David:

[0:00] So where's your heart? Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And it's easy to be present at work and the things you are passionate about. But often our work is our passion and we get pouring in our life into our work to make it better. And that kind of becomes our treasure because that's where our heart is. But what we need to do is, and we tend to forget our family because working on the family doesn't pay the bills. But it's an important part of our life. Investing in your families is very important, but not urgent work that needs to be done because that has huge ramifications in the long run. And so today I brought Jay Hall on to talk about what he has learned about being present with his family and being involved in how to train up children to follow Jesus, because that's not always our first thing we think about. Jay, welcome.

[0:47] Thanks, David. Excited to be here.

David:

[0:49] Yeah. And to start off, what is one way that you have found to honor God in your life and or business?

[0:56] So I am a community college dean. I work for a large public community college, and that is not a space where it is encouraged to talk openly about your faith and do things like that. But I have been very fortunate in that I have been allowed to be who I am and who I am as a follower of Jesus in the midst of that space. And what's really fun, but also cool, I think, is the opportunities for conversations about God and about spiritual things that rise up in the midst of a space where it's not always, well, it's never encouraged, but it's also, you know, sometimes it's not even allowed. And, but, you know, if the conversation starts, if it's invited, then it's not easy necessarily to talk about it. And I have been pleasantly surprised through the years as I've had the chance to talk with folks who claim that they don't have faith, they're not interested in faith, they're not interested in spiritual things or things of God. I've had some of those folks ask me to pray for them just because they know that I do. And it's one of those, well, it couldn't hurt.

[2:02] And I'm happy to do that. But also, I mean, I've performed weddings for people. I have prayed for sick kids. I've done funerals, just all kinds of things to be. So I love the opportunity to be a person of faith and a person that represents Jesus in a space that is not terribly interested in having Jesus represented and sorting out how to do that in a way that is both honoring to who he is, but also that honors the people around me without kind of beating them to death with, I'm a person of faith and you're going to have to deal with it. I don't know if that's a terribly humble answer, but I think it is that whole idea of being a light in a dark, not a dark place, but a darker place, and also always being ready to give a reason, right, for the hope that I have.

David:

[2:52] Yep. Very good. I do find that interesting though, that people say, would you pray for me?

[2:57] Yeah.

David:

[2:58] They don't necessarily go follow God or go to church or nothing, but they realize, I don't know if it's somewhere behind them to think that, like you said, maybe there's a God. If he is not, it won't hurt.

[3:09] That's it. Right. It doesn't hurt them if they do that. It is interesting. Some of the folks who've asked me, I thought, fortunately, I didn't say, really, you want me to? Really?

David:

[3:17] It's a problem. No, I'm not going to pray for you.

[3:21] But, you know, always love to do that and love the opportunity then to follow up with, hey, I was praying for you. How are things going? Just so that they know they matter to me.

David:

[3:30] Yeah.

[3:30] And they matter to God.

David:

[3:31] Yeah. So you've written a book called God Help Me. I'm a young dad. You're in the academic world. Why'd you write that book or what led you to write that book? It sounds like a great title.

[3:43] Well, you know, you've been a young dad. I've been a young dad. God Help Me is kind of what I said a lot. I started working on the book when I found out that my son was going to have his first child, my grandson that we were just talking about came on that I spent the last week with, and wanted to make sure that I shared with my son, all the things that I thought were significant about being a dad that I hoped he'd observed in me for the 25 years up to that point, but didn't necessarily articulate. And you don't know how conscious any of that is anyway. Right. And as I wanted to start sharing things with him, I realized I also knew a lot of other young men who either had just had kids or in the process getting ready to have kids. And I wanted them to have this stuff too. And so if I was going to write it down anyway, might as well write it down in a way that was shareable. And I recognize that, and I think you said a version of it in the, in your introduction, a lot of times young men are encouraged to be great in their work, to be great in all of these different spaces. And family.

[4:45] Come second or third or whatever, just because it's not as loud. I like the way that you said important, but it's not always urgent. I think that's an important distinction. And so I wanted to encourage young men to think about the things they needed to build into their lives to be great dads, but also to take those same things, love and joy and gratitude and service, and begin the process of building them into the lives of their children, not just through saying, hey, do this, but being intentional about conversations that are had and, and being in spaces with them where they could watch dad be loving and joyful and thankful and all that.

David:

[5:22] Yep. Yes. It is very interesting being a dad and yeah, all the kids are different. I realize that dads are different, just personalities and what some things are very easy for me to do.

[5:33] Right.

David:

[5:34] Some things are not, I'm not a big storyteller and I don't, I mean,

David:

[5:37] I appreciate stories, I don't feel like I'm a big storyteller. So that's difficult for me sometimes. But overall, whether you're outgoing or not outgoing, what is a couple of the main key components, duties you think a dad has for his children?

[5:56] I think the biggest thing we can do is show up, is just be present in their lives. So the last words of the book are keep showing up. Just that encouragement to young men to be present in the lives of their children. And you're right. Sometimes our kids do not make sense to us. I have kids who were interested in things that I didn't know anything about. I have kids that were just like me. And so, you know, you kind of gravitate more towards one than the other because you just get them.

[6:25] But I, I had a dad, I have a dad who, even though he was working sometimes 16, 18 hours a day, would take off and come to a choir concert. And my dad knew no more about music than I do about particle physics. I mean, there was no connection there, but he'd come to a choir concert. He'd come to a band concert. He would come to baseball and football games and that kind of thing, which he was far more comfortable at just being there. And it mattered to me, not that my dad could break down how the band concert went, but that he showed up knowing that there wasn't a thing that he was all that into. So I think, you know, the, yes, we need to pray for our kids. And obviously that needs to happen. Yes, we need to do everything we can to, to mentor and help build them in the faith. But I think so much of that comes out of our presence because for dads to be this guy that just shows up every now and then and reads a Bible story at bedtime or that says, hey, this is what the Bible says. This is who you need to be or even that praise for us. All that's great and good. But there's also this relationship that we need to have with our kids and relationships take time and they take presence and we presence with a C, not the T, S, although I guess that would work too. But we have to have that time with them so that they know who we are and we know who they are.

David:

[7:41] Absolutely.

David:

[7:42] Yeah. So for a busy business owner or even not a business owner who's busy at work, do you have any suggestions of what they can do to disconnect when they come from home? Because sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's not, especially if there's some things blowing up at work and you are the person to take care of it.

[8:03] I have a friend who has this philosophy where he takes the drive from work to home to shift out of work gear and is intentionally thinking about, you know, there's a, he says there's a certain driveway that he passes where he no longer is thinking about work. He's just conditioned himself that now, now we're in home mode and when kids go to bed at nine or 10 or 11 o'clock, whatever it is, then I can shift back into work mode. But having that intentional mindset of when I get home, I'm going to be dad. And I know that's a, that's not always possible because sometimes something breaks or, you know, something blows up and you've got to deal with it and the phone rings.

[8:45] Having that mindset of when I'm home with my kids, as they're awake and doing whatever they're doing, I'm dad, I'm not business owner or I'm not dean, right? I'm dad and I'm going to operate out of that for however many hours it is that I have. The other, and this is as simple and practical as it gets, and I wish I was better at this, so I will acknowledge right now that this is a do as I say, not as I do moment. If you can take your phone and put it in a room where you are not and don't look at it again until you're out of dad mode, it changes everything. We've gotten so good at pretending, not pretending, but trying to spend time with people while we're also spending time with the internet or email or whatever's coming through. So just jettisoning the phone. I accidentally the other day, it was my wife and I just had our 33rd anniversary and we were going to dinner. And I realized as we were in the car driving away that I'd left my phone on the table. And it was great because there was no opportunity for me to even think about, well, gosh, I hope nobody's texting me. I hope nobody's emailing. So I think very practical, but just making that decision and then making a practice of taking those devices that pull our attention away from our family and put them somewhere else until it's time to deal with them again.

David:

[10:02] I totally agree with that. Yeah. And it depends on the person. Me personally, I don't get very many texts and stuff, so I just don't worry about it. If I know something, it's just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And yeah, there's a focus mode. There's an airplane mode. Just shut it off a little bit.

[10:17] Right.

David:

[10:17] There again, depending who you are, you get sucked into it or you don't get sucked into it. I know for me, one of the issues I have is I have my day job and then I come home and I do this podcast and I do some coaching. I do all this stuff and it's like, when do I take off? But I try. I try when they come to just, okay, put it down, talk to them, answer their questions. And after a certain time of the day, try to just say, okay, pull myself away.

[10:49] I think you can even schedule some of that. You know, I've, I've got the calendar like everybody else does. And now my kids are all gone. So I don't have to do these kinds of things in the same way anymore. So I have more time to come home and podcast and write and do things like that. But when I was younger and they were around in my schedule, it was just written like be dad. Sometimes it was just that simple, you know, without a specific set of commands for what that meant. But what it meant was I wasn't going to be on the phone. I wasn't going to be worried about work. I wasn't going to be, you know, I wasn't even going to be watching baseball. I was going to be with my kids and be intentional about being dad. And again, that's easier said than done sometimes.

David:

[11:31] Have you ever heard about, or do you know, is there different time requirements from five-year-olds to 10-year-olds to 15-year-olds to 20-year-olds? Does that change over the years?

[11:41] I think it does. I think part of why it changes is because they need us less. Now that can be felt as they are less interested in being with us, which may be also true, but I would rather think about it the other way. A five-year-old needs a lot more of us than a 15-year-old, at least in terms of kind of the day-to-day presence, partly because we've established that relationship. I talk to parents and I'm around folks who are trying to connect with their older teenagers for the first time. And it's hard to do because you haven't established yourself as a part of their life. So I think there's just more care that's needed of a five-year-old than a 15-year-old. 15-year-old can go wander off and do their things on their own. They don't need dad around as much. They're not asking for bedtime stories and those kinds of things. But the flip side of that, the things that those older kids do sometimes take more time when we're driving them back and forth. You know, all my kids were athletes and they were involved in some other things. And so there was a lot of time spent in the car driving to, you know, Yale, Oklahoma, do a basketball tournament. That time can be intentional too, but it also is a, it's a different kind of time than we're going to go play in the backyard or we're going to, read stories or we're going to build Legos or whatever. So I, I do think it gets less as they get older, but I think maybe the blocks that are necessary might get larger sometimes.

David:

[13:02] Yeah. I forget who said, and this has been in the back of my mind for years now, that there's seasons of life.

[13:08] Right.

David:

[13:09] And from zero to six, seven, eight, they need a lot of, maybe four or five, a lot of times, specific different times start the day. Maybe just a minute here, a minute there, a minute there. Whereas they get older, they need less times together, but those times can get stretched out. You don't spend a three-hour time block with your grandchildren, well, your grandchildren you can, but your child is too, and say, oh, I'm good for the week. They need it little bits at a time where 15 to 20 and older, I have children now outside the home that I feel like my relationship is kept up very well. And I just call them twice a month. And we spend 20 minutes or so talking twice a month. And that keeps that relationship going because they're adults. They don't need things. I mean, they need things, but it needs like more time, longer time, less frequency kind of thing. So I know the things I'm doing today, I couldn't have done 10 years ago just because of the age of my kids. So there's seasons of life and sometimes you have more time to invest in business and sometimes you got to put it into the family.

[14:17] Right. And I think that's probably something that most of us know. It's hard because it's hard to convince the people who depend on us outside of our house that the people who are inside our house matter more to us. And that's, that's hard to say, especially if you're not at the top of the food chain, if you've got a boss and they've got a boss. And so you're, you're having to explain to whomever I can't be here this afternoon because my son's pitching in his first game. That's really important to me. I want to be sure I'm there. Those are hard conversations sometimes. It's kind of a privileged position to be able to get away with that. But you're right. And it's interesting. All of my kids, as I mentioned, are adults.

[15:00] And yeah, there are short kind of bursts of engagement. The beauty of the phone is that they can text me goofy stuff and memes and, you know, questions or whatever all the time. And that goes on. But yeah, that concentrated focus, hey, we're having a conversation time is not what it used to be for sure.

David:

[15:16] Sure. Yeah. That's fine. That changes. Yeah. Yeah. So spiritually, so what have you been able to do? What have you found that works to really direct your children's hearts back to the Lord as they grow up? What can we do?

[15:31] One of the big points in the book, and I hope it came out of something I was doing and not just something I decided to write after my kids were grown up and moved on. I think the most important thing we can do is be who we are called to be in front of them, which, again, goes back to presence and it goes back to, you know, making sure that we're intentionally around them. So when we talk about serving, it's one thing for me to say to my kids, hey, you need to serve each other. You need to serve your mom. You serve the community. It's a whole other thing, not just for them to watch me do that, but for me to say, hey, guys, come on, we're going to go mow the yard next door or we're going to go make sure the dishes are taken care of so that that's something that mom doesn't have to deal with tonight, whatever.

[16:13] And so it is it's being those things that we've been called to be. It is encouraging and inviting our kids to be them with us. And then along the way, also saying, hey, by the way, this is why we do this. You know, the Seth Godin thing, if people like us do things like this, we say to our kids, we believe in Jesus. We believe that Jesus loves our neighbor. Jesus has called us to love our neighbor. And one of the ways we can love our neighbor is to go mow the yard. So we're going to go do that because he broke his leg and he can't do that right now. And so rather than paying somebody, we're going to go take care of it. And we do this really cool thing at our church just every now and then where the pastor will announce, hey, we're putting together food baskets. We're putting together backpacks for kids, whatever. all the stuff's laid down to the gym, everybody go to the gym and pack bags or boxes or whatever. And I love going in there and seeing these families with young kids and they're, you know, the kids are just sticking toothbrushes in the, they don't know what's going on. But mom and dad are saying the reason that we do this is because there are people who don't have things and Jesus tells us to take care of them. And so this is one of the ways that we can do that. So I think that's it. It's being who we're called to be, staying connected to Jesus so that we can be who we're called to be, living that out in front of our kids in a very open way that invites them to be a part of it. And at the same time, also using our words to explain this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it.

David:

[17:35] Yeah. My mom used to say it's more caught than taught.

[17:37] Absolutely.

David:

[17:39] But I also know there's a guy who said, you're training your children's like a three-legged stool. And you need all three legs. You have to pray for them. Right. You train them. And then you're a good example to them. Yeah. You know, it's all three of those things because, yeah, you can't say one thing and do another.

[17:57] Right. And they're always watching. I think that's the thing that we, I did not realize as early as I should have, that my kids were watching everything, listening to every word and that they are parents and will repeat some of the things that they hear and see. So, yeah. And so I think having them watch us do it, but also being very careful about this is why.

David:

[18:19] Yeah. So for young dads, do you see any character quality or spiritual thing that they should do? Would like, what would be the top scratch at? What's a common problem you see people doing wrong or not as good as they should be?

[18:38] Thank you for correcting me. Cause I want to be careful about wrong. Cause that, that turns into a whole other set of conversations, right?

David:

[18:42] Oh yeah.

[18:43] I think it's the intentionality. I think it is. And man, I'm getting ready to be like going to full old guy mode here. So just prepare yourself. There is a thing in younger generations that is selfish. I mean, there's a thing in all of us, but I think it is very easy. A lot of the young dads that I know come home and they're tired and they've done whatever, and they have things that they want to do that are different than what their children want to do or that their children would be doing. And it's easy to, to disconnect because I'm tired or I have this thing that I want to take care of and lose those opportunities then to connect with kids and to...

[19:30] Maybe set aside, here are the moments in the week where I'm going to be intentional with my kids rather than when I'm with them, I'm intentional with them. And I'm not sure that distinction makes sense. It does in my head, but the inherent kind of me-centeredness that all of us carry and that I think is really encouraged in the generations around us has to be beaten down. And we have to recognize, I don't live for myself. I live for Jesus and I live for everybody else around me. And that includes the five-year-old who is asking for one more story or the seven-year-old who's asking to play catch again or the three-year-old who wants to do yet another tea party. Like we have to be willing to put aside some of who we are so that we can engage with them like that.

David:

[20:22] Mm-hmm. No, I get it. And, um, it's like my father-in-law said, you will learn how selfish you are once you get married. And especially once you have kids, because the crying baby doesn't take care of itself. You have to take care of it. Um, but yeah, I think that is a fight. And I think there, again, what I've seen too, is generation really into themselves, really into their phone still. And that, that's going to be a snare to them. Um, plain and simple. But, um, I know one of the things I've, it's kind of funny, but one of the things I've done in the past six months to connect with my daughter is I bought Minecraft. I've been playing Minecraft with her. Okay. Yeah. Not all the time, but usually an hour or two a week. Yeah. She might play it every day. I don't have time every day, but, um, just to, she gets all so excited about it. I was like, what are you going to build now? I was like, you're, you're way far beyond me, but we'll, we'll play around and do something with it.

[21:18] Well, no, it's so important to find those points of connection. And like you said, even if there are things that we don't get or we don't understand, but there's something that can be done together. I cannot tell you how much Mario Kart I played as a father of all of my kids were into it. I mean, I've had a decade of Mario Kart between my kids being all that age. And we still, you would think, we still drag it out. If everybody's together, that we comes back out and away we go again. And I like video games and that was kind of fun. But at the same time, if I'm going to play video games, there might be other things that I want to play, but that's what they were into. So I love that, you know, Minecraft is something that may or may not make a whole lot of sense, but it's a point of connection with her. And that's really significant.

David:

[22:04] Um, so yeah, you, you've said a lot of interesting things to say. Is there one challenge, one thing that you could say to just encourage the fathers that might mean more than any other ones there?

[22:15] I, if I can do two and I'll do them very quickly, I promise.

David:

[22:17] Go to, go to.

[22:18] I'll give you the first three, the first words of the book and the last words of the book, because I think they're the significant thing. The first words of the book are this, your kids have a perfect father and it's not you. And that's good news. Right. As squirrely as we can be, and we can definitely be squirrely. I am chief among those. Your kid's perfect father loves them in a way that is beyond measure. And he was intentional about putting you in their lives as the dad they need to be who he wants them to be. So that's the first thing. That was a long thing. The second thing is much shorter. It's just keep showing up. Even when it's hard, even when you're tired, even when it doesn't make sense, even when they don't make sense, keep showing up.

David:

[22:57] Keep showing up. I like that. Yeah, because, yeah, I'm not perfect. Obviously, nobody is. But, yes, keep showing up. That's great. Jay, thank you so much for your time and encouragement. And, guys, for the next steps to put this into practice, check the show notes. We'll have a link to his book and the site that he has so you can learn more about himself, him. Again, sign up for the newsletter. The podcast is a great way to communicate, not miss out on future episodes. And that's all we have for today. Hope you've been inspired to redeem your business, redeem your time, fight back, and walk worthy of God's great name.