In this episode Gina has a conversation with Van and Laurie Miller. Van and Laurie share about their humble beginnings and how to build a healthy foundation in life, marriage, and business. They share the crazy journey of being entrepreneurs during the pandemic and the beauty and impact they experience when partnering with God in life and business. They talk about parenting and leading others in their natural giftings, and how to awaken a movement of kingdom builders outside the four walls of the church.
Check out Laurie’s luxury botanical skin care business Nani Pua.
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Church as a Lifestyle
Gina:
Well, Van and Laurie Miller. Hi guys, I’m so excited that you’re here and I probably, um, did an intro before this is playing, so I’ve probably gone into history, but we met over 20 years ago. You guys moved into our neighborhood living across the street from us. Van, your sister had owned the house before you.
And didn’t she say, “There’s some long haired musician types from that church you guys go to across the street and they are hippies.” Yeah, Norm had a mullet… We won’t talk about that. The dark ages and pictures of him with them all. But even before that, you were the limo driver for his bachelor party. When you guys were in a season we’ll go back to that, and I didn’t know that.
That street was just this sweet time. We had this amazing neighborhood and another couple that we knew. We all became so close in the Flint, Burton, Bernice Burton, Bernice, Sue Lou next door. But it was this such a sweet neighborhood and family and spiritual family. Norm and I were newly married.
We had our kids with you guys. Um, that sounds really funny, but given my upbringing with my parents and my mom not being around, Lori, you were like my mom. You taught me how to cook a chicken, and even breastfeed a baby. Like all the things like, you know, you guys were, were like these surrogate parents slash friends. You’re not old enough to be my parents, but, um, but God does that.
He brings surrogates and that is something very significant. God brings us these surrogate parents to support us and come alongside us. You guys were that for both Norm and I. So we’ve done a lot of life together and seen a lot, but I’m super excited to have you here and I really wanted both of you here because both of you are significant.
Also your relationship and how you love each other and walk out this crazy life together has been inspirational, to say the least to Norm and I and so many others. So yeah, welcome to the podcast guys. So good to have you.
I would love for you guys to share your story first, like just your history with Jesus, and with each other in those early years. You don’t have to go into crazy detail, but I would love a little bit of foundation for people to kind of get an idea of who you are.
Laurie:
We’ve been married 37 years. I have a church background, I was Presbyterian, and I went to church on Sundays and they had great donuts. So that’s where we went as kids. Van comes from no church background whatsoever. So when we first met and he wanted to take me out, he was a surfer guy, and I just thought, there’s no way I would get together with a surfer because they don’t work and they just surf. He was traveling and on the weekends to California to surf.
But as I kind of got to know him, I realized he was incredibly driven. He’s super healthy in his lifestyle. He was fun, he made me laugh and so I ended up going out with him and we connected instantly. There’s something about that connection that you have with somebody that is your opposite, but who also supports you. He loved me because I was very type A, an ambitious type of a woman, and very independent. So he gave me that permission to be independent, which back then was a big deal. So before we knew it, I was pregnant with our son. I think that was the second time we made love out of wedlock. A year later we got married and here we are.
We moved to San Diego and we found Horizon Church. I was really looking for a church, because at this point, I hadn’t been to church in a while and I dragged Van to Sunday service. The Pastor, Mike McIntosh, was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and that’s all it was for Van. It was like, “Oh, this is a real guy.” So before you know it, I had rededicated my life to the Lord, and Van came to the Lord during that time.
Of course, we don’t do anything halfway. We ran ministries. We had home fellowship at our house. We started a sports ministry. I worked for the church and we were all in. The great thing about Van, is I come from this church background where it’s like you give your 10% to the church and that’s what you do. You check it off, you put in the envelope and you’re done.
Van never understood any of that. If somebody was next door and they were starving and they needed a ride to the hospital or to the doctors, that was church to Van. Having somebody flip that on you, and making you realize in your heart, that’s the right thing. But it kept it in this crazy pureness. Van always spins everything you know differently, he’s never inside the box.
Gina:
That is the same thing for God actually, which is kind of what you’re speaking to, right? Like religion puts God in a box. Like, “This is how you give, this is how you serve, this is what you do, this is what ministry actually is.” It’s defined in this very narrow thing. So what you’re saying, in some ways it was Van’s naivete to the box of religion, and Van just living out the gospel in everyday life. That’s actually more true Christianity and church and spiritual community than all the other things that we make of it.
Living out Humility
Laurie:
It kept it really real for me. Deep down inside, I am that hippie person, and so it resonates with that hippie thing that I need everything to be real and authentic. As we grew, we started to make money and we started to do well. God blessed us. We had this big house, and we had home fellowship there, and we were giving 10% to the church, and giving more to our neighbors, whoever needed it. We were giving, giving, giving, giving. Then Van decides that he’s going to pray that God would humble him, and he did not tell me he prayed that. He decided that he needed to be humble to be taken to this next level with God. So he lost his job.
Van:
I would just say that I had good communication with God. He was just answering my prayer. God was like, “I got you, I can make that happen.”
Gina:
What were you feeling that led you to pray that prayer?
Van:
You know, the whole Christian lifestyle was so new to me and so counter to everything I was raised with, I started to embrace these things about it, and this spirit of humility, which interestingly looking back on my journey, has really appealed to me that there’s a couple of things in the Bible that I take really seriously. Like never let the right hand know what the left hand’s doing.
When we give, we try and give without anybody knowing. I think we are very cognizant of how much God has blessed our lives. God blessed us in our friendships, and in tangible things like properties and those kinds of things, and the ability to make money. But you know, more importantly, God blessed us with our kids, and the relationships we have, and certainly our marriage.
When you look at those gifts that he’s bestowed on you, you can’t help but be humble. It’s just like, “God, why me?” So I think that, being in that place of – Oh, I was an athlete and I worked at this place, and it was all about the show and the logo on the chest and those kind of things. I think that’s what kind of put me into that place. It was really kind of a quiet prayer. It made for a somewhat awkward conversation after I had lost my job. It was like, “Oh, yeah, I was praying for humility.” And Laurie was like, “What?!”
Gina:
Like, “What? You idiot! Don’t ever pray that! That’s Christianity 101.”
Laurie:
Exactly!
Humility in Marriage
Van:
When I first met Lori, her strength and her clarity of the direction that she was heading in her life really appealed to me. I was not a person that dated very much, I had a lot of friends, but never really dated very much. It was interesting looking back, it was the perfect plan. Having Kana and then being married, it allowed us to fall in love. It was completely backwards, but it was perfect for us.
When I became a Christian, I started to realize that, “Wow, I’m married to a woman that has insane discernment.” It’s really hard because as a man, you want to know all the answers. If we’re at a pivotal point and Laurie says, “I really think we need to go this way.” We’ve both given each other permission to make those kinds of statements, but it’s really trusting in that, and it’s still a hard thing to trust in.
Gina:
I love that. I think that’s really important. We’ve talked about this on the podcast before Norm and I even did a couple of episodes on partnership and marriage. I think the whole submission model over the years in the western evangelical church has been really distorted. It’s a distorted picture of what marriage should be, because it really is a partnership. You can’t stand where you are without Lori beside you.
She can’t stand where she is without you beside her. It’s the two of you walking and discerning and praying and making decisions together. I don’t think any man was designed or equipped to carry the full load and weight on his shoulders of the spiritual health and relational health and everything of the entire family. You go back to Adam and Eve, and there’s this necessity of the partnership, which is a reflection of the Trinity.
God… Father, Son, and Spirit, mutually submissive, but equally God. Anyhow, but, and that is something that I’ve so respected as I’ve watched you guys over the years navigate and grow in significant ways. Through things that honestly break up a lot of marriages, losing everything, then getting everything, like any one of those swings can tend to destroy a marriage because that partnership isn’t there.
Van:
Well, we’re certainly not immune to those stresses that are in life. They affect us. I mean there’s a million times that we’ve had angst about something. And it’s about moving past it and just growing and embracing that growth.
Laurie:
I think in a marriage you need to learn how somebody processes pain. Van is very much a three day person. It takes him three days to get to the point where he can then communicate what he’s thinking. For me, I cry about it for 24 hours, and then the next 24 hours you come up with a plan. I’m already coming up with a plan on day three where he really needs that whole day three to really process this. So day four, we can sit down with it together. We come together and we do this with every single thing. We don’t let things lie a long time.
It’s like, “Okay, how do we move through this? Once we make that plan, we very much hold each other accountable through that plan. Through that plan, things change. When Van says to me, “We can’t do that.” I know he’s already processed that with God, and I don’t need to do that, and the same with me. If I say that to, then Van knows, “Okay, she’s already gone there with God, He’s talked to her about this.” We need to listen, that’s real partnership. It’s not always together, sometimes it’s individually, sometimes we’ll do this tag team listening to God.
Humility as the foundation
Gina:
So you prayed that prayer, and you lost everything.
Laurie:
So we have a Bible study one day, and he’s sharing about what he prayed for, and the whole home fellowship was like, “You did what?!” It wasn’t just me.
Gina:
This was your fault!
Laurie:
I couldn’t breathe.
Gina:
But I remember hearing stories of, I think you have one car, you were riding a bike with two kids to the store, grocery store and you know, beans and pot of beans for a week, you know, all that stuff. And we met when you guys were on the other side a little bit mm-hmm. So Van started working for San Diego State in the Aztec athletic department. You bought the house from your sister, a small little house across the street that was a beater. Like what, 900 square feet?
Laurie:
672 square feet.
Gina:
With two kids. But that was a part of you receiving the provision, and then turning it into a home.
Van:
But here’s the interesting thing, my sister was moving, she was going through a divorce and she had borrowed money from my grandparents to purchase this house. She was going to walk away, and my grandparents had called me, and it was so far from the beach I was mad. It’s so funny.
It’s just so typical. God wants to bless you and give you stuff and you’re just a stubborn little two year old in the corner stomping your feet. Of all the places we’ve lived and we’ve moved a lot, 20, 30 homes, it’s still our favorite place. We had no idea going into that.
I can’t wait to get to heaven to talk to Burt and Bernese. I mean, I just adore those guys. They were the neatest elderly couple. Burt was super cute. He would come and sit down and I’d have to pull him out because he couldn’t get up. He would only stay for 10 minutes because he’s like, “Bernice will wonder where I am.” You know, I miss those guys. That was a super fun place to live. It was fun to kind of get to know everybody there.
Gina:
I love that. I think that we definitely live in a time where just seeing people and building relationship with people that wouldn’t necessarily be in your circle. It is kind of a lost art, you know? Life is so crazy.
I look at young families now and the pace at which they’re going and the kids are in 12 sports, and there was a very sweet season where your lawn was kind of like the neighborhood living room. Almost every day kids were playing in the street, and we were hanging out on in the chairs talking about life, the ups, and the downs.
Van:
Street wide garage sales, and having Norm play base on the front step.
Check out the rest of this conversation:
Ministry as Business
Check out the Dwell Meditations
