Like a River, with Granger Smith

Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well, Dr. Lee Warren here and it.

Is a Friday conversation here on the Self-Brain Surgery Podcast.

I am very excited to bring to you today New York Times best-selling writer.

Accomplished country music singer, Granger Smith is here to talk with us about

his new book, Like a River, finding the faith and strength to move forward after loss and heartache.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. And just before Thanksgiving,

Granger and I sat down via the magic of the internet to have a great conversation.

We share our faith in Christ, and we share the fact that we are both bereaved

fathers. And Granger's story is powerful and gripping.

On a June day in 2019, his three-year-old son, River, drowned in their backyard pool.

Granger and the other kids and his wife were all there. Somehow River got loose

and got into the pool. And by the time they found him it was too late.

This is a devastating story But what really is

amazing is the story of what happened to Granger and his family after they lost

River It's a compelling read and Granger did a great job telling his story But

what really happens is it's a man who's driven to his knees by devastating loss

by the massive thing that we all face and The story culminates in one night in Boise,

Idaho when he gets to the point where he's either gonna take his own life or

something has to change.

And what changed was, he found his faith.

And by finding his faith, he found his way forward with his family and his hope again.

And we had an incredible conversation about loss and pain and doubt and faith

and things like hope and maybe even happiness again.

And what can happen when the Lord is able to put your life back together.

Granger's story is compelling.

We have two copies of Like a River to give away. Send me your physical address

to my email address, Lee at drleewarren.com.

Lee at drleewarren.com. I need your name and your mailing address for you to be considered.

We're going to randomly choose the two winners that Allison over at HarperCollins,

the great publicist for Grainger, has given us two copies of the book to give away.

So please email me your name and your mailing address. If you don't include

your mailing address, you won't get the book.

So we are looking forward to sharing a copy of Like a River with two listeners.

Listen friend, this is one that brings some tears, but it also made me say amen

and hallelujah numerous times.

Granger's story is remarkable.

And when you've been through trauma and tragedy and other massive things,

sometimes you get to a place where you just have to make your mind change.

And Granger gave us a great example of how to change your mind and change your

life. And before we get into the conversation, I just have one question.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place for the neuroscience

of how your mind works, smashes together with faith and everything starts to

make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

take control of our thinking and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time,

my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

Friend, we're back and I'm so excited to introduce you to a new friend today.

I've got Granger Smith, country music singer, father and amazing author of a

brand new book, Like a River. Granger, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that. It's really good to talk

with you, and I've been learning so much about you and your family as I read your book.

I think you're going to really help a lot of people today. So before we get

started in the conversation, Granger, would you say a prayer for us? I will.

Lord, thank you so much for an opportunity for a platform like this. Let us be your servants.

We want to serve you. We want to tell your truth, not ours. Don't let our ego

or our pride get in the way as we as we work to use this conversation to edify

us, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Thank you. As a little bit of background, Granger, for this show,

most of the people listening here, like you and me, have lost someone or gone

through something major, some sort of massive kind of trauma or tragedy.

And so the people listening are going to resonate with your story.

And as we get kind of close to the end, I'll just ask you to have a word of

encouragement for maybe what other people who are in the fresh part of that

trauma or tragedy can get from your story.

So we'll get there at that point, but I just thought you might benefit from

knowing who's listening out there. And I think your story is really going to

help a lot of people here today, Granger.

So why don't you give us just the nuts and bolts of what happened in your family,

and then we'll kind of just see where the Lord leads us in this talk.

Yeah, I joined this fraternity that nobody wants to join, that you're speaking of here.

And on June 4th in 2019, we lost our little boy River. He was three years old

and he drowned in our home pool.

I was there about 20 feet away when this happened.

I was outside with all three of our kids.

And River was the youngest and the boys were playing water gun fight.

And I was playing gymnastics with my daughter on this one particular,

just beautiful evening, about 730 at night.

And Riv got into our locked, gated pool.

Not sure how, we don't know how, even though we thought about it a lot.

But he separated from his older brother and just 20 feet behind me,

when it got quiet, I looked behind me and saw him inside that gate and he was in our pool.

It had only been 120 seconds, maybe three minutes since I I had seen him last.

And so I wasn't able to get his heartbeat back, but the paramedics did.

But about 10 minutes had gone by since he went unconscious and the we lived

out in the country. So it took him a little bit of time to get out there, to get to him.

We lost him about 24 hours after that. He was pronounced dead.

So sorry. And that just had to be just not only the trauma of losing a child,

but to be there physically when it happened, And like, what did that do to you

and to your other kids and to your wife and your family in the immediate days after that?

You know it did it did Nothing short of killed me,

It it I I died that day as well the the old me My wife as well did my the old

version of my wife We all died that day.

And Spiritually speaking, of course, I grieved my son.

I grieved my family as we once knew it I grieved my wife as I once knew her

and my children that have now been exposed to this kind of scarring, which never goes away.

And I grieved myself. I grieved the old me that seemed to kind of have a chip

on my shoulder and seemed to be happy-go-lucky most days.

I was thrown into a world of now introspective depression and searching for answers.

Not only just emotionally naturally searching for answers, but also my brain

was physically entering these loops,

these never ending loops of trying to find some kind of resolution to a situation

that was impossible to understand.

And in my book, I call that the slideshow.

These events would just pop up into my head randomly at different pieces and

different orders, but it always looked the same generally.

It was just little snapshots of the worst moments compiled together.

And it would happen during a conversation with someone.

It would happen in the middle of the night. It would happen while at work,

while I was on stage as a country music singer.

It happened all the time, I could not stop it. So that began to haunt me in all ways.

You talk about that, how that revisiting the trauma kind of became this involuntary

problem for you and you sought help for that.

You went to a retreat and you write beautifully about some of the things that

you learned coming out of that.

Maybe just describe that role of therapy in the early days out of that and what

you learned and what you would maybe advise other people in terms of is that

helpful, was it harmful to you in any way or what did you get from that experience?

It's it's hard to say just because everyone's situation is so different everyone grieves differently.

Everyone experienced their loss differently and for you know Naturally,

there will be a lot of people listening that have not experienced extreme loss

But I would say I would say that you will Let's say it's it's it's almost as

close of a guarantee as anything else I could tell you is that you will living

on planet Earth breathing oxygen experience,

extreme loss, if you are someone that loves.

If you don't love anybody, I would say you're probably safe from loss,

but that would be ridiculous because we're human beings and we love.

And so because of that, because we're all so different, it's hard to say in

that ground zero period, those first 12 months are just so difficult that sometimes just breathing,

just Just heartbeat by heartbeat by heartbeat, minutes passing by are critical

just to live from one minute to the next.

Therapy was something very natural for us.

We just thought, as probably most people listening, we thought,

well, that seems like the natural progression. Everyone's recommending therapy.

It's almost like you have to do it because it's worked for so many people.

So you might as well add it to your arsenal.

One of the problems is it's so expensive. It was gifted to us from some dear friends.

But not everyone has that kind of opportunity to go to therapy.

So it's not an option for everybody and it's not a guarantee that things are

just going to get better. You're not just going to go to therapy and just be better.

I know you probably know as well, people that have done it for 30 or 40 years,

they're still going to the same therapist.

And so, that was a long way of saying, I don't know, therapy certainly helped me in the long run.

It helped my wife and it helped my children. They went to the kids therapy.

But it helped retrospectively. As I look back in hindsight, I can gather those

tools that I learned that were beneficial for me to then kind of use as things

arise down the pipeline.

But to stop the complete onslaught of that slideshow, therapy was not enough.

Yeah, and you did some, I think as many of us do, you did some sort of self-medicating,

some numbing behaviors.

You tried a lot of different things. And then you kind of, I think,

came to a climax, like a moment where everything came to a point where you had to make a change.

Maybe talk us through that just for a minute for the people that haven't read

the book yet. Yeah, I did anything, anything and everything to try to dole that slideshow.

And I want to qualify, before I just say that and let it be,

I do want to qualify myself as someone who naturally has a tendency to go through

some mentally tough situations and come out okay.

I've been known as the kind of guy that I could just kind of fight my way through

it, just muscle up and just tough it out.

I've always been that kind of guy and I say that, not in a braggadocious way,

but I say that in a way to qualify me by saying, look, I was pretty tough and this broke me.

I couldn't tough my way through this. This completely manhandled me and took me to the ground.

So no matter what I used to numb it or distract it or meditate my way through

it or visualize it or read self-help books through it or work out or count my

calories or try to desperately get better sleep.

If it was in a book about how to how to recover from anything,

I was reading it and trying to do it and none of it worked.

And that all came to a head about six months after we lost River.

I realized in one night in Boise, Idaho that everything I had worked for including

therapy, including all the self-help I had tried, nothing was ultimately going to work.

There were times when things got a little bit better and I thought it was getting

progressively better, but when it all came crashing down in Boise, Idaho, I knew.

I was either going to die or take my own life.

This was going to get the best of me, or something else outside of me was going

to have to intervene. And in fact, that is what happened.

You found a way after that night in Idaho, and I don't want to give that all

the way for the reader, because you wrote it so well, and it's just heartbreaking

how you got to that point.

And you found a way forward after that, and maybe explain where you were spiritually

before what happened with River.

And you would have called yourself a Christian, right? But you didn't have the

same kind of faith that you do now.

And maybe give us a little bit of a sense of the spiritual journey that you

took, because I think that really tells everything about your story in the end. Right?

It really does. The book is not just about the death of my son and the spiritual

death of me, but more profoundly.

It's about the spiritual rebirth

of me. It was the new creation that I was made after that aftermath.

And you know, I would have called myself a Christian, certainly.

I would have argued that from a pretty good standpoint. I could have articulated

the gospel to you. I could have told you what Jesus did.

I was born and raised in church, very faithful mother and My father.

According to my mom, at four years old, I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart.

I was part of every club and Young Life, Young Group, Fellowship of Christian

Athletes, whatever that was.

I was a part of that. So certainly in the category of Christian,

I was checking the Christian box in all the ways.

And then I went to college. And then after college, I started getting deeper

into work, which is the music business, and never left my description of myself,

my self-made description of Christian.

But there wasn't an outflowing of fruit from that self-made declaration of Christianity.

I would have called myself a Christian, but I didn't live like a Christian.

Not that I was living some big sinful life on the outside, it wasn't,

but I wasn't attending church regularly.

I wasn't reading, certainly wasn't reading my Bible regularly.

The extent of my faith was reading

a devotional, some kind of Christian 360-day, 65-day devotional. So.

I was beginning to trust myself, really, I was my own savior,

and I really trusted myself.

Now, this is complicated to anyone that's listening, because if I was listening

to this podcast 10 years ago, I would have said, that's not me.

I'm definitely a real deal Christian.

You know, so it's so hard to see until the veil is removed, until your eyes have seen the light.

It's hard to see that this is you. And this is certainly me,

I would have defended myself as a Christian.

But I know now in hindsight, without the fruit of craving to read God's Word,

waking up before the sun comes up to make my cup of coffee, to get into the

Word to see how the Lord is going to speak to me this morning,

without some kind of prayer life that doesn't just involve myself and Lord make me better,

without some desire to be around God's people or godly people,

or to be at church, to attend church on a Sunday morning.

I was touring on Saturday nights, I didn't have time for that kind of stuff.

So in hindsight, though, the lack of desire for all of these things was a very

clear indication that I was spiritually sick.

In fact, I will go so far as to say, looking back now, I was not a Christian.

Wow, and what was the moment when you realized that like when you needed a Savior

because it was that coming down to Figuring out that you needed to be saved

is really when you began to heal from losing rid of right?

Certainly I after that crazy night in Boise when I wanted to take my own life,

I Was the slideshow was relieved.

By me calling out Jesus saved me God, my God, my Lord, Jesus, save me.

The slideshow stopped, and I fell to the floor. I remember on the back of my

tour bus, and I fell asleep that night in all my clothes, crying myself to sleep,

calling out to Jesus, which is not abnormal for a cultural Christian to say,

for an American Christian to say.

That's a word we're very familiar with. But I think I was shocked by how that

word, calling out to Jesus, actually helped,

practically In a real world situation where I was really hurting,

calling out to him was a real healing.

It was a real peace. It was a real rest.

It wasn't just something we say or something we hear in a modern devotional. It was real.

It was the only time outside of everything I had done, and I tried everything,

this was the only time I felt true peace. And so from that night on,

I went on to a journey, a personal journey of, who is Jesus?

Really, who is Jesus?

The Jesus I have proclaimed for 40 years of my life, that I've known about him,

my mother and father taught me about him, I heard the preacher saying it from

the pulpit, but was that real?

Was it real? Is everything, when Jesus says, if anyone would come after me,

let him deny himself, Pick up his cross and follow me.

Wow, does he really mean that? Does he mean that in a practical sense,

a sense of actual surrender, denying myself, denying my personality that wants

to exalt myself and defend myself and protect myself, all about myself?

Does Jesus really say, let go of yourself? Is that what he means?

So this journey, I started this journey for about three months.

I was kind of relentless, as I was in the self-help world as well,

reading all I could, listening to all I could, and watching sermons.

And it wasn't until March 1st, that following March after that December day

in Boise, when I was listening to a sermon and the pastor was preaching out of John 14.

And he said, the disciple asked Jesus, Lord, why is it that you manifest yourself

to us, but not to the world?

And Jesus said, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will

love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

And suddenly I just, I knew, I knew that I had called out to him in Boise.

I was his, I was an adopted son. He had healed me, he had saved me,

he had given me rest, he had given me peace.

And out of gratitude for that, all I had to do to show him that gratitude,

to show him And that, yes, indeed, I love you, Lord, was keep my word. That's what he said.

And I didn't know what his word was. It all came together.

One moment, my eyes were opened, the veil was removed, and I knew I had a Savior.

I knew I was a son. I knew I was a Christian.

And so I went home with a new craving to read his word.

It sounds crazy to even say it today, but just practically speaking,

it sounds crazy for a Christian to say, I wanted to read the Bible.

But I did. And so I went home and my wife was tracking with me and we got together

and I said, we're going to read.

We're going to start, where should we start? How about Matthew one?

That seems like a good spot, birth of Jesus.

So we started at Matthew one, verse one, and just started reading like it was

a book, like my life depended on it.

And I started just working through it. And then I started finding all these treasures in there.

Like I was just uncovering this this gold lined in a cave and I was mining the

gold and I thought look at this And then look at this and I'll go to my wife

and say look at this and then we get into the epistles and we get into Romans and we get into.

All these just beautiful things that,

I got all the way to the end of Revelation and I thought, well,

I've got to start over in Genesis now.

Jesus said the prophets were talking about him, I've got to start over.

So then I started reading from Genesis and by the time I got to Malachi,

I thought, I've got to go back into Matthew to see what I missed.

I wanted it and the more I read it, the more addicted I was to it.

And that was the good addiction. So, as I was filling my mind with this knowledge

that was coming from the Bible, my mind was setting aflame.

It was dropping specks of gasoline onto the flame, the pilot light in my heart.

And so the knowledge coming into my mind, my ears and my eyes started inflaming

my heart for God, for worship.

And the more I read about Him, the more the flame grew and the more I wanted to know about him.

And by that time, as this flame was lit, I started thinking less and less about

poor pitiful me grieving the loss of a son, grieving the loss of a father five years before that.

And instead, when all the people said, you need to forgive yourself, you're not guilty.

You're not guilty of being there in the backyard that day when you lost your son.

And my mind is telling me, well, certainly I am. Who else is guilty?

He died. Who else is at fault for this, if it's not me, the responsible adult,

but then the gospel, I couldn't reconcile that until I read in the gospels where

it says, you are a sinner.

You are guilty, but by the blood of the cross, I have covered your guilt.

I have separated your sin. I will remember your sin no more.

You are mine. I have cleaned you. Your guilt is gone clean, not because of something

that you did yourself by forgetting it, but because I said so.

And then after that, I was so far gone into the gospel that slowly the slideshow,

which I still thought about, suddenly it didn't have the sting to it anymore.

It didn't have the pain like it used to. It didn't stab me like a cold knife anymore in my heart.

And I thought, yeah, it happened, but it is not happening anymore. I am redeemed.

Amen. My goodness. I love that you say in the book, you talk about how you went

and used Billy Graham sermons, like old school Billy Graham sermons on YouTube.

And it just made me think of that verse that says, you know,

my word will go out and it won't return to me empty.

It's like, we just have no idea the work that we do and how it's going to persist.

And especially in the internet age, like who knows, you know,

30 years from now, somebody might hear what you just said on this podcast on

YouTube and find their way to the cross.

Like it's just so powerful that those old sermons led you to the Lord.

Now, I want to make sure we don't miss this, because I think you were kind of

climbing in your career, pretty successful, really successful country music

singer touring, playing shows all over the place, kind of at the apex of your

career when this happened with River,

and people were not kind to you.

Having a personal tragedy like that when you were a celebrity,

like just unpack that for just a second so people have a sense,

I think, of what you guys went through as a family, because it wasn't just you

didn't get the privilege of just losing a child in private like most of us do.

You did it in front of the whole world.

Yeah, certainly. And you know, it's that lives with me always,

because certainly there will be someone listening to this podcast that says

that things to themselves.

And probably rightly so. They think, man, I'm suffering from a loss.

Somebody might be thinking, I am not behind this.

But here's this guy, this celebrity singer guy, he's just playing in his backyard.

He's not watching his kid.

Yeah, you know, why should I feel sorry for this guy?

I'm I have I I have nothing to do with this But but here's this guy.

All he has to do is just keep his eyes open man. Just just watch your kids so,

so those kind of thoughts first of all, i'll qualify that and so that's that

would be natural to think because Uh before this with me, I I remember reading

news stories and thinking similar horrible thoughts about people without knowing the situation,

and so certainly that was uh That was a big deal for me.

We were hearing that, we were seeing that. Every time it got on a news station,

there were those kind of comments.

Like, what an idiot. This guy just can't even watch his child.

It was hurtful, not just because of the comment, but it was also hurtful,

maybe even more, because perhaps I believed them.

And perhaps I agreed more with them than I did with the people that said,

Granger, this is not your fault." I thought,

no, I kind of side with the critic that says, why don't you just watch your kid?

And that hurt worse. But once again, I have to reiterate, that's why I was saved by the gospel.

That's why when I heard the gospel, when I heard that we are all sinners,

dead in our trespasses, that no one is good, no, not one.

So I have come, God demands a righteousness from us that we cannot give,

and in His mercy, He gives us the righteousness to us that He demands from us

through Jesus on the crops.

That is a story that saves sinners like me, that saves the guilty,

that saves the shamed, and that saves everyone that's listening to this podcast.

Wow. Amen. That's beautiful. And, you know, our son died and with his best friend,

both of whom were stabbed, they were 19.

And there was a lot of mystery around surrounding that event.

And the police never really figured

it out. And there were all these accusations, things that happened.

And for us, I think similarly to what you went through, there was a point in

time where we had to say, we will never really know what happened and we can't know.

And so we have to just be able to find a path forward with the not knowing.

And so you wrote about this idea, how you can come to terms with it and let

God redeem it and move forward past it, even if there's still big questions.

So how do you address that for people when they say, how do you make peace with

not knowing what happened, not really understanding what happened?

You know, it would depend on, it would probably depend on who I'm talking to,

if it was a Christian or an unbeliever, because, and the reason is, because as Christians.

As we read through the Bible, we are revealed.

What we see is a God revealed in the pages of Scripture, of Holy Scripture, of inspired Scripture.

We see a God that is revealed, that is providential, that is sovereign,

that is all-knowing, that is the Alpha and the Omega, that is all-powerful, that is good.

So you take a God that is all-powerful and all-knowing,

And He's also good, and He's also tender, and He's also merciful,

and He is love, and He's working all things for a greater good,

for His glory and our gain and our joy.

So you go, okay, I don't know the answers to why the child is molested in Africa.

I don't know why the woman is widowed at 23 because her husband was a police

officer and gunned down on a day at work.

I don't know why the child that's seven years old, perfectly healthy,

all of a sudden gets diagnosed with cancer in a terminal.

I don't know, but I do know that we have a God that is working all things for good.

Now, and I have to qualify that instead of just saying he's working all things for good.

That doesn't mean that he's reacting.

It doesn't mean he sees a child with cancer and goes, Oh man, I'm so sorry everybody.

Let me try to work on that and make it good. Let me see what I could do good

That's not what he's doing If we look at Genesis chapter 50 if we remember Joseph

in the Bible and the one that was sold To death by his brothers.

He was left for dead and sold into slavery by his brothers He goes to Egypt

and he he ends up going to prison But he works his way out and he becomes royalty in Egypt.

And he sees his brothers again, and he tells them in that moment when he sees

them, and they're scared to death of him.

Like, oh, no, here's his brother, and he's coming back and surely he's going to kill us.

And Joseph says, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.

That's right. Not what you meant for evil, God reacted and changed it and hopefully

going to make it a good thing.

He said, no, God meant it for good.

And then we look back on history In the redemptive history of that,

we go, oh yeah, God meant this because Joseph was sold into slavery.

That's what got him to Egypt.

And then he worked his way up through Pharaoh by reading a dream of his.

And then he was able to take during the famine all of Israel,

bring them to Egypt because of the famine, and they survived.

And then he was able to raise up a prophet within that group.

Moses. And then he took that baby out of the Israelites and brought them into Pharaoh's favor.

You see this whole story in redemptive history and go, God was meaning all of this.

Now then you look at the individual lives and you go, they couldn't see it.

They couldn't see it. This person that was suffering couldn't see it.

But God was building this beautiful story that was always moving towards good.

And so, although we don't know when we're in the ground, and we don't know specific

instances of why there's evil, why there's problems, we do know we have a good

God who is working all of it.

So we trust, and we wait, and we praise Him for that.

Amen. Wow, that's powerful. Thank you for that that you and your wife Have a

miraculous story of something that's has come along in your family and in a

beautiful story of healing and God actually added Another child into your life

and just unpack that for a second and talk about I'm sure it was a complex,

Emotional thing that happened and I mean you obviously aren't replacing river

with another child But it's a, it's a complex thing, but what a beautiful story that you tell.

Talk to us about Maverick and beautiful story. Yeah. Praise God.

And that redemption that doesn't always happen that way.

Certainly recognize it. Um, God blessed us with a child, uh,

after, after we lost Riv, um, Amber had a miscarriage and we thought we were finished.

Certainly the odds were against us. Amber was 39 years old when she gave birth

to Maverick, against a lot of

odds, a child that would not be here if we hadn't lost his older brother.

And so certainly that is a miracle and he always will be.

And the fact that I could look at him today and think that this beautiful child

exists because another beautiful child doesn't,

there's something like you said, it's very complicated And it's difficult to

unpack, but I will just say, there are moments when God smiles upon us in these

times and gives us a breath of joy, maybe when we need it the most.

That's right. That's beautiful. And there's a thing that I run across a lot as a brain surgeon.

I interact with a lot of people that develop brain cancer and lose spouses to

brain cancer and that sort of thing.

And I have had more than one person who lost a spouse that then remarried and

then had children and they've had this sort of epiphany that this child that

I love wouldn't exist if I hadn't lost my husband,

that it's complex and it doesn't, it's not, you can't trade one for the other,

but God somehow works that out where there's some good that can come out of that pain.

And you tell that story beautifully. And I think the other thing that I learned

from you, that I learned from your story, I think in a very real way, you sort of can, I guess,

account your salvation to the loss of your son in a way.

Because if he hadn't lost Riv, then maybe you never would have had that spiritual epiphany.

And so that's maybe in a way, he saved you. Does that make sense?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani It absolutely does. I don't think you could tell my story

without a thesis like that.

I absolutely think that it took the loss of River for my spiritual rebirth.

Maybe it's because I'm so stubborn.

Maybe it's because I'm so set in my ways, but it was and is always part of God's

plan that this is the way it was supposed to be.

Because I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe that River was never

intended to live one day, one second, past when he did.

Just like you and I both have our exact moment when we will physically leave this earth.

For all of us, it is planned. Jesus says, I know every hair on your head.

Every hair on your head. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father.

And aren't we of more value than sparrows? He knows our exact minute on this

earth And so River lived out his life fully and completely, according to the plan.

Without his loss, you could take away everything that I've gained spiritually.

Would I have rather had River back? Certainly I could say that as a father, certainly.

I would rather him live than me to live, but that's not the way it happened.

So what will I do with that? Oh man, that's the question, right?

That's the question that should keep us all up at night. I'm here,

my loved one's gone, and I'm still here.

What will I do with this time, since it was me that was chosen to go a little

extra farther in this race? What will I do with this?

That's right. That's beautiful. That was one of the key moments for me and healing

after we lost Mitch really was I had a similar slideshow type thing.

For me, it always felt like a, like a staircase that at the bottom of the staircase,

there was a door and I had this mental image that Mitch was in that beyond that

door and I needed to go save him.

And somehow I had this notion that I wasn't with him when he died and I could

have done something, you know, could have saved him somehow.

And I kept seeing that image, like, and I would get to that door and I was too afraid to go in there.

And I didn't know what was going to happen. And the Lord somehow showed me that

Mitch was made to be with Him in eternity.

He was created to be with the Lord. And when Mitch crossed from this life into

the next one, he wasn't sad about it.

He was, he said he was home, right? He saw his creator and he was where he was supposed to be.

And so somehow that brain surgery that God did on me, the brain surgeon,

was, hey, you lost your son, but he's not in that room behind the door.

He's where I made him to be. He's with me.

And you should be glad for him. Not glad that you lost him, but glad that he's

right where he's supposed to be. And he wouldn't want to be where you are.

Did you see that? That's what it did for me. And I think hearing your story

of how you described that and how your two sons, your three sons,

honor the fact that they all exist for a purpose, for a time, in the right setting.

And I just, I thank you for having the bravery, Granger, to write that story

and put it out there for people.

I think it's going to help millions of people around the world.

And I think the last thing that I think is fantastic is you've made a decision,

vocationally you've made a decision, how to change how you earn your living

as a result of all this. Talk about that for a second.

You know, as I moved on from...

This rebirth and started learning more and more who God is, and started talking

to more and more people about my loss in relation to their losses.

People that were going through extreme grief or some kind of PTSD or someone that feels stuck.

And the more my story got out there, the more people wanted to hear from me.

And the more people wanted to hear from me, the more I saw healing from this

message. And the more I saw healing from this message, the more I thought,

you know, I don't know if I have time in my life to do anything but this.

There are too many hurting people. There are too many people that need to hear this.

And I think I'm spinning my wheels with country music. People say,

no, no, no, country music is going to bring so much joy.

I say, I hear you, but there's multiple problems with that.

One, I felt the sin of exalting myself on the country music stage. That was a problem.

And then secondly, I couldn't be as specific.

I couldn't be the brain surgeon with the message of the gospel while I was still

on that country music stage. I needed to be able to specifically articulate

what I meant, and I had no time for that with music. I do now.

Wow. That's amazing. So you're preaching, you're teaching the word to people

and helping people heal.

What does that look like? Are you traveling around to churches or what are you doing specifically?

Specifically it starts really right now at my local church.

I have not been able to consistently sit in front of local wives teaching from

our pastor in over two decades.

From touring on Saturday nights, church attendance for me was sporadic at best.

And so right now, I'm in a season of equipping, learning under that Sunday morning

teaching from my pastor, who's one of my best friends.

I'm also pursuing a master's degree at seminary.

So in a season of equipping, I am getting out occasionally and speaking and

preaching in different churches and conferences.

But right now, it's a season of learning and learning and learning.

Good for you. Tell us where we can learn more about you. You have a podcast, you have a website.

Tell, tell folks where they can get ahold of you. Yeah. GrangerSmith.com is

kind of a hub for, uh, for my podcast.

Um, all social media. I'm at Granger Smith. It's all the same.

And, um, yeah, I'd love to love to connect with anybody.

That's great. And if somebody, the last question, if somebody's in the acute

phase of their loss, Granger, They just got the diagnosis.

They just heard the doctors tell them what's happening.

What do you have to say for them right now in the coming days,

how they can grab something and hold on to it in the coming months and years for them?

What do you have to say for us today? Yeah, it's two answers.

For the Christian, I say, you're redeemed. You are healed. You are forgiven.

You are an adopted son. You are bought or daughter. You are bought and paid

for by our Heavenly Father.

And we grieve as those with hope as Christians.

I would say as any human that's grieving in the acute phase,

in the ground zero phase, it's going to hurt. And so grieve out loud.

When you want to cry, cry. When you're in your family and they need to cry,

cry. by realizing that people grieve different levels, different phases.

Some people might be having a decent day, and their spouse might be really hurting.

And so we have to be cognizant of that, aware that people grieve at different

levels, and that's okay.

I would say, don't worry about grieving in front of children.

It's perfectly okay to break down and cry. Why?

Whatever you're feeling, what I'm trying to say at that time is okay in that acute phase.

The holidays, it's okay to change up a routine in the holidays.

It's okay to maybe go to Disney World for Thanksgiving to just really change

things up, to shake things up.

And I promise you, as most people can attest, as years go by,

you will get back into that rhythm of tradition, you will sit around that Thanksgiving

table and you won't always cry about it.

You will have tears of joy in remembrance of that. That's the acute phase for the Christian.

And then for the non-believer, I say this.

Two thousand years ago, God invaded this planet out of mercy,

knowing that it requires perfection to be around a holy God,

a perfection that we cannot give,

because we've already passed our phase of that.

We've already gone too far. We all have fallen short of His glory.

So two thousand years ago, God invaded His creation just because of that,

knowing that we have fallen short out of mercy.

He entered creation as a man, and that man is Jesus, who lived a perfect life,

who lived a faultless life.

Who was then condemned for that, fulfilling the law perfectly in a way that

we could not, was condemned for that, crucified on the cross.

During that crucifixion, took on the wrath of God himself, the punishment that

we deserved to withhold his justice because he's a just God,

to withhold that justice against us, the rebels.

He poured it out on His only Son, out of love and out of mercy for His people.

Three days later, His Son Jesus was resurrected, proving His deity,

proving that He was who He said He was, the Son of God.

And all who believe in Him will be redeemed, will grieve with hope,

will have eternal life with Him one day.

That is the hope we have, and that is the message I give to unbelievers. That is the gospel.

God bless you. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. What an amazing conversation.

I hope that was encouraging to you. And I really appreciate Grainger taking

time out of his busy schedule just before the holiday to spend some time with us today.

We would love to give you a copy of Like a River. We have two copies to give away.

Please email me your name and your physical address to Lee at Dr.

Lee Warren dot com. We're going to go out today with one of Grainger's songs.

He released a song about a year ago. It's called In This House.

And remember, if you hear music on the Dr. We have BMI and ASCAP licenses to

play these songs. We never violate copyrights.

And I just want to share a little bit of Granger's music. I also encourage you

to check out his apparel company, Yee Yee Apparel, yeeyeeyee.com.

They've got some great hats and shirts and other things that would make great

holiday gifts for your friends, Christmas gifts for your family.

Check out yeeyee.com, Granger's Apparel Company.

And I can't encourage you highly enough to read his transformative book,

Like a River. We're gonna go out with his song in this house.

God bless you friend. Happy Thanksgiving I hope that you have an incredible

Christmas and that this episode has been a blessing to you We're praying for you.

God bless you friend. You can't change your life until you change your mind

I hope this episode helped you get it done, but you should remember you can always start today.

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Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my

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It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio books.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

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Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states

and 60 plus countries around the world.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend,

you can't change your life until you change your mind, and the good news is you can start today.

Music.