Michael Nixon
Episode 166

Narrator: Welcome friends to another episode of The Story & Experience Podcast. Join your host, Japhet de Oliveira with his guest today and discover the moments that shape us, our families and communities.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, welcome friends to another episode of The Story & Experience Podcast. I am here at Andrews University in the campus ministries office. Bright and early. Bright and early.

Michael Nixon: Oh, yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, yeah. Bright and early before any students have even decided to consider waking up on this campus. If you're brand new to the podcast, we have a hundred questions. They are about stories and experiences that shape this person into the leader that they are today. I will ask the first 10 and then they get to choose where they want to go after that. So let me begin straight away and ask you, could you tell us your name and does anybody ever mispronounce it, sir?

Michael Nixon: Sure. My name is, well, it's great to be here first of all, Japhet, thanks for having me. My name is Michael, middle name Timothy, Nixon, and I said my middle name because I'm oftentimes called Timothy.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh really?

Michael Nixon: My folks, of course, you know my dad very well.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, I do.

Michael Nixon: My dad is Timothy, and my name doesn't get mispronounced, because Michael is common, but I don't know why people do this spelling of E-A-L. So my name is M-I-C-H-A-E-L, and I guess there are weird people out there that spell it E-A-L. Hey, I mean, God bless them, I love them. But for some reason, if I would go to, I wouldn't go to Starbucks, but if I go to an actual coffee shop and they write your name on the cup, I'll see E-A-L, and it just irks me. I don't know, it's a little pet peeve of mine. So not mispronunciation, but misspelling sometimes, for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's so good. That's good. Well, Mikael, Michael.

Michael Nixon: I guess that's how you say it that way I don't get it.

Japhet De Oliveira: No. Hey, that's great, man. Hey, tell us what you do for work.

Michael Nixon: Sure. So I am the Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging for Beacon Health System, which is in Northwest Indiana is our main service area. We have some locations in Michigan, but really just in that sort of Michiana region for those who are familiar with it. Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: How many hospitals in that system?

Michael Nixon: There are five total.

Japhet De Oliveira: Five.

Michael Nixon: And then we have a medical group which has about 78 independent facilities that are under that umbrella.

Japhet De Oliveira: So diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging?

Michael Nixon: Correct.

Japhet De Oliveira: Is belonging like an afterthought?

Michael Nixon: No. That's funny. Yeah. I think for us, belonging is really, it's that really culmination of where this is supposed to lead us to. What we always say is it's an ongoing journey, it's an not a destination, and it's something that's collaborative. And so patients, physicians, APCs, providers, folks in the community all contribute to that journey of making sure that folks belong at Beacon is really like, that's our tagline. You belong at Beacon. And so yeah, it's been an interesting journey so far. I've been doing that for about a year and a half situated within human resources. And so yeah, every week is fun.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great, man. That's great. Now, how did you end up in this? Because I mean, I know you and you've had an interesting journey. I mean, this was not your path, right?

Michael Nixon: No, this was not my direct, and it definitely was not my intended path for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: So, tell us a little of that story.

Michael Nixon: Absolutely. So prior to doing that here on the campus that we're sitting on, I served as the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, and then later expanded to Culture and Inclusion for about six years, which was a really interesting thing for me. I'm an attorney, that's my background, by trade. And so went to law school, I was working sort of in the civil rights space, particularly in the area of fair housing, housing discrimination cases. I worked for the Fair Housing Justice Center in New York City as their staff attorney, legal coordinator, and was having a good time doing that. Honestly, really I'd done some of that work in law school, really developed a passion for it, and so was really having fun with it.

But Andrew's here where I went to school, where you work with my father and where I grew up here pretty much from middle school on, was on this really interesting critical journey back in 2017 to really reckon with some of the old ghosts here on campus that have been around for a long time, just around a lack of equity, lack of inclusion, obviously racism and racial tensions and things of that nature. And so at that critical moment, which was a bit of a precursor really before all of the conversations we had around the EI in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. So it was a few years prior to that, this campus really had that intentional conversation. And what came out of that was in part the creation of that VP position.

And so, I'm just an interested alum watching from afar over there in New York, really just marveling at man what the world is going on over there? It just seems like it's on fire. But I was really drawn to in particular, and I know we're talking about leadership, the president at the time, Dr. Luxton, the way that she navigated that, I just really marveled at it. I'll never forget because they streamed this chapel forum they had after a lot of the major tensions had sort of blown up and there was a viral video and students were really engaging in these conversations.

And so there was this chapel on the other side of that, and everybody around the global Andrews network is thinking, what is she going to say? What is she going to do?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, exactly.

Michael Nixon: And she stands up there in front of that church and starts off by saying, "We will be okay." That's how she started it. And I was just like the audacity to be able to say that, but also the ability to hope for something better that's going to come out of this, seeing this not as this thing that's going to break us and crumble us, but we're going to get better because of this. I was really just drawn to that and I couldn't really explain why. It was just this thing. I kind of developed this small obsession of just reading about it and thinking about it. And as fate would have it, over the course of their three, four month process of searching, my name kept moving forward. And that's what led me here. So that's what got me into the DEI space. It was a very personal sort of passion project I'd say, given the fact that I basically grew up here. And so that's what sort of launched me toward what I'm doing now.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's fantastic, man. That's fantastic. Now, a practical question, are you a late night owl or an early riser?

Michael Nixon: Definitely late night owl.

Japhet De Oliveira: Lucky you that we met so early.

Michael Nixon: Yeah, you train yourself to wake up early, because I know you're in healthcare too. Sometimes physicians or whoever they want to meet at the crack of dawn sometimes, so you just kind of roll with it. But yeah, I'm a late night person.

Japhet De Oliveira: What's late night for you?

Michael Nixon: So I try to get to bed, so my median is midnight, I would say. So if I'm trying to get to bed before midnight, that's the constant goal. I fail often, but that's sort of what I have in my head.

Japhet De Oliveira: You have it your mind.

Michael Nixon: Exactly. That's the goal. Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: And then in the morning when you get up, first thought that you had today when you woke up?

Michael Nixon: Well, I was greeted by my daughter, so my first thought was, what am I going to do for her for breakfast, essentially? And so I'm a co-parent, and so I have my daughter 50% of the time, and so when I have her, especially on a weekday when I know I'm dropping her to school and usually we'll figure out the school outfit the night before. So I try to, because a lot of mornings- [inaudible 00:08:04]

Japhet De Oliveira: That's the way to do it.

Michael Nixon: Yeah, I try to cut out the decisions that I have to make. I'm trying to ease myself into decisions. And so deciding breakfast is like, I can figure that out. There's a couple options I know she likes. That's an easy thing to do. And so that was where we started.

Japhet De Oliveira: And so do you feel that you always provide her what she likes rather than what she needs?

Michael Nixon: Ooh, no. I think we're starting to make that transition a bit. So she's nine years old, fourth grade, and I'm definitely not just with her, but I think I'm naturally, and I've had to grow out of this a bit, I naturally tend to be another center people pleaser for sure. And it's even harder, as you know, with your kids. I mean, my daughter, I'm just like, okay, yeah, you want candy at 11 o'clock? Okay, sure, your bedtime is like eight and you shouldn't be eating candy, but why not? So that was how it used to be when she was like kindergarten and stuff. Man, she was too cute. But I'm trying to, and her mom's a good partner in this, so we're trying to gear ourselves up to, all right, you still got to be loving and empathetic, but we can't just melt when she wants something immediately. So yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: We'll see how that goes.

Michael Nixon: Yeah, we'll check back. We'll have to circle back on that when she's in high school or something.

Japhet De Oliveira: Now, in the morning when you get up, do you have a coffee, water, liquor, green smoothie, tea? What's your first drink of the day?

Michael Nixon: I typically try to do water. I'm going to get coffee in at some point. Probably just after that, maybe at the same time, I'm just chasing the coffee with the water maybe. But yeah, I try to start off with a glass of water.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. All right. Personality-wise, Michael, do people think you're an extrovert or an introvert and do you agree with them?

Michael Nixon: Sure. So it's interesting. I think people are surprised to learn that I'm an introvert. So I don't agree with the fact that people don't necessarily perceive me as introverted. So that's kind of interesting. I guess I'm technically an ambivert, so I'm an INFP and I'm kind of right in the middle. But on the I-side, and I think part of what that is I've had to sort of develop tools around being upfront or being conversational, or even just the work that I was doing even prior to DEI work with getting deeper into the DEI work now there's a lot of heavy relational approach. I think for me, it's something where I definitely, you hold space for people and you don't want that to be awkward.

Japhet De Oliveira: True.

Michael Nixon: I'm still developing those tools, so when I tell people, yeah, I'm a bit more introverted because particularly when I was here at Andrews, you're at events a lot. You're connecting with students, you're doing all this club stuff and they want to call you up front and do something funny or whatever-

Japhet De Oliveira: Always.

Michael Nixon: ... so they just assume that, oh yeah, life of the party vibes. But honestly, I am very comfortable sitting in my chair letting the TV watch me and just recharging. So yeah, I guess I can present as more extroverted than I actually am.

Japhet De Oliveira: Now, look for all our listeners, your dad's phenomenal up front, right? Bit of a legend up front. So how did you navigate that space? I'm just kind of curious.

Michael Nixon: That's a good question. Yeah. I think my dad was always really good at telling me in particular, to be yourself, be comfortable being yourself. And so I would deal with a bit of stage fright, anxiety, that kind of a thing over time and, excuse me. And well, first of all, I never really felt like the direct call to pastoral ministry like him, which I was like, thank God, because I am growing up watching this man just deliver these powerful orations on the gospel on current events.

Japhet De Oliveira: Every week.

Michael Nixon: And he had this really brilliant, and still does, has this brilliant ability to just tie in current relevant events to the gospel in a way that's just always so engaging. And so I think for me, I was always drawn to that part of it. And I think the way I sort of eased into it is I would tend to do a lot more of that in the writing space. And so I would write blogs for a period of time and things of that nature. And that's part of what I think started to draw some people toward my voice in some ways, just in the written word. And then when you start writing things, you start getting acts like, "Hey, can you come speak at this event or this conference, or whatever." And it's just like, ah, okay. And so I think it's something that over time I just had to learn.

Japhet De Oliveira: Cultivate too?

Michael Nixon: How to cultivate it and how to really lean into, okay, I know I'm not going to be Tim Nixon, because there's only one, and God bless him, but how can I lean into his advice of, "Hey, be yourself. Don't just do this, the family business or because there's a bunch of ministers or other people talk, but do what really brings you happiness." So I think that really helped me not feeling that pressure. I think it's really what helped me find my own voice and niche in that space.

Japhet De Oliveira: Now, where were you born?

Michael Nixon: I was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. Upstate New York. My dad was pastoring up there at the time.

Japhet De Oliveira: Did you grow up there A little bit for a little bit of time?

Michael Nixon: Very briefly. We were there. I kind of barely remember it. It's funny. People tease me, because I'm a very proud native New Yorker. People were like, "Oh yeah, you were there just long enough to be born in a hospital there." But I'm still a proud New Yorker.

Japhet De Oliveira: Claim it, man.

Michael Nixon: I'm claiming it. Yeah, Yankees won last night, so we're here. So yeah, we moved from there to Southern California when I was pretty young. And so most of my earliest memories are probably in Southern Cal. And my dad was pastoring there, and that's where my sister was born. I have one younger sister, she was born there. One of my biggest memories of SoCal was I was very young during the OJ Simpson trial.

That's something that everybody was watching. I probably shouldn't have been watching some of it just based off of what they were talking about, but it was just on TV all the time. And so that was really my first visual or exposure to the courtroom. And that's where I really developed the idea of wanting to even become an attorney.

Japhet De Oliveira: Interesting. Interesting.

Michael Nixon: It was watching that scene.

Japhet De Oliveira: Because of that trial you wanted to be a lawyer?

Michael Nixon: Because you have Johnny Cochran on one side, and then you have the prosecution with Christopher Darden. So you have these two black men that are connected to, and obviously OJ, this polarizing figure that really drove a lot of conversations around race and the law and that sort of thing. And so it was like all these things were kind of happening at this very, I think, critical point for me in my development and growth. So yeah, that was the first thing that I went to my parents and said I wanted to be, that wasn't like, "Oh, I want to be a power Ranger. I want to be a superhero. I want to bounce off the walls. I want to be a professional athlete."

All these different things that maybe that last part, okay, it's possible, but you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than doing that, but fine. But this was like, okay, an actual profession? We're going to latch onto that. We're going to pour into that. And so although my mom kind of held onto this dream of me being a doctor even all the way up until college, but she kind of consented.

Japhet De Oliveira: Well, she's in healthcare as well.

Michael Nixon: Exactly. Exactly, so finally she relented and said, okay, that's a decent profession, too. You can go do that. So that's the biggest memory I have from SoCal. Then we moved to the DMV area, and then we came here to Andrews.

Japhet De Oliveira: And what's the DMV mean?

Michael Nixon: So DC, Maryland, Virginia, yeah, the East Coast. We were there. [inaudible 00:16:28] Yeah, I got you. I got you. And we were there not very long. We were there probably about two and a half, three years. And then dad got the call to come here to Andrews in 1998. I was going into the sixth grade, and so I really didn't want to come here, honestly, I didn't even... They'd said the word Andrews before, but I'd never connected that to Michigan or the area of the country it was in. We'd never been out here. But no, I mean, obviously coming here changed the trajectory of my family's life in totality, not just for my parents, but for me as well. And so yeah, I did middle school, high school here, left for a couple years in college. I did one year of college in Puerto Rico at Antillean University, which was a beautiful experience. Then I did my second year at Oakwood University down in Huntsville, then came here to Andrews to finish up.

Japhet De Oliveira: Fantastic, man. Fantastic. All right. Last question I have for you, and then I'll hand over to you. A leadership question. Are you a backseat driver?

Michael Nixon: No.

Japhet De Oliveira: No?

Michael Nixon: No, I'm not. I mean, if I'm sitting in the front seat passenger side and I see something, I might say, "Hey, there's something in the road, wake up." Yeah, no, but I'm definitely not a micromanager. I'd say I'm the kind of person that I love having ideation conversations and helping to set trajectory. But if I know that it's not a space where I'm the main driver, I want to be a supportive, collaborative passenger in those ways. And so yeah, that's my philosophy on that.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, that's fantastic. Good. Well, thank you so much. Michael, where do you want to go? Floor's open from 11 to 100.

Michael Nixon: 11 to 100. Wow. Okay. Let's start with 30.

Japhet De Oliveira: 30. All right, here it is. Tell us about something you're really looking forward to.

Michael Nixon: Something I'm really looking forward to. So later this month, actually two weekends from now, some good friends of mine are meeting up with me in Chicago. And these are friends of mine from high school, college, some of those old, longtime friends. We try to get together, at least the big group of us, we try to get together maybe once a year if we can. The last time we got together with this kind of a group was for my 35th birthday. We all got together in Orlando, which was great for me. It was one of, it wasn't my first birthday, but it was one of my soon birthdays after I'd gotten divorced. And so my friends just kind of flew from all across the country and just, we all met there and just really had a solid moment. And so we've tried to keep the tradition going and so we weren't able to do it last year. We would kind of connect in smaller groups, but this year a good amount of us are coming together in a couple of weeks.

Japhet De Oliveira: Great.

Michael Nixon: So I'm looking forward to that for sure.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's good. All right. Hey, that's 30. So where next? Up or down?

Michael Nixon: Up. I should keep going up.

Japhet De Oliveira: Sure.

Michael Nixon: The man who has the questions in his head like, oh no, that's your own risk. Let's go 40.

Japhet De Oliveira: 40. All right. Ooh, tell us about a time that you failed.

Michael Nixon: Well, I failed the bar the first time I took it. So this was back in 2013.

A lot of interesting things were happening at the time. So like I'd mentioned, I went to law school in Chicago, and so I finished law school like May of 2013. And then law school graduations, I tell people this, it's the funniest, it's like the most subdued graduation that you can have because basically you've been granted the opportunity to sit for this exam that your professional career depends on. So it's like, yeah, here's this paper, it means pretty much nothing-

Japhet De Oliveira: Nothing.

Michael Nixon: ... unless you pass this test in two months. So go light your world. So we're all kind of standing there in a daze like, yeah, this is great, but are we going to pass this freaking bar? What are we going to do? So I graduated in May and immediately the week starting after that, I'm in this intense season of studying. I was also my fiance at the time and I were planning our wedding, so it was-

Japhet De Oliveira: A lot.

Michael Nixon: ... a crazy summer for sure. So I sat for the bar, it was the end of June and then got married... No, the end of July, excuse me, and then got married a week or two later in August. And then you have this waiting period where you don't know, it takes them a few months to grade the thing.

And so I found out a couple of months later that I hadn't passed. And it was one of those things where, so now where we were living on the East Coast and in central New Jersey, and I didn't have as built up of a network in the legal field as I would ultimately, or as I had in Chicago in school. And so I was just working different sort of jobs to just kind of help make ends meet.

I would have these weird experiences where I'd be applying for jobs and then I'd never been told I was overqualified for jobs until this point in my life. It just like, yeah, dude, yeah, you have a great resume, but we really just need you to stack these papers in a pile.

Japhet De Oliveira: In a pile.

Michael Nixon: And we're going to just hire somebody else. I'd feel bad hiring you for this. And I wanted to say it was like, "Yeah, bro, but I really need the money. So just like, please." So I would just do some odd jobs. I found this document review job, which is sort of just almost like legal secretary kind of work, but my steady job actually was I got hired to work at this suit shop I worked at, you probably heard of Joseph A. Bank?

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, yeah.

Michael Nixon: They ended up getting acquired by Men's Warehouse, but at the time they still had locations everywhere and they're well known for buy five suits for the price of one when those suits are not worth one.

Japhet De Oliveira: Ouch.

Michael Nixon: But I mean, just giving you some inside stuff there. But that was their claim to fame. And so I remember just being in this really, it was a tough season. I mean, I felt really inadequate. I wasn't making a lot of money. We were making enough to make ends of meet, but there were a lot of people who knew somebody who knew an attorney.

Japhet De Oliveira: Sure.

Michael Nixon: I remember one time I showed up, it was on a day that I didn't have work, I was supposed to meet with this attorney who had a potential job and then they just didn't show up. So I'm just sitting in this restaurant for lunch with this attorney and was concerned about whether or not I could even afford the lunch to have this meeting with the attorney, because it was just so tight at that time.

And I just felt like really inadequate. I'm actually working at this suit shop and there are attorneys coming in to get suits and I'm fitting them for suits, and they're talking about what they do, and then I'm scared that they're going to ask me, what am I doing here basically? Because they hear me talking stuff. And people can just kind of tell when you maybe just don't fit somewhere. And I'm already 6'7", so there's that too. And it's like, "Hey, why are you not in the NBA or doing something else?" And they'd find out that I was a law school graduate and it was perplexing to them. So having those repeated interactions were interesting. But while I was there, because I ended up working there for a good number of months, I found myself just having these conversations with my co-workers. So the majority of my co-workers were these semi-retired or retired guys that used to own suit shops way back in the day.

But as companies like Joseph A. Bank or Men's Warehouse became big, their local shop would get bought out or go out of business, and they ended up joining this conglomerate. And I would just sit down and talk with them and they'd just share their stories with me. And I remember a co-worker of mine, his name was Howard, just like the funniest guy ever. He was a Jewish guy from South Philly, chain smoker in his sixties. I mean, we couldn't be more different. And we built this really strange bond and friendship just around having these different conversations about his journey and mine.

And so what ultimately ended up happening was I reached out to the Fair Housing Justice Center in New York. I just had this idea one day finally like, "Oh, why don't I just look and see if there's any organization out here that's doing that?" I did some of that in law school. I reached out to them and basically said, "Hey, I don't know if you all have any job opportunities, but even if you are looking for an attorney who can just volunteer time, here's some of my experience, I'm open to that." And the gentleman's name was Fred Freiberg. He was the executive director there at the time. And he wrote me back almost immediately and he said, "Hey, we don't have funding for a staff role right now, but if you're serious about volunteering, give me a call."

And so I said, okay. So I gave him a call the next day. We set up a time for me to go in and to meet. And so I started volunteering two days a week there. And they were able to help out a little bit with the travel into the city. But what I found out was when I'd reached out to him, they had actually been without a staff attorney for the prior six months. And so there was a backlog of stuff that they needed help with.

And so he said, "Hey, I was really happy to see your email." I'm thinking it was a shot in the dark. Because his wife is actually an attorney. She works for a firm. And she was kind of helping to tree out some stuff. And he said, yeah, I was actually saying to her the other day like, man, it would be great if somebody just said, "Hey, I'll just come help out."

Japhet De Oliveira: Isn't that incredible? Wow.

Michael Nixon: And I ended up kind of being that guy. So I volunteered for about four months, and then they got more funding toward the end of that year. This is 2014 now. And Meanwhile, during this time, I was studying to take the bar again. So I sat for the bar again in February of 2014, and I thankfully passed that second time, the New York bar. And so having that credentialing in hand, and then not long after that, the Fragile Justice Center got this huge influx of grant funding and they brought me on as a full-time staff attorney.

Japhet De Oliveira: An opportunity.

Michael Nixon: So yeah, it, yeah, I appreciated that. Yeah, it was definitely a trying time. But man, I actually think back on my time in that suit shop fondly just because of the things that it-

Japhet De Oliveira: That's great, man.

Michael Nixon: And the way that it helps me see people now. I actually remember when I got hired here at Andrews and I was asked to speak at an event on campus. I wore this jacket that I had sold myself from Joseph A. Bank, and nobody else there would know it. But I just remember while doing that, I had to kind of catch myself. I was looking down at this jacket that I would wear feeling so dejected, feeling so worthless and a failure. And to now at the age of 29, be a Vice President at this place that I grew up at in the same clothes? It just blew me away, man.

Japhet De Oliveira: That's incredible, man.

Michael Nixon: It blew me away.

Japhet De Oliveira: Do you still have that jacket?

Michael Nixon: I do.

Japhet De Oliveira: You're going to keep it?

Michael Nixon: I don't know.

Japhet De Oliveira: You're just going to keep it.

Michael Nixon: I'm going to keep it. I don't know if I can fit in it as well because I got a few more here.

Japhet De Oliveira: You developed.

Michael Nixon: I did.

Japhet De Oliveira: But you got to keep that. That's great. Absolutely. What a story.

Michael Nixon: Thank you.

Japhet De Oliveira: It's beautiful. Hey, I love that, Michael, we have time for two more numbers.

Michael Nixon: Okay.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah. So where'd you want to go?

Michael Nixon: Oh, man.

Japhet De Oliveira: That was 40?

Michael Nixon: That was 40.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah.

Michael Nixon: Man, I'm, I'm an ambitious guy. So we're going to go, let's go to 70.

Japhet De Oliveira: 70. All right, here we go. Tell us about one thing that you're determined to accomplish. This is great for you.

Michael Nixon: Oh, wow.

Japhet De Oliveira: What are you determined to accomplish, Michael?

Michael Nixon: One thing I'm determined to accomplish? I want to, for me, it's funny, I just talked about it. I put on a few pounds. I want to really get healthier for sure. I think I've always had this relative health throughout my life, but I've always carried a little extra weight. And the thing, the blessing I guess I have is that I'm 6'7", so you may even be surprised to hear this from me because I can kind of hide it pretty well.

Japhet De Oliveira: Share it?

Michael Nixon: I can share it around the real estate that I have. But I'm 36 now. I'm getting ready to turn 37 next month. And I haven't had any particular health scares or anything per se, but I've gone through sort of these different kicks of, okay, I'm going to eat right, exercise, and I'll do that consistently and get where I want to get, and then I'll drop off and it just kind of ebbs and flows. And so in 2025, I really want to make the change and then that just be the way I live my life from that point forward and just maintain it.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yes, yes. That's what it needs to be.

Michael Nixon: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Life change.

Michael Nixon: So that's been a big thing for me.

Japhet De Oliveira: Start a program.

Michael Nixon: Yeah. Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: Good for you, man. Good for you.

Michael Nixon: I appreciate that.

Japhet De Oliveira: Why until 25? Why not now? Sorry, curious.

Michael Nixon: That's true. The whole New Year's resolution thing, right? I'm starting to slowly work myself there, so what I have implemented is, I've done this in the past, but I'm getting back onto my intermittent fasting. So I usually do the 16/eight protocol.

Japhet De Oliveira: Oh, nice.

Michael Nixon: So I only eat between the hours of 12 and eight. So I'm getting back into that. And so that's kind of how I'm working myself toward it. I broke it yesterday when we got breakfast.

Japhet De Oliveira: I know we were talking about that. Praise the Lord. Were it not for grace.

Michael Nixon: So I'm building the habits back slowly, and then I've been going to the gym maybe two times a week, but I want to ramp that up. So I'm giving myself some time to build up to it, but I really want to just get it going, get it cracking.

Japhet De Oliveira: And you look forward to 2025?

Michael Nixon: Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: Actually 2026.

Michael Nixon: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: Yeah, the result year.

Michael Nixon: Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: Hey, that's great. Good. Final number? Yeah.

Michael Nixon: Ooh, how dangerous do I want to get? So I will do in the spirit of my favorite current Yankee player, Aaron Judge, because they won last night, he's number 99.

Japhet De Oliveira: 99?

Michael Nixon: We're going to do 99.

Japhet De Oliveira: All right. Hey, this is actually really apropos for you. What is the most difficult truth you've ever told?

Michael Nixon: Man, I think it was probably to myself. And what it was was it was actually something that God told to me, but it wasn't going to really resonate until I communicated it to myself. It was actually when God told me that my marriage is over. So I had this experience, and this is probably a podcast by itself, but I'll give a very graphic version where I went on this spiritual retreat back in October, 2019, and lots of stuff was going tough at the time. Stuff here with professionally. I was just in a rocky space with my relationship, with work, with lots of things.

And so I went on this retreat, disconnected from our faith community. It was a group of people that didn't know each other and that sort of a thing. I was in the mountains of North Carolina and anyone who knows me up to that point, I'm not an outdoorsy person. We have Pathfinders in our faith community. And I did that. And most people are surprised by this because his dad was a minister, is a minister. I was in Pathfinders for three weeks and I quit. I was just like, "I'm not doing this crap, Pop." And he was like, "Okay, whatever. Stay home." So that was just never my thing. I was never certified with any of the badges.

So I'm in the mountains in North Carolina for this week and towards the end of that week we'd been going on these hikes. And early on in the week, it was tough for me. I was like, what are we doing? But as the week progressed, I just started finding myself connecting with God in just new ways through nature. Just like I just felt the presence just more viscerally. And I think a lot of it was because it was one of the first times in my life where I really disconnected, not just from technology and all those different things, but I disconnected from the pressure that I felt to perform for everyone around me.

To make sure that my spouse at the time was okay, that obviously Noah has everything she needs, my daughter, for functioning or making my parents proud and happy, which is not even necessarily pressure they put on me, but it's pressure because of my personality that I always felt. And so because I kind of unshackled myself from that disposition of prove yourself, make everyone happy, what does everybody else want? I had this free space to be able to really ask myself for the first time, probably since I had written a Christmas wish list, which was the question, Michael, what do you want? And to feel like that was an okay question to ask that it wasn't selfish to ask that. That it wasn't a violation of my commitments to other people to ask that.

Japhet De Oliveira: What do you need?

Michael Nixon: Yeah, what do I need? What do you want, truly? And what do you want the rest of your life to look like?

And so toward the end of that week, we're on one of these hikes and we end up going on this trail that leads us to this cemetery that was set by this beautiful stream flowing through the mountains. And we stand in a circle. It's a group of about eight of us, and one of the people who was with us, her name is Meredith, she's a Methodist Pastor. The day before she came on the retreat, she preached the eulogy at her grandmother's funeral and her grandmother was her best friend. They would talk six, seven times a day. And so she talked to us now in this circle about how physically my grandmother is dead, but so many parts of who she means to me are still alive and I need to start the process of putting those to rest so that I can move forward.

And then she said to each of us, there's something in all of our lives that is dying or that is dead. And she handed us each flower petals, and these were flower petals from her Grandmother's casket on top of the casket. She said, I grabbed these before it went down to the ground, and so now I'm gifting you each one of these. And she said, one by one, we're going to lay these petals on the ground and you can either audibly so that we can hear, or internally in dropping that flower petal, you're acknowledging the reality that something is dying or is dead.

And so I'm like somewhere in the middle, other folks are sharing, and I'm kind of thinking like, well, this is interesting. I can't think of anything. What am I going to share? And my brain kind of blanked out a bit. And then it came to me, and then I heard it so loud in my ears that I repeated it. It literally sounded like a wind and then a voice.

And God said to me, literally, he said to me, he said, "Your marriage is dead." And then so I repeated it. I said, "My marriage is dead." And then I was like, I just said that to these strangers? What did I just say? And so I just had this flood of emotion.

Japhet De Oliveira: Sure.

Michael Nixon: And I was resistant to that for a bit of time after I convinced myself that that wasn't God who said that, why would God say that? That went against everything I knew about God. He doesn't want that. He wants this to get figured out. And I worked really hard to try to convince myself that that wasn't God or that wasn't true.

But I remember coming to a moment where I really had to look in the mirror and say to myself, flat, no, that was God. And it's true that this is dead and it's time to move into a new season. It doesn't mean that you can't transition that relationship somewhere else because like I mentioned earlier, my ex and I we're wonderful co-parents. We have a good relationship. There's no static. It's not friction. It's not a me versus her. We do the best we can together for our daughter.

She's gotten remarried and I'm super happy for her and her new husband and he's a great guy. And so all things work together ultimately. But for me personally, I had to acknowledge the truth of no, that was God's voice. And even though what he said was confusing, I mean, have you read the Bible before? He often says confusing things and you don't necessarily know why at the time. But I had to acknowledge that truth and it really, I'm a different person I think on the other side of that. My ability, again, to connect with people, to see people, the amounts of people who have reached out to me that know even a little bit about my story, just to get support when they feel that their world is crumbling around them. I've just been given a sense of resolve and an outlook and perspective on life that can only be built through the fire of pain. And so yeah, that's definitely the most difficult truth I've had to tell and it was to myself.

Japhet De Oliveira: Wow, Michael. That was a beautiful and honest story. But I mean the entire conversation has been phenomenal. Thank you. Thank you. It's interesting you talked about your friends that all gathered together. And how you share stories with each other and look after each other. And I think this is exactly what this is as well.

Michael Nixon: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: And I say this for every episode and I really believe it. You sit down with a friend, you ask good questions. We are changed.

Michael Nixon: Yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira: We learn from each other.

Michael Nixon: Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: Thank you so much, man.

Michael Nixon: Thank you.

Japhet De Oliveira: Really appreciate it. Thank you. Well, appreciate it.

Michael Nixon: Absolutely.

Japhet De Oliveira: God bless you, and we'll connect again on another episode.

Michael Nixon: Sounds good.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us for the Story and Experience podcast. We invite you to read, watch, and submit your story and experience at adventisthealth.org/story. The Story and Experience Podcast was brought to you by Adventist Health for the Office of Culture.