May 6, 2025 • 50 mins
Sarah Jakes Roberts was recently named the successor to one of the most influential churches in the country – stepping into the role held by her father, Bishop T.D. Jakes. But the path wasn’t simple. It was marked with detours and storms she had to survive to get here.
On this episode of the My Legacy podcast, Sarah sits down with her mother, Serita Jakes, and co-hosts Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger, and Craig Kielburger, for a deeply personal conversation about overcoming life’s biggest challenges and the women who shape our lives.
From teenage motherhood and depression, to leading a movement for millions of women, Sarah shares what it means to walk boldly into a calling that once terrified her.
Unforgettable lessons from this conversation include:
- How to navigate the “messy middle” without losing your faith or your fire
- How to honor where you came from without staying stuck there
- Why power doesn’t have to look like control—and how women are redefining it
- The one mindset shift that helped Sarah step out of shame and into authority
If you’re navigating change, carrying the weight of your past, or searching for the strength to rise again, this conversation will meet you where you are – and stay with you long after it ends.
Creator and Executive Producer: Suzanne Hayward
Co-Executive Producer: Lisa Lisle
Editor Duane Fogwelll
Post-production producer Tina Pittaway
A/V by A. Britton Dream Production Co.
Produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and Executive Producer Gabrielle Collins.
Like our podcast? Visit http://youtube.com/@mylegacymovement to see full episodes.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And so I'm like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm
gonna at least be honest. I don't want anyone to
ever be surprised that because I preached a message that
I experienced depression, that I worked at a strip club,
Like I want you to know, like this is what
you're getting. It is not much, but I am gonna
give my best. I'm gonna share my best, and if
I make you feel less alone, then girl, we could
(00:24):
grab arms and move towards better together. But I just didn't.
I just didn't wanna. I didn't want to live on
a pedestal. I wanted to be able to Sometimes on
my social media, I will be like all glammed up,
dressed up. Other moments I'll literally be snatching my wig
off and washing my face like this is like, this
is all of who I am, And I just don't
want people to be connected to this caricature. I don't
(00:46):
want to be trapped in my own life.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
That was the incredible Sarah Jakes Roberts, whose radical transparency
has inspired a global movement reaching millions of women around
the world. Now, as a daughter of Bishop TD Jakes,
she's stepping into a historic new role as a successor
of one of the most influential churches in America. I'm
Andrea Waters King and this is My Legacy, hosted by me,
(01:10):
my husband Martin Luther King the Third, and our good
friends Mark Kilberger and Craig Kilberger. Today on My Legacy,
Sarah and her mother Serena Jakes pull back the curtain
on the private battles, public expectations, and the unexpected path
that prepared her for this moment. If you've ever struggled
to believe you could rise above your past, this conversation
(01:32):
is a masterclass in healing, hope and stepping boldly towards Westnext,
get ready to be inspired.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Welcome to My Legacy. For our new listeners and viewers,
this isn't your typical solo celebrity interview. This is the
show where remarkable people pull back the curtain and bring
along the one person who's seen the full story unfold,
the his the heartbreaks, and everything in between. And today
we're honored to be talking to a woman whose journey
includes teen mom, best selling author, pass and leader of
(02:01):
a global movement that has inspired millions. Sarah Jakes Roberts
has built her platform by telling the truth about pain, purpose,
and what it means to write and rewrite your own story. Sarah,
We're truly honored to have you here today, and would
you mind introducing to us your plus one, the person
who knows you best and who has been with you
(02:21):
on your life journey.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It is my honor and privilege to have my mother,
Serita Jakes, joining us today. I could stop it just
saying how much she means to me as my mother.
But she is an incredible woman. First, she is courageous
and brilliant and vulnerable and strong. She's the glue of
our family and certainly throughout some of my most difficult seasons,
(02:45):
I would say that she was the oil that got
me unstuck when I was in some spots that I
never thought I would get out of. So I'm just
so honored that I get to share her with the world.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Sarah, and thank you
all for having us.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh, We're so excited for this conversation today.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You know, Sarah, you grew up in one of the
most extraordinary, influential faith families here in America. Can you
share with us a recollection or story from your childhood
and helps us to understand what's it like growing up
as a Jakes.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You know, I have this one photo of me. We're
at this conference and it was back to the Bible,
and it's my sister and I sitting on the front row.
My mother's mother, my Grainy is sitting beside us, and
we're standing and we're looking at this stage and my
sister looks so excited and I look like a little confused,
a little amazed. And I think that that probably encapsulates
(03:40):
what it meant to be part of such a large family.
That there were these moments of pure just awe and
amazement and just wonder at what was taking place, and
then there were some moments of confusion where I wondered,
how do I fit into that? Do I fit into that?
And I think balancing that tension of confus usion and
(04:00):
amazement is ultimately what allowed me to discover my own identity.
But it was both brilliant and challenging in many ways.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You know, I know a little something maybe about being
a preacher's kid, but there obviously are additional dynamics when
your parents are larger than life. And so missus Jakes,
how did you help Sarah maybe become and navigate through
(04:38):
those potential challenges that would come.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Well, you know, when I think of a legacy, I
was thinking today, you're looking forward, but you're also looking backwards.
When we got to this huge city, I did not
realize that I was going to have to move to
the forefront and that my children would be left alone
without me hadging them on either side. And my mother
(05:03):
died shortly after we got here. So in hindsight, I
would have done what she does. She'd makes certain that
her children or wherever she is. I wish I had
done that more. And so seeing her overcome the lack
of my presence to try to do it differently than
(05:24):
I would have even thought to do it is amazing
to me.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I will say, though, even though you guys had a
lot of responsibilities and a lot of things going on,
I think one of the things that my mother did
is that when she was present, she was completely present.
You would let us sleep in the bed with you.
We would always be doing dinner like you'd have us
running around doing errands with you. Like I never felt
like a burden to you. No, And I think because
(05:51):
I never felt like a burden, I always felt like
I could be seen and heard and valued, and we
needed those pockets of that in a moment where all
attentions like maybe on my dad or maybe on the
both of them, My mom was a space where we
could take the stage and she would be our audience
and we could put on whatever raggedy gift or cooking menu,
(06:11):
our little recipes or auditions and dance and plays like
she made us feel like stars in the moments that
she was able to look at us. And so I
think that you preserved our special even as you were
balancing all those things.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Oh where's the and that had to be such a
tremendous amount of weight on you to you know, to
be balancing all of that and to be a mom,
and so to hear your daughter giving you, I think
those much needed accolades is beautiful.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
It's so beautiful because you know how the enemy will
try to rob you with guilt and would it should
have cut us And so I'm so I knew you
felt that way, but to have you articulated today, I'm
a little weepy.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, for me, it's very true. I think that
the only reason why it's not sitting with you at
church meant so much is because of how big your
presence was when we were with you. Oh good, So
I think that you know, us not sitting with you,
if we didn't have such a deep relationship, may have
not meant as much. But you were. You're our girl,
you know. And so it's like me and Ellen, my
daughter Ella is nine years old, and I'm convinced she
(07:21):
wants to get back in my stomach, Like I'm like, girl,
give me some space.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Our daughter calls that her first apartment, like sometimes she'll
put pat my stomach. Okay, that was first of my
first apartment.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Oh sure, that's what. The other day, Ella was up
on my lap and I was like, Ellen, don't you
think you're a little too big to be on my lap?
And she's like, you're thirty six and you still still
sit on your mom's life. I was like, mind's your
business now?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And Sarah becoming a mom at fourteen, I'm sure that
was a lot of judgment, a lot of pressure, expectations,
especially when you look at it within the faith community. Right,
soh what do you remember around that in that moment
and how do you feel it shaped you and your
legacy moving forward?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Fourteen is such a young age to become a mother
that I think to properly contextualize it, you have to
understand that I was not afraid of being pregnant or
having a baby. I thought I was going to get
in trouble. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to
get grounded or my parents are going to be so upset.
It wasn't until I saw their response that I began
(08:29):
to realize that this is much bigger than like you
got in trouble, Like your life has completely changed. But
to my mom's credit, one of the things she told me,
she's like, I didn't get rid of my babies. I
didn't give them away. Whatever you decide to do, I'm
going to stick with you every step of the way.
And she did that, and a man, there were so
many moments where I've won. I felt like the pregnancy
(08:51):
just solidified this idea that I don't belong in that family.
So if you go back to that image of me
as a little girl being confused and amazed, I think
in that moment it was solidified, like, oh my goodness,
you don't belong here, And so it became so easy
for me to kind of move into the background. But
I think in moving into the background that it also
gave me an opportunity to discover my identity outside of
(09:14):
my family name. It's like I'm already the black Sheep,
I'm already disconnected. Now I get to just kind of
figure out who I am and what I want to
do with my life. And though my life had certainly
had some twists and turns, even since having the pregnancy,
I found a real sense of being okay with myself
without the validation of other people because I'd lost it
in many ways. And the moment that I began to
(09:36):
really say, you know what, this is my story. I'm
want to love it, I'm gonna embrace it, and I'm
going to wake up each day and really do the
best that I can. I began to see my life
change for myself, and then the overflow of that kind
of changed into this touch point for other women who
could relate to experiences like my own.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And then missus Jakes as her mother. What I'm sure
that you also had, you know, going through just so
much emotions and having to do so there's even that
added layer of going through all of this publicly as well.
But is there anything that you wish you would have
shared or said during that time.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I think that my actions spoke louder than my words,
because when I found out that she was pregnant, the
first thing I thought was, we've got to get health care.
We've got to get health and at her age, is
she even able to physically bear a child? So all
of those things went through my mind. I'm a mother
(10:39):
of five, and I know that labor, I'm told is
the closest that a woman comes to death. So I
knew that labor if she was able to even bear
a child. So health care was the first thing I
thought about immediately, immediately and making sure that she was
(11:00):
okay uh. And then I went into protective mode. I
didn't want anybody to say anything. Don't say anything, don't
write anything.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Any of us see that we know.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
I was not immediately and so just protect her, to
protect her because people can be so cruel, and I didn't.
The church people were supportive for the most part. There
was some old school people that wanted her to get
up and have a long speech and us sit her
down in the corner, and one of our family pastors
(11:37):
came and spoke. He was like, now you want to
talk about her? Keeping or they referencing you want to
talk about her having a baby.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I remember that sermon, you know. He was basically trying
to say that when people go through different things, their
response is different. When someone may have given their child away,
we take a moment and we grieve with them and
love on them. Or if someone's gone through some other experience,
we take the time to really care for them and
nurture them. But then we have the girl who kept
(12:06):
her baby, and we're like, no, we don't want to
see it, don't touch her. It's contageous. And so I
think it was an opportunity to highlight some of those
I guess double standards that can exist in faith spaces. Yeah,
which is why part of what I wanted to do
in creating safe spaces for women as they begin to like,
oh my gosh, I gravitate to your story. It's like
for us, it didn't matter what you've gone through. If
(12:28):
you come to anything that I'm hosting, we want you
to bring all of yourself, your whole story, all your scars,
into the room and so that you can heal and
be transformed by love and connection, because at the end
of the day, it truly doesn't matter what we've gone through.
What matters the most is who we want to become
as a result of what we've gone through.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, And then I just want to add, even in
your Women Evolved meetings, it's multi generational. So we have
women that are my age that say that was my story,
that was my story and so and thank you for
allowing me to be able to accept forgiveness and release that.
(13:09):
And so that's And so I'm on the street and
someone's like, oh my god, oh my god. And I'm like, oh, yes,
you know, yes, and they say you're Sarah's mom.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I'm like, whoa, do you remember the first time that
that happened. There you got the you're Sarah's mom.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Yes, but you know what, it wasn't a child, it
was an older woman. Interesting, And she said, she's talking
to me too, and I want you to tell her
thank you. And I thought, wow.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That has to be the highest praise as a mother.
I could just see you glowing with just pride.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I used to say, especially when me and my father
are going through our reconciliation, like all of the good
things about me came from my mother. But I heared, Amen,
there's some good things I got from him as well
amen restoration. But my mother, she saved me at a
(14:10):
time when I was really I was. I don't know
how much in my story, you guys are familiar with her,
how much I can share. But when she said, I'll
do whatever it takes. I dropped out of college, I
was waitressing at a strip club i'd given my parents
bought me a car. I gave the car back because
I felt like my dad was being too controlling. I
was like, here's the car. I'll take care of myself.
(14:31):
And we had some real tension in that moment because
I just I was difficult to control. And my mother,
she still made sure that I didn't get too far
off track. She would check to make sure I was
home safe after working at the club. She'd meet me
for lunch. Sometime. She put gas in my car, give
me groceries, even when I tried to say, Mom, I
don't need it. She'd have groceries in my car when
(14:53):
I left somewhere, like she made sure that I was
never anywhere on my own. She is my girl.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And so you didn't know at the time that you
were practically battling with depression. Just you felt something was broken,
and you've now been so open about others. You've helped
others to create safe spaces. You know, our family, my
wife's a psychologists. Our families battle those same issues. So
when you look back and you reflect back in your
own journey, what have you learned about mental health and
(15:22):
what do you share with others?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I think that I learned really a lot about functioning
depression and trying to achieve to cure depression. I just
there are so many pockets of my life that I
feel like I don't remember because I was in such
a fog of depression that they are just memories that
(15:44):
I can't easily pull from. But what I have learned
is whether we acknowledge where we are, especially when we're
having harder emotions, whether we acknowledge it or not, it
doesn't mean that it's not showing up in our actions
in our life in some way. And I think giving
myself permission to feel because I think when I first
(16:06):
got pregnant and I realized by everyone else's response that
this is something bad has happened, this is something that's wrong,
I think I immediately shut down and just went into survival mode.
And oftentimes when we're in survival mode. Even in a
physical experience, if we're having a car accident or something
traumatic has happened to our bodies physically, sometimes we don't
(16:26):
feel the pain because there's so much adrenaline you're in
the moment that you can't tell that you're bleeding. And
I feel like mental health is very similar to that.
The shock of the trauma that we have experience can
be so jarring that we don't even take the time
to assess how we're showing up in the world and
how that could be depression, it could be anxiety, and
a lot of times it ends up showing in the
choices we make to a neessize those pains. And so
(16:49):
I think that I have learned to really take a
moment and ask myself, how did you feel after that happened.
Whether it feels like it was an immature response or
that's a response, I think it's important to really assess
I had a reaction to what just occurred. And it
has allowed me to not just recognize the moments where
I'm having a heart emotion like depression, like anxiety, but
(17:12):
also to allow myself to experience joy because there are
so many things that happen that our answers to prayers,
that our dreams that we thought would never achieve, and
we're so busy moving going to the next thing that
we don't take a moment to really recognize, Like I'm
already standing in a dream that I thought would never
be and so I am prayer for that part of
(17:35):
what I get to pass down and maybe pass up,
because I think the beauty of legacy is not just
what we pass down, but we get to throw some
things up. Is this opportunity to allow yourself to take
up space in your own world, to not just run
your world and to function function in your world, but
to take up space to allow yourself to be one
(17:56):
of the main the main character in your story, and
to give yourself permission to do that has been really
helpful for me as I navigate what mental health looks like.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
A main character energy. We have a sixteen almost seventeen
year old daughter, and she taught me recently that I
guess there was a social media trend about being that
main character energy. So it's interesting too, how kids can
they teach you quite a bit in the Black Church
for so long, I think, and maybe another face too,
(18:29):
I can only just talk about my experience. There was
a separation almost from mental health and then you know,
and then integrating that with our faith, did you did
you struggle? Because you find a way to beautifully yoke
them together. So what advice or what would you say
(18:52):
to a young person in particular that you know that
maybe want to talk about mental health, but maybe feel
that as a person of faith that make that that
it's not a safe space to talk about that. What
advice would you give someone.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's that's so laired? First of all, I will say
I do think that that has been true in the
Black church, but I think it's been true in a
lot of black spaces at all. And I always preface
this by saying I've only ever been black, so it
could exist in white spaces and brown spaces and yellow spaces.
But one thing I know for sure is my black
experience is that we have been so trained to survive,
(19:29):
to do what we have to do, that we often
don't allow ourselves the opportunity to feel anything. You know,
suck it up, You'll be okay. You gotta do what
you gotta do. You gotta be strong, you got to
be this, you got to be that. Actually women, you're
stripped down.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yes, yeah, maybe black men too, but it hasn't been
my experience. But yes, black women, you know we are
we are. We're taught were to be strong, to be yeah, yeah,
to go forward no matter what.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And what we don't realize are those expectations. They're they're ropes,
they're chains around and the more that we're tied to
this idea of you can't do this, you can't do that,
you can't do that, we're ended up living. We're ending
up living these restricted existences. And one of the things
that I wanted to do was leading my own transparency
and vulnerability to say, hey, I really thought that it
(20:15):
would disqualify me because when people started gravitating towards my
story and my interpretation of who God is and can
be in our lives, they didn't know that I was
a teenage mother. So I got pregnant before blogs, before
social media, and so I started writing this blog just
about me. I was in this toxic marriage and I
(20:35):
was like, you know what, my life is unraveling, and
I'm gonna help it come undone by telling these stories
on this blog. And people started gravitating towards my message like,
oh my gosh, that's me. You took the words that
I couldn't say, Oh my gosh, this is what I
would pray to God if I could pray these things.
And I was like, oh my goodness, this is not ministry, Like,
this is just me telling my story. I can't be
a ministry. I'm a teen mom. And so I wrote
(20:58):
this blog post where I was like, I'm gonna just
let it. Everybody know that I'm a teen mom so
they can stop putting that pressure on me. It kind
of backfired because they were like, oh my goodness, now
that I know that you have a story too, now
I trust you even more. And so I think that
we have an opportunity in black faith spaces to be
intentional about telling our story to the extent that we
(21:19):
have healed from them. I like that, yeah, to the
extent that we've healed from them, to the extent that
we have become comfortable in them, and telling the nitty
gritty of the story, because our job is not to
look like God or to become God for other people,
is to lead people to them. And I think the
more that we are willing to say this is how
messed up, confuse upset, angry, bitter that I was. And
(21:41):
this is what I am learning about God's ability to
meet me in those spaces that I don't have to
get it all together, that I don't have to have
all the scriptures and know all the things. That He'll
take me broken, depressed, abused, strung out. He'll take me
just as I am and in love show me this
version of myself that is possible. And I think that
if we're willing to tell those stories with courage and
(22:04):
with resiliency, especially as leaders, that we have a better
opportunity of having bait to lead people. But I think
in the attempt to restore the dignity of blackness, that
we became models of perfection that we can never truly
live up to. And I think that we're seeing the
(22:25):
deconstruction of that necessity that is allowing us to really
give space to our leaders having humanity. And I think
that we're going to see much healthier leadership because they
are not trying to be God, just lead people to
them like that a lot you're preaching to me.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Coming up on my legacy, Sarah opens up about the
relationships that almost broke her and what finally helped her
break the cycle. If you've ever needed a reminder of
your strength or know someone who does like, share and
send us their way.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Now I'm going to turn to your husband, because you've
said in the past that toxic relationships used to be
your drug of choice. I want to know what helped
you finally break that pattern.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I think what really helped me was really was realizing
that the toxic relationship wasn't with the other person, it
was with myself. Like I think that part of the
reason why I was so drawn to people who I
felt like I could save or make better, or who
could add it worth or value to me if they
(23:51):
were able to be loyal and significant, significantly present in
my life was because I felt so devalued myself, was
so insecure myself, I was so frustrated with who I
was that that person became a distraction and a trophy
that would make me feel better if ever they would
just get it together, And so I made the pursuit
(24:14):
of them my focus instead of really trying to figure
out who I was. And there was really one thought
that really changed my life. But it was after we
got into a really bad argument and the police recalled,
so maybe more than an argument, and I had to
go to CPS to just tell them, like, hey, the
(24:36):
kids are okay, you guys can continue to check in
on me, because the police had been involved, and I
was walking out of that CPS office and I just said,
I can do better than this. I can do better
than this. And it wasn't like I thought, I'm gonna
be a New York Times bestselling author and I'm gonna
host an event with forty thousand people. I meant, I
can avoid going to CPS offices, I can avoid getting
(24:59):
so angree that the police are called on me. I
can do better than this. And I just did what
was a little bit better than that, and then I
would get on that level and I would think I
could probably do a little bit better than this. I
moved back home with my parents and I had the kids,
and I thought, well, if I could just get my
own place, and better and better and better just became
(25:21):
my pursuit. Not better for the pursuit of moments like this,
but just better, because I just felt like, anything is
better than this, you know, anything is better than this,
and if to not pursue better is to move backwards
and I was moving backwards quickly. And I think that
(25:42):
that's what we have to understand in these toxic relationships,
whether it's with ourselves or with other people, because you
canna have a toxic relationship with yourself that makes you
just get degree a degree after degree because you think
that's going to make you feel better. A toxic relationship
that makes you achieve and pour yourself. Anyone who's dealing
with some type of trauma that is unresolved may have
a toxic relationship somewhere, but better. It's just I think
(26:04):
I can experience better health than where I currently am,
and I'm really grateful for who I am now on
the inside. Like I've had all of these different things
happen to me, I have not changed my bio on Instagram.
My bio is the same bio that I ever had, cause,
like I, you know, the books are nice, the things
are nice, but like, if that ever becomes my bio
(26:27):
for me, it just feels like I miss something because
I'm so proud of the girl who like finally figured
out who Jesus is, who loves her husband, whose children
are her teacher, Like I'm so proud of who she
is that That's what I want you to know about me,
more than all of these things I achieved, because that's
what I fought for, and that's what I thought was
never possible. The other things are they're just cherries on top.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, let's talk about something that you wrote on Instagram,
because in your getting better and getting better and getting better,
at one point you thought that you didn't you did
not ever want to get remarried. Oh yeah, but then
someone changed your mind. Oh yeah, and this is what
you wrote on Instagram. The vulnerability required to become one
(27:12):
after you fought to become whole is not often discussed.
I had to surrender my identity as a powerful single
mother to discover my power as a married woman.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, nasty work. You know. Here's the thing, here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I got to a space where I was healthy, I'd
bought a home for me and my children, and I thought,
this is the dream. Like I thought that getting married
and having the white picket fence was the dream. I
saw that white picket finch just keep falling off over
and over again, and I said, you know what, fine,
I love being my mindself. I'll travel the world. I'm
still young. Everything will be fine. Then I'm at this man,
(27:57):
and in meeting him, I just I love the way
the world looked through his eyes. It was a compliment
to the way the world looked through my eyes. But
it also had so much more vibrancy and color, and
there was so much more care and depth for people
and opportunities. And I thought to myself, I think that
(28:19):
he would make me better. You know, as we talk
about this better better, But I will say that I
underestimated the transformation necessary for me to let go of
the pride of being like, oh my gosh, I made it.
I'm this, you know, single mother who bought this house.
And I can make good decisions and I can take
care of my family. I can I can bring home
(28:41):
the bacon and fried in a pan. And now I
have someone who's like, hey, I could grab the pan,
or hey, I could bring home the bacon. And I
think I did have a sense of pride and identity
connected to that. I never wanted to need a man again.
I never wanted to feel like my life would fall
apart if something happened. And I think, in the resistance
of oneness that I could have lost out on the
(29:03):
opportunity to experience the beauty of oneness, and so that
took a lot of work. He's got some battle scars,
God bless him. But my life woman evolved when exists
if it wasn't for him, because his ability to create
space for me to dream and to believe in those
(29:23):
dreams and to say they're not crazy, they're possible, gave
me the courage to actually pursue them. So he's definitely
been a north star for me for many years.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Now.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That's a beautiful sentiment.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yes, you know, missus Jake's after more than forty years
of marriage and ministering to so many couples, what's one
simple thing that couples often miss when it comes to
staying connected?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Great question.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Yes, I was thinking. I do the premarital counselor for
a lot of the couple, and they do a survey
where at that particular time they answer a question or
a statement and say this is how I feel now.
And so when I go back with that survey with
them go through it, I found out that most of
(30:18):
the time, most of the time, whatever the problem is
at the beginning of the marriage will become the problem
that disrupts the marriage, whether it's the fact that you overspend,
or you've got children and their bonus children, or the
(30:40):
in laws or the outlaws, or the time spent doing
things that are extracurricular. So I've found out in our
marriage that the very thing that I do now I
did then the same way that I treat him, then
(31:01):
I still treat him now. Does he get on my nerves?
I would say occasional that. So I feel that if
you start the relationship based on the things that are
important to one another and not switch up, don't bait
and switch, Like if you're not going to make his
(31:23):
plate for the rest of the forty years, don't start it.
If he's not going to open the door for you
when you get in the car, and that's what you're expecting,
you should let him know that. But don't get in
the middle of the water and say, look, if you
don't open this door for me. So, I feel like
(31:43):
you have to set a standard at the beginning of
the marriage. These are the things I expect from you.
The I mean, truth, honesty, all of that that they
say with these new vows, they want to rewrite the vowels.
They don't want to be there for better or for worse.
In sickness and in hell. They don't want to forsake
all others. They don't want to do that, But it
(32:05):
is what it is. I don't care how you want
to make it flow through the rivers. When I saw
you walking through the door and the clouds gathered above
your head and it rained one drop on you, and
I knew that you were the one. They want to
write that sounds good, but in theory better for worse
sickness and in health, forsaking all others, richer or for poorer,
(32:29):
because you're going to hit all of those milestones throughout
your marriage. And so I feel like it is what
it is, you know, And I'll hit a milestone with him,
and I'll think, Wow, this is in sickness and in health.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Or I'll hit something when we went through and we
didn't have any water, or we didn't have any food
for the children, or we were on wick.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And food stamps.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Richer or for poorer and forsaking all others. Cling to him,
you have to, you have to or that's not your guy.
And so many people ended divorce and it really scares
me because you never know. Yesterday I was at a
(33:15):
memorial service and they were talking about how going up
the hill to Jerusalem, that you would find that there
were dens of thieves along the way and you would
fall into those traps, but you still had to keep
moving forward. And so I'm just thinking when those things
happened along the way during our forty two years of marriage,
(33:38):
I can see where there were as we traveled upward,
rich or poor, sickness and health. There were little entrapments,
snares if you will, that would waylay us unless we
decided that we were going to stick together. And he
was preaching when I married him, so I knew that
(33:59):
he was God, that's man. But if I was on
the other side of him, pulling on one arm and
God was shaking on the other side, that I was
going to lose.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Just I just want to say, you know, the din
of thieves along the way. Sometimes the thief will do
you a favor. I don't know if you noticed or not. No, Baby,
it's someone who's been through a divorce. Some of them thieves, Baby,
some of them thieves. Then did you a favor. He
gets your insurance. The insurance on the thing that you
done lost is more than what you lost in the
first place.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Cha. I just want to hear some of our listeners
in Hallelujah.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
I wish our listeners are tuned into the video version
right now to look at Missus Jakes and her fal
expressions are phenomenal. Missus Jakeson's So we all know Bishops CG.
Jakes's America's preacher, but to you, he is your husband,
he is your father. Six months ago, of course, the
world held its breath, We all held our breaths when
he had that heart attack. So let me ask, well,
(34:57):
Missus Shakes, how is he doing now?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
He's doing well, he's recovering. I don't want to say
that he's fully recovered, because then he thinks that he's
just going to go back to doing like he was
doing prior to. But he slowed down quite a bit significantly,
(35:24):
and we did hold our breath. I didn't know how
or what that was going to be. Right on stage
and he sat down and he just I just looked
at him, and it was like, what is going on?
And I was recovering from knee replacement, and I stumbled
(35:47):
over there to him, and he was not there. He
was not there, and so the ambulance scooped him up
up and got him to the hospital and they said, well,
you know, he's had a massive heart attack, and but
(36:08):
thank God decided that it was on. I hadn't been
the other side, we would have completely lost him, or
if the hospital had been farther away, we would have
lost him. So now I, with trepidation, I tell him
to slow down. Uh, he's so excited. He's such an
extrovert that it's easy for me, as an introvert, to say,
(36:31):
you know, calm down, sit down. You know, it's going
to be fine. The people are gonna be fine. And
I'm so grateful that Sarah and Pastor Teray have come
alongside to help. They are help meets for sure, in
governing the church and the affairs of the church, and
and doing the teaching and the preaching. So that when
he gets some mike, he wants to holler a little bit,
(36:53):
but we tell him, don't you don't get to holler anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Pipe down.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yes, but he's doing well. Thank you for asking wow.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Very deep prayers, and please send our love and our
gratitude to me.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I will between her knee replacement and his heart attack.
If you want to talk about legacy, I'm having a
hard time parenting my parents.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
They don't did you tell them? Y'all got to come
and get it. Y'all got to get this together.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Here' not following the rules. They're not doing what they're
supposed to do. And it's funny because I got into
a lot of trouble for not following rules, a lot
of trouble, and yet here we are. Legacy is not
legacy properly, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah? Not really?
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, I love listening to the two of you.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Next, Sarah talks about the messy middle, living in it
and loving yourself through it, like follow and share with
someone you love to let them know you've got them,
no matter where they are in their journey. Now back
(38:05):
to my legacy, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
When I think of your ministry or I think of
Women Evolve, it has been built on this radical transparency,
Like you have redefined what it means to be a
woman of faith based on radical transparency, your past, your marriage,
you're sharing your stories. Why with Women Evolve has it
and your entire ministry? Why has vulnerability been so important?
(38:27):
Why has it been so important for you to be
this radically transparent with all those who look to you?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
You know, I don't know that I saw it as
radical when it started. Like I said, I kind of
thought that if I told people, they would be like, oh,
my goodness, will leave her alone and it won't be
a thing. But the more that I realized how many
of us are suffering in silence, the more I felt like,
if I can tell my story and it helps someone else,
then I'll tell it one more time. And if it
helps someone else, I'll tell it another time. And I
(38:58):
think what I have learned is that through isolation, the
darker voices, the harder voices, the meaner voices that we
hear in our head, they're louder, and until you hear
someone say like, hey, I felt that too. But I'm
telling you it wasn't always like that, or that I
found a flicker that it gives someone permission to start
looking for light even in their dark seasons. And I
(39:20):
didn't want to. I didn't want to be in ministry.
I didn't have this as like a goal in my heart.
And so I'm like, if I'm going to do this,
I'm gonna at least be honest. I don't want anyone
to ever be surprised that because I preached a message
that I experienced depression, that I worked at a strip club,
like I want you to know, like this is what
you're getting. It is not much, but I am gonna
(39:42):
give my best. I'm gonna share my best, and if
I make you feel less alone, then girl, we could
grab arms and move towards better together. But I just didn't.
I just didn't want to. I didn't want to live
on a pedestal. I wanted to be able to Sometimes
on my social media, I'll be like all glammed up,
dressed up. Other moments I'll literally be snatching my wig
off and washing my face like this is like this
(40:03):
is all of who I am. And I just don't
want people to be connected to this caricature. I don't
want to be trapped in my own life. And so
for me, my honesty has been my freedom. My honesty
has been the runway that allows me to not feel
stuck in this life. And I think because of that,
(40:23):
my prayer is that I'll continue to have endurance for
what is ahead because I don't have to figure out
how do I keep this mask up? How do I
keep this facade going? My greatest question is how do
I continue to be honest in a way that reaches
the most unlikely person.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
I feel like it was like a mic drop moment
right there. I wish more young people, especially on social media.
I just heard that message, and for any of our
listeners like share that clip, like to connect with that moment.
I love that you speak to women who are in
the middle of it. I like this turn, not post breakthrough,
not post glow up. What do you want people to
know about the messy middle of the journey.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I think that people should know that it's all the
messy middle. You know what I mean. That's that it's
all the messy middle, that there is no there, there,
there is no once I do this, then that once
you get there, you realize that there's another mountain, that
it keeps going, that there's something else that you have
(41:26):
to overcome. So instead of trying to get post anything,
I think the question is how do I find the
better in now? And I think that that has been
one of the things that has really been instrumental for me,
is recognizing that there's beauty in the messy middle. And
if I keep moving the goal post, then I'll never
(41:48):
find peace. But if I dare to believe that there's
peace somewhere here, then all I have to do is
start searching for where it exists. Now I just have
gone through enough to I mean, especially if you think
about my life like as a team mother. I thought,
when I get married, then I'll be okay. And then
I got married, and I'm like, well, if he would
do this, then I'll be okay. And if we do that,
then I'll be okay. And then I left and I'm like,
(42:09):
if I could get the house, then I'll be okay.
Then I got the house and I met this incredible man,
and it's like, okay. Once I moved to La then
like it just kept moving, and so it dawned on me.
This is all a part of the journey. It's all
the messy middle. But I do believe that our lives
can be scripted and cursive. And I say it can
be because a lot of times we miss out on
(42:30):
how things can be woven together. We miss out on
how all things can work together because we segment our lives,
we try to leave some things behind. I'm gonna pretend
like that never happened. I'm going to become another person,
not realizing that the beauty of our story is the
full weight of our story. And so if we can
collect all of our pieces and look at the president
(42:50):
and say, Okay, this is the wisdom I have, the
experiences I have, how do I apply it to this moment?
I have found that that is the shovel that we
used to find the beauty in the mess.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
When I keep when I hear you speak about the
messy middle, I keep thinking about the whole idea of
a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, right, and when they go
into that cocoon. What most people don't know scientifically, it's painful.
So if you're looking at the cocoon, if you're looking
at with your naked eye, you see it, you know,
(43:24):
moving and wiggling, and it just seems like this is
it is too hard, it's too it's too much. If
you cut that cocoon at that point, it is messy.
There is it's a puddle, you know that, it literally is.
If you would open it up, it's a puddle. It's messy.
And actually that butterfly is not formed. It's through that
(43:46):
messy middle. It's through that struggle that the caterpillar emerges
as the butterfly.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I think that's an incredible analogy and one that I
think all of us experience in a cycle though, you know,
like we get these beautiful wings for certain seasons, and
then we start realizing, like, wait a minute, I think
I'm turning to a caterpillar again, and now I'm going
back into the cocoon again.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I think that's the part is embracing, like that's okay.
Like I was I needed to be super president in
my children's life, and now they're moving to One of
my oldest son will be moving to New York this summer,
and it's like my definition of motherhood is changing, and
so I have to support him in different ways. So
I feel like I'm in a cocoon as his mother,
but I'm in a butterfly season as it relates to
(44:30):
being back in school, and so we're all in different
seasons and stages of our lives depending on the roles
that we're in. But being okay with realizing I'm going
to be in somebody's middle in some stage of my
life and that's going to be okay because I want
to thank God for the butterfly. I'm going to submit
to the liquid and I'm going to enjoy the air
(44:50):
of a caterpillar life. Try to find something in each
of those moments.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
I love too, how you just bought forth that you
can be in different phases, different areas of your life.
I think that's so important for so many of us
to hear and to visually think about it that way.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Missus Jakes, when you see who your daughter has become,
what are you most proud of?
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I think the fact that she survived that I'm grateful
that she survived. There were so many the vicissitudes of
her life, A lot I didn't know until she wrote
about a lot of it I witnessed first. And but
(45:36):
to know that she survived at all. You know, pearls
are formed in irritation and diamonds come from coal, and
people always want the end result, but they didn't see
the story along the way. So when I see her
out ministering and her first woman evolved, this is her
(45:58):
generation that seeks hope. And so when I see her,
I feel like, you go girl, you go girl. But
at the same time, I'm the watchman on the wall,
and it's like, don't don't go, don't don't disrespect her,
(46:22):
don't try to disrupt what God is doing at that moment,
because you know some people will come and they want
to outspeak her without the MC. So I'm the one
that says, hush, stop it, it's not your turn. And
so I'm most in awe of the gift of God
(46:45):
that's in her and flowing through her. I don't I
don't see her as my daughter. I see her as
God's messenger of hope for me, for her daughter, for
my mother, and you doing what I was unable to do,
(47:08):
and the stance that you've taken upon the centuries of
hard labor that our mothers are are the female generation
had to go through but ash And so when I
see her, I see glory. When I hear her, I
hear glory. When I'm in the room with her, I
(47:31):
feel glory. And so that's that's I just hallelujah oocuse you.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Can say hallelujah on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
And I think, what a what a wonderful gift God
allowed me to participate in, because not one day does
your heart beat that mine doesn't be because you're talking
about you living in me. And even though they cut
the cord, they.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Didn't always say that before our children first we hold
them in our womb then we hold them in our arms,
and we always hold them in our hearts.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Always, always.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
I think that we're fortunate, because I know not everyone
has the healthiest experiences and a mother daughter relationship. And
yet I'm grateful that in many ways we've been able
to show people what's possible. That wasn't our intention, But
I do think there's something very healing about experiencing your heart.
(48:37):
It inspires me as a mother, like I want my children.
If my children feel about me the way I feel
about my mother, I would have done a really good job.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Well, Sarah and missus Jakes. Was a privilege to listen
and to witness the two of you together, Missus Jake's
it sounds like the love that your daughter holds for
you is bound us Sarah, the admiration your mom holds
for you, and the two of you being so just
(49:05):
open about the journey, how it hasn't always been easy,
so vulnerable about what we went through, the healing, the reconciliation,
the learnings, the ministry, the sharing, that messy middle, that
caterpillar emerging into that butterfly that inspires now millions around
the world. And so thank you for sharing your legacy
(49:26):
with all of our listeners and viewers, and thank you
for sharing that legacy with the world and.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
For allowing us a safe place to just share our
hearts and take off the mask and be real. It's
so important that we don't have to pretend this is
who we are.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Thank you, thank you so much, thank.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
You, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
If you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
at my Legacy Movement on social media. New episodes drop
every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday. At its core,
this podcast honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community
(50:09):
and the power of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production
distributed by iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Haywood co
executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, may you
find inspiration to live your legacy.
And so I'm like, if I'm gonna do this, I'm
gonna at least be honest. I don't want anyone to
ever be surprised that because I preached a message that
I experienced depression, that I worked at a strip club,
Like I want you to know, like this is what
you're getting. It is not much, but I am gonna
give my best. I'm gonna share my best, and if
I make you feel less alone, then girl, we could
(00:24):
grab arms and move towards better together. But I just didn't.
I just didn't wanna. I didn't want to live on
a pedestal. I wanted to be able to Sometimes on
my social media, I will be like all glammed up,
dressed up. Other moments I'll literally be snatching my wig
off and washing my face like this is like, this
is all of who I am, And I just don't
want people to be connected to this caricature. I don't
(00:46):
want to be trapped in my own life.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
That was the incredible Sarah Jakes Roberts, whose radical transparency
has inspired a global movement reaching millions of women around
the world. Now, as a daughter of Bishop TD Jakes,
she's stepping into a historic new role as a successor
of one of the most influential churches in America. I'm
Andrea Waters King and this is My Legacy, hosted by me,
(01:10):
my husband Martin Luther King the Third, and our good
friends Mark Kilberger and Craig Kilberger. Today on My Legacy,
Sarah and her mother Serena Jakes pull back the curtain
on the private battles, public expectations, and the unexpected path
that prepared her for this moment. If you've ever struggled
to believe you could rise above your past, this conversation
(01:32):
is a masterclass in healing, hope and stepping boldly towards Westnext,
get ready to be inspired.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Welcome to My Legacy. For our new listeners and viewers,
this isn't your typical solo celebrity interview. This is the
show where remarkable people pull back the curtain and bring
along the one person who's seen the full story unfold,
the his the heartbreaks, and everything in between. And today
we're honored to be talking to a woman whose journey
includes teen mom, best selling author, pass and leader of
(02:01):
a global movement that has inspired millions. Sarah Jakes Roberts
has built her platform by telling the truth about pain, purpose,
and what it means to write and rewrite your own story. Sarah,
We're truly honored to have you here today, and would
you mind introducing to us your plus one, the person
who knows you best and who has been with you
(02:21):
on your life journey.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It is my honor and privilege to have my mother,
Serita Jakes, joining us today. I could stop it just
saying how much she means to me as my mother.
But she is an incredible woman. First, she is courageous
and brilliant and vulnerable and strong. She's the glue of
our family and certainly throughout some of my most difficult seasons,
(02:45):
I would say that she was the oil that got
me unstuck when I was in some spots that I
never thought I would get out of. So I'm just
so honored that I get to share her with the world.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Sarah, and thank you
all for having us.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh, We're so excited for this conversation today.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You know, Sarah, you grew up in one of the
most extraordinary, influential faith families here in America. Can you
share with us a recollection or story from your childhood
and helps us to understand what's it like growing up
as a Jakes.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
You know, I have this one photo of me. We're
at this conference and it was back to the Bible,
and it's my sister and I sitting on the front row.
My mother's mother, my Grainy is sitting beside us, and
we're standing and we're looking at this stage and my
sister looks so excited and I look like a little confused,
a little amazed. And I think that that probably encapsulates
(03:40):
what it meant to be part of such a large family.
That there were these moments of pure just awe and
amazement and just wonder at what was taking place, and
then there were some moments of confusion where I wondered,
how do I fit into that? Do I fit into that?
And I think balancing that tension of confus usion and
(04:00):
amazement is ultimately what allowed me to discover my own identity.
But it was both brilliant and challenging in many ways.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You know, I know a little something maybe about being
a preacher's kid, but there obviously are additional dynamics when
your parents are larger than life. And so missus Jakes,
how did you help Sarah maybe become and navigate through
(04:38):
those potential challenges that would come.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Well, you know, when I think of a legacy, I
was thinking today, you're looking forward, but you're also looking backwards.
When we got to this huge city, I did not
realize that I was going to have to move to
the forefront and that my children would be left alone
without me hadging them on either side. And my mother
(05:03):
died shortly after we got here. So in hindsight, I
would have done what she does. She'd makes certain that
her children or wherever she is. I wish I had
done that more. And so seeing her overcome the lack
of my presence to try to do it differently than
(05:24):
I would have even thought to do it is amazing
to me.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I will say, though, even though you guys had a
lot of responsibilities and a lot of things going on,
I think one of the things that my mother did
is that when she was present, she was completely present.
You would let us sleep in the bed with you.
We would always be doing dinner like you'd have us
running around doing errands with you. Like I never felt
like a burden to you. No, And I think because
(05:51):
I never felt like a burden, I always felt like
I could be seen and heard and valued, and we
needed those pockets of that in a moment where all
attentions like maybe on my dad or maybe on the
both of them, My mom was a space where we
could take the stage and she would be our audience
and we could put on whatever raggedy gift or cooking menu,
(06:11):
our little recipes or auditions and dance and plays like
she made us feel like stars in the moments that
she was able to look at us. And so I
think that you preserved our special even as you were
balancing all those things.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Oh where's the and that had to be such a
tremendous amount of weight on you to you know, to
be balancing all of that and to be a mom,
and so to hear your daughter giving you, I think
those much needed accolades is beautiful.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
It's so beautiful because you know how the enemy will
try to rob you with guilt and would it should
have cut us And so I'm so I knew you
felt that way, but to have you articulated today, I'm
a little weepy.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, for me, it's very true. I think that
the only reason why it's not sitting with you at
church meant so much is because of how big your
presence was when we were with you. Oh good, So
I think that you know, us not sitting with you,
if we didn't have such a deep relationship, may have
not meant as much. But you were. You're our girl,
you know. And so it's like me and Ellen, my
daughter Ella is nine years old, and I'm convinced she
(07:21):
wants to get back in my stomach, Like I'm like, girl,
give me some space.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Our daughter calls that her first apartment, like sometimes she'll
put pat my stomach. Okay, that was first of my
first apartment.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Oh sure, that's what. The other day, Ella was up
on my lap and I was like, Ellen, don't you
think you're a little too big to be on my lap?
And she's like, you're thirty six and you still still
sit on your mom's life. I was like, mind's your
business now?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And Sarah becoming a mom at fourteen, I'm sure that
was a lot of judgment, a lot of pressure, expectations,
especially when you look at it within the faith community. Right,
soh what do you remember around that in that moment
and how do you feel it shaped you and your
legacy moving forward?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Fourteen is such a young age to become a mother
that I think to properly contextualize it, you have to
understand that I was not afraid of being pregnant or
having a baby. I thought I was going to get
in trouble. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to
get grounded or my parents are going to be so upset.
It wasn't until I saw their response that I began
(08:29):
to realize that this is much bigger than like you
got in trouble, Like your life has completely changed. But
to my mom's credit, one of the things she told me,
she's like, I didn't get rid of my babies. I
didn't give them away. Whatever you decide to do, I'm
going to stick with you every step of the way.
And she did that, and a man, there were so
many moments where I've won. I felt like the pregnancy
(08:51):
just solidified this idea that I don't belong in that family.
So if you go back to that image of me
as a little girl being confused and amazed, I think
in that moment it was solidified, like, oh my goodness,
you don't belong here, And so it became so easy
for me to kind of move into the background. But
I think in moving into the background that it also
gave me an opportunity to discover my identity outside of
(09:14):
my family name. It's like I'm already the black Sheep,
I'm already disconnected. Now I get to just kind of
figure out who I am and what I want to
do with my life. And though my life had certainly
had some twists and turns, even since having the pregnancy,
I found a real sense of being okay with myself
without the validation of other people because I'd lost it
in many ways. And the moment that I began to
(09:36):
really say, you know what, this is my story. I'm
want to love it, I'm gonna embrace it, and I'm
going to wake up each day and really do the
best that I can. I began to see my life
change for myself, and then the overflow of that kind
of changed into this touch point for other women who
could relate to experiences like my own.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And then missus Jakes as her mother. What I'm sure
that you also had, you know, going through just so
much emotions and having to do so there's even that
added layer of going through all of this publicly as well.
But is there anything that you wish you would have
shared or said during that time.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I think that my actions spoke louder than my words,
because when I found out that she was pregnant, the
first thing I thought was, we've got to get health care.
We've got to get health and at her age, is
she even able to physically bear a child? So all
of those things went through my mind. I'm a mother
(10:39):
of five, and I know that labor, I'm told is
the closest that a woman comes to death. So I
knew that labor if she was able to even bear
a child. So health care was the first thing I
thought about immediately, immediately and making sure that she was
(11:00):
okay uh. And then I went into protective mode. I
didn't want anybody to say anything. Don't say anything, don't
write anything.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Any of us see that we know.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
I was not immediately and so just protect her, to
protect her because people can be so cruel, and I didn't.
The church people were supportive for the most part. There
was some old school people that wanted her to get
up and have a long speech and us sit her
down in the corner, and one of our family pastors
(11:37):
came and spoke. He was like, now you want to
talk about her? Keeping or they referencing you want to
talk about her having a baby.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I remember that sermon, you know. He was basically trying
to say that when people go through different things, their
response is different. When someone may have given their child away,
we take a moment and we grieve with them and
love on them. Or if someone's gone through some other experience,
we take the time to really care for them and
nurture them. But then we have the girl who kept
(12:06):
her baby, and we're like, no, we don't want to
see it, don't touch her. It's contageous. And so I
think it was an opportunity to highlight some of those
I guess double standards that can exist in faith spaces. Yeah,
which is why part of what I wanted to do
in creating safe spaces for women as they begin to like,
oh my gosh, I gravitate to your story. It's like
for us, it didn't matter what you've gone through. If
(12:28):
you come to anything that I'm hosting, we want you
to bring all of yourself, your whole story, all your scars,
into the room and so that you can heal and
be transformed by love and connection, because at the end
of the day, it truly doesn't matter what we've gone through.
What matters the most is who we want to become
as a result of what we've gone through.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, And then I just want to add, even in
your Women Evolved meetings, it's multi generational. So we have
women that are my age that say that was my story,
that was my story and so and thank you for
allowing me to be able to accept forgiveness and release that.
(13:09):
And so that's And so I'm on the street and
someone's like, oh my god, oh my god. And I'm like, oh, yes,
you know, yes, and they say you're Sarah's mom.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I'm like, whoa, do you remember the first time that
that happened. There you got the you're Sarah's mom.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Yes, but you know what, it wasn't a child, it
was an older woman. Interesting, And she said, she's talking
to me too, and I want you to tell her
thank you. And I thought, wow.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That has to be the highest praise as a mother.
I could just see you glowing with just pride.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I used to say, especially when me and my father
are going through our reconciliation, like all of the good
things about me came from my mother. But I heared, Amen,
there's some good things I got from him as well
amen restoration. But my mother, she saved me at a
(14:10):
time when I was really I was. I don't know
how much in my story, you guys are familiar with her,
how much I can share. But when she said, I'll
do whatever it takes. I dropped out of college, I
was waitressing at a strip club i'd given my parents
bought me a car. I gave the car back because
I felt like my dad was being too controlling. I
was like, here's the car. I'll take care of myself.
(14:31):
And we had some real tension in that moment because
I just I was difficult to control. And my mother,
she still made sure that I didn't get too far
off track. She would check to make sure I was
home safe after working at the club. She'd meet me
for lunch. Sometime. She put gas in my car, give
me groceries, even when I tried to say, Mom, I
don't need it. She'd have groceries in my car when
(14:53):
I left somewhere, like she made sure that I was
never anywhere on my own. She is my girl.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And so you didn't know at the time that you
were practically battling with depression. Just you felt something was broken,
and you've now been so open about others. You've helped
others to create safe spaces. You know, our family, my
wife's a psychologists. Our families battle those same issues. So
when you look back and you reflect back in your
own journey, what have you learned about mental health and
(15:22):
what do you share with others?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I think that I learned really a lot about functioning
depression and trying to achieve to cure depression. I just
there are so many pockets of my life that I
feel like I don't remember because I was in such
a fog of depression that they are just memories that
(15:44):
I can't easily pull from. But what I have learned
is whether we acknowledge where we are, especially when we're
having harder emotions, whether we acknowledge it or not, it
doesn't mean that it's not showing up in our actions
in our life in some way. And I think giving
myself permission to feel because I think when I first
(16:06):
got pregnant and I realized by everyone else's response that
this is something bad has happened, this is something that's wrong,
I think I immediately shut down and just went into survival mode.
And oftentimes when we're in survival mode. Even in a
physical experience, if we're having a car accident or something
traumatic has happened to our bodies physically, sometimes we don't
(16:26):
feel the pain because there's so much adrenaline you're in
the moment that you can't tell that you're bleeding. And
I feel like mental health is very similar to that.
The shock of the trauma that we have experience can
be so jarring that we don't even take the time
to assess how we're showing up in the world and
how that could be depression, it could be anxiety, and
a lot of times it ends up showing in the
choices we make to a neessize those pains. And so
(16:49):
I think that I have learned to really take a
moment and ask myself, how did you feel after that happened.
Whether it feels like it was an immature response or
that's a response, I think it's important to really assess
I had a reaction to what just occurred. And it
has allowed me to not just recognize the moments where
I'm having a heart emotion like depression, like anxiety, but
(17:12):
also to allow myself to experience joy because there are
so many things that happen that our answers to prayers,
that our dreams that we thought would never achieve, and
we're so busy moving going to the next thing that
we don't take a moment to really recognize, Like I'm
already standing in a dream that I thought would never
be and so I am prayer for that part of
(17:35):
what I get to pass down and maybe pass up,
because I think the beauty of legacy is not just
what we pass down, but we get to throw some
things up. Is this opportunity to allow yourself to take
up space in your own world, to not just run
your world and to function function in your world, but
to take up space to allow yourself to be one
(17:56):
of the main the main character in your story, and
to give yourself permission to do that has been really
helpful for me as I navigate what mental health looks like.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
A main character energy. We have a sixteen almost seventeen
year old daughter, and she taught me recently that I
guess there was a social media trend about being that
main character energy. So it's interesting too, how kids can
they teach you quite a bit in the Black Church
for so long, I think, and maybe another face too,
(18:29):
I can only just talk about my experience. There was
a separation almost from mental health and then you know,
and then integrating that with our faith, did you did
you struggle? Because you find a way to beautifully yoke
them together. So what advice or what would you say
(18:52):
to a young person in particular that you know that
maybe want to talk about mental health, but maybe feel
that as a person of faith that make that that
it's not a safe space to talk about that. What
advice would you give someone.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's that's so laired? First of all, I will say
I do think that that has been true in the
Black church, but I think it's been true in a
lot of black spaces at all. And I always preface
this by saying I've only ever been black, so it
could exist in white spaces and brown spaces and yellow spaces.
But one thing I know for sure is my black
experience is that we have been so trained to survive,
(19:29):
to do what we have to do, that we often
don't allow ourselves the opportunity to feel anything. You know,
suck it up, You'll be okay. You gotta do what
you gotta do. You gotta be strong, you got to
be this, you got to be that. Actually women, you're
stripped down.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yes, yeah, maybe black men too, but it hasn't been
my experience. But yes, black women, you know we are
we are. We're taught were to be strong, to be yeah, yeah,
to go forward no matter what.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And what we don't realize are those expectations. They're they're ropes,
they're chains around and the more that we're tied to
this idea of you can't do this, you can't do that,
you can't do that, we're ended up living. We're ending
up living these restricted existences. And one of the things
that I wanted to do was leading my own transparency
and vulnerability to say, hey, I really thought that it
(20:15):
would disqualify me because when people started gravitating towards my
story and my interpretation of who God is and can
be in our lives, they didn't know that I was
a teenage mother. So I got pregnant before blogs, before
social media, and so I started writing this blog just
about me. I was in this toxic marriage and I
(20:35):
was like, you know what, my life is unraveling, and
I'm gonna help it come undone by telling these stories
on this blog. And people started gravitating towards my message like,
oh my gosh, that's me. You took the words that
I couldn't say, Oh my gosh, this is what I
would pray to God if I could pray these things.
And I was like, oh my goodness, this is not ministry, Like,
this is just me telling my story. I can't be
a ministry. I'm a teen mom. And so I wrote
(20:58):
this blog post where I was like, I'm gonna just
let it. Everybody know that I'm a teen mom so
they can stop putting that pressure on me. It kind
of backfired because they were like, oh my goodness, now
that I know that you have a story too, now
I trust you even more. And so I think that
we have an opportunity in black faith spaces to be
intentional about telling our story to the extent that we
(21:19):
have healed from them. I like that, yeah, to the
extent that we've healed from them, to the extent that
we have become comfortable in them, and telling the nitty
gritty of the story, because our job is not to
look like God or to become God for other people,
is to lead people to them. And I think the
more that we are willing to say this is how
messed up, confuse upset, angry, bitter that I was. And
(21:41):
this is what I am learning about God's ability to
meet me in those spaces that I don't have to
get it all together, that I don't have to have
all the scriptures and know all the things. That He'll
take me broken, depressed, abused, strung out. He'll take me
just as I am and in love show me this
version of myself that is possible. And I think that
if we're willing to tell those stories with courage and
(22:04):
with resiliency, especially as leaders, that we have a better
opportunity of having bait to lead people. But I think
in the attempt to restore the dignity of blackness, that
we became models of perfection that we can never truly
live up to. And I think that we're seeing the
(22:25):
deconstruction of that necessity that is allowing us to really
give space to our leaders having humanity. And I think
that we're going to see much healthier leadership because they
are not trying to be God, just lead people to
them like that a lot you're preaching to me.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Coming up on my legacy, Sarah opens up about the
relationships that almost broke her and what finally helped her
break the cycle. If you've ever needed a reminder of
your strength or know someone who does like, share and
send us their way.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Now I'm going to turn to your husband, because you've
said in the past that toxic relationships used to be
your drug of choice. I want to know what helped
you finally break that pattern.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I think what really helped me was really was realizing
that the toxic relationship wasn't with the other person, it
was with myself. Like I think that part of the
reason why I was so drawn to people who I
felt like I could save or make better, or who
could add it worth or value to me if they
(23:51):
were able to be loyal and significant, significantly present in
my life was because I felt so devalued myself, was
so insecure myself, I was so frustrated with who I
was that that person became a distraction and a trophy
that would make me feel better if ever they would
just get it together, And so I made the pursuit
(24:14):
of them my focus instead of really trying to figure
out who I was. And there was really one thought
that really changed my life. But it was after we
got into a really bad argument and the police recalled,
so maybe more than an argument, and I had to
go to CPS to just tell them, like, hey, the
(24:36):
kids are okay, you guys can continue to check in
on me, because the police had been involved, and I
was walking out of that CPS office and I just said,
I can do better than this. I can do better
than this. And it wasn't like I thought, I'm gonna
be a New York Times bestselling author and I'm gonna
host an event with forty thousand people. I meant, I
can avoid going to CPS offices, I can avoid getting
(24:59):
so angree that the police are called on me. I
can do better than this. And I just did what
was a little bit better than that, and then I
would get on that level and I would think I
could probably do a little bit better than this. I
moved back home with my parents and I had the kids,
and I thought, well, if I could just get my
own place, and better and better and better just became
(25:21):
my pursuit. Not better for the pursuit of moments like this,
but just better, because I just felt like, anything is
better than this, you know, anything is better than this,
and if to not pursue better is to move backwards
and I was moving backwards quickly. And I think that
(25:42):
that's what we have to understand in these toxic relationships,
whether it's with ourselves or with other people, because you
canna have a toxic relationship with yourself that makes you
just get degree a degree after degree because you think
that's going to make you feel better. A toxic relationship
that makes you achieve and pour yourself. Anyone who's dealing
with some type of trauma that is unresolved may have
a toxic relationship somewhere, but better. It's just I think
(26:04):
I can experience better health than where I currently am,
and I'm really grateful for who I am now on
the inside. Like I've had all of these different things
happen to me, I have not changed my bio on Instagram.
My bio is the same bio that I ever had, cause,
like I, you know, the books are nice, the things
are nice, but like, if that ever becomes my bio
(26:27):
for me, it just feels like I miss something because
I'm so proud of the girl who like finally figured
out who Jesus is, who loves her husband, whose children
are her teacher, Like I'm so proud of who she
is that That's what I want you to know about me,
more than all of these things I achieved, because that's
what I fought for, and that's what I thought was
never possible. The other things are they're just cherries on top.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, let's talk about something that you wrote on Instagram,
because in your getting better and getting better and getting better,
at one point you thought that you didn't you did
not ever want to get remarried. Oh yeah, but then
someone changed your mind. Oh yeah, and this is what
you wrote on Instagram. The vulnerability required to become one
(27:12):
after you fought to become whole is not often discussed.
I had to surrender my identity as a powerful single
mother to discover my power as a married woman.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, nasty work. You know. Here's the thing, here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
I got to a space where I was healthy, I'd
bought a home for me and my children, and I thought,
this is the dream. Like I thought that getting married
and having the white picket fence was the dream. I
saw that white picket finch just keep falling off over
and over again, and I said, you know what, fine,
I love being my mindself. I'll travel the world. I'm
still young. Everything will be fine. Then I'm at this man,
(27:57):
and in meeting him, I just I love the way
the world looked through his eyes. It was a compliment
to the way the world looked through my eyes. But
it also had so much more vibrancy and color, and
there was so much more care and depth for people
and opportunities. And I thought to myself, I think that
(28:19):
he would make me better. You know, as we talk
about this better better, But I will say that I
underestimated the transformation necessary for me to let go of
the pride of being like, oh my gosh, I made it.
I'm this, you know, single mother who bought this house.
And I can make good decisions and I can take
care of my family. I can I can bring home
(28:41):
the bacon and fried in a pan. And now I
have someone who's like, hey, I could grab the pan,
or hey, I could bring home the bacon. And I
think I did have a sense of pride and identity
connected to that. I never wanted to need a man again.
I never wanted to feel like my life would fall
apart if something happened. And I think, in the resistance
of oneness that I could have lost out on the
(29:03):
opportunity to experience the beauty of oneness, and so that
took a lot of work. He's got some battle scars,
God bless him. But my life woman evolved when exists
if it wasn't for him, because his ability to create
space for me to dream and to believe in those
(29:23):
dreams and to say they're not crazy, they're possible, gave
me the courage to actually pursue them. So he's definitely
been a north star for me for many years.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Now.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That's a beautiful sentiment.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yes, you know, missus Jake's after more than forty years
of marriage and ministering to so many couples, what's one
simple thing that couples often miss when it comes to
staying connected?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Great question.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Yes, I was thinking. I do the premarital counselor for
a lot of the couple, and they do a survey
where at that particular time they answer a question or
a statement and say this is how I feel now.
And so when I go back with that survey with
them go through it, I found out that most of
(30:18):
the time, most of the time, whatever the problem is
at the beginning of the marriage will become the problem
that disrupts the marriage, whether it's the fact that you overspend,
or you've got children and their bonus children, or the
(30:40):
in laws or the outlaws, or the time spent doing
things that are extracurricular. So I've found out in our
marriage that the very thing that I do now I
did then the same way that I treat him, then
(31:01):
I still treat him now. Does he get on my nerves?
I would say occasional that. So I feel that if
you start the relationship based on the things that are
important to one another and not switch up, don't bait
and switch, Like if you're not going to make his
(31:23):
plate for the rest of the forty years, don't start it.
If he's not going to open the door for you
when you get in the car, and that's what you're expecting,
you should let him know that. But don't get in
the middle of the water and say, look, if you
don't open this door for me. So, I feel like
(31:43):
you have to set a standard at the beginning of
the marriage. These are the things I expect from you.
The I mean, truth, honesty, all of that that they
say with these new vows, they want to rewrite the vowels.
They don't want to be there for better or for worse.
In sickness and in hell. They don't want to forsake
all others. They don't want to do that, But it
(32:05):
is what it is. I don't care how you want
to make it flow through the rivers. When I saw
you walking through the door and the clouds gathered above
your head and it rained one drop on you, and
I knew that you were the one. They want to
write that sounds good, but in theory better for worse
sickness and in health, forsaking all others, richer or for poorer,
(32:29):
because you're going to hit all of those milestones throughout
your marriage. And so I feel like it is what
it is, you know, And I'll hit a milestone with him,
and I'll think, Wow, this is in sickness and in health.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Or I'll hit something when we went through and we
didn't have any water, or we didn't have any food
for the children, or we were on wick.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And food stamps.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Richer or for poorer and forsaking all others. Cling to him,
you have to, you have to or that's not your guy.
And so many people ended divorce and it really scares
me because you never know. Yesterday I was at a
(33:15):
memorial service and they were talking about how going up
the hill to Jerusalem, that you would find that there
were dens of thieves along the way and you would
fall into those traps, but you still had to keep
moving forward. And so I'm just thinking when those things
happened along the way during our forty two years of marriage,
(33:38):
I can see where there were as we traveled upward,
rich or poor, sickness and health. There were little entrapments,
snares if you will, that would waylay us unless we
decided that we were going to stick together. And he
was preaching when I married him, so I knew that
(33:59):
he was God, that's man. But if I was on
the other side of him, pulling on one arm and
God was shaking on the other side, that I was
going to lose.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Just I just want to say, you know, the din
of thieves along the way. Sometimes the thief will do
you a favor. I don't know if you noticed or not. No, Baby,
it's someone who's been through a divorce. Some of them thieves, Baby,
some of them thieves. Then did you a favor. He
gets your insurance. The insurance on the thing that you
done lost is more than what you lost in the
first place.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Cha. I just want to hear some of our listeners
in Hallelujah.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
I wish our listeners are tuned into the video version
right now to look at Missus Jakes and her fal
expressions are phenomenal. Missus Jakeson's So we all know Bishops CG.
Jakes's America's preacher, but to you, he is your husband,
he is your father. Six months ago, of course, the
world held its breath, We all held our breaths when
he had that heart attack. So let me ask, well,
(34:57):
Missus Shakes, how is he doing now?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
He's doing well, he's recovering. I don't want to say
that he's fully recovered, because then he thinks that he's
just going to go back to doing like he was
doing prior to. But he slowed down quite a bit significantly,
(35:24):
and we did hold our breath. I didn't know how
or what that was going to be. Right on stage
and he sat down and he just I just looked
at him, and it was like, what is going on?
And I was recovering from knee replacement, and I stumbled
(35:47):
over there to him, and he was not there. He
was not there, and so the ambulance scooped him up
up and got him to the hospital and they said, well,
you know, he's had a massive heart attack, and but
(36:08):
thank God decided that it was on. I hadn't been
the other side, we would have completely lost him, or
if the hospital had been farther away, we would have
lost him. So now I, with trepidation, I tell him
to slow down. Uh, he's so excited. He's such an
extrovert that it's easy for me, as an introvert, to say,
(36:31):
you know, calm down, sit down. You know, it's going
to be fine. The people are gonna be fine. And
I'm so grateful that Sarah and Pastor Teray have come
alongside to help. They are help meets for sure, in
governing the church and the affairs of the church, and
and doing the teaching and the preaching. So that when
he gets some mike, he wants to holler a little bit,
(36:53):
but we tell him, don't you don't get to holler anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Pipe down.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yes, but he's doing well. Thank you for asking wow.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Very deep prayers, and please send our love and our
gratitude to me.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I will between her knee replacement and his heart attack.
If you want to talk about legacy, I'm having a
hard time parenting my parents.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
They don't did you tell them? Y'all got to come
and get it. Y'all got to get this together.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Here' not following the rules. They're not doing what they're
supposed to do. And it's funny because I got into
a lot of trouble for not following rules, a lot
of trouble, and yet here we are. Legacy is not
legacy properly, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah? Not really?
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, I love listening to the two of you.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Next, Sarah talks about the messy middle, living in it
and loving yourself through it, like follow and share with
someone you love to let them know you've got them,
no matter where they are in their journey. Now back
(38:05):
to my legacy, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
When I think of your ministry or I think of
Women Evolve, it has been built on this radical transparency,
Like you have redefined what it means to be a
woman of faith based on radical transparency, your past, your marriage,
you're sharing your stories. Why with Women Evolve has it
and your entire ministry? Why has vulnerability been so important?
(38:27):
Why has it been so important for you to be
this radically transparent with all those who look to you?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
You know, I don't know that I saw it as
radical when it started. Like I said, I kind of
thought that if I told people, they would be like, oh,
my goodness, will leave her alone and it won't be
a thing. But the more that I realized how many
of us are suffering in silence, the more I felt like,
if I can tell my story and it helps someone else,
then I'll tell it one more time. And if it
helps someone else, I'll tell it another time. And I
(38:58):
think what I have learned is that through isolation, the
darker voices, the harder voices, the meaner voices that we
hear in our head, they're louder, and until you hear
someone say like, hey, I felt that too. But I'm
telling you it wasn't always like that, or that I
found a flicker that it gives someone permission to start
looking for light even in their dark seasons. And I
(39:20):
didn't want to. I didn't want to be in ministry.
I didn't have this as like a goal in my heart.
And so I'm like, if I'm going to do this,
I'm gonna at least be honest. I don't want anyone
to ever be surprised that because I preached a message
that I experienced depression, that I worked at a strip club,
like I want you to know, like this is what
you're getting. It is not much, but I am gonna
(39:42):
give my best. I'm gonna share my best, and if
I make you feel less alone, then girl, we could
grab arms and move towards better together. But I just didn't.
I just didn't want to. I didn't want to live
on a pedestal. I wanted to be able to Sometimes
on my social media, I'll be like all glammed up,
dressed up. Other moments I'll literally be snatching my wig
off and washing my face like this is like this
(40:03):
is all of who I am. And I just don't
want people to be connected to this caricature. I don't
want to be trapped in my own life. And so
for me, my honesty has been my freedom. My honesty
has been the runway that allows me to not feel
stuck in this life. And I think because of that,
(40:23):
my prayer is that I'll continue to have endurance for
what is ahead because I don't have to figure out
how do I keep this mask up? How do I
keep this facade going? My greatest question is how do
I continue to be honest in a way that reaches
the most unlikely person.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
I feel like it was like a mic drop moment
right there. I wish more young people, especially on social media.
I just heard that message, and for any of our
listeners like share that clip, like to connect with that moment.
I love that you speak to women who are in
the middle of it. I like this turn, not post breakthrough,
not post glow up. What do you want people to
know about the messy middle of the journey.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I think that people should know that it's all the
messy middle. You know what I mean. That's that it's
all the messy middle, that there is no there, there,
there is no once I do this, then that once
you get there, you realize that there's another mountain, that
it keeps going, that there's something else that you have
(41:26):
to overcome. So instead of trying to get post anything,
I think the question is how do I find the
better in now? And I think that that has been
one of the things that has really been instrumental for me,
is recognizing that there's beauty in the messy middle. And
if I keep moving the goal post, then I'll never
(41:48):
find peace. But if I dare to believe that there's
peace somewhere here, then all I have to do is
start searching for where it exists. Now I just have
gone through enough to I mean, especially if you think
about my life like as a team mother. I thought,
when I get married, then I'll be okay. And then
I got married, and I'm like, well, if he would
do this, then I'll be okay. And if we do that,
then I'll be okay. And then I left and I'm like,
(42:09):
if I could get the house, then I'll be okay.
Then I got the house and I met this incredible man,
and it's like, okay. Once I moved to La then
like it just kept moving, and so it dawned on me.
This is all a part of the journey. It's all
the messy middle. But I do believe that our lives
can be scripted and cursive. And I say it can
be because a lot of times we miss out on
(42:30):
how things can be woven together. We miss out on
how all things can work together because we segment our lives,
we try to leave some things behind. I'm gonna pretend
like that never happened. I'm going to become another person,
not realizing that the beauty of our story is the
full weight of our story. And so if we can
collect all of our pieces and look at the president
(42:50):
and say, Okay, this is the wisdom I have, the
experiences I have, how do I apply it to this moment?
I have found that that is the shovel that we
used to find the beauty in the mess.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
When I keep when I hear you speak about the
messy middle, I keep thinking about the whole idea of
a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, right, and when they go
into that cocoon. What most people don't know scientifically, it's painful.
So if you're looking at the cocoon, if you're looking
at with your naked eye, you see it, you know,
(43:24):
moving and wiggling, and it just seems like this is
it is too hard, it's too it's too much. If
you cut that cocoon at that point, it is messy.
There is it's a puddle, you know that, it literally is.
If you would open it up, it's a puddle. It's messy.
And actually that butterfly is not formed. It's through that
(43:46):
messy middle. It's through that struggle that the caterpillar emerges
as the butterfly.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I think that's an incredible analogy and one that I
think all of us experience in a cycle though, you know,
like we get these beautiful wings for certain seasons, and
then we start realizing, like, wait a minute, I think
I'm turning to a caterpillar again, and now I'm going
back into the cocoon again.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I think that's the part is embracing, like that's okay.
Like I was I needed to be super president in
my children's life, and now they're moving to One of
my oldest son will be moving to New York this summer,
and it's like my definition of motherhood is changing, and
so I have to support him in different ways. So
I feel like I'm in a cocoon as his mother,
but I'm in a butterfly season as it relates to
(44:30):
being back in school, and so we're all in different
seasons and stages of our lives depending on the roles
that we're in. But being okay with realizing I'm going
to be in somebody's middle in some stage of my
life and that's going to be okay because I want
to thank God for the butterfly. I'm going to submit
to the liquid and I'm going to enjoy the air
(44:50):
of a caterpillar life. Try to find something in each
of those moments.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
I love too, how you just bought forth that you
can be in different phases, different areas of your life.
I think that's so important for so many of us
to hear and to visually think about it that way.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
Missus Jakes, when you see who your daughter has become,
what are you most proud of?
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I think the fact that she survived that I'm grateful
that she survived. There were so many the vicissitudes of
her life, A lot I didn't know until she wrote
about a lot of it I witnessed first. And but
(45:36):
to know that she survived at all. You know, pearls
are formed in irritation and diamonds come from coal, and
people always want the end result, but they didn't see
the story along the way. So when I see her
out ministering and her first woman evolved, this is her
(45:58):
generation that seeks hope. And so when I see her,
I feel like, you go girl, you go girl. But
at the same time, I'm the watchman on the wall,
and it's like, don't don't go, don't don't disrespect her,
(46:22):
don't try to disrupt what God is doing at that moment,
because you know some people will come and they want
to outspeak her without the MC. So I'm the one
that says, hush, stop it, it's not your turn. And
so I'm most in awe of the gift of God
(46:45):
that's in her and flowing through her. I don't I
don't see her as my daughter. I see her as
God's messenger of hope for me, for her daughter, for
my mother, and you doing what I was unable to do,
(47:08):
and the stance that you've taken upon the centuries of
hard labor that our mothers are are the female generation
had to go through but ash And so when I
see her, I see glory. When I hear her, I
hear glory. When I'm in the room with her, I
(47:31):
feel glory. And so that's that's I just hallelujah oocuse you.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Can say hallelujah on this podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
And I think, what a what a wonderful gift God
allowed me to participate in, because not one day does
your heart beat that mine doesn't be because you're talking
about you living in me. And even though they cut
the cord, they.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
Didn't always say that before our children first we hold
them in our womb then we hold them in our arms,
and we always hold them in our hearts.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Always, always.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
I think that we're fortunate, because I know not everyone
has the healthiest experiences and a mother daughter relationship. And
yet I'm grateful that in many ways we've been able
to show people what's possible. That wasn't our intention, But
I do think there's something very healing about experiencing your heart.
(48:37):
It inspires me as a mother, like I want my children.
If my children feel about me the way I feel
about my mother, I would have done a really good job.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Well, Sarah and missus Jakes. Was a privilege to listen
and to witness the two of you together, Missus Jake's
it sounds like the love that your daughter holds for
you is bound us Sarah, the admiration your mom holds
for you, and the two of you being so just
(49:05):
open about the journey, how it hasn't always been easy,
so vulnerable about what we went through, the healing, the reconciliation,
the learnings, the ministry, the sharing, that messy middle, that
caterpillar emerging into that butterfly that inspires now millions around
the world. And so thank you for sharing your legacy
(49:26):
with all of our listeners and viewers, and thank you
for sharing that legacy with the world and.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
For allowing us a safe place to just share our
hearts and take off the mask and be real. It's
so important that we don't have to pretend this is
who we are.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Thank you, thank you so much, thank.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
You, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
If you enjoyed today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
at my Legacy Movement on social media. New episodes drop
every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday. At its core,
this podcast honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community
(50:09):
and the power of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production
distributed by iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Haywood co
executive producer Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, may you
find inspiration to live your legacy.
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
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