From Other to Us, Part 2: The Testimony of Apostle Dr Lee Ann Marino

Testimonies provide essential information about Christian journeys, especially throughout a number of years. Join Apostle Dr. Lee Ann Marino as the tables turn and she's interviewed by Ministers Nik Lewis and Charlie Reep, and Brad Loggins, all of Sanctuary in Charlotte, North Carolina, for her testimony. In this second of two-part episode, learn about Dr. Marino's years from seminary awareness on; through years of ministry, first marriage, burnout, widowhood, establishment of Sanctuary, and new journeys God has in store for her today. (Intro and Conclusion Track Fire ball" by Yvgeniy Sorokin, https://pixabay.com/users/eugenemyers-40510887/. Empire Transport Track "The Beauty of Green Legends" by DTXN1,https://pixabay.com/users/dtxn1-42017842/.)

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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(00:51):
Welcome to Kingdom Now, the podcast featuring Faith with an Edge.
As we recognize the Kingdom of God within you, I am your host, Dr. Lee Ann Marino,
apostle, Overseer, author, podcaster, blogger, professor and theologian and founder of Safe
Ministries and all the works that go along with it.

(01:12):
I am excited to share this program with you as we explore the ins and outs of counterculture
Christianity present as you live out the Kingdom of God in your everyday life.
And to learn more, visit KingdomPowerNow.org.
And now our program, which features a variety of formats, fear, just for you.

(01:33):
Interviews on a variety of relevant topics, teaching and preaching taught everywhere from our
ministry studios to sanctuary and beyond.
And powerful insights here for today as we turn the world upside down everywhere we go.
Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, happy whatever time of day it is wherever

(02:01):
you are and to our listeners in name a country.
And all of our Spanish-speaking countries, we say hola.
We hope that whatever time of day it is when you are listening that you are having a good
time, and stop shaking your head no.
And I welcome you to the edition of the Kingdom Now podcast and I am your host, Apostle
Dr. Lee Ann Marino here.
and I am the spitfire serving as the voice of counterculture Christianity.

(02:25):
And if you would like to learn more about the world of counterculture Christianity, feel
free to visit my website at kingdompowernow.org.
This is the second part of my two-part testimony, which is an update of the one I did about
seven years ago.
And I think it's kind of interesting because a lot has happened in seven years.
Obviously given who, well, who was sitting next to me, who is now whispering at other people

(02:46):
while we are doing this, so I don't know what he is doing.
But anyway, a lot of stuff has happened in the past seven years.
And I have here with me in order to kind of tell this story, to moderate, we have got minister
Charlie Reep, we have got minister Nik Lewis, and we have Brad Loggins, who is my husband,
even though he didn't really want to tell everybody that on the first episode.

(03:07):
And I am going to give you guys all a chance to introduce yourselves again.
Hello, I am minister Charlie, they/them pronoun user, minister of education at sanctuary.
And I have a website that is a resource basically for queer questioning and deconstructing
Christians.
It's called Beloved Not Broken.
It is Beloved-Not-Broken.com.

(03:31):
So yeah, feel free to check it out.
Hello, my name is minister Nik Lewis.
I am the Jesus brain just cocked out.
Minister of music and worship leader for sanctuary Charlotte.
I also have a blog that I run that is NikFits.com, N I K F I T S. And you can follow me on

(03:56):
there, subscribe so you never miss a post.
And I also have my link tree linked on there.
You can follow me on social media, the only ones that I'm not super active on right now
are Twitter and Insta, but everywhere else you can pretty much follow me on.
Yeah, hi, my name is Brad.

(04:17):
I'm the CEO and owner of Empire Transport.
I'm Lee Ann's husband as well as advisor because-
What do you have my advisor for?
Oh, am I not now?
I advise you to hush.

(04:38):
On my own podcast, yes, anyway, go on.
Yes, on your own podcast, all about you today, right?
It's okay.
Let's get going to part two and talk about yourself.
Website.
Oh, yeah.
And you have a book.
Man, show your book.
No, because he's going to be like that.

(04:59):
That is the author of Breaking the Silence, a Journey into Men's Mental Breakthrough.
It is available now on Amazon.com and you can also find a link for it on his website,
empiretransport.co.
That's how that stuff works.
Anyway, so I left off with part one where I was doing a seminary project, doing a thesis

(05:25):
on sexual ethics.
And it's not the only thesis I ever did, but it was one was kind of telling us to where
I'm at now.
And I actually don't even think in the first testimony I talked about this, so this is interesting.
So in early two thousands, it's like I say people were gay or they were straight, pretty much

(05:46):
in the in the minds of you.
And I knew that I wasn't gay, so that man I was straight and y'all are giving me this look,
right?
I pretty much knew the experience that I knew.
And I didn't really have any understanding of asexuality.
I had no understanding of aromanticism.

(06:08):
They were just things that basically everybody kind of told you, well, when your situation's
right and the right person comes along, you'll understand it all.
And that really just kept not happening.
I'm going to just kind of put that out there.
And it's like I say, there were always some people in churches that we wondered about, you

(06:29):
know, the woman on the platform who was over 30 and never married into my knowledge still
hasn't married and pretty much looked like the most abnormal thing you've ever seen in
a dress in your entire life.
And there were some things, but we never really talked about them.
It was never really discussed, but the issue was starting to come to the forefront.

(06:49):
And there was an intersection of a couple of movements at this point in time that was
changing my relationship with church.
So there were a few women first in an apostolic church out in California.
I believe that they were part of the UPCI and they got ordained.
And that caused a splinter in the apostolic movement because traditionally women did not

(07:11):
pastor in apostolic churches.
That's not true in black apostolic churches.
In fact, women in leadership is very, very common in black apostolic churches, but it was
not as common among white communities.
And I was still in more of what we would consider a white community at this point in time.
That would not always be the case, but that was kind of true at the time.
And so that splinter really kind of gave a lot of, it's more incentive for me to not only

(07:35):
be ordained, but to use my ordination through House of Pentecost because it was such a problem
at that time and it was, it was kind of hot news.
But the whole apostolic community was in an uproar.
I do believe that that was an important change for the apostolic movements of churches because
they have come a long way like from when I was in them 20 or 30 years ago.

(07:59):
I cannot believe some of where they're at.
And I mean, and I'm grateful for it.
I think it's really, really, really important.
But there were things that would have been unheard of in this time.
And then you had that people were starting to talk about gay rights more.
And the first place that that kind of popped up and where I kind of worked in sexual ethics

(08:19):
is for a while.
I worked as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood.
And I did it because, as I did at a clergy, I did it as community educator as well.
And what happened is all of a sudden you had all these more liberal churches because even
though I was like in the most conservative of conservative churches that existed, I was
exposed to much more liberal ministers because that's who was for these causes.

(08:44):
And while I would say most apostolics were really not pro choice, they were also not anti-choice.
They were kind of like it's the person's choice or there are instances where it should be
okay.
Or you know, there were a lot of exceptions.
So I mean, I ran into much more liberal preachers than myself.

(09:05):
And actually there was one I knew who in gay marriage was not legal married a couple in
New York in, Albany, New York at the time.
Media news got in a whole lot of trouble for it. I mean, there was a whole big thing in his
Denomination at the time.
But churches were starting to vote on gay marriage. They were starting to vote on same
sex couples. There was talk about it and somehow I knew that I was supposed to work with

(09:30):
queer communities. But that was the hell. No. First of all, I was a Jesus name baptized,
skirt down to the floor which that skirt down to the floor and meant I was in love with
Jesus. Okay? When it's below the knee, they're like, okay, and maybe when you're at the calf,
they're dating, but when you've got that skirt down to the floor, that meant that you were

(09:51):
in love with Jesus. And no man was ever going to be good enough for you kind of thing.
And I, you know, tongue-talking King James only, apostolic Pentecostal. I was not having
nothing to do with none of this stuff. And I made a joke I was holiness bitch. I really
wasn't that nice of a person. I mean, I'm really going to be honest and saying that I was very

(10:15):
much about what I did. I was very focused. I really wasn't very social. I didn't really
know how to talk to people about anything normal. And I was not having none of this. I just
was a no. And because in my mind, that was going to make me more other. I was other enough.
I don't need to be any more other. I was a female preacher in an apostolic church. And,

(10:37):
you know, I would go on to have a lot of different relationships with that over over the next
few years. But I'm doing a work on sexual ethics. And the primary focus was things like birth
control and submission. Not in the BDSM sense, but submission in the husband, wife, sense,
like in the church. Well, we're talking about sexual ethics. And so I mean, you know, that's

(10:59):
why I mentioned that. I hadn't gone that far yet. And, you know, things about birth control
and abortion and about control over female autonomy. And in it, one of the things I tell people
is I hate bad theology. And I'm encountering all this stuff that's in response that's just

(11:23):
bad theology. And it was very, very difficult to make arguments and to really go in favor
of it. But I just pretty much accepted what everybody told me about gay people that it was against
the Bible. Didn't really look that much into it. And so I'm kind of, you know, like scrolling
on it. And I'm not really focusing on it. But I was taking issue with the fact that they

(11:44):
were trying to lump women's issues with gay rights, that they were kind of lumping everything
altogether. And so I was determined to separate all that, you know, just make everything different
and stop looking at me like that. You know, I was just, it was like that $5,000 baptism in
the New Testament challenge. I was going to do it, damn it. And I didn't really deal with

(12:05):
it, but I really wasn't able to do it. That I didn't have the same amount of knowledge
I have now. But even with what I knew then, the idea that we're telling people not to
come to church didn't make sense to me. It was like, what do you mean we're excluding
an entire group of people from home in church? And around that time, I dated somebody who

(12:28):
I very quickly got engaged to who I'm still speaking to today sort of, but you know, not
like I did back then. And I way were pretty fast moving. I mean, it was the most quote unquote,
I would say romantic. I ever got in a relationship. And even it wasn't that much. It was, he really

(12:49):
understood me. We were both writers. And I wrote something that, I read something that he
wrote to me to my mom. And I'm standing in her, the doorway in her kitchen. And she says
to me, he's interested in you. I said, nah, I think he's gay. And it's more appropriately described
as pan or bi, you know, something would be in that category today. But as far as I was

(13:12):
concerned, you'd never been with a guy you were gay. And I had my suspicions and we broke
up. You know, we didn't wind up making it. And I pretty much blamed myself for what happened
at the time, because you know, that's what we do when we're young and we're dramatic in
yadda yadda. And he, I found out later had actually been with a man before he'd been with me. And

(13:34):
he actually went on to have a relationship with a man for a number of years later on. And
finding that out really crushed me because when you were in these communities, one of the things
that people started telling the other partner was that you were doing something wrong. It
was something in you that made them that way, which I mean is an entire concept, I mean,

(13:58):
by itself, that's really kind of weird that how can any of us make somebody gay or make
somebody that? But that is very much based in the belief that it's conditioning. And I
probably would have told you that that was what I believed. You know, we're told it's
sexual abuse. We're told it's this. We're told it's that. And we don't critically think.
We don't go home and go out of all of the vast numbers of people who are sexually abused

(14:22):
throughout history. Shouldn't this be more common then? Or you know, we don't really,
we don't really go over a lot of that in our minds. But that was an encounter. And that really
was a wake-up call for me in how I handled other people because I was very much, you know,
you're going to have to be what I am if we're going to be together. You have to believe

(14:42):
like I believe we've got to get whatever these things are in your past out of you kind of thing.
And that didn't work. And it caused me to examine that. And then, oh, at the time, not all that long
after I was on a pen pal site that no longer exists. And it was just for people to talk. It was just

(15:02):
like for Christians to talk. And I had a friend on there who I don't ever know what happened to him.
I didn't talk to him for very long. He lived in West Virginia somewhere. And he asked me how I
felt about the issue. And I'm just kind of like not wanting to talk about it and wanting to avoid it.
And you know, it's funny how when God is in stuff it keeps coming up, up, up, up, up. And he said to me,

(15:24):
that is God's house. And how can any of us tell somebody that they can't come in God's house?
Now I'm an Apostolic where we told, said, oh, everybody was welcome to come, but we told people
for different reasons they can come all the time. I mean, you know, they didn't have the right clothes on
or they didn't have the right length skirt or they were wearing shorts or, you know, their hair wasn't

(15:47):
long enough. I mean, and then I remember all of the rules that we had. And from that point,
kind of inadvertently, I started dissecting all these things. We make this fuss about women in
their hair. Well, what about cancer patients? Or what about instances where people have hair that
breaks really easy? I mean, and they can't have it long, long, you know, what about that? And I kind of

(16:11):
put the thing on hold and kind of put stuff over there and didn't really want to deal with it
because the other part of it was I didn't even know the first thing about church with other people.
I didn't know the first thing about, you know, that there were gay churches or queer churches or
something like that. And I didn't know anybody who was gay. I mean, at least that I, well, apparently,

(16:33):
obviously I did, but I didn't really know anybody that I knew wasn't so what are we going to do? You
know, I mean, kind of this thing is I put it away. I did. Yes. I got to put it away. I did a lot of,
more or less kind of women's ministry, which now I don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Isn't it

(16:55):
funny how things change with time? But most of what I did, it was kind of like smart women's ministry
and what I mean by that is it wasn't about healing or children. It was, you know, pretty much doctrine,
which, which stuff that women didn't do, which then landed me on an awful lot of councils and panels
where I was the only woman. I mean, that was the way it was all the time. And I had a lot of people that

(17:17):
started coming to me for leadership and covering. And I mean, I started basically leading other
leaders around 2005. And different things work, different things didn't work. Stuff kind of happened
in and out of there. And in the meantime, I'm still approaching 25 and 24, 25 years old. And I still

(17:41):
wasn't married. And of course, that was a problem for absolutely everybody else in the entire world.
So I'm going to kind of put this on the level that I really never knew if I was supposed to be married
or not. You know, it's like they tell us that we're supposed to know that we're supposed to do.
You know, somebody's I didn't even know what I was going to eat for breakfast. I mean, you know,

(18:01):
come on, it's like I let alone a big huge decision like that. And I attributed the way I talked about
being in the last episode where people would say, "Oh, don't you think this one's cute?" or this
or that. And I would be like, "Okay, they're all right." I mean, it never, it was underwhelming. I wasn't
excited. I didn't really get that into it. I didn't find myself lusting after everybody I saw or

(18:26):
anybody that I saw of that matter. I attribute it to where I lived. I figured that first of all,
I knew a lot of these people from the time they were young and that's an ick factor all by itself.
And then you've got that there wasn't a lot of choice. There weren't a lot of people. There really
weren't a lot of available single people within my age group. But what happens in apostolic

(18:50):
churches is if you're a decently good looking without makeup because they do the no makeup thing
because I say non-vanity is the new vanity. You know, it's basically like the competition was
how unveined could you be? How much makeup could you not wear? You know, and so that became a source of
pride. Anything can be prideful, anything can be vain. What happened was, you know, when you're decently

(19:16):
good looking, which at that point in time of my life I was, I was very thin. I was platinum blonde.
I was kind of petite. They really are that many good looking women in these churches because they
don't do anything to help themselves. So you can be in demand. And I was sort of in demand, but never

(19:37):
really connected with anybody, enough to marry them. I tended to fall for my friends was the story.
And then that was a whole emotional trauma in and of itself because stuff see they're not reciprocated
or you get the one or two friends which I had who play on it. And they're not really not interested,

(19:59):
but they're not really all the way interested because you're not going to do everything that they
want you to do. And so that really kind of became a thing. And I mean, I kind of went in and out of
a couple of serious relationships I was engaged a couple of times and I just really wasn't finding
anything. And I felt there was something wrong with me. I felt intrinsically, I would probably say I

(20:24):
felt like I was unlovable. And the thing is that when you're other and you don't understand it, you
don't understand why I had around that time had a falling out. I'd had a newsletter and the
remaining two siblings I had that were kind of in and out of my life. They weren't really regular and
we weren't really close. Got into a whole thing about my newsletter and it took it out on me and

(20:47):
I pretty much never heard from either one of them ever again. And it like I say in hindsight
over what it was was kind of dumb, but you know people make their choices, I guess is the way to put it.
I really don't have any family. I really don't have anything as far as I'm concerned that's really
going for me. And I'm sitting there by myself trying to figure me out. And like I say, I had a better

(21:12):
relationship with God at this time than I had had earlier, but God still kind of seemed kind of
distant, you know, to me. It wasn't, you know, it was still the system I say that's pagan in that
we're still trying to make God happy. And I'm trying to do ministry because I feel like this is what
I'm supposed to do and I'm called to do it, but I didn't really all that sure where I was supposed

(21:33):
to be going with it, or I'm even going to be honest a lot of the time that I wanted to do it.
Sometimes I think I should have found something else for a while, maybe come back to it, maybe not,
you know, we know who knows. And I had met somebody and everything seemed really promising and then
literally one day he literally disappeared. And I was doing all this research into demonology at

(21:55):
the time and I actually started to think maybe he was a demon because it was literally like he
vanished. Never found him again, never heard from him again, never even found a record of him again.
And I mean, and that and there were times over the past years I haven't done it in a while, but there
were times I did look out of curiosity. It's literally like he just vanished. And so I really wondered
at times if I even encountered a human being or if something was there to kind of put me in a place.

(22:19):
And I literally said, God, I can't do this anymore. The ministry is not going anywhere. Life is not
going anywhere. Everything seems really, really dead end. I was still living in the family home, which
is a whole other thing. And I just needed, I said, God, whatever you want me to do, however you want
to direct me, I'm going to leave this up to you. And on that same website, I mentioned earlier,

(22:43):
ChristianPenPals.com a couple of days later, I met my first husband. And the story I tell about
my first husband was that the day I met in my new that we were going to get married. Now, I didn't
know that because we fell madly in love or because I was taken and swept off my feet and all the

(23:08):
romantic crap, everybody told me how I've suddenly made sense. It was a knowing. I would say it was a
word. I guess we could say it was a word of knowledge. It was a word of knowledge. I just knew that day.
And we had met through a friend of his that somebody else he was talking to who was actually, I think
she was a woman in Africa and she was a missionary or something and somehow she connected the two of us

(23:31):
and we started talking. And my husband, my first husband lived in Kentucky and I lived in New York at
a time. And we trying to sort of, I mean, you know, I guess what we kind of connected over was religion.
So our interest was, I mean, one of the first things he talked about was praying for my father's

(23:53):
salvation. That was one of the first things that kind of came up. And I'll be honest in saying that
there were huge swathes of his life to this day. And, you know, he's not going to hear it. Now, I mean,
I don't know. Maybe he hears it from heaven. I don't know. But there were huge swathes of my life. I never
told him about it. And I didn't tell him about it because I knew who he was and I knew how he was.
And I knew he would judge things. And he was seemingly very strong in his faith. I would kind of

(24:19):
put it in the context of, and I'm not using this term in the context that everybody uses it today. He
was very, very religious. And what I mean by that, he was very religious is that he was very much
into the practice of the faith. So he really, he had a lot of trouble going in churches. He had a lot
of issues with authority. He was very, very staunch though about the baptism in the Jesus name. He

(24:43):
was very, very devoutly. King James only. And so you can see where this kind of would go knowing I
was in ministry, knowing that at the time I really expected kind of what I would say the joyce
meyer set up where maybe, you know, I had husband who maybe he was in a ministry himself or on the

(25:04):
platform himself, but he needed to be involved somehow. He very quickly became the top contributor to
the ministry. He seemed to be really interested in it. He connected me with people who lived there.
And we would go on like that for a while. And then the meantime I kept working and kept ministering.
And we kind of reached what I call a ceiling. And if you've ever heard of me talk about relationship

(25:25):
ceilings, it's basically means that your relationship is gone as far as it can go when you start
hit like a ceiling. And the relationship isn't going to go any further unless the ceiling gets moved.
And there was no reason for him to move where I was. And I already had opportunity where he was
supposedly didn't want to go in anywhere, but I had opportunity where he was. And it seemed like

(25:49):
the right thing to do. I up and I'm uprooted my life and I moved to Western Kentucky where I would stay
for the next two and a half years. And what happened was we got married. And right after we got married,
he came in and he announced he was not going to tithe that anymore. Because he said that he was going
to have to pay the bills and he was going to have to pay for the house and he was going to have to

(26:10):
pay for all this stuff and he was just not going to do it anymore. And we spent the next 11 and a half years
dealing with like what I talked about in the first episode where I'm driving by this house and
there's stuff all over the lawn and people are fighting on the lawn and you say it's domestic violence
and I'm going that wasn't my experience. I spent the next 11 years dealing with different forms

(26:35):
of domestic violence. Things were never really right. And I think in hindsight that I think we cared
enough about each other to care, but we really didn't care enough about each other to make a
marriage work or to be really really married. And all those years we kept clashing, we kept trying to

(26:57):
make something happen that wasn't going to. And then you have that the ministry was involved and
that means you didn't make a lot of money all the time. And in his family for some odd reason,
the women all carried the men. Now I don't know if that was something with where he lived,
something with history, but his mother carried his both his father and then his stepfather and his

(27:19):
brothers, wife carried his brother. And he pretty much expected, I think, and I'd never really
said anything to me about it because if he had said something to me about it, we wouldn't have ever
gotten married. He expected that it was my responsibility to carry him so he could pursue or do
whatever he wanted to do. And there were a lot of different forms of violence that came over the
years. I'm not going to get into outlining all of them because you know that it's neither here nor

(27:42):
there. And as I had mentioned before, he is deceased. But we had the battle for all those years
where I needed to go do something for ministry and he needed to work and he wouldn't come home on time.
Or I couldn't have the car or you know it was all right when he wanted to go on vacation and go
home and visit his family. But then I had to stay behind and be the adult. And over those years,

(28:07):
I say that ministry became compulsory for me in that it had to work. It had to work because if it
didn't work, I didn't have anything. And so I probably pushed and over pushed in that. And that
was through a lot of years where the push was to cover a lot of people or to have a lot of people
under your ministry. And one point in time, we had 22, you know, to really make that work. I made the

(28:31):
transition somewhere in there. I started working predominantly in black churches in the south of
the rural south. And so that was kind of an interesting experience. And I mean, it's like I say,
I loved it and I would do it again. I had nothing against it. Over time, you know, what kind of happened
is a lot of them tend to be kind of rigid. And so it's like I would say, you know, we might be able to

(28:52):
approach certain things, but some ideas you just did not touch and you just did not go there for in
the more I wanted to explore that, I kind of lost some of the footing that I once had. But you know,
we had at one point in time, you know, joked that that was my entire world was that the only white
person I knew was my husband. And we spent those years, he went through 12 or 15 jobs in the time

(29:21):
that we were married. He was always changing jobs. And we eventually moved to North Carolina. God had
told me when I got married, I'm sending you to North Carolina. And I was specifically sent to
Rolly. And we moved there. And ministry kind of continued there. And there was a point in time I was
doing stuff all the time, a couple of times the month was gone to preach. Could clear up my Rose

(29:43):
of Sharon table by, you know, things that I sell could sell it out at night. And it came to 2012. And
he was working at the time for Walmart and management. And I was standing in the laundry room that
we had in the apartment. We had an apartment off 55 for everybody who knows that area out of 55.

(30:08):
And then we had a laundry room. And I was walking at the laundry room in all of a sudden
I basically got a word again. And it's like I say it's almost like it falls. It's kind of audible
but not. It's hard to explain. It's just kind of like word falls out of the sky on your head. And I
heard my husband was going to die. And I was so overwhelmed with the presence of death. I literally

(30:29):
fell on the floor. And the dogs we had at the time, particularly the female dog she kept running over
and trying to get me to get up because she probably thought something was wrong. And it was so
overwhelming. I was planning every move I was going to make that I was going to have to my mother
lived in New York at the time. And I was going to try to get her down here to help me. And I was
I was orchestrating in my head how I was going to handle this and how I was going to tell his family.

(30:54):
All this sort of thing and it didn't happen. And that's just like God that you know he tells you
seven years in advance because it was literally seven years almost exactly. And I started to go
through a really deep period where I would say I knew I didn't fit where I was but I didn't really

(31:17):
know where I belonged. And I knew I didn't belong in the marriage I had and I knew I didn't really have
any churches that I could go to. And I really I had acquaintances. I had ministry ministry associates.
We would call them ministry friends. They're people we call up and most of what we talked about
though was ministry. And I had a couple who knew who had known him had met him a couple times. And

(31:40):
I had a few people that I had known. And the first one that really made me realize that something
was wrong was a woman who was part of our ministry who later would die from breast cancer. And I
talked to her every day and she had a really crazy marriage when she was married. And I started talking
about stuff and she said this isn't right. Something about this is not right. And she wanted me to run

(32:06):
off and marry a millionaire. She wanted me to go run off and she got out of Prince Charming mentality.
You know, so I'm not going to lie. Some days I still miss her because you know, it was just like she was
always there and then one day she got really sick and she wasn't she never came back. And she was
while I'm always there and I had another friend at South Carolina who I was really close to who
within the next two years I would distance from. And then everything kind of started to fall apart

(32:30):
once. I went to Europe. I didn't I thought I was going to have our conference and it wound up being
a mission trip and it was a disaster. Everything about it was just a disaster. And I came back and it
was like my entire life changed. Everything changed. And everybody started fighting and people started
leaving the ministry and the friend I had the one I had been engaged to early in time who was now back

(32:56):
more or less as my friend and I had a huge falling out that really wasn't because of anything I did
it involved somebody else but we had a falling out and stuff was never really the same ever again after
that. And I was trying to find someplace where I fit. I connected with some ministers up in Durham
and I worked in Durham, North Carolina for a while. Then that kind of fell through by the end of

(33:21):
that year. That it fell through and it just felt like everything was always in chaos. Like there's
a never ending stream of chaos. And I would finally reach a point where I thought things were getting
better and they wouldn't. And preaching started to change and didn't get as many invites. And I mean
the truth is that everything I'm going through I'm going through behind closed doors. Nothing is messy,

(33:42):
nothing is public. Nobody knows anything that's going on. Nobody's holding anything against me. It
just wasn't going anywhere. And finally reached a point. My husband lost his job. He lost his job
after I told him not to leave the other job. He didn't want to be at Walmart anymore and he
quit. And he went somewhere else and I told him I don't feel right about this. You shouldn't do this.

(34:06):
He told me I was negative and that I never supported him. And then six weeks later he was out of work
for a year and a half. And then he came home and he wanted to cry. So don't you come and cry at me.
I told you that you should not have done this. And we then spent a year like that. And he decided
he wanted to be a locksmith and he went into locksmith thing after that. Trained, got rehired. And in the

(34:29):
meantime I started sanctuary. I got a word I needed to take a project off a shelf. And sanctuary
basically came out of this period because I didn't have anywhere to go. I didn't have anywhere. I
wanted to do the old panacostal thing and lay out on altars we used to say and I didn't have anywhere

(34:49):
where I could go and do that. And I said if I survived because you know we're always metal dramatic when
we're going through all these things I would make a place where people could find what they needed that
safe place. And that was how sanctuary came to be. But I didn't do anything with sanctuary really
that much until I moved here. We had one year where they said take a project off a shelf somebody

(35:10):
told me it was sanctuary. I followed the prophetic word. I put word out there that we were doing this.
Everybody sent us money for the first month's rent and we had actually enough for a month or two.
And then I'm figuring all right that's what we're supposed to do well then by the end of the second
or third month we didn't have any money. And keeping that church open was a struggle. We basically

(35:30):
had one or two families. We had a few people in and out some friends that we know one in particular.
He came a couple of times. Yeah he came a couple of times when we were in rolly we did an ordination
while we were there. And you know things just kind of went on but it wasn't sustainable. And I think
that part of that was it was still too traditional. I was still trying to be traditional and not do it.

(35:54):
And I was in that year we're up to about 2016. I was invited to preach for a birthday service for
preach up in Danville, Virginia. And it's like I say the message was fine the only thing that was wrong
with it was I delivered it. It was very typical boring message. I was very badly received. And I got
in the car and I'm driving home and anybody who's ever driven from Danvolt to carry knows that's

(36:17):
a really dark drive. And I'm in the car and I told God if I never preached again I never preached
again but I couldn't do this anymore. And I did not preach for another year. I did seminary. I
think we were on the radio was still at the time. I believe we were still on the radio at that time

(36:39):
and so I still the radio program. I'd been on radio for years. I'd been on television in
in Wake County Durham County. I'd been in Orange County as well. I'd been on TV. We had radio
program. I was on the Caribbean. Yeah we were on the Caribbean. We were in Greenville, South Carolina
and Ashville, which I kind of find interesting where I've worked these years and then you know I met

(37:00):
you and you down Greenville way and I was on radio in all those areas. I was on radio in Africa
and that I believe was still ongoing at the time so I was still doing that. I mean I was still
doing some stuff. I just really wasn't doing very much. And gay marriage became legal

(37:22):
somewhere in here. 2015. So yeah that came down 2015 and as a result in there I had come out
basically as what we would classify as affirming. And the reason I felt okay about it from

(37:45):
that point was because of the legality of it. I guess you know being able to acknowledge the
relationships legally gave it a certain validity to me. I didn't know a lot of the theology. I still
really didn't know anything of it. I just was okay with church being for everybody. And even though
our church in Raleigh was technically affirming it really did look that way to anybody from the

(38:10):
outset. And I'm pretty much burning out and in the meantime somebody that was part of the
ministry for a very long time is having their own crisis about whether or not she should have come out.
And she came to me and she said to me, "Do you really believe that I'm going to go for hell for this?"

(38:33):
And I listened to her and I have watched her struggle for several years and I said to her, "No,
I don't." And as a result she came out. And I had worked with other ministers over the years,
which a lot of people talk about in black church that it's the biggest secret, obvious secret

(38:58):
on-keypt, that you've got choir directors and you've got worship leaders and you've got pastors.
And I worked with somebody for a little while who was on the DL, but everybody knew about it. And we all
looked the other way and I said, "Well, if we can look the other way for him, we can look the other way for her."
And she came out and I'm at the time not really doing much of anything and not really sure where I'm

(39:24):
going to go. And I had connected and got an invite to preach at a conference in Atlanta that was
affirming. And the conference actually was a mix of a lot of different ideas and the experience didn't
really go very well. But I was at a place where, "Hey, I'm willing to try something different and
try something new." And that kind of became my inaugural, I guess you could say, in these different

(39:50):
communities. But I'm not going to lie to you all, I really didn't even fit in there. I mean, and you
know, I'm sitting here going, I don't know how you can be so obviously other and like, there is
no other place that you fit in anywhere. And my first husband was very opposed to the work. He was
very opposed to me working with the community. I don't really think he ever reconciled that. And

(40:14):
going on, kind of waiting in this place and all of a sudden one day God says to me, "Have you ever
considered living in Charlotte?" And I'm, the answer was no. Okay, the answer was, I'd been to
Charlotte a few times and I did not like Charlotte. You know, I was just like, "No, I had no intention
to move into Charlotte." Or the area or anything, having to do with it. But it was just the same way

(40:39):
that that word fell and that the word felt was the same type of, the same type of experience and
the same type of thing. And so I knew it was God. And I went home and I talked to my first husband
about it and to my very great shock, he really wasn't that opposed to it. But it would never happen,
or at least it didn't happen with him. And I kind of went through a lot of years where I didn't really

(41:04):
do a whole lot. Things were kind of quiet. We had one conference of our own association which was
shrinking for different reasons. And I mean, it really was never anything specific. But things started
to change. And I was just kind of around kind of doing things and kind of waiting for God to show me
what was next. And what happened in the meantime was the marriage that I had was pretty much

(41:30):
in a toilet. And I mean, there's no other way to put it other than that, that the years of
the abuse and the years of the lack of support. And I changed a lot between 25 when I got married
between 25 and then 37 when my husband died. I mean, I changed a lot over those years. And I got

(41:55):
more. I was never physical and I never hit him, but I didn't have any problem speaking up at certain
points in time. And that led to a lot of conflict. And in the meantime, my mom moved down from New York.
And it was never really her plan to live with us as long as she did, but she came down here,
was going to buy something and then wasn't able to find anything because of the Raleigh market. It

(42:18):
was changing at the time. And so then she was with us. And the combination of all this going on,
losing my church, really not knowing where I belonged in ministry, really kind of burning out.
And dealing with her and him together because that was a bad combination. I had points. I was suicidal.
I had points where I just really didn't know what I was going to do. And there was one particularly

(42:40):
very bad incident where he blew up and I said to myself, I cannot do this anymore. And I had decided
that the following year, which the following year was 2019, that I was going to have to move out.
And I was going to have to figure something out because I wasn't going to be able to stay like this.
And very shortly after that, he went away. He went down to help with Hurricane relief. I don't

(43:04):
remember what hurricane it was. It was Matthew or it was our every, I don't remember which hurricane
it was, but it was whatever the hurricane was that damaged the new burn area, damaged the coast
really, really bad in 2018. He went down for hurricane relief. And he came back sick. And we didn't know
what was wrong with him. And we figured that maybe he ingested bad water. That would probably be

(43:28):
the most obvious choice or maybe he had a parasite or something to that extent. And he just didn't
get better. And he had this thing about his primary. And I said, you need to go somewhere else.
You need to go talk to somebody else. And he didn't. And he kind of kept going on and on. And in

(43:48):
December of 2018 was a little bit after my birthday that year, he went into the hospital because he
was so bloated in his abdomen. And he was so windy. He couldn't tie his shoes and men over to tie
his shoes. And he stayed in there for a week and they told him that they suspected that he had cancer.
And I at the time was sick. I basically came back from Connecticut, that trip to Connecticut sick.

(44:14):
And I did not get better until after he, his funeral in February. And I suspect I don't know,
I have often wondered if it was COVID. They say it's too early for COVID, but it sounded
enough a lot like COVID. And he, I said, and what do you want to do? And he said, well, you know,
if I can, I want to fight it. And I said, all right, well, why don't we wait until we find out what's

(44:37):
going on? And they did a liver biopsy was around Christmas time. They did a liver biopsy. And then we
had that hush that, but I say the silent night where for almost two weeks, we waited. And we didn't
nobody talked to much. Nobody said much. He started being up all night coughing and having a lot of
different problems. And we went and we found out he had liver cancer at was stage four. It had metastasized

(45:04):
to his lungs. As a result, he had advanced cirrhosis and they gave him between two and 11 months to
live. And probably more on the lower end, which is actually exactly what it wound up being. And
that was sobering because you know, you pretty much went from being two people who were at total odds

(45:24):
to all of a sudden now. You're looking at a finish line that you didn't really ever expect to do.
So the first thing that happened was I basically cried for three days. And I stayed up the entire night,
the night he was diagnosed. And I tried to figure out what I was going to do with my life because

(45:48):
this wasn't it. And all of a sudden I didn't want to work with all these people that I knew and I
didn't know if I even wanted to be in ministry. And that would follow me for a few years to be really
honest. And then I started singing one thing remains by Jesus culture for three weeks. And the joke was
I didn't even like Jesus culture. I didn't even know the song was Jesus culture, but there I am in the

(46:12):
shower. Your love never fails. It never gives up. It never runs out on me. You know, in life and death,
I'm confident of your great love. And I'm singing this song and I don't know what's going to happen.
And we're trying to find peace and putting stuff aside. And I almost say that God gave me what I would

(46:34):
call forgiveness for him because I was really worried about his salvation. I was really, really worried that
because he had been so awful and he hadn't been to church in so many years that he wasn't going to be
right with God when he died. And so I started praying for that. And taking him to all his appointments and

(46:56):
basically taking over the household and 22 days from his diagnosis, 22 very long days with bad experiences
with hospice and in and out of hospitals and doctors and he died one o'clock in the afternoon,
at Rex Hospital in Raleigh. And that then started the whole thing. God in the car went home, sat there,

(47:22):
thought I was going to lose the car. I still actually went up having the car. He very much to someone
she grew up. I still had that car was able to take care of it and pay it off. And I put myself together
and went home, took care of my dogs, went to bed and then got up the next day and started the long

(47:43):
process of handling estates when people die. I had to battle his family that got really, really ugly
at a couple of points. And to make the long story short somewhere in there, much of my life was put
on pause. And so I started making trek two, three times a week to come to try and find a house in

(48:04):
Charlotte. Wound up fine and one in Gastonia at the in the little midnight hour. You know, right before
the absolute deadline moved in June, I made the adjustment not very well. Not going to lie, I didn't
make the adjustment really great. And then a few months later, I noticed that sums up with one of my

(48:25):
dogs, the dogs that we had and then she died. And so Fiona, a female dog died. And that was a huge
blow because I was really enjoying being her owner because a lot of the tension that existed between him
and I over her wasn't there anymore. And I loved having her without him. And so losing her was a

(48:48):
surprise that turned out she had Cushing syndrome. That was another really, really big loss. And in the middle
there, we started this podcast. And the individual that I had mentioned earlier who had come out
after I basically kind of aligned as affirming came out. And she really pushed me to start sanctuary

(49:12):
because she felt that it was needed. And she was right it was, you know, as much as she may not be here
now. She really was very instrumental in all of us being here. And in keeping me going and keeping
the interested in ministry through a very long period where I didn't want to be. And we started in
McDonald's. We started meeting in, I don't know why it was McDonald's. And I always seemed like we were

(49:38):
meeting in McDonald's and her roommate and you came along and different people came in and out. And
I think started in my gut. And I don't even remember why we did that. And even in the middle of this
thing, it's like I say, I really was an other that really didn't fit in the affirming movement. And

(49:58):
somehow brought a bunch of others together that also needed something. And then very shortly after
that we went into COVID. And I think I went through what I called delayed grief. I was in a place for a
really long time where the only way I could describe it is you hurt, but you hurt so long you don't even

(50:18):
feel it anymore. And try to go about life, try to do things, publishing, working, you know, doing
everything that need to be done, taking care of my dog that was alive. My mom was with me and, you know,
trying to do everything there. And really trying to somehow in a weird way get right with God because

(50:41):
I didn't really feel wrong with God because I was. Horing after everybody I saw because that definitely
wasn't the case. Or, you know, in alcohol or backsliding or drugs or anything like that, but I really
wanted to feel the presence of God in a really interesting way because it's like I say, I never felt

(51:03):
God like I did when my husband was dying. Just simply because, and they say in our, our humanists,
we find divinity because we come to the end of ourselves and we know we need something more than us.
I'm sorry, you want the mic?

(51:24):
Well, you can keep talking. I was just in, you were just in my prayer last night.
Okay, so I was in your prayer last night, cool. And that really wanting to kind of have a better
understanding of that. And down the line and in those years things happened, people came and went,

(51:45):
not going to get into all that detail. We've talked about all that on a lot of other episodes,
not going to get into all that in this one. And I came to the point where I knew I needed to have
more in my life than just sitting at home and becoming the crazy cat lady stereotypically, no offense
to anybody in here who has a cat. And, you know, just kind of really cutting off from the world. And

(52:12):
it was after a really big disaster event that made me start dealing with my history with my mom.
And some of those things that I suddenly realized, hey, you know, I better go on a date again
or I'm going to just shut off from the whole world because that was very much where I was at the time.
And I kind of feel bad for the first guy I went out with because he had asked me for two months

(52:37):
because he was younger than me and I didn't feel that that was appropriate. And then that kind of
didn't go anywhere and in the meantime other people kind of came and went and eventually we reached
the point where we had a split in our church because people wanted things. I was dealing with being

(52:57):
both Demi and Arrow and kind of really realizing I was aromantic. I'd been dealing with Demi for a while.
But when you're dating again, all of that stuff really kind of comes front and center when you realize
that the way that you interact with the world is not the same as how they interact. And I was mean,
I'm just going to admit it because that's just who I am. And you know, like, blessed and highly petty.

(53:18):
And you know, I'm sitting there and you know, you get a comment from somebody about, you know,
something and they say you're the most beautiful, second most beautiful woman created after eve.
I said, are you saying that I'm old? You know, or some of the other things that would come up, I mean,
I just, you know, I got one message once it said head and I said, is this like Jeopardy? I said, okay,

(53:41):
what is the part of the body you are not using to think with right now? You know, I mean, I just said
some of these horrible things to people and I'm going, oh my god, I'm going to be single forever.
And at the time, I sort of had a boyfriend. I don't really know what he was, what was really going on
in hindsight. And my other dog died. He's lamenting some girlfriend all over social media when we were

(54:02):
supposed to be dating. I took a deep breath and I dyed my hair black, which I had wanted to do for
years and years and years. I took the plunge I dyed my hair black. And a couple days later, I'm on
the world's biggest trash site. And I start talking to this one over there.

(54:27):
And everything in me said nah, he's too young. And everything in me said nah, we don't have anything to come.
It's okay. Everything said, nah, we don't have anything to come in. And I went, all right, yeah, he's
just going to be one of these ones who talks to me once or twice and I don't ever hear from him again.
And that's exactly what happened initially was I, you messaged me and I'll talk to you tomorrow and he

(54:47):
didn't. And so I figured, nah, whatever. And so three weeks later, a little birdies in my inbox again,
do you go get coffee or something? And I don't know what they'd me say yes. I'm just being honest
because I'm going nah, he's too young and I'm about now. And I said oh, but I'm not

(55:12):
said okay, and I'm going what the hell is the matter with you? And so then I'm going,
tell me he's not my type. And you know, I don't know about this and you know, God really, come on. And so
I got a wrestle back and forth and you thought it was too early because you were out of your
disaster toxic mess. And we went out and we went to the river and his car died and he doesn't like

(55:42):
fords and I drive a ford and you don't know how delighted I was to drive him in my ford to the parts store.
And I just had to replace the transmission. Okay, but how many years later anyway. And so
we had our extinguishes back and forth and I remember talking to Julie, who everybody knows from

(56:03):
this podcast. And I said, I don't know, he's not really my type. And Julie said, so what are you going
to do when I said I'm going to see where this goes because sometimes our type isn't good for us. And
here we are. Somewhere down the line in there we got married and that one over there
officiated the ceremony and okay, one over there was Nik. Okay, Nik officiated and Chuck was the

(56:28):
witness and we had our wedding party at Cookout and we played cards against humanity and here we
are. And somehow I guess what I would say is that I've had in hindsight, you know, even as we're doing
this now, just think he's wanted to faint on us. We keep, I guess we can, you know, we're at the

(56:58):
procs of another change in ministry and in our lives at this point in time. And I know it and y'all
know it and we're all at different points with that change, but we kind of all know that the change
is coming in. I had so many points where I thought that we were done and we weren't. And God always

(57:21):
had something else. And so, you know, I guess in a certain sense, one thing does remain that constantly
through these years and through all these different experiences, it really is true that his love
never fails, it never gives up and it never runs out on us because I went from kind of feeling with God,
like he was some sort of distant relative to being the thing that gets me through every day, yes,

(57:45):
dear. So in other words, God never gave you up and he never let you down.
So in other words, God, rick rolled me.
And I'm leaving that in. So that was brilliant and we're going to just let you have that.
Anyway, but it really does it really nicking chuck, well, no, not chucking bread anyway,

(58:13):
it really is a testament that, you know, ministry sometimes need to be different and going from other
to us is maybe what we need to call this because that's exactly what God has done. Even though it might
not have felt like it all the time and been like it, but that's really kind of where we're at is that

(58:40):
every time we think it's a dead end, it's actually just a curve. Yes.
So it's funny how you say that because I used to go to an affirming church. I am no longer there,
obviously. I guess you can say I dealt with church hurt there and then in trying to find another one,

(59:02):
there was one not too far away from me that was kind of secret friendly as you pointed out, Leanne.
And I didn't realize I was discerning that things were off, but it's eventually I did and I kind of was
out of church for a bit. I didn't really know if I could trust, you know, certain preaches to use the
correct theology or whatever. And then individual who was no longer here was like, hey, we're doing a

(59:27):
Bible study. And that was how it was pitched to me. It was a Bible study. I didn't know there was a whole
church, she failed to mention that. It really wasn't. Okay, fair. It really wasn't.
Okay, there wasn't really a church at the time. So that was my mistake. But then, you know,
the whole church started and I'm like, wait a minute, what? And then what like a year or something

(59:50):
later is just like, oh, hey, we're talking about ordaining unique. I'm sorry, what?
So yeah, I kind of went from not fitting into fitting in more in a way that I did not expect.
Oh my god. Yeah. Well, but she did. She became a fix. It was this fits first, but then next

(01:00:11):
fits, yeah. I'm piggybacking on minister Nik's thing because I was in a very similar boat where I was,
I didn't come out until like very, very like relatively recently, like within the last five years.
Oh, hi. Okay. Yeah, piggybacking off of what Nik said that they were actually the ones who invited me

(01:00:32):
to sanctuary's Bible study. It took me a while to go. I didn't go until COVID because I had,
like, I was still attending a conservative church. I was still like straight as far as I knew.
I'm getting condescending paths on the head right now from Nik because, oh, bless. Now I'm like,
three flavors of queer. And so after I came out for the first time, I guess it was the second time.

(01:00:58):
Then I, Nik was like, hey, you should, you should come to sanctuary. You should come to Bible study.
And I did. And I remember the very, one of, I don't mean to like hijack this at all, but yeah,
the, there are two experiences. There are two experiences that stand out to me. This was the
second time of me coming. The first time y'all had known me as my government name, the second time,

(01:01:22):
y'all, I stepped through the door of Nik's apartment and y'all say, hey, welcome, Charlie. And that
was like that, yeah, that, that really floored me. And then I think the first instance might have
actually been that first time where like you would pray over me or something. And I really felt
the movement of the Holy Spirit. And I was like, okay, this is legit. But yeah, like Nik was saying,

(01:01:45):
you know, I thought it was just going to be cute little Bible study. I was like, okay, I'm going to
like grow in my faith a little. And then they're just like, hey, we think, we think you would be
ordained. And I was like, excuse me, what? They're like, yeah, you have a calling as a teacher. I'm like,
excuse me. Why? After all this time, all this time I was saying, I don't want to be a teacher. I'm
just want to be a writer. Oh, okay, fine, fine. But yeah, it's very, yeah, for the other to us.

(01:02:13):
Yeah, all of us just, all of us others just being put in the same area.
And that the work, the work of this though is that it's becoming others, it's becoming other to us.
And that God is growing us and he is expanding us. And maybe it's not as fast as we want or the timing
that we want or the way that we expect. But it's definitely still happening. And so before we close

(01:02:39):
out, does anybody have any questions that they want to ask from this or anything they want to add? Yes,
so you're, you've been explaining this entire time how you have been going through these very
isolating experiences. You are saying one thing remains. His love never fails, never gives out.
Can you tell us more about how God has gotten you through these really isolating times?

(01:03:02):
I don't know if I can explain it. And the recently said, I don't know if I can explain it is because
I think that all of us have, we have our corporate experience with God in the body, but we also have our
individual experiences with God. And the way I would describe it is that a lot of my life with God
is very much revelatory, but it's in a very ordinary way. It's very, very brother Lawrence.

(01:03:24):
So it's driving in the car. Well, I'm hysterical and listening to the music in all of a sudden,
God drops a thought or kind of like I would almost say it's got like God drops pebbles. And what I went
much for, yeah, our throws in my forehead sometimes. Yeah, I mean, that's valid, but I almost

(01:03:46):
find it as an awareness and a presence of God in my life that I didn't have earlier in time. I
think I wanted it. I think I saw it. And what I'm going to say is that I've had a relationship with God
all these years. And I've always loved God, but I have not really found what I looked to with God
until after my first husband died. And that might sound really weird given I was a minister for all

(01:04:10):
those years and given word and running around the room. And I mean, in like, I mean, sometimes the
prophetic word I would give to people was so accurate. It was shocking. I mean, you know, people left. I
remember I was in one church and she said she just aired out all my business. I mean, she just
walked away and like she just told all my business kind of thing. I mean, that it was stuff I didn't

(01:04:32):
I had the ability, but the relationship was not always there. And it like I say, my concept of God
was very, very performative and it was very much based on the life that I had. And I mean, I'm
even going to not, I'm dealing with that even in the relationship I have with Brad and with
my husband now because I'm not with him because he's not with me because of my performance.

(01:04:54):
He's not with me because I can because I can throw down in the kitchen or because I can
preach down the house or because I can clean compulsively. Those are not he's not with me because I
came into this with perfect credit. And to hang a relationship on those that performative aspect

(01:05:21):
is not good even when it's with God. And I think that learning the idea that God loves me. God loves
me as much when I'm a mess in the bathroom on the floor or when I'm don't want to get out of bed
or when I hate my day job or when I'm sitting there going, I don't know where I'm going to go,

(01:05:45):
when I'm not performing when it's not the music on and everybody's around and we're all singing in,
we're all feeling real spiritual that God loves me just as much as he does it any other time is
really important. And God loves me as a person whether I'm a minister or not if I never ascended
the pulpit again, which I mean we all know I'm going to but even if I never did it again, God would

(01:06:09):
not make God love me any differently. There's that line in Jireh by Maverick City.
Wasn't holding you up so there's nothing I can do to let you down. I'm not holding up God.
And so I can't let God down. And I think that this kind of understanding and I did not come to it
until I came to queer theology. I did not come to it until I understood the other in scripture

(01:06:35):
and how the other became us in scripture. I didn't recognize it until that came about. And I think that
I can see God in hindsight all through it. It just wasn't always the way I wanted. And God did not
make me everybody else, which is what I wanted for a lot of those years. And that acceptance and coming

(01:06:58):
to that place is made a really really big difference. Anybody else have any questions? They want to ask
that they didn't get to ask? No. Go ahead have your other thing. So in reflecting on your entire

(01:07:26):
like life story, what would be some advice that you would give people who are looking for that
similar kind of relationship with God? Was that the wrong thing to ask? No. Be prepared for the surprises
and learn to find God in them and adapt the mentality that God, I want to find you in everything that I

(01:07:58):
do and in everywhere I set my foot and in everything that I undertake. And you will find the will of God.
It's not in the performative aspect that we often talk about. You know, we basically often treat the
will of God as a performative thing that if we're in God's will, we're going to do or act or be in a
certain way. It's not what it is, but be prepared for that will of God to take you to places that maybe

(01:08:21):
you would not always expect. Anyway, so on that note, I'm the one who's talking, so I guess I have to do
the final thought. I really think that that was a pretty good final thought, but what I would say is

(01:08:46):
I don't really think in terms of life when I think of myself, I don't really think I'm that extraordinary.
Now, I don't mean that it's a put down. What I mean by that is I don't feel that God has done anything
for me that he can't do for somebody else. I don't really think that I've had all these really

(01:09:11):
major and in the scope of my life, I haven't really had that much extraordinary experience with God. I've
had a few encounters. I've had a few experiences, but I haven't been to heaven fifty times a day. I
haven't had a vision of the throne room. I haven't, you know, I don't speak in tongues 24 hours day. I
really have not had that many things in terms of that level of experience, but I think that finding God

(01:09:37):
in our boringness and our extraordinary days in our chaos is a really, really important thing and we
may not feel God in and at that moment, but we will see God carry us through it at some other point
of time. And so we need to be open to the presence of God in our lives in our every day, in every way,

(01:09:57):
and to realize that being called of God means automatically we cannot be like everybody else.
If we are called and we are a cookie cutter of everybody else, that makes me question the calling,
especially in these day and ages where we don't need another ministry that's exactly like the 50
others that are on our block. So don't be afraid to do different things and don't be afraid to find God

(01:10:21):
in different things. So that being said, I'm going to let my moderators give their info on how
everybody can get in contact with them if they would so like. Hey, this is minister Charlie again. I am
not the most active on social media. So I would recommend reaching out through my website. So beloved-not-broken.com.

(01:10:49):
Go to the questions tab. That's basically just my contact page. It will say like, hey, what do you want
to know? Feel free to just drop anything that either you want to know about me personally or
like anything spiritual or what have you. It's just go nuts with the form, I guess.
Nik again here. Again, I have a website that's nikfits.com. That's N-I-K-F-I-T-S.com.

(01:11:16):
I have a contact form on there that you can message me from, but I am.
I'm active on social media on a couple platforms. Namely blue sky and
yeah, namely blue sky, occasionally check and stuff, but yeah, definitely not on Twitter anymore.
But pretty much any link on there you can follow me. Yeah.

(01:11:39):
It's brad again.
owner of Empire Transport. You can feel free to reach out to me at empiretransport.co for any
and all the transportation or for any needs. And also go on Amazon.com and look for his book

(01:12:00):
breaking the silence, a journey into men's mental breakthrough. Well, I think everybody for
being on here today and I think all of you for listening. And let's start here. If you'd like to
connect, if something in this really clicked with you and you would like to connect with me across
social media @kingdompowernow, that's @kingdompowernow. Just look up the handle. I will come up

(01:12:22):
Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Blue Sky, anywhere else WordPress. I'm actually going to be
updating my WordPress site. So I'm going to be working on redoing my blog. So definitely go check that
out at Kingdom Power Now. Also, if you would like a book that might help you out with some of what we've
been talking about here today, I am going to recommend my book ministering to LGBTQ+ and those who love

(01:12:45):
them. An introduction into queer theology. I think this is a subtitle if it's wrong. For a primer for
queer theology. That's ministering to LGBTQ+ and those who love them. A primer for queer theology.
And the accompanying workbook. Okay, the workbook is gorgeous. Go get the workbook. So find me on Amazon.com
and wherever books are sold. Dr. Lee Ann B. Marino and all my titles will come up. There is something

(01:13:08):
for everyone and check that out. Also check out my pathos column leadership on fire at patheos.com/blogs/leadershiponfire
or our collective church blog. Write the vision at youarewelcomeinthisplace.wordpress.com.

(01:13:29):
Yep, youarewelcomeinthisplace.wordpress.com. We have writings from minister Charlie,
minister Nik and myself and so definitely follow and check that out and watch for our newsletter
that's coming soon. So also if you're interested in learning more about the world of counterculture
Christianity, feel free to visit my website at www.kingdompowernow.org. That's www.kingdompowernow.org. If you

(01:13:49):
are looking for seminary that is entirely affordable and can be done from anywhere in the world,
check out Apostolic Covenant Theological Seminary. Acts for short at acts176.org. That's acts176.org.
And if you are in the Charlotte, North Carolina area and you are ready to go from other to us,
check us out at sanctuary at welcomeinthisplace.org. That's welcomeinthisplace.org.

(01:14:13):
And if you cannot find all the answers to your questions on our website, feel free to reach out. We'll
be happy to get back to you. And this is apostle dr. Lee ann marino reminding you in closing that
God can work miracles out of anything, even taking other to us. Until next time, be blessed.
Thank you for joining us on Kingdom Now. I pray that it is proven to be a blessing in your life,

(01:14:42):
offering an on time word for you. To learn more about this work, ask a question, submit feedback,
advertise with us, order suggested items, be a guest, or donate to support this work. As our podcast is
supported by people like you, visit my website which contains essential information, projects,

(01:15:03):
and other points of contact around the way. At KingdomPowerNow.org. Also, if you'd like to visit
sanctuary international fellowship tabernacle, sit in one of our North Carolina or South Carolina
locations, check out welcomeinthisplace.org. Until next time, this is dr. Lee ann
marino reminding you that the Kingdom of God is within you, and that means the Kingdom is now.