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[MUSIC]
0:41
[MUSIC]
0:48
This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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All right, guys, a little bit of a somber one today.
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Obviously, the name of the podcast is Fox Hole Funeral.
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And there was a death to a very, very special person in one of our Fox Holes this week.
1:02
And that was the death of David Paul Arrington.
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So he is the father of a guy in our Fox Hole who we'll talk about here in just a second.
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But we attended his funeral and I'll get into the wee part of it here in a little bit.
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And so this man died of COVID-19.
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He died and he left behind a wife, two children, grandkids.
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And of course, as with any funeral, it was a very, very sad time.
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This is the first person that I know of, kind of in a personal context that has died from COVID-19.
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Obviously, we've talked a lot about COVID-19 on this podcast, about how it's not nearly as bad as our reaction.
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But obviously, there are deaths.
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There are well over 300,000 deaths in the United States as of today.
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And one of them was David Arrington.
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So the funeral was a social distance funeral, a mass required kind of a deal.
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They had several overflow rooms just to kind of accommodate the social distancing that were going to be part of this.
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But it was very typical of a funeral in a lot of ways, very somber, you know, some words from Pastor.
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And then David's daughter came up and had some words to say and she gutted through that.
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But then it was the words of a guy from My Foxhole, JC.
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And so if you go back to episode 104 of this podcast, you will know him as JC that consistent.
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And if you want to know why I called him that, you can go back and listen for yourself, episode 104.
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But JC got up to do a eulogy for his father.
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And he even mentioned this from the outset of what he said.
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He said, they told him, you know, 300 to 600 words.
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Make sure you write it out so you can, you know, get through it, but also so that we can make sure that you don't really go go over time and blow the eight and those types of things.
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But right from the outset, JC was like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not sticking to 300 to 600 words.
2:42
So everybody buckle in, which I really appreciated.
2:46
And so I was so proud of JC as he was making his way through his eulogy for his control for his pace,
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for his tempo.
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There were some times when he got choked up two times, specifically one time, it was choked up out of anger at the virus, COVID-19.
3:05
He specifically said, I hate you, COVID-19, but he held it together through that.
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He told a amazing story about a nurse.
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And I guess I can go and tell it because you all don't know where this all took place.
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But at a certain point, JC's father, Dave, was not doing well.
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He frankly wasn't doing well from the moment he came down with symptoms of COVID-19.
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But they needed to transfer him to an ICU and luckily they had an ICU bed for him,
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but they would not let JC or the rest of his family know where he was in the hospital, right?
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Because he couldn't visit him like in that type of a thing.
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So JC and others were left outside the hospital, basically just lost for what they could do.
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And so all they could do was pray.
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And so that's what they did.
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They just prayed at the direction of the hospital.
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And I might get some of the details of the story wrong, but I think the journal just is going to be the same.
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But they begged the staff, would you please just let us know what wing of the hospital our father's on?
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Just so we can pray in that direction, even.
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And so what the nurse ended up doing is the nurse actually went into his father's room
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and waved to JC and the others that were there.
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And to kind of basically indicate that, hey, this is where your father is.
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But then not that long thereafter, he got a tremendous blessing.
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The nursing staff or one of the nurses came down to where he was outside
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and said, hey, do you want to go see your dad?
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And outside of normal protocol and outside of, you know, probably everything that they were supposed to do,
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which who actually gives a crap, they got JC in along with some family members.
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They took them up a back stairwell.
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They took him to a room where they got him in full PPE to where it would be safe for everybody else on that floor.
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And in the hospital, just in case they were infected, whatever the thing was.
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And then they took him in to go see his dad.
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And my understanding was, is he was not able to speak, but he was, you know, he was awake.
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He knew who was in the room.
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He knew what was being said, even though there wasn't kind of that normal communication.
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And not long after that, he actually passed away.
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And so JC got to actually say goodbye to his father, technically, in person,
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whereas a lot of people during this pandemic, because of lockdowns and because of all kinds of certain things,
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they've had to say, buy their family members through a window or on FaceTime or Zoom or something like that,
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you know, just horrible, horrible gut-wrenching stuff.
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But JC makes it through his eulogy.
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He was very poignant.
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He did a fantastic job.
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And it reminded me of something that Jordan Peterson talks about a lot.
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I can't remember if I've mentioned it on this podcast show or not.
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But he talks about how, as a man, you should try to have the strength to generate the strength
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to where you can be the person that everybody depends on at your own father's funeral.
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Because when you think about that, even if your father's healthy or if your father's already gone,
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that's, that's a visceral feeling you get when you hear someone say that.
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Be the guy that everyone can depend on at your father's funeral.
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When you're just wanting to wail and just go nuts and, you know, scream at the world and all that,
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you can't.
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Because people need to depend on somebody.
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So why not make that person you?
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And that's what I witness with JC, the consistent.
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That's what I witnessed in the run up to his father's death.
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And I wasn't witness it firsthand at the funeral.
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This young man walked down the aisle with, with strength.
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And his sister was on one side of him and his mother was on the other side.
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And, you know, JC is essentially dragging these women, holding them and carrying them down the aisle.
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Using his strength.
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He was, he was the anchor point for that family.
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And that was obviously a physical manifestation of that truth, but even not physically, even just figuratively.
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He's been that first family up until the death of his father Dave and thereafter.
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But there's something that I want to kind of talk about today, something that I noticed.
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Because even in all of the emotion and the negativity of what was going on and that type of a setting,
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when you're at a funeral for someone that died of a virus, I saw some things that I found that were very interesting.
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So again, this is JC the consistent. This is a member of my foxhole.
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And after the service, you don't have kind of the normal receiving line for the guests and the family.
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They basically took the family and put them in the choir section of the stage.
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And everyone, whenever they opened the casket, you could essentially walk by the family.
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But I mean, they were probably about 15 feet away or so.
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So you couldn't touch them, hug them, you know, kiss them, give them a handshake or any of that type of a thing.
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And the interesting thing about the funeral is who showed up?
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Because JC's foxhole showed up.
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There were 11 of us at my count that showed up from his foxhole.
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This is our Sunday night crew that reads books together, trains to Jiu Jitsu, works out, you know, does life together.
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And it was brutal, man.
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Not being able to go and give him a hug and all that, just, you know, walking by and just pad my chest saying,
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"Brother, I love you." You know, that kind of a thing.
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He probably couldn't even hear me because we all had masks on.
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But before I really continue with my story and with what's going on with the funeral,
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I want to kind of go back to episode 104 of this podcast, your foxhole.
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Because I talked a lot about what a foxhole is.
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And just to go through very, very briefly, I talked about how to identify a foxhole guy.
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And I gave you seven ways to help you identify who those guys are.
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One, a guy you see often.
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Two, a guy that is available.
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Three, a guy that you've watched make improvements in their life.
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Four, a guy that seems to always be striving.
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Five, a guy that quickly identifies mistakes he has made and moves to remedy them.
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Six, a guy that doesn't mind confronting you or others.
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And seven, a guy that voraciously loves their woman.
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J.C. checks all those boxes for me.
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But that's how you identify a foxhole guy.
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And then I also talked about what a foxhole guy isn't.
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And I gave you seven of those.
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A foxhole guy is not a pussy, a complainer, an excuse maker, a settler, an addict, a womanizer,
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or a bum.
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I even talked about how you could find foxhole guys.
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I get a lot of emails from people all over the world like, you know, how do I find foxhole
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guys?
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How do I develop it?
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And I just kind of threw out some examples, you know, it could be your family.
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It could be people at your church, which I urged everybody to proceed with caution.
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More on that in a second.
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You know, your Jiu Jitsu Academy, your gym, your social club at work, you know, there
9:52
are other places to find those foxhole guys.
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Now, you even talked about how you can kick guys out of your foxhole, which I won't really
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go into here.
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But when you get your foxhole started, there are some things that you should do.
10:03
And I talked about how you should meet weekly.
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You should actually do stuff together.
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You should go on an adventure at least once a year, just basically do life together.
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You should be vulnerable with this group of people.
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You should never stop pushing one another.
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And there are others.
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But here's to kind of pick back up because that's the foxhole concept.
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That's what a lot of you guys have attached yourself to in later podcast episodes after
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104.
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I talked about 3 AM friends, right?
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Those guys that are, you know, you call them at three o'clock in the morning, you can
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already hear them putting on their boots and grabbing their keys because they're, you know,
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they're ready to head to you because they know if you're calling at 3 AM and something bad.
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But as I'm sitting there at the funeral, I'm kind of looking around because you know, you're
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looking for people that you recognize or, you know, someone that you might need to say
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hi to or something like that, you know, just in her scan in the room.
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And there's one thing that I noticed and it was who was there, but also who was not there
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because who was there, as I've already mentioned, was J.C.'s foxhole.
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This ragtag group of guys that gets together on Sunday nights and we get a little rough
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and tumble play in and we read books and kind of do all that stuff.
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But you know who wasn't there?
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This is church family, supposed family.
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Because this guy, J.C. and I, we were in a Sunday school at this particular church that
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we go to for a very long time together.
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And then, you know, I kind of split off into another Sunday school group.
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It wasn't like a bad split.
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It was just, hey, the group got a little big and so some people went over here and some
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people stayed.
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J.C. stayed.
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And so he has been in this Sunday school group, right?
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It's a couple Sunday school group.
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As you know, in their, you know, 30s and 40s, you know, two, three, four, five kids, that
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type of a thing, there was one guy from his Sunday school that decided that it was worth
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their time and effort to drive from Oklahoma City to El Reno about 50 minutes, 45, 50 minutes,
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spinning on how fast you drive to support J.C. as father's funeral, one out of a group
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of two dozen or more guys, one.
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None of the wives of those guys showed up to support J.C.'s wife, who was basically like
12:22
a daughter to Dave, treated as such, basically from day one, none of them.
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One guy showed up.
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And this is the caution.
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There are fake friends out there.
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There are friends that are just friends whenever they see you in person.
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And then you have your, oh, how's everything going?
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Everything's great, church friends.
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That's apparently what this guy has.
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And I just could not believe what I was seeing when I was looking around and not seeing anybody
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else there.
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And this isn't to, you know, Pat, my group on the back and all, aren't we so good and
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all that, but I just couldn't believe it.
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I couldn't believe that they wouldn't support this man.
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He has poured into their lives and they've poured into his supposedly and he's helped
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teach that class and done everything he could to support for years.
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And none of them show up.
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The reason why I bring this up.
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The reason why I'm doing a whole episode essentially about this and it's not just the
13:25
honor of the life of David Arrington is because I want you to be careful.
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I want you to be aware that those guys at church that you think are your buddies.
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They might not be.
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Those are your six PM friends.
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If you call them before about six, seven PM every night, they'll probably be there to
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help you.
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They're probably not your three AM friends.
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And that's what I want to warn you about.
13:59
There's a lot of us, especially if you grew up in the south or the Midwest where churches
14:04
are just kind of like all over the place.
14:05
There's more churches than there are Starbucks.
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You get this idea that the men that you see there, the men in your Sunday school, the men
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in your home group or whatever, that those, those guys are, those are your real dudes.
14:18
If the, you know what hits the fan, those are the guys that are going to be there because
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I've always been suspicious of that in being like, I don't really know if those guys would
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actually be there for me.
14:29
Like those guys, I don't even know if they would donate sweat to me, much less blood.
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And I feel like that's what we saw at this funeral this last week, that this guy had
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a lot of folks in his life that are his friends for about an hour on a Sunday.
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But when he's really needed, when you really need in a situation, you're absent.
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So what do we have that's actionable from this?
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It's actionable from this is I think you should test your friend groups and you might
15:05
do that in a number of ways, but there are ways to find out before tragedy strikes, whether
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or not they're going to actually be there for you when you need them.
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Because for JC's sake, I'm ecstatic that he had this foxhole because he had 11 guys
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there, right, which is essentially how many guys show up on a Sunday night.
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It's usually between, you know, 10 and 15 guys.
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It pretty much had the whole foxhole there for him and the guys that couldn't make it
15:30
because they were out of town or couldn't get off work or had COVID themselves or whatever
15:34
the situation was, they all reached out to him.
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They all made a point to reach out to him, to say how much they love him and how much
15:41
we're there for him.
15:44
And if they need anything that we were going to be there.
15:48
So my encouragement to you guys is to look at the guys in your life and think will they
15:54
actually be there and just go through some of the standards I put for a foxhole that I
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mentioned earlier.
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Just go back and listen to the earlier part of this podcast.
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Again, go listen to podcast 104 if you want a little bit of a deeper dive because if these
16:08
guys don't check those boxes, they're probably not going to be there for you.
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And when times are really, really tough, when you lose a close family member, you lose your
16:18
job, you lose your business, something dire, something kind of foundation cracking happens
16:24
in your life.
16:26
Who's going to be there?
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Because for a lot of guys around the world and certainly in the United States, the answer
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is no one.
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No one's going to be there.
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You will be completely alone.
16:40
I talked about suicide back around Thanksgiving.
16:43
The suicidality in the United States for men is about four times that of women.
16:48
Part of that is because of how we deal with relationships and how women easily get and
16:52
maintain relationships going and men just don't.
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That we just kind of assume it'll be just like school, high school or college.
17:01
We assume it'll be like the police academy or boot camp.
17:04
And when you're in your 40s and 50s, you just don't have those things anymore.
17:09
And how potentially damaging that can be.
17:13
And so I'm going to implore you guys again, and I will continue to do so.
17:16
This certainly won't be the last time to develop a foxhole, a real foxhole of guys that will
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be there at the drop of a hat when you ask guys that will be there before the hat drops
17:31
without you having to ask guys that will make time in their busy schedules to drive on
17:39
a Wednesday morning to support you at your father's funeral, regardless of what their
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wife says, regardless of what the people at work say, regardless of how inconvenient it
17:49
might be to them to do that.
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Develop those relationships because they're important and you never know when you're going
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to need them.
17:59
Proverbs 1824 says this, a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who
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sticks closer than a brother.
18:10
And Jason Arrington has no blood brothers, he has one sibling and it's a sister.
18:15
But on that day, in those pews in that church, he had 11 brothers, all from one foxhole.
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So this episode is to serve as a memorial, but it's also to serve as a congratulations.
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Congratulations to JC for being such a strong role model to be an inspiration to so many,
18:41
including me.
18:43
But this podcast will serve forever as a memorial to the memory of David Paul Arrington, born
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October 8, 1954, died December 23, 2020.
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Guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
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We really do appreciate it.
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I'm going to skip the normal announcements today.
19:02
You guys know what all that looks like, but I will let you know what the quick resilience
19:05
boost is for today.
19:06
It is a message from Jocko Willink.
19:08
So there's a YouTube episode that he released around New Year's Eve.
19:13
It's called We Have Not Been Defeated, marching into a new year 2021.
19:17
So he tells a story that he's told in other podcasts before, or that he's gone into another
19:22
podcast, but then he kind of gives us some messages going into 2021.
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
19:28
Remember, keep cultivating mainly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical
19:33
toughness.
19:34
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
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