# How to Forgive Someone Without Letting Them Off the Hook featuring Father Stephen Gadberry

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dad-edge-podcast-522814/how-to-forgive-someone-without-letting-them-off-the-hook-featuring-father-stephen-gadberry
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dad-edge-podcast-522814/how-to-forgive-someone-without-letting-them-off-the-hook-featuring-father-stephen-gadberry.md
Podcast: [The Dad Edge Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dad-edge-podcast-522814)
Published: 2026-05-29T00:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://thedadedge.com/1484
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/gooddadproject/5.28.26_-_Father_Steven_Gadberry.mp3?dest-id=264727
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-dad-edge-podcast-522814/episodes/how-to-forgive-someone-without-letting-them-off-the-hook-featuring-father-stephen-gadberry
Duration seconds: 4366

## Resource

Father Stephen Gadberry is a Catholic priest ordained in 2016 after a path that took him from a small family farm in the Arkansas Delta through the United States Air Force, a deployment to Iraq, and all the way to Rome to study philosophy and theology. He competed on American Ninja Warrior in 2018 and 2020, has worked alongside Bishop Robert Barron and Word on Fire, and currently serves at Saint Theresa Catholic Church and School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In this conversation, Father Stephen opens up about losing his father and twelve-year-old sister in a car accident when he was just eight years old, how that tragedy shaped his understanding of duty and sacrifice, and what it felt like to receive his calling in the middle of a deployment in central Iraq. He is a hunter, archer, CrossFit athlete, knife maker, and musician who speaks about masculinity, suffering, and faith in a way that cuts through all the noise. We also get into forgiveness in a way I have never heard anyone break it down before. Father Stephen uses the image of a plant to walk through the entire process of healing a broken relationship, from cultivating the soil, to planting the seed, to watching for weeds, to understanding why we pull back just when things start to feel close. It is pastoral counsel and practical wisdom at the same time. This one hit me differently, guys. I am not kidding when I say I felt the weight of this conversation in my chest. If you have ever carried loss, wrestled with abandonment, or wondered how a man of deep faith actually lives out forgiveness in real time, this episode is for you. Timeline Summary [1:02] Father Stephen and the host kick off by acknowledging this is take two, after a tech failure ended the first recording [1:55] Father Stephen explains his two appearanc…

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## Transcript

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