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0:59
This is Undaunted Life a man's podcast.
1:22
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:24
Let's get into it.
1:25
All right, guys.
1:26
You've got a special guest on the podcast today.
1:27
His name is Jay Hewitt.
1:29
He's a pastor, author, and Ironman triathlete.
1:32
He actually completed in an Ironman triathlon while undergoing treatment for terminal brain
1:37
cancer.
1:38
He writes about all of this in his book called "I am weak.
1:41
I am strong building a resilient faith for a resilient life."
1:44
If you know anything about my show, you know the word resilient.
1:47
That just appeals to my brain.
1:48
This is a tremendous story of resilience in this book.
1:51
The book certainly does get practical as well.
1:52
It doesn't just stay out there in the memoir world, but it's a practical story of a guy
1:56
who got this terrible news in his late 30s, and he could have just rolled over and literally
2:00
died or just rolled over and stopped really paying attention and stopped.
2:03
Yeah, we'll just kind of let these pills do what they do and the surgery do what they
2:06
do.
2:07
And then we'll just kind of figure it out.
2:08
But he ran to God in this moment, but he also ran to resilience.
2:13
And so we go through all of the story of like, okay, he gets sick.
2:17
Now what?
2:18
Okay.
2:19
What about surgery?
2:20
Okay.
2:21
He decides he's going to do an Ironman triathlete, which triathlon, which in terms of endurance
2:24
races is one of the hardest things that any human being could possibly put themselves
2:27
through, much less doing it while undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, post cancer surgery.
2:32
So we get into all those details why he did it, what the motivation was, setbacks that
2:37
he experienced during training, setbacks that he experienced because he was trying to run
2:41
this race during COVID.
2:43
And you know, these races were going to be outside.
2:44
But you know, remember back in 2020 and all those different times where it was like we
2:48
pretended like COVID was going to track you down like a heat seeking missile and go up
2:51
your nose at the time.
2:52
And so he has all these races canceled that he's been training for.
2:56
And you know, what do you do whenever you have an injury?
2:58
Like, how do you, you know, keep going towards your goal, but then coming backwards and how
3:01
are you going to do a race when they're not actually holding races?
3:04
Guys, we get into all that information in this podcast.
3:07
So I don't want to actually ruin the story for you.
3:09
So come along on that journey with us.
3:10
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:13
Jay Hewitt.
3:14
Welcome to another life of man's podcast.
3:15
How are you today?
3:16
I'm doing well, man.
3:17
Thanks for having me on.
3:18
Okay.
3:19
We got a lot of ground to cover today.
3:20
We can jump right on in because at a very early age, you and I have kind of a similar
3:26
story in that we got obsessed with a particular type of exercise.
3:31
But I will say that I got it on a different side.
3:34
So I got obsessed with like pro wrestlers.
3:36
And my dad told me like, look, you don't just get muscles and get to keep them.
3:40
You have to like keep doing stuff in order to like keep them and get them and all that.
3:44
But as far as I understand it, when you were 10 years old, 10 or 11 years old, this is back
3:48
in the late eighties.
3:49
You saw Iron Man athletes for the first time.
3:52
And so similar to what Hulk Hogan and macho man Randy Savage were for me, these Iron Man
3:56
athletes were for you.
3:58
So take me through that.
3:59
Yeah, brother.
4:00
Well, first I got to say, I was right there with you with the WWF at that time.
4:04
That's right.
4:05
It was WWE.
4:06
That's right.
4:07
That was all about it.
4:08
But you're asking me about Iron Man.
4:10
Yeah.
4:11
When I was 10 years old, watching a wide world of sports, Iron Man triathlon came on.
4:16
And I, I thought there was no way.
4:18
When I was watching and I was learning, because I'd never heard of it before.
4:22
And when I heard that these athletes were doing 140 miles nonstop, they're swimming,
4:29
they're cycling, they're running, I just thought these people are superhuman.
4:34
They're not normal.
4:36
And you know, at that point, I was 10 years old, not in a real healthy home environment.
4:41
So at that point, I didn't think, oh, I want to, I want to become an Iron Man.
4:46
That wasn't on my radar at all.
4:48
But I was just so impressed that guys could do that.
4:53
So tell me, like, was it something where you were like, okay, sorry, I got to back up
4:57
on my own question.
4:58
So when I got obsessed with WWF and all those guys, like I had the wrestling buddies, like
5:02
I was jumping off my bed and like elbow dropping.
5:05
I was like doing super fly Jimmy Chinooka stuff off of my roof onto the grass and things
5:09
like that.
5:10
So did you think like, okay, I'm going to go emulate that now?
5:13
Or was it just like a cool thing to see to be like, yeah, I had no idea if people even
5:16
did such stuff?
5:19
I did not emulate it whatsoever.
5:21
It was so beyond me.
5:23
It wasn't even in my realm of thinking that I could do something like that as a 10 year
5:27
old.
5:28
It was just like, wow, look at, look at those guys good for them.
5:31
But never, never came back into my brain until quite a while later in my life.
5:37
Okay.
5:38
So we'll certainly get there.
5:39
So we started fun.
5:40
Now we need to start kind of, you know, get into the not so fun stuff.
5:43
So you actually detail this in your book, which is a fantastic book, I am weak.
5:47
I am strong guys that will be there in the show notes.
5:49
We're not going to be able to cover everything here on the podcast today.
5:51
So you can go to the show notes and pick up your own copy of the book there.
5:55
But as you age, and you can kind of give us to ages and age ranges and things like that.
6:00
But something was starting to go wrong with your health.
6:03
There was some confusion there at the very beginning.
6:05
And you know, here you are in your late thirties and all of a sudden you're getting some bad
6:09
news.
6:10
So let's talk about your late thirties, kind of how you were feeling and then kind of what
6:13
ended up happening with your health.
6:15
Yeah.
6:16
So out of nowhere, I had a seizure, never had a seizure before, didn't know what hit me.
6:21
But that got me into the doctor that got me into the neurologist to figure out what was
6:25
going on.
6:27
And I got a call on a Sunday afternoon from a neurosurgeon that I'd never met.
6:32
And he told me he said, Hey, I'm looking at your, your scan right here.
6:36
And it appears that you have a brain tumor, pretty significant in size is about the size
6:40
of a ping pong ball.
6:42
And man, when I heard that over the phone, that just, that took my, my breath away.
6:47
You know, I, again, I don't, I don't know how to react to that.
6:50
So all I knew to ask him was like, is it cancer?
6:55
And he said, I don't know yet.
6:59
And I asked him, am I going to need brain surgery?
7:03
And he said, yes, if possible, because this, this brain tumor is right in the center of
7:09
my brain, very hard to reach very high risk if I was going to try to go through with a
7:14
surgery.
7:15
So getting that news, it just, it shocks you who's a shocking afternoon.
7:22
And I went upstairs and I told my wife and we just kind of embraced and fell on the bed.
7:27
And it was like, okay, we have no choice but to face this.
7:31
So let's go.
7:32
Okay.
7:33
So I actually want to talk about the gap between finding out, telling your spouse embracing.
7:40
And when you got to the point to where you're just like, well, this is the hand that I was
7:43
dealt, I have to play it because I'm fairly pessimistic in my personality.
7:47
And I tended to dwell on things that are negative, not on things that are positive, things that
7:50
are positive.
7:51
I'm like, Oh, that's great.
7:52
And then I move on to the next thing.
7:53
But I've gone through that same scenario in my head having not experienced what you've experienced,
7:58
but I've tried to put myself there so that I could try to predecide how it would react.
8:02
And you know, the drill, Jay, you don't know how you're going to react until you're literally
8:06
in the middle of the situation.
8:07
So what was the time length between like, okay, this absolutely sucks.
8:11
Maybe you're in tears with your wife and all that, all the worst, worst possible things
8:16
that could scare a person are right there in front of you.
8:18
And then how long was that gap and kind of, you know, how long did it take you to get there?
8:22
What did you do to get there?
8:23
Take us through that.
8:24
Yeah.
8:25
So it was probably a year that went on before I actually had my first brain surgery.
8:31
I've had three now, but my first brain surgery took about a year because I had to fight insurance.
8:37
They didn't want to pay for it.
8:38
Of course.
8:39
And you know, surgery like that's over a million dollars.
8:42
And so it's not something that you can just say, I'll take care of it.
8:46
So anyway, I had to fight insurance.
8:48
And then I also had to find a surgeon that was capable of attempting this surgery because
8:54
of the placement of the tumor.
8:56
A lot of surgeons would call it inoperable, but I kept, I didn't give up.
9:02
And that's my personality of when life is out of control, I get moving, I get busy.
9:10
I start working and that can sound good, but it's also an attempt at control.
9:14
You know, I'm trying to control something I can't control, but it worked out well in
9:18
this situation because I just wouldn't give up on insurance or on surgeons.
9:23
And then finally, I got to a neurosurgeon up in San Francisco that he specialized in
9:29
surgery in this placement.
9:32
And so he was willing to attempt the surgery for me.
9:35
Okay.
9:36
So take me through this.
9:37
So one year of waiting, typically my experience with family members or loved ones that have
9:41
gotten cancer is they get a diagnosis and treatment or surgery and or surgery typically starts
9:46
almost immediately, depending upon the severity of what's happening.
9:49
So I mean, a year waiting around knowing that you essentially have a time bomb in the middle
9:55
of your head, like, like, how do you, how do you deal with that?
9:59
Like, even just from a practical health perspective, were there any deleterious things happening
10:04
because it was, you know, taking so long to get this thing going?
10:08
Oh, yeah.
10:09
Absolutely.
10:10
I mean, the, the main symptom that I was dealing with was seizure.
10:14
And so I was having, I don't know, maybe five, six seizures a day.
10:17
And that's pretty debilitating as far as your capacity to work and even decision making.
10:24
And you know, the interesting thing is I've had some people ask me about prayer.
10:29
And during that year, I couldn't pray much, you know, because it takes quite a bit of
10:33
mental focus to really pray.
10:37
But fortunately, I had a great faith community around me.
10:39
I had a lot of people praying on my, my behalf, and I had to kind of lean on that to find
10:44
the, the peace that can only come from, from Christ.
10:47
So when you say you had these people praying for you, I'm working through acts right now
10:50
and, you know, we're, we're going through different parts where like people were, we're
10:53
praying for Peter and praying for, for Paul after his conversion and stuff like that.
10:58
Were they praying instead of you?
11:00
Were they praying with you where it was kind of one of those things where it's like, you
11:04
know, you got, you got so down on the dumps, maybe you're so depressed that prayer wasn't
11:07
even on your mind.
11:08
Like, tell me a little bit more about that because, you know, some people, when things
11:12
go poorly, they run away from God.
11:14
That's kind of my MO because I'm so mad.
11:16
I'm going to go over here and fix it on my own and then I'll show you God kind of a
11:19
thing.
11:20
And so like prayer typically doesn't work into my equation.
11:22
What was it like for you?
11:24
Yeah.
11:25
So I, I was having difficulty praying, not because of depression, but because of the seizures,
11:31
because of the mental load of, of having seizures, it was hard to focus to pray.
11:37
And so people, yeah, we're praying on my behalf in place of me.
11:41
So my prayer life wasn't, wasn't full at that point, but I had other people lifting me
11:46
up.
11:47
Yeah.
11:48
And, and I don't know, I don't know for, for our time together, it might be helpful
11:53
to fast forward and, you know, that's a great thing about the book.
11:56
You have time to, to unfold things.
11:59
But after that first surgery, they were able to biopsy the tumor because at first, you
12:04
know, it's in a lot of cancer situations or tumor situations when you're figuring out
12:10
if it's benign or malignant, they take a biopsy.
12:13
But with brain tumors, there's a skull in the way.
12:17
So you can't just poke a needle in there to get some tissue.
12:20
So I went into the first surgery, not knowing if it was cancerous or not.
12:24
And then after that first surgery, that's when I discovered that it was cancerous and
12:28
I got the diagnosis with the prognosis.
12:32
And that's the moment where I really had to decide, am I going to turn to God or turn
12:40
away from him?
12:41
Because it's at that point where you can start to ask the questions, why me?
12:47
You can start placing blame and you can blame God for things like this.
12:51
And as a pastor, I've watched people in crisis.
12:54
That's the moment where they turn and they walk away.
12:58
I think I had already dealt with a lot of that when my dad passed away and there's a
13:02
lot of anger and a lot of blame.
13:04
But God was so gracious with me during that point so that now when I'm facing my own personal
13:09
crisis of my own personal health, I was able to turn to him pretty quickly, almost like
13:14
a reflex.
13:15
And I turned to him in prayer was my first connection point with him.
13:21
And so when you find out that it's cancer, what was the prognosis initially?
13:26
Yes.
13:27
So it was also terminal and chronic and they gave me six to 10 years, six to 10 years
13:35
and when was this?
13:37
I was 36.
13:39
Okay.
13:40
And so how old are you now?
13:42
I'm just wondering how long ago you got the prognosis.
13:45
Yeah, I'm 42.
13:47
Okay.
13:48
And so with that, let's just kind of go and speed up to your recovery and then we'll get
13:51
into the in-between and we'll spend a lot of time there.
13:54
So you said three surgeries, right?
13:56
So you've had three surgeries.
13:58
What is kind of your prognosis now?
14:00
Like what do the doctors feel about your situation, kind of where you're currently at?
14:04
Yeah, so now I'm in the middle of that prognosis span.
14:09
However, my last visit with my neuro oncologist, she was able to say because my last surgery
14:19
was so successful that I almost get to restart with that prognosis.
14:25
So that extends past quite a bit.
14:29
Okay.
14:30
Very good.
14:31
Well, that's certainly good news considering some of the news that a lot of people get.
14:34
And that those doctors have to deliver to those people.
14:37
But I want to turn now to a conversation that you had with your daughter.
14:40
So this is while you're in the middle of your fight, you know, you're receiving your treatment,
14:45
trying to take care of this issue.
14:47
And you tell your daughter that you are going to do an Ironman triathlon and do it for her.
14:54
So take us through just that initial part.
14:56
Well, first of all, not everyone knows exactly what an Ironman is.
14:59
So like describe exactly what you were telling your daughter that you were going to be doing
15:03
for her and in honor of her.
15:05
But just tell us like, where did you get the idea to do all of this?
15:09
Let's just start there.
15:10
All right.
15:11
So an Ironman is a triathlon swim bike run.
15:15
You swim two and a half miles and then you get out of the water, get right on a bike and
15:19
you do a 112 mile ride.
15:21
And then when you're done with that, you top it off with the marathon.
15:25
So it's 140.6 miles and it has to be done in under 17 hours.
15:32
So it's pretty intense.
15:33
It's a gold standard of an endurance race.
15:36
So how that came about where that idea came from was really that moment where I had to
15:43
choose, am I going to turn to God or am I going to turn away from him?
15:47
And I chose to turn to him and I prayed.
15:51
And it was just a very matter of fact, prayer of God, what are you doing?
15:57
This doesn't make sense because I just planted a new church that was thriving, doing really
16:02
well, have a young daughter.
16:04
Things are going well and it seems like he's working in my life and it just made no sense
16:09
to me that at this point in life, I would get hit hard with a terminal illness.
16:16
So I was confused.
16:17
So I asked him, I said, what are you doing?
16:21
So I sought the Lord, he heard me and he answered me.
16:25
And through the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus promised and described, the Holy Spirit reminds
16:30
us of the teachings of Jesus, the Holy Spirit spoke to me through scripture, it's like
16:35
my heart, my mind, my soul, we're all directed to 2 Corinthians 12, 9 and 10, where Paul
16:42
has this, there's different ideas of what's going on in Paul's life.
16:47
But for my purposes, I've seemed to bonded with the interpretation that he has some kind
16:52
of mysterious illness, a thorn in his side.
16:56
And he's prayed three times for it to be removed, three is the number of completion
16:59
that we find throughout the biblical text.
17:02
So he prayed until there was nothing left to pray about.
17:05
And God's response to his request that it be removed would simply, no.
17:11
But God went on to so kindly tell him, but my grace will be sufficient because my power
17:21
is perfected in weakness.
17:23
And then Paul concluded, well, then when I'm weak, then I'm strong.
17:29
And so as my heart, my soul, we're taking to the scripture, I concluded the exact same
17:32
thing.
17:33
Okay, what is God doing?
17:36
He's about to demonstrate his power through my weakness.
17:39
He's going to show me what it means that his grace can sustain me through something like
17:44
this.
17:45
And so I concluded, okay, well, then when I'm weak, then I'm strong.
17:51
And after I prayed that prayer, then I prayed the next prayer, which is so pivotal, okay,
17:56
how can I cooperate, how can I join you in what you're doing?
18:00
And you know, I'm pretty clear that the Lord spoke to me with what he was doing, how I
18:08
could join him.
18:09
I'd more call it a nudge or the Holy Spirit.
18:11
I felt this nudge from the Holy Spirit saying, Hey, you have an opportunity here.
18:15
You have an opportunity to show your daughter what resilient faith looks like.
18:20
And you have an opportunity to show her that the promises of God are real and reliable.
18:25
And I got this idea of what if I attempt something that I never thought I could do at my best
18:32
and I attempted at my worst and I don't know where, like I said, I hadn't really thought
18:37
about Ironman in, you know, 30 years.
18:42
And this idea popped in my head, what if what if I did Ironman something that I saw when
18:47
I was 10 years old and I thought there's no way these people are superhuman.
18:51
I could never do that.
18:53
What if I attempted that while I was going through cancer treatment?
18:58
So the idea was my daughter would be able to watch me get up and get out and train even
19:05
when I want to stay in bed so she can see that resilience and then she could also see
19:11
me cross the finish line and see me do something that would be impossible on my own probably
19:17
impossible if I was just at my best but definitely impossible when I'm at my worst.
19:24
And I thought, well, if I do this and if she's my motivation and I dedicate my race to her,
19:32
not only do I get to show her what resilient faith looks like, I also get to provide a
19:36
grand gesture of love to say, honey, this is for you.
19:41
And when all of those pieces came together in a very short amount of time, you know, this
19:44
is a prayer that lasted 30 seconds.
19:48
I made the decision.
19:49
I'm going to do this.
19:50
I ran it by my wife.
19:52
I ran it by a pastor that I greatly respect and then I told my daughter, I said her name
19:57
is Hero.
19:58
I said, Hero, I'm going to do an Ironman and I'm going to do it in your honor.
20:03
And from that point, there's no turning back.
20:05
Yeah, certainly.
20:06
If you tell her something like that, that's not like saying, Hey, we're going to go get
20:09
ice cream this afternoon like this.
20:10
This is something that you pretty much have to dedicate yourself to, but take me through
20:14
the process now of, okay, I've heard about people going couch to 5k.
20:18
I've even heard about people going couch to, you know, marathon.
20:22
Nobody does, you know, couch to Murph.
20:24
No one goes couch to Ironman triathlon.
20:26
This requires training and planning and build plans and diets and changes.
20:32
Tell me about that process, but also I remember when Stuart Scott was going through his cancer
20:39
fight, the, the former sports center anchor and I remember seeing him doing like MMA training
20:45
and MMA style workouts and I just in my head, I was like, wait a minute, I thought that when
20:49
you're going through like you post cancer surgery or radiation or chemo that you've got
20:54
to be basically in a bubble because like if someone sneezes within a half mile of you,
20:58
then you're probably going to die.
20:59
I just remember like thinking like, how's he able to do this?
21:01
So take me through and disabuse me of any of that ignorance of like what you're able to
21:06
do and capable of doing post cancer surgery, but while also undergoing radiation and chemo.
21:12
Yeah.
21:13
So I passed it by my, my doctors first and they said, yeah, this is good.
21:18
The more you can exercise during treatment, the better it strengthens your body.
21:22
You can re recover more.
21:24
Now, I don't know if they knew how intense training for Ironman would be and I don't
21:28
think I did either.
21:29
Yeah.
21:30
When I made this decision, we did not know how intense it was, but regardless, they said,
21:34
yeah, go for it.
21:37
And so coming out of surgery, they give you about a month to recover before your body's
21:41
strong enough to endure radiation and chemotherapy.
21:45
And so I rested during that recovery time for a month.
21:49
And then on day one of radiation and chemotherapy, I ran a mile.
21:55
And each day I would go in, I would run a little further and a little further.
22:00
And so pretty soon I was up to 10 miles and at 10 miles, I had a seizure.
22:06
And I thought, okay, grand experiment over, you know, because I, in the back of my head,
22:11
I, I know that the scripture is, is about spiritual things, not necessarily about physical
22:17
things, but I saw this as such a great metaphor to demonstrate the spiritual.
22:21
So I just thought, you know, I got to the 10 miles and I thought, well, this was silly.
22:25
This was foolishness.
22:27
My body can't do this.
22:29
So I went to my doctor and I said, Hey, like, what do you say?
22:32
And my doctor said, well, just back off a little bit.
22:36
So the next day I went and I ran 10 miles, just a little slower.
22:41
And my body was able to do it.
22:42
And then I just got pushing.
22:44
And I didn't know what I was doing.
22:46
I was just during that time, I was like, okay, I know to run a marathon, you people train
22:52
20 miles.
22:53
And so I'm going to see if I can work my way up to 20 miles, just adding a mile each day.
22:57
And my body was able to do it.
22:58
And then once I could do that, then I added swimming because I had no idea how to swim.
23:06
And that was difficult on my body and then cycling against so difficult on my body.
23:10
But I just kept adding a little more and a little more.
23:12
That was my game plan.
23:14
But it wasn't until I had to start doing what's called brick training, where you're not just
23:19
running, you're not just swimming, you're not just cycling.
23:22
You're doing those things together.
23:24
That's when I needed a plan and it was so crazy the way that God works.
23:31
One thing that I learned, and I talked about this in the book, is that whenever I pray
23:35
for help, God seems to respond by sending me someone.
23:41
And so I've learned when I need help and I just have one of those like urgent, like
23:45
God help, I open my eyes to see who He's sending to me at any particular point.
23:50
And so I got into the brick training, my body wasn't handling it, and I prayed for help.
23:56
And then within a couple of days, I got a call from this guy that I'd met one time in Idaho.
24:02
I'm out in California, Southern California.
24:04
A guy from Idaho calls me and says, "Hey, I was on a run today and I thought of you."
24:09
I was running with a woman who competes at the world championship level of Iron Man.
24:14
She's a breast cancer survivor and she's starting to coach people.
24:18
I told her about you and she wants to coach you.
24:20
And so now I found myself with a coach who competes at the top level of what I'm trying
24:25
to do and understands what it is to go through cancer treatment.
24:30
And she was the one that was able to craft my workouts.
24:34
She followed me by my sports watch that would also give her vitals of my body.
24:39
And she knew when I needed to back off and when I needed to push and she modified workouts
24:44
for me.
24:45
But if it wasn't for her giving me that training program and modifying it, one of her axioms
24:52
was always the hardest part of Iron Man is getting to the starting line healthy.
24:57
Because the training is so intense.
24:59
But she got me to the start line healthy.
25:01
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That's why I want to remind you that we are partnered with origin.
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And that's such a tremendous asset.
26:38
You know, I'm connected to a lot of people in the MMA community and that's the same thing.
26:42
But their thing is like you never get to the fight, you never get to fight night healthy.
26:46
So you just try to get there as healthy as possible.
26:48
And so I'm sure even for you, you certainly had to have had some setbacks.
26:52
It's impossible, seemingly to train for an Ironman at any age with any type of genetic
26:56
predisposition without some significant setbacks.
26:59
So take us through some of those setbacks and then also go ahead and just tell us, what's
27:03
the worst part?
27:04
Like, do you hate the biking more or the running more because it's always, you know, different
27:08
distances.
27:09
Some people are really good in the water.
27:10
They're like fish.
27:11
What was, what were the bad times like, but then also what's the crappiest part?
27:14
What did you hate the most?
27:16
Well, I think specifically for Ironman, the crappiest part's got to be the run because
27:20
it's at the end.
27:21
Yeah.
27:22
Yeah.
27:23
You know, so to just go do a, you know, 120 mile warm up before starting a marathon.
27:27
That's a brutal marathon, right?
27:29
Yeah.
27:30
Right.
27:31
That's got to be.
27:32
I enjoy running.
27:33
That's the only thing I'd done before.
27:34
You know, I wasn't an athlete.
27:35
I wasn't, I didn't play varsity sports or anything like that, even in high school.
27:40
But I would run occasionally.
27:43
And so I was most comfortable with running.
27:46
Swimming was the hardest to learn, obviously.
27:49
I could keep my head above water, but you know, the, the first time I went out for a swim,
27:54
I did a hundred meters and I was gassed.
27:57
I was so, so tired.
27:59
And I thought, how am I going to do 3,200 meters?
28:02
If I can't even do 100, and I thought there's, there's no way.
28:06
But again, I prayed and I said, God help.
28:09
And here comes a guy from my church.
28:11
He was a division one swimmer, swam with Michael Phelps and he knew what he was doing.
28:16
He got, he took off work early every day to meet me at the pool, teach me how to swim.
28:22
So that was brutal to start with.
28:24
But the cycling was the part that my body couldn't handle because one of the byproducts
28:32
of chemotherapy is muscle strains.
28:34
And so to be on a bike, you know, you're out for four hours training, doing 100 plus miles
28:40
and your, your stationary and your hamstrings just over and over are pumping the same motion.
28:46
And so I had some, some big muscle strains, which then because I'm on chemo, the recovery
28:53
from that was really difficult.
28:55
And the recovery was slow, which was scary because my race that I'd already signed up
28:59
for in Australia was getting closer and closer and I wasn't able to be out training.
29:05
And so I was freaking out, like, am I going to be ready for this thing?
29:09
And, and then I, it also freaked me out too in training to be dealing with muscle strains
29:14
because Ironman, like one of their favorite things to do is to show highlight reels of
29:19
elite athletes crawling across the finish line because they, they cramp up somewhere along
29:25
and then by sheer willpower, they just crawl across the finish line and I'm thinking my
29:30
body's not going to be able to handle it.
29:32
You know, I can, I can give myself the best nutrition and hydration, but with chemotherapy
29:37
in my, my system, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it.
29:40
But so it was a muscle, it was a huge mental strain during training to be experiencing
29:46
these strains and thinking, what's the point of continuing to train if I'm not even able
29:51
to go a hundred miles on a bike and I need to do 112 plus a marathon.
29:57
So it was, yeah, it was difficult.
30:00
I had sent that stir back during the race as well, but that was the training.
30:04
Well, so with the training, it's funny that you brought up Michael Phelps and all that.
30:08
So I remember after this would have been what the 2008 Olympics when Phelps won all his gold
30:12
medals, a gold medals or whatever, I was like, you know what, I'm, I'm motivated.
30:15
Let's go swim.
30:16
And I'm a good athlete.
30:17
And you know, I'm in good shape and all that.
30:18
I go to our pool at our university and I go from one end of the pool to the other.
30:23
And I'm like, this is the dumbest thing in the world.
30:25
No one should do this.
30:26
Like why do people do this to themselves?
30:28
And I kept trying and I kept going.
30:29
It's like, all right, I guess I'm just not going to be a swimmer and I kind of moved on,
30:33
but you obviously pushed through all of that.
30:35
You had some resilience to go through all that, but you mentioned you signed up for a race
30:38
in 2019 in Australia and that was postponed.
30:42
And then you signed up for a race in Santa Rosa in 2020 also postponed.
30:48
So tell me where you go from there, because I just got to imagine, I mean, again, I keep
30:52
thinking about this for whatever reason in an MMA context, because the training for both
30:56
is so brutal, but you get a fight, it's on the calendar, then the fighter pulls out and
31:00
then they push you to another day and you're like, okay, so let me hit the reset button.
31:04
Let me start my recovery, then I'll restart my training camp and then I'll go like that.
31:07
But for an iron man to have it postponed twice and not know when we're actually going to
31:12
do the damn thing, like, what was that like?
31:15
Yeah, it was like, you're talking about that resiliency of mind, I kept having these ideas
31:23
of like, that was such a stupid idea, like, of course, right, especially when you started
31:30
quitting it with that you're being led by God, because people get that wrong a lot.
31:36
Yeah.
31:37
And I've gotten it wrong in the past.
31:38
And so when you're trying to do something like this and you feel led by God, but then,
31:42
you know, you're getting injured, then races are getting canceled.
31:47
And you mentioned 2020, and we all know what happened in 2020, you know, here comes COVID
31:53
and the pandemic sweeps through and everything shuts down.
31:57
You mentioned in the beginning, your idea of somebody going through cancer having to be
32:02
in this bubble, well, that was the truth.
32:05
Now all of a sudden I'm at high, high risk because of my sickness, my illness.
32:12
And so now all my training partners are pulling out.
32:15
So now I'm solo, you know, they don't want to be around me.
32:18
And so I'm because I don't want to they don't want to be responsible for getting me sick.
32:23
And so I'm solo, I'm training all on my own, the help that I had wasn't there.
32:28
And then there's more more stress being put on my family.
32:33
And honestly, this was probably this was the hardest on a heart level and mentally.
32:39
So I'm doing this whole thing for my daughter, for my family.
32:42
But once 2020 hits and everything shuts down, my wife is a professor.
32:48
So now she's at home and she is lecturing from home.
32:52
And my daughter who would have been at school is now at home as well.
32:57
And instead of me being home pitching in, I'm out riding my bike.
33:00
I'm out training and just leaving it all on them.
33:04
And so I had to, I had to really think, all right, did I, did I get this wrong?
33:08
Because there's now so much stress being put on my family as a result of what I'm attempting
33:13
to do.
33:14
And then Ironman starts canceling races because Australia said, no, you can't hold a race
33:20
here.
33:21
And California said, no, you can't hold a race here.
33:25
And I got a call from Ironman at that point I was an Ironman sponsored athlete.
33:30
And so they called me and they said, Hey, we haven't made the announcement yet, but we're
33:36
going to cancel all of our races worldwide.
33:40
And they said one race that we've never canceled before is our world championships in Kona,
33:45
Hawaii.
33:46
But if you remember back then, Hawaii was really locked down.
33:48
Right.
33:49
And so there was no way Hawaii was going to allow them to hold their race.
33:53
And so I got this call, everything shutting down and I thought, okay, well, then that
33:57
answers that this obviously wasn't from the Lord.
34:01
It's time to back out.
34:02
What they said to me, they said, Hey, we want to, we want you to do the world championship.
34:11
I was like, well, I didn't qualify for that.
34:13
They said, yeah, yeah.
34:14
Honorary.
34:15
And I said, but that's canceled as well.
34:17
And they said, well, what we're going to do is we're going to have our first ever full
34:21
distance virtual race as like, how's that work and, and you know, all of us are competing
34:29
with sport watches on smartwatches and they said, well, you have an app it'll attach to
34:34
your Garmin and you'll plan your own 140 mile course.
34:41
And we'll track it via the app and the, the watch and you'll compete against everybody
34:45
that way.
34:47
And I remember thinking, I can't do that because I've never, I've never been to an Ironman
34:55
race.
34:56
And now I have to plan my own.
34:58
You know, I, I don't know what a transition zone looks like.
35:02
I don't know what an aid station is.
35:04
And now not only do I have to plan a route 140 mile route that, you know, that I can
35:09
do, but it's the other pieces permits, support for me having a paramedic available.
35:19
All of these, all of these things just seemed impossible.
35:22
And so I told them, I said, well, let me talk to my wife, which, you know, that's, that's
35:27
good man code for, I'm not going to do this.
35:30
You know, it just gives you an out.
35:33
Yeah.
35:34
So, so I thought because so much stress had been placed on my wife, I thought, yeah,
35:39
we'll have this conversation, but this, this isn't going to happen.
35:42
But when I talked to her, she said, I think you should do it and that really took me
35:49
by surprise.
35:50
She said, Jay, if you can plan your own course, we can put the finish line right in front
35:56
of our house.
35:58
She said, you know, hero watches you train because I had a running route, a genius running
36:03
training route.
36:04
It was only a three mile loop that I would just do over and over because I always had
36:08
a bathroom, you know, because I'd come by my house every three miles and so it was smart.
36:14
So my daughter would watch me pass by the house every three miles.
36:18
And she said, that's important to hero.
36:21
And now if she can watch you cross the finish line out in front of our house, that's gonna,
36:26
that's gonna submit that minute, that memory.
36:29
And she also said, you know, it was a cute idea to go out to, to Australia and make it
36:34
a trip for the whole family, but she said, your community is here and people will be able
36:40
to support you if you do it at home.
36:43
And when she said those two things, I thought, okay, let's go.
36:47
And so I called the Ironman back and said, yeah, count me in, we're gonna do this thing.
36:54
Stay for me, fortunately for me, at this point, there's a documentary crew that's following
36:59
me.
37:00
And so I've got a full crew with, you know, directors and producers and all of that stuff.
37:05
And so they put one of their producers on the race.
37:10
So there was a producer that handled all the permitting, all of those things.
37:14
So that that was a weight taken off of my shoulders, which was very, very fortunate.
37:18
Okay, very good.
37:19
So obviously everybody had to get really creative during 2020 because everything got really
37:24
stupid there for a little bit.
37:26
And so you're doing this process.
37:27
Luckily, you've got some people that are helping you.
37:29
Luckily, you got somebody helping you with the permitting, figuring out the track, figuring
37:33
out all the aid stations, all those types of things.
37:35
But I remember a buddy looking at me like I was crazy, because I told him that I train,
37:41
you know, powerlifting or all the training I do, I do that alone.
37:44
And I don't listen to music while I do it.
37:46
He's like, are you a serial killer?
37:47
Like, do I need to be concerned like you work out without anybody around?
37:50
Like, so there's, you know, you don't get that little ego boost because, you know, somebody
37:54
is on the other side of the gym, maybe looking at you, seeing what you're, what's your deadlift
37:57
in that day.
37:58
So the, the idea, Jay, of like doing this alone, like without any people, like, come on, man,
38:04
you can do it or smack any on the bottom on the way by it's a, you know, just that camaraderie
38:08
you get from doing any kind of race with other people, whether it's a tough mutter or an iron
38:13
man or anything like that, like that absolutely suck.
38:16
Or did it?
38:17
I just assuming that it did, but it sounds like it would be terrible.
38:21
Yes.
38:22
Yeah.
38:23
Like, like you're pointing out there's a certain amount of, when other athletes are there,
38:28
it's motivational.
38:29
It keeps you going.
38:31
The pure competition comes out of you out of you when you're competing against others.
38:35
And now I'm alone.
38:37
I'm solo and with all my doubts and anytime I'm going to be thinking, maybe I should just
38:43
quit.
38:44
Maybe I should just give up on this.
38:45
I'm on my own.
38:48
But what I also learned during the training, because during 2020, I was training alone.
38:52
So it's kind of like the Lord was preparing me for that.
38:56
And so I learned how to find some, some gratitude in the solitude where swimming, swimming was
39:06
the worst to learn, but then it became my favorite to do because I would meditate on
39:10
the Lord's prayer every time I would swim and I, I felt myself growing spiritually, even
39:16
while while I was in the trenches of training and then cycling as well.
39:23
When I, when I'd be out on a long ride by myself, I was some of the best time to process through
39:29
all of the emotion that came along with a terminal illness.
39:34
And I was able to, to, at that point through prayer, I was able to pray during that point.
39:40
Really make some headway into my own mental health as I was also boosting my physical health.
39:46
But then the run man, the run is just brutal and terrible.
39:51
And when you're doing that on your own, makes it even more difficult, absolutely.
39:56
So it's interesting to see how much mental training you went through, which guys, obviously
40:01
if any of you have ever done anything difficult physically, you know, there's a tremendous
40:05
mental component to it as well.
40:06
We always talk about cultivating spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
40:10
And it sounds like you were really sharpening all of those knives as you were going through
40:13
this training.
40:14
But let, let's just get to race day.
40:16
So it's race day.
40:17
You're trying to, you got to get this thing done in under 17 hours and just take us through
40:21
the race.
40:22
Where did you start?
40:23
When did you start?
40:24
Like, you know, what was race day like?
40:26
Yeah.
40:27
So four a.m.
40:28
The alarm clock goes off.
40:30
I put my, I put my feet on the ground and pray.
40:33
Were you able to sleep?
40:34
Jay.
40:35
Were you able to sleep the night before?
40:36
I can't imagine you got a good night's sleep.
40:38
There's no way.
40:39
No, I, I was able to.
40:41
I was.
40:42
Yeah.
40:43
Okay.
40:44
Through this whole thing.
40:45
There's, God has just given me such a piece and I slept well the night before my surgeries
40:51
slept well the night before my race.
40:54
So yeah, I get up at 4.30.
40:55
It's dark out.
40:57
I come downstairs.
40:58
I eat a poke bowl.
40:59
That was my, my morning nutrition routine.
41:02
So I had some raw fish and, and white rice and, and gotten a van and went to Newport Beach.
41:11
So Pacific Ocean, you have to do an open water swim.
41:14
And so I went down there and the producer had set up an opening ceremony, Ironman do,
41:20
they do an epic opening ceremony and a party afterwards.
41:23
And I was really bummed that I wouldn't be able to experience that.
41:27
But the producer put together an opening ceremony, a good friend of mine, a pastor was
41:31
flown in to do that opening ceremony.
41:34
There's probably about a hundred, 150 people that were there before the sun came up to
41:38
support me.
41:40
And after that opening ceremony, I went to the start line and everybody came around
41:45
and countdown three, two, one when they hit one.
41:48
My wife and daughter had an air horn and they hit the air horn.
41:52
And as that sounded, I pressed start on my watch and I charged down to the Pacific Ocean,
41:58
jumped in, freeze and cold, woke me right up and, and I started heading out for that
42:04
two and a half mile swim.
42:06
And there was this moment, there was this moment where I'm swimming alongside the pier
42:12
and all my friends had run over there and same with my wife and my daughter.
42:16
And as I'm swimming, my head comes up and I go to take a breath and I can see my daughter
42:21
and we lock eyes and we both knew it.
42:24
You know that, that moment when you have a connection with somebody with eye contact
42:28
and you both know.
42:29
Oh yeah.
42:30
Although there's people all over the place, it's just me and you.
42:33
So we could tell and she, she waved at me and I was at the perfect point in my stroke
42:38
where my hand was coming out of the water and I waved back at her and she started jumping
42:42
up and down.
42:43
Now, the night before the Lord gave me another scripture, Nehemiah eight, ten, might be ten
42:49
eight, it's been a while, anyway, the joy of the Lord is your strength.
42:54
And I went into that day thinking, all right, I am going to give gratitude for every moment
43:00
of this race and watch it transition into strength.
43:04
And so when my daughter waves at me and started jumping up and down, I just, I thank the Lord.
43:10
God, this is amazing that I get to do this for my daughter.
43:14
And I could feel myself just well up with strength in that moment.
43:17
And the more I gave thanks, the stronger I felt throughout the day.
43:21
So I got out of the water two and a half, two and a half miles in and I felt good.
43:26
I truly felt like it was a good warm up and I was ready to go.
43:30
I jumped on the bike and I head out and it's, you know, the sun is just starting to rise
43:35
at that point.
43:37
And I realized at that moment, people travel from all over the world to cycle Pacific Coast
43:45
Highway up the west coast of California.
43:47
And this is what I get to do and it's a perfect day.
43:50
I get to watch the sunrise.
43:52
I get to watch how the light reflects back off of the Pacific Ocean.
43:56
And it turned out to be a 74 degree day.
44:00
So as I'm writing, it's just perfect conditions and I'm loving it.
44:04
Some other really amazing moments on that, that bike that I detail in the book, but won't
44:09
get into it for the sake of time.
44:11
But when I got off of the bike, I, again, I felt really strong.
44:18
So now I'm, you know, let's see, 115 miles in and I put on my shoes and I start for the
44:26
run and I'm planning to run 10 minute miles, right, which, you know, that's not exceptionally
44:33
fast at all.
44:34
It's mild.
44:35
It's very mild.
44:36
But for a first time triathlete, it's respectable.
44:39
So 10 minute miles is my, my plan.
44:42
And the first mile I looked down at my watch and I'm doing eight minute miles.
44:48
And I think to myself, this is literally a marathon, not a sprint, slow down.
44:54
And so I, I back off my pace and at mild Sue, I, I checked my pace and I'm at eight and a
45:00
half minute miles and I, I had this really stupid thought.
45:05
I thought, you know, all right, I knew the Lord was going to teach me what his strength
45:10
through my weakness really looks like.
45:13
And I didn't expect this, but maybe he's, he's turning me into something that's superhuman
45:17
spirit fueled and I'm just going to go crush this time.
45:20
Maybe I'm going to do this with eight minute miles.
45:23
And right about that, that moment where I had that thought, it, it happened.
45:28
I knew somehow, some way I was going to have to battle my cancer treatment.
45:34
I didn't know how I was most, I was most prepared for some kind of cramping.
45:40
And the way that I was fighting against the cramping was through my nutrition and hydration.
45:45
What I didn't know was that because of the chemotherapy, my digestive system was just
45:52
trashed.
45:54
And so I had all of this food and water sitting in my stomach, not being absorbed through my
46:01
gut lining.
46:02
Now, when you're swimming, your stomach is stationary, when you're cycling, your stomach
46:07
is stationary.
46:08
But once you start running, all of a sudden your stomach's moving up and down and everything
46:13
that was inside of me wasn't going to stay inside of me anymore.
46:18
And from that point on for the next couple miles, I felt like I was running with a stomach
46:23
flu.
46:24
And I thought, well, if, if it wasn't bad enough, now it's even worse.
46:31
And I gave thanks, I gave thanks for something that I went through that was difficult before.
46:37
I gave thanks for this, this time that I climbed Mount Whitney with some friends.
46:42
So Mount Whitney, the, the largest mountain in the United States are contiguous, basically
46:48
not Mount Denali.
46:50
So anyway, all that to say, I got altitude sickness.
46:56
And on the way down, I was so sick, but I was able to get back down.
47:00
And I just thought, I've fought through this before, if I did it before, I can do it now.
47:04
So God, thanks for giving me that experience before, let it fuel me now and help me to
47:09
press on.
47:10
So I kept, I kept pressing on for a couple more miles.
47:12
But the problem was, I wasn't able to take anything in.
47:17
I wasn't able to take a sip of water, any other nutrition.
47:20
And I knew anybody, whether you're going through cancer treatment or not, a person's
47:26
body cannot run a marathon without a sip of water.
47:31
And I just knew I am going to cramp up.
47:33
At some point, I'm going to cramp up.
47:36
And I thought, if I'm 20 miles away from the finish line, I'm not going to be able to cross
47:43
the finish line, no matter how much willpower I have, I cannot crawl 20 miles and, and make
47:50
it to the finish line.
47:52
And so I just, I had to come to terms with the fact that everything that I'd done up
47:56
to this point, it was all for nothing, and I wasn't going to finish this race.
48:02
I had to come, I had to come and find peace with the fact that I wasn't going to finish
48:06
this race.
48:07
And so then it became very important to me that I was a good example for my daughter,
48:14
that I'd be able to look her in the eye and say with absolute authenticity, I gave it my
48:21
all to make it back home to you.
48:24
Because as a guy with terminal cancer, this has become a metaphor now, where I'm fighting
48:29
throughout the day to make it back home, just like now I have to fight every day to make
48:33
it home to my family.
48:35
And so I needed to know in my soul that even if I wasn't able to make it home that day
48:40
and cross the finish line, I needed to be able to look here on the eye and said, say,
48:45
honey, I gave it my all.
48:47
And so I started this new mantra in my head during that point where I just said, you have
48:52
nothing to prove, just an example to set.
48:55
You have nothing to prove, just an example to set.
48:58
Which was difficult because I knew there's 100 people waiting for me at home, they've
49:03
been waiting all day, they've been following me all day.
49:05
I've got a documentary crew that's following me to document all this and Ironman had sent
49:11
out their broadcast crew.
49:13
So the crew that's normally in Kona, they were out with me following me and they were
49:17
broadcasting me on their overall World Championship race.
49:20
And so it was difficult to say you have nothing to prove when you know you have that many
49:24
eyes on you.
49:27
But I was able to say it in my soul and mean it.
49:32
But it was, I mean, you can imagine to put that much into something and to realize I'm
49:37
not going to finish this race.
49:39
And so I prayed the same prayer that you would pray, that anybody would pray, that really
49:43
simple prayer of help, help.
49:47
And then God did what God had done the whole time, He sent me someone.
49:51
And so this is what happened.
49:53
About the time that I prayed help, my coach who had flown out from Idaho, who had been
49:58
monitoring me by my sport watch, noticed that my vitals were not well.
50:04
And she knew I was in trouble.
50:06
She tracked down through the GPS where I was and where my next aid station was.
50:11
And she met me there.
50:12
She met me at the aid station and she had brought her running shoes.
50:16
She started running alongside of me, asking me questions that I didn't know to ask myself.
50:22
I'm a rookie.
50:23
I don't know what I'm doing.
50:24
Yeah.
50:25
She's, she's world class.
50:26
And so she starts asking me these questions and she said, all right, I promised I wouldn't
50:31
want to introduce anything new into your nutrition regimen.
50:34
But I did bring this salt tablet, put it under your tongue.
50:37
Let's get the sodium into your blood.
50:39
We need to balance this out.
50:41
So put this, the salt tablet under my tongue and within a mile, I could feel a change.
50:49
All of a sudden I could feel what was left inside me start to absorb into my body and
50:54
my muscles to start to get the nutrients that they needed again.
50:58
And when I, when I felt that, I thought, I have a chance.
51:01
I have a chance.
51:02
I still have 20 miles to go, but this might actually happen.
51:07
And so I thanked God for sending me this woman again.
51:11
And I felt myself strengthen with that gratitude and that joy.
51:15
And I pressed on, some was starting to set.
51:19
And at that point, a police squad car pulled up behind me and turned on its spotlight and
51:25
started going behind me.
51:27
I'm in my community now.
51:28
I'm getting closer to home.
51:29
And so I'm in my home city and there's a police officer from my city that with a Scott
51:34
squad car that's following me and lighting the way.
51:38
And over the loudspeaker, they're saying to me, come on, you got this.
51:42
You got this.
51:43
We're with you.
51:44
You got this.
51:45
And then they started playing AC/DC for me over the loudspeaker with just me.
51:50
That'll help everybody.
51:51
That fuels you.
51:53
So then I look back and as I'm turning into my neighborhood, there's not just one squad
51:59
car.
52:00
There's five.
52:01
And it's like to have your community behind you like that is amazing.
52:07
And as I come into my neighborhood, I can see a couple streets over.
52:10
I can see my house or at least where my house is.
52:14
There's all these lights.
52:16
I can hear music and I can hear my friends laughing.
52:19
There's a party waiting for me in my front yard if I can just make it.
52:24
And one thing that you learn, never to say to endurance athlete is you're so close.
52:32
Because when you're a mile away, if you're just going to go run a mile, yeah, it's not
52:37
a long run.
52:38
But when you've done 139 miles and you still have a mile to go.
52:45
But because I could hear them, I knew I was close.
52:48
I was so close and it gave me that joy and that strength and I came down my last street
52:55
and I turned on my street.
52:57
When I turned on my street, a friend of mine who's a contractor had rebuilt the Ironman
53:04
finishing structure.
53:05
They have this really iconic finishing structure and they were going to ship it out, but it
53:10
was like $50,000 to ship it.
53:13
So they decided against that and something crazy.
53:15
So a buddy of mine replicated it, took up the entire street.
53:20
There's a red carpet, there's finishing shoot and on both sides, you know, got 100 friends
53:24
that are cheering me on and I get to run through this channel of support down a red
53:29
carpet.
53:30
And when I looked up at the finish line, my wife and daughter were holding the finishing
53:36
tape and they had a little sign and said there's no place like the finish line and my house
53:40
is to the right, all my friends, but once I saw them, everything blurred out.
53:45
It was just me and them and I floated.
53:49
I floated to them and after 14 hours, 140 miles, I did it.
53:54
I actually crossed the finish line.
53:56
I was reunited with my family and then I got to finish what I started.
54:02
Gave my wife a kiss and flowers and I got down on my knee and I looked at my daughter
54:06
here on I said, hero, if I can do it, you can do it because we serve the same God who's
54:13
the same yesterday, today and forever.
54:15
And he delights, he delights in demonstrating his strength through our weakness.
54:20
And I told her, I said, listen, honey, God is going to put dreams in your heart.
54:25
He's going to put a calling on your life.
54:26
Do not be surprised when your enemy knocks you down, but you hold on to the hope of Jesus.
54:33
In his strength, get back up, stay strong, press on, and you will experience for yourself,
54:39
honey, that anything is possible with God.
54:43
And that's why I did it.
54:45
All of it, all of it didn't count.
54:48
It was that moment that counted.
54:51
Everything else supported that moment, but it was the ability to say that to her and not
54:56
just to say it to her, but to show her that resilient faith, that resilient faith allows
55:04
the impossible to be made possible with God.
55:07
And I really appreciate you going into all that detail that I literally at different
55:11
points was like, I felt like I was there, like I felt like I saw the cops showing the spotlight
55:15
on you playing the music saying that you can do it getting you there.
55:18
I really appreciate you going into all that detail.
55:20
And the, you know, the subtitle of your book is building a resilient faith for a resilient
55:25
life.
55:26
You'll make this the last question of the day.
55:28
So you've, you've already set up this life where I think there's another quote from the
55:32
books that, you know, there's strength in the attempt.
55:34
And so you had kind of became okay with the fact that I'm going to at least attempt this,
55:38
but you didn't just attempt it.
55:40
You accomplished it.
55:41
You had a tremendous amount of support.
55:42
You had literally hundreds of people supporting you across, you know, the pathway from soup
55:46
to nuts to on this journey, you get across the finish line, your wife and daughter there,
55:51
you know, that's going to be the picture.
55:52
That's going to be the artwork for, for the show, just an absolutely fantastic, amazing
55:55
thing.
55:56
But talk to me just in general about living a resilient life, because Jay, I know you
56:01
know this in your work as a pastor, but just as just being a dude, you were surrounded
56:05
by people that have no resilience in their bodies or in their souls whatsoever.
56:10
That if anything gets difficult, they tap.
56:12
If anything gets difficult, they quit.
56:14
If it even seems like it might be difficult, they're not even going to try and attempt
56:18
it.
56:19
And we have this horrific problem, especially with our youth that, you know, there's a
56:23
lot of daughters out there, Jay, that don't have dads like you that are going through
56:26
cancer treatment, doing this crazy stuff and, you know, giving that message to your daughter
56:29
that, Hey, if I can do it, you can do it too.
56:32
And I just, I lament for our culture that we're in this place where resilience is seen
56:38
as a terrible thing and how it's somehow, you know, tied into toxic masculinity because
56:43
we live in a parallel universe where everything is completely stupid.
56:46
And so it's like, just talk to me a little bit about the importance of just resilience,
56:50
not just in the extreme scenarios of brain cancer and Ironman triathlines, triathlons,
56:55
but just the day to day of getting through life and getting to the finish line that
56:58
God has for us.
57:00
Yeah, you know, life is hard.
57:02
Yeah.
57:03
Life is hard.
57:04
There is no escaping life being hard.
57:06
And that's why I opened the book with that question.
57:08
Why me?
57:09
Because you also have to ask why not me because life is hard.
57:12
We're all going to go through it.
57:15
But what I've learned is the obstacles that are in front of us don't need to stop.
57:20
Stop us because the obstacles in front of us actually hold opportunity and the obstacles
57:26
in front of us, we may not have the strength to overcome them.
57:31
You know, there's a lot of, you know, slogans in the cancer world like, Oh, I kicked cancer's
57:37
ass or whatever.
57:38
And the truth is, no, like I do not.
57:41
My body is not strong enough to be a terminal disease, but my God is my God is and he loves
57:49
to display his strength through our weakness because then it is so obvious, so obviously
57:54
his strength, not ours.
57:56
And that's what glorifies God.
57:57
And so I have found that with every obstacle that's in our way, we have an opportunity
58:05
to love someone else and to bring glory to God.
58:08
And that creates a meaningful purpose filled life, the type of life I want to live because
58:14
at the end of it, who who cares how long you live, you're not really living and it's the
58:20
obstacles that give us the opportunities to live a meaningful life if we don't give up,
58:27
if we don't give up.
58:28
And part of it is giving up on hope.
58:30
And that's why I told my daughter.
58:32
I said, you know, life is going to knock you down, but hold on to the hope of Jesus.
58:36
And in his strength, get up and press on because once we let go of hope, once we think that
58:43
God is against us, not working all things for the good of those who love him, when we think
58:48
that he's against us, we let go of that hope we blame him, it's over.
58:52
We don't have enough strength.
58:53
But if we hold on to the hope and we have resilient faith, then now we have access, no
58:58
matter how weak we are, we feel we have access to a divine strength that will allow us to
59:05
overcome whatever obstacle is in our way and find amazing opportunities along the way
59:11
to love and glorify God.
59:13
Man, it's such, this has been such a refreshing interview for me because, man, I've talked
59:18
to so many people this year, Jay, that have walked through the valley of the shadow of
59:23
death.
59:24
They had something come up and it's just like, Oh my gosh, how are you going to get through
59:27
this?
59:29
And one of the ways that we can galvanize our own energy and our own resilience is by seeing
59:35
resilience and other people.
59:36
That's why it seems like it was going to suck so bad to go run that race by yourself because
59:40
that was just like an extra layer of suck on top of the other levels of suck that you
59:45
knew was already going to be there.
59:47
And so just an absolutely fantastic message.
59:49
I really, really appreciate you coming on today.
59:51
But that is all for me.
59:52
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
59:54
Yeah, you know, I just want to point out with the book, I am weak.
59:57
I'm strong.
59:58
It is story driven.
1:00:00
Like you said, you need to see examples of resilience to know that you can do it yourself,
1:00:05
but it's not a memoir.
1:00:06
It really is a field guide to resilience.
1:00:10
So as a pastor, I've always used story to teach and I use this driving story to teach
1:00:15
how to be resilient.
1:00:17
So yes, it's an example of resilience, but it also gets very, very practical.
1:00:22
And so if somebody is going through a hard time or they know somebody else that needs
1:00:26
a little extra kick of resilience, this will be helpful for them.
1:00:30
But also for anyone who has a large calling on their life, if they want to do big things
1:00:35
in this world, this world is going to knock you down.
1:00:38
There's an enemy that's going to stop you from doing good things.
1:00:40
And so it's good to know going into it, what you're about to face and that you can get
1:00:45
through it using these techniques.
1:00:48
And so the book, the book provides those things.
1:00:50
And I hope it'll bring a lot of hope and resilience into this world.
1:00:53
For sure.
1:00:54
Very good.
1:00:55
Jay Hewitt.
1:00:56
Thank you for coming on Don't the Life of Man's podcast.
1:00:57
Thanks so much, Kyle.
1:00:58
Appreciate you, bro.
1:00:59
All right, guys.
1:01:00
I hope you enjoyed my time with Jay Hewitt.
1:01:02
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:01:05
That undaunted life or mission is equipping men to pushback darkness with content that
1:01:08
forges spiritual mental and physical resilience.
1:01:10
So I've got two links for you today about a link to where you can go and buy your own
1:01:13
copy of I am weak.
1:01:14
I am strong.
1:01:15
And also a link to Jay's website so you can keep up with everything he has going on over
1:01:18
there.
1:01:19
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
1:01:21
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five
1:01:24
star review.
1:01:25
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an
1:01:27
email to info@undonton.life.
1:01:30
That's I N F O at undonton.life.
1:01:33
Also on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
1:01:36
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
1:01:39
Just go to www.undonton.life and as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing
1:01:43
us to use their music for our content.
1:01:45
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album
1:01:49
on Face Down Records.
1:01:51
The links are in the description.
1:01:52
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:01:54
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience.
1:02:01
You're seeking the lion of Judah.