August 13, 2025 • 21 mins
Nine moves in a single year. Financial strain. A new marriage. And an unexpected conversation with her mother before she passed away that changed everything. In this Soul Talks episode, Ruth McKeaney shares how she and her husband turned chaos into connection. And how her mother’s faith and perspective shaped the way she sees life, love, and what truly matters. 🛎️ Subscribe for more soulful conversations. Connect with us: The Soul Talks website: https://www.soultalkswiththeresa.com/ Get your copy of "He's Not Coming Back": https://bit.ly/40qGX6Y Connect with our guest: Hungry for Home website: https://www.hungry4home.com/ At Home with Ruth McKeaney: http://bit.ly/45mBNe6 Follow Ruth: @hungryforhome on Instagram and TikTok
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And there's a book called It was written by my
one of my grandparents friends called Evidence Not Seeing and
it's a beautiful, beautiful book. She was, you know, and
she was in a concentration anyway, the point being, I
told the Lord, I'm going to praise you every day
(00:34):
for one year. For one year, I'm going to literally
go on a one hour walk into sing, but you
better show me who you are by the end of
that year. And it was sometimes the prayers were so deep, right,
(00:56):
I almost needed to divorce myself back and get back
to the basics. Uh, I need to know who you
are and I need to so I remember the first
time I was going out walking and uh, I said, Lord,
that's a really nice tree and that is all I
have literally, and you know what, I love it. The
Lord's like, I got it. I take I'm taking it.
(01:17):
You know when you're thinking about the sacrifice or praise, Yeah,
where praise is really a sacrifice you put on. And
so each day for one year I would walk, I
see and by the end of that year, I had
(01:37):
fallen in love with I knew so, you know, And
and during that time there were a lot of other
things where I remember walking out of the lawsuit and
he had gotten continued again and I was in tears.
My mom said, don't let me forget to tie later
and I said, by I bring you your groceries. There's nothing
(02:01):
in My Mom's said route the Lord promises blessings, And
I said, where are the blessings? And she said, We're
the most blessed family I've ever.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So she's without a home, she's in a lawsuit, and
she's had fifty two surgeries, just didn't cancer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
This was at the beginning of this. When I tell you,
I mean even when she was she had just found
out it was terminal. There was nothing else they could do.
I'm bringing her home the doctor and she's laughing in
the passenger seat. I said, how can you be laughing?
And she said, are you putting me? I'm the luckiest
one in the world. I have six children who love
the Lord and love each other, in love me And
so what.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
An incredible perspective. But it feels like it feels two storybook.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, But see I used to ask that same question
with my parents, you know, having grown up with I mean,
when I tell you, I think we did one of
our family Readians because we would have hundreds of people
are a marine. We would have maps of all the
countries people had been evangel us or minister missionaries, and
so our stories are just And I remember saying to
(03:05):
my dad, how how did they face what they faced? Ruth,
you won't know that when the time comes, he won't
give me this drenth. Don't have to have it right now.
I couldn't have it right now. And there was something
comforting about that because I knew I didn't you know
(03:25):
what I mean, But he would have quacked me when
this time, if and when the time.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So you've you've never had like a dark knight of
the soul where you questioned your faith or your belief, or.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Is thereby the dark knights of the soul of questioning
whether you love Okay, knew he was my savior. Okay,
I knew he was, but do you actually love me?
That's my that would be my thing. But it was
never who he was.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And so that probably speaks to all kinds of things
that you felt as a child, all kinds of shame
and hurt and pain you were caring for whatever reasons,
to not feel that the savior you so truly believed
in might not love you, Ruth.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I think that there were, you know, moving so much.
There was a lot of I went through a lot
with people, other kids, So those things are shaping you
along the way as well.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I actually was recently in up from the city and
I saw the girl. Girl she's a woman. Now. I
had been in hueting means each other in twenty five years,
and he is watching to get it In Homecoming, Queen,
you all stayed oncoming me and she get befreped me
when we moved to home, when she was at risk
of losing everybody, I just hadn't grown up with everyone.
(04:58):
I got the opportunity to thank her, and it was
so cool because I don't know that i'd ever said
to her. You don't know what you did for that
fifteen you know what I'm saying. But I just sometimes
I think the Lord permits these kinds of you know,
things that hit you growing up so that you truly
(05:22):
lean on.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So talk to me about your mom's journey through cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, so she forgot about it for eleven mutes, Like
I said, surgeries.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What kind of cancer?
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Like her fifties. She died at my It was a
mouth cancer. I actually got the call from her dentist
who called me it my job in said you need
to have your mom call me in the middle. And
it was a spot on her gum. It was something
that you only get if you smoke Church Jude for decades.
(06:02):
She'd never die either, and uh, it didn't respond to
chemo or the radiations. They had to keep cutting it in.
So by the time the end was there, there was
no roof of her mouth. There was no it was
and she kept asking the Lord, if you're gonna take
me this early, then please let me be like Samson
(06:26):
and do more in my because of my death than
you were even able to do. So there was a
There was a six She was with Hostas for six months.
I mean every day they were like, she's not gonna
make un till tomorrow. And she would wake up and
be like, Okay, God, I'm still here. Ifud else do
you want me to see? So her whole focus was.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Mm hmm. So yeah, and you were always close to
your mom.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, And God did a miraculous feeling with with me
before the only God I my mom and I were
very I loved her deeply, but I was she had
gone to Berkeley. She was a hippie.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I love that. Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I mean when I say hippie, I mean till the
day she died barefoot every day. I mean totally different.
In fact, when she was dying those last few months,
she said, Ruth, we put on my shoes and walk around,
and let me walk around in your shoes, just for
a few moments, just understanding how different you were. And
(07:42):
I had known, and I know my dad would in
any way be grudge me sharing this story, but I knew. So.
I'm the oldest of six. We spent twenty three years.
The last one was born when I was in law school,
so it was a huge She had kids in the
sixty seventy, say, and I knew from a very early
(08:03):
age I would have said five. She said four. She
let me go, meaning she knew I would be the
one that would be okay. I was very highly self motivated.
I started working very young, put myself through college in
law school. But there always was a sense to me
(08:28):
that although I knew my mom loved me, I didn't
think she was proud of me. And I remember prospess
we were all out. She was in Utah when she
was dying, and I was sitting on the top of
the mountain at four o'clock in the morning by myself,
crying out to God, saying, I don't know, something has
to heal before you take her. I don't know what
(08:50):
it is. I do know I have four little girls
who are under five, and I can't mother in the
way in a in the way I want to. Feeling
a bit of brokenness, and so I was praying this
on the mountain and I walked into my parents' bedroom.
(09:11):
At the time, they were living with my aunt and
uncle in Parsony, and my aunt at the time was
sleeping outside of the bedroom every night and every day.
She was transcribing every conversation my mom. So I walk in,
I'm sitting. Everyone's asleep. I sat in a chair right
next to her. My mom was asleep and I was
just watching her. And she wakes up and she looks
(09:34):
at me and she said, what's wrong? And I just
just weeping, and my dad wakes up. My aunt comes
in to shape the conversation, and my dad said, everybody out,
it's the conversation and nobody and I said, Mom, I
know you love me. I don't think you're she wanted
(09:56):
me to go to law school. I was much more
control than my mom. My mom was wild and free,
and she just didn't understand me. She said. She started crying,
and she said, you know, I feel the Lord show
(10:17):
me who you are. For the first time in the
last two weeks, she said, I let you go. It
I known that, but to put it, I remember I
had sat at the top of the mountaining Lord. I
don't know that she would know. There's nothing to say
to heal what's going on in my heart, Like there's
nothing to apologize for. She was a wonderful mother of
(10:41):
like there was no specific instances, but I knew in
my heart there was something that statement only the word
show and she said, would you get in bed with me,
let me brush your hair and be my It was done.
I don't cry about it. And it is so healed
(11:04):
in me. I can't even tell you to the point
where I know my mom is rejoicing in a heaven
God's doing with me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
How beautiful that, yeah, was How beautiful that you.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I had that that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
But you know, I hurt for that four year old
little girl who was let go. I mean to me,
I I've probably hovered too much as a mother, I
have helicoptered some. You know, I have not wanted to
let go maybe when I was supposed to let go.
You know, I can't imagine in my wildest dreams even
(11:41):
thinking that I could kind of let go emotionally of
a child because they were confident that just I can't
get it right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Down, and I'm probably not. I don't. I got to
be very careful. It wasn't that I was let go
in any way that you would think of, oh, she's
a derelict, you know what I'm saying. No, I know
she didn't understand me emotion and I could be. I
still can be. I can shut emotions down pretty quickly
and I just do my thing. And she had so
(12:12):
much from her own childhood. I mean, she was married
a nineteen, she had me at twenty. Father tried to
kill himself in front of the fat Like. She had
so much. A dad left the day she was born.
She had her own things that she was trying to
grow up and navigate. And there was you know, a
(12:33):
couple of months we lived in a tent while my
dad was in law school, and so it was just
there was a lot of her trying to grow up
at the same time as be a wife with two
little babies by the time you're twenty one, and uh
really hard. So you know, I looking back, I'm like,
I don't even know how she did it. God's great
(12:53):
she did it, and she at her funeral I think
one of my brothers did it. Was like an eagle
who put her wings over her six children and didn't
permit her past to affect her children. So and God
gave us an incredible I mean, that was the biggest
healing thing that could have ever helpened to me. And
(13:14):
I love her with all my heart.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So it was again, did you have an opposite sort
of approach to motherhood?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yes? In term let me, I'm going to say that
this my mom. She was amazing and I always have
to come back to this. People would go to my
mom because she could see people, she walked with their grief.
She was so incredible with them. I was much more
(13:46):
regarded and she didn't know what to do with that.
Probably And what was your question, because there was something
I wanted to say.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Was it one to eighty? We often do ith.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Okay, So she was also because I think she'struggled a
bit with depression, so she could go from zero to
one hundred, whether crying to be laughing to anger in
a way that I really saw as a weakness because
of how it affected me. So you know, Cindy and
(14:18):
I have talked about this. Cindy, who has you know,
been in charge of my leadership group, because what I
did was I will never.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Be like That's what I was wondering.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So what what I then did was you won't hear
me raise my voice, you won't see me enraged, you
won't you know, control became much more of that. But
the flip side can be then you don't see my heart.
So for me, it's been recognizing that and being vulnerable
(14:53):
to my kids and being able to say Mom's hurt
and not like brick by brick by brick, just putting
it all off.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
So it begs the question for me. You know, here
we are, with this beautiful platform, you've built, this amazing book,
this gorgeous television show, you're speaking all over the place.
Did you ever feel with your mom that you really
had home?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yes? So it is when she done let me go
back when I was we were living with my dad's.
You know, they had just come back from overseas and
was pastoring a church in Denver, and I was new
to the school as usual, and all these kids were
talking about their parents getting divorced. And I had gone
(15:41):
home and my parents were fighting, and I bursted tears
and I said, are you all getting divorced? My mom
pulled me into her bedroom. We were living in the
basement in my grandparents' house. Like mattress on the floor,
Sit on the floor, and she takes off her wedding
actually singing right, and she said, I want you to
look on the inside of it. On the inside of
it is a triangle and she said that stands for
(16:04):
the war. It is the head of your father. We
will never divorced. You don't need to worry about that. Ever.
That became to me in the midst of all our moving,
in the midst of different griefs. They were, you know,
they had lost a house when they you know, elset
a house a couple of times. And that became my anchor,
(16:26):
so family in the family unit that my parents created,
which was incredible. And again that's why I have to
our family traditions and all of those things that we
did collectively became my you know, it held me together.
So then when my mom was dying, she called all
six of us into her bedroom separately and said, if
you could have anything in mind, you want what you
(16:47):
wanted to do. I said, you're you're wedding. She didn't
have a diamond, she didn't have an engagement raging. So
like when my mom died, I don't have any jewelry
from she never had one story. And I said, I
just wanted it's just a simple old band. I said,
this is what I want of yours. I'm the only
one who asked for it. But I said, that's what
represented my whole life's facility for your mare. And so.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yes, its concept is so beautiful. And yet I can't
land where you really felt home outside of the story
you just gave me. Did home become what you felt
with Bob as you're moving sixteen times in ten years
or whatever it was?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So we you know, we moved, We left Richmond and
we moved to Philadelphia, and that first year of marriage
we lived in nine places. But understand that I know,
and and so I'm waiting to wade into the bar
of Pennsylvania. So I don't have a job take We're
literally sleeping on people's living room floors. And I remember
(17:54):
we were living with Bob's parents for about a month
and they have this like field next to their house
and I go into the field and nice scream at
the time of my lungs, God, can you see me?
I don't think you can see me? So let's I'm
in a big, wide open space. Can you see me?
And but it was pretty wonderful, uh for Bob and I. Yeah,
(18:18):
so that's that's how sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, I don't have I don't understand how that was
wonderful because to me, it's like, I'm not kidding. To me,
that's im horrible.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Oh well, what's clear.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I don't know how I got through it, but we
got through it stronger than we started, and.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That it looked like a recipe for disaster for a marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
One thousand percent. And let's just let me tell you.
It was hard. It was difficult, and if Bob and
I hadn't turned towards each other instead of stores, you know, stores,
to you know, each other, we would have been in trouble.
It was I don't know you, I'm here. I just
left being a trial lawriate through Attorney General's office that
(19:03):
Virginia's Supreme Court justice who was my mentor, had taken
me to lunch and he's like, does your husband know
what you're giving up? You're about to lose your mind.
And it was horrible. So I'm not saying our circumstances
weren't horrible. I'm not saying I wasn't an emotional asking case.
I am saying, God show up.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So again I'm trying to track this and I can't
quite find I can't quite find that. So you lean
into Bob. You're moving like nine times in a year.
How does that happen? You're and you're not like a
twenty something.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I'm thirty. You know, I'm thirty. So I got married
at thirty. I'm thirty one. I mean we had no money.
We met, went from two salaries to his salary was
less than what either one of us were making New Richmond,
and our house hadn't sold in Richmond. That's why we
or were kind of whoever would take us and we
would go stay with and we didn't even have money
(20:01):
to go out to eat. And we'd said I had
a game of sequence, and we would play in our bed,
and to this day we have the cup, the lid
of it that has all our scores from that person.
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I love that though. That's very well.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
I would say it's that that it was. It was
almost you know, if I think about it, The Lord
knit us so tightly that we could then handle the
next fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
What was your mission statement?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Oh, we had several things, but part of it was
love hard, play hard. It was love hard, play card,
work hard. We just had a number of things that
we really highly value, and so I got pregnant that
first year. That's when we met with the realtor and
she said, what can you afford? And we told her
and she burst out laughing and she said, you can't
(20:53):
live here. I don't like her well she She then
became a wielder for about sixteen transactions. We hold the
record the entire her realty company. She called us back
two weeks later and said, are you afraid of hard work?
I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Next week in Part three with Ruth, nine moves in
a year, Financial struggles and the question that changed how
she prays, don't miss it
And there's a book called It was written by my
one of my grandparents friends called Evidence Not Seeing and
it's a beautiful, beautiful book. She was, you know, and
she was in a concentration anyway, the point being, I
told the Lord, I'm going to praise you every day
(00:34):
for one year. For one year, I'm going to literally
go on a one hour walk into sing, but you
better show me who you are by the end of
that year. And it was sometimes the prayers were so deep, right,
(00:56):
I almost needed to divorce myself back and get back
to the basics. Uh, I need to know who you
are and I need to so I remember the first
time I was going out walking and uh, I said, Lord,
that's a really nice tree and that is all I
have literally, and you know what, I love it. The
Lord's like, I got it. I take I'm taking it.
(01:17):
You know when you're thinking about the sacrifice or praise, Yeah,
where praise is really a sacrifice you put on. And
so each day for one year I would walk, I
see and by the end of that year, I had
(01:37):
fallen in love with I knew so, you know, And
and during that time there were a lot of other
things where I remember walking out of the lawsuit and
he had gotten continued again and I was in tears.
My mom said, don't let me forget to tie later
and I said, by I bring you your groceries. There's nothing
(02:01):
in My Mom's said route the Lord promises blessings, And
I said, where are the blessings? And she said, We're
the most blessed family I've ever.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So she's without a home, she's in a lawsuit, and
she's had fifty two surgeries, just didn't cancer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
This was at the beginning of this. When I tell you,
I mean even when she was she had just found
out it was terminal. There was nothing else they could do.
I'm bringing her home the doctor and she's laughing in
the passenger seat. I said, how can you be laughing?
And she said, are you putting me? I'm the luckiest
one in the world. I have six children who love
the Lord and love each other, in love me And
so what.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
An incredible perspective. But it feels like it feels two storybook.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, But see I used to ask that same question
with my parents, you know, having grown up with I mean,
when I tell you, I think we did one of
our family Readians because we would have hundreds of people
are a marine. We would have maps of all the
countries people had been evangel us or minister missionaries, and
so our stories are just And I remember saying to
(03:05):
my dad, how how did they face what they faced? Ruth,
you won't know that when the time comes, he won't
give me this drenth. Don't have to have it right now.
I couldn't have it right now. And there was something
comforting about that because I knew I didn't you know
(03:25):
what I mean, But he would have quacked me when
this time, if and when the time.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So you've you've never had like a dark knight of
the soul where you questioned your faith or your belief, or.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Is thereby the dark knights of the soul of questioning
whether you love Okay, knew he was my savior. Okay,
I knew he was, but do you actually love me?
That's my that would be my thing. But it was
never who he was.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
And so that probably speaks to all kinds of things
that you felt as a child, all kinds of shame
and hurt and pain you were caring for whatever reasons,
to not feel that the savior you so truly believed
in might not love you, Ruth.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I think that there were, you know, moving so much.
There was a lot of I went through a lot
with people, other kids, So those things are shaping you
along the way as well.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I actually was recently in up from the city and
I saw the girl. Girl she's a woman. Now. I
had been in hueting means each other in twenty five years,
and he is watching to get it In Homecoming, Queen,
you all stayed oncoming me and she get befreped me
when we moved to home, when she was at risk
of losing everybody, I just hadn't grown up with everyone.
(04:58):
I got the opportunity to thank her, and it was
so cool because I don't know that i'd ever said
to her. You don't know what you did for that
fifteen you know what I'm saying. But I just sometimes
I think the Lord permits these kinds of you know,
things that hit you growing up so that you truly
(05:22):
lean on.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
So talk to me about your mom's journey through cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, so she forgot about it for eleven mutes, Like
I said, surgeries.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
What kind of cancer?
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Like her fifties. She died at my It was a
mouth cancer. I actually got the call from her dentist
who called me it my job in said you need
to have your mom call me in the middle. And
it was a spot on her gum. It was something
that you only get if you smoke Church Jude for decades.
(06:02):
She'd never die either, and uh, it didn't respond to
chemo or the radiations. They had to keep cutting it in.
So by the time the end was there, there was
no roof of her mouth. There was no it was
and she kept asking the Lord, if you're gonna take
me this early, then please let me be like Samson
(06:26):
and do more in my because of my death than
you were even able to do. So there was a
There was a six She was with Hostas for six months.
I mean every day they were like, she's not gonna
make un till tomorrow. And she would wake up and
be like, Okay, God, I'm still here. Ifud else do
you want me to see? So her whole focus was.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Mm hmm. So yeah, and you were always close to
your mom.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, And God did a miraculous feeling with with me
before the only God I my mom and I were
very I loved her deeply, but I was she had
gone to Berkeley. She was a hippie.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I love that. Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I mean when I say hippie, I mean till the
day she died barefoot every day. I mean totally different.
In fact, when she was dying those last few months,
she said, Ruth, we put on my shoes and walk around,
and let me walk around in your shoes, just for
a few moments, just understanding how different you were. And
(07:42):
I had known, and I know my dad would in
any way be grudge me sharing this story, but I knew. So.
I'm the oldest of six. We spent twenty three years.
The last one was born when I was in law school,
so it was a huge She had kids in the
sixty seventy, say, and I knew from a very early
(08:03):
age I would have said five. She said four. She
let me go, meaning she knew I would be the
one that would be okay. I was very highly self motivated.
I started working very young, put myself through college in
law school. But there always was a sense to me
(08:28):
that although I knew my mom loved me, I didn't
think she was proud of me. And I remember prospess
we were all out. She was in Utah when she
was dying, and I was sitting on the top of
the mountain at four o'clock in the morning by myself,
crying out to God, saying, I don't know, something has
to heal before you take her. I don't know what
(08:50):
it is. I do know I have four little girls
who are under five, and I can't mother in the
way in a in the way I want to. Feeling
a bit of brokenness, and so I was praying this
on the mountain and I walked into my parents' bedroom.
(09:11):
At the time, they were living with my aunt and
uncle in Parsony, and my aunt at the time was
sleeping outside of the bedroom every night and every day.
She was transcribing every conversation my mom. So I walk in,
I'm sitting. Everyone's asleep. I sat in a chair right
next to her. My mom was asleep and I was
just watching her. And she wakes up and she looks
(09:34):
at me and she said, what's wrong? And I just
just weeping, and my dad wakes up. My aunt comes
in to shape the conversation, and my dad said, everybody out,
it's the conversation and nobody and I said, Mom, I
know you love me. I don't think you're she wanted
(09:56):
me to go to law school. I was much more
control than my mom. My mom was wild and free,
and she just didn't understand me. She said. She started crying,
and she said, you know, I feel the Lord show
(10:17):
me who you are. For the first time in the
last two weeks, she said, I let you go. It
I known that, but to put it, I remember I
had sat at the top of the mountaining Lord. I
don't know that she would know. There's nothing to say
to heal what's going on in my heart, Like there's
nothing to apologize for. She was a wonderful mother of
(10:41):
like there was no specific instances, but I knew in
my heart there was something that statement only the word
show and she said, would you get in bed with me,
let me brush your hair and be my It was done.
I don't cry about it. And it is so healed
(11:04):
in me. I can't even tell you to the point
where I know my mom is rejoicing in a heaven
God's doing with me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
How beautiful that, yeah, was How beautiful that you.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I had that that?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
But you know, I hurt for that four year old
little girl who was let go. I mean to me,
I I've probably hovered too much as a mother, I
have helicoptered some. You know, I have not wanted to
let go maybe when I was supposed to let go.
You know, I can't imagine in my wildest dreams even
(11:41):
thinking that I could kind of let go emotionally of
a child because they were confident that just I can't
get it right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Down, and I'm probably not. I don't. I got to
be very careful. It wasn't that I was let go
in any way that you would think of, oh, she's
a derelict, you know what I'm saying. No, I know
she didn't understand me emotion and I could be. I
still can be. I can shut emotions down pretty quickly
and I just do my thing. And she had so
(12:12):
much from her own childhood. I mean, she was married
a nineteen, she had me at twenty. Father tried to
kill himself in front of the fat Like. She had
so much. A dad left the day she was born.
She had her own things that she was trying to
grow up and navigate. And there was you know, a
(12:33):
couple of months we lived in a tent while my
dad was in law school, and so it was just
there was a lot of her trying to grow up
at the same time as be a wife with two
little babies by the time you're twenty one, and uh
really hard. So you know, I looking back, I'm like,
I don't even know how she did it. God's great
(12:53):
she did it, and she at her funeral I think
one of my brothers did it. Was like an eagle
who put her wings over her six children and didn't
permit her past to affect her children. So and God
gave us an incredible I mean, that was the biggest
healing thing that could have ever helpened to me. And
(13:14):
I love her with all my heart.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So it was again, did you have an opposite sort
of approach to motherhood?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yes? In term let me, I'm going to say that
this my mom. She was amazing and I always have
to come back to this. People would go to my
mom because she could see people, she walked with their grief.
She was so incredible with them. I was much more
(13:46):
regarded and she didn't know what to do with that.
Probably And what was your question, because there was something
I wanted to say.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Was it one to eighty? We often do ith.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Okay, So she was also because I think she'struggled a
bit with depression, so she could go from zero to
one hundred, whether crying to be laughing to anger in
a way that I really saw as a weakness because
of how it affected me. So you know, Cindy and
(14:18):
I have talked about this. Cindy, who has you know,
been in charge of my leadership group, because what I
did was I will never.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Be like That's what I was wondering.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
So what what I then did was you won't hear
me raise my voice, you won't see me enraged, you
won't you know, control became much more of that. But
the flip side can be then you don't see my heart.
So for me, it's been recognizing that and being vulnerable
(14:53):
to my kids and being able to say Mom's hurt
and not like brick by brick by brick, just putting
it all off.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
So it begs the question for me. You know, here
we are, with this beautiful platform, you've built, this amazing book,
this gorgeous television show, you're speaking all over the place.
Did you ever feel with your mom that you really
had home?
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yes? So it is when she done let me go
back when I was we were living with my dad's.
You know, they had just come back from overseas and
was pastoring a church in Denver, and I was new
to the school as usual, and all these kids were
talking about their parents getting divorced. And I had gone
(15:41):
home and my parents were fighting, and I bursted tears
and I said, are you all getting divorced? My mom
pulled me into her bedroom. We were living in the
basement in my grandparents' house. Like mattress on the floor,
Sit on the floor, and she takes off her wedding
actually singing right, and she said, I want you to
look on the inside of it. On the inside of
it is a triangle and she said that stands for
(16:04):
the war. It is the head of your father. We
will never divorced. You don't need to worry about that. Ever.
That became to me in the midst of all our moving,
in the midst of different griefs. They were, you know,
they had lost a house when they you know, elset
a house a couple of times. And that became my anchor,
(16:26):
so family in the family unit that my parents created,
which was incredible. And again that's why I have to
our family traditions and all of those things that we
did collectively became my you know, it held me together.
So then when my mom was dying, she called all
six of us into her bedroom separately and said, if
you could have anything in mind, you want what you
(16:47):
wanted to do. I said, you're you're wedding. She didn't
have a diamond, she didn't have an engagement raging. So
like when my mom died, I don't have any jewelry
from she never had one story. And I said, I
just wanted it's just a simple old band. I said,
this is what I want of yours. I'm the only
one who asked for it. But I said, that's what
represented my whole life's facility for your mare. And so.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yes, its concept is so beautiful. And yet I can't
land where you really felt home outside of the story
you just gave me. Did home become what you felt
with Bob as you're moving sixteen times in ten years
or whatever it was?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
So we you know, we moved, We left Richmond and
we moved to Philadelphia, and that first year of marriage
we lived in nine places. But understand that I know,
and and so I'm waiting to wade into the bar
of Pennsylvania. So I don't have a job take We're
literally sleeping on people's living room floors. And I remember
(17:54):
we were living with Bob's parents for about a month
and they have this like field next to their house
and I go into the field and nice scream at
the time of my lungs, God, can you see me?
I don't think you can see me? So let's I'm
in a big, wide open space. Can you see me?
And but it was pretty wonderful, uh for Bob and I. Yeah,
(18:18):
so that's that's how sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, I don't have I don't understand how that was
wonderful because to me, it's like, I'm not kidding. To me,
that's im horrible.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Oh well, what's clear.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I don't know how I got through it, but we
got through it stronger than we started, and.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That it looked like a recipe for disaster for a marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
One thousand percent. And let's just let me tell you.
It was hard. It was difficult, and if Bob and
I hadn't turned towards each other instead of stores, you know, stores,
to you know, each other, we would have been in trouble.
It was I don't know you, I'm here. I just
left being a trial lawriate through Attorney General's office that
(19:03):
Virginia's Supreme Court justice who was my mentor, had taken
me to lunch and he's like, does your husband know
what you're giving up? You're about to lose your mind.
And it was horrible. So I'm not saying our circumstances
weren't horrible. I'm not saying I wasn't an emotional asking case.
I am saying, God show up.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So again I'm trying to track this and I can't
quite find I can't quite find that. So you lean
into Bob. You're moving like nine times in a year.
How does that happen? You're and you're not like a
twenty something.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I'm thirty. You know, I'm thirty. So I got married
at thirty. I'm thirty one. I mean we had no money.
We met, went from two salaries to his salary was
less than what either one of us were making New Richmond,
and our house hadn't sold in Richmond. That's why we
or were kind of whoever would take us and we
would go stay with and we didn't even have money
(20:01):
to go out to eat. And we'd said I had
a game of sequence, and we would play in our bed,
and to this day we have the cup, the lid
of it that has all our scores from that person.
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I love that though. That's very well.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
I would say it's that that it was. It was
almost you know, if I think about it, The Lord
knit us so tightly that we could then handle the
next fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
What was your mission statement?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Oh, we had several things, but part of it was
love hard, play hard. It was love hard, play card,
work hard. We just had a number of things that
we really highly value, and so I got pregnant that
first year. That's when we met with the realtor and
she said, what can you afford? And we told her
and she burst out laughing and she said, you can't
(20:53):
live here. I don't like her well she She then
became a wielder for about sixteen transactions. We hold the
record the entire her realty company. She called us back
two weeks later and said, are you afraid of hard work?
I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Next week in Part three with Ruth, nine moves in
a year, Financial struggles and the question that changed how
she prays, don't miss it
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