FINDING LESSONS IN LIFE WITH BRYAN CRUM | EP 52

[DAWN GABRIEL]
Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, your host of Faith Fringes podcast, recording live from Castle Rock, Colorado. I am a licensed professional counselor, owner of a counseling center and a sacred space holder for fellow therapists. This podcast is for those who want to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. I create intentional space to explore your own spiritual path, a space that allows doubt, questions and curiosity without the judgment or shame, a place to hear another story and dive deeper into how to have a genuine connection with God.

For my fellow therapist, listening, I will often pull back the curtain of our layered inner world that comes with our profession. I bring an authentic and experienced way to engage your spiritual journey in order to connect you with your deepest values for true renewal and soul care. But really this podcast is for anyone listening who’s desiring a deeper and genuine connection with God. For those of you wanting to engage your spirituality in new ways, Faith Fringes is for you. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello, welcome back to Faith Fringes podcast. This is Dawn. Today’s show I am going to be actually talking with a hospice chaplain. His name is Bryan Crum. He has helped thousands of people understand the value of their life stories. He’s a published author and the president of Boomerang ministries, a non-profit designed to help ministers and people return from trauma. Bryan works full-time as a director in a hospital system in Akron, Ohio, and lives in Sunbury, Ohio with his wife, Maggie and daughter, Casey. Bryan is an entertaining storyteller who provides the audience with funny moving and motivating stories. Be on the lookout for his new book Eden Equipment, which releases in May, 2022. Welcome to the podcast, Bryan.
[BRYAN CRUM]
Hey, thanks Dawn. I’m so excited to talk with you and your audience. It’s cool.
[DAWN]
I am excited to hear about your book actually, because I think it just goes in line with what I’m talking about this year of spiritual formation. Why don’t you tell my listeners a little bit about you first and then a little bit about the book?
[BRYAN]
Oh, absolutely love to. I’m a healthcare executive guy working for a hospital system in Akron, Ohio. I like to tell people I’ve given over to the dark side of spreadsheets and management and budgets but I really started my career years and years ago as a hospice chaplain. To be honest with, got some great paper on the walls, got some great degrees, but really the things that I learned that I think are the most important happened really at that bedside, meeting with patients who were confronting their mortality and just have learned a great deal about how God wired us internally. When you sit with hundreds of folks that are near the end of their story, and they’re telling you their story, you start to catch onto some common themes that really ring true, things that God’s given us to live a great story.
[DAWN]
Wow. That sounds so rich and deep. I’m just sitting here, like that’s also intense too.
[BRYAN]
I’m sure you can relate, when you encounter people’s lives, it’s really raw. There’s no TV moment of that. It’s real and good, bad, ugly. All of it comes through. I think we start to learn some things about ourselves when you see folks in that situation.
[DAWN]
So you said you had some themes that came up as you’re sitting there. Is that what motivated you to write the book or is it different?
[BRYAN]
It really did. I started catching onto the fact that God really intended us to live these stories without regrets. Like we’re supposed to live this powerful story. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of folks get to the end and have those regrets. As I’ve done some deeper digging on that thought line, I’ve discovered some things really God designed us in the garden of Eden to live that fulfilled and happy life. We know what happened with Adam and Eve. We know that story. Well, we’re still living the effects of that, like it or not. But the thing that gives me goosebumps, honestly, Dawn is that though we left Eden, all of those original components inside of ourselves were never changed. They’re still there exactly where God installed them. His fingerprints are still inside of our internal workings and we can find those, we can dust those off. We can reconnect them and we can live these stories that are powerful and hopefully free of regret.
[DAWN]
Wow. So when you say fingerprints, what do you mean by that? Like what are some of them that are coming up that you’ve seen?
[BRYAN]
Oh yes, now we’re getting into. I think our internal components operate on certain concepts that maybe we’re not so familiar with. I think one of my favorite ones that I like to talk about is how we run on good words. Words, whether good or bad play this big role in our lives and it seems that good words really move us forward and bad words hold us back. I’ve got some really great examples of that if you don’t mind me sharing that.
[DAWN]
Yes, I’d love to hear it.
[BRYAN]
So I definitely have this book I came to talk about called Eden Equipment and I’m excited to do that, but I actually wrote a children’s book years ago. It was banned from my daughter’s Christian school of you can believe it.
[DAWN]
Why
[BRYAN]
It was banned for two bad words. So here I am, a former chaplain and I’ve written a book for children banned for foul language.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh. Well, you can say them on here if you want to.
[BRYAN]
Oh yes, they’re so horrible. The first one was butt and the second one was crack. If you put those together, you get this buttcrack.
[DAWN]
I have two boys, that’s some of their favorite words. I hear it at least 20 times a day.
[BRYAN]
That’s common language.
[BRYAN]
But yes, I mean, I was mortified, to be honest with you because the way the story played out is we wrote this great bedtime story. My daughter, and I have this great ritual where we just every night share a bedtime story. I’m sure you can relate when you have little ones it’s that extra drink of water and that one more story, one more song, Papa and finally you get them settled down. This story was born out of those bedtime moments. So we had a friend that just illustrated this beautifully. My daughter was in fourth grade at the time and her teacher said it’d be really great. Let’s bring your daughter in and have her read this to the kindergarten class and proud papa moment, I’m like, “Wow, that’s great. Love it.” The principal found out about the idea said this is a great chance to encourage reading. Let’s get all of the kindergarten classes together. Put it on the calendar. One small problem, principal read the book.
[DAWN]
It has the word butt in it
[BRYAN]
Had the word buttcrack in it. I’ve walked away from that experience with a new perspective, Dawn, just that a lot of us let one or two bad words, keep us from sharing our whole story with really the intended audience that we’re meant to share our lives with. I think that’s the power is one or two bad words. I think we know those words, they usually start with “I’m not” statements, I’m not beautiful enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. What I’ve found is if you take out that “I’m not,” you’re left with “enough.” I am beautiful enough. I am smart enough. I am talented enough. I think that’s really the way God intended us to be wired. There were no I’m nots in the initial wiring we had.
[DAWN]
So you probably, you said you’ve seen this as people near end of life. How would that show up at an end of life type of moment?
[BRYAN]
It’s so amazing. I bet you could testify to this or have examples too, but it’s amazing to me, how much of a burden an “I’m not” statement can be to someone. It’s often what I’ve seen is folks have carried it for years. I’m sitting with an elderly person who’s near the end of their story, and they’re still remembering when they were a teenager and their dad came in from washing the car and was angry about something and he said, “You’re not… fill in the blank. They’re still holding onto that. So I think a lot of times we just need someone to help give us some permission to lay those I’m nots down.
[DAWN]
It’s so true. In my work as a therapist, when I sit with clients, a lot of it is going back to what are those negative thoughts in your head that you’re holding onto as truth. I would call them negative core beliefs that I’m not statements and realizing like really digging in, is this true or not and we need to turn that and change it to actual truth and actual, and a lot of times we don’t even realize. Especially if there’s a trauma, we don’t realize we’ve made those in our heads, but we’re reacting and living those out and not even realizing it. So I see that all the time. It’s one of my core values that I work with when I work with clients is speaking truth over them so they can, until they can realize, wait, I need to let go of this.
[BRYAN]
That’s so true. I saw this story on the news not long ago, I think it’s an older story, but I think it was one of those big recap shows where you see top 10 worst crashes in the world or something like that.
[DAWN]
Yes, yes.
[BRYAN]
This one was about a fire that was, a house that caught fire in Louisiana and the firemen show up on the scene. They do their thing with the water and hoses, and then they’re shining their flashlights through the smoke and the debris that’s left and they realize the fire burned away everything about the house and got down to the studs, those two by four raw wood framework and it stopped. These are seasoned firemen and they’re thinking this is not normal. What’s up here. As they’re shining their lights on this house, they start to see scripture written on these beams. Evidently the owners, the builders of the house had taken Sharpie magic markers and as they’re building, they were writing scripture on their framework of their house.
[DAWN]
Wow.
[BRYAN]
Supernatural or not, these flames reached that wood and stopped.
[DAWN]
That’s fascinating.
[BRYAN]
I don’t know, I think that’s what you’re talking about too. There are trues on our framework internally and some of those are true. They’ve been written there by God Himself and some of those, maybe aren’t so true. A little bit of fiction we’ve added ourselves but for some reason, when we look at those beams, we think those have to be true. Not so much. Maybe we need folks like you, I’m sure you and your talented team to come in and say, “Hey, Bryan, you probably need to do some erasing here. You probably need to do some crossing out because that’s not true.”
[DAWN]
Yes, and I even, watching my boys grow up, I think it’s something about just our humanness, that whether it’s an experience or just our human nature, sometimes it’s easier to attach to a negative thought than it is a positive one. It takes way more energy to switch it. So our brain looks for things that’ll prove that negative true. So if there’s experiences in our life that keep happening, we’re like, see, that means I’m not good enough. Or if someone actually said it to us, and then it reminds us of what we’ve been saying internally, and it’s all subconscious at first and then it can be conscious.

So even watching my little kids grow up, I’m like, wow, I can see how easily it happens. Or even when I screw up as a parent, because I’m not perfect and I realize later I accidentally said some untruth to them subconsciously I better go back and help fix that. But it’s even, yes, it’s so true. Like getting anchored back into the truth is so important. That’s fascinating though, that you’ve seen that theme come up with end of life. That makes sense. What’s another theme you’re seeing that you would say has been one of the core?
[BRYAN]
Certainly the opposite is true. That’s the good news is that while bad words hold us back, good words make us move. They really do. I don’t know, I had a race track when I was a kid. I don’t know if you had one, but I had this high, heavy duty Dukes of hazard race, car track. I don’t know if you remember such a thing.
[DAWN]
Yes, for sure.
[BRYAN]
It was like, I mean, it seems so sad now compared to our technology today, but it was this, just a circle and a plastic track and it had these little grooves in it and you’d take this little car and you’d set it down in those grooves that had a little prong that settled down into that track. When you pushed your thumb on the remote, the electric would fill that track and it’d take that car, just spin it around the track. The best part was just Dukes of hazard.
[DAWN]
Oh, okay, yep.
[BRYAN]
But we couldn’t see the electric in the track, but you knew it was there because you could see the car moving forward. I think that’s our good words because you pay someone a compliment and their cheeks flush red or you say something positive and you actually see their posture straighten up or you cheer from the sidelines and you watch someone play harder or better or faster. I just think good words are that electricity almost the spark plugs to our engine, helping us move around this track of life.
[DAWN]
I love that.
[BRYAN]
You’ve probably seen that too because I bet your sessions are spark plugs to help folks get around the track too.
[DAWN]
Well, sometimes. It depends. We have a lot of unpacking to do sometimes, but no, I think it’s so true, positive words. It would be cool to try it out, like put this to a test, give someone a compliment and like you said, watch how their facial expression or their posture changes. I think it’d be a great way to try it out.
[BRYAN]
Yes I do too. I’ve tried to do that with my daughter, like I mentioned the bedtime ritual and even now she’s older now, but we still do bedtime every night.
[DAWN]
Really? I love it.
[BRYAN]
Our ritual is the same. We do stories still. She’s, I mean, we’re talking 12, 13, and we’re still doing stories and it’s just this great time.
[DAWN]
That’s cool.
[BRYAN]
A lot more talking. She’s talking back now more, which is coo l but at the end we still have this ritual. I still like to help her fall asleep, I like to say good words to her while she’s falling asleep, “I’m so proud of you. I think you’re really great at the drums. I think your voice is beautiful when you sing.” Just making a list of the things that I’ve seen in her and I’m calling them out. I want her to recognize them too. I want her to have this script, this soundtrack, if you will, to be reminded, almost like going into that framework and saying, I’m going to underline some of the best parts for you. I’m going to highlight some of these so that when you look inside yourself, you don’t miss them.
[DAWN]
I love that idea. That’s a great idea. As they’re going to sleep too, it’s like a peaceful time and it gets in there. I think that’s such a great idea. I’ll have to try that with my boys.
[BRYAN]
Yes, it’s good stuff.
[DAWN]
Hi there. It’s me, Dawn. I just wanted to take a moment and say that if you’ve been listening to something today and you feel maybe nudge to go deeper into your faith journey, I offer a free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections. I promise it’s only one email a week. It’s a short exercise and a short email and included is a journaling workbook that has guided exercises that will help you explore more of what you were brought up to believe. Even if you’ve been disillusioned or hurt on your faith journey yet still deep down, you’re desiring to authentically connect with God and you can feel that then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up for your free Spiritual Reflections course today.

So is this on your book too? Is this similar to what Eden Equipment is, like you talk about this thing.
[BRYAN]
It is there. It’s packed full of stories. They’re funny, they’re heartfelt, some of them will make you cry, I’ll be honest. They’ll make you think. That’s the biggest thing, is they really will make you think. I think what they are in general is a flashlight shining down under the hood, if you will, showing us some of our internal components. The book is all about that, all about learning, about what you’re wired with and connecting those components so you can live powerfully.
[DAWN]
Okay, what are some more components? What do you mean wired? Because I’m sure there, like, are you talking about personality? Are you talking about human stuff? What components are we talking about here?
[BRYAN]
There is a lot. One of my favorite ones, which is probably not a secret is we’re really wired to do life together. We’re created in such a way where we’re not supposed to do this on our own. We’re really wired to do life together. We’re not meant to do this on our own. I think it shows, I saw another story on the news that I thought was so good. It happened in Australia, I guess where this man is trying to catch his train to get to work, catching a subway type-train. He’s on the platform, he goes to take a step into the train as the doors open and it’s ready to accept its passengers and his foot lands just perfectly, just in the wrong way between the platform and the train.

He falls into the gap between the platform and the train. When I say falls, he falls as far as you can, one leg. One leg is up on the platform, one leg as deep as it can go and he’s stuck, like really stuck. Luckily the officials on the platform stop the train because this thing’s on a schedule and can you imagine that would’ve been bad? But they stop the train. They can’t get them unstuck, can’t pull them out, don’t know what to do next and then they come up with this genius idea. They say everyone off the train, everyone steps off on the train onto the platform and they all push, every passenger pushes on the side of the train.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh.
[BRYAN]
It’s just enough. I mean you can imagine what one of these trains weighs.
[DAWN]
Yes.
[BRYAN]
It’s just enough to move it centimeters and that movement is enough for him to get his leg out.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh.
[BRYAN]
I saw, I was watching this video of it. You can look it up online. It’s really cool, of these people throwing their shoulders into this train. I thought that’s it. There are problems that I have that I need other people to help throw their shoulders into. There’s problems you have that really we need to all take a second and step off of the train, step out of our busyness and help push against some of these problems we’re facing. Because the truth is we were wired in a way where we need that. There are problems that, there are trains in our lives that are too heavy for me to move myself.
[DAWN]
I totally agree. Yes, for sure.
[BRYAN]
I think a lot of times we’re the people in the gap stuck, but a lot of times we’re the people on the platform too.
[DAWN]
I feel like you could relate to either one of those positions. One of my main pillars of this podcast is authentic community in learning how to just really walk alongside people in authenticity and where they are in life and we are created for community or created for connection. I think that’s such a good analogy. I’ll have to look up that train video.
[BRYAN]
That’s really good. It’s really good.
[DAWN]
Wow. So what else are you, anything else that you’re finding? I think you said you had another story or another fingerprint that you wanted to share.
[BRYAN]
I really think we have a lot of powers that God gives us in our equipment. One of them is the power to ask. There’s a lot of scripture about that, ask and it will be given scriptures. I keep thinking about that one because there are things that we really could have we’re just not asking for. I think God tells us if you’re asking for something that’s good for you, if you’re asking for something that will help you that’s really God’s will. If you ask for something that is God’s will, he’s going to give it.

So I think about all the things I’m lacking and why haven’t I asked for some of those to be solved. Some of those prayers at the bedside of folks that are at the end of their story have been along those lines. I wish I would’ve had another moment with my daughter and someone like me comes along and says, well, have you asked God for that? More times than not, when we would ask for those things, they would present themselves, moments with the family that we wish we had and one more sentence or one more second that we wish we had.
[DAWN]
Wow, that’s powerful.
[BRYAN]
There’s a lot of those things that we just haven’t asked for yet.
[DAWN]
Okay. I think sometimes when you’re talking about asking, like I’ve worked on sitting with people when they haven’t got the answers they want and the disappointment there or even as big of deconstructing their faith because of not getting the answers that they want. So I think the flip side is, yes, I’ve not looked into the power of asking. I mean, I have looked into it, but I’m just saying I’m used to being on the other side of that question but no, it’s true. We do have power in the Holy Spirit. He left the Holy Spirit for us. I think we don’t tap into that as much. Like, I feel like in my recent journey over the last few years, I realized how much, like, I don’t remember talking about the holy spirit that much and I don’t remember tapping into that more experiential, spiritual realm. It’s more the head knowledge realm, and not as much the spiritual realm. So, I don’t know, I feel like it’s in those, I’m thinking about that when you were saying it.
[BRYAN]
Agreed. We have a lot. We really do. We have a lot that we’ve been given and the truth is it’s enough. It really is enough. I got one more story if you don’t mind.
[DAWN]
Okay, sure. Yes, absolutely, love it.
[BRYAN]
We had a hornets nest that we dealt with one time that was really interesting. It’s the story’s in the book. It’s funny. It’ll make your belly laugh when you read it in full, but I’ll give you the highlights. We had this hornets’ nest outside of our window and it was a problem because our house wasn’t air conditioned, it was really hot in the summer and you had two choices. You could open the window and experience the cold breeze but if you did that hornets from this hornet’s nest hanging just outside the window were going to come in. or you could leave the window closed and you could sleep in what was pretty much an oven.

But we’d open the window and when hornets came in, they’re so different than bees. Bees, the saying you leave them alone, they leave you alone, hornets, I don’t know. They must be straight from the devil or something. They just come at you, no reason and sting multiple times. They’re not like a sting and die being like a bee. They sting and sting. So we decided something had to be done about this problem and one of my friends said, I saw on a cartoon once that, if you have advice that starts this way, you run away.
[DAWN]
It’s going to be a no.
[BRYAN]
But he said he saw a cartoon that he could take a vacuum and put all of the bees and then you just threw away the vacuum cleaner bag, problem solved. I thought about it and I thought let’s try it. Sounds genius.
[DAWN]
I need to know how old you were
[BRYAN]
Yes, yes. Unfortunately college days. We tried it. Now college days in a guy’s dorm room looking for a vacuum cleaner, there’s the first challenge. So I like to tell folks it was like finding Lochness Monster. Like people had seen it. They were sure it existed, but good luck finding it.
[DAWN]
But you eventually found one, it sounds like.
[BRYAN]
Found one. We plugged it in it, it turned on. I mean, it was probably Moses’ vacuum when he was a baby, because it was really old, but it powered on and we successfully inserted the hose into the hornets nest.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh.
[BRYAN]
It’s actually working. You could hear ting tinging, these hornets coming down the hose and I really think it would’ve worked still to this day if we had checked to see if there was a vacuum cleaner bag in the vacuum because it was not
[DAWN]
Oh no. So they’re angry.
[BRYAN]
It sucked up lots of hornets and spit them out the back immediately into the room. We had, you’re exactly right, a room full of not just hornets, angry hornets. So we get outside and close the door, but we still have this really, really big problem. As college people do, we decided to confront it head on and so we put on all of our clothes, like winter coats, all of the clothes we owned, we had bedspreads come in those thick plastic bags. We put those over our heads and we went in and went to battle with these hornets, with a fly swatter and a rolled up newspaper. Eventually they all died. Eventually they’re on the ground. Eventually we find a vacuum cleaner bag and plan works because we do vacuum them up successfully, eventually
[DAWN]
Oh, wow. Did you get stung?
[BRYAN]
We did get a few stings, but nothing like what we really probably deserved.
[DAWN]
I’m waiting for the analogy here.
[BRYAN]
So the analogy is, I think we expect God to equip us with something just magical in our lives. But a lot of times a fly swatter and a newspaper are enough to confront these really big things.
[DAWN]
Interesting.
[BRYAN]
Kind of the way our equipment is. We have these things that look simple to us. They almost look like something out of a cartoon. They’re so simple, but God says with me, they’re enough, enough to confront all of those problems. So I think Dawn, a lot of us are waiting in the hall though and there’s this room full of things we need to confront, just beyond the door and we really need to step into the room and let God use what we have to do some great things because what we have is enough.
[DAWN]
That’s so interesting. As you were saying, we had a fly swatter and a newspaper, I was like, that didn’t work, but it did. I’m like, oh wait, you killed them all with that. I was in shock but as you’re making the analogy, I’m like you’re right. God uses our weaknesses even, because we can rely on Him. It makes us independent, I mean co-dependent, or I should say interdependent on Him. Like we aren’t independent. So again, back to we were made for community, we were made for community with God. So, yes, that’s just a good story. Like even if we’re using a fly swatter, if we are leaning into our relationship with God and Him, like yes, you could take down a whole hornets nest, I guess which it’s very real.

My five year old, this past fall stepped on an underground hornets nest and got covered with tons of hornets and got stung multiple times. It was terrifying. So I’m like very interested in this story because I was just picturing they were mad and we had to go out, my husband put on all the stuff, we were pouring bleach down it and trying to kill it. After we got them all off of him and he was screaming for hours, it was awful. But yes, I’m still shocked that a fly swatter worked for all those, but I love the analogy that worked really well
[BRYAN]
Probably in your situation, not the right time to find a vacuum cleaner.
[DAWN]
No no, no, no. I mean, but yes, you got to kill those bees. So tell us more, if people want to get your book, it should be out in May, you said? I think that’s the month this podcast will be live.
[BRYAN]
Oh, perfect. Yes, it’ll be out May and we have set up this fancy text number. So you can text my name. My name’s Bryan and I spell it with a Y. So you can text B-R-Y-A-N to 66866. So 66866, my name Bryan, text to that number. It’s going to take you to this one page with four buttons. Each of the buttons is full of goodness. There’s so much good stuff on this page. You got to check it out. There’s a one click that’ll take you to the book. That’s one button. There’s a one click that’ll take you to my social media. That’s a button. Then there’s a, if you want me to come and tell some stories like this at your church, oh my gosh, there’s a button for that. Just click it. I’ll come around.

Then there’s a fourth button. We actually have a non-profit. It’s a charity and we spend all of our dollars helping folks bounce back from trauma. We’ve been helping mainly ministers, to be honest with you who are recovering from cancer, a minister that was going through chemo and couldn’t work, we helped pay their salary. A minister who fell off of roof and couldn’t work, we paid his salary so he could get back on his feet. We do things like that. It’s called Boomerang Ministry and it’s all about helping folks boomerang back to the good work they were doing before. All of the dollars from this book sales go to Boomerang to help folks do that. So if you’re looking for something that can help you move forward in your life, this book’s a great tool. Guess what, if you buy that for yourself, you’re helping someone else move forward too. So good stuff.
[DAWN]
I love that. That’s so cool. I love hearing that. We’ll put all that info in the show note so people can go back and check it out if you didn’t write it down. But Eden Equipment by Bryan Crum is coming out in May. Excited to see that. Well, thank you so much for being on my show. It was nice talking to you and I love your stories.
[BRYAN]
My pleasure. Thank you, Dawn. This was so fun.
[DAWN]
Yes.
[DAWN]
Thank you for listening today to the Faith Fringes podcast. For those of you wanting to take a deeper dive into your own faith journey, you can grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my website, faithfringes.com. If you’re a therapist and would want to work with me, I offer sacred space holding for you through my consulting, as well as my soul care retreats. To find out more, go to my website or email me, dawn@faithfringes.com.

I love hearing from my listeners. Drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can also connect with me on social media. I’m on Facebook and Instagram at Faith Fringes. As always, if you’re enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you could show it by your reviews., Go to Apple Podcasts and leave your review so that others can find this podcast and get curious about their own spiritual journey. Thanks again for listening.

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