Dancing in Smoke | Suffering | with N.D. Wilson

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:13

I just, I mean, I wanted to talk about, like, you know, people asked when I started posting stuff, we're doing stuff together, they're asking, like, how's

00:20

Nate doing? That was a big, most asked question is how's he doing? Yeah. So, I mean, to introduce people to this, watching this right now, we've been doing some stuff on Notes from the

00:31

Tilted World, talking about how you describe the world and you talk about God's story.

00:37

He's created a story, he's playing, he's sovereignly wielding that story, right?

00:43

And you had, in Notes from the Tilted World, this amazing description of how we should be in awe. Yeah. We should be in awe of everything.

00:49

The earth going around the sun at Mach 86, and it's spinning, you know, at a thousand miles per hour, and, you know, we're not flying off,

01:00

God's holding the, holding us down to the earth. And you just have this amazing description of, you know, this wonder of creation and the

01:07

God who's wielding a story. And then this year, you discover that you have a tumor behind your ear.

01:14

So we should probably tell everyone about that. Yeah, so, and actually when I wrote Tilted World, I got a great response.

01:20

It did really well. It kind of, it did a lot of things that I wanted it to, and then there was a woman who read it, it was the widow, and she liked it, but her response was, yeah, we'll see.

01:30

We'll see if you still think this when you go through something. Right. And it's like, okay.

01:36

So one of the first things that happened when I discovered that I did have, you know, this egg in my head,

01:43

I woke up and my wife was looking at me and she said, well, I guess it's an opportunity to not be a hypocrite.

01:49

Right. I was like, great. Okay. That's, there's the game plan. Right. Let's not be hypocrites. So it was wild.

01:56

So it was a size of a farm egg directly behind my left eye, like back in the middle, compressing my brainstem.

02:03

So I was not breathing at night. I was like, things were starting to be suppressed. I was starting to die. And the impulse to breathe was disappearing when

02:11

I was asleep. So I just hold my breath. It's kind of a weird sensation to hold your breath for two minutes, but I was doing lots of breath holding and I would wake up after not breathing for a couple minutes and I wouldn't feel like breathing.

02:24

Like the impulse to breathe was gone. You had to tell yourself to breathe. I had to like make myself breathe.

02:29

So there's no gasp. There was no like coming up from underwater. And even that is an amazing gift to realize that we are just wired, that God has wired us to survive.

02:40

Like we're, we have all these mechanisms built in. I can't make my heart beat. No, none of us can resolve to beat their heart one more time.

02:48

It's just going and we're breathing and we're thinking and the heart's going and God just holds us in being all the time, holds us in existence.

02:55

So on every level. So I knew, okay, this is from God. I don't know what it's for, but he gave it to me and I want to use it.

03:06

So whatever he gives me, I'm supposed to use, I'm supposed to invest and that's it. And I've found that since discovering that I had a large brain tumor,

03:16

I can say the same things I would say before to someone, but now it's like I'm wearing brass knuckles.

03:23

It's like I'm throwing the same punch. It's the same punch. There's nothing different about what I'm saying. It's just the impact.

03:29

It's like now somebody crumples. So before I had great parents, I was raised in a great

03:35

Christian home. I got a book deal. Yeah. I have a, you know, married a pro surfer.

03:41

Like everything's happy, happy, happy, happy. Heather's a pro surfer? Yes. I didn't know that. Yeah. When I met

03:46

Heather, she was the women's longboard and shortboard champion of Argentina when

03:51

I met her and she had just, she'd been a competitive sponsored surfers and she was a teenager, but she just started surfing pro contests and kind of have, you know, four book deal with Random House, awesome family, great relationship with my parents.

04:07

Like there was nothing there. I'm still mortal. We're all still going to die, right? Right. Somebody who's dealing with a hard thing who would read

04:13

Tilt -A -Whirl and dealing with hardship would look at me and be like, yeah, he doesn't, you know, he doesn't know.

04:19

Yeah. And so it doesn't really surprise me that I wrote a book called Notes from the Tilt -A -Whirl and Death by Living.

04:25

I then got given a brain tumor. It doesn't, it's kind of my fault, right? It's like I was, I was talking about this stuff.

04:31

You said it. And then I got to put up or shut up. Yeah. You know, it's like, so do you believe it or do you not?

04:36

Yeah. And getting up at five in the morning and walking into the hospital knowing that I'm going on to the altar and we're going to see what happens is like, that's a real put up or shut up moment.

04:48

Yeah. You know, so it's, uh, it was been, it's been wild. I've learned way more about the brain than I care to know.

04:53

Yeah. But it just makes me marvel even more at what, at what God does, how complex it is, how much they don't even know anything.

05:04

Yeah. It's like you touch it. Anything could happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's so just like everything else. It's on a razor's edge.

05:10

We're just right on a razor's edge, blissfully acting like we're immortal when we're not. And so getting the ear peeled off and drilled through and, you know, coming out the other side was definitely a nice little brush with mortality that I think is, is pretty healthy.

05:26

Yeah. It's a healthy thing for all of us to remember and showing my kids, you know, like going through it with my children in front of my children with them watching me go through it.

05:37

All of us are going to do it at some point. I did a little like appetizer for mortality and appetizer for death, but all of us have death beds.

05:44

All of us are coming up on death scenes and how we face that death, like, well, it's going to be the fruit of our faith and you know, the faith is going to put up or shut up for all of us.

05:55

So getting old and falling apart, slowly decaying so you can't stand up, so you can't wipe your own rear end.

06:02

So you, all the things that happen when we fall apart, your kidneys are failing, everything else is not less terrifying than what

06:09

I went through, you know, what I went through. Yeah. I watched my grandfather go through it now and he just got a pacemaker put in and it's just as scary, more scary.

06:19

Everything's dying. Every function is dying and they die one at a time. Your muscles are atrophying, your heart's going bonkers, your kidneys are shutting down and you're just going into the grave.

06:29

So we all have that ahead of us at the end of the story. You believed, obviously, everything you said in Notes from the

06:37

Tilted World, that's why you wrote it. You believed it. But how, like, what was the process like as you're going to get surgery and even up to now?

06:45

How has God used this experience and the moments where you had to trust him in the midst of, like, deep, the deepest possible pain, how did he use it to really shape all of that and bring it to life for you?

06:58

What kind of, what was it like? What is it like? Well, it heightens, it heightens the gratitude a lot. Yeah. So it's all cliche, everybody knows it, but you don't know what you got until it's gone.

07:07

Right. Man, I spent 38 years not appreciating my left ear. And now it's gone.

07:13

And now it's gone. You know, 38 years. I checked that ear out of God's library and I had to give it back. It's like, okay, got to give the ear back now.

07:21

And then suddenly, now I really notice what I had. Yeah. Not feeling my face, like, man, who really thinks that you care very much whether your cheek is numb?

07:31

You know, it's like, I get the spasms in my left eye, my half my tongue can't taste all the... I just found that out today.

07:37

Half your tongue. You lost taste in half your tongue. Yeah. Which is useful when you put something really hot in your mouth and you're like, oh, and most people kind of burns a little bit.

07:45

I just move it to the left side. It's gone. Can't feel it. Oh, man. So there's a ways in which it heightens gratitude across the board.

07:54

It makes me way more grateful for my right ear. You better believe that I don't forget this one. You know, it's...

08:00

So gratitude is heightened. Everything's amplified. All your relationships are amplified. And many, many people have gone through it before.

08:09

People have gone off to war. People have gone into surgery. People go through risky business all the time.

08:14

But in our day and age, we try to push it away and forget about it. You know, there was a time not very long ago when every woman going into childbirth was going into something more lethal than brain surgery is now.

08:27

Not very long ago, more women died in childbirth than people die in brain surgeries.

08:33

Like, what I was going through was not actually more terrifying than what my great grandmother went through every time she had a kid and so on.

08:43

So it really heightens what you have, and it heightens your relationships. And it really brought a lot more perspective, like a deeper feeling of the same things, like the same things

08:54

I already believe, but just more and more. So it's like getting a double shot of whiskey instead of just a taste.

09:03

Yeah. Why aren't you mad at God? Well, that's ultimately, that's always our choice, right?

09:10

So if you stub your toe, you have two options. You can praise God, you can rejoice in the Lord, or you can curse

09:15

God and die. Those are the only two doors. There's the curse God and die route, or there's the

09:21

Lord gives, the Lord takes away. And those are the two doorways. So I don't know why I would be.

09:28

I couldn't be mad at God for not making me 6 '5", when he made me 6 '4". Why would I be mad at God for having me born in 1978, when

09:36

I'd rather have been born in 1979 or 1980? It's just, I've got no control of this.

09:43

He's made all these creative decisions for my life and who I am, and this is another one of those.

09:50

So I was born with two ears. I lost one when I was 38. I was born with two legs, still got both of them.

09:57

I didn't choose two legs. I didn't make any decisions. I didn't choose my parents. I didn't choose my location, nothing.

10:04

It was all from him. All the creative decisions that matter are his. And so I'm more than happy to trust him with life and death decisions all the time, because he always has.

10:15

How did your dad, as everyone knows, is well -known, pipe -hitting, black coffee -drinking

10:25

Calvinist, run your face across the gravel Calvinist. How did that help you throughout this trial?

10:34

Well, I never really, man, it never even would dawn on me that God might not be in control.

10:40

I mean, people think that's more reassuring. That's the most terrifying thought. The idea that there's not someone in charge, that the one, like I say, in Tilt -A -Whirl, the idea that the guy running the

10:53

Tilt -A -Whirl machine is drunk or high or left or the gears stop working is far more terrifying than knowing he's in control.

11:01

He designed it. He built it. He's got a plan. And so I can enjoy the rollercoaster, and I actually have enjoyed the rollercoaster.

11:09

It's weird as it is to say. I can enjoy the rollercoaster because I know it's designed, because there is a designer, because there is a

11:16

God. Apart from that, there's no way I could. It would just, I'd be freaking out, you know, screaming in a closet somewhere.

11:22

Yeah. So it was my favorite, we talked about this today, my favorite part of Tilt -A -Whirl that the image that stuck with me is when in the film,

11:32

Notes from the Tilt -A -Whirl, which everyone needs to get, you talk about the earth itself spinning around the sun and rotating, and you have this scene where you're grabbing hold of the grass, like, why aren't we more in awe of this, and why are we not afraid to fly away?

11:48

And you have the scene of you grabbing the earth, because when you really think about it, it doesn't make any sense that God is holding all this together in the way that he is.

11:57

But something happened to you in the surgery that sort of gave you, like, a kind of picture of what that's really like.

12:03

What happened? Well, they snipped my inner ear. And I can say that that scene in the movie, when

12:11

I'm on my face, hanging on to the grass, is because I just got out of an airplane that was doing goofy stunts, and I was totally earsick.

12:18

Oh, yeah? So I got out of that airplane, and I just flopped on my stomach, and I was just hanging on to the grass face down, just like, whoosh, just letting it out.

12:24

So that was real? That was real. Oh, yeah. It was totally real, and it happened to correspond with the section of the book where I talk about doing that.

12:29

Right. And so they grabbed the shot. It was not a planned shot. It's a good B -roll. Yeah, they grabbed the B -roll and threw it in there.

12:36

But having your inner ear snipped is a brush with reality that you should never, ever hope to have.

12:44

Because your inner ear is doing wildly complex math all the time, intermingling data from your ocular reflex, or your vestibular ocular reflex, your eyes, the bottoms of your feet, and your inner ear.

13:00

So there's three sensors feeding through there, going into your brain, what you see, what you feel on the bottoms of your feet from gravity, and this amazing leveling balance nerve that you have.

13:11

It merges all the math, pumps it into your head, and when they cut that, it goes into free fall.

13:18

So my left ear, when I came out of surgery, was telling me that I was in free fall. Just everything's going.

13:24

My right ear is telling me everything's the way it was. But you realize the complexity of the math that's being done all the time in order for you to feel like you're holding still when you're not.

13:35

We actually are on a ball of lava, whipping around a star, and everything's nuts. Everything's crazy.

13:41

That's the reality. But we have this gift from God that enables us to think that nothing's happening. So being unable to sit still, without feeling like you're on a bucking bronco or on a bowl, that's where I was.

13:56

So I was on a bed hanging onto the sheets, just being like, whoa, because everything's just going.

14:02

There's nothing I can do to stop it. It won't go away until my brain finally learns to stop listening to my left ear and only listen to the right ear.

14:12

And so you have to retrain your brain. And the only way to retrain your brain is to overwhelm it. So your brain's not going to rewrite anything if everything's working.

14:21

So you have to put yourself in situations where you melt down. So they'd make me, I had to do this multiple times a day.

14:27

So I'd look at my finger like this and go like this until I was sick. You feel sick, and you're overwhelmed, you stop, and you just curl up and want to die for a little while.

14:38

And then you feel better, and then you do it again. And the more you overwhelm your brain, the more it says, okay, let's just go to the other ear.

14:46

Let's just listen to that one. This isn't working. This is insane. And the thing is, I felt like when

14:52

I was in the chaos of vertigo, I didn't feel like it was lying to me. I felt like I'd lost my liar.

15:01

I'd lost the thing that was actually taming it all down for me and making it palatable, like I could handle it.

15:08

But if you just take out your balance nerves, man, the world's going to feel as crazy as it actually is, and you're going to die because you're not able to handle it.

15:16

So God's given us these things that can mute it, tone it down, dampen it, so that we can actually just put our feet up.

15:24

It's just your ear. Yeah, it's your ear. It's a tiny little nerve in your ear. And we have two of them. And you think about trying to evolve that, by the way.

15:32

For millions of years, people were in freefall and panicking, and then finally, they were able to sit still and feel like, yeah, it's chill, it's fine.

15:44

Because really crazy amount of calculus and physics and trig is going on in your inner ear.

15:49

Atheism is so stupid. It's so dumb. Yes. So losing my inner ear and going through the experience of a complete loss of just a ripping away of that veil.

16:01

So it felt like the veil got ripped off, and holy cow, just grab on for dear life, until slowly it's gone back to just the way it was, where I'm only listening to this one now.

16:14

So yeah, I'm grateful for it. But it was a weird, in retrospect, I can look back and say, okay, that's a little straight shot.

16:21

Yeah. Yeah, a little straight shot of what's going on. It's kind of like, in a different way, I think about when

16:26

Elisha tells his servant, or asks to have his servant's eyes opened to see what it's really looking like right now.

16:33

Let's have him see it now. Is that going to calm him down or freak him out more? It was kind of supposedly calming, but it actually kind of created more panic.

16:42

So yeah, there's a bunch of demons over there with this army, but there's crazy fiery horses over here and angel warriors over here.

16:50

That's just nuts. Yeah. So there's different times when the eyes are opened. People see things the way they actually are, and every time it's terrifying.

16:59

Everybody who's ever wanted to see God, ever really wanted to see God, it's a terrifying thing, and it's the same thing here.

17:09

Just rip off one of the veils, and you can really feel it. So if you want to know what the real world feels like, get some scissors, go in there, lose your balance there.

17:21

You know, I think it's interesting, so you talk about the philosophy of Christianity, God being the necessary precondition of everything, and you have a couple different ways you can approach a trial like this that you've gone through, and I can't even imagine what that must have been like for you and what it is like for you.

17:42

It's just incredible. So you could approach what happened to you, like an atheist who says that all we are is was just another cosmic accident amongst the trillion accidents that are happening constantly around us.

17:56

Bummer. Bummer. So you can approach it in that way and say, well, this is purposeless anyway, the loss of my face and my taste and my ear and going through this pain, it's all just sound and fury signifying nothing anyways.

18:09

Or you can approach it, say, in the Arminian perspective, or say the open theist perspective where God didn't know this was coming,

18:16

Nate, but He's going to do His best to work it out. Like believing those things has consequences, but it doesn't really make any sense that you're sitting here in the way that you are, still giving glory to God, still living in the way that you are, embracing everything you ever said about God, that you learn from Him and His Word.

18:35

There's approaches that mean something, theology matters. One, there is no God, this is a cosmic accident, sound and fury signifying nothing.

18:43

That's depressing. Yeah. And lonely. And then there's the other view that says God didn't know and He's impotent to do anything about it.

18:51

He's just as surprised by it as you. Yeah. So there's a couple different options. There's no

18:56

God, negligent God, evil God, or good God.

19:02

And the open theist will try to embrace a negligent God who created all this, but He didn't know what was going to happen.

19:08

Right. That sucks. Yeah. It's like, sorry guys. I didn't realize when I lit this firework that it was going to go off in your lives.

19:15

Yeah. You know, it's like, He's either a negligent God where He created something He couldn't control,

19:21

He lost control, or lost control of it, and it went bonkers. That's the open theist, you know, approach, which is awful.

19:27

But also God's culpable in that situation. He is culpable. He's negligent. Or there is no God, in which case my tumor has every bit as much right to live as I do.

19:37

Yeah. So what? It's not any more special than you. Yeah. It's like, why do I think my brain is more special than the tumor?

19:44

Right. There's just as much chemical activity involved. Yeah. And when I fall over and die, the funniest thing with the materialistic atheist approach, there's not even a difference between life and death.

19:55

So if I just go over, none of my atoms slow down. Right. None of my cells even slow down.

20:03

They all start to accelerate, actually, like you're going to get more, like, acceleration and things are going to go a little more rapido, you know, like it's going to start firing up.

20:12

But there's just as much activity. But we know the soul is gone, but they don't have that.

20:18

So if there is no soul, then like there's not even an edge between life and death philosophically.

20:24

Like it's, what on earth is it? Right. What's the difference between Mountain Dew in the bottle and Mountain Dew on the floor?

20:30

Right. You know, it's like, it's Mountain Dew. Right. You know, that's, that's it. But we get really bummed out about one of them.

20:35

So the atheist approach is nonsense on many, many levels. Right. One of which is that there's no such thing as death.

20:43

Yeah. Like just that even, that concept even goes away. Right. There's just change. You know, that's it.

20:49

Flux. Yeah. Flux and chaos. And then you have, you know, you move to the malevolent God, which

20:55

I would like to say is not possible because he invented peanut butter and chocolate, you know, and somehow foreordained that those two, those, that combination would be discovered.

21:09

So like what we're smoking right now, or the whiskey we were drinking earlier, like there's way too much grace and artistry in all of it.

21:18

Yeah. It's just, it's everywhere. So trying to even think about an evil God is like, doesn't make any sense.

21:24

Plus beyond him, there's no standard. So whatever, whatever the creator or the infinite creator loves is lovely and whatever he hates is hateable and good.

21:33

He is the standard for good and evil. So by definition, that one just kind of falls apart, right? So instead you're left with a

21:38

God who knows what he's doing. And if I think that God knows what he's doing, which I do, and that is affirmed every second of every day that he knows what he's doing, then that's the only thing, that's the handle you grab onto when you're going through a trial.

21:52

It's like when, when somebody says, hang on and they go for the Dukes of Hazzard lunch, that's when you grab on, you grab onto that.

21:58

You grab onto the fact that there is a God and that's it. And if I die here, I mean,

22:03

I was fully ready and I was actually, I had to like do a reckoning and accounting of my life and be like, okay, what am

22:08

I leaving my kids? And like, what words do I want to leave them with? I was grateful I'd written as much as I had because I felt like my younger ones would have an opportunity to really know me.

22:18

Yeah. Like they would still know me because I had written for them. Yeah. Um, so going through that process and not wanting to die, but being ready to, if I was given 38 years and that was it, like a lot of people have been given just 38 years.

22:33

A lot of people are given less than that. So I didn't do anything to deserve 38. I didn't do anything to deserve five minutes more.

22:41

You know, it's like, it's just, you know, it's one of those things. My dad is fond of using one example where he says, if you have anybody who has kids can follow this.

22:49

If you, if you bring out a bowl of ice cream for one of your children and you sit them all on the couch, they're all watching something.

22:56

You bring out a bowl of ice cream and you give it to one kid only. The other kids are immediately going to freak out with that sidelong glance and none of them did anything to deserve ice cream, but you gave one of them ice cream.

23:09

And so the other ones immediately feel entitled, like they need ice cream too. And they're going to, they start, the sin kicks in and there's, they start that sideways glance.

23:17

So because some people got to live to be a hundred, I immediately think I have a right to, right?

23:22

You know, I deserve that. And my dad says, you, we all, all parents know how the other kids will respond if you give one kid a bowl of ice cream and then he would say, hold on and you go get a bigger bowl of ice cream and give that to the next kid.

23:34

The first kid who just got a bowl of ice cream who was just fired up a minute ago and you know, all, all pleased is immediately looking sideways at the bigger bowl of ice cream saying,

23:44

Hey, like, why don't I have that much? And there's nothing in this world that is all about equity for people.

23:53

It's about stories for people. It's about stories that glorify God and manifest God, not about, do we all get the exact same amount of ice cream?

24:01

Yeah. Like, so when I had to come to grips with the fact that maybe I only got 38 years, like that might've been it like, okay,

24:09

I have to be willing to thank God for that and praise him for it. That's the, if that's the end of the run, that's the end of the run.

24:16

And I didn't really, I didn't want that. I didn't want it for myself, but I really didn't want it for my kids. Like, cause

24:22

I knew that in their first chapters, like this would be a major incident in their early life if that's how it played out.

24:29

So, but that's the thought. I don't, I didn't deserve anything. I didn't deserve to come into existence.

24:34

I didn't deserve to be conceived. I didn't deserve to be born. I didn't deserve to have the parents I had for whom I'm really grateful.

24:41

Like, or my sisters or my life or my wife or my kids, you know, it's just, none of it is deserved.

24:48

Your sisters are a little nutty and amazing. Sisters are great. They're awesome. They're pretty great.

24:53

They're so awesome. And they were great through this too. All gifts. But there was no, at no point was our family afraid, like there wasn't a big fear.

25:04

It's like, cause it's like, all right, we're going on this roller coaster now, but it's a roller coaster.

25:09

It was built by someone who controls it, who has a reason, who has intention behind it.

25:15

And while I couldn't unpack all of the intention of why he did it, like I couldn't tell you all the reasons why the

25:21

God had, I can tell you there were reasons. And I've seen fruit, you know, I've seen fruit from it already. So it's early yet.

25:27

I'm only seven months post -op and it'll be about a year before they tell me I will have hit new normal.

25:33

And they've said that I'll never have old normal. There will never be old normal again. But whatever is after a year is pretty much it.

25:41

Like that's, that's the new normal. So that's kind of a long rambling approach to it.

25:47

But it's when you get given something by your father, you want to thank him for it. Not look sideways.

25:53

If you won Powerball tomorrow, you know, you found a ticket on the ground and picked it up and you won $2 million, like we're all

26:00

Powerball winners. All of us are Powerball winners. Like it's something ridiculous. Like in every sexual act, there's 8 million sperm.

26:09

Like there's 8 million times, however, a number of possible eggs there were, there were that many variations possible on who could have been born.

26:16

And instead it was you. Then here you are. All of us are Powerball winners. And you pick out that Powerball ticket and you only win a million bucks.

26:24

And then somebody else picks up the one on the ground in front of you and it's 40 million. How long does it take before the human who won a million is like,

26:31

Hey, yeah, it's like I only won a million. I only got a million undeserved dollars, not 40.

26:37

So it's all about checking the human heart and just maintaining gratitude. So you wrap up on this part, you said when you're working through the different options you have and how theology matters and how it impacts how you walk through this kind of trial and it matters a lot, you said the person who believes in the good

26:58

God, how has, but why the, why the, why the triune

27:03

God of the Bible? Why Jesus? Why does he satisfy your soul in this trial? Why, why the good

27:10

God of the Bible? Well, two things. One is the night

27:15

I found out about my tumor. It's probably the night I laughed hardest in my adult life.

27:22

No kidding. It ended up being hilarious. It was just, the whole thing was comic. It was straight out of a movie.

27:29

And it was just funny. Everything about how I found out, the situation where we were, I couldn't really tell my wife.

27:35

It's like everything was just arranged. We were staying with her cousin's family. There were kids everywhere. You know,

27:41

I, we'd gotten there. We wanted to hang out with them, find out how they were doing. I get a phone call right when we arrived on a

27:46

Friday afternoon and I'm told, I step out in the front yard and I'm told that I've got a large brain tumor.

27:53

And the doctor says, and I know nothing about these, so I can't tell you anything, but I'll have a specialist call you immediately so you don't have to go through the weekend wondering what's going on.

28:03

Nobody called. You know, so I get that phone call, 4 p .m. on Friday, right after we arrive at her family's house.

28:10

And we're downstairs on an air mattress in the basement and there's kids everywhere. They've got a bunch of kids. We've got a bunch of kids. I walk back in, kind of like, wow, okay.

28:18

That was, that was some news. And my wife in front of everybody was like, so what was that call? And I was like, you know,

28:23

I'll tell you later. Like, I'll, I'll fill you in later. I didn't want to just make everything about me from then on for that weekend.

28:29

I wanted to actually spend time with his family and really talk to them. And so I waited until everybody was down.

28:37

And then my wife and I finally went to our guest room downstairs and sat down on an air mattress and I said, okay, so I have a brain tumor.

28:44

That's, that's the news. It's 11 p .m. And I broke it to her at 11 on that Friday.

28:50

She just, you know, it bowled her over. And she had just grabbed her toothbrush right before I told her this.

28:57

So she's standing there, like, frantically brushing her teeth, staring at me. And she says, we have to pray about this, like, right now.

29:03

We have to pray about this right now. And I said, yes, we do. She sits down next to me. I start to pray and she just passes out.

29:12

Just, I'm one or two sentences in and she's unconscious. She passed out? Just fell asleep.

29:18

Just, bloop, just over. No kidding. And I had barely gotten past, like, father in heaven.

29:24

Like, I was one sentence in and my wife is unconscious. And I'm sitting here just thinking, like, really?

29:33

Like, okay. That's weird. Like, but this was already an answer to prayer for me. Like, one of my biggest fears was, like, how is this going to hit my wife?

29:41

Yeah. Have her actually just asleep and peaceful? I was like, okay, I like this coping mechanism. This is better.

29:47

Yeah, this is. Because I hadn't expected her to sleep a wink that night. Like, when I was telling her at 11 p .m., I figured we're in for an all -nighter.

29:55

You know, like, this is going to be a long night. And she was just out. What? So then I was sitting there thinking, like, okay, so what should

30:01

I do? And I thought, you know, I should probably read Job again. Let's go back to Job. And it was late, and so I pull up my

30:08

Bible app and hit Job. And I kind of flopped back and I just hit the audio. I'm going to listen to it read.

30:15

And I'm sitting on an air mattress. My wife's unconscious. And incidentally, she has an old surf injury. She would never sleep on an air mattress ever.

30:21

This is not something she's capable of doing. Man. Even with this old back injury. So she's just out cold. And I start listening to Job.

30:30

And it's really slow. It's this, you know, the reader's voice is going really slow. So I hit double time.

30:36

And then, like, 150 percent. And then, like, 125. And then back to 150, trying to find the right pace.

30:41

And so it's like this really quick chipmunk reading of Job as it's just going. And I'm sitting here listening to Job read by a chipmunk while my wife's asleep.

30:51

And I'm thinking that what I'm dealing with is not even in Job's league. Like, not even close.

30:58

Yeah. I mean, nowhere. I can't even, like, knock on his door, you know, with this trial compared to what he went through.

31:05

And I'm listening to this, like, fast audio book. And I just got cracked up. I mean, I just started laughing. And I'm just sitting in bed just laughing.

31:12

My wife's asleep. Job is funny to me right now. And I'm shaking the air mattress laughing.

31:18

And she's not waking up. She's kind of just bouncing next to me. And I read a bunch of Mayo Clinic articles and then read more

31:27

Job and finally just went to sleep. And then the kids wake us up in the morning, and my wife looks at me like, ah.

31:33

Like, we have to talk about this. But we have no time. It's pancake feed time. And everything's like we're off to the races, and we have a whole day planned.

31:40

And so we finally get back to the house that night. It's night number two. And I tell her, like, okay, now let's pray about it.

31:48

Now that we're back here again. I start praying, and she's just, again, first sentence, just out. She had two back -to -back eight -hour nights of sleep on an air mattress.

31:57

And it was just funny. And the next morning, I was like, okay, I'm starting to understand a little bit about Jesus in the garden with the disciples.

32:03

Just a little bit. Where at some point, he's like, you know what? Just get your sleep. You do that.

32:09

I'll do this. Just rest. So it was funny. It was genuinely funny.

32:15

It just got hilarious. And, you know, there was never a meltdown.

32:22

Like, there was never an emotional meltdown about it. There was never anything. The next time we really talked about it was when my wife and I got back.

32:29

Because we drove all the way back home from Utah with the kids in the car, and I hadn't told them yet. I didn't want to tell them until I knew all the information.

32:35

And so we didn't talk about it in the car because the kids were there. You know, it's just the next time we spoke about it was me waking up at home and her saying, well,

32:44

I guess it's a chance not to be a hypocrite. Like, all right. Well, here we are then.

32:49

That was as much of a family meeting as we ever had to have about it. Yeah. So it was funny.

32:55

And it only could have been if I had complete faith in the one doing it. It's like, that was it.

33:01

So, I mean, and that's, he's there. And the reason, to get your question about Christ, going through Job.

33:10

I went to Job, and it was laughable to me how much what I was dealing with was nothing compared to what he was dealing with.

33:17

I mean, he had the devil sent and took his entire family. And I was thinking, man, I would do this in a heartbeat over any of my kids going through it.

33:25

It was like, if I had a choice of me having this or one of my children, like, sign me up. Yeah. You know, and Job, what

33:31

Job went through was just next level. And from there to Jesus is an even bigger leap.

33:39

So I'm not even in Job's league. Job's not even in Christ's league. What Christ went through, what Christ shouldered, what he did, what he took on himself, and what he accomplished is just so far beyond.

33:50

So if it was Allah, like, who cares? You know, it's like, there's no loving personal relationship there.

33:56

Like, if I was on a roller coaster that Allah had built, it would be like, oh, crap. Right. You know, it's like,

34:02

I'm going to burn. Right. Or even the Catholic, you know, the Catholic version of the

34:08

Father. Like, no, that would be awful. But because I'm in a place, you know,

34:14

I'm serving, and I'm created by and crafted by the Father who sent the Son, and the Son who saved me, and the

34:20

Son who knows my name and has always known my name and has a purpose for me, then it's reassuring.

34:26

Then it's calming. Then it's personal. Right. So even if my wife falls asleep, he hasn't. You know, and everything is still rolling.

34:35

So to try to, like, the reason why it was a joke to even compare myself to Jesus in the garden is because that's,

34:41

I mean, that's a whole different ball of wax. So Job was way out of my league.

34:47

Christ was way out of Job's league. And yet, there's a personal relationship. So I say in Tilt -A -Whirl, when you go through the grave, the way is lit with Christmas lights.

34:58

It's like it's already, like, you're not the first one there. You're not the first one to go through it. And that's how

35:03

I felt. It's like I felt like I was on a well -worn trail. Like, this is, like, this is where everybody goes.

35:09

This is the believer's trail. And there's Christmas lights all along the way. So it wasn't dark. It wasn't scary.

35:14

It wasn't lonely. Because you're not alone. Because he's been. He's been there. He's been in deeper, darker valleys of worse shadows of death.

35:22

So, and, you know, we fear no evil. So we either do or we don't.

35:28

And that's the hypocrisy part. So that's the long -winded answer to why Jesus. Yeah.

35:33

That's good. Because he's been. He's been there. And has felt it in a far more excruciating way than I ever would.