Giraffes on Ice, Part 4: The Cost of Unfinished Business

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sage Hill is a social impact organization that helps people see who they are made to be so they can do what they're made to do. I remember that when, I was growing up, one of my worst difficulties, deepest wounds was coaches. I was scared to death of coaches, needed coaches, sought approval of coaches. I finally figured out if I could dive in glass, so to speak, then I would get approval. If I could harm me, you would appreciate me. There's that kind of thing, willingness to to harm. So when Tennyson and William came into life, both of them really enjoyed playing baseball. I wasn't a baseball player. I was track, football, and basketball. And, so they love baseball, so let's do baseball. But every time I was around the coaches, I was a little bit nervous raising them. Alright? And, I adjusted to surviving coaches and never letting myself be known by a coach. I never let a coach know I was hurting. I never let a coach know I was scared. I never let a my job was to be the soldier, the robot, the the dude if I wanted his love. So perform for love. Perform perform to be valued, perform to get to play. Because if you don't get to play, you're nothing. Now in the seventh grade, there's a player who's in no. It was either the eighth grade. There was a seventh grader who got my uniform one game, and I got the uniform back the next game. So he told you how much I played. In other words, we shared a uniform. K? I'm not playing a lot. And I'm also, I was at somehow, I don't know how this happened, but the game there are nine guys down there on the other end of the floor when I got to play one time. And I looked back and realized, like, what are we doing down there? I thought, I better go down there. Now 10 people on the floor in basketball. Y'all know that? I don't know what I was doing down there. I swear. I just forgot or something. And I turned to go back to catch up. I stepped on my foot and I fell down by myself down there. And I remember the sound of the floor. It was at the old Critchlow gym. And the it was the building was just that close to being condemned every year, and we were in our twentieth year. We're gonna condemn it next year. So when I hit the floor, I was thought, I'm gonna go through it. But I remember hitting the floor and realizing, like, I just fell. I'm by myself, and I could hear the floor. I could hear the echo of the floor. And I didn't ever want that to happen again. Hey, coach. I I wanna play. I don't wanna be that guy. So anyway, I remember we're over here at, the I guess, is it McKnight? But you're right by the sportscom. And it was a fall ball. I was, helping coach an eight year old team. Tennyson was pitching. And that year old fall ball. The parents and, coach and the players were up against the screen. They were screaming at Tennyson. This it was insane. I mean, I've never seen anything like it except maybe a pro game or a college game or something. And the the grandfather of the coach was getting the kids to scream ugly things at Tennyson. I mean, if I were awake to myself emotionally, spiritually, just in terms of pure right and wrong, I would have said, Blue, stop this game. You boys come off the field. This is ridiculous. You you do something about that or we're done for the day. That's just the obvious. Right? Anybody who's healthy enough would see that. Right? Not me. No. No. I walk out to the mound to my eight year old who's already beginning to cry. I mean, he's acting normal. So I go out there and say, you hear that over there? You hear what they're calling you? I said, do you wanna do this? I gave him the decision. He's eight. You know, I'm I'm 40. You know, you're eight. I think you can handle this. You know? I did. I was eight. I dealt with it. So I leaned into him. I said, do you wanna do this? Do you wanna do this? And and he said, yes. So in other words, I wanna play, but not with that. And he's crying. He's telling me. Of course, I wanna play dead. I love this. I love this game, but something's off. I'm crying. Alright? He said, yes. So yes means, yeah. You wanna do it? Alright. Here's what you do. You act like you don't hear a thing. You don't let them see. You don't let them know that it's hurting you. K? That way, boy. And I go back and stand there and let the thing keep going. I see the grandfather later, and I said, I don't like what you did. That's the most I could muster. But do you realize during that experience, I didn't even think about anything but endurance, Anything but endure. Anything but get through it. Stoicism. Don't let them see you feel. Don't you dare admit that you're human. You're eight. We gotta grow you up right now. Well, I started the training there. I was a dad of love until it came to the world that they spent most of their lives living in. Now listen to this. I was a great dad until it came to the world they spent most of their lives living in. Do you get that? But do you know after the games when he needed a dad, when things would not go like he wished they would? Do you know what I would do? Coach. Hey, son. You need to think about this. Your swing is this. Your this is that. He didn't need a coach. He need his daddy. But see, I didn't want them to defeat him. I didn't want them to get to him. You do your talking with your bat. You don't let him get you down. You don't let him get your heart. I didn't give him a place to go on some levels. Now, I didn't know that until late. He would fight me. Dad, I don't need to hear that. I know I know some. And I would promise Sonya after the game. I would get wisdom from other guys who've been through athletics before. Number one thing I regret doing was trying to coach my son after the game. I said, gotcha. Gotcha. I just practice not saying anything after the game, they would say. Gotcha. Gotcha. I won't say a word, not a word. Son, did you think about so and so? I couldn't stop myself because I did not want him to go through the pain that was unfinished in me. You get that? Now what's amazing is later he tells me that to to Steve referred to, to Tennyson and I went out to Idaho fishing. And you gotta say, I love these boys, these men. I love them so much. Like, you tell me I'm blind, son. Show me just show me where my eyes need to land and I will see what I need to see. Because I'd rather have you than my ego. I'd rather have you than my pride. I'd rather have you than than than to to live. I mean, I I brought you here to love you, and I'm gonna finish the job. And I'm gonna do it by being as much human as I possibly can because that's the only thing I have to give you. And so we're in Idaho fishing, and we were we were smoking cigars, and we're by this this hot water pool watching the moon come up over some little peaks in Idaho. I just dreamed of doing this with him. We're just having to just talking and sharing and college is over. The disappointments have come into a conclusion. Such a tragedy the way his his college years ended in baseball. Just I just my heart was just broken. And with his, and I couldn't do anything about it. So I kinda quit talking by then. All I see is do is just, son, I'm here. And I remember one time he said, dad, nothing really matters. Not really. I've read Ecclesiastes. I know what Job says now. I get it. I said, but he said, it's all kinda meaningless. And I said, no. No. It's not all meaningless. You mean something to me. I remember his face went, yeah, that's something. Do you know that that date? So he was sitting there in Idaho and he said, dad, you know what? Said, I sure did hate you. I was scared of you. What for? Because what you would do after the games. Because I knew I I had basically was saying, I knew I didn't have a place to go. I would have to listen to you, and because I love you, I would do it. I just try to make something out of this stupid stuff you would say. Now, I'm the coach. Now, I want I didn't coach really much. I just say eight years old, I was done. But listen, just watch this. I said, William, listen. I'm watching you hit and you're swinging like you're swinging like this like this. The ball's coming, you're swinging like this. I watched you for years. You need to be swinging like this. You see? You need to be swinging like this. Do y'all see the difference? There's not any. He said, Dan. Dan, you're crazy. He said, you you're showing me let me show you what you showed me, Dan. You're showing me swing like this, now swing like that. There's no there's no difference, Dan. I'm like, okay. Okay. But I'm working The only thing you could do is finally laugh at me. That was the closest we could come. Dan, you you you're an idiot. And it's like the idiocy was directly connected to unfinished business. A childhood of seeking approval, the wounds, the name calling, the insults, the shame. And what's so so ironic about that to show that over the years, the the willingness to face, you know, the neediness that, Steve and I actually last Friday did a conference for coaches. And I was the main speaker for coaches. And what was so cool was realizing that the coaches who came there were looking for how to do it differently. It was amazing. And I've we kind of thought in my old self it was gonna be one way, but I had eyes to see and a heart to recognize that these guys were doing it differently, and looking for how to do it even more differently than they had before. So it's really amazing to start bringing them the truth that that encouragement has so much more power than shame. And that coach, your job is to love these kids who are dying to be loved. When I was a freshman in high school, there were 88 kids that went out for freshman football. We were 14 years old, and by the end of three weeks, there were 15 of us left. And if you in the Central High School annual, if you look at those 15 kids, every single one of those kids was an orphan of heart. Every single one of those kids were looking for somebody to say you've done enough. It's amazing. Black, white, it didn't make any difference. Because I know them all. Children of alcoholics, roughed up. I mean, it was just never gonna be enough. Littlest kid, big brother had to seek the approval. All of us in that picture were looking for daddy's validation, daddy's approval. It was just amazing. So and and and I remember that one of the coaches, that the, I I I was the fifteenth guy left. And I remember we had a practice so hard one day, I decided I was going home. I was there were gonna be 14 after me. And I remember I knew if I went home that that was the end of something. But I was so worn out, I couldn't do it anymore. And a coach walked up to me when we had to run a second 400 meter four forty then. We we had practice four hours and we had to run two four forties under a minute ten seconds with cleats. With no water. With what? No water. No water. We didn't have water. Water was still for weakness. Water was we crazy. I'm from that era. Water was weakness. Oh, I'm 59. I'm 59. I know about that. And you get sued now. But but, a coach walked up to me. I said I can't do it. And a coach patted me on the side and said, yeah, you can. You can do it. And he patted me and I did it. Now hear me. He patted me. A orphan of the heart got touched in heart, my rib cage. And and it was this rib cage actually. And it was 1972. So how long ago was that? Forty five years. Forty five years ago, I can still feel his touch. He said, you can do it. And I did it. And two minutes and forty two seconds later, I ran a four forty that I had to run-in a minute and ten seconds. Took me all day long to get around, but he touched me. And so I could. The power of our hearts being touched was amazing. And what I was I was willing to never have a self to get the approval. That's the power of approval. And that's the importance of unfinished business because I set both of my sons up on some level to have to work to get my approval, to to, on some level, achieve what they wanted to do anyway before I could be okay on some level. I mean, I know it's not completely finished with us in a lot of ways, but it's like where you have unfinished business, wherever your wounds are you don't talk about, whatever, you know if you say you came from a great family, then I say you're harming your children. K? If you say you came from a highly and a good religious family, I say you're harming your children. If you come from a family of of chaos and harm that you know was there and you haven't owned the emotional impact, I say you're harming your children. If you come from a family that doesn't do feelings and you gotta read the book, The Voice of the Heart, and I know I sound adamant because I am, but if you come from a family that didn't do feelings kidding. And that means you have unfinished business. If you come from a place where you don't do feelings and you're not doing them now, you've got unfinished business that needs to be finished So your children have the opportunity to come become really good at being human. And your crap doesn't get in the way of lives that's gonna be full of crap anyway for them.

This is Stephen James, the executive director of Sage Hill Counseling. Thanks for listening to the Sage Hill podcast with doctor Shiv Dawn. Sometimes in life, we get stuck or blocked or reach an impasse. At times like these, intensive and short term therapy can help you overcome what's keeping you from the growth and change you desire. At Sage Hill Counseling, we offer therapeutic intentions to help couples gain new momentum and new recovery process. If you wanna find out more, please visit sagehillcounseling.com.