Right now the best and worst things in my life are happening at the same time. My kids are growing up beautiful, and my wife's mother is in the last hours of a two year battle with stage four stomach cancer. I bring on my friend John Mark McMillan, the songwriter behind "How He Loves," who I first found during the worst season of my life, going through my own divorce, listening to his album on 5am walks because I couldn't sleep. We talk about how death and crisis have a strange way of contextualizing your life, and I share something I realized sitting next to my dying mother-in-law, the only thing that actually matters to her right now is the community she built and what she leaves behind, not a truck, not a vacation, not a bank account. John Mark gets real about his own story, middle school bullying that felt like "blood in the water," the one friend who changed everything for him, and how he almost accidentally discovered songwriting while going through his divorce, writing songs at night on a porch for an audience of nobody but God and a speed hump in the road. He breaks down a framework he calls Category 1 and Category 2, Category 1 is what keeps you alive, Category 2 is the actual reasons to stay alive, and traces an entire generation of men's emotional suppression back to our grandfathers coming home from World War II and the Great Depression and being told to just pretend everything was fine. We talk about Victor Frankl, meaning versus pleasure, and the Oliver Anthony song that took a total stranger from 40,000 followers to a million in about a week because he said something people felt but didn't have words for. We close on his favorite song he's ever written, "The Road, the Rocks, and the Weeds," about a God who doesn't just heal your pain but actually feels it with you, and why Jesus's vulnerability on the cross is the only reason any of us can have a real relationship with him. Then we get honest about something a lot of men carry shame over, their sex drive and temptation, and John Mark makes the case that Jesus being tempted in every way, including same-sex attraction, isn't a problem for faith, it's the whole point, because holiness was never about what you can get away with, it's about the joy on the other side of what you're willing to sacrifice. Thanks for listening, guys, stay Brave, and we'll see you next week. Chapters: 00:00 – The Best and Worst Things Happening at the Same Time 07:26 – What My Dying Mother-in-Law Taught Me About Success 14:51 – Middle School Survival: "It's Like Blood in the Water" 22:24 – Writing Songs for an Audience of One: God and a Speed Hump 29:50 – How a Song Took Oliver Anthony From 40K to a Million Followers 37:13 – Why Our Grandfathers Were Taught to Never Look Weak 44:44 – Finding the Middle: Surviving Hard Things While Choosing Joy 52:11 – Half a Million Monthly Listens: Keeping Success From Owning You 59:32 – Inside "The Road, the Rocks, and the Weeds," His Favorite Song 1:07:01 – Why Real Passion Always Requires Something to Suffer For CONNECT WITH BRAVECO Join Our Free Community for Men (ladies, sign up your man): https://www.braveco.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/braveco.men Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braveco.men/ Shop: https://shop.braveco.org/ ABOUT BRAVECO: We live in a time where men are hunting for the truth and looking for the codebook to manhood. At BraveCo, we are on a mission to heal the narrative of masculinity across a generation; fighting the good fight together because every man should feel confident and capable of facing his pain, loving deeply, and leading a life that impacts the world around him.
