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Topsail Insider
TRUE Word, Faith for LIFE! with Dr. Shawn Greener
Have you ever wondered how to find the strength to carry on after a life-changing accident or event? Well, get ready to be inspired. Today, we are speaking with Dr. Shawn Greener, the host of the TRUE Word, Faith for Life! podcast. Dr. Greener's incredible journey includes a distinguished career in the US Navy, law enforcement, CIA, and leading an executive protection firm. He is an expert in terrorism, counterterrorism, personal protection, survival, and high-level threat assessment. But his life took a dramatic turn when he survived a head-on collision at 91 mph! He now lives with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm that no surgeon can correct, constant pain, and numerous other health challenges, yet he continues to inspire through his testimony, podcast, books, and teachings.
Email: smgreener@gmail.com
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Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina. Coming up, I have the honor and privilege of speaking with Dr Reverend Sean Greener. He's a man who was pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident and, although he lives with a life-threatening condition as a result, he has defied all odds. His journey has been nothing short of miraculous. From serving in the US Navy and law enforcement to founding an elite executive protection firm, dr Greener's life took an unimaginable turn. Yet today he continues to inspire and impact lives through his books, podcast and public speaking. You don't want to miss this extraordinary, profound tale of survival and strength on today's episode of experience.
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Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome to Topsail Insider. My name is Krista and I am your host. Today we are talking to Dr Reverend Sean Greener, a resident of Hampstead. He is the host of True Word, faith for Life podcast and author of two books Excellence Killed the Church how Mediocrity is Destroying America. That was in 2012. And he's also written the Bible Summary for Real People. Welcome, dr Greener. Thank you for joining me today. Well, thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:I've been waiting for this for a long time, actually, because how I met you and I'll be brief with this I met Dr Greener when I was starting this podcast and I was looking for some equipment and he posted on Marketplace. So I asked him, because I was looking for some equipment and he posted on Marketplace. So I asked him because I was being nosy. I was like, well, why are you giving up podcasting? And he did inform me at that time that he was very ill and I got the feeling that I just needed to stop asking questions. And so he told me that he had some more podcast equipment coming up. So I was following him, I was looking to see what else he might be selling and, lo and behold, I noticed he has a podcast up. I'm like you did not quit podcasting, what's going on? And so I reached back out and I'm so glad to have you at this table today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:You were military law enforcement and a private protection firm, which I find completely fascinating, and I know that I can't ask you any questions about it. I'm going to ask a little bit. And you can tell me what you're allowed to say. You are a disabled US Navy veteran and a former Newcastle County police officer and an expert on terrorism, counterterrorism, personal protection, survival and high-level threat assessment.
Speaker 3:Fascinating. I sound like somebody, don't I?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a pretty exciting life. What led you to join the Navy first of all, and can you just talk about the progression to law enforcement and to eventually founding your company, the Executive Protection Team?
Speaker 3:First of all, thank you very much for having me. I'm honored to be here and I'm excited for this podcast what a cool podcast. And your reasons in our conversation before, your reasons for doing this. I love them. I love your motivation. I love your why.
Speaker 3:You know the Navy. My uncles had all been in World War II and my favorite uncle. They're all deceased, but my favorite uncle was in the entire World War II, except for 30 some days the whole war and he spoke with such love about his service and his why. And he had a rough upbringing. He was a really tough upbringing. Why? And he had a rough upbringing. He was really tough upbringing and he married my mother's eldest sister and he came from really the wrong side of the tracks, if you will, but he served heroically, just with great honor and valor, and no big deal to him. He thought, well, this is what you do. And so I looked at that as a model and I thought, okay, my older brother, who was two years ahead of me. He went into the Navy and for me I had scholarship officers. I had three full scholarship officers.
Speaker 3:I played soccer, I did art and martial arts, and so I had options, but one day it was maybe 6, 6.30 in the morning and my parents were early risers and I was an early riser because I ran. I would do a lot of the fitness training and all these things. I was still in high school, but I would do a lot of that stuff early in the morning. There was no sleeping in at my house, that wasn't a thing, and so at that time the pans were 150 years old. Big old cast iron pans were 150 years old. Big old cast iron pan 150 years old.
Speaker 3:I'm just standing there and I'm looking like what is my life about? What is my contribution? And this was in my junior year and I was just thinking to myself okay, what am I going to do here? Because I knew that I could play soccer at really great division North Carolina was one of them. I knew that I could go to art school, to really great schools, and I knew I had options that maybe other people in my family hadn't had. But I looked at what am I contributing? Where am I making my mark? And I'm saying, okay, this is my country, but what have I done for it? And then I made the connection okay, my physical body will never be more fit than it is now. And the Navy said hold my beer. Oh, is that correct? Was that what you think? So I just decided, right there standing there, I walked into my parents. They were sitting on the porch and I said I'm joining the Navy. And my dad said is that a question or a statement? What? What are you telling me here?
Speaker 3:I said I need somebody to sign for me because I was young. They said, okay, what are you going to do? I said I'm not sure, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But you knew it was the Navy.
Speaker 3:I knew it was the Navy. The reason I knew it was the Navy was because several of my uncles were in the Navy. Now my favorite uncle was in the Army, but I knew that the ASVABs. I had aced the ASVAB. The ASVAB test is the test that everybody takes to see what your level of intelligence, your employability, Specifically for the Navy or across all military branches?
Speaker 3:For all military, but it's basically an assessment, but I took it and I aced it. I don't know how. It's not something that I know of that you could study for. I don't know how. I just had a weird brain then that I could.
Speaker 1:Well, you were a literal genius, am I right? You were a literal genius, am I? Am.
Speaker 3:I right, you were.
Speaker 1:Okay, We'll get. I want to talk about that a little more.
Speaker 3:My wife will say not anymore. We're going to get Colleen here one day she's going to give you all the dirt. So you were saying you passed that test, so I had to take it again, because if you, if everything, if it's, I guess, the way way they measure it 100%, they say okay, well, what's the deal with this guy?
Speaker 1:Something went wrong, something's fishy here, and so I had to take it again with a proctor as close as you and I are sitting. Oh, interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:So I took it again and I had seen it and I had this brain where, if I would look at something just for a second, like, for instance, a book, and this is nothing I taught myself, it's a gift, it was a gift and I didn't appreciate it, and I guess as we go on, we'll see just how much I didn't realize the gift that I had until I lost it.
Speaker 1:Would you say it's a photographic memory?
Speaker 3:Photographic is about the third level down from the memory that I had. Yeah, so so I would goodness. Yeah, it was a weird situation. I could actually read. This is this was a fun party trick. My wife didn't believe I could do it until she goes. Okay, fine, so I could read two different books side by side at the same time really you could quiz me about it.
Speaker 3:so my wife goes you know we're, we were dating at the time, show me, and I you could quiz me about it. So my wife goes you know we were dating at the time, show me. And I did it. And she was like, oh okay. That's incredible, that's kind of weird, yeah, but I didn't know. I thought everybody. I literally grew up thinking everybody had the brain I had Incredible.
Speaker 1:And everybody had the eyesight I had. Oh wait, what about your eyesight? I?
Speaker 3:had crazy eyesight Really. Yeah, the best they could measure it was 25. They didn't go any higher than that. When you go in and your doctor's office, you stand on line read the lowest line you can read.
Speaker 3:Well, I could read the copyright at the bottom yeah, oh, my gosh, yeah. But so the thing is I had all these assets that I didn't. First of all, I didn't realize that everybody didn't have. I knew some people didn't utilize their capacity, they didn't go to capacity, but in my case I had teachers on my case all the time. I had my English lit teacher, god bless him. He actually cussed me out after class one day and he said you are wasting a gift that, trust me, not even 1%.
Speaker 1:So your teachers were aware of this gift and they knew that you were not utilizing it fully. Some were what kind of student were you? I was okay.
Speaker 3:I was okay.
Speaker 1:Were you bored.
Speaker 3:Very bored. Yeah, I felt like it was a lot of wasted time. I didn't have the capacity to deal with the people talking back, the people interrupting the people. The other students just weren't paying attention, yeah, and I figured we're only here for this little bit of time Now. I hadn't put together the whole idea of put this is your career, this is your high school career, then it's going to be your college career, right, I didn't look at it that way. I was into sports and art.
Speaker 1:You said soccer, any other sports besides?
Speaker 3:soccer In high school, only soccer.
Speaker 1:I only played soccer, but I did martial arts. What style of martial arts did you do?
Speaker 3:Well, that's what's interesting. I started with Aikido, which is really a flowing, was designed to disarm swordsmen when you don't have a sword and then I think my husband took that yeah, no good yeah, it's not a popular. It's not a popular style it's more about mindset, uh and exchange of energy transferring yes so there's a lot of rolling and all that, and I was I was really really good at that, but I was also very, very good at striking, so I fought competitively in full contact karate. Okay.
Speaker 3:And so I excelled in that area, but I was a really skinny kid, but I was really really fast and I was very strong, and so my thought was okay, I don't think my body's, my capacity, my strength, my quickness, any of those things, I don't think I'm going to be better and faster, and my mental acuity?
Speaker 3:it's never going to be better than now as a young man, and so I just I made the decision while I was making. I still remember what I was making. I can't remember what I ate this morning, but I remember I was making scrambled eggs in a 150-year-old pan, that's really cool. So for the Navy, when you go to boot camp, I had never been on a plane, except for recruiting.
Speaker 1:So no college. You went straight from high school to Navy.
Speaker 3:Much to the chagrin of a lot of my teachers.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I bet yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I would have wasted the scholarship money in fairness In the military a lot of the schools, depending on what you do. I had a very nondescript job really, but I was fascinated by the military training and as I progressed I had opportunities presented to me because different people saw capabilities and I loved the Navy. So I was married. I got married young and this is my second marriage 21 years.
Speaker 3:Oh that's right my second marriage, but my first marriage I was too young. I was too young and I was far less of, probably far less of a husband and definitely far less of a father than I could have been and should have been. So, that being said, I didn't stay in the navy. I had been recruited by the agency the agency oh really so I was recruited twice and on two separate kind of two areas of attack they flanked me okay, but you're gonna have to go back.
Speaker 1:So what were they seeing that they're like. We need you on our team.
Speaker 3:At the time I didn't know I was being recruited. First of all I had no idea. And let's just dispense of the movies portray. Hollywood portrays that kind of life romantically.
Speaker 1:You know, that's what I'm tapping into right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's really not. It's super, super hard. It's a hard life. You lie to everyone, including your family, all the people that are closest to you. My parents didn't know until shortly before my father died I shared it with him Really and my mother.
Speaker 3:After my father had died, I ended up protecting some very high profile people. Father had died. I ended up protecting some very high profile people and we were on CNN and usually if you're on a protection team, your objective is to stay out of the camera shot, and that was always my goal. But in these particular cases there was so much press around these people that you could. There was no way to effectively protect them, and so I would get calls when the wee hours of the morning my mother she would be up late. Sean, I'm watching television and I'm seeing you on television and you're with this person and she knew who they would be and it looks like you're a bodyguard. Is this you, or is this someone who looks like you? And a lot of my friends and different people who had no idea they were seeing it.
Speaker 3:They were seeing it too. So all of a sudden I'm getting these calls and so finally I said oh no, mom, that's just a doppelganger. People have said that before because I didn't want her to worry, obviously, and so there's an element of you protect your family by lying to them. There is a truth to that, because when you share certain things that are very difficult to hear, the darkness that exists in the world is too dark for most people to handle. Right, I can see that.
Speaker 3:It's just like with combat. Combat is there's a very high level. It's not just an adrenaline rush, but you're competing at the highest level life or death, life or death. And so there is a. I'm going to use the word thrill, but really thrill has a negative connotation in this space, but in reality it's the challenge, it's the ultimate challenge, and you lose when you die.
Speaker 3:The challenge is live and win or die, which is not the case really. There are lots of heroic men and women who have died in combat and they died heroes not just because they died, but they died doing heroic things beyond our imagination. But that world is extremely dark, and when you enter into the space of international intelligence in the clandestine I was in the clandestine service you see an experience and are privy to things that are sickeningly terrible and evil, and so at the same time, as a younger person, it's thrilling. Right, I get it, I totally get it.
Speaker 3:So it challenges your intellect, challenges your physical abilities, challenges your ability to think on your feet. And the problem is, stress is good. Dr Jim Lohr in his book Stress for Success a book was out, I don't know, 20 years ago. It's still the best book on using stress to your advantage, and he talks about linear stress versus oscillating stress. Oscillating stress is okay.
Speaker 3:I'm going into this really difficult situation, and so then you ramp up, ramp up, ramp up, and that loop is going higher and higher and higher. And that pinnacle is that moment where higher and higher and higher, and that pinnacle is that moment where, whatever it is you're dealing with, whatever you're engaging, coming out victorious and then taking that deep breath on the downside of it and catching your breath and letting all that adrenaline flow out of you. And so that's oscillating stress and that's good for us. Just like lifting weights right? If you lifted a weight and you just held it up all the time, that's linear stress on your body. Lifting weights, weight-resistant training, is really the fountain of youth, but if you do it every day, all day, it's going to wreck you. So you have to oscillate, you have to rest, and so that's the way the stress is, for whatever reason, I had an uncanny ability.
Speaker 3:I was recruited for several reasons. My eyesight was off the charts, literally off the charts. I could see no kidding, as long as it was within the line of sight. I could read street signs from almost a mile away. That's incredible. It was insane. From almost a mile away. That's incredible.
Speaker 3:Well, here's what I learned is, that's great, but the issue that made that good and bad was my perception of everything. Was on fire, so I was seeing little movements and I had a. My peripheral vision was greater than normal, so I could see very clearly what's way out here.
Speaker 1:So this is a hyper-stimulation. It is it's hyper-awareness.
Speaker 3:Great for executive protection in areas where you're, you know, great for that. But guess what? That doesn't shut off. And so what? A lot of people with that? There aren't many people with that, but the people that have it among that group they tend to drink or do drugs to try to shut that off. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Because, it's exasperating because you hear and you see everything, all the movement. You're always paying close attention to it. So all of that either eyesight. But what became evident was my ability to accept pain. Now people will use a word or a phrase called pain tolerance. Pain tolerance and pain acceptance are two different things. So pain acceptance is the ability to feel pain, intense, terrible pain, and still function at an optimal level. Mental acuity is still high. Physical ability is still high despite severe pain impairment.
Speaker 1:Did you have that naturally?
Speaker 3:or is that?
Speaker 1:something you trained? No, you had it naturally.
Speaker 3:Very naturally.
Speaker 1:Because I figured in the military. They would probably train you to accept pain to some degree.
Speaker 3:They do some of it and then, as training advanced in my post-military life, it becomes more of a psychological study of okay, this is a real situation. You may be hurt very badly, but pain is a feeling. And you either pay a lot of attention to it or you segment it. You fragment it, you compartmentalize it, you put it over here and you say okay. I'm feeling pain, but I still have something to do. Okay, and if I don't do that something, if I succumb to this pain, then I get killed.
Speaker 3:Okay, you know or or tortured or whatever the case may be, or that may be, part of the process of pain. The cause of the pain might be torture.
Speaker 1:So you were naturally built already to do the CIA type work right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was. I will tell you it wasn't a lovely existence, but the other part of I think I failed Spanish in high school. I think her name was mrs huff. God rest her soul. She was old when she was. She was good land. She was really really old when she was our teacher, but I don't know were you not applying yourself?
Speaker 1:because how many languages did you end up picking up?
Speaker 3:five, I spoke five, I could go into the country. And here's the interesting thing if you just learn a language because you want to go visit and you want to be able to talk to people, that's one form of language learning. I was a polyglot so I could speak. For whatever reasons, I could learn other languages really quickly.
Speaker 3:And I don't know why, it was just my weird brain. I could pick it up, but my fascination wasn't just with that. Like I said, that's great. If you want to go visit the country, you can converse, you can order a pastry.
Speaker 1:Where's the bathroom? You know type of deal.
Speaker 3:But my fascination was the deeper level, which was the cultural appropriation Understanding how they wear their belts in this country, how they button their shirts. Do they button from the bottom up or the top down? How do they wear their watch? Do they wear their watch? Do they wear watches? How do they count? There's a great movie, Inglourious Bastards. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.
Speaker 1:I've heard of it, but I have not seen it.
Speaker 3:There's a scene in that movie which it's going to totally wreck the movie for people who haven't seen it but there's a scene in it where one of the undercover, pretending to be German soldiers, he holds up his fingers to show I think it was three, the number three. And there are many ways to show three, there's three, three, three. To show three, there's three, three, three. There's so many different ways that you can show that. Well, in the movie, this officer, this actual german officer, could tell that, okay, this is not, this is.
Speaker 3:It was a small thing, it was so insignificant. But little things don't mean a lot, they mean everything, and so they can cost you your life and and in that movie they did. So I enjoyed learning those things and I would go in and come out. I didn't go in and stay, I would go in, do what needed to be done and come out. So that that was a great advantage for me. And again, 90% of my family had no idea. Most of my friends, except for two, two really good friends they knew that they were good for it because they had top secret clearances anyway because of what they did yeah.
Speaker 3:And so, anyway, I did that for a time.
Speaker 1:When did you become a police officer?
Speaker 3:Well, I said you know what, I think I'm done with the Navy, so I'm going to go be a police officer. And so there was a time frame in between Navy agency and there was wedged in. There was time to become a police officer, so I applied for it in the state.
Speaker 1:How did you like that work? Well, you didn't stay in it very long, did you? Five or six years. I think that's a good length.
Speaker 3:And this was the early days of anti-police, the anti-police attitude Early days of it.
Speaker 3:I loved most of the people that I worked with and for I worked for some great people. It was a very restricted job, so you knew what needed to be done, but you couldn't do that, and the only reason you couldn't do that was because of perception I don't think we had. We didn't have any body cameras or anything like that. Maybe dash cams were coming in. I doubt it, though. I don't have any recollection of that part at all. But what I do know is it just felt very restricted. It felt stupidly restricted, very politically driven, and it was a large police department and served a huge county, much of which was urban and suburban, so it wasn't like the county that we're in, where everything is spread out. It was a lot of people.
Speaker 3:And it just was exasperating.
Speaker 1:Maybe because I'm from small towns, I can't imagine it being as adrenaline rush oriented as what you were doing prior.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a tricky business.
Speaker 1:I mean, I almost feel like you would be bored.
Speaker 3:I was a little bored, but the reason I left was I had gotten hurt a couple of times and we didn't know this then. Obviously we know this now. But I had what was called arterial venal malformation, AVM. I had an AVM and so I passed out, you know, and they put me in the hospital for a week, lost a ton of blood internally, and so they put me in the hospital and they say, hey, you've got a massive tumor and that's frightening. You're going to check out. This is bad deal here.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it was crazy. But then they did doctor, medicine, surgery, stuff. They said, ok, what this is this calcification? It's not actually a tumor. It looks like a tumor on imaging but it's not actually a tumor. So they used sound, which is fascinating, to break it up.
Speaker 1:So they used sound, which is fascinating to break it up. I've heard of that. That's really cool. It was wild.
Speaker 3:And it's wild to experience it. But during the course of all that they said look, you have an AVM.
Speaker 1:What is that?
Speaker 3:Arterial, venal malformation. Think of it as the intersection of your arteries and your veins, where they come together. There's a weakness and it bulges and becomes an aneurysm. Oh Well, you know, fast forwarding all the way to today. Right, I now have a massive aneurysm. Right. And of all the things that are trying to take my life, the aneurysm is the worst thing, because I now have an aortic.
Speaker 1:Descending correct Descending aortic aneurysm yeah.
Speaker 3:And so the cardiologists all say it's in the worst possible place.
Speaker 3:It's bad and there's nothing we can do for you. So anyway, that is what it is. So I have to get out of that, create a new life. Well then, I you know, there were opportunities to work as a I use the word contractor, it's overused, but as a consultant really and then, in essence, a contractor getting to go and do jobs because of my past and I did and I liked it. It was fun. But one of the things that I liked more than anything else was hostile repatriation.
Speaker 1:And I like hostile repatriation.
Speaker 3:So what that is? Someone is somewhere they don't want to be Hiding. They're not there of their own volition, oh gotcha.
Speaker 3:They're being held, they're taken, they're being held Okay and interest Okay. Of our government says, hey, we need those people back for myriad reasons. Who knows what the reasons are. Those were never my. I didn't have to really think about what the reasons were. The government, the agency, couldn't go get them themselves, so they needed a private contractor to do that. I loved it. I had a team of guys who range from SEALs, delta guys, secret Service, cia protection group Great, great people, extraordinarily capable people, and so periodically we would have these jobs and no one would ever hear about it. They just get reunited with their families and a liaison would say, hey, we've got them, they're safe, we're bringing them back to wherever the meeting point would be, which usually would be either the United States, or, if they had bad medical issues, they would go to the next best place that were friendly to us, get well enough to travel the United States and continue healing.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 3:So I like that. And then I also really loved very high risk executive production. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Speaker 1:You are a thrill seeker.
Speaker 3:You know what I never really thought of myself, but the whole notion of jumping out of an airplane never bothered me, it never crossed my mind. I thought to myself yeah, okay, when can we go? Can we go now? That's amazing. Can you teach me on the way up how to do it? Maybe jump out, be next to me and just tell me what to do on the way? I loved it.
Speaker 1:I absolutely loved it no fear.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know that. It's no fear, but it's just.
Speaker 3:I had life in a different perspective then, which maybe wasn't the best perspective quite honestly, because I beat my body to death doing these things, and so I loved it. I really, really loved, I loved serving. My thrill was looking somebody in the eye and saying we're here to help you, we're going to help you. That's the thing that thrilled me was being able to change somebody's worst day or worst experience into one of the greatest experiences they've ever had. I love that, and I felt like there's a certain type of person who is to be in that role. Now I want to go back to law enforcement and just say that I don't demean what they do. Their jobs are so different now than even the little bit of time that I served, and so for me I greatly appreciate great law enforcement. In fact, I do counseling now high trauma counseling, which is acute situations, usually with people that can't go to a normal psychiatrist or psychologist or therapist or counselor. They can't do it because of their job. They do that, they lose their job, and so helping people through this acute situation to get them through and my wife can tell you if she ever comes on there are, there have been phone calls at 3 30 in the morning where there's gunfire in the background and so this person is locked up, for whatever reason, their brain is not moving forward and yeah, I
Speaker 3:get calls from the weirdest numbers, and so I love helping in that regard. So for me, the thrill is really that. But law enforcement, now they really have it tough. In the case of police officers now suiting up and going out, there's all this extra gear that they have to carry. I mean, in addition to this big vest, which I encourage every police officer out there, wear your body armor, wear your body armor. I know it's hot, but I'd rather sweat than bleed, but they've got to wear all this other gear which is designed for nothing other than to minimize litigation against the police department. That's what it's for, and you may have comments that say, well, you know, I've run into more bad cops than I have good cops. Comments that say, well, you know, I've run into more bad cops than I have good cops. Look, I've talked to literally tens of thousands of police officers all across this country and I can tell you, the amount of bad cops is minuscule.
Speaker 3:It's minuscule by comparison. They are. They're up against it. The recruiting went through a phase where they stopped looking for ex-military men and women and they started looking for well, we just want a college graduate, maybe with humanities or criminal justice or whatever. That's not the. It's not a bad thing to have, but if that's all you have, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because if you've never been punched in the face, everybody's got a big plan until they get punched in the face. Because if you've never been punched in the face, everybody's got a big plan until they get punched in the face. And if you are fighting for your life and you've never fought for your life it's way different than people realize. I guess to sum it up is I have great empathy for law enforcement out there. The whole desire to help people was always strong there and what I learned was you spend 90% of your time dealing with the same people over and over and over.
Speaker 3:And so you don't get the opportunity to really really help people. My prior life was very specific. Here is the problem you develop a plan to solve the problem, go do it. We don't really care how you do it, but go do it and try to bring them back. And in the case of executive protection, when I formed executive protection team, our tagline was when it's your life, we're your team. We were actually, we were hired when the Navy SEALs were outed for the bin Laden raid.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3:I remember that was a lot of a lot of navy seals and military people speaking up while their lives were at risk significant risk right well, we were the company that was hired to protect them wow, okay, not all of them, just a few of them, and so we always make a joke of that, like when the navy seals need somebody to protect them, we're the ones that get called, and so that's a very specific thing.
Speaker 3:So you can see, you can help with that, and I enjoy that. That, to me, is the mission. Is it clear? And I know we didn't plan on getting into this whole mission creep and all that stuff, but it is. It's that way in life. People have a mission. They start off with this thing you can talk about weight loss, you can talk about I want to learn to do this, I'm going to learn to do this, I'm going to learn to do that. And then you're all hyped up, you get all the tools, you get all the stuff, and then it's not as easy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not as easy as you thought it was going to be Right, wow, maybe I won't do that anymore. You just don't do it anymore. You stop doing it, saying that I haven't because I have.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. But then the crash. Okay, you have multiple theology degrees, you have an undergrad in biblical counseling, but you do counseling now, right, I do some, some. You have a master's in theology Hebrew worldview. You've got a doctorate in theology Hebrew worldview as well, and a doctorate in practical theology, Timeline-wise. So you've got this incredible life of intrigue. When did you fit in all of this theology education?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. I may have been a really intelligent guy at one point in time, but really stupid. I had an opportunity to go to many great schools for free and instead I decided well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to be in a business and I'm going to go to school in all this spare time that I allegedly have, and I'm going to pay for it all myself. You know why not? And so I did that, and I was a person who I wanted to be part of the family, so I set up my desk in the living room. What was weird is, before the crash, that television could be on, but I could be focused on my schoolwork, no problem.
Speaker 1:So you're no longer doing. This is after the protection. Oh no, I was still doing some of it.
Speaker 3:I had another business, but because that business doesn't come in regularly enough to provide it.
Speaker 3:So I had another little business and I was doing that and working crazy hours and really hard, but I still was capable of learning. I had a high interest in learning and the topics were fascinating to me. So what I did was just total immersion. Great professors, great admin staff just they were the most wonderful people. They were fantastic and they kind of saw how I was and who I was. So they let me go at a higher rate of speed. I think, than others.
Speaker 3:So the undergrad, grad and one doctorate was prior to the crash, and yeah, then everything changed.
Speaker 1:Well, you grew up in the church, am I?
Speaker 3:right, I did. I grew up in an independent fundamental right haircut, right clothing, right shoes, kjv only. Nothing against the KJV, only crowd not throwing rocks. I'm just saying it was the authorized version because Jesus, that's the one Jesus carried. That was their thought and that's how they operated. And so very, very strict, very incongruent upbringing. My dad was not a person of faith for much of my childhood, most of my childhood.
Speaker 1:Your mom taking you to and from church?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but he always supported that, and they're both been gone a little while now.
Speaker 1:Did you have siblings?
Speaker 3:I did. I'm the youngest of five, youngest of five.
Speaker 1:Okay, and all five were taken to church every Sunday. Youngest of five, okay, and all five were taken to church every Sunday.
Speaker 3:We had a drug problem in our family. Mom drug us to church on Sunday night. She drug us to a WANA. She drug us to Wednesday prayer meeting.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's funny. That was our drug problem. I like it.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that was really a strong influence, but it took with me, it didn't take with the others, not everyone it really took with me.
Speaker 1:What was it that made you decide when you were going to get an education? What made you decide theology? What was the spark there?
Speaker 3:So, okay, what had happened was I and I try to get through this without crying I was. I had a high school problems of democracy civics teacher. He was my favorite teacher of all. My whole life he's been my favorite teacher and he used to go away to all these far-flung countries every summer and he would take all of these amazing photos and record these little videos and a lot of what we would do is study those countries where he went and he would explain to us about their systems of government and the upside, the downside and and all of these things, the difference in the people. Oh, wonderful.
Speaker 3:Until he got to teaching about the Holocaust. When he taught about the Holocaust, I couldn't believe my ears. I was appalled. I just couldn't understand it and I'd always been fascinated. Why did God have jesus yeshua? Why did he plop him down in the hebrew land among the hebrew people? Why did that happen? That was always a fascination. As a little kid, I know I read weird books. Grown-up books. When I was just a little kid uh, I would read books that were. You know, I read the PDR, I think.
Speaker 3:I was physician's desk reference. Okay, my mom would go to yard sales and she'd give me a budget and I'd spend it all on books grownup books like a physician was retiring and originally my thought in my head was you know, I want to be the doctor that cures cancer. And so how your brain?
Speaker 1:works. It was weird. I was a. Be the doctor that cures cancer, and so how your brain works.
Speaker 3:It was weird, I was a weird kid, let me tell you. And but the thing is is I didn't say any of this stuff out loud. It was all going in in my head because I thought people are going to think I'm weird, which they did. I find out in retrospect. And so, when it came to the Holocaust, I said why the Jews? How did this happen?
Speaker 1:And I started really, really studying it. It's a wonderful question, yeah.
Speaker 3:And what became? As a young adult, I had the idea of writing a PhD dissertation on the Holocaust. What it really was, how exactly did it happen, and can it happen again?
Speaker 3:And how do we stop it? That was going to be my thing and I said, well, I've got to go and talk to the people, I don't want to just read about it. So I had the opportunity to travel to five of the concentration camps. I was able to secure private tours, and so it was horrible. It was. It was I'd seen a lot of evil in my lifetime. I'm telling you that broke my soul. It, it, it violated, and and I, you know, even at that point in my life I had little faith in the humanity of man. I thought, oh, we're in deep trouble more and more and more. I really just didn't love it. But then, when I was there, it broke your soul.
Speaker 3:Broke my soul, that's so. It literally broke my soul.
Speaker 1:So you were just saying, I'm just intrigued by what you're talking about. So, looking upon mankind, you were disheartened about what we are as a species.
Speaker 3:Just not the best creatures. How depraved, how utterly horrible one segment of humanity could be toward a specific segment. Now it wasn't just the jews, it was anybody handicapped, it was any down syndrome, all of that, and they were killed immediately unless there was some scientific benefit they could find. But when I went to auschwitz I the part that got me was again I. I was because of my background, I was, I had some back channels and I could get private tours oh, right, yeah so there was a one-on-one with an interpreter and as we come out at the end of the day, I was devastated.
Speaker 3:I wept. Even now I wept harder than I've wept my entire life and I looked out at the people that were going through these different exhibits and displays and then seeing the horrific things and the remnants of them, and everybody was pretty quiet but I could see they didn't quite get it and I remember walking out of there and as I came out there was these two tiny elderly people and I'd always had a heart for the elderly.
Speaker 1:Same yeah.
Speaker 3:I love old folks, and we didn't speak the same language, by the way, wasn't one of the languages that I knew but they saw me and they said, come, come, come. And so I was there. They took me to their little. Their whole house, I kid you not, was maybe slightly larger than this room.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, it was small.
Speaker 1:They invited you into their home.
Speaker 3:Brought me right into their house. Yeah, crazy, and they didn't know me at all.
Speaker 1:What did they want to show you? What were they inviting you to? They saw me hurt.
Speaker 3:They saw the hurt in my soul and they and they wanted to invite me in. So I don't know if you know, but Polish people make their own liquor and they did and and we drank that and we communicated and it ended up being a whole evening into the next morning. Oh wow, but that whole time, I said because they would explain different things to me and it was difficult. But I always say let your sincerity be your own best interpreter. So they're sincerely trying to communicate with you. I'm sincerely trying to connect with them. You'll work it out, you'll work it out You'll work it out, and so we did.
Speaker 3:And at the end, when I was getting ready to leave and I gave them hugs, they tried to give me food and I remember I forgot to ask how did you two meet? How did you two? How did you meet? How did you? Do you have family? How? Did you meet? Do you have family? I didn't even ask because the questions were all, and so they do the come back in sign. I go back in and we sit down and they pull their sleeves up.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, they met in a camp.
Speaker 3:They met in a camp. They didn't know each other. They met in a camp as they met in a camp. They didn't know each other. They actually they met in a camp as they were being liberated Okay. His family, his entire family, died in that camp. Every single person in his lineage that was alive died in that camp, almost all but one of her family. They didn't know each other outside of there.
Speaker 3:They had no connection whatsoever. And she was slightly younger than him and as they're being liberated, you know they were young, they were very, very young. They kind of clung to one another and then through medical care and different things they would bump into each other and eventually they were married very, very young, extremely young, probably legally way too young. But they both survived the camp and none of their family did, and that bonded them.
Speaker 1:So sad yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Sort of thick and in the process of thinking about writing that dissertation I thought, well, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1:I can't do this justice. Oh, you chose not to.
Speaker 3:No, I wrote 120 pages and then I just said whether I would fancy myself to be a good writer or not. There is no way I can do this topic justice. No way, and there were so many PhD dissertations out there where they touched on the Holocaust or different aspects of it, my approach was going to be a different way, through a more personal way, and I'd even talked to he wasn't a guard, but he was a policeman at one of the camps- yeah yeah, how did you?
Speaker 3:how do you justify this? Why aren't you in jail? I was real in his family.
Speaker 3:Bold yes and we have all the discussion about well, what did the families know? I, I held a great animus towards Germany and Austria for a very, very long time because I thought how could you have allowed this to happen, how could you have allowed this to happen? And I still, to a great degree, that generation. I don't excuse it, I don't give them a pass, because those officers came home. They came home at night, they had families, so their families knew what was going on, just like when the atom bomb was being created. Everybody's there and they have families and then they go home.
Speaker 3:Well, do we think that they didn't have conversations with their wives? Come on, that's unrealistic and we've found through research that, yeah, that did in fact happen and many of them wanted it to happen, and many of them don't express any regret at all, no remorse at all, even until their death.
Speaker 1:Are you talking now about the making of the atomic bomb, or are you talking about Auschwitz?
Speaker 3:No, no, I'm talking about the Holocaust Right, okay, yeah, the families were like that's how it was, that's what happened, it's okay.
Speaker 1:I do think that the generations that followed they still, probably to this day, feel a great amount of guilt on some level for what happened.
Speaker 3:I think there is some, but it's making a nasty resurgence. Is it really? It is? Yeah, it really is. It's a huge movement. It started very much as an underground movement, but now it's pretty bold Because people know. Now I can say what I want to say. I'll say what I want to say and I'll do what I want to do.
Speaker 3:I did not know that, yeah it's big, it's unfortunate and what's interesting is I rode BMW motorcycles for many years and I struggled with the choice of brand because of that. They were a supplier to the third rank and there were a lot of companies. Where I learned to let go of that was I learned the United States had a lot of complicity. Before we really connected with what was happening, we had a lot of complicity.
Speaker 3:Before we really connected with what was happening. We had a lot of complicity and a lot of the stolen art, the antiquities, the massive wealth still sits in bank vaults in the United States. Much of it has never been given back, and so I don't know that we can say that we've taken the high road. And given my past, I can tell you that many times we have not taken the high road, we have not done the best.
Speaker 1:So let's go ahead and get to that accident.
Speaker 3:All of the different things that have tried to kill me over the years, the life that I had led. One would never think that a 19-year-old high school senior in a borrowed car with state minimum insurance, with his other high school senior buddies, would be driving 109 miles an hour, lose control, jump a 40-something foot median and hit me head-on at 92 miles per hour. Nobody would think that that's how I would go out.
Speaker 1:It's an unbelievable story. If you don't mind and I know you've done this before- yeah, it doesn't bother me. Would you please just take us through that day.
Speaker 3:It was a relatively normal day, were you at work? Well, so I'm pretty much always at work doing different things. I had so many different things going, but one of the protection vehicles that we used was a Suburban and I was to protect two very prominent people who, for whatever reason, people wanted to kill them and they had very, very significant and actionable threats on their lives. And what ends up happening is I dropped the vehicle off at the detailer because I had a specific detailer who I knew was trustworthy to be in the car Just cleaning the car.
Speaker 3:Make it like brand new. Okay, that's always how I rolled was brand new.
Speaker 1:And you're traveling with high level dignitaries and so forth.
Speaker 3:Everything's set up three different newspapers. They would have drinks. I wasn't their chauffeur, I was their protector, but I liked everything to be top shelf. Anyway, headed home, looking forward to dinner, and I was crossing a bridge and it was down to one lane and on the south side of the bridge was only maybe six minutes from my house where is in delaware?
Speaker 3:delaware, okay, middletown delaware and on the downside of the bridge it goes back to two lanes. So I went from the left lane, which was the only lane I could do on the bridge, over to the right lane and I was going around 51 miles per hour at impact. There's a start of a big double loop curve. You would call it an S curve, but it was huge. It was a huge curve and they were, like I said, they had spent the day. The driver had borrowed his uncle's car. It was a big SUV and these guys were all friends of his from the high school which, ironically, my son went to the high school.
Speaker 1:How many were in the vehicle with him?
Speaker 3:I think five, oh my gosh, I think five total in the vehicle, four occupants, and I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that was the number and it was four or five.
Speaker 1:Were they drinking or on drugs?
Speaker 3:Nope, there the number and it was four or five. Were they drinking or on drugs? Nope.
Speaker 2:There was no drinking, no drugs, I was just speeding speeding all day long.
Speaker 3:He was driving like a crazy person all day long and in fact the one fellow that died turns out the fellow that died I knew very well.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 3:In fact my son was his backup on the football team. They used to go to a football practice together a lot. They would sometimes get rides home because he was our neighbor.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it was horrible. It happened so fast.
Speaker 1:I can't even believe that Amazing.
Speaker 3:Not next door, but just across the fairway there this house was, and a lovely guy, we know him well, smiling Andre. He was amazing. What's interesting is I've had the best training in the world. My driving training is extraordinary and I knew once I came to realize anything, I knew, wow, if I couldn't avoid this, this was high speed. I knew that I was in terrible pain. I knew that I was struggling to breathe. I knew that I couldn't move. Those were all imminent reality. I mean, it was right there, acutely in my face. So I said three prayers. When I air quotes came to, I said three prayers and I'll explain why the air quotes here in a second. When I came to, I prayed three prayers. I prayed a prayer of contrition because I said, if I couldn't avoid this very high speed, I know the pain that I'm in, I know that I'm not breathing. Well, I'm probably not going to make it out of this. So asking for forgiveness of my sins my hurts habits and hangups.
Speaker 3:Then I prayed a prayer of petition for whoever's in the other vehicle. They're probably in as bad a shape. Little did I know that most of them, other than the one boy that was killed. The worst injury was a broken arm.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, that's amazing. It is amazing, I mean, I did not expect to hear that.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, go ahead so then I prayed a prayer of petition for them and then I prayed a prayer of gratitude that neither my dog, who was my shadow everybody knew me me and buckeye rode together always, but because I was getting it detailed, she was a blonde dog, so she wasn't allowed in the black car when daddy gets a detail so but she was always my companion and so-.
Speaker 1:You were just thankful that she wasn't with you at that time.
Speaker 3:My family wasn't in the car. I prayed for that and I felt like, oh, it's my time, I was convinced of it.
Speaker 1:This car was going how fast.
Speaker 3:At impact. Well, when they crossed the median, they were going 109. When they hit me, they were going 92. And I was going 51 head on. Driver's side head on.
Speaker 1:Did you ever find out? I mean, it could have been just the speed that he was going and he lost control of the vehicle, or was there something more to it that made him lose control?
Speaker 3:Well, the crazy part of the story. I mean there's about nine different crazy parts to this story. But they had borrowed this car. It was a particularly warm day for spring break and they'd gone down to the beach, rode with the beach. They'd had a great day. But he had been driving crazy all day long. Just he was showing out for his buddies and trying to be cool and he had just been stopped just a couple minutes, literally a couple minutes before.
Speaker 1:For speeding, for reckless driving.
Speaker 3:He received a ticket for reckless driving and passing on the right and something else I can't remember. I think it was two or three tickets, just literally a minute and a half, two minutes before, and it didn't slow him down, they had texted, just got stopped, not texted, tweeted, just got stopped by a racist white cop for DWB Driving while black. That wasn't what happened at all. The guy was, he was driving crazy. And this particular police officer who felt terrible about what happened to me because I knew him, you know, if I had delayed him a little longer, who knows? But he didn't learn anything because he ran, I think, nine cars off the road Once the police officer got out of view, just drove crazy again. And none of the boys had the cojones to say, hey, stop this car, stop this car, stop driving like an idiot. And they regretted it later.
Speaker 3:But, andre, they had stopped at his house. His little brother was in the car for the whole first part of the day and he said, hey, they had to go on to another place to drop the other guys off. Hey, drop off my little brother. And the reason. And his little brother said I want to go, I want to go, I want to go and he was like no, no, get out of the car. And he's like no, no, get out of the car. And he saved his life yes.
Speaker 3:Saved his life, oh my goodness. Yeah, and what was also crazy is we were the only me and Andre were the only two believers in the crash. Yeah, so what happened in the crash was it was astounding. Crash was it was astounding. We didn't know for two years later that I had died in the crash, until we talked to the head paramedic, or head.
Speaker 3:EMT and EMT fireman, and him and his buddy, who was his deputy, had both run my vitals and marked me dead and walked away from the car. And so I remember I don't have any. I didn't have a near-death experience that I can recall, which is interesting. I'm a person of faith, you would think, but I did not have that experience. I remember I didn't realize it at the time that I was trapped, but I remember being in intense pain and I had experienced horrific pain in my life. This was the worst. This was easily the worst pain that I felt. My left side was shattered, my face was wrecked. You're probably good thing it's not a video audience. They'd be saying, well, why didn't they fix it? It lands.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with his face.
Speaker 3:They can do things with plastic surgery. These days I have to say, like on True Word, faith for Life. My YouTube channel I always joke and I tell people I said my half a year probably watching out of pity. But the fact of the matter of it is I knew I was not breathing. I mean I was just taking like that little sips of air, were you actively trying to get a breath.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you were forcing it. I couldn't breathe in, I could not breathe in, I could not breathe out.
Speaker 3:I had massive thoracic damage, and so I just couldn't breathe. I could not breathe and I said okay.
Speaker 1:So they walked away from you. This man is no longer with us. Let's go take care of the other car.
Speaker 3:So the other car was on fire and so the fire department was. They'd gotten everybody out of the car including Andre. But they were actively trying to put the fire out. And it was. The car burnt to the rails, but I was so close to it that I had red on my arm. I could feel the heat of the fire. It was intense.
Speaker 1:And no one is there taking care of you, trying to remove you from the vehicle.
Speaker 3:No, they figured he's gone, and so we didn't learn this until two years later, when he comes in and goes. He was a friend of my daughter's. We were at my daughter's birthday party and he said I thought I was going to have to tell your daughter that your dad was gone. And so, yeah, we were like what, excuse me, my son.
Speaker 1:That was your first time hearing it two years later. Yeah, two years, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy. And I was nuts. He said did you not know that? I said no, we had no idea. No one told us, so we didn't know. And so I remember being in the car and I said those three prayers and I said it's okay, it's okay, God, I'm already with it. You've given me a way better life than I've ever deserved, truthfully, truthfully, and I was very thankful and I was very thankful that my family and my dog wasn't in the car and I just, I just remember thinking. Once I came to they did tell me it was a bunch of high school boys and I said are they? Because the helicopter was coming in? And I said to the lady working on me heroic, heroic, paramedic. She was an advanced life support paramedic. She had climbed through the back, they had peeled open the door and she had climbed through metal and glass and everything to work in between the front seats to work on me.
Speaker 1:Well, when did they realize that you were not dead? Well at some point. How long were you lying there? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I don't know what the time frame was, but I know that the roof had collapsed, and on my head. Now I'm six foot four, and so my spine was in an S shape and my head was crushed down. It actually crushed down the headrest, if you can imagine how low a headrest is. It had actually crushed the headrest down and so oh, my goodness yeah it was brutal.
Speaker 3:It was a gruesome position to be in. My feet were facing the door, my knees were facing the passenger side door. My gosh, I was trapped in eight inches of space front to back. This body Now I was in way better shape then, but this body was trapped in that kind of space.
Speaker 1:I just can't imagine.
Speaker 3:It was gruesome yeah.
Speaker 1:Tell me about how your body physically altered the vehicle. Your body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I bent the steering wheel with my mouth. I broke the windshield. What they tell me is my mouth, just below my bottom lip, hit the steering wheel, bent it and glanced up and my forehead hit the windshield. The seatbelt stretched eight inches. The metal tang stretched. They're designed to stretch just a micro amount because it helped.
Speaker 1:I didn't even know they could.
Speaker 3:Yeah, honestly and all the engineers that have looked at the car since. They said there's no way anybody survived this. The airbags they did deploy, but what use are they? They deployed and then blew out right instantaneously the. The impact speed was just so great and so who discovered that you were indeed alive.
Speaker 3:There was a young lady I describe her this way, the way I remember her she had long, straight, mid-length, maybe to the just below her shoulders in the back. She was slender, she had a little diamond stud in her nose, she had beautiful eyes, she was crying profusely and she had walked up. And I remembered and I don't know if she actually had on a white top, but what I saw was a white top and she had walked up and she was walking to like a three-quarter view of me. And then I remember and I opened my eyes because periodically I was closing my eyes because they hurt, they hurt.
Speaker 3:They physically hurt, and I just was able to open my eyes and look this way to the left with my perfect, because I couldn't move my head, and she starts screaming oh my God, oh my God, this guy's alive, this guy's alive. And so that's when they started working on me and that's when the lady went crawling through the back.
Speaker 3:The advanced life support person got there and she crawled through. She immediately started speaking with me and they did an assessment. I was real familiar. She could see and it's too bad I didn't have it on. It would have been great if I had it on. But body armor helps to attenuate chest trauma, so it would have been great if I'd had that on but, I didn't.
Speaker 1:You were headed home.
Speaker 3:I was headed home. So that was in the back. She could see firearms-related things. She could see that I was wearing a firearm, so she says it's a black SUV. She asked me are you Secret Service? And I said no, ma'am, but I do work with them.
Speaker 1:Okay. So she wasn't frightened by what she was seeing. She was already familiar with it. She made the connection.
Speaker 3:And I said if you're worried about my firearm, I can't move my arm, but if I can tell you how to take it out, I can make it safe she goes. No, for now, let's leave it there. Let's just keep it there.
Speaker 3:And in fact the, the medic or the police officer at the hospital, the trauma center. He's the one that took it out. I heard the helicopter and I knew by having been a police officer and having different experiences in my life. I said, look, if that helicopter is for me, I've lived a good life, god's been better than me and I deserve Take whoever's hurt worse in that vehicle because they're young. And she said to me distinctly you don't get to make that decision, we make that decision. I was like, okay, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1:Was it still the same lady? Who was Same lady?
Speaker 3:She was with me in the car the whole time and in fact, a man had walked up and you could tell he was a person, carried himself like military. And he had walked up and he stood right in front of the car and he said I want you to look at this point on your windshield, don't try to turn your head. I'm going to come around to your passenger side and I'm going to talk to you. Don't turn your head. Okay, so he comes around to my passenger side and he says listen, mr, you're hurt real bad. Is there anybody I can call for you? And I said, yes, I explained that my wife, she, doesn't like the phone, so you're going to have to keep calling and keep calling and keep calling, because if she sees your number she barely answers for me. You're going to have to keep on calling. And so he did. And she was on a treadmill at our house and my son says Mom, you've got to answer this phone. They keep calling, and sure enough, you know. So they were able to get to the scene.
Speaker 1:While you were still in the car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were cutting me out of the car. Took them 40 minutes to cut me out of the car, but that's traumatic in itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Walking up and seeing you in that state.
Speaker 3:I had been training, as you might imagine, I had been training my family for years, with my background. I trained, trained, trained, train, practice, practice, practice. And one thing I drilled into them is losing your composure in a traumatic event makes it worse. Be calm, take deep breaths, think things through TTT, think things through, survive the next 30, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 30 hours, 30 days. Just keep surviving, keep in that mode. And so they were very calm. They did great. They did great.
Speaker 1:I feel like I need to start training my children.
Speaker 3:You know it's. You always hope people say, oh, you're so paranoid. I'm not the least bit paranoid. I'm still, to this day, armed wherever I go. Still, to this day, I teach people how to survive terrible things, and it comes when you least expect it. It's that event, that life-changing event, comes when you least expect it. Now, the problem for us was I was 90% of the income self-employed.
Speaker 1:I'm the business.
Speaker 3:Which is not to demean my wife. She worked very, very hard, but she worked in a business that didn't generate and we were buying over the business.
Speaker 1:She was working at the time. She wasn't a stay-at-home mom, she was working. No, no.
Speaker 3:She had her own business and did that and she did great at it. She did a great job, job, but all of a sudden the income stops that's why. I tell people you have absolutely got to get disability insurance, get as much as you can afford, because I will tell you it took years, years for the disability to come in many years. I was stubborn when I got home from the hospital how long were you in the hospital? A day, basically yeah basically a day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was crazy. I got sent home with a shattered left side, massive thoracic injury, twisted aorta which turns out it was not a twisted a order, it was an aneurysm. Yeah, it was a mess, but I did not receive the best care. And so things we started to learn as time went on. Going to different specialists, they were like why, why in the world you should have been left there in the hospital.
Speaker 1:Was your facial bones crushed.
Speaker 3:I broke 10 teeth. My jaw moved back up into my skull.
Speaker 1:Is that the brain injury and the brain injury yeah, or was it just a collision with? The.
Speaker 3:That was just a physical trauma. Yeah, the brain injury. We started to realize that I had a substantial brain injury. I couldn't remember anything, in fact, I didn't know that I spoke multiple languages.
Speaker 1:I had no after the accident you had no idea, no recollection of it at all.
Speaker 3:and people they were, they were very nice, they came over and would read to me. They asked my wife, what can we do to help you other than bring food, what can we do to help you? And so she would say well, sean loves to read, but he can't read right now.
Speaker 1:You had quite the library too, right? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:Thousands of books. Yeah, yeah, I love books, much to my wife's chagrin.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute. How many times did you read the Bible front to back?
Speaker 3:At that point it was 33 and three quarters times. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:I'm at 38 now and I learn something new every time. I bet Honestly every time. Okay. So, avid reader, you're in there and your friends are coming over to read for you.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I interrupt a lot. So she comes over and she was dear and sweet and wonderful and I still remember the lady's husband was one of my dearest friends and so she's like, well, what would you like me to read? I said, just pick something off the bookshelf. And everything was gobbledygook to her. And so finally she pulls something off and then there's a handwritten notebook next to it, spiral bound notebook, and I said what's that you have there? And she shows it to me and I was like what's that? And she goes it's your handwriting and it looks like Hebrew, Hebrew or Russian, I can't remember which.
Speaker 1:It was you spoke both Hebrew and Russian.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Wow Okay. Yeah, yeah, I don't think we talked about these specific languages that you did know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the primaries were Hebrew, Russian, arabic and different dialects within that, so related dialects that you would be proximal. Those areas that would be proximal, you have to learn those. So it was one of those languages and I said well, whose handwriting is that? She told me it's your handwriting. She thought I was kidding, she thought I was joking, because she pulled it around in front of the hospital bed and showed it to me and I was like that's really nice handwriting in a weird sort of language. I kind of had an idea it might be Hebrew. And she goes you don't remember that you speak these and write these. And I'm like nope, I didn't know that at all. How long after the accident was this realization?
Speaker 1:don't remember that you speak these and write these and I'm like I didn't know that at all. How, how, how long after the accident was this realization?
Speaker 3:Probably two or three weeks.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, two or three weeks, maybe a little more. I had a surgery that I had to have two, I think about two weeks. They said the reason they couldn't do the surgery is the inflammation was just so massive. And when they did the surgery to put my shoulder back together, they found pieces of my collarbone was completely shattered and they found pieces of it inside at the bottom of where my rib cage was, at the bottom rib.
Speaker 1:Which blows my mind, because they sent you home. Yeah, the pain that you must have been in.
Speaker 3:It was brutal. I can tell you it was awful. It, yeah, it was a, it was a. You must've been in. It was brutal it was. I can tell you it was awful, it was horrific, never ending pain and it was the worst pain that I've ever experienced.
Speaker 1:What kind of pain do you experience today? I would imagine there's so it's intractable pain.
Speaker 3:It's there's no really for it. I could take drugs for it. I'm offered you name it the Veterans Administration in Wilmington. I cannot sing their praises enough. I love them. That's so good to hear. Oh my gosh, these are the best people. The physical therapist, dr Walker, dr Jude Miller, my audiologists, dr Oster, my neurologist all of them, all of the ones, the specialists that take care of every part of my body, are utterly amazing people, and there are so many there. I know I'm forgetting names and I feel bad about that, but I'm going to tell you they were and they are. I'm there between one and three times a week. Four years I'm there and I still go.
Speaker 3:I just came from one of the off-site treatment centers. They're angels on earth, in my opinion. I understand that not every va is that way. Mine is, and I'm blessed beyond deserving. So they work on me all the time. Oh, and dr and Dr Fountain and her people, all the nurses also that take care of me Unreal. They're just beautiful people. It's probably I don't know that it ever goes below a six. They say the one to 10 scale?
Speaker 3:I don't know that it ever goes below a six. It's brutal.
Speaker 1:But you don't wear it.
Speaker 3:I try not to, and I'll tell you why. One thing I taught my family is that your pain and your suffering is no one else's problem, no matter what the cause of it is. You can't think of it as someone else's problem. You can't make it about them. I'm totally handicapped now. I'm 100% disabled. I will tell you that I've learned some very interesting things. I remember when I was a police officer. One of the things that I would do is if I drove by and saw a car with non-handicapped tags and no hang tag, I would wait for the driver. The driver would come out and I'd ask them hey, are you handicapped? No, no, I was just going in there for a minute. No, no, no, are you handicapped? They go, no, I was just going in there for a minute. No, no, no, are you handicapped? They go? No, would you like to be?
Speaker 3:It ticked me off worse than anything, so I had a sensitivity toward handicapped, accessibility, just what they have to deal with, what people, blind, people, amputees, all of these things. I had a real heart for them and then I became one. It's mind boggling. And so people who go into that career, where that's who they deal with, what angels on earth they are. So I would say, yeah, I'm in a pretty substantial pain and the system because of my brain injury, injury the systems of my body aren't working properly. So you have an autonomic system and a parasympathetic system. They do things like blink your eyes, right, you blink your eyes, you don't even think about it, it's just a well, I have to think about it. The the process of breathing, the all of the different body processes, organs. I'm now insulin-dependent diabetic.
Speaker 1:You were not prior to that, no.
Speaker 3:I was in phenomenal health. Phenomenal health, Great eyesight All of this now I wear corrective lenses. I use a cane, a walker and crutches. That's what I do, that's my life now, in fact, the cane to my right, that's my life now. Yeah, In fact, the cane to my right was made by my dear friend Doug Allen.
Speaker 1:It is a beautiful cane by the way. I noticed it as soon as I saw you at the front door.
Speaker 3:Handmade from a branch that fell off a tree in his yard.
Speaker 1:Incredible Yep and he made it to the perfect time.
Speaker 3:Oh, he's amazing. He's amazing. He's amazing. I'm telling you that. The church family that I have, grace Community, topsail I've spoken all across. When I did my book tour it became this big thing Five months and speaking and doing that, be on the radio and people say you need to have your own radio show Because I was much better then physically and mentally. My mental acuity then was much better than that it is now and it will get worse. Everything will continue to degrade.
Speaker 1:So you've had the accident, you are in a state of recovery, you're learning things about yourself. Now tell me how you got into radio and where were you living now? Are you still in Delaware? At this time yeah, we were in Delaware. So what made you decide you want to do a radio show and reach out to someone in Texas Like how, tell me about how that came to fruition?
Speaker 3:So I was on a bunch of different radio and all over the country and then some TV shows.
Speaker 1:Speaking about your book. Yeah, I wrote the book mostly before the crash it was like almost 90% done, right? Yeah, it was almost 90% finished. So after the accident you do use some technology to help you finish the book, the last 10% of the book, Something called Dragon. Yeah Right, so if you buy that book.
Speaker 3:Excellence Killed the Church. If you buy that book, it's not great because it's brain injury. Boy trying to talk into a microphone that's converting to speech which is really not where it is now.
Speaker 1:Right, this was back in 2012.
Speaker 3:2012, right.
Speaker 1:So you finished the book. It's now published and it's getting some publicity. Yes, well, I hired a publicist. You did.
Speaker 3:So here's my bright idea. This is advice. This is free. You're listeners, you don't have to pay anything for this. But think of the money you'll save. Unless you write a bestseller, you're not going to make a ton of money selling books. So I wrote a book I was a prolific writer prior to the crash a book of over 120 poems that I wrote songs, hymns, you name it.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, a whole bunch. I have another book, a novel, that I'm working on that I'm hoping that I can finish it and publish it. So I'd written an awful lot, but I wasn't finished with this book. Excellence Killed the Church. How Mediocrity is Destroying America. But it was such a controversial book I thought, wow, I'll hire a publicist and we'll do all this. So we took the money, thinking I'm going to go back to work. This is Sean Greener thinking here In my mind oh, I'm go back to work. This is Sean Greener thinking here In my mind oh, I'm going back to work. I've been hurt, real bad, lots of times before I'm going back to work, okay, and I'm going to make the money and so we live, thank God.
Speaker 3:We put food away, my wife, I remember she was always great about it and I went to her one day I said, look, we need to be putting food back prior to the crash and we had whole big things of food that we did, thank God, and people didn't know it until years after the crash, that's what we ate.
Speaker 1:Okay, because the income it had completely stopped, and so now you were just relying on what you'd stored away.
Speaker 3:I had no concept in my head, even though once we started receiving the appropriate medical care, the doctors all would say you are never going to get better, you're only going to get worse. And it was only until Dr Hopwood, a neuropsychologist, tested me for two straight days solid. They're the hardest two days of my life. I've had lots of very tough training. I've been through lots of tough experiences. I was literally sweating trying to put together a children's puzzle of the United States where it says what the state is, the shape, the color, all those things. And I still couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:Did you realize, while you were taking the test, that it was not going well? Yeah, you did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it was awful Cause I was in a total state of delusion up until those moments. I told my wife after the first day I don't know, I'm not going back. And she said no, you're going back. People need to understand how bad this is, because I had always been a workaround guy. My process of thinking and doing was keep moving the next 30, survive, the next 30, keep moving, keep adapting. All of these things were great for my life. The problem was it wasn't great Like when doctors would ask me how are you doing? How are you feeling Great? I'm doing great Because in my mind, I wasn't great, like when doctors would ask me how are you doing? How are you feeling Great? I'm doing great Because in my mind, I am doing great. My benchmark of great is way different than most people's great.
Speaker 3:And so, yes, I'm in terrible pain, but you know what I'm blessed? I'm blessed to be here, and that was the worst thing I could do, because they couldn't, they hadn't experienced anybody like me. It's just not what you.
Speaker 1:Were you fooling them?
Speaker 3:I think some of them I was Some of them. They're busy and they weren't engaged. But there was no fooling Dr Hopwood. Let me tell you what she was amazing. She was a godsend. She had talked to professors of mine, the president of my seminary, dr Ford. She had talked to these people because she wanted to get an idea, okay, what was before like. And she talked to my wife and all this. But you know, wives they're biased, hopefully. And so she wanted to get a broader view. She was amazing, and at different points in time I could see tears coming down her face because I was so frustrated.
Speaker 3:Why can't I do this stupid simple thing? Why can't I tie my shoes? Why can't I button my shirt? What's going on here? How come I can hold a conversation with you but I can't do stupid simple things? How come I can't remember anything? My memory was shot and all of these things. I knew that I had to have lived a better life than I had remembered. And so she looked me right in the eye the second day we're about to finish up and she said Dr Greener, I am sorry to tell you you are not only never going to get better, you are going to get a lot worse and it's going to be a hard road for you, and she had a conversation with me and my wife about getting our affairs in order.
Speaker 1:Several doctors had that same conversation and then you were even on hospice at one point were you not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah yeah, I could still be on it now if I wanted to be. But that's why I'm back in the podcasting, because I had at a certain point I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't sit up anymore. I have a special what's called a TLSO brace and it helps hold me up. It's got a metal bar and a padding system here. It comes down and it mounts at my waist and that helps me. But you can't wear that all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because if you do wear it all the time, you won't be able to hold yourself up at all, except for when you have that on, and even then it won't work anymore.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the aortic aneurysm. And this is a life-threatening condition that you live with now, correct?
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, yep, yep. So it's called a 5+, so it's 5 or bigger. So it's five or bigger. The risk of MRIs for me seems. I had 30 some MRIs prior to developing this massive claustrophobia. I was never claustrophobic before and I didn't know that I was claustrophobic, until they're pushing me into the thing and it's like, yeah, this is. She was like you said you've had these before. I said, yeah, I have, and I loved them. They were great.
Speaker 1:But you were compacted in that car. Is that triggered this whole? It was yeah.
Speaker 3:Different psychologists have said that they think probably that subconscious event where you don't want to be trapped in there Because I could not move. There was no moving in that car at all.
Speaker 3:I had no option to move and I didn't have the concept of being able to move. It was not even in my head, because everything was collapsed around me. When you're in that position for such a long period of time, you can't move Mind-bending Involuntarily. Now, if you're sitting still because you're trying to avoid getting shot or being detected, that's one thing. You're doing that voluntarily.
Speaker 1:Still not easy, but I just can't imagine Crazy.
Speaker 3:I can't. So she told me. She said you need to apply for disability right away. And I still fought it. I want to say it was four years before we ever applied or looked into it. I left there saying I will prove you wrong. I have defeated everything in my life the odds. I was two and a half months premature. I was 2.6 pounds at birth. Oh my goodness, at that point in time I was the youngest. I was the smallest baby in my state to have ever survived. Wow yeah.
Speaker 3:And I said I've been overcoming my whole life long, I am not going to stop now. And so went a considerable period longer. Of course, what does that do? That drains your finances. Yeah. So we had spent everything that we had saved in our marriage up until that point. Every dime was all gone in our marriage up until that point every dime was all gone.
Speaker 3:Most of our credit cards were charged up because I'm being forceful with my wife and saying no, no, no, no, no, no. We're where I'm going back to work. I knew what kind of money I could make and I'll make up for lost time and all of this. And it cost us and that's that's on me, now, what I've learned. You have a brain injury, like, for instance, the trauma doctors said did you ever lose consciousness? As I'm being wheeled into trauma, did you ever lose consciousness? Well, that question in and of itself is malpractice. We've learned this, since when you're unconscious, guess what? You don't know that you were unconscious, that you were unconscious, and so, yeah, they were. They kept asking me and I kept going nope, nope, sure wasn't, which hurt us.
Speaker 1:It hurt us in the long run. Yeah, it was an assessment that you desperately needed to be correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it wasn't yeah, exactly okay so suffice it to say brutal, brutal reality hit us. When one day I just said to my wife, I said I don't think I can do it. I tried several times. I passed out in people's homes, fell down basement steps, broke out in a sweat and passed out when they were there bringing me. They knew who I was locally. They knew who I was because it was national news. The crash was national news and um, I just remember saying I don't think I can do it.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm going to step back. The aortic aneurysm you talk to what? Five or six different surgeons and they're like we're not touching this right. It is what it is and it's what it's going to be.
Speaker 3:So my, my wonderful, wonderful, I love him, my, my cardiologist, now unbelievable guy. I asked him. I said, after he looked at all my records and all my imaging and everything, I said, so, okay, so what, what would you do? What would you do? And he goes well, if you were my father and I'm like, whoa, hey, why do we have to go to father? Why can't I be your?
Speaker 1:brother.
Speaker 3:How about your distinguished older brother? Maybe that? How about your? I mean your dad? I got to be your dad all of a sudden, and so we had a good laugh about that. And then he said look, if you're my dad, if you present it to me at the ER and I'm just, I've got to try to save your life. I'm going to try, but you'll be dead in three minutes. He said I have a great team, our team is phenomenal, but I'm not operating on you. And he was in a long line of cardiologists that said oh no, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is what you live with on the daily, or do you just pretend it's a non-issue? At this point, you appear to be living your life with not much thought to that. That's the outside appearance. What's going on in your head and your heart?
Speaker 3:So my faith is. I remember we'll go back to the Navy for just a minute. I remember getting back from this long trip back to the States I'd been in the air for a gazillion hours. I hadn't slept in a gazillion hours, so I slept. I mean, I don't know how long I slept, it was a long time and I was staying on a military base.
Speaker 3:I woke up I realized it's Easter Sunday and I had kind of fallen not fallen away from my faith, but I wasn't really practicing it because I was focusing on all this darkness in the world, you know, and I was like Easter Sunday and I'm not in church. What's wrong with me? And I put that Easter Sunday and I'm not in church, what's wrong with me? And I put that quickly out of my head, say hey, buddy, you're super tired, you've got to do your laundry, you've, you know? Blah, blah, blah. So I put it out of my head, walked to the chow hall and I saw this God awful ugly, hand-painted, look like blue and white bus, with this little tiny. It was all at the far end of the parking lot of the chow hall, this dear little old man doing this, the come here sign, come here, come here. So he started walking toward me. I started walking towards him. We met in the middle and he told me. He said hey, my name is Jewel Martin. This is in Memphis, tennessee. And he commenced to tell me he's from church and he said you know how do you like to go to church with us today? We'll carry you there and carry you back.
Speaker 3:I said, well, sir, I certainly appreciate that invitation Absolutely. But I said no, I got to get in here and eat, I don't want to miss chow. And then you know, I've got to eat lunch, I've got to come back here for chow, and then I've got a bunch of duties to do later this afternoon. So I do appreciate it Absolutely. But no, thank you, I appreciate it, he goes. Well, guess what we have? We have a full kitchen and Southern ladies and they know how to cook. We have a whole kitchen, a dining area.
Speaker 3:I said, well, sir, I appreciate that, that sounds really good, but I've got to work out, I have to stay very fit. And he said well, guess what we have. We have a big old gym with a full-size basketball court and we got glass backboards and we got volleyball and we got all kinds of people your age and there's other military fellows that are in there eating breakfast right now. You won't go in there and eat breakfast. You'd come right on out after you're done in breakfast. I'll carry you right on in there, carry you right back. You'll get here in time for chow this evening, if not before, but in the meantime we'll feed you a good lunch, you can do your exercises and all that. And I said okay, well, he's got me, he's got me.
Speaker 1:You were not getting out of that I got no more and dear.
Speaker 3:he's long since gone to his reward. But I went to church and I was very moved by the church. I was also under massive conviction. Why did I not even think of church, especially on Easter? What am? I thinking so yes, that got me back into going to church and that's actually where I met my first wife and who gave me a beautiful, amazing daughter.
Speaker 1:That's who got you back into church and back into religion, joel.
Speaker 3:Martin did when I was in the Navy, yeah, but I had stayed with it. I had stayed with it after that and I was always fascinated with it. The scriptures fascinated me and I thought, wouldn't it be neat if I could read these in the original language?
Speaker 1:Wouldn't that be a fun thing? That's why you went to Hebrew.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
Speaker 1:Can you still read those languages at all? I can do some Some. You had a great many, a large part of the scripture memorized in your head. You could recite them without the Bible in front of you. Is that right? Am I getting that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that was the weird thing, I didn't realize other people couldn't do that. I used to like to do these dramatic readings act out what was happening, make it dramatic and exciting and make it come to life. And so I did that and it was just easy peasy for me to remember entire books of the Bible and gone.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the radio show. This was a very popular radio show that you were doing the radio thing was crazy.
Speaker 3:I contacted this company that produces radio shows because somebody kept giving me their names, like call these people. And so I took money from our savings and I didn't know the first thing about monetizing. And within a short period of time we debuted at 114,000 listeners. And when I get a call right after the show ends, I get a call from Texas, from the CEO of this company, and he says well, hey, dr Sean, listen, I'm just calling you up to congratulate you 114. He said we've never had that, we've never hit that number on a debut. He says, man, you must know a lot of people and I said that probably counts for my family, maybe, and some friends and some people. In pity, I don't think I have 114 people that would listen. He says no, 114,000.
Speaker 3:This was your debut, my debut, yeah, first time. I didn't know anything about it. So they produced the show for a year. They were wonderful, yeah 5. Some million subscribers to my website at that time, and I loved it, though. I love teaching God and Country. The Collision of Faith and Politics was the name of the show. Eventually it was carried on multiple platforms.
Speaker 1:You're doing this radio show. It Is Religion and Politics Colliding. So to get that kind of reaction from the public listening to you, what do you attribute that to? Because usually mixing religion and politics does not work, you know what's funny is I hear that a lot.
Speaker 3:I hear that a lot and my show True Word, faith for Life. What I'm doing now much less in the area of politics, maybe one-tenth of one percent, but I can tell you that they are inexorably connected religion and politics. Because if you don't pay attention to politics, you will lose your religion, your ability to practice your faith with freedom and the liberty as intended, as the founders intended. You'll lose it because it's on the chopping block at any given time, and so I tried to illustrate active applied civics. A dear friend of mine, mark Herr, founded Center for Self-Governance and it's an applied civics project really, and it teaches people how to get involved in government and to be plugged in. One of the crossovers is our founders were people of faith. They can diminish them all they want because that's within their agenda. Hey, I don't want to believe that Judeo-Christian values were at the center of our founding.
Speaker 1:But that's the case.
Speaker 3:They were. That's a whole show in and of itself. But I had a unique perspective. I taught a class. I had started teaching the class before the crash at a church that I was attending and we were bursting at the seams. The people were really interested in this. So every week I would come back and we'd have to put chairs outside the room. And there were chairs outside and people were leaning in and standing looking through the two windows, and it just grew and grew and grew because people were hungry for that kind of knowledge. And when I came back from the crash which it was a, it was a while and it was tough I thought I could do it a lot easier than I could, but I was sweating profusely from just so much pain.
Speaker 3:You never be, in that kind of pain where you're just drenched with sweat. But when we did the show it was the radio show. The radio show God and Country Collision of Faith and Politics. When I did that, people were looking for somebody to explain to them what's really happening happen. Somebody that knows, somebody that has friends that he can call and say, hey, person in the administration or a person at high levels of agency and otherwise. Would you be on my show and they would explain what was happening and I could explain things that were happening.
Speaker 1:I have access. Then they were guests on your show.
Speaker 3:Some of them were Okay, the ones that could.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I had access to information and I was still kind of in touch with that community and so as a result of that I don't know, it just was crazy it took off and I was doing, I think, three hours a week and then eventually, what did the numbers grow to? 5.6 million, yeah, yeah. If, if. I converted all of those subscribers to my website that came from the radio show. If I can was if I had a business head. I could have converted them and would have made millions of dollars.
Speaker 1:But as it was, what did you make from the radio show? I mean?
Speaker 3:Zero, zero, yeah, not a dime. And so on Sundays, the class had grown to such an extent where we needed more space. So, there were some deer folks, the Stableys, and they had a room that could accommodate a hundred people in their house.
Speaker 1:That's a big house.
Speaker 3:The room was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 3:And yeah, it was pretty amazing. And I had this idea of kehalah, which in Greek, ekklesia, a lot of pastors will refer to church as ekklesia, the Greek word ekklesia but really it doesn't have a religious connotation, it's a gathering, it's more secular than it is anything else, whereas Kehalah is Hebrew and it is. It's the gather, it's like the home church, right Meeting in people's homes, and you meet, you have a meal, you worship, you do music and then you do the learning, you learn have a meal, you worship, you do music and then you do the learning, you learn. And so I had a thought of doing that, and so I talked to Mr and Mrs Stabley Mrs Stabley has gone on to her reward, but they welcomed all of us crazy people into their home and that grew and grew and grew. So they said, how about doing a broadcast on Sundays, sundays with Dr Sean? So I did, and that grew.
Speaker 1:That's also a radio show. Are you podcasting at this point?
Speaker 3:it was a radio and facebook live okay video at facebook live and a couple other places, and it went all around the world. And what here's what's crazy is you don't know who's listening. You have no idea who's hearing the message, and what I tried to do on sundays was try to teach the Bible and the character and nature of God, what being a follower of the way means and what Yeshua was all about and what he is all about, and my goal always was to teach in such a way that seconds after you go out the door you can apply the things that I taught. And I wanted to be in a very real way, real life, and so that grew. In fact, we had a group of ladies from Belgium who they were an atheist book group.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 3:Atheist, Actually atheist, we say it. We say it incorrectly. It's atheist, which literally means against God.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And so they were an atheist book group, all ladies. Somehow they got a copy of my book. I remember back then the company that sold the books. I went on the website and I found I could see that all these books went to Belgium. I thought, well, that's interesting. And they started listening to the show because I had embedded links to the show. So this group of ladies it gets me every time One by one came to Christ. One by one, they placed their faith in Christ, yep, and then they became a Christian book club. Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, if I do nothing else in my life that made it worth it. That made it worth it.
Speaker 1:That made it worth it. That's why you survived that crash 13 people, I guess. I would imagine it's more.
Speaker 3:Who knows?
Speaker 1:Who knows?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's, all of us have this mission in life and I was so moved by it. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it when they started writing to me and they say we all listen to your show. We gather at this weird hour here and we listen to your show and they subscribe to do all the different things and they were listening it blew my mind, it was wonderful that's something to be so proud of well it's.
Speaker 3:That's a god thing, that's not me, that's somehow or another. They saw through this goofiness and somehow another could connect with god, and so that's what my goal was for that, and this is the first book, correct, first book, yeah, okay which was nothing great by the way. This is. This is not a great book. If you buy my book.
Speaker 1:I did it is bold, it's real bold. You don't mince words in this book Did you have negative feedback where people were like you are wrong.
Speaker 3:I will tell you a story about that. What's interesting you asked about was the book well received? Yes, but in some cases, yes, very much so, and a lot of times I would hear well, I'm glad somebody finally said it, which I appreciated. I appreciate all that, but my wife and my son and I were in Ocala, florida, and there was a chance that I was going to be senior pastor of a huge church there and we were in the early talking phases of it, so much so that my family, we went and looked at houses and neighborhood and looked at building. What kind of house do we want to build? We met with the builder and figured out which exact one we wanted it was.
Speaker 3:At that point, I have to tell you, we were having dinner and in walks this very famous and I'm not going to say his name because it wouldn't be fair to him, but he walks in with his posse. He's famous Big time preacher, tv guy, author, and I pointed out to my wife and son. I said man, can you believe that? Look at that, he's in here and I happen to have an extra copy of my book. So I autographed the book and wrote an inscription to him and thank you for all you do and for the great work in the kingdom and all this stuff. I'd only known the work that he had done and what appeared to be the fruits of it. So I walk over to him and I say, listen, I don't want to interrupt you, I just want to give you this book as a gift from me to you. I appreciate what you do and I don't want to interrupt. I just want to give you this book.
Speaker 3:He looked at the book and goes excellence, killed the church. He didn't even read the second part of it, which is how mediocrity is destroying America. And he looked at that and he threw the book at me, threw the book literally at me. He goes the church ain't dead, I don't need this book. I said, oh okay. I said, well, here's the thing. What I always tell people is the book is either for you or it's about you. This one, apparently, is about you. Oh, my goodness yeah.
Speaker 3:I was so glad that I thought of it so pre-crash. I would have never had a problem thinking of that, but I was so glad that post-crash came right to mind and I don't think it had any effect on him because he's still doing what he's doing. And I went back to the table and they were like what happened and I explained. They were like well that's disappointing.
Speaker 3:So yeah, but the point of it is is how he received it received it. He just looked at the cover and read the first part of the title. Yeah, yeah so yeah, it's an unfortunate thing. That's how the world is.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you have a second book. Actually, there's two others I want to mention. You have the Bible Summary for Real People. How did that one go?
Speaker 3:That one went well. Unfortunately, I signed up with a publisher who took all of the royalties. I didn't get a dime from that, yeah, and where most people buy their books I'm not saying the name because I don't want to give them any press. It took years to get them to take the book down. I said these people are ripping me off, they're taking the money, they're not paying me and that book sold well. That book outsold the first book by a long shot, not a dime, not a dime.
Speaker 3:Still not gotten a dime to this day, and I never will.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, can you republish it?
Speaker 3:I'm rewriting it. I'm almost finished. I'm about 98% finished that book.
Speaker 1:These are some expensive lessons. They are that you've learned over the years. You know what I'm not good at.
Speaker 3:Business. I am not a good business person. I'm not a good tech person, not a good tech person and I'm not a good business person.
Speaker 1:I gotcha, I'll admit it, all right. So what is the name of this podcast? You said it before.
Speaker 3:I just want to drive it home the True Word Faith for Life with Dr Sean. It's on YouTube. It's a video podcast, so I apologize in advance.
Speaker 1:I have been, I watched it and it's very good, and you're doing it live, which is impressive.
Speaker 3:It's something I'm not brave enough to do. Most of it is live. I tell you, I like doing that because it's kind of like having church. It's very small, we just got started. And how that started was a friend of mine that I've known almost all of his life. He and a guy he knew founded a podcast and it was very successful very quickly. And he asked me. He said, hey, would you mind being a guest on our show? And I said sure, so I was a guest on the show.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is watchful. Is this watchful?
Speaker 3:Watchful and Christopher yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I saw that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that episode was particularly successful, I guess. And they said hey, how'd you like to come back and be a regular guest?
Speaker 1:on our show Like every week.
Speaker 3:Every week, Every week. So every Monday at 10, I'm on their show, but that's a much bigger show than mine. But the reason that I'm back doing podcasting was I figured I'm not dead yet. I was supposed to be dead a long time ago and they always remind us hey, listen, you got to understand because there's a lot of other stuff wrong Advanced heart failure.
Speaker 1:Oh, beyond the aortic aneurysm, there's other things happening, okay.
Speaker 3:Way, way more than that. I presented at the emergency room with a thousand blood sugar and 12, 12 A1C maybe a little higher than that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was lucky to have survived that because my pancreas is failing. So, as I said, the different things just stop working and sometimes they just turn off like a switch, and that's how it is. My doctors in Delaware refer to it as a cliff death. So one minute you're alive, animated, next minute you're off, just like that, depending on how I die. Which system fails first. To give you an idea of where we are with it we've already met with the undertaker. We've already got everything laid out On my phone. Everybody that's super important to me. That's going to be a part of it. We've already met with the undertaker. We've already got everything laid out on my phone. Everybody that's super important to me. That's going to be a part of it.
Speaker 3:My funeral is planned out to when this song is played. When that song is played, what type of message do I want? I want it to be a very strong, evangelical, positive event and I want it to be uplifting and I want it to be a home going. So you know, we met right up the road. Yeah, is the people is going to lay me out, and I felt like I've tried to do as much of the planning in advance as I can, because I don't want my family to have to do that.
Speaker 3:That's why I always say have a trust, have an estate plan. It's not just for wealthy people. Have all of your important documents together. If you have life insurance, have it all together. If you have any insurance at all, have it together. You have to make it as easy for your family as you possibly can, because when the time comes, it's going to be a devastating thing, a devastating thing, and so you don't want to put them through that, so help them with it. And so you don't want to put them through that, so help them with it. And so we did that, and periodically we modify it. It's three pages. My funeral, it's a three-page event, but it's not going to be long. It's not going to be super long because my pastor at Grace Community, topsail, is going to be the one preaching it, and I've already said hey, man, don't make people squirm in their seats. Make them squirm in their seats from conviction.
Speaker 3:But don't make them squirm in their seats from sitting in there. That's funny, but anyway, no, he's a great guy, he'll do a great job.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, we're going to wrap this up. Now. Let's talk about future plans.
Speaker 3:There was a novel that you were working on, or did you complete that? I mean, it's a good ways along, but I need there's a lot of work. There's probably, if I have a year of life left in me, there's a year of getting it where it needs to be. My biggest thing is rewriting the Bible summary for real people, and I've added about 85% content. I need a publisher. Okay, and I'm not going to publish it. I'll end up giving it away. Self-publish.
Speaker 3:Well, you got to understand self-publishing is very expensive. So I could go to that company that I mentioned, that I don't give them any business because they're not really ethical people. I could go to that big company where everybody buys books and you can do a self-publishing thing right through them for very little money.
Speaker 3:I could do that route, but that really and truly is. Your book will never be seen. It's a way for them to make money, it's not a way for you. So I'm on a very small fixed income. It's a very fixed income. So the resources that I used to have I don't have anymore. So it has to and I don't need an advance. I just need them to cover all the costs. I can't pay six or seven or eight or $10,000 anymore to do the hybrid publishing or shared publishing, whatever they have, all kinds of buzzwords for it.
Speaker 3:It has to be a traditional publisher. I prefer a Christian publishing company just because they'll, they'll get it, they get it, but I just don't have the money to co-publish it.
Speaker 1:Right, I do know that there are some people in our community that have published their own books, so if there's anyone out there listening who can guide Dr Greener in a way to get that thing published where he can actually make money off of it this time that'd be great information to have I contacted a company that turns completed manuscripts into eBooks?
Speaker 3:And. I thought, if there was a way now it's costly, it's very costly to do If there was a way to do that, have it converted into an eBook for a download and then you pay what you can If you can pay, great. If you can't, that's okay, and if maybe you can afford to pay for three or four other people's books, pay it forward that would be okay with me.
Speaker 3:I'm almost to that point, because if I die before it gets published, then it just sits. Nobody's getting anything from it. That one is the one I'm most proud of. That one is the one that's-.
Speaker 1:The Bible summary for real people.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure what I'm going to call this version. It's not going to be a second edition, even though I own the copyright to the first edition. It's so much more of a book now. Okay, I'm super proud of that one and I would love for that to be in people's hands. If you think my first book, excellence, killed the Church, if you think that is gritty, oof. Oh really. Oh yeah, this one's much more.
Speaker 1:Oh see, I didn't expect that at all.
Speaker 3:Much more in your face. Okay, Because when you have a death sentence, when you're told hey, don't buy any green bananas. That's one thing I've learned. Being terminally ill is that whole thing of the what do they call it Filter. I didn't get one. You didn't get one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or it broke in the crash, because I don't have it anymore. I figure I've only got a certain amount of time to tell people about. Jesus, the real story about Jesus. The real story about God, the real story about faith. I've only got a certain amount of time to help people understand how all these moving pieces in the world work and why it's critical that you get it, and you get it quickly.
Speaker 3:You don't need a couple doctorates in theology. You don't need that, not with the resources that are available today. But in that book I really get gritty to the faith.
Speaker 1:Well, I do hope you get that book published. I really do. I would love to read the new edition of that book.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The genre of the Other, the novel. What's the genre of that book?
Speaker 3:So that was intended to be the first in a series of books somewhat based loosely on my life and the like other life, the other life, the intrigue yeah there's pieces of that, but that one is probably. I've been told by test readers and they said this is the book that's going to. This is the one. Publish this one.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you get that one published too.
Speaker 3:But I thought that one's not going to bring anybody to Christ, that's not going to change anybody's life.
Speaker 1:Probably not.
Speaker 3:And it's a book that really it's gritty, but it's a book of you could be maybe 10th grade and up. You don't want your young kids reading it because it's really gritty.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:But it's clean, where there's not a bunch of profanity. My goal was to create which look, hey look, I was a sailor, the mouth came along with it, and anybody that knows me. I'm not a perfect man by any stretch, but I wanted to have a book, a novel, an exciting thing to read, where there weren't things in it that you wouldn't feel comfortable giving your older teen. I want them to be able to read that, and so that's how it was written, and I've got substantially more to do on it, just because of the times have changed. There've been a lot of changes, but it's a man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a murder mystery and it's gritty. It is gritty and it touches on some very, very third rail issues.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll be a test reader for you.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 1:All right, let's finish up here with some final thoughts. What is the final message that you want the listeners to take away from this conversation today?
Speaker 3:You know, I know it's easy for people to think I have held the hand of people as they were breathing their last. I've literally, as a police officer, I've watched the car crash. I was that close to it and gotten to the car as they were. I remember one lady said, one young lady said she was 23 years old. She said, mister, am I going to die? And they always train you to say no, you're going to be fine, Hang with me, Stay with me.
Speaker 1:Stay with me.
Speaker 3:But I refused to do that and I said to her yes, you are going to die, you're not going to make it through this. And I felt like honesty at that point. What's the objective? Well, they'll give up on living. No, no, she knew she was dying. Her chest cavity was wrapped around her steering wheel. She was most assuredly dying. But I've been with other people who were shot. I've been with other people who were different experiences in their life where it's bad.
Speaker 3:It's a bad situation and, yes, we're sick. I've been with lots of people who asked me am I going to die? And there have been times where I said I have a dear friend named Pam who she asked me if she was going to die and I said no, you're going to make it. You're going to live and not die. You're going to go through hell to get there. It you're going to go through hell to get there. It's going to be super, super tough, but you're the one to do it. You're going to do this and you're going to have a family and you're going to. You're going to look back on this and you're going to wow, holy moly, that happened. But then there were others where you don't and we, you never know. You never really know, even the terribly sick people.
Speaker 3:I always hear this term, people say it a lot at funerals Somebody had cancer or some dreaded disease. Well, they were a fighter, they fought. They fought so hard. As a believer, what am I fighting against? I'm trying to live. I have a grandbaby, I have a wonderful daughter and son. I adore them. I have a great son-in-law, an amazing son-in-law and, by the way, I have an amazing, unbelievably cool and great grandson, who is amazing and awesome and sweet and I want to see as much of his life as God wills me to see.
Speaker 3:Of course, of course. But we all are functioning within life with this notion that that picky thing, that dumb thing that we're fussing about, that thing we cannot change. We can't change how other people live their lives. But we get all spooled up, all jacked up over it. That thing that's going on at work, that thing that's fix your family, fix it. Those are the only people you got. Fix it. If you're the problem, fix you. There's resources. There's no reason to be all jacked up in. Today you say, well, it's a tough way to live and everything is so bad and all of these things. I say all the more reason to get it together.
Speaker 3:Jack or Jill or Schmuckatelli whichever your last name is, I don't know Get it together because tick-tock, tick-tock. The clock is ticking and this beating heart inside you one day will stop. Get right with God, get it figured out. You don't have to know all the answers, you do not have to know. Look, I have decades of doctorate level theological work in the biblical languages and all of these things and I don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 3:But I'm going to tell you this I know in whom I have believed and I know he's able, and I know that when I placed my faith in him, I was not guaranteed an easy life. Exhibit A my busted up, broken up body. But I can tell you this you will never be happier than when you're loving Jesus and you're letting Jesus love you. Your mama may not have loved you, your daddy may not have loved you. You may have had terrible things happen in your life, in your own family, maybe in your own community. All of those things can absolutely be true, but you know what? God isn't them. Jesus wants to change your life and he can and will do it if you let him. It's so much simpler than people make it. But don't wait around, don't sit on the fence, because I'm telling you, as a guy who knows I have been at death's door so many times, you, as a guy who knows I have been at death's door so many times, so many times I mean, call the family in type of deal you don't know. You don't know when it's going to be, and not only for that reason it's not an insurance policy, but also, don't you want to live knowing who the creator is? Don't you want to know him? Don't you want to know why you're here? It's not just to take up space or time. I love ice cream too, but I'm not here just to eat ice cream.
Speaker 3:And the fact of the matter of it is that I think if I could encourage anybody is don't look at churches or the people in churches and say, oh well, those people, I don't go there because those people are hypocrites. We are all hypocrites, from the pastor on down. Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite, sinner, sinner, sinner, sinner, hurt. Have it hang up, hurt, hypocrite, sinner, sinner, sinner, sinner, hurt habit. Hang up, hurt, habit, hang up, I have them. I'm as jacked up as anybody you'll ever see in your life, but God loves me. It took me almost a lifetime to figure that out and to accept it. It's time you start accepting it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:The honor is mine.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to thank you. It just means the world to me that you're coming here and you're so open and you're willing to share your story and your life with us and to share your love for Christ and trying to lead people to Christ, like those Belgian women.
Speaker 3:Ain't that something? Yes, ain't that something. I can't imagine Blessing of a something. Yes, ain't that something Well, I can't imagine Blessing of a lifetime.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's give out your contact information. So, listeners, you know that I will have all of the links and the socials in the show notes and there'll be hot links that you can click on for easy access.
Speaker 3:The easiest way to get a hold of me is smgreener at gmailcom. S as in Sean M as in Michael. Greener as in the grass is always greener. Okay, at gmailcom. Or contact me through the show on YouTube. You can leave messages there. I'm on Quora Q-U-O-R-A. 4.1 million views.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Yeah, I do see you on Quora a lot. Yeah, I do see you on Quora. It's crazy yeah.
Speaker 3:I write about certain specific things on there, but there's a messaging platform there. Facebook is an easy way to get me Facebook Messenger. Those are probably the easiest ways to get me Okay. I almost never check my Instagram messages.
Speaker 1:Oh, really Okay, which is terrible, because I forget that they have messages. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But whatever way works for you, that I'm on, feel free, okay.
Speaker 1:All right. Thank you, listeners, for joining us today. I just hope that you enjoyed that as much as as I have. And thank you, dr Greener, for being on Topsail Insider and sharing your story with your Topsail friends and neighbors on Topsail Insider and sharing your story with your Topsail friends and neighbors.
Speaker 3:This is the prettiest studio I've ever been in. You win.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. It's just my converted dining room.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's lovely we're going to work on it some more. We got a ways to go. All right. Thank you, you bet. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode of Topsail Insider, please show your support by clicking the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. You can also follow us on Facebook, instagram, twitter and YouTube. Please also go to topsoulinsidercom and join our mailing list by clicking on the make me a Top Soul Insider button. While you're there, you can click the send me a voicemail button and let me know exactly what you're thinking your message just might be on an episode of Topsail Insider. You can email me at Krista at TopsailInsidercom, or call or text me at 910-800-0111. Thank you for listening and supporting Topsail Insider and our local businesses and nonprofits. These are our neighbors and our friends, and together we build a mighty and a beautiful community I'm super proud to be a part of. I'll see you around Topsail.
