SpeakLifeAZ
The testimony of Jesus in, with, and through everyday people like us. A father and son who were addicts for over 20 yrs. You name it, WE DID IT, TOGETHER!!!! we used to use drugs together now we share about what God Has done for us to encourage the body of Christ and anyone else who may listen to this that is feeling hopeless and empty. LISTEN TO OUR STORY...and the testimony of others who feel led to share with you.... GOD BLESS YOU....TODAY WE CHOOSE TO SPEAK LIFE AZ!!!!!!!!!!
SpeakLifeAZ
LeAnna B. Testimony #1
What happens when childhood trauma collides with adult relationships? In this raw and deeply moving episode, Leanna bravely shares her journey through multiple forms of abuse and her remarkable path to freedom and healing.
Growing up in a chaotic family environment, Leanna experienced rejection, witnessed domestic violence, and suffered childhood sexual abuse that was swept under the rug. Though attending church with her grandparents provided structure, it wasn't until a powerful Holy Spirit encounter at age 16 that she began her authentic faith journey.
The conversation takes an intimate turn as Leanna reveals how, at just 19, she entered what would become a 23-year marriage marked by increasing levels of emotional, mental, spiritual, and eventually physical abuse. With remarkable vulnerability, she dismantles the misconception that domestic abuse must leave visible bruises to be legitimate, sharing how her efforts to seek help—even from church leadership—were often met with spiritual platitudes rather than practical support.
Perhaps most powerful is Leanna's transparency about her healing journey through Celebrate Recovery, where she confronted childhood wounds and began rebuilding her sense of identity and worth. Today, she channels her experiences into advocating for abuse victims and deaf education students, demonstrating how God can transform our deepest pain into purpose.
If you've ever felt trapped in cycles of trauma, struggled to recognize unhealthy relationships, or wondered if healing is truly possible, this episode offers not just understanding but genuine hope. Leanna's testimony stands as a powerful reminder that no matter how broken our beginnings, our stories don't have to end there.
all right, everybody. Welcome back to the speak life az podcast testimony of jesus and everyday people. I'm your host, eddie, and always with me is my son, rowdy jesus what up, dude? Let's get it. Dude. That's dad. How's your day, buddy? It's starting to get hot here in arizona man and uh so I'm feeling it a little bit, but praise god it's gonna be in the 90s next week.
Speaker 1:Nice and cool I have a job I provide for my family, so I can't complain. Man, come on, buddy, amen, dude about you it's a good day, bro.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, man Went on a bike ride Really. Yeah, Look at you. Go, come on bud. Anything I can do to help myself.
Speaker 1:Come on, man Ready for this.
Speaker 2:I am.
Speaker 1:Who'd you bring with you? Brother, I you got us connected, dude who did.
Speaker 4:I bring with us. Who did you?
Speaker 2:bring. You got our sister Leanna Leanna.
Speaker 5:How are? You sister, I'm blessed. How are you guys?
Speaker 1:Really good. Thank you for coming on, man. Thank you for having us. God made it very clear to us that when we get one of his sons or daughters on to show them honor, so we just want to take a moment and say thank you. We've had people who's turned us down, so would not?
Speaker 1:everybody wants to come on and share their story, so when we do get somebody, it's a privilege and an honor to host a daughter or a son of the King, and so we thank you for your time. We know time is the only commodity we don't get back, so we thank you for sharing a little bit of your time with us, man, and we honor you for that.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story on a broader spectrum.
Speaker 2:It's a little different than CR. Let me just kind of pray real quick, man, and then we'll just get into it. Jesus, man, holy Spirit, thank you, lord. God, I just thank you for what you're getting ready to do. We just pray that you do what only you can do, god, and that's heal people, that's transforms people's thoughts and their minds about how good you really are and what you can do with somebody. Thank you, lord.
Speaker 2:I just thank you for your daughter, leanna. Lord, I thank you for her testimony that she's getting ready to share Holy Spirit, just use her words and guide this conversation, god. I just thank you that whoever's watching this, whoever's listening to this, they can find some similarities, god, because if you can do what you've done in her life, you can do what you can do in their life. So I just pray you just come and have your way in Jesus' name, amen, amen, amen. So, sister, like dad was kind of saying before we started, when God gave us this thing, man, we didn't do it all what he said to do, which is Speak Life AZ podcast the testimony of Jesus and everyday people. The first couple of years, man, we were in my bedroom setting up a studio and preaching videos it was big life, Eddie and Rowdy preaching.
Speaker 2:But once we finally got to where and we started to do what he showed us Obedience man.
Speaker 2:Yep, obedience. This thing just kind of started to grow and go where, and so here we are today. Amen, basically what we would like from you today. We just want to know who Leanna is. We want to know where you were born, what your childhood was like growing up, brothers and sisters, relationship with mom and dad, god was God something that you guys did? Was it a Sunday thing or was it a lifestyle School? What was your school like? Growing up? Sports grades and you know, you know, man, being involved in recovery, um, a lot of the stuff that the hurts, the habits, the hang ups and the stuff that mess with us later in life. It actually happens earlier in life from a lot of the traumas, um. So if you could please, um, just let the holy spirit lead you in any of that.
Speaker 2:But I think the coolest thing that we want to capture today is your encounter with God. Mine was literally in Teen Challenge at 1515 West Grand Avenue in Phoenix, at this two-foot blue altar on the right side under the bass speaker. I still remember where I was Dad he was in a prison cell in Tucson Complex. So we want to know where your encounter when God became, and it's different for everybody. Some peoples it happens in a day or a moment, other peoples it's a series of events that happens that you come to realize that whoa God's been with me this whole time. But it's very personal, it's yours. Yeah, that's whoa God's been with me this whole time.
Speaker 1:But it's very personal. It's yours. Yeah, that's right. That's how he got me. It's not how he's going to get you, it's not how he got him, and that's when we talk about God as a personal God. He knows what it's going to take to get you To get you.
Speaker 4:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:At the right time, the right moment or a series of crucial, that we capture that moment your personal encounter. It's personal man, it's so and it shows how personal god is. Come on, man, it really does right. Absolutely. I think it's one of the coolest things about doing this man.
Speaker 2:It's just how god encounters his people, um, but then at the very end, um, well, no. So after your encounter, we want to know, kind of, how your life changed. Transformation, transformation, like that always says man, the evidence of somebody having a personal encounter with god is life transformation, and it's literally what jesus talks about in the word man is a life being transformed, um, so we want to know how your life changed.
Speaker 1:Not that you're perfect, no, no, god, no, all saying, but there is transformation.
Speaker 2:That takes place over time and we become to reflect him a little more. No. Saying yes to Jesus brings a bunch of hell into your life.
Speaker 1:I can see somebody hearing that being like oh, you think you're perfect? No, we're becoming like him over time.
Speaker 2:Deny yourself and follow him, he'll make you a fisher of men. But then at the very end, um, you're still young, sis, you still got a lot of life ahead of you. Um, you were talking about a podcast. Um, basically, we just want to get kind of what god has put inside of you, what he, what he wants to do through you in life that hasn't maybe manifested yet.
Speaker 2:What you're hoping and believing God. For yeah, absolutely, mark. Chapter 9, verse 23, it says anything is possible for them that believe. So I always tell people, man, when we get to that part, go big, because we got a really big God.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do, absolutely. We had a pastor one time who had this big plot of land and he built this little old, probably 200 hundred person church right and we were walking the property with him one day and he stopped and he turned back and looked at the church and he said the biggest mistake I ever made, eddie, was that was all I was believing god for oh, wow and so that always stick in my head now, god's only going to give you what you're believing him for. Come on man you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So that's why we tell people go big because whatever you're believing, god for your faith is a measure of your faith. He'll meet you right there, that's right, you know what I mean. So go big man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yes absolutely Sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh no, you're good dude. Yeah, let Holy Spirit lead you, bro Come on Amen.
Speaker 1:I know I'm going to butcher your name, but what was it like? Growing up Leanna.
Speaker 2:Leanna.
Speaker 5:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I got to go through the CR slides every Monday and make sure they're correct. Spelling's not his gift, it's not.
Speaker 5:No, I've had that my whole life actually. But like the first day is capitalized, but people still say Leanna. I've even gotten Leona before.
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't know how you came up with that one, but okay, I could talk to how blue in the face, but spelling forget it. So what was it?
Speaker 5:like growing up man Well. So I'm not from Arizona, I'm not an Arizona native.
Speaker 2:There aren't many that are, I know I think I've met maybe three people, I am.
Speaker 4:Really, I am Really. I think I've met like Four and out people.
Speaker 1:You're number four, I literally was born right on the other side of the 60, right here. Stapley and 8th Avenue is where I grew up Awesome. I went to Mesa High School and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:She has no idea.
Speaker 5:No, I mean, I kind of know the area a little bit, born, and raised man Wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I was born In October of 1975.
Speaker 2:I'm older than I look I think you may be the first one that gave a date okay, usually people don't or at least the first one yeah amen I like that because I like seeing the people's faces.
Speaker 4:We're like what.
Speaker 2:Praise God. God's been good to you.
Speaker 5:I tell them all the time I'm like it's good jeans and. Mary Kay.
Speaker 1:I use good skincare. You're only three years younger than me and you look a whole lot younger than I do. Thank you, I've been through some stuff, man.
Speaker 5:But no, I was born in Key West Florida. Oh wow, florida.
Speaker 1:I Florida, oh wow, Florida. I was born in Key West Florida.
Speaker 5:I think you're the first person I've ever met that was born in Florida. Really, yeah, yeah, I was born and raised in Florida.
Speaker 1:Really Not in.
Speaker 5:Key West. I was born in Key West but I grew up in the Orlando area. Wow, Mostly there was a couple little things when I was little, like my baby sister. I'm the oldest of two.
Speaker 2:She was born in.
Speaker 5:Texas. Yeah. And then we lived in. I don't remember it, but we lived in rhode island for a little bit before coming back to florida. Yeah, um, but my parents made it out of the gators man.
Speaker 1:Gators didn't get you no, no, no um.
Speaker 5:Is that a real thing? What?
Speaker 2:like in florida, like you'd be walking down the street and see a gator on the road.
Speaker 5:Depends on where you're at man. Same as Louisiana.
Speaker 2:I moved here from.
Speaker 5:Louisiana, but that's later in the story.
Speaker 2:I couldn't do it.
Speaker 5:I'd freak out man, it really depends on where you're at.
Speaker 1:Swampland areas right, not always, no, really.
Speaker 4:No, no, it's not just the swamplands, it's more prominent there, but it really just depends on where you're at and what key west orlando, not key west because, that's like the very end of florida, out in the middle of okay, you know the ocean.
Speaker 5:But but yeah, orlando you certain areas around some of the lakes that are more infested with the gators. You can find them in your yard, you can find them, like, in the neighborhood. Yeah, have you seen the cat swimming pools?
Speaker 2:have you seen the videos?
Speaker 4:I haven't seen the cat in three days.
Speaker 1:Man I see people coming out of their backyards and they're like up in their yards and stuff. I'm like no, thanks man yeah, I'd have me some nice shoes yeah, that happens in louisiana too.
Speaker 5:You don't hear about it as much as in Florida. I think they're crazier in Florida, the gators.
Speaker 1:Well, Louisiana is where they have the what's that TV show where they gator hunt the Swamp People. Yeah, that's Louisiana. Right, that is yeah. Yeah, that is.
Speaker 5:Although I think there is one person that is Texas, but it's like literally right over the border.
Speaker 2:It's a different breed of people over there, different culture totally.
Speaker 1:And their accent holy. I can barely understand what you're saying.
Speaker 5:Well, that depends too on where you go in Louisiana, because that's more south central, like where I moved from. If you go more north, we're like Duck Dynasty where the Robertsons are from Completely different country, completely.
Speaker 1:Who was the guy back in the 70s and 80s who was a Louisiana cooker?
Speaker 5:Oh, that was, oh my gosh, I can see him. We used to watch him on.
Speaker 4:Justin Wilson yeah.
Speaker 5:I got one too, yeah. Justin Wilson. Yes, I used to watch him on PBS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love that dude. Put some more of that Louisiana sauce on there. Yes, yes, he was awesome.
Speaker 5:I loved him.
Speaker 2:A little fire A little fire Exactly, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:We'll go down some rabbit holes.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I'm the queen of rabbit holes, so you just got to rein me back in.
Speaker 2:I will, I'll do my best.
Speaker 5:That's my best.
Speaker 1:That's what he's here that's what I'm here for. You know we're in trouble. When this guy's got, we had one guy that went six hours, yeah, and he was talking. He was like we're way off topic. He's over here, like come on, I'm like dude, stop.
Speaker 5:He's talking about some stuff I'm interested in. Yeah, like that's what editing's, for we don't.
Speaker 2:We don't edit nothing we don't edit, you get everything whatever's coming out, it's going on.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, that's awesome though I love that. I love that yeah I really I love authenticity and just like that's raw real, exactly, it's real man we had some of our listeners tell us you guys are, you guys are real, you guys have real conversations, and it's that's what we're trying to be. We're just be us yeah, I mean we're not trying to be somebody, we're not.
Speaker 5:We're just here being ourselves having good, genuine conversations with a believer and it's genuine, it's authentic, yeah, but I feel like in, especially right now, in I don't know about the rest of the world, but in american culture and society, there's such a hunger for that because with our technologies, and with everything's really just the stuff that's been happening in like the last three to four years.
Speaker 1:It it's like people are done.
Speaker 5:They're so. Done with the facades. They're just done with it. Especially, I think, when it comes to Christianity and the church as a whole. So yeah, I'm all about transparency and authenticity and like rawness, like you said.
Speaker 1:People call me and him radical. Because we're, because we're just brutally honest. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean we just talk about stuff that, like you were saying, no, people normally don't right yeah no, I think there needs to be more of that.
Speaker 5:But in like, sorry, I'm not crying yet yet um no, my eyes.
Speaker 2:That comes later. My eyes are watering, oh, I'm sure I'm sure it will.
Speaker 5:I'm very um. I can be very emotional amen amen especially being uh, I have the gift of being an empath, so oh, wow, yeah, you can feel, oh very much so yeah, sometimes it's overwhelming, but so do you remember a bunch of your early, early florida time?
Speaker 1:I do moved, yeah, I do.
Speaker 5:I remember bits and pieces of it and I talk about it sometimes in my well. It's part of my testimony when I go to like separate recovery. Yeah.
Speaker 5:But my parents were. They were very young. My mother's family wound up in Key West because my grandfather, her father, was career Navy. Okay her father was career Navy Okay and Key West was one of I think it was the last duty station that he had been assigned to before he finally retired. Yeah, that base is no longer there. I don't even know when they got rid of that base. It was decades ago, okay, but that's how she wound up meeting my father, so my father's family, who I don't really know. They were from Cuba.
Speaker 2:Oh really. Oh yeah, so I'm part Cuban. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5:And I don't know if he was actually born in the States. I think he was actually born here in the States, but the family settled there in Key West I don't know how many generations and that's how my mom and him met. They met in Key West. I don't know how many generations and that's how my mom and him met. They met in Key West. Yeah, my mom was like 17. I think she was senior in high school, you know, and you know it wasn't too far off from the 60s, so there was like still some of that hippie love type thing going on, you know, and um, yeah, so they, they met, and I always used to think that they, they weren't married.
Speaker 5:And then I found out years later that they actually were married, even at that young of age. Like they, they were married. And, um, it's really wild because for the longest time I couldn't figure out why he, he left. You know, like so my little sister was born about a year and a half later. I don't know why we were in texas, but we wound up in texas where she was born there, and shortly after she was born, my father left oh man no, you know no, nothing just left.
Speaker 5:That was it wow how old were you?
Speaker 2:like two, I was.
Speaker 5:I was about three.
Speaker 1:I think, Do you remember?
Speaker 5:that.
Speaker 2:I don't actually.
Speaker 5:Even with all of the recovery that I've gone through, there are still chunks of my childhood that I can't recall. I believe at some point, when it's the right time for it to happen, god will bring it up as he does. There will be a time and a purpose for it, um, but I don't remember that. Um, I do remember my mom telling me one time, like when I asked her about it though, that apparently I I cried a lot, um, you know, and was asking like where's daddy? Where's daddy?
Speaker 5:I have no recollection of that yeah but apparently that went on for quite a while, I guess, until I just finally well, let's say, between three and five is when our cognitive comes around.
Speaker 1:You know I mean it's developed, so that's probably a crucial time to be traumatized it.
Speaker 5:Very much is like I. I learned later and that's later in my story, but part of when I was a teacher and pursuing a master's degree in SPED I had to do some classes. One entire course, eight weeks, was on the brain and neurology, oh wow.
Speaker 5:And some of the stuff I researched was specific to how we develop language, because I was going to do my thesis on language deprivation in deaf children because that's the area that I was teaching in was deaf ed. That comes later in the story, but along with that I was able to learn. I don't know how anybody can deny that there's a God. Let me just put it that way because, even putting my faith aside, after learning all of that and the intricacies of just the human brain alone from a scientific basis.
Speaker 5:I love that I was like wow, it's perfect.
Speaker 2:No way we came from amoebas to monkeys Like that didn't happen.
Speaker 4:Like there's just no way you know like.
Speaker 5:No, this is too intricate.
Speaker 2:There's a God that loves us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's people's way to try to explain away god yes, is the other yeah, you know, the evolution part of it is their way of trying to explain god out of the picture.
Speaker 5:Yeah, exactly, exactly yeah and is, but it is just so um, it was just so amazing and it even, it even plays. Because you know, we talk all the time about how, particularly for the addicts that come into recovery, that have those habits, but, like I've learned, as you'll hear later in my story, like, even if you're not an addict, you have some destructive habits that came out of that right. And so it's not a cliche to say I forget how long it is.
Speaker 5:It says that you have to do something consistently to change your habit yeah that's not a cliche, because even through all of this, I was now able to use that when I would minister to people in recovery, because there's scientific evidence to back that up. We literally, when you have a habit let's say, you know, I'm addicted to cigarettes, for instance right, and I want to change that. I got through all this stuff, all of this stuff the more consistent you are with getting away from that habit.
Speaker 5:What's happening in your brain is there's literally a physical change happening in your brain because the neurons the pathways that you have forged are here when you break away from that you literally start developing a new pathway track and this one starts to shrink until it's no longer there, and now you have the new pathway. It's fascinating. Beautiful huh. I mean, that's a rabbit hole I could go down for days He'll love that. Yeah, no, it really is, and I was never a science kid, Like I was never a science kid, but I'm fascinated by neurology and it's just amazing.
Speaker 2:There's a pastor. It's slipping my mind his name, but he's a huge science guy and he had this one about laminin. It's literally like the smallest thing, the smallest cell adhesion molecule.
Speaker 1:You look it up, it's what holds us, us, together, and it literally looks like a cross.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my god, that's great dude, and it's three strands that look like a cross exactly.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I saw that. Once I saw the video about that, I was like so cool, you want to check it up.
Speaker 2:Laminin L-A-M.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's our right cross for Christianity.
Speaker 5:No, no, it really is. That is truly fascinating. And even things like that, like the. I don't see how even the strongest atheist could watch a video like that and not at least become an agnostic. Yeah. I don't get that, but there's's so much evidence god's got a time evidence.
Speaker 2:God's got a time and a place for each person, exactly that's really those that are his exactly so you're in texas dad kind of bounces yes
Speaker 5:you're going through some crying fits yes, so when my father left, my mother reached back out to her parents.
Speaker 2:Who are still in Florida.
Speaker 5:No, I think that's how we wound up in Rhode Island. I think they were in Rhode Island at the time. I don't know why they were in Rhode Island. Okay, I know.
Speaker 1:How'd he go from Florida?
Speaker 5:to Rhode Island.
Speaker 2:I don't know. And they're retiring.
Speaker 1:Let's go up to the snow honey Go up to the beach and warm weather to freezing.
Speaker 5:My grandparents weren't snowbirds to my knowledge, but if they were, that's how you would wind up in Rhode Island, okay.
Speaker 2:Up north. You know same thing in Arizona, we had in Florida. We have snowbird season in Florida too.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so we wound up in Rhode Island back with my mom's parents. I don't know how long that was. I remember an polaroid um of my sister and I in matching like parkas oh wow out in the snow in front of my grandparents house.
Speaker 3:That's about the extent of my memory of rhode island um and then from there.
Speaker 5:At some point, we all um excuse me, just one moment you're good, my allergies are crazy today. Um, from there, somehow, we all wound up back in Florida, in the Orlando or no in the Jacksonville area, which is the top of Florida, duval, that's the county we were in.
Speaker 4:Yes, we were in.
Speaker 5:Duval.
Speaker 2:County.
Speaker 5:My memory is really, really hazy, but the earliest thing I actually do remember and it was during that time was my mother meeting my first stepdad, who also happened to be Latino. His family was from well, his father was also from Cuba. My mom had a thing for Cubans, I guess I don't know. Yeah, so, and he was a wonderful man and like that's my first memory, yeah, you know of a man in the home is your stepdad.
Speaker 2:That's my first actual memory like he was he was wonderful.
Speaker 5:I don't know what happened between the two of them. I don't know why that marriage didn't last um, but after they divorced he never quit being my sister and mine's dad yeah Like he even accepted like years later, when we had kids.
Speaker 1:How long were they together for?
Speaker 5:I think only three years. Really. And in the early little time, because we wound up then moving to Orlando, like that's how we settled in Orlando, like the whole family was there grandparents, everything, aunts, uncles, all that. So for several, several years after he would come down from Jacksonville to Orlando at least once a year to come spend the day with me and my sister Like we went to Disney once.
Speaker 5:Like he would send birthday cards, christmas cards, like he never stopped being our dad. And as we got a little bit older, the dynamic shifted. It was not like an actual traditional like father-daughter thing, but he still was always our dad. And so, like the visits got more infrequent, the calls got more infrequent but we always knew, yeah, and even his parents. His parents never stopped thinking of me and my sister as their granddaughters and are you the are you?
Speaker 2:did he have kids with any other ladies? No, he never had any children Okay.
Speaker 5:He remarried twice after my mother. The second one. They parted ways. The third one, however, he was with her until he passed, and they always knew that we were his girls.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, they always knew. Were you able to go to his funeral? Or his girls? Oh wow. Were you able to go to his funeral? Or his celebration? Oh, okay, Wow.
Speaker 5:That's really special. Yeah, that comes a lot later and that in and of itself was a hard time.
Speaker 1:Blood makes you relatives. Family is a different thing.
Speaker 5:People are there for you. I have a lot of family.
Speaker 1:That's my step, he's my stepson, and you would never know it as he's my dad as close as we are
Speaker 5:I say, yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't guess that at all, yeah, so it's a choice man, family's a choice, people you can choose to love and let in your life very much.
Speaker 5:So it's his choice, man and blessed is the person that has it in both because I I got blood relatives that are family that I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't have a relationship really with. I mean, yeah, I always tell people man, family is the hardest. Family is the hardest one man, because they are. I love them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also they're not people that I need in my life.
Speaker 5:No, our family was and still is very toxic.
Speaker 1:Very toxic Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, what is?
Speaker 2:that. What are those?
Speaker 5:Exactly right. It took me a long time to learn what that was.
Speaker 1:It's like I can love you and not need you in my life at the same time, exactly. Yes, that doesn't mean I don't love you and I care about you but I just don't need you in my life, man. Yeah, so so that was my earliest memory of of anybody and then, um, so you were about six or seven when they split up at that time.
Speaker 5:I might have been closer to five yeah yeah. I think it was closer to five right um, when they divorced and, um, I don't remember everything that happened after that, like the whole timeline. Yeah.
Speaker 5:But I do remember there was a lot of my little sister and I being bounced around, like I remember. We lived for a brief period not with our mother. We lived for a brief period with one of our uncles and his wife and our cousin. Then we lived with one of our aunts for a little bit and then several times we wound up back with my grandparents.
Speaker 1:Did mom struggle with addiction or anything Alcohol, that I'm not sure of.
Speaker 5:I don't know the extent of it, but however, that was my first introduction into domestic violence. My mother went through a string of not-so-great guys very abusive. There were a couple of times that we actually witnessed it. Well, I don't know if my sister did, I did yeah, like um men are horrible, men they can be hey, there are just as many women abusers as there are there.
Speaker 1:Is there really? Is like, and that's part of what I I share well, I know I had a cousin who used to get beat with fry bars and thrown off balconies by his girl. Dude, I'm like wow.
Speaker 5:One of my current husband's ex-girlfriends went after him with a box knife and he has like a scar.
Speaker 4:Ooh.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so women can be just as much the abusers, and not just physical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, emotional.
Speaker 5:Emotional and like emotional, emotional, everything, everything. So. But, um, there were, um, there were a couple of occasions that I I do have memories of, of, like one of the times that we were visiting our mother and, um, I still remember it vividly, I don't even know what the fight was about, and she was in like a, an apartment that had an upstairs floor, and I just remember him dragging her down the stairs by her hair. Wow, well, I don't know where my sister was, there or not, but I was there and you know, I just remember that. And then there was another time that, um, it was during the last time that my grandparents had my sister and I, and I was like preteen at that time, and I remember that the man that she was with and I think I talk about this in my testimony the man that she was with beat her so bad that she wasn't even recognizable, and my grandparents had a two-story house, with half of the house was, you know, like below the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:And the whole bottom half. And this was in Florida, so the whole bottom half was like its own little apartment and like one of my aunts lived down there and whatever. And so they brought my mom there to recover and she had to be wheeled in in a hospital bed. Wow, she begged my grandparents not to let us see her. And they said no, they want to see you. Yeah, and I can still remember what my mom looked like. Yeah, man. In that bed, you know.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's why you were bouncing from your sisters, or your?
Speaker 5:hands and grandmas probably trying to keep you out of it.
Speaker 1:That probably had something to do with it, because they knew she was in those kind of situations and didn't want you kids to be around yeah, I think that was part of it um did any of them dudes, ever put hands on you as a kid?
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah. So the very last one that she was with my grandparents.
Speaker 5:The last time they took my sister and I in, they gave my mom basically an ultimatum and they said, listen, and they always did this to keep us out of the system. Yeah, they always did that to make sure that we never went in the system. Oh man, you know.
Speaker 2:Thank God, yes, thank God, in the system you know um thank god, yes, thank god.
Speaker 5:So, as toxic as my family was, I've, I've always, I've always been grateful for my grandparents, you know it wasn't like peaches and cream with my grandparents, you know.
Speaker 2:But well, the apple never fall too far from the tree man so yeah, but I will. I've always been grateful that they stepped in, and when you say grandparents, you're talking about your mom's parents, my mother's parents, yes.
Speaker 5:I didn't know my father's family. I still barely know some of them, so this was never a part of the picture.
Speaker 2:When you say your family and everybody in Orlando, I'm talking about my maternal side, my mother's side.
Speaker 5:Yeah, everybody was there in orlando. My grandparents, um, they were married. Uh, they met because my grandmother's father was a salvation army preacher and like. So my grandfather, I think, served in in the little church or whatever. Um, he was career navy, like I. I said like career Navy. He served in Korea and a little bit of Vietnam and my mother actually could be a dual citizen One of the few duty stations overseas that he was allowed to bring family was Naples.
Speaker 5:Italy, and so they had three boys, and then they had my mother. My mother was actually born on the base in Naples, italy. Wow yeah, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got two older brothers that were born in France when my dad was in the military. Yeah, yeah, they almost got deported once.
Speaker 5:Really yeah, both of them. I bet that's a story yeah.
Speaker 1:So they both ended up in prison, and while one of them was in prison, they literally had him ready to go and my dad had to produce what's that paper? You get a d40, dd214 to prove that he was in the military and stationed in france at the time that they were born. And uh, they were actually in holding in the immigration system. They were at the what? Is it?
Speaker 1:the ice ice place over there in florence, where they keep where, they keep you ready to deport you, they were actually inside there, ready to be deported back to france. My brother calls. He's like I don't know what to do. I don't speak french, I don't even know anybody over there, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah that's hilarious and then one day they told him right, pack your stuff up. And he's like all right, here we go. They took him to a bus station and told him get out. Just left him there at the bus station that's crazy.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, how fun, though. How fun I lost where I was at oh, your, your mom was born in you're in orlando yeah, with family.
Speaker 1:The last guy, oh yes yes, so.
Speaker 5:So the last time that we went back with my grandparents, I was in middle school. Yeah. And.
Speaker 2:So nine or ten, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think I was.
Speaker 1:Eleven.
Speaker 5:No, it was younger than that, because God man. It was younger than that because I remember I went to at the time in Florida where we were at. I went to sixth grade, still in elementary school. It was the last year that my county that we were in had sixth grade in middle school. After that they went to a traditional sixth through eighth type of thing. So I actually was still. I was in the sixth grade, basically when you're the big man on campus.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that.
Speaker 5:I think the bullies would have something to say about that but so you're about nine or ten maybe yeah, probably something like that.
Speaker 5:and so they. They basically told my mom listen, we're going to take them back again, but at some point you're going to need to step up. And so from what I remember being told was that the deal was that when, either when I turned I think it was like 14, or when I entered high school, whichever came first, turned out to be high school, that came first, um cause I was able to start at the age of four in Duval County.
Speaker 5:Um, yeah my mom had to have had to have me take a test. They don't do that anymore, but, um, I had to take like a test to prove that I was ready for kindergarten because my birthday is so late in the year.
Speaker 5:Um, it's the end of Octoberober yeah so and I passed, and I started kindergarten at you know nice four years basically, yeah, um. So I wasn't quite 14 yet when I started my freshman year, and so, true to their word, we went back with my mother when I entered high school and at that time she was with her last abusive boyfriend, but she had already been with him for, I think, like two years and, like we knew him, we had seen him a couple of times, you know, or?
Speaker 1:whatever. When you're staying with your grandparents, are you still visiting mom and seeing mom, or is that just a complete separation? No, that's.
Speaker 5:That's part of my testimony. Part of my roots of rejection is um just that complete. I loved my mother and I know that she loved us, but during all of these years of being back and forth and being like with my grandparents and stuff, there was a lot of broken promises oh, yeah, a lot of calls. That never happened. Yeah, you know she just I always say it this way. My mom was just messed up, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and Well, she was a kid when she had you. She never really had a chance to Exactly Grow up yeah. You said she was like 17.
Speaker 5:She was 17. So if you're 10, she's 27. She's still navigating adulthood and figuring it all out, and I don't really know what my mom went through either you know like that's part of me being in recovery that I've learned that I had gotten to a point through. At the end of my first year of Celebrate Recovery, I got to a point of being able to forgive both of my parents and recognizing that they were broken themselves.
Speaker 1:I don't know what traumas they went through, I know what my family is like and if my mom grew up in that hello amen, you know me and him got to the same conclusion at different times in our lives with our dads, yeah, and it was god. I mean god literally revealed to us they did the best they could with the knowledge.
Speaker 4:They had.
Speaker 5:That's what I said the tools that they were taught through their parents.
Speaker 1:Because we don't know how to be a parent except through our parents.
Speaker 5:Exactly. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So we see, you know how our like. I can still remember my wife telling me you're just like your father.
Speaker 2:Oh man.
Speaker 1:And how that hit me like a brick.
Speaker 2:That was the last day he threw something across the front room.
Speaker 1:I'm like not anymore, I'm not that was the last time. I screamed, yelled, hit, threw I started having conversations.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And so that's how we learn. So if your mom is learning from your grandparents who obviously admit they're not, weren't the greatest people you know what I mean. So maybe she you know what I mean. So maybe she you know what I mean so?
Speaker 5:it's exactly, it's a lot there man yeah, and then she had the three older brothers and there's a lot of story there too, but I bet um, yeah, so she, you know she grew up in whatever that environment was for them.
Speaker 1:I haven't haven't heard you mention church at all yet yeah, I was wondering the same thing, man yeah, well, um so growing up, there was no, oh no, there was church when we were with our grandparents yeah, when we were with our grandparents.
Speaker 5:There was um, there was church, whether we wanted it or not oh yeah, yeah you're, you're going I don't know how they went from salvation army to united methodist, but that's, that's okay. So it's a denomination I was raised in.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this because going to church is different than living Christ-like. So would you say your grandparents were church attenders, or were they actually exemplifying?
Speaker 4:walking with Jesus in the home. Did you see grandma and grandpa?
Speaker 1:praying.
Speaker 5:There really is a difference. Nobody has ever asked me that question, and wow.
Speaker 1:Because it's a difference, it's real.
Speaker 5:No, it is real, but I've never thought of it before. When you've got?
Speaker 1:parents that are walking Jesus out in the home, at the home, in front of their kids. The kids see that, see it. When you have kids who were raised with a parent who went to church, it's a different story, because you see, okay, we, we go to church, but in the home we drink, we watch football, we cuss, we scream, we smoke and yeah, there's a difference, you know?
Speaker 5:I mean yeah, no, I that's you, you're the first person to ever bring that up and I've never actually thought about it before. Um, at their core my grandparents were were really good people, as many people are okay, so at their core they were good people um I can't Okay. So at their core they were good people. Um, I can't remember a single time that we prayed. Wow. Not even over Well, thanksgiving we would always pray over the food.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:But you know, like you know, that um my grandfather had a temper. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um my grandfather man he wanted to run his household even with his granddaughter.
Speaker 4:Tight shit exactly make your bed.
Speaker 5:I can remember so many times my grandfather saying children are meant to be seen, not heard like we weren't allowed to be so now think of your mom being in that situation.
Speaker 1:is that you?
Speaker 2:that's some, oh it's that we're live here, people, you're totally good, you're so good, totally good.
Speaker 1:Is it a Christian song?
Speaker 5:It's my mother's, my mother's ill.
Speaker 1:Oh, go ahead. Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, you're good man. That's the only reason why it came through. Oh, you're good through. Oh, you're good, you're good, sis jesus, we're still doing life while we're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, that scared me, but that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Now about lord please let everything be good being a military man and how he would run his home like that, so you can see how a tight ship mom might have been a little messed up. You know, I mean praise god, yeah, yeah, that's so good though. It really is important how the difference between people attending church and living Christ out, how different that really is, brother, yeah, that's really where that's the change.
Speaker 2:That's why it's so important for parents who are raising kids to be in community yeah, to actually be walking it out with your kids and praying with them and showing them what it's like to read the Bible, bringing them to church on Sundays and let them have community with their friends being involved. Man, that's really. It's so important to be involved in the community because otherwise it just becomes a oh, that's we're going to church on sundays yeah
Speaker 1:parents who are church attenders but don't live out christ are raising children to be church attenders but not living out christ yeah yeah, but now parents who are going to church and walking with jesus and exemplifying that in the home are raising kids who walk with jesus and exemplifying that in the home, or raising kids who walk with jesus and exemplify that in the home yeah, you have to be an example for him.
Speaker 2:Got to bro that's so crazy what else you got. I just I couldn't live in florida. No, no, not with the alligators and the crocodiles, but no way you don't like boots.
Speaker 1:I'd have me some nice shoes and belts all the time.
Speaker 2:I'd be golfing barrel and go to get my ball. No, thank you, keep it. I got another one.
Speaker 1:You remember in prison how they used to have the horse. Well, you weren't in prison at that time, but in prison you used to be able to have hobbies and you could make horsehair belts. Oh, wow. You know what I mean. You could like braid horse hair and make belts and stuff I would have alligator boots and belts and hats, and shoes and I'd have gator, everything dude, catch a gator in my yard. It's becoming something special.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bro, yeah, praise god god lord I hope everything's okay with their mom, me, me too, man Jesus.
Speaker 1:Please, god. She didn't say her mother's name, did she Mm-mm. Well, father God, we just praise your holy name. Lord, we thank you for Leanna's mom, leanna's mama. Lord, we just pray for good health in her body.
Speaker 2:Thank you for her God.
Speaker 1:Lord, if it's her time to return home, lord, we just pray that you make it peaceful and quick. God, live it. Your will, god, that she should stay here a while. Lord, we just pray that you just touch her body. Keep her strong, lord, heal her in Jesus' name. Thank you, lord, and we praise you, lord, jesus, it will be done in Jesus' name. Do it again. God, yeah, man Do it again, lazarus rise Out of in Lazarus, rise out of that grave, praise the Lord. You got to go to the bathroom too.
Speaker 1:Oh it's just me by myself. I got to kill some dead air time. Hey people, this is real life, man, this is what we do. But we thank you, you know, just for being patient with us man, and you know she had an emergency with her mom. So, yeah, we just thank you for being patient and we love you for it and praise God. But it's just me now. Everything good, sis oh wow, oh jeez I love it.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, oh, geez, god love it. Oh, you're good. We prayed for her while you were gone. Yeah, yeah, god love family. Man Keeps us on our toes. Yeah, so we are. We're still going, man. I was talking to the people and letting them know what was going on and he dipped out on me, so I was just explaining to them that this is life, man.
Speaker 5:This is what happens yes, yeah, everything's, everything's okay amen yeah, we share. We share a netflix account with her and she wanted to watch something and couldn't get into netflix. So she wanted to know if it was netflix acting crazy or if somebody at my house was watching. So I had to. I had to call my husband to be like is james watching his anime right now?
Speaker 2:like, yeah, I'm like tell him to get off. It's about the kids man, that's fantastic. Thank you, you had us in here praying for mama.
Speaker 5:No keep praying.
Speaker 1:Keep praying.
Speaker 4:Well, that's cool. You guys still have a good relationship like that though. Yeah.
Speaker 1:God's probably done a lot of work, or should I say that?
Speaker 5:you guys still have a relationship. I don't know if it's good or not. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely God, amen, but we were.
Speaker 1:I remember correctly, we were talking about the last person that she was with yeah the dude, yeah, yeah, good memory, because I forgot.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so she started seeing him when we were still with our grandparents and you know we knew who he was, was like because some of our visits and stuff, and he seemed like he was a nice guy and I think he had a daughter too. I don't remember, but, um, he just started progressing. You know he was an alcoholic, yeah, um, pushing the boundaries he was not a happy drunk oh no yeah, he was a very violent drunk oh like very violent and I think it was right before we wound up moving back in with my mother.
Speaker 5:Um, his mother passed away and he just, he just went down. He went down from there and like really, really bad went down from there.
Speaker 5:So my sister and I, you know, back in and she's still with him and then they were living together and so she was still with him and he didn't care that we were there. You know he would mouth off or he would like do things and like hit her. And I remember there was one day, like it was a little apartment and so when you walk in the front door you had like the small little kitchen and it was one of those old school ones that had, like the, you know, the opening where you could see through it to the living room.
Speaker 5:And so they were sitting on the couch watching like wheel of fortune. I still remember what they were watching.
Speaker 2:Oh, you were in the kitchen looking out through the.
Speaker 5:I was doing the dishes and wheel of fortune was on and I don't know he had already been drinking. I don't know how long he had been drinking, but he had already been drinking. And somebody said something on um the show and they had like this weird laugh and I I remember going who funniest thing I ever seen, you know and my mom said something to him and it set him off. Oh wow, I don't even remember what it was, but it set him off really bad and something in me just snapped. And this was back in the day when we still had phones up on the wall the long cord.
Speaker 5:I grabbed that off the wall, came around and was dialing 911, and he saw it and before I knew what was happening, I had a hand on my throat pinning me up against the wall. 911 still had called it.
Speaker 5:So they wound up. They eventually wound up getting there, but not before. I don't even remember how we got away from him, but me, my mother and my sister, we all ran downstairs and we had gotten like in the car and there was a big enough gap in my mom's window because he had followed us down for him to reach through and he literally had her by the hair trying to pull her head out the window.
Speaker 3:Wow, and he literally had her by the hair trying to pull her head out the window.
Speaker 5:Wow, and I remember my younger sister, who was a lot more strong than me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's just put it that way. Like she was, like you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, she jumped out and ran around and jumped on his back, nice, and like trying to protect my mother.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and he backfisted her in the lip.
Speaker 5:Oh God, like the cop showed up. He back and like trying to protect my mother and he backfisted her in the lip. Oh god, like the cops showed up, he was taken away yeah and um, I remember him calling. I remember him calling at least two or three different times because my mother would call the cops on him before we came to her my mother would call the cops. He'd, you know, call and she'd take him back and I could never understand that cycle.
Speaker 5:I could never understand it at the time, and so for this time we thought she was gonna do the same thing, because I distinctly remember him calling at least twice, like on the phone hearing him crying and hearing with the shotgun wow. Threatening to kill himself wow.
Speaker 1:And hearing with the shotgun, wow Threatening to kill himself Wow.
Speaker 5:And I think the only reason why my mother kept her resolve that time was because he had injured us. Yeah, Because I I don't think she.
Speaker 2:It's one thing to hit me, it's another thing to mess with my kids, exactly. Mama bears get crazy when you mess with the kiddos. I think that was the only reason why she finally stuck to her resolve, and then we never heard from him again wow after that, but um thank god, because it's like you said it all gradually worse and pushing, and pushing and pushing you take back somebody like that and who knows what they can go through now.
Speaker 5:Next one might be the last one exactly right, yeah, exactly, so, um, I don't really know whatever happened?
Speaker 1:how old were you at this time?
Speaker 4:I was about 14 wow yeah because I was in high school yeah, I was a freshman in high school, yeah so um, it was really one of the few
Speaker 2:things that seared into yeah, what kind of kid were you? I was what did you do for fun.
Speaker 5:I was known as the goody two shoes. Oh.
Speaker 2:So were you smart, did you get good grades in school?
Speaker 5:I got decent grades. I mean, I wasn't like a you know genius or anything, but I got decent grades. I didn't know what to call it back then, but I was a people pleaser because of like the root wound of rejection, like.
Speaker 5:I wanted to fit and belong, so much Didn't feel like I belonged in my family. Part of my testimony is that I was literally bullied from as young as I can remember, like third grade, all the way through high school, like I was just severely bullied the entire school time. Um so you didn't like school.
Speaker 5:I liked aspects of it, especially in high school. Like I was one of the ones that would always dress up, I still would like to do this. I would always be the one to dress out for every single day of spirit day like whatever the theme was the costumes you know, and people didn't know me, especially when I started being able to be a teacher.
Speaker 2:That was one of my favorite parts of being a classroom teacher I get to participate. Yeah, and I go all out, Like I go all out.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I go all out. I love it. I have so much fun with it.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of Diane.
Speaker 5:Coleman.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she always goes all out too.
Speaker 1:She's a teacher, and she goes all out too. I have an entire Facebook album.
Speaker 5:You got to have fun, man, because I taught for like five and a half years, so I have an entire Facebook album of just my like spirit week outfits and you know like I don't celebrate. Halloween, but I would always like do something like a costume or something you know and yeah, so Any sports, any clubs that you did during school or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I played softball actually Really, any clubs that you did during school or anything like that I played softball actually Really Nice.
Speaker 2:Did you get one of the Letterman jackets for?
Speaker 5:varsity. So I got jilted out of being on varsity in high school. But I played Little League softball and then when I got into high school I tried out for the team and I made JV, but they never advanced me to varsity.
Speaker 1:What position did you play?
Speaker 5:I was always an outfielder.
Speaker 1:Really Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so when I did Little League it was traditional softball, like slow-pitch softball so you had four outfielders and I was usually one of the two center field. Nice. But when I made it into high school they had switched to fast pitch, which was a whole other ball game. Oh yeah. And you have the nine person. Yeah, just like baseball, and so I had to do all of center field Every now and then they'd put me in left or right and I hated it, I hated it.
Speaker 1:It ain't fun trying to hit a fast pitch softball. That stuff comes at you pretty quick. It is not.
Speaker 5:It was not yeah, I even did a little bit of church league, which was kind of cool because I played with my mom. Oh, church league, softball, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my mom was on there. I have to ask why did you hate playing the corner outfield spots and you preferred center? Not a lot of action.
Speaker 5:Exactly. Ah yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I never made any of the teams. I was too short and fat, okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know I was wondering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even in baseball, right field was the worst place to play. Yeah, it is Because most batters are right-handed so they're pulling to left field or center field. So if you put the worst kid in right field, You're going over here, kid, exactly.
Speaker 5:I mean the most. You might not the most, but most of the action you would get from a left or a right fielder would be if they hit a line drive, yeah, or if they popped it right over the head of you know the baseman, but center field was like hey. You know you got like all of the action and stuff.
Speaker 1:I played a couple years of church softball over here in Mesa yeah.
Speaker 4:Such a blast man.
Speaker 1:So, fun, I tried to get another team going.
Speaker 2:Well, and his timing man. It's hard to get people to play.
Speaker 5:I loved it I, I loved my time, you know, playing softball um I love that.
Speaker 2:You said they jilted me and didn't let me on varsity like man, that's stuff, that happens when we're kids, man it really
Speaker 5:hurts us I was real on varsity. Why not give me a?
Speaker 2:shot coach.
Speaker 5:No, I was talented enough to be on varsity and then in the church league I wound up catching a ball in the outfield. Did not get all the way up off the field because I wound up on the ground, but the runner was going home and so I didn't take the time to get all the way up, I just got up on my knees and threw, and pulled a groin muscle. I way up, I just got up on my knees and threw and pulled a groin muscle.
Speaker 1:I was never the same after that, never the same after that I was running to first went to go slow down and I forget what the muscle is in the front of your leg and that but that slow step yeah yeah that hurt?
Speaker 5:no, that was that was, like probably one of the best things about, because I didn't have a lot of good you know, in my childhood and teen years.
Speaker 2:So um, that was probably softball was kind of an escape for you that and reading I was an avid reader I have a very active imagination, very vivid, nice imagination.
Speaker 5:So I was an avid reader. Um, I loved fiction, a lot of fiction, but I loved, like, mythology and that type of thing, even as a young Christian which, getting back to that, I was raised United Methodist and when we were with our grandparents, like I said, we went to church every Sunday, whether we wanted to or not I love how you say that my grandparents. It's true.
Speaker 2:You ain't or not. I love how you say that, my grandparents, because it's true. You ain't got a choice. No, you don't.
Speaker 5:My grandparents, particularly my grandmother. I always joke and say they were the head of every single committee ever created.
Speaker 4:They always seemed to be the ones running.
Speaker 2:Everybody knew them, they did.
Speaker 5:They did. My grandmother was in the choir. I came out of the womb singing, but my grandmother was in the choir and I do remember, um, in that last little span of time that we were with them. Uh, my grandmother started a what they called sacred dance. Other people call it interpretive dance, but so she started the sacred dance team and and again, me and my sister, whether we want it to be or not- we were on the sacred dance team and there were two other girls that were on it and my grandmother.
Speaker 5:She choreographed all of the songs.
Speaker 2:Most of them were.
Speaker 5:Gaither songs Wow.
Speaker 1:And you know everyone was a Gaither song.
Speaker 5:Bill Bill and Gloria Gaither I don't know who they are it's before we got saved dad. So in the world of Christian.
Speaker 2:They were like.
Speaker 5:Not just Christian music, but If you've ever gone to United Methodist Baptist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in a Baptist.
Speaker 5:I've heard of them 95% of the hymnal Was written by Bill. Gaither Gloria Gaither 95% of those hymns. I'm sure you know the hymn Because he lives like a face tomorrow. That's like a classic.
Speaker 1:I don't know much of the hymns I grew up with.
Speaker 5:I think probably got to much later in life. A lot of people have sung it, though, especially at Easter time.
Speaker 1:I grew up fetching beers and cigarettes. Man, that's homework for you, that's homework for you.
Speaker 2:Look up Bill and Gloria Kater, the first time he actually felt God was in Phoenix Community Church. It's a Southern Baptist church and we were literally up singing out of the red hymnal.
Speaker 5:Yes, the red hymnal when God touched him.
Speaker 2:He's all crying, my little sister. What's going on, oh you feeling God.
Speaker 1:I'm fresh out of prison. I'm not a cryer. The few Bibles were brown.
Speaker 4:The hymnals were red. Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 5:I was raised in the faith, but, like you said, you know, just being raised in the faith doesn't make you a Christian.
Speaker 2:It's different than having a relationship with God and to circle back to what you were saying about my grandparents.
Speaker 5:I've never thought about it before. To circle back to what you were saying about my grandparents, I've never thought about it before, but no, I don't remember. I don't remember any time that we didn't read the Bible in their house. We didn't. I mean, we'd talk about God every now and then. You know, like they didn't hide it, mostly my grandmother, my grandfather, was a man of very few words, unless he was angry at you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Very, very few words.
Speaker 2:I bet you that your grandma was a lot like my grandma, and late at night and probably first thing in the morning. That's when she got her jesus in, probably because it was as first for some reason back then and those. It's a personal thing for these people, the whole getting out and sharing jesus with the world. It's lost. I don't know, but I I don't. You don't really hear a lot of that with the older people that are in the faith man.
Speaker 2:It's a very personal thing for them yeah so it just I think it's kind of the time they lived in with. Nowadays, with us in the culture and stuff, we want our stuff. Now. We want it. We real and authentic, not saying that their want it.
Speaker 5:We real and authentic, not saying that their stuff wasn't real and authentic no, it wasn't, it was a different, it was just personal, for it was and like you, you said the key word culturally. You know back then, like I mean, I grew up in the you know, 80s, 90s and so um culturally right, I know we could ride our bikes all day, not worry about a thing but you take
Speaker 5:being mostly raised for most of my childhood by people who literally grew up in the great depression yeah, you know, like my grandparents were born in the late 20s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they didn't have a pot to well, I said it, but they did. We know what you meant.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so they had a very different mindset and, like they, had already raised their children and all of their children grew up in the 40s, 50s, 60s you know my mother was born in in like the mid 50s um so, and then they had draft kids.
Speaker 2:Those were exactly yep right.
Speaker 5:So they had my mother, so they had the three boys and my mother, and then they had twin girls and like. So my aunts are even closer in age to me than okay you know, like my mother and I about 20 years apart, which is the same spread, I am from me and my first child, um, but it was a very different mindset back then yeah you know, and so now we're being raised mostly by our grandparents with, yeah, like you were talking about that culture, that mindset so no, they weren't very open.
Speaker 5:However, um, I do attribute my grandparents again, particularly my grandmother, to the very fact that I'm even a christian come on because if they had not brought us to to church, still planted seeds exactly still planted seeds, and I remember the um, the last, the last little church that we were in in orlando yeah, the last little church that we were in before my mother got us back, um, I don't even know how many years we were at that church, and so everybody knew my grandparents, everybody knew me and my sister, because it was the same congregation like they didn't
Speaker 2:the congregation didn't change for almost like 10 years right so everybody knew them.
Speaker 5:And, um, my sister and I were both also called acolytes, which I never knew how much united methodist church was like the catholic church, until I went to my ex-husband's niece's uh first communion in in the catholic church I was like the catholic church until I went to my ex-husband's niece's uh first communion in in the catholic church I was like we do that methodist church, we do that the method, oh yeah oh, yeah, yeah so in the united methodist faith they have um what's called acolytes, which are very similar to, like the altar boys um, but except you don't have to be a boy and a lot of traditional umc churches.
Speaker 5:Up at the altar they usually will have two candles yeah every single sunday and part of the opening service is the acolytes with complete with the little robes.
Speaker 5:I mean, we had me and my sister were both acolytes and I haven't thought about that in years and we had the long pole with the little tiny thing on the end that had like the wick to light the candle, and that's what we would do at the beginning of the service, not every week because they had like a rotation, but my grandmother was responsible for that because everybody knew the Smiths.
Speaker 2:The.
Speaker 5:Smiths were like, like pillars in the church, you know, and so we were acolytes, and that's what led to the Gaither thing, because my grandmother, you know, was the the music minister as well. Well, she wasn't the music minister, they had one of those, but she was very much involved with it. You know I come from a very musically talented family all around, including on my father's side. Just knowing, like my father, my father was in a semi-professional band called. Overseas Highway, nice, very psychedelic music, but they had some really cool songs actually.
Speaker 4:They had a few songs let's drop a hit and get high and make some music dude?
Speaker 5:No, it truly is. Some good music though though, after my sister and I found out that he had passed away. Um, my little sister had gotten in contact with his best friend, who had been the drummer. Believe it or not, his name really is jimmy dean, like the sausage company. Like the sausage company, that's my, my father's, best friend. And so he sent a box of stuff to my sister which included some of the actual vinyl. They made like six records.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 5:So I have in my storage unit in Louisiana, cause I still haven't been able to get my stuff over here. Um, I have two or three of those vinyls, but we also had like copies of um, one of the records they made onto a CD. Wow. Um, yeah, like copies of one of the records they made onto a CD?
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, so I had that. I thought you were going to say eight track, no, no he actually he had been able to transfer, like the recording, to a CD.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 5:So I listened to the entire thing and half of it is vocal songs and they're really good. Yeah, like really good. The other half was just instrumental tracks, and that's the ones where it's like y'all were doing acid when you did this one wow like it's just the style of music you know, yeah, yeah, like just that style of music have you thought about putting some vocals over the audio, the instrumental?
Speaker 1:no, I never thought about that.
Speaker 5:Why not? That'd be cool, man. I'll the instrumental. No, I never thought about that why not? That'd be cool man I'll have to talk to my sister about that, because she sings too really well like and we blend so well together, but did you imagine putting some?
Speaker 1:instrumentals over your dad's music that he recorded that would be awesome and have something like that.
Speaker 5:That'd be, that'd be sick I'll talk to my sister about that, especially since we're both Christians and we've both written songs. We've both written music, so that would be a cool project.
Speaker 2:That would be, man, I want to hear it when you do it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that would be a really cool project yeah, I'll talk to her about that, because that's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1:It is. I believe you never thought of that being musical. No, I didn't. I never, ever thought about that.
Speaker 5:That's wild, yeah, but even with the really trippy sounds to it, it's still really good music.
Speaker 1:Even better, really, really good music. You could start a new Christian fad, psychedelic instruments with some. Christian music With Christian lyrics to it.
Speaker 2:Why not? I love you, dad, what Nothing.
Speaker 4:Why not? I love you, Dad what.
Speaker 1:Nothing, why not? There's some old hippie Christians that would be like whoa, we're just being all my life.
Speaker 5:We have almost every single genre in Christian music that the world has in secular music.
Speaker 1:We got heavy metal.
Speaker 5:that's the thing about God, my oldest loves heavy metal and I'm like I don't know how you can listen to that stuff because I can't even tell what the lyrics are. But you know, and that's simply that secular music genres are simply satan twisting what was his responsibility in the very beginning and twisting it because it's not the music, it's the lyrics the message it's the lyrics have you ever looked up barry manilow's?
Speaker 1:I write the song lyrics.
Speaker 2:No, look that up, that'll trip you out, that'll really blow your mind.
Speaker 1:The song I write the songs that make the world go yes, wow, it starts off. It starts off and says I was here at the beginning the time. Crazy, I make the music that make people, whatever. I never really listened to that song, I mean I. It starts off and says I was here at the beginning of the time. I make the music that make people, whatever.
Speaker 5:I never really listened to that song. I mean, I know the song, I've heard it here and there.
Speaker 1:Look up the lyrics and you'll be like holy. I shared it with a group of men that I do Bible study with and they were like wow, barry Manilow. I'm like, yeah, dude, listen to it, read it. It's crazy. I grew up on gangster rap in the 90s. What was it? John Lennon's lyrics in one of the Beatles songs literally has Arabic writing below it and it literally talks about the Arabic writing that goes with it is something about praise to Allah or something it goes along with the song. Yeah, something about praise to Allah or something that goes along with the song. You got to remember when the head fallen angel was gifted in music. You have to be careful with music, because that's his tools, that's his instruments, that's his.
Speaker 5:Well, that's exactly what it is. Why would he?
Speaker 1:not use what he was made and designed to do Exactly.
Speaker 5:There were three captains, two of them are still up there doing what they're supposed to do and you know, like michael was the captain of war, yeah, of warfare, gabriel gabriel is the captain of the message, the word. Lucifer was the captain of worship. Yeah, and I've always said that, as christians, our two strongest weapons are prayer and worship, because that's what moves? That's what moves the angels, that's what that's what shakes and he knows what he's doing yeah, that's crazy he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 5:But yeah, so music has always been a part, always been a part of my childhood, like I grew up singing, singing in church, choir, singing in school, and that's always been a big, big part of my life. But, um, in that last little united methodist church that we went to before my mother got us back, because everybody knew us so much, like we would always have youth camp, just like so many churches have youth camp and in florida, um, about 45 minutes north, I guess, of of Orlando, is a small little town.
Speaker 5:Well, it's kind of grown now. My sister lives there now, actually the small little town called Deltona, and they have a youth camp or something like that, like a little children's home or whatever there. I think I'm getting that mixed up. The children's home is in Del, in deltona, and we used to, we used to minister there like we used to go and, like you know, serve as a part of the camp.
Speaker 2:No, not as part of the camp.
Speaker 5:We used to go there as part of the church, like we would go we would go once a year because it was it's a united methodist okay, it's united methodist.
Speaker 5:Run the camp, for the camp is too, but there is there's a children's home, yeah, um, which, like for kids that aren't with their parents, and stuff like that and um but the camp, the it was called the united methodist youth camp and I think it was in leesburg actually, now that I'm remembering it, and we wanted to go, and you know my grandparents, they weren't like poor, poor, but they weren't well off either, and so two years in a row we were able to go because people in the church sponsored my sister and I come on amen and I had been, you know, raised in the church and I remember being 12 years old I don't know remember if it was my first or second time going, but I remember being 12 years old and we would always have stuff during the day and they had a chapel, and so at nighttime we would go to the chapel.
Speaker 5:And I cannot remember the guy's name, but this particular year they actually brought in somebody to do chapel and he was like I don't think he was a christian artist, but he did like worship yeah and stuff and he was kind of known, you know, in the methodist church, and so he did our services wow he would do the worship, he preached, the message, whatever.
Speaker 5:And I remember this one night of chapel, sitting in there. I can't tell you what he preached, can't tell you what he's saying. I just remember at the end of that service I was bawling and he was doing the altar call because you know a lot of the kids that go to these camps they're not saved yet. Yeah. I mean, I thought I was saved because I grew up in church.
Speaker 5:You know, I was growing up in church you know I was growing up in church, so, but I, I walked down that aisle just sobbing snot running down my my face and I went down to that altar and that was that was the night that. I got saved. Jesus, yeah, he met me right there and you know um, I struggled with that years and years later, when I started working in recovery ministry. I really struggled with that because I felt like, well, I don't have a testimony yeah.
Speaker 5:I didn't have the struggles all most of these people that come through these doors have. I didn't find him as an adult because I was living a life of like the prodigal son. Yeah, you know, I really, really struggled with that a lot of people do man a lot of people?
Speaker 2:yeah, because, because I got saved at 12.
Speaker 5:You know, and I didn't have the drugs, I didn't have the alcohol, I didn't have the running around and sleeping with people. I didn't have any of that.
Speaker 1:We have a buddy here at our church that we keep trying to get on Lived for God his entire life.
Speaker 2:For 60 years the dude never drank, never smoked, never done drugs, never did anything stupid.
Speaker 1:His kids and his grandkids are serving God now All this stuff and he's like I don't have a story, I've never done drugs or anything like that, and I'm like what are?
Speaker 2:you talking about dude? Cut the story of Abraham, bro you got the best story there is God's faithfulness.
Speaker 1:Faithfulness You've been faithful to God your whole life. He's been faithful to you. That's the story. That's the story everybody wants. Yeah, this is god's faithfulness. I said. Now I know god will be faithful the rest of my life because of your story, dude, if you'll share it but that's why I'm I've always been so incredibly thankful for almost 20 years ago, for god speaking to johnny baker of celebrate recovery because, like recovery programs are, they're essential.
Speaker 4:Even the secular ones. They are essential People need that.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, and I've known people that have gone through that and got like deliverance got healing.
Speaker 2:It didn't work for me but yeah, I know some that did, so I don't ever knock those.
Speaker 5:But I'm so thankful that God spoke to him about creating Celebrate Recovery because of people like me, yeah, who I can't? Of people like me yeah. Who. I can't go to those meetings. Yeah. I don't have a reason to be at those meetings, yep. But what I went through in my life, in my childhood and then like subsequent my first marriage, I was just as messed up as these people.
Speaker 4:Yeah, come on yeah.
Speaker 5:And it caused things in my life Come on, I didn't turn to alcohol. I didn't turn to alcohol, I didn't turn to drugs, I didn't turn to promiscuity or gambling, but I had my own vices, yeah, you know and and and walking recovery has helped me to see that, and so, um, just a little bit of what we were talking about.
Speaker 5:But if we, if we dial it back a little bit, um, right after my mom and my first stepdad split, during one of those times that we were with our grandparents I think he was the oldest, the oldest son, I believe, was also living with them in the same house and, as I share in my testimony, I was about seven years old. I don't know how it started, I honestly don't remember how it started and I don't remember how long it lasted, but that uncle, while we were living there, that uncle began molesting me. Wow, damn man, it never went like full. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I don't want to say too much on that part.
Speaker 2:It never went full. Yeah.
Speaker 5:But it was enough, yeah, and I never. I don't. I still, to this day, don't remember how long it actually went, and back then it was sometime in the 80s. Back then they used to have, like the public service announcement ads.
Speaker 2:You remember those? Yeah yeah, like the PSAs yeah.
Speaker 5:And I remember I was watching TV one day and there was this little girl who was like swinging and I don't remember everything that was said, but this man came on and was talking about like inappropriate touching. It's okay to tell, and I'm telling you like I didn't know what the Holy Spirit was at that time, but I know now that it was the Holy Spirit going you know, like, know, like yeah because I watched that and it was like my eyes were open to what had been happening and I went, I told my grandparents and, thank God they, they believed me wow, yeah thank.
Speaker 5:God, yeah, and he was kicked out of the house, but that's part of the struggle I had also growing up is he was kicked out of the house, but he wasn't kicked out of the family and I'm not saying he should have been don't, please don't get me wrong, yeah however, it was never talked about really it was one of our Smith family secrets that got swept under the rug so many years wow so many years and so at every single family function he would be there.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 5:I would have to interact with him well into adulthood like well, well, well, well into adulthood and so like it just never got addressed, so nobody outside of your grandparents him and you knew. My mother wound up knowing. Yeah, later on. It was sometime right after that, knew. My mother wound up knowing yeah later on. Or it was sometime right after that, yeah my mother wound up, knowing but nothing.
Speaker 5:Even after we went back with our mom, we would still go to, like you know, every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, we would have the big family gathering, every Easter, the big family gatherings, and he'd always be there and he'd always want to get like really close and I'd gatherings and he'd always be there and he'd always want to get like really close and I'd be like, I'd always feel like you know, but like nobody ever said anything Wow, nobody ever protected me I was forced to have to just because of the silence.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know, it was like the little thing we don't ever talk about. Wow, man yeah. Was that hard oh yeah, I mean, I didn't recognize it at the time. You know like I was, I was young, but um, that was part of um going through your first that was.
Speaker 2:That was still a big secret. What's that family secret?
Speaker 5:that was a big part of it still affected you though oh, absolutely yeah, I mean, I may not recognize it at the time, but it was I know physiologically, like now being older and the things I've learned, I know now what I was feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, both physically, mentally trauma response like I know now what that was but um, yeah, and that went on for you think that would have affected your trust of people as far as, like everybody keeping us silent, did you feel like, who can I trust, because nobody's talking about this?
Speaker 5:you would think so, but I think I I had a bad um flaw yeah of um trusting too easily and too quickly, and I think that was born out of that rejection and wanting so desperately to belong somewhere. Like I haven't even thought about that. I think that's what it was, because I have a pattern of being really, really hurt by people because of trusting them when I shouldn't have. And I'm not saying that you should be distrustful of people. I'm not saying that people don't.
Speaker 5:I'm not saying that, but when it comes to stuff like that, yeah, um, I had a pattern of bearing all when I probably shouldn't have been, because that was not a safe person, but I, I didn't. I didn't have a way to recognize that, I was just so desperate yeah you know, for somebody to hear me, for somebody to to belong yeah um and so I feel, seen.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yes, exactly heard exactly, yeah acknowledgement of hey man, I'm here, right, yeah, that's, that's hard to deal with, man so we never talked about it in the family.
Speaker 5:And, um, well into adulthood and I remember, um, my three kids were well even going down after I got married and I had kids even even going down like my, my husband at the time. He knew, he knew and it was always very hard for him not to ever say anything to him.
Speaker 5:Uh, but I remember right after we got married um, this is one of the first instances I had as an adult after we got married. Um, we lived in Jacksonville and my family was in Orlando, so it's like a three hour, it's like going from here to Tombstone yeah about how long of a drive and we were going down there for Thanksgiving and we had a large family, right, because my grand, my grandparents, had six children and all but two of them each had two kids. Okay.
Speaker 5:My two oldest uncles, the two oldest boys. They never married, never had kids, and one of those is the one that molested me. So you have all of these grandkids. You have all of these kids Like we had a large family all the time and my grandmother would always get cute little ways to have like the name places. Um, sometimes she would order stuff from time life you remember time?
Speaker 5:life. This particular year she had ordered they were selling these little tiny ceramic bells and each bell was one of the 12 days of christmas, so she had ordered two sets of them, right with little name cards. She had me sitting right next to that uncle. Oh, wow. Didn't know that until we got there. Wow.
Speaker 5:And so we got there and I'm looking at the table and I'm looking at the names and I didn't know what panic attacks were, but I can distinctly remember like getting very like yeah, and I went to my husband and I have to sit by him and he's like, uh, no, and so I went over and I literally picked up his name and switched like put him somewhere else. Yeah, it's like they never thought about that stuff.
Speaker 5:You know it was never talked about, it was like it never happened, and so I had to deal with that. And then when we started having kids, um, every time we would go down for christmas or thanksgiving, there would always be this element of my ex-husband and I like being on guard yeah yeah and like watching and making sure he didn't get close enough
Speaker 4:to our kids.
Speaker 5:You know so, it was always that. And then you throw into the mix the toxicity of the family and it always every thanksgiving ended up in this massive family argument and just it's just that's what I knew of thanksgiving right, that's what I knew of thanksgiving, um, but then I remember um.
Speaker 5:So it was a few years later. After all, three of my kids were born and we were back in Jacksonville. The church that we were attending at the time announced that they were going to be doing a new kind of like a small group. But you know how we have small groups and churches now, but then we have specific groups like CR or grief share yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay so more focused yeah exactly.
Speaker 5:It's kind of like a small group, but it's more like a. This is a purpose that we're we're doing for this right.
Speaker 1:We call those equipped classes, yeah.
Speaker 5:Oh, I like that, I like that term for it. So they were doing an equipped class called door of hope, and it was very short term just like grief share is 13 weeks, this one was 13 weeks. Same type of thing. It was a video uh, weekly video with a workbook type of thing, but it was specifically for women who had been victims of sexual abuse or violence of any capacity and it's called what it was called door of hope really I've.
Speaker 5:I think it came out of hillsong church. Don't get me, yeah I think, we won't hold you I remember it came somewhere from in australia because they the the host of the videos were australian yeah, yes, um and so welcome to the class mate I know I can do some another shrimp on the bar I can do some accents. Well, but I've never been able to quite get that one.
Speaker 1:That was Cheech and Chong. That wasn't Australian Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I signed up and started going through it and I kind of got disheartened at first because the first I don't know three or four classes, I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. But the other ladies that were in there like from day one God was just like rocking their world rocking their world.
Speaker 5:You know. So I almost quit. I almost quit, Wow, and I'm so glad I didn't. Yeah. So the time that we started, it was end of the summer and it was going to run us through until right before Christmas. Yeah, so the time that we started, it was end of the summer and it was going to run us through until right before Christmas. Yeah, and so I stayed the course and I think it was maybe like the fifth session, something broke. Wow.
Speaker 5:Something broke and I was just like I was crying and I was sobbing and I don't even remember what that week was about. It was so many years ago. But something broke. Yeah. And during our discussion times, like the ladies knew that it was approaching the holiday, because at that point we weren't going down for every holiday. We were either doing Thanksgiving or we were doing Christmas and we were going down for Christmas holiday.
Speaker 5:We were either doing thanksgiving, or we were doing christmas and we were going down for christmas that year, um, and so they knew that it was getting to that time and they knew the history I had talked about and stuff and they had been praying for me, and so something breaks in this, this class and I think actually it was the class right before we were going to have to go down because we were going to take a break for the holidays anyway, and I was like, okay, cool, you know, whatever We'll see what happens. And I remember every year that we would go down, we would take I-95 in Florida and at some point you shift and you get on I-4. And so I-4 is what takes you down into like the Orlando area, and every year that we would go down for a visit when we would hit I-4, I would start having these feelings you know, and I would always just push them away.
Speaker 5:I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're getting close, exactly.
Speaker 5:I know now what it was and like my body was reacting, you know. So we get to I-44 and I'm not even paying attention because there's wildfires on both sides of the road because, it was weird wildfire season that year and so I'm like paying attention to this or whatever, and we get down there, we get to my grandparents house and he's there and, um, he was doing like a business for himself where he would get like these inflatables, and I remember that. I remember he has no business doing like inflatables like kids.
Speaker 1:Yes, he always did something involving children, wow.
Speaker 5:And so he was like doing all this stuff and he had like this website where he was selling stuff and he was like, and he, he had this nickname for me and he had one for my sister and we both hated it, and he would call me Leanie and I hated it. He's like Leanie, Leanie, come here, come here. And I obliged him and I remember he had something on his phone. He wanted to show me this Scooby-Doo costume that he had up for sale. He's like what do you think of this? And so this is me, my position, right, Say, this is my uncle, literally this close to me. Okay, Face face, showing me his phone. I'm like, okay, yeah, that's cool. And then I walked off. About 10 minutes later it hit me. I didn't have any panic feelings on my floor.
Speaker 5:I didn't have any panic or repulsive feelings that close to that man and I knew in that moment that that day in that fifth session, when something broke that, that was my breakthrough and that was my healing and I was able to be around him.
Speaker 2:I still watched my children carefully but I was able to be around him.
Speaker 5:I still watched my children carefully, of course, but I was able to be around him without these feelings of like cringy yes and like just I couldn't even yeah yeah, and so it was in that moment, and when I got back and we went, I went back into, like the next sessions I was able to share that testimony with those women and it was just like so powerful wow you know, and uh, then we finished like the session.
Speaker 5:You know we finished it out and everything else, but um, yeah, you never know when you're gonna get it no no, and you couldn't have planned for that.
Speaker 1:But god knew in that fifth session that he was gonna do what only he was saying when you were in the bathroom that the first couple sessions all these girls were having these breakthroughs and she was like getting nothing.
Speaker 5:She almost quit. Wow yeah, after the fourth one I was thinking about withdrawing and quitting Because I wasn't like.
Speaker 2:There was like absolutely nothing.
Speaker 5:I mean, it was great information that we were getting and you know I was engaged in the conversations and all, but from day one these other women were just like you know, just like being rocked and I had nothing. Um, yeah, so I'm, I'm really glad.
Speaker 2:That's why we keep saying keep coming back, that's right.
Speaker 5:You never know when it'll happen Exactly and not just for recovery, but really for anything that you're walking and believing God for so door of hope.
Speaker 1:You said right Door of hope. I don't know if it's still around, but yeah, that's what the program was called Door of Hope. Yeah, I'll look into that.
Speaker 5:If it's still around. It's really a powerful program that I would encourage churches to get if it's still around because, it's very like I said, it's like.
Speaker 2:Grief.
Speaker 5:Share is very specific for the loss of loved ones and or hope was women only, specifically sexual victims of sexual um abuses and and whatever that looked like yeah, exactly exactly because that trauma is trauma.
Speaker 2:but that one messes with young girls, man. Well, even men, even men.
Speaker 5:And a lot of men that are currently in the homosexual lifestyle. If you really get to the brass tacks of it and they're honest and you get a chance to minister to them, almost every single one of them will tell you that that around that same age and it's usually molested by men. It's not even molested by women, they're usually molested by men, which is even more of that. That's where that perversion?
Speaker 1:comes in in the first place. Men that are molested by women become more sexual in women, and men that are molested by men become more active in the gay aspect like men that are molested by women become sexual more like a womanizer. Yeah, yeah where men who are molested by men become kind of gay exactly, and it's I mean.
Speaker 5:I've heard it so many times not just in the rooms of recovery but, I've heard it, like from um other men, male friends of mine, that I've had that were in that lifestyle.
Speaker 1:I've done research on it and it's if those people are literally honest. It's like 80 to 90% of those people have been molested in some way, shape or form, by a man. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, the other 10% are probably just curious. You know what I mean, right? But yeah, it's a huge number.
Speaker 5:So in my own life, what that moment in time when, from the very first time that he did whatever it was that he did. I mean I have flashes, sometimes still of some of the things that he did, but again as an adult.
Speaker 5:finally, you know growing with the Lord more and finally going through like recovery and stuff like that and getting some understanding of some of those things. And finally going through like recovery and stuff like that and getting some understanding of some of those things in my own life. The moment he did that the first time, he introduced the spirit of perversion on my life. And I have vivid memories of myself as like a seven or eight-year-old little girl with stuffed animals doing girl with stuffed animals doing things with stuffed animals little seven eight year old girl should not even think about doing yeah yeah, um, and I struggled with things like that and very little brief time in high school.
Speaker 5:I thought I was attracted to a girl at one point and I was already like well into being a christian and I was like what is this? This is like I'm satan.
Speaker 5:I'm not what you know, but yeah, no, I struggled with that and that's real, yeah, and I didn't know where that was coming from, like I said, until I really started walking with the Lord and starting understanding things of like spiritual warfare and you know, things like that. Um, and so once I knew, I took authority over it and, you know, did what I needed to do to work through that and to break that off of me, because even into adulthood I kind of struggled a little bit with some of that. But that's where it was introduced was way back then when he did what he did.
Speaker 1:The spirits are transferable.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Very much. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were talking about when you were 14, you were back with your mom, the guy, all that stuff, and you kind of jumped ahead to when you were married already.
Speaker 5:Did you graduate high school? I did.
Speaker 1:You did yes, any college.
Speaker 5:So when I graduated high school I was in Orlando. You know I was serving in the church that I was in. I was in youth group, all of that. I had a high school sweetheart that we didn't go to the same high school but we were at the same church.
Speaker 5:My first real serious love, and so when I graduated high school, I was informed that I would be being shipped back up to Jacksonville to go to junior college, like my youngest uncle and the middle uncle were going to like pay for it. The middle uncle had gone career in the Navy, was retired, you know whatever.
Speaker 5:Followed in grandpa's footsteps, huh yes yeah which reminds me there, through through my first bits of recovery, there were things that had come up where I had realized that, um, though they didn't go to the same level that this other uncle had, there was inappropriate touching from that middle uncle, yeah, and even a couple times by my grandfather really which that one really rocked me wow when that, when that came up, I was like you know, because I had this picture of my grandparents, you know yeah and so that one really rocked me um so what if there was, in some, inappropriate things going on with your uncles and your mom in that household as well?
Speaker 1:because usually those things are passed on and then they're passed on again.
Speaker 5:It becomes generational kind of thing exactly, and there might have been, I don't know we learned that growing up learned behavior.
Speaker 1:I don't think, people just become that way sometimes people do, but usually it's very much. You know, I mean I don't think people just become that way out of. I mean, sometimes it's people do, but usually it's something that's passed on or has been done.
Speaker 5:Most of the time it's, it's not most of the time. It's like what you're saying like you, you grow up in that environment and you learn it yeah the question is when you come to a point which I believe god allows everybody to come to, that point of of revelation yeah you then have a choice to make oh yeah you can either continue to let that define you or you could be like uh no yeah, that's not who I want to be, that's not what I want to do and you take whatever measures you need to take to change that.
Speaker 1:Somebody's got to break the generational curse. Yeah, absolutely Somebody does.
Speaker 5:Absolutely so. But that middle uncle is, he had retired from the Navy and was in Jacksonville because that was the last place he had been stationed. Yeah. And so they had all talked without even.
Speaker 4:I learned to care what I wanted. Nobody talked to me about it.
Speaker 5:I was told because I was still 17. I was 17 when I graduated high school.
Speaker 1:That's right, because you started early.
Speaker 5:So I was still a minor. Wow, I did not have a choice in the matter and it was very contentious in my home with my mother which we do have to actually backtrack a little bit to get to how that was before moving in with my uncle. So I had told you guys that my sister and I moved back in with my mom when I was 14 and entering high school and then we had that little altercation with that one man.
Speaker 5:She got rid of him. I don't remember how long of a time frame it was Not very long, because I was like 15, I think when she met the man who would become our second stepfather and we had moved out of the apartment we were in to like this other little place that we were in, and his name was Dave and he was one of the kindest, sweetest men you would ever want to meet. Wow, ever ever want to meet. Yeah, he was like shorter than me, he was like five, you know, five foot four, long, white hair, long beard, still looking like a hippie. He was a Vietnam veteran and so he met my mother and you know they fell in love and he wound up like moving in with us and then, my senior year of high school, they got married, um, and so like they stayed married up until the day he passed away.
Speaker 5:So he was always our second the only grandfather that my children ever knew, wow. Oh wow. The only grandfather, because my ex-husband's grandfather and stepdad had passed away when he was young. Wow. So well, my kids did know my other one a little bit, they knew Grandpa Gus a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So Dave was in the picture but right before he got in, because my mother really hadn't been there a whole lot. You know, in our younger years it was very difficult, like moving back in with her and my mother and I would like butt heads a lot, we would fight a lot and I think all of the stuff that I had felt during my childhood of feeling like rejected and not wanted and not loved by her and she was choosing these men over her daughters.
Speaker 5:Like all of these things that you know, I was feeling were coming to a head and I remember saying in my I've written that in my testimony I talk about in saying that I actually resented her for trying to be a mother when she wasn't my mother. Don't do it now, right exactly, so I think that had a lot to do with, like, the contention, yeah, um and so that makes sense.
Speaker 5:So then she marries dave, and we wound up moving to um, this uh little neighborhood, and two doors down from us were um, was this family that they were spirit-filled, nice, okay. So my mother didn't want to go to church, my stepdad didn't want to go to church, but they were allowing my sister and I to still go, and so we had my high school sweetheart's family would come and pick us up on Sundays, take us to church and then they would bring us back home, so we were still getting to go to church and youth group and all of that.
Speaker 5:So these people two doors down were spirit-filled. My stepdad wound up going to work for them.
Speaker 5:They had their own company installing lightning rods on homes and businesses because, you know, Florida is the lightning capital of the United States, Like it just is, and Orlando is probably one of the hot spots. And so they had their own company doing that, and so Dave started working for them, and so we started getting to know them here and there. You know and they knew the dynamic that my parents didn't go to church, but they allowed us to go to church, and so one night they invited the whole family Come on.
Speaker 5:For a Wednesday night service, to go with them to their church oh wow, that's when the real people go to church yeah.
Speaker 2:Wednesday night.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know it's getting real in there.
Speaker 2:That's when the flags are coming out. People are hopping on pews.
Speaker 5:Man in Jesus name, right yeah, so, um, it actually wound up being I don't know if it's still in operation, but it wound up being Orlando Christian Center, which was the church of Benny Hinn. Really Nice. Back when he would still do services, I mean, he would do some of his evangelism, but it wasn't like these big crusades, you know that he wound up doing so.
Speaker 1:we know a guy that was in Florida at his church. Yes, we do.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so we went um. My sister was like this is too weird for me, like you know, or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 5:Maybe that's what she thought. I don't, I don't really know, but she never went back no. No, they didn't want to go, but they said, you guys are welcome to go All right. Yeah, and so my sister never went back, but there was something that night that. I was like what is this? Holy.
Speaker 5:Spirit, and so I went back, I went back with them. I think it was the following week. I went back with them and I I think it was the following week I went back with them and I remember being there in that service and those are the types of churches you know where you can get into a loop of singing the same thing over, and over and over.
Speaker 5:And I still remember the song. What was that song? Oh yes, I still remember the song that they were singing and I think it might have been like the last song, and it was there is none like you, and they just kept singing that over and over and I remember we're all standing up. You know, and um, we used to go to, like, uh, the churches that would host the the Gaither Vogel band concerts, and we would see, like the Baptist you know, raising their hands and stuff and and I'd hear like my grandmother and the family snickering and like making fun of them, calling them holy rollers.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You know. So here I am.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean that's what we would call it right.
Speaker 2:Keep your composure.
Speaker 4:That's what we would call them, because you don't do that in the United Methodist Church Right.
Speaker 1:It's very, very quiet. You just sing your little. We call those stiff necks. Yes.
Speaker 5:So we're in this service and they're singing this song, and it didn't take me long to get the words. It didn't take me long to get the words, because that's one of my first giftings is worship, is songs, and so I'm singing it and I start feeling something.
Speaker 2:Like my hands are down and I start feeling this, doing this, and I'm like, and.
Speaker 4:I'm literally having a conversation in my head.
Speaker 5:I'm singing these songs and I'm aware that my hand's trying to come up and I'm like what are you doing? No, put that down, put that down. And I'm like having this fight in my head and all of a sudden it just goes like this and I start bawling and the other hand goes up and I got filled with the Holy spirit for the first time. Wow, I didn't have, like the, the, the holy language, you know that night, um, but I knew.
Speaker 2:I was like something was different, you know, and I'm like hands raised and I'm I didn't care who was looking and I'm like.
Speaker 1:Holy roller. Look at you, go, holy roller.
Speaker 5:And I was like I didn't care.
Speaker 2:You found freedom.
Speaker 5:I didn't care, freedom, so we get back home.
Speaker 1:You went from religion to relationship. Come on.
Speaker 2:All it took was put a left hand up. I don't even know what happened after that.
Speaker 5:Like I don't, know what happened, the rest of the service. But we get back home and I walk in the door and it was a school night mind you. This was wednesday night okay, so I walk in the door. My mom was already in bed, my sister was in bed, but my stepdad, dave, was waiting he was up waiting for me. Now, he comes from a very, very, very strong Christian family. Okay, he had an understanding of the scriptures like I have never seen before, but he wasn't always walking that out in ways that people would recognize.
Speaker 2:Right, okay.
Speaker 5:And he certainly wasn't at that particular time in his life. However, he still had a belief, he still had, you know, whatever Foundation, yes, particular time in his life.
Speaker 2:However, he still had a belief. He still had, you know whatever. Yeah, foundation, yes, so I remember sitting on the couch and I was just.
Speaker 4:I come in the room, the, the door and I'm like, oh, you're on fire. And I was like yeah, you're on fire.
Speaker 5:It was so amazing and I'm like feeling, like I want to just like bounce around the room and he was like really, come tell me about it. And so I think we were up to like one in the morning, Me just like going over and over, and he was like throwing scriptures. I had never heard him talk scriptures and just it was just amazing. It was an amazing experience with me and my stepdad on a school night. How I made it through school the next day. Only God.
Speaker 4:Like I really don't know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:But I was never the same after that. Like, my walk with God was never the same after that, Wow yeah. And so our neighbors. They started like I started going with them every single Wednesday night. I didn't miss.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I went to our church on Sunday, yeah, and then I didn't miss, I went to our church on Sunday, and then I didn't miss a Wednesday night service. I just kept going and going, and going.
Speaker 2:I guarantee it's one of those things on Sunday where you're like this is boring.
Speaker 5:I can't wait for Wednesday night. You're not even lying.
Speaker 2:It was so different you can't catch fire. You're like what in the world? It was different until it was so different you can't catch fire.
Speaker 5:You're like what in the world?
Speaker 1:Well, it was different until she was closet, dancing over there, trying not to move, like don't let grandma see me, don't let grandma see me.
Speaker 5:It was different until my senior year, because in the United Methodist faith and I think they do it in Baptist too, but in the UMC faith they literally rotate pastors out. They literally rotate pastors out.
Speaker 5:Okay, it's different. In the non-denominational churches, if you found a church, you're usually the pastor until God tells you to move or get somebody else. Right, it's different. But in the UNC faith they assign pastors, keep them there for however long, and then they rotate them out. Yeah, I don't know why, but they do. Yeah, my senior year of high school we got a new pastor, spirit-filled United Methodist pastor. Really yes Wow. Yeah, he was awesome and suddenly Sunday mornings were like really cool.
Speaker 2:Really that's great Wow.
Speaker 5:Sunday mornings were really, really awesome.
Speaker 2:You never know what we're going to get.
Speaker 5:No, it was we. We lost some people when that happened but, um but yeah, it was, it was really cool, but I would go every Wednesday night with them.
Speaker 1:And so religious folks. Yes, we did, we did yeah.
Speaker 4:He's not lying. He's not lying. They couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1:No. So, those are the people that get mad when you sit in their seat. Yes, don't you know? I've had the same seat for 10 years. This is where. I sit and you're in my spot.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 1:Move around, Get a different perspective people.
Speaker 5:Yes, I have. I've encountered some of those before we knew what to call them Karen.
Speaker 2:I've encountered some of those before we knew what to call them Karen, before we knew what to call them right.
Speaker 5:Yes, I've encountered some of those before, but so through the course of me going like every Wednesday night, I developed a strong relationship with our neighbors, particularly their daughter, who was an adult, so she wasn't like my same age but she was, I think, like in her 20s or whatever, and they started trying to kind of mentor me a little bit Because remember I was saved at 12. Yeah.
Speaker 5:But I wasn't really walking a Christian walk. I was even from the age of 12 till this time in my life. I got very attracted. I always forget to tell this part of my story. I get very, very attracted to things of the occult. My addiction was horror films I especially stephen king. Like I loved horror films, I was fascinated by the occult um my little sister and me and our friends, like we would do, like the ouija board, and we even made our own.
Speaker 5:I have some stories and I can tell on another podcast of things that we actually saw and witnessed supernatural, things that I've gone through Some people elevate. I've always said that the things that I personally have gone through, even into adulthood I could literally write a multimillion-dollar Hollywood blockbuster.
Speaker 1:Why don't you Like I could? Why don't you?
Speaker 5:I might. I might just do that one day. I do have a gift for writing, so I might just do that one day Come on, Come on, Deb.
Speaker 2:We're pulling songs out and books out. Oh man.
Speaker 5:Let's go.
Speaker 1:No, there is a book that's only halfway written that I need to finish and you didn't even have to speak it over her. Yeah, there is a book in him.
Speaker 5:No, I have a whole entire separate testimony just for that, because I had the opportunity.
Speaker 1:We have somebody that can write your music script for you.
Speaker 5:Hey.
Speaker 1:He does it professionally.
Speaker 5:All right, we might have to talk later.
Speaker 1:No, I have a separate.
Speaker 3:It's all about relationships. I have a separate testimony just for this.
Speaker 2:What happened in that time in the occult, like in the occult, and all that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, what happened in that time and all that Years ago when I was in?
Speaker 1:Florida. Go listen to Bradley's testimony. I'll look it up On our podcast. He was in a cult.
Speaker 5:Well, I was given the opportunity to speak at my lawn man's church when I left my ex-husband and I had to move back to Florida. My lawn man was this wonderful old, older, black gentleman. Godly left my ex-husband and I had to move back to Florida. My lawn man was this wonderful old, older, uh, black gentleman. Like godly, godly gentleman, and I don't know. We would always get into these conversations when he would come like. I'm digressing from the other story, but I'm just briefly. Um and so one day it was totally a God thing he had finished and we were at the door and we were like doing the payment and we just got to talking and he mentioned what they were talking about on Wednesday nights with their Bible study and that the pastor was trying to get the congregation to start realizing that spiritual warfare is real. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Door open. I start talking about what I went through and he's like hold on one second. He gets the pastor on the phone talking on the speakerphone. He's like you got to hear this girl's story and I only told him like a tiny little bit right it's like say it again for the pastor and the pastor's like young lady, would you be willing to come and speak on?
Speaker 5:I'm like I guess so I've never been invited to speak at a church before, and so that led to me going god, what do you want me to say? Like, like, what am I supposed to do? And the testimony came out like actually putting it onto paper, that time of my life, from the age of 12 to 16. And even after, as an adult, because that opened the door. And then.
Speaker 5:So ever since that door was opened, you know things that I've gone through. And then at 16, when I really started walking with the Lord, like when I got filled with the Holy Spirit, literally all hell broke loose in the spiritual warfare realm for me and I learned a few years later that, you know, every Christian is given a measure of discernment. There's a type of discernment, but then there's a gift of discernment to be able to discern evil spirits and things in the supernatural realm. And and that was why I was attracted to this in the first place, because I have that gifting. So walking it out there from the age of 16, even up to now in current times, has been a journey of God just showing me and helping to grow that gifting and realize what's going on around me, like when I have these encounters and these different things, you know.
Speaker 5:So I got the opportunity to share that at this church and that was a wild, wild day. That was a really wild day it was really awesome uh opportunity. But um, I said all of that to go back to. I forgot where I was at. Where was I at before that?
Speaker 1:People were uh discipling you. They had an older daughter, oh yes, yes, um, yeah.
Speaker 5:And so they had started to disciple me and so I was starting to learn about spiritual warfare and all you know, and that was age 16. Well, things started changing in my home. I remember my mom and I were already contentious, right, and by this time dave was in the the uh the picture as well, and you know still have my little sister. And as I started to grow and particularly learning about like spiritual warfare and everything else, I started having experiences in the house, and it would get to the point where, when I would get home from school, I would step through our, our the little door that goes into our kitchen, and I would step through the little door that goes into our kitchen and I would instantly feel like I was being pushed down like this the oppression that was in that house was so incredibly strong and the more I grew in the Lord, the worse it got for me in my house and to where I started isolating I would go.
Speaker 5:The only place I felt any peace at all was my bedroom. Any peace was your sanctuary it was, it absolutely was my sanctuary and I started like drawing a little bit at that time and I would draw like these little Christian pictures and stuff and it was like my only, my only peace, even though I had experiences in that room as well like demonic experiences where they would try to attack me at night. Yeah, it was a wild, like just a really wild time.
Speaker 1:In my faith, they ever attack you in your sleep.
Speaker 5:They did actually the one time that I actually do remember. I don't even remember what had happened, but it was like the middle of the night and I remember waking up Um and I usually would like sleep facing the wall, so like my back was to the rest of the room and I remember waking up and just feeling the sudden dread and almost like I couldn't move. And I finally got the strength this is part of my occult testimony. I finally got the strength to roll over and I looked to my right and I wanted to scream because right here by my bed was a hooded figure standing over me and I just had like this sense of like you know what the heck is this?
Speaker 5:And I knew it wasn't, it wasn't safe yeah um, and the only thing screaming through my mind was just to say the name of jesus, but I struggled to get it out yeah I start like I'm screaming it in my head, but it wouldn't come out of my mouth and finally, finally, it came out and it was gone.
Speaker 1:I know someone who woke up with a sense of being choked. Yeah, and there was this black figure over them. And it was strangling, like they were struggling to breathe, and they said the same thing. They were just trying All they knew to say was the name of Jesus and through the choking they barely got it out. And as soon as they got it out, whatever it was let go and disappeared and they were like yeah, that was the beginning, Jesus.
Speaker 5:That night was the beginning of things escalating, for me yeah. Like the attacks in the home, escalating.
Speaker 1:You got to imagine your mom probably just carrying just demonic entities with her through the abuse and all the things that she's been through and her, that being her house, has authority over that house, so it's a demonic household. You start to bring in this light with you, this jesus with you. These entities are like no, this is our house, you don't. You know what I mean. So they're going to do everything they can to get you to silence you well, and I I hadn't gone through deliverance yet at this point either.
Speaker 5:So there were. You know, whatever it was that I carried from childhood was also still with me? Yeah, because I hadn't gone through deliverance, yet they don't like to let go. No, they really don't, they honestly really don't. They want complete control. But that was the night that, the beginning of everything escalating and uh, how old were you?
Speaker 5:16, 17 somewhere between 15 and 16. Yeah, yeah, at that time it was somewhere between 15 and 16 and I think closer to 16, and so some of the other ones that I had during that time in that house weren't as um, I don't want to say severe for lack of, but for lack of understanding. They weren't as severe but like. One of the other ones was. So like when you walked into our house we had like the kitchen and then we had like the living room and then there was a door that led to where the bedrooms were, and it was one of these kind of it was like a ranch style house in Florida very common in Florida and so you'd have a long hallway and you'd have bedroom, bedroom bathroom right.
Speaker 5:So when you open the door to the hallway, to the left was the bathroom. First door on the right was my room, but my parents' room and my sister's room were at the end of this long hallway yeah okay, and it was like that linoleum all the way through, and I had a piano that I had been gifted because back then I could actually play, play like I could read music and play, and, and one of my solaces was I would get home from school, because my sister was at a different high school, so I would get home first.
Speaker 5:Our parents worked late into the evening, so it was, you know, like me and her, and, uh, I would go down to my parents room where the piano was and I would play. Well, after this happened and things started escalating in the house, I started to get fearful in the hallway and it just kept escalating and escalating, and escalating until one day I went to go do it and something felt very different in the house that day, even when I walked in from outside and I was like, okay, I'm just going to go. And I opened up the door to the hallway and I took a few steps and was here at the bathroom. And I took a few steps and I literally audibly heard, with my natural ears, click, click, click on the floor behind me. Jurassic Park had already come out by then, and so just imagine the raptor with that big claw. That's what it sounded like.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 5:Like if somebody was taking a claw, or like your dogs when you don't cut their nails. That's what it sounded like, and so I stopped and the clicking stopped. I'm like what is this? I'm hearing things. What's going on? So I took a few more steps click, click click. And I stopped again. By this time I'm like getting. Oh, I'm really getting fearful. So I get halfway down the hall because I went again, took about three more steps, click, click, click On that third time of taking steps.
Speaker 5:When the clicking stopped, hot breath was on my neck like it was breathing yeah physically breathing on my neck and I knew in a minute what it was, that it was a demonic entity and like the fear that gripped me. I had never felt fear like that, not even when the hood of figure was standing over me.
Speaker 5:So the fear that that gripped me and again I was like Jesus, but I couldn't get it out and finally, I screamed Jesus and bolted the rest of the way down, the rest of the hallway down to where the piano was. But when I finally sat down and my heart stopped pumping, I didn't feel it anymore from seeing the name of Jesus. But it was things like that, and I would go on to have several, many, many, many experiences like that throughout the course of, you know, my the rest of my teen years, into early adulthood, and I don't have them, as you know, really as much anymore. I still have that discernment, though. So, like sometimes, if I go somewhere, particularly if I'm going to pray with somebody, somewhere I will be able to discern and you know, whatever.
Speaker 1:But what's needed in that moment yeah, but that was a very, I can see people that are controlled by demonic entities and I like I point them out dad finds them across the room.
Speaker 2:I see you looking at me. I see you, I I'm going to walk over to him. What's?
Speaker 5:up bro, talk to him Exactly Most of the time you got to let them know that you're not scared of them? No exactly.
Speaker 1:Because what they want to do is they want to induce fear and intimidation into you, to where you cower away.
Speaker 5:But when you're bold as a lion and you go and let them know, I know who you are, you don't scare me exactly, and they like oh jesus a lot of times, if I'm praying for somebody, um, and there's something like that, they're like sometimes the way that the lord works for my gift of discernment is I won't necessarily be able to see it like in my mind's eye, but I'll get the name of whatever the spirit is that, or the demon that?
Speaker 1:yeah you know, because they each, they each have a certain name and so I'll be able to call it out yeah and be like uh, you're out of here I was at a service one time with two of my buddies and there was this girl sitting in the. I had a walkway and then another set of row seats and she was sitting in this row of seats next to us and I told my buddy, she's got a demon in her, dude. He's like what he's like whatever dude you know. I mean like five minutes later, pastor, come over and next thing you know she's and just flail in and I'm like, told you, dude that is one of the biggest lies.
Speaker 5:I think that satan gets people to believe that yeah, because you're saved, because you're sitting in church you're good. You can't possibly be possessed or have like. You can't possibly have demons in you like here's what people know you still can.
Speaker 1:Here's what people need to understand. This is a building. Whether you call it a church or not, this is a building. Anything can walk through these doors this could be a club most people have things attached to them when they walk through these doors. Just because there's a church doesn't mean they don't still have things like. It's not like when you walk through the door, everything just falls off you absolutely, you know what I mean. You're still demons, still come to church man they're coming to see, absolutely oh look at him.
Speaker 1:He thinks he's he's here on a sunday. He thinks he's really gonna.
Speaker 5:I got you, do you know where I learned that the most was going back to the um, when I was 16 and they were mentoring me Um. Part of what happened with this, this family was, um. They were friends with this older woman I don't remember her name, Um, but she was an actual prophetess. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I had never. I didn't. I was new to being spirit filled. I was new to all of this. I didn't know what this was, you know. But I remember she came to visit and they were like we want you to meet her. And so I did. I met her and within like 30 minutes of talking with this woman, she starts reading my mail. I mean absolutely, she knew that my father had left. They didn't even know that. Okay, she starts reading all my mail. I'm 16. Mind's blown, and you know, she just starts doing it. And that was the first time I had had any kind of deliverance, like she actually did some deliverance on me, and that was the day that I got baptized in the spirit and was able to start speaking in the heavenly language, the prayer language.
Speaker 5:Didn't know what that was.
Speaker 1:She explained it to me. He opens people's mouth all the time.
Speaker 4:It freaks them out, dude.
Speaker 1:It freaks people out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it really does you literally look at him like.
Speaker 5:How did you know that?
Speaker 1:He literally told this girl one time something and she was like how do you know that I never told nobody?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 5:And he's like I'm just telling you what god told me, you know what I mean, and I'm looking up like oh, here we go again. It goes back to how satan uh perverts things you know, like in the, in the world, we have what are called, uh, psychics, and some of them are truly fake. Yeah, some of them are really fake, but the people that are not, that can also read your mail, are people that God has gifted the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge, but because they're not living their life with God.
Speaker 5:Satan's twisting it.
Speaker 1:That lady literally called him like two different times and was like dude. I have to know how you knew that. Because the Holy Spirit told me she's like we need to sit down and have a conversation. Yeah, just do whatever God told you.
Speaker 2:We were doing street ministry oh man, that was great Guy on the street. We'd never met that was great Shopping cart dude. Him and his girl was with a shopping cart and we stopped.
Speaker 1:And I like to watch.
Speaker 2:I'm an observer.
Speaker 1:I don't have the he sits in the back and he prays and I sit there. Hey, that's important too, and I'm watching him as he's and this guy.
Speaker 4:I see this guy go.
Speaker 1:He's looking at me and I'm like you know what I mean. You know, and he gets done. He's like dude, he's just like I'm like wow.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I love moments like that.
Speaker 2:That's when I started calling him prophet Dude that's when my whole life started going to hell. Literally on my phone, his name is Prophet Rowdy Jesus when he started calling me that all kinds of warfare.
Speaker 5:I went back into addiction less than a year later, when he started calling me prophet man. You know, it's funny because other people can see things in us, even sometimes our giftings.
Speaker 5:We may be experiencing it, but not know really what it is and other people can see that and, the moment, somebody that you know and trust calls it out, calls it out in you, without you even knowing like exactly, and so in that moment I really believe that why everything broke for you or whatever, is because when he called you that, the relationship the two of you have, the trust that you have without you even being like, oh yeah, I accept that. Your spirit was like amen, I'm in agreement with that because, it tracks yep and so, when your spirit came into agreement with it, well then, it was on yep yeah, it was on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's fun to watch yeah, it is it's such a blessing to watch it happen, because I know him and I'm like really he knows me, he knows me.
Speaker 5:I mean look at who he chose in the bible.
Speaker 2:I know he chose some crazy guys, dude any gift somebody has it don't matter what it is.
Speaker 1:It's fun to watch somebody's gift being used for the glory of God. Yeah, whether it's discernment, whether it's prophecy Interpretive dance.
Speaker 4:Whether it's interpretive dance, whatever it is, you know what I mean the gift of teaching, the teaching yeah, to watch somebody.
Speaker 5:I never thought I'd be a teacher.
Speaker 1:that was wild, but to see somebody utilizing the gift God gave them for God's glory.
Speaker 2:It's an awe especially when you know them and you're like there's no way he ain't smart enough to come up with that one so I told you guys I was an avid reader during that time.
Speaker 5:That was another one of my escapes.
Speaker 5:Was just getting lost in my books and so this prophetess, when all of this happened, um, I started asking her like all these questions and everything else, and she had this book by a christian author named franketti, one of my all-time favorite Christian authors, and I was like, oh, that sounds really, really good. And I said can I borrow it? Because I knew she was coming back. I said can I borrow it and read it? And she said absolutely not. I'm like, oh, okay, she goes. You're not ready to read this and this is a piece of Christian fiction, mind you. Okay, the name of the book was this Present Darkness. It's very well known in Christendom. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Okay, very well known, and it has a sequel called Piercing the Darkness.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 5:So this Present Darkness is the first one, and then he wrote a sequel called Piercing the Darkness, and it takes place in this fictional little town, but it's got some not-so-fictional characters, like it has Michael and Gabriel in it.
Speaker 1:Forgive my ignorance. Fictional is fake, right? Yes, okay.
Speaker 5:Fictional is fake to a point. Yeah. To a point. A lot of fiction is based on reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so it has.
Speaker 1:Michael, but it's not like a documentary.
Speaker 5:no, no, no, no, no, no no no, these are novels yeah, um, and so it actually has, like michael and gabriel and like the angels and um, she said. I know this is a fictional book, she said, but the things that this author writes about, the entire book thing, is all about spiritual warfare, what goes on in the spirit realm? And how it affects the real world, okay. And so she's like you're not ready for that. And I'm like what do you mean? It's just a book. She goes, no, no, this will open doors. You're not ready to walk through.
Speaker 5:It's real and so I was like okay, whatever, you know. I mean, I didn't understand at how many months it was that went by before she came back for a visit and I was like, oh cool, she's back, you know whatever. And got to talk to her and she ministered some more to me and, um, I had told her some of the things you know that it happened and everything else. And she says well, here you go. And she gave me the book. Wow, she thought I devoured that book.
Speaker 5:I just I couldn't get enough of it. And then I wanted to read the next one, and she was not lying. Yeah. I start reading that first book and just everything's just started going crazy.
Speaker 5:Like I started having more experiences of like, you know, like demonic, trying to attack me and waking me up Like it. Um, I remember this this one time, during that time, I had gone in my room, my solace lights on, everything, completely on. I sat up in my bed, I had my back against the wall and I remember I don't know why, I closed my eyes, but I leaned back against the wall and I closed my eyes. And you know how, when you close your eyes and the lights on, you can still see light through your eyelids.
Speaker 5:Nothing Really Closed my eyes, and you know how when you close your eyes and the lights on, you can still see light through your eyelids. Nothing really closed my eyes, instant blackness and I'm like what is this? What is this? And all of a sudden it was like I was looking at through a pinhole. There was like something at the end and in like a split second it went, went bam, right here and it was the most distorted, demonic face. I could have ever imagined.
Speaker 5:And I remember I shot my eyes open and I'm back in my room with the light and I was like what was that? And it was after I started reading this book. So things just really escalated after that and they still continue to mentor me and help me understand, like, what I was reading. But that was my, my beginning of my journey of really being discipled in the faith and starting to learn about spiritual warfare. And you know, like angels and demons aren't just something we hear about on sunday in you know that happened back then in the Bible, like you've got an enemy that wants to kill you.
Speaker 5:This is real.
Speaker 1:And knowledge opens our mind to the supernatural.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say you once you're knowledgeable, now you're accountable for it, Because if you have no knowledge of it, then it you don't know it doesn't really exist, but once you become knowledgeable of what's there, then it becomes reality.
Speaker 5:Responsibility, knowledgeable of what's there, then it becomes reality.
Speaker 1:responsibility experience it, you know I mean very much so.
Speaker 5:So let's fast forward back to um, where we were talking about with me graduating high school and happened to go to jacksonville. So I got moved there against my will. You know, I didn't. I didn't want to go because I had my high school sweetheart and stuff.
Speaker 5:I didn't want to go but I had to go um, and so I enrolled in the junior college that was there and, uh, college wound up not being for me at that time like I really struggled, um, not that I'm not a decent student, I just really struggled with it. And but I wound up meeting, um, this young lady, uh there at the college who was a Christian, and through her I started going to my first, because I don't count my time at Benny Hinn's church but, like as an adult, my first, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like your church. Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 5:I was going to this one church, this one United Methodist church, and then I met her and she brought me to my first non-denominational church in Jacksonville, oh wow.
Speaker 5:And they had like a Friday night singles ministry, and so I started going to the singles ministry every Friday night and that's where I met two of my longtime adults. They're still friends of mine today. We all served together and in Jacksonville. Jacksonville is a unique, a unique city. Okay, because you have the main part of Jacksonville, which is what we call the mainland, and but then you cross over what's called the um oh my gosh the intercoastal waterway, so it's almost kind of like a saltwater river and it separates the mainland Jacksonville from the beaches.
Speaker 5:And like you have to cross over a bridge to get to the beaches, and a lot of the East coast of Florida is that way, cause even when I lived in Southern Florida in, like, the Vero beach area, it was the same exact way, like you had to cross over the intercoastal waterway to get to the, to the beaches. Um, it's just the way that it's separated, so, um, so we were in Jackson mill and we would go our. Our church was very close to the intercoastal waterway and so we would go at the at every Friday night when singles ministry was over. My buddy, glenn, was the head of the outreach ministry for our singles group and we would go down to Atlantic Beach or Jacksonville Beach, I forget which one it is. They're right next to each other, and there was this little tiny boardwalk that had like a couple shops, it had some restaurants, and right in the middle it had this little tiny boardwalk that had like a couple shops, it had some restaurants, and right in the middle it had this little spot that was a milk bar.
Speaker 5:Now, a milk bar is something where it's built for teens and young adults that can't drink alcohol yeah but this was a hangout right and it was right across from another restaurant that had a bar, and so we would go out there every Friday night and, um, it was our my first time ever doing like street ministry. We would go out and we would talk to them. But he was really big on building relationships. Like we didn't go out there with Bibles.
Speaker 4:Bible humping. You know we didn't go out there and do that.
Speaker 5:Like we just started getting to know these kids come on man um, but it was also my first experience of that gift of discernment outside of what happened to me in my home?
Speaker 2:yeah, and now you're starting to see and feel like it was also the first time that I empathetic and you're like whoa.
Speaker 5:I remember the first night that I went out with him. Um, we literally we parked and then we crossed the street and when we stepped up on the sidewalk I got really ill, Really, Mm-hmm, I got very ill. We were right outside the doors of the milk bar. There was some kids you know out. I suddenly got really really ill. Yeah. Almost doubling over. I didn't know what was happening and he said what are you feeling?
Speaker 1:You're entering demonic territory.
Speaker 5:And I told him and he said you're sensing, I'm like really yeah. That is one of my key things now. I know now like if I step in somewhere that's the first thing that's going to happen to me before I even get any words or anything, If there's something like that going on the moment I walk into the area. I get sick. I get physically sick. Yeah, I get physically sick, which is not fun.
Speaker 4:But I've learned how to do it.
Speaker 5:But, that was like some of my first experiences, and we would literally just go out there, because some of them would go out there every Friday night, some of these same people. You'd see them, and so we'd start building relationships with them and then getting to minister where we could and everything else. But it was my time at that church, which is how I met my ex-husband, because a friend of mine in the singles ministry. So this was 19,. I graduated in 1993, so this was 1994, early 1994.
Speaker 5:I remember Easter Sunday of 1994. I was running around the church trying to find the big giant card that the kids of the adults from the singles ministry we had had, all the kids make, this big card for the pastor, and we couldn't find it and so one of my friends, she stopped me and she said hey, I have somebody I want to introduce you to and I'm like okay, cool, whatever you know. And, um, as I'm talking, I can see him turning around Like I have a vivid memory of of that, that first day, and it was my ex-husband and so, like, she introduced me. I don't know how he met her, I don't remember um, but she introduced us and I was like oh, cool, hey, you know, nice to meet you. Blah blah, I gotta go bye, you know, because I was busy you know, um, and then.
Speaker 5:So he started coming to the singles ministry and then one of my other friends hosted a um, he hosted like a little barbecue. He, he lived on the beach and so like he hosted this little barbecue for a bunch of us to come over one Sunday after church and my ex-husband came and he actually picked me up and like we didn't really know each other, but I didn't have a car, and so he came and picked me up and everything else and we wound up being out in the ocean it was just the two of us and something brushed past brushed past my leg, as they often do when you're in the ocean and I kind of like jumped up and he caught me and and then we wound up going back in and we were all sitting in like the jacuzzi together.
Speaker 5:There was like five of us and little butterflies started and so we, we just you know, dating and it escalated very quickly and you know I was, I didn't know I was broken, but I was still very broken. I was 18 when I met him. Wow, toward the yeah, I was like had just barely turned 18, right, because my birthday's end of October and I met him Easter Sunday, which was April of 94. So I was like 18 and he was like 24 and he seemed charming and everything you know, just my knight in shining armor type of thing. And so it escalated very quickly.
Speaker 5:Went to church went to church, all of that, yeah. So it escalated very quickly because I was still searching. You know, I didn't know that's what was going on, but I still wanted to be loved so bad and accepted and just wanted so incredibly bad because I didn't really have that you know, and I had very low self-esteem, low self-image because I was bullied for years and years so I didn't think I was pretty.
Speaker 5:you know all of this stuff like I got um relentlessly teased for my nose, um, I used to get called, uh, pinocchio oh, jesus yeah, because my nose being bigger I used to get called dumbo because my ears are bigger I'd also get called buckto tooth because of the front teeth Kids are mean man.
Speaker 1:I was pizza face. I had back acne.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pizza face.
Speaker 1:Kids are mean, man Kids are mean.
Speaker 5:Do y'all have like a cough drop or something, because it's starting to get itchy?
Speaker 1:Eddie Spaghetti.
Speaker 5:Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:Kids are mean. Man, they are yeah. Good to meet men, they are yeah.
Speaker 5:So I had a very low self-esteem, self-worth, body image issues, all of that jazz. Yeah. And so I didn't think anybody would ever find me attractive or want me, and he was quite good looking. Yeah. Very good looking, so that just kind of added to the appeal. Yeah. And he was interested in me. So it blossomed very, very quickly and one thing led to another and my uncle kicked me out no reason. Really. Blindsided me, kicked me out. I had nowhere to go.
Speaker 1:Were you still going to college?
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I still was going to the junior college.
Speaker 1:He brought you down, paid for you to go to college, then turned around and kicked you out Really.
Speaker 5:Mm-hmm, yeah he.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 5:Well, part of it was he tried to parent me. I think is what it was. He tried to parent me and expect certain things. If I didn't go with what he wanted, he'd get very angry.
Speaker 1:Was it like living with your grandfather again?
Speaker 5:Sort of. As far as, the military. This is what I expect in my role yeah, I think that might have been part of it, because when he retired, when my uncle retired, he he wasn't as high ranking as my grandfather, but he was a chief petty officer, yeah, so he was as high as you could go for non-officer yeah and so, um, I think that's part of what it was, but I can remember things like he wanted me to do all the housework and I was like no, because like that, that that was expected of me and my sister, like when we were still living at home and I was like no, you know, I'm going to junior college.
Speaker 5:I had church. Like, no, I'm not, I'm not here to be your slave, you know. Like I didn't even want to be here. And one of the days I remember I come home and I found the entire bottom rack of the dishwasher that filled with dirty dishes sitting on my bed.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 5:Because I hadn't run the dishwasher.
Speaker 1:Oh geez.
Speaker 5:Yeah, things like that. So he told me after I started dating my ex-husband he was like you know, he just told me one day I want you out. I'm like what?
Speaker 1:Was your uncle married.
Speaker 5:No, he's one of the two uncles that never married, never had kids. Yeah, so we got into like this argument about it and he's like no, I want you out. And I was like I don't have anywhere to go and my ex-husband happened to be there and he's like well, I guess you can move in with me we weren't fully serious. Yeah, yeah, but it's like, what else am I gonna? Do you know, I had no money, I had no job, like none of that, because I wasn't.
Speaker 5:I wasn't allowed to work because I was going to junior college yeah didn't have a car anyway, even if I wanted to work. So that's how I wound up moving in with my ex-husband yeah and of course it really blossomed after that you know because now I'm living with them you know, and we're already exclusive and so we met april 1994. We were married by december 1994 really, that is quick. Yeah, we got married by December 1994.
Speaker 5:Really that is quick. Yeah, we got married, is that? Eight months, something like that, yeah, yeah, and so like I was 19 when we finally got married, you know, because I'd had a birthday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, October Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I was 19 when we finally got married and nobody well, my friends didn't. My friends were kind of okay with it, but nobody in my family wanted me to marry him. Really I didn't care what they said, because you know, it's like it's my family yeah, right like you know, you guys never did anything good for me, so um and I was.
Speaker 5:You know that was um, my little sister and I have talked about it and like my sister saw red flags, like we've talked about it now, she saw red flags, but I didn't see them. I couldn't see them, you know I mean, I wouldn't have known. Love makes you blind man I wouldn't have known what they look like if you put them right here.
Speaker 5:You know I wouldn't have been able to to see what they were, but um no. One of the reasons why the rest of the family didn't want me to marry him is because they didn't like how he talked to my grandmother one day. I loved my grandmother, but she was in the wrong. And. I will still say that to this day.
Speaker 2:She was in the wrong. Oh yeah.
Speaker 5:So we were just going to go to like the justice of the peace, and I still don't know to this day how my family found out otherwise. But my mother, my little sister and my grandfather showed up at our apartment one day, unannounced, showed up at our apartment and he wasn't home from work yet, and so when he got home from work, he walks into me sitting in a chair like this, all three of them sitting on my couch, like you guys are sitting, as if it was some kind of tribunal.
Speaker 2:Intervention.
Speaker 5:He walks in, he looks at them, he looks at me and my grandfather said have a seat. Now my ex was ex-Navy as well, so here's a commanding officer talking to a you know whatever. Enlisted, so he went and grabbed a chair and he came and sat next to me and he's like what's going on? I said I don't know. They just showed up Like I don't know what's going on, you know like this is crazy, and my sister never said a word, she just sat there out there.
Speaker 5:I think they just drug her up there because you know she was still younger, she was still a minor yeah and so, um, they proceed to to tell him that my mom's like I'm not gonna let my daughter be married in the, you know, justice of the peace or whatever. You're not gonna strip her of her dream wedding. And I remember looking there like what are you talking about? What would you know about what my yeah, like my mom and I got into an argument about it, you know, but whatever they, they said we're like fine, whatever, we'll have a little wedding you know, whatever, we'll do it um.
Speaker 5:So my grandparents actually paid for some of it. It wasn't a big extravagant thing yeah it was literally in the uh clubhouse of the apartment building that we were living in, like tiny, tiny, tiny little thing, right. Just family, only Family, a couple friends, but they paid for part of it. They gave me an $80 allowance for my wedding dress. That's a God story in and of itself, but then they were also going to pay for dresses for my bridesmaids that I chose.
Speaker 5:So fast forward, we go to the store I want to say. It was Montgomery Ward was still open back then. My grandfather actually worked for them, but it was either Montgomery Ward or JCPenney and it was like the last place we had gone and there was this big circle, round circle of like formals and dresses and everything else, and I saw literally just a sleeve of something lace sticking out, and I walk over there, push everything aside.
Speaker 5:There's this beautiful floor-length lace dress 79, 99, and my size and I was like that's what's up this is the one I was like we ain't looking no more. We found it she said yes to the dress and it was very 80s, 90s, like the high collar, you know everything, yeah um, so that was my dress, but the issue came with um, uh, remember, I told you I have my, my two oldest, dearest friends were from the singles ministry.
Speaker 5:Well, um, the the female, um, she was actually going to be singing at our wedding. She was going to be a bridesmaid and then she had to back out, but she was still going to be singing at the wedding. She's like, hey, I'm not going to be able to do the bridesmaid thing. I forget what the reason was. It was a really good reason because she was a single mom and everything else she's like so here. So she gives me the dress back to bring back to my grandparents. No harm, no foul. Right, they could take it back.
Speaker 5:Never been more. So that was Thanksgiving weekend of that year of 1994. We go down for Thanksgiving. He's meeting all of the family for the first time. Blah, blah, blah. Things escalate, as they always do at the Smith family Thanksgivings, and it was just craziness that was the year of the bells.
Speaker 5:A lot of things happened with that one. So long story short because a lot of things happen with that one. Um, so long story short because a lot of things happened with that. But with pertaining to the dress, we had brought the dress down right giving it to my grandparents. Didn't think anything of it. We go to church my, my church. I grew up in and the church was throwing us a little bridal shower afterwards. It was a surprise bridal shower.
Speaker 5:I was like oh, this is so cool. Blah, blah, blah, you know whatever. Well, my twin aunts show up and they're like, hey, you got to go by your grandma's house before you leave town. I'm like no, I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Like, yeah, you do. And so they were adamant that we had to go by grandma's house. Yeah, and so they were adamant that we had to go by grandma's house. Yeah, fine, whatever. So we go to grandma's house. Grandpa is like he's in the back room doing whatever. Grandma's sitting in the front room. She's sitting in her little recliner dress is laid out my friend's dress yeah, okay, is laid out.
Speaker 5:And I was like what is going on? She lays into me Like she just started going off and she started saying things about my friend and attacking my friend's character. And this is at the end of a very long, toxic, stressful weekend, very long. And I start kind of getting back on her and I suddenly double over in pain, because when we first got down there there, we went to one of my other aunt's houses and, um, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Yeah, so didn't know what was happening, but I literally found out that I was pregnant and lost the baby all on the same weekend that's what was happening, the stress of the entire weekend yeah caused me to have um a miscarriage and I didn't even know.
Speaker 5:That's what it was I was so young and naive. But when I doubled over in pain, my ex had had it because he had kept his mouth shut the entire weekend. Like I asked him to. A lot of stuff had gone on and he finally had it, wow, and he laid into my grandmother, who was not used to being talked to like that by anybody.
Speaker 5:And, um, we left there with the dress still there and I guess they got their money back for it. But, um, he took me and we, we left when you know, went back home and I found out, um, after our first child was born, um, I found, I found out because he wasn't allowed at one of my uncle's houses and I said something to my uncle about it and it traced all back to that one moment.
Speaker 1:Wow, that one moment Speaking of grandma like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, wow, but in that particular instance, like she was in the wrong, yeah. And he was only defending me because I literally was violently ill and in pain and couldn't even stand up. Wow yeah. So but hindsight and all that, there were red flags that I didn't see early in the beginning and so part of my amended testimony, after going through my last step study that I went through, which dealt with my marriage, because I was married to him for 23 years. Wow.
Speaker 5:There was one. So when our daughter, who's our middle child, and our youngest son were seniors and juniors in high school, we had a nine-month separation and it was totally God that brought us back together, because if God hadn't told me it was time to come home, yeah, it wouldn't have happened yeah um, so 23 years really. The first half of my adult life was with him. Yeah, I knew very early on that something wasn't right. I knew this isn't what I thought love or marriage would be. I knew how I was feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 5:That it was horrible most of the time, but I didn't know what to call all of it. You know, and he was always very, very careful to not be physical yeah, very careful, and he was always very, very careful to not be physical. Yeah, very careful and.
Speaker 2:What do you mean To not have relations with you?
Speaker 5:To not or to not put his hands on you. Put his hands on me, okay.
Speaker 1:There's different types of abuse.
Speaker 5:There's verbal emotional physical he came out of that as well. Yeah, he watched his mother go through all that stuff too and have it done against him yeah and we used to talk about that yeah um, so he was always very careful. I think he wanted to do it. There was a few times, actually I started remembering later on. There were a few times where he came very, very close like um punched a hole in the wall right next to my my head like barely missed me.
Speaker 5:Um yeah, things like that, but um so so many emotional mostly mental yeah so it I wouldn't, I wouldn't discover all of this until the very end. So our youngest um graduated high school and he was still kind of staying with us because we had already reconciled. So about a year and a half after we had reconciled from the first, the first separation, why?
Speaker 1:did you guys separate the first time?
Speaker 5:Because I caught him having an affair through Facebook with an old high school friend, his high school best friend's girlfriend. They were having a thing on Facebook together and he actually was the one that walked out. I didn't kick him out, he walked out. Really, mm-hmm, he chose that walked out. I didn't kick him out, he walked out. Really.
Speaker 5:Mm-hmm, he chose to walk out. Wow, so yeah, it was, and there was a lot of things that happened in that time too. I got accused of a lot of things and things that weren't true, so my character was really defamed a lot during that time.
Speaker 1:Well, those who are guilty usually cast blame in that direction. I was just thinking the same thing, bud. You know what I mean, yeah so there.
Speaker 5:but I mean, you know I have a greater understanding because of what I went through. I have a greater understanding now of how my mom got wrote back in so many times by those men. Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast today too, is because, as an advocate now, the things that I've learned since coming out the other side of it because I was one of those people even in the midst of it, I was one of those people that thought well, domestic violence is when you're getting the snot beat out of you and that's still what our society thinks. And so, as someone who's gone through it now and has had revelation as the holy spirit continues sometimes to still give me revelation on things like you were just mentioning some- of them.
Speaker 5:There's about probably what eight to ten different forms of actual abuse but, nobody ever talks about that being part of domestic violence and abuse, but that's how it always starts. Nobody ever starts by hitting you.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Ever. They get you ready.
Speaker 5:They have to carefully condition you.
Speaker 2:Right. They have to carefully, carefully, condition you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:And then you add children into the mix and you, yeah, they have to carefully, carefully, condition you. Yeah, yeah, and then you add children into the mix and, oh, that's a whole other ballgame.
Speaker 1:As violent as the physical abuse is, I believe that the other abuses are probably more traumatic and long-lasting 100%. Than the actual physical abuse 100%. While none of it is good, we tend to say, well, I don't see no bruises on you, so you're not really getting. You know what I mean.
Speaker 5:That's why we can't get help.
Speaker 1:And so it's like but you're not seeing what's the verbal and the emotional, what's being done mentally?
Speaker 2:what's being done? Emotionally what's being done spiritually? Well, what's being done mentally? What's being done emotionally? What's being done spiritually?
Speaker 1:well, even physically, they're controlling and dominating and putting. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I'm just not hitting you. But you can be controlling and dominating without putting hands on somebody, oh yeah fear intimidation.
Speaker 5:He was a master of that. I mean absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he's six, two oh, dang, I'm about five seven. Yeah, he's a big dude. Yeah, yeah, he's six'2". Oh, dang, okay, I'm about 5'7".
Speaker 5:Yeah, he's a big dude. Yeah, he's 6'2" and I'm 5'7", and so there was always, you know, like that. Yeah. And I remember I was 18 when I met him. Yeah, he was 24.
Speaker 2:24. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah so.
Speaker 2:He liked what he saw, yep.
Speaker 5:Yeah, he carefully, carefully.
Speaker 1:Can I say something? Not what don't come out mean. Say whatever you want to say. I think he saw somebody that he could control and manipulate.
Speaker 5:Oh, absolutely that's not mean that I've I've come to terms with that.
Speaker 1:I want to be careful what I was saying, because I didn't want it to come off as being that way, but as hearing your story, hearing your story now and how you were such a people pleaser and how you were done. He saw someone that he could control absolutely 100.
Speaker 1:He was like I can control this fresh meat 100, yeah, just that when people are people, when guys like that, that's what they're looking for oh yeah, they're looking for someone who's been yeah, hurt you know, if you ever told, if you ever told him anything about your family while you guys were having conversations.
Speaker 5:He was like bingo we used to have competitions on whose family was more jacked up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he already knew I can control, manipulate this one she's she's used to it.
Speaker 5:You know exactly, yeah, yeah, and I was so naive, you know, because I literally went from my family straight into a relationship with him so I was so naive and so, like you know, ignorant to the ways of the world, so to speak, and yeah, it was very, very easy.
Speaker 1:But someone who's never really experienced what real relationship was and your history is that that kind of environment. To what you're going into now it just seems normal, because that's what normal was for you. So how would you know any different than? Exactly what you got yourself into, because that's what I grew up with.
Speaker 5:This just seems normal and that's that's kind of how I put it in in my written testimony when I'm talking about it, how like I didn't know what it was, but I knew what I was you knew something was feeling.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I knew how he made me feel. I knew the number of times that I would just sit there feeling shattered and I would just cry, like because of his words and we were talking about learned behavior.
Speaker 5:He grew up in that environment, like my ex-mother-in-law who has passed away now, but even even in our marriage, even toward our children, a lot of times very sharp tongue, very um, she was very controlling, very condescending and, um, yeah, very much so. And so, um, you were telling, talking about how, like your, your wife or your ex-wife had said well, you're acting just like your father. There were several times when I started like, at certain times, like I, I would be brave enough, I guess, to argue back and I'd be like you're acting just like your mother, you know, with some of the things he would say oh he gets so angry.
Speaker 4:He's like I'm nothing like her.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, okay, bud, Dude you're talking just like her.
Speaker 5:And it was worse for me, but there were times that I would hear him be that way with our kids and I would like fight with him on that.
Speaker 5:You know like fight, fight, fight with him on that. But it took me being on the other side of it and starting a healing journey and, god, like opening my eyes and like, literally, I would have flashbacks to different things that happen. But I'll see them in a new light now and I'd see them for what they were. And the more I started learning about the actual different forms of abuse, I'd be like, oh my gosh, I went through that. So in my testimony I say it this way I was like I literally experienced every known form, every known form of abuse over the course of 23 years and one of the biggest ones that my ex and I used to actually argue about this because we had a friend that this happened to while she was married.
Speaker 5:One of the biggest ones is and and this is this is what I was saying, the disclaimer at the beginning like there are parts of my story that a lot of people close to us and like, especially the, our kids and stuff, like they don't know the extent of what went on behind our bedroom doors and when they weren't around. But um, um, he, uh, he raped me one night. Wow, and this is the first time outside of Celebrate Recovery that I've said this, and this was one of those things where this is why I was seeking counsel with the two people closest to me and contending whether or not I should even do the podcast or if I should even speak about this, but I'm at the point where I feel like God's like no, it's time to fully. There's people out here that need to hear this that don't go to celebrate recovery.
Speaker 5:That ain't in church, no, and so there's people that need to hear this and I remember this happened to one of our friends and I distinctly remember him laughing and saying they're married. Yeah. Like he can't, her husband couldn't have raped her. Yeah, they're married. Yeah, her body literally belongs to him. Yeah, damn, and he used to tell that to me a lot. Yeah, he used to say you're my property.
Speaker 2:Like your body belongs to me oh man yeah Wow.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He used to twist like scriptures and stuff too, and um, I remember where I was at when those guys yes, oh, jesus, yeah, he has just enough belief to know some of the scriptures and like his, favorite one to to always twist would have been the one about um.
Speaker 5:Where is it at in ephesians? I don't know the exact address, but the one that talks about the husbands and the wives and the submitting yeah, and I remember there were times too that he used to tell me that, like back in the old testament days, like he could have me beaten for refusing to do certain things oh, jesus yeah, he'd say stuff like that to me all the time. Like the, the kids never would hear that, but he would say things like that to me all the time dang.
Speaker 1:So, for those who may be confused, let's clarify this Jesus that rape can still happen within the context of a marriage. Yes, it can, because no is still no Yep, even in the context of a marriage. So if a husband is forcing himself on his wife even after she says no, that's still considered rape.
Speaker 5:It is. You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean. So let's I just want to clear that. So someone who listens be like what? You know what I mean. So let's I just want to clear that. So someone who's listening to be like, what do you mean? They're married, they understand now? No is still no, even in the context of a marriage.
Speaker 5:You can't just force yourself and in our instance it happened. It happened during our intimate time and he, he broke a pact yeah. He broke a pact Because I told you, he knew about what happened to me as a kid. Yeah, what happened to me as a kid? Yeah, and he broke a pact.
Speaker 5:I don't remember what the safe word is today, but he was my first actual partner yeah, wow, you know, like I was his second wife yeah um, I had done a little things here and there, you know, with former boyfriends, but nothing like major, like second base kind of stuff right, yeah um, so he was my first actual partner and so, um, that was a whole new, a whole new area for me, and, because of what I had gone through, there were a lot of times that, like, I had to struggle with being intimate with him because, the trauma you had experienced the trauma was interfering.
Speaker 5:I didn't know how to process it. I wasn't in cr interfering.
Speaker 4:I didn't know how to process it. I wasn't in CR.
Speaker 5:You know, I didn't know how that, and so he knew all of that. And so we had said, we had said you know, hey, okay, well, let's come up with a safe word. If we're ever doing something, like trying something new for you or whatever, and you start to feel uncomfortable, just say the safe word. So we, without getting too graphic, we were having our time.
Speaker 5:there was a little bit of role playing going on yeah and I don't even remember what it was he did, but he, he did something and I just suddenly got very panicky and it wasn't part of me acting like. I got very panicky and I was like no, I, I'm not comfortable with this. And I said the safe word and he just kind of played it off and so I said a little stronger and I'm like no, like I I'm safe word, safe word, safe word. You know. Whatever it was, and I literally saw something change in him oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Like I saw it In his eyes.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I saw it.
Speaker 5:His voice changed, his eyes changed.
Speaker 2:It's not a game, no more. Yeah.
Speaker 5:His strength Woo, because he was over me, jesus.
Speaker 1:So his strength changed. He's demonic.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 5:I knew I was so fearful in that moment and I was like screaming the safe word and he moment and I was like screaming the safe word and he didn't even hear it. Yeah, he got more aggressive, finished having his way with me and then he walked out of the room. Damn, and I'm just like what just happened, yeah, and I blocked it instantly it wasn't until years later wow when I went through that last step study wow I had some other people that I had to do in my spiritual inventory.
Speaker 5:For those who don't know, that's what we do in Celebrate Recovery. I saved him for last.
Speaker 2:It's probably one of the hardest things you had to do.
Speaker 5:I saved him for last he was nine front to back pages. Jesus Just himself.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 5:Because there were so many different categories, I went away from the model that they give you and I had to categorize. I literally had to categorize under the forms of abuse and then what happened under each one. And I remember I went to Starbucks cause I do my, I do my schoolwork.
Speaker 2:That's where everybody does their inventory.
Speaker 5:Starbucks I can't if I'm at home, like when I was getting my two degrees and I'm back in school again getting another degree. But when I, when I got my first two degrees well, not, not the very first one, because I this that was right in the middle of us being married and the kids were young it's a miracle I got that with having a 40 hour a week, full-time job, plus young kids at home, plus going to church. Wow, yeah, but I did. I got my bachelor's, um, but when I was getting my first master's, which was after I left him, um, I couldn't do work at home. I would get too distracted and then when, once I got my dog, my dog would literally come up and be like put me, put me, put me.
Speaker 5:So I would go to Starbucks and like tune everybody out and get my work done.
Speaker 5:So I went to go do my spiritual inventory and I remember I was sitting in a little corner of the thing and I had done all my first few people because I do it in a notebook, I don't do it on the paper and I had done all my first little people that God had brought up and then I was ready to do him and I had gotten through like the first four categories, right, and then I came to the sexual category.
Speaker 5:And there's some other things under the sexual category, um, that qualified, uh, for that, for like the abusive moments. But, um, then that one popped up, wow, and it was through the step study that I realized what that? Because I had a flashback and I, like I said, god revealed to me what that night really was, and so and I'd already talked to my sponsor about it and so here I am, I literally have the pen in my hand, right, I go to put the pen on the paper and I froze and I started having a panic attack in Starbucks, froze, couldn't do anything because I suddenly was seeing that night and I hadn't thought about it before.
Speaker 5:You blocked it out, I blocked it out it all came rushing back and what happened in the moment was I disassociated. I didn't know what that was at the time, but I disassociated.
Speaker 5:I didn't know what that was at the time, but I disassociated in the moment, but now I'm sitting in Starbucks and God is allowing me to see everything, and so, for the first time, I'm feeling everything and I'm in the middle of Starbucks in a little corner, crying hands still frozen to the paper, like my arm would not move, managed to pick up my phone and put in the group chat with my stepsisters and like this is where I'm at, this is what's happening, I need prayer. And a few of them answered back right away and it was like instantly when, as soon as they said we're praying, I felt it come over me and my finger just started writing and like I wrote everything out about that one moment and I was just like crying and um now.
Speaker 2:Look, now you're able to be at a place where you can talk about the hell that you experienced in that time, in that moment, because you put in the work.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This wasn't you. This just didn't happen. No, you had to put in a lot of time and a lot of work and be very intentional in your healing and your recovery with God, absolutely In order to even get to this place where you're able to talk and not be a blubbering mess.
Speaker 5:Yeah, the first few times that I well, well, immediately after that, I shared it with my sponsor and, like froze again and could hardly get the words out. Um, I was doing some free counseling services at that time, like some free therapy sessions. Yeah, because what I didn't state was right at the time that we were doing um step study like the. The fourth step, the spiritual inventory. Remember, I told you about my two stepdads. So this was 2022, the end of 2022. Are we?
Speaker 2:talking about the Cuban one or Dave Both? Okay.
Speaker 5:Both, so Gus wound up getting what his parents had His parents both passed away from dementia, and so Gus wound up getting what his parents had His parents both passed away from dementia, and so Gus wound up getting that and it like slowly started affecting him, right. So I hadn't talked to him in like quite a while, but my stepdad Dave in March of 2022, he fell off of one of their steps and like shattered his shoulder or something and like my mom had to take him. He was really frail at that point. My mom took him, you know, to the VA, whatever, and through the course of him being there, they discovered he had small cell lung cancer. It was directly related to being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, yeah exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and so we found out in March by December of 2022, we knew that that was going to be his last Christmas, that we weren't going to have him the following year. Yeah, and so I was still teaching. I was already here, because I moved here in February of 2022. So I took my two-week Christmas break and I went to virginia, where my parents were at um, to go be up there for christmas, and my ex actually brought our three kids up as well the one who was in jacksonville yeah, my ex-husband, okay, um, he actually paid for and drove our three grown children up to virgin Virginia to be able to see their grampy yeah
Speaker 5:you know, for his last Christmas. What none of us expected was that that was actually his last week. Yeah, that was actually his last week. So, like I got there. So the week of Christmas, I got there at like midnight Virginia time on Tuesday, had one final like half hour conversation with my stepdad and when we woke up the next morning, um, he had turned during the night and he never spoke again after that and like cognitively he just wasn't there.
Speaker 5:So, fast forward, fast forward, he passed away the evening of Christmas Day almost at midnight. So I was still there. And then the very next night, the 26th, I was sitting in the front room with my mom because she was staying at my uncle's house that's where they were staying for his health reasons and I got a phone call from Gus's wife and I was like, oh, I meant to call and say, you know, merry Christmas and everything, because by that point he barely even knew who I was and you couldn't have a conversation with him on the phone anymore. But I would still call and I said, you know, dave just passed away and there was silence on the other end of the line. Oh, wow.
Speaker 5:And she was like. I am so sorry. I really don't want to have to tell you this. Gus passed away christmas eve oh wow, dang, dude, I let out a blood-curling scream and my mom jumped up from her chair and she's like what? I don't even know what his wife said after that, because I just started screaming, I lost them both. I lost them both.
Speaker 5:I lost them both and my mom just hugged me and that's what you were screaming yeah, that's what I, yeah, yeah and um, my mom, just she just started hugging me and I don't even know how the phone got hung up. But when I finally calmed down, I had to call my sister and I had to tell my little sister and we just sat there on the phone, we didn't even know what to do, we didn't know how to process that you know, and that was right in the middle of the fourth step of the study all hell breaks loose when you're in a step study and you're doing your fourth step yeah, so it was.
Speaker 5:It was crazy. And then, um, so then I get back and you know I had to do the inventory and so now I'm processing all of this too and it was just too much all at one time. And so my sponsor and um, my sister and all they're like we think you need to talk to somebody and I had some free like free therapy sessions through my benefits at work, yeah. And so I called and you know, I had like I think two sessions, maybe three sessions, and it was a christian woman great um, to help me process not only the double grief, but then this had come out.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know the rape and stuff I had discovered and all of this.
Speaker 2:All the feelings that come with it are back. Yeah, so she was like You're dealing with a lot.
Speaker 5:Really.
Speaker 5:There's a lot going on, and there had been a lot of change in my life in the last five years too, including moving from Louisiana to Arizona, and in that span of that five years was when we got divorced and like I had left him and had to go back to Florida and like it was all of the stuff. Like I didn't want to go back to Florida, but we were talking about how people don't recognize the other forms of abuse and I didn't want to go back to Florida, but I had nowhere to go in Louisiana. I had no job. I had no. Nobody would open their home and let me come in. And what happened was circling all the way back to how our youngest son had had just recently graduated high school, right, and he was out one night. He was, he was dating this girl that he wanted us to meet, and so we had planned that we were going to go to dinner, my ex-husband and me, and the two of them and me and I was at home, and he comes in.
Speaker 2:I don't know what happened, your youngest? No, my ex-husband came home from work. He came home from work. I don't know what had ticked him. No, my ex-husband came home from work.
Speaker 5:He came home from work.
Speaker 5:I don't know what had ticked him off at work, but he was not in a good mood when he came home and we were in a tiny little apartment right so I'm in the bathroom with the door open and he came in and he went to the room that was catty corner, which used to be our son's room, and my son's drums were in there and my ex-husband was a self-taught drummer and so he went straight in there.
Speaker 5:He started drumming to blow off steam and like, see, by this point it had been a year and a half since we had reconciled and within four months of us reconciling he had started going back to all of his old ways. But it got to the point where even my kids were recognizing. I remember my daughter and I have her in a conversation one day after her dad said something to me and she's like is it just me or does he seem worse this time? And the scripture that came to mind and I told her. I said you know that scripture in the Bible that talks about be careful when you clean your house, because it's going to come back and it's going to bring seven that are even worse than I said.
Speaker 5:I that's what I feel like is going on yeah and it really was he. Had he, he had never been that level ever like it was.
Speaker 5:It was the most intense I'd ever seen him wow so then it fast forward to this night, you know, and even the kids were recognizing it, and um, so he's drumming and he starts yelling at me for something. I don't even know what it was he was yelling about, but he starts yelling at me for something and my son hears it because I'm on the phone with my son, right, he hears it and he goes is that dad? And I said yeah, what is he yelling about? I said I don't know. He came home angry from work and he's taking it out on me. I have no idea what's going on. He's like you know what, mom, I think I'm going to cancel dinner. I don't really want to bring her around. That. I said that's your choice. You can do that. I totally understand.
Speaker 5:Hung up, told my ex-husband what had happened. He's like what did you say to him? I said I didn't say nothing to him. He heard you. He heard you and chose not to bring her around. That. Well, that ticked him off. It set him off and he's like I'm going out.
Speaker 4:I'm like, oh, okay, and he went out for hours. I'm going out.
Speaker 5:I'm like okay, and he went out for hours. By the time he got back home it was probably 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. I was sitting up in our bed and we had one. It was a bed he had brought. It sat up really high. I almost had to step like on the railing. I'm not sure, but I had to step on the railing to get up into the bed.
Speaker 5:Yeah, Okay, I'm not sure but I had to step on the railing to get up into the bed. Okay, so he's 6'2", so when he came and stood at the bed, it came to about his midsection. That's how high up he had the bed.
Speaker 5:It was crazy. So when you walked into our room, if you were looking at it like your perspective, the door is where you guys are at. So when you walked into our little room we had this big um king bed, I think it was that was up against the back wall. I slept on the left, so to my left there was a wall, so just a little little piece for me to walk through right yeah to the right was the bigger space, one way in and out. That door.
Speaker 5:I'm already up in bed Sitting up Playing my games on my iPad. He comes in Dressed differently than he had left out. Oh really.
Speaker 5:Dressed differently than he had left out Hair down. He had long hair at that time, hair was all down. He was not much of a drinker, but there was booze on his breath. I was like whatever. He just went off and blew some steam. So he came up right here to his side of the bed and I don't remember what the conversation was, but he started saying something to me and he was still agitated and I looked at him and very calmly started to say something and he lost it and he started screaming at me and the next thing I knew his hand, open fist, started here at the top of my right shoulder. Both of his hands boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom all the way down. First and last time he ever laid his hands on me like that and I scooped up my phone, slid down out of the bed and before I could get out and around he had come around and blocked, trapped you in there.
Speaker 5:He trapped me in there and for the next however long I don't even know how long it was he had me trapped like that, screaming at me, terrorizing me yeah.
Speaker 5:And at one point I tried to say something back to him and he took a step forward and he loomed over me and he started screaming don't lie to me blah blah blah Scared me so much that I took a step back and I I landed against the um the nightstand and there was a big fat lamp on there and my hand went back like this and clamped on the lamp. He proceeded to hold me there long enough for me to lose feeling in that arm, wow. But my arm wasn't coming off of that because the whole time he was saying whatever else he was saying, I just kept. If he comes at me again, I'm swinging.
Speaker 1:I'll smack you with his lamp If he comes at me again.
Speaker 2:I'm swinging because he's going to kill me. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And I was like, and I better, I prayed God, I knock him out.
Speaker 2:So you did. You feared for your life right there. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm, a swing, and I kept praying.
Speaker 5:if I have to swing, God, knock that man out, because if I don't knock him out, he'll kill me. Yeah, because the state that he was in, yeah, he, he had finally crossed that, that physical, you know, and I believe he was, I believe, even if he hadn't been intoxicated, it was coming to that point. Yeah, it was, it was just coming to that head. You know, and I've never claimed to be an angel. In our whole marriage, I mean, I made lots of mistakes, um, but none of my mistakes weren't no, any of what.
Speaker 5:Take a walk dude, take a walk buddy none of them weren't any, any of the stuff that I went through um so let me ask you this, just so if somebody's listening and they may be curious if their relationship is toxic yeah, maybe they're going through some of this maybe they're in a marriage and they're thinking, man, my husband seems to be a little you know I mean aggressive.
Speaker 1:What are some signs, some things that they can look for to say, hey, this is not a healthy situation?
Speaker 4:I'm in.
Speaker 1:I may need to consider getting out.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we know that a healthy relationship, according to the Bible, is not a man demeaning a woman, putting her down, making her feel less than anything other than a queen, things like that. So what can a woman look for? What signs are there that they can gauge how bad their situation is?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's a really good question um from your experience well, just from my own, I know it's different than everyone's but from your experience, what were some things now looking back that he said did that you were like should have known then, or you know what I mean, things like that. So someone who's listening, who might be in that situation, can be like hey, I'm in that situation right now, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5:I think one of the hardest things for me personally because he wasn't physical, you know, for so many years. I think one of the hardest things for me was until I started going to Celebrate Recovery and started learning about myself and like getting healing about my own self-image and worth issues. I believed those lies for so long coming into my relationship with him that I didn't see it when he was also doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Okay, when he was also, like you said, demeaning me, putting me down um the things that he would say. I mean, after we started having kids, which was almost immediately, we had our first one, like, um, our oldest was born. We, we were married December of 94. Our oldest was born October of 95. Yeah, so right away. Like the day after the day before my 20th birthday. So we started having kids right away. Not planned that way, but yeah, we started having kids right away.
Speaker 5:But my metabolism changed. I mean, there are some changes to women, there is some changes, um, but then there's other women like me where it's it's a drastic change and like that's what happened with me. Like, uh, I had a metabolism just naturally from my father that, um, I didn't really have to watch what I ate, I didn't really have to exercise my body just naturally would burn fat and you know, I stayed looking kind of thin and then we started having kids and my entire makeup changed.
Speaker 5:Like it really changed my metabolism, my chemistry, everything, and so I started struggling with weight and know things like that. And he would make comments here and there, not very nice comments, like very bullying behavior. Wow, um, he tried to be really subtle, so he like I he would think that I wasn't like picking up on it yeah but I had heard all those kinds of things growing up and you know just how like if a pathological liar says something long enough, they actually start believing what they're saying.
Speaker 5:It's the same thing, if you hear the same things over and over and over again you start to believe it about yourself, and that's where I was at, which is what made it so hard. I didn't recognize, you know. So that's the first and foremost thing is, um, it can sometimes be when you're so ingrained in that situation and this is the person that you've given your heart to like, I say it's the one person in the entire world that you're supposed to be able to trust 100 and feel the safest with, even more so than your mother or your father. Yeah, when it's that person and you're already so ingrained, it can be very difficult to pick up on things like that. So the first thing I would say that would be a big red flag is if there's any kind of aggression and even with that you have to be very careful, because we are humans, we naturally get angry. Some people feel and express anger a little bit more than others. So even in that sense, it can often be difficult to distinguish between okay, this person is just angry to.
Speaker 3:I think that was a little like dude, you have a problem, you know like you have an issue.
Speaker 5:You might need a chip for that you know that kind of thing. You know we have a class, we have a group for that Right exactly. So, it can be very, very difficult when you're in a romantic or even in a. I mean, we hear about it all the time, people giving their testimonies about how like it wasn't romantically it was giving their testimonies about how like it wasn't romantically it was the parent-child relationship, because we're so emotionally entwined with them it it really does blind our judgment.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this, because I agree what you say right, there is, love makes us blind. Yeah, but if you're, if, particularly if a woman, if you're in a relationship and you have to question am I safe? Am I safe? Am I?
Speaker 5:safe, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You're probably already in a bad situation to begin with. If you're at that point, then you're probably not safe or it probably is bad.
Speaker 5:No, I would say you're not. You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean If it even crosses your mind that you might be in a toxic relationship. You probably are.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you've already invested so much time Some things have already happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you've already invested so much time, some things have already happened and things have already gone on To make you think that.
Speaker 1:That you even had to question my husband. Really you know what I mean, yeah. He was probably there already. You know what I mean.
Speaker 5:I would say that I wouldn't necessarily tell that person immediately to leave, but you definitely if something like that crosses your mind or you see little things that is making you go. Oh, talk to somebody yeah talk to somebody, because I've also had the experience where, because of the things I've been through, um, I might have a situation where I totally misinterpreted that yeah, yeah and not to downplay anything, but I may have totally misinterpreted that because of how close I am to the situation.
Speaker 5:So and that's actually that's actually kind of what I'm going to school for now. So when I left my ex-husband and after that night, that's what caused me to finally be like that's it. You've crossed that boundary now I know you'll cross it again.
Speaker 4:And I'm not.
Speaker 5:I'm not going to stick around, but because I didn't have any bruises, because I didn't have this or that, I couldn't get help.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's real, I could not get help, which is another thing that I'm passionate about talking to and educating people now, because how many of these true crime stories you can go watch, snapped you can go watch, like all of these? How many of those were these people killed Because there was no physical violence, but there was a history of emotional, mental, spiritual, like all of these things, where they just wore them down and then that was it. Their first and only physical act was to kill that person.
Speaker 1:And the crazy part is is a lot of those situations are not done publicly.
Speaker 5:No.
Speaker 1:Like your husband. Probably you guys weren't probably out to dinner and your husband probably wasn't like ripping you a new one in the middle of a restaurant.
Speaker 5:No, but I would get pinched under the table several times this thing's if he didn't like something I was saying to somebody I would get he would, he would or he would lean over and he would hold me tight and he'd be like stop it right now like he would yeah just enough to where other people couldn't see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, god showed me, showed me something the other day, and you remember the old kids rhyme. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words don't ever hurt me.
Speaker 5:God made it One of the biggest lies ever. Words hurt man.
Speaker 1:This is what God gave me that day, it was sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will slice and cut you.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I was like dang, like dang, because the bible says that the tongue is sharper than a two-edged sword. Yes, so swords from my knowledge of warfare, they slice and cut. Yeah, buddy. So if your tongue is a two-edged sword, it has the ability to slice and cut people very, very deep, deep, to where not even sticks and stones can really affect that. You know what I mean. And so it's very crucial that we just he was a master of that Because, like I said, he learned from yeah man, he learned from his mother.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you know, she was a master of that too, with her tongue, and I'm very like. I remember one of the biggest things that my ex-mother-in-law ever did was when our oldest was was a baby. So many babies. When they're like their first I don't know two to three months, it's very common for babies to get respiratory infections I mean, it's just a thing, you know, they're out of the protection of the womb now in the real world and um, he called rsb or something it's well, it's rsb now, but there's um, there's just like a common one too, and it often they'll tell you to take the baby to the hospital because they are infants.
Speaker 5:And that's what happened with our oldest. He wound up getting really sick with like a respiratory infection. He wound up in the hospital and because of his age the hospital had mandatory he was going to stay like four days or something like that, I don't know. So I'm in the room, first-time mother freaking out right. I'm in the hospital room with my baby and in walks my mother-in-law she got there before my ex-husband did oh geez.
Speaker 5:Yeah, in walks my mother-in-law, who's a nurse. She walks over to the little crib and she checks on her grandson and then she turns around and she starts berating me and telling me what a horrible mother I am that I let my baby get. I mean, all of this stuff gaslighting me. Wow, I'm a new mother. Yeah, freaked out because my child is in the hospital and this is what she does. This is what he grew up with yeah. This is what he grew up with.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so yeah. It's just that there's so much more to what I endured over the 23 years. But those are just like little snippets, and so that's why I'm very passionate now and so like when I so when I finally had to leave, I couldn't find the help. There were people that I was very close to that I told when it happened. They knew that I didn't want, even though that was my apartment in my name, I didn't want to stay there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to go.
Speaker 5:Nobody would open their doors and help me to get, even just for a brief little time. Nobody offered to let me come wow um and stay and um, some of those people I don't talk to anymore and they're like well, you're the one that chose to run off. I'm like. I didn't choose to do anything. I was backed into a corner, literally I had no job at that time.
Speaker 5:I didn't, I couldn't, I would not have been able to support myself. You know, um, it would have taken me a while to find a job. I had no place to go because that was my apartment and he wasn't leaving Because I had gotten that apartment when we were separated and then, when we reconciled, he moved in there.
Speaker 1:Situations like that will show you who your real friends are.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and some of these people, they knew both of us and I think that they didn't want to take sides, basically. But I was like I'm not asking you to take sides, like I need. You know, the people that I thought I could go and help, they're like well, you don't have any proof, like we can't take you in. You know, they only want to have safe houses and shelters for, uh, for the women who who are being physically abused, and I mean, and that's awesome, that's great.
Speaker 5:We need programs and safe houses in place, because some of these women will never get to the point of physical abuse, the physical abuse. They're going to be dead, yeah they're going to be dead before that happens, straight up yeah and we need.
Speaker 5:We need programs to broaden their horizons and say, yes, we'll provide you a safe place, get you out before it ever gets to that point, because you're recognizing, you know, whatever. And so I didn't have that. I didn't have that option and didn't have that option, and so I had to stay. So this was the beginning of August of 2019. I stayed at the apartment until the end of August of that same year, but never alone with him. If our daughter wasn't there, I wasn't there. I didn't sleep in the bedroom with him. I slept on our big giant round chair that we had out in the. We had like one of the main giant round reader chairs yeah.
Speaker 5:So I was never alone with him, ever again, because I knew better. But I had no choice but to stay there right. And so during that month my mother, who was in Virginia already, and my best friend from high school, who was in Virginia already, and my best friend from high school, who was in Florida, they both without even knowing that each other had talked to me. They both were like, hey, we want to help you get out of that situation and we will help you give you some money to get out to whatever move. My mom wanted me to go to Virginia with her and I was, like, not happening mom, Not a healthy situation.
Speaker 5:That's not happening. She still helped me out with some money and then, like my friend, sent me some money. Well, it was my friend in Florida. I had known her met her first day of freshman year of high school in choir Instant friendship. We were friends for life. Knew her husband Because Orlando was a Navy town. When we were friends for life, um knew her husband, she because Orlando was a navy town at when we were in high school.
Speaker 5:our high school literally shared a fence with the training the training base and we would go out sometimes and watch the boys we were like oh, look at this, sailors. You know, our favorite movie was Top Gun we wrote a sequel to Top Gun, and then we were mad that they actually made a movie. Yeah, so anyway. So she was like my best best friend and she said I've talked with my husband about it and we want you to come, we'll put you up you know for about four months.
Speaker 5:We're like we'll help you get on your feet. Whatever. I said okay, and by that point I had done some substitute work because I had an oil field job and that was right around the time that the you know, deepwater Horizon happened and like the moratorium and like so many people lost their jobs in Louisiana because almost everything is tied to the oil field in Louisiana, even little, little tiny companies, yeah, so that's why I was out of work and because I had one of those jobs, so that's why I was out of work and I was trying to find something. And so I started doing like substitute teaching had no desire to really be a teacher, but it, you know, it was bringing in a little bit of money for me, whatever.
Speaker 5:And through that, one of my last assignments that I had was in a kindergarten class. They're called parishes in Louisiana instead of counties, the only state that calls it that. So in the parish that we lived in, or the city that we lived in also, there were three schools elementary, middle and high school that had the the deaf education program. And when I was pregnant with my daughter, god had brought me into deaf ministry. I had a friend that was an interpreter and I had a desire to learn.
Speaker 5:Sign for my own time of worship to have a more expressive. Yeah, yeah. Because I love flagging and you know all that. Well, that led to God being like guess what? I'm bringing you into this and the. Holy Spirit helped me start learning sign language and like.
Speaker 2:So I do that, I interpret in church.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I interpret for the deaf in church. So that led to me doing deaf ministry at the church that I was attending and my daughter met another girl in youth and they became best friends. Well, her mother was one of the interpreters at our church.
Speaker 2:And so mom and I became best friends.
Speaker 5:And so it was through her she wound up being one of the interpreters in that educational interpreter in that kindergarten class. So I'd see her like every morning, you know Well, in this kindergarten class, so I'd see her like every morning, you know well, in this kindergarten class, there was four deaf children and, um I, I had a permanent end of the year position as the teacher's aid and I got it because I knew sign language.
Speaker 5:that's why they asked me to do the permanent placement for the end of the year, and so through the course of that, I began seeing issues in the school system, issues with these children and some of the resources that were given to them at the school. Oh, they were no good, Not really no them at the school that they were no good, not really no. And um, this is where my my passion for language deprivation was born, because I saw it firsthand you saw a need I saw it firsthand.
Speaker 5:These kids are not um. 90 of deaf children are born to hearing parents and the hearing parents.
Speaker 5:Just even today, with everything that's out there, even today, they're still given really bad information by medical experts and stuff and you know they they really push these kids getting implanted or whatever, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they a lot of times they do not talk about teaching them sign language. And this is going back to the research that we were talking about. That I I did, I was able to do when I was getting my master's in SPED. During this time of being in Florida I was allowed to choose whatever I wanted to choose for all of my papers and so everything was deaf, ed, deaf, ed, deaf and that neurology class that we took. I learned how, even giving them early access to sign language at the same time that hearing kids are getting early access, same exact process happens in their brain for processing and acquiring language. It's been proven.
Speaker 2:So, as you're teaching a young kid who can hear how to pronounce vowels, you teach a young kid who can't hear sign language.
Speaker 5:If they get the same early access. The only thing that they have a disadvantage in is that they don't start hearing in the womb. Okay. Children, who who's hearing is develops regularly. It's been scientific, like they tell you all the time, like seeing the baby you know moms will be like, hey, they're jumping, you know whatever it's been proven that those specific pathways that that control our acquisition and understanding and learning of language, they actually start firing in utero.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 5:So that's really the only disadvantage that that deaf kids have, and understanding and learning of language.
Speaker 5:They actually start firing in utero, wow, okay. So that's really the only disadvantage that deaf kids have that are born deaf yeah, not that lose their hearing early on, but that are born deaf. So, that said, they had some resources that were being given to these kids, including them having to be taken out to get like 30 minutes with a resource teacher here and there. Well, one of those classrooms that they sent these kids to was being run by these two older ladies who refused to do any kind of sign language with these kids, even though the school had approved it. Not all schools do. They refused. They're like no, they've got to speak, they've got to blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Speaker 3:Any kind of sign language with these kids even though the school had approved it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, not all schools do. Yeah, they refused. They're like, no, they've got to speak, they've got a little whatever. And we had many opinions about that, me and my friend the interpreter. And so we get toward the end of the school year and it had been one particularly really hard week of just the entire week just seeing things, and we used to go almost every Friday we would go to Starbucks, our favorite little place to just like unwind and decompress. And this one particular Friday I was really fired up, I was just downright angry with some things I had seen and, just you know, I didn't even think I would ever be in a teaching capacity and so I was telling this to her and she said you know, I don't know why you don't just try to become a resource teacher for the deaf.
Speaker 5:I was like, yeah right, I'm never going to be a teacher and I told her that. I was like whatever, you know, I'm just, I'm, I don't know, I'll just pray about how, how it can help these kids and she's like okay. Just saying they need people that know how to sign. And you know you're very passionate and we're like, okay, whatever. So that was a Friday. Woke up Saturday Couldn't stop thinking about it All throughout the day. Woke up Sunday Couldn't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 4:I saw her at church on Sunday. I was like what did you do?
Speaker 5:and I told her what was happening, you know, and she was like hmm, sounds to me like that's the holy spirit. I said, yeah, whatever, um, but that's that's how it happened that's that's where, and I couldn't, I couldn't shake it and so. I was like, okay, I'm gonna pursue a master's in special ed. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but you know. Then all of this happened and you know I'm like bad you kept thinking sped.
Speaker 2:I'm like what is special ed?
Speaker 5:special education.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, so have you ever seen the the father and the daughter. That do reels the daughter's deaf. Both parents are speaking I don't think so they're always like in a van daughter's name's, kylie no, I'll have to look that one up, oh it's all awesome and so that they do they teach sign language kindly right. And supposedly how she got her, how she got her sign name was if someone gives you your sign name yes, the deaf, the deaf assign you a sign name and her name is kylie, so it's like the k, like this kylie, you know I mean.
Speaker 1:But one of the things they said was is because he learned sign language so he could communicate with his daughter and she always tells him dad, you're the best. Because most some parents don't take the time to most of them don't, and I'm like what the hell, why would you not want to learn?
Speaker 5:it goes back to what I was talking about is because they're giving. They are not giving, given good information, like, first of all, they don't expect their child to be born deaf I mean you don't expect your child to be born with something for lack of a better term not working, yeah right, you don't expect that yeah so it's very much a grief process, because now you've been given this reality, you weren't prepared for you don't know what to do with it. So you're going to trust who yeah the so-called experts?
Speaker 5:yeah, and that's what happens. That is what happens. The only experts they're not including in that is people who work with the deaf or deaf themselves. They don't include them in these conversations. And so when I was going to continue pursuing, I mean I did get my master's, but then I was working on a um, I was working on a doctorate, and my doc, my doctorate thesis, was going to be language deprivation. And you know why this is um. We need to stop this and you need to give them early access, because the fight has always been um, we're for it. Well, we're against it. Yeah, nobody's ever come at this fight from a scientific standpoint. Yeah, so when I started learning all of these things and finding research after research after research to prove that scientifically, biologically, language deprivation, what you're doing to these deaf kids, you're messing with their brain, yeah, like you're literally messing. They have the same capacity to those same, like I said, those same pathways that form form with them.
Speaker 5:It's been proven if they get early access to sign language, they may have a one degree delay from their you know it's going to be a difference between them being three grades behind or whatever, versus they're almost on par with the rest of their class Wow. And the other big myth is that if you teach them slang language, they'll never they will never learn how to speak. Yeah lie, that's a lie the girl kylie.
Speaker 1:She has a cochlear that was called cochlear yeah, the one that's implanted as a cochlear and to see her her speech grow and get better and better. But it's kind of cool to watch. I mean I love their reels. They're pretty awesome and but you can see her for dressing, and there's a lot of times where she'll hear noises that she's not familiar with and she's like ah what is that?
Speaker 4:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And her dad has to explain to her that you're hearing the AC blowing. You know what I mean, things like that. So it's, I don't know. I really enjoy their reels because I learn a lot. Yes, I have a nephew who's deaf.
Speaker 2:I got a cousin who is a kid, so I learn a lot from them.
Speaker 1:Not that I can communicate him with sign language, but I would love to he does sign.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he had an implant, I think, but he speaks a little bit. But my aunt, oh, she learned.
Speaker 5:My cousin, my sister, my sister sister started learning so she could talk to him when I was teaching, like if I got a chance to talk to parents, which I didn't often, but um one of them in particular. Like, um, I'm still facebook friends with the mom from my very first teaching job when I moved to florida.
Speaker 5:Um, he just graduated eighth grade and he was a first grader in my classroom, precious little boy, not little anymore. But one of the things that I would always advocate is the importance of, as parents, learning sign language, because cochlears and regular hearing aids are just machines. Yeah, okay, machines break, and depending on the hearing loss degree, because there's different levels of hearing loss, even within deafness. So, depending on the degree of their hearing loss, if their machine breaks they either have still a little tidy bit of hearing or they are 100%, completely deaf. So I always would try to tell parents look, the more modes of communication you can give your child, the better you are setting that child up for success so I will always be an advocate for parents learning sign language 100%, but that's another thing.
Speaker 1:Think about a Hispanic family whose first language is Spanish. They come to America. Kids got to learn English to get through.
Speaker 5:You know what I mean. It's a special class in public schools that they put them in.
Speaker 1:But when they go home, they generally still speak Spanish. So now that they're in America, you're going to tell them well, stop speaking Spanish, because you need to learn English. You know what I mean? Because a lot of people on these reels with this, with this dad and daughter, would ask her well, now that she got her cochlear, why don't she just speak so her language can get better? And she'll tell them signing is my first language it's the language I learned. This is my language you know I mean.
Speaker 1:This is just helping me to communicate in a different way. I still like to sign. You know what I mean Exactly, and I love that. It's like having two languages. Why would you not continue to sign? You know what I mean.
Speaker 5:No, 100%. But the other myth with that that these parents are often told which is why they usually make the decision to and implant you only get implanted if your hearing loss is it and implant you only get implanted if your hearing loss is it. Has to be a certain severity like it has to be really severe or the implant's not even a viable option. That's why some of them have like hearing aids. But these parents are also told that this will make them hear like us. They will never hear like us, ever, even with those devices on. First of all, they're not hearing the sound the same as we are. It's a mechanical type sound so they're.
Speaker 5:They're not going to ever have that same degree, and even with those devices on and active, they're still missing a certain percentage of what is spoken. So, yeah, I'm a big advocate with with that too. But um good but that's how I wound up.
Speaker 2:Getting into teaching was because of what happened here wow with you know me, um losing my oil field job and then taking that little um substitute job, little substitute job, and I'll already be already being in the deaf ministry, already having a heart for the deaf. And then what happened with?
Speaker 5:my ex-husband when I had to suddenly move to Florida, and that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Number one I had never been away from my children ever. My children were all adults by then. Well, the youngest just barely an adult, just barely an adult, um, but I had never been away from them ever. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I had an entire life built, you know, not just him as a part of it, but I was. I was active in my church, I was um, I was, you know, on the worship team at my Celebrate Recovery group. I was deaf ministry at my church. I had a life there, I had friends, I had my children, and so that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make was I had to choose to go where I was going to be safe and I had to, you know. Can I ask?
Speaker 1:you a tough question, ask away. You don't have to answer if you don't want to. How did your church respond to what was going on?
Speaker 4:oh man, just from that I can.
Speaker 5:Oh, that sucks damn part of the people that I asked for help were from the church yeah, this is, this is part of what my, what I want my podcast to be about.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, friend, to expose that and Dad, we apologize a lot for the big. C. For the church Church. Yeah, just missing the mark. That was part of the problem.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that was part, Because I did go before it got to this point, like after we had reconciled and things were getting bad. I did get counseling at the church and, you know, told them some things that had been going on, told them a little bit of the history and while I was sympathized with, I basically was told God hates divorce. Really. Which is. I can't say what I want to say on.
Speaker 1:Were you still in a Methodist church? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5:I hadn't been in a Methodist church since I was a teenager. Wow, I've been in non-denominational since I was an adult. Wow. Yeah, serving in all of them and, like you know, not just serving. Like I don't downplay anybody's services, you know service to the church but when I? Say, serving like, I'm in like yeah, these actual ministries.
Speaker 4:You know, like not just you know whatever. You know what I mean, like not a greeter.
Speaker 5:I'm sorry if I offend anybody, because I've done greeting too and I absolutely love it because I love people. But I just to tell you what the difference is you know, um, yeah, no, so that was basically it wow man that that's what I was told.
Speaker 5:And so when I had to leave, people were shocked that I was moving back to Florida. Wow, and they were like what do you mean? And I said I don't have a way to stay here. Yeah, you know, and I almost didn't do it because my daughter was at the house that day I had a Honda Element that I had been blessed with. I miss my Element and I had everything that I had brought into the marriage and had accumulated over the then 21 years or whatever 22 years jam-packed in that Element.
Speaker 2:You couldn't even see out the windows and the back, because it was it was floor to ceiling of all of my possessions with, I think, some still in storage that stayed there.
Speaker 5:But um, yeah, so it was sorry you're good, I'm getting scratchy again, again, these darn allergies. So the day of, I had finished packing everything and my daughter was there and, um, she was, you know, came to tell me goodbye and gave her a hug and everything. And I my oldest, wasn't talking to me at the time, that was a direct result of what had happened. That was not my decision. He wasn't talking to me at the time so and he was down, he was somewhere else. Anyway, he wasn't in the same area yeah.
Speaker 5:I think he was in New Orleans by then. Um and um. So I had talked to my daughter and my youngest son about this, about how you know look, this is where I'm getting help. I don't want to go, but I didn't, you know. And they both said, mom, we see God's hand on this. Like you got to go, like you got to do what you got to do, and I think that's what I was waiting on. But even so, that day day, my daughter gave me a big hug and she started crying. And I started crying and I got in the car and I pulled out of the complex and I got down to the end of the street and our church was like right there, and like I got down to the end of the street and I started to do this, to turn back around, and I just felt like no, if you go back, that's it, and so I just kept going and drove to Florida um, it was really hard.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's why a lot of women stay?
Speaker 5:because I have this whole life here and he's just one part of this entire life that I've built here, and I don't have nowhere to go and I don't want to lead the life that I built and the people that I had even though he's, you know what I mean well, I think it's a lot harder for women who were facing what I was facing, where I wasn't just leaving him, I had to leave, like completely leave the area, so I wouldn't have had anything, I wouldn't have had any of my support nothing, yeah um, I think for women who recognize that they need to leave but it's maybe not that drastic to where they have to like completely get out of the area and they may still have some supports in the area that they can trust it's still a difficult decision.
Speaker 5:I'm not going to say it's never. Right. But I think it might be a little bit. I don't want to say easier, I can't think of the word I'm looking for Maybe conducive. It's maybe a little bit more conducive for them to make that move. Yeah. Than you know like what I was faced with. Yeah. Every door was shut to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in in louisiana and here this how many women are faced with that, though?
Speaker 5:I think more than we realize.
Speaker 1:You know how many women go to their friends and family and be like hey, man, this dude's like you know, he's not physically beating me, but he's's man. I just feel like nothing and they're like they're like no.
Speaker 5:I think that's that's way more prevalent than we realize. We're around you guys, all the time and we don't see him ever talk to you.
Speaker 1:That way, you know what. I mean so they're, because they don't see it, they don't hear it, it doesn't exist, kind of thing.
Speaker 5:You, but they're so good at making other people think that they are. They are so crafty.
Speaker 1:They're so good at that In public, they're the greatest dudes in the world.
Speaker 5:And they're just knight in shining armor. Can we get real for a minute about the church?
Speaker 1:But the minute they get in the car.
Speaker 5:it's like let's get real for a minute about the church as a whole and how many of these women included too. But in church and like law enforcement in, women included too, but in church and like law enforcement in church, it's more prevalent in the men. How many of them are the deacons?
Speaker 2:the elders, the pastors even and.
Speaker 5:I'm not saying it's everywhere, but it is such a problem in the American church that we are turning a blind eye to and they're literally destroying their wives, their husbands, their children behind closed doors and then getting out in this, these churches, every sunday and being like praise the lord and like praying for people and preaching from the pulpit and yeah that's real and then when?
Speaker 5:when that person comes to you for help the one place that they're supposed to be able to come to for help you got nothing for them could you imagine being a pastor's wife who's who's being verbally and emotionally abused? I've read stories and you have who.
Speaker 1:Who can you go to? Who's going to believe you? Because I've read stories it's pastor, so-and-so, everybody loves him. Yep, you know what I mean. Who's going? To believe you because I've read stories. It's pastor, so-and-so, everybody loves him. Yep, you know what I mean. Nobody's going to believe that he's really like that when we're at home you know what I mean and think I mean that's got to be the most horriblest part.
Speaker 5:Yeah, there was a story recently um, what was it earlier this year? Because I follow like a officer tatum yeah on social media and, uh, he was showed a story. There was this pastor that they thought had maybe have had killed his wife, but then, as the more of the story came out, it looked like she may have faked her death. I don't, I don't know how it finally ended out but there's, there started coming out stuff about a possible abuse from him to her and that she just found a way to end it.
Speaker 1:I'll just fake it so I can get out Either fake it or she took her own life or something like that because she couldn't, because he was the pastor of the church and nobody was listening to her.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's a real issue.
Speaker 2:There is a couple of things, leanna, that I want know, because you've talked about CR quite a bit. You've shared a couple of things on kind of maybe what, what God could be doing in your future. How did you get involved with Celebrate Recovery? Why did you get involved with Celebrate Recovery? Why did you get involved with Celebrate Recovery? We'll start there.
Speaker 5:So it was in. I want to say it was 2012. I always forget if it's 2011 or 2012. The church that I was attending at I wasn't involved in like deaf ministry there yet, but I was in the choir and I sounds like you've sung at every church you've been involved at if there was an opportunity.
Speaker 4:I did. Yes, I came out of the womb singing so and singing at Celebrate Recovery too.
Speaker 5:But amen so I was in the choir and I had like an instant connection and friendship with this gentleman. We always used to joke, even though he's older than me. We also used to joke that we were like separated in heaven because we mesh as if we were blood brother and sister. Yeah, we just always have Love singing with him or whatever. And I don't know so I don't even know how many months it had gone by and like we had built up this friendship, you know. And um, he starts talking to me about this ministry that the church had called celebrate recovery, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's cool, like whatever that is, you know, and I'm not a drug addict.
Speaker 5:No well, he just started talking about it, because he was helping with worship at Celebrate Recovery and and he just started talking to me and talking to me and I was like what are you talking about, man? Like what is this? He goes no, I just think you should come, you know, and just kind of maybe, just kind of like come help us out with the worship. And I said, dude, no, I just think you should come, you know, and just kind of maybe, just kind of like come help us out with the worship. And I said, dude, no, I'm not. Whatever, that's your thing. That's cool, I'm not down with that. I don't even know how many months he kept saying that. And finally I was like, fine, whatever, I'll come check it out. And so I went that one night and walked in there and was a Christian version of NA or AA, you know, it's recovery yeah, yeah and I was like boy, was I wrong?
Speaker 5:I mean it is, but it isn't yeah you know, um, and so I went in there and I sat through that entire meeting the first night and, you know, they really gave me of it and I was like, okay, cool, I'll help you out with the worship, because they needed some people, right? So my ex-husband started going too as well. He wound up drumming for a little while, but, yeah, so I started on the worship team and shortly after, that In Louisiana?
Speaker 4:Yeah, really.
Speaker 1:In.
Speaker 5:Louisiana. That's where I first started going to self-recovery yeah. Really In Louisiana. That's where I first started going to Celebrate Recovery.
Speaker 4:So shortly after that is when God started revealing why he wanted me in Celebrate Recovery.
Speaker 2:I love how he does that. Here comes the first layer of the onion.
Speaker 5:Okay, God the first layer was my main root, which was rejection. Yeah. Because the worship team that was already there was a tight-knit group. Okay, and outside of celebrate recovery they had formed a band and sometimes the band would go and do like little they'd get invited to go play you know, somewhere, whatever.
Speaker 5:So there was this one particular night where we were doing practice before the meeting started and they started talking about something like I don't know some gig or something coming up and I said something, oh, I'm like, I'm available. And they're like uh no, this is, this is the band thing. Only in that moment, every little bit of rejection and like being left out and everything else.
Speaker 2:I'm not good enough Like mm-hmm.
Speaker 5:That reared up and over the next I don't know how many weeks. I didn't even realize I was doing it, but my attitude got so bad I started lashing out Like I mean it got bad I started lashing out Like, I mean, it got bad.
Speaker 5:It got to the point where and I was starting to realize it too that I needed to step down. But it got to the point where the ministry leaders are like, hey, we need to meet with you, whatever. Blah, blah, blah. And they had my friend come in because he was kind of like one of the he wasn't the.
Speaker 4:He wasn't the.
Speaker 5:No, no, I think he was the worship leader at that point for celebrate recovery, so they had him come to and they were talking about it and I said, well, I, I think I need to step down. They're like well, we're glad you said it because we were about to make you do it wow that's how bad, and I didn't realize it had that it was that bad. Um, so I stepped down from the worship team and that was when I really started working the program because I wasn't really working the program.
Speaker 2:Before then I was just coming to do worship and I'm surprised you didn't just flip on the bird and walk out and I'm done with it all.
Speaker 5:No, because the holy spirit was already working on me wow, you know like he, because, like I said, I recognized finally that I this something's not right.
Speaker 5:I think I need to step down, and it was right, when I said that to myself, that they said, hey, we need to meet with you and they were gonna tell me to get down but, they gave me a chance to talk first and they're like that's where they're like, well, we're glad you said that, because we were actually this meeting was to tell you that you needed to step out off the worship team. Wow, because, like you're causing a lot of whatever, some of it wound up.
Speaker 1:You're disrupting the band man.
Speaker 5:Yes but some of it wound up not being me. Yeah. Later, things happened and when some of us all looked back, it was what was going on with me. How God, what happened with me?
Speaker 1:God actually used that to root out some other things that were happening.
Speaker 5:Yeah, um yeah it always comes to light, man yes, and I was like did you have to use me as your patsy?
Speaker 2:like really like what's the deal? Dude like no, I know that feeling man.
Speaker 5:No, um, but no that was at least.
Speaker 1:But at least he lets you step down and not yeah, yeah, you'll be removed. So he kind of guarded you there a little bit because that would have been worse for me yeah, and like he knew that that would have been total rejection, he knew with how I was that would happen. You would have left cr all together. I probably would have.
Speaker 5:I might have even left that church, oh yeah, because they, we, they all, we all went to church together. You know like so um, which happens a lot with celebrate recoveries a lot you know a lot of them, ones that your group winds up winds up being your church members right now, if that happened uh, yeah, there's a lot of that in there, too, um a lot of
Speaker 2:that in my history too yeah, um, yeah.
Speaker 5:So that was when I really started working the program fully and that was 2012, I think. So, yeah, I can never remember if it was exactly 2011 or 2012, but it was somewhere around then is when I first started going and then so I started working the program which really just started out with me just attending, I kept, I came back the very next Friday and people were like why isn't she singing? We never said anything. We're like I'm just taking a sabbatical, like that's what my answer would be I'm just taking a sabbatical.
Speaker 5:Like they didn't know, didn't need to know my business or whatever.
Speaker 5:So I would stand in the back during worship because the the signing, because it started out of a desire to have a more expressive worship, like when I'm interpreting worship, I'm not interpreting, I just I don't look at the deaf, that's me and daddy, god time and that's just me, like you know, whatever, and I'm still like that. So even if I'm not interpreting or if I'm not up singing, you'll often sometimes find me in my pew or wherever I'm at, or if it's somewhere like Celebrate Recovery, I'll go to the back so I'm not disturbing anybody. And I'm you. If it's somewhere like Celebrate Recovery, I'll go to the back, so I'm not disturbing anybody and I'm signing during worship, not even singing, and so that's what I started doing at this CR in the back, and we were a small little room so I would do worship and then I would listen to the lessons just before, because you're going to be coming here next month.
Speaker 2:We're in a small little room and when we do our worship I do not want you worshiping in the back, I want you up front with me. I'll be on one side, you be on the other. We'll be weird together.
Speaker 1:We literally have the beginning of our service. We literally tell people there's freedom in how you worship.
Speaker 5:Amen.
Speaker 1:Worship is between you and God.
Speaker 5:We need more churches like that.
Speaker 1:If you want to run dance jump, it's between you and God. We literally have that as our opening statements.
Speaker 5:That is awesome. We need more churches like that just free worship.
Speaker 1:One of our things is if we're getting ready to come into a great time of worship. We want you to know there's freedom in worship.
Speaker 5:It's between you and God, if you want to run, dance, jump, go right ahead.
Speaker 1:Man, it's between you and God.
Speaker 2:Well, you guys all heard it first that Rowdy said that I could come up front and I could sign Praise be, man Get it I have a really good friend that literally last year we were over at the summit and he felt like God told him that one day he would be signing for people that needed it, Because where our seat was, we were literally seated right by the lady.
Speaker 5:Put a pin in that, and don't let me forget to tell you my story of Summit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will, I will, I totally will. Yeah, but it's just crazy.
Speaker 5:Don't let me forget to tell you my story of what happened at Summit. That's related to what you just said.
Speaker 2:Okay, nice, all right.
Speaker 4:Well, just tell us now.
Speaker 5:Well, hold on a minute, yeah, so I start working the program which eventually um led to me going through my first step study almost a year after I started going, because I couldn't get good I couldn't get into like the first one, yeah, um sometimes they don't need to be in the first one no, I mean, I admire people, that start coming to cr and then one opens up and they jump right in and like that's awesome and I'm sure God blesses that.
Speaker 5:But yeah, I do. I think too that sometimes it's better for you to actually just be there at the program.
Speaker 1:I think my introduction to CR was a step step.
Speaker 5:Hello.
Speaker 4:A lot of people Guess what you're doing.
Speaker 5:That is yeah but um yes, I was bro I went through my first step, study and um we didn't make it past the step four the whole group fell apart after step four and the whole group.
Speaker 2:The leader called me like happened so much, though, more so in the men's groups, because, like satan, attacks y'all I think, there's it's scary when you have to open up really quick, really quick um, because I just said this, recently I got to go with um.
Speaker 5:I'm part of this amazing group that does like worship and prayer and like street ministry and we had the opportunity you were talking about Teen Challenge down in Phoenix. We had the opportunity. I don't think it was last Wednesday, it might have been two weeks ago now. We our leader got invited to bring a team of us to their Wednesday night service to do the altar time, and it was so amazing.
Speaker 2:You'll never experience something so powerful when you experience these men worshiping God and just broken.
Speaker 5:And that's what I was talking about when we were on our way back because I rode with them. So we were talking about it on our way back and I've said this in Celebrate Recovery too, on the testimony nights. When it's men, I love anybody that has a testimony because testimonies are so powerful, celebrate Recovery and women can be very powerful, but for me personally, I am so much more blessed when it's the men, because God created you guys. It's the men.
Speaker 5:Yeah, because God created you guys to be the heads. He created you to be the protectors, the whatever and like we were talking about on the truck on the way back from Teen Challenge. American society and even even worse in some other societies, like I think about Japan and China and places like that Boys are raised to basically be I'm a big Trekkie people. Spoiler alert here you're basically raised to be Vulcans. You really are.
Speaker 5:You're raised to say, well, emotions are weak they're sissified, like I don't care how you feel you stuff it, you don't show it, you're macho, you're whatever. And so you go through an entire childhood of being reared like that, experiencing your traumas, whatever you stuff it, you stick it in the back of your mind, whatever. I almost feel like you guys have so much more to work through and overcome than women do, and I am not. Please, sisters, hear me, I am not negating, I am not minimalizing anything that we women have to go through. I'm not. Yeah, I hope you hear my heart on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but men, there's just a lot of stuff that guys haven't opened up to and you're conditioned we don't use our words and we don't know how to express our stuff. Girls will sit in the bathroom and talk for an hour. You're conditioned differently than we are and you're wired differently for that reason.
Speaker 5:But you take what God created and then it gets warped by the conditioning that men go through Mostly, with some exceptions. So for me it's so much more powerful when the men get up there and give their testimonies. And what was amazing at Teen Challenge that night was he the guy that was speaking. He finished the service and he opened up the altar right. He had two or three people come up at first, so we were all up there being prayed for. There was about seven or eight of them that stayed sitting in the pew. We're still an hour after the service. They're still sitting there. They did not want to leave the presence that was there.
Speaker 5:And I was sitting on the stage with the pastor, the preacher that had preached. I was sitting next to him because we were kind of wrapping up praying for some of the guys and I just looked at it and we started having this conversation. And I was like kind of wrapping up praying for some of the guys and I just looked at it and we started having this conversation and I was like that, right, there is what true hunger looks like. They don't even want to leave. They're not coming up to get prayed for, but they don't even want to leave because the presence was so amazing. But then, the three men that God allowed me to pray for, I was wrecked that night going home. Let me tell you I was wrecked that night going home. Let me tell you I was wrecked.
Speaker 5:It was just so awesome. So, um, bring that back to celebrate recovery and, like I said, like to hear the men's testimonies. Even the mini monies, um, it's just so much more powerful to me. I know it's not that way with everybody, but, um, it is for me. So, um, so I went through my first, finally went through my first step study, and, um, god dealt with all of the childhood.
Speaker 5:That's why he brought me to celebrate recovery he dealt with all of the stuff, that things I haven't even told you guys about, but, like all of the rejection and the abuse and the um, all of it, all the crap station the toxicity that I grew up in Um literally I think. I think I did half a notebook. I'm not even lying. I think, I did have a notebook because there was almost every single member of my family had their own page.
Speaker 2:Wow, I tell people when they're doing that that you're going to get out of this what you put into it. More work and time and effort and things that you put into your, the more you're healing and the more freedom you're going to find on the other end.
Speaker 5:Exactly Because it was. Almost every single member of my family had their own page. My father was on there. I'd already had some healing in 2004. Because we found out in 2001, my sister found out. She just, I don't know. She just had a desire to try to find the family and find him and she had gone on to like the social. I don't know what made her think of this, but she went on the social security website and that's how we found out that he had passed away. My father had. He was a wild, wild, free spirit, even when he was with my mom and we saw him again when I was 16. He finally allowed my mother to find him and he wanted to come down and meet us and she said no. But then she asked us and we're like yes, we have questions, you know. So he came, he came down to see us and if y'all remember, at 16, that was right when I was starting to walk with the Lord.
Speaker 5:So it was a very, very, a very tender time for me, and the Christian in me was like I'm ready, I want to hear what he has to say, Like I'm going to forgive him. Blah, blah, blah. And so I opened up my heart completely to my father.
Speaker 5:Oh man and you know he came down and he was like he had found God and he was so sorry for all these years and everything else. Wow, my mom had had like a private investigator for years trying to find him because, like child support and like all of this, stuff you know.
Speaker 5:And so he wound up being in Pennsylvania and she actually made me call the phone number. I'm like, why are you making me call? And some lady answered the phone and I told her who I was and she's like I've heard nothing but good things about you and your sister and I'm thinking from who you know.
Speaker 5:I didn't say this to her, but I was like thinking from who you know? I didn't say this to her, but I was like from who? Like this man hasn't been in my life since I was three years old. He doesn't know who I am like I don't know what she's heard, you know. So, um, we, I gave her the information and that's how he, you know, he contacted and he found us and he comes down and, uh, turned out that he had done what so many people do back then. You know, he was doing some drugs and stuff and he shared a needle and he contracted hiv. Oh, wow, yeah. So he didn't have full-blown aids at the time that he came to see us, um, but he was still sick. You know, he had hiv and he knew it and so he.
Speaker 5:I guess that was his way of trying to reconcile before the end um, so he stayed for a little bit and he was there long enough to even come to epcot because, remember, I grew up in florida and so, um, my, uh, my show choir that I was in my senior year I made it into. I was in concert choir but I was also in our little show choir. We got invited to sing at Epcot and so he came with us and he got to see me perform at Epcot and stuff which was a