Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's an all encompassing thing.

That's a, you know, Jesus would say, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself.

Take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

So what are your thoughts on, you know, decision for Christ, altar call, sinner's prayer versus the salvation breakdown? Yeah.

And what turned you on to that?

You know, it's interesting.

I was just I was watching the program this morning with you.

And right before I came on, there was an advertisement for Fox News Health talking about anxiety.

And I thought that's that is a perfect segue into this, because we as as Americans could could start to feel this anxiety.

And those that identify as Christian could be crippled by this anxiety and yet thinking, aren't I supposed to have faith? Aren't I supposed to trust in something greater than me? And there can be ways to diagnose a sick faith.

And I know that because this is the life I lived for many years.

In what way? Tell me about the book.

And so help us kinda understand the timeline of this thing that's welling up inside of you and then how it, it's ex- extrapolated out onto this very successful career

So everything you just said, none of that happened soon, and it was never a great epiphany.

Um, it wasn't like, "Man, I'm, I am a, you know, I'm, I'm becoming this, this character on stage, and it w- and maybe I shouldn't do this." Um, the Lord had to do his work first.

So that, that took my life to about everything we've said.

You know, things were going great.

Career was exactly what we wanted, um, bigger than we could have imagined.

Amber and I were living the life we dreamed of.

Mm-hmm.

how do we know if we're not so

i'll say it this way i um imagine you know my ribs get healed now 2018's coming um we we are just everything is going the way i always wanted it to go it's city after city and in arenas and tour after tour and um we were living in our dream house three kids like everything i i was never i wouldn't have just been off the rails i wasn't searching or needing something.

I didn't have a God-sized hole in my heart that, you know, it wasn't me.

I was, I was, I read this book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, who later became a friend.

He's in Austin.

But I, it was like capture your morning, you know? You back up your time when you wake up and capture your morning.

And so it was like eating right.

which was something

So

I'll say it this way.

I, um, imagine, you know, my ribs get healed now, 2018 is coming.

Um, we, we are just, everything is going the way I always wanted it to go.

It's city after city and, and arenas and tour after tour.

And, um, we were living in our dream house, three kids, like everything.

I was never, I wouldn't have just been off the rails.

which was something

That's really self-aware.

Yeah.

It's taken a lot of years to look at that and, like I said, to kind of reverse engineer what was going on.

What happened to me? But on June 4th, 2019, during this bliss in our family, I found my little boy, River, in the swimming pool face down.

I was out there with all the kids playing gymnastics with my daughter.

My boys were playing water gun fight.

Somehow the boys got into the gated pool and River fell in, refilling a water gun.

So the guilt was

How does a spouse bring the children into discussions about infidelity in the union and doing that well when the spouse is still grieving or tempted to be bitter about it?

A lot of this from this panel, a lot of this has been about communication and open communication and early communication.

Grant mentioned five years old.

I don't think it's too early.

There's not a time to talk about things too early when it comes to theology.

and you could start introducing things that are counter to God's purpose early as you see fit.

And the local church, which I believe on our last panel and this panel, the local church is foundational for almost every question that's been asked in terms of humans are built, we are created to live life in a tribe.

And I've seen through my mom just her spiritual growth of loving on her mom and how that has... enabled her and it continued to ignite her to keep on pouring into the next generation and not to just click out you know I'm I'm sailing out now and I'm just gonna ride easy the rest but no she's gonna invest that time for the kingdom and so I think you know those are those opportunities where we see life for what it really is and we know that our time you know is not forever and we need to invest it wisely

But if you, you know, as comfortable as you, as you feel, would love to hear that, that part of your story and how that shaped you the last few years.

Yeah, thanks for that preface.

And, you know, I've wrestled with this over the last few years.

Not so much that, oh, no, this is going to be very emotional.

This is going to be very hard to say.

Not that side, but more so, like, do I need to tell this again? Is that something that's in my past? Is that kind of behind me now? Or should we be thinking more about what's going on now? and that's a wrong way of thinking because the, you know, the Lord, that's my story that the Lord gave me.

And so it should be, as long as someone needs to hear it or wants to hear it, it should be what I tell the rest of my life.

Do you feel like God kind of went right to the identity source in you and like started to pull some of the things that you've always looked for? I feel like I'm kind of leading you in this question, but does that make sense where he's like stripped you from everything that you used to find security in, in order to get your full attention? I don't know if that makes

Mm-hmm.

And stepped away from it completely, because I, I, um...

Well, there, there were several reasons.

One, the Lord just rearranged my desires and a l- a lot of things, um, didn't feel meaningful in music for me anymore like they used to.

So I, I just felt like I was, um, wasting time, kind of just creating a, a party for people over and over, and I'd done it for 24 years.

And I f- then I also felt just an urgency for ministry.

Um, I j- I just suddenly became more and more aware of the g- kind of the brevity of life and, and that, that I didn't have, you know, what do I have r- I have at max I have three decades left, I would say.

But the rest of the rope was, like, all the way...

As you reflect back on the journey you guys have been on, processing this grief together and the loss together, how have you guys been able to build your marriage now stronger and heal through it rather than going down that path of it broke our family, it broke our marriage, it broke our community?

Yeah, it's just not something I did.

The Lord did it, but it happens through seeking Him.

Because if I were to seek Amber in grief, or if she was to seek me, we're going to let each other down.

And because because everyone grieves differently and, you know, you could be at a different stage of grief and you try to if I would try to rely on her and she's kind of absent, then then I would fall deeper into despair and vice versa.

But when I think when we truly started seeking God as he's revealed himself in the Bible.

and recognizing who he is and then therefore who we are in light of who he is and our need for him, not because he's going to save us from ourselves or from our sin or from the devil or from our heartbreak, but essentially because he's saving us from the wrath of God himself.

then like there's something that's kind of like a interesting representation of what christ allows despite the the wreckage that might be around us anyway that's just more of a thought i don't know if you guys resonate with that or i feel like you experience that or you might use different terms to to be helpful to listeners who might not conceptualize that well

They lived in a beautiful ranch house in the Texas Hill Country, and life was picture perfect until one fateful day in June 2019 when everything changed.

I'm out in the backyard with the kids in just a beautiful late afternoon.

All I'm doing now is just present, just being as present as I can with the kids.

No phone, no distractions.

Amber was inside getting the house ready for the kids to take a bath and go to bed and put their PJs on.

And I'm playing gymnastics with my daughter London and the boys are running around us shooting each other with water guns, having a water gun fight.

I remember thinking, soak up this moment because these moments will not last forever.

And he's your guitarist.