In this powerful episode of "What's The Story," we sit down with Rob Brown, a man who faced one of life's most daunting challenges - a stroke - and emerged with invaluable insights on gratitude, faith, and the power of resilience. Join us as we unravel Rob's journey from the onset of mysterious migraines to a life-changing diagnosis and his subsequent path to recovery and discovery.

Show Notes:

• The Onset of the Crisis:

1. Rob details the initial signs of his health scare - a series of intense migraines that hinted at something far more serious.

2. The moment of clarity and relief when receiving his diagnosis, shifting from uncertainty to a path of action.

• Role of Faith in Adversity:

1. Rob reflects on how his faith provided solace and strength during his most vulnerable moments.

2. Insight into how faith can be a guiding light in times of darkness and uncertainty.

• The Power of Gratitude:

1. How Rob's perspective shifted from what he lost to what he still had.

2. The transformative power of focusing on blessings rather than losses.

• Life Lessons and Inspirational Takeaways:

1. Rob shares universal truths that resonate with all listeners, regardless of their personal battles.

2. The importance of being thankful for life's gifts, even in the midst of trials and tribulations.

• Navigating Life Post-Stroke:

1. Rob's journey of recovery and adaptation, embracing new limitations with a positive outlook.

2. The ongoing role of faith and gratitude in his life after the stroke.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Understanding and coping with unexpected health crises.
2. The role of faith in personal resilience and recovery.
3. Embracing gratitude as a tool for transformation in challenging times.
4. The journey of self-discovery and growth through adversity.

Tune in to be inspired and perhaps discover a new perspective that could change your life.

----------------------

Connect with Rob Brown:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobbrown/

Hey there, and welcome to What's the Story.

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And now, let's meet your host and our special guest for today.

Welcome to What's The Story, beside me on

the screen if you're watching

this is a very old friend of mine, Mr.

Rob Brown, all the way from Nottingham, the land of Robin Hood.

If you're listening to this on audio, you can't see him, but trust me,

he's just next to me on the screen.

It's great to have Rob here.

We're going to get into Rob's story.

A whole bunch of stuff with Rob about his Christian journey challenges he's

had to face and all that sort of stuff but yeah, Rob lives in Nottingham,

he's doing TED Talks apparently he interviews people for a living.

He's written a book, so I feel slightly nervous.

In fact, he's interviewed a thousand people or more on

what makes good people great.

Thousands of people.

He is a stroke survivor, he's got epilepsy, he's a committed Christian,

he has a black belt in kickboxing, so I just need to watch my P's and Q's

apparently he played chess and backgammon as well, Rob, in your quiet time.

Which I think is quite fascinating.

You love, I love this.

You love orange chocolate.

Is that Terry's chocolate orange or is there a

That is my go to, Matt, definitely.

I can devour a whole one in one go.

Yeah, I'm with you, bro.

There's something that is so addictive about that Terry's chocolate.

And do you do the Terry's chocolate orange, which is

literally the orange in the box?

Or do you do the individual segments, that come in all the different flavors

or are you disappointed with those?

I'm very versatile, but it's got to be milk chocolate.

Terry's Chocolate Orange are diversifying their product offerings, so you

can get it in all kinds of ways.

But, yeah, my go to is the original.

I don't know if overseas listeners of this will get this, but it's a It's chocolate

wrapped up like an orange with little segments in it, in an orange wrapper.

You would know it well, Matt.

Yeah, that is my kryptonite, really.

That is about a thousand calories, I think, in one of those.

I've never actually checked, I was in the States a couple

jeez, it's flown by, I was in the States six, seven months ago, and my gift to take

to them was a whole bag, I just filled my suitcase with Terry's Chocolate Oranges,

Wow.

Did they get it?

Did it go down well?

oh yeah, loved it.

Yeah, that and Cadbury's Dairy Milk Celebrations, I don't know if you've tried

that one, that's the one with popping

and I've got to say that the chocolate in the UK is better

than the chocolate in the USA.

Let's put that out there right now.

Let's get controversial straight away.

As is the coffee.

My wife Amanda says the Americans can't do a decent cup of coffee, but let's not

start an international incident here.

All the Americans throwing their pens down.

That's so wrong.

That's so wrong.

Listen, Rob, it's great to have you on this podcast.

You are a podcaster yourself.

Like we said, you've interviewed thousands of people.

And so I'm, I've been looking forward to this comment just cause it's always nice

to chat to you if I'm honest with you.

It's going to be fun.

Yeah.

No.

because I'm usually the one doing the questions, but as you and I

know, it's more of a fireside chat and a conversation like that, isn't it?

Because I'm sure I might fire a couple of things at you and get your take on things.

But yeah, lovely to talk about life.

Men don't talk about life much, actually, do they?

Men don't have best friends, we don't confide, we don't share, we

don't make ourselves vulnerable, so it's good that we're doing something

like this and putting it out there.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Let's get started.

Let's start not obviously right back at the beginning in terms of childbirth, but

let's talk about your Christian faith.

Always like to start off the show just by asking people, how, what was it

that caused you to become a Christian?

Were you born a Christian?

Were you, was there something quite significant along the way?

I'll tell you what didn't make me come a Christian, was going

to Catholic schools my whole life.

I grew up

I'm sure you're not the only one in that boat to be fair.

yeah, I grew up in Hull, went to a Catholic Primary school,

a Catholic middle school, and I was even head boy of my Catholic senior

school in the sixth form there.

Small school, there was a few priests doing lessons, but I never

grasped the whole faith thing.

I did it by rote, and in many ways it turned me off God, because there's a

lot of man made stuff, particularly in the Catholic Church, and the

sacraments, and the confession.

Confession booth and the rosary beads and the penance and all of those things.

So I couldn't see God in that.

So I went on my merry way after school, having no faith at all, meandering around

the world, looking for loads of things.

And it wasn't until I was probably Early thirties, I wound

up in Charlotte, North Carolina.

So I'd lived in Hong Kong.

I'd done loads of traveling and a good friend of mine that I met in Hong Kong was

from Charlotte, North Carolina in the USA

Yep.

I'd got to a crossroads in my life where I thought what am I gonna do?

I'm nearly 30 I've tried a few different things.

I've been a teacher.

I've left that behind.

I've done some coaching and ask yourself the question, is

this all life has to offer?

Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?

So I moved to the US, was as good as anywhere, and It hit that wall

where you say, if I don't make a decision now, I'm going to be

lost for the next 10, 20 years.

Because you look at a CV, a resume, if you like, and if it says you've been all over

the place, you're basically unemployable.

Yeah.

He's a drifter, he's a wanderer, he's tried a bit of everything.

We can't tie this guy down.

So I was asking myself the question, what am I meant to be doing with my life?

Now, most people become a Christian.

If they're not born a Christian and born into that life, and I really wasn't,

most people become a Christian because they hit a rock bottom, they hit a

dilemma, a tragedy, a loss, a betrayal, a diagnosis, a situation, something,

and they don't know where to turn.

I actually was the opposite in that I had too many options.

Okay.

I was a qualified teacher.

I could have lived anywhere.

I could have married anyone.

Basically, I had, I wanted to settle down.

I wanted to be that guy.

My brother was married with children and I envied that.

I took so many things I could do and so many options and I was free to choose

the more, but it's bewildering, isn't it?

The paradox of choice, they call it.

The more choices you have, the more you feel unsatisfied with

the choice you actually make.

I had a lovely story about Do you remember a few years ago, you could go into a

clothing shop and buy a pair of jeans and you'd have maybe a couple of sizes

to choose from, and you'd have to wear them for a couple of months and wash them

in, but eventually they'd fit nicely.

These days, you go into a shop to buy a pair of jeans and you've got 50

different cuts, 50 different colors, 50 different styles, and you eventually make

a decision, but you come out thinking did I really choose the right one there?

Yeah.

Yeah.

there.

I didn't articulate it in that point, but that was the fork in the

road that I came to, and I felt in English terms, I was at a roundabout.

Which road do I take from here?

And I had that sense that if I took that road there, doing that job with that

person, or I stayed here, or I went there, I'd be looking back towards the roundabout

thinking did I take the right road?

Should I have taken that other road, that other exit?

Which means you'd have to go back to the roundabout.

And start again.

So it became really critical that I chose the right path.

And I was bewildered by the choice and the responsibility of that choice.

And that was when I started to, my roommate back then, Eric, was a Christian.

He was going to a church in Charlotte.

And this is Billy Graham's hometown, Matt.

Yeah.

Charlotte, North Carolina.

We know Billy Graham, one of the greatest evangelists of modern times.

I went to a Billy Graham crusade and he filled a football stadium with 80, 000

people and there were 8, 000 in the choir.

Wow.

Wow.

That's a

And I went on my own.

I was right up there in the rafters, just curious.

I hadn't gone to a church.

I didn't want to go back that way, but I did have some questions.

Ultimately, the question was, God, if you're out there, you're the

one person that's likely to have the answer to the question, what

am I meant to be doing with my

Yeah.

I wasn't praying for a miracle.

I wasn't praying for redemption.

I wasn't praying to be saved from anything.

I wasn't at rock bottom.

Like I said, I just wanted a simple answer to the question,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And given the enormity of that decision and all the weight on it, it

was something that I had to get right.

So you go to the ultimate source.

And I really wanted God to be real.

And give me that flash of light.

So that was the first bit of the journey.

And I didn't get an answer then, but I did go down to the

front, they do the altar call.

If this message has affected you and you want to make a change.

And I prayed a simple prayer, but nothing happened.

What did happen is a few weeks later, I'd obviously got something and I felt

maybe God might be staring, but I didn't believe he was real at that point.

And I'm early thirties here.

So I went to church where Eric went.

I don't think I went with him actually that day, and they did a

funny thing where, this is a big church, Matt, so you're probably

looking at five, six hundred people,

yep.

big auditorium, very well done, Baptist Church

Oh,

in the south of the US, and they're very fervent,

but very professional, and they asked the question, if you're

new here, just stay in your seat.

and wait for 30 seconds.

And at that point, everyone that wasn't new in the church stood up.

So the only people that sat down are the newcomers.

So immediately, everybody knew who you were.

And That was the news, wasn't it?

Because they didn't say, if you stand up, because you'd feel really

conspicuous, I'll put your hand up if you've not been here before.

No, it was stay, stay as you are.

And everyone else stood up.

And as soon as they saw somebody sat down, I had a ton of handshakes and

welcomes and great to have you here.

And they gave you this little card that said, if you'd like anyone to chat

to any questions you've got, let us know and we'll send somebody around.

Now, I had a ton of questions.

So I filled in this form and a few days later, it was Tuesday, 10th of October,

1996, three people knocked on my door at this apartment in North Carolina.

We're from Hickory Grove Baptist Church.

Wow.

You filled in the card.

We'd love to come in and have a coffee with you and answer any of your

questions and share some things with you.

And it was very subtly done.

It wasn't a hard sell.

But they did sell it wrong insofar as they started talking about Jesus and

God, and I'm saying why should I believe?

They said you get eternal life.

And I said, look, I don't, I'm not interested in eternal life.

I want something right now.

I want an answer now.

Yeah.

And I did the usual gambit of Listen, I believe in this God of yours.

If I see this flash of lightning, I see this miracle.

I see something, I see a sign.

And the biggest thing they did to get me over the line was they said, and it was

actually a guy called Lawrence Beatty.

He was an old guy.

He'd come to the Lord at age 57.

He'd been hospitalized many times through alcoholization

He got to that end of the road where there's nothing else but God now.

And he had a wonderful testimony, but he said to me this, he said,

faith doesn't tend to work that way.

You've got to believe in God first and then he'll show you the signs.

It's a blind step of faith.

It really works with people.

We can think of Paul on the road to Damascus where he gets the

sign first and then he believes.

For most of us mortals.

You've got to take that step of faith first, and

God will show himself.

So I said, okay, I'll do that.

I entered into the game, if you like.

But I did pray with an open, fervent heart.

And they stood with me right then, and we prayed the prayer,

Lord, I bring you into my life.

I've messed things up.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

I know that I've got stuff wrong.

If anyone can help me issue, please come into my life and

guide me and be my savior.

And many people listening might recognize some kind of believers prayer like that.

Yeah.

But it was that blind step of faith, Matt.

And whilst I'd love to tell you that there was lightning bolts and stars

and angels singing and everything else.

It wasn't that, but it was a sense of peace around me that

I've done something good there.

That's a step in the journey that I want to go down now.

And I can tell you with all honesty that in the next few days, a real

peace came about me that I'd done the right thing, that God was in my life.

And I started to see God everywhere, even in the trees and the sky and

the, my mind, and it became that there was something bigger than me.

And that was such a relief.

It was such a peace that I didn't have to make this decision on my own.

So it didn't all fall on me if I got it wrong.

Yeah.

And I can look back on it now and think do you remember Moses when God

called Moses to release the Israelites and go to Pharaoh with a staff and Moses felt

completely inadequate to handle that task.

But God said, you won't be doing it on your own, I'll even give you Aaron,

but I'll be there with you as well.

And I'll give you these miracles and I'll give you these signs and

I'll give you the words to say.

So I felt like I wasn't on my own.

And pretty soon after that, I'll stop talking in a moment.

I'm sure you've got a few questions, but God told me to go back to the UK, go back

to where I came from, go back to the start and be a teacher, which was my craft.

So I'm already getting answers of what to do and where to do it.

And that was a great start.

He didn't show me all the answers then, but he gave me.

A couple of pieces of the jigsaw

It's

and that.

There was peace in that.

Yeah, no, fantastic.

Fantastic.

That's amazing.

And the reason I'm smiling a lot is because as you're talking I'm

realizing we have probably more in common than I initially thought.

Because, yeah, I wasn't in my mid 30s.

But I did go live in North Carolina.

Wow, okay, I

I did become a Christian in North Carolina.

Goodness

Because I went to a Baptist Church in North Carolina.

Now it wasn't

How have we not known this, known each

it's

so long, how have we not put these pieces together?

yeah, it's funny.

I took a year out from university, before going to university, and

ended up working in a children's home

In England.

No, in North Carolina.

Did you get out there?

Originally, I wanted to take a year out.

We, at my school, we had I remember we did this assembly and a guy came around

and talked about the virtue of taking a year out before going to university.

And I thought that sounds really good.

And so I actually wanted to go to China to teach English because I

wanted to go study Kung Fu because I was really into martial arts.

We, and that all fell through and the organization that I was doing it all

with said, listen, we can't get you into China, but we can get you into

this children's home in North Carolina.

I'd been to America once and I said, sure, why not?

At least they speak English,

and they've got Chuck Norris, I think, which is the nearest

you get to come through, probably.

It's not quite China, but it's it's something, isn't

Yeah, Chuck Norris, you know what, I love all the Chuck Norris

memes that go around on Instagram, they're hysterical but yeah that's how I ended

up over there and I was working in this children's home, wasn't really looking

for a Christian faith, I have to be honest with you, if I, if you'd have asked me

if I had a Christian I'd have said yes, I had some kind of belief in God, but that

was about it, and I went to the children's home, I had to take them to church

every Sunday, that was part of my duty.

And so you got to hear the gospel every week, and it just had a profound impact

on me over about 3 or 4 months, so yeah.

you were more of a slow burn then, weren't you?

But God got you where he wanted you to be to hear that message.

It's funny how God does that, yeah, funny how that

funny how he does that.

But yeah, it's certainly threads of our life in common.

And you got God in your life when you weren't particularly looking.

He does that as well, doesn't he, to some people.

yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, when is good and ready?

There's a lady in our office, she's lovely, bless her, she's She

wouldn't call herself a Christian.

In fact, she'd probably call herself the opposite, but she always knows

in as Rob, when you run a company, things are up and things are down.

And when things go down she always comes to me and says, you just need to pray.

Because that's what we need.

We pray, prayer seems to work.

And so when you pray, God seems to answer and things happen.

And I'm like why don't you pray?

And she's I'm not going to.

I'm like, Shell, listen, you may as well stop running.

Cause at some point he's going to catch her and it would just be much better for

you if it's sooner rather than later.

I'm just pointing that out.

Don't wait till the last minute.

You can, but why would you, it's so much fun.

In the meantime, I'm curious though.

a point there that there are people in my life that

would make really good Christians.

My business partner, Martin, he's very philanthropic.

He works in the food banks and things when he's not running his business.

He does a lot in buying up debt and setting people free and he would be a

huge asset to the kingdom of God, but he doesn't believe, he's very open to it.

My brother who's passed on now, but he was another one that would have made

such a great ambassador for the Lord, but there didn't seem to be an itch.

In his life that God could scratch at least anything I was bringing to him.

He wasn't interested in eternal life and he had all the things he wanted.

He was fairly comfortable.

He had a wife, two great kids and, but would have made such

a wonderful evangelist or

Eventually God would have got him over the line.

I'm sure he had a Christian wife.

who went to church and took the kids, but yeah, things in common, for sure,

Yeah.

Fascinating.

Fascinating.

And actually you don't live that too far away from my mum.

'cause you're in Nottingham.

She lives in a sort of small village between Derby and Nottingham

I am.

Now I never saw you in any Kung Fu movies, so was that the end

of your martial arts career?

I think it was.

I heard that,

brilliant.

In phase It is interesting actually for the, when I became a Christian,

I still carried on doing martial arts and there was some very

lovely, well-meaning, but very.

Unhelpful Christians around you at that time when you're already

in Christian faith telling you that, you can't do martial arts

and be a Christian kind of thing.

And I listened to him, but I didn't.

I carried on.

And I remember for me one point I was walking down the street.

There was three of us, two guys and a girl, and we were walking.

I can't remember where we were walking from, but we were walking back somewhere

and this group of, this gang of, Kids, let's just say they were kids.

I don't know how old they were, but gang of teenagers swarmed around us and

started pushing us around and I managed to get the other guy and the girl away.

I'm like, go and take her, get her away.

And I'll stay here just to keep this group entertained a little bit.

While you get it, cause it was a bit frightening for a blesser.

And I remember I remember it really clearly, Rob.

I remember.

I was standing around these people, and as I turned around to make sure they were

gone, one of them punched me in the face.

Now, I turned round, and I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this,

but in that situation, I looked at them.

My whole body changed in an instant.

I went into a stance, and I could see myself in my head in an instant.

I knew what I was going to do to the first five people around me.

I knew the moves.

I could see, I'd trained for so long, I could see those moves happening.

And I remember Very clearly in that instance, the Holy Spirit

saying to me, I've got this.

And so my whole body then instant relaxed.

And the person in front of me could see it cause they thought, Oh man,

I'm going to get a good eye in now.

This guy's really hacked off.

And I said, I just, I remember pointing at him and I said,

listen, I'm going to start praying.

That's what I'm going to do.

You

Yeah.

I said, I don't know if you believe in God or if you don't, but let me tell

you, you need to thank him because he has just stopped me from absolutely

going for hell for leather on you because he was the one that hit me and

I was going to take them out first.

I was so angry.

And I'm like, you really need to thank him.

And I think in that instance I then stopped doing the martial art.

I don't, it wasn't intentional.

It just happened from that point on until maybe my kids were, I don't

know, two young boys and I thought actually it'd be really good for them

to start to learn some of these things.

And so we went and we did martial arts every week and we really enjoyed it.

My middle my middle child, my youngest son, Zach, particularly enjoyed trying to.

Hit me every week.

It was like cathartic.

It was like therapy.

So yeah, that's my story.

That's straight out of a, you can make a movie out of that.

We see these scenes in movies, whether it's Bruce Lee or Jack Reacher or, insert

your own superhero there, where they're surrounded by a group of ill meaning

ruffians and evil villains, and They all put the guns down and fight nicely and

come at you one at a time, such is the way the movie is, but I've never seen

or heard of that response to a potential fight, and how obedient and courageous

of you to actually handle it like that.

Yeah.

Okay.

totally diffused the situation.

And you know what?

And just to finish the story off, a week later, I saw that person, that

same person walking down the street.

And do you know what I had in my hand?

My Bible.

So here I am thinking, because part of me is going back and going okay,

God, I could see what you're doing there, but I really wanted to hit him.

And

completely

Yeah, completely normal sort of thinking.

And I remember walking away thinking, Oh, I don't know if I did the right thing.

And then I saw them a week later.

And I had my Bible and they recognised me and I just said to them, I really

hope you have been praying and I really hope you have started thanking God.

But if I'd have, if I'd have got into a fight and then he'd have saw me with the

Bible, I'm not quite sure what that would have said, but yeah, it was fascinating.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you got into kickboxing, black belt in kickboxing.

I was late to the party.

My, one of my daughters, Georgia, my eldest, played in a football

team and one of her teammates went to a kickboxing class with her dad.

I said to Georgia, why don't we go along and join them as a daughter

dad type thing, and we went to a local kickboxing class in a

sports centre, and we enjoyed it.

We bought the pads and the kit, and Started playing with it, and

this daughter and dad fell away, but Georgia and I kept going.

And at this, I was probably 46, 47,

Wow.

And I'd had my daughters got married quite late.

After I came back to the UK, it was within a year, no, probably a few

years, that I met my wife in Hull.

So that's my hometown.

So God brought me back for that reason.

So we did this kickboxing stuff.

This other pair fell away.

Georgia and I kept it going.

She stopped at her blue belt she got, but I'm now maybe 48 and I'm

thinking, why don't I just keep going?

Could I get my black belt before I'm 50?

And it took me three or four years, but I did, I kept it going.

And even after George had fell away and it became a real goal for me,

not so much that I wanted to be a fighter or anything else, but I thought

this is a great thing to attain.

And if you're a father of two daughters, the old cliche of

they bring a boyfriend round.

Oh yeah.

Yep.

And you show them your knife collection or your gun

collection, which is in the US.

I wanted my daughters, with me as the ultimate protector, to say,

this is my dad, and by the way, he's a black belt in kickboxing.

Yeah.

Totally.

but for myself as well, but which led to another

thing I'm sure we'll come on to.

But yeah we need goals as we progress throughout life and

I wasn't young like you were.

And there was.

Kids doing kickboxing that was in their 20s and they could throw fast

punches and run rings around me But I could hold my own to a point and

it's the caters and things, isn't it?

You'll know that word when you go through the routines and that it's

not so much It's what it makes of you

Yeah.

as a person, that journey, that

I think it's good discipline.

Yeah.

That's the word, isn't it?

It's discipline and that's why I was key.

The kids did it, especially the boys.

I was, Zoe did it, my daughter as well, and she got.

Into the whole marginalized thing.

To the point where if, when she does bring a boy home, if she's a, if he's

actually got far enough to come home, I'm kinda like, he's probably okay

because he's , she's got two older brothers that he's gotta get through.

And then there's, I remember one time, I dunno if I should tell this story,

but we were, I was back home in Derby.

And my cousin who's not really my, was it my cousin?

I can't remember if it was my cousin or somebody, like someone close to

the family, her boyfriend was coming round to our house, to my mum's house.

And this was a few years ago and there was three of us stood outside.

There was me, my brother, who is ex military, right?

He wasn't at the time, he was in the army at the time.

And my brother's best mate.

And so this guy came round and we're like, We're going to meet him.

We are going to wait outside and we are going to meet him.

Because I know what I was like when I was a teenager and none of my

girlfriend's dads at the time took me aside and said, I'm not being

funny, Matt, you do anything crazy.

I'm going to break your legs.

Not that I advocate that level of violence, obviously, but I think

that's probably what I needed.

And so I took this, we took this guy turned up and Stu, the guy that was with

us, said to him, okay, this is Matt.

He's trained to save you because he always calls me the vicar

and this is his brother John.

He's trained to kill you.

was just a very funny converse and this kid is like, what do I do?

And I just said to him, I said, you behave yourself.

That's what you do.

Because you don't want to get caught not and no, I get it, very protective

of your daughter, a very protective of my daughter, rightly or wrongly.

and I wish more dads would have those kind of conversations with

young boys because there's a lot of cockiness and arrogance of youth that

probably you and I felt back in the day where at 20 you feel you know everything,

But looking back you realize you

No, nothing.

That's actually

nothing, you know nothing.

You are lovely.

Yeah, a bit of humility at that age is the dad's job to instill in

the young men that get around our

Yeah, absolutely.

And listen you have a great time, but if you step out of line in any

way, there are consequences and I think that's an important thing.

The line I used once was, don't touch my daughter

anywhere that I wouldn't.

Yep.

That just sums it up, doesn't

It totally sums it up.

It's exactly right.

And I think these conversations should be had.

I remember a pastor friend of mine, he his daughter.

was going on a date and this is in the States and they were going to

senior prom and this was the first time she'd gone on a date and the guy

had come round to pick her up and the dad knocks on the door he knocks on

the door and the dad answers it Eddie.

And so Eddie's come on in dude.

And he's all dressed up, black tied and he's she's just

going to finish getting ready.

But let me show you something, while we're waiting.

So he leads him to the garage and shows him this brand new car, a big

shiny car that they had had the license plate Glory 1, I think from memory

the bizarre detail of the story.

Anyway, big shiny car.

And he said, Would you like to borrow the car this evening?

I can I can give you the keys to my brand new they were talking about the car.

Would you like it?

Do you like my new car?

Love the car and all that sort of stuff.

And then he ends the conversation by going, would you like to borrow it?

Would you like the keys?

And the young man quite rightly said, Oh no, I wouldn't take your car out.

And Eddie's like, why do you not want to take my car?

And he says it's a new car.

It's brand new.

He says, it's really, it's expensive.

It's worth a lot of money.

And Eddie said, I just turned around to him and said, you are

taking my daughter out tonight.

She is worth war to me then this car is worth.

That was really clever.

thought it was very clever.

So you've got a black belt in kickboxing.

And I said in the intro, one of the things I do want to talk

about is the stroke that you had.

Cause you are a stroke survivor.

That's what we said in the introduction there.

And when we were doing the preacher, I asked you, what's one of the biggest

challenges that you've faced in life?

God's helped you overcoming.

You immediately talked about the stroke.

Just run through that.

Any near death experience brushed with mortality

has got to be up there, hasn't it?

So I was, a little bit of context, I trained as a PE teacher, a

physical education teacher, and I did maths as a second subject.

So you're not teaching hockey on the cold, plain fields of England in your 50s.

That was the thing.

So I trained there, and I've always looked after myself.

Rugby player and cyclist and did triathlons and things like that.

Never drank.

My dad was a drinker and it pushed me away from drink.

Never smoked and eat well, look after yourself.

That was my upbringing.

in my mid forties, late forties, I'd got my black belt in kickboxing

and I was doing boot camps as well.

The outdoor exercise thing in the park with a few people and you swing

in some kettlebells and I'm doing all of this and feeling good for my age.

And that's a vanity thing about men as well, isn't it?

You don't want to be an old man with a beer gut and out of shape.

Yep,

So a bit of vanity helps with that.

So I got my black belt and I laid that down, actually, I don't know how far

you got, but once I was presented with the black belt, I didn't really go back.

Do you go on to your second Dan and your third Dan and how far do you go with this?

And some people did, but for me, it was that attainment.

got that.

So I laid it down and I looked for some other things, did a bit of

jogging and rowing machine I've got.

But probably I did some damage because I started to get some migraines.

This is maybe about 18 months after I quit kickboxing and I'd hit my 50th birthday.

And I got, I would get migraines as a child, Matt, maybe one a year.

My mum got them too.

But I went through a period, Easter 2016, where I got 28 migraines in 30 days.

And these were not just migraines.

If you were to put a pain scale up where 10 is you, your head's exploding

And you're rolling around on the floor and one is just a mild headache.

I was up in the eights and nines.

I was on the floor.

Now I'm a Christian at this point, so you can pray as much as you

like, but the pain is still there.

And we knew something was wrong.

So I went for some tests and they offered me a The scans, but they

said, we can have a look, but these scans are like a thousand

times more powerful than an X-ray.

Do you want to be doing that to your brain?

So they talked me out of it.

So I went down a journey with my wife of changing my diet.

Am I stressed?

Am I looking at screens too much?

What's going on here now?

We didn't know it, but I had.

I was having some mini bleeds in my brain.

So without getting too medical, there's a network of capillaries around your

brain, arteries and veins, and an artery had shunted into a vein and opened

up what they call a communication.

Now they're not supposed to be joined arteries and veins.

So this was starting to pump high pressure blood into a low pressure vein.

And this vein couldn't cope and it started to leak a little

bit and that was the migraines.

We didn't know this at the time.

So for months, I'm changing what I'm doing and got some slight relief,

but I was still getting migraines.

And I said to my wife, look, I'm just going to, let's just go away on holiday.

I'll come off screens.

And we went to a place in Mallorca and got a lovely hotel and I just had a swim one

morning and I got out of the pool and laid on the sunbed and I had another migraine.

And I could not get up.

And this was the last two or three days of the holiday.

So we're thinking this is serious.

Now, I didn't know it, but I'd had a brain hemorrhage.

I'd had a bleed on the brain at that point, because this

vein had just gone boom.

It couldn't take it anymore.

So that was happening inside my brain.

So I'm Riding on this bed, a doctor came to see me and we need to get me

home, and I wasn't fit enough to fly.

But he gave me an injection, I managed to get on the plane, I was

looking, I was in really bad shape.

I'm shuffling around, I've got shades on, I'm dehydrated because I was

vomiting, I couldn't keep anything down.

But I got on the plane and when I'm checking in, the steward there's

saying, is this guy alright?

And my wife said, oh, he's just scared of flying, but it wasn't true.

was in a bad way.

So the journey and the elevation, the height, the rarefied air.

I took ill on plane.

So it was oxygen masks.

Thankfully we were sat at the front.

It didn't cause too much of a ruckus, but I was given oxygen on the plane.

And at the end of the journey back to Nottingham,

paramedics came onto the plane.

The hospital sent an ambulance and I'd vomited on the plane too.

right?

There was no way I was coming off that plane without

being in an ambulance because something is majorly wrong.

Yeah.

So they, I bypassed passport security.

I got into the country without showing my passport and I went

straight to hospital and it was bank holiday, August bank holiday, Matt.

If you're in the UK, you know that.

Everyone's on holiday there.

So I got to a hospital at one o'clock in the morning and they put

an IV in me and got some saline in me because I'm not drank for a few

days and I'm totally dehydrated.

They had nobody there to assess me.

So I came home in a taxi at three in the morning.

Still with a pounding headache and Amanda called our doctor the next

day and said, look, we've got him home, but he's still in bad shape.

And the doctor came to see me at my home and he said, you need to

get him to a hospital right now.

So we went back to hospital and I collapsed at the hospital waiting by

an elevator to go and see somebody.

And a nurse came up to me and my wife and our pastor was there

actually, Kate with us too.

And they said, are you okay?

My wife said, and she pressed the button in the lift and a crash team.

came to me, these emergency teams

Yep.

and now I'm in the system.

So they scanned me straight away.

I'm basically unconscious.

And they found this massive bleed on the brain.

The blood was rushing around my skull and they put dye in you as well.

So they know exactly where it is.

And they operated pretty quickly on me.

A neurosurgeon knew what was going on.

And any kind of bleed or blockage in the brain is deemed a stroke.

That's the generic term.

Yep.

We often think of people getting paralyzed down one side or

their mouth or the side of the face.

So I didn't get any of that, actually.

But it does come under that umbrella.

So I was operated on.

They blocked the communication, as it's called.

They blocked this artery vein communication with glue.

It's called

Wow.

They fire it in through your groin, but they had, so they didn't go

through my school, but they had some brain surgeons and with laser guns and drills

standing by just in case it required that.

And there were 16 people in the operating theatre at the time

of my procedure, just in case.

And I was under for four or five hours, and then in

intensive care for a few weeks.

And to bring it to the end of the story, I did come out.

I was healed, but I found out later I had some scarring in the brain and the

bleed had damaged some nerve cells.

So I lost some vision.

I was a bit blurry eyed for the next few days, but as it all calmed

down, I realized that I couldn't see a quarter of the world.

It's called Quadrantinopia.

If you think of your vision as four quadrants, my eyes were fine, but the

quadrant that transmits the nerves that transmit what through the nerve endings

into the brain, they were damaged.

Right.

So I'd lost vision in my top left quadrant because the bleed

was in the back right hand side of my brain and your optic nerve crossover.

Yeah.

So once this was diagnosed, there's a quarter that I can't

see and I wasn't allowed to drive.

So I had to have that surrendering of my driving license

And then we'll come to it.

I'm sure, but at COVID a few years later, five years later, I was diagnosed.

I had a major epileptic seizure where the scarring in the brain had

caused some electrical imbalances.

I So I fell unconscious with a major seizure, was taken to hospital

by an ambulance and woke up there and they said you've got epilepsy.

What caused it?

And the scans they showed had come up in this area of my brain,

these electrical imbalances.

So they said to me, you won't be able to drive now.

And I said actually I've not been able to drive since 2016

because of the vision problem.

So I was used to that.

We can talk through that.

But that is the journey.

That was the major episode.

That was the moment, if you like, not a moment, but a near death experience.

Wow.

We can talk about that, what that means for me now

and what I've learned from that.

But it gives you a different perspective on life, Matt,

ultimately, as you can imagine.

Oh, I'm sure it does.

There's no doubt.

And I'm curious, one of the things, as you're talking, I'm listening to

you talk, thinking, I remember doing an interview with Mark Mitchell,

the guy that owns Mitchell Mazda

Okay.

I don't know him, but

Yeah, Mark Mitchell at Chester Way.

Similar story.

Yeah, but did he have a, had something wrong in his brain?

I don't remember if it was a bleed or whether it was something

else, but his story, very similar.

Things went very wrong.

Is it life has changed as a result.

Now I'm curious with you though, Rob.

Yeah, cause you're quite a capable guy, right?

In a lot of ways, you're.

You are the kind of guy that will just get up and go, I know I'm gonna

get my black belt in kickboxing because that's just what I want to do.

I've got this goal is what I want to reach.

I'm gonna grow this.

I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna do that.

And it strikes me that in that instance, that feels like

it could have that ability.

See, did you still have that?

Was that taken away from you?

And I'm curious how you viewed God in this whole scenario.

Because I think I've seen people either press into God from a

very Christian term, isn't it?

Either, lean into God more or withdraw a little bit because God, why have you

allowed this to happen to me a thing?

When I'm going through this, you do pray.

I prayed a lot.

My wife prayed with me.

My pastors at the time, Alistair and Kate came round and put oil

on my head and we did all of that.

When you're praying, God, take it away.

I can't handle this.

And the verse that came out for me was, uh2 Corinthians 10, which is when

Paul had an ailment, it might've been a vision thing, but he prayed three

times for God to take it away from him.

Do you

Yeah.

And that verse starts with, and the Lord said, no, for

my grace is sufficient for you,

Yeah.

My power is made perfect in weakness.

And then Paul said, that's why I will boast on the more gladly.

about my weaknesses, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

So I got this real sense that when I'm weak, and this is me on the floor with

another migraine, or as I'm recovering, when I'm weak, then I'm strong.

So God was Picking up the slack, if you like.

Now I prayed that my vision would be restored.

I prayed that I would have no more migraines.

I prayed that I'd have a long life.

Like many men, you want to feel in control of your

You want to live a long life.

You want to be strong towards the end.

You want to run a good race.

But that's taken away from you in a way.

You're no longer in control.

You're no longer fighting the fight on your own.

It becomes in God's hands.

Now, I was very blessed to come out of a stroke with all that I still had.

And That was my lesson, actually, we'll come on to, but I was very

grateful to still be in the game.

Because you hear of people having heart attacks and strokes and

cancer and everything else, and that, that's a terminal diagnosis.

That's it.

Or they come out with major impairments in a wheelchair, they can't walk properly,

they can't think properly, they can't, they lose motor function, and there's

all kinds of outcomes, and bless the people that have those, it's tough.

The fact that I could still see something, and I could still function Almost

like I used to, but with the throttle turned down, I was still in the game.

I could still work.

And so thankful for that.

And I became grateful for a lot of things that this is a lesson

really, if we're free to move on to it, that you become so thankful.

And instead of asking why me, you say I've had a great life.

Why not me?

There's a one of my good friends, Richard Holmes, he's been diagnosed

recently with motor neuron disease, last couple of years.

And he did an event just recently in Sheffield, interviewed by Dan Walker

from the BBC, who used to do focus, who goes to that church in Sheffield and

talking about his journey with motor neuron disease, because it's a brutal

illness and Richard's life is disappearing before his eyes and for his wife and

kids as well, it's really difficult.

So he was asked the question, are you angry?

He said, no, I'm not angry.

You would expect me to be angry and think why me, but if it's

not me, it would be somebody else and why should it be on them?

He's a man of faith.

And he said, I've led a good life.

I'm thankful for so many things that have already happened and

God's going to do a new thing here.

And he's told me it will be brutal, but there will be beauty

and there will be things to appreciate throughout this journey.

And I could resonate with that because it does knock you back.

It does.

Take a sheen of arrogance off your life because you're relying on God.

There's a lot of humility and gratitude and appreciation for the smaller things

and the ordinary mundane things in life.

And that's the point where I got to, that God was showing me something

and stripping layers off me and snipping things off like the vines.

They're right.

It's just about God now.

Walk that walk.

That's where I got to.

So the, because this was the, like I said, I'd like to ask

everybody, what's the one thing that you've learned over the years in all

of this and you've quite eloquently said, I was just became more grateful.

So in terms of that journey, you first get the, you having the migraines, you,

you have all this drama on the plane.

At what point do you switch from?

anxiety from fear into gratitude, or those two things going

side by side the whole time.

I'm curious to know what happened to you in that.

That's a great question.

I'll tell you a moment that was a massive relief for me.

When we are in the hospital, I'm semi conscious and the consultant there

had looked at my scans and he said I know what's been happening to you

and my wife's there and Pastor Kate is there as well and he said you've

had a bleed on the brain, you've had a hemorrhage and I started laughing

Okay, good response, probably.

and my wife next to me was obviously horror stricken because you're

looking at brain surgery and is he going to survive and all of those things but

I was so relieved Matt that finally I knew what this was that I've been going

through for the last three four months.

I'd had a diagnosis, I had an answer and once you've got an

answer you can deal with it.

Once you know your enemy, once you know what you're up against, if it was a

stroke or a cancer diagnosis or whatever it was, I would have been happy that

at least I could deal with it and I knew what had been going on in my head.

So I laughed and such relief.

So that's when God started to come into it, that there was no anxiety.

Amanda, it's hard for your partner, isn't it, sometimes, because

I'm in the eye of the storm.

Barely holding it together, just trying to focus on me and I went

into my own little world and Amanda's on the outside running my life.

Picking up all the pieces, dealing with relatives, dealing with the diagnosis,

Yeah.

very young daughters who are saying, Is daddy going to die?

Taking care of all of that stuff.

And I'm just focused on the procedure that will allow me to get through this.

Going into surgery, signing a disclaimer, all of that, with a very shaky signature,

and then being prepped for brain surgery.

There was a calm about me.

I think that I knew finally where I was, I knew what I was dealing

with, I didn't know what life would look like on the other side, but the

surgeon said we can stop this bleed.

So after that I'm in intensive care and then I'm in rehab and there's

blood still in my brain and it takes six months to dissipate back into the

body because it doesn't go anywhere unless you release it from the skull.

I was in a season where I couldn't get my pulse above 100.

wow,

the body's under huge stress, so

I'm actually putting on weight then, but I'm staying very calm thankful

that I've got through this, that there was life on the other side

of this, and I was fairly normal.

I knew then that I'd lost vision and I'm coming to terms with that, but

through it all, there was a certain relationship with God, a bit like

your Holy Spirit moment with that fight, with God saying, I've got this.

yeah,

I am with you, we'll get through it together, and in your weakness

and my strength, we've got a team.

I remember this story from, this is going back a little bit, but John

McEnroe, do you remember the tennis

Yeah,

was a fantastic doubles player, and he played

with a guy called Peter Fleming.

Fleming and McEnroe, that was the dream team, they won lots of titles.

It's back in the 70s, early 80s, and Peter Fleming was once asked, who's the best

Doubles pairing of all life, of all time.

And he said, John McEnroe and anyone,

ha, that's a great answer, yeah,

he said, as long as you've got John McEnroe and a

doubles pairing, you'll do fine.

And I re relay that story to God, God plus anyone is the dream team,

It's the

God plus you,

it

God plus me.

It will defeat all comers.

It is the majority.

And I felt like that, that God was with me and he would help and he has.

Help me get through that.

And I've been so grateful so appreciative of that, that I've

never taken things for granted.

And here's another thought.

And Richard Holmes brought this to me.

He said, I've seen my life in thirds.

And I always thought I would live till 90, like a footballer.

You'd get 90 good minutes on the pitch

yeah,

in the soccer game.

So the third, the last third of my life would be 60 to 90 years.

He said, here I am at 58, 59, and I'm now in the last third, and the last

third might be the 40 to 60 range, if I get past 60, it's a bonus.

And he said, I just want my last third to count,

yeah,

wherever that ends.

Whether it be 90 or 60, I want it to count.

That was his legacy now, that he wanted to shine a light on God and do something

that matters by being a witness to God through what he's going through.

I've not articulated it like Richard, but having thought I would live till

90, 100, it might be a lot less now.

Who knows what's going on in my brain.

But for those, that last third, the season that we're in, for that

to count, however God wants it to count, that's where I'm at now.

Yeah, that's actually quite a liberating way to think about

it as well, I would have thought.

It's quite it's quite powerful, isn't it?

Just to go, no, and I want this to count.

And I think it's interesting because when you, certainly the older I

get, the more the questions in my head change from what can I do to be

successful to how can I make an impact?

God, how can I build your kingdom, right?

Whatever that looks like and whatever mechanism that is, how do I glorify you?

How do I build your kingdom?

And

Because it's less about you, doesn't it, Matt?

Our egos fade away when you feel more mortal,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I imagine this whole event has made that even more so for you.

Yeah,

brought to their knees, sobbing on the floor with a diagnosis, with a

phone call, with a piece of bad news, with an accident, an illness, we like

to think we're invincible, particularly as men, that's our whole identity, isn't

it is true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're in control,

We've got the power, but really we're all contending with

something we can all be brought on.

If you look at the, isn't suicide the biggest killer of men under 40?

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

And we've got that thing going on with men that we don't

share stuff and mental health.

starts to be a premium currency for men.

We don't talk things through.

None of us are mortal.

Our bodies get older and you, like I have, must become a lot more humble

to say I can't do this on my own now.

I need people around me.

I need God in my life.

I'm not as strong as I used to be.

I'm not as fit.

I'm not as fast.

I don't think like I used to.

I'm not 20 anymore.

And it's that mortality where you start to look for some more

meaning and it's less about the ego.

Yeah, very true.

Rob, just in closing I'm, I don't want to treat this like a church service because

I don't think it is, but I do wonder if someone's listening to the podcast

they're listening to your story, and they're going through something right now.

And that is, it's, horrific for them.

What would your advice be?

What would you Maybe another way to phrase that question is, what would you

go back and tell yourself as you're just about to start this migraine season?

God plus one is a majority.

When Richard was on stage, they did a Q& A at the end, and I was really

keen to put my hand up and say, how would you have dealt with this,

Richard, without God in your life?

Because he spoke a lot about how God had held his hand throughout

it all, and he continues to do and even with my stroke, I wonder how

I'd have dealt with it without God.

It's a certain peace that comes from knowing that God is in your corner, and

the battle is the Lord's, the Bible says, and in your weakness there is strength.

I would talk back to myself, if I was talking back to a Christian,

you would say, stay close to God.

Because where else can you go?

Do you remember in John 6 where people were falling away from Jesus?

He'd fed the 5, 000.

He was giving them bread and fish.

But when he started to talk about I am the way, the truth, the life, anyone

that drinks my blood eats my flesh.

That was really tough

Yeah.

people fell away and he said to his close 12, will you also

Following and leave me and Peter said to him where else should we go?

Where else what's, what else is left?

You'll learn half the words of eternal life.

So speaking back to anybody as a Christian, I would give them that

message, but speaking to non-Christians.

I would say that we can't do this on our own.

Nobody escapes trials and challenges and bad news, and nobody can say with any

certainty how their life is going to go.

You plan things out, but trials are going to come to us all.

So who are you going to fight those with?

Because you can't stand on your own two feet and keep swinging.

So there's that sense of who's going to go with you for the journey?

And God must be as good a choice as any.

Where else are you going to go?

What is left?

It's a privilege to grow old, isn't it?

Not everybody gets to grow old.

Yeah.

And you get grateful in thinking the job I'm bitching

and moaning about right now might be somebody's dream job.

Or me, still being in the game and not being able to drive might

be fantastic for somebody that is in a wheelchair that hasn't got

through that part of the stroke.

So as much as I might.

Complain about what I haven't got.

There is so much to be thankful for that I have got.

So my ultimate message would be wherever you're at in your life and whatever you're

contending with and going through, there are so many things to be thankful for.

If you just look for them, if you're open to them, count your blessings.

And be grateful for what you do have left and what's still going for you.

If you start to look at that instead of the size of the problem, and you

start to look at the size of your God instead of the size of the problem,

that's the ultimate takeaway for me.

And that makes every day count in the end.

I keep a little journal of blessings now.

Just things that happen to me and around me.

It's not quite that was a great sunset, but I had that lovely walk and that was

great with my daughter and we got through that and I did that preach at church and

that went well and little things like that might seem quite mundane to people but

if you start to count those up you feel that God is for you and not against you

and that's a wonderful feeling of peace.

Absolutely.

Oh, mate, powerful stuff.

Powerful stuff.

If people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out to you,

what's the best way to do that?

I am most active on LinkedIn.

Ah,

not an Insta or Twitter or anything else.

I quite like TikTok, but you wouldn't really find me on there.

It's for the younger generation, but I'm still in the game business

wise and will be for a few years.

So LinkedIn, if people want to have a conversation, that's a good reach out.

But I'm not the robbrown.

com, go there and see all my talks and buy my books and everything else.

That's a season long past.

I'm quite happy to be in the background and hear other people's stories.

What have you taken from this, Matt?

Oh, mate loads.

I just love your whole attitude to the whole thing.

I've not had a stroke.

We've gone through some horrific stuff in life and like you, I think that the, you

come away from it going I have the option to get really angry towards God, here,

because he's not come through how I feel.

Thought he was gonna come through.

How dare you not play your

Exactly.

Don't you know who I am?

God.

And it's that kind of thing, isn't it?

But then you realize actually no God's God.

And he's, and I think sometimes with time really helps when you can look back

when you're not in that instant pain.

And, but when you can look back three or four years later, you go,

actually no God, you were right.

And I see the plan, and I see the purpose in this and forgive my arrogance, because,

and I think you're right, with God you're in the majority, and I don't get it right,

I don't always hear him or understand him in the instant, but if I look back I

see his hand on my life, and I, and like you I'm just super grateful for that,

super grateful, and I think the older I've got the more grateful I've got.

And we only hold a couple of pieces of the jigsaw, don't we?

It would overwhelm us to see the big picture

Yeah,

so much going on there, that would be frightening.

I think it would just be one of those things where

you just go, that's it, I'm out.

I'm

I'm out.

Give me a couple of pieces that can just about hang on to that, Lord.

good.

But as much as we want to know what's going on and why, we

want to know the why, don't we?

We feel we've got a right to know the why, but we don't have a right, like Job.

He wanted to know the why, but he didn't have the right, and he

acknowledged to God in the end.

I was speaking about things I had no idea about,

yeah,

so we will not know the why until we get up there.

Maybe the why won't matter, but it's in the journey that God is doing the

molding and the shaping and the snipping and the clipping, turning us into a

good work, and we're thankful for that.

amen.

Rob, listen, thanks, man.

You're a legend.

Absolute legend.

Love talking to you.

I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story and

just being so candid with us.

It's been phenomenal.

Absolutely phenomenal.

It's been a wonderful conversation.

Bless you.

And just like that, we've reached the end of

another fascinating conversation.

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