Community, Faith, and Healing: A Conversation with Tom Smith

SPEAKER 04 : 0:01

welcome to the good news with angie austin now with the good news here’s angie hey angie austin and tom smith we are joining each other again because tom was on the program and tom was talking to me about his book the three o’clock calls which he will briefly describe to you again and i said tom i have to have you back So here he is a week later, and he is back because I wanted to know what happened to his life after the 3 o’clock calls. And so I wanted to know how the Lord showed up for him after really the three worst calls of his life. Welcome back, Tom Smith.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:45

Oh, it’s great to be back, and thank you for having me, Angie.

SPEAKER 04 : 0:48

All right, so the 3 o’clock calls in a nutshell, and I don’t know how we can even say this in a nutshell because I was just on with another author, and I’m like, you’ve got to hear Tom Smith’s interview. I said he was on for the entire show, and whenever you get a call 3 o’clock in the morning, nothing good comes from a 3 o’clock call. Tom got a call about his father, about his daughter, and about his nephew. And in all three of them, they ended in the call was about a tragedy. So give us a brief synopsis of those. But what I really want to talk about today was not the horror of the three o’clock calls. I want to talk about how the Lord showed up for you after these horrible losses in your life.

SPEAKER 01 : 1:30

Absolutely. Absolutely, Angie. And, yeah, just, you know, we discussed last week basically, you know, nothing good comes from a 3 o’clock call, and I think we can all agree to that. And so as we spoke through that, you know, I’d mentioned that, you know, we took three calls at 3 o’clock, and my book was originally going to be titled Our Last Conversations because that’s what it almost amounted to. But we decided, you know, everybody would kind of know what that title meant right away. And so the 3 o’clock calls, You know, we’ve all had them. And so I take the readers through three characters near and dear to my life and my heart and my family. And I write in third person. And so as I’m describing these loved ones, the reader really don’t understand the relationship Tom has with George, Danielle, and Kayla, which I’ll reveal in Chapter 10, that relationship. And I’m sorry, not Kayla, Blake. Okay. George is and was my father, and he died tragically as an alcoholic and had committed murder. And my dear 19-year-old daughter, Danielle, coming home from college, and she never made it home, and we spoke about that. A lot more detail there for the reader. And then Blake was my nephew, who absolutely was a wonderful kid in his early 20s, and he also worked hard. for me at our place of work as well and uh we talked about his tragic murder uh that happened here just recently and as we endured and went through that trial with my sister and uh we finally got uh justice through you know the the criminal justice system here in florida and uh that was uh handed out on october i mean of august of 2024 and and then we was able to write the book and get it out finish it i finished the book in the courtroom during that trial, and we were able to get it out December of 2024.

SPEAKER 04 : 3:23

And, you know, your daughter died in an accident. Your father had issues with alcohol, and that’s the drinking led to the death of the person that you’re talking about regarding your father being a murderer. And then your nephew was trying to break up a fight when he was shot and killed. And so in all these instances, you know, you think, how can anyone even get through anything like this without faith? And so the point of the book really was for you to explain to people how the Lord can help you through really the worst nightmares of your life.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:04

That’s right. And that’s right, Angie. And so I hope that when an individual reads this book, and Angie, my hope was that when I wrote this book and shared this story, it’s 40,000 words, 10 chapters, and most readers read it in anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. Easy read. And my hope was that when somebody read this book, that the first thing they would think about is, oh, my gosh, I know who I need to pass this on to. I know who this book may encourage or may give some direction or some guidance. And so that was the hope in sharing this story. And we certainly didn’t want to come across preachy or judgmental. We’re all sharing life together, Angie, and we live in a broken world that if you haven’t experienced some type of tragedy in your life, possibility that you will eventually because of the broken world we live in. And so I thought, well, you know, I’m going to share these, and then I want to share with the reader in Chapter 10 that, yes, All these people were family members, and yes, I am grieving, and yes, it’s hurtful, and yes, it’s painful, and yes, you go into a bad place at times, but there’s hope. There’s hope on the other side, and there’s hope that I have in my faith, and there’s hope that I have in my community of believers outside of my immediate family. And so that’s what I was hoping to share as we were able to distribute this book.

SPEAKER 04 : 5:30

Yeah, I am. I was so encouraged by you when we discussed this last week. I thought, you know, what a perfect opportunity to have you come back and talk about what happened after these calls. Now, your father, that was a troubled relationship. You said he started drinking very young because your father’s father made moonshine. And so your father became an alcoholic when he was 12. Yeah.

SPEAKER 01 : 5:57

Yes. And, you know, and so there we have to live through addiction and violence, domestic violence. And I’m telling you, that’s traumatizing as a small child. I still picture that to this day. And, you know, the laws wasn’t in place to help that that battered spouse like it is nowadays. But my mother thought that she could change my father and his addiction was too strong and it didn’t happen. And he was a very mean individual when he was drinking. It just changed him. And so we suffered through that. But the perseverance of not giving up on my father, Angie, I said, Lord. I’ve been praying for a long time. I prayed when I was a kid, when my mother was getting beat up. I prayed when I was a teenager. I prayed in my young adulthood and in my 60s, and I was praying. And I said, Lord, do you hear our prayers? Am I even heard? And you start questioning these things because, as we know, it’s never our timing. It’s the Lord’s timing. And as I shared, Angie, three days before he took his last breath in the We were able to share Christ with them through the Roman roads of taking them through that salvation process of what that looks like and being able to hear my father with a tear in his eye say, yes, I do accept the Lord as my Lord and Savior, and I do want to be forgiven for my troubled life. And, son, if I had to do it all over again, I would do it differently. And he was very remorseful, very sincere person. And my father accepted Christ, you know, with a few days to live. I mean, I don’t know how you could cut it any closer, Angie.

SPEAKER 04 : 7:44

Now, after, you know, your daughter is a freshman, after she passed, you have one other daughter. After your daughter passed, how do you even get through that? I mean, I know you have a very strong church community, that you live in the South, that you are a man of faith. I just don’t even know how you leave the house. Seriously, I don’t even know how you function on a day-to-day basis after that happens.

SPEAKER 01 : 8:08

So it was very difficult. And Angie, you know that we live in this world that’s broken and people are broken. And the Bible says that we are to be kind and love and respect one another. And and you know the atmosphere of the world now. It’s just a difficult day, and it’s difficult even more when you lose a loved one. You know, you blank out the world, and now you’re dealing with just your own personal misery. And I recall that, you know, when Danielle passed, I think I might have shared it with you, just touched on it. We had to do all the things that parents never even think about, and that’s to make funeral arrangements, you know, for the celebration of life, for her going home. When you just said that, Tom, I hate to interrupt.

SPEAKER 04 : 8:56

When you just said that, I remembered my brother was murdered, and I remember when you said we had to make funeral arrangements. He was cremated, and I just remember my stomach sank a little bit when you said what no parent wants to do to make funeral arrangements. It is painful to lose a brother. I can’t even imagine. You know I’ve got a girl heading off to college. I know. And I can’t even wrap my head around. Just even thinking about you losing her, I want to burst into tears. My eyes are welling up. When you say you have to make funeral arrangements, I don’t even know how you make the calls. I don’t know how you stand up. I don’t know how you walk out the door. Did you feel like God was with you? Did you feel a sense of strength? Or were you just like… feeling like you were in the middle of the ocean trying to tread water and each wave kept coming over and you didn’t know how you were going to make it to the next day?

SPEAKER 01 : 9:47

All those are great questions. And yes, yes, yes to all of them. And here’s the thing. So I shared with you that, you know, we are a faith-based family and we attend a church on a regular basis. And, you know, you don’t have to have church in your life to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. You know, you don’t have to, but you’re missing out on, you know, so much. of the joy and the growth and the love that you can have with a faith-based community. And so that church, our congregation, our brothers and sisters, come alongside of us, and they lifted us up, and they ministered to us, and they loved on us, you know, when everybody else was kind of busy and going back their own way. And that was so important at that time to have other people within our church community and family just pouring out their love and encouragement and helping us through it. It has to soon go back and go back to their own life. But we go to church with these people on a regular basis and every Sunday, you know, and we just kind of gained our strength through the love of the church, through the support of our pastors, and obviously our Lord Jesus Christ and our Savior.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:57

But, you know, you ask something, and when you’re making these arrangements, you don’t know how. Pastors, if you think about it, pastors have to deal with a lot of funerals and weddings, and that’s what they do. And so he was able to guide us through a lot of that through the support of our church, and pastors are constantly, you know, having to deal with loss. And so that was a great support system, and that’s another, you know, advantage to a situation like that a church brings. Yeah. So as we’re making those arrangements and we buy our plots, I went ahead and bought mine and my wife’s and Danielle’s, and we were just going to put Danielle right in between us, and we bought these three plots because we were going to do a traditional burial. Kayla says, which, you know, was her younger sister, our youngest daughter, about eight years younger. She was 12. She goes, Daddy, what about my lot? And we said, Kayla, you’re going to be married one day and probably be buried with your family. And she couldn’t understand it. She was crying, couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to be with her family. So guess what we did? We went in there and bought another lot. And so I said, we’ll have our whole family here. And then fast forward, fast forward years later. Her cousin Blake gets shot, gets killed. And I shared with the readers and on the show that it’s just my sister and I. We had two children, Danielle and Kayla, and Tanya had three children. And Blake is the one that got murdered. And my sister is going through the same tragedy of understanding what just happened. She don’t know where to start. She don’t know what to do and don’t even know where she’s going to put Blake. And my little daughter of mine, Kayla, said, Aunt Tanya, Blake can have my lot. And so now she’s married, and she’s got her own child, and she lives in Pensacola, Florida, about six hours from us from Jacksonville. And she gave her Aunt Tanya the lot, and now Blake is buried right beside Danielle.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:44

Right beside Danielle. Tom, we’re going to take a break. I just am so touched by your daughter’s heart and how she gave that lot to her cousin. And I just who would have ever thought that it would work out that way, that you and your sister would lose children, would be end up being buried right next to each other. I’ll be right back.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:10

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SPEAKER 01 : 14:08

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SPEAKER 04 : 14:17

Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News. We are speaking with Tom Smith, his book, The Three O’Clock Calls, the three calls he received to tell him about his father dying, his freshman and college daughter, Danielle, dying in an accident, and then his nephew breaking up a fight. He was shot and killed, and they just finished with the court case. He finished the book while he was sitting there. in court finishing that up. And I said, you know, these three o’clock calls that you never want to get, they all ended in tragedy. But, you know, how did you get through this? And you were just talking about how your youngest daughter wanted a plot when Danielle, your freshman in college, died. and that how then when your nephew was recently killed, she said, Daddy, I know he doesn’t have a place to be buried, and so I want to give him my plot. So now your sister’s son and your daughter are buried next to each other. Just the heart of your daughter, too, said, you know, just without even thinking, Daddy, I want to give him my plot so he has a place to lay to rest. It just touches my heart.

SPEAKER 01 : 15:23

Yes. It was, you know, the Lord’s had his hand in every step of it, and I wish I could do justice on our discussions, but I really do share the details in the book. There’s so many ways, Angie, that you don’t see it when you’re going through these tragedies, but after the fact, as you pull back, a lot of us will say, God, where are you? Where are you in all of this? He’s there the whole time. It’s just that we’re filled with anger and grief and grief. We sometimes just don’t see it. And when we slowly step back from it and we slowly let the grief take its process, that’s when we see that God was with us every step of the way and he was leaning into us as much as we want to lean into him. And that part right there with that plot, you know, that was no doubt. You know, a miraculous act of God that we did that because we was able to, you know, provide that plot to Kayla and Kayla then in turn could give it to her aunt to have a place to put Blake in.

SPEAKER 04 : 16:22

My goodness. All right. Now, as you’re starting to, you know, write, you know, do speaking engagements, do these podcasts. What kind of response are you getting from people, or are people asking you for advice on how to deal with their grief? Because I’m sure a lot of people go into a dark place with these kinds of losses, and they just don’t know how to get out.

SPEAKER 01 : 16:43

You know, you’re exactly right. You know, I’m not shy about putting my personal email in the back of the book. And, you know, I’m just a regular person. You know, I’m not a pastor or a preacher, but I do have a good understanding, you know, in some of these tragedies. And everybody… It goes through tragedies and grieves in different ways, but you’re exactly right. I do have a lot of emails that come to me and say, Tom, I read your book, and this is what we’re going through. And you hopefully are not getting a lot of responses from people losing their children because that’s just not normal. And there’s a pile of people that have lost their children, but the most response – The majority of the responses that I receive is from like what happened with my father. It’s people reaching out that their parents or their children has an addiction of some type. And that addiction is just something that’s been so difficult to deal with. And some of it’s led to tragedy and some of it’s just led to separation. And so we get into a discussion about that, of the support. And do they have a church? and to have anybody ministering to them. You can wear your immediate and extended family out, but what’s your outside support? What does it look like that you’re getting encouraged and built up on a weekly basis? And, you know, we talk about, Angie, I think I mentioned to you about Facebook the last time we talked, and everybody has social media and Facebook, and they say, oh, look at my Facebook friends. I’ve got 2,500 friends. Well, you probably only know a handful, and they’re not really deep friends. They’re pretty much just shallow people that you know, and people are putting their best part of their life on there for about three to ten seconds. and then really you don’t have that relationship that you think you have. But I call my friends at church, church book friends, CB friends, because those people are real. I’m touching those people, you know, every Sunday, Wednesdays when we go. And then those are people that I can call at 2 in the morning or 3 in the morning and say, I’ve just had a situation. Will you pray for me or can you meet me here? And I’ve got dozens and dozens of people that will do that. And so I say that to say, you know, Why not look and go find a church and just say, look, I’m here. I want to make some friends. I want to get with like-minded people. I want to be community. And then let the course just take its place. If you felt led spiritually to join a church or you felt led to maybe pray to receive Christ during that time that you’re there, then let it happen. But I would say be proactive. Find that church before you need a church.

SPEAKER 04 : 19:15

It’s interesting, too. You said… You know, even if you’re not a Christian, you can go to church and find that fellowship, that camaraderie, that friendship, that support. Even if you’re not, you know, 100 percent all in. I was just at the church last weekend and they were talking about somebody being new and, you know, kind of joining in. And they kind of had a little program where you have like a punch card almost to like have friends. you know, come six times and little goals during those six times that you come to church. And then like, even some like little door prizes and stuff, which I thought was really cute because I’m just trying to get you to see that, like, this is a place where you can find love and acceptance, you know, even if you’re not all in initially, hopefully you’ll be all in, you know, later and that you’ll feel that love and, and maybe we’ll, we’ll develop a faith and a love for the Lord. But a big part of our faith is a love for people.

SPEAKER 01 : 20:12

That’s right. A love for people. And, you know, you go to that church and people goes in and a little bit skeptical. I can tell when somebody’s never been before and I like to go welcoming, you know, to the church. And, you know, we have what we call first steps, you know, like if you’re new and you want to see what it’s like to take the next step and, you know, enter into a brand new class of new visitors or believers, you know, and put you with like-minded people and go through life together, then this is a place that we can do that. And we certainly try to do that with our community. We want to be there, and I have certainly been on the receiving side as well as the giving side of what a church offers. And I certainly, we had love poured out to us, and we poured out the love with other families that’s lost loved ones or dealing with tragedies and just the messiness of life. And I’m telling you, the church community, you can find then you have started to understand, I think, the purpose of life is being able to do life together with loving, like-minded people. Isn’t that the truth?

SPEAKER 04 : 21:17

Now, in terms of anything that’s come out of writing the book or in dealing with other people where you really felt the Lord’s hand in it, where maybe you were led to someone or got feedback from someone, anything that’s come out of it that you thought, wow, that’s a real God wink?

SPEAKER 01 : 21:36

It is. You know, we’ve got some e-mails and gotten some calls, and I went and sat with a family at a hospital about an hour or two away, believe it or not. I don’t think they had anybody, so they called me on a whim, and I went down there, and apparently their daughter had gotten kicked by a horse, their 8-year-old, and she ended up dying as a result of that. And I sat in that waiting room, Angie, with that couple for hours and hours. And I didn’t have to say a lot. You know, the deeper the pain, the quieter you need to be. I don’t go down there offering any kind of. you know, verses or encouragement or, hey, you know, she’s in a better place. And, you know, hey, I get how you feel. I don’t get how they feel. I know how my own loss was. But just being there, letting that couple know that you care and that they’ve got somebody there that’s went through it. And then I got another call from a gentleman that works for me, and he was going to Walt Disneyland here in Florida, and they were stopped on the turnpike or in the interstate, and the vehicle behind them didn’t stop, and they got rear-ended. He and his wife was in the front seat. They lived, but it broke their little son’s neck in the back seat, and so we ended up going to their house, and I hung out four to six hours at his house when he went through that, and his wife went through that, and you know, Angie, I was there four hours, and they was running around and had other family there and different things, and I think after hour four, he looks at me and goes, Tom, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you made it. And I’m thinking, you know, I’ve been here four hours. That’s how jacked up and how emotional and how chaotic it is when you’re going through those things. It’s a very difficult time. And just being there for people to know that they know that people care.

SPEAKER 04 : 23:26

Yeah, just being there and that they know that people care. Regarding the little girl that died that was kicked by the horse, how did they find you? Did they know you through church? Did they know you through your book? Did someone say, oh, my goodness, I know another man that lost his child that I’m going to send your way?

SPEAKER 01 : 23:41

I will only tell you that I don’t know if somebody referred them or they found it recalled or they had the email in the back of my book, but it came from the result of the book. And I can’t remember if one of the parents read it or a friend read it and said, hey, You know, you’ve got to see if this gentleman will be able to speak to you. I don’t think they knew I would come, but an hour and a half I got dressed, and we just went to the hospital down there in Ocala, and we just hung out. And the first time, you know, we still talk to them to this day. You know, and it’s no – I’ll tell you, it’s no club that you want to be in, you know, when you lose a child and you’re grieving. But there is support systems out there. And just that’s what I would tell those folks as they read my book is that, Man, you’ll make it. It’s a season in life that is difficult, but if you’ll hang in there, you’ll get through the other side, and the Lord’s willing and ready to walk with you through it.

SPEAKER 04 : 24:42

wow i mean that is mind-blowing to me that yet that you’re not even sure how they found you and that that i think that what’s going to happen over the next however many years with you know you putting the book out there the three o’clock calls and people knowing with those three three o’clock calls what about your dad your daughter and your nephew just recently being murdered that uh you’re going to get so many calls in the future, and it’s a club no one wants to be in, but it’s a club they know you’re in, so they want you to stand by them as they go through some of the, you know, similar issues. And so I think that by, you know, having the courage to write the book and to share your pain, that God’s going to have people reach out to you. Some of these cases you’re not even quite sure how they found you and there you were sitting in the you know waiting room not even knowing the people but there for them and they needed you

SPEAKER 01 : 25:37

Yeah, I had to ask for their last name, you know, as you come in through the information. And typically I know to go to trauma or emergency in those situations, and I had to ask for somebody to point them out because I didn’t know what these people looked like, you know. And it was a hug like we’d known each other forever. I introduced myself, and, man, it’s just hanging out. You know, I didn’t really have to say anything. I just was there. I mean, there was nothing I could say. And that’s the thing. I don’t think they expected me to say anything. They just knew that I knew.

SPEAKER 04 : 26:13

Yeah, I mean, I’m speechless. I mean, this is going to open so many doors to you, to people in pain, but I feel like you know that it’s God’s calling and that you’re prepared to be there. How do you feel when you arrive? Are you scared? Do you feel the pain? Or do you feel like God kind of gives you that supernatural strength to be able to handle their pain in order to kind of be, you know, the strength standing beside them?

SPEAKER 01 : 26:43

Well, you know, when you meet people, for sure, there’s some nerves involved because you don’t know, you know, what the expectations are from people. And, you know, I do read the Bible a lot. I’m not a scholar or nothing, but I do read and study the Bible. I have most of my life. And I’m reminded of Romans 5.3. It says, you know, we also rejoice in our sufferings. the Word of God says. That’s why I’m not a pastor. I said, you know, we rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. And I just know that we serve a loving God and that I know that through our sufferings and as we persevere through this life, you know, and we stay the course, you know, and we remain steadfast in our faith, then I have the hope that we’ll be reunited with our loved ones. And I do share with these couples that say, listen, I know it’s difficult. I know it’s a very emotional time. I’m here for you. Let me know whatever I can do for you. And I don’t go in, you know, quoting scripture and trying to, you know, lean people towards, hey, you’ve got to find God. I just hang out. And if the course through our relationship and our friendship, it may take a year or two for me to have a gospel conversation that maybe, just maybe, I can tell somebody that, hey, that the Spirit of God is the source of true life and not just existence but abundant living. And if I can kind of lead somebody down that road as a result of the way I live my life, then you know what? If one person, one person finds Jesus Christ as a result of this book and this ministry, everything that I have went through in this lifetime, Angie, will be worth it.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:27

Wow. Well, it sounds like you’re already, your numbers are already above that. I want to make sure people can find you, Tom Smith, and the 3 o’clock calls, your websites.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:36

Yes, ma’am. 3octcalls.com. And, you know, we’re all over Amazon, and we’ve got a lot of great reviews if you wanted to kind of read the reviews. But I make the book available in hardback and softback, and it’s an e-book. And I think we’re probably going to try to do something in the audible format as well. And I think you need to voice that over for sure.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:58

Thank you, friend. Thank you so much, Angie.

SPEAKER 02 : 29:02

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.