven years I pastored that church. Plant
stepped aside at the end of the seventh year and
went through seven years of just full time speaking on
the road with this. And around year six I came
down off of the stage an event in Florida and
walked over and sat down next to my wife Lisa.
She would go on most of these trips with me,
(36:21):
just because she knew what it was like ripping the
band aid off every time you tell the story. And
I looked at her, I sat down and I said,
I think I'm done, and she said, well, you're not
supposed to speak the rest of the day. I said no,
I mean with this And she said, so you're not
ever going to do it again? I said no, I said,
I think God will always give me opportunity to use
this story. I said, but there's a bigger story I
want to tell. I said, I just missed being a pastor.
(36:43):
So she said, well, let's pray about it.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And this gives me emotional again too, just because it's
got so incredibly awesome when you give him a chance
to be this way and you keep your eyes open.
So I said that to her. We flew back home.
Two weeks later, the pastor of the church where I
had been attending comes up to me and he goes,
you were a church planning right, And I was like yeah.
He said you ever thought about doing it again? I
said yes. He said would you work with us to
start a church? And I was like, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
God.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So we started this church in Chapel Hill five years
ago and it's been an amazing journey. And I guess
because of what I've been through now, every time something happens,
I'm going that's God.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yes, I see, Yes, You've got your hand in.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Your fingerprints are all over this.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So if you were to put in your own words
about this, you know you said, quote unquote the bigger
story you want to tell?
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Obviously it's it's you know, the book, the story.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yes, but what would you say, is your your your
words around this bigger story that you want to share?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Oh gosh, I don't think that you're the only person
who goes through grief. I mean, everybody who has touched
this earth, walked to this earth for any day has
experienced pain from you know, friends who betrayed you, our loss,
our discouragement or frustration. The difference between who you are
today versus who you're going to be tomorrow is going
(37:59):
to be determined by how you respond to those things.
And so to me, one of the beautiful images of
the Gospel is that we don't have to run from
God with all our ugliness. We get to take it
to him and lay it at his feet and say, Okay, God,
what are you going to do with this? So I
get asked all the time, what's your You know, what
was the verse that brought you most hope during that season?
(38:20):
And I jokingly tell people it was Genesis to maps
because I was literally reading the whole Bible all the time. Okay, God,
show me something, Yeah, But I got to the very
familiar story in John where Jesus is feeding the five thousand.
Most of us have heard that story, and I've read
it a dozen times, probably even more than that. Taught
it at vacation Bible schools, read about it in seminary.
(38:41):
But I was reading it one night in that eight
month period, and I can't remember when it was. But
you get to the end of the story, and if
you remember, it says that Jesus told the disciples to
go back out with the baskets, and he says, pick
up all the pieces, do not let anything be wasted.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
And you know, you said something so profound too that
I think I really want people to get is that
when you're in that brokenness, or you're in that messiness,
or you're in the place where you don't know what
to do, that's when God wants you to come to
him exactly. And so many people they run away, they hide,
They think like, no, I'm too messy right now. I
don't want anybody to see me like this, or God
would be mad at me or ashamed of me and
(39:15):
all those things. And it's like, no, the God that
I know would want you with open arms to come
to him with all of those pieces, because nothing's wasted.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And that's what the enemy wants to convince us to do.
He wants us to take that and hide it away
and think somehow if we hide it and don't come
out with it, that somehow it'll heal itself or at
least will be protected from the shame and guilt. And
the absolute opposite is true. If I could say anything
that you hear today as part of this podcast, if
you have brokenness, hurt, paining, discouragement, sin, shame, guilt, whatever
(39:46):
it is in your life, don't walk run to Jesus.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yes, amen, Yeah, And I'll tell you it's like in
my darkest hours, that God was the place that I
knew I had to run and it was the opposite
of how I used to be.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I used to be.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
And that's why I'm highlighting this because I can see
both sides. I used to run from my spirit and hide,
and that's where we I'm out and we distract and
we procrastinate and we shove it down and it's like no, run,
don't walk. Run to the feet of your father, because
it's in a lot of times it is I'm actually
going to say the majority of times, it is a
(40:21):
spiritual need that needs to be filled. It's not logical,
it's not logistical. It is a spiritual, soul driven need
that needs to be filled, and you're not going to
get it from anything else.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And right now, if you're listening, there's a good chance
that probably Satan is trying to convince you this is
all a joke, or that this is no this only
happens to those kinds of people, not to me. But
it's really not that far different from a good father
and what he does to his children. Because when I
was raising my four kids, five kids if you count
my son who passed away through the accident. When I
raised my kids, I always told them, if you do
(40:54):
something wrong, don't run from me, come to me. I
can help you fix it. I can help you put
it back together. I can take what's broken and mend
it with. What I can't do is fix the things
you hide from me. And if I can do that
as a fallen, broken, sinful dad, I mean, how much
more can a holy good father do?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
For you. Absolutely when we can, when we what we
can seal, we can't heal, got to heal it. Yeah,
and that's such a good picture of like, yeah, bring
it to me, let me help you figure out what's next,
rather than thinking we have to do it on our
own and it becomes a burden, it becomes shameful. So
such a such a beautiful point. Well, first of all,
thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
For sharing your story.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
And I can I can just feel feel the conviction
in you, and I'm sure it feels different every time
you tell it, you know, because little I'm sure new
little pieces of revelation come for you every single time.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, sometimes it's like an outer body experience that
you're telling somebody else's story. Because again, there's absolutely no
way I'm sitting here today without God carrying me through this.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Absolutely I completely feel that.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
And and it takes a lot of courage to to,
like you said, open that wound or rip off that
band aid time after time, but you now know the
greater purpose for you and to help people walk alongside
their own whatever it is. The horrific stuff and even
the things that we mitigate or minimize our pain, and
we think like Oh, it's not that big of a deal.
Other people have it worse. It's like no pain is pain,
(42:18):
and God wants us in those moments too. Absolutely, absolutely, Well,
we have a little thing that we do. You get
to choose, and you can also choose both if you want.
But the first one is you get to pick either
a spiritual soundtrack or a spiritual bookshelf. So for spiritual soundtrack,
we'll have you share a song or a piece of
music that has a special significance to you, maybe it
(42:39):
has you know, meaning to you.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
And your faith journey.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Or spiritual bookshelf would be a book or scripture or
spiritual text that has really, you know, helped you on
your journey, made a profound impact.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
And you can also do both. Let's be honest.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Okay, I'm going to do both because I'm a pastor
and we never run out of word.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Try beautiful spiritual bookshelf.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I'll go with that one first. I actually had just
finished reading Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life right before the
accident happened. Wow, And in those eight months there were
parts of it that kept coming back to me, and
one of them is a quote that I've already shared
with you. And that is that God did not create
us for this life for comfort and convenience, but for
his glory, you know. So it's not about that for us.
(43:20):
And so that helped me beginning to understand, Okay, the
seventy plus eighty plus years I'm blessed with here on
this planet, there's gonna be a whole lot more well
spent when they're spent for Him, for his glory, rather
than trying to build my own kingdom, because that's not.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Going to work.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Absolutely yeah, and talk about putting purpose behind all the
pains as well.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Absolutely absolutely So that was a powerful, powerful thing for me.
On the soundtrack, I will tell you two songs, one
from the beginning and one from now. And the very
beginning my wife and I Sarah, who was my first wife.
She and I had been to several conferences prior to this.
There was a worship song at the time that was
very very new, very very popular, called Sing to the King,
(44:00):
and it says, sing to the King who is coming
to reign, you know, and it talks about this whole
idea that someday we'll stand with him. And so as
I went to memorial services for my wife, that song
kept resounding in my head. Someday I'll see her again.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
It was powerful. Yep. So uh and right now, but
there's one that's just rocking my world. Charity Gale sings
a song thank You Jesus for the Blood, and man,
I get every single day and I have to look
at this ugly mug in the face in the mirror,
and I look at myself and I go, I know
who I am. I know at the core what I am.
I know what I'm not capable of, and I also
know what i am capable of. And without the blood
(44:37):
of Jesus, none of this would be worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Wow, amazing. Yea is it?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Thank you Jesus for the Boss.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Okay, I know it, I know it. Yes, that is
a good one. That is a good As a new.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Believer, I know the songs of the last four or
five years, the ones of the last ten twenty years.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So you're rocking my world right now.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Go look up sing to the King.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Oh yeah, Oh.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It's going to be on Spotify, you you bet. And
then our next one is going to be Failures Redeemed.
And this could cross over with something that you've already shared.
But you know, a time when your faith was tested,
or you found yourself in a situation that maybe at
the time felt like a failure or a setback or
a regression, but God used it and redeemed it and
turned it into a massive blessing or lesson.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
I'm going to say a series of things as my answer,
and that is the times I really messed up the
recovery after the accident with my kids. My daughter, who
was not at the time, now married, lives in Northeast
Florida with her husband, who is a student minister. Beautiful family.
They've started, no kids yet, but they do have a
beautiful dog. And you know, she is an incredibly gifted,
(45:43):
godly woman and just a beautiful thing that God's doing
in her life. But I didn't do well. There were
moments where I should have been a better dad for
our I should have maybe held her a little longer,
or encouraged her a little more, or sat down and
ignored all the phone calls and taught with her more.
Same thing with my son. My son is single, living
in Nashville. If there are any godly women to look
(46:03):
at for a husband, all.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
The listening and we're playing mash maker.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Right now, but he's a good kid. I love him
with all my heart, but he's not as connected to God.
And I think that's probably in part because he never
dealt with his anger, but it's also probably in part
because I didn't do the right thing as a dad
sometimes along the way and list in my wife now
tells me, you know, you were a good dad, You
did the right thing, But I don't feel that. I
(46:27):
feel like they were missed opportunities along the way where
I could have done better, and if I had, maybe
he'd be a little bit closer to Jesus than his
wont today.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
And I think also with the failures redeemed side of things,
we can turn that into our prayers, you know, like
that can become the prayers that we're asking God to
redeem for us. And there's beauty in that another. It
just gives us another perspective of the humanness of you're
a pastor and you're human ing at the same time,
you know, and it's a beautiful again.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
It's another connection point because people go, oh, you got it,
you're a pastor. You have a perfect family. No, I
don't have a perfect family. It's you know, it's got
its fault It's got its failures. I still scream at
the TV when I lose a football game. Sure I'm
not a perfect guy, but praise God, I serve a
perfect savior.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Amen. Amen, Well, thank you so much for sharing your words.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Your sweet encouragement to.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Absolutely absolutely Where can people find you?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Follow you? Where can they google? Stock you?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
So I'm on Facebook, Ridley Barron Ministries on Facebook. We
have a Facebook page there Grove Hill Church in Chapel Hill, Tennessee,
if you want to go there. We actually also have
a podcast where you can listen to sermons. You'll hear
the lessons I've learned over the course of my life,
coming through my sermons a lot. So you know either
one of those places, You're welcome to email us. We have,
(47:41):
you know, of course, the email address if there's ever
any questions or any way we can encourage you. And
then of course I do have a book. It's an
ebook on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. And then I
actually have physical copies if anybody wants to email me
and say, had like a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
What's the name of your book?
Speaker 3 (47:55):
It's called Twist of Faith. Twist of here's the funny thing.
I self publish this book. It took me seven years
to write it after the accident, just because it was
hard to go back and relive all that and because
there were parts where I wanted to go back and
revisit with people make sure I got the fact straight
because I obviously was in a different world at that season.
But when we finally released the book called it Twist
of Faith. Next day I looked on Amazon to see
(48:16):
if it was there, and the lady who does Anti
Anne's Pretzels has a book called Twist of Faith.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Oh wow, yeah, it's not Anti and this is the
gluten free variety exactly. Yeah, beautiful. Well we'll link all
of that in the show notes. Definitely check it out.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I want to hear you preach through your podcast as well,
and thank you again for just sharing and giving us
hope in the hopelessness, because I think again, this is
a picture of what's possible. Again, it doesn't change what happened,
but who we become in the shape of it, and
rooting our identity further in the values that bring that
bring us out to be who we are designed to be,
is what's possible in the midst of all of that.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Thank you again for a delightful afternoon together and forgiving
me an opportunity to do this.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
We'll be back with more What's God Got to Do
with It? But in the meantime, I would definitely love
to hear from you, so just tell me where you
are in your story or maybe what questions you have,
like where do you feel you need clarity or support
or wisdom in your own journey. I definitely want to
hear from you, So head on over to What's God
(49:22):
Got to Do with It? Dot com and scroll down
to the form to share your thoughts, your questions, your feedback,
and you can do that instantly. So What's God Got
to Do with It? Dot com You'll find all the
ways to do that. And if you like this podcast
and want to hear more, go ahead and follow, like,
and subscribe wherever you listen.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
To podcasts to get your weekly dose of What's God
Got to Do with It?
Speaker 2 (49:46):
New episodes drop every single Tuesday, and while you're there,
be sure to rate and review to show your support.
It really means so much. What's God Got to Do
With It? Is an iHeartRadio podcast on the Amy Brown
Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
It's written and.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Hosted by Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, post
production and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music written
by Cheryl stark and produced by Adam Starker
If you want to go on a journey. If you're skeptical,
don't worry. Now here to preach, gonn to keep it clean.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And talk to me and recall where faith.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Meets all nature.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Get in touch with your creator with a baking love
and jew She even speaks Hebrew.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
What's done? What's that?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Well? Should talking transformation?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
What's done? Gonzo? All right? Hello, Hello, we are back
for what's God got to do with it? And I'm
here with the amazing Ridley Baron.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We're here in his office at his church down the
road from church, and we have a beautiful testimony of
his that we're going to dive into. But you know,
one of the reasons I tracked him down and wanted
to get him on the podcast is, first of all,
he is a picture of God doing a work in
our hearts and a testament to what can happen when
(01:12):
you come back to faith, even after tragedy, even after
unexplicable grief.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And he'll share his testimony as well.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But also I think there is sometimes there can be
a separation or divide when we think about a pastor's
life and we think like, oh, you know, they don't
know what it's like or if only they knew, And
it's like, no, when you hear your story, you'll know
that you've been in it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You've been in the thick of it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You know what it's like to suffer and struggle and
have that redeemed. So, first of all, thank you so
much for being here and spending time with us.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm excited
about this.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
For anybody listening who's never known you, met you heard
your story, just share a little bit about who you are,
what's made you who you are, and a bit about
the stories that have you know, really tested you and
brought you to a whole new version of yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Grew up in great Christian home all my life, surrounded
by godly people. My grandfather was a free will Baptist minister,
so literally from the day I was conceived, I was
exposed to the Bible and the Gospel, which probably looking back,
might have made it too neat and too clean for me.
So I got saved at age eight, but I didn't
even really fully comprehend all that that meant for me.
(02:19):
I just knew it was a step I needed to take,
and I do believe that was the time I acknowledged
Jesus as my savior and Lord, but again didn't understand
the depth of where I could come from to where
I was now in Christ Jesus. So that was incredible
for me. I was very blessed. I grew up in
a very I would say, even charmed life. I mean,
everything I touched as a kid growing up seemed to work.
(02:41):
I was valedictorian in my high school class. I played
varsity ball for football and baseball for three years in
a row, dated the cutest girl in school in my imagination.
But you know, all those things weren't great. I didn't
even know a personal death until I was in college
when my grandfather died, and that was the first place
I was ever exposed to it. So all through that,
everything's good, everything's smooth, but again probably just a little
(03:04):
bit nice and neat. And if there's anything I've discovered
is that Christianity is not a nice and neat faith.
It takes us through really dark seasons. So fast forward.
I've been in ministry thirty eight years, since it was
very young. I did student ministry for fifteen years and
then was called by God to move into the area
of church planting so my wife and two kids, we
(03:26):
were in Tennessee at the time, moved to Georgia, Southeast Georgia.
We planted a church and served for four years and
just again a great experience, good church, very strong group
of people around us who loved us very well. And
we took a trip to the beach Hilton Head, South Carolina.
It was from the spring break trip and we were
coming back home at the end of the trip on
(03:47):
Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday. My wife was
driving the last forty five minutes of the trip. That day.
I was actually just looking over my sermon getting ready
for Easter Sunday, and the last words I heard my
wife say that Friday afternoon, we're oh, my word. We
were hit by three guys in a Ford Explorer who
were in a stop sign going fifty five miles an hour.
It hit the front left corner of our van. Spin
(04:08):
our van through it, excuse me, spin our van through
the intersection. We tumbled down the side of a rural highway,
probably about one hundred yards before it came to a stop.
I was awakened that Friday afternoon by the sound of
my oldest son sitting in the middle of the seat
behind me, who was screaming at the top of his lungs, Daddy,
what's happening. And I, of course, being knocked unconscious, was
(04:30):
trying to clear my head, trying to figure out what
was going on. Didn't even know what he was referring to,
and I looked to my wife, turned to look at
my wife, and I watched that day as she let
out this really deep sigh. I thought at the moment
was just because she was in pain from the accident,
but EMTs would later tell me that I had actually
watched that afternoon as my wife took her last breath.
And so now what was once a nice and neat
(04:51):
faith has been completely rocked to the very core of
who I was. I remember that Friday afternoon looking through
the broken windshield of the window, waiting for emergency personnel arrive.
At one moment, I'm having a conversation with my kids
in the back seat. By the way, at this point,
we had three kids, because we had another after we
moved there. But I'm having this conversation with my kids, going,
you know, Mommy's gonna be okay, They're gonna come take
(05:12):
care of us. I'm trying to reassure them, and then
turning around and having these conversations with God and going, God,
where are you right now? I need you? It was hard.
I was screaming at God. I was saying things like, okay,
do not let my wife die. I need her. I
can't do this without her. I was negotiating with him.
I said, God, and you know, if anything's going to
(05:33):
happen here, take me because my kids need their mom.
And again the question, God, where are you right now?
I need you? None of those prayers were answered, so
again what was once nice and neat faith suddenly just
kind of fell apart right there in front of my eyes.
My son, my youngest son, who was a seventeen month
old toddler at the time, was in a car seat,
(05:53):
and as the vehicle was spinning down the side of
the road, the seat belt literally snapped and so his
car seat was thrown out of the van and as
it rolled down the road. Emergency personnel would later find
him about fifty feet away from where the van stopped,
and he was lying in the woods, still strapped into
his car seat, but he was unconscious. They took him
from the scene of the accident to our local hospital,
(06:15):
which was a rural Southeast Georgia hospital, flew him from
there to Savannah, Georgia, to a much larger hospital to
get him into better care. He was there for four
days under the care of the pequ unit of this hospital.
I had family members who went over and stayed with him,
but because my injuries, they wouldn't let me travel the
first few days, and we got reports all throughout those
(06:36):
four days. You know, here's what the nurses are saying,
Here's what the latest tests are showing us, those kinds
of things. I finally got to go see him for
myself on Tuesday, got to spend some time holding him
that day, just being in his presence, but also excited
just to talk to the people who were caring for
him and kind of get their assessment of where things
were on, what was going on. I went home Tuesday night,
(06:57):
got up on Wednesday morning with the intent that we
were going to drive back over there later in today
with other family members. The reason we had to go
home was because I had to obviously take care of
some arrangements with funeral home. I had to have surgery
on a broken bone after the accident, so we had
to get that stuff scheduled. But before we could get
in the vehicles and make our way over to Savannah,
(07:17):
I got a phone call that afternoon from an employee
at the hospital saying, we need you to come back
to the hospital. And I said, well, we're coming later today,
but if we need to come sooner, obviously we can
do that. Can you give me any information about what's
going on? And she said no, I can't. And I said,
you can't tell me anything at all? She said no,
mister Baron, we just hip of regulations prohibit it, which
(07:38):
is a stupid comment because I'm the parent, I'm the
person who's supposed to know these things. So I just
told her, I said, listen, I said, I just need
to know something because we're two and a half hours
away by car. I can't just drop what I'm doing
and be there in ten minutes, so I need to
know what's going on. Well, she hung up on me
that day.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So I called back to the hospital and I asked
the lady, I said, can you tell me what's going on?
I just got this strange phone call on the lady
very kindly just said, look, whatever you're doing, you'll need
to get here. We need to have a face to
face conversation, so please get some family members and comes
as quickly as you can. So we did. And to
take a long short story and make it much much shorter,
walked in that day and was told that they had
(08:15):
accidentally killed my son with a medication overdose, had given
him five times the strength of what was needed for him,
and the medication that might have possibly kept him alive
at that point actually stopped his heart immediately because it
was too strong.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Oh wow, so this is I mean so much. We
were already in that place of God. Where are you?
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I need you?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And then you think it can get any worse, and
then this happens, like where did you go? How did
you experience that? What version of yourself emerged then?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And there?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Well, it's kind of interesting because I was still pastoring
this church. I tell people in that season, I felt
very much like a hypocrite because I would still go
on Sunday morning and try to preach sermons for these people.
I knew that was my job. I have a sense,
like a real deep sense of loyalty and responsibility, so
I will go and do the thing that I need
to do. But I would come back and at night.
(09:04):
Doctors required me to sleep in a recliner for the
next eight months because I could not get my shoulder
to heal from the accident. So I would sit in
that recliner every single night, Sunday afternoon through Sunday morning,
and just question everything that I'd ever been taught, the
right and wrong of it. You know, God, are you
really there? And if you are, why were you not
there that day? You know, the verses were all familiar with,
(09:26):
like God won't let his you know, his children stumble,
nothing will touch them. And I'm like, okay, am I
not your child? You know? Were you asleep when I
needed you? And I questioned everything? And I would love
to say that, you know, at some point there was
this bright light that shone over me and you know,
angels saying things change. But it was a long journey
(09:46):
of getting back to what I believe was foundational. You know,
you and I talked a little bit before we started
the podcast about this reality. There comes a point where
I think the greatest growth we can have in our
Christian faith is when we have the honest conversations with God.
He knows our heart anyway, And so I started having
those honest conversations with God. And in July, three months
(10:06):
after the accident, I remember in the middle of the night,
I was wide awake, staring out on the field behind
my house, beautiful moonlit night, and I had probably been
crying for a few hours at this point, just questioning
again everything, even little things like hound of the world.
Am I going to take my take care of my
little girl. I'm a single dad. I don't know anything
about taking care of this girl like she deserves. But
(10:27):
in that moment, I just finally said to God, I said,
you know, I don't like this. I don't understand it.
I believe there had to be some other way for
this all to happen. But I still believe you're God,
and nothing about you has changed. So I said, if
you will give me the strength to do what it's
going to take, I'm going to find some way to
bring something good out of all of this. Again, that
was not the end of the journey. In fact, I
(10:48):
would say it was probably the beginning of the real journey,
because it was the night that I was really truly
brutally honest with him.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, what do you think it was that flipped in
you from being immersed in your grief to knowing that
there was something that you could create on the other
side of it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I wish I could take credit for it, but I
started off this story by telling you I grew up
in a Christian homes rounded bout great Christian people, and
between them and a church that loved on me, it
was them.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
I mean I had an older sister who one time
looked me in the face one day and she said,
you do not have permission to quit. God has you
alive for a reason. For your job to figure out
now what that reason is.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, And because your life had been so like kind
of buttoned up or with a bow on top before this,
this resilience factor that had to come for you. And
I'm sure in the form of things like depression and
anxiety and you know, questioning, you know, hopelessness and all
of those things. So did you feel like a different person?
Did you feel like you were no longer the same
version of yourself? And do you feel like you've come
(11:51):
back to him or He's or you've recreated Like what
would you say about the identity piece of you with
Christ independent of Christ?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
All the things?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Obviously it's hard to separate the two, but just like
the human inside of you and then the christ centered
side of you.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
A great question. I've never really been asked that, but
I mean, it's easy for me to look back and say,
this definitely not the person that I was, and I
don't want to be that person. God tore me down
in a way that he probably couldn't any other way.
Who knows, maybe somewhere along the way he had tried
using other means and I was just too hard hearted
to get it. But he tore me down and using
(12:26):
people around me, and of course obviously his word and
his spirit, he built me back up into a better man.
And as if I had to put it into any
kind of image, it would be the difference between a
dad sitting on the couch with the son at the
end of the couch and saying, hey, we're sitting on
the same chair, versus pulling him in close and saying,
now we're really sitting on the same chair. You know,
(12:49):
he pulled me in and you know I'm not there.
You know, I would sanctifications a lifelong process, but that
jump started my growth as a Christian in ways that
nothing else ever had.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What do you think in terms of you know, pouring
into other people and the church that you were the
leader of. Do you think that ended up being part
of your healing? Is that part of what? Did you
throw yourself into it? And I know, I'm sure the
human part of you felt a little bit burdened, like
how am I supposed to you said, hypocrite? Like how
am I supposed to show up and talk about the
glory of God when I'm sitting here in the muck,
(13:21):
in the mess?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So what was that process like for you as a
leader and how did your thought process change and how
you wanted to shepherd your church?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Well, it was a very up and down process because,
as I was shortening the story for you, the day
before the accident happened, we actually received a call from
our former church here in Nashville inviting us to move
back to Franklin and start a church for them. So
my wife and I had immediately agreed. We loved Middletonnessee,
we wanted to come back. We were excited about that.
And so when the accident happened, pastor of that church,
(13:49):
he's a dear friend of mine, called me and said, look,
will delay this decision. You know, as long as you
need to. In fact, if you don't want to do it,
we understand. And I prayed for a couple of weeks
and I called them up and I said, look, Jerry,
I said, I really very much appreciate your patience with this.
But here's the deal. God knew this was going to
happen when he gave me the yes two weeks ago.
(14:10):
So we're going to go ahead and make the move.
We're going to follow through. You're just gonna have to
be patients with me as I try to figure out
what this looks like, being a single dad going through
my own grief and trying to plant a church. And
of course they were very, very very cooperative. In fact,
many of the people who were part of that church
plant were longtime friends from years before who surrounded me,
loved me, encouraged me. But I have to go back
(14:32):
to the church that I was pastoring at the time,
because in the four months that I lived there before
I did relocate back to Middle Tennessee, they literally cooked
every single meal that my family ate. There was not
a day that I didn't have a contact from one
of them or a note from one of them, and
even times where I knew in the middle of the
night when I was feeling like really stinky that they
(14:53):
were praying for me.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's an interesting type of leadership because you're still a leader,
but you're now learning how to receive on a whole
new level, which is it's a switch shifter.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You know, it's an identity shift in itself.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Well, you talked about this earlier. Many times today even
there are conversations where in the past where I would go, hey,
I'm a pastor, and people would instantly shut me down
and go, you're a pastor. You can't understand where I am.
You don't know me, you don't know my past. And
when I say nineteen years ago I lost my wife
and my son, it's like I'm a different person almost,
but in a good way. Suddenly walls drop down and
(15:27):
they're going, Okay, maybe it's possible he does understand the
pain that I'm feeling, are the grief that I'm going through.
And you know, if you go back and look at
the characters in the Bible, and I think that's exactly
what happened with them. I mean, you got Joseph, he
was thrown into prison. You got you know, David who
had to hide in caves from King Saul. You've got
all these people who experienced grief and pain, and it
wasn't until they experienced it they were ready to be
(15:49):
what God wanted them to be.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
One of my favorite non biblical quotes is the depths
of your darkness is the height of your light. And
it's like you have to not that you have to,
but I believe you have to kind of know the
depths of darkness to really understand and appreciate and see
the good when it comes, and even to go manufacture it,
like be a participant in actively turning things around, Like
not looking back at your situation and being like, oh,
(16:22):
I'm so glad that happened. You're not like pating delusional
optimism on top of the situation, but looking at it
and saying, Okay, this happened, and this is the worst
of the worst and it's awful. But now, who do
I mean, obviously give yourself that space degree, but who
do I want to become in the face of this?
And I think that's where I really wanted people to
hear your testimony. So before we get into that, talk
(16:43):
to us a little bit about the steps of finding
I hate to use.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The word new normal.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
But you're now a dad of How old was your
daughter at the time?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
She was six years old?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Six years So it was just the two of you, guys.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
After I had another son who was nine years old.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Was he in the car? Yes, in the car so everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But so the your daughter and son survived, So not
just being a single dad, but them dealing with the
loss of their mother and their brother and all the
things that you were dealing with in an adult brain.
But now you know their child like faith.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Was shifted forever.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
So what was it like picking up the pieces, putting
them back together, recreating this new puzzle? But then also
you know, shepherding these two children.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
I have to be honest with you. If I were
to write the book on how to do this, I
would tell you not to read it. Yeah, because I
stumbled my way through it. Again. Incredible family that surrounded me.
I have two older sisters, one of them her husband
and their four boys literally picked up and moved back
to Middle Tennessee when I moved here to be near
me to help me with my kids. I have a
huge family on my mother's side, cousins that would call
(17:47):
me and email me and just simply say hey, I'm
praying for you. They were kind of my lifeline in
a lot of those situations. I had members of my
new church you would say, hey, do you need me
to come by and fix your daughter's hair before church
this morning? Or d just need me to go take
her shopping for school, and those those were the kind
of people who helped carry me in moments when I
really didn't know if I even had the energy to
(18:09):
pick up my foot.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You know. And what were your conversations with God liked
during that time? When did you feel like you were
I mean, I don't want to say done being mad
at him. I'm sure it was an ebb and flow,
but like what were your prayers, like, what were your
conversations with God?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And how did so manifest?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Let me be clear to tell you, I don't know
that I'm not still mad at God. Yeah, and I
think he's okay with that.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, And he's here for it. He's here to meet
you in that.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Because I think if it were up to God completely
and he didn't have to deal with my stubborn heart,
he would have not wanted to have put me through this.
But I think it now probably mess up this quote,
but I think it was a w tozer who said
it's it's highly likely that God cannot deal with a
man completely until he has hurt him deeply. That was me.
I needed to be hurt deeply so he could get
(18:54):
my attention. Would I love to have my wife and
son back. Yeah, absolutely, Even to this day, I missed smustling.
I missed getting to see all the experiences that he
would have gone through. I heard from my children that
my daughter graduated kindergarten without her mom around, that she
got married without her mom around. That my son even
to this day, quite frankly, probably still deals with anchor
issues because of what happened. And he's twenty eight years
(19:18):
old now, so there's all these things that were going on,
and you know, if I got it right, I had
to be honest and tell you it's probably by mistake.
But we did counseling with the kids. I did counseling.
We tried to get both of them. I did try
to get them back to normal as quickly as possible,
and like like a week and a half after the accident,
I was back coaching his baseball team, getting back in school.
(19:40):
We were determined that we weren't going to let this
stop us from living life, whatever that life might look like.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, And I think there's so many lessons within that,
like first and foremost the God that I know he
will meet you in all of it, like whether you
are mad, sad, confused, whether it's rational or not, like
he is there to hold space and support you and
love you and meet you there. I've a big believer
that perfectionism is actually like.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
The root of all evil, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
It causes us to feel inadequate and unworthy and all
of that. But I love the acceptance of the lack
of perfection. You're like, you know what, it was a
book that I wouldn't recommend reading, and and you had
to make your way through it because you were finding
your way. It was this puzzle piece where it's like
felt like pieces were missing, And you know, I love
the humanness of it because it shows like we don't
(20:25):
have to have it all together, and the feelings that
we're feeling they might not necessarily all go away. But again,
that is what brought you from having God so far
away from you on that couch to now you're snuggled
up under his arm and you're in communion with him,
you know, So share with us a little bit. You know.
Obviously time went on and you know, the pain didn't
(20:46):
go away, but the life kept going.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And you shifted. And again you said in.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
That moment that the day that you were out, when
the beautiful moon was, you know, shining on your on
your backyard, that there was going to be some purpose
in this.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So can talk to us a little bit about because
I know.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
When we're in the depths of our darkness, it's hard
to think about, like, you know, what is going to
come out of this?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Who am I going to be?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Because we're sometimes we're in a relationship with our with
our fears and our thoughts and our doubts. So for
anybody who's there, like share what's on the other side
of this.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
So in the aftermath of the accident, one of the
things I determined to do was to get my brother
in law actually as an attorney, so he represented me
after all of this. But I asked him, I said,
I want you to communicate to the hospital that I
forgive the pharmacists for what she did. Wow, I don't
want to spend the rest of her life worrying about
what I think about her because as far as I know,
she was the one who kept him alive those first
(21:37):
four days. You know. So even though we communicated that
from the very beginning, and even told the hospital that
I was not planning on suw Indim, I just didn't
want to do that. Didn't want to drag my kids
through court cases and things like that. We just wanted
to move on with life. There were still these conversations
that you have to have paperwork, that you have to sign,
all this kind of stuff. And so we're going through
those conversations one day here in Nashville, and we resolved
(22:01):
all of the things that had to be worked out,
and when it was over with, the vice president of
risk management for the hospital, who was a fellow believer,
looked at me and he said, is there any chance
at all you'd be willing to come back to our
hospital and speak to our staff about what it's like
to be touched by one of our mistakes.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
And I remember laughing and saying to him, you think
this is your idea, I said, but I negotiate this
deal with God in my recliner back in July.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Oh my God.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And so in December, eight months after the accident, I
went back into the hospital where my son was killed,
spoke to about four or five hundred people in a
conference that they were having there on the campus, and
honestly got through and thought, Okay, I'm done. This is it.
This is what God wanted to happen. This is where
we bring good from the bad. And as I got
ready to leave, just overwhelmed by the people coming up
(22:47):
and just saying thank you so much. We appreciate you
being so raw and transparent with us, and I'm thinking, Bamn,
this is it. This is God getting glory out of
bad stuff. So went home. Two weeks later, he calls
me back, this vice president. He said, we had such
a great response. I didn't know if you might be
willing to do it again. And I thought he was
talking about and go back to Savannah and speak to
that hospital again. So I said sure, I could do that.
(23:10):
He said, great, I've got you booked for the National
Association of Children's Hospitals in Boston in January. And I
was like, I can't do that. Wow, he said, well
why not, I said, Wayne, I said, I'm not in healthcare.
I don't know the lingo. I'm not an expert on
health care management or any of those things. I don't
know that that's what you want, he said, You're exactly
(23:30):
what I want, because it's not often we have somebody
who's on the other side of the bed from us,
who experience his pain because of our mistakes, and I
think you could be the guy that helps us be better.
And so that first year I probably spoke about five
to seven times at different conferences, and every time I
would come home the same thought, Okay, God, way to go.
(23:51):
You did your part. We brought good out of it,
and the phone would ring again. To the point where
I was back here in Franklin. I was pastoring that
church I had star guarded. I got remarried three and
a half years after the accident. My wife and I
served at that church for total of seven years, three
and a half with her as my wife, and about
the seven year mark, she said to me one day,
she said, this is getting way too big. You can't
(24:13):
possibly serve your church and do this well at the
same time. You've got to make a decision. And so
she and I agreed to pray, and after a lot
of prayer, I stepped away from my church to do
this for a season full time, and to the point
where one year I spoke eighty eight times and it
was everywhere. I literally have been in forty eight of
(24:34):
the states. I've been to Canada, I've been to Mexico,
hundreds of hospitals all over the place. I've been to
a military basis to speak to troops that are coming
home from war for PTSD. I've spoken to corporations, banks
that wanted just somebody to talk about their story, just
all kinds of settings, and every time I kind of
laugh and go, Okay, God, only you could take a
(24:56):
kid from South Georgia and put him in a secular
sight with the attitude that hey, you're going to have
a platform to talk about Jesus. And that's that's what
it's been. It's been an amazing journey.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Wow. So okay, I'm so curious. You said you negotiated
that deal on a recliner. What was your negotiation talks?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Like with God? How did that play out for you?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
It just it goes back to that point where I
just said, you know what I mean. I've heard all
the sweet verses and I've claimed him and I've had
them as posters on my wall, but that verse Roman
to date twenty eight You can do you know, you
bring good out of all things, all things for those
who love the Lord. And does it say all things
will be good? It just says you bring good out
of those things. And so I just said, I'm going
(25:38):
to give you this. I'm going to give you every
bit of it. I don't know how to put a
ponytail on my daughter's hair. You're going to get glory
from this.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Absolutely wow.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
So yeah, And we don't often think about like you
hear about the mistakes at hospitals, and in this case,
it was a life a life changing, you know, mistake.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But there's humans behind that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That live with that shame and that burden and the
fact of having somebody like you being like no, I'm
not pressing charges. I forgive you, and you actually I
thank you for keeping him alive as long as you did.
Like that is a different kind of human that a
lot of people that don't have the joy of the
Lord and their heart might not get to experience. And
to witness somebody showing up like that, to me, it
(26:18):
would make me ask questions like what does that man
know that I don't know?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I could sit here, I don't know how long you
got for a podcast, but I could sit here and
tell you hundreds of stories where it was obvious my
reason for being where I was wasn't to talk about
health care management or healthcare performance or safe hospitals. It
was to help somebody heal from what they had been through.
I spoke to pharmacists in the state of Texas one time,
a large pharmacist convention. After it was over with, this guy,
(26:45):
probably in his early seventies, came up to me in
tears and he pulled me over in the corner and
I said, what's going on? He said, forty years ago
I committed a mistake like what you talked about, and
no one's ever told me I was forgiven. And he said,
been living on that guilt for forty plus years. And
he said, today I felt like I heard you saying
(27:06):
to me I was forgiven.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And there's countless stories like that where people are walking
around with toxic shame in punishing themselves over and over again.
Absolutely so being in such secular environments. And I love
the boldness in your faith, you know, I think that
is you know, especially this this podcast, there's a lot
of people listening that might be skeptical or cynical, or
have their own stories, you know, and the you know,
(27:32):
the fact that you are a picture of what you know.
Inviting God into our stories can can allow us to
open up. So for anybody that's listening that feels like
they have maybe you know, their past is following them around,
or like, how do I make good out of my past?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Or what how do I find the good in what happened?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Like?
Speaker 1 (27:50):
What would you say to somebody who's still in it?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Well, I would encourage you. First of all, As I said,
I came from a strong Christian background. I had all
those people around me, so I was grounded in something
that held hope for me, and I could keep coming
back to that. There may be somebody who's listening today
who isn't fortunate enough to have that background. I would
encourage you not to give up. I just had a
friend tell me this a minute ago. He said, as
(28:14):
long as you're still fighting, you're still winning, and so
don't give up that search for where hope and meaning is.
It's in this God that we're talking about. He has
it all right there in his hand. I don't care
how broken you are how ugly you are, how nasty
you are, your past maybe whatever you think it is,
but if you put it at the feet of God,
(28:34):
you will find that he can bring.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Purpose from absolutely.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah. Did this give you a whole new way to
connect with the people in your congregation? Just a whole
new level of humility? And have you found that people
are responding differently to you? And I'm more kind of
like off the record kind.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Because there was a young lady
in our church in Southeast Georgia who my wife had
been witnessing to for a while. It had invited her
to Bible studies and stuff like that, was still very resistant.
In the week after she died, she accepted Christ. Wow
again once again. It was just a little tidbit, but
it was kind of like God's saying, Okay, watch watch
(29:09):
what I'm about to do, because this will not be
the first, I mean the last. This will not be
the end of this. But I'm going to use your
wife's story. I'm gonna use your son's story, I'm gonna
use your story. We're gonna find ways for me to
get glory out of all this. You know, at the
end of the day, That's the thing that has stood
out in this more to any more than anything of
the part of the story is the reality that God
did not create us for our comfort and convenience. That's
(29:32):
not what this life is about. It's about His glory.
And so we find much more meaning when we go, Okay, God,
here's all the junk, here's all the pieces, here's all
the ashes. Now, let's see what beauty you can bring
from it.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, and it's not like you went out seeking these
opportunities to speak, It showed up for you and then
you pursued it. So with that, a big part of
your healing journey just be seeing what God was doing
in the in the audience and that man who pulled
(30:05):
you aside like that.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
It was, Yes, it was very much so. And you're right,
we didn't I early on I was asked by people,
do you want to stoo promote you? Do you want
to get an agent? And I was like no, no, no.
First of all, because I was working with healthcare, it
was my belief that until they were ready to ask
for me to come, they weren't ready to hear the
message anyway. So I wasn't going to try to force
my way into any doors or anything like that. We
(30:27):
just let it be organic and it worked out very well.
But secondly, again just this whole idea that there were
people that I didn't know were going to be in
the audience that would hear things in my story and
I would go, how did you even get that out
of my story? So it's almost like sometimes you're speaking
a different language and God interprets.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It for you.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I spoke at Arizona one time, three different times in
one day, and they were doing a video of it.
They had their audio visual department come in and record
it for employees who couldn't make the three sessions. And
after the second or third session that day, I can't
remember which, I think it was the third session, I
was standing there talking to people afterwards, as I always do,
and the guy who was responsible for recording that day
(31:11):
came over to stand next to me, and I thought, oh,
he's waiting to get the lapel mic from the recording.
So after I finished talking to the last person, I
took the lapel mic off, started wrapping it up, started
walking towards him. As I got closer, I realized he
was crying, and I said to him, are you Okay,
is there anything I can do for you? And he
said I wasn't even supposed to be here today. And
I always laugh when people say that, and I'll go, yeah,
(31:31):
you are, yeah, you just don't have Yeah. I wasn't
supposed to be here today. My partner, who works in
the Navy department, was supposed to be but he called
me early this morning and said, can you take this
from me? I've got a sick child or something. He said,
I had left the house this morning and left a
suicide note on the table for my wife and daughters.
And the only reason I agreed to take the job
(31:52):
was so that I could leave them a little bit
more money before I go. He said, can I talk
to you about why you have hope?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
My gods.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
It was amazing night. And we prayed together that night,
and he didn't receive Christ that night or have that
moment of salvation. But I fortunately had an old seminary
friend who lived in town, and I called her on
the way home and said, here's the guy's name. He's
going to be reaching out to you. Can you get
him plugged into your church? And so last I heard,
he was attending church with his family Oh my.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Goodness, yeah, wow, Like the whole family receipt like gets
him back, you know, Like because even when you think
about when somebody's at that moment before they decide to
take their life, like they're not showing up in their
life before that either, like you've lost yourself and to
be found again just because you planted a seat of
hope and then the trajectory that takes place. Then you
connected him with your friend and now their family goes
(32:43):
to church. Like these are the things that could happen.
So when you were having those questions the day the accident,
like God, where are you?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I'm mad at you?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
And you could go back and talk to yourself now,
like what kinds of messages would you share with the
ridley of them?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Like what did he? What did you? What would you
want him to know?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I do, And I talk about this in my book
when I recounted the story in the in the middle
of all that, because it was a while, they had to,
you know, use the jaws of life to get me
out and to get all the kids out and all
that kind of stuff. So there's a long conversation going
on as I waited for God in that car but
there was a point in the middle of all that
screaming at God that I probably one of the most
real feelings of God's presence, that he actually came into
(33:25):
that van with me through his Holy Spirit and said
to me, your wife is not going to make it,
but you will. Wow, because I'm going to be with
you to this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Wow, What do you even do with that?
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I didn't know what to do. Yeah, it was it
was hard. I mean, even to this day it makes
me emotional. Here's here's the most incredible, awesome, powerful God,
this God of the universe, and he's at my car accident.
He's there with me, He's watching me. I even dare
say he was weeping with me in that moment because
he knew what I was feeling. And that happened so
(33:59):
many different times again during those months afterwards, where there
would be a moment where something would happen and you've
heard the stories before, where survivor guilt would come over me,
and I asked the question, what if I had been
driving that day instead of her, or what if we
had taken a different road. The moments where a song
comes on the radio and it makes you think about
(34:20):
what you've been through. The first Christmas we had after that,
my son lost it that day, just went berserk. It
was really out of character for him. So I just
walked into the bedroom and laid on the bell with
him and said, what's going on. Started bawling. He said, Daddy,
I miss my mom. Nothing you can do to prepare
yourself for those moments. So even in that moment, you're
(34:42):
thinking to yourself, Okay, God, if you're not with me
right now, I'm never gonna make it, you know. And
praise God he has been He's more than restored. There's
a passage in the Book of Joelts says he will
restore the years that the locusts have eaten, and that's
kind of been one of the verses I've held onto.
And he has more than restored. I got remarried, like
I said, incredibly beautiful, godly woman, two beautiful daughters in
(35:07):
the process. Now I have five grandkids. He continues to
bless I'm in an incredibly sweet place. And I think
Guy continues nineteen years later to use the story to
draw himself glory.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Wow, gosh, he really has just restore. I mean, that
is such a beautiful passage and you think about, you know,
the version of you that was like where is God?
And what I just heard is you now see like
He was everywhere and like you couldn't have gone through
it without him, and he was there even when you
couldn't even see it in the moments.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
But you also knew.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
And so I know that you said that the speaking
full time it was a chapter. But now you're obviously
this is your church, You're back at it. So talk
to us a little bit about how you knew it
was time to you know, there was obviously this purpose
driven part of you now absolute new meeting, new fire
lit under you.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
How is that man now?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
And so first seven years I pastored that church. Plant
stepped aside at the end of the seventh year and
went through seven years of just full time speaking on
the road with this. And around year six I came
down off of the stage an event in Florida and
walked over and sat down next to my wife Lisa.
She would go on most of these trips with me,
(36:21):
just because she knew what it was like ripping the
band aid off every time you tell the story. And
I looked at her, I sat down and I said,
I think I'm done, and she said, well, you're not
supposed to speak the rest of the day. I said no,
I mean with this And she said, so you're not
ever going to do it again? I said no, I said,
I think God will always give me opportunity to use
this story. I said, but there's a bigger story I
want to tell. I said, I just missed being a pastor.
(36:43):
So she said, well, let's pray about it.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And this gives me emotional again too, just because it's
got so incredibly awesome when you give him a chance
to be this way and you keep your eyes open.
So I said that to her. We flew back home.
Two weeks later, the pastor of the church where I
had been attending comes up to me and he goes,
you were a church planning right, And I was like yeah.
He said you ever thought about doing it again? I
said yes. He said would you work with us to
start a church? And I was like, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
God.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
So we started this church in Chapel Hill five years
ago and it's been an amazing journey. And I guess
because of what I've been through now, every time something happens,
I'm going that's God.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yes, I see, Yes, You've got your hand in.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Your fingerprints are all over this.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
So if you were to put in your own words
about this, you know you said, quote unquote the bigger
story you want to tell?
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Obviously it's it's you know, the book, the story.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yes, but what would you say, is your your your
words around this bigger story that you want to share?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Oh gosh, I don't think that you're the only person
who goes through grief. I mean, everybody who has touched
this earth, walked to this earth for any day has
experienced pain from you know, friends who betrayed you, our loss,
our discouragement or frustration. The difference between who you are
today versus who you're going to be tomorrow is going
(37:59):
to be determined by how you respond to those things.
And so to me, one of the beautiful images of
the Gospel is that we don't have to run from
God with all our ugliness. We get to take it
to him and lay it at his feet and say, Okay, God,
what are you going to do with this? So I
get asked all the time, what's your You know, what
was the verse that brought you most hope during that season?
(38:20):
And I jokingly tell people it was Genesis to maps
because I was literally reading the whole Bible all the time. Okay, God,
show me something, Yeah, But I got to the very
familiar story in John where Jesus is feeding the five thousand.
Most of us have heard that story, and I've read
it a dozen times, probably even more than that. Taught
it at vacation Bible schools, read about it in seminary.
(38:41):
But I was reading it one night in that eight
month period, and I can't remember when it was. But
you get to the end of the story, and if
you remember, it says that Jesus told the disciples to
go back out with the baskets, and he says, pick
up all the pieces, do not let anything be wasted.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
And you know, you said something so profound too that
I think I really want people to get is that
when you're in that brokenness, or you're in that messiness,
or you're in the place where you don't know what
to do, that's when God wants you to come to
him exactly. And so many people they run away, they hide,
They think like, no, I'm too messy right now. I
don't want anybody to see me like this, or God
would be mad at me or ashamed of me and
(39:15):
all those things. And it's like, no, the God that
I know would want you with open arms to come
to him with all of those pieces, because nothing's wasted.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And that's what the enemy wants to convince us to do.
He wants us to take that and hide it away
and think somehow if we hide it and don't come
out with it, that somehow it'll heal itself or at
least will be protected from the shame and guilt. And
the absolute opposite is true. If I could say anything
that you hear today as part of this podcast, if
you have brokenness, hurt, paining, discouragement, sin, shame, guilt, whatever
(39:46):
it is in your life, don't walk run to Jesus.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yes, amen, Yeah, And I'll tell you it's like in
my darkest hours, that God was the place that I
knew I had to run and it was the opposite
of how I used to be.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I used to be.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
And that's why I'm highlighting this because I can see
both sides. I used to run from my spirit and hide,
and that's where we I'm out and we distract and
we procrastinate and we shove it down and it's like no, run,
don't walk. Run to the feet of your father, because
it's in a lot of times it is I'm actually
going to say the majority of times, it is a
(40:21):
spiritual need that needs to be filled. It's not logical,
it's not logistical. It is a spiritual, soul driven need
that needs to be filled, and you're not going to
get it from anything else.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And right now, if you're listening, there's a good chance
that probably Satan is trying to convince you this is
all a joke, or that this is no this only
happens to those kinds of people, not to me. But
it's really not that far different from a good father
and what he does to his children. Because when I
was raising my four kids, five kids if you count
my son who passed away through the accident. When I
raised my kids, I always told them, if you do
(40:54):
something wrong, don't run from me, come to me. I
can help you fix it. I can help you put
it back together. I can take what's broken and mend
it with. What I can't do is fix the things
you hide from me. And if I can do that
as a fallen, broken, sinful dad, I mean, how much
more can a holy good father do?
Speaker 2 (41:14):
For you. Absolutely when we can, when we what we
can seal, we can't heal, got to heal it. Yeah,
and that's such a good picture of like, yeah, bring
it to me, let me help you figure out what's next,
rather than thinking we have to do it on our
own and it becomes a burden, it becomes shameful. So
such a such a beautiful point. Well, first of all,
thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
For sharing your story.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
And I can I can just feel feel the conviction
in you, and I'm sure it feels different every time
you tell it, you know, because little I'm sure new
little pieces of revelation come for you every single time.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, sometimes it's like an outer body experience that
you're telling somebody else's story. Because again, there's absolutely no
way I'm sitting here today without God carrying me through this.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Absolutely I completely feel that.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
And and it takes a lot of courage to to,
like you said, open that wound or rip off that
band aid time after time, but you now know the
greater purpose for you and to help people walk alongside
their own whatever it is. The horrific stuff and even
the things that we mitigate or minimize our pain, and
we think like Oh, it's not that big of a deal.
Other people have it worse. It's like no pain is pain,
(42:18):
and God wants us in those moments too. Absolutely, absolutely, Well,
we have a little thing that we do. You get
to choose, and you can also choose both if you want.
But the first one is you get to pick either
a spiritual soundtrack or a spiritual bookshelf. So for spiritual soundtrack,
we'll have you share a song or a piece of
music that has a special significance to you, maybe it
(42:39):
has you know, meaning to you.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
And your faith journey.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Or spiritual bookshelf would be a book or scripture or
spiritual text that has really, you know, helped you on
your journey, made a profound impact.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
And you can also do both. Let's be honest.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Okay, I'm going to do both because I'm a pastor
and we never run out of word.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Try beautiful spiritual bookshelf.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I'll go with that one first. I actually had just
finished reading Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life right before the
accident happened. Wow, And in those eight months there were
parts of it that kept coming back to me, and
one of them is a quote that I've already shared
with you. And that is that God did not create
us for this life for comfort and convenience, but for
his glory, you know. So it's not about that for us.
(43:20):
And so that helped me beginning to understand, Okay, the
seventy plus eighty plus years I'm blessed with here on
this planet, there's gonna be a whole lot more well
spent when they're spent for Him, for his glory, rather
than trying to build my own kingdom, because that's not.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Going to work.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Absolutely yeah, and talk about putting purpose behind all the
pains as well.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Absolutely absolutely So that was a powerful, powerful thing for me.
On the soundtrack, I will tell you two songs, one
from the beginning and one from now. And the very
beginning my wife and I Sarah, who was my first wife.
She and I had been to several conferences prior to this.
There was a worship song at the time that was
very very new, very very popular, called Sing to the King,
(44:00):
and it says, sing to the King who is coming
to reign, you know, and it talks about this whole
idea that someday we'll stand with him. And so as
I went to memorial services for my wife, that song
kept resounding in my head. Someday I'll see her again.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
It was powerful. Yep. So uh and right now, but
there's one that's just rocking my world. Charity Gale sings
a song thank You Jesus for the Blood, and man,
I get every single day and I have to look
at this ugly mug in the face in the mirror,
and I look at myself and I go, I know
who I am. I know at the core what I am.
I know what I'm not capable of, and I also
know what i am capable of. And without the blood
(44:37):
of Jesus, none of this would be worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Wow, amazing. Yea is it?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Thank you Jesus for the Boss.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Okay, I know it, I know it. Yes, that is
a good one. That is a good As a new.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Believer, I know the songs of the last four or
five years, the ones of the last ten twenty years.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So you're rocking my world right now.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Go look up sing to the King.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Oh yeah, Oh.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It's going to be on Spotify, you you bet. And
then our next one is going to be Failures Redeemed.
And this could cross over with something that you've already shared.
But you know, a time when your faith was tested,
or you found yourself in a situation that maybe at
the time felt like a failure or a setback or
a regression, but God used it and redeemed it and
turned it into a massive blessing or lesson.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
I'm going to say a series of things as my answer,
and that is the times I really messed up the
recovery after the accident with my kids. My daughter, who
was not at the time, now married, lives in Northeast
Florida with her husband, who is a student minister. Beautiful family.
They've started, no kids yet, but they do have a
beautiful dog. And you know, she is an incredibly gifted,
(45:43):
godly woman and just a beautiful thing that God's doing
in her life. But I didn't do well. There were
moments where I should have been a better dad for
our I should have maybe held her a little longer,
or encouraged her a little more, or sat down and
ignored all the phone calls and taught with her more.
Same thing with my son. My son is single, living
in Nashville. If there are any godly women to look
(46:03):
at for a husband, all.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
The listening and we're playing mash maker.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Right now, but he's a good kid. I love him
with all my heart, but he's not as connected to God.
And I think that's probably in part because he never
dealt with his anger, but it's also probably in part
because I didn't do the right thing as a dad
sometimes along the way and list in my wife now
tells me, you know, you were a good dad, You
did the right thing, But I don't feel that. I
(46:27):
feel like they were missed opportunities along the way where
I could have done better, and if I had, maybe
he'd be a little bit closer to Jesus than his
wont today.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
And I think also with the failures redeemed side of things,
we can turn that into our prayers, you know, like
that can become the prayers that we're asking God to
redeem for us. And there's beauty in that another. It
just gives us another perspective of the humanness of you're
a pastor and you're human ing at the same time,
you know, and it's a beautiful again.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
It's another connection point because people go, oh, you got it,
you're a pastor. You have a perfect family. No, I
don't have a perfect family. It's you know, it's got
its fault It's got its failures. I still scream at
the TV when I lose a football game. Sure I'm
not a perfect guy, but praise God, I serve a
perfect savior.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Amen. Amen, Well, thank you so much for sharing your words.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Your sweet encouragement to.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Absolutely absolutely Where can people find you?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Follow you? Where can they google? Stock you?
Speaker 3 (47:20):
So I'm on Facebook, Ridley Barron Ministries on Facebook. We
have a Facebook page there Grove Hill Church in Chapel Hill, Tennessee,
if you want to go there. We actually also have
a podcast where you can listen to sermons. You'll hear
the lessons I've learned over the course of my life,
coming through my sermons a lot. So you know either
one of those places, You're welcome to email us. We have,
(47:41):
you know, of course, the email address if there's ever
any questions or any way we can encourage you. And
then of course I do have a book. It's an
ebook on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. And then I
actually have physical copies if anybody wants to email me
and say, had like a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
What's the name of your book?
Speaker 3 (47:55):
It's called Twist of Faith. Twist of here's the funny thing.
I self publish this book. It took me seven years
to write it after the accident, just because it was
hard to go back and relive all that and because
there were parts where I wanted to go back and
revisit with people make sure I got the fact straight
because I obviously was in a different world at that season.
But when we finally released the book called it Twist
of Faith. Next day I looked on Amazon to see
(48:16):
if it was there, and the lady who does Anti
Anne's Pretzels has a book called Twist of Faith.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Oh wow, yeah, it's not Anti and this is the
gluten free variety exactly. Yeah, beautiful. Well we'll link all
of that in the show notes. Definitely check it out.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I want to hear you preach through your podcast as well,
and thank you again for just sharing and giving us
hope in the hopelessness, because I think again, this is
a picture of what's possible. Again, it doesn't change what happened,
but who we become in the shape of it, and
rooting our identity further in the values that bring that
bring us out to be who we are designed to be,
is what's possible in the midst of all of that.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Thank you again for a delightful afternoon together and forgiving
me an opportunity to do this.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
We'll be back with more What's God Got to Do
with It? But in the meantime, I would definitely love
to hear from you, so just tell me where you
are in your story or maybe what questions you have,
like where do you feel you need clarity or support
or wisdom in your own journey. I definitely want to
hear from you, So head on over to What's God
(49:22):
Got to Do with It? Dot com and scroll down
to the form to share your thoughts, your questions, your feedback,
and you can do that instantly. So What's God Got
to Do with It? Dot com You'll find all the
ways to do that. And if you like this podcast
and want to hear more, go ahead and follow, like,
and subscribe wherever you listen.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
To podcasts to get your weekly dose of What's God
Got to Do with It?
Speaker 2 (49:46):
New episodes drop every single Tuesday, and while you're there,
be sure to rate and review to show your support.
It really means so much. What's God Got to Do
With It? Is an iHeartRadio podcast on the Amy Brown
Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
It's written and.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Hosted by Leanne Ellington, executive produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, post
production and editing by Houston Tilley, and original music written
by Cheryl stark and produced by Adam Starker
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
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Amy Brown
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