An OKC bombing survivor’s radical transformation
Jordan Raynor sits down with Amy Downs, CEO of Allegiance Credit Union, to talk about what she prayed while buried in the rubble of the OKC bombing, her 4 steps to practicing hope, and how to cultivate self-awareness.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I bring you a conversation with a Christ follower who is pursuing world-class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work.
Guys, I think this is going to be one of your all-time favorite episodes on the podcast. Today, you're going to hear from Amy Downs. She's a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing, which occurred on April 19, 1995, 26 years ago this week. At the time, Amy was, by her own admission, wasting her life, throwing her life away. She was 355 pounds. She had dropped out of college after one year, and only a 0.5 GPA, and she saw no meaning in her work as a low-level employee at a credit union whose offices were destroyed in that bombing.
After the bombing, today, she's the CEO of that same credit union. She's lost more than 200 pounds, and, oh yeah, she finished an Iron Man at the age of 50. This is one of the most remarkable stories I have ever heard. This episode answers of how the world this all happened. Amy was gracious enough to sit down with me recently. We talked about what Amy's prayers were, while she was buried in the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing and how the gospel of Jesus' unconditional love just transformed her life.
We talked about Amy's four steps to practicing hope on a daily basis, which comes from her terrific book, Hope Is a Verb. We also talked about how to cultivate self-awareness. We all know this is an important quality in our work, but how do you actually develop the habit of being more and more self-aware? Amy answers that question. You guys are going to love this episode with Amy Downs.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:17] JR: Amy Downs, thank you so much for being here.
[00:02:19] AD: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:22] JR: So, your story, as you tell in the book, really can be told as Amy Downs, pre bombing, Amy Downs, post bombing. Tell us a little bit about yourself before this tragedy that happened 20 something years ago.
[00:02:40] AD: Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right. I feel like everything in my life is either before the bombing or after the bombing. Before the bombing, I would describe myself as life happening to me, just complacent. I really didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had flunked out of college. I was just really floating. In my earlier years, I had grown up in a Christian faith-based home. I was very involved in church. And before the bombing, just a few years before, I had just – I won't say like I didn't become an atheist, or there was no moment where I was like, “Okay, I'm done with Christianity.” But there was just a drifting away. I think I have it here, God, I'm just going to kind of take the wheel now.
Everything, I was just detached and I had gained 200 pounds. I went to work every day, came home, ate, watch TV, did it again the next day. So, there's just no purpose in my life at all.
[00:03:40] JR: It was like a lack of intentionality, right?
[00:03:42] AD: Complete lack of intentionality, just drifting — just drifting.
[00:03:47] JR: I think this is really common, for people. I see a lot of people just going through life just kind of disengaged, just not being purposeful. Looking back, now that you have had this radical transformation, which we'll talk about a minute, what do you think is the source of that lack of intentionality?
[00:04:02] AD: For me, I think it was growing up in the south, and kind of on the cusp of like, when I grew up, you either got married and it was your husband that had the career or if you didn't go to college, well, then you just like went in the military or you were a hairdresser. I didn't feel like there were a lot of options for coaching people into, what do you want to do? And now, there's so many great tools to assess your strengths finders and personality tests where you can kind of find out like what are you wired toward? I never went through any of that at all. I think that could have saved me a lot. I just thought, “Well, I'm supposed to go to school and do something.” I didn't know what that thing was that I was supposed to do.
So, Therefore, when I flunked out, I think I just thought, “Oh, well, I'm nobody. I can't do anything. So, I just need to go get a job.” And some entry level positions somewhere so I can pay the bills. Apparently, I'm just not cut out to be that kind of person that knows what they want to be when they grow up.
[00:05:11] JR: So, before the bombing, talk a little bit more about your perspective on work specifically. Was it just a means to get a paycheck? What was worked for you?
[00:05:19] AD: So, at first it was. It was just a means to get a paycheck, which I think is kind of funny that, okay, I flunked out of college because I could not pass the remedial math class, like the fake math class that you have to take before you actually get the one that you get credit hours. I couldn't even pass that one. So, I got a job as a teller with a cash drawer. I know, that’s just crazy.
But anyway, so first, yes, it was just, I needed a job. But something happened. I found a mentor. After I had been working at my job for several years, I moved into a department where this woman that I worked for, began coaching me. I didn't even know it. I look back now, and like she was coaching me, and not only coaching me, but I remember, she would want to practice her Sunday school lesson on me. She taught an adult Sunday school lesson every week and she would say, “Hey, can I just practice. I'm nervous. I want to run this pass you.”
[00:06:16] JR: She was discipling you.
[00:06:18] AD: Oh, my gosh. At her funeral, she was killed in the bombing and at her funeral, hearing everybody talk about her. It just came crashing down on me. She was absolutely like discipling me. She was caring for me and loving me. I want to cry right now thinking about it. And not only that, but she taught me because at this point, I'd gained 200 pounds, and in the south, I think I grew up thinking like everything about a woman was there her looks. I'd lost all of that. Couldn’t pass the math class. I didn't even look attractive, like, what do I have to offer anybody? She taught me that you, it did not matter your dress size. Do your work with excellence and take pride in the work that you're doing and serving others. The organization I worked for, the mission is people helping people. So, it's a financial institution. But it's a not for profit financial institution.
The whole thing is about serving others and she really taught me. I watched her serve others day in and day out and live it. She just really impacted my life. I went from just a job to all the sudden, like really admiring this woman who was helping other people and doing it with such excellence. And I kind of wanted to be like her.
[00:07:39] JR: Thank God for her and her example, her name was, if I remembering correctly, from book, it was Vicky?
[00:07:44] AD: Yeah, it was Vicky Dexter.
[00:07:47] JR: So, in the book, you mentioned that part of the bombing, you just spent all of your energy trying to avoid work, right? Which I think is a very common view work. It's part of the reason why this podcast exists to give people a bigger picture of work and how their work contributes to what God wants to see in the world, which essentially, is loving your neighbor as yourself, as Jesus summarized. Remind me what exactly was your job at the credit union, the time of the bombing, you were a teller?
[00:08:12] AD: I was hired as a teller and I was a teller for several years, and right before the bombing, I had moved over – well, a couple years before the bombing, I had moved over into the credit card department. And so, I just posted credit card payments and stuff like that and Vicky, my boss there, in that credit card department had started teaching me to do the applications, like to actually give credit cards to people. So, that was where I was, in the credit card department at that point.
[00:08:38] JR: Got it. So, we're actually going to release this episode. We're recording this in early February, we're going to release it the week of the 26th anniversary of Oklahoma City bombing in April. I hate to ask you to go there. But I want to ask you to go there for a minute. You're sitting in your office at the credit union that you worked out when the bomb went off. What do you remember about the explosion, about the immediate aftermath, being trapped in the building? What do you remember about that tragic day?
[00:09:04] AD: I remember Robin, one of my coworkers who is seven months pregnant. She came in, she sat down right beside me. And yeah, sometimes in the morning, you're just busy, you're working and you don't want to be interrupted. I was kind of irritated. Honestly, I was just really irritated, like, “What does she need?” I went to sign in on my computer, I was kind of actually almost ignoring her, like, “Let me sign on my computer. Let me do all these other things and like, then I'll give you my attention.” I remember I turned finally, and was like, kind of with an attitude like, “What do you need?” And I don't even know if the words, “what do you need” came out or not because that's when the bomb went off.
I was sitting on the third floor, front and center close to the glass windows of the Murrah Building. And I remember as I turned to say, “What do you need?” Everything went black, and I could feel this powerful rushing sensation, while at the same time, this roaring in my head and it was so loud. I remember hearing this woman screaming right in my ears. “Jesus help me! Jesus help me!” And then like, all of a sudden realizing that was me, that was my voice. I didn't even recognize the sound of my own voice. I could hear people screaming all around. And then all of a sudden, the screaming stopped, and I couldn't see anything. I couldn't move.
I remember just straining to open my eyes, that everything was black, and I couldn't move. It was hot. I remember, there was this awful smell that burned when I tried to breathe. I remember, just the minute the bomb went off just praying, “Jesus help me! Jesus help me!” I remember laying there for a minute wondering, am I dead or alive? I honestly had no bearing about where I was. Then I heard a siren going off in the distance, and I decided, “Okay, I must still be alive, I can hear the siren.” I had no idea what had happened. I remember thinking something's happened and what if I'm the only person left alive and just not knowing, and it was about 45 minutes before I heard men's voices.
I heard them saying, you know, “This is the daycare area, let's look for the babies.” And I was kind of confused by that. But I started screaming my head off anyway. This man says, “I hear you. I hear you child. How old are you?” And I remember right then, like, wanting to lie, like “Two. I’m two.” And I was like, “I'm sorry, I'm 28.” He goes, “That's okay.” He starts screaming, “We have a live one. We have a live one.” And he said, “We can't see you, we got to follow the sound of your voice.” And so, they eventually make it over, I found out later, I'm still in my chair and I'm upside down, under 10 feet of rubble in this rubble pile, but my right hand is sticking out of the side of the rubble pile.
They come across my hand, and they find me, my hand, and I'm thinking, “Okay, they found my hand, they're getting ready to count three, pull me up and out.” But about the time they found my hand, I hear men yelling in the background, “There's another bomb. There's another bomb. We need everybody out now. There's another bomb. Let's go! Let's go!” I realized at that point, because they told me there been a bomb and now, I know there's another one. They said, “We need to get some more hydraulic equipment we're going to be right back.” But I heard, I knew what was going on. I just started telling them, over and over again, my name and tell my family I love them.
They left, and with that, I was alone and buried, and realizing, like what had happened, and that my life was actually getting ready to end. And I remember thinking, I'm 28 years old, and I have wasted so much my life and I've never really lived. It's getting ready to be over and I've never really lived and I had so much regret in my mind. When you hear people talk about life flashing before your eyes. I mean, that was exactly what was happening. I was just thinking about everything and all the things that were really important at that moment to me, relationships, my relationship with God, and all of that that had been pushed aside. I just wanted to do over and I just started praying, just begging God for a second chance. I don't know if it’s praying or bargaining, actually, it’s probably more bargaining.
[00:13:29] JR: It’s like negotiating.
[00:13:30] AD: I was [doing some] serious negotiating. I remember at one point, I was so scared and so terrified, and I’d like to tell you like, I just immediately felt God's presence. I did not. I felt alone. I felt scared. I started trying to remember a scripture. I grew up in this Christian church and they would always – when you were a little kid, if you memorize the scripture, they gave you candy, which I kind of think back now, like that's probably not good. But probably, maybe that had some to do my weight problem. I don't know.
Anyway, I started trying to remember the scripture like, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” And that was all I could remember of the scripture and I remember laying there thinking, like the irony of that, like, “I'm in the freaking valley of the shadow of death.” I don't even know what comes next, like literally, or in the scripture, or nothing. I was just so scared. And then, all of the sudden, like this song that we used to sing a long time ago just came into my mind and of all the weird things to do, I started to sing. I started to sing this praise and worship song.
“I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you. Oh, my soul. Take joy, my king and what you hear and let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.” As I began to sing that song, I felt peace, and I knew that it was going to be okay. I did not know I was going to make it out alive. I really still thought, I'm getting ready to step over into eternity. But I feel like once I got my eyes off my situation and just start praising God, things change, even though nothing changed. Of course, there was not a second bomb. That's why I'm here with you today. They came back and they started working to get me out and it took them a total of six and a half hours to get me out. These men risked their lives getting me out in in one piece, because the area where I was at was extremely unstable, and they had an emergency physician on standby to amputate my leg and they would talk to them about every 20 minutes or so about whether or not they were ready to amputate.
But these men just kept saying, “Give us 20 more minutes. Give us 20 more minutes.” And they did this all day. I remember finally they said, “We're going to count to three, this is probably going to hurt.” And of course, I didn't care. I'd been telling them, “If you need to cut my leg off or something, just do what you have to do. Get me out.” I just wanted to live. They count to three and they pulled and I came out from under the rubble. I remember looking around thinking, this is not real. I'm in a movie. I literally could not believe what I was seeing. They took me out the back of the, what was once the federal building, on a gurney. I remember dark and grey and starting to rain. That morning, it had been a beautiful spring morning. And now the sudden, it looked like the middle of winter. I'll never forget that looking up at that grey sky and taking that first breath of fresh air and promising God I will never live my life the same. I didn't know what my injuries were and I didn't know about my friends. But I just knew, if I make it, if I live, I'm not going to live my life the same.
[00:16:47] JR: Your book or you tell the story, obviously in a lot more detail. The book is called Hope Is a Verb. Listen, I told you before we start recording Amy, it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a really long time. Incredibly well written and the conclusion of those prayers in the rubble was really remarkable, to me. It's really the essence of the gospel and actually want to read directly from the book. You said that in the rubble, you realized that quote: “God didn't love who I might be in the future. But he also didn't love my past decisions. He loved me in that moment. He loved stupid, big, selfish, Amy. It was unconditional love. Seconds before I was about to die, I had everything I'd ever wanted.”
I got real choked up reading that the first time because that's all any of us want, ultimately, is the gospel and the unconditional love that only Jesus can truly offer. So, you get out of the building. You take that first breath of fresh air. How over the weeks, months, years, after that, how did that recognition of God's unconditional love transform your life after the bombing?
[00:18:03] AD: Sorry, it makes me cry too. But every day, every morning, I think about his unconditional love. This morning, we had the most beautiful sunrise. I see that sunrise and I'm reminded every morning. His mercies are new every morning. I'd like to tell you that I got out of the hospital. They played the rocky music. I went like running out the front door, like I'm ready to do all the things. It didn't exactly work that way. I really struggled honestly, for probably about four years. I knew –
[00:18:40] JR: I think anybody would.
[00:18:42] AD: Yeah, first of all, traumatized. Second of all, my business was shattered. We only had one location. It was in that building. Our business purpose was to serve the people in the building, and over half of our staff was killed. So, how do you take a business and turn that around. So, I was very committed and devoted to turning the business around because of Vicky, because of the people that I knew that I loved that work there, and I felt like if the credit union went away, it somehow meant their memories went away. So, it became very personal to keep the credit union going.
I focused all of my energy on my business and work and with my other teammates. And so, for the first few years, it was all about like getting that up and going. But at the same time, I had this burning desire in my heart that I knew I wanted to do more, not just about work. I knew that I wanted to figure out how to live my personal life different too. And one day my boss, my mentor, my CEO, she asked me and I used the word magic, but I don't really believe in magic, but it's the idea. If you had a magic wand, the magic wand question, if you had a magic wand what would you do? And somehow or another, that unleashed me to be able to tell her, like, “Well, we would have a better culture.” I started talking about the stuff at work we would do. And then the most powerful thing, though, what she said to me, “Given your current situation, and your current limitations, what is one thing you can do today to move toward that picture?” I remember walking away from that meeting thinking, “Okay, wow, what just happened? She just made me responsible for culture.” And like, “I'm not even the CEO. I'm not even in management.”
But what she gave me was hope, because she gave me the idea that I could contribute to this future, better picture of what, I thought, we needed to have. As we began transforming things at work, I saw this picture of, “Wow, I could apply this to anything.” So, I remember thinking, it really bothered me that I had flunked out of college, that I had wasted all of that opportunity, and I really wanted to go back, but I didn't quite know what to do. So, I pulled out an index card one day at work, and I wrote down, I want to get my degree. And then on the back of that note card, I wrote down the simplest, given the current situation current limitations, like, “What do I do?” My first thing was, find the phone number to LSU to get the transcript — and that was the beginning.
As I began to work through these things, and actually got my degree, and I didn't flunk out and I graduated magna cum laude, and all this stuff. The confidence just swelled. It was like, “Wow, I can apply myself and I can be more and I can live my life intentionally and on purpose.” That magic wand question gave me clarity. So, instead of life happening to me, all the sudden, I was dreaming up, what do I really want. I remember yelling out, I want to become physically fit. I want to ride a bicycle and getting a bike. I want to ride 10 minutes in my neighborhood. And then, eventually, I want to ride to the next town and then I want to ride across the state of Oklahoma to my dream right now is, I want to ride my bike across the United States.
[00:22:06] JR: I love it.
[00:22:08] AD: It was just a constant leveling up. I don't know if that's mastery. I don’t know if that's part of what that is where you're just constantly trying to improve. It ended up transforming my life. I look back and I went from being a teller and now I'm the CEO of the same credit union. I was 355 pounds. And a few years ago, when I turned 50, I became an Iron Man triathlete, which means I did a 2.4-mile swim, followed by 112-mile bike ride, finished up with a 26.2 marathon all in 17 hours to be declared an Iron Man.
[00:22:44] JR: No big deal.
[00:22:44] AD: The reason I describe that is to say like, I'm 50 years old, I was 355 pounds most of my life. I'm still not skinny by any means. The things that you have, the desires and the dreams, and the things that you want to do, like, given your current situation, your current limitations, what are the steps you can do to get there, because those small steps consistently over time really can transform your life.
[00:23:12] JR: I find a lot of people really struggle with this. So, in terms of achieving big goals, on the one hand, you have to be able to dream really big. And imagine a preferred future that is not based on your current reality, but based on what's possible. The challenge there is if you say I want to lose 200 pounds, that could feel overwhelming, right? But it's not about losing. You can't just lose 200 pounds. You can take one action, a single next action on the step to doing it. You can download MyFitnessPal to track your calories. That's something physically you could do right now. By the way, are you familiar with David Allen's book, Getting Things Done?
[00:23:55] AD: I have it right here on my shelf. I've got it at my work office, not my home office. But yes, I sure do. We took our whole staff through that book.
[00:24:03] JR: Okay, because I'm reading your story. I’m like, “Oh, this is GTD.” It is, define your project, what's your desired outcome, and just define the next actions from there. And that's it. Like I was just writing about this in my next book. I lost 50 pounds, way less impressive than you, a few years ago. For years, I had wanted to do that. But it would always be something and more of it's like, “I want to lose weight.” And it wasn't until I set a specific goal of lose 50 pounds and define the next action of download MyFitnessPal and track my calories on a daily basis to actually get it done. Can you talk about the magic of next actions in achieving goals?
[00:24:45] AD: Absolutely. So, the next action, and I just recently read the book, Tiny Habits, and, oh my gosh, so much of that. I'm like, “Oh, yes, yes, yes and yes.” That's what I did, was what is the smallest step that I can do that I know that I can do. In the morning, my morning self is different than my afternoon self. My morning self, when I wake up in the morning says, I'm going to eat kale and I'm going to work out three times today. I'm all out. But my afternoon self is like, “Kale? I want me some chicken nuggets. I’m going to Chick-fil-A, not for the kale.”
What I had to do was break it down and make it so simple, and fun. So, that's where I think the bike riding came in, because it was like, “Okay, I think riding a bike is a blast. So, I need to make this fun.” Me and my sister are going to go ride a bike together. And also, for me, I had to figure out if I'm trying to go with this the same way, every time, we all know that’s definition of insanity, trying to do the same thing over and over again. So, for me, my path, went to research of what are all the different options that I'm not doing that maybe I could be doing. And so, I ended up incorporating a bariatric surgery called a gastric sleeve in my process, because I felt like, for me, I had a problem that was bigger than I could come up with a tiny habit to fix or whatever.
To me, it's about looking at all the options, what are the next steps that maybe you haven't thought of. And then the other thing is having community in that because when you start surrounding yourself with other people that are working toward that same thing, I think there's something really great that happens with that community as well. Because now, it becomes part of who you are and part of the other people that you're with. Kind of like if you're going to go for a run, and I asked a friend to meet me, “Let's go for a run.” Well, now, I don't want to let that friend down. So, I'm going to go show up. Whereas if I'm just left to my own devices to run at whatever time in the day, I might blow that off.
[00:26:54] JR: Yeah. So, there's something I loved about the book. By and large, it's not a super practical how-to self-help book. But there is this one little section where you went there, and it felt really right and I really liked it. You talked about this really practical four step process you use for “practicing hope”. Can you share those four steps with us? Because I thought that was really well laid out?
[00:27:19] AD: Yes. I want to mention the book Hope Rising by Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman. This book is kind of the science behind hope in it and I read that and went, “Oh, my gosh, that's exactly the point.” So, it's the idea that hope is basically having a goal, then having steps to get to that goal and the agency over that goal, and community accountability in that process. So, that's all it was, was basically setting a goal and that magic wand question helped me get clear about what the goal was and then it was simply breaking down those steps. We're just coming out of 2020, COVID was crazy, we've all pivoted. Early in quarantine, when we're all like, “Oh my gosh, I can't go out to eat.” We're all kind of depressed. Well, it's kind of like when you realize, “Oh, there's an app. I can use DoorDash.” And all of a sudden, it gave you a little bit of hope, because now you figured out, “Oh, I can have groceries delivered to the house.” Like you started adjusting and pivoting and you started making those steps, and it gave you agency over your day. Versus at first, “Oh, my gosh, there's COVID. I have to sit in the house and be quarantined and we're all depressed. And what do I do?”
Once we started making steps to figure out how to live our lives, we started having a little bit of hope, like, “Well, I can do this and I can do that, and I can have a Zoom meeting.” It's just figuring out how to give yourself the agency over how to get to that better and brighter future that you're dreaming of.
[00:28:54] JR: Yeah, and I'm going to read directly from the book because I thought this really good. The four steps. Number one, you already mentioned it, “Take an honest assessment of yourself in your world. Number two, set a goal. Number three, map a path to that goal. And then number, four basics of GTD, take the next action. Don't worry about all 50 actions you got to take to find the next action no matter how small toward your goal.” I thought that was so, so good, Amy.
Hey, Amy. Today, you're the CEO of the same credit union that was bombed at the bombing, now renamed Allegiance Credit Union. You've got way more than 10,000 hours of purposeful practice as a business leader. So, I'm curious. What do you think are the keys to mastering the art of leadership? If you were to boil it down to one, two, three things, what does it take to master the art of leadership?
[00:29:46] AD: I believe the most important thing is self-awareness.
[00:29:52] JR: Amen.
[00:29:52] AD: As you move up, and particularly as the leader of your organization, people want to tell you what you want to here and so you really need to you need to understand what your blind spots are, and you need to really be aware of how you're coming across to others, and you also need to really work on that. So, I think self-awareness is huge.
[00:30:17] JR: I want to ask you to go deeper. How to cultivate self-awareness?
[00:30:21] AD: Okay. So, for me, my first team, the executive team. I have to lean on them and I have to create a culture of another good book, Radical Candor is this book. So, yesterday, I literally passed out little red flags and I asked my team, I was like, because we had this meeting where we talked about our bad behavior. We all have our bad behavior. And I said, “I want you, so we don't have to make it awkward and weird, just wave the red flag.” Because, you know, as soon as you do it, I'm going to be like, “Oh, okay, sorry, I'm doing the thing.” Because we're going to keep doing it over and over again because it's a lot of times our strengths and also our weakness. So, you have to really create a culture for people around you to tell you because you won't always see it yourself.
[00:31:11] JR: Have you read, No Rules Rules from no Reed Hastings of Netflix?
[00:31:13] AD: No.
[00:31:16] JR: It's terrific. It was the best book I read last year in 2020 and it talks a lot about Netflix's culture of Radical Candor, and how they apply it within Netflix. It's really great.
[00:31:28] AD: I need to read that. Yeah, I would.
[00:31:30] JR: I'll send you a copy. What else on the art of leadership? Is there anything else that sticks out to you?
[00:31:35] AD: Yes. So, I also believe that, so right up there with self-awareness, you have to flex your communication to the others around you, because people are not wired the same as you. So, you really need to also understand the personalities and the strengths of your team and the people you're talking to, so that you can talk to them in a way that they can hear you. I think communication, self-awareness are, I think, the top two things. And then I would say, as a leader, you have to communicate your vision, and the goals over and over again, overcommunicate it to the point that you're sick of hearing yourself talk about it, and then you're probably still not saying it enough.
[00:32:16] JR: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, that's your job as the leader is to overcommunicate the vision, so that nobody has any doubts about everybody's heading. Hey, Amy, what are your day look like? From the moment you wake up, from the moment you go to bed, take us through a typical day in your life.
[00:32:31] AD: Okay, so I'm a little freaky about this. I wake up at 4 AM. Yeah, so it starts at 4 AM and coffee first, because you know. So, the first hour or so of my day, I spend journaling. So, I do sort of some just conscious stream journaling. This is my reflection time, often my prayer time. And then I also, this past year began some structured journaling, where I write down the things that I'm thankful for, so I can have that gratitude and then I reflect on my goals in my day ahead and make sure that what I've got ahead of me is lining up with what I'm actually wanting to accomplish. And then around 5:15, 5:30, my husband leaves for work, and that's my cue to then go work out.
I work out and, during my workout, a lot of times I'm listening to a podcast, or Audible, my book that I'm listening to, or sometimes it's just ‘80s rock music, just depends. And so often, my workout of choice is the bike and I'm a cyclist, love riding my bike, and I have a program called Swift that have a smart trainer. It's amazing and I'm doing that or I go to the gym and do a gym workout. So, then I come back from that, I get ready for my day for work, and I also began the practice this past year, about a year ago of making my bed.
Yes, I was 53 years old and did not make my bed because I'm like, you're going to mess it up again. Why do it? And I love it because I start my day off with a win. So, I make the bed, I straighten the house, I get ready. And again, I'm still listening to podcasts or Audible. And then if I'm working from home, dive right in. If I go to work, I keep listening to the podcast on my way to work. The morning, that ritual, learning and listening from others, having that quiet time, that reflection time, I cannot tell you how many ideas are generated during the workout or while I'm journaling, because that quiet focused time. That's where the ideas come.
[00:34:45] JR: Yeah. solitude.
[00:34:48] AD: And so, then I start my day at work with an executive huddle. Our first team, we have a huddle, share what our top three things are, what we're accomplishing that day, and then the day begins.
[00:34:58] JR: And that's it. What time do you go to bed?
[00:34:59] AD: So, I do go to bed at eight o'clock.
[00:35:02] JR: I love it. I do the same. I go to bed at nine, I wake up at five. Eight hours, that's a deal breaker for me.
[00:35:08] AD: There you go.
[00:35:10] JR: I love it. So, after the bombing, you develop this knack for setting just epic goals. It’s one of my favorite parts of your story, lose a ton of weight, become an Iron Man, become CEO of your credit union. And by the way, side note, I love the line in the book about, “No, we don't need to call Iron Woman. I'm an Iron Man.” I loved I loved that so much. That was really great. So, you set these really big goals. I'm curious what role you think your faith plays in enabling you to take big swings and just set epic goals? Are those things connected for you and your faith in your ability to take big swings?
[00:35:49] AD: Yes, I feel like I was given a second chance. And some of it may not feel connected, some of it may be some kind of, like Iron Man, you know, how is that connected? It is because people are watching you, and if you want to encourage and serve and love those around you, for me, because I speak and because I want to encourage people to live their life intentionally, then I need to model that and I need to do that. I want people to look at me and say, “Oh, my gosh, if she can do that, well then what can I do?” Like I want to be that person that I love it when – not very long ago, there was this young man, he was telling me how he wanted to be an Iron Man. But he wasn't good enough yet and he didn't know. And I said, “Yeah, I'm an Iron Man.” And I told him my story. I saw the look on his face, like the look on his face was like, “Oh, my gosh. This old lady –”
[00:36:40] JR: What excuse do I have?
[00:36:41] AD: Holy cow. Yeah, he literally was just like, “If this old lady can do that. Why am I not doing it?” And I love it because I want to be that person that encourages by what I've done for you to think, “Well, wow, what can I do?” And so that does, that pushes me to just want to keep trying to level up so that that way, hopefully that that helps others.
[00:37:02] JR: Yeah. And going back to your prayer in the rubble, this recognition of God's unconditional love. I think that's connected too. Because if you fail epically, at achieving your big goals, who cares? At the end of the day, you still have the unconditional love of Christ. That's why I talk so much about setting big goals. We can take big swings, because we got nothing to lose at the end of the day, right?
[00:37:29] AD: I center myself to that all the time. I center myself to that every morning when I'm nervous about something, and especially if I'm going to go speak, because you know, as a speaker, you're trying to master like to be the best, like most amazing speaker, and you can get really hung up, and that's all about you and yourself. So, I have to back away from it and go look at the end of the day, who am I. At the end of the day, what is really important. It's not what these people think of me. It's the fact that I'm a child of God, that I want to serve him, that I want to love others. So, you kind of have to get yourself out of it, and I had to do that all the time, because myself just wants to get it all the time.
[00:38:06] JR: It's a constant struggle. It's a constant struggle. We're never going to get over that and I think the Lord is honored and glorified in our struggle, wrestling with that tension. Hey, so in the book, you really made credit unions sound romantic, which I loved. I really love, really, genuinely, appreciate it. I mean, just talking about what they do for people and communities. So, I'm curious, like, how do you see your work as a credit union connect to what God wants to see done in your community there in Oklahoma City?
[00:38:38] AD: Early on, I remember thinking, I feel like I'm in the ministry, because the mission is people helping people. Like that's what we're about, is people helping people. And it very much feels like, I mean, you're serving. You're serving, you're helping your community, and so credit unions because of the structure, our boards, our volunteers, they're not investors, they don't get paid. So, our structure at the top is volunteer. So, everything that we make goes back in the form of services or better rates for our members.
Just to give an example, so after the bombing, we lost our building. So, another credit union in town, a really large one. They were so big, they had like a training facility where they train their tellers. They opened up their doors and let us open up and work out of their office. Like we are so collaborative that a credit union, like say, a competitor credit union will say, “Go ahead and come over here and open up and you can operate out of our building.” I have lunch about once a month with another credit union CEO in town. We come together to do collaborative things to raise money for Children's Miracle Network, other things like that. It's just very different than a lot of industries and that we are so much about people helping people that we are collaborative, and we come together to learn from each other. Oftentimes, I'll have another credit union call me and ask for a policy. We share a policy or a procedure. We absolutely do. We share all of that stuff back and forth and we're technically competitors.
[00:40:19] JR: But there's so much collaboration, because you’re serving. That's the essence of it. I think a lot of times when we hear the word, I love that you say, you think of your work as ministry because a lot as we hear that word and we think ministry has to be preaching or serving the poor. And of course, those things are ministry. But at the end of the day, ministry, all it means is service. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That was a complete sentence. That's good in and off itself and that's what you do at the credit union every day.
[00:40:50] AD: Well, it's like, we came up with like a second chance checking. And there's like a fee for the first 12 months, because you know, we're taking a risk, because you've run into problems somewhere else. On your 13th month, if you haven't had any issues, we give you all the money back, all the fees back. I love that because I feel like we're going to wipe the slate clean. We're going to give you the chance nobody else is going to give you, we're only a second chance. And on top of that, we're going to give you everything back and restore you on that 13th month, if you do what you say you're going to do.
[00:41:19] JR: I love that. I love that so much. You talked before when you were talking about the bombing, your coworker seven months pregnant, sitting there with you, who was lost in the bombing. You lost 18 of your 33 coworkers in the tragedy. How is that experience shaped the way that you think about your relationship specifically with your coworkers since?
[00:41:44] AD: It's completely changed it. I heard somebody else say this. I'm stealing this from somebody that I listened to, some podcast, I don't know which one. But there's no such thing as work friends. You have friends, maybe met them at work, you met them at church, you met them wherever, but you have friends. And I realized as I sat at each funeral, you don't realize how much these people are part of your life, day in and day out. And so, it is very different for me. I will often send really sappy love letters to my team, to different individuals, letting them know how much I care about them, and yes, how much I love them. Because I don't ever want to sit in a funeral again, with unsaid words. I also don't ever want to sit at a funeral again, of someone who I didn't treat with respect, and have regret over ignoring them, or maybe treating them with less respect like they deserve, even if we're not best friends and whatever, you deserve to treat people with love and respect. So, it definitely colors my relationships at work to this day.
[00:42:52] JR: Yeah, I got to imagine that has to be one of the most significant outcomes of the bombing for you, just realizing that each of these people are made in the image of God and we're called to come to love them and care for them. It's part of how the gospel becomes winsome and attractive. Speaking of which, you talked about, you kind of took a shot at the local church in the book, which I was initially really taken aback by, but I actually think the essence of your argument is pretty fair, right? Like, basically, you're saying, “Hey, local church, we’re often failing to provide genuine community for people.” But it seems like you are trying to build genuine community at work. How do you do that?
[00:43:42] AD: Yes. So, at work, we're very specific about service, does it just mean to our members, the people that are coming to us for business, it means to each other. So, there are people. We have 70 something employees. We all look different. Our skin colors are different. Our belief systems may be different. We're all different. But we are inclusive, and that we are all there to help other people, and we are all there in service even if there's things about us that are different from each other we're going to work together and accept each other and serve each other as we look to the greater good, which is serving the community.
[00:44:31] JR: Amy three questions we love to wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books, we've already just talked about a bunch of books, but which books do you find yourself recommending or giving away most frequently to others?
[00:44:44] AD: So, I am very fickle. It changes. It depends on whatever my most recent book that has impacted me has been. Lately, I have been telling others to get The Motive by Patrick Lencioni. And I think that's because I have so many people tell me they want to be a CEO. “I want to be a CEO what I need to do to get there?” Well, the first thing is you got to check your motive. And that book is amazing, and it will step on your toes, and it is about checking your motive.
[00:45:10] JR: That's a great answer. You guys can find a link to that, as always, at jordanraynor.com/bookshelf. Amy, who would you most like to hear on this podcast? Somebody who loves Jesus, but it's also like, world class at what they do professionally.
[00:45:24] AD: Okay. I heard your recent podcast with your pastor and the pastor was talking about the trash man, right? What I really want to hear and I've not heard this from any leadership podcast, I want to hear some of the people that have the jobs that we think are the most awful jobs in the world. I want a plumber. I want the trash person. I want somebody with a job that a lot of us think is awful and I want to hear what they say, how are they doing that to the glory of God? What is their mastery? What are they doing? I would love to hear that person.
[00:45:58] JR: I love that answer. I was thinking back at the beginning of COVID, the irony of who is deemed an essential worker. We were thrown around that term a lot in March and April, and it was people whose jobs are primarily service. I think it was really beautiful because we're told them the kingdom and the kingdom of heaven, that's who's going to be deemed the greatest. I love that answer. We got to get – by the way, anyone listening, if you know a garbage man, a plumber, somebody's doing a “dirty job” as Mike Rowe would say, who loves Jesus and is great at what they do. Send them our way. You can reach me personally at jordanraynor.com and we'd love to hear their stories.
Alright, Amy, last question. One piece of advice to leave this audience with, this audience who cares about doing great work for the glory of God and the good of others? What do you want to tell them?
[00:46:54] AD: I would say, pursue with all of your heart, all of your mind, the passion, the dream, the thing, pursue it. But at the same time, keep yourself centered on how that is going to serve others so that you don't get your own self in the way.
[00:47:14] JR: That's really good. That's really good. Amy, I just want to commend you for the exceptional redemptive work you do every day. Thank you for serving people, serving your community through the ministry of excellence. Thank you for allowing the Lord to transform you and make you a truly new creation in the wake of that horrible tragedy, 26 years ago, and thank you for teaching us to say that hope is a verb, hope is a verb is something that is active. Again, guys, this is one of the best books I've read in a really long time. It's called Hope Is a Verb. You can find it wherever books are sold, and you can connect with Amy at amydowns.org. Amy, thank you so, so much for joining us.
[00:47:58] AD: Thank you so much and thank you for the work that you do on this podcast.
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[00:48:02] JR: What an incredible story of grace, of hope, of the gospel. Just so thankful for Amy sharing that with us today.
Hey, listen, I don't know if I've ever told you guys this, but we read the reviews that you guys leave at this podcast on Apple podcast, we read them at our all hands meetings. Every Friday, we pick a couple to read out. So, if you're loving the show, do me a favor, drop a review on Apple podcasts to encourage my team. It's going to come as no surprise to you guys that I don't do the show alone. We got a lot of people working behind the scenes to make this podcast and my books and everything else work. Drop a few lines on Apple podcast about why you love the show, so that that can be an encouragement to my team here at Jordan Raynor and company. Hey guys, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.
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