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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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Behold, children are heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
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Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.
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Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.
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We shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
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That is Psalm 127, three through five guys, guys, guys, I am back in the studio.
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I'm back, baby.
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I mean, this has been the longest break that I've taken from recording in the history
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of this podcast.
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We saw this podcast back in 2017, if you can believe it.
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And when we had our first kid, I took a little bit of a break.
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You know, got a bunch of stuff ready to go, but the podcast is much bigger now.
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We've expanded, you know, we've doubled, excuse me, the double, double the number of
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episodes that we do normally and all that.
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And so I have not been in the studio for a very, very long time, but you guys didn't
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notice that.
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You know why?
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Because I gave you like 16 interviews in a row two a week.
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And again, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here, but that takes a lot of effort.
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I mean, I've been basically from December through like February, I was like, all right, busting
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my tail to make sure we got all the content done.
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Cause with every interview, there's, you know, reading the books, listening and watching
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their other interviews, you know, kind of formulating an interview that I think is going
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to be interesting, not only to me and not only to the person doing on the other side,
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the interview, but to you guys, obviously.
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And so it took a lot of effort, a lot of work, but it was totally, totally worth it because
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we love doing what we're doing here at Undaunted Life for you guys.
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But I am back.
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I'm going to be consistently doing the episodes.
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So you'll still be getting your interviews on Tuesdays and your other episodes on Thursdays.
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And next Thursday, we're going to talk a little bit about some format changes, uh, to get
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a little bit more content in because I'm asked about topics constantly.
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And you know, in a podcast format, if I'm not doing a Q and A, it's kind of hard to get
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to a bunch of different things.
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So stay tuned for that next week and we will give you some more info on that and just a
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little advertisement here from the very, very top guys.
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The only way that we're able to stay in operations here at Undaunted Life and the only way I'm
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able to feed my kids.
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And I've expanded that number here recently and we'll get into that is because we have
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donors, so we have money, we have a little bit of money coming in with advertising, but
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the overwhelming amount of what we do here is supported by direct donors like you guys,
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like a lot of you guys in the audience.
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So I would ask you to go to Undaunted Life backslash donate.
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That is our donation page and become a monthly donor to us.
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If you like our content and you want our voice to continue to be elevated above the other
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voices in society that have more money and have more followers and all that.
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This is a way that we get that done.
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So go there.
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We have guys given as a little as five bucks a month and all the way up to 500 bucks a
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month.
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But we support you guys.
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We love you guys very much.
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This is how we're able to do that.
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So please support us back.
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But I'm going to go all the way back to episode 134 of this podcast, okay?
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That was titled Sweet Baby James.
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And that was about how on May 7th, 2020, at 1250 AM, my first son was born James Kyle
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Thompson.
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And I kind of explained to you guys like kind of how we do the naming in our family.
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Finally, the father gives his first name as a middle name to the first born son, okay?
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So my name is Kyle David Thompson, okay?
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My dad's name is David.
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His dad's name was Glenn.
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So he's David Glenn Thompson.
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So obviously I handed James my first name as his middle name, but James Kyle Thompson.
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We love the name James.
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There's not like a family significance to that.
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We actually found out after we picked the name, it was the most common popular boy's name
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of the last 100 years, which we weren't a huge fan of, but he is James.
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He's not Jimmy's not Jimmy.
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He's James.
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And anyway, that's it on the name.
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Yeah, that's about as interesting as I can get on the name, but he was born at seven
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pounds, three ounces and about 20 and a half inches long.
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And when I recorded that episode and released it, he was only a week old.
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And so, you know, in that episode, I talked about a lot of different things, a lot of
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different feelings kind of talked about the labor story, how we went and, you know, it
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wasn't time for her to be held there, but she was my wife was in a tremendous amount
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of pain and how she had two different epidurals.
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I don't even know if I talked about this last time, she had two different epidurals and
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either one of them worked and so she was an excruciating pain the entire time.
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And anyway, it was a bit of a mess, but the, you know, my son came and it was all good.
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And then we kind of get into we got into some other things about it, but I'll get in some
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more stuff later on the podcast about stuff that happened with James.
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But on March the 9th of 2022, okay, it's about a month ago at one 11 a.m.
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Our second son was born Elijah Jack Thompson.
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So let's get into that name a little bit again.
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There's no family significance to the name Elijah.
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That's just a name that we really, really like.
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We'll probably be referring to him as Eli or baby Eli a lot.
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And we've got a nickname for him that I'll tell you about here in a second.
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In terms of the middle name, Jack, that's what my wife desperately wanted to name our
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son, but both sons actually, she loves the name Jack.
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I hate the name Jack.
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Part of the reason is because I'm stupid and I know a lot of people that are named Jake
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and Jack and I can't keep them straight, whether I trained you Jitsu with him, went to high
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school with him or their picture on my favorite baseball team.
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And I always have to stop and pause and be like, okay, this Jack is this Jake.
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And also, like a lot of you guys out there, I still have that inner 11 year old in me.
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And if a kid's name is Jack, well, there's some things you can do with that name to make
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fun of somebody.
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So I just was never really a big fan of it, but we decided to make it his middle name
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because I never actually have to refer to him as his full name, except for on this podcast
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and maybe on his diploma.
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So Elijah Jack Thompson, he was born again one 11 a.m. on March the 9th, seven pounds,
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six ounces, about 20 inches long, so he's about the same size as sweet baby James.
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And as of the recording of this, he's just over a month old.
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So we've got to spend quite a bit of time with him because, you know, like I told you guys
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over the last month and even the month before that, I wanted to make sure that I was freed
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up so that I could help out with James.
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I'm basically exclusively on on baby James Zootie these days so that mama can take good
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care of Eli.
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But I do want to tell you about the labor story.
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So in don't worry guys, it's not going to get gruesome.
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You're not going to have to hide your kids, but it's just interesting kind of how this
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all, you know, came down.
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So for any of you guys that have had wives that have maybe experienced birth or gone through
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that whole process, there's that always that anxiety.
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If you're not doing an induced labor and you have a date for a C section or something
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like that when you're doing, you know, vaginal birth, you're always a little bit of an easy
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towards the end because you're like, Hey, are these contractions birth contractions or
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am I just having contractions?
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So there's something called Braxton Hicks, which are contractions that are basically
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false contractions.
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My wife had those for both babies pretty much for the entire pregnancy.
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So she's three months pregnant and she's having contractions, right?
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They're not incredibly painful, but she's definitely contracting.
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And so we get to a point where, okay, these contractions seem serious enough.
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So we take her to the hospital, you know, we have somebody else pick up baby James from
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from daycare and we're at the hospital and she's in pain.
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They check her and they do all the different tests and all that.
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And she wasn't dilated far enough for them to keep her, right?
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And so for those nurses and those doctors is like, look, you can be at this state for
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weeks, right?
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And so we don't want to, you don't want to, you know, kind of keep you here because you're
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not going to keep you here for weeks, especially if things don't change.
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But you know, we're at, you know, a couple of weeks before his actual due date, you know,
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she's in pain, whatever, but they're like, sorry, we can't keep you.
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So we get down to the car.
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My wife's in excruciating pain and a lot of contractions and we don't even get two miles
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down the road and she starts getting very, very sick in the car.
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And you know, she's trying to give me the hand signals, like, turn around.
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Let's go back.
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I call, I call the nurses and we come on back and we go up there and wouldn't you know
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that she had, you know, progressed along to where they could actually keep her.
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So it was a little bit of a rough spot there to where it's like they sent us home whenever
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they could have kind of kept us, but they kept us there and all that.
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But all the while that this is happening.
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So even before we left the hospital the initial time, I start feeling a little bit sick.
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And some of you might automatically think, oh, you're probably just nervous.
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I know what nervous sick feels like.
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Like I had different points in my life, whether it's, you know, in a, you know, life or death
8:02
cons or, you know, construct or it's, you know, with being nervous about a sporting
8:07
event or something like that, I'm about to compete in like I know what like butterflies
8:11
and nervous stomach.
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I know what all that is.
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That's just not what I was feeling.
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But in that moment, I'm there to support my wife and there to support the things that
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are going on and doing the things that I can do, which is very limited, but trying to make
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sure I crush the things I'm actually able to do, right?
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But I'm just progressively not feeling well.
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Not feeling well.
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Sick to my stomach.
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Right.
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And so here we are.
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We're in the labor room and you know, she's, she's hooked up and she's got the nurses coming
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in and out.
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We're just kind of waiting for things to progress along and I'm just getting worse and getting
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worse and getting worse.
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And so I go to the bathroom to what I think is going to be Ralph everywhere.
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And while I'm in the bathroom, the nurse and my wife are having a discussion and my wife
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kind of asks and they're like, Hey, should she be here right now?
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And the nurse, it was almost like it was a cathartic thing for her because she had been
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thinking at the whole time.
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She's like, no, if he's really sick, like he's got to go get checked out somewhere because
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if he's got some sort of a flu or a COVID or something else like that, that's manifesting
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these symptoms, like he can't be around you.
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He can't be around the newborn baby, that kind of thing.
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So I come back out of the bathroom and, you know, we have that discussion and my wife's
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like, Hey, I really think you should go and I'm thinking the same thing because it's like,
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I don't want to get my baby sick, you know, right when he comes out of the womb, that
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would be terrible.
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And so we're on the sixth floor of this hospital building Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City.
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And there's a couple options here.
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I could go to one of these clinics.
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That's around because it'll be a lot cheaper or there's an emergency room in the basement
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of the building that I'm in.
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And so we make the decision.
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I'm going to go to the emergency room in the same building.
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And so go down the emergency room, just kind of speed the story up a little bit.
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They're running all kinds of tests or testing me for everything because I understand, you
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know, Hey, I'm about to go back up there and be around a baby and all that type of thing.
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And so I'm hooked up to all these machines.
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Essentially what they say is like, look, there's a 24 hour stomach bug that's going around
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right now.
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You know, that's very, very likely what you have.
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So they gave me some medicine through an IV and they've got all kinds of things hooked
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up to me and whatever.
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Then I get a call for my wife, right?
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I've got my phone in my hand the entire time.
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And she says, babe, the doctor is on the way.
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The nurses are telling me keep my legs closed because, you know, baby's coming.
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So I'm having this conversation on speakerphone.
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And as it's being said, as my wife is saying these things, nurses just start unplugging
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crap, right?
10:16
So they're just unplugging me.
10:17
They're taking my IVs out.
10:18
They're doing whatever.
10:19
Like, Hey, you didn't get all the fluids, but you know, get back up there because from
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their perspective, they're like, you're good enough.
10:24
We don't think that you should just not be around them.
10:26
And so I go upstairs.
10:27
So I get back upstairs and I get there basically just in the nick of time because five, 10
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minutes later, our son's born Elijah Jack is here.
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It's this great, overwhelming, awesome situation, but I'm still feeling terrible.
10:41
And though I got all these fluids and I think it was so fran or something like I can't exactly
10:44
remember what they gave me.
10:46
I'm feeling terrible.
10:47
So after the initial kind of 30 minutes of, you know, watching the nurses do their thing
10:51
and the doctor do do their thing, my wife suggested I just kind of in that stupid little
10:55
chair that they put next to the bed that's super uncomfortable for the husbands or whoever
10:59
is going to be sitting there during the pregnancy or during the labor and birth.
11:03
She's like, how about you just roll over and try to sleep?
11:05
And so I roll over and take like a hour to our nap.
11:08
I wake up.
11:09
I feel worse.
11:10
So at this point, the nurse and the nurse basically says, you can't be here.
11:15
You've got to leave.
11:16
And I'm not mad at her.
11:17
I'm like, I get it.
11:18
And so here I am at about, I don't know, four o'clock in the morning.
11:21
My son has just been born and I'm driving home, trying not to puke all over myself, right?
11:26
I live about 30 minutes away from the hospital.
11:28
So make it home, go to sleep, wake up.
11:31
I feel better.
11:32
I'm a little weak throughout the day.
11:34
Clearly this was a 24 hour stomach bug thing.
11:36
So and this is all going to crescendo somewhere guys, so hopefully the story is entertaining
11:39
for you.
11:40
So I don't actually get to hold my son until a day later because when he was born, you know,
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he's on mom doing, you know, the skin to skin or whatever that is and, you know, it was
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great.
11:53
And I'd already fallen asleep and it was, it was a problem, right?
11:55
I didn't get to hold my son.
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So when I'm feeling better, realizing that this bug is kind of made its way through
12:00
my system, I go back up to the hospital again.
12:03
He's two days old at this point.
12:05
And I'm so nervous because this is my second son and it's just like, you know, they're
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so small and it's like, I just, I'm so anxious.
12:12
I just, I just want to hold him.
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I just want to hug him.
12:14
I just want to, you know, see him and all those different things.
12:17
So I get in the room, I open the door and my wife's holding our baby and I'm like, the
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very first thing I say is I go, Oh, squish, like, Oh, look, he's so squishy, right?
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And it was just kind of a funny thing because, you know, newborn babies are kind of squishy,
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right?
12:34
They're pretty squishy.
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Right?
12:36
Because, you know, they're not really terribly formed and they're, they're not super rigid
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at that point.
12:40
They're just kind of like, you know, floating around a little bit.
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And so what's funny about that is my wife and I just started referring to him as squish.
12:49
And it's just kind of stuck.
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So here we are.
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That's why the name of this podcast is Squish Thompson, because here we are, you know, four
12:55
or five weeks later, we're still calling them squish.
12:57
We're also calling them Elijah.
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We're calling them baby.
13:00
Eli, we're calling them all those things.
13:01
So little man may have already gotten his nickname.
13:04
So I don't know if squish is a good nickname.
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I don't know any other people or babies that are called squish, but for now it's stuck.
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And so it's, it's always cool to have a nickname and it's even better when you don't even
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get to pick it out and people just thrust it upon you.
13:16
So that is basically a story of how we got Elijah Jack Thompson, Elijah Jack squish Thompson
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to the planet.
13:23
LinkedIn is pretty great at a lot of things like helping you tap into the latest trends
13:27
and insights in your field.
13:29
We cannot stop your co-worker from tapping her pencil.
13:32
LinkedIn can help you find new jobs that align with your career goals.
13:36
We cannot help you find the source of that weird smell in the office fridge.
13:41
Yeah.
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And while we can't stop your co-workers from bringing their hobbies into the office, LinkedIn
13:47
can help you bring your career to the next level.
13:50
LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
13:54
But just like I did on episode 134 when I was talking about sweet baby James, I'm going
13:57
to go over some, some random thoughts that I've had over the last four or five weeks.
14:01
Because again, since I wasn't recording, I said a lot of time to kind of sit and think
14:04
about, you know, kind of what I'm, what I'm doing and where I'm at and kind of what we're
14:08
doing as a family.
14:09
And so I want to kind of give you some reflection and I hope these will be helpful for you,
14:13
for you in your life, whether you have kids or you have a young family or grown kids, doesn't
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really matter.
14:18
So the first thing that I want to kind of talk about, some of these will be the same from
14:20
whenever I did it with James and someone will be different is the random emotions that you
14:25
have.
14:26
So with neither kid, did I immediately start crying when I saw the baby?
14:29
I think I had told you last time.
14:32
I didn't have that feeling that a lot of dads, at least say they feel like the moment they
14:36
see their first born kid, their entire life changes, their entire, you know, worldview
14:40
and everything's different.
14:41
I didn't really have that experience, right?
14:44
It was, it was an overwhelming situation.
14:46
It was an emotional thing, but I didn't feel like I was like my whole life had basically
14:51
readjusted.
14:52
It was, it was like, oh, it was almost like things got more intense.
14:55
Things got more serious.
14:56
It's like, oh, things weren't serious a second ago, but they're serious now.
14:59
That was kind of the, the feeling that I felt.
15:02
But something that happened, and again, I'm not sure if I talked about on this podcast
15:05
or not.
15:06
So if I did, it'll be a repeat for some of you, but at six weeks old, we had to basically
15:11
have emergency surgery on sweet baby James.
15:13
Okay.
15:14
So he's having some intestinal issues.
15:16
We thought there was intense deception happening, which is where your, your, I guess, Oh God,
15:21
doctors out there are going to be like, Oh, you're an idiot, but it's basically where
15:24
the, the tubing of your organs is like, you know, suctioning in on itself.
15:28
And it's kind of like telescoping in and it's, it's potentially fatal.
15:32
We thought that was maybe going on.
15:33
There was a hernia down there.
15:34
There was all kinds of things.
15:35
And so for the first six weeks of James's life, I knew intellectually that I loved him,
15:41
but I didn't feel the rawness of the emotion of love towards him until I handed him off
15:47
to a nurse to take him back to go have surgery and we're thinking, you know, he may not come
15:51
back.
15:52
It's a dangerous thing for a six week old to have surgery, right?
15:55
And that, that feeling of love whenever he was back in our arms, like that was an incredible
16:00
emotion.
16:01
And so with, with the second kid, you know, people kind of make the joke like every subsequent
16:04
kid, you don't care as much and you let them do more stuff and you don't feed them the
16:07
right stuff.
16:08
It's just whatever, but it's almost like, you know, we've elevated the emotion in our
16:13
household because our, our ability to love has been expanded and you've heard a lot of
16:17
people say that like you think you can't love anymore and then you have another kid or maybe
16:21
even before that, then you get married and you're like, okay, it was all self love and
16:24
positivity.
16:25
And then you get married.
16:26
It's like, oh my gosh, I have this tremendous amount of love for another human being and
16:29
with every child that that becomes expanded.
16:31
And so that's been kind of an interesting thing in our household is just kind of the random
16:34
emotions with everything.
16:36
And you know, we'll get into some more here in a second.
16:38
The other thought that I was having or another thought that I was having is that my wife
16:42
is still unnatural.
16:43
Like I talked about that in the, in the first one, again, some women take to, to being a
16:48
mother, like a fish in water, like that's just something that they really take to other
16:52
women kind of struggle.
16:53
I'm happy to say and to report that my wife Kelsey is she's an absolute natural at it.
16:58
Right.
16:59
Now that doesn't mean that there's not issues.
17:00
That doesn't mean that there aren't times where, you know, there's, there's frustration
17:03
and there's, you know, stuff that's going on to where it's like, hey, we wish we had a
17:06
better idea about, you know, how to do certain things and there's still confusion and oh,
17:11
is, is he actually tired right now or is he just fussing to be fussy or, you know, does he
17:16
have gas or does he, is he hungry or those types of things?
17:19
But it's just amazing to see how naturally she's taken to the motherly role because that's
17:24
something that's just not really obviously natural for most guys.
17:27
It's certainly not natural for me.
17:28
I do a terrible job of consoling children.
17:30
That's just not really my bag.
17:32
Give me your kid when they're like three or four and they just want to rough house and
17:34
wrestle around and we'll, you know, we'll go do that for hours.
17:37
You know, I'll be like the, the living jungle gym, but it's great to, to know that I've
17:41
got a partner that's right there and she can do all those things that, you know, are,
17:44
would be a struggle for me. It's just really, really cool to watch and it makes me love
17:47
my wife even more.
17:49
Another thing that I've kind of thought through is just things overall that are different
17:52
with a second kid just that are, that they're just different.
17:55
Now some of you out there that have kids and a lot of you guys in this audience have kids,
17:59
you know what it's like when you go from zero kids to one, right?
18:03
Cause even if you have a dog, even if you have, you know, animals on your farm or ranch that
18:06
you got to take care of, it's different when you have a kid that's part of your DNA, part
18:11
of your wife's DNA. It's just different, right? But when you go from one kid to two kids,
18:17
like obviously you're going from double coverage to man coverage, right? And that's just kind
18:21
of what my wife and I have done is, you know, I've basically been exclusively taking care
18:26
of the almost two year old James and she's almost exclusively been taking care of the
18:31
newborn. Some of you guys might have some issues with that. We certainly have some crossover
18:34
care. So that both, both kids feel loved and feel, you know, like they get some experience
18:39
with their, with their parents and all those types of things. But for the most part, that's
18:43
what we're doing. And one thing that I talked about that's maybe different than last time
18:47
in the last episode where I talked about sweet baby James is that, um, learning to avoid
18:51
the freak out. So in that episode, I forget how I worded it, but it was like, I think
18:55
it was learning to control the freak out. And so because it was like, you know, when
18:59
you're changing a kid's diaper and he's screaming and oh crap, he just peed on the wall and
19:02
Oh, no, they're the poop got on the countertop and like, what are you going to do? And like,
19:05
I would just kind of short circuit and freak out a little bit. So I was like trying to figure
19:09
out how to do that. But this time I'm learning to really avoid the freak out. So in the times
19:14
that I'm changing the new baby's diaper, like I'm used to changing the two year olds diaper,
19:18
those things can be chaotic as most of you guys know, but with a new born, it's very
19:21
different and she's not eating solid food, but it's a little bit runny or it's all the
19:25
different things, right? And so I'm just, I know what's, what's to be expected in that
19:30
situation. I know what's going to be happening for the most part. And so I've learned to
19:33
kind of avoid the freak out a little bit. Another thing for my wife and I without getting
19:37
into all of our, our life details, you might seem like you, it's already been TMI up to
19:41
this point. But just smarter planning for my wife and I, and even leading up to the birth
19:45
of Elijah, we were just kind of like, okay, here's some things that we're definitely going
19:49
to do different than the first time. Here's some issues that it caused in our household
19:52
when we didn't do this the first time. So we're going to do it this time, realizing
19:57
yes, it's going to be different because we've never had two kids before, you know, not every
20:00
baby is the same. But we've been able to plan a lot better. It's a lot smarter for us to
20:06
kind of figure out what's going to work well for us. The other thing about that is we've
20:10
had a lot of people, especially in our Sunday school, so our Sunday school is fairly large.
20:14
And just about every family in there has four kids, like the weirdos have three kids, right?
20:19
And so we have two and we're probably going to stay there, you know, just doing with the
20:23
two kids thing. But we've had a lot of parents in our life that are still relatively in our
20:28
age range that have some experience. And so we've been able to ask questions and we've
20:32
just been able to watch and see how they take care of their kids and some things that they
20:35
do. And again, for them, by the time they're having their third, fourth, and some of them
20:39
fifth kid and so on, it can get pretty significant, like the different planning and trying to
20:44
juggle everything. And so that's something that I feel like is different with the second
20:48
kid is because, you know, with the first kid, there's so much focus on it. You know, there's
20:51
all the baby showers and it's just everyone's taking care of mama and taking care of both
20:55
of us. But you know, the drill when someone has their second kid, you're like, Oh, yeah,
20:58
that's great. What a blessing. Then they have their third kids like,
21:00
Yep, that's another one. And then they have their fourth one. It's like, okay, okay,
21:04
what are you trying to prove here? Like, you know what I mean? And so we get all this attention
21:07
with the first one we moved on to the second, but it is so cool to kind of see the the love
21:11
and everything that we're getting from people. We're still getting loved on by people bringing
21:14
us food and wanting to come over and just hold the baby for a bit. So that's pretty awesome.
21:18
So it's good to see even with the second kid. Another thing that I've kind of thought through
21:22
over the last four or five weeks or so is this overwhelming desire to focus or I guess figure
21:29
out rights of passage and figuring that out, the desire to figure that out has been majorly amplified
21:36
over the last four or five weeks. Because, you know, when you're thinking about having kids,
21:40
you're like, Oh, maybe I want a boy, maybe I want a girl. And you know, you kind of have
21:42
your preferences. And then you end up having your kids. And here we are, we've got two boys now.
21:46
So we didn't get a boy and a girl, which is maybe what my wife would have preferred. But
21:50
we got two boys. And the thought of these two boys growing up to be knuckleheads
21:55
is just completely poisonous in my brain. I'm like, we can't have that. And to a degree,
22:01
I can't control that outright, but I'm going to have a tremendous influence on that. And no one's
22:05
going to have a bigger influence on that than me or my wife, if I can help it, right? And so
22:11
this is maybe going to not change the direction of undaunted life. Because, you know, to a degree,
22:16
we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing. I feel like we're hitting the bullseye on the
22:19
stuff that we're shooting for a lot of the time. But I partnering with people that are doing
22:24
rights of passage stuff for boys. You know, we talked with John Tyson, I've got some other
22:28
connections that are kind of working on those types of things. But again, societally, we do not
22:33
usher young boys into young manhood and then into manhood. We don't do that. We don't welcome them
22:39
into manhood. We don't explain to them, Hey, now you are a man. This is why you're a man. This
22:44
is what you are going to be good out as a man. Here are the things that you're going to struggle
22:48
with. Now, here's also the expectations and responsibilities that we have on you as a man.
22:53
Again, we self actualize as men in our culture. You get to figure out when you become a man.
22:57
Maybe it's first time you have sex. Maybe it's first time, you know, you buy your own car. Maybe
23:02
when you graduate high school, maybe it's when you graduate college, maybe it's, you know,
23:05
you get to figure it out, right? We don't tell our sons, especially in the Christian church.
23:10
We don't really do that. I mean, Jews, they, you know, they have their bar mitzvahs and
23:13
bot mitzvahs and those things. And so they kind of let their young boys and young girls know
23:16
whenever they've elevated to that position of manhood or womanhood or whatever. But that's
23:20
something that I really want to to kind of get to bedrock because to a degree, you know, my son,
23:25
you know, my eldest isn't even two yet. And the first born or the second born is obviously a
23:31
newborn. And so there's years to go before these manhood lessons are going to make sense. I mean,
23:35
sentences don't really make sense to these kids at this age, right? And so that's something that I
23:39
really am kind of amplifying my viewpoint on. I don't just want my, my focus on manhood for these
23:45
kids to be centered around once or twice a year going camping or, you know, me showing them how
23:51
to fix a certain thing around the house, which I'm terrible at, you know, in large part anyway.
23:55
It's not just going to be reading books. It's not just going to be that it's going to be a
23:58
combination of a lot of things. So that is kind of really amplified what I want to do there. And so
24:02
for you guys listening to this, if that's something that you want us to help kind of figure out,
24:06
let us know because we're very market driven at this, you know, at this ministry, not this podcast.
24:11
If you want us to do something, then we'll look at it. But if nobody in the audience wants it,
24:15
it's not something we're going to mess with. Another thing that I've really thought through is
24:18
the desire to protect my sons from, you know, the predations of modern society has been
24:24
majorly amplified as well. Because again, if you pay any attention to the news at all,
24:30
there's constantly something to be outraged about. And one thing that I tried to do is I
24:34
tried to take myself out of the news cycle. I tried to like sit back, put my phone away and
24:37
just kind of think through, okay, this is what the media that I follow is telling me. What is
24:43
the media that I'm not following telling me? What are they communicating about this situation?
24:47
But also what's really happening here? What's really going on? Because we're getting a version
24:52
of the story. We're not getting the story, right? So so how do we get to bedrock? How do we kind
24:56
of figure that out? But the one thing that is very, very true is that the degradation morally of
25:01
our society is going at breakneck speed. Because if you've done any reading of history, and you know,
25:07
when I talked to Andrew Clavin here recently and had him on the podcast, this is a guy that's very
25:11
learned. And so he doesn't have these big sways of emotions by stuff happening in modernity.
25:16
Because he's read so much history. And he's like, yeah, you know, this something similar
25:20
happened back in the 17th century, something similar happened back at this time. It's really
25:23
not that big a deal. But the things that are a big deal are a big deal. And so on that podcast,
25:28
we talked about the transgenderism issue. And he thinks that is a bedrock cornerstone issue
25:31
that is going to affect American society. And he's absolutely spot on with that. And so
25:37
the things that we're seeing right now, it's not just, oh, you know, don't be worried about
25:42
public schools. You went through public school and things were fine, right? But yeah, we had not
25:46
had the transgender revolution whenever I was in school, I graduated high school in 2004.
25:50
We weren't talking about nobody knew what a transvestite was when I was growing up. And that
25:56
was the word you could use. That was the colloquial term you could use. Like, no one really knew what
26:01
a tranny was that guy that wears a dress because we didn't talk about it. We certainly weren't
26:05
introduced to these concepts as five, six and seven year olds. And make sure you tune in for
26:11
next week's episode because we're going to be talking about, you know, the Florida
26:14
parental rights bill, we're going to be talking about Disney. We're going to be talking about
26:17
groomers are going to be talking about all that. So you're not going to want to miss next week.
26:19
But that's the thing that I'm really, really amped up and amplified as I'm thinking about.
26:25
Is there are so many things that are going to be in the ears of my sons that I'm not going to be
26:29
able to control? But that is not an excuse for me to throw my hands up and say, well, I guess I
26:35
can't control anything. Go on to public school. Hopefully nothing goes wrong. Oh, yeah, watch
26:41
whatever you want to on television. Hopefully nothing goes wrong. Oh, here's a brand new iPhone
26:45
that's unlocked with no filters. Oh, here's, you know, a laptop for you to have in your room with
26:50
full access to the internet. Oh, here's a PlayStation where you can access the internet is what? No,
26:54
just because there are going to be things that seep into my son's life, whether he sees it on
27:00
someone else's phone or he accidentally sees it or something that I haven't viewed first and then
27:05
he gets to view it and then doesn't talk to me about it. That is not an excuse for me to just give
27:08
up as a parent. Okay. So my desire to protect my sons has been elevated to an extreme degree,
27:15
but I'm not going to protect them from everything. I'm not going to protect them from, from hurt
27:20
or heartache or, you know, tough life lessons. Like I'm actually excited to be a little tough on my
27:26
boys in those areas. And so is my wife. She's in a lot of ways more of a gangster than I am,
27:29
if you can believe it. But the things that they can't control, like the potential sexual grooming of
27:35
them at school, you know, sexual predation of predators, these ideas, LGBTQ ideas, anything's
27:41
from the woke agenda, this idea that somehow because they were born with a, you know, certain
27:46
level of melanin that they are in a presser, those are things that I'm not going to stand for. And
27:51
there's a zero percent chance I'm going to let my sons be affected by those things in a negative
27:55
way. Again, if I can help it. Struggling with weight loss, Prolon's five day fasting mimicking
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percent off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/now. Another thing that I've
28:26
thought through over these last four or five weeks is just the desire to be a sheepdog has
28:31
majorly been amplified. And so that, you know, goes back to the thing I just talked about,
28:35
you know, being vigilant and all those types of things and being a protector,
28:38
but also when, when I see these dads around that say they love their kids and they say they love
28:47
their wife. And yet it is so clear that they've done nothing to put themselves, put themselves in
28:53
the mental or physical space to be able to protect them. It makes me look at them a little bit of
28:59
a scam. Like, yeah, you love your family, but you don't have a gun in the house because your wife
29:06
thinks it's scary. Okay. You don't know how to fight. You think you know how to fight or some
29:13
people know they don't know how to fight. And you think that's okay. So in a scenario where
29:19
somebody is violating the amago day and the amago day that is written on your wife or on your
29:24
children, and you would be unable to intercede in that moment. Do you actually love your family?
29:30
And like, if you can't protect them, what exactly are you doing for them?
29:35
Hopefully providing, you know, paying the bills and taking care of everybody and doing the
29:40
financial planning and stuff like that. Like, that's great. Every man should certainly do that.
29:44
But what if you can't protect them? And one thing about being a sheepdog, again, it's not just
29:50
physical. It's not just putting hands on people or, you know, being in a home defense situation,
29:54
where you're potentially using your firearm to end the life of somebody that's a threat to your
29:58
family. It's the mental attitude. It's not sitting there on your phone, looking at fancy football
30:05
statistics or playing some sort of video game or whatever, but watching what's going on at the
30:09
playground while your kid's playing is somebody there that looks a little bit out of place.
30:13
Is somebody there that's been there for a while and you've not seen a single kid come up to him
30:17
knowingly? Right? Like, hi, dad. Hi, uncle. Hi, grandpa. Are you paying attention?
30:22
How about the signs that parents talk about whenever one of their kids is, you know, abused
30:29
sexually or physically by a teacher or a pastor or a coach or a neighbor or a family member?
30:37
You weren't really paying attention. You didn't have a sheepdog mindset. And again,
30:40
it's not about constantly looking around for threats and, you know, being a threat level 10
30:44
at all moments, right? It's just being in that yellow zone of like, okay, I'm paying
30:49
attention to what's going on around me. I'm paying attention to who's in and around my car when I'm
30:54
getting in and out of it, right? It's just simple stuff. And so for me, it's just another reminder
30:58
because I've always been very protective of my wife. And if anything were to happen to her or
31:03
before her, that would be for me to kind of intercede. And then that only got elevated with
31:07
James and it's elevated further with Elijah. And so that's my encouragement to you guys again.
31:12
If you're not someone that knows how to fight, if you're not somebody that knows how to at least
31:16
protect yourself, that's a journey that you need to be on. And guess what? You're not going to learn
31:20
that in a weekend class. Now, I'm going to go to some self defense seminar for two hours on
31:25
Saturday and all of a sudden be able to fight off an intruder in your house or to protect your kids
31:30
out in public if something's trying to happen to them, right? So there's your encouragement as far
31:34
as that goes. The next thing here that I wanted to kind of talk through is I still suck at living
31:39
in the moment. And I can't figure out that's a good thing up because I'm pretty sure it's a bad
31:44
thing. But for me, I'm always looking forward to the next thing. So for a lot of you guys,
31:50
you're like me, I don't care about road trips. In fact, I hate road trips. Like, I don't want
31:57
to get in the car and drive for hours and hours and hours. I care about the destination. I care
32:03
about where we're going to end up. That's the big deal for me. So I remember like the first time
32:08
my wife and I went to St. Louis, right? You know, to go to a Cardinals game. I was like, oh my gosh,
32:13
seven and a half hours in a car. And the only thing that made it worth it is because we ended up
32:18
where we drove into St. Louis got to see the big arch. And then we went to Bush Stadium got to see
32:22
game is all good, right? But that's one thing that I've carried into just life in general.
32:27
I'm very excited and amped for things that are going to happen later in my son's lives.
32:33
You know, when they start playing sports and going to games and practicing with them at home,
32:38
and we start reading books to where we can have, you know, a conversation about the book, you know,
32:41
what are you learning? Dad, what did you learn when you did all this? Like, I'm looking forward
32:45
to those things that are not happening now. And so that's one thing I'm trying to remind myself
32:49
of is that it's a big deal that they're at the moment they're at in life. Now, I remember people
32:57
saying whenever James was a few weeks old, man, take advantage of these times, you're not always
33:02
going to have these times. And, you know, just really, really cherish these times. And it's like,
33:07
when I look back when James was a few weeks old, like, I don't miss those times at all.
33:11
Like, I really don't. That may make me sound like a horrible, horrible person, but I know a
33:15
segment of you guys listening to this, you get it. But I don't miss those times. Like, there was not
33:20
really anything I could do for him, right? I much prefer the time right now where I can actually
33:26
interact with him and we can do stuff together and that type of thing. I don't miss those hard,
33:31
early, sleepless days. Like, that's not really like, why? Like, why would I look back on those
33:35
things? But I know that that might be a little bit of a blind spot for me because I don't want to
33:40
think that at every age. Because right now, James is somewhat coordinated and he can do some things,
33:45
but a few years from now, he's going to be more coordinated and we can do even more things together
33:49
in a physical nature. He'll be more developmentally so we can have more conversations. But I do want
33:53
to try to start acknowledging the moment a little more. That doesn't mean I'm going to just live in
33:59
the now, I guess I'm always kind of future focused in that degree. But I do need to work on that.
34:05
That is something that that I should make some changes in that area. And the last thing I want
34:08
to talk to talk through before we kind of wrap up is just the next step, which is every time you
34:15
have a kid, everyone kind of asks the next step. And so we're starting to evaluate in this household
34:19
what a, you know, quote unquote complete Thompson household looks and feels like. So there are people
34:24
that like they feel like the family is just not quite there and then they get a dog and they feel
34:28
like the family can be complete. Then some people feel like, you know, the family's not quite complete
34:32
and then they get a cat, which means they worship Satan because cats are terrible.
34:35
But for us, it's like, okay, we have a couple of dogs. We have a couple of kids, both sons.
34:41
For me, I never wanted a daughter. I don't know if I've kind of talked through all that on this
34:45
podcast. And here I feel like, Hey, I have to pay for two rehearsal dinners and no wedding. So I
34:49
feel like that's pretty good at this point. You know, I've never had that overwhelming desire to be,
34:54
you know, you know, a girl dad and all those different things. I always wanted sons and God
34:58
is plus me and give me sons. That's just kind of the way the cookie crumbled. But we have been talking
35:03
about kind of what what does our house look like? As of right now, it seems like we're fairly
35:07
content with with having two kids, neither one of us were always big family people. We didn't come
35:12
from big families like I have one sibling she has one sibling. We love that, you know, these two
35:17
boys get to interact with each other and they're going to be close enough in age where they can
35:21
interact and learn from one another and and do those types of things. We want them to be friends.
35:25
Our household will be one that if you are feuding with your brother, you can't go hang out with your
35:29
other friends until you have true reconciliation with your brother with your blood. And so, but for
35:36
us, we don't really see a scenario where where a third Thompson kid or four Thompson kid is in the
35:42
cards, but we haven't made the definitive decisions in that. But I know that that's always going to
35:46
be the question and I've already been asked that I'm freaking a hundred times since our baby's been
35:50
born is when you can have a third and that type of thing. Don't really see it in the cards,
35:54
but it certainly might happen. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the
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36:28
to the scripture from the very beginning of this podcast and that is Psalm 127 three through five
36:32
because that was the scripture that I that I read after Elijah was born as a scripture that I shared.
36:37
I think it's very, very important. I do want to break it down a little bit more, but I'll go
36:40
ahead and reread it here again. Psalm 127 three through five. Behold, children are a heritage
36:45
from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the
36:50
children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put
36:55
to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. So the author of the 127th Psalm is Solomon
37:01
and kind of the major theme of the 127th Psalm is got well, I guess the major theme of this particular
37:08
area is the sovereignty in family life. Okay. And really the entire book is about his sovereignty.
37:14
But in sovereignty, it's kind of a weird word. We don't really kind of use that in modern parlance,
37:17
a lot of us don't, but it just means supreme power and authority. That's what sovereignty means
37:22
supreme power and authority. So this little section versus three through five, that's God's
37:27
sovereignty in family life. Now as I was prepping for this podcast, I was reading through, I got a
37:32
new a couple new commentaries and I actually want to read through what the Moody Bible commentary.
37:36
So you guys can see this on screen if you're watching on YouTube, I actually want to read
37:40
what the Moody Bible commentary says about Psalm 127 versus three through five because I thought
37:44
it was a really good encapsulation of what what this is should mean for us. So let me go and get
37:48
into that here again. This is the Moody Bible commentary. In the agrarian culture of Israel,
37:53
children were the key to a successful family. And the absence of offspring was a family disaster.
37:59
The point is that if God does give children there to be viewed as a gift, you know, the inheritance
38:03
or property of the Lord, this inheritance, he has in turn entrusted to human parents for
38:09
proper care and nurture both physically and spiritually. Children, the fruit of the womb are a reward
38:14
because only the Lord can create life. Godly people throughout the scriptures valued, protected,
38:19
and taught their children as the Lord commanded. This does not suggest that children are the only
38:23
or even the best gift God can give or that if one does not or cannot have children, one is lacking
38:28
an important gift of God and is somehow less favored by him. Yet children were the blessing
38:33
in ancient times and compared to arrows in the hands of a warrior. For like arrows, adult children
38:39
could provide protection for the family in times of danger and would provide honor to the family
38:43
at the gate of the city. Depending on how these arrows or children are shaped, drawn and aimed,
38:49
they may either miss the intended target or hit it on the bull's eye. Given the messianic context
38:54
of this psalm, Solomon may be indicating that the final realization of the Davidic covenant
38:59
is given to his beloved as a gift of the Lord. That is at a time to be decided by him alone and
39:05
apart from the work of his people. And the big thing that I keyed in on here guys is this one part
39:11
here. Depending on how these arrows or children are shaped, drawn and aimed, they may either miss
39:17
the intended target or hit it on the bull's eye. And so that's the thing for me. I feel a lot of
39:25
pressure as a dad. And some people automatically when they say they're feeling pressure, there's
39:29
people that just want to rush and be like, Oh, no, no, don't feel pressure. You don't need to feel
39:33
pressure. It's going to affect your life. Things are going to go wrong. You don't want to put that
39:36
much pressure on yourself. Absolutely not. The best way to avoid pressure is not to avoid it. It's
39:42
it's to enforce it is to put pressure down. And so I put a lot of pressure on myself. I know my
39:49
wives put a lot of pressure on herself to make sure that we are forming these arrows in a good way.
39:55
That we are setting them up to be shot in a good way. That when we shoot them, that there are no
40:02
problems that we can foresee and fix on our own. Because when we shoot these boys out into the
40:08
world at some point, we want to make sure they hit the bull's eye. And again, to reiterate,
40:12
I know I can't control that. I have a very controlling personality that's going to be shocked
40:17
everyone listening to this podcast. But that's the thing that I really want to focus on is making
40:22
sure that they are as prepared as they can possibly be within my power with God working through me.
40:28
I want them to be as sharp as possible. I want them to be as godly as possible. I want them to
40:34
know when they go out in the world that there's going to be issues that will befall them, but they
40:39
have the tools to care for themselves and for the people around them. Because that's what legacy is.
40:45
For a lot of guys and I myself fall into this and and still do and probably still will as I move
40:51
forward. We're very concerned about handing down stuff. You know, we want to hand down firearms,
40:58
we want to hand down money, we want to hand down property, we want to hand down our name.
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You know, we built up our name and you know, we want the blank family name to be carried on and
41:08
still have on and all those different things. And to a certain degree, all those things are fine.
41:12
Like, I'm so excited to to get air looms that my dad is going to give me from his family,
41:18
right? Like, I like that. That's cool. I've already got air looms that I'm going to give to my sons,
41:23
like, you know, knives and firearms and, you know, cool stuff and letters from grandparents,
41:27
stuff like that. Like, we got all that. But if all that were to fade away or to go away
41:34
or burn up in a fire or get carried off in a tornado or something like that, what am I leaving
41:40
my sons with? Because if I'm only leaving them with stuff, if I'm only busting my tail so I can,
41:48
you know, make all this money and get all this property and do all these other different things
41:51
and then that's what I leave them. That's good. Those are good things, right? You know, passing
41:55
those things on. But do they know how to be a man? Do they know how to steward well the things
42:02
that I'm entrusting to them? Do they know how to think and problem solve things that money
42:10
doesn't help with an extra firearm doesn't help with it? You know, cool, custom made knife doesn't
42:14
help with. Are they able to love their spouse and children? Well, Lord willing someday?
42:20
Those are the things that I'm really thinking about. So for you guys as fathers out there that
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are listening to this, these children are an arrow in your quiver and you are a warrior. Okay.
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And like a warrior, you have to have arrows. A warrior needs arrows just like we need our sons,
42:37
just like we need our children. Because on that day, the sons would serve, you know,
42:42
as protectors of their aged fathers. Like that, that's an obvious thing that would happen in our
42:47
modern culture. We basically put our aged fathers in homes and go visit them when it's convenient for
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us. It's a very, very different time now than it was back then when this was written thousands of
42:56
years ago. But it's still important for all of us to understand and to recognize what our role is
43:01
in forming these children. Because if you don't form them, they will still be formed by somebody.
43:06
It could be by street gang. It could be by knuckleheads at school. It could be by evil
43:11
teachers, maybe even by some good teachers. It could be by the pastors at your church.
43:17
But it is your job to categorize your children is your job to formulate your children. And if you're
43:23
not putting in the time and effort, someone's going to. So you should take that to heart and make
43:27
sure you plan for it. All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience
43:30
boost out on daunted life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
43:34
for just spiritual mental and physical resilience. So the two links I've got for you today, I've got
43:38
a link to our donation page on the undaunted life website. And I've also got a link to episode 134,
43:42
where I talked about the welcoming of sweet baby James. All right, guys, thanks so much
43:45
listening to the podcast. We do appreciate it. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
43:49
rate and leave us a positive five star view. If you want to come speak live at your event or on
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your podcast, shoot me an email to info at undaunted.life. That's I N F O at undaunted.life. Follow us on
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Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how
44:02
to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www dot undaunted.life. And as
44:08
always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our
44:12
content. The music on this podcast is our song cutting the tides, which is off their 10th anniversary
44:16
re recording of their album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
44:22
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience.
44:29
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
44:59
[Music]