BraveMen S4E120: Chris Singleton - Murder, Baseball and Redemption

Chris Singleton was playing baseball at University, doing well. In fact, he ended up playing professional baseball, but on June 17th, 2015, the unthinkable happened. His mother was murdered. Murdered by a crazed racist in downtown Charleston. His mother was leading a prayer meeting at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Nine people were killed. It ended up on the news all over the world. And what happened next? We're going to meet Chris and talk to him about it. But what happened next? I remember watching this and thinking, how could you actually stand there and say this? Because on national global news, Chris said this. He said, love is stronger than hate. Then he said, I forgive the man who killed my mom. How do you do that? How does that happen in your life? Chris went on from college and university baseball to play in the Chicago Cubs, minor league organization and had a great career. But God began to use him to speak to students across the country. And today he's an incredible speaker. He travels all over the world speaking to students about what love can do in their lives. Why love is stronger than hate. He's been on ESPN and sports Illustrated CNN, USA Today, you probably have seen him. I am really thrilled today to have Chris singleton on brave men. Remember for all your needs for discipling men, for building men like a Chris singleton, go to cmn.man, CMN.man, Christian men's network. And you'll find the tools you need to disciple men and build men like Chris singleton. I am this man knocks me out. It's not only in what he did at that moment. Think about the devastation, the stress, the pressure, and then microphones and cameras in your face. Just when you really in your gut want to say, I want to find that guy and do something to him. And he says, I forgive the man who killed my mom. Today, meet bravery and courage in action in the life of Chris singleton. Today on brave men. It's brave men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. I'm talking with Chris singleton. Chris singleton is an inspirational speaker, travels and speaks, a former pro athlete, baseball, probably my favorite sport, and is also now an author of children's books. And Chris, take me back June the 17th, 2015, because what a marking point in your life. You got a phone call. And tell me about that in that moment. And we'll use that as a focal point for us to talk about things, Chris. Yeah, well, I call that moment the unthinkable, because you never think something like that would happen to you until it does. But I remember getting a phone call about Bible study at my church. And the lady on the phone, she said, Chris, you got it down here to the church, something bad happened. And so I raised to my church and found out the unthinkables that my mother was shot and killed that night. And I found out that it wasn't just her, but it was eight other people that lost their lives based on the color of their skin. So that that was June 17th for me. And I'll always categorize it as the unthinkable. You know, that's June 17th, 2015. That was a manual church in Charleston, South Carolina. And a man, basically a man, you know, with bent by demonic forces does does the unthinkable shoots people trying to start a race war. You know, a man that's bent in his in his world. And man, how do you, how do you respond? How do you, how do you, how do you spend that first night, Chris? How do you walk through that? Yeah. So the first night when there was, there was no sleep, obviously. Yeah. You know, and I vividly remember my little brother, because at the time my, my mom was, you know, taking care of me, my brother, my sister. And I vividly remember, you know, me going to bed next to my brother that night. Wow. And him crying the whole night. He was 12 at the time. And so yeah, those things, you never forget that kind of stuff. And so for me, the first night was just trying to figure out how do we move forward? How do I take care of my brother and sister? You're, oh, because you're now, you're in college, you're playing baseball at Charleston Southern, right? Correct. And so in fact, you had a game that night. I did have a game. I actually had a summer league game that night. And the thing, the thing was, like, I didn't go to Bible study every single Wednesday with my mom, right? Because I played baseball. If I had a game, I definitely wasn't going. But it's, it's, it's ironic that that game that night wasn't even supposed to be on that night. It was supposed to be on Thursday. And it got moved to Wednesday. And that's why I was playing ball that, that everything happened. So it was actually a baseball game about 40 minutes away. Your mom would have been, you would have been there with your mom. Your mom was 45 years old at the time. And you know, we hear this thing. And, and I guess all of us can remember the moment we heard about this tragedy. And not many people getting shot, not many people killed, the unthinkable moment from hell. And all of us can remember that what happens to us sometimes. And then what happened after that, and we get into that in a minute. But what happens to us is we, we kind of look at the name, Shuronda Coleman singleton, your mom. And she was 45 years old. And we don't, we don't even, we don't really know the backstory. We don't know the is kind of like, yeah, it's terrible. That happened. But she was, she'd been a really championship athlete. Track star, right? Yeah. She was a college athlete, man. She full ride to go run hurdles at South Carolina State. That's a big deal. Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal. She was, she was strong. And track champion. She was a coach track. And she was speech therapist. Yeah. So, so the thing was, man, you know, I played professional baseball, but I didn't, I didn't beat my mom in a race until like the seventh grade. She wasn't, she wasn't having it. And so, yeah, she wasn't having that. Oh, for sure. She was, she was quick, man. And for, for me, you know, in her life, it wasn't just that she was a former athlete, right? She wanted to pay it forward. And she did that. And she said, Chris, the only reason why I was able to win in high school and in college was because of my form. And so she said, now it's my, my duty to kind of share that with the next generation of how to have good form when it comes to track. You know, that, that starts putting humanity to it, Chris, for me. You know, reading about your mom and reading some of her accomplishments and some of the things I, I went back. I mean, we're talking about some of the things you're doing now, the inspirational speaking, love is stronger than hate that came out of it. The children's books you're writing. But I went back and started reading about your mom and I thought, man, this, this woman was amazing. And obviously the other people, everybody had stories, but in particular, because you and I are talking, you know, a life cut short that was impacting so many people for good and for God. And there she is of all things at a Bible study. You know, well, how do you, how do you do that the next day? How do you walk forward the next day? How does love become stronger than hate? Because dude, at that point, when I find out, this is a man is a white man, angle guy. He's, he's got nothing but, you know, hell in his heart. Obviously the brokenness of this world. I think anger would have just overwhelmed me. How do you, how did you cope with that and how did you go forward and what happened next? Yeah. So initially, man, I didn't have time for anger at first. I was so wound up and what do I do for my brother and sister? Right. I think there wasn't a time for me to be angry at first. And I always said, I used to think that my mom kind of like had her hands on me, right, saying the words love is stronger than hate. And then actually for giving my mother's killer, because at the time when I forgave him, I didn't know why he took my mom away. All news was that he, he, my mom was gone and he took her away, right? I didn't know why or what the motive was. All the news that she was gone. And I said, I forgave him. And to be honest, I know now that God was using me in that time, but at the time, I thought, why didn't the world that I just come out of my mouth, right? I didn't know. I had no clue. And so for me, that kind of, it was just words that came out during an interview. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, we're seeing that. Yeah, it was just words that came out. And to be honest, I wasn't even supposed to have an interview. It was like, Chris, some people are at the college and they're waiting on you to be there. It's what my coach said. And I'm thinking, well, nobody told me I was supposed to be, yeah, nobody told me I was supposed to be there. And so I get there, me and my, uh, chaplain at my, at my, at my college, I went to a Christian university. I said, I don't know what I'm supposed to say to these people. He said, Chris, let's just pray about it real quick. I think God's going to use you. And then boom, that the, those words love is shonging and hate. So if we just love the way my mom would, the hate won't be anywhere close to where love is, came out of my mouth. And the next, the next thing I know, you know, the next morning, you know, it'd been seen hundreds of thousands of times. Yeah, it went viral, Chris. And, and there's no question the Lord used you in a very powerful way in a very difficult moment. You know, a lot of us deal with things that nobody ever sees. And here you are, if you will, Chris, on the world stage, because this story went around the world. And, and then the reactions, and then the reactions of some of your other family members, uh, from a manual church, the way they responded also was a stunning. The world doesn't understand that, do they? No, and it's hard for me to explain without sharing my faith to be honest, because and I have to do that quite often to be honest with you, right? And it's how to do that. Yeah. But, you know, I think I know now why forgiveness was placed on me, because it's not like I set out a road that I want to forget my mother's killer. It just happened. And now I know why it just happened, because I know the power and forgiveness now. I don't think about my mother's killer anymore. I'm still upset about what happened and it dedicated my life to, to kind of stopping it. But I don't have to think about what he's doing and where he's at to be honest with you. Yeah. Wow. So forgiveness releases from our lives. You know, if you will, you know, for giving somebody who's hurt us, for releases us from the shame that can happen to us when we're abused, things like that, it can release from us anger. You know, you get from forgiveness, things you can't get any other way. Justice wouldn't have solved it. Would it? I mean, even if you get justice, you're still mad, right? Yeah. I think for me, to be honest, I didn't even people to ask me, Chris, did you want, you know, the death penalty, this that and the third and I was never focused on that. I was focused on how in the world, do I take care of my brother and sister? They're in high school and middle school right now. What am I supposed to do? Right? So I at first, I didn't go to any of the trials because I'm saying, well, how is it going to help me in my life? I wasn't searching for closure. I was searching for how am I going to take care of my family because I'm 19 years old now. I was 18 just turned 19. And I got to figure out how, you know, we put food on the table to be to be quite frank. Yeah, of course. You know, it's amazing. Chris, I'm talking with Chris Singleton, who now is in it. You know, I a lot of people say, well, this person, that guy is a motivational speaker. I love the way you've twisted that. You're an inspirational speaker because you want people to walk away from the time you're with them, inspired. I can do this. I can make it through life. And you actually did personal coaching too. Yeah. And for me, the reason why I don't say motivational speaker is because, you know, I don't scream and yell. I share my story. I share my, I share, you know, what I've been through. I share how to be resilient. And I hope that people can change their heart, right? When they look at me and they may be from somewhere else or speak a different, like I hope people change their heart. And that's really the mission. It's not about motivating anybody. It's about hopefully sharing a story of forgiveness of love and bringing people together. And that's generally what the overall mission for me is. You know, in John chapter 20, verses 21, 22 and 23, Jesus. It's one of the appearances of Christ after his death burial and resurrection. Comes back to the disciples and he says, Hey, I want you to receive the Holy Spirit and says he breathes on them. And he says, whoever you forgive will be forgiven and whatever sends you retain will be retained. And forgiveness releases stuff from a heart because if we don't release it, we end up with a heart filled with whatever that stuff is, right? Yeah. And it's, it's, it's very accurate. And to be honest, what I, what I realized with forgiveness is a lot of the time people will say, if I forgive this person, I'm letting them off the hook is what put out here, right? Oh, yeah. Not realizing that when we forgive somebody, we're letting our souls off the hook. Come on. We're finally moving forward in our lives, right? Because that person may not have thought about it ever again, but constantly we're thinking about it daily. And so for me, I realized forgiveness maybe isn't always for the other person. Maybe it's for you to move forward in your life. And when people understand that, they then understand, okay, well, wow, forgiveness is empowering to me. Forgiveness allows me to be a great father to be a great husband to be a great son, right? It allows me to do those things because of forgiveness. So good. So good, Chris, you know, forgiveness just opens our heart to the, to the potential of our life. And unforgiveness, what we all know, we all know people, in fact, we've all experienced the fact that we didn't forgive somebody and then we just kind of, it constrains us. It wears on us. And so you use this moment. Now you went back into baseball. You played some professional baseball in this color of Cubs organization. Yeah, I did. I did. So the funny thing is like now when I go places, they automatically think that, you know, Chris is going to talk about sports, right? Because I played, I drafted by the Cubs. And I basically devoted my sophomore year of college. I said, you know, what, baseball is going to be my therapy, right? I wasn't going to therapy at first. Baseball was my therapy. And so I literally trained every single day more than anybody, probably more than it was healthy to be training. But I did. I totally, I totally get it though. Yeah, yeah. And that allowed me to kind of get an upper hand on college athletes at the time. And I got, I was fortunate to get drafted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Played a couple of years. And then how do you end up moving into speaking? That's not necessarily, frankly, just because I love baseball. I'm been around it most of my life. It's not necessarily what you think of in terms of when you think of baseball players. The speakers, right? Yeah. So, so for me, how did that happen? The whole, everything happened because I, there was an E 60, I'm not sure if you're familiar with like the ESPN 30 for 30s or the E 60 pieces. There was an E 60 on me and my mom and my story of love is stronger than hate. And after that happened, it aired and there were people everywhere saying, Chris, we got to bring you to my youth group, right? We got to bring you to my church. We got to bring you to my school to share your story. And at first, it was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to get in front of people's like and stare at me for an hour, right? What am I going to say for an hour? Like I don't have that much to say, right? And one day, I finally said, you know what? I feel like God's calling me to do this. The reason why I say that is because I said, I didn't want to be a preacher. I always tell my mom, I was like, I don't know how you do it. My heart you go up there and pre I don't know how I do. I didn't see that part. But did your mom actually get up and speak at different meetings of church and stuff? Yeah. So she was an ordained minister and she go to different different churches and share, you know, the gospel and all good stuff. And I said, my mom, I don't know how you do it. I don't. But I remember one day we had a men's group, like a youth group at my church. I mean, at my college at Charleston, Southern. And the message was you don't have to be a pastor to preach God's word. And I was like, oh, that was a guy trying to give me a little gut. And so I ended up take an organization that reached out to me to speak after I got an award. I initially said, no, because I said, you got to give a 10 minute speech afterwards. You get the award. And I'm like, I can give a speech after I get the award. Like, why do I have to do that? And I eventually said, yes, I went down there. I spoke, I shared. And after I got done speaking, a lady said, Chris, I don't know, you know, what you're doing with your life. Now I heard your baseball player, but you got to keep doing what you did tonight. And after that, I kind of said, you know, I'll just be obedient. And if I get the opportunities, then I'll, I'll do it. And that was, it's been, you know, four years, almost five now that I've been speaking and God has definitely blessed it for sure. Well, there's no question about it, Chris, and I've seen some of your videos. I'm talking to Chris Singleton, S-I-N-G-L-E-T-O-N, and ChrisSingleton.com. It's where you can find who is book him to speak at your church group, you know, athletic event, whatever it may be. Because basically, that's what you do. It's as funny as you can bomb. I'm never going to do that. And then it's like, that's what you do. And then you moved into writing for children. And you've, you've got two books out now, children's books. One's called different. What's the other one called? The other one's called Your Life Matters. That's the newest one. Just came out. It sure did. It came out. So I've got this one. And I thought it was great because it's beautiful artistry, very well done, but it's real life. It's like how people really live. And I thought you really captured that. And it's about a young child. Well, I won't give it all away, but different. The story about loving your neighbor is about a young child who doesn't feel accepted. And then, and then, and then now that what's crazy now, seeing the background of your mom turns out she, you know, the, the, the student in here can run really well, right? Yeah. And the teacher that tells him he's beautifully, wonderfully made. That's my mom too. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I love it, man. That's fantastic. You know what I mean? And he finds, he comes from a different background, and all the other kids, but, you know, he finds his place in the teacher, which is now I see now as your mom is a great book. So those are available on chrissyngleton.com. How do you end up writing stuff like that? That's, that now you're moving a long ways from baseball now. You're right. So the reason why I started writing was, you know, to be honest with you, I get the opportunity to share with companies that just shared with Microsoft and some of their teams shared with NBA teams like the wizards, like the, uh, uh, timber wolves, right? I share these different organizations, a lot of colleges, but I said, it's not my place to share my story with little kids, right? I don't want to take it where they're in their innocence. Even though I want to teach unity and teach love, right? How do I do that without telling the kid my mom was murdered because she's black? I think that's too gory. And so kids book was a way to do it. And so I said, I know what I want the mission of, of me writing books to be, right? It's about unity. It's about love. It's about coming together regardless of what we look like or what we're from. And then saying, okay, how do I put this in the book form for kids? And that's how this book came about, um, and, and to be honest, I thought I would sell a thousand copies. I said, you know, if I sell a thousand, it'll be a huge win. But I think we're at 17,000 so far and, and keep growing. So it's been a blessing. No kidding, man. It's fantastic. I, I, stuff like that, I just get so fired up. I get so happy about that stuff, Chris, because, man, that's what it's about right there. And it's guys like you being willing to put it out there. And I mean, this is hard work because once this is written and it's in print, it's in print. So yeah, every word that you said, and you're like, oh, man, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fantastic. So I want to encourage people to get that. And it's something you can, they can get copies of, get a bunch of them, hand them out, give them to people. It'll help young people in particular. But I think that's fascinating. When you talk about, I don't know that it's my place to put it in front of them, something negative, but to put it in front of them, something that has a positive image, right? Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, I definitely don't, I don't shy away from telling my mom's story. Right. But if I'm talking to an eight year old, right, or a seven year old, I don't want to tell them, hey, mom was shot and killed because she's black. I want to tell them, hey, you should love people regardless of what they look like. And that's kind of what the overall message in my books will be, right? And my second one, your life matter is kind of that same thing. Signal towards little black boys and girls and make sure they know how important they are to the world. But it teaches kids everywhere about black history. And yeah, it's been phenomenal so far. For me, man, that's, that's fantastic. Yeah, here's the deal. Here's, here's my, my take on that. As I, I believe there has been a, an ordinent attack. And I believe, you know, when people talk about conspiracies and all kind of stuff, I'm very much a conspiracist. But my conspiracy is the conspiracy of heaven against hell. And that the enemy has a conspiracy to take out young men. I think it's been a specific attack on young men of color, in particular black young men. And, you know, this is something that, that men on our board like, you know, Dwayne Pickett and Jackson, Mississippi and, and others who are friends, the particularly minister into urban areas. We talked about a lot. There is a, it's almost like a, a special assignment of a demonic enemy to take out young black men. And my thing is always, anytime you see an enemy trying to take out a, a specific other thing or person or part of what they're attacking, it's because there's, there's going to be something that comes out of young black men that could literally change the world. I think some of the greatest evangelists will come out of our urban cities. Amen. And so I think that's why that's why there's a conservative attack. I'm just, I'm fully, fully convinced of that. And for us in America, to still, I don't know what it's like in Charleston, I didn't look at the stats. But for, in Fort Worth, where I live, to have 13 food deserts is, is absolutely reprehensible in a nation that has as much, that's as wealthy as we are. To have places in a food desert means you, you don't have fresh food within three miles or five bus stops. And so, to, I don't know what Charleston's like, but I know in urban areas across the country, it's true. And I don't, I don't know, it doesn't always mean that it's people of color, but it's, it just shouldn't happen. You know what I'm saying? It's like Navajo Reservation. You know, we're 36% of the people in the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and Mexico don't have running water. Wow. There's, there's certain inequities, Chris, that people like you standing up and inspiring others, I believe it takes men like you willing to, I mean, because this is, this is like you put yourself out here, man. You know, for sure. You're out there off the, off the edge off the limb. I'm just going to go do this and you and your wife had to pray over commit to it. And it's not easy stuff. It's hard work. Yeah. People go, Hey, you just up there for 30 minutes. You know, they don't see the hours of, of work, the travel, the airports, the buses, the whatever it takes. Right? Yeah. So I want to continue for that, man. And I want to thank God for guys like you who stand up and speak like this and speak about, you know, speak about what the, what the word of God says about racial harmony. And it's what the word of God says about loving your neighbor, the love is stronger than hate. And we just have to have people that are willing to stand up and speak. And I thank God for your Chris. Well, thank you, man. And yeah, my, my, me and my wife know, like, I've been gone, right, 80 to 100 days a year for the last four or five years. Um, and so you talk about what the, what the little wind's tough. And so when I'm home, it's, it's full time. I'm, I'm home home. I don't want to do anything else, right? I don't care. Um, but yeah, I feel like I've been called to do this man. My wife has been more than amazing. She's been superwoman. You talk about a woman that I've been with since high school, right? My high school sweetheart. Yeah, man, that's still a thing. That's still a thing. We're young. That's fantastic. That's still a thing. We're at high school. Sweethearts, man. She's been rocking with me for a while. And we're going to rock to have her forever. So she's everything to me, man. And what's your wife's name, Chris? My wife's name's Mariana. Mariana. Mariana. Yeah. That's fantastic. So now, when you speak about, uh, you've got a thing that you call numbers, okay? Give me, give me that deal. You've got five numbers. It means something to you. Tell me what they are. Yeah. And for me, man, I always hear people say, Chris, you know, what's your why or those say, find your why. And I don't believe in that because I feel everybody's got the same why. Like everybody wants to, to make family okay financially, right? Provide for your family. Everybody wants to make the water better place. And so for me, I have something called a struggle moment that pushes me forward every single day. When I get tired on the road, when I miss my wife, my son, my little son on the way, when I miss them, my struggle moments, five numbers is one, it's 70, it's 50, it's nine, and it's one. There was one person, just one that was missing, misinformed and misled to hate black people. And so what this one person did was he walked into my church and he fired over 70 bullets. And when he fired over 70 bullets, over 50 of those entered bodies in my church. And he took nine lives. And one of those lives happened to be the coolest person in the world to me. She was my mom. And so once somebody asked me about a why, I don't give them the why. I give them those five numbers because that's the reason why I get up in the morning and I work extremely hard to bring people together. It's not just because I want everybody to sit by the fire and sing kumbaya. I know it's because of what happened to me and my family. I don't ever want somebody to feel what I felt when my brother was 12 years old crying himself to sleep at night. So I give them people those five numbers as my struggle moment to push me forward every single day that I'm still breathing. That is so good, man. Now, when you talk about racial reconciliation and the different things, and you know, in some ways, for me, not an Anglo, for me, I look at what's kind of stirring and stuff. And we've got a lot of young guys who write the news, they're 25 and they go, this is the worst it's ever been. And I'm like, dude, you're not old enough to remember Watts. You don't know that old enough to remember Detroit 67. But the fact is, is that it has, there have been a lot of, it has come up and people are talking about race and people are talking about, you know, reconciliation, people are talking about these things. I think it's super positive. I think we have to have conversations. I think if any, any place has these conversations, it should be the church, it should come out of the word of God. And we should be the peacemakers in all of this. And so when you talk about this stuff, what give me your thing? What do you, will you hit people with on that Chris? Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned the church because I think the church, you know, we're leaders when it comes to bringing people together, right? And I think that's part of our mission. Our mission is to go out and spread the good news. And the good news is always coming together and loving one another. Right. So, so for me, when I go into an organization or church, I talk about love, talk about sharing your story before your opinion. And what I mean by that is, if I automatically share, you know, my opinion on a subject without sharing my story, people stop listening, even people in the church, right? Because they're saying, oh, I automatically assume this or that about Chris or about his family because of the opinion he just shared. But if I share you my, if I share with you my story, then you may understand why Chris doesn't like guns, right? Because Chris lost his mom while she was praying. So it's pretty easy to see why Chris doesn't. But if I don't share my story before that, people may shut their ears off and don't want to hear anymore. And I also say with the church, I love it because we just have to teach. And it starts at home with us, to be honest with you, if we're not teaching our kids to love one another no matter what they look like, then it's going to be very hard for them to go out and do the same to their kids. So what are we doing at home? We need to look ourselves in the mirror and say, you know what? I need to be teaching my family to love because I didn't choose my skin color. I didn't choose my first language and neither did they. And when we go out and we teach our families that, I guarantee you, if we the church do it, we'll lead the way in this thing of unity. And I promise you that. And I've already seen it, right? I've seen it happen where people say, I'm going to start with my family and my heart first because I need to work on myself, Chris. I've got some things that I think that maybe aren't the best. And when I work on my heart, then I can share that with my family. We go out into the world and we represent the church, the way that church should be represented. So good, man. You know, we didn't choose our color, but God did. And God placed Ephesians 2, 10, He places on the earth with a purpose in mind. Every man has an identity of purpose in a community in his life and a sense of reason and purpose. And that's what gets me fired up. See, I think the attack on a family has come particularly through fatherlessness. And I think we see that in every part of our culture. Last year, two years ago, the United Nations reported there were just over 220 million children worldwide that were abused and neglected or mistreated. So that's fatherlessness, man. And right now 85% of the babies born in America this year will be born to men without any biblical worldview or basis if you will for right thinking. Wow, that's scary. Exactly. So we're on the midst of just absolute total chaos. And that's why we need men like you that stand up, speak your solid. You've been through it. You've got it. It's like your mom is a seed in the ground that springs forth this harvest in your life, Chris and your brother and sister. And it's a seed that forever will bloom. It's a seed that will forever bloom. And I thank God for Charanda Singleton and her life and her legacy lived out in you and in her grandchildren and their children. Amen. Amen. And man, that's where it's at right there. So when we pass on to heaven, because we live eternal life as followers of Christ, we leave a legacy. And you either just lived history and everybody remembers you or you leave a legacy, which means you put something in the motion. And Chris, I just thank God for you and you're putting something in the motion and being willing to do it. And somebody would say, well, it came out of this event. But you know, you had to actually pick, pick up in a sense, say, God, I'm going to trust you no matter what. You had to actually wake up the next day. You had to wake up the next day after that. And you had to lean into Jesus Christ. And you had to do that, Chris, and so I salute you for that, bro. Well, thank you. And I'm sure you you kind of feel the same way of of having something you can, you know, pick up and lead them that God has given you, right? And so for me, it's just like, how can I Stewart this, right? How can I make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing? And God and me praying that God has just said here, this is the way that we should be going. And I've just tried to be obedient. And man, I've seen things that I could have never seen happen, right? I've seen, I've seen people say, I forgive my, my mother who left me when I was two years old, right? I forgive my biological mother. And I'll do that because, Chris, if you can forgive your mother's killer, I can forgive my mom, right? For wanting to be in my life now. So I've just seen God move tremendously through just trying to be obedient. There's the power of forgiveness. I mean, we have to think about this. The power of the cross is the power of forgiveness, right? Yeah. Roman Romans 5 that even when we were the King James's enmity, but even when we turned our back on God, we were a war with him. He still loved us. And the power of the cross as Jesus says, I forgive them, right? And then the power of the Christian life as a Christianity is the only faith that started with the words, it's finished. That's good. Ask him, which I love, man. It'd be like, it'd be like, you know, baseball, it'd be like the first pitch, it'd be like, it's over. So anyway, hey, Chris, we pray for you and your wife and in your family. And where's your brother? And you had a little sister, is that right? Yeah, man. So like I mentioned before, not only did my mom pass, my father passed about a year and a half after my mom did. So it was, it was me, right? It was me and my wife taking care of my younger brother and sister. And it was tough, right? Because I was 20 at the time and they were in high school and they want to do whatever they wanted. But God gave me strength through that time. And my, my brother still lives with me. He's about to play baseball in college next year. Super excited for him. He's a senior in high school. And then my sister's a junior in college right now. They're doing well. Good for you, Chris. Well done, man. Dude, I don't know if I was 20 in my little brother, and I was his, you know, his parent is guardian. And he's in high school. I'd just be like locking him in a room. Hey, I want to do this. No, I already did that. It's not good. That was, yeah, that was conversations I had with my sister a lot. But I'm thankful like God kind of took the reins like Chris, you know, you, you, you're okay because of me. She's going to be all right because of me as well. Yeah. Well, thank God for community. Thank God for manual church, right? And thank God for awakened church where you're at now and the people who come around you because it really is, it does take community, yeah? 100% of our people have helped you all the way. So what position, what position did you play? Played center field. That's, that's what I love center field. That's what I did because I couldn't do anything else. You were actually a really good player. You got drafted. So played center field. What position does your brother play? He plays shortstop and center field. So he plays short and center. Okay, short and center. Okay. So he's got, so he's got an arm. Yeah, you can throw it a little bit. Yeah, you can't do, you can't play short and center without that. And so you could hit, I just swing it a little bit. I always tell him he's still trying to beat my records in high school this year. So, yeah, he's trying. We'll see. We'll see. Come on, man. We got to, we got to root form. You got to root form. Sort of. I mean, I mean, you got the brother thing, you know, you got the brother thing going. Oh, no. So, yeah, well, we pray, right? We just pray. He gets the right stuff, the right things happen to him, the right goes into, I mean, Joseph was in prison in the Bible says he still had favor with God. And so we pray for favor for your little brother, man. That would be a wonderful story. And you know, your mom would be so proud of you, Chris. And of what's happening, how you guys have navigated this because so many people wouldn't have been able to do this. And so God gave you a special grace, man. And I'm really proud of you, bro. Thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah. Hey, uh, so we pray for you and pray that everything your hands touch will prosper and every place you put your feet will be holy ground. And that the Lord will keep you and your wife and your growing family deep within the grip of his favor and grace. Chris Singleton, God bless you now. Thank you, brother. You just experienced brave man with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian men's network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.