Own the Season: Grief, Single Parenting & Blending a Family

A text that changes everything. A nap that becomes a goodbye. And a father who chooses hope, presence, and integrity to lead four girls through a storm they never asked for. Pastor and nonprofit leader Jonathan Pitts shares the story behind sudden loss, the quiet courage of daily faith through single parenting, blending a family, and how a small resource grew into a magazine serving thousands of tween girls and their families. 

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome & Guest Introduction
• 0:24 Jonathan’s Ministry Background
• 1:14 Marriage, Early Family, and Calling
• 3:21 Winter’s Calling and For Girls Like You
• 5:21 The Day Everything Changed
• 6:34 Moving, Community, and Early Healing
• 7:48 Remarriage, New Trials, New Son
• 9:05 Parenting Across Eras and Tech
• 9:50 Faith as Anchor in Grief
• 12:10 Living Present: Counsel and Practice
• 13:29 Blending a Family: Fears and Oneness
• 16:24 Integrity at Home Over Image
• 18:07 Owning the Season and Leading Through Tension
• 20:47 For Girls Like You Details & Offer
• 22:20 How to Connect & Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Welcome to the Next Tech podcast. We are a nonprofit passionate about keeping kids safe online. We're learning together how to navigate tech, culture, and faith with our kids. Today on the show, I have Jonathan Pitt. Jonathan, thanks for being here. You want to introduce yourself to our audience?

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Hey Mandy, yeah, I'm glad to be with you. And uh yeah, I guess I'll uh say I am a pastor in Franklin, Tennessee. Uh I uh lived in Texas 14 years, uh, but I've basically been 20 years in ministry, pastoral ministry for probably half of that. And then was the exact executive director for a ministry called the Urban Alternative, which is a ministry of Dr. Tony Evans. If people know the Evans family, maybe. But I've really grown up in kind of a nonprofit ministry world. I still run a ministry for uh my late wife Winter Pitts and uh called for Girls Like You, which is the magazine. So I've got like a lot of different things going on. Um, every day's pretty interesting, but um, more than anything else, um, I've got a big family that I love. I love God. I'm just a regular dude. So yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07

A lot of ministry experience. Tell us about your family, and you said your late wife Winter. Walk us through that story.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

I met um Winter in college in 2001, and we got married soon after graduating in 2003. We're just college sweethearts and got married, and by God's grace, I was not I was living kind of a hypocritical Christian life when I met her. Um, she was doing less so, but maybe a little bit disconnected from from her faith. And really the Lord would, when we met, he would really just kind of spur us on towards um yeah, just the things of God. So we kind of both rededicated our lives to Christ at kind of a young age. And uh we graduate from Drexel University, Drexel University in Philly in uh 20, 2003, get married. We had our first daughter, Alina, at 24. So some would consider that young. I didn't at the time, I thought it was kind of normal, but we'd have one baby and then we'd proceed to have four babies in five years, um, all girls, our youngest two being twins. And we actually would move to Texas um pretty early on um in our marriage. So my girls were basically raised in Dallas, Texas for the first 14 years of my oldest daughter's life. My other three were born there. And so um, yeah, we uh found ourselves in marriage and life, and um, I I would basically fall into ministry by accident. I was a guy trying to make a bunch of money, and God called me into ministry. I took all of my call administrative relationship gifts and just gave it to the Lord in vocational ministry. That's a whole nother story for another day. But um winter actually would feel like God was calling her to come home early on. And she actually uh, you know, a couple years in that she wasn't like the baking bread um you know, homeschool mom type of uh type of mom. She she felt like God called her home, but it was a real it was hard. And so she just would embody that scripture, delight yourself in the Lord, he'll give you the desires of your heart. She actually had that scripture on her on her prayer wall in our closet. And eventually God would give her um a ministry, and she just wanted to create a resource for our oldest daughter who was seven at the time, and that would become for Girls Like You Magazine, which has really been like this family ministry that has been in my family now for 14 years. And so um, but yeah, the long story short, at 38 years of age, we were married 15 years. Um we actually were in the middle of a transition from Dallas, where we've been for 14 years, to Franklin, Tennessee. I was taking on a role as an executive pastor um for a large church called Church in the city, where I'm still at, um, after uh 14 years of working in what I call the Evans brand of ministry. And um, we were finishing my last week of work. We had already bought our house in um in Franklin. And um, on the Tuesday of my last week of work, Winter would text me and say, I don't feel well. And I was I text back, like, what's going on? And she never responded. So I just went home. I say home, but we were staying at one of her family members' guest homes. And um anyway, we ended up um I ended up coming home and she's doing hair with my sister-in-law, her brother's wife, and my daughters and their daughters, they're all just doing each other's hair and just kind of hanging out in the living room. And I took a power nap. I got up, I remember walking by her, and she needed to take a power nap. And she was finishing um the last book that she would author, um, uh a prayer book for girls. And uh she she had to work that night, and I just knew, like, let her take a nap, you fix dinner. We kind of knew each other, we didn't have to talk at that. And then those moments, you know, you are when you're married for that amount of time. And so she laid down to take a nap. Um, I went into the bathroom to floss my teeth because we had Costco ribs, which I've never eaten again and wanted again. And I remember flossing my teeth and looking out, and she um she sat up and then she just slumped over in kind of an awkward way. And uh what I didn't realize at the time is that she had a heart just her heart got off rhythm, the call heart just rhythmia, and um she collapsed, and um that would be uh I don't know, 30 of the scariest minutes of my life that um would end with her sudden um entry into eternity with the Lord. And so um that began a pretty crazy journey for me. I had four girls that were again then 14, 11, my twins were nine. We had already bought a house in a new town, I'd accepted a job in a new town, and what's crazy about God is he um he basically told my oldest daughter, and she came to me and said, Dad, uh she said, Dad, are we this is while we're planning the funeral, uh she's like, Dad, are we still going to Nashville? My boss had already told me if you want to sell this house and get your stuff back to Dallas, you can. I could have gone back into my role. I could have secluded down into our family, the Evans family, which is a beautiful family that are still my family. Um, and she said, I said, uh, we have to pray about it, you know, and just see what God wants. And she said, Well, I feel like we're supposed to go because mom was more excited than any of us. And so we would we would bury Winter in Dallas, and then my girls would go to Pine Cove Christian camps, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with. They had they already had a week planned to go there, so we buried her. Sorry, we did a funeral on a Saturday, we did a sunrise uh uh burial on that Sunday morning, and then we drove my girls to camp. And what's really beautiful for me is um I know Pine Cove is such a special place for us, but it was probably one of the only places in the world I knew I I knew I could drop my kids off, and they would be encouraged and build up in truth while I could also get some time to recover from yeah, the most hellacious kind of week of my life. And so that began kind of a new journey. We'd we'd move on to to Franklin. And what I what I love to say is Franklin is just like such a wonderful place to heal. Like people come here to heal. And what I would say is I've received um early on uh a couple of really beautiful years of grieving and healing, and also support to you know help with my girls. My sister would move in with me. She had never been married, never had kids. She moved in with me and became a surrogate mom of my girls. And um, yeah, that was a beautiful season. And then I would eventually meet my now wife, uh, Pita is her name, my beautiful wife and best friend, which is weird to even be able to say that. Uh that's probably a mysterious kind of saying for someone that heard the first part of my story, but um, God had another plan for my life. Um, I've been married now for four years, and we'd have some grief. We lost uh we had miscarriage, we had a stillborn son, um, and then uh at 38 weeks, which was really painful. We held him in our arms and all that and said goodbye to him. And then um eventually we'd have another son, uh, Jonathan, my namesake, Jonathan Joshua Arrow. We call him Arrow. And so now I have five children, been married for four years, 19 total years of marriage, but four years in my current marriage. And God's just really faithful. I still run for girls like you, I still pastor church the city. Um I don't know if I'm giving you more than when you want, but um anyway, my I felt I find life to be really beautiful right now, and in some ways I'm in this place where I'm like, all right, God, what do you have now? Because um I'm kind of in this settled place now. You know, it's weird to kind of have I've had really seven years of massive transition, and now I'm kind of like, okay, I'm in my new life, I'm kind of settled, I'm raising my my I've got one that's married for a year now, I've got one that's launched at Baylor University, I've got twins that are juniors and a newborn baby. So I'm I'm in a lot of seasons at once right now, Mandy. It's pretty crazy. And having to, you know, it's funny thinking about kind of what you do. I've had to do um technology with kids in a lot of different ways over all these years. And by the way, when I finish with this boy, who I think is my last, um, I'll have been parenting 39 years parenting minders, which is a lot of years of parenting minders. So pray for me, I got a lot of years ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 8:49

So well, and technology is changing so fast. So how you parented your older girls and how you're gonna have to parent your son is gonna look different as well.

SPEAKER_00: 9:00

I want to need all the hope in the world I can get.

SPEAKER_02: 9:02

I got you, I got you. Okay, so I want to unpack this because you know, winter passed suddenly. You did not expect it, and all of a sudden you're a single dad. And it sounds like you had a great family support system to help you manage that, but still it was on you. You were the dad. And you were also grieving your wife. So, you know, I look at that and I think, man, how does somebody with no faith get through something like that? Like how important was your faith in that time? Because you're happy. You're, you know, we know how the story ends for you. You're you're in a great relationship, married again, you know, and this is amazing. But but in that moment in that dark of night when your life has just completely blindsided you as to what you thought it would look like. Speak into that about your faith and and that journey with being a single dad and helping them walk through their grief as well.

SPEAKER_00: 10:03

Yeah, I mean, honestly, like I don't know what I would have done without faith. It's funny, I I do a lot of pastoral um, not counseling, but you know, obviously a lot of pastoral conversations with people, a lot who have lost because of my story, a lot of grieving people. And I'd say there's a stark difference between the person who is walking by faith and the person who's not, because the person who's walking by faith has some level of understanding of the purposes of God, are grander and more mysterious than we could have ever imagined before. And so, and I I would say to the degree that you're more mature in Christ, it doesn't make the pain any less. You feel the pain, the pain is real, the pain is there. But there is a level, you know, I think scripture says we don't grieve as those who have no hope. Um, because that's that's true and that's real. So for me, like a couple things I want to say. First of all, I knew by the power of the Holy Spirit when Turg died that God obviously had new purpose for me, new purpose for my girls, new purpose for everybody connected to her. And that's a weird thing to both feel the pain of the loss of someone, but also have in the back of your mind there's almost like this, I don't want to call it cognitive dissonance, but there is this reality of, I guess, multiple um realities at once, like this reality of like I just lost the most significant person I've ever had in my life. Also, I know she's with the Lord. Also, I know that I knew that she fulfilled the purpose of, you know, the Bible says that David served the purposes of God for his life. This is in Acts, in Acts 13, I think. David served the purposes of God for in his life for his generation, and then he fell asleep. And Dr. Remens used to preach on that all the time. So I had like this awareness of like, wow, like God will not allow any of us to leave this world without fulfilling the purpose that he has for us if we're in Christ. And so, like, I'm like, I have all these realities going on at once. And so for me, there was some level of like, um, I don't even want to call it peace, but I do want to call it um, maybe hope is probably the better word. There was this hope that God was doing something despite the circumstances that were happening. Didn't mean there wasn't doubt, didn't mean there wasn't wrestle, didn't mean there wasn't, there was a lot of fear. Um, but there was like this purpose that I felt in it. Um, that was also really helpful and true because I had these four girls, and I knew that if we were gonna make it, if my girls were gonna make it, I had to be okay. And so there was there, I think there's this thing that God does for parents that you you realize that I've got this job to do, and that job is greater than even myself. Like my my ability to parent these girls is greater than my need to parent these girls is greater than my need to even be healthy myself. Now, I can only be I can only parent them well if I'm healthy myself. So there's you got all these things going on, but I but there was something about having my girls that this purpose in that that was also really fulfilling. But I think the biggest thing for me when it comes to my faith is, and it comes down to one scripture, Philippians 4.8, it's my life scripture, I think, at this point. Yeah, Paul says earlier, Philippians 4.4, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice, let your gentleness be known to all the Lord is near. And then he goes on to say, uh, whatever this is Philippians 4.8, whatever is true, whatever is right, whatever is honorable, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. A lot of theologians would call that the celebration or the discipline of celebration. Like that celebration is actually not just like something we do, it's something we discipline ourselves to do. And we have to discipline ourselves. Imagine Paul saying that as a prisoner to a persecuted church. That's what was happening. Paul was talking to a persecuted church, so he's not giving these words from some mansion, you know, in, you know, he's not like this mega church pastor just enjoying the vine life. Like he's like this guy that's gone through a hard time. And so I would say those words from Paul, which were already kind of etched on my soul, became real and necessary for me in that moment in a way they had never been before. And I'm thankful that they were there. I'm thankful that my parents like literally did all they could do to equip my siblings and I to like just feed us the word of God, whether we wanted or not, by the way, they were feeding us the word of God. And at some level, at some point, it just took root and it took root and it took root. And that saved my life. I promise you, it saved my life in the hardest moments of my life. And frankly, you know, it's funny because even with my girls, like I would say it saved their lives because it saved my life saved my life. But ultimately, even like there was this part of me, and I have to acknowledge this, there's this part of me that is always future forward focused. It's just how God's wired me. So, like the easier thing for me in grief, so there's two kinds of people. There's those of us that look forward in grief, and we just go, okay, I gotta keep going, productivity, all that. And then there's those of us that want to stay behind in grief, and we um we want to just stay in the past. And my counselor told me when I was in um grief counseling, when I was like, I had this propensity to just be like, okay, what do I do? What do I do? What's next? He said, Jonathan, you can't live in the future and you can't live in the past. All you can do is live in the present. And so, anyway, that's really been the desire of my my life. I don't get it right any day, um, but it's just to live where I'm presently at. And I would say for for anybody walking through grief, but really for anybody walking through life, that's like the goal of our life is just to be present, you know. Um, so I said more than you probably wanted me to there, but um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:09

It was beautiful, and that was a word for all of us because we all to be present, no matter what we have going on. We all have mountains and valleys that we're we're on in this life.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

Yeah, and our in our age, it's probably both at the same time, pretty much uh all the time. It's like there's mountains and valleys at the same time that we're having to navigate. So that's a good point.

SPEAKER_02: 15:28

That is absolutely true. Um okay, so you're you're grieving and that's a process, and you're single dadding, and you know, you're doing all of this with the Lord's drink. And then you meet PETA. And help me walk me through that because I immediately go to happiness for you, but also like, oh, your girls, how did that, how did that, how did they handle that?

SPEAKER_00: 15:53

Yeah. Yeah, I would say um family blending. I think this is true. I say it all the time now, but I think it's true, that family blending for me was scarier than walking with my girls through grief because with grief, my girls and I were on the same team. We're all grieving differently, and there was like this, there was the biggest challenge in grief is I have to give my girls space to grief differently than I did grieve. And some are slower, some are more angry, some are more withdrawn, where I'm more vocal. Um, so that was there was like a leadership in walking through grief, but we were all on the same page. We had all lost the same person that was the most important person in our life to that point. And then all of a sudden, I meet the person who uh is quickly becoming the most important person in my life. And I'm realizing that I'm like, I'm falling in love with this person, and and this person is heaven sent to me. Like, I can tell like God's doing this. But that's not the same for not just my girls, but anybody else in my life. For everybody else in my life that knew Winter, there's this new person that really changes the story in a way that I would say most people weren't comfortable with. And by the way, like even for me, like I was a bit uncomfortable with because in some ways, like I've got, you know, I've got this relationship with a person that I love, 15 years of marriage. And the hard thing is, and this is, I don't know, maybe some of the other listeners have experienced this, like, you know, oneness is I'd say oneness is kind of threefold. I'm not a I'm not like a psychologist or I'm not a I'm I'm I don't have the degrees to say this, but I would say oneness is physical, oneness is um emotional, and oneness is spiritual. So when Winter died physically, we were no longer one. But the process of like emotionally and spiritually becoming unone with somebody, which has to happen because you can't become one with another person on this earth if you're one with the person that passed. So like I had all this work to do emotionally and spiritually, which spiritually I say is trusting God, like trusting God that He He gives and He takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Like, you know, think about your vows in marriage, like until death do us part. You know, you have all these things that you say that you don't realize until you have to realize, like, oh, that's now ending. And I have to trust, I have to trust winter into the hands of the Lord, and I have to trust that if God's giving me this new assignment, then I have to go all in on this oneness. And that's a process, and that's grievous for me. Uh, that's grievous for those around me. And so um, yeah, that was um the thing that I learned uh in in losing winter. I I had to go, I'll always be a dad leading through grief. And that was more true in um the family blending than it's ever been true. Like that was the biggest decision I made that invoked grief, not just for my girls, but for everybody around me. And me, by the way, and and my my now wife. Like it invokes grief for all of us because you have to reconcile with this world that we don't really understand, these mysteries we don't understand. And so that was a challenge. Um, you know, we're four years in now, and what I would say is God is so faithful and so good, and our family is closer than we've ever been. You know, obviously there's lots of insecurity and fear, and I would also say there's um for all of us, I want to be careful how I say it, but I think for all of us, including me, we can't help but make um idols out of even our own identity, who we are, who we think we are. And God's always coming for that. He's always breaking down like anything that we put our identity in beyond him. And that can be our marriage, that can be our children, that can be the type of family we have, that can be our family structure. And so I would just say that God, um, in his kindness, but also in his wild, scary nature, he came for a lot of that in us. And um, you know, he's always doing a new thing, and for us to do the new thing with him, we also we have to be willing to let the old thing go. And I'm not saying like winter, like winter is with the Lord, and she's always a part of our family in some mysterious kingdom way, but like he's doing something new, and to follow him the new thing, we have to actually die to ourselves. We have to die to what we thought our life was going to be. And so I was the guy leading my entire family through that in some ways still, you know, like we're always leading through that. Um, but what I can say is um I never imagined my family being as whole and healthy as we are now, even though we're all different. Like my girls are very different than each other, like everything's different, we're all different, and there's gotta just be grace for that, you know. But I would say like what we have, like we've got this very great diversity of people in our family, but this great unity in our family. And I would say um my son has probably been kind of the icing on the cake for that. Like he's he's blood with me, he's blood with his sisters, he's blood with my wife. So he kind of he's like this unifying force in our family that I'm really grateful for. So I'm grateful for him beyond that, but I'm grateful for for how that he was a big part of that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:54

How God is using him in that way to kind of to kind of bring you guys all together. You know, we're big around here at Next Talk about open communication and having a healthy dialogue. And I just, as I listened to you speak, with all these moving parts and all these emotions and you said we we all processed grief differently. Some of us were more vocal, some of us got quiet, some of us, and then all of a sudden you start dating and you fall in love again, all these moving parts, and then still grieving every day for winter. How important was maintaining a healthy dialogue and that open conversation in your relationships with all of these moving parts within your family?

SPEAKER_00: 21:35

Yeah, really important. Um, after winter passed away, there were some things I was like probably too honest with my girls in, like bring almost bringing them into decision making, because I'm like, all of a sudden I don't have my partner. And I'm like, I remember like at times asking my oldest daughter, like, hey, what do you think about what we should do here with your younger sister? And I'll never I'm so grateful for a wise oldest daughter because she's like, Dad, I don't know. I don't feel like I can help you with that. It's just like I in some ways I was inviting my girls into too much, but in other ways there were there, like it was funny, especially around dating. There was a there was a moment where I was trying to actually keep my girls um out of my life, so to say, and it backfired. And I'll spare I'll spare you the story, but it was um it was it was a difficult moment. And so I had this moment with my girls where I just determined to be honest with them about the things that I needed to be really honest with them about, and then obviously be thoughtful as a parent in what's not helpful for my kids to know about you know my decision making. And so that it's all it's always a tricky balance because that depends on the age of your child, that depends on the maturity of your child, that depends on the nature of the thing that you're thinking about. Uh, I'm really grateful with with my wife with PETA. Before we did that, we actually had friends that felt like the Lord was telling them to introduce us, a common friend. And um, the morning I was gonna meet her on a Zoom call. And this COVID, I'm uh I'm in I'm a pastor in uh in in Franklin, Tennessee, and my wife is this Australian actor in in LA, and I'm just like, we have nothing in common. We don't know anybody in common except this one person. I'm nervous out of my mind. I remember walking outside at like 5 a.m. I can't sleep, and my daughter's out there journaling, my oldest daughter. And I remember just had having made this conscious decision to say, I'm gonna let I'm gonna let her know that um I'm having this conversation um with this woman. I'm I don't I don't know what's gonna happen. I'm just having this conversation. And I it was really cold because I felt like our like my relationship with PETA started with like this really this very honest place with my daughter, just being like, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm talking to this woman, and would share that with my younger daughters as well. And so it I I wouldn't say it made it not I wouldn't say it made it easy. It wasn't easy, but um, but I do think like honesty is important. I think discernment's important and how we talk about the things that we need to talk about with our kids. I've never gotten it perfect. So the thing that I've always been sure to do is always go back if I've said something wrong, if I've said something in the wrong energy, the wrong emotion, out of fear. Like I always go back, I apologize to my girls, I own it, you know. I ask them how they receive certain things, you know. So it's been this is a hard thing to talk about because I I think from the sake of my daughters, I try to spare, you know, specific things, you know, in a way. Um, but yeah, I've I've I've had to do a lot of recovery with my girls. Um, and that's through conversation and through admitting error, admitting fault, admitting, hey dad didn't say that perfect. I didn't react perfect to how you reacted to what I said. You know, it's like there's so much that you know, there's so much immaturity that's brought out in us based on the immaturity of our kids. And I think when it surfaces, we have to be willing to actually acknowledge that. And yeah, that's been that's been a journey. And really loss and then family blending has has brought that to the surface in a way that I never even thought possible because it's such a vulnerable place and there's so much emotion around it. I mean, there's there's so much emotion around family blending. I I I honestly I don't know how families do it, you know. Um, I've done it now and I still don't know how families do it. I really feel like it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_02: 25:02

Well, I one of the things that you said when you answered that was being vulnerable. And I think that you portray that beautifully in the sense of I don't always get it right, but I'm just honest. Like this is me trying to figure everything out right now with with my life and where we're going as a family. And I think that is thrive on that, I believe, because they see so much fake on social media, right? They see it. People post one way, live in life a different way, a double life. And the more authentic and vulnerable we can be at home, even when we don't get it right, but just going back and like you said, apologizing, that right there is relationship-building gold to me. You know, just the authentic and the vulnerability side.

SPEAKER_00: 25:47

Yeah, but you make a good point. I think the integrity of what we say and the way we live is is the most important thing. And like I think about my own childhood and my parents who weren't perfect, but amazing, godly couple, been married 50 years. The thing that kept me in the faith, even when I questioned, even when I, you know, wrestled with like even um rebellion, was my parents were very um, there was a real integrity between what they said. And I don't mean integrity in the way we think about it, I mean integrity as in like there was a consistency between what they said and how they lived. And so I've always sought to like try to really be that um and model that. So even like when it comes to like there's a time and point where we as parents have to make decisions. We have to make decisions around am I gonna give my kid a phone? Uh, am I gonna allow my kid to date? Whatever the thing is, we have to make decisions. And I think the most important thing when we make a decision is we have to we also have to have a conviction about our decision. But if our kids know that there's an integrity between how we live and what we say, I think it makes a massive difference. Where otherwise they're just like, you can't even manage your own life. Why are you trying to manage my you know? They don't say that, but I think that's kind of like in the background, the hum.

SPEAKER_02: 26:58

Well, I think that's, you know, I mean, in my personal opinion, Christian parents, that's how we mess up our kids the most. When we look a certain way at church and we don't live it out in our home in private when they see us behind closed doors, like how we treat people, how we talk about people, how everything. Like that's the Jesus that we're living out, if we're claiming Jesus. And so I think you're so on there with the integrity. And I love how you point it out. I think that's a word for all of us that even when you struggled with your faith as a as a young guy, that you would maintain the integrity that you saw behind the closed doors with your parents. And it it it spoke something to you, it did something to your faith, it solidified it.

SPEAKER_00: 27:41

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 27:43

I think it's a call for all of us to make sure we don't we we have a saying around here, look in the mirror, see what you're doing wrong, and fix it because how important is that in building the relationship with your kid? And I think that's exactly what you're saying. Any other parting words of wisdom to anybody out there blending a family or walking through grief or a single dad season? Any any other words of wisdom?

SPEAKER_00: 28:07

Yeah, I think there's lots I could say, but I think um what I want to encourage anybody that's walking through, whatever that season is, is just to own the season. You know, like there's this reality. Like when I when I finally, because the hardest thing for me, I never realized I was angry and in loss or in my in my grief because I didn't have rage. But anytime something happened that I didn't like in that in that grief, I would say, I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for this. And finally, my counselor would say, Hey, just so you know, that's like that's that's actually anger surfacing. And like, it's good because that's a part of the process. Um, but long story short, when I decided that like that when I finally had that anger, I had to make this decision, okay, what am I going to do with this? And then there's a benefit to anger. Um and for me, that benefit was actually being willing to just like be where I am and have to figure out how do I do this, how do I live this. And for me, it was like I started to say to myself this other phrase, you'll always be a dad leading through grief. Like I just like accepted the reality of where I am. You'll always be a dad leading through grief. And so when something would surface out of grief, I I no longer gave myself the right to just like be bothered. So like, no, this is where I am, this is what I'm doing. I'll always be a dad leading through grief. In the same way, I I I've never really vocalized this, I didn't I didn't have to say it because I knew it to be true. Like, I'll always be a dad leading through blending. Like I'm I'm leading through the blending of a family. I'm sure, uh and I've already experienced it, like weddings and all these important dates where mom's not going to be there, winter's not gonna be there, and life looks different than you thought it would be, and then what you wanted. And there's just like this weird tension that you have to walk through. And so no matter what you're going through, like there's gonna be this tension you have to walk through. And I would say the more you can actually just accept the circumstance you're in, trusting that God can actually enter that circumstance. The better off you're gonna be, rather than despising it, rather than being bitter about it. That's a choice. Like I can be bitter. Like I had even when I married PETA, there were moments where I had people reacting to what I was walking into in ways that I'm like, man, that doesn't feel godly or kind or helpful. And it and I had to actually just be okay, I had to embrace it and be like, okay, I'm I'm I'm leading through grief in this moment. So like this is the leadership that God is that that God has put me here. It's not it's not my doing, God has put me here. So how do I actually just embrace that and walk in it in a way um that's pleasing to God? So um yeah, just embrace where you're at.

SPEAKER_02: 30:37

That's a word for anyone, you know, own the season. I I loved how you said that. How can people contact you? And and also let's talk about for girls like you as we wrap up, too. It's it's a magazine for twin girls, and it it's still going strong.

SPEAKER_00: 30:52

Yeah, we've got thousands of girls across the country, every state in the country, all around the English-speaking world, but it's a it's a print magazine. So it comes in the mail in your daughter's name bi-monthly, so every other month um the magazine comes out and it's for twin girls. So we say like a mature seven, eight-year-old that has can read at a pretty high level, up to 12. And you know, we have some girls that read beyond that, but it just really depends on kind of the maturity of that girl. Um, but yeah, it's every other month. And uh I think um if they subscribe, uh with a discount code. What is that, man? Oh, next talk 20, 20% off, next talk 20. But it's really content for girls trying to encourage them in their faith and come alongside families to support them, Christian families and raising Christian girls. So it's gonna be encouragement, age appropriate. You know, we're not coming at topics that you know an eight, nine, ten-year-old's not able to digest and think about. So we want the parent to be leading that. But outside of that, I'm at Church of the City, I'm a pastor at Church of the City, I love pastoring here. So if you ever find yourself in Franklin, Tennessee, you could um come out and visit our church. But um, you can also find me at uh Instagram's kind of where I where I live on social. So it's PittsJr26. That's my Instagram. And then for girls like you, it's at for F-O-R for Girls Like You. And that's kind of all the social handles for girls like you. So I'm grateful to have joined you, Mandy.

SPEAKER_02: 32:12

Well, I thank you for all you're doing for the kingdom of God, your ministries, and um man, the the amazing family that you're raising.

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

Uh well, thank you. Um I count myself privileged to have my beautiful girls, my wife, my daughter, it's it's or my son. It's it's it's all pretty much a gift from God. So grateful.

SPEAKER_02: 32:30

So thank you for sharing your journey with us.

SPEAKER_01: 32:33

Thanks, Mandy. Next Talk is a 501c3 nonprofit keeping kids safe online. To support our work, make a donation at next talk.org. Next talk resources are not intended to replace the advice of a trained healthcare or legal professional, or to diagnose, treat, or otherwise render expert advice regarding any type of medical, psychological, legal, financial, or other problem. You are advised to consult a qualified expert for your personal treatment plan.