Tell Us About Yourself:

When I was a kid, my mom told me I was going to change the world. My problem is: I believed her.

She also told me that I was funny. 

I don’t know if that’s how you’re supposed to start your answer to the question, “Tell us about yourself:” – but I’ve been sitting here with nothing on my screen for 20 minutes. 

And what’s meant to uniquely serve me up – well-done – to the producers behind my all-time second-favorite podcast (1) …. has now become a stumbling block. 

In overplayed frustration and exasperation, I’ve pounded the desk -- a couple times.  I may have…I …I did…I’ve thrown a few things.

So, I’ve decided this little cookie has been in there too long.

It was time for a vomit pass. 

Holy Ghost, it’s now or never.  Oh.  AND COFFEE.

Let’s Get This Party Started. Right.

I am a Christ-follower (3) – I can finally, honestly say that.  I hate brussel sprouts. 

When people rhetorically ask a question, and then immediately answer it themselves in conversation to make their point – that’s NAILS on a chalkboard to me. 

Scared of spiders.  Most bugs, actually.

But, I will often go out of my way to swat flies within any vicinity because, Beelzebub. 

Have no interest in being on any stage – can also honestly, say that. 

Therapy has helped me to identify that through the unholy influence of the spirit of the fear of man, historically, I would ironically, pursue the stage in albeit unholy ways – then, get knocked off the stage because my ego couldn’t take the gravy. 

I think GOD talks in dreams, still.  To think anything otherwise means you’re probably missing a lot and missing out, A LOT.

Because of a recent dream, I’m wondering if it’s possible there are actually flies that shouldn’t be swatted – at least, by me.

This begets landmine number one: 60% of the time, I have to learn the hard way…every time.

Heck, you bought dinner, and I am a cheap date. (4) Let’s go all the way.

Number two: much of the destructive wake I've left behind me had EVERYTHING to do with the fear of man. 

Now, we’re getting DEEP into the salt mines.  Love me the vomit pass.

Also, I think one of the more significant struggles I’ve had since my 20s is that I would often view my professional journey as being inexorably linked to my personal worth. 

And I didn’t learn to properly steward either of those – until my 40s. 

Maybe I should NOT use the word, 'also', back there.  Because, that last one pretty much sums up EVERYTHING. 

What do I mean by ‘EVERYTHING’?  I’m glad I asked.  The idolatry of both, personal worthiness and professional title, are neither an, ‘in addition to’; they’re probably the unrelenting manifestation of the same spirit – the fear of man, also.

See that?  I’m hilarious. 

Whatever.  That last point was pretty rad, though.

And because I typically only really learn things the hard way: there has been A LOT of self-inflicted, significant, elevation change between the mountains and the valleys.  

That was ANOTHER good one! 

LORD? Anything else? 

Yeah.  Oof. There have also, much regrettably, been several people I’ve hurt while I remained self-ignorant.  And, part of my problem?  I carry THAT around with me a lot, also.

What Kind of Day Has It Been

We moved around A LOT when I was a kid.  Like, 11 times before the 5th grade, I think. May need to ask for a re-count, to be sure. Finally landing for good in Illinois.  And during what would be called a really nice and solid upbringing in suburban Chicago, I attended a Young Life summer camp, and after the week-long build up, the preacher gave THE proverbial altar call climax on day 5.

And, at 15, I gave my life to Christ.

I think?!

During that mandated 30 minutes of quiet-reflection – where they send the teenagers outside to ponder everything they just told them for 4.5 days – sitting on a log, I literally said, “Ok, GOD.  Let’s do it.”  That was my Sinner’s Prayer.  Verbatim. 

I know it’s a heart thing, not necessarily a script thing.  But, still - I question the actual indwelling of the Holy Spirit in THAT moment, not just because of what well-meaning Protestants would consider lacking in proper repentance protocol, but because of my 20s.  

Annnnnd, my 30s. 

But, that’s later.

The adolescence download continues….

I am above-average intelligent (at least standardized testing says I am) and I had an above average jump shot.  But, I didn’t actually commit to, nor understand the necessity for, above-average effort in anything High School until Junior year / Senior year.  And so, I lack-luster performed. 

Once it FINALLY clicked, I was desperate to try and make up for lost-ground as an upperclassman, so I made the unnatural leap from basic level to all AP classes – surprising EVERYONE.  And despite nearly straight A’s onward – I still had a GPA that served only as a historical millstone around my neck.

Grace of GOD, I graduated. I went on to attend a private Christian University because, Jesus, and a B-average.  

Now, College is QUITE the experience.  So much good. So so so much stupid.  Wish I could have a redo on almost everything.

Now, the goods. 

My 20s and 30s, was a seemingly perpetual cycle of, ‘work my way up, get myself knocked down.’ Put myself at the table; get asked to sit along the wall.  Think I got it going on; God re-teaching me Who’s actually Sovereign.  Winking and saying the right things and getting everyone to believe I am the right guy for the job.

Unfortunately proving: I’m actually, not.

So, if I could sum up these last 17ish cliches, just now: who’s got two thumbs and used to embody ALL the issues that like half the parables Jesus used to teach against?

THIS GUY.

I started out as a pharmaceutical sales rep, out of college; crazy awesome opportunity.  Favor.  Company car.  Boom.  But, I’m back to not really trying.  Again, therapy helps in hindsight: I didn’t really love it and to be good at the job means being willing to sacrifice relationship to move the proverbial needle.  Again, fear of man.  So, THAT wasn’t going to happen. 

Jumped ship to another team – and a pharma-portfolio that would be best described as, relationship-based: allergy meds (6).  I pushed for promotion; sacrificed important relationships and A LOT of integrity along the way.  But, finally got my way, and got the call to the corporate headquarters.

I was being fast tracked, and I knew it.

Unfortunately, I’m so idiotically egotistical in the midst of this, that I got divorced after 5 months of marriage because I chose career trajectory over Covenant.

I know. It’s awkward – I never told you I’d been married before. 

Now, I’m a statistic that I actually abhor. 

But, the drug of man’s praise helped push that festering disappointment down after every successful deliverable for the new drug launches they kept putting me in charge of.  It didn’t take long for me to get WAY too big for my britches. And then my immoral personal methods caught up to my magnificent professional momentum and it all started to crumble.  And I was so blinded by pride, that when HR hijacked my calendar and put the ‘5pm on a Friday’ meeting on my Outlook, I didn’t suspect anything.

But, come 5:11pm, I was packing my things. 

Because it was my everything, that meant I lost, everything.  Now, the sum total of all my awesome life choices meant I had nothing.  So, spent about two years crashing on peoples’ couches.  Actually had a moment where I spent the night in my parents Honda CRV – with all my remaining material possessions in the back seat – parked in front of my buddy’s house because I was too embarrassed to knock on his door, but his place was the only safe place I could think of in the moment.

No exaggeration, no hyperbole: had ALL the car windows down because it was July. His sprinklers went off at 4am. 

Even THAT literal, didn’t get me to much needed metaphorical, rock-bottom. 

Had very real opportunities in this time period to learn and grow, but pride still very much there so I really didn’t take advantage of them; it was merely, ‘focused desperation to get out of the pit’ 

And so, because there had been ZERO growth, when I had another professional chance to restart; the same thing happened.  Lost it all. This time, filed for bankruptcy in 2008 along with something like 30% of America. (7)

Now, I’m another statistic.

By this time, there's nothing about my current position reflecting the future potential mom said she saw in me or had spoken over me decades back. 

But, FINALLY, the humility light starts to flicker on the inside. And after some rebuilding, I get to reset, and get recruited as a sales rep for a startup healthcare company.

Fast tracked to VP.  Got myself installed as President months later. This time I’m trying to do everything - I think, is GOD’s way.  At least, professionally.

But the harmful fruit in other areas of my life would reveal that I’m not really submitted to the LORD of my life; I’m also lacking a lot of practical know how. 

I did it, AGAIN. 

Promoted myself and made assertions about my skill set and knowledge base, that were really just assumptions.

Kind of like how most people assume they can change a tire IF the seemingly unthinkable ever happens. Then, you have your blowout. Then, YOU got your family in literal harm’s way on a narrow shoulder, with semi‘s and people simultaneously checking their Facebook timeline - barreling by and you’re on your knees waiting for the YouTube tutorial to load. 

THAT is the fruit of self-elevation: no staying power and hurting people.

You know, this has been a good exercise. I just did the math; I’ve been fired almost as many times as I’ve been promoted. THAT can’t be a coincidence.

The upward spiral

Only after losing everything, I think four times now, an honest self-assessment would reveal that I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been – if one could measure self-health by counting the number of times I say “I don’t know”, now. 

I think (I hope) God's ‘2x4 to the head’ processes have been bearing His intended fruit.  I don’t know. 

See that?  Hashtag: winning

But THAT only comes after He gave me the Revelation, six years ago: if I don’t do something about this, whatever-it-is-that’s-wrong-in-me, RIGHT NOW: I’m dooming my kid to repeat the same.

So, I did.  Therapy.  Highly recommend for all reasons, up to, and especially including if you think you’re fine.

In 2019 I started my own company, mostly out of necessity (aforementioned: got fired) AND to explore whether or not stock trading was a multi-generational anointing.  Can’t find it in the Bible, but I think it is.  For reasons.  I love it.  I just wished it loved me back.

Meanwhile, for the last 8 years, I’ve been married to an incredible woman. I married UP.  WAY WAY UP.  She was with a guy before me for nearly 19 years that put her through every possible and grotesque abuse imaginable: verbal, physical, sexual. She had jumped into marriage at 18 in a desperation move to get out of the unrelenting caustic authoritative approach from a parent. 

NOTE:  that’s like the fourth proof of the running theme of this introduction to yours ever so truly: hurt people, hurt people. 

Even though it came really close to killing her, at least twice, she felt she had to stay in it though because, kids.  Then towards the end, God opened a door for her to get out. Somehow, she is now on the other side, still beautiful, profoundly healthy, and sensitive to Holy Spirit. While some of me still triggers A LOT in her, she is the most impressive epitome of: “innocent as a dove, wise as a serpent.”  If you don’t know what THAT means, I give you the words of one of my fave commentators: “Jesus was teaching us two things: That wisdom may dwell with prudence. That all true prudence must be attended with innocency.”  My girl.

GOD is restoring her lost years, and I get a front row seat: she is well-deservedly on a career track where she will be CEO of something. 

In addition, multiple times: she’s received prophetic words about helping women all over the world break out of their own, awful, horrible bondage. 

In fact, you know what? Maybe SHE should be the one on the podcast. 

I married into three kids. Insta-dad.  It wasn’t pretty at the start.  Graciously, they’re older or it would have been ugly.  Despite BEST intentions, I was in no way ready for any of it. 

In fairness, there’s just no preparing you to come downstairs the day after the honeymoon to see teenage boys standing in your pantry hand-digging the marshmallows out of YOUR Lucky Charms, and asking to borrow your phone for youtube purposes, and then watch them take it into the bathroom with them for potty-time entertainment. 

Let alone, the aforementioned ex- was over in the next county and kept lobbing emotional grenades at us (and into the kids) every other weekend and Wednesdays.  So, there were SEVERAL experiences that were well outside of expectations going into this little adventure of ours - for not just sugar cereal hygiene (what I think are realistic) - that got us all pretty messy, too.  But, all three of them are really good dudes and Grace of GOD: we’re pretty good on this side.

Then – not too much later – she and I, made another.  THAT kid; he’s amazing.  She wanted to name him, Finn.  I used my one veto.  Then we decided that we’re not going to just name the kid.  We’re going to NAME the kid.  Like they used to in the Bible.  Back when names pointed at destinies.  And we decided on, Asher.  From the Bible.  Lots of good things from the Bible about Asher: Happy. Blessed. Favorite amongst the brethren. Will provide rich things to the King’s table.  We pray it all for him, and over him, almost daily.

We call him a lot of things, but we usually call him: Smash. 

Now, as of writing, Smash is seven.  JUST lost both of his front teeth, in the same 24-hour period.  For weeks they literally dangled there, and he wouldn’t let us touch them – he wanted them to come out, ‘naturally’.  His words. Now, his attempts to adjust to his new consonant-free-lifestyle has us in stitches. 

Smash is beautiful, REALLY funny – well beyond just the mispronouncing of things – and has this absurd favor on his life.  I mean, he literally commands the attention and the affection of every person, in every room he walks into – his classroom, the dentist chair, any Banana Republic Outlet Store.  Doesn’t matter.  He walks up to strangers in hotel hallways to say 'hi' and you can watch them melt from the inside. 

I tell everyone they’re gonna vote for him someday. 

I tell him, he’s really important for what GOD is going to do in the world….

Typing THAT … is when it hits me: 

Oh, he is SO screwed.        

Holy Catalyst? Or, Cataclysmic Crotch Punch.  It’s up to me.

I’m in tears.  Literal ugly man sobs that are more high-pitched than I’ll ever admit – even if the nearby Ring camera picked them up (8).  I realize I’ve got goobs all over my shirt because you know a man’s desk can’t have Kleenex. 

Because you know, people come over to our house, never.

WHEN, GOD, are you going to deliver me from this man-fear-opinion thing??

After quite some time as a puddle on the floor and after tidying my face, it’s become obvious this is no longer my embarrassingly self-effacing submission to be on The Basement podcast.

This just became my first Smash Letter. 

Not because Tim Ross has a character limit on his Contact Us form (he does). 

And, not because I’m 27 B-Side pods in and despite the significant gaps in cultural understanding - I can, for the most part, infer a substantial part of the meaning of what they're saying through observation – but I’m still really wondering: how come EVERYONE gets called, 'fam'?

Who or what IS 'fam'???

(Can GOD be, 'Fam'? Asking for a friend).

BUT, because now I need to tell Smash….everything, and more. 

Because here is THE ACTUAL REALITY: Right here at this moment, the next generation after me is standing at a crossroads.  There’s only one outcome, God is Sovereign.  But the choice of difficulty for them, is actually, mine.  

And Smash needs me, to do more than just pray, that he doesn’t repeat, me. 

If a meteor landed on my head today – every generational-curse-busting lesson of ‘don’t do what daddy did’ – that I’d intended to download over a decade-long sermon series at Denny’s.....Moons over my Hammy.  YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, FAM?! 

See?  Did I do that right? 

Anyway, all that hard-fought Wisdom and hard-way learnedness gets pulverized along with my spleen and my sneaks. 

And if I’m gone, I already know that it would take more than Interpretation of Tongues to decipher the handwriting in my journals. 

So, I need to get to work getting what GOD wants from in my journals in to 12-point Arial and .mp3 format in order to save him, or else, I will have failed him. 

And THAT was actually, another dream. 

Word count at 2600?!  Yowza.  Gift of gab must be generational, too.  Thanks, mom.

Let’s land this sucker.

If the Bible says ANYTHING, it warns us that – whether it’s by DNA, or by years of proximity – If left in the dark – our untreated, dark generational issues are doomed to repeat.

I believe I owe it to Smash – and I believe, the future world – to do everything I can to ensure that he inherits more than just a great hairline and humorous self-deprecation that SLAYS on Zoom calls. 

So, after a brief contemplation I just said, “Ok God.  Let’s do it.” 

I’m bringing it all into the Light.  And I present to you, smashletters.com.   

And, this humble preemptive autobiography.  In case, I ever end up Googleable.

Now, only GOD knows if a humble heart can be coded by adenine-thymine pairs, but what I do know first-hand is that humility now, saves you from A LOT of humiliation later.  So, by the Grace of Almighty GOD – and this new domain name that I just picked up for 12 bucks – Smash will learn it the easy way; not, his dad’s way. 

And, fortunately, it’s not all on me. 

The Bible also says - A LOT - about how because of Jesus, Smash is NOT heir to curse nor condemnation – nor subject to any man’s opinion. 

Once saved, Smash is newly grafted into every Promise GOD made, and every Possibility GOD made available to anyone whose name is written in GOD’s Book of Fam.

So long as Smash believes his Heavenly Father on THAT – and trusts me, about spiders – he’ll be just fine.

Tell Us About Yourself. SmashLetters. Copyright © 2023 SmashLetters. All Rights Reserved.

One more thing

You just read that it took yours ever so truly a pretty long awhile to finally get back on GOD's intended path for me. It didn't have to be that way. If you don't yet know Jesus as Savior - please take just a few moments to read what He did for you and made available for you to start living your best life - the one He's dreamed for you, since the beginning of time.

 The Gospel.

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Footnotes

Click annotation number to go back to where you left off.

1       The Basement. You need to watch it. If just half the people that watched it, did just half the things that Pastor Tim shares as best practices for life and walk - this world would

be 1000% better. That's GOD Math. (2)

2 Is there such a thing as too much apostasy in one annotation? Nah. For the record, I

don't think there's any apostasy in either dude. Them's APOSTLES.

3       There’s a BIG difference between that and a Christian. We’ll talk about it.

4       I really am a cheap date. Was a cheap date. Whatever. Sorry. YOU A VICTIM OF THE

VOMIT PASS

5      Lost count. I’ll ask my sister.

6 If you only knew what actually goes into so many prescribing decisions.

7    The Great Recession was killer. Due to inventory, it actually hit us in Denver in 2007.

Don’t quote me on that stat; I’m making a broader point

8    Thank GOD, for motion-based recording only.