451 | David's Mighty Men, the Heart of a Warrior, and Why an Aimless Dad Leaves a Family Unmoored (Cliff Graham)

Brotherhood & MentorshipFamily VisionLegacy & Grandparenting
Written By Jeff Zaugg

Episode Description

Most men have never pictured David's mighty men as real flesh and blood warriors who bled, prayed, and screamed to God for covering before they ever swung a sword. In this episode, novelist and Army veteran Cliff Graham shares what twenty years inside the world of the Old Testament taught him about sacrifice, mentorship, and becoming the kind of father whose absence is felt when he's gone. You'll also hear why your kids see the things you thought you did in the dark, and why aimlessness in a dad leaves an entire family unmoored.

  • Cliff Graham is an author and U.S. Army veteran best known for the Lion of War series, an epic retelling of the lives of David's mighty men that has been translated into seven languages and hit bestseller lists. He has spent extensive time in Israel researching the world of the Old Testament, and has also written Shadow of the Mountain (Caleb) and The Boundary of Blood (Shamgar). When he isn't writing, he works as a railroader in the western United States. He and his wife, Cassandra, have four children, three of them sons.

    • Your kids are watching at all times. The thing you think you did in the dark and nobody noticed is the thing they saw.

    • The toughest men in scripture didn't charge in confident in their own abilities. They cried out for God's covering first, and so should you.

    • Sacrificial choices still count when your heart isn't in them. Decide through the paradigm of what's best for your family, however you're feeling, and God honors that choice.

    • Invite your kids into your work and into your worst days. Let them see how you respond when everything falls apart.

    • Male mentorship is disappearing. Find the man who is twenty years ahead of you, who will sit in your pain and call you out on your stuff.

  • This is a barndominium, I think, is what they call this place. And we're in these plush rocking chairs, which, you know, our mutual friend Neil, we were like, we're sitting in a sewing room in rocking chairs. It's probably the wrong backdrop for the conversation, but we make it work. It's a quiet space, it's raining outside. Thanks for taking time to connect, Cliff.

    [0:28]  Cliff Graham

    Great to be here, man. It's great to be here.

    [0:31]  Jeff Zaugg

    So I have not been hearing your voice, because the book, you guys have an amazing narrator that did the audio version. And I recently got a hold of your book. Our mutual friend Tyler was like, have you read it yet? Have you read Day of War? And I have been working on a project at my house, a quadruple loft. So all four of my girls are now six feet off the ground. Their bedroom now has space. They're all four in the same bedroom. Quadruple loft. I built it like a deck though, two by sixes, two by fours. It's built strong. And I'm building it and I'm taking it down, I'm sanding, I'm painting, I'm rebuilding it. And your book was in my earbuds.

    [1:12]  Cliff Graham

    Okay.

    [1:13]  Jeff Zaugg

    The whole project.

    [1:15]  Cliff Graham

    I mean, it's like thirteen hours, isn't it? I hope it sped it up for you.

    [1:19]  Jeff Zaugg

    No, it truly, I was immersed in the life of David, but more his warriors than him. The mighty men. He hardly talks about David in that first one. So I want to say thank you. First, thank you for a medium that, I shouldn't say medium. I love it in my ears. I love reading, I love story, I love the books that have heart and captivated imagination sparked. And I like a little bit of, let's go after it, tell it like it was. And so I've been listening to books about special forces operations and this and that, but not Bible mixed with. So this to me was like, I've been waiting for this book. Even though you wrote it like eighteen years ago, sixteen years ago.

    [2:00]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah, about twenty years ago originally, yeah.

    [2:04]  Jeff Zaugg

    So I guess it's twenty years of overdue gratitude, but you hear it now. You get to hear thank you now.

    [2:10]  Cliff Graham

    Thank you very much. Very kind of you.

    [2:13]  Jeff Zaugg

    So what, before we talk about your family, and obviously we'll talk about being a dad, what was the catalyst of, I'm going to spend time on this project and bring the story to life in a new, fresh way?

    [2:30]  Cliff Graham

    I was on a ski trip with some buddies back in the mid two thousands, and we were taking boys. It was up in South Dakota. We took a ski trip from a church there into Montana, and myself and the youth pastor, another buddy, we were coming as chaperones. And so we did that, and we would in the evening take the Bible, open up and try to do Bible study. Now everyone's been skiing all day and it's teenagers, and so, however, the girls were always attuned. They had their notebooks out, they had their Bibles and their colored pencils.

    [3:05]  Jeff Zaugg

    Locked in.

    [3:06]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah, they were locked in. And the boys were just, you know, headlong back on the sofa, bored out of their mind. And I kept thinking, why is that? It can't be that the word of God is boring. It's not boring, but it can be taught in a boring fashion. And it wasn't anyone's fault on the trip, but it got me thinking about how do we teach boys. It started with boys, then young men, then just men in general. And I realized men have a hard time reading the word in a way that I think brings fire and life to it. It's just hard for them. And so that ignited the idea. Right around that time the movie 300 was popular. And I always loved Braveheart and Gladiator, that kind of thing. So what we need is an epic narrative about war and warriors that takes place within the world of the Old Testament. And of course I gravitated to David. I'd always loved the story of David, but that had been told so many times, and continues to be told so many times.

    [4:08]  Jeff Zaugg

    David focused, David focused.

    [4:10]  Cliff Graham

    And I thought, but you don't ever hear much about this group of warriors that are in Second Samuel twenty three and First Chronicles eleven, the mighty men, and this list of heroes that do these great deeds. And so I just was hooked on this guy, Benaiah, who does the dirty work for David and Solomon through their lives. And I thought, that's the doorway, if we can ever just tell that story. So I started researching and developing, and started going to Israel and studying the ground. And I was in the Army myself, and so I just took what I knew of the world of warriors and their culture and tried to put that onto the scriptures and pull that out.

    [4:48]  Jeff Zaugg

    Okay. As you mention Benaiah's name, I am picturing the specifics of the weapons that he used in the pit with the lion on a snowy day. In the whole history of my life, I've known about Benaiah for thirty years. And my mind has never jumped to picturing what types of weapons, how would you climb out of that pit after you killed a lion? So your creativity. Of course it's not depicted in the Bible, but why not? God gave us creative brains, and there's a verse that anchors in the Bible that he killed one. So you're not false on scripture. Now, did the Bible say there was a second lion that came along?

    [5:22]  Cliff Graham

    No, no, that's all made up.

    [5:24]  Jeff Zaugg

    That's okay. Because there could have been. And then what village did he walk into afterwards? Did he see an angel? The level of memory God's given us is crazy. And the prayers that he prayed, as he's like, is he going to survive this, and the level of wounds that he received from that lion, and this is just one. I think it's so needed to have a more vivid, captured essence of strength. Like, God's warriors would have that kind of strength. So I could interrupt you over and over with, this is my brain exploding. And obviously I'm a little bit of a fanboy over here, because it's so fresh. It's so helpful. It was so helpful. But so you have this idea, you go and you write this book, and now it's been a series of, how many total projects have you done?

    [6:10]  Cliff Graham

    So that's a series of five books. I just turned in the fifth one, so that'll publish this year. That was the first book. There's five total in that series, the Lion of War series. And then I did one on Shamgar called The Boundary of Blood.

    [6:25]  Jeff Zaugg

    The judge Shamgar.

    [6:27]  Cliff Graham

    He's only mentioned twice in scripture, with two verses, and so I did a whole narrative around that. And then I did one on Caleb. It's called Shadow of the Mountain, and Caleb as an old man conquering his last city in Hebron there. So I could take on like another eight projects basically and just go right through and have my imagination explode.

    [6:47]  Jeff Zaugg

    If we just kind of focus in on David's mighty men for a second. The level of, so you've spent time in the places where this may have happened. You led tours, right, in Israel? And then deep research. How did it change you? A project like this, how did it change you as a husband, a father? How has the deeper wrestling with the God of the Old Testament and what he called men, what men are capable of, how has it changed you?

    [7:05]  Cliff Graham

    You know, the submersion into that world, it does affect you. Like any craft you have or any profession out there, if you go deep into it and try to become as good at it as you possibly can. As men, we're wired that way, right? I want to grab as much as I can. And I really wanted to portray a believable world. It's fiction, so there's a lot of caveat to it. And there's a lot of real estate between three thousand years ago and their mindsets and us, no question. But the fundamentals of the fighting man are the same. So in my process, for example, the Benaiah story where he fights the lion, that is based on an actual lion encounter that a friend of mine in Africa, his dad had, and I got to spend time with that guy. And he was personally chewed up by a lion. And so I was asking him deep questions. How do they pin you, and all this. And at the point in the story where he shoves his arm into his throat, that's what happened. That's how he survived a lion attack. So the character of Benaiah is based on a buddy of mine, Clinton. He lives over in Africa, and his father worked in the game departments over there, and he was chewed on by a leopard and he was sorted out by lions too. But his whole experience and aura, it's like, that's my Benaiah right there. That's the guy that walks into the room covered with lion scars.

    [8:25]  Cliff Graham

    So all that to say, from that to just the mind and heart of the fighting man, I spent a lot of time with guys like our buddy Neil and elite operators from special warfare. What is it like to have this very elite band of brothers that fights together and suffers together and lives together? Many hours, guys from everything from World War Two to Vietnam to the Bush wars in Africa. I just spent many, many countless hours around Israel. I spent time with the IDF in Israel, and just trying to talk to men who have fought in war over the duration, crawling into their psyche and into their head. And then if they're men of faith, how did you balance that? How do you have this barbarian side to you that is a war fighter, but then you also have to be a man of God who loves the Lord Jesus and lets the Holy Spirit flow through him? And how do you balance those two things? I was fascinated by that tension, and it threw me all the way down into the rabbit hole of trying to bring it to life.

    [9:27]  Jeff Zaugg

    Yeah. There's so much evidence that Jonathan, King Saul's son, was a beast of a warrior. So much evidence. But yet why have I, at forty four years old, still the majority of my thinking about him is pretty soft? That's crazy.

    [9:48]  Cliff Graham

    Isn't that crazy?

    [9:50]  Jeff Zaugg

    I'd known the one story, but the level that your book captures him, and the level of courage of, that's the kind of man I want to be. And that's how I want to die. I mean, in some ways, I want to just leave it all. But then he prayed, and this is a thread that was through the whole first book of the project, like the covering prayer. You're my covering. And the way it changed the mindset, the heart, the strength, the absolute depleted energy, because of God being the covering. Where did, is that personal? Is that from a mentor? Is that from the actual scripture? Where did the idea of crying out for God to be our covering come from?

    [10:27]  Cliff Graham

    So Psalm one forty, verse seven. David cries out, O Lord God of my salvation, you have covered my head in the day of battle. And when I started this project, I was looking for kind of a theme verse, and I came across that. And one thing about David that I think the church in general is very comfortable with is that he's the psalm writer. A lot of our worship music comes straight from him. But you can't really understand him unless you understand him as a warrior. That was his primary thing. And because of that, this idea of, he didn't charge into the fight endlessly confident in his own abilities. He was screaming to God for covering, like, I need you to give me strength, give me power, give me endurance. So I loved the idea of that absolute fierce dependency on this covering from God being the thing that the toughest men in the world all relied upon. And how much more so for us? If these men are crying out to God for strength and courage because it's not naturally in them, they have to cry out to him for it, how much more so should we do those things? So I seized that idea of the covering as kind of the way the Holy Spirit manifests. This is pre-Christ, right? This is the Old Testament. So I needed to have verbiage for how they would have viewed the Spirit of God moving.

    [11:33]  Jeff Zaugg

    Every good story is full of ups and downs. You get this as a writer. I've learned a little bit about it. A good story certainly is not level when it comes to the storyline. And there's technical terms, the inciting incident, and then there's the climax, and you could play it all out for us. But your life, and even just the season of fatherhood, because your kids are, what's the age range, one more time?

    [12:10]  Cliff Graham

    So my oldest is twenty, yeah. My youngest is fifteen.

    [12:16]  Jeff Zaugg

    Okay. And your oldest, fun to get to train with him in the gym, because he's here boxing with us. So just even within the fatherhood window of ups and downs, and finding yourself out of the writing season and working on the railroad, I mean, there's moments of, did I miss it completely? How has God been covering? What are some of those experiences, and what have you learned in that journey?

    [12:31]  Cliff Graham

    Well, that's a very deep question. I think as a father you are always aware of your shortcomings. And just to encourage anyone listening, I think my kids turned out very well. My wife and I put in the work and we're immensely proud of them and our relationships are tight. But it's never easy. You've got to be a man that is willing to just sacrifice constantly. And you don't want to all the time. You know, there's times you just want to grab what's yours and move on, right? And I think for me, just learning the discipline of, if I make a choice through the paradigm of what is best for my family and for my kids, however I'm feeling, that God will honor that choice. And I just had to see that in my life repeatedly. I'm not doing what I want to do. Maybe I missed the boat of my calling. But I need to provide, I need to put food on the table for my family. So what do I have to do in this situation to meet that responsibility at its core?

    [13:20]  Cliff Graham

    Now there is an immense joy and satisfaction when you set that goal for yourself, that I'm going to provide for my family, and then you do it. Incredible satisfaction. So I'd say start there, that you go back to the fundamentals a lot and say, what do I do in a sacrificial way for my family that will provide for them not just the meat, right, but also their aura? What's the atmosphere in our home? How do I set that tone? And then model as a husband as best I can. But they're watching at all times. You know, you and I had this conversation the other day, and they are always watching. And every little thing that a guy does that he thinks, I did this in the dark and no one cares, you'd be surprised what your kids are seeing all the time. And I learned that very, very acutely.

    [14:15]  Jeff Zaugg

    The challenge that our mutual friend Neil made about being a man who trains. I'm a man who enters training purposefully. He even described it as, we could just go on to be blobs of flesh. He was pretty graphic with, we become a self serving blob. He said something to that nature of, that's the current, the world is like, just do things for you, do what you want to do. Turn on the screen and endless consumption, right? Like, eat whatever you want. I've seen already that you've chosen, I'm going to train, I'm going to, you care about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. What's a frontier of training that you've chosen to step into the last few years with a little more intensity or intentionality? Is there a frontier that's been a growth area for you?

    [15:10]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah, I'm noticing in my boys, I have four kids, three of them boys, and all of them though, we are a family of storytellers. I've noticed that. They all have that passion. It's not just dad rubbing off on them. It really is in them from a talent, skill set, and desire perspective. So what a joy to get to mentor in that way, to say, okay, we're at the home of a guy who's a construction builder kind of guy, and you can tell his boys are watching that, loving that too. So it's difficult to overstate how much a dad can set that marker. Maybe his kids don't do exactly what he did in their trade. Maybe not. But if you invite them into that process, they will learn to love it in the context of how much you loved it. And so I think for me, it was learning in that season, how do I meet my kids at a point where they see what I do, even if they don't do it themselves, do they understand it? Did they feel like they were part of the home in that way? Do they feel like they could ask me questions about my trade and about my experiences? And then when everything fails and falls apart, and it does in this life, when that occurs, did I invite them into that place too? Did I say, I want you to see how I respond to this. I'm not going to do it perfectly, but I'm going to try to do it righteously. And I need your help. So if you see something I need to be told, I want to hear it from you.

    [16:22]  Cliff Graham

    But one day you will fall on your own face. And you need to invite your kids into that process too.

    [16:36]  Jeff Zaugg

    Wow. Yeah, we're going to be humbled. Are we going to choose it, or are we going to let it come after us?

    [16:47]  Jeff Zaugg

    We prayed before we hit record. God, help our hearts turn toward heaven and turn toward home. I've heard you speak on this in my research, around just the hearts of men, going after the hearts of men. God is after the hearts of men. What does that stir up for you, thinking hearts toward heaven, hearts toward home?

    [17:38]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah, you know, if you can reach the hearts of men, so much of society will follow along with that. Men are the builders and movers and shakers in so many ways. They are the titans of industry, they are the cultivators of fields. They do so many things with that natural sense of aggression. And I think it's so important that there is a heart of a man that is humble before the Lord God. The best version of you is the one that is inhabited by the Spirit of the Lord, going to do the task he has appointed to you. You will love the fight if that occurs. You will love the joy of it all. It is your honor and privilege to strive to do your best and be a model for your kids. And the healthy, happy home looks like a driven, purposeful man. And I know that's hard to figure out. I mean, this is good kind of cheerleader language, but it's really important that a man is always aware that I need to know what the Lord wants from me in my home. I should be minded that way. Because if I'm not minded that way, I will be an aimless person. And aimlessness is not what we want. It's not an awesome dad if you're aimless.

    [18:40]  Jeff Zaugg

    Whoa. When you say it that way, like an aimless wandering, there's a lot of emptiness there, and you're actually guiding towards, there will be more that follow you. For me it's four little girls and a wife that will also find themselves aimless. So the stakes are high.

    [19:05]  Cliff Graham

    You're unmoored. I recently lost my father, back in October. And I am, you know, it's wild. Great man. He was a pastor for fifty years, my hero in every way. And we had such a good relationship. And I tell you what, I'm forty five years old, and I don't care how old you are, I've had older guys come up to me and say, you never get over it. You never really get over it. And this is the natural order of things, right? I'm a son, you bury your father, that's the way it is. But I was hoping to have more years with him as that patriarch of the family. And I still feel unmoored at times. I haven't relied on him for anything for a long time. But isn't that something? I felt unmoored and I still feel unmoored. I will still check my phone and think, man, I wish I could just ask my dad this question. I wish I could call him up and bounce this off of him.

    [19:42]  Cliff Graham

    And my goal is, I want to be a dad like that, that when I go one day, my boys are like, what an absolute loss. I mean, they'll overcome and they'll get along, but just to be a dad that the loss is felt when you go is so important. And I'll never forget that about him. I could always ask him something and he was in my corner.

    [20:05]  Jeff Zaugg

    Sorry for your loss. So this is coming up on seven years of my dad being in heaven. And as you were sharing, my heart just went, my dad would have loved reading your book.

    [20:25]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah, it would have captured his heart. He was my biggest fan, you know, and I think about that a lot. He didn't live to see the end of this fifth book in the series. It's been a twenty year journey. The fifth book in the series, and I think probably primarily about the fact that he didn't see the end of it. And it was my life's work, and you want your dad to be proud of you with your life's work.

    [20:41]  Jeff Zaugg

    What's upstream of the man, the father, the husband that you are today? You could mention your dad again, or a mentor, a book you read, a moment. Are there one or two things that jump into your heart right now that's upstream, that have helped shape your heart, your calling, the man you are today?

    [21:02]  Cliff Graham

    I think being around my dad was the main one, right? But being around older men who are functioning in a way that, it's not that they were perfect men, but they were righteous men. And I observe how they are with their wives, and I observe the community around them, how it's been cultivated by their presence. There's a guy named Pat that's a dear friend of mine over in the West, and he's pushing eighty, and I want to be this guy one day. The fact that he takes the time to mentor me. And it's very difficult with the male ego to seek out mentorship. We just don't like that. They ask hard questions and you get challenged.

    [21:45]  Cliff Graham

    But one of the smartest, wisest things you can do, I believe, at any age of your manhood, is to find that guy that, maybe he doesn't have to be forty years older than you, but twenty years ahead of you, something like that, where he's walked your journey and he's willing to just sit with you in your pain. He's willing to call you out on your stuff and honestly encourage you. Like, man, you did that awesome. Get out there and do it. And I think that's just the idea of male mentorship. We're losing that in a desperate way. And I feel like that's what I hope to become myself, and I hope I keep finding it out there.

    [22:20]  Jeff Zaugg

    Yeah. I mean, even as you say that, I'm like, I want to work more on that. I want to work more in this chapter. I want to develop more of that. Because it doesn't come without work and building it and asking. Cliff, I was curious, as you thought about chatting with DadAwesome, helping dads like me and others, is there anything that you're like, this might be helpful? Anything that you were thinking coming into this conversation, an insight, an idea, something that's helped you that you'd want to pass on to the dads listening?

    [22:45]  Cliff Graham

    Never forget the satisfaction and joy that being a dad gives you. There's nothing in this life that gives you anything near the joy and satisfaction of being a dad. There's just nothing. And I've been around a lot of men that have everything in this world with wealth, they have everything in this world with power, and those are addictive drugs. Those are things that you would see wanting to go after. But on this very trip right now, outside this, I have three of my sons out there and they want to be here with me. And it's work, but gosh, the joy of the conversations now. If you're a dad of little kids, for example, hang in there. There will come a point where you get to just talk about a movie you all saw together and everyone's got an opinion and you're bickering about it and you're throwing popcorn at each other. But the idea that you've made it. You've made it to a point where they're your friends and not just your sons or your daughters. You actually feel like you can hang out together. So it is worth everything to get to that point, if God gives it to you.

    [23:49]  Jeff Zaugg

    I have to ask, you know, being a storyteller, a couple movies or books that you're like, these are great stories. If you haven't seen these. What are some, just off the top of mind, movies or books, maybe two of each, that you're like, these are some of the top ones?

    [24:10]  Cliff Graham

    It's a funny question, because to me it's, what part of life are you in right now? Just off the top of my head, one that I recently saw that I thought laid out the father journey so well was the movie Field of Dreams. And it is an absolute, I mean, it's a tear yanker for men. The last twenty minutes of that movie, and I won't spoil it, but the way it wrestles with, he's wrestling with something from his past with his father, and it so satisfyingly addresses that at the end of that movie. I recommend that one in a huge way.

    [24:37]  Cliff Graham

    You know, taking on the great book project together, I would even say, not to make this a commercial, but I wrote the books that I wrote and will continue to write so that fathers and sons can read together. And then talk about the Bible story afterwards. Like this is the David books. I have the Shamgar one. The dedication in that one is for every man who has ever been broken. That's just what I put in there. And the story of Shamgar, I did fictional, but he's made a lot of mistakes in his life. And I wrote this as kind of my own testimonial coming out of a very bad season. And I said, how do you, when you've completely messed up, or there's all this destruction around you that you've caused, how do you crawl back out of that and keep fighting?

    [25:35]  Cliff Graham

    My absolute favorite movie, not just to land the plane here, but my absolute favorite movie in the world is Cinderella Man. My favorite movie as a young man was Braveheart, because, how could it not be?

    [25:48]  Jeff Zaugg

    Yeah, you have to mention it. Cinderella Man though, it's been a long time. I'm going to go back and watch it.

    [25:53]  Cliff Graham

    It is an incredibly moving story of a man who life dealt him a hard hand, and everything about the last thirty minutes of that movie as he's fighting and his family's cheering for him, he's taking punches, it'll have you weeping at the end of that movie. Again, if you're at a certain point of your life where you appreciate that kind of thing more. My heart is always for the man who has tried hard, and he's not done it perfectly, but he's fighting. And I just think that's a beautiful story.

    [26:25]  Jeff Zaugg

    Were you thinking about that movie when we were in the fight gym, the boxing gym?

    [26:30]  Cliff Graham

    Oh man. Always.

    [26:32]  Jeff Zaugg

    Would you pray, and I guess I want to say thank you first. Thank you, Cliff, for the conversation. Thank you for pouring your whole heart into all these and all the books to come.

    [26:36]  Cliff Graham

    It's an honor.

    [26:37]  Jeff Zaugg

    And they'll all be linked out, so we'll make sure. I'm going to send our crew at DadAwesome to dive into the world of these book projects that you've written. Would you say a short prayer over all of us dads?

    [26:52]  Cliff Graham

    Yeah. Father, I want to come before you and thank you for the dads out there that are trying, that are fighting, and they're showing up every day, and they're buckling on the tool belt or the sword belt and they're just going for it. And I think about those men in the Valley of Elah when Goliath was threatening Israel, and we read about how they were afraid. And they were afraid because we are afraid, and we can all be afraid. But they showed up and they were there. And I want to just thank you for the men listening to this who are showing up. They are starting the journey of doing whatever it is they have to do to be obedient to you and to follow you. And I want to encourage them. I ask that they get into your word, that they're inspired to read your word, that they find fellowship and brotherhood,

    [27:33]  Cliff Graham

    and they view their families as the greatest treasure and asset they could possibly have in this life. And it is a high privilege and a high calling and an honor to get to be the dad in that home. And that you look at them as a proud father. And whatever their father was on this earth, good or bad, you are their father, and you continue to father them and show them the way. So I bless them and I praise them. I bless this ministry. The DadAwesome ministry is a powerful force for good in this land. And I lift up Jeff and all of his team, that you would richly bless and anoint them for this task. In your mighty name we pray. Amen.

    Transcript lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are approximate.

    • "It's not an awesome dad if you're aimless." (17:40)

    • "Every little thing that a guy does that he thinks, 'I did this in the dark and no one cares' — you'd be surprised what your kids are seeing all the time." (14:05)

    • "He didn't charge into the fight endlessly confident in his own abilities. He was screaming to God for covering." (11:00)

    • "Just to be a dad that the loss is felt when you go is so important." (19:50)

    • "There's nothing in this life that gives you anything near the joy and satisfaction of being a dad. There's just nothing." (22:47)

 

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450 | Running 24 Hours for Freedom, Writing Birthday Letters, and Why Family Mission Beats Solo Missions (Brent Silkey)