I’ve got a guy that helps me with my car. I’ve got a different guy that keeps my appliances running. I’ve met these folks over the years, collecting people I trust like I gathered baseball cards as a kid. It’s easy to call around and see if anybody will trade me a plumber for an electrician, like some kind of barter in tradesmen. ‘Naw, dude. The last guy you gave me smelled like pall malls and didn’t own a belt. Who else you got?,’ go the negotiations.

So then I needed legal advice and financial planning. They were in a different card deck than the HVAC guys. These folks didn’t have their names sewn on their shirts. Their first question to me was ‘what do you want.’ When I called the appliance guy, the answer was pretty obvious: 'ice cream. The freezer transformed the cookies and cream into soup. Make it go back.’ When my lawyer asked me what I wanted, my reaction seemed too obvious: ’to stay out of jail.’ The financial planner bounced between hopeful and fearful (Based on my ’needs’ today and tomorrow, he advised a need to save approximately 152% of my salary. Could get interesting.)

It’s taken years to collect men and women I trust with my health and wealth. I trust my doctors to partner with me to guide my health, yet I’m not concerned with his opinion of my transmission. Kevin, my mechanic, is a great guy and could probably fix my toilet because he’s handy, but I take his perspective on stocks and bonds with a grain of salt.

Look, I have the YouTube and can figure out how to change my oil, but Kevin sees things I don’t. He looks for patterns and notices what’s out of place because he knows what life under the hood is supposed to be like. These folks care for me and my family and express that through brake pads and living wills. They don’t however, care for my heart. They can’t know my hurt or how my kids experience me, but they do play a pivotal role in supporting my family.

I do however, 'gotta guy' for soul care as well. I've got a few of them actually; men that know my story and hold it with the same gravity as my physician does with my lab results. These men never let me stray too far into self-pity and always, always ask about my bride. They also have exercised their influence in my life and called my bride directly to calibrate my story. Unlike the once-used mechanic wanting to replace the flux capacitor in my minivan, I trust the men in my life and am thankful that I gotta guy caring for my marriage and for my heart.

Do you?