March 20, 2025 • 47 mins
Pastor Sherman Bradley Co-Pastor and Founder of the Warehouse Church. CQ Cultural Intelligence Trainer, Spiritual Director, Coach Approach; Life Coach, Founder Storehouse Development non profit. Get a sneak peak into the heart and life of Pastor Sherman Bradley, pioneer of one of the most anticipated and transformational podcasts hitting the digital airwaves in 2025. This upcoming podcast, founded upon his own personal journey and experience, “ShermSpeaks” is the next big thing, and you'll hear it here first.
Find out more about Sherman Bradley and The Warehouse Church here https://www.thewarehousechurch.org Need help dealing with Grief? https://www.griefshare.org
Exciting news!!! You can now join Henry, live via Zoom, for Empowerment Sessions every Sunday morning at 1030am EST, by clicking the link below, or by using the ID and passcode provided below. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82108038420?pwd=twW0ChMfqMskiPizTEFEbOPFq8zORT.1 Meeting ID: 821 0803 8420 Passcode: 439385 Empowerment sessions are not a church service—but are a service to the church. Our automobiles, homes, electronics and various other tools in our lives need maintenance, upgrades and repairs. Are we as a person any different? Empowerment Sessions are where believers get the opportunity to make the necessary corrections, adjustments and spiritual enhancements needed to be better equipped to live more powerful lives for Christ. Acts 1:8
Empowerment sessions offer the opportunity for one-on-one coaching, discipleship and self-improvement, in a confidential but very transparent group setting. Those who attend experience powerful personal sharing of life experiences and struggles which allows for all to defeat the lie of the enemy that says “you’re all alone in this”. You are not alone. You are just a few clicks away from your empowerment. You need to join us soon. When you begin to operate with power in EVERY area of your life, then you have achieved Powerful Living. Join your host, Henry Flowers, as we discover principles that produce the "rich and satisfying life" that Jesus said that He wants for us.
Let's also make strides in the area of teen pregnancy prevention. My book will help your teens avoid the dangers of excessive unsupervised idle time, which is the major cause of trouble for too many of our teens; and it will help them to move from where they are to living the life that they love. Get it here. http://amzn.com/1503271021
To hear my musical tribute to a father's dedication to his family, get my album "I Am With You", at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/henryflowers
Find out more about Sherman Bradley and The Warehouse Church here https://www.thewarehousechurch.org Need help dealing with Grief? https://www.griefshare.org
Exciting news!!! You can now join Henry, live via Zoom, for Empowerment Sessions every Sunday morning at 1030am EST, by clicking the link below, or by using the ID and passcode provided below. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82108038420?pwd=twW0ChMfqMskiPizTEFEbOPFq8zORT.1 Meeting ID: 821 0803 8420 Passcode: 439385 Empowerment sessions are not a church service—but are a service to the church. Our automobiles, homes, electronics and various other tools in our lives need maintenance, upgrades and repairs. Are we as a person any different? Empowerment Sessions are where believers get the opportunity to make the necessary corrections, adjustments and spiritual enhancements needed to be better equipped to live more powerful lives for Christ. Acts 1:8
Empowerment sessions offer the opportunity for one-on-one coaching, discipleship and self-improvement, in a confidential but very transparent group setting. Those who attend experience powerful personal sharing of life experiences and struggles which allows for all to defeat the lie of the enemy that says “you’re all alone in this”. You are not alone. You are just a few clicks away from your empowerment. You need to join us soon. When you begin to operate with power in EVERY area of your life, then you have achieved Powerful Living. Join your host, Henry Flowers, as we discover principles that produce the "rich and satisfying life" that Jesus said that He wants for us.
Let's also make strides in the area of teen pregnancy prevention. My book will help your teens avoid the dangers of excessive unsupervised idle time, which is the major cause of trouble for too many of our teens; and it will help them to move from where they are to living the life that they love. Get it here. http://amzn.com/1503271021
To hear my musical tribute to a father's dedication to his family, get my album "I Am With You", at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/henryflowers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello friends, Henry Flowers here Powerful Living Outreach Ministry has
got a really special guest for you today, my friend,
my fellow minister, mister Sherman Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Good day. Hey, it's a beautiful day.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I was excited to get your podcast information and your logo.
You sent a couple of things to me and I said,
look at my brother trying to do this thing on
a high level.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well that's the hope, but.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's the goal because you know, you know, I've been
in music for a long time and then you know,
getting into crossing over into videos and things like that
is just you know, too many times you see just
a lack of professionalism. You know, people really want to product,
and especially the people of God. Oh God call me,
it's just Jesus, and I just love them so much.
(01:01):
You know, there's a whole thing to be said about
being professional in your presentation of a product that you
especially if you want people to invest their time in
and invest their money in.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Saw your logo, it just made me smile. So tell
me about your media group and your hopes and thoughts
about your podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, the plan is to take what's called sharm Speaks
one word my first name being Sherman, and as one
word that along with the logo of Microphone, is what's
going to be the production for production company for the
things that I want to do, all things communication. So
(01:47):
first foremost of the podcast and Shehrm speaks is probably
just going to be the production the producing I'm thinking
of calling the podcast Good Grief, because my goal is
to really tap into the hearts of people who may
or may not know that they're challenged by grief and loss,
and to understand that grief does not only apply itself
(02:08):
to loss of life, whether it's a pet or someone
close to you, but grief can come from losing something
that's just very valuable to you, and you go through
this emotional place and state that requires some introspection, requires
some self awareness and some honesty about what it is
(02:28):
that you've lost. It can be divorce. It could be
a friendship. It could be a job. It could be
a prized possession. It could be you've had a natural
disaster of some sort and it has taken some things out.
It could have been a vacation you plan for two
years and then COVID happened and you couldn't take it.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You lost the money, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Things that you've lost, there is a real emotional challenge
that comes in these mons, moments that require our authenticity
with ourselves. And most people I find just try to
wash over it. They suppress it. They don't actually delve
into it. They don't ask themselves questions. There isn't any
time meditating or journaling regarding what it is that they've
(03:15):
lost and why they feel what they feel.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
They just attempt to move on and press on. But
that just lingers.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That is not the healthiest approach to navigating loss. So
I want to begin to unpack that on the podcast,
and there'll be some interviewing of people who've gone through
loss on various and variety of spectrums that.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You'll get to hear their personal.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Stories of their challenges, some who are in it, some
who have come through it, some who may have Aha
moments in the middle of it and realize, you know,
this was a little more let's say, pertinent than I
thought it was going to be once we begin to
untap it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So you're talking about grief and in this expect because
good grief like that suggests a lot that is not
necessarily there for some people because other people say, well, well,
what's the good that comes out of grief or talking
(04:17):
about it? Especially because are you am I in need
of counseling through this? Is it okay to just share
this with the brothers or sisters that's close to me?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Like how in depth? Who trust? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And then all of these things that are involved with grief.
So give me your thoughts on this. These levels of
grief being good.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
So very valid questions, and it is important to be
able to categorize and compartmentalize so that you can then.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Answer those questions more intellectually.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
When you think of We'll start with the major one
that people will identify with, and that's when I've lost
a loved one. There's a grieving process that we go through,
even though we have a tendency to not walk it
through or be intentional regarding it. Most will acknowledge it
is grief. If you lost a pet, you may not.
(05:11):
Some people will say I'm not grieving that I just
I lost it. It was a pet, I loved it.
I feel a certain way, but they may not associate
themselves with grieving or needing to process that grief.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And then there are some who will have.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
For instance, nine to eleven, there were people who didn't
know any of those three thousand plus people that died,
but they went to see counseling afterwards because their sensibility
is the way that they saw society and life as
a whole changed drastically.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I remember where I was. I remember the day. Yes,
I was a carpet cleaner for service Master, and the
ladies whose carpet I was cleaning, we grieved together in
that moment.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I had just left. I was on my way home
from God's Bible College. I was.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I walked in the doors of the news and it's
showing it. Nobody told me. I did not hear it
when it had happened. I am seeing the replay on
television because I was in route home. I remember that
vividly as well. And those moments that are monumental in
that regard require us to do some unpacking, and it may,
more than likely will require somebody who's a professional who
(06:23):
can assist us unpacking what we feel and why we
feel what we're feeling. Let me give you a personal story.
The most difficult loss that I can recall is probably
my mother. My grandmother was challenging as well, but I
didn't properly handle that one.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
But it wasn't as deep. There was no wound. It
was just the love loss.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
My mother's death was a wound, not just a loss,
because it was an unhealthy relationship that we both had
desires for it being healthier, but neither one of us
knew how to obtain that. So her loss left me
not only grief, but it left me with regrets and shame.
(07:08):
The day I buried my mother, a friend of mine
called and apologized for not being able to make the funeral.
That was a Friday afternoon. That Sunday, he committed suicide.
He's gone. I haven't grieved my mother. I'm going to
do his funeral several weeks later. I think it was
(07:30):
on February twelfth, because that's my grandmother's birthday. It was
a Monday, if I remember correctly. It was the year
because that Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday and the Philadelphia
Eagles won. I can remember these very tangible things in
my experience as I'm dealing with the grief and loss
of two people. Now it was less than three months
(07:51):
later that my mother in law died. I've not dealt
with the grief of my mother or my friend in
any manner that would allow me to have have to
deal with the grief of my mother in law passing,
who I loved and who now My wife is in grief,
and we're both grieving, and we're both trying to navigate
one another's grief, and in it it's just cloudy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It's messy.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
But because I had not really dealt with significantly the
unhealthy nature of the relationship between me and my mother
and what we both had longed for, that we could
never come together on to build something that we would
feel more.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Confident and appreciative of.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I carried that weight after she left, and I wasn't
aware of how big a weight it was. But I
was feeling grief in ways that was hitting me in
the most unopportune times. Standing in line at the grocery
store and I'm just overwhelmed with grief and loss and anxiety,
(09:00):
and I begin to cry, and I don't understand why
I'm feeling this so heavily. I was sitting in real time,
I was sitting on a plane and my wife is
next to me.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
We're on our way to California.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I'll never forget this We're going to Oakland, and I
just fel she was sleep so I didn't bother her.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But I just felt this overwhelming grief.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And I'm sitting on a plane with all these people around,
and I'm just crying and I don't understand why.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And I don't want to drunk, not just because other
people are around.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I don't want to feel the weight of what I'm
feeling that I can't fully comprehend that I'm starting to
get inklings of I know it's connected to what I
wanted that never came to be, but the fact that
it is now unable to be obtained was a part
of the process that I did not have an answer
(09:57):
to couple that with that cannot fix now that she's gone.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
What I had hopes for that I had suppressed.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Now those hopes that were suppressed come to the surface,
but they come to the surface with no way to
know how to actually navigate them. If that wasn't enough.
That same year, because my mother and John in January,
my friend I had the first week of February, we
buried him. I think it was February twelve. My mother
in law dies in May.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Now I need y'all to understand something here because in
addition to what happened that year, because you're about to
tell me something else now, I need everybody understand here
that all of these things are happening in his life
while he and his wife are both knee deep in
church planting, launching a ministry again for the really the
(10:51):
second all of these things you went through with the UMC,
like this is all that.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Time, Well, this is this is twenty eighteen and then
twenty nineteen is when we started engaging with the UMC.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But we were pastoring and I continued to pastor.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
There were times my wife challenged me that maybe I
needed to step away for a while, but I refused
because that was my life source that gave me. Because
I'm a communicator. That's my passion. It's my purpose. Whether
it's a pull pit, or it's some other platform, or
it's a street corner, that's just who I am. Whether
it is in poetry, or it's in authoring, or it's
(11:30):
on a podcast, or it's just one on ones with
somebody that I'm inspiring and pouring into.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It's just in my DNA. That's his strong suit. Correct Now,
I remember.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
My powerful living partners because we talk about this thoroughly,
about your strong suit, and your strong suit is a
good thing, but just understand your strong suit can be
hyper metabolic like you. It consumes you, you consume it.
It's a weird kind of relationship. So all this stuff
is happening, and while we are in ministry and doing
(12:01):
these things, see, we don't how so if you were
struggling with it, how does the average person, because you're
about to tell us something else that.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Happened, Yeah, how do we create these opportunities? Because if
it was weighing on you that way, what about the
average parishioner who didn't have.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, this is why counseling is important, and this is
why I went through ultimately a small group what's called
grief Share small group program that's thirteen weeks that in
a very detailed and structured manner, unpacks what grief looks
like and what God's process for helping us heal if
(12:49):
we'll engage it, if we'll accept the invitation into his
loving arms where he wants to nurture us and comfort
us in our time of grief. That's a process that
one has to be intentional with and must understand outside
of themselves, because there were things that I did not
want to delve into. There were things that were difficult
(13:11):
to process through. There were realizations I had to come
to grips with. I got asked the first time in
a way that I actually listened, because.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It's probably not the first time it was presented to me.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
But I got asked, what do I think my mother's
life was without her mother, who died when she was
a teenager. Because I had never asked myself that in
conjunction with my frustrations of what kind of mother she
was or wasn't to me. I only looked at me
and what my issues were with her and the challenges
(13:45):
I faced and the things that disappointed me. I never
ventured into her history because I was like three years
of age when my grandmother died, so I don't know her.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I didn't get to meet her.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I didn't have any kind of connection to recall or
think about what kind of person she was. That absentee.
He just left her as somebody I never knew, doesn't
even have pictures of I can't even remember what she
looks like visually. But when it came to processing grief,
this was one thing that I had to do, and
(14:16):
it was very painful because the things that were coming
to me, and some of the people that I began
to ask questions of talked about how my grandfather was
very tough and stern individual didn't and I remember him
being a tough.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And stern individual. He wasn't a big emotor.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You walked on eggshells around him, and that was the
nature of the family. Without a mother, and my mother's
oldest sister, my aunt, kind of took on the motherly role.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But then she died when I was like nineteen or twenty.
I was in the military.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I had to come back from Europe to Cincinnati for
her funeral. So now there's that grief and loss, and
I we had to process and begin to forgive myself
and forgive my mother for all of the anxiety and
disappointments that I had, and then for the regrets and
(15:12):
shame that I felt about myself and the fact that
I couldn't fix it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But I couldn't do that on my own.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I had to do that counseantly, and I thought it
for a while, and there was too much going on
in my life. What I just shared with you was
the first five months of twenty eighteen. But also in
twenty eighteen, we bought a home and moved into it
and staged the home with our stuff before we moved
(15:39):
into the new one, somebody wanted to buy it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
We moved out, take.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
All of our stuff, get into our new home, and
this person's decides he wants to switch from a conventional
to a VA loan, and a VA loan has different criteria,
and he had met the criteria and he wanted us
to wait another month. We didn't have time to wait.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
To wait while he gets his stuff figured out.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
No, no, no, we didn't have time to wait.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And this was the one thing I'm thinking is a
positive thing that's happening in this year with all the
discrief and loss that I've had, so to have this
put to a halt and I have to put the.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
House back on the market, and now there's nothing in.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
The house, so I have to restage the house to
get others to view the house, and.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Now I'm paying two house notes.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It was four months later before we got that house sold,
and we had to put several thousand dollars into it
because the next potential buyer wanted a few things change. Shocker, Yeah,
so now I'm dealing with that. At the same time,
I got a call. This is the second stint. I
(16:46):
got a call from one of my lovely children that
she was incarcerated. How's a substance abuse issue? And this
was the second trip in the first half. What I
forgot to mention between my mother's staff and my mother
in law's deaf is that my daughter calls me from jail.
Second half of twenty eighteen. I actually she gets in
(17:09):
again and I go see her. I thought I was
going to see her, mind you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I went all the way to Colorado to see her.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And you don't get to go into the building, and
you don't get to sit face to face. They didn't
tell me this on the phone. There's a building across
the street, and you get to sit in front of
a black and white monitor connected to other monitors where
you've got a little elbow room, but you could reach
out and touch the next person who's also on a
monitor talking to whoever they're talking to behind bars. That's
(17:36):
how impersonally, that's how the lack of privacy went amy.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And it's thirty it was twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's all you get, and you traveled how far for them,
all the way up to Denver, and you had no idea,
no idea.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
They didn't tell me that on the phone.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
They just told me the location, where to go, what
I needed to do to register. They didn't tell me
it was in another building and I wasn't going to
get to see her face to face. So I go there.
I do that. In the midst of having these two
house notes, I'm paying while still navigating this thing called
grief and finally in counseling and in small group such
(18:18):
that I am actively engaging it. But stuff is still
happening because at the same time, there was a gentleman
we went into a deal with real estate who let's
just say, I don't even know the details of what happened.
I just know we lost a large sum of money,
and that individual, shortly after that moved his whole family
(18:41):
out of state out west.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
All this is happening in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Then I go back out to Denver when it's time
for my daughter to be released, to literally walk her
out of her incarceration, and spend a week attempting to
get her into rehab with no success.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
For a variety of different reasons. This is all on
the heels up.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I spent from the time that I visited her to
the time that I went to get her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It's like six weeks later.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I spent time on the phone with Denver's correctional institutions
trying to get them to release her to Ohio Parole.
From Denver's Parole, they wouldn't do it. I had already
had a program lined up here in the city that
she could attend. I had all the documentation that everything
I needed, but they wouldn't release her. They justified it
(19:37):
based upon the level of misdemeanor that she had for
why she was incarcerated. Wouldn't allow them to release her
to another state to her father.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
To go through rehab.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Mind you, at that time, I was running a drug
rehab program for men. So I'm faced with trying to
get her to rehab and I can't.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So I can't find a place.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So the place that had the closest available opening in
the not too distant future, we put her up in
a hotel across the street from it.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It was barely forty eight hours later. I got a
call and she's got a hold of bad dope and
she's in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Oh no, and I have to rush back out there
and I sit with her for dan half for two
days as she's.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
In there recovering.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Unfortunately she would But all this is transpiring in twenty
twenty eighteen, and it was that December that I was
on the phone with a friend of mine and he
said to me, sureman.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
You might be depressed. That's like, no, I'm not depressed.
Matter of fact, you know what, I hadn't even started.
You know, I hadn't even started. I stepped back.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I had not even started the Greek course yet, and
I hadn't started counseling yet. It wasn't until he mentioned
to me, you might be depressed that I began to
think about it for the first time, because I'm like,
I'm an optimistic person.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I don't get depressed. This never happened before in my life.
And that was the first inkling.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
The second inkling was my wife mentioned it right before
we went on medication, and I thought, no, no, no,
And so she's like, you need to call a friend
of ours who's retired psychologists. Call, just call and have
a conversation with her. I was like, fine, fine, fine,
I'll call. I talked to her, I'll call her. So
I called her and she's like, Sherman, you're not only depressed,
(21:37):
you need to take medication. I was like, the devil
is a lot. I might be depressed, but I ain't
taking no medication. What else can I do?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Because see see this is where oh my gosh, see
we can have so many conversations about this, where we
don't allow these kinds of possibilities in the body of Christ. No, no,
I'm not depressed. I have the mind of Christ. I'm
not doing medication. Man, listen, physicians, heal yourselves.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I trust God for all of my hamiling. He is
my medicine. Yeah, now we do. Now. Now let me
say this.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
While I wasn't gonna take medication because I believed exactly
what you said for myself and I was determined I
was gonna do whatever I needed to do, then I
have to do medication because I believed that there was
a process I could go through that was with help
outside of myself.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
As much as I would get help from God himself.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
As I would draw into what dis grief look like
and what does God want me to know from it?
Some of that came from what I would read in
the Bible. Some of that came from this one on
one counseling. Some of it came from this small group
session that I went through all three of these components,
and my own willingness when necessary to get to that
end result physician healed myself. Now I will say that
(22:54):
I will not say that nobody needs medication, because I've
seen some folk who have been in the pressure for
so long it has altered the chemical makeup of how
their brain functions.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Because this brain is a muscle.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And you can overly think yourself into a disruption of
what is the normal process for how the brain is
supposed to function.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And there has been.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Proof that you can help with the assistance of writing
some of that damage with certain kinds of medication, not
for the longevity, but for a process. If not, that
means the other work has to still happen as well.
It's not just the medication. We don't do medication for
medication's sake as an avoidance to the work that has
to be done internally in one's mind about how one
(23:37):
got into the particament that they're in in the first place.
But I do believe there are some folks who will
have to go through that. I just didn't believe I
needed it, and I knew there was a process I
can incorporate, and I knew I had a level of
faith to say that I'll work through this, and I did,
and I am a living example of being able to
come out of that because I had a wall, and
I had a wall so hard that my boy started
(24:00):
revealing to me even after I had begun these courses
of correction through shingles.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Oh boy, Now I suspect some of this was also
in conjunction to because shingles didn't happen until twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Or twenty twenty one, I can't remember, but it's from
what I did. It took, it is it is.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
It took me all of twenty nineteen to work through
what twenty eighteen was. It took me, and I thought
I was coming out in twenty twenty until COVID hit, and.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Then I realized there was more than.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I needed to unpack because there was other issues of
loss that were taking place in compounding the losses and
grief that I was feeling from getting through these three
people that I loved and.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
My daughter's challenges. So I did get her out to
finish the story.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
After the hospital, we did get out, and we did
before I came back to Cincinnati find a place to
enroll her in, and she did go through rehab and
she was doing well for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But all of that in twenty eighteen was just.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
A weight I have never felt before in my life
and never want to feel ever again, and a challenge
that I had to endure that still feels fresh today
because of how deep the wound was and how far
I had to go to process truth so the lies
(25:32):
I had believed such that I could be free of
the baggage of shame and guilt and regrets, because regrets is.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
Ruminating on the grief over and over and over again,
not letting it go, not allowing oneself to process through
such that you can exhale, cast that burden before the
throne and leave it there, Let it be burned up
in the fire of your worship and your praise and
your acceptance of God and who you are and Him,
rather than the weight of the identity that it's shifted
(26:01):
when we allow those things that have happened, regrets and
loss and disappointment to reshape our thinking about ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
In your experience. How would you.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
How would you measure how we as ministers possibly have
failed our followers in this area.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Well, we don't talk about the nuances of grief and loss.
Grief is typically connected to death of some kind, and
then we'll delve into it, but I don't know how
deep we actually delve into it.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's not a popular subject. It's not when somebody's going to.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Come to you and say, more times than not, will
you do a study on.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Grief and death and loss?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
They might do one on heaven, but merely is it
about grief and loss? And when we do, we may
just do a series on it and it may cover two, three,
four weeks and we move on because there are so
many other topics we have to address.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
But in every church there ought to be what's called
grief Share.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
There ought to be this course that I went through
thirteen weeks, small group where everyone who's had some kind
of grief of loss should go through, because it will
enlighten you to what God says regarding it and how
to not get stuck in it, and why it's important
to avail yourself to the truths that are connected to it,
because oftentimes we allow things to linger we're not consciously
(27:34):
aware of, but it affects how we see life, it
affects how we see death, it affects how we see relationships,
and that's very important to a walk of faith.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So I'm going to have that information because I'm gonna
get it from you about this Grief Shared class, and
we'll put it in the description box and see what
we can do to make that available.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
So that's always prosable. Twice, let me make that clear.
At first thirteen weeks, I was numb for most of it,
and the difficulty for me was that I was in
a group of about eight.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I was the only minority.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
For one I wound up being the only male because
the other two males dropped out, And I'm in there
with all women who really deeply longed for the return
of the person that they lost. I was the only
one in there who didn't have a healthy relationship with
the person that they lost and was grieving the difficulties
of that. Everybody else had these loving relationships and stories
(28:29):
that they would tell and all the fun that they
had and all those experiences.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I didn't have that story.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And so I'm sitting there listening every session to all
of these positive experiences, and I'm sitting there with one
that wasn't positive, and I'm trying to make sense of
it all, and how in the world am I supposed
to value myself as a good person when I couldn't
even have a healthy relationship with my biological mother.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And I got these women and.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
They're talking about relationship they're having with their husbands or
their children who they've lost, and how healthy it was,
and how they miss them, and how they longed for this.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I didn't really have a lie for I just had
a longing for a different story.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So you couldn't even late.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I couldn't even relate the first time. I was just
numb in there. I'm being hit with all these stories
and information. There's wonderful, mature, wonderful stories. They interviewed tons
of people every week. There were multiple interviews with people
and their challenges of how they navigated for grief, how
they got stuck or how they came out, and what
it had to happen, what kind of resources and support
(29:27):
that they needed in order to come out, how long
it took. I was sure what it was going and
so forth. But me that first thirteen weeks, man I
was just like, I know I need this. I know
I have to be here. You can't quit, you can't run,
you gotta injustice, you gotta digestice, you gotta think you
got the work book, you got you know, I do
the work, and then I might skip a week, and
then I had.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Two weeks in a row because it was a lot
to take in.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I had a lot of loss and death in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
In twenty eighteen, while you're full time ministry, Wow, wow,
everything going on with your personally.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
My wife is grieving from the loss of her mother
and some of the dysfunctions she went through with remaining
family members who rejected her.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
So she's got her own grief.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So I'm also trying to hold her up in this
process as well.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And it was catastrophic. Was it was nightmares.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
So I wound up with and then and then when
COVID happens, and the race relation stuff is happening during COVID,
and we got folks in the street and rights, We've
got the anxiety, and I got people coming to me
because I'm a pastor wanting answers I don't have, and
wanted to talk about stuff. And then people's ignorances and
biases are revealing themselves who may not have revealed them
previously because they don't fully understand this whole George Floyd
(30:43):
thing or Rihanna or Almah Arbery.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Or or or or.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, these are some of the prominent ones, prominent ones
in that timeframe, and that's stress. That's a weight to carry,
to have to be viewed as someone who's supposed to
have answers.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
When I walked in and you're leading this because one
of my first connections with you was at the Mosaics
event and y'all, y'all just understand it's heavy.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
They're heavy. Yes, this was not new to my life.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
In other words, when these things, because I can go
back to two thousand and one when I was with
passa day malnch a new prospect before the riots took place.
We were there burying the mails some of the males
who had died at the hands of the police before
two thousand and one and the uprising took place.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
So I've always thomised, Yeah, Timothy Thomas.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Was a spark for that, but there were like thirteen
unarmed over the course of like four or five years.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
That was the impetus to this.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Implosion in the city, and so I've been accustomed and
been involved, but this was this timing was on top
of all the things that were going on with my
life personally, just made it a tremendous way to try
to carry and I needed to get help and support
and in order to do so.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
What's going to be your.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Hope for your upcoming podcast Good Grief? And I'm definitely
going to do what I can to help you get
reach and spread the word about it. What's going to
be your hope for your podcast? Let's just say the
first thirty to sixty days of your podcast launch.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You know, that's a very good question.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Ultimately, I want folks to know my personal story in this,
so I am a practitioner through experience. I'm not just
someone pontificating out here because it's a subject matter I
think is important. I'm launched into this because of what
(32:50):
I went through, because I was not prepared. I did
not understand grief. I had not done any work in
the grief category of any magnitude. It literally knocked me
off my feet. And it is only the grace of
God that I could stand and stand in pulpits and
attempt to continue to lead. I don't know how well
I was doing that, but I know the people loved
me enough to allow me to be me and go
(33:12):
through that. And even though my wife at times wanted
me to step away from it, it was my source
of strength.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
It was my lifeblood.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
My preparing and reading and studying and going before the
Lord to deliver and walk in the truth of the
role that I'm.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Called in purpose to do is life giving for me.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And to be in brief and lose that at the
same time just felt like too much for me.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I would recommend that for everybody.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Everybody's got to look at their individual temperament, what their
capability is, how deep the wounds are, what other resources
are they utilizing to get help and support. So I'm
not saying this is a way that everybody should go
through it, but it helped for me.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
And don't want to unpack the story.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
I want to bring in folks to interview who will
tell their stories and we get to dialogue about their challenges,
and we get to speak into the audience about where
to get help, who to get help, how to go
about it, how to see the warning signs, what to
begin to prepare yourself, for if you're someone who's living
with somebody who's grieving and you're not the one with
(34:18):
the direct loss, but you're trying to navigate this difficult
world with them when they won't go get the help
that they need. And there's a variety of different things
that we can continue to unpack on this subject matter
to help people out there who are struggling, and not
just the loss of.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Death from death.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
We want to really tap into people to help them
better understand how to navigate losses that were important that
we typically don't really give credence to. We typically just
suppress and move on to the next thing, or the
next person, or the next job, or.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
The next hobby.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
You know, when I tore my ACL on a basketball court,
I was like forty one years of aw.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I've been playing basketball since I was little. I quit
after that. Literally, I didn't pick a ball up for.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Years because one, I didn't want to go through that
rehab again, and I didn't want to deal with the
whole insurance issue again. And I picked up something else.
I picked up golf instead.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Nobody's going to hit me on the golf course. I
don't have to leave my feet on a golf course,
and so.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Being willing to make drastic changes is not something I've
ever been afraid of, but I find many people are
or they'll make drastic changes to avoid something, not out
of a place of growth and development and healing, but
out of a place of suppression and avoidance.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And so we want to bring some of these things
to the surface.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
To try to help people who may not know they're
grieving the loss of a community or a job or
a friendship in a way that's more impactful to them
than they're willing to get credence too, because it hurts,
and there may be some guilt involved, there may be
some regrets involved, there may be some shame involved, and
we don't typically allow ourselves a healthy way of walking
(36:13):
through that.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
We typically medicate or suppress and move on. But we
carry that.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Baggage with us into the next relationship, and we only
compound the next grieving situation when that one doesn't work
as well.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
This is where it comes into play where we talk
about the strong suit, and in many different areas of
our lives, when I show up in a room, I
automatically put on my strong suit, whether it's being funny
or singing or speaking, whatever your gift is, you pull
(36:52):
on strong suit, and it can happen that many times
we use the strong suit to protect others from seeing
who we really are. We're constantly trying to look good
and trying to be right and not look bad. And
these are things that society has told us that we
(37:15):
ought to be over and over again. So I appreciate
your desire for being willing to step up and say, hey, listen,
this is my story.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Because the.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Authenticity part of this whole dialogue is huge, and we.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Have to unpack the fact that there are stages of
grief as well. Some say five, some say step seven,
but will unpack these stages so folk can understand there
is no cookie cutter process to grieving.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Each person is.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Going to experience differently, and each person needs to be
allowed to experience it differently.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
But then we also have to look at the other
side of this coin.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
People say some of the stupidest things to people grieving,
and they try to make statements to move them out
of grieving, or they try to put some kind of
Christianese on the grieving instead of allowing people to be
in the messiness of it.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Because you've lost.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Someone or something very near and dear to you, God
had a better plan.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Your child is now in heaven. Is your child's in
a better place?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah? Yeah, that realization takes time for.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Someone to internalize, to process, and they may never be
good with it, but they can go on from it.
Because some folk want an expiration date on grief, it
can linger. Some folk won't give it up, and it
will shut down their quality of life because they won't
(38:55):
come out of the grieving.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Some think that if I'm not grieving, then.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I'm not expecting the loss and I really love the
person that died.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
No, you can do both.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
You can walk out of it and walk into the
fullness of who you've been created to do.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Because, like you said, God is sovereign. His ways are
not out our ways, his thoughts and our thoughts. As
he chooses to do, he's going to do.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And it's going to work together for the good of
those that love him and for those who call it according.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
To his purpose. So the question becomes in what do
you believe? But that's not surf, that's not top of mind.
When you're in the thrones of grief and loss.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
You're thinking about what you're missing and how well it
was or how bad it.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Was, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And it takes time to walk through that and not
be so reminded.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Of it or processing it in ways that may cost time,
in ways that without it with them here you would
never have to invest.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And so that's very real. Hmm wow.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I'm looking forward to hearing more. Definitely looking forward to
being a part of your ministry as well.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I do know that there is.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Some good grief that needs to occur in my life
as it relates to my never having a rock solid
relationship with my father. You know, someone call me the
other day asked me about my father. I was my
father in the system, Well, my dad is up there
in age.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I think my dad.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Is going to be let's see.
Speaker 9 (40:27):
He's was he nineteen years older than or something older
than my mother, So my dad is probably going to
be about eighty eight or eighty six somewhere this year.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And they called saying that my dad was in the
hospital COLPD, things like that, and I just began to
think about him and I sat with it for a
minute because there was something that was not in my
heart that I thought should be there, and I just
(40:59):
had to sit with a moment of sadness, saying, you know,
if this is the time that my dad passes away,
I think I'm going to grieve because I won't grieve.
I won't have anything to grieve because I don't have
any of it.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
My daddy always right, My daddy used.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
To no man told the story from the platform A
couple of times. I used to go out there and
play catch with my dad. I throw the ball and
the ball would never come back because he was never there.
And that's grief that I know I may not even have.
I may not even have the capacity to deal with
that loss at missing part of my life until after
(41:41):
he's gone.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's real.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I know. The last plan I'll maker is someone once
said I can't miss anything I never had, and I
disagree with that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Is that what someone said?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
And there are people who believe that, especially as it
relates to relationships. And since biologically you have a male
and a female parent, your DNA is interrelated to their DNA.
You have likenesses because they are the parts of you
(42:21):
that create you. Absolutely so, even in the context of
what God intended relationally where to wait until marriage, conceive
and have this child and are married. They've created a
covenant bond that as they love on this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Child, the child is becoming.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Well rounded psychologically, emotionally, and physically by healthy care of
two loving parents.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
You remove one, you've removed that part of the equation.
Now Mom can attempt to be both, but mom is
it both.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
She'll do the very best she can, but there's a
void that's missing.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
That was the original intent.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
And anytime you do not have the original intent of
something operating, misuse is occurring. We don't like to call
it abuse, but it is abuse anytime you miss use
something outside of its intended purpose. The intended purpose of
coming together is for procreation. Yes, there's pleasure attached to it,
(43:30):
but the goal is to continue to propagate the earth
with humanity.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Well, we've created other goals for.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
This coming together without that, such that we don't have
to be married to do that. We don't have to
be in covenant arrangement. We have to be in covenant agreement,
and we can have multiple partners. Failing to realize that
we're connecting our DNA, we're transferring fluids every time, and
we're creating dysfunctions because we're operating outside of.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
The original intent.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Now you couple this with there's loss when there there's
only one parent there. That loss is typically not designed
or not presented in a way that you need to
grieve it.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
They just matter of factly, it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
You only had one parent, or maybe there's a surrogate somewhere,
maybe you had an uncle who stepped in, Maybe you
had a next door neighbor to stepped in, maybe you
had a coach that stepped in, and we go on
with that, but there needs to be a healthy grieving
of that.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
There were expectations.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Even if it's just what you saw modeled in the
community that you lived in by children who had their
actual biological father in the family, it gives you a
inference of what could have been, and there's always a
sense of loss in that as you go through.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Because there's certain things you're going to miss out of.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Like you said, you're throwing a ball and there's no
dad on the other end to catch it and throw
it back.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
That's a loss.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
There's grieving that comes in that because there's a natural
DNA psychological, physical, and emotional connection even when there's an absence,
and that must be walked through in processed through such
that you can be healthier going forward, especially as you're
going to take on a role one day of being
a father.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
And how is that going to play itself out? Are
you going to overly.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Engage yourself and involve yourself in the life because you
had no one in your life and you had no
one to step in and be as sarrogate or are
you void of what you don't know because you just
don't know and you are you too proud to go
get assistance with what you don't know because you never
had a father to teach you so that you could
be the best father you need to be. We typically
(45:35):
just tough it out. That's what we do as man.
We're rarely going to ask for help and ways that
are going to be uncomfortable to us if it means
we're going to have to do some reflecting on some very.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Painful things in the process of getting this.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Help, and we don't typically like we typically like to
tell help how to help us on top of it.
So you got to be the kind of help I
want to help me if I'm going to ask you
for help. And that's oftentime, not the totality of the
help that we need, and this is not the depth
of the help that we need. And so these are
natural dynamics that operate relationally that we have to give
(46:07):
more credence to so that we can be healthier for
whatever is next in our lives.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
What he said, Henry Flowers Powerful Living Outreach Ministry is listening.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Y'all want to subscribe and make.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Sure you turn the notifications because when this brother's ministry
gets launched, I want to be able to give you
an opportunity to be a part of it as well,
because we got some good things to unpack and uncover
and for the safe everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
And if you're local, you can find us in Finnytown.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
If you're in Cincinnati, Ohio, where our church, the Warehouse
operates on Sunday mornings ten eight m six' nine to
One Fleming, road we'd love to see.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
There Henry flowers here With Pastor Sherman, bradley looking forward
to his Podcast Good. Grief ye, man all need to be.
Ready it's about to go. Down In jesus', NAME i
ain't going to wear coming back
Hello friends, Henry Flowers here Powerful Living Outreach Ministry has
got a really special guest for you today, my friend,
my fellow minister, mister Sherman Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Good day. Hey, it's a beautiful day.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I was excited to get your podcast information and your logo.
You sent a couple of things to me and I said,
look at my brother trying to do this thing on
a high level.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well that's the hope, but.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's the goal because you know, you know, I've been
in music for a long time and then you know,
getting into crossing over into videos and things like that
is just you know, too many times you see just
a lack of professionalism. You know, people really want to product,
and especially the people of God. Oh God call me,
it's just Jesus, and I just love them so much.
(01:01):
You know, there's a whole thing to be said about
being professional in your presentation of a product that you
especially if you want people to invest their time in
and invest their money in.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And when I.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Saw your logo, it just made me smile. So tell
me about your media group and your hopes and thoughts
about your podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, the plan is to take what's called sharm Speaks
one word my first name being Sherman, and as one
word that along with the logo of Microphone, is what's
going to be the production for production company for the
things that I want to do, all things communication. So
(01:47):
first foremost of the podcast and Shehrm speaks is probably
just going to be the production the producing I'm thinking
of calling the podcast Good Grief, because my goal is
to really tap into the hearts of people who may
or may not know that they're challenged by grief and loss,
and to understand that grief does not only apply itself
(02:08):
to loss of life, whether it's a pet or someone
close to you, but grief can come from losing something
that's just very valuable to you, and you go through
this emotional place and state that requires some introspection, requires
some self awareness and some honesty about what it is
(02:28):
that you've lost. It can be divorce. It could be
a friendship. It could be a job. It could be
a prized possession. It could be you've had a natural
disaster of some sort and it has taken some things out.
It could have been a vacation you plan for two
years and then COVID happened and you couldn't take it.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You lost the money, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Things that you've lost, there is a real emotional challenge
that comes in these mons, moments that require our authenticity
with ourselves. And most people I find just try to
wash over it. They suppress it. They don't actually delve
into it. They don't ask themselves questions. There isn't any
time meditating or journaling regarding what it is that they've
(03:15):
lost and why they feel what they feel.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
They just attempt to move on and press on. But
that just lingers.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That is not the healthiest approach to navigating loss. So
I want to begin to unpack that on the podcast,
and there'll be some interviewing of people who've gone through
loss on various and variety of spectrums that.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
You'll get to hear their personal.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Stories of their challenges, some who are in it, some
who have come through it, some who may have Aha
moments in the middle of it and realize, you know,
this was a little more let's say, pertinent than I
thought it was going to be once we begin to
untap it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
So you're talking about grief and in this expect because
good grief like that suggests a lot that is not
necessarily there for some people because other people say, well, well,
what's the good that comes out of grief or talking
(04:17):
about it? Especially because are you am I in need
of counseling through this? Is it okay to just share
this with the brothers or sisters that's close to me?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Like how in depth? Who trust? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And then all of these things that are involved with grief.
So give me your thoughts on this. These levels of
grief being good.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
So very valid questions, and it is important to be
able to categorize and compartmentalize so that you can then.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Answer those questions more intellectually.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
When you think of We'll start with the major one
that people will identify with, and that's when I've lost
a loved one. There's a grieving process that we go through,
even though we have a tendency to not walk it
through or be intentional regarding it. Most will acknowledge it
is grief. If you lost a pet, you may not.
(05:11):
Some people will say I'm not grieving that I just
I lost it. It was a pet, I loved it.
I feel a certain way, but they may not associate
themselves with grieving or needing to process that grief.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And then there are some who will have.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
For instance, nine to eleven, there were people who didn't
know any of those three thousand plus people that died,
but they went to see counseling afterwards because their sensibility
is the way that they saw society and life as
a whole changed drastically.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I remember where I was. I remember the day. Yes,
I was a carpet cleaner for service Master, and the
ladies whose carpet I was cleaning, we grieved together in
that moment.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I had just left. I was on my way home
from God's Bible College. I was.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I walked in the doors of the news and it's
showing it. Nobody told me. I did not hear it
when it had happened. I am seeing the replay on
television because I was in route home. I remember that
vividly as well. And those moments that are monumental in
that regard require us to do some unpacking, and it may,
more than likely will require somebody who's a professional who
(06:23):
can assist us unpacking what we feel and why we
feel what we're feeling. Let me give you a personal story.
The most difficult loss that I can recall is probably
my mother. My grandmother was challenging as well, but I
didn't properly handle that one.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
But it wasn't as deep. There was no wound. It
was just the love loss.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
My mother's death was a wound, not just a loss,
because it was an unhealthy relationship that we both had
desires for it being healthier, but neither one of us
knew how to obtain that. So her loss left me
not only grief, but it left me with regrets and shame.
(07:08):
The day I buried my mother, a friend of mine
called and apologized for not being able to make the funeral.
That was a Friday afternoon. That Sunday, he committed suicide.
He's gone. I haven't grieved my mother. I'm going to
do his funeral several weeks later. I think it was
(07:30):
on February twelfth, because that's my grandmother's birthday. It was
a Monday, if I remember correctly. It was the year
because that Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday and the Philadelphia
Eagles won. I can remember these very tangible things in
my experience as I'm dealing with the grief and loss
of two people. Now it was less than three months
(07:51):
later that my mother in law died. I've not dealt
with the grief of my mother or my friend in
any manner that would allow me to have have to
deal with the grief of my mother in law passing,
who I loved and who now My wife is in grief,
and we're both grieving, and we're both trying to navigate
one another's grief, and in it it's just cloudy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
It's messy.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
But because I had not really dealt with significantly the
unhealthy nature of the relationship between me and my mother
and what we both had longed for, that we could
never come together on to build something that we would
feel more.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Confident and appreciative of.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I carried that weight after she left, and I wasn't
aware of how big a weight it was. But I
was feeling grief in ways that was hitting me in
the most unopportune times. Standing in line at the grocery
store and I'm just overwhelmed with grief and loss and anxiety,
(09:00):
and I begin to cry, and I don't understand why
I'm feeling this so heavily. I was sitting in real time,
I was sitting on a plane and my wife is
next to me.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
We're on our way to California.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I'll never forget this We're going to Oakland, and I
just fel she was sleep so I didn't bother her.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But I just felt this overwhelming grief.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And I'm sitting on a plane with all these people around,
and I'm just crying and I don't understand why.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And I don't want to drunk, not just because other
people are around.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I don't want to feel the weight of what I'm
feeling that I can't fully comprehend that I'm starting to
get inklings of I know it's connected to what I
wanted that never came to be, but the fact that
it is now unable to be obtained was a part
of the process that I did not have an answer
(09:57):
to couple that with that cannot fix now that she's gone.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
What I had hopes for that I had suppressed.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Now those hopes that were suppressed come to the surface,
but they come to the surface with no way to
know how to actually navigate them. If that wasn't enough.
That same year, because my mother and John in January,
my friend I had the first week of February, we
buried him. I think it was February twelve. My mother
in law dies in May.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Now I need y'all to understand something here because in
addition to what happened that year, because you're about to
tell me something else now, I need everybody understand here
that all of these things are happening in his life
while he and his wife are both knee deep in
church planting, launching a ministry again for the really the
(10:51):
second all of these things you went through with the UMC,
like this is all that.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Time, Well, this is this is twenty eighteen and then
twenty nineteen is when we started engaging with the UMC.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But we were pastoring and I continued to pastor.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
There were times my wife challenged me that maybe I
needed to step away for a while, but I refused
because that was my life source that gave me. Because
I'm a communicator. That's my passion. It's my purpose. Whether
it's a pull pit, or it's some other platform, or
it's a street corner, that's just who I am. Whether
it is in poetry, or it's in authoring, or it's
(11:30):
on a podcast, or it's just one on ones with
somebody that I'm inspiring and pouring into.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It's just in my DNA. That's his strong suit. Correct Now,
I remember.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
My powerful living partners because we talk about this thoroughly,
about your strong suit, and your strong suit is a
good thing, but just understand your strong suit can be
hyper metabolic like you. It consumes you, you consume it.
It's a weird kind of relationship. So all this stuff
is happening, and while we are in ministry and doing
(12:01):
these things, see, we don't how so if you were
struggling with it, how does the average person, because you're
about to tell us something else that.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Happened, Yeah, how do we create these opportunities? Because if
it was weighing on you that way, what about the
average parishioner who didn't have.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, this is why counseling is important, and this is
why I went through ultimately a small group what's called
grief Share small group program that's thirteen weeks that in
a very detailed and structured manner, unpacks what grief looks
like and what God's process for helping us heal if
(12:49):
we'll engage it, if we'll accept the invitation into his
loving arms where he wants to nurture us and comfort
us in our time of grief. That's a process that
one has to be intentional with and must understand outside
of themselves, because there were things that I did not
want to delve into. There were things that were difficult
(13:11):
to process through. There were realizations I had to come
to grips with. I got asked the first time in
a way that I actually listened, because.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It's probably not the first time it was presented to me.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
But I got asked, what do I think my mother's
life was without her mother, who died when she was
a teenager. Because I had never asked myself that in
conjunction with my frustrations of what kind of mother she
was or wasn't to me. I only looked at me
and what my issues were with her and the challenges
(13:45):
I faced and the things that disappointed me. I never
ventured into her history because I was like three years
of age when my grandmother died, so I don't know her.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I didn't get to meet her.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I didn't have any kind of connection to recall or
think about what kind of person she was. That absentee.
He just left her as somebody I never knew, doesn't
even have pictures of I can't even remember what she
looks like visually. But when it came to processing grief,
this was one thing that I had to do, and
(14:16):
it was very painful because the things that were coming
to me, and some of the people that I began
to ask questions of talked about how my grandfather was
very tough and stern individual didn't and I remember him
being a tough.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And stern individual. He wasn't a big emotor.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You walked on eggshells around him, and that was the
nature of the family. Without a mother, and my mother's
oldest sister, my aunt, kind of took on the motherly role.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
But then she died when I was like nineteen or twenty.
I was in the military.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I had to come back from Europe to Cincinnati for
her funeral. So now there's that grief and loss, and
I we had to process and begin to forgive myself
and forgive my mother for all of the anxiety and
disappointments that I had, and then for the regrets and
(15:12):
shame that I felt about myself and the fact that
I couldn't fix it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But I couldn't do that on my own.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I had to do that counseantly, and I thought it
for a while, and there was too much going on
in my life. What I just shared with you was
the first five months of twenty eighteen. But also in
twenty eighteen, we bought a home and moved into it
and staged the home with our stuff before we moved
(15:39):
into the new one, somebody wanted to buy it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
We moved out, take.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
All of our stuff, get into our new home, and
this person's decides he wants to switch from a conventional
to a VA loan, and a VA loan has different criteria,
and he had met the criteria and he wanted us
to wait another month. We didn't have time to wait.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
To wait while he gets his stuff figured out.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
No, no, no, we didn't have time to wait.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
And this was the one thing I'm thinking is a
positive thing that's happening in this year with all the
discrief and loss that I've had, so to have this
put to a halt and I have to put the.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
House back on the market, and now there's nothing in.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
The house, so I have to restage the house to
get others to view the house, and.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Now I'm paying two house notes.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It was four months later before we got that house sold,
and we had to put several thousand dollars into it
because the next potential buyer wanted a few things change. Shocker, Yeah,
so now I'm dealing with that. At the same time,
I got a call. This is the second stint. I
(16:46):
got a call from one of my lovely children that
she was incarcerated. How's a substance abuse issue? And this
was the second trip in the first half. What I
forgot to mention between my mother's staff and my mother
in law's deaf is that my daughter calls me from jail.
Second half of twenty eighteen. I actually she gets in
(17:09):
again and I go see her. I thought I was
going to see her, mind you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I went all the way to Colorado to see her.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And you don't get to go into the building, and
you don't get to sit face to face. They didn't
tell me this on the phone. There's a building across
the street, and you get to sit in front of
a black and white monitor connected to other monitors where
you've got a little elbow room, but you could reach
out and touch the next person who's also on a
monitor talking to whoever they're talking to behind bars. That's
(17:36):
how impersonally, that's how the lack of privacy went amy.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And it's thirty it was twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's all you get, and you traveled how far for them,
all the way up to Denver, and you had no idea,
no idea.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
They didn't tell me that on the phone.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
They just told me the location, where to go, what
I needed to do to register. They didn't tell me
it was in another building and I wasn't going to
get to see her face to face. So I go there.
I do that. In the midst of having these two
house notes, I'm paying while still navigating this thing called
grief and finally in counseling and in small group such
(18:18):
that I am actively engaging it. But stuff is still
happening because at the same time, there was a gentleman
we went into a deal with real estate who let's
just say, I don't even know the details of what happened.
I just know we lost a large sum of money,
and that individual, shortly after that moved his whole family
(18:41):
out of state out west.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
All this is happening in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Then I go back out to Denver when it's time
for my daughter to be released, to literally walk her
out of her incarceration, and spend a week attempting to
get her into rehab with no success.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
For a variety of different reasons. This is all on
the heels up.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I spent from the time that I visited her to
the time that I went to get her.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It's like six weeks later.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I spent time on the phone with Denver's correctional institutions
trying to get them to release her to Ohio Parole.
From Denver's Parole, they wouldn't do it. I had already
had a program lined up here in the city that
she could attend. I had all the documentation that everything
I needed, but they wouldn't release her. They justified it
(19:37):
based upon the level of misdemeanor that she had for
why she was incarcerated. Wouldn't allow them to release her
to another state to her father.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
To go through rehab.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Mind you, at that time, I was running a drug
rehab program for men. So I'm faced with trying to
get her to rehab and I can't.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So I can't find a place.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So the place that had the closest available opening in
the not too distant future, we put her up in
a hotel across the street from it.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It was barely forty eight hours later. I got a
call and she's got a hold of bad dope and
she's in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Oh no, and I have to rush back out there
and I sit with her for dan half for two
days as she's.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
In there recovering.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Unfortunately she would But all this is transpiring in twenty
twenty eighteen, and it was that December that I was
on the phone with a friend of mine and he
said to me, sureman.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
You might be depressed. That's like, no, I'm not depressed.
Matter of fact, you know what, I hadn't even started.
You know, I hadn't even started. I stepped back.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I had not even started the Greek course yet, and
I hadn't started counseling yet. It wasn't until he mentioned
to me, you might be depressed that I began to
think about it for the first time, because I'm like,
I'm an optimistic person.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I don't get depressed. This never happened before in my life.
And that was the first inkling.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
The second inkling was my wife mentioned it right before
we went on medication, and I thought, no, no, no,
And so she's like, you need to call a friend
of ours who's retired psychologists. Call, just call and have
a conversation with her. I was like, fine, fine, fine,
I'll call. I talked to her, I'll call her. So
I called her and she's like, Sherman, you're not only depressed,
(21:37):
you need to take medication. I was like, the devil
is a lot. I might be depressed, but I ain't
taking no medication. What else can I do?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Because see see this is where oh my gosh, see
we can have so many conversations about this, where we
don't allow these kinds of possibilities in the body of Christ. No, no,
I'm not depressed. I have the mind of Christ. I'm
not doing medication. Man, listen, physicians, heal yourselves.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I trust God for all of my hamiling. He is
my medicine. Yeah, now we do. Now. Now let me
say this.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
While I wasn't gonna take medication because I believed exactly
what you said for myself and I was determined I
was gonna do whatever I needed to do, then I
have to do medication because I believed that there was
a process I could go through that was with help
outside of myself.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
As much as I would get help from God himself.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
As I would draw into what dis grief look like
and what does God want me to know from it?
Some of that came from what I would read in
the Bible. Some of that came from this one on
one counseling. Some of it came from this small group
session that I went through all three of these components,
and my own willingness when necessary to get to that
end result physician healed myself. Now I will say that
(22:54):
I will not say that nobody needs medication, because I've
seen some folk who have been in the pressure for
so long it has altered the chemical makeup of how
their brain functions.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Because this brain is a muscle.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
And you can overly think yourself into a disruption of
what is the normal process for how the brain is
supposed to function.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And there has been.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Proof that you can help with the assistance of writing
some of that damage with certain kinds of medication, not
for the longevity, but for a process. If not, that
means the other work has to still happen as well.
It's not just the medication. We don't do medication for
medication's sake as an avoidance to the work that has
to be done internally in one's mind about how one
(23:37):
got into the particament that they're in in the first place.
But I do believe there are some folks who will
have to go through that. I just didn't believe I
needed it, and I knew there was a process I
can incorporate, and I knew I had a level of
faith to say that I'll work through this, and I did,
and I am a living example of being able to
come out of that because I had a wall, and
I had a wall so hard that my boy started
(24:00):
revealing to me even after I had begun these courses
of correction through shingles.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Oh boy, Now I suspect some of this was also
in conjunction to because shingles didn't happen until twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Or twenty twenty one, I can't remember, but it's from
what I did. It took, it is it is.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
It took me all of twenty nineteen to work through
what twenty eighteen was. It took me, and I thought
I was coming out in twenty twenty until COVID hit, and.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Then I realized there was more than.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
I needed to unpack because there was other issues of
loss that were taking place in compounding the losses and
grief that I was feeling from getting through these three
people that I loved and.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
My daughter's challenges. So I did get her out to
finish the story.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
After the hospital, we did get out, and we did
before I came back to Cincinnati find a place to
enroll her in, and she did go through rehab and
she was doing well for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
But all of that in twenty eighteen was just.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
A weight I have never felt before in my life
and never want to feel ever again, and a challenge
that I had to endure that still feels fresh today
because of how deep the wound was and how far
I had to go to process truth so the lies
(25:32):
I had believed such that I could be free of
the baggage of shame and guilt and regrets, because regrets is.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
Ruminating on the grief over and over and over again,
not letting it go, not allowing oneself to process through
such that you can exhale, cast that burden before the
throne and leave it there, Let it be burned up
in the fire of your worship and your praise and
your acceptance of God and who you are and Him,
rather than the weight of the identity that it's shifted
(26:01):
when we allow those things that have happened, regrets and
loss and disappointment to reshape our thinking about ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
In your experience. How would you.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
How would you measure how we as ministers possibly have
failed our followers in this area.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Well, we don't talk about the nuances of grief and loss.
Grief is typically connected to death of some kind, and
then we'll delve into it, but I don't know how
deep we actually delve into it.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's not a popular subject. It's not when somebody's going to.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Come to you and say, more times than not, will
you do a study on.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Grief and death and loss?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
They might do one on heaven, but merely is it
about grief and loss? And when we do, we may
just do a series on it and it may cover two, three,
four weeks and we move on because there are so
many other topics we have to address.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
But in every church there ought to be what's called
grief Share.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
There ought to be this course that I went through
thirteen weeks, small group where everyone who's had some kind
of grief of loss should go through, because it will
enlighten you to what God says regarding it and how
to not get stuck in it, and why it's important
to avail yourself to the truths that are connected to it,
because oftentimes we allow things to linger we're not consciously
(27:34):
aware of, but it affects how we see life, it
affects how we see death, it affects how we see relationships,
and that's very important to a walk of faith.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
So I'm going to have that information because I'm gonna
get it from you about this Grief Shared class, and
we'll put it in the description box and see what
we can do to make that available.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
So that's always prosable. Twice, let me make that clear.
At first thirteen weeks, I was numb for most of it,
and the difficulty for me was that I was in
a group of about eight.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I was the only minority.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
For one I wound up being the only male because
the other two males dropped out, And I'm in there
with all women who really deeply longed for the return
of the person that they lost. I was the only
one in there who didn't have a healthy relationship with
the person that they lost and was grieving the difficulties
of that. Everybody else had these loving relationships and stories
(28:29):
that they would tell and all the fun that they
had and all those experiences.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I didn't have that story.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And so I'm sitting there listening every session to all
of these positive experiences, and I'm sitting there with one
that wasn't positive, and I'm trying to make sense of
it all, and how in the world am I supposed
to value myself as a good person when I couldn't
even have a healthy relationship with my biological mother.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And I got these women and.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
They're talking about relationship they're having with their husbands or
their children who they've lost, and how healthy it was,
and how they miss them, and how they longed for this.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I didn't really have a lie for I just had
a longing for a different story.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So you couldn't even late.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I couldn't even relate the first time. I was just
numb in there. I'm being hit with all these stories
and information. There's wonderful, mature, wonderful stories. They interviewed tons
of people every week. There were multiple interviews with people
and their challenges of how they navigated for grief, how
they got stuck or how they came out, and what
it had to happen, what kind of resources and support
(29:27):
that they needed in order to come out, how long
it took. I was sure what it was going and
so forth. But me that first thirteen weeks, man I
was just like, I know I need this. I know
I have to be here. You can't quit, you can't run,
you gotta injustice, you gotta digestice, you gotta think you
got the work book, you got you know, I do
the work, and then I might skip a week, and
then I had.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Two weeks in a row because it was a lot
to take in.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I had a lot of loss and death in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
In twenty eighteen, while you're full time ministry, Wow, wow,
everything going on with your personally.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
My wife is grieving from the loss of her mother
and some of the dysfunctions she went through with remaining
family members who rejected her.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
So she's got her own grief.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So I'm also trying to hold her up in this
process as well.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And it was catastrophic. Was it was nightmares.
Speaker 7 (30:21):
So I wound up with and then and then when
COVID happens, and the race relation stuff is happening during COVID,
and we got folks in the street and rights, We've
got the anxiety, and I got people coming to me
because I'm a pastor wanting answers I don't have, and
wanted to talk about stuff. And then people's ignorances and
biases are revealing themselves who may not have revealed them
previously because they don't fully understand this whole George Floyd
(30:43):
thing or Rihanna or Almah Arbery.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Or or or or.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, these are some of the prominent ones, prominent ones
in that timeframe, and that's stress. That's a weight to carry,
to have to be viewed as someone who's supposed to
have answers.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
When I walked in and you're leading this because one
of my first connections with you was at the Mosaics
event and y'all, y'all just understand it's heavy.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
They're heavy. Yes, this was not new to my life.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
In other words, when these things, because I can go
back to two thousand and one when I was with
passa day malnch a new prospect before the riots took place.
We were there burying the mails some of the males
who had died at the hands of the police before
two thousand and one and the uprising took place.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
So I've always thomised, Yeah, Timothy Thomas.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Was a spark for that, but there were like thirteen
unarmed over the course of like four or five years.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
That was the impetus to this.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Implosion in the city, and so I've been accustomed and
been involved, but this was this timing was on top
of all the things that were going on with my
life personally, just made it a tremendous way to try
to carry and I needed to get help and support
and in order to do so.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
What's going to be your.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Hope for your upcoming podcast Good Grief? And I'm definitely
going to do what I can to help you get
reach and spread the word about it. What's going to
be your hope for your podcast? Let's just say the
first thirty to sixty days of your podcast launch.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You know, that's a very good question.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Ultimately, I want folks to know my personal story in this,
so I am a practitioner through experience. I'm not just
someone pontificating out here because it's a subject matter I
think is important. I'm launched into this because of what
(32:50):
I went through, because I was not prepared. I did
not understand grief. I had not done any work in
the grief category of any magnitude. It literally knocked me
off my feet. And it is only the grace of
God that I could stand and stand in pulpits and
attempt to continue to lead. I don't know how well
I was doing that, but I know the people loved
me enough to allow me to be me and go
(33:12):
through that. And even though my wife at times wanted
me to step away from it, it was my source
of strength.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
It was my lifeblood.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
My preparing and reading and studying and going before the
Lord to deliver and walk in the truth of the
role that I'm.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Called in purpose to do is life giving for me.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And to be in brief and lose that at the
same time just felt like too much for me.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I would recommend that for everybody.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Everybody's got to look at their individual temperament, what their
capability is, how deep the wounds are, what other resources
are they utilizing to get help and support. So I'm
not saying this is a way that everybody should go
through it, but it helped for me.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
And don't want to unpack the story.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
I want to bring in folks to interview who will
tell their stories and we get to dialogue about their challenges,
and we get to speak into the audience about where
to get help, who to get help, how to go
about it, how to see the warning signs, what to
begin to prepare yourself, for if you're someone who's living
with somebody who's grieving and you're not the one with
(34:18):
the direct loss, but you're trying to navigate this difficult
world with them when they won't go get the help
that they need. And there's a variety of different things
that we can continue to unpack on this subject matter
to help people out there who are struggling, and not
just the loss of.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Death from death.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
We want to really tap into people to help them
better understand how to navigate losses that were important that
we typically don't really give credence to. We typically just
suppress and move on to the next thing, or the
next person, or the next job, or.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
The next hobby.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
You know, when I tore my ACL on a basketball court,
I was like forty one years of aw.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I've been playing basketball since I was little. I quit
after that. Literally, I didn't pick a ball up for.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Years because one, I didn't want to go through that
rehab again, and I didn't want to deal with the
whole insurance issue again. And I picked up something else.
I picked up golf instead.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Nobody's going to hit me on the golf course. I
don't have to leave my feet on a golf course,
and so.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Being willing to make drastic changes is not something I've
ever been afraid of, but I find many people are
or they'll make drastic changes to avoid something, not out
of a place of growth and development and healing, but
out of a place of suppression and avoidance.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And so we want to bring some of these things
to the surface.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
To try to help people who may not know they're
grieving the loss of a community or a job or
a friendship in a way that's more impactful to them
than they're willing to get credence too, because it hurts,
and there may be some guilt involved, there may be
some regrets involved, there may be some shame involved, and
we don't typically allow ourselves a healthy way of walking
(36:13):
through that.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
We typically medicate or suppress and move on. But we
carry that.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Baggage with us into the next relationship, and we only
compound the next grieving situation when that one doesn't work
as well.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
This is where it comes into play where we talk
about the strong suit, and in many different areas of
our lives, when I show up in a room, I
automatically put on my strong suit, whether it's being funny
or singing or speaking, whatever your gift is, you pull
(36:52):
on strong suit, and it can happen that many times
we use the strong suit to protect others from seeing
who we really are. We're constantly trying to look good
and trying to be right and not look bad. And
these are things that society has told us that we
(37:15):
ought to be over and over again. So I appreciate
your desire for being willing to step up and say, hey, listen,
this is my story.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Because the.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Authenticity part of this whole dialogue is huge, and we.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Have to unpack the fact that there are stages of
grief as well. Some say five, some say step seven,
but will unpack these stages so folk can understand there
is no cookie cutter process to grieving.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Each person is.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Going to experience differently, and each person needs to be
allowed to experience it differently.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
But then we also have to look at the other
side of this coin.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
People say some of the stupidest things to people grieving,
and they try to make statements to move them out
of grieving, or they try to put some kind of
Christianese on the grieving instead of allowing people to be
in the messiness of it.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Because you've lost.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Someone or something very near and dear to you, God
had a better plan.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Your child is now in heaven. Is your child's in
a better place?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Yeah? Yeah, that realization takes time for.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Someone to internalize, to process, and they may never be
good with it, but they can go on from it.
Because some folk want an expiration date on grief, it
can linger. Some folk won't give it up, and it
will shut down their quality of life because they won't
(38:55):
come out of the grieving.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Some think that if I'm not grieving, then.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I'm not expecting the loss and I really love the
person that died.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
No, you can do both.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
You can walk out of it and walk into the
fullness of who you've been created to do.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Because, like you said, God is sovereign. His ways are
not out our ways, his thoughts and our thoughts. As
he chooses to do, he's going to do.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And it's going to work together for the good of
those that love him and for those who call it according.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
To his purpose. So the question becomes in what do
you believe? But that's not surf, that's not top of mind.
When you're in the thrones of grief and loss.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
You're thinking about what you're missing and how well it
was or how bad it.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Was, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And it takes time to walk through that and not
be so reminded.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Of it or processing it in ways that may cost time,
in ways that without it with them here you would
never have to invest.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And so that's very real. Hmm wow.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I'm looking forward to hearing more. Definitely looking forward to
being a part of your ministry as well.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I do know that there is.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Some good grief that needs to occur in my life
as it relates to my never having a rock solid
relationship with my father. You know, someone call me the
other day asked me about my father. I was my
father in the system, Well, my dad is up there
in age.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I think my dad.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Is going to be let's see.
Speaker 9 (40:27):
He's was he nineteen years older than or something older
than my mother, So my dad is probably going to
be about eighty eight or eighty six somewhere this year.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And they called saying that my dad was in the
hospital COLPD, things like that, and I just began to
think about him and I sat with it for a
minute because there was something that was not in my
heart that I thought should be there, and I just
(40:59):
had to sit with a moment of sadness, saying, you know,
if this is the time that my dad passes away,
I think I'm going to grieve because I won't grieve.
I won't have anything to grieve because I don't have
any of it.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
My daddy always right, My daddy used.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
To no man told the story from the platform A
couple of times. I used to go out there and
play catch with my dad. I throw the ball and
the ball would never come back because he was never there.
And that's grief that I know I may not even have.
I may not even have the capacity to deal with
that loss at missing part of my life until after
(41:41):
he's gone.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's real.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I know. The last plan I'll maker is someone once
said I can't miss anything I never had, and I
disagree with that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Is that what someone said?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
And there are people who believe that, especially as it
relates to relationships. And since biologically you have a male
and a female parent, your DNA is interrelated to their DNA.
You have likenesses because they are the parts of you
(42:21):
that create you. Absolutely so, even in the context of
what God intended relationally where to wait until marriage, conceive
and have this child and are married. They've created a
covenant bond that as they love on this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Child, the child is becoming.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Well rounded psychologically, emotionally, and physically by healthy care of
two loving parents.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
You remove one, you've removed that part of the equation.
Now Mom can attempt to be both, but mom is
it both.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
She'll do the very best she can, but there's a
void that's missing.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
That was the original intent.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
And anytime you do not have the original intent of
something operating, misuse is occurring. We don't like to call
it abuse, but it is abuse anytime you miss use
something outside of its intended purpose. The intended purpose of
coming together is for procreation. Yes, there's pleasure attached to it,
(43:30):
but the goal is to continue to propagate the earth
with humanity.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Well, we've created other goals for.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
This coming together without that, such that we don't have
to be married to do that. We don't have to
be in covenant arrangement. We have to be in covenant agreement,
and we can have multiple partners. Failing to realize that
we're connecting our DNA, we're transferring fluids every time, and
we're creating dysfunctions because we're operating outside of.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
The original intent.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Now you couple this with there's loss when there there's
only one parent there. That loss is typically not designed
or not presented in a way that you need to
grieve it.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
They just matter of factly, it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
You only had one parent, or maybe there's a surrogate somewhere,
maybe you had an uncle who stepped in, Maybe you
had a next door neighbor to stepped in, maybe you
had a coach that stepped in, and we go on
with that, but there needs to be a healthy grieving
of that.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
There were expectations.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Even if it's just what you saw modeled in the
community that you lived in by children who had their
actual biological father in the family, it gives you a
inference of what could have been, and there's always a
sense of loss in that as you go through.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Because there's certain things you're going to miss out of.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Like you said, you're throwing a ball and there's no
dad on the other end to catch it and throw
it back.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
That's a loss.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
There's grieving that comes in that because there's a natural
DNA psychological, physical, and emotional connection even when there's an absence,
and that must be walked through in processed through such
that you can be healthier going forward, especially as you're
going to take on a role one day of being
a father.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
And how is that going to play itself out? Are
you going to overly.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Engage yourself and involve yourself in the life because you
had no one in your life and you had no
one to step in and be as sarrogate or are
you void of what you don't know because you just
don't know and you are you too proud to go
get assistance with what you don't know because you never
had a father to teach you so that you could
be the best father you need to be. We typically
(45:35):
just tough it out. That's what we do as man.
We're rarely going to ask for help and ways that
are going to be uncomfortable to us if it means
we're going to have to do some reflecting on some very.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Painful things in the process of getting this.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Help, and we don't typically like we typically like to
tell help how to help us on top of it.
So you got to be the kind of help I
want to help me if I'm going to ask you
for help. And that's oftentime, not the totality of the
help that we need, and this is not the depth
of the help that we need. And so these are
natural dynamics that operate relationally that we have to give
(46:07):
more credence to so that we can be healthier for
whatever is next in our lives.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
What he said, Henry Flowers Powerful Living Outreach Ministry is listening.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Y'all want to subscribe and make.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Sure you turn the notifications because when this brother's ministry
gets launched, I want to be able to give you
an opportunity to be a part of it as well,
because we got some good things to unpack and uncover
and for the safe everybody involved.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
And if you're local, you can find us in Finnytown.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
If you're in Cincinnati, Ohio, where our church, the Warehouse
operates on Sunday mornings ten eight m six' nine to
One Fleming, road we'd love to see.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
There Henry flowers here With Pastor Sherman, bradley looking forward
to his Podcast Good. Grief ye, man all need to be.
Ready it's about to go. Down In jesus', NAME i
ain't going to wear coming back
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