Episode 420 - Never Settled with Shawn Congleton

Hey friends, Rick Lee James here inviting you to join me over at rickleejames.substack.com. Substack is a great new free platform that helps me connect directly with all of you who listen to my music and podcast. All you have to do is subscribe with your email address and that's it. It's easy to use and we can interact right away. So go to rickleejames.substack.com for some inspiration in your inbox. Today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you are here with us again. For what I know is going to be a great conversation with a friend of mine, Sean Congleton. Sean Congleton has lived a life on the move, moving nearly 80 times before he graduated, living in almost 20 states. Since that time, he has spent most of his life in Ohio with his wife Heidi and 3 girls, Morgan, Jordan, and Brooklyn. He has been an admin clerk for the United States Marine Corps, secretary for Wright State University, Youth and Young Life adult pastor at High Street Church of the Nazarene, church planner with LifeHouse Community, secretary with Springfield-Clark Career Technology Center, school for counseling for Dunbar High School and Springfield High School, and co-principal with his wife Heidi at the Eagle and Dove Academy. And he has a new book, Never Settled: A Memoir of a Boy on the Road to Manhood. It's an emotional and brutally honest story that focuses in a large part on Shawn's relationship with his father. Shawn shares about his fears, his sense of despair, and the losses that impacted his formative years as he endured abuse, both physical and mental. I've known Shawn for almost 20 years now,, and I didn't even know half of his remarkable story until I read his book. I'm so glad that we finally had the chance to connect again. Sean Congleton, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thanks, Rick.

Glad to be here. It's so good to be here, and this is the first time in over a year that I'm actually doing an in-person, face-to-face kind of— I'm going to just call it the— not exactly post-COVID, but kind of like the I guess during COVID but coming out of it, like face-to-face interviewed. I'm all vaccinated up and I'm able to do some stuff now and not through a veil, but face-to-face if we're going to use the biblical metaphor. So it's so good to be here with you today. What a great book. And Sean Congleton, everybody, if you haven't had a chance to read his book or if you haven't even had a chance to hear of it yet, Never Settled. Is quite a memoir, and you're going to get to hear more about it today. I, I want to let all of you that are listening know that if you go to our website at voicesinmyheadpodcast.com or even go to our Substack page, you'll be able to find links to Sean's website, you'll be able to find links to his book, and I know you're going to want to find out more about it today as you hear some of the stories and some more that we hear that we're going to talk about today. But I want to find out from you first of all, Sean. There's so many great stories and we're going to get into some of them today here. Why did you feel like right now at this point in your life was the time to tell this story in the form of a book? It just came out really, it was the end of 2020, right, when you published it?

So yeah, right at the end of December, uh, released the book. That's an interesting question. I think I had found myself You know, I'm hitting that, that midlife of sorts, 45 years old, kind of starting to look back on my life a little bit and just remembering some of the days, the '80s and '90s. A lot of those time eras are popular on TV right now and just kind of remembering the days and having conversations with my dad a little bit during that time frame. And my dad's health had gone down a little bit, so just kind of recollecting some of those stories, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And in some ways I kind of always wanted to write a book, and in other ways it had been long pushed back. It was kind of a— the idea when I was probably in junior high or so. And, um, just recently, just talking about stories, I thought, I really want to put my story down on paper. I want it to be something that, that lives on because it's It's also something I found very difficult to tell a person. You can't sit down and have this conversation. It's quite lengthy and it's quite extensive and it's quite unique in many ways. So it's something I just wanted to put on paper and share with the world.

Yeah. Well, and having known you for a lot of years and we've shared meals together and we've gone to Marvel movie premieres and Star Wars movies. And I didn't know, you know, like so much of this. You're right. So much of this I'm reading, and I'm so glad to know this side of you that I didn't know before, and just hearing so much of your journey. And other than yourself, the book does focus a lot on your father, you know, and sort of the abuse situation, which I would think that has to take a lot of courage to tell about. Not only just for you to tell it, but because your father is still a person that's here in the world.

Still.

And I think it takes a lot of courage probably to be able to tell these stories. And I know that you've— that he's aware of the book and that you're talking about him. And then even—

Actually, Rick, unfortunately my dad just passed in August.

Oh, he did?

Oh my goodness, I'm sorry.

No, I understand. It's been some time, you know, we've had some time to kind of process a little bit. And I had every intention of publishing it while he was still alive.

Okay.

Had every intention of giving him the opportunity to read it. It's funny you kind of bring that up a little bit in the sense that I have let different family members read it and kind of review it, give me their feedback. Were there facts that I missed here? Did you see something differently? And things like that. And I was always a little bit in fear and also curious What will Dad think when he reads this? Never quite had that opportunity. So, it's interesting timing. I think God has a time for everything and there's probably a reason for that.

I must have totally misread that. When I got to the end, I kind of thought you had talked to your dad about it a little bit and stuff. I guess I misread when I was going through that.

Yeah, I certainly talked to him about the process and during the writing.

Sure.

And all that. And we talked about stories together. We created the timeline and things like that of where we moved and when.

So he did have a part in it.

Yeah, he certainly did.

Okay.

Um, but he never actually got to read the final product or even hear it.

Well, that's, that's what I find remarkable about it because I mean, the book opens up with, um, and I want to get the quote right because you, you, you do— it's a very humanizing look But I mean, the book starts right out with you talking about basically, "I hated him," you know. I mean, it starts out that way. And so the fact that he was sort of helping with the telling is kind of a— it's got to be kind of a cathartic process in the midst of that too, because there's some hard stories to tell in the midst of that. But I love in the way that you also very much humanize him too. And I just want to share a little bit of what you wrote because this is part of the way that you both humanize him as a person in the midst of telling some of the abuse that also went on too. And you say this, my dad liked to bless people with music, which stood out to me as a music person.

Yeah.

It said he loved music so much and it gave him great joy to share his music with others. He would often give one of his mixtapes away, sometimes for money, sometimes in trade, and sometimes as a peace offering with a stranger. Can you talk about that just a little bit? Maybe just some of his love for music, because that comes up actually time and again in the book, and kind of like this collection of music that just kind of kept growing, even in all the moves and stuff.

Yeah. In many ways, that's a part of the story that's hard to explain as well. It's hard to describe my dad's love for music. It was all-encompassing. As much as I've come to know, love, and follow Jesus, like music was his Jesus in many ways.

Okay.

Um, it, it was his life, it was his passion. And, um, I think in so many ways it was therapeutic to him. And, uh, being able to share that with others, like here's something I really love and enjoy, being able to share that with somebody else just gave him so much joy. And so it was, you know, it was, it was really incredible, um, just to see how much music impacted him and then he used it to impact others. And of course he wasn't a musician or anything, he just enjoyed listening to it and sharing the artists and the songs and tapes with people that he loved.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's kind of a neat thing. I, I think a lot of people would maybe if they'd been through your situation, would maybe just choose to only see the dark side and not find any of the humanizing elements that were there. Mm-hmm. And, and I— and maybe that's partially the Lord and the healing that God has done through you as well too. But I think you can very much see in the general way that you talk about the way that your dad loved music and the way that he kind of shared that with others. In some ways I can see that in the way that you tell that, that was his way of sharing love with people, you know, and that because that moved him in some way and maybe he didn't know how to express love in any other way. But that was kind of how I was reading it on the page. My words, maybe not yours, but that's what I was sensing.

Yeah, for sure.

And I sensed that he really didn't know how to express love very well. You know, as I was reading through the pages, you know, it was a tough thing, but it's just the way it would describe it. And you say also in the book, another thing you wrote, you said, "My biggest problem was that my dad always wanted to move. He never settled on one place for very long. As soon as I started to enjoy something about a particular place, we had to leave it." And this is the part I wanted you to elaborate on a little more, because people who haven't read the book aren't going to understand you didn't move like people whose parents were in ministry, like my parents were. And we moved a lot. My parents moved every, you know, probably on average we moved every couple of years. My parents did. People who are in the military, they move probably about the same, you know, on average. Whenever they got reassigned, they would go. Explain this a little bit, how much you moved, because I truly have never heard of anyone moving And even my dad, by the way, there are a lot of similarities between my dad's father and your father as I read the book, by the way. There's another connection I had, which we don't have to get into on this podcast, but my dad also, I think my dad had moved like 50 times by the time he had got— so it was a very similar thing with a lot of the same kind of personality traits. But yours even, I think, tops that. So just explain a little bit about all the moving because it's kind of wild.

Yeah, even 50 is more than I've ever heard anybody else move. Yeah, I've never quite heard that. I used to have no idea, to be real, how many times it was. I used to guesstimate at about 100. In the process of writing the book, we started with a timeline. My mom and dad and several members of the family were trying to come up with the timeline. And the best guess we had, or, you know, based on where we remember where we were and such, was 80 moves. Wow. Um, averaging, you know, for many years, probably from kindergarten to around 8th grade, probably averaging close to 10 moves a year. Um, every couple of months, at times every couple weeks. Some people may ask Like, so how did you even define a move? Like, what— for me, defining a move was when everything that we owned went with us. Um, and if it didn't go with us, we no longer owned it.

Yeah. Okay.

That's how we define a move. So there were times we lived in a hotel for 2, 3 weeks, couldn't find work, and we picked up and went on. Um, time where my dad would start a job and we'd be there for 2 months and we would move on. Um, and that was pretty consistent.

Okay.

And part of that was that at first, as a kid, in elementary age, it was all I knew. Yeah, it was normal to some degree. I mean, I saw other people's lives weren't like that, but it was normal for me. Yeah, it didn't start becoming kind of a weird thing, like, I wish this would stop, until probably middle school, high school.

Age.

So on some level, like, I could see that because there is something about like when you're a little kid, like, oh cool, a motel, let's go, they have a pool, you know, things like that. But when you do get older, it starts to kind of lose its romance and charm, you know, pretty quick. And when you're losing those things and when your dad moved so much because you talk about in the book he's trying to keep under the radar of law enforcement for a big reason, right?

Absolutely.

There was alcohol problems, there was DUIs, there was things like that. So a lot of the abuse that came out in your home that you and your siblings faced, he was also facing repercussions from the law.

For that.

Yeah.

So, so that was a lot of the reason. It wasn't just for work necessarily. Um, so it wasn't just like, hey, we've got a job, we gotta go. It was, it was really kind of like, I'm on the run again, pretty much. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so this was a really unstable, kind of difficult environment.

I mean, there were times that, uh, at a job he would get mad at his boss and get in a fight and punch his boss, and then next thing you know, the cops are coming after him, and so we're leaving. Yeah, there were times, like you said, it had to do with abuse, and they're finding out about things happening at home, so we better get on the road.

Now, and, and I want to ask about this too, because I, I don't know too many people that have actually been through the system like this. I don't know if you noticed when you pulled up, we actually have a sign in, in our our churchyard where we're recording for foster care. The Oesterlund has been using our facility helping to look for foster care. And you're one of the people that at times you talk about in the book, you and your siblings were actually put into foster care. You went in and out of it. And I got thinking about that. I would, I just wonder what that was like for you Did that at times feel like a reprieve for you because of how at times home life was so bad? Or did it feel like, I really want to get back home because home is familiar? Or was it kind of a mix of those two things? Because I, I can totally get the idea of like, even when it's bad, it's still home. Like, I still want to get back, especially when you're a kid. Like, what, what was that like? Kind of being pulled out.

It's funny, I keep hearing you say the word home. Yeah, like, think about that. Like, that place was changing every couple of months. Yeah, so home was really just our people, my family.

Yeah, we're people.

But that's a really good question in so many ways. And for the most part, the opportunities or the time in foster care was a bit of a reprieve. It was a chance to get away, feel safe, um, have a positive experience, not feel threatened by moving or threatened by potential violence or yelling at me or whatever. So it was, for the most part, it was hopeful experiences. I don't really know how to explain. It wasn't that I didn't want to leave the foster or that I didn't want to go home, either one of those. But initially and being there were fairly positive experiences, actually.

Okay.

Well, I do remember there's one part in the book where we first got pulled out of our car and were taken to our foster home. And when my wife read it for the first time— she was my first beta reader— yeah, she's like, what was your response? Like, I don't hardly see any response here. Like, I think she was wanting me to pull some emotive out of there, and I was like I didn't have a lot of emotion to it.

Yeah.

I didn't know what was going on. I just went with it.

Yeah. You know, so maybe because you were so used to just constantly going wherever you were made to go, you just kind of were used to that.

Yeah, pretty much.

So there wasn't maybe a lot of emotion to it anyway. So, and, and when you— and you've already alluded to a little bit, and I don't know how how deep we want to get into this, honestly. And I, for listeners that are sensitive or who have been through it all, but the abuse was real and you talk about it in the book. Your father was pretty harsh in the way he would speak to you and your siblings. I mean, just the insults that would be given to you. I mean, parents shouldn't say that to a kid anyway. And I don't want to go— I'm not trying to dredge up stuff. Yeah. Physically, the abuse that was there, it's not fair. I mean, for one thing, it's not fair for an adult to ever do that to— for people to do that anyway. I mean, you already talked about him punching a boss.

Yeah.

Um, it's very bully-ish for parents to do that to a kid. But again, I'm not trying to dredge all that up. I'm just trying to kind of paint the scenario for the listener as they're kind of reading through and hearing your story. There's a lot of what we call in the Wesleyan tradition anyway, like, "provenient grace" in your story too. I'm hearing of all these situations of like, "How did Shawn even get out of there alive?" I mean, honestly, I'm reading some of these stories and I'm thinking like time and time again, like, It's amazing that Shawn's even here with us right now.

Yeah, for sure.

And that he became the amazing person he is that sits in front of me right now and all the ministry endeavors that I've seen you in over the years and the family you have. And it's just, it's amazing as I read about it. One thing that I found interesting, and I didn't even think about it exactly in this way until a few days ago, But you talked about something that I know you and I share together because we're both a little bit geeky in this way about like the characters on TV and people like that. But you— I totally related in the book when you talked about the relationship to like television characters. And I thought about this in a new way. You said partly because you moved so much, but you said everywhere you went there was a UHF station and the characters that you would stay in touch with partially because you moved place to place, you didn't have friends that went with you, but the people who went with you were, and you talk about, you stayed in touch with Buck Rogers, the Million Dollar Man, which it feels like MeTV on Saturday night, you know, watch that now. You said Buck Rogers, the Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, and my friends on Gilligan's Island, whether we lived in Indiana, New Mexico, California, Colorado, Illinois, Or wherever else the road took us, Gilligan's silly antics would be there to make me laugh and make me feel a little bit better about life. And this is on kind of a funny level, and I know I mentioned it and you saw my comment that you wanted to be on Bozo the Clown on the grand prize game. And your next-door neighbor, by the way, Brandon, you didn't know this until I told you, he actually was on the Bozo Show and he was on the grand prize game. Which is kind of amazing. But you know, you also talk about in your book, and we've already mentioned it a little bit, we've gone to comic book movies and stuff together over the years, and you like comic books and stuff like that. But there's something about the way those characters drew you in, and I hadn't really thought about it until reading your book, like those characters were familiar to you and they went with you from place to place almost because they were friends that were consistent. Yeah, you know, um, and I had never really thought about like maybe that's why even in our society today there's such a draw to things like that because there's a lot that doesn't seem consistent in our world. Even pre-COVID, everything seemed to be kind of out of control and like everything sort of in that pop culture realm revolved around that and nostalgia. We've already talked about like '80s nostalgia and all that. I just wonder if there's something to that that you kind of hit on in the book. The way you described it made me think about that a little bit more deeply. The way that you went from town to town and you didn't have those relationships. Do you, do you think that in some ways culture as a whole where we're maybe substituting real relationships for those kind of things sometimes? When we can't get them, we're losing ourselves in those fantasies in some ways, maybe?

I could certainly see TV playing a role in that in our lives. The characters in our series that we watch and particularly binge watch nowadays, so many people just find themselves escaping the real world that's constantly changing and leaving so much unknown in our lives, giving us a comfort level that I can— it's kind of like taking the roller coaster at Kings Island. It's scary up here and it's exciting, but I know it's safe. Yeah, it doesn't affect me that much, you know. It gives me some thrills, it gives me some oohs and aahs, but it's not really going to affect me, and I can watch it from afar and stay safe.

Yeah.

And I can definitely see those characters, particularly in those '80s shows that played that role in my life. There was so much unsafety around me.

Yeah.

And those folks gave me safety.

Yeah.

Typically positive people. You didn't mention them, but when I think of some of those, like Family Ties, Growing Pains, those were sitcoms in the '80s that I loved that made me feel like, man, I wish I could just sit at their table every night. Oh wait, I can. It's on Tuesday nights at 7.

Yeah, yeah. And you, you probably had a feeling with them like, like I got sometimes when I'd see on those similar shows the Christmas episode where they all gather around the piano and start singing, which even in my musical family seemed weird, you know what I mean? But on TV they always did it, and we did every now and then like stuff like that, but But yeah, there is this sense. So on some level, I think like society, it can be unhealthy to have that kind of escapism. But I think for you, as I read about it and for some of these situations, like you needed it, like it actually was your kind of lifeline.

As a form of survival.

Yeah. And so in some ways, like, I just think about like those show creators probably would have no idea that in some ways what they were creating were saving your life, you know, or maybe even those, you know, Lee Kirby comic books of Marvel that you talk about, you know, those were part of like getting you out of those situations in some ways, which is kind of an amazing thing when you think about it. And the power that sometimes even pop culture art can have in our lives, you know, which is kind of an amazing thing when you think about all that too.

You know, and even being in the middle of that and seeing that, I think one thing that those sitcoms did for me in particularly they kind of gave me a vision for life. So sitcoms and comedies have changed a lot over the years, the way that they depict the characters. But in that day and era, I mean, Family Ties and Growing Pains is two examples where like I looked up to all those characters. I wanted that life, you know what I mean? And in many ways it gave me a vision for when I grew up and had my own family. I wish I could live a life like that. Instead of what I was experiencing. And in so many ways I do now.

They almost set up the ideal rather than the realism in some ways.

Yeah.

Whereas now things have gone more to, this is what it's really like and not the ideal.

You got that right.

It's more the anti-hero than the hero. Yeah, so. For sure. Well, you know what, since we're kind of on that subject of like characters on a show and we've mentioned like movies we've gone to and stuff like that, you have a story in your book that I couldn't get out of my head about a you ended up going to see a Star Wars movie.

Uh-huh.

Okay. And it ended up— it's so wild. Every part of this story is just crazy. And I'll let you tell as much or as little of it as you want. But you have this memorable story in the book and long story short, you and your brother go to see Return of the Jedi and it's at the end of the day you had gone to town. The first part of the story, I'm a little bit hazy. I can't quite remember. I think you had gone to sell— was it some albums that your dad had?

So we were given food stamps.

Okay.

We had food stamps and we were given an amount of food stamps, I don't know, $30 or so each. And our mission was to drive 15 miles on our bikes to the next big town.

Okay, right.

We had to trade in the food stamps, so to speak, for actual coinage.

Okay.

So when you bought a small piece of candy, 15 cents, you get 85 cents in return on your food stamp dollar. So our, our idea was go trade in your food stamps for actual coinage and then go buy my dad some audio tapes.

That's what it was, right? Okay.

To which he recorded his albums on these audio tapes. He made, basically made mixtapes, uh, and it was his way of making sure the albums played well because they always bought them used and wanted to make sure they didn't Skip and so forth. So that was our job that day, is get $20 worth of audio tapes from my dad and then bring them home. And we got to keep whatever was left. So obviously our goal was to keep as much as we could.

This is where the story really picks up, right? Okay.

So at the end of the day, once we got our candy for the day and we'd eaten our fill, we were getting ready to head back and we noticed Return of the Jedi was playing at the theater. And it had only been a few weeks I'd seen since we had seen it, the original Star Wars on television itself. Okay, so man, it was like, oh my goodness, we could go see Return of the Jedi! Which, by the way, do you remember the original title of Return of the Jedi?

Um, was it Revenge of the—

yeah, it was Revenge of the Jedi. I actually wrote Revenge of the Jedi in a few of my prewrites, and people kept correcting me, no, that was Return of the Jedi. So I just left it Return because I knew everybody's gonna just remember that. It was the original title. But anyways, we went and saw—

So even on the marquee it was Revenge of the Jedi?

Well, I'll tell you this, I've seen a poster.

Okay.

I can't tell you from when I was 7, my memory's not quite that vivid.

Okay, got it.

I did know that the title was originally, and I've seen a poster that says Revenge of the Jedi. Anyways, yeah, we went and saw the movie at the theater, took our candy in with us, and then we get out of the theater, it's 9:30 at night, and it's in the summer, and or at least, you know, early in the summer, and the sun's going down quick and we still got 15 miles to ride home.

Yeah.

And by the way, we didn't have a cell phone then, you know, right? 1980 or something. Yeah, '82 maybe, I can't remember.

But it's like 9:30 at night. Yeah. Okay. And, and, and so this is the part, like, this goes from like a story of like triumph to me to pure terror.

Yeah, pretty much.

Because You've got 15 miles basically to ride home in the dark. You don't have— I don't, I don't remember you writing about having lights on your bike or anything. Um, and but then like the story goes from like not just that you have to ride home, um, you finally after riding— I don't remember how many miles exactly in the dark and it's getting cold at this point. Um, I remember you're You're starting to panic at this point. You're freezing to death. You think your dad's gonna maybe literally kill you because you're not sure at this point with some of his behavior. You see a gas station and somehow at this gas station, I think it's your mom that pulls up around that time and sees you. And it's been like maybe 2 hours after you've left the theater at this point. And finds you. And tells you to get in the car, but then you don't go back to— again, we're going to use the word home loosely, right? What happens from there?

Well, actually, I mean, I'm gonna assume we actually did go home from there. We were about 4 miles— at that point we were 11 miles from the town.

Okay.

And so we were only 4 miles from home. It was about 11:30, almost midnight at night. It was dark. That, that road was— that's a two-lane highway, you know. Yeah, small town Indiana area. And not a lot of cars were traveling necessarily, but every once in a while, and it wasn't exactly safe as we would call it now. And I just remember getting picked up and we did go home after that and we didn't die that night because I'm here today talking to you.

You're here with us still.

Yeah, but I sure thought I was going to.

But the book leads in, and maybe forgive me if I'm confusing the facts because I've it's been a little while since I read it, but it seems like it was very shortly after that time that it led to a pretty quick move where you actually, you ended up leaving a brother behind.

Yeah. Yeah.

Actually at that point too.

So that story was in the middle of our story about when we moved and left my brother behind.

Right. Okay.

So I kind of went back into that story kind of depicting an example of why my brother was a hero of mine.

Okay.

And I looked up to him and so forth. Then I go back to the story where we're moving and we leave my brother behind.

Okay, that's where my mind is getting confused between the two.

Yeah, it's getting confused.

It's a story inside of a story in a sense. Gotcha, okay. And so at that point, shortly after that, I finish up that story and we do, we leave my brother behind. And that's the last I see him until after he graduates high school.

Wow.

Like 4 or 5 years later.

Man. So there's times in your move that not only stuff didn't go with you, there's times siblings didn't go with you. I mean, that's just beyond wild, like parts of your story. So what did happen to— it was Jimmy, right?

Jimmy, yeah.

And did he just stay with a foster family or did—

He did. He ran away at that point. He was gonna go try to stay with a friend that he had lived— that he had known that was in a town close by. He didn't quite get to that friend, and he ended up staying with a foster family for a year or two.

Okay.

Turned out that family didn't really work out well for him. Ironically, they were a very religious Christian family. My brother had kind of rebelled against that a little bit, pushed back, and he ended up being able to stay with his best friend in high school for the last 2 and a half years or so of high school. 2 and a half, 3 years, something like that. And they were great people and treated him and took care of him well.

Wow.

Wow.

But yeah, we weren't able to stay in touch during that time frame much.

Well, there's a lot I want people to read in your story, so I'm going to say one more time, people need to read the book Never Settled. And so I'm going to skip a lot of the book too here tonight, but I want to take a moment to read what a counselor here in our city of Springfield wrote about it, because I think he really sums up a lot of what the book says. So In some ways, this is sort of like a book review/advertisement of the book in the middle of our conversation here tonight. And this is by Chris LeMaster, who again is a counselor here in our town. And he just said this in such a good way, better than I could have possibly said it. He said, "In a beautifully raw and compassionate way, Sean invites us into his painful yet hopeful story. Through his willingness to process the pain of his childhood, We are also able to experience with him the power of redemption. I really appreciated Shawn's candor and his ability to tell his story with a genuine openness. Family can be the means of our greatest joys or the place of our deepest pain. To anyone who dares to look back in order to be able to finally move forward, I recommend this memoir. So let me ask you this question with that quote specifically in mind, because it really does sum it up well. Who do you think you wrote this memoir for?

I think I wrote the memoir for people that don't know Jesus, don't know the power of forgiveness. That want to see reconciliation, hope from difficult family situations. People have thought, you know, have talked about the fact that writing a memoir could be very therapeutic. It wasn't therapeutic for me, to be real. It was very difficult to relive some of those times and I had a lot of healing that had already taken place, but it kind of dredged up some difficult emotions for me. So in many ways, I continued to write and I continued the process because I wanted to give hope to people that didn't have it through the difficult things that they've gone through in life. There is an other side and you can come out on it and look back and find some peace, find some reconciliation, find some joy, and, you know, hopefully restore relationships that have potentially been broken.

Good answer. That's a good answer. No, very good. I wanted to hear that from you, and I had that suspicion And I did wonder if it was as much therapeutic for you as it was painful. Because it did seem like a painful book to write, you know, in many ways. And yet, hopefully it was maybe helpful to kind of relive some of those things and maybe put them to rest in some ways too. And kind of face them and go, "Okay enough." You know, I hope, you know, sometimes those can be helpful things, but I do think it's helpful for other people to hear those things too. And the open way that you share those stories too, it's very good in a testimonial kind of way. I think it's good for those of us who are on the journey to remember that that life is not always an easy thing. We have a way in sometimes our Christianese, in the way that we talk, to make it sound too simple sometimes. And sometimes even in the faith community, we can way too simplify this and not want to deal with those sides of the story. So I appreciate the way that you've put that out there for others. And I want to I want to move towards kind of the— it's not quite the end of the book, but to me it's kind of— if they make a movie of your book, to me it's almost the climax scene, you know, of it. It's not my favorite scene of the book, but it's a scene that you remember for sure. You'd become quite a good wrestler.

Yeah.

You know, which is kind of amazing anyway. I mean, that you became quite a good athlete. And there's a dramatic part of the book where a confrontation happens, and it really kind of happened after you did the best you could, kind of really the end of the wrestling season. You kind of get the feeling like even the best that you could possibly do, even coming in second place, which was great, you know, you worked your tail off, almost came in first, not quite.

It was my first second place, by the way.

Yeah.

First time I ever did that well.

Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's an accomplishment. That's tremendous. I mean, in a society, sometimes we, well, you didn't get first, so what? I get the feeling that that was kind of your dad's attitude, was like, "So what? You weren't first." You know, which is, it makes me want to just, if I could go back and just give you a hug and be like, I mean, I just want to go back and go, "Are you kidding?" Like, you know, it's amazing what you, you know, I mean, if I always want to say to any kid, if you did your best, like, The best is all anybody could ever ask for, but I mean, second's amazing. It all leads up to this scene though, which— do you mind telling us that story around the— it kind of happens around the pool table. And it's kind of this moment where, to me, it's this pivotal climax moment where it feels like, at least in the book, there is this moment of deciding almost on your part like I'm either going to become like Dad or I'm going to be going a complete different opposite way. And it's this physical altercation that happens. And I, I'll let you kind of talk about it if you want, but if you don't mind.

Yeah, it's, it's funny you even kind of joke about second because I remember at the end of that tournament I was on cloud nine. I couldn't believe I got second. Yeah, my goal was first, but like I had an incredible tournament and it was, and it was, uh, I was just on cloud nine from being able to do as well as I did.

Yeah.

So I come home and the family's playing pool and that was a family game that we did once in a while. And this particular night, I mean, there were a few of the younger kids that were playing, but when I got home, the younger kids got kind of set aside and it was the adults. And I got to play with the adults as a 16-year-old high school kid on cloud nine from this wrestling tournament. And I'll tell you, I was doing good that night. I was shooting well and it got to my head. And, uh, my dad could see me puffing my chest up a little bit and feeling a little proud of myself. And, um, you know, as soon as he noticed it and his team had lost a number of times, uh, he challenged me to basically a bet. And I'd learned one thing before this even is never to gamble with my dad, never to bet my dad. It was like, okay, I'm taking off the training wheels. Now we're going for real. Yeah. So we played one game of pool after this bet and he just whooped me. You know, I think he basically forced me into like a $5 or $10 bet. That was a lot of money at that time. And he just whooped me off the table with not even a chance. And I could tell he was wanting to put me in my place, but he wanted to do it even physically. I could see the way he was looking at me and the way he was talking to me and the way he carried himself. And it was the end of the night, you know, it was early in the morning, 1, 2 o'clock in the morning, and he was done. And the altercation just came to, he wasn't going to let it go even though he'd beat me. And he's, we got too close to each other in a sense physically, and the tussle came into play. My dad had had a bad leg from a car accident, and I, you know, I had learned how to handle myself as a wrestler. So he was much bigger than me, but next thing I know, that physical altercation ended up with him on the floor and me on top of him. And my instinct was to wrap his arms around himself to hold him down so he couldn't hit me and he couldn't move and he couldn't do anything about it, even though that wasn't even a particular wrestling move. It was just to keep him from throwing a punch. Mm-hmm. And my mom yelled, "Don't hit him." I was so confused in that moment. Does she mean me? Does she mean him? Man. And, uh, my response was literally, I'm not gonna hit him. That's what he does. I'm not like him. And like you said, I decided I'm choosing another life. I'm gonna be different. Yeah. There's a phrase that people often use, and I remember hearing it in youth ministry a bit: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Yeah.

And oftentimes when we see kids going through difficult are being difficult or challenging in many ways, oftentimes are very, very much like their parents. I decided for me in those moments, that wasn't going to be me. I'm going to fall as far from that tree as I can and I'm going to do things differently because that's not the life I want.

Yeah. So do you need to take a break or anything?

I'm good.

I'm seeing— I'm sorry.

It's all good.

Dredge up, uh, you wanna— I can get a tissue for you.

No, I'm good. I'm an emotional person happy. Okay, I'm an emotional person sad.

I know listeners can't see, it's getting a little emotional in here. That's, that's fine.

Um, and that's the way my dad was too. He's very emotional. I definitely got that from his DNA.

I, I totally understand. Well, you know, what strikes me— I'm, I'm going to go back to Provenient grace again, which is a big word that means preventing grace, and I can see that as a grace moment in your life, and I don't think you probably would even have words in the moment to know what to call it, and I don't even think, at least reading your story, I don't even think there was enough Christianity or even religion in your life to know what to call it in that moment, probably. But I see in your story in that moment the Holy Spirit moving in your life in that moment, clearly moving in you in that time, doing what we would call a move of repentance. You know what, because literally what repentance means is a change of direction. Like, it's literally a change of mind and a change heart and it changed— like, we often think about it as a trip to the altar, but it's not actually that. It's actually a complete turn of a direction. And so what happens in that scene in the book— and again, I don't think 16-year-old you even had the language or any sort of understanding at that time— but I think what God was doing in your heart at that time, that's how good God is before we even know or ask of it.

Yeah, for sure.

I think God was working on you in that moment, just how I'm seeing it.

Yeah.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm seeing that change happening before you even realized it or asked it, and you're seeing it and going, I want something completely different than that in my life. I don't want to be violent. I don't want to be that person. So to make a bit longer story a bit shorter, there's another person in your life because you— the story goes on a bit more. You go into the Marines and you go in a different direction in your life and it takes a different place and you end up in Springfield here where you are. And again, there's so much in the book, I want people to read it. But there's another person that becomes very important in your life and becomes another parental figure. To you, and I want to talk a little bit about Rosemary if I could, because she's really neat in the story. And one of my favorite lines in the book is— now this is Heidi's mom, right?

Yeah.

And so one of my favorite lines in the book is how you're not seeing Heidi in the story but you're over at Heidi's house and at just different points in the story and it's Heidi's mom, Rosemary, who is, their whole family is really active in church and are they active at High Street Nazarene?

Exactly.

Okay, so that's the Nazarene connection again. This is a great line in the book and I wrote it down so I'd so I'd get it right. She would tell you these stories as you would tell stories about your life, and then she would tell you stories. And this is what you said: While I shared stories about my life, she shared stories about Jesus, the church, and her own life. And for whatever reason, that particular sentence in your book, um, that was actually the last thing I wrote down for our interview, just because that was, to me, the most powerful thing, because I was thinking about the stories you were sharing throughout the book, but it was the stories I think that she was sharing just on those visits that— and there's more to your book than all this that we're talking about, but there's something about the power of stories that we share that shape us and make us into the people that we are. And it's one thing to tell stories about Jesus, but then it's another thing someone who's telling stories about the Jesus that has changed them. And it feels like as you're hearing stories from Rosemary, it's also that Rosemary has taken time to listen to your story, you know?

Yeah.

It's not just that, hey, I want to talk to you about Jesus and you're going to listen, right? It's that Rosemary has taken time to let you sit and tell about you.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, no question.

And I just, I loved all that. You know, the whole way that you took care to tell about that and then how your whole journey kind of unfolds from there. And you get to the end of the book and that's where you almost realize at the end, what? I've been reading a Christian book? And it's kind of, it's so clear by the end like, oh, this whole journey has been like, like, wow, God has been so present through this whole book, but it hasn't been spelled out till right now, which I really love the way that this whole thing has played out. I just see your whole story as a story of grace from the beginning to end. One of my favorite stories, I'm gonna go on a very slight tangent and then we'll get back to it, but one of my very favorite stories is, you know, Alice Cooper, the rock star.

Okay.

He was an alcoholic for a long time and Alice Cooper was Rick Lee James, a preacher's kid, and he got away from his faith for a very long time. He was on NPR one time telling his story, and he had drank so much alcohol one night, he said that he was badly addicted, like big time. Didn't want anything really to do with God, didn't want anything to do with church at this point. Knew all about it, grew up in it, didn't care. He said he was so addicted to alcohol he just couldn't go minutes without it and had so much blood alcohol— his blood alcohol level had risen so much like he was just gonna die. There was no other way around it. He was in the hospital, nearly did die, and he woke up the next morning in a hospital bed and he came out of the room and these are his words, not mine. He said on this NPR interview, he said, and I woke up the next day, I did not have any desire for alcohol anymore. He said, I just knew it was God. He said, and I didn't know what else to do but to pray and get my life straight with the Lord. And he said, and the weird thing about it was I didn't even ask. Like, that's how good God is. So he started, he changed, like became a Christian all over again. And he's given his testimony on NPR. And that was the part that really stood out to me in the story. Like somewhere today, Alice Cooper is teaching Sunday school on the weekends. Like it's the weirdest story, like because he's still like a professing Christian, still doing the rock star thing. But like he's, it's Funny, but that was the part of the story that was so amazing to me when he talked about it. He said, "That's how good God is." He's talking to Terry Gross. He says, "That's how good God is. I didn't even ask and God did that for me. He saved me from this." And I, in so many ways, see that in your story.

Yeah.

Like all these pivotal moments that I feel like I'm reading your story and like, wow, there was a turning there that I don't think Sean even saw coming. You know, there had to have been God moving in these, in these really pivotal big ways that, that was just like, wow, God is good. And we probably can only see that in hindsight. Maybe that's the blessing of you writing this memoir now for those of us who would read it.

Yeah.

And maybe even for you too, as you look back, you talked about the hard journey and how difficult it was. And maybe that's even some extra comfort for you in writing it, is maybe now as you're looking back at the journey, do you feel like that in some ways, that you can look back and go like, "Oh, I didn't see that"?

Yeah, there was definitely some benefit, and it wasn't even the initial writing, the initial creative process. It was the editing process. When I went back and started reading what I had already written Wow.

Yeah.

God worked in my life here and I didn't even know who he was.

Yeah.

Wow. God set that up, or at least allowed it to happen in such a way that, man, without that, you know what I mean? I can totally go back and see and reread it differently.

Yeah.

After the fact.

Yeah.

That you bring up the term provident grace, and I love that I love that term. And the way I think about prevenient grace is before I cared anything about God, God did for me. Yeah. And one of the, one of the things that I caught earlier, there's a— it's a very small part of the story and it has next to nothing to do with the whole story, but when I was a senior, I wrote this senior English paper that was silly. And I love Bart Simpson. Yeah, I had this Bart doll that sat mat side at my wrestling Matches. And my paper was called Bart Power, and it was all the ways that Bart Simpson is always with me and helps me. Knowing Jesus and having the Holy Spirit living in me, so much better than Bart Power. I was— I literally had a picture of what the Holy Spirit was like in my life. When I had no idea who he was. Yeah, I went back and read that after I wrote that and said, wow, man. Yeah, such a neat, such a neat thing, the way that God reveals himself.

Sometimes, sometimes we just have a glimpse, and the best we have, the only way we can articulate it is Bart power at the moment.

You got it.

And God doesn't can't wait for us to find out more. He just says, go, go with that for now. We'll, we'll get to it later. Yeah. Oh man, Sean, this has been great, brother. I, I wanna, I wanna emphasize to everybody who's listening, um, to please check out the, the book. It's called Never Settled: A Memoir of a Boy on the Road to Manhood. It's by Sean Congleton. You can find out more about Sean at his website site. It's shaundcongleton.com. I'm gonna just spell it out so they'll know, 'cause Shawn is spelled several different ways, but it's S-H-A-W-N-D-C-O-N-G-L-E-T-O-N.com. Shaundcongleton.com. And that way everybody can find it. We'll make sure to have all the links on this podcast on our webpage at voicesinmyheadpodcast.com. And on our Substack page. So you, if you go to our site, you'll just be able to click on it and go straight through. But this has been such a joy. I'm so glad I had a chance to read your book and that we were finally able to sit down and do this after much trial and error to get this scheduled. Is there anything that you really wanted to talk about on the show that we didn't have a chance to get to tonight? Because I always feel like I'm going to leave something out, especially when a book like yours that covers so much, I want to make sure that we didn't leave anything out. If not, we'll save it for a future podcast.

Well, man, Rick, I can't believe we did not even bring up once the Marvel versus DC comic book genres here. Maybe we'll leave that for another podcast.

Maybe. I did— listeners don't know this, but I do have my Superman hat on, so, you know, but I I love them both, so I can't really, I can't squawk too much. Sean does have a little dig in the book about how much he likes Marvel Comics better than DC, but that's all right. There's, you know, we'll know in heaven which one's better, I guess. I don't know. Well, Sean, as I say to my guests every week, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.