The Plain Values Podcast EP #10 – Gabe and Mandy McCauley on Work, Play, and the Miracle of Children

Gabe McCauley:

Her life has made us who we are, who we probably need to be but never wanted to be.

 Mandy McCauley:

We had somebody say that to us once. It’s like, your life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the things that happen along the way. And we’ve learned in a very intense and unfortunately dramatic way that that is absolutely true.

Marlin Miller:

Recently, my friends Gabe and Mandy McCauley and I had a chance to sit on their front porch and talk about life. If you’ve been with plain values for any length of time, you have probably heard me talk about, or you’ve probably read about Porch Time. Gabe is the founder of All Things Porch Time that I have ever been aware of, and the story where that came from is deep and it’s long. And in Gabe’s own words, porch time is a sacred place for slowing down guys. I cannot think of a better place to do a podcast with my friends Gabe and Mandy, than on the porch that started it all.

We talk about life, we talk about loss, we talk about the hardest of the hard things losing a child, and it’s a fantastic conversation. I am so glad to tell you that Berlin Seeds is our newest sponsor of the Plain Values Podcast. Now, Berlin Seeds has become a staple in our house. It is my wife, Lisa’s absolute favorite seed shop, store catalog, everything in between. Now, granted, they’re only 10 minutes from us here, but they do a wonderful job. You can find them at Berlin Seeds Life. Their catalogs are wonderful. If you call ’em, you get a real person. And guys, every single seed they send out is non GMO. There are no gimmicks, there’s no shady anything going on. They are wonderful. If you are a beginner and you are testing out a couple tomato plants and you want a few seeds, or you are planting acres of veggies for a CSA, they have you covered from everything in between. They do a wonderful job and they’re just the coolest people. You’ll love them. Again, Berlin Seeds life and tell ’em Marlon sent you. So hold my, can we start with just how we met?

Gabe McCauley:

Yes.

Marlin Miller:

The thing that I remember the most was at the festival walking up to you, and I don’t even remember what I ask you, but I remember in 30 seconds, I think you and I were nearly engrossed in deep conversation and it was wonderful, and I don’t remember what we even talked about, but I just remember going, okay, I like this guy a whole lot.

Gabe McCauley:

Yes, yes. That’s roughly how I remembered as well. And I can’t remember, did someone introduce us or did? No, I think I just walked up and started looking at stuff or whatever. And then I think somehow, pretty quickly you started putting some connections together and maybe you realized that you knew friends of friends, et cetera. But yes, it was, and quite frankly, that’s how I feel like most introductions or conversations should be, is that if you’re not getting deep pretty quick, then what are you doing? Anybody can talk about the weather to go deep really quick, but for those who are willing to join in that effort with you, if it seems like an open enough and willing conversation, at least for me, I know quite quickly that that’s a kindred spirit.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite stories about that exact thing was after Joel and I talked for the first time, his comment back to me was a pretty direct reference to the verse where the two guys on the road to Emmaus or talking after Jesus was gone did not our hearts burn within us as he shared. And I just thought our initial friendship, our initial, just that meeting was very, very similar to he and I talking for the first time on the phone as well. And that burning, the heart’s burning within us is kind of an inside joke for Lisa and I where we will talk about that. And yeah, we very quickly know how a conversation went when we throw that in there. So it’s a lot of fun. So yeah,

 Mandy McCauley:

That’s good.

Marlin Miller:

So can you guys just give us a little bit of a background as to how you ended up here on this porch and all that this porch means?

Gabe McCauley:

Yes, we can try. So Mandy and I, would you like to start? I want you to start. Thank

 Mandy McCauley:

You very much for speaking for me.

Gabe McCauley:

We met in college at a small bible college in Florida, and Mandy was interested in making music, which she still is interested in doing and does.

And so that led us to Middle Tennessee State University. Basically, I followed her up here. And so we’ve lived in this area for quite some time from Murfreesboro to Nashville. And then 11 ish years ago, one of our friends and someone I’d worked for quite some time, Rory asked us if we wanted to move into this house. And we thought, well, that’s interesting. But for us at the time, it was not an easy decision, primarily because we had a special needs daughter and we were about 10 minutes away from Vanderbilt, which we spent a significant amount of time at and had had several situations where being that close was what needed to be. It was an emergency situation. It wasn’t an easy decision. It was a bit scary to sort of take that leap of faith, I suppose. But he kept asking. And about the third time we said, I guess we need to just drive down there and see. I’d already seen the place at some point. This is an old farmhouse that our landlord’s grandmother grew up in

And his mom. And so it’s a Sears and row buck home over a hundred years old, and we’re on about 150 acres here, so we’re just renting from them. But Rory had been kind of fixing it up and was thinking that maybe some family or something might move in when that didn’t happen. He is like, well, I don’t know. I think Gabe and Mandy would really like it down here. And I was already doing a lot of work down here. And I would say it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made for a number of reasons. But one, just as you know, when you’re a parent with special needs children, a lot of our time is spent searching for peace, just a moment of peace, and you are dealing with so many heavy things in your life constantly that even the smallest little moments that you can curate to give yourself an extra breath is invaluable. And so I don’t think we realized just the noise and the busy that we had surrounding us in Nashville. So we didn’t mind where we lived,

But the kids were getting ready to start school. It was that age. And after watching some of our neighbors be arrested and hearing gunshots at night, we thought, well, I guess we could look for a different place. So anyway, just the almost immediate piece that fell upon us when we came down here and now have lived here for 11 years. It’s something that I think we try not to take. I try very hard not to take for granted when I can get out of a vehicle at night and see the stars and I can hear the cows and just sit and be, and this porch has been a significant part of that. I mean, the porch is in some ways what makes the house. Yeah. Yeah. Mandy, would you like to add to that?

 Mandy McCauley:

You did really good. Thank you.

Gabe McCauley:

I tried really hard. Oh man.

 Mandy McCauley:

That’s really good.

Gabe McCauley:

Yeah. But I mean, would you like to add anything?

 Mandy McCauley:

No, I’m going to need to be led with questioning, but thank you so much for having me on this podcast.

Marlin Miller:

Well, yeah, I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. So what year was your daughter born? When was Scout born?

 Mandy McCauley:

Scout was born in 2009.

Marlin Miller:

So she was born with something called Louis Dietz Syndrome. Right,

 Mandy McCauley:

LO’s.

Marlin Miller:

Okay.

 Mandy McCauley:

As in Joey Lowe’s, Dietz Syndrome.

Marlin Miller:

Okay.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

And what are a lot of the core things that come along with that? I know a little bit about it. I really don’t know that much.

 Mandy McCauley:

Most people don’t. In fact, when she was diagnosed, I’ll get there, but this is just to let you know, don’t feel bad about knowing about it. It’s very rare. And when she was diagnosed, it had only been described as a syndrome since 2005, and there was only maybe, I believe maybe 400 cases in the world. I might be wrong on my numbers on that, but it was very low.

And then once she was diagnosed, if we went to a doctor, we’d have to say, she has this. And we know they were going out of the room and going Google it, and then come back. Really? Yeah. So there’s a lot more people that know about it now, but it is a connective tissue disorder that affects, of course, her entire body because it’s connective tissue. And the markers for it were are bilateral club foot blue sclera, which is the blue around the whites of your eyes, really long fingers, a split uvula. If you can hear that yelling, it could either be our peacock or our son inside talking to his friends, just to let you know for the listeners out there. And then he just really burped really loud. I don’t know if you could hear that, but those are the

Gabe McCauley:

Common markers. And it’s not in everyone because such a diverse, I mean, there’s a spectrum of, with most syndromes and things that you, but she did have those markers,

 Mandy McCauley:

I believe. I think I could be safe in saying that. Her case was pretty severe. She had her first, well, she had a PDA ligation when she was a month old. I believe that’s when they close up something in your heart. I am not a cardiologist, you guys, but she had many surgeries to try to correct things to save her life and correct things to help her have a better quality of life, to be able to walk and to eat and just straighten her eyes out. She also had opia, everything in your body is weak because of its weak connective tissue.

Marlin Miller:

So how old was she when you guys moved out here?

 Mandy McCauley:

I think, let’s see, I think we moved here in 2014. It was a week.

Gabe McCauley:

It was five-ish.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah,

Gabe McCauley:

Right. Five.

 Mandy McCauley:

I think Ash was one,

Gabe McCauley:

So she might been four.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah, I think we were four when we moved here. And she had turned five the next month. It’s all, we have so many stories with other people weaved in here that I want to, there’s too many things to touch on as far as a timeline. It goes all over the place, but I believe we moved here in 2014.

Marlin Miller:

I mean, this is a really dumb question, but how was the transition? So here’s the context for my question. When Adelaide was born, she was in the NICU for two months, and I got used to being able to see where is her oxygen level, where are all these, what’s her heart rate right now? And when things would change, I could go look on a monitor and I could see, and I learned what they meant to a degree. And then we come home, we have this tiny little drop of a baby, and I got no monitors, I got nothing. And I remember those first couple nights being, holy cow, this is, I don’t know. How did that go for you guys? Because I have a feeling she had a lot more, am I on track there or not? Well,

 Mandy McCauley:

I don’t know Adelaide’s case when she was a baby, so I cannot compare. But I can tell you that I was a constant nervous ball of mother, but I see it in you guys too. You are always on guard. You are always making sure that everybody is safe. And that’s what we had to do with Scout. If I could have, I would’ve wrapped her in bubble wrap.

Gabe McCauley:

Yeah, it’s kind of a double-edged sword with the hospital and the care versus at home. You do get used to that. And there’s, to some degree, a sense of, I guess, security with all that at the same time, that just adds to your anxiety and the constant reminder of these things. And so without them, yes, there’s a sense of, well, now what in the world do we do and how do we know? But at the same time, with them, it’s not really a win-win situation in that regard.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah. I mean, with Scout, if she was sick, it was serious. There was not like a, oh, well, she’s got a cough. It was, oh, she’s got a cough. We probably need to go to the er. Or I definitely bought all the at-home medical devices I could to monitor whatever we could. We have three, what do you call these? Temperature things? Thermometers? Yes, thank you. And an ear thingy. Look, it’s been a while, so I’m not up on that. Oh, we had the pulse socks, the stethoscopes, everything we could to just, okay, is this as serious as we think it is? Am I just panicking? That was constant for us,

Gabe McCauley:

Which is why when you find even the slightest moment of peace, how valuable that they add up over time and not realizing when you’re constantly being barraged with just culture and busyness and consumerism and advertising and what you know, I mean things that you don’t realize that exist until you’re stripped away from them. And then you’re just like, oh, this is nice. This is better. This gives me a moment. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Well, if I can change gears, we’ll come back to Scout in a second, but how long ago did you start your video production company?

Gabe McCauley:

Basically when we moved here.

 Mandy McCauley:

What? No, we started it

Gabe McCauley:

Way before that. No, moved in Tennessee. Tennessee is what I mean. Moved from Florida to Tennessee. So we were at school together. When we moved here to go to college, I basically started freelancing, but I’d started a company as myself. And then, yeah, so that was like 2000 ish.

Marlin Miller:

So sorry, I’m just thinking of all the commonalities here. This is wild. Would you mind just simply sharing more of how things came to be with Scout? I mean, she ended up passing away at the age of nine. That was in 2019. Yeah.

Gabe McCauley:

Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

I don’t even know what question to ask. Yeah, I’m sorry.

Gabe McCauley:

Well, because there aren’t really questions to ask. Yeah. So I had been married nine years before we got pregnant. For some reason. We have this weird thing with nines. I dunno what the deal is. And I, we knew from a few things that she probably had some abnormalities, but we didn’t know what and to what extent really. So we knew about the club feet and things like that based on sonograms. But yeah, I mean, once she was born, that was the trajectory of your life kind of took a pretty big turn, or at least maybe, well, it did, I suppose. But also I think just the expectation of what your life’s going to be.

I think most of us want to assume the easy road. I mean, how could you not? You know what I mean? You’re going to have dreams and have hopes, and you’ve been done something for so long. And so we became special needs parents, and particularly for Mandy, just becoming a mother would be enough of a change, I think. But becoming a special needs mother. And one of the reasons we had not had children for a few years is because Mandy is a very talented musician and songwriter. And so we were both pursuing different types of paths like that. And so we’d spent a number of years trying to build some kind of career, but always assumed that even through having children, that would continue at some degree. But I think it’s really not been until the last year or so that Mandy has been able to get back into that at a level which you would prefer to be able to, because you do what you got to do. And it was the thing that should have happened, needed to happen. It was an amazing journey that’s still going on. Scout is what her life has made us, who we are,

Who we probably need to be, but never wanted to feel free to talk faster than I am.

 Mandy McCauley:

I don’t know what to say. I can’t remember what the question was because I feel like you beered off.

Gabe McCauley:

Oh, I think the question was scout.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah.

Gabe McCauley:

It wasn’t a question.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah. I dunno what you’re getting at with the question, but I think I do. Well,

Marlin Miller:

I think maybe how I should have phrased it was part of what I love about you guys the very most is the perspective and your ability to be present with whoever you’re with. And it’s something that I envy because I get busy and I get focused and Lisa and I go down a track and all of a sudden I look back and I go, you know what? Dug on it. I haven’t spent real time with any of our kids. Or you know what I got to take? I want to take miles to the baseball game, or I want to take Benny fishing, and life just happens and all of a sudden there goes half the summer and I’ve not done it. And I beat myself up over it for a while, and then I try again, and I long to have that kind of a focus. Yeah.

 Mandy McCauley:

May I challenge you, sir?

Marlin Miller:

Sure.

 Mandy McCauley:

I do believe you’re present, and I do believe what you’re feeling is every good parent’s guilt. You spend wonderful quality time with your kids, and I know you do, and I know you are very intentional. Both you and Lisa are, and I am reading into what you’re saying about us, but we have that guilt constantly. Our son is upstairs playing a video game while we’re down here recording a podcast. You don’t think that’s in both of our heads, like, oh, he shouldn’t be playing video games. But at the same time, I’m like, whatever. Yeah, he’s fine. Even though at night we both go, oh no, he played video games. He’s like, all right, we got to chill out a little bit, man. We can only do the best we can every moment of every day. And sometimes that might be to chill out a little bit because I still live in that fear of am I doing the right thing? But I think that anxiety and fear is actually good for parents because there’s a lot of parents that I hear about. I don’t see them much that kind of don’t care. I mean, you guys, we grew up in the eighties. We were like free range

And not in the best way, not in the way that free range kids are today, where it’s like, oh, well, they get to go in the woods and take berries, and they know all the names of the trees. That’s not us. We were like latchkey kids, man. Well, I don’t know if you were, but that’s what I grew up around. My parents didn’t do that if they’re listening to this podcast.

Gabe McCauley:

Well, if we have any good or healthy perspective at all in regards to some of those things, to appreciating the moments when you can of attempting to be present, A large part of that is because we were faced every day with the reality of how precious life is. And when you’re reminded of that on a daily basis, it is hard not to eventually be changed. And when you have lost someone, particularly a child, there’s just I very few things left in life that are worth my being really upset about because we’ve seen the depths and so, oh no, our flight got canceled. All right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And maybe sometimes I don’t, we’re, I don’t know that we’re trying to have that perspective. I think we’re just out of energy, you know what I mean?

We’re kind of just done our anxiety and our stress and our worry and all those things. At some level, it’s been spent. And so what’s left is hopefully what energy is there. We, I think, try to gear somewhat intentionally toward gratefulness, authenticity, being present. That’s where we can go back around us first meeting and having that conversation. I don’t know, I just don’t really care to ask you how the big game was last night or what you think of the weather. Those are fine things to talk about for a little bit. But really I want to know, I want to know more. I want to get to the good stuff because I know life is too precious and short to not be digging the depths of our souls.

Marlin Miller:

So why do you think it’s so hard for most of us to slow down? Are we just going too fast? No,

 Mandy McCauley:

It’s an addiction. We’re addicted to busyness even when we sit down and have a moment by ourselves, what I see is people pulling their phones out because they still need their brain and they don’t want to sit with themselves.

Marlin Miller:

What do you guys think of when you hear the term? I’m just so crazy busy

 Mandy McCauley:

That it’s a badge of honor.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. The answer that I want to just throw back in their face is why? How

Gabe McCauley:

Can I help you? Well,

Marlin Miller:

Who’s

Gabe McCauley:

In charge of your calendar? Do you need to come sit on my porch? I mean, unfortunately, I mean, I get it. It’s a lot of things. There’s not a real easy answer to this, but I think the biggest thing is it is just, it’s a culture that we are a part of and it is hard to avoid based on the current sort of capitalistic, consumeristic culture that we are a part of, to find a job that doesn’t sort of assume that you’ll need to pour this amount of thing into it to have our kids in schools. It doesn’t assume they’ll be involved in extracurricular activities, all of these things. So unless you are potentially one of the fortunate ones that, or crazy enough ones to say, I’m going off the grid and I’m going to whatever, but farming today is not easy or homesteading. It is not for the week of, and it is.

I make a course with Joelson on how to farm. So I’ve spent a lot of time or specifically regenerative farming and at his place learning from him. And that is a lot of hard, hard work, and it’s not easy for people, even if they’re willing to get up at the crack of dawn and bust their butt all day long. There’s a lot of people that are probably willing to do that. But the entry level is not easy. It’s just not easy. Anyway, I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here. I’m just saying we’re live in a culture that does not celebrate the ability to sit on a porch and have this conversation.

And you can still find that. I think there are other countries and cultures that believe in that or just it’s assumed a little bit more. I mean, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around a little bit with work, and so I’ve seen some of that. I mean, I remember being in Spain and it was about noon or one or something walking by the strip and just nothing was open. I was like, what’s going on? I was like, well, siesta time, they went home. When are they going to be back? I don’t know when they’re ready to come back. So these individuals, whoever’s operating these stores, making a dollar was not their number one priority. I mean, it couldn’t have been right.

No, I’m going to go home and eat my lunch, take a nap. I might be back at three, might be two 30. Who knows? Anyway, it’s interesting to see how we do things here in America. And if you’re raising that culture, it’s very, very challenging to, you have to be intentional about it. So that is a part of what if I could offer advice to people? I have a feeling we will talk about this porch even more, but it has become what I call a sacred place for slowing down. But it’s not without intention. I do have to still carve out the time and the space to just sit and be.

Marlin Miller:

So that’s the perfect segue. That’s exactly where I was going to go next was to ask you how porch time began. What was your thinking around?

Gabe McCauley:

Well, I wasn’t thinking Marlon, and really that’s the beauty of it. I mean, to some extent that’s true. What this community, a handful of individuals have now called Porch Time, I really began with, there was some ideas and some intention behind some guys that we just need to get together. We just need to spend more time as men with one another. And it hadn’t really come into any kind of fruition, but you could tell that there was a heart for it. There was a longing for it. And Rory, who had asked us to move down here and who was kind of fixing up this house, his wife Joey, passed away. And so without much real intention, just of knowing that if there were ever a time for friends to gather around and to just be, this is the time, this is when this is needed.

This is when you do this kind of thing. And so they came to this porch and we sat and we were just there for him with no real agenda or intentions, whether that meant we’re sitting in silence and sackcloth and ashes, or whether it meant we’re yelling and hugging and crying or whatever. It just was going to be what it needed to be. And that sort of evolved into, we need to do this again. We need to do this more often. And then of course, over the course of years within this group of friends, other friends go through hard times. And so I forget how many years, but however many years later, they’re back on this porch when Scout passed away doing the same thing. They’re just here. In fact, first they weren’t here, they were in the backyard chopping wood, and they’d brought a little griddle and they were making pancakes back there, and they were just here to be.

Marlin Miller:

You guys also have some pretty special things that happen here every year.

Gabe McCauley:

We do. And that kind of started with Scout. I’m not really sure how, but we were part of a church that was in, it’s about 30, 45 minutes away, and I’m not exactly sure how, but I know Scout was an inspiration at some level to just, she loved Easter and she just wanted, I dunno, somehow we said, well, what if we just had it at our place on the porch in this yard right here? And so of course the first year we’re real ambition. It’s going to be a sunrise service that lasted that year. And then after that, it proved logistically challenging, especially for a lot of the young parents with kids. But that has gone on and continues. I mean, at this point we just have a number of people who as they’re leaving, I don’t care if you’re having it or not, I’ll see you next year. You guys can sleep in if you want, but I’ll be on your porch. And that’s become a pretty worthy special thing. Again, one of those things that I think it’s fascinating to see where things will evolve. I mean, porch time is quite a thing now at some level. I mean, it’s still going on. It’s evolved. It’s been at different places. There are little subgroups.

It’s just a thing. But again, with no intention of it becoming something more, having to define it, but it has and sort of the similar scenario with this sort of Easter celebration we have here. It just keeps evolving, which I think is a testament to something beyond us. Yeah, God, inner weaving and curating and playing behind the scenes. Yes. Mandy,

 Mandy McCauley:

I kind of drifted off talking so much. Thank

Marlin Miller:

You. I love it. You’re welcome. This podcast is sponsored by my friends at Azure Standard. A while back, I had a chance to sit down with the founder, David Stelzer, right here at the table. And we had a great conversation. I love the Azure story. They started out as farmers back in the seventies, and I think in 1980 they began a nationwide food distribution company. And guys, they are non GMO organic. They do it right. They do it so well, and you can get a truck to drop food right in your town. Check ’em out@azurestandard.com and tell ’em Marlin and Plain values sent you. Does the house face East? It does,

Gabe McCauley:

Right? It most certainly does. In fact, speaking of my lovely wife, you can see and listen to a music video that I shot of her probably two years ago. It’s again, going back to this, she has an album that she’s putting out now that she started before Scout passed away, and then it was a very personal album. She should be talking about it, not me, but she probably won’t. And it had a lot to do with just her being a mother and a woman and all of the complexity of that. And she wrote a song called Dreaming and Slow Motion, and it’s, would you like to say what it’s about? I’m doing a really good job. I can

 Mandy McCauley:

See you’re doing great, and I love that I don’t have to talk that much.

Gabe McCauley:

I think it’s kind of about her initial thoughts and ideas of what it would be like to be a rockstar.

 Mandy McCauley:

Well, okay, I will jump in. Thank you very much. Appreciate.

Gabe McCauley:

See, I knew if I

 Mandy McCauley:

Started,

Gabe McCauley:

And then we have to take it all back around because it has something to do with Facing East. That’s where we’re going.

 Mandy McCauley:

Okay, well that’s good. Let me remember that when we get there.

Gabe McCauley:

Oh, I’ll remember.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yes, it dreaming of Slow Motion, first of all, was one of the only first and only song I’ve written about Gabe and I’s relationship that’s firstly, and I wrote it with two of my, I guess I would call them, we work together all the time now, Heidi F and Dylan Hodges. And when we finally got that, it took a while to get the hook, but we knew it was good and we knew, we started crying when we were writing it because of how weirdly personal it was. It can be very general, but for our story, it’s personal and what you think that your life is going to be like. But it turns into something different. And how I had these plans to get all the rockstar stuff established before I was 30. Well, I actually didn’t think I would get married until I was 30 because I wanted to be able to do my own thing. And I had the plan of like, okay, here’s where I’ll be and then I’ll get married and then maybe if I feel like I’ll have kids kind of

Gabe McCauley:

Thing. She couldn’t resist.

 Mandy McCauley:

I couldn’t. I met this guy and I was like, I don’t think I can pass this one up.

Marlin Miller:

I mean, he had a puppet.

Gabe McCauley:

That’s true. Speaking of past this out today in honor of this podcast, we decided that it would be our 25th wedding anniversary.

 Mandy McCauley:

Oh yeah,

Gabe McCauley:

Today, today is our 25th today anniversary again, June 9th. Oh, those nines. Yeah. Interesting.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yeah. How deep do those nines go? They go very deep.

Gabe McCauley:

They go deep. Not

 Mandy McCauley:

On purpose

Marlin Miller:

For another podcast. That sounds like a

 Mandy McCauley:

Plan. Yeah. It’s not on purpose, not really. But anyway, dreaming of slow motion is about just where you think your life is going to be, but maybe it’s turned out better with the, what do we call those when you veer off the road? I don’t know. I dunno. Detour. Yeah, thank you. Detours.

Marlin Miller:

I was thinking an accident, but I didn’t know I

 Mandy McCauley:

Did

Marlin Miller:

When you run your car to the ditch, right.

 Mandy McCauley:

But we had somebody say that to us once. It’s like, your life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the things that happen along the way. And we’ve learned in a very intense and unfortunately dramatic way. That is absolutely true.

Gabe McCauley:

And it’s one of those things where as Mandy has often referred to it before, but so much of the horrific things that could happen in your life, the suffering that maybe you or go through or witness someone else going through. And most of the time while that’s going on, you do not realize that you are in the holy poop, if you will. Sometimes another word might be more appropriate because it’s just that contradiction, that juxtaposition of something that could be so beautiful and so devastating at the same time. How do they even go hand in hand? But yet somehow they do. And somehow that’s I think, what we’re all meant to see and go through at some level.

And I mean, we constantly say, I would never wish even on ourselves to this day, it would be hard for me to want to wish how we got here. So again, if we have some kind of perspective or insight, it’s not that we wanted it. You know what I mean? It’s been, but hopefully it can be used to help someone else. It certainly has given us a perspective to be able to from time to time point out. I know this can seem like something now that you’re going through it, but let me tell you, I’ve been on the other side or whatever. And so back to Facing East, that music video that we shot, which was very simple, but I had been wanting to do something since really the year we moved into this house because the sun rises to the east here, and two times a year in the spring and fall, it will line up with the door and it’s just a square house with a wide hallway.

It’s a Sears and Robuck, so it’s like room, everything matches, it’s all symmetrical, whatever. But for about a week, that sun will pierce through this door and hit all the way through the back side of the house. You could literally open both doors and the sun was straight through. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. So I kept wanting to shoot something in the house when that happens. And this song Drew Means slow motion, just felt like that would be something appropriate. And so it’s very simple, but you can look it up and watch it. And you can see our Eastern sunrise.

Marlin Miller:

Well, I have Lisa shared it, and it is magnificent.

Gabe McCauley:

Yeah,

Marlin Miller:

I absolutely, I love it. It’s so good. And the song is ridiculous.

Gabe McCauley:

And so you can hear Scout and Ash in that song. I mean, you won’t necessarily recognize it, but there’s little noises and kid sounding voices. And again, thus why that was just such a personal project in so many ways. And so it’s taken Mandy a long time to get it finished and release it, but we’re working on it. We’re almost there. Yeah.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah. A friend, a close friend, and my goodness, Mike has been a coach and a mentor to me for seven or eight years, and his wife adopted their first two children and then had to biologically and their first two children put them through the mill for 20 years, and then their second two children, I believe I’m getting this right, dealt, I think three of the four kids have had cancer.

And Mike told me, and he was with me during our hardest years with our oldest son, and Mike told me many times, he said, Marlon, don’t think that when you live in a high stress situation, and then life changes and that stress is like the stress ore is taken away that the stress you feel if you’re at a 9.3 and it goes on for a long time, it continues to climb 9 4, 9 5, 9 6, and then that goes away. It does not go from a 9.5 or 9.6 to a five. He said it takes a long time to go back down. And when we moved Preston out the day after he turned 18, we were at that nine plus for years, for quite a few years. And I saw the wisdom in that experience and we lived that 9 3 9 2 9 1. And I think it took Lisa and I probably a year to two to be able to poke each other and say, Hey, do you feel like it’s getting better? Does it feel like it’s getting better? And I think there’s a lot of truth in that. How long has that process taken for you?

 Mandy McCauley:

It’s still there, but after Scout passed, one of the first things I thought about doing is throwing her medicine away. But I woke up the next day and it was gone. You did it just always making sure we were on schedule and making sure that we gave her medicine at the right time. And just going down from the high alert that we lived with and me needing to focus. I still have that energy that I had to put into all of this stuff. The insurance, the doctors, the therapies, the just constant walking around her, making sure that she didn’t fall and hurt herself and making sure her little crazy brother who we called bam bam didn’t hurt her.

And I didn’t realize how stressful and full of anxiety I was until after she passed. It was, I was always living up there and I had to transfer that energy somewhere else because I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I found something else to do, but I tried to, this is a weird thing to go into with you, but I had to transfer all of that energy into something and I wanted to make it a positive thing where we can make good memories together. And so I started travel hacking so that somehow I’m going off here. I know I am. If any special needs parents are listening to this, which I guess they are. You guys know there’s this thing about our children and how much money we are allowed to make and how much they lose their insurance if you make a certain amount of money. And it was just constant headaches of dealing with SSI and trying to figure out how much money we were allowed to make and actually make money without, I’m going off, you should call this out actually. Anyway, we just lived in high stress and always it was medical. It was financial. It was spiritual.

Yeah, you can cut all of that out. I just realized I was going off.

Gabe McCauley:

I very much understand. Well, so your question, how long has it taken to come back down from this 9.9 stress situation? I mean, I absolutely know we are still not down from this, but time does eventually alleviate, I would say the weird thing about out potentially our situation, not weird. And that this is so to go from a special needs parent to a parent who loses a child. So in one scenario you are high stress constantly, and then the next situation, you’re a grieving parent. So from anxiety to grief, and the moment you lose someone again, you’re still at 9.9 stress, but now you’re immediately at 9.9 grief in a way. You know what I mean? And the grief in some ways only continues to grow maybe as the stress is going down. I don’t know. But it’s a difficult road to figure out how to handle it all and what’s what. Yeah,

Marlin Miller:

I think, I hope you guys know how often I have shared little parts from a 50,000 foot view, just the very basics, which is all I know. But I’ve shared of our friends in Tennessee who have walked a hard road and of the porch, and you would not believe if I tried to count an ad all the times, that it has made a very clear and a definitive impact in people’s lives that I’ve met that I’ve had a chance to talk to. I think a year or so after we became friends, we’re driving home from Tennessee one time, I’m up to Ohio, and I told Lisa, I said, babe, I’m so tired of talking about the weather.

I’m so tired of talking about the weather. We’ve talked about living in real community inside our magazine for years. And I’m like, I want to do more. And she said, first of all, she said, Marlon, not everybody wants to go deep with you 30 seconds after meeting you. And I said, yeah, that’s true. That’s probably a good idea. But that’s when we began our own version of Porch Time, and I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but there’s a family in North Dakota that began one, there’s a family, an hour or two from here in Tennessee that began one. There’s a friend of ours in Mount Gilead, Ohio, Chris and Lee, who have begun two different versions. One is for the men and another is for families. And some of the stories that have come out of those other porch times are just fantastic. And so I hope you guys know how much I appreciate just your friendship and just simply sharing and then being able to be okay with some numb nut bald dude in Ohio talking about parts of your story and then sharing how it’s impacted us.

 Mandy McCauley:

Well, Marlon, I don’t really think it’s appropriate that I know that you’re nuts or numb.

Marlin Miller:

We were talking earlier about Joel and Daniel fixing their calves, but it’s not quite the same. So we should probably move on. How can we pray for you guys? Oh, for crying out loud. I’m sorry.

 Mandy McCauley:

You trapped

Marlin Miller:

Us. Well, just give me just shallow, I don’t care. Just because I love you

Gabe McCauley:

Guys. You know that. Well, our son is always top of mind. And I mean, just being a parent is so difficult. And we spent, so Scout was alive nine years, nine months and nine days. Thank you, Shane. That was an amen. And as much as we tried to give our son a normal childhood by necessity, he was often getting the leftovers or time and attention because we were actively keeping one child alive on a daily basis. And I think anyway, he is experiencing, I’m sure all of this at some level of grief that we just don’t understand and not able to express it with the emotional intelligence of an adult. And for us to figure out what is, this is normal teenage boy stuff and what is this is grief and anxiety and everything else. So anyway, that comes to top of mind right away is I just as us is continuing to try and be the parents we need to be for our son.

And I think also praying for this porch, it has become, it’s not ours. You know what I mean? It’s become something for those who need it. It’s become a little bit of a respite. It’s become a sacred place for slowing down, and I want to make sure that I don’t lose sight of that and that we are good stewards of this porch and really all that that means might not be this literal porch, but maybe even just in continuing to I think help foster the community that’s being built here in this town. It’s an amazing community and it just blows my mind that what the people here and what they’re trying to do, and I think there’s probably some more I responsibility in that then I realize, you know what I mean? Would you like to add anything else? Do you want another 25 years of this or are you good? Is our marriage fine? Or

 Mandy McCauley:

I feel like you both are trapping me in different ways. I’d say on a physical material level, we’d like to own this porch. We rent it, and we’d love to be able to have the opportunity to buy this land one day to be able to keep doing this for as long as we can. I know, I mean, scout said she wanted to be here forever, and Ash does too. Ash is our son for you listening out there.

Gabe McCauley:

And Scout is actually buried in the family cemetery right behind next to our house, which is wow. Something.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I don’t know, when Lisa and I talk about you guys a lot, we often, often pray that you guys can truly rest, which I know you’re good at, but I think you know where I’m going. Yeah. And it’s I, yeah, so thank you. Thank you for doing this, for just being willing to sit and to talk. And I hope I didn’t trap you too, too tightly.

 Mandy McCauley:

No, I have a feeling that you wanted more laughter from us, but you got a little deep with these questions, dude. And that’s okay.

Marlin Miller:

I hope. I mean, should I apologize?

 Mandy McCauley:

No, no, no apologies. We love you and we love Lisa, and we’re so happy to know you guys.

Marlin Miller:

Well, I think, and if you don’t, I’m going to say it again that it is extremely reciprocated.

 Mandy McCauley:

Yes. Mutual admiration, society

Gabe McCauley:

A s. Yeah, you’re doing good work. And whenever we get the magazine or hear more stories about what you’re trying to do or the top topics that you want to cover, the ambitions you have, I keep thinking this is a worthy thing to go after and accomplish. And that’s surprising how few things there are that I look at and would kind of deem as a worthy thing to put your time and interest in. And so yeah, I just thank you for that.

I feel like if we did this podcast again, I could answer twice as fast. Some of the things you want to start all over real quick? I’m just kidding. But I will add about the porch time thing just for a second. I, because it is quite strange what this porch has become and what it means to us, but also I think what it’s meant to others, which is again, something that was never intended. And I have a lot of people that wind up asking me about it, they hear from somebody or in conversation like something porch time, Hey, you should come Gabe’s porch or whatever.

So often they say, well, what is it? Or their expectation is that, oh, it’s a Bible study, or, oh, it’s a business mastermind kind of deal, or it’s a whatever. And it’s none of those things. It could be, but it’s one of those unique moments in life where you had no intention and it became the right thing at the right moment. And I feel like those things are so rare that I don’t want to lose sight of what it was and what it still is, but it’s changing, it’s evolving. And maybe that’s fine and necessary too, but there was a moment in time where in particular there was a group of men who needed to be with one another and needed to be there for grieving individuals and it was what it needed to be. And so I often will tell people if I had to put names and define it, that for us, what it has become is this sacred place for slowing down. And I try not to define it any more than that because I feel like the moment you do it does become like, oh, well it is this Bible study thing or it is this men’s business mastermind thing or whatever. But if I had to give intention behind it to encourage other people to start, I would say one, we live in a time and place where you do unfortunately often have to be very intentional about fostering community. You would think that that should be more natural and should happen, but I think you have to decide, I need to be together with men or with women or whatever, with families, some kind of intentional

Fostering and developing of community together and making time and space for that. I also think for us, it has made a difference to be outside, to be on a porch. I just think it leads to different conversations. It leads to more conversations that can surround the beauty of creation and things like that and the birds that are seeing and the cows that are moving or whatever. And so that to me has been an important part of this. And then the next piece is that being willing to reflect and to be contemplative, and it’s that slowing down peace and to literally have to train yourself and others to be comfortable in some silence. And not that we’re getting together and nobody’s saying anything, but I’m just that opportunity to go deep. Because if you don’t have moments where you can sort of pause and rest and think for a moment, you’re just going to keep talking about the big game last night or it’s going to quickly go into how can I talk about business a little bit more or how can I connect with this person so that I can make more money and do more things or whatever.

And so that intentional, that piece of slowing down and just saying let’s reflect on it, drives those conversations deeper in really beautiful ways.

Marlin Miller:

I think this is probably not totally appropriate, but I have to share it. The only thing I could think of as you were sharing the last part was Seinfeld’s the awkward pause. I’m all awkward. Pause. It’s all I Am is awkward pause. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

 Mandy McCauley:

No, sorry.

Gabe McCauley:

I mean I do give a lot of awkward pauses. So’s so funny.

 Mandy McCauley:

I definitely do. Now I’m just like, I got nothing else to say, so I’ll sit here and just, I’m not going to make something up.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, I love it guys. Thank you. I mean, is there more that needs to be said? I mean, I feel there is obviously I know there is

Gabe McCauley:

Not unless you think you just had a question that we really didn’t get to or in the right way or quick enough or anything like that. The thing is in particular in asking you about scout, I mean there’s so much to be said. I just don’t know where to begin other than the beautifully hard blessing that she is. And

Marlin Miller:

Yeah, I think I told you earlier that I kind of wanted to talk about how you slow down and the thing that was in the back of my head the whole time as I was thinking through this time was how do I get there without bringing her up? And yet, yeah, there’s no way to do it, is there? There’s no way to do it. Yeah. So thank you.

 Mandy McCauley:

We will always want to talk about Scout.

Marlin Miller:

I hope you know how many families when we shared the story in the magazine a year. Yeah. You guys have no idea. You have no idea the stories, the calls. I got a couple of emails, and so thank you. Yeah. I think the best way to describe it is the holy poop thing.

 Mandy McCauley:

That’s not what I would say, but yes, I know.

Marlin Miller:

Yeah.

Gabe McCauley:

Thanks guys. Is this satisfactory for you? Are you nuts?

 Mandy McCauley:

Not numb.

Gabe McCauley:

I’m giving you some visual references for the mics.

Marlin Miller:

This episode of the Plain Values Podcast is sponsored by my friends at Kentucky Lumber. When Derek from Kentucky Lumber and I first talked, one of the first things that we talked about was his story of their family and their business and how that all came to be. And what I found really quickly was massive similarities in their family stories and Lisa and I, our family story from the adoptions to the business side of things, it really comes down to Derek and his wife and Lisa and I basically saying the exact same thing where we basically said, Lord, if you want us to adopt and foster children, you’re going to have to bring us a bigger house and a bigger income. And that’s exactly what happened in Derek’s case. Two weeks later, a guy approached him about buying his business and his home. In our case it was a little different a couple of years later, but he provided everything that both of our families needed to live out the calling that he had put on our families to care for the children that he was going to bring us. And I adore that.

Having the faith to step out and say, if you want us to do this, you got to provide the way. There’s something so great where you give. Not that we don’t give the Lord the opportunity to do something, but I think it’s especially wonderful when you have the attitude that you have to do this in a way that I can’t take any of the credit. It is literally so cool and so absurd in a way that only you can get the glory. And I just love that. I love Derek and his family. They are the kind of people that I want to do business with, and I have a feeling you’re going to find the same thing. You can find him@drywallhaters.com.

In his book, Rembrandt Is in the Wind, Russ Ramsey says that the Bible is the story of the God of the universe telling his people to care for the sojourner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow, and it’s the story of his people struggling to find the humility to carry out that holy calling guys. That is what plain values is all about. If you got anything out of this podcast, you will probably love plain values in print. You can go to plain values.com to learn more and check it out. Please like, subscribe and leave us a review. Guys, love you all. Thanks so much.