369 | Healing Father Wounds, Pausing in the Driveway, and Dying as a Good Man (David Dusek)
Episode Description
Are you carrying around unresolved father wounds? In this episode, David Dusek unpacks how a father’s words ripple through generations and what you can do to promote healing. David will challenge you to refocus on your family, reconnect with your kids, and recognize that as long as you’re breathing, it’s not too late to finish well.
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David Dusek’s mission is to encourage and equip men to live their lives for Christ. He is an author, speaker, and the founder of Rough Cut Men Ministries. David resides in Florida with his wife and has five adult children and two grandchildren.
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· The enemy isolates you on purpose through fear of embarrassment.
· You need a strong brotherhood to help you see through the fog and chaos of life.
· If your kid doesn’t engage in conversation, they might not feel comfortable enough to bring you their problems because they know you’d be disappointed.
· The issue with the father wound is it can manifest itself so far down the line in ways that seem functional but aren’t.
· It doesn’t matter how you start; it only matters how you finish. And as long as you’re breathing, it’s not too late to make things right.
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· Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome
· Apply to join the next DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email awesome@dadawesome.org
· Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text the word “Dad” to (651) 370-8618
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave me this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
David Dusek: [00:00:39] You sit down one kid at a time and you look them right in the face, you put your phone down, you ask them to put their phone down, you grab them by the hands if you want to. You can put your hand on their face, depending on their age. Start as early as you can. I'd say, is there anything I've done this week? Is there anything I've done or said that hurt your feelings? And you're going to get the truth, If if it's a safe place. Now, you can end this thing right away and that practice will never work if you get defensive.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:05] Welcome back to DadAwesome. My name is Jeff Zaugg and today, Episode 369, I have David Dusek joining me from Rough Cut Men. Before I introduce him, I want to encourage you guys to receive text messages from DadAwesome. Resources that we found helpful, quotes or challenges from each for our weekly podcast or just even the reminder that, Hey, here's a little snippet of this week's podcast. You'll for sure receive a Thursday text each week. And then we've been trying to increase, just a couple more text messages each week to help you guys be more DadAwesome. So simply do this, text the number 651-370-8618, Text the word "dad" to the number 651-370-8618. That number's also linked in the show notes, so you can check that out. Today, though, we're thankful, Episode 369, David Dusek has been resourcing, encouraging, supporting men's ministries, churches, groups of men around the world. He does a lot of work in Australia and New Zealand. He leads the ministry Rough Cut Men. I had a chance to meet David a few months ago at an event just north of Atlanta and this is amazing. The resources he's created, he had the military contact with him and say, Hey, would you develop a film series for men and women serving in the military? It's called Who Has Your Six, but it's also available for any group of men to use that film series. Incredible resource. And then his book, Rough Cut Men. He's got another book he's released a few years ago. Want to encourage you guys, check out the show notes for all those links and resources. But today I'm going to jump right in. He spoke at a men's event that's supported like 18 churches in the area that I live in northeast Florida. So we'll, we'll reference a couple of times the event last night, that's what he's referring to is that, that, that event with like 800 men he's referencing back to that event. We're going to dive right into the meat of the conversation. He's going to be sharing about brotherhood, about the reasons for not living isolated. And then he goes into just so much dad wisdom as he shares heartache of his own journey as a dad. And just some moments that are like, this is hard, but this is what God is teaching me. And this, this is helpful. It's, it's transferable to all of us dads. So this is episode 369 with David Dusek.
David Dusek: [00:03:45] If you want to have a relationship or develop a brotherhood, it starts with time. There won't be trust until there's time. But you don't have to go to a Bible study to get time. Go fishing, man. Go play golf. You are stuck in a golf cart for four hours with each other. If you do that week in and week out, the conversation is going to go from, Hey, man, how about those Florida Gators to, Hey, I got a real problem with one of my kids. Or I've got a real problem at work or I'm not sure how we're going to pay the mortgage next month. I've had seasons like that.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:16] It jumps steeper because of the time.
David Dusek: [00:04:19] And if you want to really throw a grenade into your marriage, sit down with your wife and say, I don't know how we're going to pay the mortgage this month. Cause you jeopardize mom's security, now you got a problem because they like to nest. Those discussions are earmarked for the brothers that we have in our life that will help us make practical, pragmatic decisions to get through it. There's wisdom, a Bible says, in multitude of counsel. Most of us try to make all these decisions on our own, and we wonder why they don't work out.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:43] And isolation as the set up for, yeah, for not good things.
David Dusek: [00:04:47] I think I told somebody the other day isolation is the linchpin to everything. It really is. The enemy of our souls gets us by ourselves. He does it on purpose. He knows if I can get this guy by himself, I can rack him, his marriage, the kids, and the legacy that comes after him. All you got to do is go after one guy and make him feel so defeated when he looks in the mirror first thing in the morning and he faces his own worst enemy, that he stays isolated because of embarrassment. This is another reason why we don't connect with men. There's something in our lives we're completely embarrassed by. We're disappointed in ourselves, and we know that everybody around us, if they could see in through, in through the wall we have up, they would be disappointed, too. And so in order to not disappoint, we just don't go all in. Because that takes transparency. That takes putting it out there and trusting that someone will walk us through it or help us get through it and not burn us in the process. And truth be told, I am, what I shared this with the guys last night ,I have a 30 year old who's struggling with addiction. His marriage is all but over, and I'm watching this whole meltdown occur, and this is right at Christmas. So it's February 1st, right. So it just happened a couple of months ago. And so we're in the midst of all of this and trying to endure that by myself would just not work. Trying to endure that, just me and my wife, Joni, wouldn't work because both of us are too invested emotionally. So you can't think clearly when, when you're, when you are steeped in the emotional part of it. so I have to have objective people who can see things rationally and give me wise counsel based on the circumstances without being emotionally compromised. And that's where the one comes in. That's the one that you can call and say, my kid just told me he's been addicted to methamphetamine for six years. What do I do? I shared some of that last night. You'd be surprised how many guys came up to me and said, I have been where you are. I have been in the past tense where you are, but God. And then I was able to not only, from the platform, with the microphone in front of 800 plus guys, tell them that I'm, I'm not bulletproof. I'm your ministry guy speaking to you tonight, but I'm not immune from getting my tail whipped.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:13] You're going through it.
David Dusek: [00:07:14] Right. I'm in the midst of it right now. And it was so encouraging to have guys, when I took the leap of faith and got to, I wasn't going to bring that up. And I've actually put it out there thinking, What, what am I doing?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:28] Yeah.
David Dusek: [00:07:31] But I did it, in hindsight, because God wanted to tell me, Hey, look, dude, you're in the middle of this battle right now, but after every winter comes a spring. Let me introduce you to a couple of guys who got through it and have a spring and now their kids are back right on track. Their marriage's got saved. They got passed, delivered from the addiction. And it was so encouraging because a lot of times we don't know what other people are going through, especially if all we're doing is talking about a Bible study. If we don't take a leap of faith and turn to the guys in our small group and say, My wife and I are on the ragged edge, man. It doesn't open the door for someone to say, Hey, man, we were right where you were. Our, what God gets us through is designed to give away to other men because you have no idea the guy to your right maybe going into the same battle you just got out of and the guy to your right might be in the, literally in the middle of it. And for someone to come up to me last night and say, I was right where you were, let me tell you what God did. Because when you're steeped in it, you don't see a finish line. You don't see, you don't see a good ending. You don't see anything other than the fog of war. And when you're in the fog of war, all there are, are bombs going off, there's people screaming and that's it. You don't see the end to the conflict. And right now it's where I was. Last night, my transparency gave someone else permission to come up to me and say, You're going to make it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:58] Yeah. It unlocks, well in your case, it unlocks encouragements and perspective. It also unlocks the start of a journey towards freedom and healing for so many others. Wait, you're like me. Wait, You're going through a valley? Wait, you're on stage and going through like, the gift of that is, is enormous. I think to the set up, you had the friend that you could go knock on his door in the middle of the night. So there was some set up that prepared you for that devastating news for your son. And we've, you know, we've talked about that. Some of that set up for what it takes to build in and press in. The, the second dad son story that, that, you know, I'm in the loop on, that our listeners haven't heard yet is a story that led to, I believe the restaurant was a Ruby Tuesdays. Do I have that right?
David Dusek: [00:09:48] Yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:49] You know a story that there's, there's pain for many, many years 15 years of back story. But then you had the gift of. I mean, probably felt like a punch in the gut, in the moment, a punch in the face. But the, but the gift that that brings towards the journey of healing. Would you take us into that story and what you learned through that?
David Dusek: [00:10:06] Yeah. That was a long season where my son was estranged from the family and there's a lot of back story to that too. I'm a divorced, remarried guy and I met the Lord when my marriage melted down. So, you know, God uses crisis to reach guys like, like us a lot. So, there's a lot of wounding in that. And then his mom passed away when he was a young boy, is 15 when his mom died. So the poor kid between the ages of 12 and 15 lost his parents marriage and then about 3 or 4 years later lost his mom. So he's got a lot of wounding in there. He was very standoffish, didn't want anything to do with her family, and I think he decided that he didn't want to kind of blaspheme his mom's memory by engaging in any kind of relationship with my wife, his stepmom, who really invested everything she has in him and still does. She says, I love that kid. I think she loves him more than I do. I just want to smack him upside the head most of the time. She just loves him to death. And just like, you know, we don't use the word step in our house. We have five kids, three are hers, two her mind, and we just, we're all siblings. Our, our girls even were each other's, in each other's weddings. And they just they slept in bunk beds all the way through high school because they wanted to be in the same room. You know, it's it's been a it was a great time. And Jordan was always, my son was always estranged. And one year he decided he wanted to start coming over for Thanksgiving. He just texted me out of nowhere, said, hey, we're going to come over for Thanksgiving. Like, Yeah, this is awesome. And I was joking last night with the guys from the platform that my wife loves to make food. She's Lebanese, you know, her love language is here eat, eat some more. And so she just laid it all out for Thanksgiving, just when all, all bets were off for Thanksgiving. And then I lost all the leftovers. She went to the store, bought a bunch of Tupperware, and packed all the leftovers for my son, who I hadn't seen in, like, five years, right. He takes all the food and I'm like, really?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:00] Yep. Took it home.
David Dusek: [00:12:01] Honestly, like, a couple of weeks later, he sends me a text, hey, when's Christmas? I says, 25th of December, like normal. He says, I think we're coming over. I told my wife and I told the guys last night, I mean she, my wife loves Christmas. She'll just buy the world. Moderation and Christmas time as she's, she has the gift of giving, let's put it that way. She bankrupt us giving everything away. She just she would, she would. If we could live with no money, she would give our all of our money away. So she went haywire, went Amazon crazy, wrapped everything up. My little granddaughter comes over and just amazing Christmas and off they go with a whole truckload of presents. And then the kid ghosts me for like ten months. I don't hear a word from him like not a thank you nothing until right before Thanksgiving the next year. Same exact thing happens year two. Same exact thing happens year three by year three, I'm ticked, man. January 1st rolls around, I'm like, all this kid wants to do is eat the food and get the gifts. I'm done. And so I decided I was going to call him and work it out or talk to him about it, trying to figure it out. I said, I'm really confused because we have great holidays and then you leave and then you just disappear. You don't call me, you don't want to hang out, you don't want to go get coffee. You don't want anything to do with me. And I'm starting to feel like all you want to do is eat my food and get my gifts, and then you just kind of out of here. He goes. Dad, there's something I just can't get past. I said, Well, let's talk about it. Tell you, I said tell you what, let's get together. It's right up by your house. We'll meet at Ruby Tuesday because I like the salad bar and we'll talk this thing through. We'll leave our wives at home, just man to man. Deal? He said, Yeah, absolutely. And I, I knew what the problem was already. I'm a guy. Most guys listening already know what the problems are. We can solve it. We'll fix it, guys, right. I mean, that's just how we do things, I already knew what the problem was. He doesn't like his step mom. In fact, for all the years we've been married, up until this point, they had referred to my wife, Joni, as my wife. Your wife, not their step mom. No relationship there whatsoever. There were consumers, but there was no love there. And I'd never heard my children say, I love you or I even sort of love you. This wasn't included in the conversation. And I think they were especially my son was cautioned by his dying mother. You can't ever love that woman. So he didn't want to violate her memory by allowing another woman into his life. So that was it. And I'm like, I know, I know exactly what it is. So, I get in the car, and I got about a 20 minute drive, I build this brilliant monologue because I'm about ready to fix the whole thing because, look, she never wanted to be your mom, son. You had a mom, but she's in heaven now. Joni just happened to fill the role, you know, she never wanted to be your mom. There was no competition there. She made you cookies. She drove you to school. She took care of you when you were sick. She talked to you in to bed. And I remember getting there, and I went right into my monologue, gave my son a hug, sat down, said, All right, I'm going to go. I'm going for it. I'm not, started the whole she loves you. And, and she, she didn't want to be your mom. She made you cookies. And he said, Dad, stop. I'm like, What? And I was on a roll. I mean, I was making some good points. And he said, I love that woman, even when I treated her like crap, she treated me like gold. He said I love her. And Jeff, I'd never heard him use the word love and Joni in the same sentence. He loved, I'm like, my gosh, he loves my wife. He never even said anything like that. I was like what a victory. He says I don't have a problem with her at all. I have a problem with you. That was a sobering moment because I'm super dad. I'm like, What do you mean? I've done my best. Granted, I got kind of cut out of a lot of his upbringing because he was living in the Pacific Northwest. I was in Florida. He was with his mom. She was really actively dying over eighteen months of stage four colon cancer. He had found the drug cabinet at that point. And so he had started battling addiction at that point. Again, going back to being embarrassed by stuff. I think sometimes when my son is really quiet, this is almost a revelation that God just gave me right now. A lot of times when God, when my son is not talking to me, I think in his heart of hearts, he feels like he's going to disappoint me because he's embarrassed about a circumstance he's going through. So it's easier to stay quiet.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:19] Yeah.
David Dusek: [00:16:19] And so maybe there's a guy listening right now who's got a kid who just kind of parachutes in and out and maybe there's something going on in their life that they're not comfortable enough to bring you into. That they know you'd be disappointed in. And the last thing they want to do is disappoint Dad. And I think that might be one of the reasons why this happened. But he did tell me that the problem was with me. And it was, it was a shock. And I said, What do you mean? He says, You don't remember, do you? I said, No, I said, dude I'm over 50, I don't remember why I walked in the kitchen. What happened? He says it was a Wednesday, because I was eight years old, and he'll remember it was a Wednesday because I was over at your house and I would come over on Wednesdays and every other weekend. Mom had us the other times.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:17:01] And he's 23 during this conversation?
David Dusek: [00:17:01] At this point he's 23 at the time. So 15 years have gone by. So he's 23 and he's telling me about this Wednesday when he was eight years old. He said, I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I had my Pokemon shirt on. He goes, I was playing my, remember I had that red Gameboy? I was playing Super Mario Kart. And I told you that I didn't want to be at your house. And I knew it was your day, but I really wanted to be with mom instead. And instead of saying, Hey, let's talk about it or let's drive over, I'll give, take your mom, you went off on me. You called me every name in the book. You called me a mama's boy and a wuss. You told me I just needed a man up and stay at your house, it's just one night. And he goes, I'll never forget the names that you called me. And as he's telling me this at 23 years old, guys I'd forgotten literally, I forgot what I had for breakfast that morning. I'm crying in a Ruby Tuesday. And I looked at my son and I said, Son, I can't believe I was capable of saying he, he he, PG13ed it to, it was worse. And I said, I can't believe I actually said those things to you. And I wouldn't forgive me either, but I hope you can. And by the time the lunch was over, we, I brought up the fact that we had shared time the day his mom was dying. When the only two people that knew what it was like to be in that rental car the moment she died was me and him. We have a very special bond. So that's pretty cool that you and I shared just that one thing together. And he said, Yeah, it is. And that's when God built a bridge. And shortly thereafter, they moved in with us because they had a housing issue. But really, it was it was sobering for me because I didn't realize how, words have a long shelf life. And the Bible says in Proverbs 18:21 that the tongue has the power to bring life and bring death. And I spoke death over my kid. I just, in my fit of anger, used my ready, fire, aim, mouth where I didn't think about what was coming out. I said stuff downrange out of my artillery, out of my mouth. It was the worst negligent discharge you could ever do. I called my son horrible names. And you know what the most difficult part was? I wasn't even mad at the kid. I was mad at his mother for never having my back. He had already sent her a text message, I want to be with you, Mom. And she said, I'm sorry you hate your dad. You should just come back and be with me. Instead of saying, Look, every son needs his dad, it's one day a week. I'll see you after school tomorrow. I want you to stay with your dad overnight. She never had my back. And the problem with throwing rocks at your ex is they always ricochet off the kids. And I was throwing rocks at her, mad as a demon. But I was hitting my son with my verbal assault. I wasn't mad at him. He was an eight year old kid. He didn't deserve that. And how many times, I wonder, either we've heard stuff from our own dads, Father wounds run deep, bro, or we've said things to our kids that if we sat down and asked them. They still remember things that we said to them years ago that have debilitated them. And we just threw it out there on our way to work. You know, you're a slob, clean your crap up. Walk out of the house and the rest of their lives they feel like they're not good enough. They don't measure up to Dad's standards, and they end up with this very pronounced father wound that follows them. I've seen father wounds, look, man, I've watched, I've seen father wounds manifest themselves in a million different ways. In the military, I see father wounds manifest themselves with guys who put their entire unit in jeopardy just to get one more ribbon on their uniform so people can walk in and say, Man, look at how brave you are. That's Dad's job. We should have been saying that stuff. You look at social media and you see inappropriate photographs of young women. Guys, if you are not telling your teenage daughter that she's the most beautiful woman in the world, some other idiot will be. We don't need those guys stepping on our turf, man. You see people crying out for, you're so beautiful. They just need the attention. I have a relative who has more, has more degrees on their wall than a thermometer, dude. And it's like you walk in their office like, my gosh, look at that. You got four master's degrees, two doctorates. Look at how smart you are. And if they had just been told when they were younger that they were smart, maybe they wouldn't have to work so hard to prove to everybody that they're bright. That's the problem with a father wound is it can manifest itself so far down the line in different ways that seem dysfunctional, seem functioning, but they're absolutely dysfunctional. We also my dad's father walked out on him when he was like 12. The moment that happens, a wound gets hit like my dad, to this day, he's 89 years old, still calls his biological father his sire, like a racehorse. The only things I know about the man is his name was Joseph, because my uncle's name is Joe Jr. So I figured there had to be a Joe upstream somewhere. And he died of complications due to diabetes. My dad will say, Make sure you get your blood checked, boy, because my sire died from diabetes. I know nothing about his biological father. That wound happened when he was, I think, nine. So 80 years my father has carried that wound. And what will happen sometimes when kids are abandoned by a parent is they'll carry that into marriage and they're so fearful that their spouse is going to leave that they do one of two things. They either suffocate them or they keep them at arm's length. I'm not going to go all in on this. They'll go, I'll love my wife the best I know how.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:22:31] Yeah. Play it safe.
David Dusek: [00:22:32] But they're not going to go all in because if they do and they get hurt, they're getting hurt again. So I don't want to put myself out there. And you know what will happen if you suffocate or reject a woman long enough, she's gonna leave. And then the guy will say, See, I told you my father left me, now my wife left me, it must be me. And that is not what God says. God says, I will never leave you, nor will I forsake you. Yet, we walk along with these stories that if you line them up with the Word of God, don't match up at all.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:22:59] Yeah, the upstream is so powerful that often we're unaware of.
David Dusek: [00:23:04] Oh yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:04] And then the the power of our words to downstream to our kids futures. I think about what the side of you just said of like it's our job to instill courage and beauty and, and like, like we speak what's true. But also, and this was real, like you you challenged, I wrote it down and I got to play it out last night, late last night, actually. You said, hey, like, pause in the driveway and tell yourself this is the most important meeting of my day. The, the kind of rejoining with, you know, if you're married, with your wife, like the moment of coming home to your wife, the most important. And, and secondly, asking this question of our wife and our kids, weekly, you challenge weekly, to say is there anything I've done that has caused pain, has caused hurt? And that, that will help the 15 year gap not happen.
David Dusek: [00:23:58] Exactly.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:59] If we make that a repeated...
David Dusek: [00:24:01] Unfortunately, I learned that in retrospect.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:24:04] Yeah.
David Dusek: [00:24:04] I mean, talk about our kids don't care what's on our business card or who salutes us when we walk by or, you know. Like, I work with NFL players, NASCAR drivers. I mean, they don't care what's on the back of your jersey or how many, you know, 80,000 screaming, crazy, rabid fans are yelling for you when you run out onto the field. Because you know what, every military career and every professional sports career ends. And when the uniform comes off and if that's your only identity, you got a problem. But I challenge men, you know, they don't, they don't care if you had a good day or a bad day at the office. When I fly, I fly for a living, you know, I'm, I'm always in the air. And flying is not fun anymore, right. There was one time I showed up at the, at the Tampa parking garage and my tire was flat and it was 1:00 in the morning. I'm in the parking garage with flat tire and May Pop spare, the one little tiny one.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:24:54] Yeah, the donut.
David Dusek: [00:24:57] Flat. The donut was flat. So I mean that just set the table and then I got an hour long drive, so I had to, you know, air the tire up, limp it home on the, on the little donut. And I mean, I was, I was spitting nails, but I, I had to be cognizant of the fact that my wife wasn't at the airport with me. She didn't go through that. She doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of my fuhrer about my flat tire, you know, or the fact that they charge me $15 for error in the airport parking garage. The little dude in a golf cart rescued me. He didn't rescue, he charged me for it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:25:28] You needed your credit card. Yeah that's it.
David Dusek: [00:25:30] You know, So we have to do that reset every day because we have bad days at work. We have bad phone calls. We get bad phone calls literally on the way home. When we pull in the garage, we've got to breathe long enough to say they don't deserve this. They deserve my best. Because if we die, they will not be talking about us at the office, but they will be talking about us around the table at Thanksgiving and the leg, the legacy that we leave behind doesn't matter at work, it matters at home. So we need to breathe. Just stop. Breathe. And like you said, I am about ready to walk into the most important meeting of the day. I don't care if you met the president, you were, the one you're going into after work, that's the one that matters the most. And if you really want to be challenged, I mean, you have to, this is, this is man up stuff. You sit down one kid at a time and you look right in the face. You put your phone down, you ask them to put their phone down. You grab them by the hands if you want to. You put your hand on their face, depending on their age, start as early as you can. And say, Is there anything I've done this week? Is there anything I've done or said that hurt your feelings? And you're going to get the truth, if it's a safe place. Now, you can end this thing right away, and that practice will never work if you get defensive. So you have to take a big, you're going to eat a big plate a crow with a side of fries, more than likely, because we all do.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:26:49] Yeah.
David Dusek: [00:26:50] And we're, sometimes it's a blind spot, you know. Blind spots are why we have other people in our lives.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:26:55] And their gift to be, to know about blind spots.
David Dusek: [00:26:57] Like, Hey, man. Yeah, you got a big RV. I remember the first time, dude, I had a learner's permit and we're driving through downtown Seattle. My dad's like, we had been coming through, we're out in the middle of nowhere Washington. All of a sudden I'm in downtown Seattle, which is literally been under construction. The Highway's been under construction since the 1990s. They're still not done. And I'm in this, it's a Class C, right, but it's like a 26 foot class C RV. And I didn't know what the blind spot even was. I didn't know I was supposed to look at the little bug eye mirror. So I literally slammed somebody into the dividing wall.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:27:29] Just hip checked them.
David Dusek: [00:27:31] I just gave, I just swept him right into the concrete. And my dad just yanks me out of this, I little guy at 15, he yanks me out of the seat and jumps in behind the wheel. But I just, I crashed somebody because I didn't even know the blind spot was there. I think about my life like that. I'm just rolling along in my big old RV and I just bang into all sorts of people because it's my brothers. It's David, who's my blind spot. It's my wife, Joni. It's the Holy Spirit who's also my blind spot mirror who says, I don't know if you want to say that. The conviction you're feeling, probably shouldn't have said it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:28:05] Well, the RV story of the blind spot, though. The dad who pulls the kid out and says, I'm going to take over and I'm going to take credit for what just happened back there. There's also some of that. Are we willing to take the short, it's not short term pain, like there's a working out of some of that healing that we discover when we ask that question, but would we place ourselves there today so that later? And this probably where I wanted to land our conversation, is the scene at the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan. And the, you know, the the great grandpa grandpa moment of families at the tombstone. And just like, like would the dad's listening today, would, would we be the kind of men that live into, no matter what the chapter is, No matter what the last four decades, you know, I'm about to turn 43. It doesn't matter what's in hindsight. We can live in with our day, with our questions, with our presence, with our pausing in the driveway and actually treating those that are closest to us as the most important people. Would you set up, like just in case the guys can't picture that scene and how important it is to live into just, so we can be proud of and say, I gave it my all and I was a good man. Can you kind of set that up as we close?
David Dusek: [00:29:24] Well, it's a great, it's a great, it's incredible movie. It's a flashback movie, right. So we have gone through the movie begins with an old man walking through the cemetery in Normandy. I'm a bit of a war-buff. There's 9,387 American soldiers buried on six fields, 160 acres on the north coast of France. It's the most expensive piece of American real estate in the world because France gave it to us when we put our guys in the ground there, and the movie starts with an old man, We don't know who he is, he's wandering through the French country, the cemetery, looking for a particular tombstone, and he finds it. And if you've ever seen the movie, he falls to the ground and breaks out in tears and the camera zooms in on him. And then when the camera backs up, we're looking into the face of Captain John Miller with the second Rangers, who is literally 30 seconds from landing on the beach in Normandy. It's June 6th, 1944, and they have to secure an overhead machinegun position, which they accomplish and as a reward for a job well done, Miller is given this assignment to go after a young man by the name of James Ryan from 101st Airborne Division who has gotten lost. His stick, that's what you call a platoon paratrooper platoon, his stick had to jump out of the plane early. So they missed their drop zone by a bazillion miles. They're pretty sure he's dead, but he also has three brothers who've been killed in the last several weeks. So, poor Mama Ryan is about ready to get three telegrams saying, We're sorry your sons are dead and they don't want to go four for four. So they send Miller in with a squad of eight men, he's a company commander, so he gets demoted basically from 120 plus guys to eight. And he has to take the squad into the French countryside to look for what one guy calls needle, needle in a pile of needles. There's just no way we're going to find the guy. They're all convinced he's dead. There's a lot of animosity amongst the squad trying to find the kid. He's played by Matt Damon. They don't want to go after this guy. They're like, what's the sense of the eight of us going after one guy so he can go home and be with his mom? Well, they find him. He's been picked up by another unit, by now two of the guys have been killed out of the original eight, so there's only six guys left. They find him and he's attached to another unit. They end up in this, this, this 20 man squad ends up facing an entire armored column of Nazis. And it does not go well. Like another, there's only three guys left out of the original group. Everybody dies. It was never going to work out well at all. But in the last minute, P-51 show up tank busters and they destroy the armored column. So the mission was a success. But unfortunately, Miller has been shot in the chest, he's dying. Tom Hanks. And he has a little bit of a moment before he breathes this last to have a conversation with young James Ryan, who, by the way, did not, they were supposed to send him home. He didn't want to go home. He mutinied when they found him. And he said, look, you told my mom, when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left. He was told that all three of his brothers were dead. So Miller calls him over and he says, James earn this, earn it. Five going on six men have died, so you can go home, and you better not waste it. That's basically what he was saying. And then the movie flashes back and we're looking in the face of the same old man in front of a tombstone. It is morphed, we know, we didn't know who he was at the beginning. We thought it was Captain Miller at the beginning, but we now know that it's James Ryan who lived to be into his 80s.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:32:43] Yeah. No, you're good.
David Dusek: [00:32:44] Whoops. I lost my mic.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:32:45] That's good.
David Dusek: [00:32:46] Lived to be into his 80s. And he's standing in front of that tombstone with tears in his eyes, remembering the words, Earn this on that bridge, on June 15th, 1944, it was D-Day plus nine, I think. And his wife walks up behind him. And I think at that moment, Spielberg did a brilliant job, but he's, he's doing an inventory of his life. And whether or not he lived up to the fact that six men died so he could go home. And he looked at that wife, who ironically, looked at the tombstone and said, Captain John H. Miller. She didn't even know who he was. That's the, that's the deal with combat. You go through your entire life and you don't tell people.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:33:31] That story was closed.
David Dusek: [00:33:32] That story was so closed that his own wife didn't even know who John Miller was. They didn't even know why they were in the cemetery. And she looks because Captain John H. Miller? And he turns to you and he says, Tell me I'm a good man. And without hesitation, she says, You are. She didn't have to think about it. She didn't have to say, you know, Well, back in the 60s, you were kind of a jerk, you know. And he had, not only did he have his adult kids and his adult grandkids, it was a whole tribe of about 25 people, all having blond hair walking along behind him. So his whole family was behind him. And his wife says, you are. And to me, at the end of my days, I want to make sure that anybody you ask about who David was, I don't want them to have to think, Well, you know, the first 30 years he was kind of a jerk, but man, then he met the Lord. I want my wife to say he was. And I, I always say this at the end of my life, I want to stand before my God and all I want to hear is well done, good and faithful servant. Man, you train wrecked the first 30 years, but you slid in hot, man. You finished the job. You finished well. When I talk about finishing well, you know, I talk about finishing well, there's nearly 10,000 tombstones in that cemetery, and they're all formatted exactly the same way. There's the name is the big one on top and the rank and the unit and then where they're from, the state they're from and the day they died. Three lines, they're all exactly the same. But there's one thing that's on that tombstone that isn't on most tombstones that you see. There's only a day that they died, there's no birth date. So we have no idea the ages of any of the men. There could be guys that were in their 50s, you know, there could have been guys that just volunteered because they were Jewish and wanted to fight the Holocaust. They could have been, they could have seen Pearl Harbor on a movie reel at the theater and decided, I'm going to go fight for the country. We got attacked, 38 year old contractor, we don't know anything about the guys because we don't know how old they were. They could have been fathers, they could have been grandfathers. Were they good men? Were they believers? You know what, none of it matters. The only thing that matters in the lives of those 9,387 guys is that date on the right hand permanently etched in French marble because on that day they died a war hero. Doesn't matter how we start, man, it only matters how we finish. And if we're still alive and we're still breathing, we still have an opportunity to finish well. Who doesn't love a walk off home run, man? You can be down eight and two thirds innings, but if you send that thing over the wall, it's game over and you win by a run. Who doesn't love overtime wins? Come from behind. I want my life to be a come from behind win, man. We can all do it. It's not too late. If you're listening, you're alive. If you're alive, you're breathing. If you're breathing, you can still talk. So make it right.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:36:14] Wow. David, would you pray that over us dads? Just a short prayer, but pray that even another punch through prayer that we would actually step in and live into that.
David Dusek: [00:36:25] Heavenly Father, we come to You with that Father, with that Capital F in your name. But we also come to you as Abba, Dad, and we want to model our lives, Lord, after Your blueprint, after what You have laid out for us, we want to be that edifying, supportive, God honoring, legacy building example of biblical manhood in the eyes of our wives and our kids. And frankly, anybody who encounters us, but God, we haven't. We've, in the last week I've said things that I wish I could unsay. I've, I've done things that I wish I could undo. I've, I've not laid down the ground. I haven't put footsteps in the ground that I'm confident that I would want my kids and my grandkids walking in, Lord. So first, I pray Your forgiveness and secondly, God, I pray that You empower me. You give me a holy boldness to go before my kids and my wife and own it. And Lord, I pray in advance that there is forgiveness. And then on the day that you call us to heaven, that they're standing around that gravesite, that everybody has a fond memory of who we were, whether we were dad or grandfather or husband, coworker or colleague, that we were a good man. The Bible says that no one is good, not even one, but Lord, I want my legacy to be one where You say you were a good and faithful servant in Jesus name, Amen.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:04] Thank you so much for joining us this week for episode 369 of DadAwesome. Thanks again to David Dusek and his heart, his transparency, vulnerability, his willing, man, just to go there and also the resources he's created. Guys, check out the link to the show notes, dadawesome.org/podcast and then look for episode 369 to get the Who has your six, film series, his book and other resources. Guys, I want to encourage you guys reach out to some other dads. Let's be dads who share the content, the podcast episodes. The more we can share with other dads this episode or other episodes at DadAwesome, it's helping more dads experience, man, the power of a testimony, the power of David's story today. I just want to encourage you guys to send a couple of text messages encouraging guys to check out dadawesome.org or this specific episode. Guys, thank you for listening. Thank you for leaning in. Let's continue being DadAwesome this week.
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· 4:47 - "Isolation is the linchpin to everything. The enemy of our souls gets us by ourselves. He does it on purpose. He knows if I can get this guy by himself, I can rack him, his marriage, the kids, and the legacy that comes after him. All you got to do is go after one guy and make him feel so defeated when he looks in the mirror, first thing in the morning, and he faces his own worst enemy, that he stays isolated because of embarrassment. This is another reason why we don't connect with men. There's something in our lives we're completely embarrassed by. We're disappointed in ourselves, and we know that everybody around us, if they could see in through the wall we have up, they would be disappointed too. And so in order to not disappoint, we just don't go all in. Because that takes transparency. That takes putting it out there and trusting that someone will walk us through it or help us get through it and not burn us in the process."
· 25:32 - "We have to do that reset every day because we have bad days at work. We have bad phone calls. We get bad phone calls literally on the way home. When we pull in the garage, we've got to breathe long enough to say they don't deserve this. They deserve my best. Because if we die, they will not be talking about us at the office, but they will be talking about us around the table at Thanksgiving and the legacy that we leave behind doesn't matter at work, it matters at home. So we need to breathe. Just stop. Breathe. And like you said, I am about ready to walk into the most important meeting of the day. I don't care if you met the president, you were, the one you're going into after work, that's the one that matters the most."
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