Sarah Jakes Roberts on Father-Daughter Dynamic, Teen Pregnancy & Fame | NXT Chapter With T.D. Jakes - NXT Chapter with T.D. Jakes

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You and I are going to make me cry up here.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm awesome podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Next Chapter Podcast, and I'm Tvj's your hosts,
and I'm excited today to present to you a very
very special guest, my daughter. A renowned pastor, entrepreneur. She's
also a New York Times best selling author as CEO
of Woman Evolved. She's on a powerful mission to help

(00:27):
women evolve into the best version of themselves, earning her
recognition as a Time one hundred Next honoree. She's also
a powerful wife and daughter, and I'm glad to have
her with me today. Please welcome Sarah Jakes Roberts. Once again,

(00:51):
there's nobody I would rather interview than you. I'm invested
in you. I watch from one side, you watch from
the inside, and I watch you grow and develop. I'm
honored to have you here today to be a guest
on my podcast, and I thank you for taking the
time to make yourself available Number one Preacher's daughter. Life

(01:16):
is many splendid things, many chapters, many ups, many downs.
You have to have resilience in order to be able
to do it. I would love to take you back
to the days you were born. Yeah, all the way back.
I know you don't remember this, but I remember this.
I remember rushing up to the hospital with a little

(01:38):
red dress and some barettes, preparing to take you home
from the hospital in the heels of West Virginia. We
started out in Charleston, West Virginia. When you talk about that,
and when you think about that, you were my second daughter,
my youngest daughter, and I was excited and intimidated, really

(02:00):
making ends me, trying to make it do what to do.
And like most fathers, we get preoccupied in being protective
and being providers. But there's much more to parenting than
those two things alone, and you learn that as you
go along. What is your favorite memory from your childhood?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh? When I think about my childhood, I think about
a lot of times in the kitchen with my siblings,
unfortunately because they yet y' but you know, growing up
Jake's as I call it, is such a unique experience.
And not many people understand what it's like to be

(02:43):
normal and regular but to also have these expectations placed
on you. But in the context of me and these
four other people, we got it. And it was a
space to be normal and to explore our identities and
to get on each other's nerves and extept frigging, and
to love again and to make mistakes. And so I
think about it as again in the kitchen, washing dishes

(03:05):
and cleaning up and cracking jokes and talking about one another.
I feel like my siblings were so integral and my
identity development.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think about all the stuff you all cooked, learning
to cook, that you experimented on me. I'm glad to
be alive. Yeah, I ate it, whether it was good
or not. Now her mother is a different story, but
I ate it all. And now they can both cook
like amazing, like in fact, all three of them, for
them actually are great cooks. And my stomach was a incubator,

(03:38):
the tube, the test tube.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Argue that it added length to your years, the resilience, yes,
love that you experienced, yes, yes, some some.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Could argue that some could argue that I had my
stomach pump. How was it being one of the youngest siblings. Things?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't know, you know, even though I'm one of
the youngest, I don't feel like I'm one of the youngest. Okay,
I feel like and perhaps it's because I had to
grow up so fast. Maybe it's because I'm naturally a
little bit more maternal, but I always felt like I
could provide some element of caretaking as it related to
my siblings. So on one hand, I was the youngest, but

(04:22):
also I felt like I took on a lot of
the responsibilities. It's just nurturing and care if you guys
were traveling or out of town. And I feel like
in many ways that that shaped who I am today
as it relates to a sense of responsibility.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
You know, it's funny you say that, because I'm the
youngest in my family, but a lot of the responsibility
fell on me, and so I really didn't feel babied
as much as I felt responsible. And I had to
be responsible in part because of my father's illness and
all the things that went along with that. There was
no room in our lives for me to be a child.

(04:58):
I had to grow up fast. You had to grow
up fast, found yourself in a situation where you had
to be both a daughter and a mama at the
same time, and you had to be responsible enough emotionally
and mentally to handle it. That's a lot of weight
to put on a person. It's a lot of weight.
What is your funniest memory with your simblings.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I don't think that they're appropriate for the next y.
I'll be honest. You know, those those rascals really were
something else to raise. But you know, I think, you know,
we grew up in a generation where, you know, redirection
had many expressions, and and redirection from your parents came

(05:46):
through through many different types of expression. And I think
some of my favorite memories were probably my ear to
the door as redirection was being given to some of
my siblings. See, yeah, that you're hustling, that came along
with that.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
You like that you made me look good? You made
me look good. Yeah, I appreciate that. In other words, uh,
let's leave it the way you Chapter number two teen pregnancy.
What was one of your most embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Moments as you can probably my pregnancy? Really, Yeah, for sure.
I think when most people think embarrassed, we're thinking like
you felled out the steps, or you did something that
in time you could look back and say it wasn't
that big of a deal. But I know that that
pregnancy marks me so greatly that even when I reflect

(06:39):
on my childhood, I have this overwhelming sense of fear
and anxiety that overshadows the joy that I know was there,
but I just think that that experience shaped so much
of how I saw everything that happened in my life,
and that pregnancy having to find a way to keep
my head up and still going to church. And the

(07:02):
thing about teen pregnancy is like, it's not one of
those things where it's just a church rule, right, Like
I think that you can do things that aren't acceptable
in church, but you can go into the world and
they're like, child that ain't nothing. But teen pregnancy is
one of those things that whether you're in the church
with a greencery store, people realize that there's something that's

(07:23):
happened here that is out of sequence. And so the
weight of existing with you know, this proverbial scarlet letter
was the most embarrassing thing that I felt like I
had to deal with. But also I really feel like,
because of my personality, because of how disconnected I felt

(07:45):
from faith, that my son really protected me. I think
that in the moment, I saw it as embarrassment, but
I think that he gave me this sense of identity,
this sense of responsibility where I couldn't go too far.
I think I would have been a lot more adventurous,
a lot more dangerous a lot more disposable as it

(08:06):
related to my worth and identity if I didn't have
this little person counting on me. And so he gave
me a grounding and a weight that I think I
needed at an early age, because I think later teen's
early twenties, without having him in my life, that I
don't know that I would be here now cause you
know I was down for whatever with the baby. Well

(08:28):
do you know next time? Just all truth? But I
just he became gravity for me in a world that
was spinning very fast and a life where I wasn't
always sure that I fit. My son became this puzzle
piece that I knew I had to hang on to.
And so though publicly there was some embarrassment, I think
the process of time has been built to me that

(08:51):
I needed him to tether me into something that was real.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
You know one thing I'm wondering about in between all
of that, Before all of that happened, we were in
West Virginia, Yeah, and moving from West Virginia to Dallas.
Do you think that that because by that time, my
ministry was exploding and I was twing Megafest and Woman
Are Loose was exploding, traveling all over the world on
the cover of magazines, and all of a sudden people

(09:16):
had a microscope and a telescope into our house and
into our lives. Do you think it would have been
easier to navigate had we had you gone through there
while we were in West Virginia.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
No, let me tell you why, because you know I
had to look at this through several lenses. I think
that more than anything, I think that because your life
took off so rapidly, yes, that we needed an interpreter,
a translator, And I'm not sure that we would have

(09:50):
had that in West Virginia or Texas, someone that this
is what's happening, this is where you fit, it's okay.
And I think that things just took off so quick Well,
I guess i'd have to ask you, do you think
that had we lived in West Virginia and maybe things
hadn't taken off field quickly, do you think that it
would have maybe shifted the presence and ability to kind

(10:13):
of help us navigate what was happening not just in
your world but in our own little versions of development
and change and puberty.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
And I think it would have been in some ways,
I think it would have been tougher because small towns
have a tendency to be peyton place and everybody's whispering
and everybody's talking. It's a different kind of traumas. You
don't have to worry about the news reporters and the
cover of magazines and all that kind of stuff, but

(10:40):
you have to worry about the beauty shop and the
barbershop and all the people whispering about all those sorts
of things. The one thing that gives that some advantages.
I think a lot of women related to your story
in the most amazing way. Fast forward to I never

(11:01):
said anything, So they need to understand that I never
publicly said anything all throughout the pregnancy because I felt
like it was your story to tell. And I think
a lot of times parents take it upon themselves to
tell their children's story before they're ready emotionally to be
able to handle it. And I wanted you to handle
it in your own words and in your own language.

(11:24):
I didn't know you were going to handle it while
you were introducing me in front of about twenty thousand
people as we had woman and I are loose at Lakewood.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
I had my son Alki at the age of fourteen
and there are no thoughts in the room that I
hadn't and one time thought about myself, and I remember
after coming back to church, my dad made now can
I stand up? And he welcomed us back into the service,
and I remember in that moment fling like she he

(11:56):
had my back.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
What was that like for you? You know?

Speaker 2 (12:07):
I kind of did it thinking that it would make
because I was blogging at the time. Okay, so I
started this blog, and at the time, I'm in my
first marriage and I'm trying to figure out some of
their recurring issues we were experiencing, and like, just how
did I get here where this is my definition of
love where I feel stubb where anger is the closest

(12:28):
emotion that I can feel. So I'm processing this through
a blog. And then I'd ended each blog kind of
like with a prayer or something that I would hope
someone would say to me. And people started saying, oh
my gosh, it's so inspiring, or you gave me the
words that I didn't know what were tracked inside of me,
and they started calling me inspiring, and they started calling
me authentic and vulnerable, and it started to feel like

(12:48):
people were proud of me. People felt like this was ministry,
and I felt like, you know what, I'm going to
tell them that I got pregnant as a teenager, so
they will lead me, you know what I mean, Like,
this is not ministry. I'm just a girl. This is
my story. And if I tell you this, then you will,
you know, go away, You'll say, oh my god, she's

(13:10):
not good enough, She's not this, she's not that. And
it was the very opposite thing that happened. Yes, shocking, Yeah,
and it continues to be shocking because whatever. We can
talk about that later. But yeah, it was very shocking
to me because I think I had some experiences that
grounded this theory in my head.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
But the theory in.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
My head was because you did this, you are not acceptable,
you are not adequate, you have no place in ministry,
and you should certainly not be talking about God. And
I think I had some experiences that kind of grounded that.
And so the fact that people kind of felt like,
maybe if she can figure out who God is, maybe
if grace exists for her, it exists for me as well.

(13:54):
And so I didn't know there were women who were
seventy years old coming up to me saying I have
a baby at thirteen two him like, these little secrets
that we were carrying around that were impacting who we
saw ourselves as and am impacting our ability to really
trust what guy says about us, because if I am

(14:14):
fearfully and wonderfully made, but what about this baby? What
about this abortion? What about this what about these things
that have happened to me? And you're telling me that
there's a guy who will overlook, not overlook, who will
see through them, because overlook makes it seem like he
doesn't look at them at all, but he will see
them and still say fearfully and wonderfully made and still say,
I know what you did to ease the pain, and

(14:35):
I still love you. There's still hope for you. And
I needed to believe that that was true, and I
think that they did too.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
You know if what's really funny about that you walked
up on that stage expecting to be rejected, and so
did I. So did I I was a nobody would
publish Woman or Loose. When I first wrote the book,
nobody had any reference to men writing to women about
the trauma they've been through. Nobody was talking about molestation

(15:02):
back then. Nobody was talking about spousal abuse and self
medication and all that kind of stuff. I started talking
about all of it. But I walked up there with
the same trepidation that you did, expecting to be rejected,
and instead got marved with people, which it took me
a while to believe them, even though they were coming

(15:23):
in masses. My own insecurities made me wonder was it
really real? Could I really trust it as it really stable?
Is it really going to stand? I thought it was
really odd that you had the same kind of feelings
that I did. And I was the youngest sibling. You
were the youngest daughter, and you go through that. But
there's something about the youngest child that does something to you.

(15:46):
You get to see the other ones grow up and
you learn from them, and I think there's a certain
compounded interests of wisdom that comes upon you as a
result of seeing life as a voyeur and then experiencing
it for yourself, and it helps you to grow and
to go You you did all of that. By the way,

(16:07):
when you got up on the stage and said that,
I was like, totally shocked. I'm sure I was shocked.
You should have warned me, you should have texted me no,
because you would.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Have told me no. Doesn't my history show you that
I'm not going to ask you.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I wouldn't. I don't think I would have.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
You don't think so.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
No, I don't think I would have. I just wanted
you to be ready. I was never ashamed of you.
I was never I.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Don't think you would have said no because you were
ashamed of me. But you're so protected.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Oh my god, Yes that I could see.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Saying no, don't you throw you. I could see you
doing all of those things. I don't think you never
made me feel like you were ashamed of me. But
I do think that I felt I felt your disappointment. Yeah,
And I mean as a parent myself. If I just
try to put myself in your shoes, I can experience that.

(17:01):
But I think because we had such a close bond
before I got pressed, Yeah, like I was the one
who would be up in the morning. It was the
one who was like doing the business stuff and accounting
and writing checks if you guys were out of town.
Like if we had just this bond, and I could
feel the shift in our relationship after I got pregnant, well,
but it didn't feel like this. It didn't feel like

(17:23):
a shame. It felt like disappointment.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, I admit that. I think it was disappointment. But
it was unfair too, because I didn't really see you
as a human. I saw you as a princess, a
daddy's girl. Listen, this girl would stop. We'd be on

(17:45):
the highway driving down sixty four. I was driving. She
was too little. She would be sitting in the backseat
and say, Daddy, I'm cold, and I would pull over
to the side of the road or the interstate and
take my coat off and wrap around her. So that
gives you some indication of the closeness that existed between us,

(18:06):
and I think that closeness is the glue that cemented
our relationship, whether ups or downs, because it had a foundation.
That foundation might be shaken, but it doesn't crack because
if it starts out with a solidarity, it survives everything.
We can talk and never open our mouth. We can

(18:27):
look at each other and have a complete conversation across
the table and nobody knows that we're having it. And
I think it helped us to endure many of the
things that came along the way. Chapter number three, First
marriage and Divorce. Let's talk a little bit about after

(18:51):
going through that, when you decided to get married, did
you think that getting married would sort of bring a
legitimacy and correction to your life? And were you disappointed
when you ran into a bad marriage, a toxic relationship
and hard times. Was it a disappointment from what you

(19:13):
had hoped it would bring you?

Speaker 2 (19:15):
It was initially I certainly thought that it would fix it.
I think that you also have to realize that, like
while you were out and we were traveling, we would
be in youth ministry. This is the peak of purity culture,
where they would say things to girls like if I
took a sucker and passed it around this room, by
time it got to the last person, no one would
want it. That's how your body is.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
And if you don't have your virginity, then your damaged goods.
And they would be getting married to Jesus and wearing
white dresses. And so here I am with a baby
on my head, and I'm thinking to myself, I will
never be one of the good girls ever. I'll just
never be wanted the good girls I lost, And so
marriage felt like and I think in many ways the

(19:59):
churches I doing some of this narrative for women in general,
where it's marriage is surprise, not your intellect, not your education,
not your entrepreneurship. If you get married, then you did
it all. And so I think I felt for that narrative.
It's not just in the churches, in the culture too, Right,
Sinorella needs her prince charming, and so if I get married,

(20:21):
that'll fix everything. Now here, I am married, and y'all
allied to me. Excuse me, Yeah, like what am I
supposed to do now? But I didn't realize that there
is an element of reflection in the person who you
partner with, right, And the moment that I stopped being
disappointed that I didn't get the fairy tale and started

(20:44):
looking at the mirror of what is it about this
dynamic that is feeding me, fueling me, hurting me, breaking me?
And can I really stand living like this forever? And
I thought to myself, you know what, I have already
messed up. I've already messed up what's another one? Yeah,

(21:04):
for the sake of having one whole parent for my
two children at that time versus two people. I was
on my way to prison. Yeah, on my way to prison.
And that's handed up ible, I mean, police, why are
you raning this car? I've told the story. I was
on my way to prison, and I thought, if I
don't get out of this, we're talking life for death,

(21:26):
we really are. We're talking life for death. We're talking
about foster care. And I just felt like, you know what,
I've already messed up anything to be better than that.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
See, people don't know that behind the breaches a gangster.
They may know by the preaching a little bit, just
a little bit, but don't let it shock you. There
is a real gangster behind this person. And I have
a little touch of it too. Uh, And so I
can understand how you felt like that it wasn't. People

(21:55):
are always talking about preacher's kids, but I think it's
a deeper thing than that. The only difference between preachers
kids and other kids is that you live up under
the light and the heat that comes from that light
of being on stage where everybody can see you. But
the reality there are a lot of people who were
not preachers kids who had bad marriages, who went through divorces,

(22:18):
who had children out of wedlock, all that kind of stuff.
I think that the expectation that the preacher's kids inherit
is that we're supposed to be these divine people that
come down on the cloud and have angels with harp
singing all around us. Truth of the matter is, our parents,
my generation's parents, Boomer's parents were called the silent generation.

(22:42):
They didn't say nothing, okay, and they taught you to
keep your mouth shut, okay. So we were the generation
that came along with what goes on in this house
stays in this house. Their generation didn't even bring up
what goes on in the house, okay, So we brought
it up. The guardrails on our silence was induced by

(23:05):
the way that we were raised and the country. I mean,
we grew up off of Mayberry and I love Lucy,
and Lucy and her husband never slept in the same bed,
so I mean, it wasn't a realistic expectation of life.
But those were the images that were cast in front
of us, and they were impossible to live up to.

(23:25):
Do you think that a lot of people in your
generation who could keep it one hundred, which we had
to come to grow into, we had I'm still going
into it a little bit and keep it about eighty.
But the idea of keeping at one hundred, did it
serve you well as you look back on it, or

(23:45):
does it open you up where you've got the whole
world looking into your life and expecting you to just
tell everything about everything.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Oh, that's setulated question. I think it depends on the
emotional wellness and state of the person who's sharing their story,
usually because I do think that if you're not well
when you share your story, you're sharing your story because
you want to be affirmed, you want to be seen,
you need to be liked, You want to feel better

(24:18):
because maybe you didn't get that in other areas of
your life, and now the Internet represents the place of
restoration where it'll fix the cracks in your self esteem
and your self image. I do think that for people
will utilize it. The way I want to think that
I use it is that I don't share it until
I'm ready for it to be criticized and praised, which

(24:40):
means there's a certain level of healing, at least a
Skype that has to be over what I'm sharing before
I put it out in the world, because I recognize
that I'm opening myself up to all manners of opinions.
What I will say is that I think it is
serving me and I think time will tell. In thirty years,
I have to say it was all a bad idea.

(25:02):
Relieve the ass. It was terrible, But right now.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
But right now I feel like, especially in this transition,
it's helping me to saw the legs off the pedestal
before they can put me on it.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
There was something that you said when we had Woman
and Are at Lakewood, and that was your like coming
out to the world experience, you said, and I thought
it was a very a shield, a very strong and
effective shield. You said, it doesn't matter what you say

(25:40):
about me. There's nothing that you can say or think
about me that I had not said or thought about myself.
You disarmed the audience from being critical because you were
self deprecating in such a way that it put it
on a scale where I think immediately people knew that
you got it, that you had already suffered from it,

(26:02):
and for the most part, it resonated with them in
a very profound way. As you went forward from there
and started to do women evolved. You drew around you
women inside the church and outside the church who did
not have that kind of acceptance or strength always to
keep it one hundred regardless of the generation. Sometimes I

(26:26):
think we are to stereotypical in our ideas about generations,
because there are some old folks that keep it one
hundred and there are some young folks that keep things
to themselves. So it has a lot to do with
how you were trained, where you grew up, what region
of the world, what culture you come from. All of
that plays into the makeup and the mystery, the mystery

(26:48):
of you. And I think that's what makes us so
fantastic is that we are a mystery gradually unraveled, and
you are exactly right. Thirty years from now, you may
think differently than you do right now, and that's okay.
Shame on you. If you live thirty more years and
still think the way you think now, you live thirty

(27:09):
more years and then learn. If you learn one thing
a year in thirty years, you're going to be different.
Not to say what you think now is wrong, but
the times have changed.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
You know what I think is hard about that reality,
because to your point, if our ideas aren't changing, then
we're stuck as we're being exposed, as we're gaining experience.
If our perspectives are expanding, if not totally evolving from
where they once were then I think there's something wrong
with that. The only issue with that is I think
that the way that the Internet and social media and

(27:41):
chatter is set up is that it nails you to
who you are now and it doesn't give you space
to say, oh, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm changing. And
so a few months ago I kind of came to
this reality that I am going to make sure that
everyone knows that I have as I did, that life
is a class firm and I am a forever student

(28:05):
and so yes, I'm the co senior pastor, yes I'm
the founder. Well, yes, all of those things that make
you feel like, oh, she must have it figured out.
Like I crainge reading my bio because I know when
someone else is hearing that biome that it sounds like
this is a person who has it figured out. And
I assure you, from the bottom of my art I
am literally just a girl sharing what I'm learning along

(28:26):
the way. And I have to keep putting that in
front of people because they will dehumanize you.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yes, yes, with the achievement.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
They will dehumanize you with success and influence. And like,
I can't tell people, hey, leave me alone, I'm off you.
You know what I mean, like, stay away, stay away.
I can't help the fact that I have influence. I
can't help it. I tried, it didn't work, and so
now it's like, how am I going to navigate it?
How am I going to be a steward of it?

(28:55):
And I feel like my job is to constantly show
you my scars, show you my wounds, and then point
you to the one who has been a healer, shown
you to the one who can show you how to
keep walking. But if we do not, as leaders, make
it our mission to keep our humanity in front of people, yes,
they will deify you. And so it's hard though, because

(29:16):
when you put your humanity in front of people, you're
opening yourself up for criticism. So it is easy to
just show the highlight reason, but that just solidifies the dehumanization.
And so you're going to see me in my bond
you look at it. I'm gonna be dressed, I'm gonna
switch my wings, I'm gonna put on them clothes, but
I'm gonna be on my bondy. I'm gonna be taking
care of my kids. I'm gonna be cloking. I want
to make sure that you have a well rounded view

(29:38):
of what it means to be all of who I am.
Not that I'm looking for your validation, but I just
feel like you should have a full scope.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
You are a very authentic person and have grown to
be an increasingly authentic person. And I don't think that
I can think of many examples of people who have
been at authentic. There are few, but from the platform
and the height and the global perspective of who you are,

(30:08):
that takes a great deal of courage. And when I
think about you, it reminded me of something I was
going through the Charlotte Airport years years years ago. I
was maybe your age, and I ran into Bishop Campbell
and he looked at me and he shook his shook
his head. He felt so sorry for me. He said,
you've lost something you'll never be able to regain. And

(30:31):
I said, what is that? He said normally and kept
on walking. And it haunted me. But it was so
prophetic to the loss of normalcy, the loss to have
a bad hair day, the loss of wearing a hair bonnet,
the loss of being able to lose your wig while

(30:53):
you're preaching.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
And then I didn't preached the six weeks Hater as
I had set my father taking my with.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
No, it didn't bother me.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
I know, I called you to ask him, like, listen,
you make the schedule kind of been up there since
my and then other people had their wings on the
afar either the Lord.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
We have really done it now, Yeah, yeah, it was different.
It was shocking.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
It wasn't no purpose. I didn't have a choice.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, yeah, I know you didn't pick it. I know
you weren't trying it be to be sensational, but the
way you handled it, there's something. There's some kind of
strength in not allowing the things you have to have you. Yeah,
you know, I think that God doesn't mind you having
things that I think he minds things having you. And

(31:42):
whether wig or no wig, heels or no heels, kick
my heels off, jump up and down, You've always never
let any of that stop you from doing what He
told you to do, which gets down to an unusual
amount of focus that you have on your purpose and
I'm just your person, And I think that's really fascinating.

(32:05):
I'm wondering do you think about it that way? Do
you think about it from the perspective of your focus
being your purpose rather than your person or you do you.
I know, before you get up you're thinking about you
to some degree, But once you get up, do you
get lost in your calling?

Speaker 2 (32:23):
For sure? When I'm up there, the only thing that
matters is what's happening in that moment. Sometimes I watch
clips to me preaching and it doesn't feel like who
I am when I'm not preaching at all, because I
just I don't feel. I don't. The way I've cutting
up is just completely surrender and passion for whatever the
message is that God has given. But I certainly take

(32:46):
that there seriously, and then when it's over, I actually
have protected my sense of normalcy. I think the privilege
of being able to watch you lose your.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Words, thank you, Thank you. I appreciate that ship.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
That I'm fiercely protective over mine. And so you always
talk about like how I could get off the stage
and you know, preach and the glory show up and
people be at the altar, and I will grab a
paper bag and fry chicken and get the girls and
go home like nothing happened, Because for me, all that

(33:23):
happened was God.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
You are one of the few preachers that I have
ever met in my life who can preach a message
that is very explosive in the congregation, and as soon
as you not even wait till you get home and
start frying chicken. As soon as you get in the hallway,
you act like, who I didn't do that? You know,
you have an ability to slip right back into that

(33:49):
normalcy and be surrounded by your kids and your husband
and exit honey, exit Elvis Presley, y'all. She can exit
Elvis Presley and be very comfortable in some housecoade and
some turnover shoes and making it do what it do.

(34:09):
And you have never neglected being a mother and a
wife for being a preacher. And I think sometimes career
women and career men often for sake who they are
at home, because they feel like you have to make
a choice. How do you manage being both things so proficiently?

(34:30):
Chapter number four Learning Growing Changing.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
First of all, I want to say that part of
the reason why when I get finished preaching that I
just cut a log office because for me, like this
is my offering and I say everything Guy's told me
to say the best way I know how to say it.
I study, and once I leave it out there, I
did it like this is my offering. My identity is

(34:58):
with my family, and I realize that the only way
that I can show up there is if I am
who I am with them. I don't want to wreck
the room and come home and my house feels erect.
I want to minister to my children the same way
I minister to the people who are in the room,

(35:21):
and it's really important to me that they feel seen,
that they feel heard, and that I can pour into
them with intention and so maintaining that connection. Maintain I mean,
when you got finished speaking, there were swarms of people around,
but they ran over us to get to you, and

(35:45):
we didn't know how to translate that. And so I
think for me, like Ella wants to grab my hand,
and I know what it's like to wonder, like is
that person still my mom? You know, like it does
that person still care that I got home to And
sometimes I worry that maybe I'm a little overkilled with it,
and I want to show them balanced. But I think

(36:07):
right now it's just really important to me, especially the
great and a transition, that I hang on to them
in the midst of the transition.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
I think you're bionic, you know, in your ability to
slip from one thing into another. I know that that
was a very difficult period in you as lives to
be little kids and couldn't hardly get to me for
all the people that were swarmed around me. My mindset
at the time was your mother's got you, okay, but

(36:37):
you are their mother. Now. My mindset wasn't right because
I didn't realize how significant a father's presence is to
a child. I learned that from you all that when
you start talking about always learning, I think that if
you allow your ego as a parent to make you

(36:58):
feel like you're always the teacher, you will miss the
class because while you're teaching your children and your children
are teaching you. And I didn't see the significance of
my presence around you you are in that setting, and
that you were intimidated by everybody calling me their their dad,

(37:19):
and you know that's my spiritual father, and you are
over there fussing and murmuring amongst yourself, saying no, no, no, no,
that's my real father. What I was proud of was
to learn that some kind of way, we survived it
and landed on our feet as a family. And I
can see why a lot of families don't. I can

(37:43):
see why a lot of families fall apart. I can
see where while a lot of families end up substituting
wholeness with self medication, and the parent doesn't understand why
the child is acting out because you have read regulate
relegated to someone else a role that only you can play.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
You know, I do think there's a level of emotional
intelligence required to get to that space of reconciliation. But
for me, how I've reconciled those difficult realities from my
childhood is that if I were you and I did
not have you, I would have done the same thing.
The only reason why I am even conscious enough to

(38:30):
not do the same thing is because I had a model,
an example, and I feel like that goes in both directions, right.
The only reason why I could sit down and handle
myself and interview, or to navigate large rooms without feeling
as fault it is because I had you, and so
your life has been a lesson for me in many ways.

(38:51):
But I can see how rapid it is to go
from expected rejection yeah to overwhelmingly I guess accepted. And
I do mean I guess except because you know what
I mean, Like, it's not exactly accepted close the end
of the day and crucify to mar so to live

(39:13):
in this consistent state of vulnerability where you have to
serve people but not need them, but you do need
them because sometimes that's the way God loves us, that's
the way you and you got to be in a
relationship with them, so you can't be staying out. But like,
I get it, and I get how the last thing
you're thinking is this seven year old girl wants me

(39:36):
to hold her hand and take her for ice cream.
That seems trivial in the midst of it all. I
think what we know now is that it builds bonds
and connection, and it is small but long term, and
it plays a role absolutely. But if I did not
have you, I wouldn't know that I would have done
the same things. And so for me, it's.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
It's well in my soul, you're going to make me
cry up here.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Awesome that though, And I think it's important that you
hear that that when I look at your life, that
I don't look at it just from the lens of victimuod,
that I don't just see the loss without the benefits,
and that I realized that if I had your hand.

(40:21):
I would have played it the same way, and my
children would maybe be sitting across for me what they say.
And you won there and we did well there, but
this area could have been better. I get that, and
I think, thank you, thank you for the sacrifices. Thank

(40:42):
you for allowing your life to be a less than
in every sense of that word. Thank you for still
showing up even after hearing that maybe there were things
that could have been better, be so much easier to
be like you know what, I did the best I
could go do forget y'all. But you keep showing up.

(41:03):
And I think the Chief shown up in times where
you knew we were still trying to figure out what
does a father relationship look like, or where we were
still nursing rooms. You never advanted us, and you didn't
allow our hurt to make you stay away.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
I never will, Yeah, I never will. I never will
that you can come. I never feel good or bad,
up or down, famous and not famous, successful or failure
or bringing Oreo cookies to a jail celle, God forbid.
But I never will. And then the other thing, to

(41:39):
be honest, to be completely honest with you about the
role of a father, with children. My father got sick
when I was ten. He died when I was sixteen.
So without a pattern, it's hard to make ampare of
pants and have no better. Yeah, so I never saw
that my grandfather died when he was twenty one years old.
He was murdered when he was twenty one years old.

(42:01):
My other grandfather was dead when I was born. So
I didn't grow up with that that role, and especially
where daughters are concerned, because I knew what it was
to be a son and have father's hunger, well father hunger,
but I did not know what it was how important
a father is to a daughter. And I think that
we have to look at each other through the lens

(42:24):
of what you had on the table was all you
had to serve for dinner.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
It's so that's so good. I do think, because you know,
my generation is very intentional protecting their mental health, emotional
real estate, and we have a generation where they're cutting
their parents all right because they don't get it, they
don't understand, they won't take ownership. And I think as
much as it is important for us to make sure

(42:50):
that we are protecting our mental and emotional real estate,
that I think if there's a possibility for reunification that
it's going to happen with us removing our expectations, and
if we are unwilling to set our expectations to the side,
not because they're not legitimate, but not because they don't matter.
But if you're going to see this person as a

(43:12):
person and not the parent that failed you. If you
think about what it means to be a fifteen year
old boy who's taking care of his father with an illness,
whose grandfather is gone, and then that's the person who
you want to pick you up and take you to
ice cream and plat your hair and do all these
like how right?

Speaker 1 (43:32):
How right?

Speaker 2 (43:33):
You know what I mean? My idea of father that
is primarily based off of things I've seen on television,
and some of the most iconic fathers on television. We're
not iconic people off the script, so none of this
is real. I think there's a level of maturing that
gets into a space where we say, Okay, well none
of this is real now because I know this isn't real,

(43:56):
but maybe this doesn't change the way the person showing
up in my life. What boundary do I need to have?
What distance do I need to create do I need
to create?

Speaker 1 (44:03):
What?

Speaker 2 (44:03):
How to communication this? I think you can do the
planning after, but I think to really level the playing field,
you got to look at the whole picture. Sometimes we're
asking people to show up in ways they literally don't
know how to show up.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
That's true. And the other thing, we're asking them to
be more perfect as parents than we were as children. Yeah,
you know, and it's it's I always say, I can
see everybody in the room, but me. Now, I'm not
talking about toxic relationships where you're physically abused and tormented

(44:37):
and thoughtless parents and the ridiculous horrendous things that some
people have gone through, molested and all that kind of stuff.
That's terrible, terrible stuff. But I'm talking about I didn't
take you for ice cream, or I was late for
the prom or that sort of thing, or they didn't

(44:57):
show up in the ways that you needed them to do,
and maybe didn't even verbalize, or you verbalized and they
weren't listening all of that. If you throw your parents away,
you probably end up throwing your children away. Let me,
just because you think so, let me tell you why,

(45:21):
because they're gonna disappoint you too. And if you get
in the habit of throwing away everybody who disappoints you,
you end up with nobody, husband, wife, siblings. You know,
you have to relationships or hard work.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
We have to have a generational conversation.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
The only thing I will offer to that perspective is
that and I think it's actually very adorable that we
have a generation of people who are not wanting to
have children, because I do think that everything in research
suggest that parental presence is directly connected to the outcomes

(46:05):
of children. And the only reason why I say you
probably wouldn't throw your children away if you threw your
parents away, is because part of who we have become
is a result of what we did or didn't received
from our parents. Of course, there are other environmental environmental things,
factors that play a role in that, in education and

(46:25):
social like there are all types of factors. But research
has shown that when parents are there, and I think
it's more than just taking me for ice cream. I
think ultimately when a child is frustrated with a parent,
whether it's a young child or an adult child, it's
because I don't feel single.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Which is which is also true about marriage. You can
be married to somebody, sleep in the bed with them
every night and not feel seen. You can birth a
child who's so quick to run out there and play
with people their own age at times that you want
to spend time with them. Your kids a little well,

(47:04):
you got all ages, you got a thematic, you know,
but there's a certain point in their development that they
don't want to hang with you anymore. So if you
did hang with them when they were children and then
all of a sudden they don't want to be bothered
with you, and you're running behind them and they're saying,
you know, oh no, I'll be back in a little while.
Where they come visit you on the holidays, not being

(47:27):
My point is simply this not feeling seen doesn't stop
with childhood. It goes to work with you. It goes
to church with you. It's being able to sing in
the choir and they never calling you for a solo.
It goes to being married to somebody who is not
sensitized to your feelings. What I am saying is relationships

(47:50):
are hard work, for sure, and you have to put
the work in. And if you train yourself to always
throw away something because it's hard, you end up with nothing,
because everything's hard. Being an entrepreneur is hard, going to
work is hard. Going back to school, you're going back
to school. I didn't add that to the mix. On

(48:12):
top of everything else. This girl gets up like four
o'clock in the morning and boxes in the morning, four
o'clock in the morning. I am in a coma, okay,
an absolute coma. And you go from sun up to sundown.
And your children a range in age from what.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
To what they are nine and I have my bonus
baby age twenty eight, line from.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Nine to twenty, from nine to twenty nine, and she
feeds all of them. She makes homemade biscuits, she makes
rolls from scratch, She has Thanksgiving spreads like she's somebody's grandmother.
She does all that stuff and still gets her hair done,
gets her makeup on, and comes out there in those hills.
But the girl you see on the stage with the heels,
it's not the mama they see at home. She's not

(48:55):
walking around her house with a bowl around her neck.
You know, you know, I mean, you're she's got flower
up under her fingernails and went back to school. Why
did you do that what you could easily? I mean,
you've done enough. Now, you've had enough bestsellers, you've introduced

(49:16):
yourself to the world, you've got a husband that loves you,
you've got children that respect you. Why did you take
on that extra way?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
I simply just don't feel like I've maxed out my potential,
and I feel like there's a distance between my current
drones and my knowledge, and I feel like for the
type of impact that I think ultimately matters in the world.
Because right now, you know the books and all that
stuff like, that's cool for my name, but I want

(49:52):
for women involved to really be a place where women
had the opportunity to get practical resources to involve from
the circumstances, whether that's incarceration, being unhoused, team privacy, and
in order to really erect those types of programs, it
does require a deep understanding of the research and what

(50:13):
produces positive outcomes and programs that have been shown to
be instrumental in producing those outcomes. And I could hire
someone who knows the research and hire someone who understands it.
But that's my ultimate heart and passion is to really
see it through and understand it and qualify it because
I want to put my name and my work behind it,
and I just feel like at my age, I still

(50:35):
have an opportunity to do the work required to go
and get a degree. And if they say four years
is going to pass whether you do it now or later.
And so that's what I want to do. I want
to connect the dots because I have this sensing like
I think this is true. I think these could produce
positive outcomes. But I don't have the research and knowledge,

(50:55):
and I want to go get it so that I
can continue to unearth what God's place in a fight.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
To be fair, you were almost finished anyway, Yeah, so
you didn't have far to go to complete what you're
trying to complete. Chapter number five. Father's heart attack. This
time a year ago, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I was

(51:24):
preaching in the church. I sat down in the chair,
I felt fine. I sat down in the chair and
had a massive heart attack. From a daughter's perspective, what
was that like for you?

Speaker 2 (51:44):
It was terrifying. I was at home with Ellen, and
so we were watching together and she was immediately panicked.
What's going on with Craney. I didn't know for sure
what it was. It looked like a stroke. If I
had to have guessed, I'm like it looks like so
I think I saw it on workout close. So I

(52:05):
threw on a hoodie and I was just headed towards
the church with no idea what was going on. I
was afraid but also felt very protective. One I needed
to be present for Ellen, who was afraid. But then
I needed to understand who's with my dad, Who's take
care of him? What hospital is he going to? How
do we make sure that he's protected and can have

(52:26):
medical privacy when he gets there, And so I think
a part of me really went into.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
I think, yeah, it wasn't like now is not the
time for a breakdown, Like we're in a fight and
we don't know what it is, and we got to
take care of him.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
So you know, calling security, what's the plane, what's the strategy?
You know people were watching online, They're afraid, they're nervous,
they love him. What is our messaging to them? We
don't have anything to tell them yet, so very much
so crisis. I was there by the time I beat
the ambulance to the hospital, and I don't live close
to the hospital, so that I did tell you about

(53:06):
how I was driving and I saw them will you win?
And I could tell that you were You were not
totally there, but I think you said something I don't
remember what, and I thought to myself, he's going to
be okay, He's going to be okay. Mom was surprised.
I mean, I'm talking to the nurses, you know, your

(53:28):
telephone number, your insurance, like now, it just wasn't out
for the breakdown. My husband was out of sounds. That
wasn't even like I could get someone else, And so
it's I think me and Dexter were kind of manning things.
But I will say by time I did have an
opportunity to have a breakdown, you were cutting up in
the hospital room, which robbed me of my opportunity that

(53:48):
have been breakdown because you who what what we eating?
And did y'all call this person? And did you take
care of this? And I was like, you see, now
I'm ready to have a breakdown and you'd not already
made it to the other side, which you know, I
was grateful, but also I didn't I didn't really process
it fully what that moment could have represented. I think
it took me some time to get to a space

(54:10):
to acknowledge the fear connected to it. But I had
the victory before you know, the fear could be processed.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
It was amazing to watch how you walked in and
started calling the right people, informing the right people, talking
to the doctors, acting like your father, protecting nobody. Nobody
goes in there, nobody goes in there. Don't go near him,

(54:37):
you know, you know, you turned exactly into me, and
that was that was really really nice, and I'm glad
that I came out of it, that we get to
laugh about it when we get to joke about it.
And it's been a year and I'm doing pretty well. Yeah, yeah,

(54:57):
so thank you.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
You were very obedient time of year ago too. Yeah,
bring that back. We could do that too, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
got red dance.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Well I didn't want to die.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Well yeah, but now, so.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
You missed the point. See, let me explain this. I
have a tendency to be bullheaded and and go the
extra mile when when my wife's cure all for everything
is go to bed and lay down to rest. I'm
the kind of person that will fight it.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
The doctor's cure all though, just to be clear with
the doctor's all this time.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Yeah yeah, well, whatever it was, I did it, I
did it, and did it a lot, you know, and
took the medications and and went through the therapy and
did all the things that my wife had just got
through doing with the Neva placement. Our life has not
been what you think. She she didn't.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Walk for her a year, how older two years by
telling me figure out what was one?

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, well, a year before the surgery and then a
year in recovery. And so while we were dealing with
all the other dramas that life brings to us, we
were also dealing with her. And I've been in fact,
Serena didn't start walking until I started dying, and there

(56:24):
I was having a heart attack. Was the first time
she got up and started walking without any kind of
cain or walker or anything. And she's been walking ever since.
But I've surrounded myself with some strong people in my life,
and some strong women in my life, and I was
just curious to wonder what that looked like from your

(56:48):
point of view as a daughter, for me as a father,
always being used to being the superman and to being
a vulnerable addition, you know, I didn't want them all
over me. I was telling them to get back, get back,
you know, I walk out of here, and you know,

(57:10):
we yelled at me to get in the wheelchair, and
I was trying to trying to walk because I did
not I didn't know what was wrong with me, and
I did not I did not realize that I was
as sick as I was, that it was as serious
as I was. And the first time I heard massive
heart attack, I had gone. I was in the ICU

(57:33):
UH and they were getting ready to do surgery, and
I thought my first we actually was to look over
at the doctor and say get out of here. You know,
because I had none of the morning signs that I
had read about, none of them had come along. I
thought I needed hydration. You know. It felt like that

(57:57):
I just fell asleep and and went some place quiet
and beautiful and peaceful until I came back to myself.
And then a start being bossy and can't thank for us,
like like, look, how what you inherited is, so don't

(58:18):
criticize it. But that's a great thing about family. That's
the great thing about family that there's a little piece
of your mother and a little piece of me and
every step you take, and that that will never go away. Okay,

(58:39):
Chapter the Six Blending Families. Let's back up a minute
and talk about blended families. You talked about your bonus children,
and it made me think about you married a pastor, Ila.

(59:01):
You married a pastor who had gone through a divorce. Okay,
that's not uncommon now we see more. You had gone
through a divorce, bought a house here in Dallas, taking
care of yourself, always been independent, always been resourceful, was

(59:21):
getting a degree in accounting at first, and so you
handled your money well. And you did all of that
very well. So you didn't necessarily need somebody to help
take care of you. You could take care of yourself.
I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of that.
One of my goals in life was to raise daughters
that might want a man, but don't need one in

(59:43):
order to be able to be so sufficient and be
able to sustain themselves. You have lived up to that
to the highest degree. But you came into you. You
fell in love with this dude who's a pastor, who
turned out to be a wonderful guy. After I examined him, yes,
examined him with a stethoscope, asked him everything you could

(01:00:05):
think of in the world, and looking in his eye
like this, trying to see because I never wanted you
to ever be hurt again. What was amazing though, his wife,
who your bonus children that still have a relationship. Of course,
that's their mother, but she was in the church. I
come out to California, y'all to have dinner with my

(01:00:28):
daughter and her new husband and some of his relatives
and what have you. And my wife and I come
out there, and I didn't I didn't even realize who
the girl was until I look past her, and my
wife said to me, you know who that is, don't you, child?
And she told me, and I said, get out of here.

(01:00:50):
She's heaving his ex wife over at her house for dinner.
And you never made I think the world needs to here?
How did you do that? I mean, now she lives
out here in Dallas. You know she comes to church

(01:01:11):
from time to time. We've interacted, and so the ex
wife and the new wife get along with you, with
each other without pulling each other's hair out. And I
saw you put the work into that, and her put
the work into finding a way to make it work.
Talk to people who are going through the complications of

(01:01:33):
blended families, baby mama drama, ex wives, ex husbands. Very
few people navigate that kind of stuff very well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Well, you know, I have to say, I think it's
multi layered, and that her pet was very honoring in
their transition and their divorce, and so to my knowledge,
there wasn't any bitrill towards him. And so I mean,
obviously you're not married to someone that long and it's

(01:02:04):
just a happy separation, But there wasn't this deep sense
of betrayal and dishonoring, and so it was as amiable
bull as a divorce can be so complicated. But when
he and I got married, I think we wanted the
same things for the kids, and I didn't want to
bring my kids into a toxic situation, and I don't

(01:02:26):
think she wanted her kids in a toxic situation. I
don't think that she would have volunteered to go to
dinner to me. I wouldn't have volunteered to go to
dinner with her. But do we want Isaiah's homework turned in?
For sure? Do we want him on time for his
field trip? Absolutely? And you know, no slight to pt
like he's not necessarily in the nuts and bolts of
like what kind of snack does he need? And does
need a paper sacked lunch today, and so I was

(01:02:48):
communicating with him, like trying to get information as the
kids were coming over, and finally it's kind of like,
can I just talk to her directly? And we wanted
the same things for the kids, and then she was
like a like we laughed at the same thing, like girl,
this teacher get on our nerves, and we began to
build a rapport primarily because we wanted the same thing
for the kids. And so I think that if you're

(01:03:09):
blending a family, the first thing you have to do
is make sure that you and your partner have the
same goals and ideas for what successful family and parenting
looks like before you even include the external or ex partners.
It's like, do you and this person have the same
ideas about what family looks like, what marriage looks like.
When pt and I were first blending our family, I
didn't discipline his children. He did discipline line, we have

(01:03:32):
a little huddle. I don't think that's appropriate. I don't
think it's appropriate how to we handle it? And then
whoever had the closes or bond showed up for that child.
Until we got to know one another. We dated with
the children, so we would take the kids on group
dates so that they weren't just thrust into this family dynamic.
And so I think that those types of things lay
the foundation, but ultimately, the mutual desire to create a

(01:03:53):
safe haven for the children allowed us to blame the family.
And I think that it's difficult when people aren't at
a space yet where they aren't over the hurt, they
aren't over the separation. They still feel in some way
they were wrong, and so they want to hold the
partner accountable by how they show up in their relationship
with the children. And I think that there is a
level of healing and forgiveness release that you have to

(01:04:15):
have in order to preserve what's left for the children
and their childhood and future. And I think that we
were on the same page about that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
Yeah, that's very unusual. I mean one thing, I see
what you mean that the common bond was the welfare
of the children and what was best for them. That's
the way it's supposed to be. That's supposed to be
the primary goal. But that's also very very difficult because
there's insecurities. You know, who wants your ex wife or

(01:04:43):
ex husband hanging around? You know, if you had to
be very secure in your relationship with pt He had
to be very antegrist in his relationship with her. Very
seldom do you find these ideal situations. There's simple jealousies.
You got your arm around her. I don't want to

(01:05:03):
see you with your arm around her. You know, you
are kissing in the kitchen, back out of the kids.
There's all kinds of stuff that can go wrong, which
goes back to my original point. Just because something is
hard doesn't mean you throw it away, and you work
through it. And I watched you work through it with
grace and and be nice and fixed plates and and

(01:05:26):
do all of that kind of stuff. And I've watched
her act like you were cool, you know, And and
I think that's a There's something that that our world
needs to learn from that, not just marriages, but the country.
We we kill anybody who's different, we destroyed below. We've

(01:05:48):
got to be better than somebody else. We're we're losing
our sense. Pete preached the message recently the love of
many has waxed cold. That phrase just stays with me.
The love of many his wife's cold. You had to
have a warm love that enabled you to do that

(01:06:09):
where you put others above yourself. And I think when
you are narcissistic, you have a proclivity that says it's
about me, it's not about her. This is our house.
I don't want her in our house. This is our
dinner table. I don't want her around our table or
her saying I ain't coming in her house. I don't

(01:06:29):
want to sit around her table. You have to There
is no love without sacrifice. There is the cost of
love is sacrifice to some degree, not abuse. But you
have to give an inch to hope for a mile.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Do you agree totally? And that's not to say that
we didn't have challenges, because she and I talked about
this on my podcast, because, like I said, the kids
hold a cookie. She said she could a cookie in
the charge and fel you know what I mean, because
don't I don't hear how she said one that she tried,
and she's like, I'll never throw those cookies away. And
when our oldest daughter was getting married, she wanted her

(01:07:07):
dad and her mom to walk her down the aisle,
and I couldn't help when I was officiating with her
with my husband and so so pt and his ex
wife or her mom and dad are walking her down
the aisle, and I'm standing there as the officient and
I'm thinking to myself, you know, I'm sure that this
is what they dreamed of. Ye you know what I
mean when they first got married. No one gets married

(01:07:29):
to get divorced. They probably thought that they would have
this moment together. And so recognizing that I, you know,
our love and life has modified and altered that story,
it makes me compassionate as well. When we went dress
shopping for that same daughter, I took picture. I took

(01:07:50):
the picture of them together, and then she goes, no,
we want you in it too, And so I do
think that there's this level of empathy because I'm like,
no one's going dress shopping thinking that they're husband's new
wife is going to be with them. I'm cool, take
the picture right, And after I took the picture, She's like,
I want you in it. And so I do think
that she has the same compassion that I experienced in
the children I've seen firsthand from their mother. And I

(01:08:12):
respect that because the compassion of love I experienced from
her children has made my whole better.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
When you start talking about women in general, not just
this case here, how do you avoid being defensive?

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Well, I think context is that I used to I
haven't always been a girls girl because I felt like
women who were better than I was, who didn't have
the scars that I didn't have, who were more successful
than I was, thought that they were better than me,
and so I thought I beat them to the punch
and being judgmental and critical with them and so which
made me defensive with other women. So I see women

(01:08:48):
who aren't at a space where they're ready to support
and encourage other women as women who are still healing
because there's no way that you can really live in
the fullness of what it needs to be a woman,
the difficulty that comes with that, the beauty that comes
with it, the challenges, and look at another woman and
hate on her unless there's a party of you that
hates a bit of yourself, and so I don't take

(01:09:09):
it personally.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Wow, that's a staateno. You're gonna let that so cat
for her. In other words, it's you're reflecting. You're reflecting
the anger that you have toward her. You're reflecting. I
think that's also true with men. I've never seen a
man who beat his wife and loved himself. What is
chapter number seven ex husband cheating. I think there's some

(01:09:36):
kind of deflection where you substitute the anger and the
hostility of your own insecurities and failures and transpose it
onto the woman you're with. Or take the anger that
you had for your mother, yeah, and respected her too
much to execute it, and put it out on your wife.
And so there has to be a lot of introspection.

(01:09:58):
What would you say to women who think strength is anger?
You know, because this is the age where you know,
pop my neck. I'll tell you right now, you don't
come and you know, what would you say to women
who think strength is anger? And I suppose it would
also be true for men, because there are men who

(01:10:20):
are very, very angry.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
What's the answer I would say to a woman who
has learned that strength is anger, that anger is strength
rather is that I'm sorry. I would say, I'm sorry
that that was true for you, that the only way
that you could survive was to be angry, that you
couldn't afford to be emotional or vulnerable, that anger was

(01:10:45):
the only way that you could survive whatever you went through.
And then I would offer her a perspective that maybe
she doesn't have to be angry forever. That maybe the
anger was necessary for the moment you were in there then,
but that perhaps life has changed, and if life has changed,
maybe releasing anger so that you can experience what's available

(01:11:08):
in this moment maybe the most, maybe the strongest thing
you can do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
You know, I hate that you gave a better answer
than what I was gonna get you just a little
tiny it's busy bit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
The only reason why I said it that way is
because I used to love being angry. Oh I loved it.
I can feel her right now because it felt like,
you're not gonna get over on it. I won't do it,
I won't allow it. I will protect myself absolutely not.
I loved it. It was my way of saying absolutely not.

(01:11:46):
But then I got tired I feeling like I needed
to protect myself and putting myself in positions where I
had to pull from that. And I think having to
exercise the muscle of pulling from something different. Joy like
peace like courage requires you to let go your definition
of what it means to feel alive and to feel strong.

(01:12:08):
And so I have compassion for the woman who felt
like she always needs to be angry and angry with
strength because she's had to protect herself.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
I can't speak from a woman's point of view, but
from a man's point of view, anger often is the
only emotion that we are allowed to.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Feel, and that's it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Yeah, big boys don't cry, so we don't have a
full vocabulary to express emotional intelligence. For the most part,
there are exceptions to the rule. The other thing is anger.
Everything that affects us expresses as anger because anger is

(01:12:52):
a camouflage that hurt wears not to be seen, and
for men, a lot of times the anger is a
full strength. Okay, you're gonna respect me if you come
up in the ear, You're not coming up in mind
all that need to go there? What did you say?

(01:13:15):
You know, all of that stuff. I'm really afraid you're
gonna leave or nobody stays. But it's easier for me
to be mad about it rather than to admit to myself,
I miss you. Yeah, I'm sorry I said that, or
I did that. I'm sorry I let you down in
that way, not feeling reassured that my apology will be accepted.

(01:13:40):
Maybe because I'm a repeat offender, maybe because I have
not resolved the issues. It takes a long time to
grow up, and it's embarrassing to be forty and fifty
and still have eighteen year old, twenty year old problems.
It's embarrassing. So it's always nice to just get mad

(01:14:02):
and blow up and strow them out the house. But
it's camouflage, and no matter how much you wear camouflage
in the forest, you are still not a tree. And
so I would say to the men, you have to
be prepared to risk coming out from under your fig

(01:14:22):
leaves and sow the Bible was said, or coming out
of your camouflage and face your own hurt and insecurity
in order to begin to get well. You can't heal
if you can't admit what it is that you are feeling. Okay,
if I go to the doctor and now tell him
my toe is hurting, but I really got a toothache,
and he puts some Mecure calm on my toe, and

(01:14:45):
I go out with my face swollen and throbbing, it's
not that I had a bad doctor. I never would
admit where the pain was really coming from. And we
have to be introspective enough to get down and where
the pain is really coming from. So from a male perspective,
that's my answer. I just thought, better, were you ever

(01:15:08):
almost arrested, you know, and had to go to the
CPS office to keep your kids? Tell the story?

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Okay, what we talking about? An that's a great segue
coming off of anger, Bishop, you know, anger is exactly
what I was feeling. I was in my first marriage
and there was a We were having dinner and I
looked out the window and I saw my husband at
the time, this car was running, which I thought was strange.

(01:15:37):
And he was upstairs and was like, I'm must sneak
outside the house and see what was why to his
car running. I think I knew that there was someone
in a car. And when I got there, there was
a woman in a car, and I was like, what
are you doing with my husband? And she told me
we're kicking And I thought, you know what else likes
to kick it? Me? I too like to kick it.
So I got in my car and I went forward

(01:15:59):
and reverse, Oh, we're in over again into the car
while she was in it, and he came outside, hearing
the clamor and thinking to himself, what in the world
could be happening here? And he called the police.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
Uncle.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
And when he called the police on me, mind you
I'm living in Virginia, so there's an element of isolation.
It's not like I could just I think if I
were living anywhere else, I probably would have grabbed the kids.
I'm going to my parents' house, but I'm there by myself,
and I don't have anywhere else that I can go there.
I had this one friend like, I'm not going to
go to her house and build the night me and

(01:16:33):
my kids. So I'm there essentially on my own, and
they called the police on me, and the officer came
up to me, and the car is still there because
I blocked them in from the ram and get over
and over again because what seems to be the problem here, ma'am,
And I go, well, my husband brought his girlfriend to
our house and I had a problem with that. And
he goes, Okay, I'm gonna talk to them. And he

(01:16:55):
talked to them, and he came back to me and
he like, listen, I don't know what's going on here,
but I'm not gonna give you a ticket. I'm not
gonna arrest you, but I am going to have to
write you up because you've got kids in the house.
And because you have kids in the house, they're going
to have to do a welfare check for you and
the children. And so he drove off with her, literally
stayed the night with her. Left the next day to

(01:17:17):
go to work, and I packed up the kids and
I went home because I knew I was on my
way to person that I couldn't afford to keep getting
hungry like that without risking sman had some serious time
in prison or losing my children.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
Where I got that rage from. No, I'm not sure
what the next question is, but throw that out there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Tell them, yes, I know, I haven't looked at it myself.
To pull up my camera. Yeah I can. I can
get with you if I have to. But I'm a Swiss.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Subject, Lory.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Let's talk chapter number eight, finding pardon. This is testing.
I'm a boomer asking you about a generation of music
that I might mess up. Have you heard of this
singer named Sierra Sierra's Prayer?

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
What the what?

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
What do you want to know about?

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Fears?

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Prayer?

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
See, you don't give me no credit. I'm still here,
you know, I'm I'm still here. What prayer do you
believe women should say? Women looking for a make what
should they be praying.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
I don't subscribe to that, because that was before I
make things really jacked my.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Life because we just got talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
You know, and I do think that we have an
opportunity to show women that their value is beyond the
role that they have in partnership. I mean said that
I have an incredible husband and I love him tremendously.
I did not pray for a man. I did not
pray for another marriage. I prayed and said that God
would search my heart, that God would reveal to me

(01:19:17):
the areas in my life that he wanted to heal
and develop, and that I would qualify every person that
came into my life as a part of that either
I was being a part of their healing and development
or they were going to be a part of mine.
And anyone who would take away from that health, that
God would highlight them and give me the strength to
walk away from them. And so when I met Terrey,

(01:19:39):
I was met with the dilemma because though I was
completely satisfied in my relationship with my children and my
relationship with God and my life here in Dallas I
bought my house, I'd lived there over a year, there
was a part of me that knew that he was
a part of God's next health for your life.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
And you came and told me you were moving.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
The golf Yeah, because I was finally.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was. That was that was.
I can still remember standing in the door watching your
car pull off. That's that's what I mean about attachments
and allowing learning to allow your children to have their

(01:20:25):
own life and family, rather than to say I didn't
lose a daughter, I gained the son. That sounds nice,
but in reality, for this cause she a man leave
his mother and father take them to him a wife,
They become one flesh and you're building family. So sometimes
we're having Thanksgiving dinner and you're cooking Thanksgiving dinner. And
letting that family have its own identity and develop its

(01:20:49):
own culture comes with maturity that all roads don't lead
to your house all the time, and being able to
come to your house for Thanksgiving dinner. You know, that's
a transition for people who are used to being in control.
I'm not talking about it, not not talking about anybody

(01:21:10):
I know. But I heard I got a friend of
mine allegedly. Yeah yeah, but but but freedom, love without
freedom isn't really love, And and you have to let
people go so that they can be their highest and
best self. I have to say this to you before

(01:21:31):
we cut off you. You seem to have sustained, You
have celebrated your tenth year, tenth year of marriage. If
you argue, I never heard it. If you fight, I've
never seen it. Uh. We call pet kumba, y'all. But
there's another there. The other is out there.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
What what would you say is the secret? In a
time where people divorce in three years and four years?
What have you learned about life that keeps you coming
home and keeps him coming home every night?

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
That who I married ten honest, eleven years ago is
both who I'm married to now and not. And I
think that when I got married the second time, that
I wasn't expecting to settle it to someone. I was

(01:22:34):
choosing who I wanted to grow up with. And I
feel like when you intermarriage with the perspective that this
person's going to change and I'm going to change. The
question is can be changed together and still feel at
our core connected to one another? And so I think
that above all we have a friendship. When we do

(01:22:56):
get ready to fuss or you know, have a disagreement,
like hill coming there, and I just be like, he
looks at me a certain way, I look at him
a certain way. He's like, you know, he was tripping right,
And I'm like, yeah, whatever, you know what I mean,
Like we can have that type of dialogue. I can
tell him, I can introduce myself to him. I can
say that I feel like I'm changing, I don't feel

(01:23:19):
like myself and he listens and he responds to that.
So I think friendship. I think being willing to introduce
yourself over and over again to one another. I ask
you change and to be willing to accept that. I'm
not in control of his journey. I'm just here to
support it. And so I would say, if I had
to like ask anyone or to prepare anyone for marriage,

(01:23:41):
I would say, can you marry this person right now
as they are, without anything changing, and feel like you
can spend the rest of your life with them? And
if you can say that, that's a big step because
a lot of times are like yeah, I want them
to anyone who knows that, it's like, don't get married
because you're accounting one those things growing and changing and developing.
And then now, but if you can marry this person

(01:24:02):
is as is starting. Then the second thing is can
you be flexible enough for when they change in either
direction towards growth and sometimes towards deterioration, and can you
be in attention of that? But I think the foundation
of friendship and acceptance helps you to have flexibility, as

(01:24:22):
like ships you from seasons.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
I agree with that. I also think that sometimes you
marry your opposite because they're different from you, and you
date and you say, you know, he was born in
September and my mother was born in September, and both
of us are birthdays are on the fifteenth, and they
came we came from the same state, we went to

(01:24:46):
same school, Da da da da da da. But yet
you end up marrying somebody whose personality fills the gap
in yours. They're courageous where you are vulnerable. They are
vulnerable where you are correc ages. And then after you
learn all of that about them, then you start trying
to change them, like somebody buying a fixer up house.

(01:25:08):
And if you don't see your role as fixing the
other person, but accepting the other person you know and
drawing joy, it's like your mother fixing the house. Up
for Christmas. You know, if I was single, there would
not be a bulb on the coffee table. Okay, nothing

(01:25:34):
that I got to take down again. However, I enjoy
her enjoying it and found out that's important to her,
and that gives her something that I can appreciate because
it brings her joy, you know, and she enjoys what
I enjoy because she understands that I'm not like her.

(01:25:57):
I don't like isolation. I'm not an introvert, though I'm
becoming watched you get, you start, you start becoming like
each other, and it changes everything. I've spent the last
hour or so bantering, talking, sharing with you, sitting here,

(01:26:21):
thinking what it's going to be like when you're sitting
here and kinsey Ella or sitting over there. I hope
it's as wonderful of an experience as it is for
me to stand here, to sit here, to look into

(01:26:42):
the daughters dies with my daughter and talk to you
and be so proud of what you have become.

Speaker 2 (01:26:50):
Well, that's scruts. I think that I feel face.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
You feel things, don't camouflag. Yeah, yeah, no, that's very
very true. I'm in awe of all the things you
may you manage simultaneously. I'm in awe in how you
self correct. I'm in awe of how you are willing
to take on new tasks and willing to be wrong

(01:27:19):
and willing to get it right, and willing to do
it over, and willing to give a part of yourself
to the world, knowing that in so doing, your giving
a part of yourself to people who don't always appreciate
the gift that you gave. And yet you keep on giving.
That compassion and that ability to give is a God

(01:27:43):
gift to continue to give and not expect anything in return,
but get back up there and do it again, especially
when it's not your nature to be up there in
the first place. And I know that, and you know
that the people who watch don't know that. Chapter number nine,

(01:28:06):
gender roles evidently reached. An article came out with holler
Berry talking about her husband saying that he didn't want
to be in a relationship because of the gender roles
had become blurred. Are gender roles still appropriate? Do they still?

(01:28:27):
Do they still exist? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
You know, because I grew up watching you cook and
mom says she hates cooking, I think that I've always
had this perspective that the roles aren't as rigid. But
I do think that as we even see some emotional
flexibility within men, that we are seeing stell of flexibility
and what it will to show up as a man

(01:28:51):
and a woman in different relationships, with women sometimes being
higher earning than their male counterparts. It has had to
make us kind of get out of this mentality of
what it means to be a land or what it
means to be a woman. I think that there's a
space for every expression a gluer person is, and I
think that it's a good thing that we're seeing gender

(01:29:12):
roles be challenged and limits it so that we can
determine what is authentic to who we are versus what
is this trying to fit into someone's box? And where
do we have space to maybe want to learn and
where do we want to stay the same.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
The very fact that we call it rolls implies acting, yeah,
you know, And I think that we need to start
not with the gender, but with the acting yeah right,
and not have a prescripted understanding of what Just because
I'm a man doesn't mean that I may pay bills well,
or that I make the most money, or that I

(01:29:46):
can't cook, or that I can't sol. Just because you're
a woman doesn't mean that you make the best biscuits.
So letting people do what they're best at doing, it's
not a role. It's letting me be me, you know,
and then fitting our marital construct around our strengths, and

(01:30:09):
let whoever, if you exceed at making money and I
exceed at raising the kids, that that's okay. There's still
a room for both of us at the table or
vice versa. We tried to do what we do best.
I went out and earned the living. I always was
the breadwinner. But your mother sat down and paid the bills.

(01:30:32):
I had to sit down and pay the bills. Nobody
would ever get paid. You know. I had the money
sitting up in the bank account. She's good at that.
She doesn't mind that, and she'll trace down every little penny.
I'm more prepared to be the provider, but not the distributor.
And I think part of the mystery of marriage is
figuring out who's really good at what they're doing and

(01:30:56):
who gets fulfillment out of doing what they're doing, and
then do that rather than prescripting a role. And I
think this is what happens in a lot of marriages
because in my day, women played with all houses and
they had an idea of what the husband should be.

(01:31:17):
And they're looking for a guy to play a role
that he's never read the script. Let me meet me,
not let me try out for a role in a
play that you've already evaluated, and you throw me away
because I did an audition. Well meet me, love me,

(01:31:38):
except me, and as long as I am a contributing
factor and not a deterren in your life, then let's
craft what works best for us and keep everybody else
in laws and neighbors out of our business because the
marriage is personal. That was one of the best so

(01:32:00):
I got when I was getting ready to get married
to your mother's that marriage is personal and it's not
a one size fits all and you don't have to
live up to anybody else's expectation. Chapter number ten, Women Evolved.
So tell me this. I've seen women that are loose

(01:32:23):
merge into woman evolved. Woman evolved was already gone. When
women are loose was out there. I didn't want to
be on one end of the country. Holler and women
and are loosing you on the other end of the country.
Hollow and women evolved, and I felt like, you're a woman,
so I can turn that over to you. Now they
fuse together and become one entity. What is your vision

(01:32:45):
for Woman evolved?

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
You know what's interesting? So we had Woman Evolve after
the Transition and Globe Life Field where for two years
in a row we saw basically forty thousandeen and we
had to downsize because that stadium wasn't available for twenty
twenty five. And in downsizing, we actually moved over into
an overflow section at Georgia World Conference Center and so

(01:33:11):
we had twenty thousand and State parm Arena. But then
we had this overflow expo experience, and it taught me
a valuable lesson about what growth looks like because the
average person may say, hey, we had to down size,
we're loosing ground. But in downsizing, it allowed me an
opportunity to drain that space that Georgia World POWERCRIS Center
showed me that there is an untapped potential as it

(01:33:33):
relates to the Woman evolved experiential opportunity. And so it's
shaped how I dreamed in totality about Women Evolved. What
does it look like to tell this story in many
different facets, not just with live events, but how do
we tell the stories of women who are struggling to evolve?
How do we tell the woman of the story of
women who've made it to the other side. And so

(01:33:56):
I do think in many ways that I'm looking our
motto is no Woman Left Behind is looking for the
woman who has been left behind and creating connection points
through content, experiences, social media that allows her to feel seen, loved,
and then space to grow and evolve. And so I'm
dreaming a different dream about our experiences, but also about

(01:34:17):
our overall imprint as it relates to media and gerald
is there ever, do.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):
You foresee a time that you would ever have multiple locations,
even on multiple continents for sure? Joy, Yes, that's good.
That's what I thought too. We heard some horrible stats recently.
Over three hundred thousand Black women have left the workforce.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Lost their jouals, left Chist the Hervey Waters, Tennis.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
Some of them pushed out, most of them pushed out forestyle,
most many of them are breadwinners. Those of them that
were not primary breadwinners contributed to the world alfare of
their family. So while we look at that three hundred thousand,
which is a huge number. It affects hundreds of thousands
more people who are affected by that sort of thing.

(01:35:12):
How can we continue to empower women economically who are
dealing with the adversity of the time said we're living
in now.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
You know what's funny is, before we had that stat
about black women leaving the workforce, we had statistics about
black women and education and black women in entrepreneurship, almost
as if there was some type of preparation in advance
for this downfall. I think that now more than ever,
that we have an opportunity to take care of one another. Historically,

(01:35:40):
black women have taken care of not just themselves, but
other people and their communities. And I think those who
are in positions of power, those who have been educated,
now have no choice but to figure out how do
I again try and figure things out for my community.
But this time I'm hoping that we're able to do
it with this sense of collaboration and with the tools

(01:36:04):
and resources that were afforded to us before this transition.
I want to believe that the pendulum will swing it
for as we know that history has this you know,
cyclical nature. But I think in the meantime that We
have to encourage one another to take care of one another,
and that means not waiting for someone to say what

(01:36:24):
they need, but being curious about our sisters. If I
was in her situation and I still had a job,
If I were in her situation, I was raising these children,
what would I need and how can I take care
of her? We're going to have to be proactive and
taking care of one another and so on, get to
one another's dreams.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Chapter eleven. Celebrities are people too. You know you at
one LA when you were out there pastoring with being
the first lady for Pastor Torrey, you had like ten
and O's come to your church on a regular basis.

(01:37:03):
You're right in the middle of Hollywood, so their brandy
would come by. Different people would come by your church,
Kelly Roland and many others. Uh, how did that affect you?
And how do you think you've affected them?

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
I think, if anything, it helped me to see that
people are people, no matter how big and fancy their
names and titles are, that we all need the same Jesus,
that this world is hard on each of us in
different ways and with capacities. And I think that hopefully
we created a space where you know, we didn't do like,

(01:37:47):
oh here's the i P seeding and your b ip entrance.
They just came in, sat down, got what they needed,
and left. And so I think in normalizing their place
of encounter that hopefully it made them feel like there's
a safe space to just be human. And I think
for me, it's a reminder to never be measurerized by

(01:38:08):
who a person is, to forget that God may be
giving you something that that person needs to balance those
skills well, so you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
Weren't intimidated about who they were. You dealt with the
person here that because you and I talked earlier about
understanding the difference between what you do on stage and
who you are and losing normalcy. A lot of people
that don't see famous people as normal people, and they
take pot shots at them easily because they get to

(01:38:39):
have an other look at those other people, and they
demonize and criticize what often they are praying to be,
and they need a place to go and to counsel
and to get healed and to get restored and to
get encouragement even if it's not perfect, Even if they're

(01:39:00):
not perfect. The other people in the pews aren't perfect either,
you know, but finding a way. We can't have people
that are untouchable because we're more concerned about our brand
than we are the welfare of people. You have to
be willing to get your hands in the dirt. The
first thing we see about God is that he got

(01:39:22):
his hands dirty. And when Jesus comes with the woman
called and adultery, he got his hands dirt. And you've
got to be willing to get your hands dirty and
have people walk away from you. And you've done that,
and I think it's an exciting thing. Chapter number twelve,
acceptance and ridiction have other women preachers received?

Speaker 2 (01:39:48):
Initially, I feel like they didn't really understand if I
was a woman preacher or not wish to be Friday neither,
so we were all in the same body. Sh I
don't know, because I'm not as traditional as some of
the preachers who I grew up listening to are, but

(01:40:08):
I'm not as laid back as something together, So I
don't think they really knew what to do with me.
But there have been some really incredible veterans and women's
ministry that have loved on me and taking care of me.
Marissa Ferro and that I was blogging when Marissa Fara
was preaching. She's been an incredible just I do think

(01:40:33):
that there's a generation of just like I would call
us up and coming women preachers that are building bonds
and connections. But I think initially everyone's trying to find
their footing, and no one really knew what to do
with me, and I didn't know what to do with myself,
and so it's settling. It's settling now good.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
That's a good thing because having a circle of people
who get you, it doesn't have to be a big
circle Jesus said Peter, James and John, but a circle
whose right or die. It's very, very valuable.

Speaker 4 (01:41:13):
Because this is s hard, you know, I want to
fix and because you mentioned it and because I said
it as well, I think it's worth exploring.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
Not here, but I think as a part of just
my process and relationship with God is the expecting rejection.
I don't think that's good. I want to fix that
because I do think it changes and shapes the way
I show up in ministry and perhaps in the world,

(01:41:46):
and what I expect or don't want from people. And
I don't want to live my life expecting rejection. But
I don't want to need acceptance, but I do think
to expect differently. It's something that I want to focus
on in my next chapter, Like how do I chose

(01:42:06):
this expectation?

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
Not for nothing? We stepped into the Potter's house as
Colas and your pastors after the Bush of Joey's, and
there's an element of expecting rejection there and it haunts me,
this idea of your going to be rejected from pregnancy
to now. And I feel like, for this next chapter

(01:42:29):
in my life, I want to shed the skin of
expecting rejection. But I don't know what I'm going to
put on instead.

Speaker 1 (01:42:36):
No, I don't know if this is an answer or not.
But Joe Noah after the flood got drunk.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
Yeah, so what are you saying?

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
Okay, all right?

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
In the process of getting drunk, one son in somewhere
or another with the scholars debate about it took advantage
of him, but nobody talks about the sons that covered him.

Speaker 2 (01:43:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:12):
And I think you stop worrying about rejection when you
have a circle of people around you that insulate you
and not condoning wrong doing or anything like that, but
insulate you and our ride or die. As we will say,

(01:43:33):
they become a blanket. Now the same guy who covered them,
that brought them through the flood, they got reciprocity that
if whatever you want, you give. If you want love,
you give love. If you want to smile, you give
a smile. And I think it comes back to you.
It's an investment. It takes time. You're on the arc together,

(01:43:57):
you know, but but it comes back to you. And
it doesn't always come back to you from every son
or every person, but it comes back to you in
enough quantity that we don't read about Lord getting drunk again.
And I think if you benefit, if you will allow

(01:44:17):
the people in who have the blanket, it will somehow
balance out the people who seek to defil you somewhere. Surely, well,
you have been listening to my next chapter, our next chapter.
What about your next chapter? How are you navigating that chapter?
And hopefully something that we said or did today in

(01:44:40):
some way has helped you to navigate some sensitive situation
relationship on the job, in the home, and the marriage
and with the ex wife, with the ex husband, or
just navigate your own emotions. The one thing that's wonderful,
Grace allows us to have a next chapter. Not everybody
gets to have one. Somebody's book just closed, yours has not.

(01:45:06):
You have the pen write your next sector. I'm TV
Jakes and I'm glad to have an opportunity to be
your host and to have my wonderful guests, my daughter
Sarah Jakes Roberts. Hey everybody, I want to take this
time to thank you for watching the Next Chapter podcast.

(01:45:29):
If this conversation inspired you, helped you reflect on an idea,
or spark something new inside of you, make sure to like, comment,
and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life
isn't about how you begin, It's about how you finished strong.

(01:45:51):
So start your next chapter with us right here every
week

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Sarah Jakes Roberts on Father-Daughter Dynamic, Teen Pregnancy & Fame | NXT Chapter With T.D. Jakes

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sarah Jakes Roberts on Father-Daughter Dynamic, Teen Pregnancy & Fame | NXT Chapter With T.D. Jakes