Podcast Transcript
Attendees:
Joshua Boswell, Margie Boswell, Russell De Vos
Transcript:
Joshua Boswell: Hello friends, welcome to the Happy Family Club podcast. We are so excited to have you here today. Margie and I feel like we have an amazing episode for you. Our guest… we've had a chance to visit with him a bit here as we started off camera, and what an incredible individual. So I'd love to introduce you or have Margie introduce you to Russ De Vos.
Margie Boswell: Russ De Vos, thank you for joining us today. We're so happy you're here.
Russell De Vos: Yeah. Good to be here.
Margie Boswell: I love that your mission basically is to help people having challenges, parents, especially with troubled teens. And the Teen Challenge that you've been focusing on lately is just amazing. Helps those parents adjust when their children come home from that so that they can improve their life. That's so great. But he, Russ, is the proud husband of Heather and father to Sam, Lily, and Simon. Is that right?
Russell De Vos: You got it. That’s right.
Margie Boswell: Awesome. Former Pastor, award-winning salesman. I think you got certified as a life coach, certified life coach with John Maxwell, right?
Russell De Vos: That's correct. Yep.
Margie Boswell: In the past he's helped a lot of men move forward and win at home and in the things that matter most. But now he's focused more on parents and families. So we're so happy that you're here and ready to share with us all your great wealth of wisdom.
Russell De Vos: We'll do our best. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah we’ll do our best. And one of the things I love about Russ that you guys should know. Sometimes we meet people and they seem like they had a charmed life from day one. And you think, Oh that's amazing. I could never be like that person. I mean, I'm glad to look at him. It's cool to see and aspire to that, but that's just not me. I mean, I have such a shattered broken past and I could never be like that.
Well, without getting into too many details, I’ll let russ share whatever story he wants. But I know for a fact that Russ is human, which I love. And he has gone through some rocky things and by the grace of God and through his own hard work and the love of his family and others, he has really transformed his life.
And I actually… before we even started this interview, and I don’t even know where it's gonna go. But before I started his interview, I thought I'm gonna title this interview The Rise of the Phoenix. Because I just love your story, Russ. And the way that you have come and transformed your life is just absolutely beautiful.
So thank you for being here. Thank you for changing your life and blessing so many other people's lives. We appreciate it.
Margie Boswell: And it gives all of us hope.
Joshua Boswell: I know exactly.
Margie Boswell: There's hope for each one of us.
Joshua Boswell: Not to tell any secrets, but I'm sort of a broken, messed-up guy too. So I really like that there's hope, right? Margie's not. Margie is one of those charmed people. Perfect like Mary Poppins, Practically Perfect in every way.
Margie Boswell: No no no..
Joshua Boswell: Anyway, Russ. Thank you, welcome. I'd love to dive in and hear your wisdom on what it takes to have really a happy family. But before that, can you tell us a little bit about your story and your background? I mean, how did you get…? Because your process, I mean, sales guy, Pastor, struggles and then life coach for men, and now focusing with teen parents. Like… What an amazing journey! So can you walk us through that to help us understand how you got to where you're at right now?
Russell De Vos: Yeah. The journey, right? The journey.
Joshua Boswell: The journey! Yeah, let’s hear it.
Russell De Vos: If I get emotional you'll have to forgive me because telling my story, it really… even at this moment, I feel it. So give me a second.
Russell De Vos: I was blessed to be raised with a wonderful mom and dad. I will say it was a very religious home, very strict, very protected.
But so many blessings. And the older I get the more I realize how blessed I was. But it was kind of a charmed life to be honest with you. By God's grace I thrived in most everything I did. I was a wrestler and my senior year of high school I won the State title in Oregon at 191 pounds. So I pretty much had my ticket punched to anywhere I wanted to go, I had offers from Stanford, West Point, all sorts of places to wrestle.
I didn't want to wrestle. So I took a year off. I ended up going to Liberty University and then I wrestled the second year that I was there on scholarship. I was cutting so much weight I just decided that was enough of that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Thirteen pounds a week I was cutting. So I ended up going to Bible school. I was born in Canada, up in a little town called Three Hills, Alberta Canada. So I ended up going to a tiny little bible college up there. It's the place my mom and dad both had graduated from.
And I had sworn that I would never go into Ministry. That was a non-negotiable. My dad was a pastor, I had watched multiple pastors fail morally while my dad was an assistant. I'd watched the men that he worked with fail and fail in grotesque ways to be honest with you.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It was really, really…. So I had sworn, I will never be a pastor. I will never be in Ministry. I wanted to be a politician, a US senator from the state of Oregon.
Joshua Boswell: Nice.
Russell De Vos: But I ended up, without getting into too many details, God clearly called me the ministry. I spent two years on the mission field traveling with the director of a mission organization. And then I spent a year in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and then finally in Israel.
And it was just phenomenal but I came home not knowing what I was going to do, thinking I would be on the mission field long term. Did not happen, but long story short I ended up going into Ministry. Just as I said I never would. I had married my wife, Heather. I was almost 30 when I got married. So it was a lot of years of singleness and then I got married with a lot of dreams of what a family would look like and how our marriage would be. It didn't work that way. Our marriage was a nightmare right from the beginning. In…
Joshua Boswell: Oh my goodness.
Russell De Vos: Our wedding day was a nightmare. The rehearsal dinner was a nightmare. I mean our honeymoon, I almost felt like, I can't do this. A month in, we were ready to get divorced. I mean it was awful.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And in all the midst of that I ended up going into Ministry, which is so crazy. I was a junior high pastor at a Foursquare Church in Bend, Oregon initially.
And successful. We watched growth, everything I did grew. But underneath all of the growth was character issues that I had had my whole life, but I had depressed them. I had hidden them. And success has a way of revealing you.
It's a blessing… but the weight of success is very very heavy and it will crack your foundation if it's not solid.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So pride is a killer and… I allowed pride to really grow in my heart as success continued. And in the first church I was in as a youth pastor. Then I was moved up into the adult world and was being groomed to take over the church. It was a very large FourSquare Church. Unbeknownst to many of the people there I had started a relationship with a woman on staff there. And thankfully it did not become adulterous, but it was certainly inappropriate.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I knew if I don't get out of here, it will be adulterous and it will be a disaster. So I left that church. And thought I had dealt with everything, but the roots hadn't been yanked.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So about eight months later my wife and I planted our own church and it grew from 17 people to almost 2,000 people in three years. It just exploded.
Joshua Boswell: That's incredible.
Russell De Vos: So it was an unbelievable experience you guys. I can't even tell you. It was like living in the book of Acts. I mean, it was literally like New Testament. It was crazy, but in the midst of that, three years in right almost to the day, because of un-yanked roots and because of discontentment, entitlement, all sorts of pride-based character issues, I got involved with another woman. And again it was… Thank God, He protected me. Again it was not adulterous. In fact, it was nipped very quickly.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: God uncovered it. He allowed me to be caught by… I mean the story it’s just hard even to tell it.
Joshua Boswell: mmm
Russell De Vos: It's 16 years ago now, but it's still hard to tell the story. But the Ministry was over.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I preached one Sunday morning, I walked off the stage and I looked at the people from the side of the stage. I knew this will be the last time I ever see these people.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And it was. And… I performed communion and walked off the stage. People were singing and doing business with God. And that was the last time I ever saw them. And the next day my job was done. My marriage was almost over. I mean, it all broke.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: We ended up then moving from Bend to Seattle to start over. Really to start our whole life over. And that was a nightmare also. The church we went to start over was worse than the one we had created, the mess we created. For two years I was an angry, angry, angry man. Angry with God, I mean I had my middle fingers up at God. It was awful. My Bible that I had spent hours with every weekend was not my friend anymore. I didn't open my bible. I was a mess.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And here's the thing that is so extraordinary about that. I had taught about God's grace with authority with conviction. But I came to find out I didn't really know what Grace was.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Grace is God's unmerited, unearned favor. And I somehow thought that Grace was what I earned because I was a good guy and a great pastor and all the rest. And I spent two years in sales. I’d never done anything else but Ministry. So I went on to monster.com and looked at what jobs I could possibly get in Seattle. And it was computer stuff, which… I didn't hardly know how to turn on a computer, much less sell computers. And the other was a home improvement company that would send people into homes trying to sell windows.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I got a job selling Windows. And this is the irony of it all. For two years I drove from appointment to appointment screaming, yelling, cursing at God in my car.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: Bitter, angry, blaming my wife, blaming God, blaming the Elders of the church, blaming my mom, blaming everybody.
And the only thing that God did was make me number one in the company, break every sales record possible, made more money than I've ever seen in my life. Allow us to travel all over the place as a family. I mean it was… and when those two years were done and I really started to come out of that, I realized, that's what Grace is.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I deserved lightning through the roof of my car. I deserve death and instead of that, He gave me blessing after blessing after blessing. And our family was so privileged in so many ways. And I just realized okay, now I think I know what Grace is. and…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And the goodness of God was so extraordinary during that time. But having said that…
Joshua Boswell: Can I pause you there for just a minute? I want to ask something in there.
Russell De Vos: Yeah. Please.
Joshua Boswell: You know, Russ, it’s a rare… It's not as rare as we think sometimes but it's unusual for someone as the scriptures say to come to themselves, right?
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And you're describing this really incredible story… Not a story, experience. And somewhere along the line there had been some precipitating event that caused you to go, Okay… wait a minute. And I know you're talking about Grace and you realized these blessings, but I just wonder, what gave you the fortitude and the courage to start stepping out of that hatred and that anger and that frustration, right?
Russell De Vos: Right.
Joshua Boswell: I'd love to… there's a piece there where you switched. And I'd love to hear about that real quick.
Russell De Vos: And as you're asking that question, I'm not honestly sure other than, I think it was… What I've realized over the last 16 years of work is… And the story is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, by the way. It’s that I lived my life in a fog of so much lack of self-awareness. I didn't know myself. I didn't know… Some of it was probably pride, some of it was probably that we didn't communicate about emotions or anything of any depth in my home, growing up… Though I surely don't hold that against my parents. It just wasn't the way it worked.
Joshua Boswell: Sure.
Russell De Vos: We were performance driven.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: We performed. All of us got good grades, we were some of the best athletes in school, we were on Rotary Club student of the month. All the stuff.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: We had all the awards and the badges, but we didn't really talk about the heart. And so I think I didn't really know my heart. I didn't know my own weaknesses. And I think over that course of two years… it was really right around two years the fog started to lift a little bit.
Joshua Boswell: Mmm Yeah
Russell De Vos: And it wasn't by any means fully lifted. That's been a process that goes on to this day. But I think I started to first of all realize I can't keep blaming everybody else.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hm.
Russell De Vos: I'd been blaming everybody and so angry at God and I think I just saw all of this… kind of think it was just an overwhelming sense of, Why does He keep blessing me when I keep cursing Him? Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I think there's just a point where I just realized. Wow. Because I did pick up my Bible again. I started pursuing a relationship with God again. And I know the relationship was there during those two years. It was just a very very odd, strained wrestle with God.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: That was just intense to say the least. But I think it was just a realization. I remember thinking, So that's what Grace is. And I think there was a gratitude that settled in my heart that displaced a lot of ingratitude and discontentment and the blaming. And there was a process where my heart started turning again. And I think it was just… you know, Romans 2 verse 4 says it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.
Mrgie Boswell: Hm-hm.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I think that’s… I haven't actually ever put those two together until just now. I think that's probably the answer to your question. I think it was the kindness of God that started to turn my heart.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: When I realized He's been nothing but good and I've been nothing but awful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: He just keeps being kind and I just thought, my word. And I think that's probably what was happening.
Joshua Boswell: That's amazing. So, I just want to say for the thousands of people's lives you've touched, thank you for responding to that kindness of God. And turning, in a sense, to gratitude. I see two things that play here, Russ. I mean God definitely was just pouring out stuff on top of you.
Russell De Vos: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: And if the truth be told, at least in my experience, and I've been a bishop in my church, and I've ministered with thousands of people and I've coached over 30,000 entrepreneurs across the world. I've dealt with a lot of people.
Russell De Vos: Yeah. Wow.
Joshua Boswell: And here's my experience. My experience is that God is always pouring out his love onto His children. But they don't usually recognize it. And you had the courage after a couple years to recognize it and start your prodigal journey back.
Russell De Vos: Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Right? So kudos to you. I think that's awesome. And I think that if anyone's listening to this, that sense of humility and gratitude and opening your eyes and just seeing, Gosh is God doing something for me? And what is it? I think it's so powerful that kindness turns the heart as you say, so thank you. So you said the story gets worse before it gets better. So you’ve piqued my interest man, okay.
Russell De Vos: Yeah. Oh my goodness. So you want me to just pick up where we left off?
Joshua Boswell: Let's go, yeah.
Russell De Vos: Look forward? Okay.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, it's awesome.
Russell De Vos: The work in our hearts is not a fast quick thing, I’ve found.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: You know, we all want God to change us a lot quicker than He does and we want to grow faster than we do.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And for me it has been such. The roots of things are so deep that to pull those and to really clean out the heart is really quite a process. So one of the things that marked when I…
Russell De Vos: Temptation. Not honoring my marriage vows and as first Timothy Chapter 2 says, being the husband of one wife as a qualification for a leader or an elder in the church.
I was not the husband of one wife. My mind was not committed. My heart was not committed to one woman. In some of the counseling that I went through afterwards, they basically… one of the lady counselors said, “Russ you live as if you don't have a wedding ring on.”
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And I tell you that just… that just smote me when I heard that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: This is one of the principles that I've learned over the course of this journey is that Some of us are very stiff-necked and we have to learn by a lot of pain. It takes a sledge handle between the eyeballs to get us to change.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And with the unfaithfulness to my wife issue, and the husband of one wife, the fallout of my unfaithfulness was so dramatic and so painful and the loss was so great, that by God's grace for the last 16 years there's been a brick wall around our marriage.
I mean that issue really never has surfaced again. There's always… you have to be on guard. And I'll tell people I'll never say that I'll never be unfaithful again because the moment I do, that's setting me up and a prideful statement that just sets me up. But that issue by God's grace has been dealt with.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: What I then experienced was intense amounts of anger.
Joshua Boswell: mmm
Russell De Vos: And though I was experiencing the kindness of God. I realized how I have come to realize and I began to work through issue, the second major issue that derailed me even as a pastor and that was unchecked anger.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I thought it was righteous anger. You know how… it was so easy to justify it.
Margie Boswell: Righteous indignation.
Joshua Boswell: We all want to see ourselves as Christ with the whip in the temple square, right?
Russell De Vos: That's exactly right. I know.
Joshua Boswell: This is great. I'm justified in it. Like oh… dang it. Nope.
Russell De Vos: But that has been the journey. That has been the major journey and so to… long story short, though after two years I began to build my relationship with God again. It was another six years of just really stumbling around in the dark. Deep depression. Almost despair. What we had left in Bend was so beautiful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And the shipwreck was just so awful. I remember not really knowing anything about PTSD but my wife was talking about it.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I looked up the definition of PTSD and every trait there was me.
Joshua Boswell: Was you. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And this failure… because I had, up to 39 years old when all this blew up, really had the keys to the city.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I mean God had given me so much favor and so much trust with people, I could do almost anything I wanted. It was extraordinary. And that literally went away in a moment.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Our choices are huge. Our choices are huge and what we work all of our lifetime to gain, we can lose in a moment when our character isn't right. John Maxwell said it. He said charisma will get you in the door, but character will keep you in the room.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Russell De Vos: And that is one of the key statements of my whole life. There's so many people with charisma. Lots of energy. They can draw you to them by their personality. But when you spend time with them, you realize they’ve got a lot of charisma, not so much character.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And so the Lord began to say, began to prompt me that I'm gonna refine your character. You cannot be an angry man. You cannot be angry. I will not use you if you are an angry man. And I damaged all three of my relationships with my kids so desperately and so badly that my wife… I'll just say this. In 2015 it had been eight years of just mucking around in darkness.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: A statement by a salesman friend of mine that he used to close deals, and I thought it was so corny, but it hammered me. It was simply this: nothing changes unless something changes. So simple…
Joshua Boswell: Mmm Yeah, simple.
Russell De Vos: But it was the Catalyst in my life. I remember in November of 2015, sitting on our porch swing thinking, something has to change. Our marriage was on the ragged edge. I didn't have almost any relationship with my children. They didn't want to be around me. And it was interesting because two days after that moment, I got angry at my daughter for disrespecting my wife and I grabbed her by the neck and pushed her up against the wall. My daughter, she was a junior in high school and that was over the line with my anger.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And my wife asked me to leave. And that started the first of four marital separations that we've experienced for over two years worth of time separated.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Not only for marital separations, but two times in jail. I've been in jail twice because of anger. And I could justify each one and say why it wasn't really my fault and all the rest.
But the second time I was in jail in this the County detention center. It's so funny. I've got three guys on cots… we had two bunk beds and the other three guys are all sleeping off heavy drugs. Drugs and petty crime and whatever and I'm sitting in there and I'm wide awake, two in the morning, and I'm pacing in the cell and doing business with God. And I heard His voice. He said Russ, I want to use you, but I won't use you while you're angry.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And it was a turning point for me. Another turning point. There's so many different moments.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I realized I can't keep justifying my anger as righteous. It wasn't righteous. It was damaging. It was abusive. It was very deeply controlling. It was ugly. And so the journey to get control over my anger was already in process, but it was accelerated immensely by my jail time.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, sure.
Russell De Vos: And anyway, so that was the second major major fire, if you will, that God used to burn off the dross in my life.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right.
Russell De Vos: Meanwhile, all the while that we were in this separation right towards the end of these different separations, our youngest son, who we had struggled with since he was two.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: We saw different things in him since he was a tiny child, but he was a savant violin player.
Margie Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: Spectacular violin player. But very difficult getting along with anybody. And in his own brokenness he began to use drugs, which was a nightmare for me. I never dreamed I'd be a father of a child who used drugs. It just was one of the deep fears that I had.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And his junior year… We had tried everything. I had made every kind of chart you can imagine, we had tried every reward and consequences system you can imagine. Everything. And it didn't… we were at our wits end.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Russell De Vos: Our marriage was again on a ragged edge. We could hardly agree on how to parent him. And it was at that point that we sent him, finally, after two years of wrestling with it, to Teen Challenge in Morrow, Arkansas outside of Fayetteville. And that started a whole nother Journey.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I mean the details there I can bullet point them for you if you'd like. But what happened at that point was again, God's grace. A class started for parents. It was the first of its kind. It was led by folks from a church in Dallas Texas who, believe it or not, the founders of this course called Prodigal were both plastic surgeons, very successful, world-renowned, who both have sons who were prodigals.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Russell De Vos: And so one of them… and together really, but led by one, had put together a curriculum 20 weeks on that that took parents… who are in that same chaos right through a 20-week course. And Teen Challenge had gotten a hold of these guys and asked, would you do something like this for a beta group of our parents via zoom?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah
Russell De Vos: And this is before covid and we happen to be one of four parents that got to be part of that.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And it was literally the most life-changing 20 weeks of my whole adult life.
Margie Boswell: Mmm.
Russell De Vos: And our marriage was on week five of that course, our marriage was going one direction or another. Because it confronts issues.
Joshua Boswell: It confronts stuff. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I was so angry on week five with my wife for exposing me in front of the whole group in a pretty dramatic way. And I sat quietly and didn't say a word, but I had to make a decision that week. Was I going to submit to what had just happened and move forward or was I going to resist it out of pride? and…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: say I won't put up with this anymore. I'm too good for this, or whatever the pride says. And again by God's help I veered towards, this is the discipline of God in my life continuing to root out the ugly. Because He wants to use us. He wants to use us.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So that was a hinge and the next 15 weeks of that course were just life-changing. We came out of that with a marriage that was beginning to shift and change. And a home now that had a plan. And parents who were united.
Joshua Boswell: He wants you.
Russell De Vos: That was huge. And a dad who was beginning to deal with his anger in a significant way. And for our son to leave that program and come back to disunified parents, an angry dad, no boundaries, no consequences, no plan, no strategy… It would have been disastrous.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Now. Having said that, even having everything right, becoming healthy in the home doesn't mean that the prodigal is all about that. He came home and he knew he could see a difference in us. He saw that we were united for the first time.
Because he could always divide us, that was a superpower, dividing mom and dad. And he couldn't do it. We were deadly serious. We had a very clear plan with clear boundaries, clear consequences. He knew we were deadly serious about it. We were not going to have chaos in our home again.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And long after he came home. He turned 18 and he chose to leave our home because he would not live by the rules and boundaries that we'd set up. And so it was a very cordial parting. And he moved to Chicago and dove into a world that was as ugly as you can imagine.
Then he came back home when covid hit and we hadn't adequately prepared for him to come home. It was kind of a quick fly you home because of covid. And we had to reinstate our plan and as a result of this… Let me fast forward through it to kind of where we are today. He began to secretly… We thought he was going to work at Costco every day.
Joshua Boswell: mmm
Russell De Vos: I received a text on a Tuesday morning with a video of my son snorting cocaine off of his Costco name tag.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I literally… I was numb. I had no idea what to do. Thankfully it was early in the morning when I got the text. Somebody had screenshotted it off of tik tok or SnapChat or something. They sent it to me. And we had all day to work through this to be unified as a couple. We got a drug test when he came home.
We asked him to take the drug test. He wouldn't take it for almost two hours. So we sat on the couch in silence. We said, Nobody's going to bed. Nobody’s doing anything until this drug test. It came back positive for three different things and at 10:30 at night, in a downpouring rain, he packed his bags and left the house.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And that started… we didn't realize it, but that started two+ years of addiction to fentanyl. We’re now… He graduated a week ago Sunday from his rehab.
Joshua Boswell: Yay!
Russell De Vos: He's now Nine months sober. He's 22 now.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And he is pursuing a life of sobriety. Quietly building a relationship with Jesus. And we're still in the battle. This is not over.
Joshua Boswell: Oh yeah.
Russell De Vos: And so that's kind of where we're at now. My wife and I are doing better than we've ever done. But the process of walking through this with our son after the first season of that 20 week course, the next season we became co-leaders. The third season we became leaders.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And then we just finished season number 10.
Joshua Boswell: Amazing!
Margie Boswell: God is using you now!
Russell De Vos: Oh my goodness, four plus years and worked with hundreds and hundreds of parents. And so here's how my coaching fits into it. I was only coaching men. And so a lot of the men in these classes became my clients outside of prodigal.
Joshua Boswell: Outside of it. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But it has become very clear that the need for coaches for parents who are walking through this is so great that I've shifted to coaching families now. Husbands and wives through a 16 week coaching program that I've created called Lifeline.
Joshua Boswell: Lifeline.
Russell De Vos: And it walks people right straight through week one, where does your hope have to be anchored? Week 16 there's a new sheriff in town. Taking back leadership of your home and everything in between. And so you guys that's kind of bringing us right to this moment.
Joshua Boswell: Okay,…
Margie Boswell: That’s so amazing!
Joshua Boswell: I knew the title of this was The Phoenix Rising. I mean, it's incredible on multiple different accounts. You know what, you shared with us some really personal and very private and very powerful things. And I am just overwhelmed by your generosity and transparency. And I think that it's amazing thing when you get that humble, God will bless you. And I hope that anyone listening to this that’s holding on that anger or that pride or that fear of being exposed. I hope that they see in you, Russ, that it's okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to be open.
And in fact, that gratitude, that vulnerability, that openness is the path back. Because it allows you to start from the beginning and to get the help you need and to get the support you need.
So first of all, thank you very much. That was…
Margie Boswell: An incredible journey.
Joshua Boswell: Absolutely incredible journey and I love that you’re still on it. And I want to say one other thing that I think is amazing. And that is, I'm astonished at the resilience of you and your wife and your son. I don't know the story of your other two, but certainly those three that you’ve highlighted there. Your resilience to not give up.
I have loved ones who have ended their life with drug overdose. I've seen people check out emotionally and mentally and just literally disappear, to this day not to be heard of again. And you guys… You guys stuck. It's incredible.
Margie Boswell: Well and I love how you have set the personal example for your son of this journey. And so now he has a tangible example to follow of how to overcome those negative character traits, how to create a relationship with God so he can move forward in his life. It’s awesome.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Can I comment on that real quick? You guys… there’s a reason. Nothing is an accident in our lives. That's one thing that I’ve really come to find out. When we were married, the day we were married, we stood in front of 250 people during the reception.
And off the cuff, after we'd already set our vows, we'd already done that in the wedding ceremony. I turned all the people and I put my arm around my wife and I looked at her and then I looked at the people and I said, “I promise all of you before God…” and I'd already said my vows, but I said to them, “I will never divorce this woman.”
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: I have no idea why… well I do now.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But I will tell you, my vows at that point… I didn't understand the power of the vows and the sacredness of the vows. But for me, that statement in that reception hall. That was my vow.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And it has haunted me all these years. And I just realized I made a promise to all those people. Not even I made a covenant before God. That wasn't as powerful, that hasn’t been as powerful frankly. It is now.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But it hasn't been, all these years, as powerful as that statement that I made in front of people. And I just said I can't go back on that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I've got to keep that promise. There's a second thing, a book that I read. It was by a Christian counselor. He was an old Statesman, been around for years. I can't remember his name now, but I remember reading in a book. And this is the power of a statement to stick in your mind as a marker. He said, “After all the years of coaching and counseling couples, I've come to see that many of them give up right before the breakthrough.”
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And he made the statement. I never had realized that physically this is actually true. It's always the darkest right before the dawn. That is physically the case. I didn't realize it until reading that statement.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It was literally the darkest right before the dawn. They're literally two sides of the same coin. And when I read that I just thought “I will not be another one of those couples.”
Joshua Boswell: nice
Russell De Vos: Where we do… we go through all this garbage, all this fighting, all of this struggle, all of this test, all of it. And then we just chuck it. Right before the dawn.
Margie Boswell: Yes, right.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Russell De Vos: And just said, “I won't be one of those” and my wife is just stubborn, stubborn, stubborn also and I think it's a sacred stubbornness. And so we just have determined and…
Joshua Boswell: It's sacred stubbornness. Yes.
Margie Boswell: Yes.
Russell De Vos: So we just have determined. And the third thing was, we have had so many people tell us, “We're watching your marriage. And the fact that you are still together has given us the courage to stick it out ourselves.”
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And you guys, when you hear those kinds of things. It has been super glue for us. We were just realizing our marriage is so much bigger than us. It's not just about our happiness. It is a testimony and a testament to God's power, God's amazing grace in a life. And it's broadcasted way beyond just my wife and I, even way beyond our children, which I think have been so blessed to watch us walk through this. I mean they have the battle scars.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It hasn't been because we're so amazing. There have been things that God has specifically and divinely placed in our lives that are kind of the guardrails, if you will, to keep us from going over the cliff. I have thought about leaving hundreds of times.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: In my weak moment, it’s like I just can't take this anymore. I just can't stand this. And well this is too much, and then you know you start, I deserve this and I deserve that and I deserve better this and deserve, deserve, deserve. That word is… you got to get rid of that word.
Yeah, and so that I just wanted to comment on that because I just again see the grace of God in placing these moments in our lives that have truly been guardrails for us so we don't go over the cliff.
Joshua Boswell: So can you talk a little bit about some of those either guard rails or principles? Because you've got a great marriage now and your son is pulling through and you're still in the fight with him and letting God do His business there.
Russell De Vos: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: And so you're in the thick of these things. I wonder if you have some principles… and then we're going to talk about some actions, but some overarching principles, one or two, that you see are really impactful for you to get you where you're at now and then to hold you there. So what would you say to couples that are struggling? And, you know, parents of teens or children, or any age really, that are struggling with this stuff. How do you get to where you're at now?
Russell De Vos: I'm going to take that in two sections.
Joshua Boswell: beautiful Yeah.
Russell De Vos: There was a point in our marriage where I realized. I'm not responsible for my wife.
Joshua Boswell: Hmm.
Russell De Vos: The word codependency is one that is kind of tossed around in counseling circles, but codependency essentially means that I'm dependent on somebody else's view of me for my own value.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And that I'm dependent upon their treatment of me, their view of me for me to feel valuable. I was so codependent on my wife for so long.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Russell De Vos: I needed her to affirm me to think I was the greatest thing in the world. All of that. And it was such a crippling thing for me. Encouragement is phenomenal. Support is wonderful. All these things are very healthy. But if it becomes your source of value.
People change, people are fickle. People are human. I've got to get my value from a higher source. And there was a point where I finally realized, and I think honestly the separations were what began to do it for me. Because when I was separated from my wife, it was extraordinarily painful.
On Christmas day, my… I think it was the second separation. My wife was at home with our kids and I was in my apartment. And I received an email with about 40 some odd bullet points of all the things my kids didn't like about.
Joshua Boswell: My goodness. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Merry Christmas. And I read that and I'm telling you is a dagger to the heart. It was awful. I still have it to this day because I see it as a… I was able to somehow, again God's help, see it as a bullet pointed list of the areas I needed to go to work.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And so I kept it as kind of my to-do list.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Russell De Vos: And so here's my point. If you ask a couple how many people have to change a marriage, many people will say what?
Margie Boswell: Both of them.
Joshua Boswell: Both. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And when they say that, I try to gently but respectfully but strongly say no. One person. It does not take both people to change a marriage.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. one
Russell De Vos: It takes one person. If one person changes one percent, that whole marriage changes by one percent.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So I came to understand that principle and realized I can't change my wife but I can change me.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: The more I try to control my wife, change my wife, have all these expectations for my wife. It just ends incredible frustration and it creates all sorts of conflict. And one of the things we teach in the lifeline course is that expectations are often just a setup for frustration and they're also a catalyst for a lot of anger. A lot of anger flows out of unmet expectations that we need to just drop those expectations in large part.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Mmm.
Russell De Vos: That's another conversation. But that was very important for me to just… I got sequestered away with God and just said let's work together, You and I. And part of that the separations really caused me to pull into my relationship with God and really… I think I began to know God in a way I never had before because I was absent from those who I was so dependent on for my value.
They were in another house and I couldn't even see them and so I just began to work on myself. And I'll tell you, that it's life-changing. When a dad especially when a man and a father has so much influence in a home. Not that the mother doesn't, she sure does.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But the impact of a dad or the absence of a dad, his lack of presence, has a huge impact.
Joshua Boswell: Huge impact. Yeah.
Margie Boswell: That's right.
Russell De Vos: And so I just realized I can't control my kids, I can't control my wife, but I can control my journey to grow. And so I just began. I hired a coach, you guys this is one of the reasons why I'm such a big believer in coaches.
My first coach that I hired, I looked across the horizon of my life. This is November of 2015, and literally every area of my life was a mess except making a lot of money. And this is the same for a lot of men.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: They can make money hand over fist that they can't do anything else. They're out of shape physically, their marriage is a mess, the kids are a mess. And that was me to the detail.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I said, which area do I need to start working on first? Because you can really only start one place and focus there and then move.
Joshua Boswell: right
Russell De Vos: And I realized I was heavily overweight.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Russ: Traveling in sales, McDonald's. Traveling from you know, traveling sales guy.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah
Russell De Vos: Wendy's, McDonald’s, all the junk food and I was just a mess. So I hired a coach to help me lose weight and I lost 33 pounds in seven weeks.
Joshua Boswell: That's awesome.
Margie Boswell: Nice.
Russell De Vos: And it was so dramatic, and the change was so instant, almost. I mean, I stopped snoring. I was sleeping. I was… my whole life changed.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I realized, I can't tackle all these other areas, because I can't even sleep well because I'm just so overweight. And when you're lacking sleep, it affects every other area of your life. So that… I saw the dramatic changes that a coach made. And I paid a good chunk. I paid almost 2500 dollars that seven weeks.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But it was the best money I’ve probably ever spent but it showed me, Oh my word what people can do when they have somebody who believes in them, who supports them, holds them accountable, trains and and as a contact point.
And then I hired another coach to start helping me with my anger and he was a little guy named Elijah and he was a former Marine and just a good guy and he and I started working through anger issues. And towards the major breakthrough that started to happen there as I began to rewire and renew my mind. You know in Romans 12 verse 2 says that you're transformed by the renewal of your mind.
Margie Boswell: Mmm.
Russell De Vos: It's not by the adjustment of your behavior. It's by the renewal of your mind. All of our behaviors flow out of our beliefs and our thoughts.
Margie Boswell: That’s right.
Russell De Vos: So we get to get the mind right, the behaviors take care of themselves. And so I started getting my mind right and that… I realized my mind was just a big garbage dump for every kind of ugly, hateful, dark thing about my children and my wife. I had such awful thoughts and I wasn't aware of some of them until I did what's called a brain dump. And I dumped out about 32 different thoughts that I had about my children.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Russell De Vos: And it was the ugliest list you've ever seen. It was uncensored. There was nobody else around. I was in a coffee shop by myself after a coaching session with Elijah. He had asked me the question, if you… because I was telling him how frustrated I was with my kids and how they were such, you know, blah blah blah and outta control and disrespectful and blah blah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And he said if you saw your kids as your employees, would that change the way you treat them? And I thought for a moment and I thought… It sure would.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah!
Russell De Vos: I would treat them very different if they were my employees. And that stimulated a whole line of thought that I went away from that coaching session and I said, how do I think of my children?
Joshua Boswell: How do you see them? Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So I took a notebook and on the left hand side of the page I wrote down, uncensored, I just opened up my Cranium and dumped every thought I could think of.
And it was 32, and I stood back and I looked at that list after I'd finished. I couldn't think of anything else and I thought, No wonder my kids can't stand me.
Joshua Boswell: Righ. Yeah, because they're gonna… I mean we all know children feel that from you.
Russell De Vos: They do.
Joshua Boswell: Whatever your thoughts are, they feel it, they sense it. It shows up and all your communications tone of voice and your body language.
Margie Boswell: Body language. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. I mean if you had 32.. wow.
Russell De Vos: And what I realized was, Now I understand why I'm so angry.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Because it's these thoughts that are driving my emotion of anger. So what I did then was, I did what was called a turnaround. On the right hand side of the page I went sentence for sentence and I wrote the truth as looking through God's eyes at my children.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Mmm
Russell De Vos: You guys, here's the powerful thing about this exercise. I call it the brain dump. I stood back and I had two lists sitting in front of me at that point. And I was at a Crossroads. I had to make a choice. I got to make a choice. And I realized for the first time, I can live off the left list, which I have been for much of my adult life. Or I can shift and I can begin to live off the right side of that page.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And I made a very distinct choice. I will not ever go back to the left side of the page again.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: That is history. And so I took the right side of the page, all those thoughts that were so beautiful, so healthy, so wonderful, and I began to review them day after day after day after day. And literally as scripture says, transformation comes by the renewing of your mind.
Joshua Boswell: Renewing of the mind. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Much of my anger towards my kids just went away.
Joshua Boswell: Disappeared. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: All those 32 beautiful thoughts about who my kids were from God's standpoint of you. I just… It just replaced anger with gratitude and with empathy and with compassion and with excitement, you know, there's just so many other emotions that came when I'm thinking these beautiful thoughts.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. that’s incredible.
Russell De Vos: Yeah, huge turning point.
Margie Boswell: What a great exercise. I love that. I think everybody should do that.
Joshua Boswell: Oh yeah. And for in lots of different categories of our life.
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Margie Boswell: Your marriage, your children. Any relationships. That’s incredible.
Joshua Boswell: So I had a question for you, but I think you answered it. So I'm gonna ask the question and highlight how you already answered it. You're a prophet Russ, you’re ahead of me, man. So the question was like… So these expectations that we often have for people?
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: You could also say it’s this belief level or this view of how we see them. And I think that we become addicted to that, right? It's almost like this addiction because it serves our selfish ends, our pride, right? There's so many things that it feeds. And so we're using it to defend ourselves or protect ourselves.
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And I'm sure that if you look at that list, it's like well, you know, some of these things you think about your children may have been, I'm guessing, but may have been a way to protect you or to glorify you. I'm actually a good guy because they're terrible and do this, right? And we become addicted to these kinds of thoughts. And so the question is gonna ask is how do we replace those expectations? Because we all know habits are not removed, they're replaced.
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: And because we're creatures of habits, your body and your system all want to move toward these repetitive things, especially if you're, you know, slightly OCD like me, right babe?
At any rate… what I love about what you said is that you're replacing those expectations with being able to see others through God's eyes. That's really what I got out of what you just said. And when we put on that lens, it transforms everything and then it allows us to start renewing our mind. And then as you said that renewal changes into new feelings and those new feelings change into new behavior.
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: And that's and that's that pattern and process. I think people get so fearful and frustrated, like, how do I change, and I don't know where to start, and what I do? And what you're saying is like, Oh look, this is actually easy. Put on a new lens. It generates new emotions. We have new behavior sets. And it's such a powerful pattern. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Yep. That’s exactly right.
Margie Boswell: Love it.
Russell De Vos: I think most people are not aware… First of all, this whole issue itself is awareness. John Maxwell talks about it in his book 21 Irrefutable Laws. No… it's 15 Invaluable Laws Of Growth is the book. It’s the law of awareness. And the law of awareness simply states, you must know yourself to grow yourself.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I think so much of the hard work… people… Our lives are so busy. They're so fast-paced that we don't have we don't take the time. We don't make the time or take the time to do the hard work that is… Most of our most profound growth is done in solitude. It's done behind closed doors. Where other people don't see it. It's the hard work is the heart work.
Margie Boswell: Yes.
Russell De Vos: And that usually happens in solitude. And so to speak to the issue of expectations, I think you're absolutely right. I think a lot of them… I just finished a training called Letting Go. It's probably the pivot training of all of the training to parents with their troubled teens. We have so many dreams for our kids and so many visions of who they should be and what they should attain, all the rest.
For me, that drove control, that drove the anger, that drove so many negative things for me that… I just have come to realize, there's a principle that we teach in parenting. The difference between responsible to and responsible for.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: This was absolutely life-changing for me when I realized this. Because when they're younger we are responsible for them, right? I mean, they're just figuring things out. We… you know, when they're splashing around in the toilet, you know, because they think it's so much fun. We've got to intervene in those situations.
Joshua Boswell: Especially if there's brown stuff in there. Gotta intervene. So important.
Russell De Vos: Yeah, and so… but as they get older, we begin to give them more space and we begin to give them more opportunity to make decisions and to make mistakes and to fail. Because failure is one of our greatest teachers.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And this principle was so revolutionary to me because I took “responsible for” right into the very latter part of their high school years. Versus “responsible to.” Responsible to… during the “responsible for” years… I'll just say this quickly. It’s we teach them. Words are very important during those years.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hm.
Russell De Vos: That's where you know in Deuteronomy chapter 6, it says you’re to speak of them when you rise up you're to speak of God's commandments when you lay down, when you go out, when you come in, when you're… all of it. It's just a lifestyle teaching the principles and commandments of God.
As they get older, if you've done your job in the younger years and unfortunately, you can't really say, Well, I didn't do my job in the younger years, now I'm going to lecture you all your teenage years.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: You've got to kind of step back. It's not so much words as it is modeling
Joshua Boswell: Modeling. Mm-hm.
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Russell De Vos: So many parents are not integritous between what they say and what they do. There's not integrity.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah
Russell De Vos: Kids have an antenna. And so we model and we give them room to make decisions. You know, it's a process of course, but then we allow the consequences of the decisions. And we're responsible to them to be consistent, to be a model, to be that picture of the things we've taught them all those years.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Now this is what it looks like, and we're going to let you make some choices as to whether you want to apply that or not. But you're also going to get the consequences when you choose both good and bad, right? The consequences can be wonderfully good.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Russell De Vos: And so how does that translate into expectations?
I felt so responsible for my kids' spiritual lives, for my kids' educational life, for my kids' athletic life, for my kids' musical life, for… and it's like, when you're taking “responsible for” into those years when they're becoming an adult…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It becomes almost inevitably controlling behaviors.
Joshua Boswell: Of course.
Russell De Vos: It just creates all sorts of conflict.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, especially since it's an absolute guarantee. Anybody who's had a parent… If you've been a parent. It's an absolute guarantee. They're not going to follow the “plan.”
Russell De Vos: You got it.
Joshua Boswell: Right? Like… and if you're responsible, and they keep veering off the path, like you said, that's where the control comes in. It’s like… Hey, you're off the path, I'm gonna force you to get back on here, right?
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: And you know, one thing we know is God does not force us. It's like when you were in jail, God could have forced you to give up your anger, but He said, Look, I want to use you, but I won’t use you angry. So you got to decide. And he sits back and goes, it’s your choice buddy.
Margie Boswell: Right.
Russell De Vos: Exactly. That's exactly right.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, so I think that it's really really powerful what you're saying. And you know, when the child is two years old and starts running out of the road?
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, bodily extract them from the road. I mean, come on, right? When they're 15 and running down a path. That's like, well, they're kind of in jail pacing around angry and you got to go. Well…
Margie Boswell: What are you going to do?
Joshua Boswell: You can't you can't live life angry and can have these rewards, so you gotta make a choice. And you got a lot you gotta love them. So I love what you're saying here.
Russell De Vos: I'll add one more thought to it. That is this. When I released those expectations of our, of all of our kids guys, it's been all of them.
Joshua Boswell: Of course. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It gave them the freedom to love them right where they're at. And what I had to realize was the path that you're talking about? We have this picture of what it looks like.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah!
Russell De Vos: That's not… That’s so not the path most of the time. I mean there are principles, but we're… and that's where our life gets so uptight and so controlling is, You're you're veering off the path! My son, my 22 year old who just you know is coming out of rehab and learning how to walk in a healthy way, his path is so radically different than anything I ever would have dreamed.
Joshua Boswell: Totally.
Russell De Vos: And I have to believe his mess, his test is literally setting him up to have a testimony and a message that is so powerful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: It's going to speak to so many people. Would I have chosen that route? Never a million years.
Joshua Boswell: Never. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: But it's not up to me. I… And this is one thing that we share with parents over and over and over, and it's like boom their eyes… It’s, Those are not your kids.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, that’s right.
Margie Boswell: Right.
Russell De Vos: You are a steward of them. God has divinely given you stewardship over those children. They’re His. They belong to him. And by the way, He loves them infinitely more than you do. He knows every detail of their heart, every fabric. He knit, Psalm 139, He knit them together in their mother's womb. He's written a book, a story, their own biography. He knows everything about them. You can't parent that child better than He can.
Joshua Boswell: Nope.
Margie Boswell: That's right.
Joshua Boswell: Amen.
Margie Boswell: Well, you know Russ, we have… you know we have 11 children? I don't know if you knew that.
Russell De Vos: That's fantastic.
Margie Boswell: But it's amazing to see each one of them… You know, we raise them all, we thought we raise them all the same.
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: But each one is choosing their own separate path and it’s beautiful! And you know, if we can see the beauty in it instead of holding on to, Oh, you didn't turn out the way I wanted you to be. You know?
Russell De Vos: Exactly
Joshua Boswell: And, you know, that turnaround conversation you're talking about. I think it's awesome when parents can say like we've tried to say, Well, you didn't turn out the way I expected or wanted you to be. You're turning out the way God intends you to be and thank heavens I was wrong.
Margie Boswell: Yes, right.
Russell De Vos: Absolutely.
Joshua Boswell: And even all struggles and trials that your son's going through, I think, you know what? You're right. God looks at that and His redeeming grace and His plan for people is just amazing. He knows the plan and He's willing to work with us on it. And we as parents get to be the cheerleaders the support and the guides but we don't give the control, you know, it's amazing,
Russell De Vos: Yep. Yep.
Joshua Boswell: So I… Russ, I think that we should talk again.
Russell De Vos: Happy to!
Joshua Boswell: Because I have got more stuff.
Margie Boswell: More questions, but our time is running short.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, and you have an amazing amount of wisdom. I wonder if there's any, you know, as we kind of wrap up… Actually I want to cover two things. One is, I would love to hear if there's something that has been on your heart and mind that you wanted to share with us that you haven't… you know, we haven't got to yet? And I'd love to hear that really quick.
And then also, I would love to hear how we can point people into your world, right? Because you've got this Lifeline course, you've got other resources. You’ve just got a lot of wisdom. You've got experience in spades, brother. Wow.
Margie Boswell: Yes!
Joshua Boswell: And I think there's a lot of people that could benefit from that. So first all… is there any question I should’ve asked you or that you wanted to talk about? Or any last thoughts you'd like to share with us.
Russell De Vos: Not… I mean, this has been really wonderful guys, really wonderful dialogue. And yeah, there's… I mean, if we want to get down in the nitty-gritty and the weeds, there's so many principles and things that I could talk about.
Joshua Boswell: Totally.
Russell De Vos: And that would be a great second conversation.
Margie Boswell: Yes.
Russell De Vos: The thing that… I’ll just say this. The first lesson of the 16 weeks is called Hope’s Anchor.
Joshua Boswell: Hope’s Anchor. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: Where must our hope be anchored?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And one thing that I have to immediately get centered and get… It's a ground level truth with the parents that we work with. And this is what anybody, everybody, all of us. And that is if our hope that… and I mean, if you don't have hope you're in trouble, right?
Joshua Boswell: Totally. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: I mean, yeah, our hope is gonna be anchored somewhere. It's gonna be attached or tethered to something or someone.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And what I share with the parents is this. And it's just straight out of the chutes. If your hope is tethered to an outcome or to a resource that is not God himself, your hope is in jeopardy.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Right.
Russell De Vos: God is the only rock. He's the only immovable, unchangeable, stable, reliable source for our hope.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And when everything is dark, when everything looks impossible, when you're tethered, your hope is linked, anchored, chained, super glued to God Himself, you can go… you can make it through virtually anything.
Joshua Boswell: Anything. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And that has been such a huge… I mean, it's really Relationship With God 101. I mean it's really the entry, but it's also the exit and it's everything in between.
Joshua Boswell: That's right. Yeah.
Russell De Vos: So… I think our whole journey in this life is really a process of learning to trust God.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And it sounds so simple and it sounds almost like, Is that all you got? Yeah, I'll tell you… when you start to get that, everything changes.
Joshua Boswell: Everything changes.
Russell De Vos: Yeah. So that's the final little nugget there.
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Joshua Boswell: Amen.
Russell De Vos: God is building that into my life.
Joshua Boswell:So we would echo that. I mean, any time in my life when I have put my hope that someone else will change or that an outcome will happen that I want them to do, or you know, whatever it is. You know, I've been sorely and sometimes bitterly disappointed.
Russell De Vos: Right.
Joshua Boswell: But conversely when we put our hope in God and our trust in Him, we've never been disappointed. And we've not always liked the outcome. I want to state that right now.
Russell De Vos: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: Because you know, I love the quote, and we've kind of inferred to it, but that quote from CS Lewis where it's like, and I'm paraphrasing. You know, God comes to us and says He's gonna help fix up our cottage and so first He starts, you know, fixing the plumbing and changing a few walls here and there. And we thought, Oh that needed to be fixed anyway, that's nice. Thank you, God. That’s great.
Russell De Vos: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Then all the sudden He brings in a wrecking ball. It's like, Dang, that hurts! Yeah, He's not fixing to make you a cottage. He's fixing to make you a mansion, a huge castle.
Russell De Vos: I love that. I've never heard that. That's great.
Joshua Boswell: I’ll send you the actual quote. It’s beautiful. And it's really the way it is. And so when we… I love your point about letting go, because when we let go we're simultaneously letting go and we're anchoring ourselves to hope. But we're anchoring it to a place that actually can do something.
Um, I had an atheist... I'll talk too much, but I have a friend who's an atheist. Good, you know, decent guy and I'm good friends with him. And he just can't wrap his head around the concept of God. Which I think it requires way more faith than believing in God. But that’s a whole separate conversation. I’m not going to go there.
But I once said to him, Look, I got an IT guy that lives up in Canada. I've never met him. I've seen a picture of him. I've never touched him. And yet he does stuff for me that I can't do for myself, right?
And I just said, To me that is an analogy of God, right? He's never physically walked in the door and sat down and chilled with us. But I know He's there and I've seen the work that He does in my life. And it never fails.
Russell De Vos: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: Ever. And I think that's an important lesson for parents to learn because we think we have to control it. I've had lots of coaches in my life as well. One of my coaches once said… I said, I think I just totally ruined this. And they said, Let me just tell you, you're not powerful enough to destroy God's plan for you. Sorry.
Russell De Vos: That's some good wisdom right there.
Joshua Boswell: He’s actually stronger than you are. Sorry. So…
Russell De Vos: That’s good.
Joshua Boswell: So Russ, thank you. This has been an incredible conversation. I can't thank you enough. Margie and I have just felt such a strong Spirit about where you're at, what you're doing, the good you're doing. So tell us a little bit more about your program, the life…
Russell De Vos: Lifeline?
Joshua Boswell: Lifeline. Thank you. Yeah. And how do we kind of…
Margie Boswell: How do we access it?
Joshua Boswell: We’ll share a link…
Russell De Vos: I’ll give you a link that’s the gateway into it. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah so tell us a little bit about it real quick.
Russell De Vos: Lifeline is for parents who just… they're navigating this journey, trying to, with kids who are wreaking havoc in their home.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And it's chaotic. They don't know what to do. I mean teens are intensely strong-willed. It's just incredible how frustrating they can be. And there's usually a lot of anger, a lot of hopelessness, a lot of despair, a lot of lack of sleep… missing of work.
Joshua Boswell: Everything
Russell De Vos: I mean, it's a mess we're dealing with, and it's almost it's same right across the board. And so when I start working with them, that's where they're at. They come in just, What do we do?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And we walk them through 16 weeks where they walk from just complete, you know, big eyes, like I don't have a clue to the words that I use are calm and confident and with a plan.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah,
Russell De Vos: And it's incredible because that is not an overstatement. There's a calm, there's a confidence because there's a direction. And if folks are married… because we’re working a lot of single parents also, but if they're married, they’re united. At least working towards that. I mean, it's not a magical formula, 16 weeks and everything's fixed. But there's a movement towards, I have a direction, I have the ability now to bring peace back to the home..
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: And to provide an environment that is healthy and whole where people can heal if they choose to be there. Which is a big, you know, part of that is boundaries and consequences.
Joshua Boswell: Sure.
Russell De Vos: And sometimes the choice is, I don't want to live under this.
Joshua Boswell: That's right.
Russell De Vos: So 16 weeks is the Lifeline Course. I choose to do it as a group experience not as an individual experience, primarily. There is that option. It's more expensive, because the group… There is something about walking through this intense valley. Most parents are dealing with drug addicted kids or substance abuse or whatever. They're embarrassed.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Russell De Vos: They don't want to tell anybody about it. They're living in isolation, secrecy. And when you bring this into a community and you see other people are battling through it as well… There is an intense healing that goes on. And the support…
So I love to go through these principles and walk these families through it together with the minimum, I try to have at least a minimum of three families. It is miraculous what happens. The ministry that they give to one another and the support and all that happens there.
So it's a group coaching experience walking from essentially overwhelm and hopelessness to calm and confident, with a plan. And it is our own experience. That's how we live. That's… we were where the parents typically are, and we've walked through and we are calm and confident and united. And we have a distinct plan on paper that we follow to the detail. And it has brought peace and stability and joy back to our home.
Joshua Boswell: I love it. So cool.
Margie Boswell: So great that you facilitate that for people, that growth. It's amazing, Russ.
Joshua Boswell: And we strongly… if you're in a situation in life, for all of our listeners now, if you're in a situation where you're wrestling with that. And it doesn't have to be about drug addiction, it's all about the chaos and the conflict… And that, you know, the butting heads and it's about you as a parent feeling like you've got to control this path. And finding the skills and the tools to let go so that you can facilitate and enable positive growth for your children so they become who they are meant to be.
Russell De Vos: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: So if you're in that situation, I strongly encourage you to check out Russ's program. It sounds absolutely incredible. Margie and I are gonna find way more about it. But you're… obviously, it's just had so many positive benefits for you and Heather and for these other families you’ve worked with. So again, Russ, thank you very much.
Margie Boswell: Thanks for joining us. Yes.
Russell De Vos: So I’ll give you the link to that, you guys.
Joshua Boswell: Yes, please share that with us.
Russell De Vos: It’s very simple. It's simply discovery, the word discovery, dot catalyst coaching HQ as in headquarters dot com. Discovery.CatalystCoachingHQ.com . And that will take you right to an overview of my whole course.
Margie Boswell: Okay.
Russell De Vos: It's an overview of all 16 weeks, the three phases, three stages of the course. And then given the opportunity for a parent to schedule a discovery call. There's no charge for that just to talk, find out where you're at, where you want to go and what you need to get there.
Joshua Boswell: Perfect, that's awesome. What a great resource. Even that initial conversation I'm sure will be hugely valuable to people.
Russell De Vos: Yes. Absolutely.
Margie Boswell: All right…
Joshua Boswell: Thank you again so much. We really appreciate it. And God bless you and your ministry and your work and all that you're doing for families. We just… we're cheering you on with all of our heart and soul, buddy. So, thank you. Appreciate it.
Russell De Vos: Guys, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Maybe we'll bounce into each other in Arkansas. And look forward to the next conversation, by the way.
Joshua Boswell: Absolutely, we'll book a follow-up call. This has been good. There's more to talk about.
Russell De Vos: Very good.
Joshua Boswell: So you take care. Bye now.
Margie Boswell: Thanks Russ.
Russell De Vos: Bye bye.