A poignant and raw account of personal failure emerges, as one of the Misfit Preachers shares his heart-wrenching story of infidelity and its aftermath. The speaker recounts the series of decisions that led to a public affair, emphasizing the emotional turmoil that ensued as he navigated the fallout. The pain of losing his family, friends, and sense of self is palpable, as he reflects on how quickly life can spiral out of control. His candidness in discussing the impact of his actions on his loved ones adds a layer of depth to the narrative, allowing listeners to empathize with the complexity of human relationships and the consequences of betrayal.

As the conversation unfolds, the themes of despair, regret, and ultimately redemption take center stage. The speaker articulates the long, dark journey through shame and isolation, describing moments of despair that led him to contemplate suicide. However, a turning point occurs when he experiences a moment of clarity and recognition of the need for repentance. This transformation is not presented as a simple fix but rather as a continuous process that requires honesty, vulnerability, and the willingness to confront painful truths. The dialogue among the Misfit Preachers explores the societal pressures faced by public figures, especially in the Christian community, and how these pressures can exacerbate feelings of shame and isolation.

In a powerful conclusion, the speaker offers hope to those who find themselves in similar situations. He stresses the importance of sharing one’s story, not only for personal healing but as a means to connect with others who have experienced pain and failure. The episode emphasizes that redemption is possible and that the love of God is freely available, even in the depths of despair. The overarching message is one of grace, encouraging listeners to embrace their imperfections and to seek healing through community and faith.

Takeaways:

• The journey through darkness and despair can ultimately lead to profound personal growth and understanding.
• Acknowledging and owning one's mistakes is a crucial step toward healing and redemption.
• Experiencing a public scandal can strip away superficial relationships, revealing true connections.
• Suffering can serve as a powerful catalyst for change, leading to deeper empathy for others.
• True repentance can bring back a sense of humor and joy after deep sorrow.
• The realization that sin's consequences extend far beyond the individual, affecting many lives.

I had a very public affair and decided we were going to leave our marriages and our spouses.

We made those decisions together.

They were wrong.

They were sinful.

I damaged a lot of people.

Husband, wife, children.

My life turned into a ghost town because I lost my family.

Siblings, cousins.

Vanished for two years, guys.

I forgot what it was like to be a human among other human beings.

Well, what I know from the legal process I was in, the whole thing was kind of torture and ruin.

I have never talked about this ever.

For four years, I was just lost.

Went to darkness and despair into places I thought I never would go.

Grabbed a fifth of vodka and my Smith & Wesson J frame 357.

Drove to an industrial park.

Found the most obscure parking place that I could.

Cocked the hammer.

You're listening to the Misfit Preachers, Talian Chavidjian, Jean Leroux and Byron Yan from ProdigalPodcast.com we're plagiarizing Jesus one podcast at a time.

Now here are the Misfits.

Hi, welcome to the next episode of Misfit Preachers.

I'm Byron Yon.

Not really.

I'm Jean Le Roux.

Today we're continuing the conversation that the three of us started weeks and weeks ago of talking about our story.

Everybody having the opportunity to do that.

Talking about from a first person standpoint, what, what are the things.

I mean, there's so many versions of the stories of each of us that are out there having the opportunity to say, okay, we want to hear it in first person in your voice.

And so, Byron, thank you for your willingness to do that and be here today.

It's more than willingness.

Okay.

Honestly.

Good.

All right, well, we're giving you the.

We'll give you the floor.

Because true to our baseline principle here about ownership, it's a very important exercise for me and for everybody just to name it, own it, and resolve many things in that space.

So we're encouraging other people to do it and we'll go first and thank.

Thank you guys for doing it as well.

You're kind of the battering rams for this whole thing, so we'll see how this goes.

Yeah.

So one thing I was going to say before you start, Byron, are you already talking?

Yeah, just also, John, can you work.

On the verbal pauses?

The us.

Did I do some us?

Oh, yeah.

There's an encounter in my mind.

But you've.

You felt it?

I felt it.

You felt it.

And I know there are a lot of other people out there who have felt it.

That when your world is Crumbling.

You feel like everybody on planet Earth knows.

Everybody on planet Earth sees, and everybody on planet Earth has an opinion.

And what I discovered, thankfully, is that while that was going on in my world, while everything was crumbling, I realize, dude, nobody knows who I am and nobody knows.

Nobody.

Nobody's paying attention to this.

I mean, there were mostly in the Christian world, but this world is so much bigger than that.

And so it was relieving to me on the other side to go, man, what was.

Everything to me was nothing to.

99.9% of the people in this world who have no idea who I am could care less about what happened.

And when I do tell them what happened, they're kind of like, so that's Tuesday in my world.

Yeah.

Starbucks is still open in Tucson.

Right, right, exactly.

Yeah.

I did come to the haunting realization that nobody really gave a shit.

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

You know, they weren't at home now rubbing their hands in concern now or ahead me on the forefront of their mind.

Yeah.

That was also.

Well, it's relieving when you come to that realization because you realize, wait a second.

Even in the midst of my fall and all of the negative ATT I was getting, there's still.

There can still be a sense of pride that at least I'm being talked about.

So it was.

It was relieving on the one hand to realize that wasn't the case.

And it was also humbling to go, yeah, dude.

Yeah, I'm much.

I'm a much bigger deal than.

Or I'm a much less of a bigger deal than I thought.

Yeah.

In my.

In my experience, I would say there is such a thing as bad press.

Yeah.

Oh, yes.

I can testify to that.

Yeah.

And there were particular regions of the.

Country that focused intensely south of the Mason Dixon line.

Got it.

Got it.

All right, well, the floor is yours, my friend.

Okay.

So context.

And we talked about this before the recording.

I'm about two years behind the two of you, just in my journey in process, which is why it's such a blessing to me personally, to listen to you guys, to know your stories, to get into the details of your stories, because it gives me hope.

Right.

Which is one of the things I want to emphasize to people who think there is no way out of this.

There's no future for them.

Right.

I was there at that point.

And even now, where I find myself as I look at the two of you, it's still.

It still gives hope.

So there's a little bit of definitely always a work in progress, but this is kind of where, where I am.

And then additionally, I have never talked about this ever.

Like, I stayed silent for a long time because kind of those who write well get the last word, sort of principle, but also because there were a lot of people involved in my family, other kids, my kids, my ex wife, an ex husband and so on and so forth.

It was, it was enough so.

And they'd had enough of me.

In fact, my kids came to me at one point, said, dad, you got 18 months, not a peep, Stay down, stay low.

And I was like, you got it.

So almost to the day, 18 months later, I don't know if that's exactly true, you know, here you are, here I am.

So I've never spoken about it.

In the beginning of it, I got invitations to interviews, national, you know, markets and that sort of thing.

I was like, my lawyer said, no.

Yeah.

Not no, but really no, don't do that.

And also for full disclosure for the listener.

I have notes in front of me and because I just kind of like thought through this and put this together.

That's one reason I want to be succinct and clear.

The other reason is I don't want to get sued again.

So I'm threading a very tight needle on what I can say, what I can't say.

Yeah.

Although at this stage there's nothing to get.

I don't know what else can be done.

It's kind of, it's been kind of scorched.

Sue me for what in the world, by the way.

I've seen it.

We'll get to that.

There are things to guess.

We'll get to that later.

We'll get to that later.

Somebody wrote, and I read it was like, oh, he's exactly right.

That one of the signs of true repentance is the return of your sense of humor.

And I read that after I had experienced it.

And a lot of that is kind of self deprecating, laughing at yourself.

But the other kind of humor in it is the juxtaposition between where you were in that darkness and then a feast that's been created for your honor.

I mean, hilarity is the only thing that makes sense in that space.

And those who've never been through this sort of thing, hearing self deprecating humor, even hearing me laugh and make fun of certain circumstances, they don't, they can't understand that.

Right.

All the time it's kind of like walking in on a punchline when you haven't heard the joke.

You know, I'm the joke in the punchline here.

So that's sort of the freeing aspect of this conversation as well.

So it's what Charles Bukowski called a laughing heart.

That's right.

It came back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm not as funny or as quick as the two of you guys are.

I'm more of a sniper somewhere.

Which one of us do you think is funnier anyway?

We all know the answer to that question, but we're not going to share who it is.

We made it.

I even wore a V neck shirt today.

You, without question.

You are the funniest person I have ever met.

I have peed my pants with you.

Okay, let's move on.

Listening to being vulnerable.

Being vulnerable.

This ain't that island.

Not quite.

Yeah.

Not quite.

Depends.

But you're funny.

This might be.

This might be misfit island, but it ain't that island.

Go.

I got it.

So not to bury the lead and just put it out there.

I had a very public affair, made an emotional connection to married woman.

She made an emotional connection to me that turned into a full blown affair that we tried to keep under wraps and under radar and we can get to some of that darkness as well.

But we sat down together, the two of us, and decided we were going to leave our marriages and our spouses unhappiness and in some contexts, difficulty in those marriages and just committed to one another to do it.

So we made those decisions together.

They were wrong, they were sinful.

And then for about four and a half years I chased a delusion thinking that it would materialize at some point in my life and it did not.

And now I know some underlying reasons of why I was in that position, why I did the things.

I made those decisions.

I damaged a lot of people.

A husband, a wife, children, extended family.

Disappointed enormous amounts of people.

And I own that and need to own that and want to hug that, that cactus.

And that's.

That's kind of been the process over the last really 12 months of my life.

And when I came to, which is how I describe it, and I'll explain some of this in a moment and repented, which is actually a great thing.

Everybody should try it all the time.

Imagine holding your breath for five years and then gasping and this oxygen filling your lungs and your life and your soul.

You know, when you were hopeless and now you're hope filled.

There is a way out.

It's not going to look the same.

It's not going to be the same.

It's going to be a different kind of Happiness.

I'm going to walk with a limp, you know, kind of the rest of my life there.

But when I did come to the way I describe it, it was like.

It was like waking up in a room full of carnage and death and then looking down and finding the knife in your hand.

That's well said.

And that's not to take away responsibility, but that's.

That's what the experience is like for me.

If you've ever been there, you.

You know it.

So when I.

When I finally sat down with my ex wife and talked to her, she was.

She was really the baseline and barometer.

I love her and she didn't deserve any of this great mother.

And I knew that if she could feel and confirm the sincerity coming out of me, I could probably continue on the pathway to making amends.

And some things are in process to do that.

So I sat down with her five years later, still in that darkness and despair, and said it to her.

I was a liar.

I was a manipulator.

I was cruel to you in ways that kept me up at night even when I was in the midst of all this stuff.

And while our marriage was kind of coming apart as a result of what I did, and God knows she tried to keep it together, she said to me, she goes, I don't, I don't recognize who you are.

You just need to know that.

And she didn't say, this is, this isn't who you are, because some of what I did is who I am, not all of me.

And it was the most succinct description of me during that period of time.

When she said that, did she mean, I don't recognize who you are because of what you've done, or I don't recognize who you are are because you're being so open with me in this moment?

No, this was during everything.

Okay.

We had many conversations.

And during my departure, she said, I don't.

I don't even know who you are anymore.

Like, you're not the man I married.

I don't recognize you.

Your kids don't recognize you.

And I've had those conversations with my children who've been very, very gracious.

They're my ride or dies, you know, to me.

And up until the point that I was able to sit down with Robin and own these things.

And when I talked to her, I said, I am not going to get everything right.

If there's anything you need from me, let me know.

I'll do it and talk.

And we've continued to converse and our Goal is to be civil, remain friends for the sake of the children.

Sure.

That sort of thing.

And I, you know, I'll be serving her the rest of my life in many, many ways for it.

So that.

That was an important conversation for me so that I could go.

If she.

If she confirms it with trust but verify, she should be suspicious.

Right.

Then I'm.

I'm probably on the right track, hitting the right tone.

Not my own best counselor here.

Right.

And so that was an important step for me in that process.

But up until that moment, for four years, I was just lost in darkness and went to darkness and despair into places I thought I'd never would go, and was chasing the idol which had already dissolved in my hand.

But belligerently, petulantly, as an idolater, I just kept going, like wandering around in darkness, thinking that if I just could find that previous hit that I'd gotten, that it would satisfy me and it destroyed me and destroyed numbers of other people.

I like to say that if the prodigal son could see my story, he would blush and he would go, damn, son, like I thought I was.

That was a trough in three counties over like that.

You out punted your coverage on that thing.

And I was.

I was in a very dark, difficult place.

And I'll get to this in a minute.

I disappeared from the face of the earth.

In fact, as John tried to reach out to me, I wasn't answering calls.

And so he changed the ringtone for me to Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train.

It's still your ringtone.

I know.

So when I call him now, it's that which, in retrospect, when I called him one day and he was in the other room, and it's like going after.

I said, what is that?

And he goes, because you were crazy.

Yeah.

Great song, by the way.

And, yeah, it's fantastic.

Well, I mean, I feel like I need to say something here that wasn't.

It wasn't a critique as much as, dear God, if he calls, I want to hear it.

And nobody else gets that ringtone.

So if I hear.

I don't listen to Ozzy Osbourne normally.

And so I was like, okay, I want to hear it.

And you were batshit crazy.

Yes, it's true.

Still am, quite frankly.

Got it.

A lot of that I've learned as well.

But also the other side of that, like, there's the carnage and the harm that I caused.

I saw that.

But as I looked at the location of where I was, and this is honest, as honest as I Can be.

I had no clue how I'd gotten there.

Like, I was conscious, but not conscious through all of it, but couldn't retrace my steps to how it occurred.

And it was.

It was very confusing to me because I looked in the mirror finally and saw who I actually was and went, what in the hell?

Like, how did you get here?

Still not excusing anything I did, the decisions I made, the people I heard, but that was the reality inside of it.

So at that point, I'm kind of wired, like, the two of you are wired.

I went on quest, like, I have to figure this out, like, what happened.

And in the midst of that, started jotting down ideas and just kind of went after this piece.

And I think for the public at large and for the people that watched me, the people who were my friends at the time, as you look at it from the outside looking in, you're going to focus on the surface level event that happened, the licentious act that breaks through the surface, and it's going to be confusing to people.

And that all of that is true.

All of that happened in degrees that are really hard for me to wrap my mind around.

But that focus on that will distract you from the thing underneath the thing.

And that, that was the quest for me.

And we talked a little bit about this yesterday.

I have a ton of work to do ahead of me to figure all this out.

Jean is not going to let me get away from that commitment.

And I'm not really kicking and screaming.

I'm more skipping and whistling into it.

But that was the.

There's this thing which was uncharacteristic of me up until that point.

And when people look at that, their assumption is, oh, this guy had this licentious thread underneath his life.

He was lustful.

And all those things are.

They're there.

But I was circumspect for years, 25 years of marriage, faithfully committed to my wife, faithfully committed to my children, faithfully committed to my church, faithfully committed to the network of friends that I'd built over decades and decades without even blinking.

And maybe people could have seen it coming as well.

You know, when I ask you that question in your Q and A, it's true about me as well.

I'm sure I would say the same thing was insightful.

I hope somebody would have hit me upside the head and let me know.

And so when it happened, it was a sinkhole that had formed under my life.

That was my experience of it.

Just all of a sudden, all this fell through the scaffolding broke and there were lots of people in the nearest proximity standing on the surface of that near me.

And when it went, it just took everybody down.

And it's a great way to put it.

And me and I think what people as the church at large.

And this is not me being critical of the church, this is me adding something to the church's repertoire.

And we know this, but we don't know it.

I am a subject matter expert on sin and what it does.

I just went through a masterclass on it.

And I can tell you as a matter of actual fact that I hate it.

I hate what it did and does and is doing to me personally.

But sin is a force.

It is not just an infraction.

And it corrupts everything.

And you don't.

Like a fish doesn't know it's a fish until it's flopping on a deck.

Right.

And when all this happened, that experience was like this.

And I can tell everyone that's listening, the tools that we've been given to protect ourselves from that destruction are like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Right?

Yeah.

The work and the mortification that needs to take place is way deeper than I ever realized.

Right.

And so I can.

I don't talk in theory about this anymore.

I talk in reality.

And those fractures were deep and subtle in my.

In my world and in my life.

So that's just all of a sudden, boom, everything fell through and I persisted in my idolatry and in my sin and in my destruction, grabbing at a delusion that never materialized.

And I think.

I think what people don't know, which I think is helpful for the discussion, is that I wasn't in ministry when this happened.

I wasn't pastoring when this happened.

I'd left the church and I had left the church for very personal reasons that only a few people understand.

I had to get out because I was burned out, dying in that space.

But also theologically, there was an existential crisis going on with me.

And I was angry at God and I was afraid that that disposition was going to spill out into the church in some way or another.

And I didn't feel like I was paralleling my.

My calling at that moment.

This is the first time I've ever said this publicly, but I was bitter.

For what I realize now is not disproportionate suffering in my life.

But my life has not been charmed.

There's been a lot of pain and death and tragedy that's occurred to me, to my ex wife who didn't respond the way that I did.

But I'm wired differently.

And I became quite frankly entitled.

I deserve better.

I mean, inside it, it was, I deserve better.

I'm tired of serving the church, I'm tired of delivering these messages.

I'm tired of caring for people.

I'm going to go out and become self sufficient.

And went on this theological excursion.

And so I resigned from the church for those reasons.

And the face fronting explanation to the congregation was I'm tired somebody else.

Which is actually a good thing for preachers to think through.

Around year seven to ten, are you.

The right leader for the next stage?

I.

The only mistake I made is I blew through 10 and made the decision at 20.

Yeah.

Started a business and consulting, helping people write stuff and whatever and then, and then left.

But all of that bitterness and entitlement which, you know, the ugly rawness of it all.

My marriage was not perfect.

Robin would say that.

She says I have loud crazy, she has quiet crazy.

And there were struggles that were in there, but at the end of it, this is the ugly.

Can't rub the edges off this.

I wanted a better marriage and quite frankly a better wife.

In my head, that's how delusional I was.

And so I decided I was going to leave.

And on that point you begin to believe you deserve it.

Oh, that's 100% sure.

This isn't just.

It's not a desire anymore.

It's, it's now something I deserve and I demand that I have it.

I was a 100% self absorbed asshole and I don't think I'm a narcissist, which is what a narcissist would say.

But I do know during that period of time, if you looked it up in the dictionary or googled it on psychology today.com, my picture would show up.

And it's always the worst headshot, you know, that's, that's where I was.

I wasn't talking to anyone about this.

Nobody knew.

I was just tired, exhausted, bitter.

Okay.

In that window and just gently landed the plane and got out of the fuselage and walked away.

And it hit the fan, you know, and someone came across my path and I said, that's it.

There's the void filled.

And I didn't even understand what that was in me.

I kind of do now.

Jean's been very helpful in that respect.

And the reason that's important to the story for me at least is back to the point.

There's that surface thing and then there's the underneath thing.

They think this is bad.

I was giving God the middle finger.

Yeah, yeah.

Just boiling with pride.

Yeah.

And anger.

My dad dies in a tragic car accident.

My younger sister's driving.

Horrific.

My mother after that, who plays a large role in some of my observations, recently attempts to commit suicide as a result.

My sister is a lifelong drug addict out on the street causing destruction everywhere in the family.

Older sister, my ex wife, and I lose twins at birth.

And there's just like, all this death around me.

I know now it's not disproportionate.

I know now there are far worse stories and people turned out different.

Like what nailed me, grazed them sort of thing.

So it's not an excuse, but that's where my head, my mind was.

It was a massive church split that happened as well.

I thought I was going to die through that.

And that's where the association with the two of you sons of bitches really got me in trouble, literally.

You came to preach at our conference there.

Glorious ruin.

Three days later, I get called to the office.

Yeah, well, you're welcome.

You know, it's like.

It was like.

The conversation was like when my mom would come to me and say, if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you do it?

Yeah.

I had to tell the elders, like I told my mom, I'm the front.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Like, we're both.

We're all three jumping off bridges here.

It's not like that.

But a huge thing exploded for about almost.

Almost a year.

What was.

If you don't mind me asking, what was sort of the.

What was the reason I had changed?

I went through the same transformation that the two of you went through.

You might have always been perfectly aligned theologically.

John.

No, that was sarcastic, but it's theological.

Metamorphosis where you started seeing things.

I was preaching through the Gospel of Matthew.

Well, here's the story.

So I'm preaching through the Gospel of Matthew, nailing it.

I went to a school that kind of prides itself and does a good job with structure and diagrammatical analysis and how to work through the text.

And I'm so grateful for that, but I was crushing Matthew.

And so this guy comes up at.

The end, and I'm like, show me the love, baby.

Give it to me.

Let's go.

You know?

And he comes up and he goes, this is my first time here.

I was like, great, great.

And still waiting on it.

He goes, and I brought my parents today.

And I go, that's wonderful.

He goes, and it's my birthday and they're not Christians.

And the gift I wanted was them to come to church for me.

And I was expecting to thank you for nailing it.

And he goes, now I have to go to lunch with them.

And for the next 50 minutes, explain to them how what you said is not the gospel.

That's encouraging.

Wow.

It was like a gun.

Yeah, sure.

Went off in my head.

Ears.

Theological, ears ringing.

And I was inside going, that he doesn't know.

I've got the degrees here.

I got the mic around.

I got the Britney mic around the ear.

He doesn't have it.

Right, right, right.

I've got it.

You're the guy.

And he was right.

And I mean, literally went to my office that day after the second service, sat down and went, he's right.

Yeah.

Came back the next day, backed up to Matthew 5 again and took another run.

And then I told the congregation, I said, took me a while, 20 years or so, but I realized that Jesus is the point of Matthew.

Yeah, Right.

And we're gonna.

We're gonna keep it there, right?

Yeah.

And when I moved through that change, I actually took my leaders.

I mean, I actually sat down with my leaders and said, I think I should leave.

I don't fit the ethos.

Yeah.

You built a church on one message, and now your message, it was.

It's actually a Bible church that was established and had a pastor before me, was there for 20 years.

And I was going, new wine, old wineskin, this isn't going to work.

And my elders, who were great guys, most of them said, no, we love it.

Burn as many flannel boards as you want, man.

Light them.

Light them up.

We're loving it.

And I said, okay.

And then I literally strategized how we roll this out over time.

I'm like, we don't want to go too fast.

We don't hit the gas too much, and so on and so forth.

And they were like, yes, yes.

And I should have never taken their counsel.

I should have left.

Or maybe not.

I don't know at this point.

I wish I had answered the seven year question at seven years.

Yeah.

And it just shredded the church after about 12 months, 14 months.

And it went from you preaching sort of the focus of the Christian faith is the life and holiness of the Christian to the focus of the Christian faith is Jesus.

100%.

Yeah.

And that's what caused.

Yeah.

I mean, we didn't have altar calls, but if Jesus, the gospel actually showed up in one of my sermons, it was kind of the Function like, sure, sure.

Yeah.

Somewhere in there.

Right.

Jesus meandered in.

I'd be like, yeah, the gospel is for non Christians.

I've got this.

I'm talking about you.

Okay.

Well.

And it's exactly what Steve always says.

If you want to make people mad.

Yeah.

You know, you preach the law.

Yeah.

If you want to make them really mad, preach grace.

Yeah.

So all.

And that's hard.

I mean, I don't think people understand how hard the ministry is on people.

Going through something like that shatters you, destroys you in ways that are.

Takes time to heal from.

But that was just part of the accumulative thing.

Like, this sucks.

I deserve better than this.

I'll go create it on my own.

Left.

And then the connection started with the other person, and then we.

We were like, let's go.

Yeah.

Full tilt on this.

Chase the delusion.

Yeah.

Together.

At least that's what was in my mind.

And it all exploded.

I was happy.

I.

At least I wasn't a pastor at.

The time in the church.

It's like, just missed, you know, but it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

I know.

It is what it is.

And I violated people's trust.

And years ago, 20 years ago, I set my staff down and worked through an exercise.

And the exercise was intended to create barriers or to create a deterrent to moral failure.

And I said, I just want to work through this exercise for you.

Here's a.

Here's a circle.

Each one of them got a piece of paper.

I want you to start in the center and work out towards everyone.

This is going to affect everyone you can think at.

So if you think of your aunt.

Think of your aunt's neighbor that, you know, what's the.

This.

Moral failure.

Moral failure.

So it was like, what is the.

What is the blast radius of this?

If you do this, what will happen?

Yeah.

Who will it affect?

Okay.

Yeah.

I greatly miscalculated the blast radius.

Yeah.

Of this thing.

Yeah.

And sin.

Sin is.

Has a very, very high risk tolerance.

I don't know if you know this, what you went through.

Yeah.

But you.

It.

Sin says.

You say, the dark part says.

Yeah.

You got it.

Yeah.

Of course.

There's a web of lies.

It's like you spend all of your time keeping the avatar on the surface that other people see from meeting the truth underneath.

Like, it's just exhausting.

It is.

It's exhausting.

What Brennan Manning calls the imposter syndrome.

Yeah.

When you have.

When you have a burner phone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's normal.

It's Like a grown man smoking a vape.

Yeah.

Yes.

None of us know anything about that.

And the thing about it, too, with an affair and that violation of that sacred relationship and trust, is that things evaporate that you never anticipate are going to evaporate.

Like the things that make life actually life and worth living evaporate.

Gone.

Like the pain of a lifetime of integrity and social capital in that space being vaporized in a millisecond is a pain that is just.

And you never claw it back.

I'll never, ever get it back.

You know, Spurgeon said, blessed is the man whose repentance is more notorious than his sin.

But I don't know that that's possible.

It's social media.

No, it's.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And another thing that.

So that's that part.

But the hardest part was.

And I don't know if this is your experience, but I would look down at pictures of my family and they were uprooted from reality life.

Yeah.

It was like a funeral service for everyone that I saw.

It was like, I killed this.

Yeah.

I destroyed this.

I remember my youngest son, Blake.

My sons, we call them hammer and nail brothers, but Hammers is his affectionate name, standing on the balcony overlooking the living area of our house, yelling at me at the top of his lungs, what have you done?

Yeah.

You abandoned us.

And my older son, me holding him back.

And I said, let him say, deserve it.

Yeah, I deserve it.

And it was.

It is horrific.

And you know the.

That I also discovered that every sin is the same sin on repeat throughout the beginning of time.

It is not believing that what God has for you is enough is enough and is for your good.

Right.

Right.

Surely he doesn't want you to.

He knows you shall become light.

It's idolatry.

And that's kind of the core of it.

And that I pulled that plug, dude, and it exploded.

Exploded blast radius.

Far farther than you could have ever imagined.

Yeah.

Like the horizontal consequences.

Horrific.

The internal consequences.

It's the difference between physical pain and emotional.

Yeah, emotional pain is the worst.

No, the anticipation of physical pain is an emotional pain.

Yes.

Just how it works.

It's our deepest struggle.

It was it excruciatingly painful.

The pain from my experience, the most.

If I had to isolate one moment, that was the most painful.

It was sitting down with my three kids who were 20, 18 and 13 at the time, and telling them to their face that I had been unfaithful to their mom.

I will never forget to the day I die.

The looks on their faces, the words that they spoke or didn't speak.

That is a painful, painful, painful memory.

Knowing that you've hurt.

It's.

I also grieve the fact that I hurt my ex wife, but there was something about the fact that I hurt my kids that was just excruciatingly.

Yeah.

So the way I put that together and the.

They're.

They're the ones that have a triangulated effect.

Yeah.

Right.

The triangulated effect on them was their chief victims.

They deserve to walk away, but they can't.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's a regret that nowadays.

And my sons just roll their eyes and when I, you know, like, my son called me and said, dad, you have 2.5 million views on Bar still, and they are scorching you.

Yeah.

And then Wade goes.

And it's like.

It's super cool, dad.

Yeah.

It's like, yeah, just wait.

Just wait, son.

But nowadays, well, like, with my daughter Lauren, every once in a while, just.

You just sit with them and you're, like, compelled to go, I'm so sorry.

Yes.

She goes, save it.

That same exact saving, man.

I mean, it is.

It's.

It's always.

It's always the soundtrack playing underneath everything.

Yeah.

But.

And while the effect of that is true for our kids, for the rest of their days, my kids, same experience.

I mean, I will just from time to time, they.

I've apologized to them.

They know that my confession and my repentance is real.

They don't question it.

They've seen it firsthand.

But I'm.

I still feel the pain that I caused them.

And so I'll bring it up from time to time and just like you said, apologize again.

And they'll always be like, yeah, you don't need to say it again, dad.

I've had to caution.

I have had to caution myself to you from unintentionally using my children as my burden bearers.

Yes.

Me, dude.

That is a good yes in that respect.

Big mistake.

When parents in pain do that, even.

If I'm not feeling it, I.

Yeah.

You know, close face, open face.

Yeah.

I'm happy all the time.

Yeah.

My daughter's super savvy.

She doesn't buy any of that.

Yeah.

And she'll.

Dad, you're doing that thing you do.

Yeah.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, you're right, though.

There are a lot of people who are in all of our positions who have a relatively close relationship with their kids, and they turn their kids into their Therapists and unwittingly burden them.

It's more pain.

It's called emotional incest.

Yeah, that's exactly what it's called.

And, and my kids who were older got pulled in immediately.

The other children involved did as well, kind of indirectly.

And it's my fault.

Yeah, it's my fault.

And, and recently my kids said welcome back, dad.

You know, because they, they, they're verifying.

They've, they, it was about six months or so that I had to go get them back.

And I did.

So there, there's that My, my relationships with my kids has been recovered.

I love them dearly.

But there, there were horizontal consequences.

One.

One of which is I got sued for $6 million.

That suit was dropped with prejudice.

I spent my entire life savings defending myself from it.

There's a, there's a law on the books which has been referenced recently by news outlet who specializes in misfits that can criminal offense and things like this.

What would, what would that have been?

What would the criminal offensive.

I think in this, in.

I think it's 13 states there is a law that states that the, the implicit ability to influence others.

As a pastor.

Yeah.

It's kind of like if a guy who's a black belt gets in a fight in a bar, he, he's held to a different standard.

Sure.

So it's the same thing for pastors that I know.

But, but you weren't a pastor at the time, so.

Had been.

Which is, which is the, the loophole, the tweak in the narrative.

Yeah, yeah, gotcha.

But had been.

I think that's what they.

Okay, you had been, but you weren't any longer.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And that lawsuit was handed to news outlets and sure exploded all over the world.

And for those who know nothing, Google my name.

Well, and yeah, I mean the reason is because the person high profile, the husband of the person you had an affair with is a high profile person.

High profile person and a good man.

Yeah.

And so, so was she.

Yeah.

And well, good, good men and women do things they don't.

They aren't proud of you.

When I think, when I think about it.

Well, what I know from the legal process, I was in deposed many times and you know that sort of thing.

And I'm not saying that I'm complaining or there's no wham button here for me.

What I realized or came to know or was I was informed about is that the whole thing was kind of torture and ruin.

Yeah, that was the goal.

And so it got all the information out there, because the rest of it wasn't public knowledge.

Like I had escaped it.

And God said, no, we're going to tee you up, pal.

And once that went public, it was insane.

I mean, death threats.

Yeah, multiple death threats.

People showing up at my house, having to leave town, my lawyer hiring security, the other person having to hire security.

You couldn't go anywhere or do anything for a period of time.

And that extends even now.

I mean, there aren't so many Byrons in the.

In the world.

And strangely, the leadership of the church that I pastored for 20 years, I secured a job.

They went on an email campaign to.

Get me fired from that job.

Yeah, yeah.

And my.

Was the job in another church?

No, no, it was not in another church.

I'm building my business and working over here as a contractor at the same time.

And they, they were gracious with me for a long time, but then it just became too much.

Lost that job.

They sent letters to a consulting firm that I was leading at the time.

They let me go.

I mean, it was full on attack mode.

Yeah.

Tar and feather.

This got ran off the road, somebody yelling, go to hell.

You know, sort of thing.

I'm walking into a restaurant and.

Wow.

And I get out of a car with a friend, a colleague from work.

He and I are walking up and this woman says, you need to get the hell out of here now or you're going to get your ass beaten into the ground.

And I'm looking at her going, this doesn't.

I don't even.

This.

Who is this person?

Who's she talking to?

And she came right back with it.

He'll kill you.

He'll kill you.

And it was an associate of the other people involved.

And I.

I'm.

My friend says.

He says to me, let's just go in the restaurant, sit down.

She follows us into the restaurant, and it's just screaming at the top of the young.

Her lungs, Byron, you are a piece of.

Just yelling and screaming at me.

And that's really been the context of my life for the last four years.

Not that I got the worst of it.

I didn't.

I watched another human being just get filleted, you know, by.

By all of this.

I was sitting in a bar, which is where I usually ended up, at the bar, eating dinner.

I wasn't going to be that sad guy at the table by myself.

I don't like him anyway.

He makes me emotional.

But I'm having this conversation with this elderly lady that's sitting beside me.

Literature came up.

We Started like, oh, my love.

Language.

Let's talk.

And we were talking about Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karamazov, which is, if you know it, you.

You get it.

Like, brilliant.

Yeah.

Great topic for me to be discussing at the time.

And, you know, express pleasantries.

And she went and found me somehow.

First name.

Not a lot of Byrons in my town or any town.

Try having the name Tullian.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

It could have been worse.

I went by aliases.

Yeah.

And that sort of thing.

Still not whining and complaining because God used it in a great way in my life.

But that lady tracks me down on the Internet, finds my email and just says, f you.

You know, an old lady language.

And here's what you can do with your musings on Dosties.

Yeah.

Right.

Kind of stuff happened all the time.

And like, you said it and it was true.

I.

I was afraid to let people know who I was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do people do when they walk away from you in modern times?

Yeah.

Right.

And.

And it was bizarre.

Yeah.

It haunts you.

It been bizarre.

It haunts you for the rest of your life.

And that's why I just disappeared.

Mm.

Stayed quiet.

Crazy train on Jean's phone.

My life turned into a ghost town.

Yeah.

And when I say that, because I lost my family, siblings, cousins, vanished.

Yeah.

And have put kind of put it in the rear view.

And God used that in my life.

But for two years, guys, I.

I forgot what it was like to be a human among other human beings.

Yeah.

I know that feeling, man.

Financial ruin, totally bankrupt.

Yeah.

I do own a car.

I.

It's not a Sprint van, but it's a tight little nook, which is.

You have slept in it.

I have.

Right.

It's not.

It doesn't have a bed.

I check the homeless box.

I'm aware.

And there are hacks.

Like, if you park in the.

Are you really giving it, like, advice?

Like.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're on.

If you're listening and you're on the lam, this is going to be things to note.

Pay attention.

This is the humor coming back.

And if you park in, like, Hilton parking lot or one of those chain hotels and they serve breakfast in the morning, you just park.

Yeah.

You walk in at night.

Yeah.

Say hello to the clerk.

You go out the back.

Go get in your car, fall asleep, wake up in the morning.

Yeah.

Come back in and eat breakfast.

Yeah.

And I've got.

Dude, I learned that at 17 years old.

But I don't know about you.

All I Hear right now is trespassing and theft.

I'm going to go back.

I think we need a moment.

Somebody told me that the Lord be serious again.

Okay.

Financially, done.

I mean, I'm gonna be working a long time, which is fine and whatever, but even in that space, it's been a lot of happiness.

It's the weirdest thing because it's when.

When you're.

One of the things that happens in the circumstances like this is your square footage gets cut down to a third and you are on.

God is on there on top of you.

You're just on top of each other.

And all you got is faith.

It's all you ever had.

And now you know it.

Christ was, is and was.

Never left me through that whole thing.

Never lost faith and that.

But it was dark and it was despairing.

It's not anymore.

There's regret in a different genre.

It was death metal.

Now it's like your stuff, edm.

Like, there's a.

There's a.

There's a joy, there's a Choice.

Grabbed a fifth of vodka and my Smith & Wesson J frame 357.

Drove to an industrial park.

Found.

Found the most obscure parking place that I could.

Backed it in, opened the driver's door, got in the back, laid it back as far as I could.

Drank as much as I could, Cocked the hammer.

I was way past the writing the note stage, you know, not to one up anybody here.

No, sure.

Like, yeah, I'm out.

Yeah.

And seconds minutes, you know, before you.

And I'm just gonna be brutally honest.

It's hard to pull up to get the courage up to do that.

Yeah, but it was there.

Yeah, it was there.

And knock on the window, security guard goes, hey, dude, you can't park here.

Wow.

I was like, okay.

Divine intervention.

Okay.

So I even failed suicide.

You know, there's gonna.

What?

How do you.

What?

And so I went back to that night.

I went back to the suite that I was renting.

And you know the ones I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Where the car.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Go a little farther out.

A little farther out.

There were the ones.

Lodge suites, the ones where 70% of the windows in the cars in the parking lots are hefty back.

Gotcha.

Yeah, that one.

Yeah, that motel.

So back to the suites.

Had no idea what I was going to do now.

Suicide was not an option at just that point.

Like.

Yeah, get over yourself, dude.

Depression and insomnia were my bedfellows.

You know, Couldn't sleep.

It's like 3:00 in the morning.

And I just went, I'm done.

Can't go any farther.

Show me what to do.

That was it.

And, you know, it doesn't sound like a hymn of or the.

I didn't go through any litany of things he knew.

And that was it.

It was a lamentation of the sincerest caliber.

No one left to blame to plagiarize.

You plagiarizing someone else.

Yeah, Right.

But that was it.

No idea what I was going to do.

And there's a whole series of events that happened.

There's a truck stop involved.

There's a redneck involved.

There's a fan belt involved.

There's a O'Reilly Auto Parts involved.

There's skull involved.

I mean, it's like, no, it's just a crazy story.

I got up the next morning, went, I'm gonna go to my mom's.

When in doubt, head to Mom's.

Which.

When you said that yesterday, I was like.

I was driving along going, you're.

You're 54.

Yeah.

You're the loser of losers driving to see your mom.

Now, my mom is the latter stages of Alzheimer's and isn't there, but her cupboards are, you know, or whatever.

I just needed a refuge.

And I.

And I.

After these events happened, which I can't go into because they're too long, and I love the story so much, but I called Jean and said, hey, you'll never believe what's happened happening.

You never believe what happened.

And John, it's like, oh, that's amazing.

Hey, by the way, my whole family's here.

He wasn't inconsiderate.

He listened.

My whole family's here.

Were.

Well, I heard it ring because it was crazy Train.

God's providence.

I know.

And then we have the conversation, and I had no expectations.

And then Val says, after he hangs up, call the dude back and tell him to get his ass here.

And they saved my life.

They.

That was the weird uncle in the attic for six months.

Great house guest, though, I think.

Not bad.

You were great.

I was shaking my head at the camera that I'm not the weird uncle.

When I showed up at the laroues home, I.

I was overjoyed at that stage.

You're not.

You're not taking anything for granted.

Right?

Like, there's a pantry, you know, that sort of.

And a great cook, this dude.

It's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me.

Oh, it's not.

I don't think I want to say sweetest Nicest.

You're.

Sweetie, we know that's been put out.

But you're right, you don't take anything.

I was so overjoyed just to be around people who weren't going to run from me.

I don't know if you remember when Robbie Knievel jumped over the Grand Canyon.

Remember that?

And he, like, misses.

He clears it so much.

He bottoms out, misses the ramp, goes flying into the desert, hits these hay bales and this fence.

And he gets up in his arms like that, but he's, like, laughing, and he's like, dude, your arms broke.

But I made the jump.

He's alive.

You know, that's kind of.

I came in all gangly and, like.

But I'm.

I'm.

I'm alive.

And when I got there, I was like, byron, start writing.

And I wanted to write in the experience.

Like, I literally wanted to say sin.

I saw it.

It breathed down my throat.

It tackled me.

It destroyed me.

What is that experience like?

And then I moved to repentance, and then I just kept moving and I wrote it as I processed through all of these things.

But that was a healing thing for me because I was able.

And Jean was so gracious and patient and so was Val to just.

I needed to talk, and I.

And I did talk.

And I was writing to.

To go find the sinkhole where it started.

And the thing underneath, the thing that was there in my life.

And over the time that I've been doing this and processing this, I found some of it.

Not all of it, but some of it.

I'll never be completely healed.

Always be in recovery, always be walking with a limp.

But that's okay.

It's not only that I'm right with God because of Christ taking my punishment, it is also that I am perfect before him.

Because Christ did everything.

It doesn't go to zero.

And then you take it from there.

It is eliminated over here, and then it is maxed over here.

Debt has been paid and a deposit has been made.

When you preach on Sunday and you mentioned there is no condemnation, now, my thought always is, because there is no condemnation, because God made it impossible for him to condemn you.

Because what he did in Christ, because he is also just.

And you need both of those working in tandem for it to work right.

Right.

If he was just gracious in a kind of way, all right, now you take it from here, it wouldn't work.

There'd be no security.

Be nothing but insecurity in it.

And that is an acute awareness.

And it, like, I don't get it boggles my mind every time that that's true.

And particularly with all the vitriol that still heads my way and your way and those sort of things.

I'm like, I'm good here.

Yeah, fire away.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, Fire away.

Now, I never gave any credence to psychology or therapy or the.

You mean historically in your life?

Historically.

In fact, the school that I came from was a little bit iconoclastic in that.

And there's separation between modernism and tradition.

Like, it was near blasphemy to point.

Even think about psychology or psycho babble.

Yeah, sure.

That sort of thing.

Like saying something like, there's no such thing as mental disorders.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

It was anathema.

It was a blasphemy take.

And it fits within the transactional performance.

Sure.

You know, life works in that system.

Life is ultimately about not doing something right.

Right now life is about being near something else.

Right.

Pursuing something else.

God save us from a Christianity where the definition of it is not doing things, rather than embracing the things we've been given.

Right.

Just enjoy the gift.

Those laws are there for a reason, because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

His best interest is in our mind because we're raging idolaters.

If you give us a second, we'll go.

That'll make me happy.

There's a law against that for don't play in the street with the chainsaw.

You know, it's like, whatever it takes.

And I bump up against it every single day.

I run through the decalogue every day, elbows up, blow it before lunch.

Right.

I'm sure.

Especially you, Sean.

Thank you.

But I was dismissive of those things and was completely wrong because part of the sinkhole is that reality.

Sure.

In me.

And a lot of this has to do with a mom who was severely mentally ill.

We're talking the 70s, when I was born, extremely bipolar and the mercurial and angry, unpredictable type.

And I lived in this house primarily with my older sister and just learned.

And I, not using this as an excuse, never even referred to it and really kind of only just discovered it walking around the eggshells of that hair trigger, you know, with her and the world that I was born into, Fundamentalism, spiritually speaking, didn't allow for this.

Right.

But as I reflected on my life and this is where people might part ways with me and us.

Good.

Okay.

No problem.

But the thing that you.

We talked about yesterday, Tolan, that there's the thing up here and the thing down here, excuses and causes Explanations, Explanations.

I always said what I discovered, that two, two things are true at the same time.

Right.

And they can exist.

Yeah.

There.

This happened.

I did all these things, hurt all these people.

There's no excuse.

Right, right.

Pulled the trigger over and over and over again for an extended period of time.

But the search led me to.

There's your, your.

Your brokenness over here is connected to that.

And I, I know it sounds weird for a 54 year old to be talking about a wounded, ended inner child, but I don't really give a shit because it's true.

Yeah, it is literally true.

You can't deny it.

So when I was young, my mom was vicious towards the kids because of her mental illness.

And there are many, many examples of it.

But I remember speaking of eating with your mouth open, it's a six year old.

Stable manners aren't refined.

No, it takes some, a little bit of time.

Time.

And one day.

This is kind of typical of my experience for a long time.

I'm six years old, sitting at the table and out of nowhere she knocked.

Just sweeps the plate off into the floor and says, I'm going to make you eat with the damn dogs.

And sure enough, she goes out to the garage, gets a card table, scoops up my plate, reloads it with food, takes it outside, takes a chair out there, sits me in the chair, faces me towards the glass in the door.

I can see the family.

I can hear my father and her arguing about it.

Victor.

And there.

There are other stories that are almost too embarrassing to tell people, but I received that all the time.

She was cold, she was distant.

I still love her, I still see her as often as I can and go sit vigil over her life.

But there was no maternal affection at all.

And it did great damage to me.

When I got old enough to move and go to school for my master's degree, I moved all the way to California subconsciously just to get away.

I knew, I knew it was there.

I'm not living in this anymore.

Left young, got married too young.

Robin agrees with that and just escaped.

And when I graduated and landed my first position, which I was encouraged by.

Sure, right.

My mom calls me up at like 6:00 Central Time, which is 4:00 Pacific Time.

I answer the phone, say hello, and she goes, you are a lying piece of shit.

What are you talking about?

Good morning, mom.

Yeah, you lied.

You said you were coming home.

I'd never said that.

And it was just.

By that time I was used to it.

Never went home.

But that, that trauma did some very specific things to me.

This is kind of the vulnerable part.

One of them is it created in me an anxious attachment and essentially what that is of affection, that went missing in finding it, idolatrizing it in other people and making them give it to you.

And I have these weaknesses in my life.

I am a super, super considerate, empathetic, nice, thoughtful guy.

I'll think about what you need before you think of it sort of thing.

But a lot of that is driven by this.

It's almost like bait.

Like, love me, love me, love me, learn behavior.

For sure.

No way it fits into this story in particular.

Again, not excuse.

There's two things are true at the same time.

Right.

And when I talk to my wife, I didn't share any of this with her because this isn't hers, this is mine.

She doesn't need to hear it.

She needs to hear this.

Right.

But this is helpful to me.

Sure.

Because there.

Can I pause you for one second?

I know there are people who are listening to this who.

This is all anybody talks about.

It's all anybody sees.

Right.

And I hope to a really deep degree they're like, okay, there's somebody who understands.

I've got to tell this part.

Yeah.

Because I realized these were symptoms.

Yeah.

Not the problem.

And that's true for any addict caught in any form of addiction.

Right.

This is.

Alcohol's the symptom.

Drugs is the symptom.

Needing affection is the symptom.

Where does that come from?

Right.

What Peter Berger called people are re will really connect and go, oh, I've never.

May have never even given myself permission to ask the question because this was so jacked up and.

Well, and in the Christian world, it is almost exclusively this.

That is the focus.

And that's the knife to a gunfight.

Right?

That's exactly right.

And yes.

What fundamentalism did to me and fundamentalism is like in terms of an ethos of a church environment, is like living with an alcoholic parent.

You don't know when it's going to go off.

You keep your humanity tucked, never let it breach the surface.

And for me, it was like pouring concrete on Chernobyl.

Sure.

Behaviorism, biblical knowledge, conformity, all of these things.

And you can do that, you can pour concrete on Chernobyl, but eventually two headed cows are going to meander through the scenery.

Sure.

Which is how this.

I never knew this stuff was there.

I thought I was great.

I had no self awareness really at all.

Jhar's third window was painted black.

You know, in that respect.

But where it relates is quite frankly, my poor ex wife.

I attached myself to her early and loved her.

I still love her, but made her heal me through the responses that I didn't get and needed.

And she could never ever live up to that.

It was a total bondage to her.

And she.

If she listens to this, she'll go and more, you know, I'm sure.

And again, not an excuse, but she knows I was like that.

Just pining for affection and connections on level.

Just unrealistic.

I lived in the.

Just the Hallmark movie Window of Emotion because they never go into.