Transcript
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A much anticipated announcement reveals unexpected emotions Heartache, fear, disappointment, anxiety leaves me questioning my fate and doubting my purpose.
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Let me tell you something Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you.
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Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations?
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you.
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When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense.
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Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be.
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Ooh ooh, ooh, ooh.
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What it do, what it do Hot diggity.
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Damn, am I excited to be back with you?
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Alright, I gotta be honest, I'm not real excited.
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I'm not real excited to be back because today's episode is one that I don't really want to record.
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Today's episode is a self-assessment episode.
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Today's episode is a testament of truth that I wish I could deny, but to a fault I'm too damn honest to deny.
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Today's episode is episode 199.
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That means 199 consecutive weeks of you and me.
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Episode 199.
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I should be feeling oh so fine, but I ain't.
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So I'm going to start today's episode by taking my left hand, placing it on that imaginary Cabela's catalog, and I'm going to take my beady little eyes and I'm going to look them to the sky and I'm going to give you the absolute truth from this guy.
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Sometimes I hate this podcast.
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My commitment to you, the listener, is greater than the commitment to myself, because if I gave in to my desire, I wouldn't be here today, because my desire is to shut my mouth and swallow my feelings.
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My commitment to you and this show is to agonize over my thoughts and analyze the emotions, identify the true feeling and understand why.
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Share the Struggle podcast is the accountability I never wanted, but there are people that depend on these messages Out there.
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There is someone with my same regret.
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So if I can embrace embarrassment with my same regret, so if I can embrace embarrassment, show my weakness, share my fears.
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Hopefully it gives strength to us both At this particular point, I am 100% confident that there's a vast majority of you listening right now that have absolutely no clue what the hell it is I'm referring to, and that's great.
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That's what's going to make the show great, because so many of you don't have a clue or you didn't understand or you didn't realize.
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But there's a big portion of you that probably understand where I'm going today.
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There's a big portion of you that, unfortunately, were able to read between the lines, that unfortunately saw a look on my face that might have told you the story that lied beneath.
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Because if you're a loyal listener and you've been listening to the show for quite some time, number one, first and foremost, to thank you.
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I appreciate you, I love you and it's because of you that I'm here today having this episode.
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So thank you.
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But if you've been listening along and understanding my journey, my ups and downs, this road of life that I'm on, you can go back and listen to some of the recent stories over the past few months and start to connect the dots here, because I lost my dad in November and I found out on my dad's birthday in January that we were having a child and, based on all of the conversations that I had with my dad up until his death, mostly those last few weeks, he talked about wanting a grandson.
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He referenced so much, so many conversations about his grandson, this little buck running around, because he always used to call me Buck, and I later found out that Buck was also what they called my grandfather that I never had the chance to meet my father's father.
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But my dad talked so much about wanting a grandson and one of the final things in conversations I had with my dad was saying to him I'm sorry, I'm sorry I never gave you the grandson that you always wanted.
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And I talked to him about not knowing if I have what it takes to be a dad and he gave me some advice and I thanked him for being the best dad possible and it really tore me up inside knowing that I couldn't give him a grandson when I knew he wasn't coming home, when I knew that I had to make the decision to send him to hospice against his wishes.
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I made those decisions.
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I've lived with that.
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I've thought many times, many days, about my decisions, what life would be like, what would have happened, what could have happened both good and bad based off the decisions that I made.
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So when I gave my dad's eulogy you guys actually have that recording here.
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It lives on forever on Share the Struggle podcast because I wanted to honor my father and his memory and his legacy.
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I wanted to honor my father and his memory and his legacy.
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And the best way I could do that was to come up with the most fantastic tribute that I could possibly come up with, but then also record it and share it and allow it to live on longer than myself, longer than him.
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That hopefully it lives on in the world forever with the power of the internet, right, those are the great things about the internet and I really truly felt that, as crazy as it is, if I recorded my dad's service, then for years to come, people could learn about my dad.
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You know that his grandson someday could learn about his grandfather through those heartbreaking stories.
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And if, by some day, some way, my son was trying to learn about his grandfather and he listened to that service, he would hear the importance in my voice that was echoed from my father about wanting a little version of me, about wanting that grandson.
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And, as spirit would have it, as luck would have it, as I'm up there having a conversation about us not giving my father what he always wanted and that we never gave him a grandkid my father, what he always wanted and that we never gave him a grandkid the doctors are currently trying to tell us that while I'm giving that speech, my wife's actually pregnant and if you've listened to, a few episodes ago, when we shared the news about being pregnant, my wife shared with everybody a dream, a dream that she had, that my father came to her in her dreams and he kissed her belly and she woke up bawling her eyes out, and then shortly thereafter she started to not feel herself.
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She wasn't feeling so right.
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And then, on my father's birthday, something told her you should take a test, and she took a test and she found out she was pregnant.
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His birthday, something told her you should take a test and she took a test and she found out she was pregnant.
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So she told me and my mother on my father's birthday his first heavenly birthday that we were expecting.
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There's a great sense of fulfillment and guilt that happens at the same time when you've spent 40, almost two years, nearly 42 years with your dad and one of his wishes and his dying wish but a wish over the past 20 plus years was for him to have a grandson and his dying wish was to have a grandson.
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So to find out, on the first birthday that I spend without my father, that I'm going to make him a grandfather, there's a lot of guilt that lives inside you for that moment, to tell yourself you couldn't do this a year ago, you couldn't do this two years ago and give this man that gave everything for you something that he wanted.
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But it wasn't God's timing and it wasn't God's will.
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And based off everything that happened, we knew that this was my dad's, my dad's will, this was my dad's timing, and that he was overwhelmingly involved in this.
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So I took a great sense of peace and hope from knowing that this has so much of my father's doing that it's going to be okay.
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There's so many things about having a child that I've always been scared of, and I don't want to talk about all those things that I've been scared of, because I feel like, as of late, anything that I project into this universe that I'm scared of comes back to me.
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Whatever I put out there as an innermost fear, when I share that with the world, the next morning it's facing me.
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So these things that I never wanted to have happen in life all seem to be happening.
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So I'm not going to continue to share the things that I don't want to have happen.
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So I'm not going to continue to share the things that I don't want to have happen.
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But there's so many things that I've worried about in having a child that I couldn't handle, that I didn't think I was able to overcome.
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But knowing that my father had moved on, knowing that my father was watching over me, I truly felt like he is going to bless us with an extremely healthy pregnancy and an extremely healthy baby boy.
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Because I know my dad and I felt that he again was doing what he always did and that is protecting me.
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So I felt that my dad is looking from above and I felt that my dad is looking from above and I felt that he picked the perfect baby boy for me, a representation of the both of us, and he sent that to us because he knows what we need.
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The three of us my mother, my wife and myself are not whole.
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We are not whole.
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We are not complete since the loss of my father and we are struggling far greater than I'd like to admit.
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This is the miracle that we needed to make ourselves whole, miracle that we needed to make ourselves whole.
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This is the miracle to come to us, to give us that sense of hope and promise and that reason again to help make that circle more complete again.
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And sure, these things coming have left me second guessing my every life's decision, have left me second guessing my every life's decision, like any you know soon to be first time dad would have right, and you're evaluating your businesses and your life and your direction and your finances and all these things, and you're leaving yourself with all these major questions.
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But ultimately, in the back of my mind, I knew one thing to be true this was God and my father's plan.
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This is what we needed and this will be the saving grace for this family.
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Very quickly, we named our soon to be son.
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Very quickly.
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I want to tell you that Allie and I have gone through many times in life where we just never thought we were going to have kids.
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But a long time ago we actually very easily and quickly agreed upon two names for kids.
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If we have a boy, his name is going to be Colton Cash, so we can name him Colt for short.
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And if we have a boy, his name is going to be Colton Cash, so we can name him Colt for short.
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And if we have a daughter, it's going to be Paisley Rayne.
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Very quick, very easily, we came upon these names and we're both in agreement, something that just doesn't happen right Now.
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When we found out that we were pregnant that night, we very quickly changed the name from Colt to Carter, because in the middle of Carter is Art and my father's name is Art.
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This was my father coming back to us.
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This was him protecting us and saving us all over again.
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Him protecting us and saving us all over again.
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So I put my entire being into this being the reason and the purpose for my life.
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If we have encountered anyone and talked with anyone about the announcement of our birth and you know the fact that we were going to be parents, it didn't take very long for us to segue to.
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This is my dad's plan.
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This is pops's plan.
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We're going to name this little guy Carter after his grandfather.
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On Friday, the day of our ultrasound, allie had come up with, leading up to this day, the amazing idea to invite my mother to this appointment, and I know that's probably not something that's really common for moms to be, I guess, to bring their mother-in-law to an appointment like this, but for us, we just feel like it's us, it's the three of us together, and this is what all of us need.
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Ironically, if I'm kind of connecting dots here.
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There was a time when Allie shared a conversation and I think we shared the entire message of an interaction she had with a medium, and they mentioned that my mother would struggle, she would be having a really hard time and that there really wouldn't be any break in that until April.
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And then in April something would happen that would change that for her.
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And after we made this decision we almost felt like maybe this is it, this is the this is it, this is what needs to happen.
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So my mother going on this appointment, being there for the ultrasound, seeing the baby for the first time, and then us revealing that we were going to have little baby Carter on his way, this was the healing, this was the moment that we all needed.
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So Allie had to go to work after this appointment.
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So what we decided was my mom jumped in the car with her.
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We had surprised her with the news it's kind of an early birthday presentation or present for her and so Allie and my mom were in one vehicle and I climbed up in my dad's pickup truck and I drove my dad's truck to the appointment.
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But before I did, I took a small urn of his ashes and I put it in my pocket and I brought my dad to the ultrasound.
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So I felt that when Allie was walking my mother into that appointment and she would spend the first part of the appointment and then when she came up to get me, I would walk my father in that entire time.
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Every time the ultrasound tech would tell us not to look at the screen, I would hold my dad's hand and I would say you have this.
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One day before our ultrasound appointment, allie was in traffic and she sent me a picture.
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While she was waiting in traffic there was a truck parked or in line next to her and she snapped a picture of that vehicle's license plate and she sent me the photo.
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And once I saw the photo, it literally just kind of just put everything into perspective.
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Right, I feel like you just put everything at ease.
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And that license plate was a rendition of the word Carter.
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Carter was what was on the license plate.
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It was actually spelled out.
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You know, because license plates we try to make words, you know, out of numbers.
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It was actually spelled out.
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You know, because license plates we try to make words, you know, out of numbers.
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It was C-A-R-T, the number three R, c-a-r-t three R For Carter.
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The three of us would be whole again with Carter.
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If you listened, last week I told you what our plan was for our birth announcement and if you tuned into our social media, you saw that birth announcement.
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And what I'm ashamed to say is, if you know me that well, you might have seen something in my eyes and in my face is, if you know me that well, you might have seen something in my eyes and in my face when I revealed the card to say Paisley Reign Liberty.
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This is what I didn't want to share.
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These are the emotions I wanted to swallow.
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These are the things that make you feel like less of a man.
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When you turn on a microphone and you share with the world that you didn't want to have a girl, and finding out the gender results for your soon-to-be child rocked your entire world.
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That doesn't sound like a man.
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That doesn't sound like a good father.
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That doesn't sound like a good human.
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It sounds like a whiny little bitch and it feels like a disappointing individual.
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I find it overwhelmingly necessary to say something right now to my soon-to-be daughter, paisley Rain.
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I need to say to Paisley, in the event that someday, someway she sees a video that appears to see my disappointment.
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I need to say to little Paisley right now that someday, someway, if I'm not around to explain myself and there's a family member or a friend trying to tell her that your dad was so disappointed when he found out you were a girl, your dad's whole world changed upside down when he found out that you were a girl and not a boy, and not a boy.
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If life unfolds in a way where I'm not around to explain to my daughter the look on my face and this moment of disgrace, you need to hear me say loud and clear it's not the disappointment of a daughter, it's the questioning of fate, the loss of hope and the fear of the unknown.
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The moment that I read that card, I questioned everything that has helped me heal the loss of your grandfather.
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If we found out that we were having a child two years or two months before my dad passed and we took that test and the gender reveal said that we were having a little paisley rain, we would be over the moon excited to welcome that beautiful baby girl into our arms, and so would my dad.
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The difficulty in this moment is that we wrongfully put our healing on the miracle of a child.
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We put our sense of healing, we put our grieving all on the possibility of welcoming Carter into our family.
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Every person we had a conversation with about our pregnancy, we very quickly drew the conclusion of my dad.
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If we had time to talk to you, we would explain to you the dream, all these signs.
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We then very quickly got to the conclusion of how we found the name Carter that we have.
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You know this friend that came to us out of nowhere that we feel so close to that.
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Just after a few hours of knowing them, we ended up flying to Texas to be a part of their wedding and then thinking about his name and what he means to us, and then thinking about my father and his name being in the absolute middle of this name, the whole foundation of this, all of this being so sweet, so perfect, so meant to be that it couldn't be any other way.
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So every single person we talked to, we mentioned Carter.
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In my phone, every appointment says Carter's appointment.
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On our calendar, every appointment is Carter's appointment.
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Everything we've done has been revolving around two names Carter, cash.
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That's it.
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That's all we've thought about, that's all I've been able to wrap my mind around, all the little wise tales telling you oh, if you're doing it this way, if you're carrying this way, if you're feeling this, you're craving that.
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All those things say boy, boy, boy.
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Everything says boy.
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It all adds up to that.
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All these signs, all the multitude of times that the word Carter comes to us, these feelings happen for us, all these things are shown to us, the spiritual guidance that's coming to us.
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All of that led us to feeling this was a boy.
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This was my dad's answer.
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This is our solution.
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This is our reason.
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We found our purpose.
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So when we read those results, it's not disappointment for you, it's disappointment in us that we wrongfully put our healing and our grieving on a child.
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I'm disappointed.
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I'm disappointed in myself, and what I can tell you is this has left me questioning a lot of things, and as I dig into my fears and my feelings and I share these things with you these are some of the things that I don't feel good about sharing.
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These are some of the things that I find disappointing about myself, because in that moment, when I found out these results, I tried to be happy and this flood of emotions came over me and I'm sadly going to say that I questioned my fate, and I still do.
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I questioned my healing, and that should be obvious to you.
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But in that moment I couldn't help but ask why?
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Why all the signs?
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Why all these things being placed in front of us?
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Was this just one more buildup to a letdown?
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Do I need to have my face rubbed in it?
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What have I done to deserve these emotions?
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I couldn't help but feel that these dreams, these mediums, these signs, these spiritual things that have been placed in front of me are all fucking bullshit, that none of it's actually real, that this doesn't exist, that what I've been praying for, what I've been looking for, what I've been waiting for, isn't true at all.
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This experience has robbed me of my quest to better understand my fate, of my quest to better understand my fate.
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I'm going to continue on this confessional and I'm going to say some things to you that I'm not proud of.
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I've got to tell you that my grandmother taught me this tradition, when I was getting my driver's license, about praying every time she got into a vehicle, and that became a habit for me, which became a ritual for me, which became a lifelong tradition for me.
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So I don't know how long it's been since I've had my license man 25 years or so, right?
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I graduated high school in 2000.
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So let's say right around so, right?
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I mean, I graduated high school in 2000.
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So let's say right around there, right?
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So if I've had my license for 25 years, um, this habit has guaranteed me that I pray every day multiple times a day.
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I feel like maybe my grandmother might've tricked me into this notion by just making sure that I actually pray.
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So I pray every day multiple times a day.
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Maybe that's not the right way to do things, but it was my grandmother's way of making sure that I do them.
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Now, as you guys have learned from me, I'm searching my fate.
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I'm exploring my fate even more.
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I'm learning more of the Lord, and it's helped me to cope and to heal the loss of my father.
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This miracle of child birth has helped me to believe.
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So, with that said, I've begun reading my Bible every day.
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I challenged myself for the month of April to read one proverb every day and to try to work myself through the Old Testament, even if it's just a page or two a day.
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When I got this news, my foundation was rocked, because I really, truly felt all that was being shown to me wasn't actually true for me.
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I'm heartbroken to say that I haven't prayed since I haven't picked up my Bible.
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I haven't read a proverb?
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Not a page, not a sentence.
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Not a page, not a sentence.
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I don't know what else to think.
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I don't know what else to believe.
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I've been watching church every morning, praying every night, reading every night, asking for help and for guidance to get me through.
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I've learned to put the weight of your struggles and the worries of this world into the hands of the Lord and that he will lift the burdens as he sees fit and that he will provide for you more than you can imagine.
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And that's the path that I've been walking.
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But continually I keep failing.
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Every time I put my business on the line, I've met with resistance.
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Every time I risk everything, I have my cards come up short, but I keep banking on this one thing, this one miracle that keeps being shown to me, and finding out that's not true makes me question.
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Oh so much.
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Some of you might be listening and saying to yourself isn't this a bit of a reach here, bubba?
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Aren't you going a little too far with this?
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The answer is, in my mind, no, because in my mind I've been having these conversations with my dad.
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In my heart, I've been speaking to God.
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These things have been shown to me, revealed to me, given to me, provided to me, but they weren't actually true.
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It makes you wonder if these things aren't actually fate, but indeed just coincidence.
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And isn't it true that we often find the things that we just look for most in life?
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So if I'm always looking for the sign, I'm always going to be given the sign.
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That's the doubt that I'm living through, that's the regret that I'm trying to process at this moment in my life.
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This isn't about the gender of a child, it's about the loss of hope.
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The gender of a child, it's about the loss of hope.
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The other difficult layer to this is knowing that in September, when my child arrives and I look my baby girl in the eyes, I'm going to be overcome with guilt.
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Overcome with guilt for the fact that I showed disappointment, that I showed disappointment upon finding out she was a girl.
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It's not fair to her and I don't know how I'm going to process that guilt.
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I don't know how I'm going to get over these emotions.
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It's truly a double-edged sword here to deal with the understanding that it's not the grandson you thought that your father was delivering and then, upon actually delivering, looking into the eyes of your beautiful baby girl and realizing you were disappointed that you actually possess disappointment over this miracle of joy.
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Possess disappointment over this miracle of joy truly makes it hard to feel like a man and that is why I am struggling.
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I'm not here to say that I have shunned off God and I'm not going to go back to my Bible, but I am here to say I don't know what to do and I don't know how to do it, because I thought, for so many reasons, that everything was going to be okay.
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I thought all these signs were for a reason.
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I thought all these moments and memories had meaning, meaning.
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It doesn't add up, and I'm the type of person that when I can't connect the dots, when I can't lean into spirituality, when my fate is questioned, when I don't know what direction I'm going, I need to support my feelings with some facts.
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I need to find some knowledge to help me get grounded, that maybe, if I can find a biological reason, a scientific reason, if I can find some voice or reason, some actual factual information that can prove to me why I'm feeling a certain way that maybe I can process, understand and get over that and by doing that I can get back to my fate and I could figure things out and then I can beg for forgiveness for turning my back on my Bible.
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But until I process that and understand that, I'm just stuck in purgatory, not knowing where I'm going, not knowing what I'm doing.
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So this morning I got up at five in the morning and I brought my mom to work and I dragged my sorry, pitiful, fat ass to the gym and I put in my headphones and I got back to the book that I've been talking to you guys about the Mountain is you Brianna West?
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And there were some messages in that book that up until today I would have said were sent to me, that were meant for me.
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Today I question if it's just an absolute fucking coincidence or here are we again, but some of those messages were what I needed to try to understand what it is that's actually happening.
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Understand what it is that's actually happening, because Brianna was talking about how our brains and our bodies actually work together and she discussed something very important, and that thing is emotional intelligence.
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Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, interrupt and respond to your emotions in an enlightened and healthy way.
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So I'm overcome with all these emotions, right, and I'm not processing most of these emotions in a healthy way.
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I'm trying to work through some of them and to apply that into a healthy way.
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I've just been staying obsessively busy because idle hands is, you know, time for the devil's work, right?
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So I just keep trying to stay busy.
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But hearing emotional intelligence, understanding it's the ability to understand, interrupt and respond to your emotions in an enlightened and healthy way.
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I found that as something that I can cling to, to try to understand and then to use these emotions for the task at hand and not actually against me, because understanding what your sensations are trying to tell you about your life is the key to living a more happy life.
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But I want to say that we set an expectation that what we want will elevate our lives in some tangible way, and getting it will let us relax.
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Let's dig in on this.
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We set an expectation that what we want will elevate our lives in some tangible way, and getting it will let us relax.
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So think about this.
