I think what she saw and what I was used to seeing growing up were very different. I think she saw some things in me that were scary. She actually broke up with me and that really set me back. I kind of went off and went into a pretty dark rebellious stage.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m Chris Harden and this is my wife Alexa. We\u2019ve got three children. We have been married for 13 years and we have three children.<\/p>\n
I grew up Catholic. I made a lot of bad decisions growing up. I experienced a lot of abuse growing up, both emotionally, physically, mentally, and other. When I went to college, I was pursuing money and trying to be popular and trying to be liked by others around me. I was into things I shouldn\u2019t have been in: drugs, alcohol, promoting bands and clubs, just that party scene.<\/p>\n
One night, I was walking out of a club I was promoting. I had a bunch of money in my pocket and I was drunk. There was a fight in the parking lot. I walk out and the last thing I remember was talking to some guy at his car and I woke up the next day in the hospital. The doctor said I was lucky to be alive.<\/p>\n
Alexa: He was in the ICU for a while.<\/em><\/p>\n I was in the ICU for about a week and the doctor said I had a fractured skull and a fractured jaw and a broken ear drum from \u2013 he thought I got hit with a tire iron in the back of my head. That\u2019s really where \u2013<\/p>\n Alexa: rock bottom \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n God said \u201cWhat are you doing? I\u2019ve given you blessings that you\u2019re not\u2026 So anyway, that prompted me to get out of Lubbock and interestingly enough, it brought Alexa and I together quickly after that.<\/p>\n Alexa: I had heard about this happening to him. I was in Dallas at the time and I heard about that happening. I had actually heard that he had died. For me, that was horrible because we were broken up, but I loved him and I had hoped that we would come back together. I think that God definitely had his hand in that because all the pieces worked their way back to us getting back together.<\/em><\/p>\n When we did get back together, that was really the turning point in my faith. That was when I started to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He was pursuing me and I was pursuing him.<\/p>\n When Sophia was born, we didn\u2019t know what we were doing. When we decided to move from Fort Worth back to Dallas, I was looking to get plugged into a ministry in the real estate industry and I came across Abiding<\/em> Fathers. Based on the way I grew up, it was intriguing because it\u2019s like \u201cWow, what is this? There is a ministry dedicated to training and equipping fathers on how to be a dad? As a Christian? I\u2019m in on that.\u201d So I signed up for the class that Bill Dotson was teaching at the church and went to this class and just ate up the material. It was amazing because I was getting practical, real-world knowledge and application of how to take biblical principles and apply them to fatherhood.<\/p>\n Alexa and I have talked about this: We are going to raise our kids differently than we grew up. The things of your past don\u2019t have to be carried on into your future. You can change the way you grew up for your kids. I didn\u2019t have a father who mentored me, who prayed for me, who listened to me growing up – not a mentor type. Through the Abiding<\/em> Fathers<\/a>, I\u2019ve learned to mentor, I\u2019ve learned to disciple my kids, I\u2019ve learned to pray for my kids, I\u2019ve learned to teach my kids, and listen to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An interview with Chris Harden and his wife Alexa I think what she saw and what I was used to seeing growing up were very different. I think she saw some things in me that were scary. She actually broke up with me and that really set me back. I kind of went off and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,64],"tags":[153,91,148,150,87],"class_list":["post-3586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abiding","category-mentoring","tag-amazing-stuff","tag-btd","tag-father-stories","tag-interviews","tag-videos","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/af2.musiimes.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}