Jerrad: All right, Bob. Well thank you so much, man, for hanging out with us today. For our audience, tell us who you are and what you're up to these days.
Bob: Yeah. Well thanks for having me on. I'm Bob. I'm a recovering lawyer. I used to practice law for ... I've had 30 years. I still got a piece of paper in a file cabinet somewhere that says I'm a lawyer in a couple states, but what we spend our time doing now with Love Does is starting schools in conflict areas. So, we got one in Uganda, just finished a big civil war. We've got one in Iraq and Somalia. We're going into another country here in a couple months that's right in the middle of it.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: This is going to be my farewell podcast and Nepal and India. And so, that's what we do. We just go around starting schools, and we love kids. So we're just thinking if we can make small little steps, it might be helpful to somebody.
Jerrad: Yeah. So you've written a couple of books on that principle. One of them was called Love Does, which I know a lot of our audience has heard about. How did you go from being a lawyer to being a writer?
Bob: Yeah, I don't know. Lawyers spell like lots of big long words and argue with each other, and I thought, "What would be the simplest way to say something with the fewest words?" So, that's a great training for the people that are listening. You could go on to Twitter or Instagram. What I'll do in the morning ... I haven't had a quiet time in 20 years. Mine are super loud. What I'll do is I'll just ... I'll read things I think are meaningful to me, and they'll say, "How can I say that in the fewest words possible and still be true and not give a Bible verse?"
Jerrad: Yeah, yep.
Bob: Right? We don't need to have that. It would be so lame if you asked me how I was doing, and you wanted to see my driver's license to believe who I was and then a birth certificate, just know that I had kids. So, you don't have to prove things. Just say things that are true. That would be a great overarching principle for many of us in society right now.
Jerrad: Amen, man. Preach. Your book did very well. Love Does did very well, and it was read by a lot of people. At the end of that book, you actually put your phone number. What was your motivation behind that?
Bob: Yeah, the idea of availability. I don't think people follow a vision. I think they follow availability and not like Twitter follow. I mean, like, we're inspired by people that are available. I could read something that somebody that invented something big or sent a rocket ship into the moon. That would be really interesting, but it doesn't impact me the way that availability does. And so, and I really learned this ... It was a musician, Keith Green way back in the day, and he died way too soon in a airplane crash, but I wrote to him when I was in college. He wrote me back a letter, and it just had three sentences in it. I don't even know what the sentences were, but it just meant so much to me that he took the time to write me three sentences. I get probably 250 emails a day and everybody gets three sentences and not the same three sentences. It's just like such a kind thing. If you don't want to be available to people, but that's not bad. I just know that Jesus was. And being available doesn't make you Jesus; it just makes you like him. So that's what I'm aiming for. How could we have people feel met and understood whether faith is a big deal for them or not. They just feel like ... That's just polite where I grew up.
Jerrad: Yeah, and what about for your kids? How did you ... You're a busy guy. How did you find time to be available for them as you were raising young kids?
Bob: Oh yeah. Of all the things, I lived in San Diego with Sweet Maria, and we raised our kids here. I worked in downtown Seattle, and I flew up every morning.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: And I worked all day, and I flew home for supper.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: Isn't that nuts?
Jerrad: That's incredible.
Bob: I just go down to Seattle. But, the underlying principle is this, that you must be present to win.
Jerrad: Yeah.
Bob: Sometimes as we can ... as men and women, sometimes we get so busy trying to provide for our families that we don't end up providing for our families.
Jerrad: So we're a podcast, obviously, aimed towards young dads. There are thousands of young dads and husbands that listen to this podcast and many of us relate to the statement or the sentiment that we want to be good husbands and dads. We want to be spiritual leaders of our homes, but we didn't have a good example. Most of us did not have a good example of what that look like, because our dad was either physically gone or just totally emotionally checked out. And so, one thing that as I've been reading through your books, I'm like just trying to cling onto any of the habits and rhythms that you mentioned in your book. One of them that you talk about in your latest book is how you would ... When your kids turn 10 years old, you would tell them, "Where do you want to go?" And you would literally take them wherever they said they wanted to go. Tell us why you did that and any other rhythms that we can steal from you that might be meaningful for us as we're raising young kids.
Bob: Oh that's awesome. I was thinking frozen yogurt until Lindsey said, "London." So, for each of the kids, we called it a 10-year-old adventure, and when they turned 10, they got to spin the globe and do whatever they wanted to do. Lindsey wanted to go to [Tee 00:07:43] in London. So, British Airways was opening up some new flight. It was like 50 bucks round trip.
Jerrad: Oh geez.
Bob: I ate a $100 of peanuts on the way there. Adam Goff wanted to ride dirt bikes across the Mojave Desert, which is just nuts. And so, we passed all these cattle skulls, and I thought they'd-
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: ... cast a skull that look like me. Richard wanted to climb the backside of Half Dome in the snow. And so, we waited till a big snowstorm blew into Yosemite.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: We drove up, and we climbed it. It was just like super fun. We just camped out shivered. So for each of the kids, and then there's a young man, we became a legal guardian of his big ambition he wanted when he turned 10 to climb Kilimanjaro. He's a little Ugandan boy. So, we climbed it. He didn't get quite to the top but almost.
Jerrad: Are there any rhythms that you look back for your children and you're like, "Man, I'm glad I did that. Out of all the things that maybe you wish you would have changed, are there some rhythms or habits or traditions that you were like, "I'm glad I stuck with that one"?
Bob: Yeah. Everything except punishing them. I would just say that most people don't need words of correction. What they need is somebody to lead them on an adventure, give them something better to aim for than all the wrong that they're pointing at. So, Adam Goff, he was a great kid, but he was kind of done with high school, by senior year. He was coasting and he brought me his class list, the first week or two of school, and he was like the ball monitor and teacher's pet, and he was totally was [inaudible 00:09:26]. He knew where he's going to go to college. And so, I made a deal with the principal. I said, "Make him take like two classes. Teach him how to spell the word cat." And then at noon everyday, he would go to the local airport, and he worked on his private pilot's license.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: So, by the time he invited this gal to the prom, he actually flew her over the coast, and 10 buddies had spelled out prom in the sand.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: There's one of those promposals. I'm like, "What are you going to do when you get married? Like rent the shuttle [inaudible 00:10:02]?" But you don't want bored young men or bored young women. And so, to put some big idea, and he's stuck with it. I mean, he flies a biplane now. He does like hammerhead stalls.
Jerrad: Oh my Gosh.
Bob: He's nuts. But that you find this thing and put a big ambition in front of them. It wasn't just him. My daughter, my other son, once they learned all the parts of a seaplane, they could name each part and what it did. Then they got to take one lap up in Canada, I got this old seaplane, and they flew it one lap and landed it. Took it off by themselves, landed. There's something, like they'll 14 and come back 29. There's something beautiful about that. Instead of telling people the things that they ought to do, just let them know I trust you, and that's one of the beautiful things. I think you could summarize the gospels in a ... so this beautiful interaction of Jesus. It wasn't words of correction, even when he knew a guy would betray him. He was just with them.
And that's the beginning of Matthew 1:23. It said, "Mary will conceive and have a child, and you will name the child Emmanuel," and then two sentences later said, "So they named him Jesus." We don't get anything right. So the whole idea that just Emmanuel, like with us. And so, just be with your kids, but be not just in proximity to the people that you love but actually present, because it's easy to be in proximity to people and off doing all the things that are distracting you, but to actually be present. So, Maria and I have a softball. I don't even like baseball. I don't even like softball. But when we're talking, we'll throw it back and forth. If you answer your cell phone, you'll lose teeth. It's awesome.
So that idea to actually be present and that playfulness, like, just constantly, I would just whatever it takes to engage everybody and to say, "Well I wonder what's going to happen next."
Jerrad: Yeah. You talked about at the beginning of that answer it's not good for kids to be bored. It's not good for young men to be bored or young adults to be bored. One of the questions I had for you when reading your book is, you know, there's a lot of guys who still feel this sense of like they're bored because they feel like they don't have a purpose in life. They've kind of lost sight of ... They feel purposelessness, or they don't know what God's call on their life is, and you actually talk about that in your book like, "Stop waiting around for God's call and just do something. Start to love people."
What would you save for the guys who are like, "Man, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm bored. I'm playing video games. I'm working too much. I'm just coming home and just feel bored or purposelessness."
Bob: Yeah, I would just decide who do you want to be 10 years from now. So, you could say, "I'm 58." Say, who is Bob when he's 68? I would say, "If I had my way, 10 years from now, I'd be a grandpa with a nine-year-old on my lap." I'm just waiting for somebody to have a grandkid. So, figure out who you want to be and then do things that are consistent with that. It sounds so simple, but I think that is it. Sometimes we hatch big elaborate plans. "I'm having date nights on Tuesdays. I'm doing all this crazy stuff." Just say, "I don't know." Figure out what you want, do what it takes to get what you want and then use what you've got right now.
So, instead of saying, "Well when I have more free time, when I have that promotion, or if I have a bunch of cash, or when the kids are off to college or back from college," just to say, "What have I got right now and use what I've got." And most of us have a fair amount of creativity, and if they don't, they've got you, because you're a really creative guy. And so, say, "What have I got right now?" and find a couple friends and figure out how you're wired. Like, "I'm not great at joining things. I must not play well with others, but I don't want to do the boy scouts." I think it's terrific. Just do whatever blows your hair back unless it's like robbing liquor stores, then I'd do less of that.
But I would say my boys, they like motorcycles. And so, when they were the right age, we bought a bunch of Harleys, and we started in Mexico. We drove them all the way to Canada. Here's the deal. We didn't know how to ride Harleys. We've never been on a highway before. But by the time we got to San Francisco, we knew how to change gears and everything. It was awesome. So this idea to engage, just to engage, and we paid like a thousand bucks for these bikes. They're just nothing. So find some of these impediments that we put up. We say, "Well I can't because or can't." I would just check in on those.
Don't be too hard on yourself. We're all amateurs at this, at loving people and leading our kids, but it is relatively a short season. And so, one of the outcomes of being really engaged early is that the kids and I never run out of things to talk about. When we're at the dinner table, we say, "Remember the time that Adam burst into flames as he was jumping over that sand dune?" And I think it is instructive for our faith too, like that simple idea that if you want more faith, do more stuff, but then find the right stuff to do. But I could waiting for a plan.
I mean, the only people that have plans in their back pocket are pirates. They've got these treasure maps for islands they can't seem to get to. And one of the things that you can do is just get to your family everyday. One of the things that for me was among my many flaws was that I was so busy being everywhere else in Mogadishu and like all over the place. I pulled into the driveway one day and there was a help wanted sign in the front window.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: This wasn't Sweet Maria Goff telling me she needed help. She was like, "Buddy, you need help," and it was just a really clarifying moment for me to just say like, "Wow. I'm doing all these terrific things thinking I'm helping Jesus out," and I think what would really help him is if we just continue to run home to your family. Remember the movie Hook?
Jerrad: Oh yeah.
Bob: And they were having a baseball game, and Peter Pan forgets that he was Peter Pan. He turns into a lawyer like me, and the pirates are trying to get Jack to like them more. And so, at the game, they wanted to say, "Home run, Jack," but they got it backwards, and it said, "Run home, Jack." Those who need the three words, I'd say to every one of your listeners, "Run home, jack," and I don't even care what your name is.
Jerrad: Yeah, so good. So, one of the things your readers love about you is adventurous spirit, your willingness to say yes and live this radical life for Jesus. How do you balance that, like, renting Harleys and driving across country with your kids? And also, giving your wife some stability? Like making ... as many of our wives long for.
Bob: This is crazy. I know one of the things that we do is that Maria and I are really picky about what we talk about. So, for instance, last night, I was in Phoenix, and she didn't know, because we didn't talk about it. It just never came up. The night before I was in Palm Beach, Florida, and we didn't talk about that either. So when people ask her, "Where's Bob?" She always says the same thing, "He's on his way home," because I always am. I was in Palm Beach. I flew home for supper. It was 10:00 at night, but we had a late supper. And then I went to the Phoenix thing, and I flew home for supper.
So, we don't try to figure out how to get some work, because that's super easy. It's figuring out how to get home, and then when I go to places that are conflict areas, I just lie. She says, "Where are you going?" I'm headed to Somalia, I just say, "Africa. I'll be right back." We just flew in. Part of this is taking your kids along on the things that you do whether you have a milk route or plumbing or make wood-fired pizzas, but we go to some of these areas. So, I just bring one of the kids along with me. Richard just came. There's a group of like 10,000 or 20,000 people that had been encircled by Al-Shabaab, their arm and Somalis called ... Well it's Al Qaeda's arm called Al-Shabaab.
And so, we took some of the Love Does money, and we rented a cargo plane, and we flew right over their heads and landed on the sand.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: What could possibly go wrong? So that would be one of those things, "Where are you going?" "Africa."
Bob: We just want people to be anxious, but we spend ... Here's the cadence in our family. It's nine months of like Mach five hair on fire. Where's the next thing? Like just go, go, go, go, go. We'll get an idea. We don't treat it like brain candy. People are starving in Somalia right now, because of the drought and all that. So we decided ... You can ship 44,000 pounds of food in one container. It'll feed 285,000 people. So, we just like, "We could get a million people fed in four containers and then turn the containers into fast-food restaurants in Mogadishu." Nobody will gather in restaurants, because somebody would drive a truck full of TNT in there. And so, people want to eat, but they want to pause for long perfect.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: So, I'm like, "Perfect." So that would be this breeding ground. Just get this idea and then just run with it, but the cadence for us is nine months of that, and then three months, Maria and the kids and I just disappear and go into this inlet in Canada, where we have a place. We're just off the grid. We grow our own food. We catch fish in the river. We make our electricity off of glacier. We're just out. There's no cell phones or there's no nothing. So, I would say you don't need to do extreme things like that. Find a park. You don't need to do three months out of the year. Do it three days out of the month or three hours out of the day or three minutes out of the hour.
But find something that's accessible instead of saying I'm busy. I would say, "Well I would find a cadence. It seems to work."
Jerrad: Man, okay. I could go on a whole nother podcast on just the whole like what you just said about you getting away for three months. You just laid out my dream. My dream [crosstalk 00:20:58]-
Bob: Well actually, you get to kind of decide some of those things too. I was a partner ... I think I had 25 other partners at this great big law firm. When my kids were a little taller than trout, and they could actually talk, and they were actually kind of fun to be around.
Jerrad: Right.
Bob: I told these partners of mine, I'm going to take three months and just spend it with my kids." They looked at me like I was wearing yellow boots and an umbrella. They were like, "We have this sabbatical program, and like after every 10 years, you get like nine minutes off." So I didn't argue with them, but on Monday, I wasn't there. I came back three months later. It was awesome. They were so ticked. I was like, "Whatever. Sue me," because if you need a dialysis, you'd go get it. You wouldn't wait for permission. You wouldn't push it because you got a meeting. You just get what you need. Get your dialysis when it comes to your kids.
Jerrad: Man, this is good.
Bob: Just say like, "That's immovable." And you know what? You'll lose a couple pretty good jobs that way. But what the heck? You'll get your family. You're not going to have to move into a double-wide, and if you did, it'll be the best-looking double-wide anywhere.
Jerrad: Yep. And you said once that the battle for our hearts are fought on the pages of our calendar, which I think is what you're getting at. There's so many guys who say, "Yeah, I just don't have time. I don't have time. I don't know how to be intentional with my time to lead my family and be present with my family."
Bob: Isn't that interesting, how that work that the very first thing in Scripture that God did is make time?
Jerrad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bob: And sometimes the last thing we do is make time. I'm like, I'm seeing a parallel there, but you get to just decide. So, for instance, I don't make ... I quit something every single Thursday. I just give it the boot, and including my own law firm. Two years ago, May, I walked into my entire law firm, on a Thursday, and I said, "We're done." I took the key off the ring and gave it to a guy, and I've never gone back.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: I've been clean and sober on being a lawyer and arguing with people for a couple years now, and that's what I want to do. I don't want to spend ... I've got like so little time. I'm not going to spend it just doing the things I'm able to do, trying to do the things I'm made to do. It seems like a small difference, but it's an important one to just say, "I'm able to play the banjo," but if you heard me play the banjo, I wasn't made to play the banjo. And many of the people that are listening are one or two jobs behind who God's turned them into. So, at the time you applied for the job it sounded great, because you wanted to get a house, and it may have been interesting to you, but you've moved on, which is the way it's supposed to work.
We blew up this law firm every year on December 31st for 30 years. I just said, "It's over." It's a one-year gig. And then it lets me reflect with Maria to say if I want to do it, and with each of the people that are working there, see if they want to do it. And don't do it just because we did last year. Let's do it because we want to do it again, because it's who God's made us to be, not just all the things we're capable of.
Jerrad: Bob, I know that you like to be out doing more than you like to be talking about doing, so I'm going to let you get back to all the fun stuff that you got going on. Thank you for spending a little bit of time with us. Do you have any parting words for the young dads and husbands who are listening right now?
Bob: The thing that occurs to me is that how we can ... The kind of people are going to take the time to listen to your podcast are usually pretty sensitive, self-aware, go-for-it people. The ones that's completely oblivious that has no clue, they're not listening to this podcast, because they're busy doing a bunch of the things that actually aren't that meaningful in their lives. And so, I would say to those that are listening, man, don't be too hard on yourself. Nobody has gone professional at loving their family. I've never seen anybody with like a leather suit like these NASCAR drivers, with these patches on how, like, Target has sponsored them, because there's such an awesome dad or mom or some.
So, don't be too hard on yourself. You're going to have a couple days. Things will go right in a couple days that they won't. But that beautiful thing, and you can look in your past too, that we're either reflections of or reactions to the people that have been closest to us. And so, you want your kids to ... I want mine to both reflect and react, so my kids are not just like me. But they're just delightfully different. Well you go be delightfully different from all the other moms and dads you've seen too. So, we can get these like little breadcrumbs that we leave behind, and there might be something that resonates, and totally go with that.
But if it doesn't work, and you're not a winner if you won, and you're not a loser if you lost, you're a participant because you tried.
Jerrad: Bob, thank you. I know you're a busy man. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with us and give us a few nuggets to think on.
Bob: Oh my pleasure. All right. So long.
Jerrad: All right. Bye-bye.
Bob: Yeah. Well thanks for having me on. I'm Bob. I'm a recovering lawyer. I used to practice law for ... I've had 30 years. I still got a piece of paper in a file cabinet somewhere that says I'm a lawyer in a couple states, but what we spend our time doing now with Love Does is starting schools in conflict areas. So, we got one in Uganda, just finished a big civil war. We've got one in Iraq and Somalia. We're going into another country here in a couple months that's right in the middle of it.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: This is going to be my farewell podcast and Nepal and India. And so, that's what we do. We just go around starting schools, and we love kids. So we're just thinking if we can make small little steps, it might be helpful to somebody.
Jerrad: Yeah. So you've written a couple of books on that principle. One of them was called Love Does, which I know a lot of our audience has heard about. How did you go from being a lawyer to being a writer?
Bob: Yeah, I don't know. Lawyers spell like lots of big long words and argue with each other, and I thought, "What would be the simplest way to say something with the fewest words?" So, that's a great training for the people that are listening. You could go on to Twitter or Instagram. What I'll do in the morning ... I haven't had a quiet time in 20 years. Mine are super loud. What I'll do is I'll just ... I'll read things I think are meaningful to me, and they'll say, "How can I say that in the fewest words possible and still be true and not give a Bible verse?"
Jerrad: Yeah, yep.
Bob: Right? We don't need to have that. It would be so lame if you asked me how I was doing, and you wanted to see my driver's license to believe who I was and then a birth certificate, just know that I had kids. So, you don't have to prove things. Just say things that are true. That would be a great overarching principle for many of us in society right now.
Jerrad: Amen, man. Preach. Your book did very well. Love Does did very well, and it was read by a lot of people. At the end of that book, you actually put your phone number. What was your motivation behind that?
Bob: Yeah, the idea of availability. I don't think people follow a vision. I think they follow availability and not like Twitter follow. I mean, like, we're inspired by people that are available. I could read something that somebody that invented something big or sent a rocket ship into the moon. That would be really interesting, but it doesn't impact me the way that availability does. And so, and I really learned this ... It was a musician, Keith Green way back in the day, and he died way too soon in a airplane crash, but I wrote to him when I was in college. He wrote me back a letter, and it just had three sentences in it. I don't even know what the sentences were, but it just meant so much to me that he took the time to write me three sentences. I get probably 250 emails a day and everybody gets three sentences and not the same three sentences. It's just like such a kind thing. If you don't want to be available to people, but that's not bad. I just know that Jesus was. And being available doesn't make you Jesus; it just makes you like him. So that's what I'm aiming for. How could we have people feel met and understood whether faith is a big deal for them or not. They just feel like ... That's just polite where I grew up.
Jerrad: Yeah, and what about for your kids? How did you ... You're a busy guy. How did you find time to be available for them as you were raising young kids?
Bob: Oh yeah. Of all the things, I lived in San Diego with Sweet Maria, and we raised our kids here. I worked in downtown Seattle, and I flew up every morning.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: And I worked all day, and I flew home for supper.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: Isn't that nuts?
Jerrad: That's incredible.
Bob: I just go down to Seattle. But, the underlying principle is this, that you must be present to win.
Jerrad: Yeah.
Bob: Sometimes as we can ... as men and women, sometimes we get so busy trying to provide for our families that we don't end up providing for our families.
Jerrad: So we're a podcast, obviously, aimed towards young dads. There are thousands of young dads and husbands that listen to this podcast and many of us relate to the statement or the sentiment that we want to be good husbands and dads. We want to be spiritual leaders of our homes, but we didn't have a good example. Most of us did not have a good example of what that look like, because our dad was either physically gone or just totally emotionally checked out. And so, one thing that as I've been reading through your books, I'm like just trying to cling onto any of the habits and rhythms that you mentioned in your book. One of them that you talk about in your latest book is how you would ... When your kids turn 10 years old, you would tell them, "Where do you want to go?" And you would literally take them wherever they said they wanted to go. Tell us why you did that and any other rhythms that we can steal from you that might be meaningful for us as we're raising young kids.
Bob: Oh that's awesome. I was thinking frozen yogurt until Lindsey said, "London." So, for each of the kids, we called it a 10-year-old adventure, and when they turned 10, they got to spin the globe and do whatever they wanted to do. Lindsey wanted to go to [Tee 00:07:43] in London. So, British Airways was opening up some new flight. It was like 50 bucks round trip.
Jerrad: Oh geez.
Bob: I ate a $100 of peanuts on the way there. Adam Goff wanted to ride dirt bikes across the Mojave Desert, which is just nuts. And so, we passed all these cattle skulls, and I thought they'd-
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: ... cast a skull that look like me. Richard wanted to climb the backside of Half Dome in the snow. And so, we waited till a big snowstorm blew into Yosemite.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: We drove up, and we climbed it. It was just like super fun. We just camped out shivered. So for each of the kids, and then there's a young man, we became a legal guardian of his big ambition he wanted when he turned 10 to climb Kilimanjaro. He's a little Ugandan boy. So, we climbed it. He didn't get quite to the top but almost.
Jerrad: Are there any rhythms that you look back for your children and you're like, "Man, I'm glad I did that. Out of all the things that maybe you wish you would have changed, are there some rhythms or habits or traditions that you were like, "I'm glad I stuck with that one"?
Bob: Yeah. Everything except punishing them. I would just say that most people don't need words of correction. What they need is somebody to lead them on an adventure, give them something better to aim for than all the wrong that they're pointing at. So, Adam Goff, he was a great kid, but he was kind of done with high school, by senior year. He was coasting and he brought me his class list, the first week or two of school, and he was like the ball monitor and teacher's pet, and he was totally was [inaudible 00:09:26]. He knew where he's going to go to college. And so, I made a deal with the principal. I said, "Make him take like two classes. Teach him how to spell the word cat." And then at noon everyday, he would go to the local airport, and he worked on his private pilot's license.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: So, by the time he invited this gal to the prom, he actually flew her over the coast, and 10 buddies had spelled out prom in the sand.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: There's one of those promposals. I'm like, "What are you going to do when you get married? Like rent the shuttle [inaudible 00:10:02]?" But you don't want bored young men or bored young women. And so, to put some big idea, and he's stuck with it. I mean, he flies a biplane now. He does like hammerhead stalls.
Jerrad: Oh my Gosh.
Bob: He's nuts. But that you find this thing and put a big ambition in front of them. It wasn't just him. My daughter, my other son, once they learned all the parts of a seaplane, they could name each part and what it did. Then they got to take one lap up in Canada, I got this old seaplane, and they flew it one lap and landed it. Took it off by themselves, landed. There's something, like they'll 14 and come back 29. There's something beautiful about that. Instead of telling people the things that they ought to do, just let them know I trust you, and that's one of the beautiful things. I think you could summarize the gospels in a ... so this beautiful interaction of Jesus. It wasn't words of correction, even when he knew a guy would betray him. He was just with them.
And that's the beginning of Matthew 1:23. It said, "Mary will conceive and have a child, and you will name the child Emmanuel," and then two sentences later said, "So they named him Jesus." We don't get anything right. So the whole idea that just Emmanuel, like with us. And so, just be with your kids, but be not just in proximity to the people that you love but actually present, because it's easy to be in proximity to people and off doing all the things that are distracting you, but to actually be present. So, Maria and I have a softball. I don't even like baseball. I don't even like softball. But when we're talking, we'll throw it back and forth. If you answer your cell phone, you'll lose teeth. It's awesome.
So that idea to actually be present and that playfulness, like, just constantly, I would just whatever it takes to engage everybody and to say, "Well I wonder what's going to happen next."
Jerrad: Yeah. You talked about at the beginning of that answer it's not good for kids to be bored. It's not good for young men to be bored or young adults to be bored. One of the questions I had for you when reading your book is, you know, there's a lot of guys who still feel this sense of like they're bored because they feel like they don't have a purpose in life. They've kind of lost sight of ... They feel purposelessness, or they don't know what God's call on their life is, and you actually talk about that in your book like, "Stop waiting around for God's call and just do something. Start to love people."
What would you save for the guys who are like, "Man, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm bored. I'm playing video games. I'm working too much. I'm just coming home and just feel bored or purposelessness."
Bob: Yeah, I would just decide who do you want to be 10 years from now. So, you could say, "I'm 58." Say, who is Bob when he's 68? I would say, "If I had my way, 10 years from now, I'd be a grandpa with a nine-year-old on my lap." I'm just waiting for somebody to have a grandkid. So, figure out who you want to be and then do things that are consistent with that. It sounds so simple, but I think that is it. Sometimes we hatch big elaborate plans. "I'm having date nights on Tuesdays. I'm doing all this crazy stuff." Just say, "I don't know." Figure out what you want, do what it takes to get what you want and then use what you've got right now.
So, instead of saying, "Well when I have more free time, when I have that promotion, or if I have a bunch of cash, or when the kids are off to college or back from college," just to say, "What have I got right now and use what I've got." And most of us have a fair amount of creativity, and if they don't, they've got you, because you're a really creative guy. And so, say, "What have I got right now?" and find a couple friends and figure out how you're wired. Like, "I'm not great at joining things. I must not play well with others, but I don't want to do the boy scouts." I think it's terrific. Just do whatever blows your hair back unless it's like robbing liquor stores, then I'd do less of that.
But I would say my boys, they like motorcycles. And so, when they were the right age, we bought a bunch of Harleys, and we started in Mexico. We drove them all the way to Canada. Here's the deal. We didn't know how to ride Harleys. We've never been on a highway before. But by the time we got to San Francisco, we knew how to change gears and everything. It was awesome. So this idea to engage, just to engage, and we paid like a thousand bucks for these bikes. They're just nothing. So find some of these impediments that we put up. We say, "Well I can't because or can't." I would just check in on those.
Don't be too hard on yourself. We're all amateurs at this, at loving people and leading our kids, but it is relatively a short season. And so, one of the outcomes of being really engaged early is that the kids and I never run out of things to talk about. When we're at the dinner table, we say, "Remember the time that Adam burst into flames as he was jumping over that sand dune?" And I think it is instructive for our faith too, like that simple idea that if you want more faith, do more stuff, but then find the right stuff to do. But I could waiting for a plan.
I mean, the only people that have plans in their back pocket are pirates. They've got these treasure maps for islands they can't seem to get to. And one of the things that you can do is just get to your family everyday. One of the things that for me was among my many flaws was that I was so busy being everywhere else in Mogadishu and like all over the place. I pulled into the driveway one day and there was a help wanted sign in the front window.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: This wasn't Sweet Maria Goff telling me she needed help. She was like, "Buddy, you need help," and it was just a really clarifying moment for me to just say like, "Wow. I'm doing all these terrific things thinking I'm helping Jesus out," and I think what would really help him is if we just continue to run home to your family. Remember the movie Hook?
Jerrad: Oh yeah.
Bob: And they were having a baseball game, and Peter Pan forgets that he was Peter Pan. He turns into a lawyer like me, and the pirates are trying to get Jack to like them more. And so, at the game, they wanted to say, "Home run, Jack," but they got it backwards, and it said, "Run home, Jack." Those who need the three words, I'd say to every one of your listeners, "Run home, jack," and I don't even care what your name is.
Jerrad: Yeah, so good. So, one of the things your readers love about you is adventurous spirit, your willingness to say yes and live this radical life for Jesus. How do you balance that, like, renting Harleys and driving across country with your kids? And also, giving your wife some stability? Like making ... as many of our wives long for.
Bob: This is crazy. I know one of the things that we do is that Maria and I are really picky about what we talk about. So, for instance, last night, I was in Phoenix, and she didn't know, because we didn't talk about it. It just never came up. The night before I was in Palm Beach, Florida, and we didn't talk about that either. So when people ask her, "Where's Bob?" She always says the same thing, "He's on his way home," because I always am. I was in Palm Beach. I flew home for supper. It was 10:00 at night, but we had a late supper. And then I went to the Phoenix thing, and I flew home for supper.
So, we don't try to figure out how to get some work, because that's super easy. It's figuring out how to get home, and then when I go to places that are conflict areas, I just lie. She says, "Where are you going?" I'm headed to Somalia, I just say, "Africa. I'll be right back." We just flew in. Part of this is taking your kids along on the things that you do whether you have a milk route or plumbing or make wood-fired pizzas, but we go to some of these areas. So, I just bring one of the kids along with me. Richard just came. There's a group of like 10,000 or 20,000 people that had been encircled by Al-Shabaab, their arm and Somalis called ... Well it's Al Qaeda's arm called Al-Shabaab.
And so, we took some of the Love Does money, and we rented a cargo plane, and we flew right over their heads and landed on the sand.
Jerrad: Oh my gosh.
Bob: What could possibly go wrong? So that would be one of those things, "Where are you going?" "Africa."
Bob: We just want people to be anxious, but we spend ... Here's the cadence in our family. It's nine months of like Mach five hair on fire. Where's the next thing? Like just go, go, go, go, go. We'll get an idea. We don't treat it like brain candy. People are starving in Somalia right now, because of the drought and all that. So we decided ... You can ship 44,000 pounds of food in one container. It'll feed 285,000 people. So, we just like, "We could get a million people fed in four containers and then turn the containers into fast-food restaurants in Mogadishu." Nobody will gather in restaurants, because somebody would drive a truck full of TNT in there. And so, people want to eat, but they want to pause for long perfect.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: So, I'm like, "Perfect." So that would be this breeding ground. Just get this idea and then just run with it, but the cadence for us is nine months of that, and then three months, Maria and the kids and I just disappear and go into this inlet in Canada, where we have a place. We're just off the grid. We grow our own food. We catch fish in the river. We make our electricity off of glacier. We're just out. There's no cell phones or there's no nothing. So, I would say you don't need to do extreme things like that. Find a park. You don't need to do three months out of the year. Do it three days out of the month or three hours out of the day or three minutes out of the hour.
But find something that's accessible instead of saying I'm busy. I would say, "Well I would find a cadence. It seems to work."
Jerrad: Man, okay. I could go on a whole nother podcast on just the whole like what you just said about you getting away for three months. You just laid out my dream. My dream [crosstalk 00:20:58]-
Bob: Well actually, you get to kind of decide some of those things too. I was a partner ... I think I had 25 other partners at this great big law firm. When my kids were a little taller than trout, and they could actually talk, and they were actually kind of fun to be around.
Jerrad: Right.
Bob: I told these partners of mine, I'm going to take three months and just spend it with my kids." They looked at me like I was wearing yellow boots and an umbrella. They were like, "We have this sabbatical program, and like after every 10 years, you get like nine minutes off." So I didn't argue with them, but on Monday, I wasn't there. I came back three months later. It was awesome. They were so ticked. I was like, "Whatever. Sue me," because if you need a dialysis, you'd go get it. You wouldn't wait for permission. You wouldn't push it because you got a meeting. You just get what you need. Get your dialysis when it comes to your kids.
Jerrad: Man, this is good.
Bob: Just say like, "That's immovable." And you know what? You'll lose a couple pretty good jobs that way. But what the heck? You'll get your family. You're not going to have to move into a double-wide, and if you did, it'll be the best-looking double-wide anywhere.
Jerrad: Yep. And you said once that the battle for our hearts are fought on the pages of our calendar, which I think is what you're getting at. There's so many guys who say, "Yeah, I just don't have time. I don't have time. I don't know how to be intentional with my time to lead my family and be present with my family."
Bob: Isn't that interesting, how that work that the very first thing in Scripture that God did is make time?
Jerrad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bob: And sometimes the last thing we do is make time. I'm like, I'm seeing a parallel there, but you get to just decide. So, for instance, I don't make ... I quit something every single Thursday. I just give it the boot, and including my own law firm. Two years ago, May, I walked into my entire law firm, on a Thursday, and I said, "We're done." I took the key off the ring and gave it to a guy, and I've never gone back.
Jerrad: Wow.
Bob: I've been clean and sober on being a lawyer and arguing with people for a couple years now, and that's what I want to do. I don't want to spend ... I've got like so little time. I'm not going to spend it just doing the things I'm able to do, trying to do the things I'm made to do. It seems like a small difference, but it's an important one to just say, "I'm able to play the banjo," but if you heard me play the banjo, I wasn't made to play the banjo. And many of the people that are listening are one or two jobs behind who God's turned them into. So, at the time you applied for the job it sounded great, because you wanted to get a house, and it may have been interesting to you, but you've moved on, which is the way it's supposed to work.
We blew up this law firm every year on December 31st for 30 years. I just said, "It's over." It's a one-year gig. And then it lets me reflect with Maria to say if I want to do it, and with each of the people that are working there, see if they want to do it. And don't do it just because we did last year. Let's do it because we want to do it again, because it's who God's made us to be, not just all the things we're capable of.
Jerrad: Bob, I know that you like to be out doing more than you like to be talking about doing, so I'm going to let you get back to all the fun stuff that you got going on. Thank you for spending a little bit of time with us. Do you have any parting words for the young dads and husbands who are listening right now?
Bob: The thing that occurs to me is that how we can ... The kind of people are going to take the time to listen to your podcast are usually pretty sensitive, self-aware, go-for-it people. The ones that's completely oblivious that has no clue, they're not listening to this podcast, because they're busy doing a bunch of the things that actually aren't that meaningful in their lives. And so, I would say to those that are listening, man, don't be too hard on yourself. Nobody has gone professional at loving their family. I've never seen anybody with like a leather suit like these NASCAR drivers, with these patches on how, like, Target has sponsored them, because there's such an awesome dad or mom or some.
So, don't be too hard on yourself. You're going to have a couple days. Things will go right in a couple days that they won't. But that beautiful thing, and you can look in your past too, that we're either reflections of or reactions to the people that have been closest to us. And so, you want your kids to ... I want mine to both reflect and react, so my kids are not just like me. But they're just delightfully different. Well you go be delightfully different from all the other moms and dads you've seen too. So, we can get these like little breadcrumbs that we leave behind, and there might be something that resonates, and totally go with that.
But if it doesn't work, and you're not a winner if you won, and you're not a loser if you lost, you're a participant because you tried.
Jerrad: Bob, thank you. I know you're a busy man. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with us and give us a few nuggets to think on.
Bob: Oh my pleasure. All right. So long.
Jerrad: All right. Bye-bye.