Hey everybody, Michael Gunger here. Welcome to a joint loving this and liturgist podcast

today. I've got some exciting news about the future of the work of both of these podcasts,

not just the work of these podcasts, but really all of my work that I want to talk to you

about. But before I tell you about that, I got to tell you this story from my childhood.

It's a rough story, but I think it's got some bearing on what I'm going to tell you.

Okay, so I was kind of a weird shy kid. I grew up in a Christian school in the middle of Wisconsin,

like nowhere was Wisconsin, just a tiny Christian school class, basically elevated homeschool.

But it was my birthday and I was turning, I believe 12 or 13, and I was hanging out

at my friend Joel's house with a few of my friends. And we have this thing we were obsessed with

root beer. I don't know what it was about, but we would like take root beer over to this like

co-op farm equipment place and like sit in the farm equipment and drink root beer or go up

on Joel's roof and drink root beer. I don't know, it's a weird thing. Anyway, we wanted some root

beer and I had some of my house. So we went over to my house and when we got there,

there were girls at my house. And not just any girls. I mean Liz was there and Beth

was there. The girls that I was in love with, I guess I was like kind of a little weird

poly kid, but they were there. How dare my mother surprise me with this surprise party. I mean,

of course, on some level it's exactly what I wanted. Those were the most exciting, exhilarating

thing that could have happened, having these women that I loved there, women, 12 year old girls.

But you know what I did? As I watched the scene before me of all these people that I

desperately wanted to be there for me, be there for me. I panicked.

My heart was beating out of my chest. This was too much. So what I did, I ran to the fridge,

grabbed the root beer and I bought it from my own birthday party.

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