How husbands can help their wives to cultivate mother-child relationships

Show Transcripts:

Intro: Welcome to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran, Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, dad. You want to be a godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

Kent Evans: Lawson, today we’re going to talk about how we as husbands can help our wives build stronger relationships with our children, our role in that process. What do you think, man? Sound like a good topic?

Lawson Brown: Yeah, that’s so great. And shout out to Chris Powell from California. Thank you buddy for going onto our-

Kent Evans: Chris Powell. Sorry.

Lawson Brown: … Yeah, that was weird.

Kent Evans: I don’t think I’ve ever used that voice before.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, you’re a little jazzed up from your week so far.

Kent Evans: I’m pumped. I’m pumped. I’ve had a very interesting week.

Lawson Brown: I wish I could go into detail with everything that you’ve been dealing with on Monday and Tuesday of this week, but that we cannot do. Hey, Chris.

Kent Evans: Well, we can. We could do it, we’d just have to kill our entire listening audience. It would be really messy.

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Kent Evans: Security concerns.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. We got a voice message from our website. Go to Manhoodjourney.org/podcast, and there’s a button you can click. Give us feedback, give us ideas. Talk about maybe your challenges or throw a question out to the group. Think of the audience to this podcast as an interactive group of probably, I guess, all men who are interested in being a better dad.

And so think of clicking that button as a way to engage with them because it comes straight to us, we talk about it. And as in this case, it was a great question from Chris. “How can I help my wife,” in his case he said, “cultivate a better relationship with our daughter?”

He’s a father of four, three boys and one female. I thought it was a great question. In fact, I kind of had to give it a little bit of thought. And I even talked to my own wife, because I have two grown age-

Kent Evans: Good idea.

Lawson Brown: … daughters. And so yeah, let’s dig in.

Kent Evans: Yeah, let’s start with the words straight out of the horse’s mouth. Not to call Chris a horse, but you guys understand the expression. Let’s cut to the voice message from Chris Powell right now.

Chris Powell: Hello. My name is Chris Powell. I am a father of four beautiful children and a husband to an amazing wife. My question today is, how can I as a father of one daughter and three boys, and a husband, how can I come alongside my wife and help her create a strong relationship with her and my daughter? How can I as a husband, as a father help cultivate that between my wife and my daughter?

Kent Evans: All right, Lawson, so you’re on the hot seat here, buddy, because basically Chris wants to know how to have his wife relate better especially to his daughters. And since I don’t have any daughters, except one amazing daughter-in-law, this one’s all you. I’m just going to go grab a sandwich. Ready to go.

Lawson Brown: How long have you had her in your life, your daughter-in-law?

Kent Evans: Are you’re kidding? No, you. This is all you. You can’t turn it back. Gracie’s been around for a little over two years, maybe two and a half. No, maybe three now, because they’ve been married two, two plus at the time of the recording. They’ve already been married two years and they dated for quite a while before that. So three plus years, man.

And I’ve really loved having a daughter-in-law. I always hoped I would love having daughters-in-law, like you hope when you get to certain stages of life. They’re all that you thought they would could be. And man, I’ve loved having a daughter-in-law.

Lawson Brown: That’s awesome.

Kent Evans: She is tremendous. And maybe one of the traits I love about her so much is the fact that she’s frugal, very frugal and very industrious. And my son, Alex, is one of those that money burns holes in his pockets. Just kidding, Alex. I know you’re out there, but kind of. It’s cool watching the complimentary skills of my son and daughter-in-law how they combine to really strengthen each other. But-

Lawson Brown: Yeah, that is cool.

Kent Evans: … let me ask you a couple questions. Chris has a wife and some daughters, and their daughters are younger and they’re teen years, that kind of range. Back when your two daughters were younger, what are some things you did to help Audrey build stronger relationships with them?

Lawson Brown: It was interesting. The girls and Audrey were in the living room and this came in. Versus my own opinion, I wanted to ask them. You know what the first thing they said was I real quickly defended Audrey.

Kent Evans: Oh, interesting.

Lawson Brown: I was like, “Huh! That’s the first thing that comes to your mind?” And they go, “Oh yeah, from a standpoint of respecting her and kind of knowing boundaries.” And then one of them spoke up, I think it was Abigail, said, “Yeah, I vividly remember you coming into our room after we had just done something that we shouldn’t have done and said, ‘Hey, you do not talk to my wife like that,'” to both girls.

Kent Evans: Setting down the law, right?

Lawson Brown: I don’t remember it. I do remember at times. And I do want to broaden this to just children in general, and how can a wife help a husband, how can a husband help a wife, because I think there’s some things we’ve talked about.

Kent Evans: And not just daughters, right? Not just daughters?

Lawson Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But I do think there’s a dynamic between mothers and daughters where a dad can be kind of especially helpful. Just like I think that there is a relationship between mothers, a mother and sons to help the father. Because they understand each other better. My daughters and my wife share some similarities that are more vivid than the similarities that I share with them.

It just manifests itself in different ways. I don’t know. Pick an easy one, just the things that they’re interested in, they share those. They’re easier to spot. Whereas I may have a similarity with one of the girls in a way that they approach life, but they’re somewhat interested in some of the things that I do or that they do that I’m not quite all the way there with.

Anyway, a bit of a rambling, but it was interesting to me the first thing they said was, “You real quickly and very in our face defended mom, and that put us in our place and kind of reestablished our view of her,” I guess as to paraphrase.

Kent Evans: Whoa! Okay, I got it. You weren’t just some barrier between them and their mom, you were defending Audrey in a way that actually drew the daughters and the mom together.

Lawson Brown: Just now off the top of my head thinking of, I would say it’s similar … I’m making this up. You tell me. It’s similar in the context of the Office of the President. Regardless of who’s in it, the office of the mother should be an important, it is, a very important place which should be guarded. And I think the father is the number one defender.

Kent Evans: Man, did you set out like when you and Audrey first married and you thought, “One day when we have kids, well, I’m really going to be an ardent defender of the office of the mother or my wife.”? Were you doing it consciously or were you doing it more subconsciously?

Lawson Brown: No, we did not go into it thinking that, and that’s why probably it was kind of useful to me too to hear them say that, and I was like, “Oh, wow. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect that to be the first thing to come out of both of your mouths.”

Kent Evans: That’s great. That’s great. One day we probably just need to have your daughters on the podcast. It’d probably make more sense anyway than what you and I say, right?

Lawson Brown: Right.

Kent Evans: Let’s just let our children take over.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, no doubt.

Kent Evans: I wonder, what else, man? What else came to mind? Did something else come out of that conversation with your daughters that was another thing that you had done in the past?

Lawson Brown: Just in general, and I look forward to what we are talking about doing as sort of some fatherhood strategies, fatherhood approaches, philosophies that we’re going to kind of demystify in an upcoming two part episode series. And so what Chris in his voice message made me think about was what does a cultivator mean? What does father as a person who can help cultivate a better relationship, what does that look like?

And for whatever reason, I went to farming. I did a lot of time growing up on my grandparents’ humongous thousands of acres farm as a little boy all the way through first couple years of college coming home. Oh yeah, worked tractors, the whole thing. I mean, I did what any free labor would be put to work doing is all the crap work.

Think about cultivating. You need soil prep. You got to pick good seeds. Seasons matter. You got some weeds and pest control that has to be managed. Oversight. The weather plays a big part. And then comes time for harvest. I’m thinking about like what can a dad do to cultivate it, and how did that maybe come into our parenting philosophy, mine and Audrey’s? Soil prep is, I think, know your kids, know the relationship-

Kent Evans: Oh, that’s interesting.

Lawson Brown: … the dynamic dynamics, their personalities, motivations. Good seed choices is, I think, topics. What are going to be the topics that you bring to bear in their relationship building between your kids and their mother? What sorts of things are going to be important? I think of seasons as timing. Not everything is important in the moment. Some things can wait. Some things are better down the road. You’re going to have to discern when the right approach is the right time.

I think pest and weed control is … We’ve talked about that here before, kind of the noise of the world. In fact, this past Sunday at church, the mother’s day sermon was about hearing God’s voice and discerning in our interactions with each other how best to display a mother’s love for her children as Jesus has for us. Some of that is to help clarify what is true love and loving interactions with just the general noise of the world that can appear a certain way.

Anyway, oversight, I remember my granddad would walk the field, in some cases on the big fields we would drive it. And he was just looking, he was just checking it out and seeing how things were going and being present. The only way to be present is to physically be there. And so I think oversight, being engaged, being in the mix there with your kids and their wife, and then two more and I’ll turn it back to you too.

Kent Evans: I love this metaphor. This is brilliant.

Lawson Brown: Weather, to me, especially for farming, weather is completely out of your control. And so there are some things that … I’m thinking about to Abigail and Olivia interacting with Audrey. There were some things that I just had no part in. It was something that they were just going to have to do themselves, work through themselves.

And then I could maybe be sounding bored to Audrey, or I could maybe be interpreter individually later on to one of the girls about something that was done or said. But really, that boiled down to more often than not just prayer, which is what a farmer does. They pray for good weather and they pray for things that are out of their control that they can’t manage themselves. And then the last one I wrote was harvest. And to me, I think there’s an important … That’s a good time.

That is when you’re harvesting, it’s all coming in. All that work was worth it. And so I relate that to celebrating success. When things are going well, just in general, recognize that and throw some love on that healthy fire. And then when little things happen, recognize those and call them for what they are.

And if there is, and I don’t think Chris was meaning this, but if there are times, and there will be times when the relationships just get rocky, it just sucks and it strains everything, well, okay, but recognize when it’s going well too, even if it’s a small thing and capitalize on that win.

Kent Evans: We had a moment. About a year ago, we were on vacation. And we had all our whole family together, which even now as we have one out of the house who’s married and he lives in a different city, one’s off in college, we’re starting to see some of our family events it’s harder to pull everybody together, right?

You’re not going to have as much time as you once had with all of your kids, and so you start to cherish those moments where they’re all there and they’re all happy, a little more than you did before. And so there was a moment about a year ago we were on vacation, and we were watching our kids all goof off and play together. And April just turned to me and she just goes, “This is one of those for better moments, isn’t it?”

Lawson Brown: Oh, man.

Kent Evans: Just like for better, for worse, wedding vow. And we just looked at each other and we’re like, “Yes, it is. Yes, it is.” Just recognizing, “This is good.”

Lawson Brown: I love that.

Kent Evans: “This moment right now.” She’s very poetic, man.

Lawson Brown: That’s super good. Michael Scott said something like that. He said, “Don’t you wish that when you were in the good old days you knew it?”

Kent Evans: Right. No question. The other thing you said was about prayer being kind of like the weather, where you’re just dependent upon God. And I think what’s interesting about that, Lawson, is imagine the farmer who had all sunshine and never any rain, that farmer would’ve no crops. Everything burns up. And so there is this balance that every farmer prays for, right, of sunshine and rain, and sunshine and rain. And there’s got to be some liquid to vegetate those fields, but not too much.

And there’s got to be some sunlight to let things blossom and grow, but not all the time. When you have total sunlight, you know what you get? A desert. You know when you have total water, you know what you get? The ocean. And so somewhere in the middle. Sometimes we look at those moments where our lives are difficult.

I’m walking through a season right now with some people in my life, and it’s just some turbulence relationally, right? It’s difficult. Having said that, so is weightlifting, right? Weightlifting by definition is destructive. Too much rain, all the crops wash out. Too much sun, all the crops burn up. And I think we got to keep in mind that sometimes rain isn’t a bad thing. And you’re right, we’re totally dependent on God for that.

Lawson Brown: I want to caveat something here in the way we’re breaking this down from Chris. And give this some thought, maybe we talk about it later. But that there are some many single mothers out there that don’t have a father to bring into the mix. And there’s some single dads out there that I’ve never walked those shoes, but for some reason, thinking about this, it hit my heart.

We talk a lot about, you and I do, about our wives and how important they are and how great they are. And I always remember there’s somebody out there listening to this that they don’t have that. And I just want to say, if you’re a father out there listening, and for some reason, you’re going this road alone, I think prayer is really important.

But for you, I think God has a way of feeling that gap with things that he’s going to give to you that he won’t maybe give directly to me. He would use Audrey in my case. Anyway, I’m thinking about you guys that maybe don’t have another spouse directly to lean on in all cases.

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If you take this course and you do not become less angry, you will get all of your money back. Plus we’ll send you some boxing gloves so you can beat up the wall at your house with all of your mad anger. Dad, come take the Anger-Free Dad course today at Manhoodjourney.org/anger-free-dad. That’s manhood journey.org/anger-free-dad.

That connects loss to the next point I was going to share about how we can help our spouses connect to our children better, because this connects really directly to those who maybe don’t have a spouse right in the equation immediately. I remember one time I was standing at a church. I was with my son, who at the time was maybe, I don’t know, eight or 10 years old. And a friend of mine walked up to both of us at church. And instead of talking to me, this is maybe at the time a 40-year-old friend, that friend walks up and he gets close to us.

And the closer he gets, he bends down and he looks at my son face-to-face almost, and he goes, “Hey, you know what you have? Man, you have a great dad. Did you know that?” And then he gives me a high five and walks off. And what I remember about that interaction was that guy chose to edify me in the heart and mind of my child. I wasn’t a single dad. I didn’t need him to do that, but it reminds me that there may need to be some other voices in the ears of your kids, and you’re smart to pull them in. You’re smart to pull them in.

Now, if you do have a wife around, for me, in my case what I like to do is remind my children of the positive attributes of their mom, right? Not that they need reminding. They don’t walk around here going, “Gosh, I have such a bad mom. Can somebody give me one good … Can I get a testimony?”

That’s not where my kids are, but I do like to remind them, “Man, you know you’re really fortunate to have a mom who is as financially disciplined as your mom? You know you’re really fortunate to have a mom who makes your birthdays as special as she makes them? You know you’re really fortunate to have a mom who pretty much every day of the week is in God’s word? You know you’re really fortunate to have mom who prays for you?”

It is my job. It is my job in part to remind my kids of all the great attributes of their mom. And the reason I kind of connect that to maybe single fatherhood or single mumhood is you just might need another voice to do that. If you don’t have a spouse handy, you might need another voice to do that. But if you do have a spouse handy, then, man, dads, you got to be pouring positive affirmation about your wife into the hearts and minds of your children.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, if you don’t have a spouse handy.

Kent Evans: I think they know what I meant by that. Golly, Lawson. Here’s the other thing.

Lawson Brown: Where’s my spouse? Where’s my spouse? Oh, here it is. That’s handy.

Kent Evans: Honey, go get me a sandwich. The other thing that I’ve seen some dads do, maybe this is on the don’t do side. There are some things we need to do to help our wives build strong relationships with our kids. There are some things we can do, I think, lost in that get in the way of that. That could be some sand in the gears, so to speak.

And one of those things, I see some dads make this mistake. And I’ve made it before, but I try not to. They may have like a little secret or a deal with their kid. We’ve all kind of joked about your mom does not hear about this. There may have been some moments where I did something a little dangerous. Maybe there was a hammer too close to somebody’s head or whatever that I’m kind of like, “Okay, look, do we actually have to go tell your mom about this right now?”

And so I’m kind of kidding a little. Every dad’s been there probably. But for real, and to be serious about it, we can’t have secrets. They erode the relationship with the mom, right? If our son, tell him, “You can’t tell mom,” my boys know, man, I’m a open pipe. Whatever they tell me is probably going to get to their mom. No questions. And so they just got to see us as one in that regard.

And I think it’s important for dads to remember, little side deals and, “Here’s five bucks. Don’t tell your mom I gave it to you,” or any of that stuff, man, that’s probably bad news. What do you think, Lawson?

Lawson Brown: Yeah. Not only are you doing the right thing by your wife/their mother, you’re also modeling as the dad the way that they’re going to be a good friend, because good friends stick up for each other. Like the girls were saying, they remember me kind of sticking up for their mom. Or good friends in a small group, when one of the friends leaves, good friends don’t talk about that person when they leave, and they don’t share things about each other that they don’t want the other person to know as a secret because it’s not good.

It’s fun to have little secrets and surprises and things like that you’re going to use for good, but what you’re talking about is they can build up and it really models bad behavior for just life relationships outside the family too. And then, okay, so that’s a don’t do. Something I would say that is fun to do, and especially with little kids, is like, when mom’s not around, “Hey guys, what can we do that’ll be so great when your mom gets home that’ll surprise her?”

Clean the car draw or write her a thank you card for something that … I remember Audrey, she must have put a hundred thousand miles on a vehicle going back and forth to dance and swim practice and theater. She was a theater mom, so she brought food. And there were times when the organization, the dance class or the theater group got together and said a thank you to moms. But that did not mean near as much as when one of the girls did something specific to say, “Thank you for … I know you could be doing other things than driving me two hours a day, every single day.”

You know what? I saw an ESPN thing where this pro football player was talking about … It was during the draft. This guy was highlighted. And he talked about his mom that had to drive his older brother to a school like an hour and a half out of the way, because the school locally wasn’t working for him, or he was gifted and they wanted to get him up to another place.

An hour and a half for that guy, after having dropped this player that I’m talking about off at football practice super early. She’d do that, go home, grab the other kid, drive an hour and a half north, come back, then go back, do her job. Then after that, go pick the football player up after practice. And I thought it was super cool that what got him to that point was a dedicated mother in his case.

It had to be so rewarding to her to see in this moment of glory for him, that he chose that moment to talk about how much his mom drove and how much time she spent taking care of her kids. And so you dad, us dads, I think it’s super important and really valuable to the mom, regardless of whether it’s for daughters or sons, to have them take some time. And it’s good for them too to understand how important gratitude can be.

Kent Evans: Man, you remind me … I had to look it up to get the quote right. But you remind me, Lawson, of Proverbs 31 verse 28. And just to give a little context, it’s the virtues of a noble woman. It’s this stretch of a godly woman who can find, and it’s all these attributes of a godly woman. And it’s in the context of a mom and a wife in a household, right? Most of these comments.

In verse 27 it says, “She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” She is a hard worker, right. And then in verse 28, again, this is at the end of a long list, it says, “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” And then it says, “Her husband praises her as well.” And you think of that verse and it’s like, “Yeah, man. It’s …” You mentioned ESPN in sports, they don’t yell, “Hi, dad,” when they get the touchdown, they yell, “Hi, mom.”

Why is that? Because they know that sacrifice of the driving and the time and all that usually gets laid off on this really busy mom. Dad goes to work and mom does all the shuttling. But it even says, right, in verse 28, “Her husband praises her as well.” Man, the power-

Lawson Brown: Yeah, good catch.

Kent Evans: … the power of our words, right? The power of our words. I was at lunch today with a guy, and just walking through a very difficult situation. And he pulled up something that I had said, I mean, a long, long time ago, and it affected him, and not in necessarily a positive way. We got it worked out where we realized that’s not what I meant, right? But my words carried so much weight with this guy, and I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t even realize it. And I think we forget that, right?

Lawson Brown: That’s a good point.

Kent Evans: One thing I don’t want us to get lost in here is, if I go to my boys and just speak, “Man, I love your mom.” At one point, one of my boys said … I can’t remember how old they were. One of my boys said something like, “Dad, you love mom more than us, don’t you?” And I just said, “Yes. Any other questions?”

Lawson Brown: Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%

Kent Evans: Any other questions? And I was half kidding. I like to kid around, but I was also being like, “Not more than. I mean, you can’t put love in a loveometer and …” I just made that up. Dude, that was spur of the moment, the loveometer.

Lawson Brown: I like it.

Kent Evans: The loveometer. Product marketing. You heard your first trademark Manhood Journey 2022. You can’t measure like, “I love this more, more or less or that.” More like an on, off switch. I either love them or I don’t. At the same time, it is a different, obviously, different kind of love. I want my boys to know, yeah, the most important human on earth is their mom. Long as she’s alive and long as I’m alive, that’s the most important human on earth. They’re all kind of tied for second. That’s the best they can hope for, right?

Lawson Brown: Let’s think about the guys out there that maybe need some ideas, some things, other things that we’re talking about. Authority, her authority, you as a father can reinforce that as, I don’t know, “What did your mom say? It’s totally up to her.” Maybe you’ve even, you and she, have even talked about it ahead of time, and they just happen to come to you with something, some decision point, and you already know the answer that you and your wife have collectively agreed to-

Kent Evans: Oh! Hi, Lawson, let me interrupt you. I have to share a time when I totally blew this.

Lawson Brown: … Uh-oh.

Kent Evans: Recently, not all that long ago. Man, gosh, you just reminded me of a total dad fail. And I want to share it with guys so they don’t do the same thing I did. My son was asking a question about a biblical topic. And it was kind of complicated and thorny, and he was asking this question. We had a house guest who happens to be a trained theologian, literally like a PhD in Bible stuff. And so my son framed the question, “Hey, dad, I’d be curious what you and our house guest think about it.” And there was only one other person in the room, my wife.

Lawson Brown: What?

Kent Evans: My wife. Right? And he just totally left her out, and I let it go. The thought crossed my mind, “You know who ought to talk about this is your mom, dude. She understands this really well.” The thought was in my head, it really was. Honey. If you’re listening, I promise, it was in my head. But I didn’t say it out loud. And then the conversation went on, and me and that guy had some thoughts. And my wife wasn’t invited into that moment of the conversation, even though she’s active in the conversation in general.

And I just remember going back later and thinking, “What a bone head. What a doofus.” Because what my son needs to realize is I’m not just pandering, I’m not just trying to go like, “Oh yeah, let’s let everybody talk about nuclear fusion,” even though only one guy in the room understands it. It’s not that, it’s that his mom is really sharp theologically.

She understands scripture and how the Bible fits together, the whole counsel of God, she gets it. And so what he needs to understand is if he has Bible questions, it’s like a tie. He can ask me or his mom, and he’s going to get a good answer probably either way. I missed it. I really missed that a few weeks ago.

Lawson Brown: That’s cool. I’m glad you shared that. How about this? Have you gone into the situation and just taken over and said, “Hey, everybody, all of us are leaving,” and that just gave April the free night or an opportunity to go do something fun that maybe she’s got coming up? And you’re tired, you’ve been working, but you know what, you suck it up and you take over and all things. And she is free to go roam and do whatever she wants.

Kent Evans: I’m really glad you guys tuned in this week. Thanks for listening. We’re going to have to land the plane. Oh golly, we’re out of time. Oh, out of time. On rare occasions, yes. Yes. I don’t do that as often as I should. And I will tell you, in defense of me, I feel like now all of a sudden I’m on this self-imposed reality trial TV.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, in defense of you, you’ve got an army.

Kent Evans: In defense of me, here’s what I would say. My wife really loves spending time as a family, so she’s really not clamoring for me time, me time, me time very often. Right? She has a couple things she does every week, maybe, I don’t know, three hours a week total, four, that are her time dedicated to going and doing something outside the house that really rejuvenates her, and she enjoys it. And we all know it. It’s scheduled. But here’s the thing, she fixes us dinner and then leaves dinner on the table and goes and does her thing. She’s always thinking of us first.

Lawson Brown: Wow, that’s great.

Kent Evans: I’ve done it occasionally, but not very often. But man, what a great idea. Did you do that every day or every week, Mr. Tough guy, I mean, since you brought it up? No, let’s go. Why don’t you answer your own question?

Lawson Brown: Yeah, we did. Well, I guess what I would say to the fellows is try to recognize when that’s needed. You can smell burnout from a distance. And so when you do, you may not want to do it.

Kent Evans: I thought you were going to say danger. Because there have been times when I’ve left the house with the boys thinking, “Okay, guys. If anybody wants to live through the night, we’re going to have to live through the night at Taco Bell. Let’s go. In the car. In the car. Who wants to live? Who wants to live?”

Lawson Brown: That’s funny. Oh! Wrap us up, Kent. But Chris, dude, thanks for-

Kent Evans: Great question.

Lawson Brown: … What a great question. I feel like this is something that you just can’t think about enough and talk about enough. It was great to hear your voice on there. You guys, if you have a challenge, or a question or an idea, something you want to use to interact with this whole Father on Purpose podcast, gang, please leave us a voice message.

It’s super easy on the website. And we really look forward to doing more of these where we get to hear from you, and you give us your own thoughts. Because we don’t want to do this in a vacuum alone. We love having you guys out there and think about you all the time.

Kent Evans: Yeah, Lawson, I would say in closing just two quick things. One, yes, dads, go to Manhoodjourney.org/podcast and leave us a message, like Lawson said. I really want to hear ideas, questions, big challenges, big wins. I’d love especially to hear you guys say things like, “Kent is great and Lawson is horrible.” It’s like my ego is so fragile, that’d be awesome. Somebody click and say that.

But kidding aside, I love it. In fact, the second thing I would say, Lawson, I don’t even know if you knew this happened, but I think the episode that ran right before this one, we’ll call this one the Chris Powell episode, the one right before it was a voicemail from a gentleman named Eric Davenport. And I had coffee with Eric last week in Louisville, Kentucky. We actually got to-

Lawson Brown: No way.

Kent Evans: … Yeah. He lives here. And we got to sit down, and face-to-face, man, talk life and careers. And he has an Airbnb.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kent Evans: We had a blast. I love nothing more than connecting with guys who are in the pursuit of being a godly dad and who are screwing it up like I am. Like just, we’re all-

Lawson Brown: Same.

Kent Evans: … figuring it out-

Lawson Brown: That’s right.

Kent Evans: … one step at a time. And so I had to blast with that guy. Dads, let us hear from you, please. Reach out to us on the website, and we would love nothing more than to have you be one of our future episodes, because the question you’re wrestling with or the idea you have is something that would benefit probably all the other dads listening.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, right on.

Kent Evans: Thanks a ton for listening. And please share the podcast. You’ll get some moments here on that after we close. Been a blast hanging out with you today, Lawson, as always.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, you too, bud. Always.

Kent Evans: Thanks for your time. Guys, we’ll talk to you next week.

Speaker 5: Hey, dad, thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at Manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcast, or just call the person up and tell them to listen in.

Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically that helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at Manhoodjourney.org or Fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Outro: You’ve been dozing off to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now, wake up. Head over to Fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose.