Healing ELDEST DAUGHTER wounds | Forgiving your family and stepping into your role

The role of the eldest sibling is often rife with high expectations, great responsibility and sometimes a little trauma. Now imagine being the eldest DAUGHTER. It's a unique experience that may come with many wounds that we try to escape from, and heal on our own. It is only after experiencing that nothing heals you like Jesus, that you can forgive and finally step into your God ordained role as the leader in your family that He has created you to be. Don't let the enemy trick you out of your spot! 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, you guys, welcome back to the Amani Talks podcast.
You're here with your host Amani on the podcast where
we discuss our Christian based topics and deepening.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Our relationship with the Lord.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
So we took the summer off after our Proverba Day
series back in July. You guys, I have been traveling
so much this summer. I've been pretty much gone every
single weekend. So I was like, you know what, after
the proverb today, let's go ahead and take a little sabbatical.
Let me travel, get all my traveling out for this summer.
Today is September twenty second that I'm recording. On the

(00:32):
first day of fall, I was like, Okay, when fall starts,
we're going to get back on our regularly scheduled programming
for the podcast. So we are back. I missed you
guys so much. To be honest with you, I have
really missed recording. But sometimes you need that breather. I
don't ever want to just record just for the consistency's sake.
I took a little bit of time off and now
we are back with the podcast, and I am just

(00:54):
so glad to be recording again.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So, like I said, I've been traveling a lot, and
I actually just in fresh off of a trip going
and see my family. You know, I'm wearing my New
York sweatshirt. My mom just got this for me. So yeah,
I went to go see my family back in New York.
I literally just got back today, like I left Friday,
just got back today, and I was like, I'm recording
a podcast episode tonight. I was actually just recently having

(01:19):
a conversation with a friend of mine and they were like,
you know, you've been going back home and see your
family pretty often, you know, And I was like, yeah,
like you're right, because when I first moved to Atlanta
that was not the case. I was not seeing my
family often whatsoever. I mean, I went years without going
back home, and shoot, there were a lot of times

(01:40):
I wouldn't even talk to my family. I wasn't going
back home at first for years. And then I was
going home because my mom was like, you need to
at least come home for Christmas, like come on now,
and I would be like counting down the hours until
I was able to get back to Atlanta. And now
the past couple of years, I've been going and really
enjoying myself and it just made me really realize that

(02:01):
I'm really healing from what I call eldest daughter trauma
or like eldest daughter resentment that only eldest daughters have
lived through and recognized. During this trip, you know, some
things happened, you know, while I was there, and I
had a conversation with my mom about just how hard

(02:22):
it is to be.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
The eldest daughter.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
And I was just kind of like, I'm over it,
like I don't want the responsibility of having this eldest
daughter position in our family. And my mom was basically,
just like, listen, it's not a coincidence that you're the
eldest daughter.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
This is a god.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Ordained position in your family, and you just need to
rise to the occasion because there are no coincidences or
accidents with the fact that you are gonna be a
matriarch in his family very soon, the same position that
my mom is in. This is a converse that we
just had yesterday, y'all, and it just made me want

(03:04):
to come on here and talk about something that I
haven't really opened up about with you guys at all.
I think you guys know I'm from New York and
I always talk about how I packed up my two
door hooptie and I moved to Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And you know, that was about eight years ago.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
It'll be eight years actually, I think it's like literally,
it'll be eight years tomorrow on the twenty third.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Wow. Crazy.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
But basically, I've never really given you, guys, like the
true tea about why I left New York. Whenever people
ask me, I always say the same things, which and
these things are true, but it's not the whole truth.
I always tell people, you know, I came to Atlanta
for the weather and the black people and the opportunities.
My mother's mom moved to not Atlanta, but moved to Georgia,

(03:52):
like the suburbs of Georgia when I was about in
middle school, and so we would always come and visit her,
and I would just be like in awe of just
seeing black people everywhere, because that's not the case in
upstate New York.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Like you, that's not the dynamic, and just saying that
there was just more to do.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
When I was sick of the snow all this stuff,
so I was kind of like, when I'm done with school,
I'm going to move to Atlanta. And that's what I did,
and that's what I tell people, but there is a big,
a huge reason besides those reasons as to why I
left my family home and came here. And that's what
we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk

(04:29):
about how the enemy attacks the eldest daughter with eldest
daughter resentment. We're going to talk about the ways that
I am handling it, the way that I'm still healing
from it, how the Lord has really ushered me into
a season of forgiveness, releasing resentment, and stepping up to
the god given role of the eldest daughter that he

(04:51):
has given me, and how you can do those things too,
because I know that there are so many conversations out
there that talk about eldest dynamics, especially in broken families
and especially when it's a lot of siblings, which is
definitely my situation. And I want to give you the
true perspective of healing from any emotional trauma. And I

(05:14):
don't you know, for me, it wasn't so much emotional trauma,
you know, that's that sounds so like dramatic to me,
But there was definitely a lot of resentment, letting go
of resentment, forgiving and stepping into the role that the
Lord has for you as the eldest daughter. Let's get
into it. So to start off this episode, we have
to go way back to the beginning, way way way
back to really give you guys a good glimpse of

(05:37):
what my family was like. That even led me to
having so much resentment that I felt like I had
to move across the country from my family house.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
So off the bat. My parents had me very young.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
They were teenagers when they had me, and both my
mom and my father married other people, So off the rip.
I don't have Okay, so I have ten siblings, you guys,
And this is not even including step siblings. These are
just like my biological half siblings.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
You might look at that and say, what, like ten siblings,
Like that's crazy, But these are coming from separate household y'all.
Like my mom had three kids, my dad had the rest.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
So off rip.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
I'm born into a situation that is designed to see
me fail, is designed to set me back, because you
cannot deny that a family that has a healthy, dynamic
kind of has similar things in common. There's this famous
novel called In a Kareninmum and it's famous for the
story but also the opening few sentences of that novel

(06:39):
are famous and just summarizing it. Of course I haven't
memorized it, but the sentiment of the first opening sentences
of this.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Novel are as such.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
All good families have certain characteristics or traits in common,
but all families that you would characterize as bad, they're
all bad in their.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Own unique way.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
And that's the same that when you see a healthy
family dynamic, most likely you will see these things. A
mother and a father who are married and love each other.
A household devoid of abuse for the most part, visible abuse.
Children that have siblings and they are products of.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Their mom and their dad. They're in one.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Household, good communication, love, respect, most likely a foundation rooted
in the Lord.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
These are the things that you can look at any
family that you would say this is an objectively good
and healthy family, Like when you look at I think
a good example is Seer and Russell's family. You look
at that family and you can say, yes, these are
hallmarks of a good family. This is what most good
families look like. But when your family is dysfunctional, a
lot of the times you're dysfunctional in different ways. And

(07:49):
my family was dysfunctional with the fact that broken homes
were what a lot of us were born into into
my family and were low key the norm. Because it's
not me that was born into a broken home to
teenage parents.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
My mother also was.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
And this is just a good testament of how sin
because having children outside of wedlock, having sex before marriage
is one hundred percent of sin. You cannot contest that.
This is a good example of how sin is generational.
And a good example that we see in the Bible
of sin being generational is Abraham when the Lord told

(08:26):
Abraham to leave his family and go to an unknown land,
and their travels, him and his wife they come to Egypt,
and Abraham is like, listen, these people are not God fearing.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
You are a beautiful woman.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
They're gonna try to take you for their wife, and
they're gonna kill me as a result. Please tell these
people that you're my sister so that they will deal
with me kindly. Now here's the thing about that story.
It's not necessarily false because Sarah was his half sister.
You know, back in them days, you know, they used
the mirror their family. Sarah was actually his half sister.
But he was weaponizing the truth for a falsehood because

(09:00):
that's not just his sister, that's his wife, and he
told her to omit the truth, which is lying, so
that people would deal with him rightfully. And I look
at that story and I'm just kind of like, bruh,
you really put your wife in danger of someone trying
to sleep with her, trying to take her from you,
just because you didn't want to get dealt with. I
swear there are so many men in the Bible who

(09:20):
showed their cowardice. That's a whole different situation, that's a
whole different story.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
But anyway, he did that right. He one hundred percent sin.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
And we don't see the direct ramifications of that sin
because Genesis is not one of those books that has
like the cause and effect and how the Lord responded.
Genesis is really like a historical text. In the first
like ten chapters, you get a lot of history, like
it's really just telling you what happened back in those days.

(09:51):
So we don't see directly how the Lord dealt with
that sin when Abraham told his wife to lie and
put her in danger. We know that the Lord rest
thank Sarah. We know that they got out of that situation,
but the Lord does not overlook sin, and because Abraham
did that and it seems as though that was not

(10:12):
something that he was really repentant of, his son ended
up doing the same exact thing. In Genesis chapter twenty six,
we see Isaac, Abraham and Sarah's son, telling his wife
Rebecca when they were traveling, don't tell these men that
you're my wife, because you're so beautiful that they're going
to try to kill me and take you. Tell them
that you're my sister. The same exact lie, y'all, that's

(10:37):
not a coincidence. That's a very specific lie. Like I
don't know if that was something that men did commonly
when they were traveling to ensure their safety, but that's
so specific that that cannot be a coincidence. Just like
there are no coincidences with the Lord, there are no
coincidences with sin. It's not a coincidence that Isaac told

(10:57):
the same lie with his wife that could potentially have
put her in danger that his father did. Sin being
passed down, and just like that was not a coincidence
that sin being passed down from father to son, it's
also not a coincidence that me being born the eldest
daughter into an automatically broken family with several other siblings

(11:18):
that got passed down to me from my mother and
from her mother. My mother had me when she was
a teenager. Her mother had her when she was a teenager.
My mom is also the eldest daughter. My mom also
has many siblings from different households.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
I have ten siblings. I think my mom has eight
or nine.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I think it's eight. That's not a coincidence, y'all. And
there are two sides to this coin, right. One perspective
is that this is a generational sin, and we know
that unless you submit to the Lord and these generational
sins are broken with the blood of Jesus, they will
just continue to repeat.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's why I've.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Always been so big and so vocal on speaking up
about generational broken homeness within the Black family, because you
have to recognize it first and be able to submit
yourself and submit that sin to the Lord to be
able to break that contract with the devil. When you
are willfully sinning like that, when you sign that contract

(12:20):
of sin, the Lord or the devil sorry comes to
reap the benefits of that contract with you with the
next generation or the generation after that.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
The only thing that.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Breaks the covenant that you come into when you willfully
sin is the blood of Jesus Christ and repentance. But
thank God that my mom was the person in her
family to break that generational curse, because that could have
been mean next. That could have been me after my
grandmother had my mom at sixteen, after my mom had
me as a teenager, that could have been mean Next.

(12:53):
I could have been the next eldest daughter to have
a teenage pregnancy and create another divided home. My mom
broke that generational curse by receiving salvation, submitting herself to
the Lord, and making sure that her kids don't have
to fall to the same thing that her mother fell to,

(13:13):
and she fell to. My mom was the person that
did that. I mean, it was the Lord, you know,
it was the Lord. But my mom is the one
who lived through that. And that's the other side of
this coin, because it's very easy from the outside looking
in to say, yes, that is dysfunction. That is the
definition of dysfunction. Your family has been doing the same

(13:35):
thing generation through generation.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
That is dysfunctional.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
It is wrong, it is sinful, and it is off
rip setting your children up for failure. My mom broke
that curse through living through the Lord. And now the
other side of that coin is because she's the eldest
daughter of a broken family with eight siblings. Now she
gets to teach me the correct way to live my
life as the eldest daughter to a broken home with

(14:00):
ten siblings, because I look at the way that my
mom lives her life, and by the way, she's the
only one in her sibling group, within her siblings to
be a saved Christian doing Kingdom work. And now I'm
not talking bad about my family. I love my family,
my aunts and my uncle's you know, my mom's siblings.
My mom had me young, so I grew up with
her siblings like they were my cousins, like they were

(14:21):
my sisters. You know, we darn near grew up like
like this, very close in age. Love them, but they're
not doing what my mom is doing, not even close.
My mom is the one who sets up family Bible
studies every Friday night on a zoom call so that
we as a family can all come together on a
Friday night when you could be out drinking. You're in
a textbook, You're in the word. Right now, we're going

(14:43):
through the story of Abigail living with difficult people in
your life. My mom chose this book for our Bible studies.
She's been leading it for the past five years. Who
else is doing that in our family? Nobody, Nobody is
doing that. It was my mom who got saved and
made sure that I grew up in church so that
I could receive salvation as a kid. A lot of
people get in my comments section. They'd be like, I'm
not listening to you. You just became a Christian two

(15:04):
minutes ago. Actually shut up, because you're wrong. And I've
said that plenty of times. My mom got me into
church when I was younger. I had a rebellious period
for years, but that did not make it so that
the Lord was not my father. We rebel against our
parents all the time. That don't make them not our
parents no more. Yet I rebelled, and I'm coming back
to it right now because of what my mom did
when she got me into church.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
My mom did that work. My mom broke generational.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Curses and see outside looking again, Like I said, this
could be looked at as this function that these patterns
got repeated. But I know for a fact that it's
not a coincidence that my mom and I have almost
the same life because he set my mom up to
save her in order to save me, so that I

(15:50):
can step into the role that the Lord has for
me as the eldest daughter. See, because what the devil
means for your destruction, growing up in a broken family,
being a teenage parent, things that easily break other people.
What the devil means for your destruction, the Lord can
always turn it around for your good, because we know

(16:10):
that all things come together for the good of those
who love Him and who are called according to his purpose,
according to his purpose.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
And my mother was called. So that's my background, y'all.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
I know that was a lot of information, but it's
pertinent to this conversation about eldest daughter, wound's resentment, forgiveness,
all of that, because me being thirty, I can look
back on my life and I can clearly see how
the Lord has moved is still moving, and hindsight, of
course is twenty twenty. But when you're living in it,

(16:40):
and I'm not even going to act like I'm totally
on the other side of this this these are still
things that I'm still healing from, and we can heal
together through these conversations I'm not even completely on the
other side. I'm still going through it. But right now
I can look back and say, yes, this is what
I learned. But going through it was a whole different situation,
and I want to talk about the ways that I

(17:02):
handled it, how those ways were ineffective, and how I
am releasing it to the Lord now and how it's
being handled now.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
So, because my mom.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Grew up in a situation that could be seen as dysfunctional,
when she had me in an attempt to break those
generational sins, those generational curses, you know, she did handle
me a lot differently than her mom handled her. She
was a lot more strict with me. I'm not going
to speak to how she handled my siblings. I can
only speak to my experience with my mom. She was
very strict, even to the point to, you know, our

(17:34):
whole family really recognized and you know, the whole thing was,
you know, NICKI don't play. My mom's name is Nicole, Nikki,
don't play. You know, NICKI really strict with them kids,
you know, And it was almost like a negative in
our family that my mom was very strict, Like that's
how they would talk about it in a negative way.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
And living through it. I definitely felt like it was
a negative.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
You know, you get to see your cousins and other
people kind of really living their lives and doing things,
and they invite you out, and you can't go because
your mom always saying no.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
You know, it was very strict that over here.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Like it just was because that was my mom's way
of handling things in an attempt to be like, you're
not gonna grow up the way that I grew up.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
You're gonna, you know, grow up differently.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
And it was so strict, and I felt so like suffocated,
Like I felt like my mom's house was jail Like
That's just the way that it felt, especially in comparison
to my father's house.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know, I would go over there on.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
The weekends and my dad wasn't like, oh, a free
for all, but it was just totally different.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Y'a.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Also just having that experience of my dad's house being
a little bit more free my mom's house being so strict,
you know, like I said, I'm.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Not able to do what other people are able to do.
I was just sick of it, you guys.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
But there was also a lot of spiritual immaturity in
me as well, because you know, during this time, you know,
it's college time, I'm still going to church, I'm still
doing all these things, and there was a period to
where the Lord had that took a lot from me.
And I'm going to go into specifics with that too,
because that's also very pertinent information, because when you're the
eldest child, you have that burden of not only being

(19:11):
the guinea pig child to where you and your parents
are kind of figuring out life. At the same time,
they don't really have any experience with you. You know,
they're living life for the first time too. They're just
learning not only are you the guinea pig child, but
you have to be the guinea pig child while also
setting a good example for the people behind you with
no experience to life. This is everybody's first time. By

(19:34):
the time that your parents have their second kid, their
third kid, they're a lot better at things. Which was
also a big source of my resentment because not only
am I resenting how strict my parents' household is, I'm
also resenting the fact that, oh, like y'all didn't help
me for college. Y'all didn't help me with nothing for college.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
But now I.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
See y'all doing things for my other siblings. Like, you know,
I grew up in Syracuse, New York. It has a
very rough neighborhood. I grew up on the South Side,
and you know, I went to like the worst schools
in the school district. But my younger sibling they paid
for her to go to a private Christian school. So
just things like that, y'all just totally you know, built
on my resentment for my situation. I saw my parents

(20:18):
doing things for my younger siblings that they never did
for me. I grew up in a very strict household,
so I felt like a large part of my childhood
was taken from me. And then, on top of all
these things going on in my life, like I said,
I had the burden of being a good example. Whether
you like it or not, you are your siblings' role models.
They are looking up to you. Now, whether or not

(20:40):
you feel the burden to be a good example or not,
that doesn't really matter, because you are an example, nonetheless,
So why wouldn't you just.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Want to be a good one.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
So all these things are going on, and on top
of that, I'm also expected to perform in that way.
You know what, I mean, so, you know, I made
sure that I tried to do all the things.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
I made sure that I went to school and got
really good grades.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I went to college, you know, bought a car, moved out,
and you know, all the things that you feel like
you should be doing to be a productive adult.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Mind you, all the while.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
I feel like I don't really have any help or
support that my other siblings are getting. And there was
this one particular time, like I'll never forget it because
this is what was the beginning of my rebellion. Right,
I'm in college, early twenties. I'm out of college, work
a year in finance. That was my nine to five background.

(21:33):
I worked for credit unions doing finance, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Stuff like that. After about a year, I left my
home and I moved to Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
But what was going on during that time was this,
I'm in college, I'm putting myself through college. My parents
are not giving me a dime for college. When I
say not a dime, they didn't even put any money
towards the things that you need for your dorm. You
know how when you are a freshman, you have to
live in the door and you have to get the
special double X and you have to get the special

(22:05):
long twin sheets for your bedroom, and you know you
want a TV and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
I had a summer job.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I was working at Hollister, and my money from that
job is what bought that stuff for my dorm room.
My parents didn't even buy the stuff from my dorm room,
like I remember. I remember we went to Walmart, and
my paycheck is what paid for my stuff for my
dorm room. So that's what I mean when I say, like,
you know, my parents never bought a book, They never
paid a dime towards tuition, They didn't want to sign
for any loans. So I was really on my own

(22:33):
for college. But I knew that because when you have
teenage parents there is no college fund. You know, like
they're just trying to get by. They're just trying to
keep a roof over your heads. And my parents always
did a great job with providing what I needed, but
anything extra, it was it was on me, you know.
So because of that, I felt like it was me

(22:54):
that put myself through college.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
I bought my first car while working while also going
to college for biology, and I felt like.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Oh, this is my car. I did this for myself.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I moved out of my parents' house when I was nineteen,
I think, got my first apartment.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
I'm paying the rent there.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
My parents are not getting me giving me grocery money,
gas money for my car. I'm doing all this stuff myself.
So this led to a great sense of false self sufficiency.
I thought that I was doing it all on my own,
and I was not giving God the credit for even

(23:35):
being in college, for even having the strength and the
health to be able to work during college for my paychecks.
I wasn't tithing my life. I think there was sometimes
I was tithing, sometimes I wasn't.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
But I was broke, y'all. Like I was broke, I
mean ramen noodle broke.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I mean I had a pet cat, and I didn't
know how I was gonna feed my cat during college,
like literally.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Like I was dirt, not dirt.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
But I was broke, broke during college. And there had
came a time after I was done with school that
I couldn't afford my apartment anymore because I was that broke.
After college, I needed.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
To move back in with my parents. And I hated
that for me.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
I hated that for me, but that was a situation
so I remember this like it was yesterday, because it
was just absolutely crazy. It was like the week before
I knew that I had to be out of my
apartment because I couldn't afford the rent anymore.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
And I'm already.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Very angry at this because, like I said, I felt
like my parents did so much more for my other
siblings than they did for me. I had so much
resentment with the fact that my parents did not give
me any money for school, y'all.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Like, and that's a big reason.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Like the strict household and me feeling like my parents
didn't help me enough are the reasons why during college
I moved out.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I was like, oh, I am not staying with y'all.
I'm not living with y'all.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
I went to school and Eracuse I could have lived
with my parents and saved a lot of money. I
did not cause I felt like, yeah, I could be
saving money, but I'm gonna pay for it with my
mental health. So I was like, no, like, I have
to get out of this house. Like I was literally
kicking the door down to be able to get out
of that house. So that's what I did, Like, come

(25:19):
hell or high water, I was going to move out
on my own. So I was so angry that I
was struggling in college because I had to work.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
I was so.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Angry that I did not have any more money to
be able to pay for my apartment. I was just angry, y'all.
So I go back to my parents and I'm like, hey, like,
I need to be able to move back in because
I'm broke.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
I can't pay for it anymore.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
My mom was like, well, actually, Stepdad, you know, I
drive over to their house to be able to have
this conversation with them about moving back in. Don't y'all
know that I parked my car on the streets of
my parents' house. I hear a crash. While I'm inside
with my parents, I hear a crash. I don't know
how I knew, y'all, but I just knew that somebody

(26:02):
had crashed into my car. So I go outside and
someone had crashed into my car totaled it. Mind you,
the car that I bought. I felt like that was
my car. Nobody had nothing to do with me having
that car, my apartment, being in college, but a Moani.
They crashed into my car and totaled it. So all

(26:23):
within the span of a week, I have to leave
college because of financial reasons. I was not able to
keep my apartment because I ain't have no money, and
my car is gone.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
All these three.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Things that I felt like I did for myself, I
felt like Amani did for a MONI all gone within
a week.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
But this is during a time in my life where
I was still, you.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Know, really strong in my relationship with the Lord, and
I knew, I just I knew, y'all, like I knew
that he was doing these things to break me up,
my self dependency and my self sufficiency of me feeling
like I was doing everything for myself.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
I knew that this was an.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Opportunity for the Lord to wipe the slate clean for
me and for me to not build on myself, but
to build on him. But here's where it went wrong
for me. I knew that the Lord had took these
things away from me, but in my mind, he did
not replace them fast enough. I did not take my

(27:26):
isolation season well. I did not take my rebuilding season well.
I already have so much resentment towards my family. I
already don't want to be at home. I already hate
the fact that I had to leave school because of
financial reasons. I already hate the fact. You know, there's
just so many things going against me at this time,
and then the Lord takes all these things away from me.

(27:48):
I ain't got no friends, y'all. I don't got nothing
like I don't have. I don't got nothing. And he
did not replace them when I wanted to replace them.
And I was tired of waiting, and I said I'm done.
I threw my hands up in the ear. I said God.
I remember having this conversation with God. I remember saying God,

(28:09):
I am done. And I was, and I told my
family I was gonna move to Atlanta. I don't think
they really took me seriously. The month after that, I
was gone. So me moving to Atlanta from New York
was a mix of me being done waiting on God,
but also trying to put as much physical distance between

(28:33):
me and my family because I already told y'all, I
was struggling so much with resentment, And in my opinion,
the only emotion that rivals resentment when it comes to
negative feelings towards a person or a situation. The only

(28:53):
emotion that rivals that when it comes to the degree
of hate that is truly behind these emotions is contempt.
Resentment and contempt are very hard to come away from
when it involves other people, very hard. And I felt
like what I needed to do to heal my wounds

(29:15):
of being the eldest daughter, of not having any help,
of always having to set a good example. I felt
like I needed to put as much physical distance between
me and my family as humanly possible. It was not
enough that I just moved back out of my mom's

(29:35):
house and I was still in Syracuse, live my own
life like no I needed in my mind, physical distance
is what was going to heal me. In my mind,
making a new life for myself on my own was
going to heal me in my mind. Being able to
come to Atlanta and do things that were not even
available to me back in Syracuse was going to heal me.

(29:56):
Long story short, it didn't. Long story, sure, it didn't.
Did it feel good in the moment?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Out? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Did it feel good to show my family that, yeah,
I could pack up my stuff and leave and y'all
didn't help me anyway, I might.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
As well go across the country. Did that feel good
in the moment?

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Oh? Absolutely? Did it feel good to come to Atlanta
and make money and travel and do all the things
and model and work in night life. Did that feel
good in the moment?

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Oh? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Did it feel good to not have to restrain myself
and that constantly has to die to myself when it
came to my relationship with God? Of course that felt good.
It always feels good to walk within your flesh. It
always feels good to make yourself happy, to chase happiness,
which by the way, is not biblical. It always feels

(30:46):
good to fulfill self. So did those things feel good
in the moment?

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yes? But did they heal me?

Speaker 1 (30:52):
No? And you want to know how I know that
they didn't heal me because I am still in the
midst of this stuff, y'all. And when I say, I
was still having breakdowns, emotional breakdowns about the resentment I
was still holding against my family, just even last year,
and I mean crying booho, mental breakdowns about this. So

(31:12):
that's how I know. Eight years later, me living in Atlanta,
me putting physical distance between me and my family did
not work. Me creating a new life for myself did
not work. Let me tell y'all what did work? Forgiving, releasing,
and finally accepting the position in life that the Lord

(31:33):
has ordained for me. So let me tell y'all how
each of those three things has looked.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
There are a.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Couple of Bible verses that I have been really trying
to memorize. The first one is in Matthew, I believe,
chapter ten, and as Jesus talking to his disciples, and
he says.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Freely, you have received, freely.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Give, And there are so many things that you can
put in there to say, freely, I have received grace,
so freely give grace to others. Fruely I have received forgiveness,
so give forgiveness to others. So me submitting my life
to the Lord. In the past year and a half,

(32:12):
these convictions are coming. For forgiveness Ephesians four thirty two.
I believe it talks about forgiving one another. So truly,
I'm just getting convicted, y'all, Like I'm just getting convicted
about releasing the resentment and forgiving my parents, not only
for the honor your father and your mother's sake, but

(32:35):
also because forgiveness or unforgiveness does not affect the other person.
When you're harboring unforgiveness, it only affects you. And when
I tell y'all that the resentment and unforgiveness I was
holding towards so many people, but especially my family, was.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Literally like eating me alive.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Like there will be times that I'm in a shower
and I cannot let go of the hate in my mind.
Like there will be times that I'm trying to fall
asleep and I feel like my chest is just burning
thinking about my family. You know, when I first left Atlanta,
I would not go visit my family, even for the holidays.
My mom would call and I would just ignore her.

(33:19):
I didn't want to speak to her. She would text me, like,
just call I know, the catching overdyre messing with my stuff.
She would call me and I would ignore her. She
would text me back, like just calling to make sure
you alive. Like I didn't want to hear from nobody.
I wanted as much distance between my family and me
as humanly possible, and all it did was hurt me

(33:43):
in the end, because I would go and visit them
when I finally felt like I was emotionally okay to
go visit them, and I would just see them interacting
with each other in a way that I never felt free.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
To interact with them.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Because of the resentment I held towards them, and I
would just go by myself and just cry, y'all, because
I felt so hurt. I felt so hurt, feeling like
I was the odd one out in the equation with
my family. But I did that to myself. I was
the one that left my hometown and came to Atlanta

(34:20):
and didn't go back for years and wasn't answering my
mom's phone calls like that was me. But I go
back with my family and I see the dynamic and
I feel left out and I'm just crying to myself.
That's not hurting them, that's hurting me. So I just
came to realize, like the Lord calls us to forgive,

(34:41):
not only because he has given us forgiveness and we
should reflect that in our own lives in order to
attempt to be more christ Like, but because harboring resentment
just literally is harboring sin within your own body. And
in order for me to move forward, not just with
my family, but with my life, y'all, with my own life,

(35:05):
I had to forgive. And I wasn't forgiving them for them. Well,
first of all, I was forgiving to be obedient to God.
But I was forgiving for me. So what I literally
did was I have this journal. I wrote down literally
every single person that I was still harboring unforgiveness towards

(35:27):
and resentment towards. I wrote down specifically their names and
what I felt like they did to me, and I
released it. And when I tell y'all like that might
seem like a minor thing, it might seem like, oh,
that's always what they say, you know, write people's I
don't know what your feelings is towards that particular exercise,

(35:48):
but that's what the Lord led me to do. And
I'm telling y'all, the resentment I had towards people was
keeping me up at nights.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
And after I did that, I slept like a baby.
After I actually.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Wrote it down and prayed over it as well and
said it with my mouth, I forgive this person for
doing that. I forgive this person for doing that. When
you forgive, you take back the power that the devil.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Is holding over you with that resentment.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
And that's something that we're going to get into a
little bit later too, about how the devil was working
against me with this resentment. But when you finally released that,
you take back your power to live your life again.
You're only hurting and hindering yourself. You think that you're
hurting the other person, or I will never forgive them,
they'll never hear from me again. Whole time says they
don't even care if they hear from you again. A

(36:40):
lot of the times, I'm not talking about our families,
but a lot of times, you know, we have people
in our lives that have done us wrong and we
feel like it was unjustified and they haven't gotten their consequence,
and we just hold this hate towards them like it's
hurting them, it's hurting you, and it was definitely hurting me.
So that's what I did. I wrote down every name
ever that I could think of. I took up like

(37:01):
two whole pages of really serious offenses towards my life,
family and non family.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
People that I don't even really know, people on the internet.
It didn't matter.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I wrote down every single person that I felt like
has wronged me that I just.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Kept going over like this.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
These scenarios were just playing over and over again in
my mind. I wrote them down, I prayed over them,
and I verbally said, I forgive you for this. I
forgive you for this, And like I said, I slept
like a baby that night. Now is that to say
that I don't still think about these scenarios. No, But
that was a turning point in my life. And this

(37:39):
was about last year, y'all. That was a turning maybe
about a year and a half ago. That was a
turning point in my life to where I now knew
what I needed to do to come back. Every time
that the devil tried to put those thoughts in my head, Nope,
I already forgave them. Nope, I can't think about that anymore.
I already forgave them. Because we like to say that,
oh I forgive, but I don't forget. No, that's not

(38:02):
the way that the Lord treats you with your sin.
He not only forgives your sin, but he separates you
from it, as far as the east from the west.
He separates you from that. He forgets your sin, he
removes it from you. So we can't say that we
forgive people but we won't forget. That's not the way
that it works. You forgive and forget, because forgetting is

(38:24):
the only way that you're able to move forward. Now,
that's not to say that you forget in a way
that now you go back into relationship with these people
and they're doing the same things to you over and
over again.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Oh, I forgive and I forget. Oh often.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
No, you have boundaries, you learn accordingly, you move differently now,
but you don't hold the same offenses towards them. So
forgiving and forgetting was the first thing. Writing those names
down in my journal, praying over them. That was the
first step for me. A huge source of contention with
me with my family, specifically my parents, like I said,

(38:59):
was them giving my siblings things that they never gave me.
It's very easy to say, Wow, I didn't have that
growing up. Why didn't y'all do that for me? Y'all
doing that for them, y'all didn't do that for me.
And it's not even a jealousy thing. You resent the

(39:20):
fact that your parents could not, would not do the
things for you that you see them very easily and
willingly doing for your younger siblings. And it makes you
think like, Okay, y'all not gonna help me, then I
don't gotta be around.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
That was my mentality. That's why I left.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Oh, I gotta live independently. I gotta help myself to everything.
I might as well live by myself then across the country.
But one thing that the Lord also revealed to me
is our parents are not perfect, y'all. I don't think
that there is a child alive that can say that
they don't hold some sort of resentment or then have

(40:00):
a source of contention with their parents on some subject.
Our parents are not perfect, and they are living life
for the first.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Time, just like you.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
You know, like even with my mom, she had me
as a teenager and she was figuring life out as
a teenage mom. I'm figuring life out and I don't
even got no kids. So just imagine the missteps, the
times that you just had to stumble and learn. It's
not just you living life for the first time, it's
your parents too.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
And that's real. That's real.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
So the Lord really revealed to me, like, yo, you
think that you would have done it better? Do you
think that when you were a teenager in high school
having a child, that you would have done it better?

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Show me?

Speaker 1 (40:47):
And that really put me in check because I think
about all the good things in my childhood. You know,
my mom had me, my parents had me as teenagers.
We ain't have a lot of money. We grew up
in the hood. Like I said, I went to the
worst schools in the worst school district probably in the States, probably,
And there were a lot of people in my school

(41:08):
that didn't know where their next meal was coming from.
I never had that problem. Even with me not having
the things that I wanted beyond what I needed, I
always had what I needed. I never worried about where
my next meal was coming from. I never had any
type of food and security, even if it was only
ramen and hot dogs and kick cereal. You know how

(41:28):
you had the Kick cereal when you were like on
Wick or welfere like you had plain cheerios and milk
and the block cheese.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Even if I only had that, I had food. I
never went hungry.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
I was never in fear of Oh, I could come
home and we were gonna be evicted. That's a story
for That's a lot of people's stories. My mom always
kept a roof over our head, She always kept food
on the table. She always gave me love and support
and the ways that she was able and capable to
a lot of people grow up with parents and they

(42:01):
have all the things that they want and need, and
their parents never show them love and support, and they
end up resenting their parents not for the material things
that they didn't have, but for the lack of emotional
connection with their parents. Like I said, dysfunctional families are
dysfunctional in.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Their own unique ways.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
I look back and I'm like, yeah, I could hate
my parents for all the things that I felt like
they didn't do, But what about the things that they
actually did do? And I can't speak to the experience
of a lot of the other eldest daughters that have
very similar situations to me, but I can speak to
the fact that I know that my parents did the

(42:42):
best that they could with what they had. I know
that it might not have always been good enough for me,
and they might not have had things when they were
younger with me that now, being ten twenty years into
their careers, they have more money to give more to
my siblings. And that's just logical, Like, yeah, my younger
siblings have it better off. My parents are older, they

(43:05):
make more money now, they have a house, like you know,
so a lot of things are just logical too, Like
a lot of our emotions are just not logical, And
you know, that's just what it is, and that's not
to invalidate the way that you feel, but you sometimes
have to step back from your emotions and really look
at things objectively and be like, well, what else could

(43:26):
they have done with what they had? Like Mariah Carey said,
I'm gonna do the best I can with what I've got,
like and I can truly see very genuine examples of
my parents just doing the best that they could with
what they had. And now the most important part, which
is the acceptance of truly taking on and stewarding well

(43:49):
and fulfilling the role that the Lord has for me
as the eldest daughter. And this is where I want
y'all to really kind of tune into and really listen to,
because this portion is going to speak to any eldest daughter,
regardless of the family and home situation that you grew
up in. When I was home this past weekend, there

(44:09):
was some stuff going on, and I told my mom,
you know, I'm tired of being the eldest daughter. I'm
tired of having the responsibility of getting everybody together. I'm
tired of being the one that always has to be
the bigger person and going to my siblings first, even
when they are clearly in the wrong I am tired
of it. I'm tired of it. I was like, I

(44:30):
don't want that for myself, and she told me, basically,
like I said in the beginning of this video, that's
too darn bad, Like I'm tired of his grandpa. That's
too darn bad. Like, because this is the role that
the Lord has for you, it's not a coincidence. Like
I said that I'm the eldest daughter, it's not a
coincidence that my mom was the eldest daughter of it

(44:53):
almost identical family dynamic. The Lord used what was clearly
a generational sin my family for the good of my mother,
for the good of me, because yeah, my family always
talked about how strict my mother was, and you know,
YadA YadA, and even I felt it, and you know,
I really resented that. But you know, not to toot

(45:14):
my own horn, but look at the products, you know, like,
look at what was produced than me because of my mom.
My mom is the matriarch of our family. And I
know that in society we tend to give a lot
of credence to patriarchy, and you know, it just is
what it is. Men still make more money and there's

(45:35):
still you know, CEOs of companies more so than women.
You know, the whole shabang whatever, whatever. But let's just
keep it real and this has nothing to do with
miss Sandry. This has everything to do with the reality
of the situation. Men are not the ones stepping up
in the family to get everyone together, regardless of if

(45:55):
they were a good father or not, if they're a
provider or not. That's not really what I see, and
I think a lot of people can agree, especially in
the black families. In the black community, it's not really
the patriarch of the family bringing everyone together. It's the matriarch.
It's the mother, it's the grandmother, it's the great grandmother.

(46:15):
And my mom, let me know that there's going to
be one day that she is not here and I
will be the matriarch as the eldest daughter. So I
better step into that role and do it right now
because she's not always going to be here and I
will be filling those shoes. And as the eldest daughter says,
that is going to be you. When it comes to

(46:36):
family dynamics, a lot of times it's not the son
of the family that steps up and takes care of
the parents when they get Oh no, it's the daughter
that does stuff like that. You will be the matriarch
of your family whether you like it or not. Sis,
So you better step into that role right now. Ask
the Lord to strengthen you and guide you in that
role and store it well and get the practice while

(46:57):
your parents are still here, because when they're gone, that
is one hundred percent going to be you, and that
is going to be me. And that's the conversation that
my mom had with me, Like, whether you like it
or not, that is you. He made you an eldest daughter.
That was not a mistake. Everything that I am, everything
that you are, the Lord created it. And I would

(47:18):
even argue the point that the eldest daughter position of
your life, that portion of you, is the greatest part
of you. There are a lot of things that the
Lord gives us. He gives us spiritual gifts, he gives
us our personalities, he gives us our race, he gives
us our family. But nothing that the Lord gives you

(47:40):
is going to be as important as stepping into the eldest.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Daughter role that he has for you.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
And you want to know how I know that your
role as the eldest daughter is going to be the
greatest role in the most effective role in your life.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
It is going to be your greatest.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Ministry in life. It's because I know that as the
eldest daughter through my own experiences and what I hear
of tons of other eldest daughters talk about, it is
the role in your life that the devil attacks the most.
Tell me I'm wrong. I see so many conversations online
about healing eldest daughter wounds, about women wanting to remove

(48:18):
themselves from their families because they're the eldest and all
the responsibility. It comes with all the resentment that the
devil attacks you with when you're the eldest daughter. Eldest
sons don't get this. I never hear the eldest son
of a family talk about the resentment he has towards
his family, how he wants to leave his family. You
never hear the eldest son have this conversation. It's always

(48:39):
the eldest daughter. And that also is not a coincidence.
Your greatest effectiveness in life is where the devil is
going to test you, attack you, and try to take
you away from And when I look back on my
life and I think about the deep seated hatred, contention,
resentment that I had towards my family that.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Led me to leave them and come to Atlanta. That
was the devil, y'all.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
That was the devil trying to remove me from the
position that the Lord ordained me to be in. And
now that I have a ministry of my own, with
my podcast, with the way that I serve in my church,
it has really made me go back to the basics
of just the order that the Lord ordains in our life.
Because our God is a god of order. Our God

(49:26):
is a god of structure and order, and there's no
way that He's going to put you in a ministry
position to preach and teach other people that don't even
know you, and that's not what he has for the
family that you were intentionally born into.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Ain't no way. And a good example of this that we.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Find in the Bible is with Moses. You know, Moses
lived how many years forty years out in the wilderness, married,
had kids before the Lord appeared to him and called
him back to Egypt to go lead his people out
from Egypt and on the way after Moses finally agreed,
right because he didn't even want to do it, After
he finally agreed to go back to his people, the

(50:07):
Lord almost kills him on the way. And I'm researching this,
I'm just kind of like, what, like why, you know,
because it's said that God met him and almost killed him,
and it was simply because when he was out living
this life trying to escape his people, he had forsaken

(50:28):
the law of the Lord and the law of his
people that the Lord had ordained, and that law dictated
from the time that he made a people from Abraham,
that law dictated that the sons get circumcised. While he's
living away from God for all those years he has
sons didn't circumcisee him. And that's just even that is

(50:52):
so symbolic of how we go out of our way
to leave behind what the Lord has told us to
do in order to live our own lives.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
And that was me.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
I left behind New York to go to live my
own life in Atlanta, leaving behind church, leaving behind my convictions.
But when he was finally called back, when he was
finally starting his true ministry leading his people out of Egypt,
the Lord said, uh uh, ain't no way you about

(51:23):
to go and lead people that you have never even met.
A day in your life out of Egypt, and you
ain't even do within your own family what I told
you to do. Circumcise your sons, get your household intact. First,
get your household in order, and then go talk to
other people. So now that I have this ministry with
my podcast, and like I said in my church and everything,

(51:45):
that's something else that the Lord has been convicted me on, Like,
ain't no way that I'm gonna let you have this
platform and have this ministry talking to people about me,
and you won't even do that with your own family.
And I haven't been, y'all, I have not been. I
one hundred percent have not been. It's a lot easier

(52:07):
for us to go and talk to other people about
the Lord than it is to talk to our own families.
But the Lord really spoke to me, and it convicted
me on that, like I made you the eldest daughter
of this family, you will be the matriarch of this family.
You will be the one getting people together. One day,
get your family in order, go back and reconcile with

(52:28):
your family.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Release that hurt, Let that hurt go, Let forgive.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Them, release that resentment, and you go and have better
relationships with your sisters and your mom and your stepdad
and your dad and your other siblings. You go and
do that first and then you come back to this ministry.
So in the past like year and a half, I
have been doing well. The Lord has been doing a

(52:52):
lot of work within me, like I said, to forgive
and to finally step back into the role that he
has for me. And that just goes hand in hand
with me going back and traveling and seeing my family
a lot more than I.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Have in the past eight years. And as much as
I still.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Don't always want to be the bigger person, as much
as I still want to live my own life, y'all,
like that desire has not left me to kind of
be like, bro, like this is just too much. It's
not like I just have a few siblings in the house,
you know, growing up with the same dad and same mom,
and know, like you know, several different siblings with several

(53:33):
different mothers, And it's just a lot to have to
organize all these people. You know, Like I'm thirty, Like
my siblings are now like in their twenties and stuff
like that. I still have some really young ones, but
we're all growing up and now it's critical now.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
It's like we all grown.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
This is crunch time because now we're getting into the
point of our lives to where what we do right
now will set up our future. What we do right
now is going to dictate the rest of our lives.
Where you are when you are in your early twenties
or where you are when you're in your twenties and
even early thirties is the setup for the rest of
your life. And now for me, it's like crunch time.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Now.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
For me, I don't have the luxury of being like, nah,
I'm gonna just live my own life. The Lord called
me into this role, and he called you into that
role too. Sys And the way that the devil has
attacked me with my eldest daughter role, with the resentment,
with the hate, with the da da da da da,
with moving away, with not wanting to talk to nobody,

(54:34):
That's how I know that this is my most effective role.
Because the devil does not attack where you have no effectiveness.
He is going to attack you and the area of
your life where you can be used the most by
the Lord because that's where the threat is. Wherever we
are most effective for the kingdom is a threat to
the enemy, and that's where he's going to attack you.

(54:54):
You know, like y'all have to understand that the Devil
is not this.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Super powerful being.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
He is a speed so he has powers that we
don't have, but he's not more powerful than God. And
he can't do anything that the Lord does not let
him do. And we see that several times in scripture.
So really his motive attack is not always the initial
attack itself, because like I said, he can't do anything
that the Lord does not let him do. It's really
what he does on the back end. It's really the

(55:20):
Lord putting things on your heart, the Lord ordaining things
for you in the spiritual realm, and him going against it,
trying to stop it, trying to distract you, trying to
tempt you with this, trying to get your eyes off
of what the Lord has for you. And that's exactly
what happened with me. I felt like the Lord took
all these things away from me when I was in
New York. He did not replace them enough, And the

(55:42):
Devil planted the idea in my mind, girl, you don't
even got to be here. What's in syrahcus leave your family?
And I know that that was the devil. Because those
things did not heal me. I was still in Atlanta,
like I said, being ate up with resentment and hate,
still crying about it.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Years later, I'm a grown woman.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
I'm thirty years old, crying about things that happened when
I was fifteen. That's how I know that it was
the devil that distracted me and tried to call me
away from my family and called me away from the
role that the Lord had for me by distracting me
with move across the country.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Because those things didn't help. They didn't heal me.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
And now that I have realized these things, it's allowed
me to start because like I said, y'all, this is
still a process for me.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
I'm not on the other end of this yet.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
That has allowed me to start to step into my
role of a future matriarch as a leader not only
online and in my church, but in my family. It
has allowed me to really see things for what they
are and say, Okay, the devil has taken away this

(56:54):
much time from my family and I that's not going
to happen anymore now. That does not have to look
like if you moved away from your family, moving right
back with them like that doesn't necessarily mean that I
have to move back to Syracuse, but the relationship that
I have with my family has to be more intentional.

(57:17):
And the way that that's going to look for me
going forward, I don't know. That's something that the Lord
is going to still have to work on me with.
But now that I have gotten past the first two
steps of forgiveness, of releasing resentment, those things were necessary
for me to be able to step into what the
Lord has for me the next season. So eldest daughter

(57:37):
to eldest daughter, SIS, don't let the devil trick you
out of your spot. Don't let him make you think
that leaving your family is going to heal you. Don't
let him tempt you with no If you just have
these things, if you just leave your family behind, go
no contact.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
You don't got to talk to.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Them, you don't got to forgive them is their first
time living life, but they still.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Did you wrong.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
These are all the things that are being repeated to
us about self care and self love. A lot of
this self love rhetoric that is being preached to us
through various different channels about the way that we need
to move as individuals and leave this person behind, and
you don't owe nobody. Nothing is just self sabotage repackaged.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
You're not hurting them by not forgiving them. You're not
hurting them.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
By not moving into the position that the Lord has
for you.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
You're not hurting them.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
By giving away the position in your family, You're only
hurting you. And I know that for a fact. I
know for a fact that you, being the eldest daughter,
the Lord has gifts within that. That is your effectiveness,
that is your ministry, that is the order that he
has for your family.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
And the Lord ain't never wrong about the order that
He's already ordained for you.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
So whatever steps that you need to take today's sys
to forgive your family to move forward, we go back
to your family and to be the true leader in
your family that He has called you to be. Whatever
that looks like, pray and ask God to reveal that
to you today, because it might not look like how
the Lord revealed it to me. It might look different

(59:13):
for you, But I'm telling you those things are necessary
in order to step into the highest calling of your life,
which is one hundred percent the eldest daughter, leader, matriarch
role that he has for you and that's where I'm
gonna leave with you, guys. I love y'all, I appreciate y'all.

(59:36):
We're gonna heal together, and I will see you and
talk to you guys later.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Bye.