How have your wounds been quietly shaping your life?

In this honest and hope-filled episode of The Collide Podcast, Willow sits down with pastor, Army veteran, executive coach, and author Tony Miltenberger to explore how unresolved pain often drives our reactions, relationships, and leadership more than we realize.

Tony vulnerably shares his story of growing up feeling unseen, navigating childhood trauma, wrestling with anger, and nearly losing his marriage because of wounds he hadn't fully addressed. Through counseling, faith, and years of intentional healing work, he discovered that our greatest wounds often point to our greatest gifts.

Together, Willow and Tony discuss why so many of us spend our lives managing symptoms instead of healing the root issue, how emotional triggers reveal deeper pain, and why Jesus wants to meet us in the places we'd rather avoid.

If you've ever struggled with feeling unseen, unworthy, overlooked, rejected, or stuck in unhealthy patterns, this conversation will encourage you to stop running from your pain and begin discovering the wisdom hidden within it.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why emotional reactions often point to deeper unresolved pain
• The difference between treating symptoms and healing the wound beneath them
• How unhealed wounds can impact marriage and family relationships
• Practical ways to identify emotional triggers and begin healing
• Why your deepest wounds may reveal your greatest God-given gifts
• The importance of counseling, community, and spiritual disciplines in healing
• How to stop letting your past define your identity

Collide Book

Connect with Tony Miltenberger

Website | twmilt.com

Instagram | @twmilt

Book | Wisdom in the Wound: Leverage Your Struggles to Lead with Authenticity and Strength

Follow Willow: Website | Instagram | Facebook

💑Check out Collide’s website for info on upcoming conferences, events, and resources.

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Hey, welcome to the Collide podcast.

This is Willow Weston.

It's so good to hang out with you today.

I love that I get a pop into your life, into your inbox, into your car, wherever you are.

Maybe you're on a treadmill.

I don't know.

I don't know what you're up to.

I wish I knew.

Maybe you're traveling somewhere.

But it's so fun to hang out with you.

I love that we get to hear from people every single week who are experiencing this Jesus who runs right into our lives.

And he's healing and he's good and he's powerful and he's kind and he's transformative, and he never gives up on us, and he calls us and he purposes us.

And I love that I get to talk to people who are experiencing that and they're sharing about it and inspiring us that we can experience him, too.

And so if.

If this episode impacts you, make sure to share it with someone you think it'll bless.

And make sure to subscribe to this podcast so that it just automatically comes to you every single week.

But I'm about to hand you an interview with Tony Miltenberger.

I was on his podcast now.

We just did a swap.

He was on mine, and I asked him on mine after being on his because he was so genuine and real.

And you'll see that.

You'll feel it.

You'll.

You'll hear it.

He's been a pastor, an army veteran, an executive coach, a podcaster, and he's the author of the book Wisdom in the Wound.

And we got to sit and have a conversation about leveraging our struggles to lead with authenticity and strength rather than lead from a place of unresolved pain that begins to leak out on others.

And I know that you care about this because you care about the people in your life.

You care about the kids that you lead.

You care about your co workers, you care about your employees, you care about your boss, you care about the people you serve with in church.

And so this episode is sure to bless you.

Take a listen.

Tony, it's so good to have you on the podcast.

I'm almost afraid to press record here this morning because we were just laughing so hard that this is like a little bit.

Little bit off the hook here.

Already offline, but let's hope we can pull it together for you guys listening.

I just told Tony on the inside scoop that someone turned the heat up to like 80 plus in.

In this room, and I'm sitting in a sauna so we're sweating.

Willow is doing a sauna session while we have record the podcasts, so it's great.

It's a little infrared.

It's.

This is.

There's new studies about how it's helping people's health.

This is great.

Lean in.

So Lean in.

Lean in.

Tony, it's so good to have you.

I got to be on your podcast, and so now you're on mine.

And I love that we connected in that way and that we felt like a podcast swap.

Just made sense.

So thanks for hanging out with us.

Hey, thanks for having me, and thanks for putting such great work out into the world that connected the two of us together.

And so, uh, I love.

My favorite thing about podcasting is meeting cool people, so.

And free books.

And I got both of those with you.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, it was so funny because I was a guest on your podcast, which is.

Right.

The Follow to lead podcast, am I?

Yep, that's right.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

I think it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and so I didn't realize when you were interviewing me that you wrote a book called Wisdom in the Wound.

And I didn't really realize that until partway through our conversation.

Conversation.

And then I realized you and I have way more in common than I realized.

Right.

Because I just came out with the book collide running into healing when life hands you hurt.

So I just want to start from this place of you.

You have this passion to help people stop leading from unresolved pain and begin leading with clarity, authenticity, and intentional purpose.

Why is that a personal passion of yours?

Because for so many years of my life, I didn't do that.

Right.

Like, it's.

It's like.

Like many people.

Right.

Like, I felt like most of my life growing up was chaos.

My parents got divorced at a really young age.

I was eight years old.

At four years old, my parents had unplanned twins.

So praise the Lord.

Right.

Like, it was.

It was a thing, and it was really hard on them.

And so in my head, in my mind's eye, from the time I was 4 until I really began to dive deep into the work, I felt like I was kind of on my own.

Like I didn't matter.

Like I wasn't seen.

And so then what's happened is God has redeemed kind of that wounding in my life.

To use some of the language that I use in the book is this to.

To then as my greatest gift.

So, like, oftentimes, what's.

Your wounding becomes the area of your life that you're really good at.

And so I felt like I wasn't seen.

And the Lord seems to have gifted me with the ability to see people, and that's really where it was kind of born out of.

So let's talk about this a little bit, because your parents had unexpected twins, and then it sounds like they.

They had a divorce.

How old were you when they got divorced?

Eight.

I was eight.

Eight.

So, like, four years after the twins were born, and you felt not seen.

When.

When we're kids and we go through hard things, we don't necessarily have the language to say, I don't feel seen.

What was the moment in your life where you realized, I've lived many years of my life or my childhood not feeling seen?

Like, what age did you realize that was a wound?

I was a senior in high school, and I was in the youth group, and back in the day, we used to have, like, these hacky sacks that you could, like, throw all over the place or whatever.

And so I was in the youth group, and I was this young man.

I was full of vigor and testosterone, and I was always on edge.

I love Jesus.

I never not loved Jesus.

But there was a young woman, Katie Lofesweiler.

If she's listening, I would like to apologize.

Yeah.

Also her name.

Like, what a name.

It was a name.

So Katie thought she would be funny.

And she was bouncing a ball off of something else, a hacky sack.

And then she threw it, and it hit me in the forehead.

And it hit me in the forehead in such a way.

And I. I was having all these unresolved feelings about things.

And I turned around and I slapped her.

Like, I backhanded her.

Like, I. Oh, wow.

Aggressively.

And then I started to cry, and I was just weeping, and it was really hard.

Like, it was just.

It was just one of those moments.

It was a, you know, convert conversion kind of moment in my faith walk, because that's what led me to my first round of, like, understanding that this anger is really an outward expression of something much deeper.

And it was that dialogue with, you know, our pastor who really started the process of opening my eyes to, like, you know, there's a lot.

There's a lot of movement underneath the water of this iceberg that, you know, caused my emotions.

Right.

And that was.

That was kind of the impetus of the.

The first part of that discovery.

And I was getting ready to join the Army Reserves.

And one of the things that I realized is I didn't want to go into the Army Reserves so angry that I was going to Fight everyone.

Hmm.

And so what did you do?

I began meeting with anyone who would listen to me to start to recognize that this is deeper than what I thought it was, that it's about unresolved pain.

It's about understanding that process.

And, Willow, it would probably take me 20 more years to really sort through that.

Right.

Because one of the things that happens is there's.

I'm going to get theological for just a second.

There's something called the epistemic consequence of sin.

And so we all understand that the world is inherently broken.

No one will argue with that, but we often don't talk about the consequences of that brokenness.

And so one of the things that I learned when I was in seminary is that the world is inherently broken because sin has entered the world, and there's always a consequence for sin.

And the definition that I like to use the most is anything that separates us from God.

So in that separation is where the consequence lives.

And so one of the things that I've kind of learned over the years, in the last 10 years specifically, is that we all suffer from what I call little T trauma, or the epistemic consequence of sin.

So somewhere between the ages of 4 and 13, there's little T trauma that enters our life.

Right.

Sometimes we call it middle child syndrome.

Sometimes we make jokes about it.

You've probably scrolled through an Instagram reel that has a joke about the eldest daughter and the eldest granddaughter and all the things that come with that kind of personality type.

Right.

And what I've begun to kind of piece together through a lot of studying and research and understanding this idea is that we all have this version of little T trauma.

And that by itself is just something that you need to be aware of, that you've got a wound, and that wound is inherent to who you are.

And then in my case, there's the big T trauma of my parents divorce.

And what happens a lot of times with big T trauma is it becomes a magnifier of the little T wound.

And so I didn't think I was seen at the age of four because I went from being the middle or went from being the youngest to the middle.

My parents were overwhelmed from 4 to 8, and then at 8, my parents get divorced.

And what does that do in my little kid head?

It just reinforces the thing I already believe to be true about myself.

And so now I believe it a little bit more.

And then my dad gets remarried, and I believe it a little bit more.

And now all of a sudden, we're Stacking kind of this belief, like, man, I really don't matter.

And so I get some help as a senior in high school from our local pastor, and I begin to deal with some of that emotion.

And I'm dealing with symptoms and not the wound.

And so it wasn't until I was working in a local church that the wound really exploded and I began to go see a therapist to really unpack the layers of that wounding.

There's so much stuff to break down here, and.

And I want to take the time to do it because I think it's really important.

And one thing you just said reminded me of something my therapist said.

When I first started therapy in my 20s, I was going to a Christian therapist, and I wasn't a Christian, which was really interesting experience.

But she said we're all, we're all investigators looking for evidence of what we already believe about ourselves.

And so what she was suggesting is much like what you're talking about when you have these wounds present and you have these beliefs, those wounds have in some sense lied to us and told us who we are.

Right.

Or who God is or who others are.

So we're looking for evidence.

When we walk into a job interview or we walk into a party or we walk into a committee or church or a small group, we're looking to hear, like, for me, it was you, you're not worthy to be chosen.

Right.

And so because my mom seemed to choose her addiction over me and my dad didn't show up most of the time.

And so I just felt like, oh, I'm just not enough to be chosen.

And so I can walk into.

I can join a small group at my church and walk in the first night and assume I. I'm like looking for evidence from these people to tell me that that's true about myself.

And if you're always looking for your negative self belief to be backed up, you be able to find evidence for that just because you're looking for it.

Right.

So you had, you.

You said something else that was really interesting.

You talked about this.

I mean, and now you created trauma for someone else.

I know you're confessing that and you feel bad about that, but you, your anger came out sideways on this girl and you realized it was an expression of something much deeper.

Talk to our listener about why we need to pay attention to.

To these things that come out sideways in our life and, and why it means there's something deeper going on.

Yeah, I actually have a tool for this that I'd love to share.

It's it's called the emotional intensity scale.

And so everyone has this idea of emotional intensity.

We all have feelings.

No one's figured out how to avoid them yet.

And so on the emotional intensity scale, if you think about 1 to 10, anytime your emotional intensity gets to a 6 or higher, it's always more about you than it is the other person.

So this is.

It's a really interesting thought.

Like, if.

If you're driving down the highway and I live in Ohio, and so 75 is terrible, and we all hate it.

And so I.

75, And then somebody cuts me off, and then I decide to use every word that I learned in the army, and.

Oh, wait, did you want to tell us what those words are, Tony?

No.

No, ma'.

Am.

I do not.

I do not.

If.

If.

If you decide to, like, lose it, what we're doing is reinforcing that thing that we thought was true, right?

That.

That negative belief.

And so that.

That's called an emotional intensity spike.

So that spike is an indicator.

It's your body's way of saying, danger, danger, danger.

And it's bumping up against old ideas because, you know, my wound, I didn't feel like I was seen.

This guy cuts me off.

What is that?

I'm not gonna let him not see me, right?

And I just kind of go off.

Now, here's what's crazy, Willow, is it.

It doesn't just work in the negative way.

It also works in the positive way.

I have two kids, two boys who play.

I have three kids, two boys that play football.

Two boys and a princess.

Both of them are linebackers.

And so if they intercept the ball and get a pick, six takes it to the house.

Touchdown Melton Burger.

And I go full blown Midwestern dad on the sideline.

I start chest bumping strangers, and I'm throwing popcorn in the air, and I get super excited.

Guess what?

My emotional intensity spiked again.

On a scale from 1 to 10, now I'm above a 6 again.

Why?

Because in that moment, it's more about me than it is about them.

Look what I did.

That's my kid.

That's my genes, right?

And guess what my wound is.

I want to be seen.

So when my kids excel, I feel seen.

And so your emotional intensity scale is a great way to discern some of your wounding.

So, like, if you have a problem when somebody bullies you and you spike above a six when you have a problem on Facebook, Facebook is a great place to see people's emotional intensity spike all over the place, because people get in the comments, and they just start trolling.

Do we have to watch this?

Right.

And so the reality is, wherever you spike in intensity, good or bad, I believe that God is saying, pay attention to that, because in that you'll find not only your greatest wound, but also your greatest gift.

You mentioned that oftentimes we deal with the symptoms and not the wound.

And I think this is a very powerful idea to consider, because even right now in my life, someone I care about is.

It's like they've become their own worst enemy.

They've gotten in the way of themselves.

And maybe for the first time in their life, they might start paying attention to kind of like, oh, I've recognized I do X.

And so I'm going say, say for you, it was anger.

Like, I'm going to work on deep breathing for my anger.

Like these tools that help us with our expressions, which are great, but if we never go to the root of the problem to find out why we're angry, then all we're doing is like, deep breathing through life, trying to calm down our anger.

But we.

We don't go to the root of the problem.

Like you mentioned earlier, an iceberg.

Yeah.

Did you read.

Oh, man, is it Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero that has that.

Yep, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So the iceberg illustration such.

And this book's old, but.

And so I read a long time ago, but I remember being like, yes, like, because we see some ice on the top of the water and then you see that illustration, there's just like this major, way bigger, like, chunk of ice underneath the surface.

And so many people are just trying to deal with what they see, but what about what they don't see?

And so how did you go from like, oh, I'm angry to like, what was the cause of my anger?

What.

What will help people unpack and get to the.

The.

The below the surface?

Hey there.

I want to tell you about my new book, Collide Running into Healing.

When life hands you hurt, and life does hand us hurt.

And if we don't get healing for that hurt, our pain starts to come out sideways.

And that's what we see when we're having sleepless nights and anxiety and insecurity, walking into parties and friendship breakups and all of these things.

And so I want to invite you to say yes to God's healing in your life so that you can not only live the life you are made to live, but you can bring healing to other people who are hurt.

So grab a copy of my new book anywhere you Buy books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever.

Let's collide.

I would say this.

The first thing that you have to do is be willing to give yourself space to feel the feelings.

And so one of the things that we do oftentimes as just type A personalities or humans who live in a very busy world, is we immediately want an action instead of just time.

And yet the Lord is very clear about Sabbath and how important it is.

And I think we can apply that same framework to how we deal with our emotional trauma.

And so one of the things that I began to learn working with a counselor and understanding this more and more, is that what you really need to do is you need space to ask yourself the question, when is the first time in my life I felt this way, like, and start pulling the string.

That is the, the deeper feeling that goes through all of these moments in your life and saying, wow, I was angry there, and I was angry there, and I was angry there.

Why does God keep sending me people that make me angry?

Or you could say, why am I so angry, Lord?

And so one of the things that I believe is that the wisest leaders in the world, they don't have an absence of wounding, but they have an intimacy with their wound.

That's good.

You can preach that all day if.

You can get to a place where you can sit next to your wound and understand that it's part of who you are and it doesn't make you good or bad, it just makes you, you.

Like, if we can remove guilt and shame and just say, lord, meet me here.

I was the lead pastor of a church for like seven years.

And there was one guy in the church who constantly questioned my integrity.

Like, he just was like, I want to see the budget, I want to pull out.

And, you know, I was fine, right?

Like, I knew that I was fine.

I wasn't making any bad choices.

I, I, I felt 100 confident that I was doing everything right.

And he would come into my office and he would accuse me all these things.

And I could feel the, the, the anger just like boiling up inside of me.

And I was like talking to a couple of pastor friends.

I was like, I don't know what to do about this guy.

Like, I'm gonna trespass from the church.

Like, he's gotta go and I just can't.

And ah, you know, and I'm like full blown freaking out.

And what I, what I eventually began to realize is that my emotional intensity was spiking.

And the only thing that I could do to make it better was give myself 30 minutes of time every time I met with him afterwards to just sit in my feelings, like, just.

I just needed to put myself in time out.

30 Minutes.

So then this is the rhythm is that he would schedule a meeting with me, and then I would take the next 30 minutes to cry in my office or to journal in my office or to just.

Because feelings are really just designed to be felt.

And I tell leaders this all the time, is that feelings are decision points.

They're not decision makers.

And so often we let our feelings make these decisions, right?

And so, like, my kids come home from school and they didn't do something they were supposed to do, and I get so mad that now I'm spiked above a six.

And all of a sudden, like, I'm saying, you're grounded for a month.

And then I feel bad about that.

And then that was too much, and that wasn't enough because I let the feeling make the decision.

I didn't actually feel the feeling.

And then have a logical conversation with my wife, who's my partner, and we look at the entirety of the situation, and then we kind of like, I don't make decisions when I'm spiked above a 6 because I can't be trusted.

I love that.

That feelings are decision points, not decision makers.

That's so good.

You.

You've done a lot.

You've been a pastor, you've been in the army.

You do executive coaching, you're a podcaster, you're an author of a book.

What was a moment for you in leadership where you realized you were leading out of a place of pain?

What did God change in you, and how did you see the difference when you stopped leading out of that pain?

My first church job was at a mega church.

And it was a beautiful church, great church.

And the thing about a megachurch is that it's a lot like the army.

There's kind of an always, I'll place the mission first.

You know that the warrior ethos in the armies.

I'll always place the mission first.

I'll never accept defeat.

I'll never quit.

I'll never leave a fallen comrade.

You could put that on the back of a men's breakfast shirt and at a church event.

And they would buy it, right?

Like, it's this kind of culture.

Like, we can work all the time.

There's never enough.

And so early on in my ministry career, I was at this mega church, and I had three kids under the age of 10.

My wife was.

Was dealing with a lot.

I was working at the church probably five nights a week.

And there was more work to be done, and I felt like my wife didn't care about my work.

And so I. I began to let space come between us.

And then eventually I made the worst sin of my life.

There was a female on staff at the church who was single, and she walked into my office and began to tell me how smart I was and how much she respected what I was doing in disciple making and all of these things.

And.

Well, I'll tell you that I just.

I became infatuated.

Infatuated with the feeling that I felt like she saw me.

And the truth is, she didn't see all of me.

She never went home with me.

She.

We never, like, went anywhere off campus.

She saw this one part of this one thing that I do, and.

And I let this kind of false belief began to infiltrate my head.

And.

And we were kind of like.

We just became infatuated with each other and went to a full blown emotional affair where I was telling this woman I loved her.

And we were.

We knew it was wrong.

Like, we knew it was one of those things like, ah, this is not a good idea.

Like, this is a terrible idea.

We've got to stop.

But it was already.

It was like two drunks in a bar telling each other to stop drinking.

And then one day.

One day I walked into another pastor's office.

His name is James Keith Posey.

Incredible guy.

And James Keith, I said.

I said, dude, I'm in a bad way.

Like, I've let this thing get out of control.

Now.

We.

We never laid hands on each other, me and this girl.

Like.

But I'm like, I'm.

I'm in it real bad.

Like, I don't know how to get out of it.

And he said, tony, I'm gonna help you.

And I was like, james Keith, you're gonna.

You're gonna tell her to stop talking to me?

And he goes, no, I'm gonna do even better than that.

If you don't tell Karen tonight, I'm going to tell her tomorrow.

And in that moment, James Keith reset my life.

And he saved me from myself, where I was leading out of a wound, leading from a wounding place of, like, not articulating my feelings to my spouse, not being honest about good boundaries.

Like, I was.

I was literally letting my work in the church become the idol that I served.

And.

And I was completely content with letting this woman fill the void that was meant for God and my wife.

Mm.

And it's so.

It's so true that wounds wound like you had this unresolved wound, and you were trying to heal it by being seen by this woman, but that wasn't gonna heal it.

You being seen by her wasn't gonna actually heal this wound that you.

You were hurt as a child, and now you wounded your wife.

How did, how did God show up for you guys in that?

Like, are you guys still together?

How did you know?

Because I don't want to just move on from that and not know what happened.

Well, I'll say that we're.

We're so good these days.

Like, we're so good.

God was so kind in the sense that two things happened.

One, the church didn't fire me.

And that's really important because if you don't have space to heal, you won't heal.

And I needed the job.

Like, we weren't rich.

Like, we.

We weren't independently wealthy.

If I wasn't working and it wasn't tons of money back then, it was like.

But it was.

We needed it to pay the bills.

And so they gave me space to heal.

And so then Karen and I.

My wife's name, Karen, we went to a counselor, and this counselor gave me a piece of advice that I have since given to every couple that I've done marriage coaching with, marriage counseling with every person that will ever listen.

She said, I want you guys to start praying over each other every night out loud.

And so every night, still to this day, decades later, every night I say, lord, please be with my beautiful wife.

Protect her head and her heart.

Let me see her with your eyes.

And then we.

And then we just kind of go through the litany of prayers, and then she prays over me out loud.

And.

And here's the thing that, that I've begun to realize is that it's really hard to stay disconnected from someone when you've got built in intimacy, right?

So you've got this built in intimate moment where you get to renew your covenant with God every night.

And so then all of a sudden, we began to pray and talk and pray and talk.

And I began to realize is like, most people don't fall in and out of love.

They fall in and out of commitment.

But it's not commitment to monogamy.

It's commitment to the disciplines of being married.

And so we oftentimes don't think about the disciplines.

Date nights, going to bed at the same time, praying over each other, intentional communication, worshiping together, holding hands, taking walks.

These are disciplines, disciplines that actually keep us in the marriage.

Nobody wakes up and says, man, today is the day that I want to ruin my life.

But we sacrifice the disciplines.

And so somewhere along the way, God gave me this belief, this kind of core truth.

And it's, if you aren't dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions.

If you aren't dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions.

And listen, the distractions can even be good.

The distractions can be your kids.

The distractions can be your work.

It could be serving on the pto.

It could be making so much money that your family can do whatever it wants.

All of those things are true, and they can still ruin your life.

And so your disciplines become these guardrails that prevent you from falling deeper into sin.

So it's amazing that the Lord has shown up and brought redemption to you and Karen, and now you are able to advise others and give other people wisdom.

You had this wound, though, that you so desired to be seen.

And we talk so much around here about Jesus colliding, and he runs right into our lives, and he wants to come into all the spaces and places in our lives that are messy and that are hurting and that are bleeding out.

And you had this wound.

It was bleeding out, and then it wounded your family, and it was that you.

You didn't feel seen.

So how did Jesus heal that so that you no longer lead from that place anymore?

So I would say healing, right, like it's the process of.

Of sanctification, that process of becoming more like Christ doesn't mean that my sinful self ever fully goes away, but rather, I'm just not as egregious as in those sins as I once was.

And so I still have.

I still meet with the same counselor that I've met with now for over 10 years.

His name's Dr. Pierce.

Steve.

Dr. Steve.

And Steve.

And I still talk about that wound that comes up inside of me where I want to be seen.

Here's the difference is what Jesus did is he gave me the confidence not to be scared by it.

And you know what?

I kind of laugh at it now.

Like, man, I cannot believe.

I cannot believe that that thing still shows up in my life that way, Right?

Like, it's.

You know, like, the other day, I was in a board meeting on a nonprofit that I work on, and I. I was.

Have a lot of experience with nonprofits.

I work with leaders all the time.

And I was for sure, 100% confident that this was not going to end well.

And Willow, nobody was listening to me, and I was like, hey, hey, hey.

I got there.

I got home from that meeting, and I was like, this thing is stupid.

I hate this whole thing.

I'm out of here.

Like, I don't need to do this.

And then I. I'm like, man, Tony, you are way above a six right now.

Like, what's this really about?

Are you mad that that nonprofit's not going to do what you said?

Well, no.

That sounds horribly arrogant.

What am I mad about?

Oh, man, I'm mad that I didn't.

I wasn't.

Didn't feel valued, I wasn't seen.

And I'm like, okay, let's just calm down a little bit here.

And then.

And then just be like, is it really that big of a deal?

And the answer was no, it'll be fine.

Yeah.

I think there is some freedom and empowerment in the fact that we can own.

Like, this is a wound that I continue to battle.

Like, I have wounds.

And I think people want me to say, I met Jesus, I accepted him into my heart, I prayed some kind of prayer, and now I'm good.

But the truth is, is I experienced a lot of hurt in woundedness, and I continue to battle that.

But Jesus can handle that.

And Jesus and I can be real about that.

And I think there's some.

Some, like I said, freedom and empowerment of be.

About being able to name it.

Like, Jesus knows your limp.

You know what I mean?

Like, why are we trying to act like.

I remember having this conversation.

I was preaching at a church that I went to, and an executive pastor walked up to me afterwards, and he said, you're a really great communicator.

And I said, well, what did you sense God, you know, saying to you personally today?

Like, because I don't really talk about.

I don't need to have a conversation about my communication.

Like, let's talk about what the Lord did in your heart, you know?

And he.

He here, he's this, like, executive pastor that came from the business world.

And I was talking about wounds that day, and he's like, I don't have any wounds.

I've never had any wounds.

And I'm thinking, like, are you alive?

Do you, like, have a pulse?

Have you even had.

Like.

Like, are.

Are you a robot?

Like, I don't know.

Are you without.

Are you without sin, too?

Because.

Right, exactly.

Like.

And so if you sin, you wound people and that, you know?

So anyways, I feel like there's, like, some Christian culture that's trying to posture a strength that's not real, and that's what I love about you.

And probably what I loved about my conversation on your podcast is that you really seem to be real and authentic.

And you wrote this book, Wisdom in the Wound.

Leverage your struggles to lead with authenticity and strength.

So you're, you're actually calling us not to hide our wounds or pretend we have it all together, but actually to leverage our struggles.

How can we leverage our struggles?

Like, talk to us about what that looks like.

Well, so it's so great is that when God works, we don't, you know, God redeems our brokenness.

He redeems all things.

So if you're willing to not let the fear of your wounding become like an idol in your life that you don't ever talk about or you let have authority, when you let that stuff have authority in your life, what ends up happening is God can't redeem it.

But if I'm willing to go open handed about it and be like, hey, yeah, I have had an emotional affair.

I have struggled in these things and, and God is still doing crazy cool things in my life, right?

Like, so what, what happened is I, I wanted to be seen, so I keep putting myself behind microphones, you know, case in point, right?

Like, it's not, it's not either or.

It's not a bad thing.

Like, the Lord is so kind in his redemption of my brokenness.

And here's the thing is that I'm really good at seeing people.

And so when I sit across from someone, the Lord has really gifted me some grace there that I don't deserve.

But he is redeemed and he's done that.

I've never met a person that doesn't have a gift that comes from the other side of their wound.

The thing is, when you begin to understand one half of it, it gives you a fullness of picture to your gifting.

And that's beautiful.

It's a beautiful gift that.

Like that.

The kid that grew up in chaos and experienced a life where everything was uncertain, they're usually really good at providing order, right?

The kid that grew up in a place where they didn't feel like they were ever lifted up, that person's an incredible cheerleader.

And it just works like that because we serve a God who takes the cross and uses it as the ultimate symbol of grace and love, an instrument meant for death.

He turned it into something so beautiful that now we look at it with reverence and people wear it around their necks.

Tony, I know we could talk all day.

We'll have to have you on again.

But this came to My mind when you just shared some of those examples and you've written a book.

I've written a book.

I was just at a book signing thing in Idaho, in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, and this girl showed up.

Never met her before.

She was probably 23 years old.

She walks up to me.

She had my book in hand.

She goes, I'm on page 55.

I. I don't read books, but someone sent this book to me and told me I needed it.

She said, both my parents died.

My.

One of them was an addict.

She said one of them was abusive.

They both died.

Another family took me in when I was a senior, senior in high school, and they're the ones that sent me this book.

And she said, I just don't want my messy, wounded family experience to identify me like I want.

I want.

And she kept like I want.

Like she didn't have words.

Like, talk to the person who.

Their wounds have identified them.

Like, I'm the person who's not seen.

I'm the person from the messy family who's.

They were so messed up, right?

She or she was like, I.

They died like I'm.

My wounds tell me I'm not enough to be chosen.

And I take that into whatever room.

Like, talk to the people who are still letting their wounds identify them.

What do you want to say to them?

I think the first thing I want to say is I'm really sorry that it's so heavy.

And I get that.

And also, your opinions about yourself probably can't be trusted.

And so your feelings, what you're talking about here, they're just feelings.

It's probably not true at all.

And so what I would have you do is I would tell you to pick your five closest friends, and I would ask you to sit in front of them and ask, be brave enough to ask them the question, what do you see when you see me?

Because the wounding of your past has shaped the mirror at which you look at yourself in.

And it's just not accurate.

And then after you talk to those five friends, go to scripture and see what God says about you.

Because God has something he wants to say to you.

And it's not going to be about your past.

It's not going to be about what was.

It's not going to be about the pain or the grief.

It's going to be about that you are a new creation in him, that you're.

You're made perfect in his power, right?

And there's so many things where we get.

We get stuck.

You Know, Carlos Whitaker was on the podcast not too long ago when one of his sayings that I love is, like, we get stuck paying the praying about the pain instead of the promise, pray the promise.

And just remember, like, the pain is a part of your story, but it's not your entire story.

And when Jesus becomes lord of your life, wow.

Game changer, story changer.

Off the top rope.

Gonna crush old truce.

Like, it gets me fired up, right?

Like, there's so much there.

And.

And that's.

Those are my favorite kind of people to deal with.

Right?

So it's one of my.

One of my beliefs is like, information plus application is what leads to transformation.

So information plus application leads to transformation.

You have a lot of information about yourself, but I think it's probably the wrong information.

So go get some new information.

Let's apply it, and let's see what God does.

Toni, so much goodness.

And I know that people are gonna want to follow along with you, hear more wisdom from you, get your book, go to your podcast.

All the things.

How can they find you?

You know, the easiest place?

I always say that I'm embarrassingly easy to find.

Twmilt.com tw m I-L-T.com that's also my handle on all the socials.

I have a substack as well.

Follow to lead.

All of it's there.

Pretty, pretty easy.

You can buy the book wherever books are sold.

And if there's ever anything that I can do to help you, don't hesitate to let me know.

I would love to walk alongside you in your journey and see what God does.

Tony, you could just hop on a podcast and say some cool stuff and sound like a Christian leader and amen this and peace out.

But you.

You.

You're showing up in these spaces.

You showed up today.

I just.

I'm being.

I'm being thoughtful about it because I think it has a lot of meeting.

And you, you're being so real and leading from.

From what is real and what is true and leading in struggle, leading and telling us what's true about what's happened in your marriage and one of your greatest, greatest moments of sin and weakness.

And I appreciate that so much because it's what's real and it's what's real for all of us.

And if we could all begin to be a little more real about what is true about our lives, I think we would experience our real and true God more.

And so I just appreciate you leading first in that and inviting us to follow.

So thank you.

So much for being that kind of human.

Hey, it's my privilege.

And you led by example first.

You're the same type of person.

I love it.

That's why we're.

That's why we're fast friends.

Well, Tony, thank you for hanging out with us, friend.

Isn't it refreshing to listen to someone share their story, who's a leader, but they're sharing real things about their life, not the cleaned up, polished, I have everything together.

I am a perfect leader posture, but the leader who's like, you know what?

I've blown it.

You know, I was wounded and I was leading out of my wounds, and this is what God did.

I love Tony's heart and his redemption story and that he was also honest, that he's still healing.

It's okay to say you're still healing.

You don't have to say that you're whole because you're walking with Jesus.

Maybe Jesus has healed some things, and maybe there's still more to be made whole, and that's okay.

We're all in a process.

We're following him, we're walking alongside him, and he's inviting us.

And there might be parts of us that he's heals.

And there's new spaces popping up where he's like, okay, we're gonna go in that room now.

We're gonna heal what's in that room.

And I think there's freedom there to.

To feel like that's okay, that we're on a healing journey.

Of course, we'd love a magic wand, and we love to feel like God is just gonna heal us in a moment.

And sometimes God does that, but sometimes he wants to walk a journey with us too, and unpack some hard things.

And so, friend, if you feel like there's a wound that you've been carrying for a very long time, and it's identified you kind of like Tony, like, it's told you who you are, that you're not seen.

And maybe you're not seen because you're not enough or like me, you're.

You're not enough to be chosen or like the girl I talked about, who feels like people just know her for her messed up family.

I don't know what your wound has told you, but I love that Toni encouraged us to go back to who God says we are.

Go to your friends, have them tell you who you are, but go to God and hear what God says about you.

So I just want to end this episode considering some things that God says about us.

And if you need to hear more of these.

Make sure you go to wecolide.net because we have a million resources and things that I've written, Bible studies and things our team has curated to remind you of who God says you are.

The scripture says you're beloved.

Scripture says you're a child of God.

Scripture says you're God's workmanship.

God's workmanship.

Scripture says that you are a creation, that you've been adopted, that Jesus would do anything for you.

He loves you so much that he would lay down his life for you.

That's how much worth he sees in you.

So, friend, do not let your wounds tell you who you are.

Let Jesus tell you who you are.

Keep colliding.

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You can join me in this ministry of inviting people to collide with Jesus and we'll catch you next week.