Ep.68: "God Gave Me a Choice of Three Different Women"

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In our 2nd episode with Mindy, she shares her journey growing up in a strict religious environment where purity culture shaped her early decisions, including marrying young at 19. She recounts the challenges of marrying a man struggling with alcoholism, the painful experience of domestic violence, and the difficult decision to divorce despite the heavy shame and guilt imposed by her community. 

Mindy also opens up about the controlling nature of her family even after moving out, and how she eventually found love again with her current husband, navigating the complexities of relationships within a tight-knit church community. She discusses the family’s belief that sickness was a sign of weak faith, which influenced how her mother’s cancer was handled, leading to secrecy, shame, and ultimately loss.

Mindy reflects on the impact of these experiences on her mental health and personal growth, offering a raw and honest look at life inside and beyond a cult-like religious environment.

#cultleaderfathers #cultleaders #psychologyofcults #authoritarianleaders #highcontrolgroups #religiousabuse #spiritualabuse #familytrauma #generationaltrauma #powerandcontrol #cultsurvivorstories #escapingcults #mindcontrol #psychologicalmanipulation #narcissisticabuse #truecrimepodcast #cultawareness #lifeaftercults #toxicleadership #thecultnextdoor

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow, The Worldwide Church of God presents Heriberts
w Armstrong and I'm here to bring you the truth.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
He's speaking through.

Speaker 4 (00:17):
Me the Lord.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Let me experience what it is to be a new bride.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
You know, I'm not worried about what I'm about to say,
though it may be graphic.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're coming to the Lord and if you can take it,
beyond the veil is the chamber.

Speaker 5 (00:34):
That's the wedding chamber.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
The Lord told me that. But from then on, visions
begin to come. When this comes up on me, it
produces the vision. I'm able to tell people what's wrong
with them, what they must do in life, and the
sins that they are holding back in their life.

Speaker 5 (00:52):
God is going to be moving vitally, is fot like
he dies before bossing you judgment.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult nextour podcast,
and welcome back Ashley to the intro. It's been a
minute since you've joined us for an intro. Welcome back
back listeners. If you haven't already, please go follow us
on our socials that's Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Also leave us
a voice message. You know you've heard me talk about
this before. There's a link for that at the top

(01:24):
of the episode description for the episode that you are
listening to right now. Speaking of those, I'm going to
play one real quick for you guys.

Speaker 6 (01:32):
This is from Rocks, Hey, Maddie, and Ashley.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
I just want to thank you guys so so much
for being my personal therapist. You have helped me. I've
actually been going through a really major disentangling, questioning all
of the things I've been brought up to believe in
the past year, maybe year and a half, and you
guys have been walking me through it. I don't have

(01:58):
a lot of people that I can talk to you
right now, just because my friends are not in the
same kind of journey in their lives as I am,
and so I feel like a lot of my thoughts
are very taboo. And my family is quite similar to
yours the way that I was brought up, and my
dad is actually a pastor, so it's really hard to

(02:21):
share any of my inner turmoil with them. But you
guys have been walking me through every step of the way,
and I every time I see that there's a new episode,
I cannot listen to it fast enough and I even
go back and listen to old ones again.

Speaker 6 (02:37):
So thank you. Please keep up the good work. You
really are making a difference out there. Love you guys
so much.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
That's so sweet.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, I love that one. And just for context too,
I don't think maybe she did. I don't think she
did this on purpose. But I woke up that day,
you know, I always check my phone. I get an
email for like, you know, new reviews on the podcast
and like stats and where we're charting. And we had
a really long, not very nice one star review that day.

(03:10):
And then later that day when I was kind of
going over that in my head and I was like, well,
that was really mean. That makes me not feel very good.
And then she sent that. So I don't think that
she saw the bad review and did that. I think
it was just organic how it happened. Yeah, but I yeah,
it was really nice that we got that message the
same day. I needed that up. So thank you Rocks

(03:31):
for that very much.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Well, I think like you're touching on a really important point.
It does mean a lot to us. It does impact us.
And when we get negative reviews, which thankfully aren't you know, uh,
they are few and far between, but still it's kind
of you know, it just like makes you feel bad
and you wonder how you could have done better or

(03:55):
you know, been perceived differently by whoever's unhappy and so
so it is good to have those moments where it's like, okay,
like we are this is good for someone, you know,
like we are making a difference. So yeah, I really
appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, and like you said, I know we've said it
before and like not for it to sound cliche or anything,
but you know, when we started this, and we'll talk
about this more here in just a minute, but when
we started this whole thing, for me anyway, the whole
thinking was if anybody can listen and it helps them

(04:32):
the way that I felt like I was helped by
other podcasts and things like this, then that's worth it,
Like if it makes a difference for them. And obviously
the hope was that it helps more than one person,
but it's helped a whole lot more than just a
handful of people. So to get like the feedback that
people are using it as a tool to help them along. Yeah,

(04:56):
it's it's hard to kind of even put into words
exact like what that feels like because I feel like
I was right on the flip side of that not
that long ago.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, sure of course. Also it brings to mind the
review that we talked about before about what we're doing
just being substituted therapy, and it sounds like it is
for her and it's a good things.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, so take that once, so it is substituted theory.
Before we move on, want to do our Double Portion
Club shoutouts. That's Shanda and Chase, Heather Bartlett, Carla, Julia
b and a new one this week, Tamara Smith. So
thank you all for being in the Double Portion Club. Listener.

(05:45):
If you want to be in that club and be
cool like these folks, it's ten dollars a month you
get AD free episodes and a shout out, or you
can do five dollars a month. You can support the
work that we're doing and you'll get AD free episodes
and we'll send you a really cool holographic Cult next
Door sticker. We actually I send those out to everybody
that signs up for that with a little like thank

(06:05):
you card. We ran out this week. Nice. I think
we have maybe one more, so I actually had to
order one hundred more. So they're going like hotcakes, get
them you can. So I alluded to it a little
bit earlier, but we were talking about like when we
started the podcast and like the purpose and like what
we hoped out of it. Actually, as of the recording

(06:27):
of this intro, which is the day before this episode
is released, it's a Tuesday evening. Today, we officially hit
five hundred thousand downloads on this podcast and just over
two years, which is wild.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
So crazy, it's wild crazy. I literally thought it would
be our family and three people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, And like when when we recorded the first like
unofficial episode in the back around the fire pit, it
was me and Sandy and Liz. I posted that and
I remember we got like hundreds of downloads in the

(07:12):
first week, and I was like, well, this can't be right,
Like there's no promotion, there's nothing, like, there's no way
that this is real and accurate. And sure enough it was.
After I like I wanted to be wrong, I was like,
let me look at these numbers a little bit more closely,
and they were right. And so then I knew from
them like, Okay, there's an appetite for what we're talking about.

(07:33):
And then from when we really started in earnest. It
has only just kept going up. Every month is a
new high, like last month was our record month. It's
just amazing, like the support that we've had from people,
and like the listeners all over the world and messages
we get from people on the other side of the globe,

(07:55):
like it's just it really is just wild to think
half a million and downloads. I don't even know how
that happened. Who are you people?

Speaker 4 (08:03):
I know, I was going to say, I want to
know who they are and how they found us, because,
like you said, we have spent close to zero dollars
on marketing. I think we did a couple of like
fifty dollars spends or something in the first year, so
basically nothing. And I wonder, you know, how much of

(08:24):
this is organic, just people looking for the content. How
much is being shared with others, you know, I'm really
curious about that. And also like our our because you know,
you can see where the listeners are in, like what
parts of the world, and I find those reports to
be really interesting because you know, like we were trending

(08:47):
in Trinidad and Tobago, and I just want to know why,
Like what's going on.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I want to know the spots for the world tour that.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
We're making right and hopefully it's all spots.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yes, yeah, only islands are eligible. Yeah. We I was
looking this week and we consistently we charted way up
like super high in Barbados. Who are you? If you're
listening in Barbados right now, reach out?

Speaker 4 (09:17):
Please hear from you?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, tell us what's up?

Speaker 4 (09:19):
I went to Barbados like years ago. It was beautiful.
I loved it the best time.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, you sent you sent us some uh coins and money?
Do you remember that?

Speaker 4 (09:33):
Oh? Was that from Barbados?

Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think so? Yeah, Okay, Wow, it's somewhere. It's hanging
around somewhere. Moon Mom has it. Yeah. So today's episode,
we're gonna do part two with Mindy. We had a
really fun conversation with her. I really liked Mendy and
she's got a wild story. I think you're gonna do

(09:57):
a lot more of that wild story here and part two.

Speaker 6 (10:02):
Oh okay.

Speaker 5 (10:02):
So I think that I was talking about purity culture.
So because of purity culture, I ended up married at nineteen.

Speaker 6 (10:15):
I felt like.

Speaker 5 (10:17):
I was mature because I'd been through a lot in
my life and I'd you know, moving a lot, you
meet a lot of different kinds of people. You learn
a lot of things that other people maybe wouldn't if
they just were in the same neighborhood at.

Speaker 6 (10:30):
The same house their whole lives.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
I thought, I thought I knew everything, because a lot
of people were like, what are you doing? Because it
literally was from the time we started dating till the
time we got married was only a year.

Speaker 6 (10:46):
Yeah, And I didn't know him.

Speaker 5 (10:48):
Before that, So it wasn't like I grew up with
this guy and knew him, knew his family. No. So
he I met him actually at my job. I was
working in a vitamin store and he was the boss.
He was the manager, and we used to have these

(11:11):
regular customers come in that would give him like pamphlets
that talked about God and Bible verses and stuff like that.
And he knew it was not a busy store, right, Like,
customers weren't coming in there a whole lot, so we
did have a lot of time to just sit and
talk about whatever. So he knew that my family was

(11:33):
religious and that my parents were pastors, and so he
would ask me questions about whatever those customers had told
him or whatever the pamphlet said, And so at that time,
I wasn't like head over heels on fire, right like.
I was sort of just I went because I had to,
but I kind of thought it was dumb. I didn't

(11:54):
really like it, but I didn't have a choice. I mean,
I was eighteen, but I still had to do what
my parents said. And so he would ask me the questions.
And because I went to cult school, my whole life,
my education was memorizing Bible verses. Somehow, even math class
included memorizing Bible verses and that's what we got graded on,

(12:18):
was if we could memorize and quote them. So when
he's asking questions, I know all the answers based on
what I've been taught growing up, and so I would
tell him the answers. So then eventually one week he
asked me can I go to church with you on Sunday?
And I was like, I don't think you want to

(12:40):
do that? Probably not a great idea, and he's like,
why come on, just let me. Well, he grew up
like going to church on Easter at the Lutheran Church.

Speaker 6 (12:54):
You know what I'm.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
Saying, So how do I explain to him what he's
going to experience. How do I explain the running around
and screaming and dancing and falling on the floor and
I laughing and going up and shoving money in the
preacher's pocket when he's preaching.

Speaker 6 (13:15):
How do I explain that.

Speaker 5 (13:20):
I had tried and he still decided to go.

Speaker 7 (13:23):
So I was like, well, shoot, And so so he
shows up that Sunday and he's sitting by me, and
so I'm sitting like more towards the middle instead of
the front that day, and like off to the side
instead of the center section where he usually sat.

Speaker 6 (13:40):
Just I don't know. I didn't.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
Obviously they're still going to notice me, but I just
felt like that was a little bit more hidden or something.
And we were not dating or anything. But he kept
trying to put his arm around me, and I didn't
want to get in trouble because PDA, especially in church.

Speaker 6 (13:57):
U ooh no, no, no, we're not doing that.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
So he would like, you know, put his arm like this,
so then I would lean forward.

Speaker 6 (14:04):
So that I would trouble like, no, don't do that.

Speaker 5 (14:10):
Well, so you know, I'm just biting my nails through
the entire service because this is so uncomfortable for me,
and so then of course at the end there has
to be a salvation altar call. My biggest nightmare. I
knew he was going to do that, my dad, But
so he starts the altar call, and I could not

(14:33):
get myself to the bathroom fast enough. I was like,
I'm not sitting here for this. I'm not listening to this.
This is awkward. I don't like this. So I stayed
in the bathroom what I thought was long enough that
the aultar call would be over. So as I'm going
back into the service, the guy is walking up to

(14:54):
the front and I was like oh, because of course
at that moment, my dad looks up and sees me
and he's like, mindy, come on up here with your friend. Yes.

Speaker 6 (15:07):
Oh it was so bad.

Speaker 5 (15:11):
So I was just like, shoot, I really wanted to
just turn around and run, but no, I went up
with him and stood there, and you know, he got
saved that day. So then so then we could date
because I wasn't allowed to date somebody who didn't go
to our church. But he decided he wanted to date me,

(15:32):
so he started coming to our church because now he's saved.
So loophole find the loophole, always find the loophole. But
because like I said earlier, the way we were raised,
we were never allowed to be around alcohol at all,

(15:54):
I wasn't able to recognize red flags that. And he
even told me he was as an alcoholic, but I
didn't know what that meant. I just thought because my
dad also would always say that he used to be
an alcoholic and that God delivered him from that. So
I just thought, it doesn't it's that doesn't matter. If

(16:16):
you get saved, you won't be one anymore. Oh, that
was not correct at all. Yeah, but we had decided
to move to Texas to go to a Bible school
down there, and it was called Abundant Life School of Ministry,
so it was specifically not accredited. It's not a college.

(16:40):
You just pay money for them to go to these
classes and they're supposed to teach you how to be
in the Fivefold ministry.

Speaker 6 (16:48):
And so.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
There had been some sort of prophecies or something that
this guy that I married was supposed to be a pastor.
So we went down there to those to moved there
for school, and he started drinking again. Like we had
discussed before we got married that that was something that

(17:12):
you know in our belief system in the cult, that
I was a part of alcohol was an absolute no no.

Speaker 6 (17:19):
And so even he had said he had.

Speaker 5 (17:21):
A problem with alcohol, he had he had a dui.
He had to go to jail, he had to quit
college so he could pay his parents back for paying
for a lawyer and all of that stuff for those things.
So he told me, like, I have a problem with alcohol,
I don't. I won't drink anymore anyways. But then also

(17:45):
because that was the belief system, he was like totally
on board with that. Well, when we lived in Texas,
he had started drinking again, and that was also something
we had signed in our Bible school application was, you know,
part of this code of conduct that we would not drink.
And so this was a problem, and I had found

(18:08):
several times where he, you know, was like sneaking alcohol.
So one day, my parents and my brothers had gone
on a mission trip to Nigeria, and my brother was
the children's pastor at the time, and I helped it
out in children's church. So they were gone, so I

(18:30):
was doing children's church that night and when I got home,
my husband didn't go to church that day. When I
got home, he was passed out. Drunk in the bed,
and I think he had actually even gone and met
somebody for dinner and like drove home drunk even like
is that And we'd already had, you know, three or

(18:51):
four major events that had happened surrounding his drinking, where
he had promised he wasn't going to drink anymore. So
I got home from church that night like ten o'clock
and he was passed out. After a couple hours, he
woke up super belligerent, super angry. He he was like

(19:13):
six foot three, six foot four and a competition bodybuilder weightlifter,
so his biceps were the size of my thighs. I'm
five foot two, I probably weigh one hundred and fifteen
pounds at the time, so like he could squash me.
And he was very, very angry, and he punched a

(19:36):
hole in the wall, but like right next to my face,
Like I could feel the air as his fist passed
my face, and the hole, you know, was like this
big in the wall. So I was terrified, and I
was like, this has been escalating and next time it'll
be my face, right, So I said, I slept in

(19:58):
the guest room that night. The next morning, this was
right before Christmas. So the next morning, I said, I
really have to decide what to do here. I can't
continue this if you're going to continue drinking. And so
I said, I'm gonna go stay at my sister's for
the weekend because my parents were gone. And so he said, okay,

(20:21):
I understand. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 6 (20:24):
You know.

Speaker 5 (20:24):
He carried my bag to the car. He gave me
a hug and a kiss and said, I love you.
See you on Monday. And he filed for divorce the
next day. Yeah, it was shocking. I thought he would
be at work and I had to go home to
drop off some Christmas presents I had bought, and so
I walked in and he's sitting there with his mother,

(20:45):
who lived like three hours north of us, so she
he must have called her right after I left, and
she came down and they went together to the courthouse
to get divorce papers. So that was shocking because like
when I had walked out, he was acting like, Okay,
we'll work through this. I in hindsight, I'm extremely glad

(21:09):
that he did that, because I don't know for sure
if I would have followed through on that. I think
if he would have promised again that it would change.
I think I might have believed him and tried again.
So I know now to this day that has continued

(21:31):
to be a problem in his life, and he's been
divorced several more times. So I do think that was
the right decision and the right choice. But I also
think the reason I ended up in a marriage like
that was because of my upbringing, because my dad was abusive,
and because I was never even taught what to look

(21:52):
for in a relationship and how to pick a good person.

Speaker 6 (21:56):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
That was really hard. The divorce was really hard because
I felt like a failure.

Speaker 6 (22:11):
I was shamed.

Speaker 5 (22:12):
I mean shame, I think is going to be a
big theme throughout this whole thing. There was heavy shame
put on me. People were telling me that I wasn't
allowed to get married again because that's what the Bible said.
But I'm twenty one years old and I have no children, Like,
are you kidding me? I have to suffer because of

(22:33):
his choices. That wasn't my choice. I didn't choose to
get divorced. I didn't choose to be an alcoholic. That
was abusive, that happened to me. But now I can't
get married or have kids. Yeah, it didn't make sense
to me. So obviously I didn't follow that either, but
it did take a lot of effort to get over

(22:56):
that shame and that guilt of feeling like a failure
and like because you know, again, ahead of time, a
lot of people were telling me you're so young, this
is so fast, what are you doing? And I just
blew them off. So then now there's a lot of
people saying I told you so, and that just sucks,
you know, like, yeah, this is hard enough for me already,

(23:18):
and you just have to like rub salt in the wound.

Speaker 6 (23:21):
Thanks.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:23):
Yeah. And then on top of all of that, my
parents told me that they only let me get married
so that I would quit dating so much, which again,
if you remember, I liked the same boy from fourteen
to eighteen and I got married at nineteen, So what

(23:45):
do you mean dating so much? Like again, in between
like the little off and ons with my with my
first boyfriend, there may have been a little crush here
or there, but like I wasn't horriing around, Yeah, wasn't. Yeah,
So that was you know again, like let's heat more shame, right,

(24:10):
So that's really fun. So that so to try to
recover from that. I had moved back in with my parents,
and that was another nightmare. I thought because I was
a grown woman, I had been married and lived on
my own, I'd moved to another state by myself. I

(24:32):
thought I could just live as an adult with autonomy
in a bedroom that happened to be in their house
while I saved up money to buy myself a house. No,
they put rules on me like I was a child.
I literally had a ten pm curfew.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (24:50):
Yeah, I couldn't stay there very long. So I did
end up moving out and buying a townhouse where I
lived by myself. But just because I left does not
mean the control stopped. So I had started seeing this
guy who's actually my current husband. I wasn't looking for

(25:14):
a relationship at all after the divorce. I was just
trying to recover from all of that and really try
to think to myself, like what do I want in
my next relationship? Again, couldn't figure it out. But he
was hanging out with my brother. This was a newer
family to the church. So again our church was smaller

(25:38):
at this point, like it was big when we came.
But then over the years, you know, with my dad
doing all the weird stuff, like, it just kept shrinking
and shrinking. And so we were maybe a couple hundred
people at the most at this point. And this is
including all the children of the families and stuff too,
and so there weren't a lot of options, right, and
we weren't allowed to date anybody who didn't go or

(26:00):
a church. So it was kind of rough slim pickens.
And so this new family came and they had a
guy a couple of years younger than me, but you know,
you're in your twenties, it's not that big of a deal.
And he started hanging out with my brother a lot,
and they would ask me to go places with them
and do things, and I mostly was just like, I'm

(26:21):
not interested in that. But we usually after church service
we would go out and like have something to eat
at a restaurant. We'd go to Applebee's all the time.
And so he would always make sure he went out
and sat by me, and then he would you know,
call me on the phone to talk. And even if
I wouldn't go hang out with them, go to car

(26:42):
shows or whatever they were doing, he still was making
effort to you know, be around me, spend time with me.
So we started to become really good friends, and he.

Speaker 6 (26:53):
Would call I.

Speaker 5 (26:55):
I don't know if you remember back in the late
nineties when you had to wait till after nine to
use your cell phone, so you didn't use your minutes.
The minutes were free after nine pm, so he would
call after nine, and so then a lot of times
we would end up just falling asleep on the phone,
and so we just we would talk a lot, and

(27:18):
then he kept asking me out. I kept saying no.
And then one day I was at work and I
saw this florist truck pull up to the salon. I
was working at a hair salon and watch them walk
in with this like it was all covered, you know,
but like a giant box with a paper over it,

(27:40):
and it was just like a huge bouquet, you could tell.
So I had just brought a client back to my
chair and I was joking around with.

Speaker 6 (27:46):
Her like, oh, look I give flowers.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
Again, you know, just pretending laughing, and the receptionist she
unboxes the thing and starts bringing it back and it
was a three and red roses.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
It was gorgeous.

Speaker 5 (28:03):
And stunning, and she she's walking back and I'm waiting
for her to like go to somebody else, and she
literally walks right over to me and sets it down
on my station.

Speaker 6 (28:13):
She looks me in the eyes, she goes, I hate you,
and she walked and I was like, wait, they are
for me? What?

Speaker 5 (28:22):
Because I had no idea who these could even be from.
And I was like thinking, oh my gosh, do I
have a weird stalker client or something like what is this?
So my client's like open the car, to open the car.
I was like, it's scared, but I opened it and
it literally just said pick you up at seven and
then his name. So I was like, okay, so you're

(28:46):
not asking anymore, You're just gonna tell me this is
what's happening.

Speaker 6 (28:52):
So we went out.

Speaker 5 (28:53):
I mean it was like again, something like just a
silly little Applebee's or something, not any kind of fancy
date or anything, but that was our first date and
we have been together ever since then. But so I
had moved out into my townhouse and he was working

(29:17):
overnights at the time, and so I in a salon.
You know, you don't always start early in the morning,
So like I had a couple of days where I
started at like eleven or noon or whatever, and so
he would get done with work at seven in Minneapolis,
and one particular day, I wasn't working till noon, so
he was just like, can I stop by and see you?

(29:38):
Because we weren't seeing each other a whole lot then because.

Speaker 6 (29:41):
He was working nights. So I was like, yeah, come
on over, like I just.

Speaker 5 (29:45):
Woke up, but that's okay. I've got to get ready
for work, but I've got a little time. So he
stopped by and this is like seven am, seven thirty
in the morning, something like that, and a couple minutes later,
my mom comes over knocking on the door unannounced. She
didn't call or text first or anything. She just like

(30:05):
knocks on the She just shows up. So I was like, oh, hi,
what's what are you here for? And she freaked out
because my boyfriend was there, and she was like did
he stay overnight?

Speaker 6 (30:21):
Why aren't you wearing a bra? How often does he
do this?

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Like oh my god.

Speaker 6 (30:27):
Just I am an adult living in my own home.
Why are you here, ma'am?

Speaker 8 (30:34):
You know, yeah, but I think at that time I
was probably still scared of her, so I was just like,
uh no, like he just got here and I did.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
I just didn't get dressed yet like literally it's been
two minutes. Like I just tried to how did that happen?

Speaker 4 (30:53):
Like did she just happen to drive by, because I
was gonna say she was like tracking or I don't
know somehow. But then she didn't know he spent the night,
whether he spent the night, which she didn't.

Speaker 6 (31:06):
Yeah he had, I don't. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (31:09):
I'm still confused about that to this day. Because I
lived like back in like a dead end cul de sac,
Like you didn't go back there for no reason, so
there wouldn't have been a thing where she was just
in the area and just driving by. And also it
was so early in the morning that you know, I'm
sure she was like, well God told me, and I'm

(31:31):
glad I listened, but like nothing was happening.

Speaker 6 (31:35):
It was just literally we.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
Had a couple hours to spend together before I had
to go to work. It really was not nefarious in
any way. So they still were super duper controlling of everything.
Like even after we moved out or got married or whatever,
it yeah, none of that stopped.

Speaker 6 (31:56):
But we we did end up getting.

Speaker 5 (31:59):
Married and we've been married for I think twenty some
years now, So this one has lasted a little longer
than the first one. But I ended up getting pregnant
pretty quick after we got married, like less than a
year I think it was maybe eight or nine months

(32:21):
later after. And I actually had always said that I.

Speaker 6 (32:24):
Did not want to have kids. That was.

Speaker 5 (32:29):
I always said that. And my reasoning was, I said,
I thought I was going to be a bad mom.
And I think, in hindsight, like I don't know if
I knew what I meant by that, like what did
that look like? In what ways would I be a
bad mom? I don't know if I even knew that.
I just felt somehow, like intuitively, I knew I did

(32:53):
not have the skills.

Speaker 6 (32:55):
I didn't want to be the kind of parent I had.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
Yeah, and I I don't know that I knew all
of that consciously, but I think that's what I meant
by that was like I just was scared of being
a bad mom. And so when I found out I
was pregnant, I was actually terrified. I was scared, I
was sad, I cried. I didn't want to tell my husband.

(33:23):
He was excited, so that's good. And then my mom
even actually did tell me like babies are always a
blessing and whether you were ready for this or you weren't,
this is a blessing. And your baby will know whether
you're happy or sad about having him inside of you.

(33:44):
So you need to get on board, you know, quickly
change your attitude. And that sounds extreme, but I also
actually do agree with that, knowing what I know now
in hindsight about nervous system and how your nervous system
developed and stuff like that, I do think that's that
was good, good advice. Yes, However, there was a lot

(34:07):
of like intense expectations around, like in the cult, about
how you managed your pregnancy, you know, your childbirth and
your motherhood afterwards. So like some of that was scary
to me too. My older sister she had had a baby,

(34:28):
and she who was in the middle of one of
these camp meeting services that we would have where like
we would have meetings for at least a week, sometimes longer,
and they would be twice a day, and it was exhausting.
But she was the music leader and she was nine
months pregnant and she was leading songs morning and night

(34:52):
this whole week, and then towards the end of the
week she went into labor and she barely made it
to the hospital. The first the first baby she had,
she had done a home birth, but there were some
complications and so she didn't want to do that again.
So she got to the hospital just in time for

(35:14):
them to basically grab the baby as he popped out,
and then she checked herself out and literally went back
to church that night. She didn't lead songs, but she
was sitting there in church with a two four hour
old baby.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
I don't know, Oh my god.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Yeah, And so that kind of became like a standard
that everybody else, you know, kind of thought that they
needed to follow because that's what she did. And then
there was like there was a family in the church
who had a lot of kids and she would breastfeed
her kids till way too long, like literally like five

(35:59):
six years old, and they did like the whole family
bed thing, and so there were some kind of expectations
around that, like you definitely if you didn't breastfeed your baby,
you were real bad if you're you know, like my

(36:19):
pregnancy was complicated and difficult. Well, so we were given
this book again maybe you've heard of this one called
Supernatural Childbirth, and it talked about how you were supposed
to like have enough faith to have a pain free childbirth,

(36:40):
like a perfect pregnancy, perfect delivery, you know, be right up,
Like my sister was ready to serve your husband and
the church immediately following giving birth, Like postpartum depression was
absolutely not allowed, because.

Speaker 6 (36:58):
You know, you can allow or not allowed something like that.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
But so that my pregnancy was complicated. I literally had
gestational diabetes, I had pre acclamsia, I had.

Speaker 6 (37:14):
I was put on bed rest.

Speaker 5 (37:16):
I you know, just the I was hyperemesis. I was
vomiting all day every day, like just all the things.

Speaker 6 (37:23):
It was just horrible. And my mom would.

Speaker 5 (37:26):
Always be like, Okay, I know you're on bed rest,
but you can just go shopping with me. It's not
that big of a deal. Like lay down in the
back of the car on the way there, and then
just you know, sit on a chair while I'm shopped.
Like and I let her convince me to do this
stuff too, because like you weren't allowed to be sick.

Speaker 6 (37:45):
Sick.

Speaker 5 (37:46):
Being sick is a moral and spiritual failure.

Speaker 6 (37:50):
And so like.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
I think she was just pushing me to like not
follow the doctor's recommendations too. But like my blood pressure
was so high that getting out of bed rest was
not a good idea at all. So that was pretty hard.
And then on once my son was born, he had jaundice,

(38:15):
he had colic. He literally never stopped screaming unless I
was nursing him. He would project dial vomit all the time.
So like, I didn't have a perfect baby either. You know,
my pregnancy was not great, my baby's not it. So
more shame, more shame, more shame, and yeah, more on

(38:40):
that topic of illness. That was a really big doctrinal
belief system for us. Was like, if you are a
good enough Christian, if you have enough faith, if you're
doing God's will for your life, you won't ever get
sick in the first place. And so we didn't have

(39:02):
health insurance growing up. We barely ever went to the doctor,
barely ever went to the dentist. You know, you're just
supposed to pray. I'm not sure how praying heals cavities,
but I.

Speaker 6 (39:17):
Guess it does. So my.

Speaker 5 (39:23):
Mom, well, before I get to that part, I guess
I'll talk about more of that healing doctrine thing. So
my dad actually said that God gave him a gift
to heal cancer. Specifically, we were on a we were
on a mission mission trips. I'm gonna do air quotes

(39:45):
around mission trip again, because first of all, I don't
believe in mission trips at all at this point. Like
I don't think colonizing other countries is a great idea
or you know, trying to change people's culture and belief systems.
I don't jive with that these days. And also, what

(40:08):
I would think a mission trip, what I think a
lot of people would think of it is you're going
to another country to build an orphanage or help people
in some way. But that was not what these mission
trips were. They were just an opportunity to go preach
in a church in a different country and take offerings

(40:31):
from them, that's all. So we were on this mission
trip to the Dominican Republic, and I was there on
that trip as well, and he says, I don't remember
this happening. I don't even know when or how this
could have happened. But he says, as he was preaching,

(40:53):
he was looking out the window and he could see
the ocean out there, and he saw a ball of
fire and it started traveling from over the ocean into
the building and went into his stomach and he said,
this was Jesus in a ball of fire appearing to him,

(41:13):
and that was how he received the gift to heal cancer.
But I think, yeah, that makes sense. As a lot
of fundamentalist faiths go, there were a lot of contradicting
beliefs right where Like to me, it's confusing of like,

(41:35):
you are responsible for your own health and healing. If
they would say the Bible says that God wants you
to be whole and healthy. It says, my brother and
I wish above all things that you would prosper and
be in health even as your soul prospers. So prosperity
doctrine was a big part of it to the money thing,

(41:57):
but the health thing was if your soul is prospering,
if you are right with God, if your faith is strong,
then you will be in health. So you wouldn't get sick.
And if you do get sick, it means you sinned
somehow that you they didn't believe that God would make

(42:19):
you sick, but they believe that if you sinned, it
would lift God's protection so that then Satan could come
in and recavoc right, and so.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
If he was always around every corner.

Speaker 5 (42:34):
Yeah, uh huh, yeah, no, there's yeah. The again, like
I said, there's just so much. There's a lot of
stories I could tell you about demon possession and exorcisms
that we had to go through as children as well. Yeah,
pretty rough. So yeah, So, like my mom ended up

(42:56):
with cancer, so then and that was just a lot
of shame put on her and.

Speaker 6 (43:05):
She ignored it.

Speaker 5 (43:06):
Well when I say ignored it, I just mean she
didn't go to the doctor. I think she was trying
to pray and you know, heal it on her own.
Because the teaching was if you repent of whatever sin
it was that caused that to happen, then you will

(43:26):
get healed. And they literally would say that, like if
you're not getting healed, that is not on God's side
because God wants to heal every single person every single time,
and so you need to check yourself. So it's a
lot of personal you know, shame and responsibility. But then

(43:47):
the confusing part was, then why did my dad have
the gift to heal cancer? If you're responsible for your
own healing, that's a little doesn't con compute.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
To but it gives him an out, Like if someone
isn't healed. It's just because they didn't have faith or
didn't like address their sin. So that was it's not
because he doesn't have the power.

Speaker 6 (44:13):
Yeah yeah. Well so that actually made me.

Speaker 5 (44:16):
Start really questioning things when my mom had cancer, because
she was great, like she as far as my viewpoint
at the time, she followed all their religious rules, you know,
to a tea. She wasn't sinning. What sin would she
have committed? She wasn't doing anything wrong, by the way,

(44:39):
I don't believe in the concept of sin anymore, but
just yeah, we we know what we mean when we
say that.

Speaker 6 (44:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (44:48):
So it was like that didn't make sense. So I
had questions about that, and I would even I asked
my dad, I asked my mom, and they would just
say things like, well, I'm talking to the Lord about that.

Speaker 6 (45:00):
Or that's between me and God or you know.

Speaker 5 (45:02):
So there wasn't ever an answer. So I don't think
my mom even knew, but she would. She would sit
there and she had a notebook that she wrote down
every single Bible verse she could find about healing, and
she would just read them out loud every single day,
like multiple times a day, and she barely would even

(45:24):
watch like regular TV. She would just watch like Kenneth
Hagen preaching or you know, different types of healing ministers
that she would listen to and watch. So, I mean,
I don't think I don't think it was a lack
of faith, right, But what I look back on is

(45:46):
she had she had a lump in her breast and
it was a rare form of cancer that also caused
a discharge on the outside. So there was an outer
wound and a lump inside the breast, and so she
was treating it with prayer and neosporin.

Speaker 6 (46:10):
Oh my gosh, yep.

Speaker 5 (46:13):
So she did eventually go to the doctor and have
it looked at, and they told her, you know, they
recommended to surgically remove the lump, and she decided she
didn't want to do that. They also did tell they
misdiagnosed her.

Speaker 6 (46:27):
At that point.

Speaker 5 (46:28):
They told her it wasn't cancer and it would never
become cancer, and that wasn't true. But so she waited
a year and then after a year she went back
and had it looked at again, and at this point
they told her it was in fact cancer, and it was.
It had grown a lot, and it was at that

(46:49):
point taking up two thirds of her breast, it was
that large. So they were the surgeon and the oncologist
were kind of fighting back and forth. Should she have
surgery first, should she do chemo first? But she didn't
want to do any of that, and so she said
because they wanted her to start like the next day,
and she was like, I don't want to. Can I

(47:11):
take some time and think about this? And they were like, yeah,
but we don't recommend that, like take the least amount
of time you possibly can. Well, she took two weeks
and she went to a cabin alone to pray or something,
and I guess she decided that God would let her
get this treatment, but she didn't have health insurance and

(47:35):
so that would be a hard decision to make too,
I would think, yeah.

Speaker 6 (47:40):
And so she did.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
So.

Speaker 5 (47:43):
At this point, I had just had my first child
and he was one one and a half maybe something
like that. And I had also just started my own
hair salon and I had several employees, and I was
working a second job too because I wasn't able to
pay myself from my business yet. But somehow I was

(48:04):
selected to be the one to care for my mom
while she was sick. So I took her to every
single doctor appointment, every bone scan, every blood test, every chemo,
and I sat with her through the entire chemo. My
dad didn't go to a single appointment with her, not
even one up.

Speaker 6 (48:24):
Okay, I lied.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
The first appointment for chemo, he drove separately. I drove
her there, he drove himself there, and he sat there
while the nurses explained like what the chemo was and
what they were going to do, and then he left
and I sat through the chemo with her and brought
her home. And then every single time she had chemo,

(48:46):
he would book an overseas trip and be gone for
the whole week after chemo. Is she was very very ill,
and so I would have to pack up my little
toddler and myself and go day with her for the
week after her chemo, which obviously meant that I was
not in my salon very often, And so I felt

(49:10):
like I had to explain to my employees what was
going on, because if you know, I'm never showing up,
but they don't know why. I did still make sure that,
you know, like everything was always stocked, like we never
ran out of color, we never ran out of supplies.
I always did the deposits. I would go in after
hours and clean, you know, so I was still doing things.

(49:33):
I just wasn't always there at the same time as
everybody else. Yeah, And I would be there during the
days sometimes because I had clients, and I still work
behind the chair too, But my employees ended up like
staging the walkout and they all just left and went
across the street to work at a different salon because

(49:54):
I wasn't there enough. But before that happened, I did
explain to them that that, like, my mom has cancer
and I'm helping her with her treatments, and so I'm
not going to be here all the time, but I'm
always available, you know, call my phone, call my cell phone.
Her chemo was in the same town as my salon

(50:14):
was in, so I could have just shot over there
quick while she was sitting there, like it would have
been fine. But yeah, before they left, one of my
stylists had told one of her clients what I told them,
and I asked them not to share it. My mom

(50:36):
didn't even tell her own sister she was because of
the shame of being sick. And I believe, again this
is my opinion. I believe that my dad told her.
She wasn't allowed to tell anyone because that made him
look bad. You know, he's got this gift to heal cancer.
And also, why what did your what sin? Has your

(50:59):
wife committed that she has cancer? You know, So she
wasn't allowed to tell anyone. So I felt like I
had to tell my employees, you know, And so they
told one of them told their clients, Well, that client
actually used to attend my dad's church, and they told

(51:22):
their current pastor of the church that they went to,
and that person actually used to be on staff at
my dad's church too, And so they called my mom
and were like, I think they were very kind and
we're just like I heard you had cancer. I'm so sorry.
Can I pray with you or whatever? But I got
in trouble. I got in trouble for telling. And I

(51:45):
was like, I don't know what you want me to do,
Like this is just what had I had to I'm
sorry that that happened, right, That wasn't my intention, but
I had to tell my employees, and it didn't work
because they all left anyways. So actually right around this
same time, it's so so crazy all the things that happened,

(52:07):
But there was a living in Minnesota, we get tornadoes
and hail, and so there was a big storm and
I had gotten damage to my home. My siding had,
you know, big holes from hale, and so we had
gotten a check to repair the siding on the house,

(52:30):
and my dad knew and he asked me if he
could borrow that money, and I was like, well, I
really have to use it to fix my house, and
he was like, well, I will pay you back in
less than six weeks, because what he wanted to do
was buy the contents of a gift shop that was
going out of business, and he somehow thought that that

(52:52):
would make enough money to pay back. And the check
that he borrowed from me was like thirty thousand dollars
and he did not ever pay it back, and I
ended up losing my house. My house went into foreclosure
because you know, they won't ensure it if if you

(53:12):
don't do the repairs, and then that's also fraud when
they give you money to repair and you don't. So
I could have even gotten in bigger trouble than just
losing my house. And at the same time, he had
me doing what I have now found is called kiting checks.

Speaker 6 (53:32):
I didn't know.

Speaker 5 (53:33):
What that was or that it's illegal, but he would
ask me, can you write a check to cover the
mortgage for the church, because you know it's two days
until a service and we're not going to get an offering.

Speaker 6 (53:47):
Well, I'll pay you back.

Speaker 5 (53:49):
And I was like, well, And I had seen him
do this to my sister, and my sister had lost
her business because she wasn't paying her taxes or her
employees because she was paying my dad for my dad's
stuff and then not getting paid back and so and
I don't know all the details of what that was
or why that happened, but I just saw her have

(54:11):
to close her business and I didn't want that to
happen to me. So I just said, well, I can't
do that. I have payroll coming out. And he was like, wait,
does your payroll come out? And I told him what
day and he said, oh, yeah, not a problem. I'll
get money back in your account before that ever happened.
So I was like, oh, okay. I didn't know that
that's not allowed. I just thought, Okay, if the money's

(54:33):
there before the checks come out, then it's not a problem.
So he had me do this for him several times
and then one day I went to use my debit
card and it wouldn't go through, and so I called
the bank and they said they had closed all my
accounts and seized all my money. And I had my
business account, my line of credit, my home personal account

(54:57):
line of credit, like they I seized all my money
to pay back the line of credit, and they closed
my bank accounts, all of them. And then my husband
had like a direct deposit check going in there and
we lost that too, and so.

Speaker 6 (55:16):
That happened.

Speaker 5 (55:17):
Then my employees walked out like I didn't have a
business anymore. So I ended up having to close my business.

Speaker 6 (55:24):
I lost my house.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
My dad never even acknowledged that he had a role
in that. He never said he was sorry, He never
offered to pay anything back. So I should have been
mad then, right, That should have been enough to be like,

(55:46):
I'm done with you. You're gonna do that, you don't care.
But that was all around the same time that I
was helping my mom with her illness and her chemo, so.

Speaker 6 (56:06):
She did.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
They did say that she was in remission for a
little while, so she ended up going through chemo radiation, mastectomy,
and then they said she was in remission but that
didn't last very long. I personally don't actually think she
was in remission. I just think her blood never showed

(56:29):
cancer markers. So a lot of times when she would
go for like her three months, you know every three
months you have to go back and get checked after
you have cancer, and then after you do that for
a while, it's every six months, and then once a year,
and they just keep going longer and longer between. Well,
I think she was still on her every three month checkups,
but they would do a blood draw and there weren't

(56:51):
any cancer markers, so they would say, Okay, you're good. Well,
she had started coughing really bad, and I was actually
pregnant at this time with my second child, and so
I was asking her, like, why don't you go have
that cough checked out?

Speaker 6 (57:09):
And she was like, nah, it's not that big of
a deal. Whatever.

Speaker 5 (57:12):
Well, I was in labor December nineteenth. And she was
always there with everybody, all of us kids, when we
had babies, she was always there when they were born,
and so she wasn't coming to the hospital and it
was weird, and she was like, yeah, I'm not feeling well.
I don't know, I'm going to get there as soon

(57:33):
as I can, so I didn't think too much of it.
She got there before the baby was born. I have
a picture of it, and she looked really sick that day.

Speaker 6 (57:44):
And then so that was December.

Speaker 5 (57:45):
Nineteenth, so Christmas is just a couple days later, and
she didn't even get out of her pajamas at Christmas,
which wasn't like her, and she just laid on the
couch the whole day.

Speaker 6 (57:56):
And so then by New.

Speaker 5 (57:58):
Year's Eve she had to go into the emergency room
and she almost didn't make it. So they found out
that the cancer had spread to her brain, her bones,
and go and so they kept her in the hospital
over the weekend because they couldn't It was the holidays
or whatever, so they couldn't do They wanted to do

(58:21):
radiation on the brain tumors right away because they were
worried that that was going to just cause her to
drop dead like almost like an aneurysm, I think is
how they cleaned it. So they did radiation I think
the following Monday, and that actually took care of the
brain tumors, and then they decided to go ahead, even
though they did tell her it was terminal, and at

(58:44):
that time. They said it could be as you know,
two days depending on what these brain tumors do, or
two weeks, two months. Were not sure, but it's short.
But they did still decide to go ahead and do
the chemo for the lung cancer anyways, so they put
her on an oxygen tank because she wasn't getting enough

(59:04):
oxygen from the lungs. And so at this point, because
I had an infant, my younger brother was in Fort
Benning for basic training for the army, and so it
was decided that my brother's wife would move into the house.

(59:26):
She had a two year old at the time, and
so she was moving in to help my mom because
she needed a lot more care this time. Really, she
needed round the clock care and help with everything, getting dressed,
making food, like she just couldn't do anything herself. And
so they had my younger brother's wife move in, and

(59:52):
shortly after she moved in, my dad moved out of
my mom's room. He said she was keeping him away
at night and he really needed his sleep. You know,
full well knowing this isn't gonna be very long, sir,
two months. Can you handle two months of not sleeping?

(01:00:15):
I think you probably can, but no, to move. And
my parents' house was large, like eight thousand square feet,
and it actually had been a duplex and they took
the while down in between and made it into just
one big house. And so, like I was saying earlier,
the hallway to my parents' room was the Green Mile. Well,

(01:00:37):
so my dad there were other rooms in that hallway.
There was one that was straight across from my parents' room,
and then there was one right next to that. He
could have moved into one of those rooms, but no,
he moved all the way onto a different floor. So
he was like upstairs in the loft, very far away
from my mom's room. But she's sick, right, She can't

(01:01:02):
She can't barely get herself out of bed, and if
she needs something at night now there's nobody there to
help her. So she would call or text my sister
in law, who was on the opposite side of the house. Well,
then my dad got mad at her for doing that
and told her leave her alone. She needs her rest too.
If you need something that bad, you can text me.

(01:01:24):
But he'd already moved out of her room, So like,
how is she gonna feel comfortable doing that without him
being mad at her? Like in hindsight, I wish I
could have brought her, you know, to live with me
or something instead, because I just it's terrible to think what.

Speaker 6 (01:01:40):
She had to go through at the end of yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:01:46):
So the other thing that was weird about that was
my ex sister in law. She started acting weird, like
she owned the house and like if we there was
a thing where my dad said on the weekends they
wanted well, originally all four of us girls, me and

(01:02:10):
my sisters, we all said we would take turns and
just take shifts and take care of her. Yeah, and
Bill said, sorry, my dad, I'd call him Bill because
I don't like to call him my dad anymore. He said, no,
that you know, this would work fine, this would work better.
That my sister in law needed somewhere to stay when

(01:02:30):
my brother was gone anyways, which she had her own house,
so like I don't that wasn't true either, so whenever,
so eventually they said that she would she needed some
time off. It was just too much for her. So

(01:02:51):
she needed her weekends to herself to be able to
go and do whatever she wanted. And that's fine because
me and my sisters we wanted to take care of
our mom anyway. Yeah, so it was weekends that we
would we took turns, you know, on the weekends. But
when we would get there, or even I would go
there because I had an infant and I didn't go

(01:03:13):
back to work right away, and then when I found
out my mom was terminal, I didn't go back to
work at all until after she passed because I wanted
to spend time with her, and so I would pack
up my baby and my toddler and we would go
over there and spend the day with her and you know,
just sit and watch TV, or I'd make her lunch

(01:03:35):
or you know, she likes to hold babies, and so she.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
Would really enjoyed having my daughter there.

Speaker 5 (01:03:41):
So my sister in law would always act like, oh,
thank you so much for helping me, thank you for
doing that for me, And I was like, I'm not
doing anything for you. I literally am here for my mother,
So you can just get off your high horse. It
was just weird, like she took because session of the

(01:04:02):
house in the situation, it was just really uncomfortable. Well,
so my mom from December thirty first, when she went
into the er. She only lived till April fourteenth, so
the week before she died, she had gone in for

(01:04:25):
a checkup and they said that her cancer had not
spread since the last appointment. Nothing was better, The cancer
wasn't gone like she it just hadn't spread more from
the last time. But my dad used that to say
that she was cancer free, that she had been healed,

(01:04:49):
and that the only reason why she died was because
of pneumonia. Her body hadn't had the time to recover
from the cancer. But all of that that was a
complete and bold lie, total lie.

Speaker 6 (01:05:07):
Yeah, so that was pretty weird.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
So was that so he could say he healed her
of the cancer. So in the end he was able
to heal her. But he doesn't have any power to
heal pneumonia.

Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
I guess no, he only has the gift to heal cancer,
not pneumonia. Right, her body didn't have time to recover
from the effects of the cancer, and that wasn't true
because when she was in the hospital.

Speaker 6 (01:05:38):
So she died Easter weekend.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
And so Saturday, there had been a Easter egg hunt.

Speaker 6 (01:05:49):
In the park that the church had.

Speaker 5 (01:05:50):
Sponsored, and so everybody was there but my sister, my
younger sister, was at the house with our mom, and
so I had been spending so much time with her.
I knew what her daily routines were, like, I knew
how she acted most days. And so I'd be texting
my younger sister and I'd be like, you know, how's mom,

(01:06:11):
what's she doing?

Speaker 6 (01:06:12):
What's going on?

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
And she was telling me like, she's still in bed.
She hasn't gotten up, she hasn't gotten dressed. And that
wasn't like her, Like she was bound and determined every
single day to get out of bed, get some clothes on,
get herself out to the living room.

Speaker 6 (01:06:28):
Yeah, even if she.

Speaker 5 (01:06:29):
Only sat on the couch, she wasn't in bed. Yeah,
And so it was weird, right, And so I actually
just left the Easter egg hunt and went to the
house to see what was going on. And she was like,
I think she was fading in and out of consciousness.
And so I made her a protein shake, which is

(01:06:51):
the one she would usually eat or drink every morning,
and I brought it into her bed and I was
just like, Mom, let's just see if you can drink
any of this. She could barely even open her eyes.
She was just like sipping from the straw. She got
it all down somehow. I was pretty impressed, but then
her body couldn't hold it in. Her body was just

(01:07:14):
releasing everything, and so she couldn't she couldn't get herself
to the bathroom, even like I had to carry her
to the toilet, and then I sat there with her
while she was there, and she was just and everything
was just coming out, and she was like, I'm so sorry,
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 6 (01:07:31):
It probably doesn't smell very good.

Speaker 5 (01:07:32):
And I was like, mother, stop, there's nothing to be
sorry for.

Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
I don't care.

Speaker 5 (01:07:38):
I have babies that I'm changing diapers like, it's.

Speaker 6 (01:07:41):
Not a big at all. I love you and I
don't care. I don't care. I'll wipe your butt. I
don't care. I will take care of you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
You're my mom. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
So just throughout the day she was fading more and more,
so I was not able to get a hold of
my dad for a long time. Finally, by like six pm,
he came home and took her to the er where
they admitted her.

Speaker 6 (01:08:14):
And the next day was Easter, and I was just torn.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
I was really struggling because I wanted to go to
the hospital with my mom, and I knew I would
get in trouble for not going to church. And my
husband just told me, I don't care what your dad says,
and I've got your back, don't worry about it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:39):
Go with go be with your mother.

Speaker 5 (01:08:41):
He said, I'll take our older son and we'll go
to church, and you take the baby and go to
the hospital.

Speaker 6 (01:08:48):
And I did get yelled at for that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:53):
Don't care. Didn't care then, don't care now. I don't
regret it at all. I would do it again in
a heartbeat. But she was she wasn't she wasn't doing well.
She was barely awake. And my brother was in Georgia
at Fort Benning at the time, and we would have

(01:09:16):
had to call the Red Cross to get him back,
which he could have. I didn't know at the time
that I could have called the Red Cross. I for
some reason, I thought only my dad could do that.
So I kept saying, like, can you get can you
get Drew back here? Can you get Drew back here?
You know, Mom isn't gonna make it like we need

(01:09:38):
he needs to be back here.

Speaker 6 (01:09:40):
And he refused.

Speaker 5 (01:09:41):
He would not call the Red Cross to get him
back until after she already passed. Yeah, it was really
really devastating, but he actually so on Monday, the day
after Easter, my little sister had stayed in the hospital
with heright. So again I called right away in the morning,

(01:10:04):
like how's she doing.

Speaker 6 (01:10:05):
What happened?

Speaker 5 (01:10:06):
She's like, well, just she seems the same, but like
not good, and she was in the ICU. So I
got to the hospital as quick as I could, and
the doctor came over and showed us like the scans
of her lungs and it literally just looked like Swiss cheese,
like there was no lung tissue left, there was.

Speaker 6 (01:10:26):
No oxygen to be had.

Speaker 5 (01:10:30):
Little side note, she she was so excited after she
got that report that the cancer hadn't spread. You know,
when she came home from the doctor that day, which
was just a few days before she went into the hospital,
she was so excited about that and just like you know,
did a little happy jig. Well, she had an oxygen

(01:10:52):
tank and my sister in law would pull the oxygen
tank out every day for her to sit in the
living room, and you could tell by how heavy the
tank was whether it was full or empty. And she
was responsible for filling the tank, for getting the tank
filled every week. Well, she didn't get it filled that

(01:11:13):
week for some reason.

Speaker 6 (01:11:15):
She just didn't do it. So the day before my.

Speaker 5 (01:11:20):
Mom went into the hospital, I was sitting there with
her at the house and she kept taking her oxygen
stats and they were down in like the eighties and
going lower. And she would sit and pray and pray
and pray and pray, and she would be speaking in
tongues and just praying. And then you know, probably from
all the breathing from praying, her oxygen levels would go

(01:11:43):
up a little bit, you know, and then she would
just like, Yay, praise God, I got it up to
ninety or whatever. And then but it just kept vummeting
and plummeting, and that's when she ended up in the hospital. So,
you know, I it's so hard because I feel like

(01:12:03):
she probably would have passed one.

Speaker 6 (01:12:07):
Way or the other sooner or later.

Speaker 5 (01:12:09):
But it just it feels icky to know that she
didn't get her oxygen refilled and then she ended up
in the er and never made it back out again.
That's a tough one to think about. And you know,
I mean again, in the hospital she on Monday that

(01:12:35):
day that she was going to pass away. The doctor
kept saying, like, tell your dad to get here asap,
because they knew the time was short. She had been
on a cpap mask. They said they had to take
the seapap off because her lungs were just so fragile
that even forced air into them could have exploded them

(01:12:56):
and that would have made a bigger problem. Like she
the plan was take the sea pap off, give her medication,
let her just go peacefully.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:09):
Yeah, but they didn't want to start doing any of
that until my dad got to the hospital.

Speaker 6 (01:13:14):
But he wouldn't come.

Speaker 5 (01:13:16):
He was working on a car, and like I kept
calling him, others of my siblings were calling him, and
he would just be like, you know, I really got
to get this finished. This is really important, And.

Speaker 6 (01:13:31):
That was just a lie.

Speaker 5 (01:13:34):
And so then when he finally got to the hospital,
he couldn't even sit in the room.

Speaker 6 (01:13:40):
He was like, uh.

Speaker 5 (01:13:42):
And it was like one in the afternoon at this point,
and we had started calling him at like eight in
the morning. So he sits down and he's like, I
really need to go get something to eat. I'm gonna
go find the cafeteria. And at this point, I'm literally
counting the seconds between her breaths because they're getting longer
and longer and long between each breath and you're going

(01:14:04):
to go to the cafeteria. What is happening. So as
soon as he leaves the room, she stops breathing, and
they would not call time of death because he wasn't there.
My aunt, who was actually the one who brought us
into the church, and elk River, she worked at that

(01:14:26):
hospital as a respiratory therapist and so she was often
in the ICU, so she knew all the nurses there
and everything, and so they just told her, like, go
get your brother. So she ran down to the cafeteria
and got him, brought him back up and as soon
because and then they called time of death when he

(01:14:48):
got in the room. And then as soon as that happened,
he started talking about getting remarried. And I think I
went in the room. Yeah, her body was still there.
They hadn't even taken her out of the room yet. Yeah,
And he said, you know, God told me.

Speaker 6 (01:15:10):
That this was going to happen.

Speaker 5 (01:15:12):
He started kind of shit talking my mom a little
bit about like she's had all these sicknesses over the years,
and she escaped death, you know, time and time again,
and I knew that this time she was going to die,
and like it just felt gross and then he said,
but God told me that he has something in store

(01:15:36):
for me, and God he started describing this you know
woman that God told him about. And he also said
he that God gave him a choice of three different women.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
If you liked this episode, please go leave us a
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