S2 E12 The Crown and The Throne

She wrote the first book for the woman who was tired.

The woman who had done everything on her own, built everything herself, held everything together — and one day looked around and realized she had done it all without God's design and was running on empty. That was Cost of Her Crown.

And then she realized the story was only half told.

Because behind every exhausted woman who had to become everything... was a man who had stepped back from something.

In this dedicated book launch episode, Charlene Condu introduces The Cost of His Throne — the companion book that completes the picture. Starting in the Garden of Eden with the moment that changed everything — not Eve's action, but Adam's silence — Charlene traces the long, devastating, and ultimately redeemable story of what happens when men abandon their God-given role. And what it costs everyone when they do.

This episode is for the woman who wants to understand the man she loves. It is for the woman who is raising sons. It is for the woman who wants to hand both books to her husband and say — read this. Together. And yes — it is for the man who somehow finds himself listening.

Because the crown and the throne were always meant to work together.

Thanks for listening to Me Again, God with Charlene Condu.
If today connected with you, I’d love to hear your story.

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You’re not alone in this walk — we’re learning, growing, and coming back to God together, one episode at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Me Again God. I'm Charlene Kondu, your host. Okay, today's different. We've been through 10 episodes together this season. We've stood in front of the mirror. We've found our people. We've suited up for spiritual war. We've walked through the Lost Sheep series together. And I have been more vulnerable with you in these episodes than I've ever been with a public audience in my life. And today, I get to celebrate something. Today I want to talk to you about two books, my books. Actually three, but two in this series, my books, books that were born out of my life. Mistakes I've made, crossroads where I turned the wrong direction, moments God steered me and said, wait, look, there's something you need to understand. The first one you may already know, Cost of her crown. It was the book I didn't know I needed to write until I was already writing it. It surprised me. It came from a place I was not expecting. And it said things I didn't fully understand until I saw them on the page. The second one is the cost of his throne. It's the book that completes the story. Because after I finished her crown, I sat with it for a while and I kept feeling like something was missing. Like I had only told half of a two-sided story. Like I had looked at the wound without looking at where the wound came from. And then I went back to the beginning. The very beginning. Genesis, the garden. The moment that changed everything. And what I found there changed the way I see everything. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee. Let's dig in because today we're talking about the crown and the throne, where they came from, what they cost, and why the world desperately needs both of them back. Let me tell you about the woman I wrote Cost of her crown for. She's capable, incredibly capable. She has built things, managed things, held things together that probably should have fallen apart. She has worked jobs, sometimes multiple jobs to keep the lights on and the kids fed and the household running. She's made decisions alone that she was never supposed to make alone. She has been strong because there was no other option. And she is tired. Not just physically tired, though she is that too, soul tired. The kind of tired that a vacation doesn't fix. The kind that comes from carrying weight that was never designed to be carried by one person. The kind that accumulates when you've been told by culture, by circumstance, by silence from the people who should have been beside you that you have to do this yourself. I know her because I've been her. Here's the central question of cost of her crown. What happens when a woman follows culture instead of God's design? What's a cost? The real personal generational cost of a woman who was built for something beautiful and was redirected away from it by a world that told her the design was outdated. And let me be clear, because this gets misunderstood, this is not a book that says women should be small. It's not a book that says sit down, be quiet, let the men handle it. There is nothing small about the woman God designed. Nothing passive, nothing diminished. It's a book that says you were designed for something specific and sacred. And when culture convinced you to abandon that design and build something else in its place, there was a cost. And the cost was you, the real you, the you that God had in mind before anyone told you what you were supposed to be. The crown in the title is not decoration. In biblical context, a crown represents calling, purpose, the specific God-given identity that a woman carries. When a woman abandons God's design, when she trades her crown for a version of herself that culture designed for her, she pays for it. In exhaustion, in emptiness, in relationships that don't hold, and a mirror that shows her someone she doesn't recognize. That is the cost of her crown. I think about the women who have found this book and reached out to me. Women who said, I don't know anyone else who felt this. Women who said, I thought something was wrong with me for being this tired. Women who said, I built everything, and I don't know why it still feels like something is missing. Something is missing. And it's not mere achievement, it's not more hustle, it's not a better strategy or a smarter approach. It is God's design. Reclaimed, lived out, worn like the crown it actually is. That is what Cost of her crown is about. And I wrote it for you and for me and for every woman who has been running so hard in the wrong direction for so long that she forgot there was a different way. After Cost of her crown was done, I did what most writers do, I let it breathe. And one of the things I kept hearing from women, from conversations, from my own observations was a question that nobody was quite asking out loud, but that hung over everything. But where are the men? Because here's the thing about a woman who had to become everything, there's almost always a story about why. There's almost always a man who stepped back, a father who was absent, a husband who disengaged, a culture that told men their leadership wasn't needed, or worse, that it was dangerous, and men who believed it. I'm not saying this to throw stones at men. I want to be very, very clear about that. I'm saying this because I went back to the word and I found something that stopped me cold. It started in the garden. We know the story. Eve takes the fruit. Eve eats it. Eve gives it to Adam. And we have spent centuries, literally centuries, focusing on Eve's action as a source of the fall. But I want you to go back and read Genesis 3 very carefully. Eve is deceived by the serpent. She's targeted, she's lied to, and she falls for it. But Adam, Genesis 3 6 says, She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Who was with her? Adam was there, standing right there. He heard the whole conversation. He watched the serpent twist the word of God. He stood in silence while his wife was deceived, and then he ate. He didn't speak, he did not protect, he did not lead, he did not say, wait, that is not what God said. He was present and passive. He was with her and silent. And that silence, that one moment of avoiding leadership sent a crack through everything, through every family, through every marriage, through every generation that followed. That is where the cost of his throne begins in the garden with the silence. The central thesis of the cost of his throne is this the breakdown we see in families, in culture, and the confusion of this generation. It did not begin with women stepping up. It began with men stepping back. Now I want to be careful here. This book is not a blame book. It's not a pile on. Men have been beaten up enough by culture that told them everything about their God-given nature was toxic and dangerous and unwanted. That's not what this book is. This book is a call, a loving, urgent, biblically grounded call for men to come back to something that was always theirs. Something that was designed into them before the fall, and that the fall distorted, but that redemption can restore. The throne in the title is not about dominance. I want to say that clearly. And when that is missing, when men are absent, passive, disengaged, are so beaten down by a culture that told them their strength was toxic that they stopped offering it, the cost lands on everyone. It lands on the wife who had to become everything because there was no one standing beside her. It lands on the sons who had no model for what a godly man looks like and are now grown and lost and trying to figure out how to be men in a world that has been actively working against them. It lands on the daughters who never had a father show them what it looks like to be valued and protected and cherished. And so they go looking for it in all the wrong places. It lands on the family, on the culture, on the generation that is drowning right now in confusion about who they are and what they're for. The absence of a man in his God-given role is not a neutral thing. It never was. It costs everyone around him, and it costs him most of all. That is the cost of his throne. Here's what I want you to understand about these two books together, because this is the part that I find most exciting and most important. Cost of her crown and the cost of his throne are not two separate stories. They are two halves of one story. And that story is this. When God designed humanity, he designed partnership. He designed a man and a woman to stand together, each carrying their God-given role, each functioning in a way that complemented and completed the other. The crown and the throne were never meant to compete. They were designed to work together. But here's what happened. Culture got in the middle. Culture told women the crown was a cage. Culture told men the throne was toxic. And both of them believed it. Well, not all at once, not consciously, but gradually. And they laid down the very things that were supposed to be their strength. And when she laid down her crown and he abandoned his throne, they both ended up carrying things they were never designed to carry alone. She carried his responsibilities and hers. He carried shame and confusion and a creeping sense that he had no real purpose. And the family, the children, the culture, the generation paid the price. That is the wound that both books are trying to heal. Her crown says to the woman, You were designed for something beautiful. Pick it back up. Not because it's easy, not because it means being small, but because it's yours and the world needs it. His throne says to the man, you were designed for something costly and sacred. Come back to it. Not dominance, not control, servant leadership, the kind that costs something, the kind that Adam forfeited in the garden and that Jesus modeled on the cross. And when both of those things happen, when she reclaims her crown and he steps back into the throne, something incredible becomes possible. That is the third book. The legacy. But that's a conversation for another day. Today I want to put these two books in your hands and your heart. But let me speak directly to a few specific people right now because I want you to know if these books are for you, if you are the woman who is tired, tired in the specific way that comes from carrying everything alone for too long, cost of her crown is for you. It will name what you've been living and give you language for the exhaustion you haven't been able to explain. And then it will show you the way back to something that is actually sustainable, actually life-giving. Actually yours. If you're the woman who loves a man who has stepped back, a husband who has disengaged, a son who is lost, a father who was never present, the cost of his throne will give you understanding, not excuses for him, understanding. You will see where it started. You will understand the forces that have been working against him. And you might find yourself handing him this book with fresh compassion instead of old frustration. If you're raising sons, this is critical. If you have boys in your home who are going to become men, the cost of his throne gives you a roadmap for what you're trying to build in them. It gives you language for the conversations you need to have. It gives you a biblical picture of manhood to hold up for them in a culture that is actively tearing that picture down. If you have a husband, a father, a brother, a son who is willing to read, give them the cost of his throne. Let it do what direct conversation sometimes cannot. Let them see themselves in Adam's silence and in the redemption that is possible beyond it. Let it call them back to something they were always designed for. And if you're a man, somehow, some way you found this podcast and you're still listening. I see you. This book is for you. Not to condemn you, to call you. There's a throne with your name on it, and the people who love you are waiting for you to sit in it. I want to give you a taste of each book, not a sales pitch, a real taste. The kind where you know exactly what you're getting and whether it's for you. From cost of her crown. This is the heart of it. You were told that independence was the goal, that needing anyone, especially needing a man, was weakness, that the strongest version of a woman was the one who needed nothing. And so we built, we built careers and households and families and lives. And we were strong, genuinely strong. Nobody can take that from us. But somewhere in the building, something got buried. Something that was never supposed to be optional. Something that God put in us at the beginning that does not thrive in isolation that was designed for partnership, for purpose, for a specific and sacred role that culture told us was beneath us. We paid for believing that lie. We're still paying. And the cost was never just ours. From the cost of his throne, the opening premise. Adam was there. That is the detail that changed everything for me. Three words in Genesis 3:6 that rewrote the story I thought I knew. The serpent didn't approach Adam. He went to Eve. And Adam was present, aware, equipped with every word God had spoken, and stood in silence. He did not lie. He did not act. He simply did not lead. And in that silence, in that single moment of abandoned responsibility, the crack began. The crack that ran through every marriage, every family, every generation that followed, the crack we are still trying to repair. This book is about that crack, where it started, how deep it goes, and what it looks like when a man decides finally, at whatever cost, to pick up the weight he was always designed to carry. That is what you are getting when you pick up these books. That is a conversation they are trying to start in your home, in your marriage, in your understanding of why things are the way they are and what God designed them to be instead. I did not write these books because I had everything all figured out. I wrote them because I didn't and I needed to understand. I wrote them the same way I record this podcast, not from above you, but beside you, learning out loud, asking hard questions, going to the word when I didn't have answers, and finding out that God always does. If you read Cost of her crown and felt seen, thank you, truly. You have no idea what it means to know that something born from the hardest seasons of my life found its way to someone who needed it. And if you've been waiting for the companion piece, the other side of the story, the cost of his throne is here. Read them together. Give them to people in your life who need them. Start the conversation in your home that these books are trying to start because I believe the conversation about what God designed, what it costs to abandon that design, and what becomes possible when we become when we come back to it is one of the most important conversations happening in Christian homes right now. And there's a third book coming The Legacy. When the crown meets a throne and they stop competing and start completing each other. That story is being written, and I cannot wait to put it in your hands. But until then, pick up the first two. Read them, pray over them, let them do what I believe God intended them to do. You can go online to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and look for the titles, or just look up my name, Charlene Condu. Also, please know this is a message that someone needs to hear. The only way to do that is to share my podcast. Click on follow so you don't miss an episode. Download episodes to speak to you about another woman in your life that could use the message to hear. The more you share episodes, the more download signifies the algorithms to spread. Help me spread the word. Thank you for spending time with me today. Until next time.