From Raising Kids to Rebuilding Connection - A guest appearance on The Pastor’s Studio with Paul Basden E137

Rick Denton (00:00)
This week on The Loud Quiet, something different. Clancy and I had the opportunity to guest on a fantastic podcast, The Pastors Studio with Paul Basden from raising kids to rebuilding connection.

Clancy Denton (00:13)
Paul is one of our pastors at the church that we have been at since 2007. So he has seen our children grow up their entire lives. So this was a lot of fun. got to talk about how raising adult children is really different than raising little kids. And he also wanted us to talk about how much fun we are having in the empty nest So we really hope y'all enjoy this and

We really hope that y'all will go and listen to the other episodes of his podcast, The Pastors Studio with Paul Basden

Paul Basden (00:50)
Hello, I'm Paul Basden Welcome to This Is My Story. Over the past several months, we've heard heartwarming stories about people coming to Christ later in their lives, about individuals living with an incurable disease, and about folks finding love in a second marriage. Today's story, however, is a bit different. It's a story of a couple who received a solid Christian foundation as children, grew up in spiritually vibrant churches, learned to follow Jesus in their teen years in young adulthood,

and have now raised their own two children into maturing and healthy young adults. Nothing spectacular, nothing dazzling, nothing dramatic, and yet, their story will resonate with every one of you who have children that have grown up and left home, or who will do so in the near future. Their story is about how to make the empty nest a time of joy and celebration, not an occasion for sadness and sorrow. This is Rick and Clancy Denton's story. Welcome to our show today. We're excited.

Clancy Denton (01:42)
Thanks for having me.

Rick Denton (01:43)
Thanks for having us, Paul.

Paul Basden (01:45)
Me too. All right, y'all, I've known you for over 15 years. Back in the day, we were in a life group together in our church, and your two kids were just that. Kids back then. And now they're full-fledged adults. Your journey of parenting them into adulthood has led you to recognize that you engaged in some intentional practices and patterns over the years of parenting that grounded them before they ever left home. As you look back now, now that they're out of the house,

Rick Denton (01:57)
They were.

Paul Basden (02:14)
What were some of those healthy practices that you implemented?

Rick Denton (02:19)
So you actually alluded to one of those that really was kind of the core of how we raised our kids. You mentioned Life Group. We have always, and a lot of it's our background, have always focused on church being a rhythm that our family was going to participate in. And our kids saw that from the very youngest to the age that they are now, that we were always going to be doing church. We were always going to be...

involved in a community. And even as the churches that we knew growing up with Sunday schools being a part of that, as Sunday schools weren't necessarily a part of it, we knew that the community aspect of church, not just attending, but being a part of a body and a group was a key part of how we wanted our kids to see we lived our life and we wanted to model that for them in their lives.

Paul Basden (03:12)
I think it's important what you said because you allowed the church to become something that's not just an occasional part of life, but something that's a permanent part so that they see it that way. Clancy, I'm gonna ask you the same question, but I'm gonna spin it around. If your kids were writing you a letter today saying, Mom, thank you so much for this, fill in the blank, while we were growing up, what are a couple of things they might say?

Clancy Denton (03:32)
Well, our, my side is outside of church at home. It was very important to me to be honest with our children from a very early age, age appropriate. But any question that they asked me or us, I told Rick, I want them to have the honest answer and be transparent with them. And as they grew older,

I shared stories with them that weren't always the most, I would say, reflective good on me. But, you know, it showed them that mom and dad messed up too and, you know, it's okay. But they, and they do to this day, they say, you know, we are glad that y'all always told us the truth.

Paul Basden (04:11)
look good in the stores.

Clancy Denton (04:28)
And that opened up avenues for them to come to us when they were having issues or they were having problems. And they felt safe to come and talk to us. Even now at the ages of 23 and 21, they open up to us about a lot of things that I probably, well, I know I did not open up to my parents about it. yeah.

Rick Denton (04:53)
No, there are definitely conversations we're having with our young adult kids that would not be there and so much of that is credit to Clancy for bringing that trade. That is some she brought. That transparency was something that she modeled.

Clancy Denton (05:05)
We had

conversations around the dinner table that we definitely not had in my family growing up.

Paul Basden (05:11)
You

know, each one of you talked about church, one you talked about the home, but the truth is I see a parallel, or maybe say a point of intersection.

Point of intersection is that a lot of kids walk away from the church because I think it's filled with hypocrites who say one thing and do another. And here in the home, y'all were saying, we're not gonna be hypocrites. We're gonna let you see who we are is who we are and you're gonna hear our story and that's a part of our lives. So I have an idea that might have been a reason why they were able to continue in their own spiritual walk. All right, so on this show, we've had guests who shared all sorts of things about marriage, about how to walk through the darkness of divorce, how to thrive in a blended family. Those aren't your stories. Y'all's passion is how to enjoy

to maximize the emptiness. How in the world did that come about?

Clancy Denton (05:55)
Yeah, we're laughing because spring semester of our daughter's senior year, she is our youngest. And, you know, I knew my buddy was about to leave and we had a hard time when Tanner left, there were three of us still at home. one night Rick and I were out and I looked at him and I said, what if I don't like us when she leaves?

you know, that kid glue was going to be gone. And I knew that we had a good relationship, but it was a fact that it was just gonna be back to the two of us. And it hadn't been the two of us for a very, very long time. And so I started looking for things about empty nest and really the stuff that was out there was just sadness and doom and gloom. And I was just.

This was not what I wanted. And so I approached him and I said, we've got to do something better than this. And that's when the idea of the podcast came up. And then we decided, you know what? We're gonna make this first year, the year of yes. So we called it our year of yes. And that's how we approached it. And it was really fun, just a fun, fun year.

Rick Denton (07:16)
Yeah, trying to put myself back in the driver's seat of that car when she said that, the words that she said were not the words that I heard. The words that I heard were, what if I don't like you when she leaves? And that introduced a real sort of crisis in the sense of just the emotional.

is this marriage really something at risk because this marriage had been something that was so stable, so important to who we were. And that's what, Clancy's talking about the intentionality, that was what we immediately did is what can we do to stay connected as a couple as we enter this phase? Because we have seen stories of those that experienced the other path, that they look at each other and wonder who are you? Because I don't know who you are outside of the kid glue that Clancy referred to. And

being able to enter into that empty nest with the intentionality of we're gonna do this to stay connected and be able to like us after she leaves.

Clancy Denton (08:18)
And luckily we had built a good foundation. We were very blessed to have parents that lived in town. So all of those years of marriage, we had date nights. We were able to leave the kids for weekends and go on trips. So we had built that foundation. And that is one thing that I try to tell young parents, even if you don't have that available to you, put the kids to bed early one night and just have a date night.

in your house, just try to find ways to stay connected as a couple. Let the kids know your marriage comes first. That is the key. They have to see that mom and dad come before the kids.

Rick Denton (09:06)
And it can be hard, there's folks that might hear, know, well, I don't have my parents in town, I don't have that. Date night for us, when we lived in Houston, there wasn't family in there. Date night was, well, we've got a di giorno, and we've got a VHS recording of the Friends episode that aired an hour earlier. So we sat there and enjoyed date night with frozen pizza and Friends, and it began to, and continue to cement the connection that we're able to then leverage when a wife can say to a husband, what if I don't like us?

And because of the past, that foundation, we were able to carry that forward with, here's how we're going to stay connected.

Paul Basden (09:40)
Foundations really are what you build the life on, So y'all are in the car, you're talking, Clancy has this realization, what'd call her, your little friend? Getting ready to leave. What led y'all to the conclusion that the empty nest experience should be a time for joy rather than regrets? Why didn't you say something like, gee, this is just gonna be absolutely terrible, I'm sure our marriage is gonna make it, but we're just gonna feel sucky for a year. How did y'all decide to say, hey, why don't we say yes for a year?

Clancy Denton (09:50)
My buddy.

Rick Denton (10:09)
I don't mean to be particularly glib about it, because being sad and living in regrets kind of stinks. We didn't want to do that. Now, there are elements to that, but it was really a choice of here's an opportunity. What can we spend more time thinking about? What can we do with this as opposed to what have we lost? And there are things that we lost, but there's so much more that we got to gain and leaning into that joy.

made it something that, saying yes was such a vital part of it. Now, we joked that we had to actually relearn the word no because we were sort of exhausted by the end of

Clancy Denton (10:47)
We over-indexed a little bit. I'm gonna say yes. And I think, you know, we get it. We were sad. I mean, I would walk by both of their rooms and tear up. You have the feelings. It's a roller coaster. still, when he and Tegan drive back to school, I still tear up every time.

She leaves when Tanner goes back to his town home in Dallas, there's still a little piece of my heart that I can feel it. But you can't stay stuck in those feelings. You have to get up off the couch. You have to just live. And I know it's harder for some than others, but get out there, find a new group, find a new hobby. There's so many things that you have available to you now that

You didn't when you were tied to those schedules of your kids. There's just so many opportunities.

Paul Basden (11:50)
So you're talking about you opened your eyes to something that was there, but you had not seen it because it was not really available to you because the response was driving kids places, blah, blah. And you just allowed yourself to see things that were there. All right, now you two have not just engaged in a podcast, but you've written a book. Both of them have the same title, The Loud Quiet. Clancy, start unpacking that for us, then ring pickup.

Clancy Denton (12:13)
Well, I came up with the name and I don't even remember how it came to me. I think I had seen someone refer to just how quiet the house was and I said, yeah, it's going to be so quiet that it's just going to be loud. And it is that silence is just overtaking. You don't have the thumping upstairs.

You don't have kids coming in and out of your house. Their video games aren't going, their music's not going, a shower upstairs, you know, there's just things that you miss. And when we got home that first weekend after taking Teague and I told Rick, said, I don't wanna be in the house because it is going to be so quiet. And so we didn't. We went to Fort Worth that weekend and just spent the day over there and it was good.

We just got out of the house. didn't want to be just sitting in the quiet.

Rick Denton (13:16)
It was like the moment she said it, people talk about the light bulb, the birds coming, it really was the moment she said it, we knew that's what this was going to be. And we've discovered even some additional sort of meanings that come out of it in the sense that kind of we're talking about the say yes. Well, we don't live in that quiet. We live with joy. We live with yes. We live with the loud of this. That Fort Worth was the beginning of

a whole series of choices that we made that were influenced by the freedom that we had to be able to do the things that connected us as a couple, allowed us to rediscover who we were as individuals and also start to rebuild those friendships that I don't want to say languished, but I do want to say friendships that were so heavily dominated by your kids, friends, parents. Well, a lot of that starts to disappear.

And even that element can be a loud quiet, where did all my friends go? And so choosing to how can we rediscover what friendship means in the post-kid world, the empty nest world was a key part of what the loud quiet was and what it's become.

Clancy Denton (14:30)
and forced us to get out there and make some new friends too. Because like you said, you do, some of your main friendships are through your kids' parents. And when those activities are gone, you stay close with the ones that you were close to, but you're missing some friends. And so, yes, you have to be intentional again about, you know.

starting a new life group for Empty Nesters, which we did. And yes, we have gotten two great couple friends that we are actually, I guess, two new couples that we do a bunch of stuff with and it's been great.

Rick Denton (15:11)
And there's, we talked about the freedom of it. Let me tell you, the easiest time to get a dinner reservation in Frisco is Friday night in falls at 7.15.

Clancy Denton (15:21)
When you're not going to find a night light.

Rick Denton (15:22)
Everyone else is at a sporting event. There's a lot of fun that comes in this phase when you don't have...

Paul Basden (15:29)
Sounds like y'all are enjoying this season. So let's summarize a little bit. Clancy, you first. What do you like best about empty nesting? But then also be honest, what's the hardest part about it?

Clancy Denton (15:41)
The best thing is the freedom of the schedules, which is so nice. Our kids were heavily involved in activities. And even when I wasn't driving them by the time they could drive themselves, I was still going to every single activity. But the hardest part for me was that identity shift. I was mom and I still am mom, but

Now I'm mom from a distance and it, you I was doing the laundry and yes, I'm sure some people out there saying you were still doing their laundry. Yes, I was still doing their laundry and I still do their laundry when they come home, which is infrequent. But you know, I was cooking for four people. I was doing all the grocery shopping. There were just things that,

I was there when they came home from school. I had a part-time job. So then I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna come home and it's gonna be me and Teagan's cat sitting on the stairs. What am I going to do? So I did, I had that little bit of an identity crisis that it took some time and luckily starting this podcast and then eventually Rick and I.

I retired from my job, he stepped away from his consulting job and we went into full-fledged business together. And so that has now given me a creative outlet that I have turned myself into that direction now and it's been great. But yes, that identity crisis, which I know a lot of moms deal with, that was really the hardest, hardest.

Paul Basden (17:32)
Yeah, thank you for being vulnerable on that. I'm sure many moms both identify and it scares some moms, but those things you're saying are going to keep them from being scared too long.

Clancy Denton (17:41)
And especially when your child is going through something, our daughter had a horrible freshman roommate and she went to school many states away. That was very hard for me. mean, Rick knows I was ready to get on a plane and go out there and take care of some things. when we go out there once a month and we had just been there,

Rick Denton (18:03)
This is not metaphorical. She was about to get on a

Clancy Denton (18:10)
We had come home for about three days and I was like, I'm going back. And I was about to book a flight and he was like, no, let's, and she did, she took care of things. It took a while, but that was really, really difficult as the mom to not go out there and take care of it for her. But yeah, it's hard.

Paul Basden (18:31)
What's on in my mind is the words of Mr. T. Pity the roommate. What's the best part? What's the hardest part?

Rick Denton (18:35)
I know.

Doubling down on the freedom aspect of it, mean, I'll be very specific. It's great to travel off season. I'm not having to compete with everyone else traveling during school holidays. Clancy and I can go places and all that. It's a freedom though, not just of the schedule. There's a freedom element of the mind. So Clancy, talking about the adjustment of the role, there's also the mirror side of that and there's the freedom to reinvent yourself. There's the freedom to

choose a new path forward because some of the commitments that are good commitments while you have kids and while you're raising them in your house, now you have this freedom to choose a different path, bring on something new. And so that freedom of being able to go into business with Clancy is something that we would not have chosen to do while the kids were in the house. And it's been fantastic to do it. When it comes to the

The things that are, I guess, the least appealing about the empty nest, and I almost might say the most surprising, is I put retirement and empty nest in the same definition. And the reality is entering the empty nest does not mean that you are retired. And I had the thoughts that, well, let's just go to Belize on Tuesday, those sorts of things. Well, the reality is there still are actual commitments. The kids are one component of your life.

they are not the only component of your commitments in life. And something that is, I think, not spoken of as much is it affects the dads too. ⁓ Clancy has even done a better job of helping me even sort of define it, but I had my sports conversations right there in the house. I had my video game conversations right there in the house. All that went away and that's something that I was able to use to connect with the kids. Well, when they're away,

it was discovering how to still have those same kind of connections with the kids, but in a different distance way.

It was just, it was a change to realize that they're gone, I'm still dad, but how can we still kind of maintain that dad kid friendship sort of aspect of it that I don't think it's talked about a lot, because as dads, we're not supposed to, they're supposed to grow up and get out of the house, and then they're off the payroll and all the kind of silly things that you hear us say.

But it kind of missed and a part of me was ripped out and I missed that and learning how to adjust into getting what that was going to be going forward was not the easiest change.

Paul Basden (21:25)
I appreciate you saying that. Obviously, we men all have our issues, want to be tough, want to be needless, want to prove that we can do whatever. I'm reminded of my favorite definition of grief, it is this, grief is the way that the body and the soul and the mind respond to losing something or someone that has given us meaning in life. somebody loses an arm, they grieve it, because that arm functioned for them in a certain way.

someone loses a spouse to death or divorce. They grieve it. You lose a dog, you grieve it. You lose kids from your house, even though they're alive and well and somewhere else, but you had this experience of a foursome and now they're gone. And then good grief, of course, means that you grieve until you finally embrace it and you're not afraid of it. You face it and you face it. And then at some point, all of a sudden, the storm clouds are gone and the sun peeps out a little bit, then a little bit more the next day and after a while, it's a year of the yes.

Rick Denton (22:19)
And

I love that idea of the good grief aspect of it because that's a lot of what the relationship that I have with Tegan now, the relationship that I have with Tanner now simply couldn't have happened if they were still in house. And that's natural, that's normal. It would not have happened. And it's such a ⁓ deeper and a different, to say it very simply, it's really exciting to watch them be young adults.

Clancy Denton (22:43)
And it's fun having adult kids. We're having a blast with them. we're having, you know, I loved them when they were little, but this is really fun. We get to do a lot of fun things with them.

Paul Basden (22:53)
Y'all,

now something important I want to bring up. Ian Morgan Cron is one of my favorite writers and podcasters. And in one of his podcasts a while back, he talked about three stages of parenting. And y'all have just described being in the third stage and being in a very healthy way. You might not like his choice of words, but he said the first stage is you're a cop.

He said, it seems to me from about zero to 11 or 12, you're just trying to protect them. You're just trying to let them not run out in the middle of the street, not put their hand on the burner, on the stove, not do whatever else it would that might hurt them in life. He said, somewhere around 11, maybe as puberty kicks in, somewhere up to about their 18 or 19 or 20, whenever it is that they start getting real independence, he said, actually, now you become a coach. And you can put them in, you can take them out, but the whole time you're coaching them, trying to help them become more independent on their own.

Then he said at some point, 22, 23, depends on the kid, depends on the parents, but there's some phase in their fairly early 20s where you become the consultant. And your whole purpose is to listen to them as they initiate, and then you respond back. Do you ever find it hard to bite your tongue, like you want to get back into one of those earlier stages? Like I do. With my daughters, I want to go, hey, don't you realize, and it's like, Paul, be quiet. Let them come to you if they want to.

Clancy Denton (24:08)
I think we're learning. You're looking at me.

Rick Denton (24:13)
I

looking at you. I think between us, I've had an easier time of letting that go. I think what is hard though is when you do see them making a mistake and learning what is the line that, because even as the consultant, there still is a line where you will want to jump in. If it's some sort of catastrophic life choice that they might be making or something like that, you might still want to get in there. But watching your kids make a mistake,

and then learn from it can be incredibly rewarding, but it's still a little bit of, you get a little tense in the body when you're watching that take place.

Clancy Denton (24:52)
They're both, well, since they're both still, know, Tanner's in grad school and Tegan is still an undergrad. And sometimes I still have to remind him, you know, hey, we are still paying for you to be in class. When I hear him say, ⁓ I'm planning this trip and I'll be missing schools. I'm like, well, we are still paying for this class. So maybe we should not go on that trip.

Rick Denton (25:18)
That actually, think that highlights a really good balance though between Clancy and me and probably a lot of couples that are doing this stage of life together is I would likely say, you know what? Hey, if you don't get the education that you need, well, that's on you and that'll impair your future career. And then Clancy is the one kind of dropping those reminders there. And it has served to be a pretty good balance. I think we do a good job of riffing off of each other when it comes to those sorts of things. I will say though, in the vast majority,

we're stepping back. And the key part of that consultant part is when you are hired, let's air quote that, when you're hired into that conversation to be able and willing to offer that wisdom that you have, but it is only when you're hired and brought in.

Clancy Denton (26:01)
And they are pretty good about coming, you know, they'll send us, is this email okay? Read this email. They seek our advice a lot. We don't tend to offer it, but they do ask.

Rick Denton (26:16)
And I like on that example too, is there's some times that we've been like, you got it. Like even without reading the email. And it's a choice that even that consultant role sometimes we are stepping back from to let them know, look, we're not gonna always be there to read an email that you need to send to your professor kind of thing. And that has changed as we've stepped back from that. So sometimes even the requests get, I don't wanna say ignored, that's too strong of a word. But I will say that they are.

duly prioritized in a way that helps their development.

Paul Basden (26:47)
I appreciate y'all talking about both the ability to step back some and let them grow up, as well as the desire to be back in their lives at appropriate times as adults. Denise is more like, my wife Denise is more like you Rick, she easily can back off and let them grow up.

I'm a little bit more like Clancy, but more so I call that Holy Spirit Junior. Constantly trying to help the Spirit do his job in the lives of our adult kids. That's awesome. Okay, let's explore the faith dimensions of this whole thing. I know y'all were followers of Jesus when you were dating, when you got married, as you raised your kids up. How does being a follower of Jesus impact or maybe shine a new light on this chapter of empty nesting?

Rick Denton (27:27)
I'm gonna use just one word, hope. And if you think about the question that Clancy asked me in the car, if you think about the concerns you might have about what your kids choose as young adults or the paths that they're going on or what you are wanting to be as yourself, this can be an incredibly scary and an incredibly uncertain stage of life. And even in the moments of uncertainty, because of my faith,

I know that I have hope that it will all end up working out. Even if a particular moment isn't a positive, even if a particular experience isn't something that I would have wanted, ultimately I know that this emptiness phase, their young adult phase, who I am as an individual, who we are as a couple, there's always going to be that hope there. And so much of my faith background has influenced that to understanding that today, no matter what happens, there will always be hope.

Clancy Denton (28:27)
Yeah, don't, mean, just to add onto that, there's, there has been a lot of things that we have been through just in these, since Tanner went off to school that I would have never thought we would have had to deal with, you know, he lost a friend on a spring break trip. I mean, there's just things that you would not hope would ever happen and who,

can you rely on? mean, Jesus is the only one that you can fall back on when things like that happen. And it shows our kids too that He's always there and He's the only one who's always going to be there.

Paul Basden (29:13)
Let's move into the topic of prayer. Parents who pray for their kids are truly tapping into the greatest power in the universe on behalf of those kids, and parents who don't pray are just missing something crucial. So let me just ask you all some questions, and either of you answer or however you feel like it. How have your prayers for your kids changed as they've entered adulthood?

Clancy Denton (29:37)
So my prayer is always that God would bring people into their lives that would get them back into church because when they went off to school, I know that they still have their beliefs and have their faith, but they were not involved in church. They are not.

They have not stepped out of their faith or out of their beliefs, but they are not practicing going to church. Now, one of those prayers has been answered in a big way. And do you want to tell that story or do you want me

Rick Denton (30:27)
bit here, I didn't wanna interrupt the flow, but yeah. So we talked about being intentional, and part of that intentionality was choosing how can we find friends. Well, we didn't see an emptiness group that kind of worked, and so we started an emptiness life group here at church. And Clancy mentioned the two friends, two couples friends that we have met there.

Well, as we developed a relationship with one of those couples, they have a daughter that was going to attend the same university that Tanner is. She was going to graduate school at SMU where Tanner was going. And so we thought, let's just introduce them so that they have a friend group that ⁓ they can enjoy this community down there at SMU. Well, we didn't plan for it, but it turned into a very deep and long lasting relationship.

Clancy Denton (31:12)
They're their year dating anniversary next month. ⁓

Paul Basden (31:15)
small group of two.

Rick Denton (31:17)
So they... And this is an answer to Clancy's prayer of, want to bring somebody into Tanner's life that helps him get back into church. Well, that has actually started to happen, that they have started attending church together.

Clancy Denton (31:29)
And they've been coming to Preston Trail. Tanner even texted me today and he said, what service are you all going to on Sunday? We're going to come Sunday. The series sounds good. So I mean, yeah, that was a huge.

Rick Denton (31:43)
And we make a very clear point of this, that we were friends with the adults.

Clancy Denton (31:47)
Yes,

and we were not trying to be matchmakers at all. Neither one of us, neither one of the couples were trying to be matchmakers.

Rick Denton (31:55)
And as their relationship has cemented and it shows signs of moving forward, this joke has started to fade a bit, but we said, whatever y'all do, you're not messing up this friendship that we've got as the adults. So that absolutely was an answer to prayer. think, you know what's changed a little bit is almost the maturity of the prayers, which kind of aligns with their maturity is it's less about...

I hope they do X, Y, and Z. I hope they stay out of this bad thing or go... It's more just, God, help them live a fulfilled life that is connected with what you want their plans to be. And being willing... And I think a lot of the prayers too for me have changed in the sense that a lot of it has, and let me release any sort of even fantasy that I have any element of control of what that might look like.

Every seed that Clancy and I have planted and watered is in the past. They are going to be the young adults they are, so God, it is completely in your hands at this point as to what they will be as they grow.

Clancy Denton (33:02)
And I will say that God did send the right people to Teagan at the time that she needed when she was going through the roommate debacle. I mean, even to the point that they were a year older than her and had apartments that she could go and stay at and wonderful kids. mean, we still see them every time we go out there and yeah.

wonderful kids embraced her and she found her people, I mean, that week and it was just a God thing. I mean, I knew it was. And so yeah, that was a total answer to prayer.

Paul Basden (33:46)
So hope and prayer and less spiritual topic. Let's talk about the scriptures. I know y'all learn the scripture, know the scripture. What are your favorite scripture passages and why? Clancy, have at you.

Clancy Denton (33:57)
Well,

mine is John 16 33. And this goes back to my chapel singers high school days. We had a song that this ⁓ verse was from and it's, I've told you this so that I mean, you may have peace in this world. You will have many trials and sorrows, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.

Rick Denton (34:20)
Rick? Mine is Philippians 4, 6 through 7. Folks will certainly recognize those numbers, but it's, worry about anything, instead pray about everything, tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Part of my story is there's been a lot of job loss.

and job change before we ended up going independent and then doing what we're doing now. My dad passed away unexpectedly when he was young, 57. Shoot, that same year our dog died unexpectedly. Like it was just this, there's so much unexpected loss that has happened. And I just found myself seizing and just grasping onto this verse because it doesn't say,

pray about everything, tell God what you need and you'll get it. It offers peace and a peace that is utterly unexplainable. And I especially think that when my mom was going through the ravages of Alzheimer's, I leaned into this verse as well because barring a miracle, and it is certainly within God's power to do so, typically Alzheimer's has only one path forward. And I knew that it wasn't to pray for my mom's sudden restoration, it was just pray for

peace going through that. And that verse has always meant so much to me because knowing that God is there, he's there to listen, he's there to understand, but it's not a commitment that you're going to get what you're praying for, it's a commitment that you will be given the peace around what you are asking.

Clancy Denton (35:59)
I didn't realize our verses were so, cause mine is about peace too. I didn't realize your verse was.

Rick Denton (36:05)
We find ourselves unexpectedly aligned. We've been married for just shy of 26 years. And that's part of the fun too, is just discovering new things just like that, that our verses have a unified theme.

Paul Basden (36:20)
Well, I'm super thankful to both of you for sharing your story today. Your fresh take on empty nesting will encourage all of our listeners who are struggling with the reality and in some cases the prospect of kids leaving their homes. And when I think about our own church here, the number of parents with high school kids is the largest it's ever been. Our current high school attendance is averaging 40 % growth year over year, and every one of those kids is going to leave home at some point.

And every one of those parents is going to have to learn how to parent those kids in a new season, as well as learn to adjust to having an emptiness. And I think that what the two of you have said today is exactly what they need to hear. Thank you both for joining me.

Rick Denton (36:59)
Thanks so much for having us.