Bonding and Bulls

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning, Journey. Thank you. Welcome. Glad to see you. Really glad to be back. Today we're going to talk about bonding and bull riding, but I'm going to take the long way around the barn to get there. Thirteen years ago, my friend AJ died in a helicopter crash, in part because he was avoiding people on the ground. His funeral was the largest funeral I'd ever done. About two weeks after his funeral, his parents came to meet with me. They said, hey, Vern, how you doing? I said, I'm good. And then they asked me again, how you doing? Good. Then they asked me a third time, how you doing? Really? Yeah. Then they said, you lonely? Oh, yeah, totally lonely. You kidding? My line of work. Yep. Lonely. They go, we know. And aj knew. And AJ's passion was that people would live healthy lives. And so he was a part of this leadership cohort in Indiana with John Townsend. And so much money has come in in his memorial fund that we would like to send you. It's very expensive. We got it. We want you to go to this deal in Indiana with Townsend and this cohort of guys. And so I said, okay. And for the next several years, once a month, I'd fly to Indiana and get in a room with these guys, and Townsend would rattle around in our souls. And some of the stuff that. A tiny bit of the stuff that I learned there, I'm going to share with you today as we talk about bonding and attachment and relational connection. This is my horse, Si. And Si is short for Simon, which is short for Simon Peter. And I named him after the disciple Simon Peter, but also because I thought it was funny to say Simon Peter Streeter. And this is a picture of Si and I in the church lobby. And you can tell that my horse loves me. And if there's any doubt, take a look at this picture. Super awkward, isn't it? One of the most important things I learned about horsemanship, so when my daughter turned 12, she got horse crazy, got her a horse, and that started my journey on horsemanship. And I was reading this book, and the author said this line that just jumped at me, and the line is, your horse does not love you. Oh, are you sure? Your horse does not love you? Okay, so they're making it. The author's making a point about, does the animal like that have the capacity actually to love you? And the way you approach your horse, should you have it in mind that that horse loves you? No, you really shouldn't. One time I was standing by a fire. So in my backyard, there's an irrigation Ditch. And so when there's not water running in it, which is most of the year, I build fires in that ditch and just, you know, like a campfire. I got branches that come off of my trees, and so I gather them up and I burn them. And one night in the fall, it was cold out, I got a fire going, and I'm leaning on my pitchfork, and I'm just staring into the fire, thinking about important things. And Psy comes up behind me and puts his head on my shoulder, and he just stares into the fire with me. And literally we stood there for 10 minutes, me leaning on my pitchfork, sigh. Leaning on me, just enjoying a fire. And I thought to myself, my horse loves me. And then he bit my ear off. And so then it was like, no, okay, okay. He didn't. But he does not love me. Your horse does not love you. He cannot. And the reason he can't is because the horse doesn't have a soul. The horse is not made in the image of God the way you are. A horse runs on instinct, by the way. Neither does your dog. Your dog does not love you. Definitely not your cat. But they can't. Now, they can trust. They can have a positive association with you. They can actually form attachment and show separation anxiety. They can even show preferences. Actually, even, like in a dog, oxytocin is released in the dog's brain while the dog is being your buddy. But that is the shadow of love and not the substance of it. When we say that a horse or a dog or a cat or your iguana loves you, that is an anthropomorphism, projecting human level meaning onto animal behavior. An anthropomorphism. Your dog is not. I choose to love you as an act of my will. It's more, you're my person, you're my safety, you're my familiarity and my belonging. And let's be honest, you're where I get my food. Your dog is like. I can tell you like me. But your dog, your cat, your horse, does not have a soul and has not been given the command by God to love and to choose love with their will and obedience and. And with moral intention. Your pet can't love you like a person can, by the way. You know, there's a test that you can do to see if your dog or your wife loves you more. Right? You know about this. It's just conventional wisdom. But what you do is you take your wife and your dog and you put them in the trunk of your car and drive around for a Little while. And then you stop and open the trunk and see who's glad to see you. Cause your dog is. Your dog's like, hey, oh, hey, that's great to see you. She seems a little mad, but hey. One time I had this horse that was kind of a rescue horse, well trained horse. But they sent him to a second trainer and that trainer messed with him, must have abused him because he was never the same. And so I kind of took on this horse just to give it some dignity. He was old and so I just worked with him. Just respect and kindness and even love for me to him. And he got better. I took him on an elk hunt once and oh, he got so scared of this moose. This moose came through camp and it ruined him for a day. His brain just short circuited. I couldn't get him under control, literally for an entire day. So he wasn't really well. And then a couple of winters ago, he did not winter well. And out of mercy, it was time for him to go to heaven. And so he got a lead injection, buried him honorably on a ranch. But you don't give a lead injection to something that has a soul. You put a dog down or you put a horse down because they don't have a soul. Thankfully, God did not design us to bond with animals. We can't in the way that we must bond with humans. We can and we must. You must bond with somebody, with people, if you're going to be healthy, if you're actually going to live a healthy life. When I'm talking about bonding, here's the technical definition of what I'm talking about. The ability to establish an emotional attachment to, to another person, human being, where you relate with them at the deepest level and you have an ability with them to share your thoughts and dreams and feelings and fears and your weaknesses with no fear of rejection. With a confidence that you're going to still like me. That when you say some hard things about you, their response back to you is, I'm okay with you. I maybe even like you even more. Like to introduce you to Jack Ryan. This is Jack. Jack's four weeks old. This is my grandson. He's named after his two great grandfathers. And then if you know what my son in law does for a living, then the Jack Ryan name's kind of pithy and funny. Now, when you look at Jack a few weeks old, what abilities does he have? Almost none. But you know what he can do is bond. Now he goes from a warm, wet, dark, soothing environment to a cold Dry, bright, harsh environment. He goes from the womb where all his needs are being met to an open space and then depends on fallible people like my daughter to care for him. And that gives him some shock and emotional confusion. And in that moment, as that's happening, then mom grabs onto the little guy and she holds him and a transformation begins to happen. He starts to relax and now he's turning to mom for food and for affection and warmth and love and bonding has begun. This is why we do skin on skin now. Over time, that love is going to be internalized. So for Jack, mom and dad and others are going to be stored inside of him. And that's going to give him security. And he's going to have a storehouse of memories of love and affection and warmth and needs being met to draw on. He's going to develop a self soothing system. That child learns that even though mom is not right here, he's still loved. So I'm okay. Bonding is the very first thing in life and it opens you up to the source of everything that you're ever going to need in life. In Jack's first year, Jack is going to bond with his parents and caregivers. And this is a very crucial early stage. As you know, in his second year, Jack is going to learn independence, but he's learning his independence on the foundation of bonding, attachment, emotional security. He's going to learn right from wrong and good from bad. And he's going to learn it in the atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance. So he's going to learn that failure is okay and, and so is sinning. Now the sin is not okay, but you're okay, you're loved, forgiven. So then that security that he's developing because of his bonding is going to allow Jack to go out onto the playground and bond with friends and figure out who his group is. And then there's the girls and that's going to go okay because he's bonded, secure. Then eventually, through a healthy process of differentiating as he moves from adulthood to bonding and emotional attachment, that bonding and emotional attachment is going to give him the security for Jack to leave his mom and dad and go to school and get a job and get married and build attachment friendships that are going to nurture him for his whole life. This, by the way, is what gets short circuited by the helicopter. Mom, mom, you got to land the helicopter. Like this is a process that God has designed them to go through and you facilitated all of that stuff's going to happen on the foundation of attachment and bonding and emotional security. Now, if you did not get it, you gotta go get it. It's on you for you to live a healthy life. It's on you to go get that. Bonding, those healthy relationships for a healthy life. If you don't get it, bad things happen until we learn to get it in healthy ways. Now we're gonna talk about that, but I first want to give you the biblical basis of all of this. So three areas. The Trinity, Father, Son and Holy spirit. Referenced about 50 times in your Bible. In the Trinity, we realize that God is not alone. God is not lonely. He is bonded and he is attached. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So a precedent has been set by God. To be made in God's image is to be made for relationship and attachment and bonding. God is not alone. Neither should we be. You lonely? Yep. God isn't, and he doesn't want you to be. Second, God is love. We know this because the scripture tells us this about God. First, John 4:8. Whoever does not love does not know God. Because God is love. God is love. Love is his supreme quality. And love is impossible in a vacuum. Love isn't love unless there's someone to love. Love requires an object, someone to love and be loved by. Love is emotional attachment and bonding. So we are told over and over again in the scriptures to love one another because God is love. And if you don't love, then you don't know God, because God is love. Now, the Greek word here is that really famous word agape. And agape is that unconditional love. You don't have to earn it. It's just given. But here's what nobody says when they're talking about agape, because it's always unconditional love. It's a choice. We always talk about that. Here's what nobody talks about. That Greek word also means affection, goodwill, kindness. Choosing isn't as bonding as feeling. God feels love towards us. He designed us to feel and express love for one another. Third one in the. This is supposed to be a circle creation. God created us. And sometimes you hear people say, especially when you're going through kind of a tough thing, you know, you just need God. We just need God. Maybe you've said it to people, you know, you just need God. I just need God. Not according to the Bible. It's amazing how something that sounds so spiritual can be so unbiblical. Because this sounds really good and it sounds really spiritual. It's just ungodly and unbiblical. And frankly, it's offensive to God. And maybe that's why when you hear somebody say it to you, you're a little confused and disappointed because it's not your experience. You think to yourself, you know, I think I actually need something more than just God now. Understanding this concept actually blew me away just because of the way I was raised and in my religious environment and kind of started feeling a little guilty about knowing it. And so here it is in the Garden of Eden. Okay, so this is before sin, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. In the garden of Eden, was everything perfect? Yes, everything was Perfect before Genesis 1 and 2, or in Genesis 1 and 2, before 3. But was everything good? You know, I'm setting you up. No. So Genesis 1 is a poem. It's how that is kind of passed down. It's a memory tool. And the poem has a spine that runs through it. There's a sequence of things that are happening one after another. And it's the word good. The word good is used six times in that poem. So God creates, and it's good. He creates and it's good. He creates and it's good. Six times God says it's good. Then he creates humans, and it becomes very good. So we got good, good, good, good, good, good. And then we get to humans, and it's very good. And then in chapter two, and it jumps off the page because you've been in this rhythm of good, good, good, good, very good. Then all of a sudden you read, not good, not good. Something's not good. Yeah. Genesis 2:18. It is not good for man to be alone. And if it's not good, then not everything is good. And here's the revelation. Mankind's first problem was not sin. Man's first problem was God is not enough. Adam had everything and everything included God, and God said, it's not good. So what did God do? Well, he brought the animals to Adam. Animals like Bushwhacker. So Bushwhacker is the greatest, most unrideable bucking bull in PBR history. I am now going to bless you with three minutes of. Of Bushwacker being Bushwhacker. Just enjoy. Meditate. As the judges were. [00:18:15] Speaker B: This. This was pretty darn impressive for Dust. Elliot stepped up and took him, and that's the best ride that I've seen started on Bushwhacker in a long time. Look at the amount of height this bull's getting. Unbelievable. This bull can just simply do things that other bulls cannot do. And done. Well, as a bull rider, that's what you live for, is to get on bulls like Bushwhacker and Asteroid because if you somehow are successful, you've done something that people will remember forever. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Bushwh there's ever been. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Bushwhacker is Muhammad Ali. [00:19:00] Speaker A: You can't quit him the least little bit or give him an edge or [00:19:02] Speaker B: he's gonna slam you. [00:19:04] Speaker A: He's the best bull I've ever seen. [00:19:16] Speaker C: JB Mooney has a new tattoo, compliments of Bushwhacker. [00:19:21] Speaker B: That's why you buy a T it. He's the rankest bull I've ever been on in my life. [00:19:30] Speaker C: Bushwacker will make you bounce. [00:19:37] Speaker A: He's the greatest. [00:19:38] Speaker B: Bul. [00:19:57] Speaker C: It looked as though the Brazilian was possibly going to settle in, but the end result is he is Bushwhacked. They have faced nine times before, six of them, on the Built for Tough series. Every time, it has gone Bushwacker's way. And that's taking nothing away from Mooney. Bushwacker holds the record, the best ever. 42 straight buck offs. But there's something about JB Mooney this weekend and specifically today night that makes you think maybe, just maybe, the impossible can happen. Oh, yeah. It's over. It's over. We have seen history. Great job, buddy. The greatest ever has been bested. [00:21:05] Speaker A: You're welcome. I think it's hilarious, by the way, that when Mooney wrote him, if you watch the clock, you know it's eight seconds and he hit the ground at like 8.01, right? Just barely. Then you saw Mooney hug a guy. That guy is this guy, Kent Cox. Kent Cox was Bushwhacker's handler, his trainer, his manager, his caretaker, his companion. Kent Cox was famous. He actually was called the Bullwhisperer because what he did with Bushwhacker. Six months after that picture, is this picture a mug shot? Kent was booked for resisting arrest and threatening the life of his girlfriend and the cops. 40 days later, on a cold February morning just outside of Bushwhacker's pen, Kent Cox threw a rope over a beam, put his head in the noose, and stepped off a gate. The trainer of the most famous bull in rodeo history, dead by suicide. Now, why? Well, we know why. It starts with Kent's father, a man named Dwight. Cowboy and alcoholic, went through three marriages. When Kent was a young boy, Dwight would take him with him to the bars, and he'd go into the bar and grab a matchbook and write the address on the matchbook and give it to his young son, just a little boy, and said, if daddy drinks too much, this Is how you get home. You just show this matchbook to the taxi driver and they'll get you home. By the way, Kent collected matchbooks everywhere he went for the rest of his life. Maybe longing for bonding, Kent tried to live with his dad as a teenager. They argued a lot. One day, Dwight hit him, and Kent left. Three months later, Dwight called Kent to apologize, and Kent rejected the apology. That was the last conversation they ever had because Dwight shot himself in the head in a La Quinto hotel with a bottle of vodka, 3/4 empty, next to his body. Kent said, what I'd give to call him and say, yes, I do forgive you. The innate need in all of us to reconcile and Bond. At 16, Kent was bouncing between his mom's house and the house of his employer at the ranch. He rodeoed, got married at age 26, couldn't bond, got divorced, got a new girlfriend. Her name's Gina. And that was somewhat of a volatile relationship. And then Kent met Bushwacker. Now the consensus is that bushwacker would have been a good bull, maybe even a great bull, but not a world champion and not a legend if it wasn't for Kent. Kent had a way by appearance, it looked like they were bonded. Matter of fact, Bushwhacker's vet tells of a time that he observed Kent and bushwhacker having a conversation of sorts. And so he says, kent is talking to bushwacker, and the bull goes to bellowing at him, mooing back at Kent. They talk that way for probably four or five minutes. That bull truly loved that man. No, he didn't. Gina says, I have videos of Bushwhacker. When he would get done bucking, he'd turn around and stand there and look at Kent for approval. That was Kent. He was so shy around people. He was so worried that people were judging him. But with animals, he was comfortable. That was his place. People hurt Kent. There was trauma in his life. Dad an alcoholic, parents, divorce. He was unable to bond and attach in a healthy manner. [00:25:00] Speaker B: And. [00:25:01] Speaker A: And it is not good for man to be alone. But the bull is not God's solution. Kent's relationship with Gina deteriorated. He went on and off meds. He threatened suicide at least a half, a dozen times, including murder, suicide. Because he was convinced that Gina was having an affair. Or maybe she was, or maybe she wasn't. But he moved out. On Kent's final night, Gina and Kent went to a bull ride. They met some friends at a bar afterwards, and Gina says, I wasn't affectionate enough with him. When we were out. And it tripped that trigger. And I couldn't calm him down. It was the same spiel. Your life can be better off without me. I'm hurting you. I don't need to be here. I'm a piece of trash. She says, he was just so beat down his whole life. That's how he felt. I'm a piece of trash. No, he's not. Lovingly made by God in his image and likeness. Unbonded was Kent's whole life. Inability to form healthy emotional attachments, deep needs going unmet alone. And Bushwhacker isn't the remedy. And so the next morning, at 7:33am in front of Bushwhacker's pen, Kent called Gina and said, do you want to hear what a man hanging sounds like? And stepped off the gate. That is as mean as it is sad. By the way, when we talk about suicide, you hear people say about how suicide is selfish. No, it's not. A person who commits suicide just wants to be happy, Just like you want to be happy. And you're not being selfish when you want to be happy. They just want to be happy too. It's just irrational. In that moment, Bushwhacker's vet said, I don't think Kent, with his relationship with that bull, wanted the bull to see him die. I think he was hungry, somebody's affection. And he felt so close to that bull, he just wanted to be near him. But your horse does not love you, and neither does a bull. It's a tragedy of immense and immeasurable proportion, isn't it? As great as the animals are, Bushwhacker was not a suitable helper. We need another human. Even God said, he is not enough. We need emotional and relational connection and attachment and bonding to other humans. And that is why, after saying it is not good for man to be alone, and after the animals were unable and unsuitable, God gave Adam, Eve, another human, an animal with a soul. The tragedy of Kent Cox may be of incalculable proportion, but his need is not a mystery. Kent Cox simply and classically exhibited failure to a bond, to attach to people in a healthy way. And it wasn't his fault until it was. It was the result of his upbringing, his parents, his abuse, his abandonment, the relational train wrecks. And then he did not take advantage of the many ways in which God gave him opportunities to get help, get better, get connected and live in a healthy way with others and live a healthy life. God created us to bond and attach and connect to another human. When we don't all kinds of bad things happen when a person doesn't or can't bond. It affects three areas, their life. I have three lists today. This is the second. It affects your personal life. This is where depression and anxiety happen. We know that cortisol, the stress hormone, reduces when you're in connection with another person. Badness and shame happen. An isolated self is a bad self. Person feels unloved. Addictions come from here, whether it's substances or activities. It's a compulsive physiological need for something, something to survive. But addiction is not a real desire. It's a substitute for a real need. And you got to find out what that real need is. This being masked by the deceitful desire. And if you do, you'll find that it's directly related to bonding. It affects you personally. It affects you with people. This is where on one end of the spectrum, you fear people. You create distance between you and people. You get overly protective, maybe because of some hurt. The flip side is you engulf. You get clingy, codependent. This usually leads to anger, because an alone self is an angry self. Third, performance, I'm talking about really like your job, the things you're involved in. You know, you hear people talk about your private life and your public life. You know that's a myth, right? There is no public, private separation. Think about it. Pick your celebrity, pick your politician, pick your golfer. Lack of grounding, safe friendships will affect your work. It always does. When bonded, your performance is better because you learn it's okay to be you, and you learn that it's okay to fail. That happens in bonding. Let's go from bull riding to gymnastics. Let's talk about the goat. You know, Simone Biles, you know, she started winning when she learned from her family that it's okay to fail. It's when she learned about the unconditional support and love of her family that she's bonded and attached to them. No matter how well she performs in the arena, she started winning and winning and winning and winning. Which is why in Japan, in the Olympics, she pulled out, remember, because she got the twisties. So she pulled out of the competition. One, she could get hurt. But really, the main reason she did it is she knew that she was gonna hurt the team. The team wasn't gonna win gold with her, but could win without her. And they did. And the reason that she had the confidence and the courage to make that terrible decision is because she's bonded. Being bonded is going to accelerate your performance and your productivity at work. Unhealthy attachment is going to erode it, and sometimes it's going to be catastrophic. Now you're getting investigated for sexual harassment, and you're getting arrested for dui. So what do you got to do? Well, you got to get to the root of this, and that's where I'm going to take you through four things and then going to pray and have a cleansing song. Here's what you got to do. You got to own it. First of all, you just got to admit the need. Just assess yourself. I mean, one of the neat things that Jesus said is, blessed are those who are poor in spirit. So you're in a good spot when you're in this place of need. And the blessing is that you're going to have people that God brings into your life to you to be connected with and to start living a healthy life. But you're not as strong as you think you are or as you wish you were. So you got to own it. It's up to you. It was up to Kent. It's up to you. You got to own it. Second, you need to challenge your distorted thinking. Challenge your distorted thinking. What you think about yourself. Like, I had a mantra for a long time, just personally, I'd say it to somebody every once in a while, but it went like this. The more you get to know me, the less you'll like me. It was very real for me. Now, how did I develop that? Through a bunch of difficulty, especially betrayal of doing life with people and then having it shatter and break and maybe because all I did was tell the truth, the more you get to know me, the less you like me. So I'd fly to Indy and sit in a room with some guys and let Townsend rattle around in my soul and help me rethink that, reframe that to make sense of what I was feeling and experiencing. That means I needed to share with honest people and get their feedback. It also meant that I needed to read the Bible and apply it to my life. There's a different way of thinking about that. Third one. You got to get comfortable expressing need. Yeah, this is the vulnerability word. This is learning to actually flex the muscle of need, of opening up your heart to somebody, moving towards others, and learning to say, I need. At work, in your marriage, with your friends, I actually have a need. And you guys in our part of the country, we are bad at this one. It is courageous to tell people your need because you are talking about a weakness that's hard on us, and it'll change your life. When you do it, can I get four in there? Yeah. Recognize your. I don't have the greatest penmanship, but there it is. There's the four. If you want to take a picture of it, then it's going to go away. Recognize your defenses. Like, what do you do when it gets uncomfortable? Do you change the subject when it's bad? Do you blame others? Do you do the oversight, overeat, overwork over, volunteer over, medicate? Instead of reaching out and connecting, you got to see what your defenses are and go, okay, I'm not going to hide behind that facade, that charade. I'm going to stop blaming others. I'm going to take responsibility. In John chapter 10, Jesus said, I came so that you might have life and life at its full, life at its best, life abundant. Then in John 17, he says that life happens with God and with each other. Jesus modeled this for us. He did it in the Trinity. He did it with his 12 disciples. He did it with his three friends. He did it with Simon Peter, his best buddy. And then he tells Simon, now you go do this too. You go get all up in that flock of sheep and bond with people. Sheep being a metaphor for humans. Don't be Ken Cox and don't bond with Bushwhacker and don't step off that gate. Walk through the gate because there's people in there to whom you're to be bonded. Now, you should know your church does this really well. Actually, it's one of the things that people talk about your church like it's a reputation of journey Church, is that you prioritize relationships. So there's lots of ways for that to happen around this church because we want you to live a healthy life and you've got to do that in relationship with others. That's why churches like this one have small groups. Especially big churches need to have small groups so that there's connection that's happening. So connection table in the lobby. Go online. Lots of ways to get connected in a group around here. Ladies. The scene ament, the scene event that's coming up May 7th. Already heard about it today. Great place for you to start the connection process. I don't want to do that. I don't care if you don't want to do that. You get in there and connect with people. It's on you. It's your responsibility. You go get it. Middle school and high school tonight, six o'. Clock. You always got opportunities and you always got a chance on you. You walk through the gate into connection and into healthy living. That was the long way around the barn to say be bonded and not with Bushwhacker. Let's talk to the Lord for a few moments and then we're going to sing together. Invite you to tell God whatever you're thinking and feeling. I'd also invite you to tell God right now what you're going to do, whatever that means for you. What are you gonna do? Make a commitment to him about that. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your presence. Thank you that you model relationships. Thank you, God, that you designed us for relationship and that you have given us the resources all around us. I pray for healing. I pray that we get vulnerable, humbled down, talk about needs. I pray that we would be gracious to people that are looking for bonding and attachment and we'd help them. I pray that you would give us strength and courage and hope. And that we would live the healthy life that you want for us. Thank you that you want that for us and that you have given us the resources all around us for us to live the healthy life that brings you glory but is also really fun. We want that and we pray these things now in Jesus name.