Latest / The Redeemed Backslider / Rejected, Abandoned, but Embraced By God: Diane Thompson #TRB Season 2 Episode 46

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Rejected, Abandoned, but Embraced By God: Diane Thompson #TRB Season 2 Episode 46 · The Redeemed Backslider

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Many of you know about our Unshackled conference that's taking place March 6th, 7th, and 8th.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: But what you might not know is that we have added an extra service to Saturday at 10 a.m.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: to feature Ben Bland.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't know who Ben Bland is, I highly recommend that you look him up on YouTube or Facebook.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: You will be blessed.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: And also coming is going to be Sherry Moran Haney, her and her husband pastor in Stockton, California.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: But Sherry sings a song that has been my testimony for a long, long time.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And she's so gracious to come down and sing that song and some other songs Friday night.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe she'll be here Saturday morning as well.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Brother Nick Mahaney has an incredible testimony, and he will be ministering in each of our evening services and then on Sunday morning.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Brother Mahaney was raised in the pews of a church, and by the time he was 15 years old, he was a full-blown alcoholic.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And by the time he was in his early twenties, he was worshiping Satan and conjuring up demons.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now we don't hear that story very often about kids that grew up in church.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: And his dad found him on his deathbed and took him to rehab, and God miraculously delivered him.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And Brother Mahaney has an amazing ministry of deliverance now because of where he's been in life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And Ben Bland was molested sexually by somebody in the church.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he lived as a girl almost his whole life up until five years ago.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he was a drag queen and he was all the way out into the LGBTQ community.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's also a story that we're starting to hear more and more of about how God is just calling his children home.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we hope that you will make plans to be here.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if you haven't already made plans, please mark your calendars for March 6th, 7th, and 8th.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: We look forward to having you here.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: This episode has been sponsored by my friend and dentist, Dr.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Craig Sedillo at Smile Vicelia.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you're looking for a dentist, you won't find a better one in Tularie County.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: He specializes in all your dentistry needs, plus cosmetic dentistry and ortho.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: His phone number is 559-734-7035.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: If you call him, please tell him that Kathy from the Redeemed Backslider Podcast sent you.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: With your host, Kathy Chastain, Christian-based psychotherapist in the Redeemed Backslider.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Kathy Chastain.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a Christian-based psychotherapist and a redeemed backslider.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: With me in the studio today is my friend Diane Thompson.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: She has 23 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: She has been a drug and alcohol counselor for the last 14 years.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're going to hear her story of how God has saved her from a pretty rough and difficult past.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Not everyone on the show is going to be a redeemed backslider.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, many of them will be.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: So speak up, okay?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, hello.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hi.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because we're everyone out there is gonna be listening closely.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's super nerve-wracking.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I don't know much about your story, but the little that you've shared um is something we hear in the news all the time.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think I don't think the average person ever has the opportunity to hear a firsthand account um of what has happened in your life.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: So um if you want to just start at the beginning of what you remember as a child and go from there.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, so what I remember um from my childhood is um I I was raised by my mom for many years.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_06: Single parents.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_06: My mom was a single parent uh with severe mental health problems.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_06: Um, of course, growing up, I didn't know that that was what was going on.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_06: It was just um a lot of trauma and a lot of abuse back then.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um she um and before like I talk about all of this, I just want you to know that um God has made a way for me to be able to love my mom and understand her side of the story.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um kind of after she passed away, you know, God um healed my heart by showing me some things um about about her life that I didn't know about, you know, um, and that I didn't really understand.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think he is so good to do that for us because um I think that's part of the restoration process, the healing process when God steps into a life.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, all the people that we would have blamed before, right?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't blame them anymore.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: We actually gain compassion, forgiveness, and love, like you said.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that is also very miraculous.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: I find myself saying miraculous a lot, but when somebody has been a victim like you have been, it's really, really hard to forgive um abusers.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and so the fact that you can sit here today and say that I think is nothing short of a miracle and the the true work of of the Lord in our lives.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_06: And and it's it's kind of funny because the the moment that I realized that God was doing that, I was actually standing in church on a Mother's Day.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_06: And um usually Mother's Day would be a time when I would either think about my foster mom Dorothy, who I love dearly, still love her to this day, uh although um she did pass away, you know, many years ago.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_06: But um so I would think about her and really not think about my biological mom, my mom that I was with until I was about 13 years old, you know.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_06: And um, but I was sitting in church and and God just kind of showed me how I had all these different people in the church, you know, um, Sister Diana Philpot, um, Sister Amy Ramos, um, Sister Grogan.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_06: Um sorry, I do get emotional.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna count.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_06: I will try to keep it together.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, they're just all of these different women, you know, that um I had been around for a few years, you know, that um I learned different things from them, you know, um how to appreciate being a grandma.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_06: I learned that from Sister Phyllis Miller, you know, and just different things like that.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_06: And um, but on a Mother's Day, I got up and I started thanking all of these women for their influence in my life, you know, and um, or since I had started coming to church.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_06: And then it just really hit me there standing there doing that.
• 8:37
  unknown: I'm a mess.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I just said, you know, and I love my mom.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_06: I do love my mom.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um the thing is, is that I'm where I am today because there were services available.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_06: There were people like you, you know, that were available to talk to.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas in the 60s, there wasn't there was none of that, you know, there were no services available for people to be able to reach out.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_06: Alcoholism was dealt with a medication that made people even worse, you know, than they were to begin with.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_06: And, you know, and there was a stigma of even asking for help for alcoholism, you know, people could lose their jobs, people could lose their children, you know.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_06: It wasn't until 1978 that they came out with the law that said, no, no, no, if people ask for help, you can't take their kids, you know.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_06: They they have a right to ask for help.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_06: There's confidentiality and asking for help, you know.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_06: That didn't come about until I was 10 years old, yeah, you know, so it's not like she had a choice in in what was going on in her life, you know, and so um, and the things that happened to her even as a child, you know, she didn't have a choice in that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_06: And so God just kind of showed me a way to see things through her eyes.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_06: And then my heart started healing.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_06: And um, but for many, many years I was angry.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_06: I I carried a lot of anger.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_06: I was even thinking about this the other day, and in you know, in the thought of coming here and doing this.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_06: I spent over 40 years of my life contemplating suicide, trying to figure out how I could just end my life.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't want to live, you know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_06: That's a long time to feel that way.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_06: I remember I I would say I was probably about nine years old, the first time I actually tried to do something to die.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um I mean, I was a kid, and I I see it all the time though, and kids it just people think, you know, oh, they're they're adolescents, they're not thinking about suicide, but adolescent suicide is on the rise and kids are thinking about it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've had a four-year-old think about it without the conscious really idea of knowing what it was, other than that's what they're drawing in the pictures, you know.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's right.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Kids are very, very affected by suicidal ideation.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_06: And and I can honestly say that if I you know, it the thing that I did to try to hurt myself, it was a it was the way a child thinks, you know, shampoo burns your eyes, right?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_06: So in my mind, I thought drinking shampoo would end my life, you know, and so that's what I did, you know.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_06: I drank some shampoo, made myself very sick to my stomach, but you know, just different things like that, you know, throughout the years.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and then somewhere along the line, it just you know, hanging out with my cousin, I started smoking marijuana.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um can we back up a little bit to your childhood?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, ma'am.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you started to talk about your your childhood with your mom, yeah, and then said that you'd forgiven her.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: So tell tell us about your childhood at home with you and your sister.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: You said you're raised by a single parent.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so my mom raised us.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_06: Um my mom um my mom favored my sister.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: Was she older or younger?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_06: She's ten and a half months older than me.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_06: So so we're right about the same age, you know.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_06: And you guys are biological sisters?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we have the same mom but different dads.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: So your mom was pregnant like almost as soon as as uh she's older, you said?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as she was delivered, your mom got pregnant with you right away.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, and the family story goes that while my dad was away um in Germany during the Vietnam War, um, that my mom had an affair, got pregnant, had my sister, my dad came back, didn't know my mom had had a baby, showed up at my grandma's house, saw a baby laying on the couch, asked whose kid is that?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_06: It was my mom's.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_06: They got in a fight.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_06: And uh by that time he had already spent, you know, just enough days with my mom for her to end up pregnant by with me.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_06: And then um, and then there was a lot of resentment in her heart over that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_06: Um towards you, yeah.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_06: Well, towards him, but took it out on you.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_06: Um he uh left her for my aunt and um, you know, had an affair with my aunt and then um and then ended up leaving her, you know, staying away from the whole family, but was really good friends with my uncle.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_06: Um my uncle died when I was nine years old.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_06: He was my favorite uncle.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_06: He he did what he could to protect any of us kids, you know, in the family.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_06: But even then there was abuse, you know, um, things going on in the family.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_06: Um it just seemed like I I learned at a really young age, and this is gonna sound really kind of wild, but I learned at a really young age that men could basically do whatever they wanted to me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_06: You know, they they could touch me however they wanted to.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_06: There was no consequences, nobody cared.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_06: Sometimes it seemed as if these things were happening right in front of people that should have been like, hey, what's going on?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but it was so normal.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_06: It was, it was, it just seemed normal to have these things happening.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_06: I remember I went to spend the night at a friend's house as a kid, and um she went to take a shower before bed, and I thought it was weird that her dad didn't go in the bathroom, you know.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_06: It was just so weird.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_06: And then, you know, we're her mom had made like cookies or something, and and we're sitting in the living room, you know, watching TV.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_06: And I I looked at her and I said, I'm sorry that your daddy doesn't love you, you know.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_06: And um she was like, What are you talking about?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, Well, because you know, he didn't like go in the bathroom with you.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_06: And then I became the weird kid at school, you know, and I started getting bullied at school and stuff like that.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_06: But that was I mean, I thought that that was normal for for people to just do that kind of thing, you know.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_06: And so what was your earliest memory of being abused?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have you thought of that?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_06: So um I was thinking about that over this last couple of weeks, you know, and trying to really um remember and the my earliest memory of something like that happening um to me.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_06: Now I had seen things like this happen to my sister, and that's a whole nother thing that I don't uh I I don't want to share her side of it, you know.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but I do know that as a child witnessing something happen to somebody that you love is very traumatic in in that in itself.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_06: And I think that even to this day that that um trauma has affected my relationship with my sister because we don't have a relationship.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_06: And I think that's a bit of self-preservation, to be honest with you.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_06: And so um, but my earliest memory of somebody touching me inappropriately, um well, I was actually at my grandma's house and her neighbor picked me up and put me on his shoulders to give me a piggyback ride because I was just a little kid, you know.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_06: Like three, four, five, do you know?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_06: Probably younger than that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and I remember him touching that part of my body, you know, and and and in thinking about it, it's like my grandma standing right there in front of him.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_06: How does she not know that this person is doing this, you know?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_06: And um, but then again, it it was not an awkward thing, you know.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it made me feel ugly inside.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_06: I remember, you know, I mean feeling, you know, um awkward.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know how to explain it, just feeling weird that I did not like that he was doing that, and I immediately wanted to get off of his shoulders.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and my grandma was like, no, he's giving you a piggyback ride, it's okay.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_06: But I I I have to, from my own peace of mind, believe that she didn't realize that that's what was going on, you know, and then um but my grandma and my mom fought for custody of me over and over again throughout my life, and um, there were times when my mom had custody of me, um, and she was uh she was a truck driver, she trafficked drugs and people, um, and so I spent a lot of time in Mexico as a child.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_06: Incidentally, I became bilingual in Spanish as a result of that.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Was your mom Hispanic or Caucasian?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_06: She was Caucasian, but she had uh an altered personality where she um she come dressed completely like she was a Hispanic woman.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_06: She wore black wigs, dark eyeshadow, black eyelashes, um, black eyeliner, like Diane.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Do you look at that?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I know you have you know uh fair amount about mental health with the background that you've had.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um you use the term altered personality.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So do you do you think your mom had dissociative identity disorder?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you think she was playing a role in order to traffic people and not be noticed?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_06: Probably both.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_06: Probably a little bit.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_06: I would have to say a little bit of both.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_06: It might have started out as a survival skill, but as time went on and the drugs went on and everything, I think it it manifested into um, you know, into a full-blown uh ID.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: How did you come to know that your mom trafficked people and drugs?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it how do you have any idea how she would have gotten into such a job?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_06: So I have no idea how she got into that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_06: I just know that um there was a time when um, and I and I have vague memories of these things, but there was a time when she was trying to cross the border and um she got arrested, and we spent um seven days in jail in the Mexican jail.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_06: You as well with her?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I was a kid.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_06: Me and my my sister and I were there.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: How old were you, do you think, at that time?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I would say probably about five years old.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's so young.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And by five years old, you've already had a ton of experiences.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you were very alert already.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: As a five-year-old, versus when you think about our grandchildren, my grandchildren's not even my grandchild's not even three, and uh, you know, I can't imagine he's so naive and innocent, you know, that at five for you to have all of these experiences already.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and our memory is associated um with emotion.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: So traumatic emotion really sears in our memory.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so at five, you do seven days in the Mexican gel with your sister and your mom.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_06: And so um I don't remember exactly how all of that um was resolved, other than the fact that we ended up back in Crescent City with my grandmother, my sister and I.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_06: Um and um and then we were back with my mom and there was a time when um we were getting ready to cross the border again and she got freaked out and so instead of crossing with my sister and I because the thing that the thing that got their attention the first time was this blonde-haired blue-eyed little girl that didn't speak a lick of English and that was me and I had dropped my glasses um out the window of the car and um or out the window of the truck and it was just there was a bit of a scene and then they wanted to know why this dark haired woman because again she had dyed her hair black and she looked completely not like you at all not like me at all.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_06: What are you doing with this kid?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah and where are you going and what's going on and um so uh the next time that she tried to cross and I guess she got nervous or whatever she decided she was going to leave my sister and I in Mexico and she left us.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_06: Now this is a story that I was told by my grand by my grandmother and other family members, you know um it's not necessarily something that I remember exactly but I have vague memories here and there but um that she left us standing on the street corner in Mexico and um that this lady came and got us this lady named Teresa came and got us Doña Terre came and found us she didn't know us she just knew that we were these two little white kids standing on a street corner in Mexico and um she took us in and had us with her I had a coat on I have a picture at home of me in a brown coat.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_06: I remember the brown coat um but apparently my grandma had sewn her phone number into the inside of the coat and um the whole time we're at this lady's house I would not take off this coat.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_06: And then there was a day when she um she had made tortillas with sour cream fresh homemade tortillas and put crema on them you know and I'm sitting there eating and I got crema on my jacket I got sour cream on my jacket and she convinced me to take off my coat so that she could wash it and that's when she found the phone number and um she called Crescent City called the number and my uncle answered the phone and he didn't understand Spanish at all he just knew Diana and Tammy and TJ in Tijuana and so him and his biker friends went to Tijuana with pictures of me and my sister and went looking for us and found us and um then he came back to the United States brought us back my sister and I back to the United States to my grandma's house and um then he found my mom and hurt her she spent some time in the hospital a lot of time in the hospital and he went to jail for some time and just that kind of thing you know and this was your mom's brother your uncle yes my mom's favorite brother actually yeah yeah yeah so um went to school didn't know English my teacher the teachers did not believe that I didn't know English so where did the was your mom um bilingual was she Spanish speaking where did you learn all the Spanish to not have any English?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_06: To honestly I I don't know all of that I mean because I just remember you know there was a time that my sister and I traded a pair of shoes to be able to go to school in Mexico and we had one pair of shoes and she wore them one day and I wore them the next day and then it got to a point where they just let her go and I didn't get to go but I would go and I would sit outside the fence and I would watch them do their marching and all of that that they do over there, you know.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_06: And um I I can't really say like how or when was the moment that I really started um learning Spanish other than a memory that I have that's kind of it's kind of uh it's a really not great memory of um something happening to my sister uh and she was crying and I thought she was crying because of what this person was saying to her.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_06: I was too little to understand that she was crying because of what was happening to her.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_06: But I thought it was because of what he was saying and I didn't understand what he was saying.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_06: So I ran out of the house and I ran down the street and I remember being barefoot and running down a dirt street and ending up in a store and I grabbed a pack of cookies and I threw them on the counter and I screamed at the top of my lungs cookies and the guy said something to me that I didn't understand and I yelled at him again cookies and he said no mija galletas and I yelled at him again and then he grabbed the cookies and he pushed them towards me and he said galletas and I remember that being the first word that I learned to speak in Spanish and it was because of I needed to know what these people were saying that was making my sister cry.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_06: Because I didn't understand that that's not why she was crying.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_06: You know um I used to think that was a nightmare um that I had had but it kept happening over and over again and there was so much vivid detail in it that I asked my sister about it and she told me that it wasn't a dream that it really did happen.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah that's that's kind of how that goes but it's it's strange to me to to think about those things because I look at being able to speak Spanish now is a blessing.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_06: It's yeah something that God it's a traumatic thing that happened in my life that God said you know the enemy whatever the enemy means for evil God will intend it for good.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_06: Right and um so now I get to help people you know um turn their lives around and I get to share information with them about recovery and you know an addiction and how to walk out of that nightmare and and I get to do it in inglés in espanol you know so yeah yeah when do you remember learning English?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_06: Um actually kindergarten kindergarten when we came back and we were at my grandma's uh kindergarten first grade um my teacher's name was Mrs Fry so one year I had Mrs.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_06: Fry and the next year I had had Mrs.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_06: Day I just thought that was funny as a kid but uh when you came back then did you stay you didn't have to go back and forth to Mexico after that um yeah so we didn't we didn't have to go back and forth to Mexico but we did go back and forth with my mom and truck uh in um no I mean as far as like from my grandma's to my mom and then eventually my mom ended up getting custody of us you know and um but yeah I didn't know English and the teachers didn't believe that I didn't know English and so they they hit me with a ruler and I cussed them out then they asked my sister what I had said and she told them and then I got and then I really got in trouble.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: So but yeah so I um I um what was the question you asked me I'm sorry so Diane you you said um I know obviously through what you've said so far that that there was sexual abuse yes from a very very early age you had mentioned before being trafficked so once you got back into the United States from being left in Mexico what did the rest of your adolescence look like with your mom so with my mom it was um we lived in Fresno and um I just I I don't remember exactly the age that that my sister and I were I just remember that my sister was my mom's favorite and I hated her for that I I idolized my mom.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_06: I thought she was brave I thought she was you know beautiful and um it's on one hand I I was terrified of her and on the other hand I wanted to be her you know and I wanted her to love me more than anything in the world I wanted her to love me and I wanted her to love me the way she loved my sister and it seemed like no matter what I did whether I got good grades and I did get good grades a lot most of my life I got good grades um but um it seemed like no matter what I did I was not good enough I was never good enough you know I could never be that um that person to her it was always my sister.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_06: And what do you attribute that to do you think that's due to the resentment that your dad left her or do you think there's some other reason why she favored your sister yeah I think that uh looking back at everything and and different different things that I saw growing up that I didn't understand then I think it was because my sister was more easily manipulated.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_06: My sister was somebody that would do what she's told and not tell anybody and I was I was a teller.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah and yeah I would always try to get help and try to talk to people and try to say hey this is happening and you know and I would always tell my grandma everything everything my grandma was my my grandma was my hero you know and I loved being with her um yeah I being at grandma's house always felt safe to me other than that one incident with her neighbor it always felt safe to me you know and then um when I was a preteen I uh a family member did something very horrible to me um and um up to that point I thought I was a virgin I I I I well let me put it this way living in a hum Hispanic community right the Hispanic culture being a virgin is like the most desired that's the most important thing to be when you get married for a girl to save yourself for marriage and I had decided early on that I was going to do that I was I was gonna save myself for marriage and um but then realizing you know at some point realizing that well these people have already done all this stuff to me I I didn't think that I was a virgin you know um until the moment when um I got raped and then I realized in that moment I realized I was a virgin um and uh because that had never that had never happened to me before and so um it was uh it was it was you know somebody that I trusted how old were you um about 12 years old and um I ended up uh it's kind of cutting to the chase I ended up telling my aunt and uh my aunt convinced my mom to let me go live with my grandma or let me not go live with her but let me go visit her.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_06: My sister had gotten pregnant and at a very young age and had already left home and so it was um kind of in between when that happened to me and this conversation with my aunt you know my sister had found out she was pregnant and she left home and um my aunt told my mom to let me go visit my grandma and the day that they put me on the train my mom gave me a hug which was really rare and um she begged me to come back and then my aunt gave me a hug and whispered in my ear if you want to live don't ever come back to this place and um so I went to go live with my grandma and then um I thought I was gonna finally get to be able to be a kid finally get to be able to allow to do what other kids get to do you know um I wanted more than anything in the world to be a cheerleader.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_06: I thought that was just the coolest thing ever.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_06: Every little public school kid's dream right yeah especially if you're little blonde haired blue-eyed kid you know girl that's that's what all the other little blonde haired blue eyed girls were doing they got to be cheerleaders or girl scouts or and I that's all I wanted to do you know and um so I had uh I had asked my grandma if I could do that and she said that it costs a lot of money and I told her well if I if I fundraise if I do things and it doesn't cost any money can I do it and um she said yeah if it's not going to cost me anything I don't care and so my friends and I we did that we did bake sales and car washes and everything and we're able to save up enough money for five of us girls to go to cheer camp and get our uniforms and everything and then um the day that uh my grandma needed to sign the papers in order for me to go to cheer camp uh she told me I can't sign that it's against my religion because she was a Jehovah's Witness and incidentally that just became one more reason for me to hate God you know and um and then we had an argument and I told her my aunt was there by that time a different aunt was there and um it was I was in we were living in Orville California because that's where she was living when I went when I went to go visit her and she um she refused to sign the papers and I told her so you lied to me and she slapped me and she slapped me across the face and she had never hit me before and then she just looked at me and she said I cannot raise your mom twice and so um wow hurtful yeah and the next day I met my brother for the very first time he had been given up for adoption taken taken by the state him and my oldest sister had been taken from my mom uh by the state and so I had never got to meet him before um but I got to meet him and we spent the whole day walking around Orville and talking and then when we got back to my grandma's house she informed me that there was a social worker coming to pick me up and that they were putting me in foster care and my brother asked me uh to tell her no to let me stay he said I I just found you I don't want to lose you and I remember telling him I'm not gonna beg somebody to to keep me when they don't want me and um I went into foster care and uh that was no that was not fun yeah you know I went to five really bad foster homes there was physical abuse there was sexual abuse there were disabled children in one of the foster homes and they were being abused by the foster dad I am not surprised at all and um there was one foster home the that I went into that um there was a lady and her son and her son was a teenager and her son um kind of had this agreement with the teenage girls that when his mom went to work they traded sexual favors for privileges I didn't need privileges I wanted my cigarettes and I wanted my book let me read my book I was a bookworm I've always been a bookworm I got three bookshelves full of books at home it's like my safe place books and so I um you know I just went in my room and sat down with my with my book and he came in there and uh took my cigarettes away from me and I got up and said give them back to me and he wouldn't give them back to me.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_06: Then he grabbed my book and took it away from me and um told me to do something to get them back and I told him I'm not doing that and if you don't give them back to me I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell that all of this is going on.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_06: And then I got beat up by five girls and so I ran away from the foster home and uh was um went down to the liquor store the seven eleven down on the street corner and I called my grandma and I begged her to come and get me.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_06: My grandma didn't show up my social worker did my social worker showed up to pick me up what in the moment felt like the worst day of my life or one of the worst days of my life turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life she said I'm gonna take you to a place very far from here where nobody knows you and you don't know anybody and she said and it's very beautiful where I'm gonna take you and you're gonna meet a man and a woman that I think you're gonna like she said I just want you to go with an open mind and leave all this here so she drove me to Quincy California very pretty indeed very beautiful looks like a Christmas card yes and um I remember as a kid I'm gonna say this because this is important I remember as a kid telling God you know if you're real I really like my mom that loves me.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_06: And that day I met my mom.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_06: How old were you, Diane?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_06: I was um not quite fourteen.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_06: And I walked into Dorothy Prob's house.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_06: Dorothy and John Probst.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_06: I walked into their house.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_06: It was so chaotic that first day.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_06: There was teenage girls everywhere.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_06: My foster sister Brenda was, which I didn't know who she was, of course, on that very first day, but she was she was stomping around and yelling something about some boy at school.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_06: And my sister Jen was sitting at the piano and she was playing the piano.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_06: And my mom met us at the door and she said, Hi, my name's Dorothy.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_06: She said, You can call me Dorothy.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_06: She said, A lot of the girls call me mom, but you can call me whatever you want as long as you don't call me late for dinner.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_06: I'll never forget that as long as I live.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_06: And so I stayed there until I turned 18.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_06: And she changed my life.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_06: She absolutely changed my life.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_06: I got to, I didn't get into cheer, but I got to be on swim team.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_06: My dad was a drama teacher.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_06: And so I got to be in plays and help backstage.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_06: And I had a little brother named Mark, an older brother named Michael.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: That didn't try to abuse you.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody abused me in that house.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody abused me in that house.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, foster girls, you know, there was a bunch of us, and we got into fights sometimes, but there was no abuse in that house.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_06: Um there was a day when um when I was gonna turn uh 16 on my 16th birthday.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_06: I had before that I had saved some money to bring my biological mom there so we could do counseling.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_06: And um I saved all the money from my summer job.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_06: Bought a bus ticket, and she sent my sister.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Did she send her sister to come and live with you guys there or just to come there?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_06: She she sent my sister for the visit.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_06: And um there was a situation that happened at the home that day on my birthday when we were supposed to be celebrating my birthday.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_06: One of the other girls that was that really kind of liked to be the center of attention.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_06: She did this really kind of off the wall thing.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_06: And um and uh and I said that I said always gotta be the center of attention.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_06: And my sister slapped me in front of everybody.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_06: And I was just but up to that point I had not been hit, you know, for for a while, you know.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um and um, but anyway, you know, she ended up coming back to the count back to uh the San Joaquin Valley, and I stayed there.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_06: And um I graduated school there, I started college there.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_06: Um it's funny because years later, um I was I was doing something and I was like researching baby names, you know, and I looked up the name Dorothy, and it actually means a gift from God.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's always places in our lives where we can look back and see the people that God placed in our life at just the right time.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: To comfort us or speak a word to us or direct us.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: In your case, you had a window of time that you got to be a kid.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it sounds like.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_06: I got to be a kid.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_06: I got to know what it feels like to be loved.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_06: To be scolded and disciplined the right way.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_06: You know, because I was still a teenager and I still did dumb things, you know.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um were you always a truth teller?
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, did did getting in trouble for that make it worse for you?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, like, were you, I hate the word rebellious, but kind of like rebellious about it.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be more of a truth teller, you know.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: Or some people, when they know they get in trouble for that, they close up and they go in and they stop talking and they stop telling the truth because they learn I don't want to get in trouble for this.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_06: So I did for a long time not say the truth.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_06: I for a very long time um there were, it was hard to get people to understand the trauma that I had experienced in my life.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_06: It's almost like if you tell somebody, and I'm just gonna use this as an analogy, okay?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_06: If you tell somebody they held a gun to my head versus they they pulled the trigger and tried to shoot me, one of those is gonna sound more dramatic, dramatic and get that person's attention.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_06: And I know that um for the longest time that was the way that I tried to get people's attention to like, hey, dude, I need help.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_06: Like, this is not okay.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_06: Like, bad things are happening.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_06: I went to the school and I told them, you know, I tried to tell them one time when I was at my, you know, still with my biological mom, I tried to tell them, you know, what was going on that she had made arrangements when I was about 12 or 11, something like that.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_06: She had made arrangements for me to marry a grown man and he was gonna pay her, I don't know, some large sum of money.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I went to the school and told the school, and they called her to the school and asked her about it.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_06: And it's weird that then nobody questioned the fact that I didn't come to school for the next couple of days, and then when I came back, my arm was in a sling.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody seemed to care about that, you know.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_06: Right, right, and yeah, so I mean, there's just there were times when I tried to say things to people and and have them help me.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_06: I had a babysitter one time.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_06: My mom had actually broke a cast iron skillet across my back and left the imprint of the skillet on my back.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_06: And the babysitter called the police and they came out and they took pictures and the whole nine yards, and and um uh they found m my mom found out that the babysitter was the one that called the police and she hurt her bad, you know, beat her up very badly, you know.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_06: Was there consequences for that?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_06: For your mom.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_06: My mom?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for beating up the babysitter?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_06: No, yeah, there were never consequences.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_06: Never she never had any kind of consequences in that regard, you know.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_06: I now I think that the life that she was living came with its own consequences.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, you know.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: Was she always violent?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, that was yeah.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: After you moved away and lived with Dorothy, Diane, did you see your mom again?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so I had always carried this idea in my heart.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: You wanted her to love you.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_06: I want my mom to love me, and I'm the problem.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_06: And now I've come to this home and I've been around these great people, and I've you know, I learned how to dance, you know, which was really huge.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_06: That was my mom always went to dances, and you know, and before I left home, I could not dance, you know.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_06: And being in the foster home, my foster sister Tammy taught me how to dance.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_06: And um, so when I was 18 years old, I came back to the valley and stayed with my mom and met my first husband.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um, my mom's boyfriend, uh, not not the same person.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_06: Sorry, that was a little confusing, but my mom's boyfriend made a pass at me.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_06: And um, so she tried to stab me with a butcher knife.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: And what did that experience look like?
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, did she chase you or you did that?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_06: So we were in my sister's apartment, and there was um, they had some neighbor friends uh this that live close by, this girl named Mary and another lady named Janet.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_06: And um, my mom was arguing uh and Janet was trying to explain to her like that it wasn't my fault that he did that, like that's your daughter.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_06: And and she didn't care, and she she ran through the living room with the butcher knife in her hand, and I ran out the front door, and I had been talking to my um talking to this guy that I had met at a bar at a 18.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I met him at a dance, uh Hispanic dance, you know, and um at the rainbow ballroom.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_06: And so I um yeah, and so I called him on the phone and um he came and got me, and then I went to stay with him at his sister's house, and um and it just that's that's how that relationship started, you know?
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_06: And um we had nowhere to live.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_06: We were living in um, we ended up renting out a garage that was turned into like a little studio.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_06: I got pregnant with my first daughter.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_06: He was extremely abusive, very, a very jealous man, and uh very controlling.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_06: Um I at the time I thought I was in love with him, but looking back and going through all these years of therapy and mental health and everything, I understand that um he was he was a way out.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_06: In my mind, it was a way out, a way, another way to get away from my mom, you know.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for people, maybe not all trauma survivors, but but definitely they're more susceptible when you do meet a man who is controlling and jealous, they mistake it for love.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: It feels like they're trying to protect you, it feels like they love you a lot, and so there's some convolution going on there, and many people end up getting into abusive relationships for that reason is um because they mistake it for love.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_06: And, you know, he again, you know, looking at where people come from and and being able to heal, God healing me.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_06: I the way that God has healed me over the years is by allowing me to see things through other people's eyes.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: Perspective.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_06: Perspective, yeah, absolutely.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_06: And so he had his own life of trauma and abuse and witnessing things in his life and his, you know, being raised with the mom.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_06: My mother-in-law had over 20 kids, you know, in in Mexico.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_06: Oh my goodness, yeah.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, and so um that many kids just breeds neglect, just just for the sake of you know, one person.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can't, you know, someone's gonna get left out with that many kids.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_06: They all kind of they all kind of took care of each other.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_06: I will say this my mother-in-law was um, she was my other mom.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, good.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_06: She taught me how to cook.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_06: She loved me.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_06: I loved her.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_06: I love her to this day, even though she's passed on.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I I have very, very fond memories of her in my heart, you know.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_06: And um, yeah.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: Diane, when you when you look back and you said at nine years old you were thinking already about how to end your life.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: What was happening for you that by the time you're nine, the idea of dying sounds better than living?
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: Was it I mean, you suffered a a major parental rejection wound for sure.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Feeling totally unloved, that is enough to make anybody, you know, feel like that, I think, you know, but all the other abuse, but were you were you a thinker?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: Were you somebody that thought deeply about things?
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some people just live life through experience and the experience is over and they just keep moving forward and they don't sit and contemplate or sit and ponder, they just kind of move through life with experiences.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: Other people are very introspective, and and something can have deep, profound meaning, especially when they're a little kiddo and they're aware.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: So what would you because that's a really big concept for a nine-year-old to think about dying and not just dying, but coming up with an idea of how to take your life.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_06: So um, I just wanted it to stop.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_06: I want I wanted to stop being hurt, I wanted to stop being physically hurt, and I had this thought in my mind.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_06: I remember as a kid thinking, I'm gonna show her.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, mm-hmm.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna show her.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, by by hurting yourself.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_06: If I die, then she'll know.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, you would never know.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: If she was hurt or not.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: I know this sounds like a silly question, maybe an obvious or not obvious question, but do you remember crying a lot as a kid?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: And did those tears continue, or was there a point when you just stopped crying and you got hard?
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_06: So um I remember crying as a kid, and I I won't I want to share this this story with you real quick.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_06: Uh there was a day when my mom was getting ready for work, and I was probably third grade.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_06: And um I remember just watching her.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_06: She worked at the bar, you know, and she would just get so dressed up, so beautiful.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_06: I just thought she was just the most beautiful thing ever, you know.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_06: And um I was watching her get ready, and I said, Mom, I love you.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_06: I was sitting on our washing machine and I just I remember telling her, Mom, I love you.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_06: And she hit me.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_06: And um and when she hit me, I kind of fell, I fell off the washing machine, and you know, and um I I don't remember if it was my mouth or my nose, something started bleeding, and that just set her off even more, and she just started hitting me.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and she just kept hitting me.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_06: And I ended up laying on my going in in my room and laying on my bunk bed, and uh just feeling pain everywhere on my body.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_06: And I remember thinking, can this please just be over?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_06: Can it please just be over?
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_06: I like I said I love you, and you right, and this is what I get for something that's supposed to be.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_06: My sister tells you she loves you all the time, and it's all you know, but I say it, and so I'm laying there, and then this kind of weird out-of-body experience thing happened to me where I felt like I was kind of floating a little bit on my bed, where because laying there, even the the feel of the pillow on my face was hurting me, you know.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_06: My tears were stinging my face because my face was so badly bruised, and and then all of a sudden, just this kind of quietness happened, and I remember not really like a hearing a voice, but just this overwhelming feeling of this is not the life I have for you.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_06: And it was like I just said, Well, I I don't I don't want this.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_06: I like okay, like whatever that other life is, that's the one I want, you know.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_06: Like, okay, can that other one come now?
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_06: Can that other life happen?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_06: Whatever that is, you know?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_06: And just I didn't understand as a kid that those were moments where God was showing up and just trying to give me comfort and peace, you know.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_06: I I didn't understand that that's what that was.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_06: Of course not, you know, right.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_06: Um, the day that I got raped, I had an out-of-body experience.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_06: It's like I could see this person hurting me, but I wasn't physically feeling anything.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, dissociation.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and so um that that kind of thing just kind of happened over and over again, you know?
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_06: And um I remember one of the one of the, and I'm fast-forwarding quite a bit, but one of the most profound moments that I had in church um is uh Dr.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_06: Jeffers was preaching at our church, and I was brand new coming to our church, and uh he was kind of preaching towards everybody, you know, laying hands on people and talking to them and everything.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_06: And I was only there because my friend Carmen invited me.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_06: And I remember it as a kid going to my grandma going to ladies' conferences and stuff, and I'm just always wondering what that was.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_06: Whatever my grandma did, I always wanted to be a part of, but there were some things I couldn't be a part of, like I couldn't have the purple box with the white flower on it, but one day I would have it and wouldn't want it.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_06: She would tell me that, you know.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and then going to ladies' conferences, and so I was at this ladies' conference, and I I remembered my friend had invited me, and I thought before we got there, I said, whatever she does, I'm gonna do.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_06: I'm I'm just gonna do whatever she does, you know, because I thought she had paid a lot of money for us to go.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_06: It's complete and total confusion about what I'd saw.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_06: I saw her write a check, come to find out she was writing a check for her tithe.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_06: And but I thought she had written a check for me to be at this event, you know.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_06: And so I said, Whatever she does, I'm gonna do because oh my gosh, you know.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_06: And so she, you know, raised her hands.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_06: I raised my hands.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_06: She went to the altar, I went to the altar.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_06: Well, this man comes and he's preaching and saying stuff, you know, to people.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_06: And then he comes down to me and he says, God has a word for you.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_06: And Kathy, I felt anger inside of my gut, like it was trying to eat me alive on the inside.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_06: Like a visceral out of your control.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_06: Something was happening in your body.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, there was like a like a bomb of rage inside of me.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_06: And uh and then Which you didn't even know was there, right?
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: Until this experience.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_06: And I and and I didn't understand what was happening.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_06: And so he goes and he's preaching for other people, and he comes back, and then he says to me, the word is freedom.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_06: And then again, I just started shaking, like, like my heart started shaking, my hands started shaking.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_06: And again, this, but I was angry.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_06: I just felt very, very angry.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_06: And then he comes back and And he says, freedom from the chains that bind our children.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_06: And when he said that, I just stopped everything, like I just froze.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, Who are you?
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_06: And what do you know?
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_06: Because something that a lot of people in our family did not know is that while my sister was gone, after my sister had run away, because she got pregnant as a teen, my mom chained me up in our shed for about two weeks.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_06: And nobody knew that.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_06: And she chained me in there and left me there.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_06: And these people would that uh worked at the car lot, they would detail cars, you know, in the car lot.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_06: They detailed cars in the alley.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_06: They would come and the the um the doorway or the wall at the end of the wall, there was like this little opening in the shed, and they would put food in there so I could have something to eat.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_06: And the guy would tell me, I can come in there and I can get you out of there.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_06: Let me come in there and get you out of there.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, No, because she'll kill you.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_06: Like you have to leave me alone, you have to leave me in here because she will kill you.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_06: Like, and um I kept that a secret for the longest time.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_06: There was the only person at that point when Dr.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_06: Jeffers was saying that, the only other person that had that I had told about that was my husband.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and I think maybe I had shared it in a counseling session when I was in foster care, but other than that, there was nobody in my immediate life that knew that.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_06: And so when he said that, I just I screamed at him and I said, Who are you and what do you know?
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_06: And he stood right in front of me.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_06: And he said, God has numbered the hairs on your head.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_06: And the pain that you've endured in your life is equal to the power that God has placed inside of you.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_06: But you're so focused on the pain you can't embrace the power.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_06: And he said, Woman, thou art loosed, and he put his hand on my forehead, and I hit the floor, and I felt that out-of-body experience, whatever that was, that rage and everything that I had inside of me left my body.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I just laid on the floor and cried.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I can't explain that other than to tell you that God is good, yeah, his deliverance power is real.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, yes, and I know that after that happened to me, I just it was like after that happened, all I wanted was more goodness.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_06: I just I wanted everything to start being good.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_06: My marriage was already kind of going crazy.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_06: My husband and I had already been verbally abusive to each other, and just, I mean, we were everything was just not great, you know.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_06: Um, a life of uh abusing, you know, my kids, you know, I abused my own children when I was in my addiction and then trying to come out of all of that and everything, you know.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_06: And here I am, you know, seven years into this life of recovery, and I have this, we call them God shot moments, right?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_06: And I just knew that at that point I wanted things to be different, I wanted things to be better, and I and I'm here I was trying to hold on to this life I had built coming out of addiction and everything.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_06: My my husband that I was married to, we had done drugs together.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_06: That's how we met.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_06: And um, I just I really wanted a good life.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_06: I wanted to have peace in my life and love and just you know, and walk in this new life.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_06: And but it just seemed like every single day fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting and arguing and arguing, and right back to that fell-safe thought, well, you could die.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_06: If you die, the kids will go live with somebody that can take care of them, and I mean, just these horrible, horrible thoughts, you know.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_06: And then there was this other thought that you're fighting with your husband every single day.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_06: That's a sin.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_06: You're gonna go to hell.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_06: You commit suicide, you're gonna go to hell.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_06: But at least this other one ends it now, you know.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_06: I felt so alone.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_06: I had a sponsor, but I felt like I was living a double life, you know, because I had my sponsor and my life in recovery and my my friends in Narcotics Anonymous, right?
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_06: And then I had my friends at church, and I couldn't reconcile those two lifestyles.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_06: The churches, people don't need a 12-step program, they need Jesus.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_06: But here the 12-step program helped me believe in Jesus.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm gonna interject really quick.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the 12-step program helps a lot of people with walking out of addiction.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Jesus delivers, but that don't mean people know how to live it.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think that's a a huge fallacy that has been in the in Christendom, I would say, not just any particular religion.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think that I pray that that's changing.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's, you know, there's potential for fallacy in any structure of belief, I think.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if we don't balance it against the word of God, um, but the 12-step program is very on point with the word of God.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: They just have different semantics that they use.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a practical program that allows people to know how to live each day because you give your life over to Jesus.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I know that much, right?
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know how to do anything else.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And like you said, um, all the thoughts you were having, I I do a lot of work around intrusive thoughts, and I'm doing a bunch of research in that area specifically because, you know, from a Christian worldview, from a biblical worldview, I believe that's the voice of the enemy.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um and yet those intrusive thoughts happen to everybody everywhere.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we are just not really identifying it and calling it what it is because there's a huge fear in the Christian world to even address spiritual warfare.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_06: But do you know that even Jesus did that?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, all throughout the are you literally said, Who are you?
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, yes.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_06: And they and the demon said, I am legion, for we are many.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_06: You know, Jesus called that demon out by like to name it, right, you know, and so we cannot fix what we don't name.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_06: Like if we're walking around pretending like it doesn't exist, then it has the upper hand.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I heard a quote, someone said that whatever we don't name will name us.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I've never forgot that.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought that is so powerful because um it's really true.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like if we're not going to identify something, it's going to identify us.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so there is power in being able to do that.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: I heard last night uh um incidentally we went to the ladies' conference and um Sister So Stran was talking about, you know, thoughts being conversations.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as she said that, I immediately began to think about intrusive thoughts.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that, you know, secular psychology would talk about the inner critic, right?
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we would know that as the voice of the accuser, right?
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Constantly accusing us.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_02: But I thought how fascinating that is, what's happening in the mind is so very often what psychology terms would call intrusive thoughts, but there really are voices.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_02: There really is a conversation happening between your real self, sometimes God in us, also trying to counterbalance that argument, but also the enemy that's constantly speaking into us lies to get us to come into agreement.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you just so clearly said that a minute ago, but it just, I'm very passionate about that, because I think suicide particularly comes from an intrusive thought, you know, as evidenced by how much we're seeing it in children now.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like kiddos don't understand the finality of suicide.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_02: All they know is they're thinking about ways to die.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've had kids tell me crazy stories that they thought of, and I know my adult mind knows that there's no way that they could have come up with all those ideas on their own.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's voices speaking, it's the enemy speaking.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, I know, I know you know this, but then I I didn't know this.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_06: And so um I like to share this when I talk to people about the that process and that that conversation, right?
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_06: When that conversation happens, the more we entertain that conversation, yeah, the more our brain develops a neuropathway and like a recognition, like I know this, how this feels and how this thought works.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_06: And so as soon as it starts, it knows exactly where it's supposed to go.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_06: Right, you know, and it just keeps happening over and over again.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_06: And the more we entertain that conversation, the stronger it gets.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_06: Right, because there's seeds that get yeah, that grow.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_06: I I wrote a poem one time, um, because that's one of my coping skills is poetry.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_06: And I I that's why I I write poetry and I paint and I listen to music and I read my Bible and I've got lots and lots of stuff like that.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_06: And I wrote a poem one time about the voice of suicide and how the voice of how we need to speak love louder than the voice of suicide.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotta be louder.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the problem is that people are so conditioned with um psychology that they, you know, psychology teaches that that's your own brain's your brain is doing that, a lack of chemicals in your brain or your brain's malfunction or whatever, you know, that it's happening within their physical senses or physical body.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and so people think it's them.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so then they begin to think that they're faulty, and they begin to think even more it reaffirms the idea that something is wrong with them.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, why am I having these thoughts?
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't be feeling like this if I was normal.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right, you know, but the good news is I want to say this for the people watching, is there's a whole other body of research taking place that is looking at um, you know, parapsychology, the idea that actually existential uh things are happening and it's not just biological.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that that is so exciting for me as a researcher to know that there is another pathway to think on these things because it is absolutely spiritual warfare from a biblical lens, from a you know, Christian worldview lens.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_02: But man, we've got to start connecting those dots and having those conversations because people are dying so frequently.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so back to my question as a kid, were you pretty introspective?
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Did you spend a lot of time pondering?
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Were you a deep thinker?
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_06: Um not really in my early, early childhood, but more in my teenage years, you know.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_06: I I think that I um I would I was thinking about more like like what you just said, trying to figure out what's wrong with you.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_06: Like what's wrong with you, that nobody can love you.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_06: That you know, and I mean my mom Dorothy told me one time, she said, Diana, I love you.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_06: And you don't have to do anything for that.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_06: That's just a fact.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because of who you are, because you exist, yeah.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_02: When did you realize that you hated God?
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I just kind of my whole life just had this anger inside of me because I would hear people say that God loves you.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_06: God loves you.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_06: You know, my grandma was Jehovah's Witness, she would take us to a Jehovah's Witness church.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_06: One of my aunts was another religion.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_06: I couldn't even tell you what it was.
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but they wanted us to walk in a bucket of snakes, and I wasn't having it, you know.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_06: So I went outside and tried to set fire to the church and got got my butt spanked for it.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but I just remember just all these people that claimed something about God had all of this, they were tied to all of the trauma and all the negativity and all the ugliness, you know.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_06: And um, I remember going to uh Narcotics Anonymous and I didn't want to hear all of that.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't want to hear the God stuff, like really, right?
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_06: Like you're talking to a lady who did drugs with her kid, you're talking to a lady that did drugs with while she was pregnant, you know.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_06: Um, God don't have nothing for me, you know.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_06: And um and so I told my sponsor, you know, and she said, I want you to go just for 30 days, go and sit in that chair and act as if just act as if you get it.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_06: Leave all the anger to the side, like leave what you think you know right at the door, and just have a seat and listen.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_06: And so I started doing that, you know.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um the day is the God of your understanding, right?
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_02: They don't specify, you get to decide right what that is, and there's people that don't have a good concept because they don't know him, obviously, but which would have been you, right?
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_06: So the only thing that I could attribute God to at that time of my life was the fact that the day that my son was born, um, I had enough drugs drugs in me to kill three people.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_06: And my son was born, and he weighed nine pounds, 14 ounces, and he didn't have any trace of drugs in his entire body.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_06: Wow.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_06: And so um when I was sitting there and I was like, okay, I don't understand all that God stuff, but clearly something protected him.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_06: So that's that's where my where the foundation of my recovery started is just being able to see that that okay, something outside of me be was working inside of me while I'm putting all this poison in my body.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_06: You know, um normally kids that when a woman is pregnant and you know, babies are born to, you know, with DEI, drug exposed different, and you know, I mean, just birth defects, mental illness, whatever, all of those things.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_06: And my son was born with none of that, you know.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_06: And the the pediatrician came in my room and told me, you're the sorriest excuse for a mother I've ever seen in my life.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_06: If I can find one thing in him, just one thing, I'll testify in whatever court I have to to make sure you never see him again.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_06: So meanwhile, I'm laying there getting blood transfusions, they had to reopen my C section because I bled out.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_06: Um just very, very fighting for my life, and I'm thinking they're gonna take my baby.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_06: And there was a nurse that had been coming to see me at my house, and um, she befriended me.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um angel, in my opinion.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_06: I tell her all the time, Donna, you're my guardian angel, you know.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_06: Because if it had not been for her friendship and for her seeing me and not seeing a drug addict, you know, she saw me.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_06: The person.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_06: And she helped me, you know.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_06: And if it had not been for God sending her to me at that time when I really, really needed a friend.
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_06: I needed a real friend, you know.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_06: And um, so you know, that doctor told me that my son was gonna struggle his whole life with learning disabilities and it was gonna stunt his growth, and he was just all these things.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_06: You know, Sister Kathy, my son is six foot, like at least six foot five.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_06: I think I think he's six foot seven.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_06: He says he's six foot five, but with his shoes on, you know.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_06: And he graduated high school with a college-level degree in engineering.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_06: Wow, you know, praise God.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_06: So that's a God thing.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_06: You know, that's not a me thing, that is absolutely a God thing, you know.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_06: And so, um, I you asked me how I was angry at God.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_06: I I don't think it was so much that I was angry or or hated him.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_06: I just I didn't know anything about him.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_06: I knew other people's representation of him was not what you wanted.
• 1:26:11
  SPEAKER_06: Was not what I wanted.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I think that's kind of at the essence of why so many people don't like Christians, is they've had a negative experience with someone who went to church and said they're Christians, and you know, and it was negative.
• 1:26:33
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, can I can I share an an insight that God gave me one time?
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_06: So imagine, imagine I throw a party at my house and I invite all of my friends, but I don't invite you.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_06: And while these people are at my house, they break all of my favorite things, right?
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_06: They destroy my home and take things from me that I can never get back, right?
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_06: And the next time that you and I have a conversation, I'm angry at you.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_06: I'm mad at you, right?
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_06: And you're like, why are you mad at me?
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_06: Like, what happened?
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_06: What did I do?
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_06: And then I begin to tell you all these things that happened at this party, and you're like, but you're mad at me.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_06: Why are you mad at me?
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_06: Well, because all of this stuff happened.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_06: But I wasn't there.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_06: I wasn't invited to the party.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_06: Why are you blaming me?
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_06: I was never invited.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_06: School said, people said no, no, no Bibles in school, no prayer in school.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not even invited to.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_06: The party, and you're blaming me for what's happening.
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_06: I was never invited into your life, and you're blaming me for what's happened to you.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_06: Just invite me one time.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_06: That was the revelation that he gave me.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_06: You let me in one time.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_06: You invite me in one time.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_06: Wow.
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_06: And do you know?
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_06: I don't think about dying.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_06: I do not think about dying.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_06: I I don't know.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_06: I couldn't even begin to tell you when the last time was.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I've been divorced for eight years.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_06: And um God has opened door after door after door after door to take care of me.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_06: I I have a huge family.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_06: Like I I used to wish I could be a part of a big family that loves me.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_06: I walk into my daughter's house and my grandkids, you would have thought that I hung the moon and scattered the stars for them babies to look at, you know?
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_06: I have more love in my life than I could have ever imagined.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_06: When I look in the mirror today, I don't have to, and I'm not saying this about anybody else, this is me, okay?
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_06: I don't have to pile on 15 pounds of makeup to hide behind who I see in that mirror.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_06: Because I like who I see in that mirror.
• 1:29:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:29:36
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I'm a child of God.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the enemy tried to take me out over and over and over again.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_06: He stole my identity over or tried to over and over and over again.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_06: But the end of the book, we win.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_06: We win, you know, and God said, just invite me one time.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_06: Like for real.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_06: You know, not this patty cake thing sitting on a pew pretending, and you just invite me in one time for real.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_06: And I got you.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_06: And that's exactly what happens, you know.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_06: I I love my life.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I a few months back I started having, you know, some health things going on.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_06: And I went to the doctor.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_06: I had to go have some heart tests and stuff.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_06: And I sat there and I told that doctor, I said, you know, there was a time in my life where this would have been a blessing to me.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_06: The thought that I could, you know, die of a heart attack or something like that.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I said, but that is not the case, doc.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_06: I want to live.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, praise God.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:30:49
  SPEAKER_06: I want to live.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_06: I love my life.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_06: I have the best friends a girl could ever ask for.
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_06: I have more love in my life than I could ever ask for.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_06: I'm about to adopt this very beautiful dog that I'm absolutely head over heels in love with.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_06: I just love him to death, you know?
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_06: And I have a great job where, you know, God gives me a front row seat to see people's lives change.
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_06: You know?
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_06: And then I sometimes I gotta sit back and I have to pinch myself because I'm like, really?
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_06: Like, really?
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_06: My life is this amazing.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_06: You know?
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not, I'm not bougie.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not rich, you know.
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_06: But God made a way for me to be able to buy my own home, you know.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_06: And wow, that's wonderful.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, you know.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, there was a time in my life I was homeless living in my car when I was pregnant with my first son, you know.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_06: And um, I mean, I've been through a lot, Sister Kathy, you know, but how can I look at God and say, that's all your fault?
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_06: Right, right.
• 1:32:01
  SPEAKER_06: When I never invited him to the party, he was never invited into my life.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_06: You know, this whole idea of, you know, I and I just want to share this because I feel like this is this is a point that a lot of people miss.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_06: You know, the Bible says that if we believe, then we're saved, you know.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_06: We have to believe in order to, that's the whole invitation part, right?
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_06: You have to believe, and then you get buried in his name.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 1:32:37
  SPEAKER_02: And belief is active, it's not theoretical, it's not just an idea, it is active, which requires actions.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_06: And it's and as soon as I'm not saying it happened in an instant.
• 1:32:55
  SPEAKER_06: This is this has been a process.
• 1:32:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, you know, but healing is a process.
• 1:33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_06: And and so is destruction.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 1:33:06
  SPEAKER_06: The destruction is a process, right?
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_06: You know, and I know when we were getting ready to start this, you had asked me if I was a backslider, right?
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_06: And the thing is, I was not raised in church.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't, I wasn't raised knowing anything, really, you know, kind of here and there learning about, you know, different things about God or whatever.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_06: Nothing I really wanted to wrap my arms around.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_06: You know, right.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_06: And um, I mean, I had moments in my life where people did really great things for me.
• 1:33:38
  SPEAKER_06: My foster mom, I had a a counselor named Kathy that, you know, took me to an Amy Grant concert when I was a kid.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_06: I love that.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_06: I'm still really great friends with Kathy, you know.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_06: But the thing is, is that I look at those moments and I and it's like, you know, the Bible says, God says, I'm standing here and I'm knocking, you know, and I I see all these different moments in my life where he showed me I'm knocking, I'm right here, I'm knocking.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_06: Right, you know, and um it's it's like this process has brought me to a place where when I went through my divorce, I I left the church out of humiliation.
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_06: I was humiliated.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_06: I was embarrassed to be there, not because of anything that they had done, you know.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_06: There was a couple conversations with Bishop that was different, you know, but that's just because he loved me like a father, and I had never really had a father's love.
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_06: I had my I'm not saying that my foster dad didn't love me, but you know the corrective peace that mom and dads generally bring when they raise kids, yeah.
• 1:34:57
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:34:57
  SPEAKER_06: And so Papa Abbott was trying to correct some behaviors that I was he saw me backsliding, he saw me getting ready to go down a very ugly road, you know.
• 1:35:09
  SPEAKER_06: And um and instead of embracing that, I attributed it to all of the other stuff I had been through where people claimed to be about God and they hurt me, you know.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_06: Felt like judgment.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, one more one more one more reason why why I'm not good enough.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_06: Right, you know, right, and so um, but the thing is, is that I had started, you know, working in a bar and you know, to uh checking IDs and stuff like that, um and taking cover charges in a bar.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_06: While you were going to church?
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_06: No, this is after 2018, yeah, when I got my divorce.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_06: Um I had started working at this bar.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_06: I I wasn't drinking, but I would sit right at the door and I would, you know, take the cover charge and and everything.
• 1:36:12
  SPEAKER_06: And I remember feeling the enemy just kind of steadily trying to pull me back into that lifestyle, you know?
• 1:36:22
  SPEAKER_06: And I was like, no, no, no, I'm not gonna let that happen.
• 1:36:25
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna read my Bible while I'm sitting there.
• 1:36:28
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna read my Bible.
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_06: And so I had my phone open and I was reading my Bible.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_06: And as people are coming in and I was taking the cover charge, I'd take the cover charge and they'd go sit down or they'd go do whatever they're doing, and I'd sit there with my phone and I'd be reading my Bible.
• 1:36:45
  SPEAKER_06: And then something happened on Halloween, and these people hurt my friend right in front of me, and I was grabbing at them, trying to pull them off of her.
• 1:37:01
  SPEAKER_06: And it was like my hands were slipping through their body, like I couldn't grab a hold of them.
• 1:37:07
  SPEAKER_06: There were so many of them, and I just looked up at her husband, and he came and he started getting people, you know, started dealing with it or whatever, and they they all kind of and I saw them drag her out, and I was just I was absolutely mortified, and I remember feeling like I had just seen these demons literally just try to kill my friend right in front of me.
• 1:37:35
  SPEAKER_06: And I got, I don't want to be here.
• 1:37:37
  SPEAKER_06: Uh oh, I don't want to be here anymore, I don't want to do this anymore, I don't want to be here.
• 1:37:42
  SPEAKER_06: And so I went back the following, or that following weekend, I think they had it closed, and then the weekend after that I went back and I was sitting there reading my Bible, and these this guy and these two women came in and I uh was sitting there reading my Bible, and this guy looks at me and he goes, What are you doing?
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, I'm reading my Bible, and you know, and he goes, Uh really, you're in a bar.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, So Jesus went to bars, you know, Jesus hung out with tax collectors and and he yells over at these women, hey, she's reading her Bible in a bar, like kind of mocking me, you know.
• 1:38:28
  SPEAKER_06: I just ignored him, I just sat there and kept reading my Bible.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_06: Well, at midnight, you know, or one o'clock in the morning, and I'm I was done.
• 1:38:38
  SPEAKER_06: And then it was time for me to go home.
• 1:38:40
  SPEAKER_06: So I got up, I got the cash box, I went back, gave it to my friend, and was about to walk out the door.
• 1:38:46
  SPEAKER_06: And this guy goes, Hey, let me buy you a drink.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, No, I'm done.
• 1:38:51
  SPEAKER_06: I'm going home.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_06: I'm good.
• 1:38:53
  SPEAKER_06: I'm you know, I'm gonna go home.
• 1:38:55
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, come on, just let me buy you a drink.
• 1:38:58
  SPEAKER_06: I sat here talking to you this whole time just so I could buy you a drink.
• 1:39:02
  SPEAKER_06: No, I'm all right.
• 1:39:03
  SPEAKER_06: I'm I don't drink, I'm an alcoholic, so I'm just gonna go ahead and go home.
• 1:39:10
  SPEAKER_06: And so I walked out the door.
• 1:39:11
  SPEAKER_06: Well, he followed me out the door, and he stood outside smoking a cigarette, watched me get in my car.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_06: I got in my car, I turned on my praise music as loud as I could, and I drove home.
• 1:39:25
  SPEAKER_06: And then I called my friend a couple days later and I told him that I didn't want to do that anymore.
• 1:39:32
  SPEAKER_06: And he said, Well, that's you know, that's okay because um we're gonna be closed for a few weeks because after you left, and these are his words, all hell broke loose, and some people got hurt.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_06: And I remember just feeling that that was a demonic conversation that I had had.
• 1:40:01
  SPEAKER_06: Now, those people probably don't even realize, you know.
• 1:40:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, but I just remember feeling like that was the enemy really trying to, you know, because in in my mind and in my flesh or whatever, if I was gonna check out a guy, he would look like that guy looked, like he was a handsome man, you know, tall, you know, he was a good-looking guy, you know.
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_06: Had you know made me laugh a couple of times while I was sitting there waiting for me to get off my shift, you know.
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_06: And um, but the fact that just that tone and that and and so the thing is, is I thank God that he allowed me to see uh something in that moment that in my past I would have ignored.
• 1:40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:40:57
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I would have ignored that and I would have gone along with it.
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_06: And um and so Yeah, the Lord kept you.
• 1:41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:41:09
  SPEAKER_02: So your first like do you feel like your the real deliverance came the moment that guy prayed for you and the chains were broken?
• 1:41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like that was the be that was the beginning of the day?
• 1:41:21
  SPEAKER_06: I feel like that was the beginning.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_06: And then um, and then of course when I got baptized, um I remember uh I I fasted.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_06: So I got I got baptized once.
• 1:41:37
  SPEAKER_06: It's a long story, I don't need to get into all that, but the day that I understood um uh Pastor Miguel had preached a message about uh about um you know uh oh my goodness, a loss for words, I'm sorry.
• 1:41:57
  SPEAKER_06: Um repentance, right?
• 1:42:01
  SPEAKER_06: He had preached a message about you know the the bab the uh salvation plan and how repentance is an isn't a crucial part of that, you know.
• 1:42:12
  SPEAKER_06: And a lot of people stop at that.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_06: They stop at that at that God forgive me part, you know, and they say that that's enough, right?
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_06: But that's that's not what the Bible says, you know.
• 1:42:22
  SPEAKER_06: And so when when Pastor Miguel preached that, I realized that that first time that I had been baptized, um, that I had not repented.
• 1:42:31
  SPEAKER_06: I had not done a fourth step.
• 1:42:33
  SPEAKER_01: I had not taken a fearless moral inventory, yeah.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_06: I had not done that, you know.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_06: And so um, so I did that.
• 1:42:42
  SPEAKER_06: I sat down and I wrote this, you know, long letter to God and asked him to forgive me of everything and you know, and things I see and things I don't see, and places in my heart and in my mind where, you know, where I have hate and unforgiveness and pride and where I just let my ego just be, you know.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:43:06
  SPEAKER_06: And um, so I fasted that whole weekend, which I had never fasted before.
• 1:43:10
  SPEAKER_06: This is actually kind of a funny story.
• 1:43:12
  SPEAKER_06: I'd never fasted before, but I decided that I want to be as close to God as I can be when I go in that water because I really want it to work, you know.
• 1:43:22
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and so not that everybody has to do that, but that was just me.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_06: In your mind, yeah.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_06: In my mind.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_06: And so um uh so Sunday um I go to church and I, you know, thinking I'm gonna get baptized on Sunday morning, you know, and something had happened to the baptismal tank.
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_06: And so pastor said, We'll baptize you this evening.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_06: And if anybody knows anything about me, they know that chorizo and papas is my favorite meal.
• 1:43:50
  SPEAKER_06: So I go home, you know, after that first morning service that Sunday, and my husband, my husband and I were still together at that time, and uh, he had made chorizo and papas for the kids for lunch.
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_06: And I walked in, and as soon as I smelled it, I was like, oh, you lying devil.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_06: And I turned around and I went back to the church because in in between the morning English service and the evening English service, they had a Spanish service at two o'clock.
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_06: And so I just went back to the church and I stayed there, and then I got I got baptized that night, and then um, and I remember feeling like I was like I was clean, like just it was all in the water, washed, yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_06: There's a song that says I left it in the river, and that's exactly how I felt.
• 1:44:45
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I felt like it was all there, all that self-loathing and depression, and you know, there was a time, Sister Kathy, I was taking 12 different types of antidepressant medications, mental health medications, yeah, because I believed that whatever pill they gave me, it was gonna fix me.
• 1:45:04
  SPEAKER_06: It was gonna this was gonna fix me.
• 1:45:06
  SPEAKER_06: And by the grace of God, I don't take any of that stuff.
• 1:45:09
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_06: Praise God, I wish that's a whole other stuff.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, ma'am.
• 1:45:16
  SPEAKER_06: So um I'm not saying that I don't get depressed, right?
• 1:45:20
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I'm not saying I don't have days, but I don't, I don't and there's a need.
• 1:45:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it yeah, you know, it it can be beneficial for a time, yes, but it's not meant to be a crutch.
• 1:45:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the difference.
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_02: And right I had somebody once that was on 13 different um antidepressants and psych meds, and I'm like, holy smokes, who are these doctors?
• 1:45:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, you know, you're taking four meds for one thing, like, you know, it it drives me crazy.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I have a physician I send people to now for med referrals so that they can straighten all that up.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, you should have seen the look on my husband's face when I told him I don't want to take this med the any of these pills anymore.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_06: He was like, I'm not doing this.
• 1:46:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, it's scary, you know.
• 1:46:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you if for people who do have mental health histories, you know, um it it aside from God, you know, it does um put a bandage on things, yeah, I think at best.
• 1:46:25
  SPEAKER_02: But um, you know, I I was thinking as you were talking, um, and this is just the nature of God, you know, he gives us everything we didn't have before, but since I have ever met you, Diane, um, the thing that resonates to me about you the most is you have a very gentle spirit and you're full of love.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you're you're uh you're loving, you know.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I mean I knew you on Facebook before I ever met you in person.
• 1:47:00
  SPEAKER_02: And when I met you in person, um it was like you had known me forever and you acted as if you knew me forever, and you immediately just exuded love.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I know, because I know my life, like it seems like the thing that we were uh deficient in the most is the very thing that God gives us the most.
• 1:47:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:47:27
  SPEAKER_02: What we desperately needed is becomes the thing that we can give away.
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I find that so ironic in the way that God works that way.
• 1:47:39
  SPEAKER_02: But um I had no idea of your history of neglect and the complete absence of real love.
• 1:47:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because by knowing you now, no one would ever know that because you do such a good job at loving others.
• 1:47:57
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you for that.
• 1:47:58
  SPEAKER_06: That means a lot to me.
• 1:48:00
  SPEAKER_06: That means a lot to me.
• 1:48:01
  SPEAKER_06: I um that really means a lot to me.
• 1:48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I know that that's how God works, yeah, but you have allowed him to do the work in you.
• 1:48:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and that is everything we invited him to the party.
• 1:48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:48:24
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think we have taken for granted I don't know that people understand the power of agreement.
• 1:48:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that they understand the power of our words, and so when the Bible says, you know, to we hear this um other denominations invite the Lord into your heart, and yeah, you know, and we as Pentecostals were like, oh no, that's not all there is.
• 1:48:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's this and there's more.
• 1:48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:48:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's more, there's always gonna be more with God, not works more, but more of Him.
• 1:49:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you know, levels of um experience with Him.
• 1:49:06
  SPEAKER_02: But that is such a critical step.
• 1:49:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know that we as Pentecostals even communicate that step, the importance of that step, the invitation for people to invite the Lord to the party into their heart, because that is an act of our will, and that is so important in the engagement because God is not going to do anything against our will.
• 1:49:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have to ask him to come in because by then we're giving him permission.
• 1:49:43
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:49:43
  SPEAKER_02: And when we invite him into our heart, we're giving him permission to work in our life, and then he will.
• 1:49:52
  SPEAKER_02: But that act of request is critical because it does involve the will, and I think we overlook.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_02: That sometimes and just our rush to repentance.
• 1:50:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I love that the Lord spoke that to you and actually gave you a picture for you to understand that because He's just good.
• 1:50:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, he is.
• 1:50:20
  SPEAKER_02: He he knows how to teach us in our own unique way and how he forms us, how our brain thinks, the things we ponder.
• 1:50:30
  SPEAKER_02: He sees all of it.
• 1:50:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so I love, I just love everything about what you said because to me that's a picture of God teaching Diane.
• 1:50:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_02: Him, who he is, you know, and he does that individually for all of us, you know.
• 1:50:49
  SPEAKER_06: There's a song on the radio um called Nobody Loves Me Like You Jesus.
• 1:50:55
  SPEAKER_06: And um I remember I was driving home.
• 1:50:58
  SPEAKER_06: I had gone home for lunch one day.
• 1:51:00
  SPEAKER_06: My husband worked graveyard, so he was at home that day, and he was just he just said some really not great things, and it just really hurt me.
• 1:51:08
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and uh I was driving back to work from my lunch break, and that song came on the radio, and there's a part of there that says, like a love letter written in the sky.
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_06: And it was just that was one of the things that my husband used to do is he used to write me love letters.
• 1:51:29
  SPEAKER_06: He used to write me notes, you know, and he had stopped doing that.
• 1:51:33
  SPEAKER_06: And I was, and I had some resentment in my heart because he had stopped doing that, and um, but when I heard this song, it was like another revelation that God gave me that you're wanting these people, these broken people to love you in a way that only I can love you.
• 1:51:59
  SPEAKER_06: Right, right.
• 1:51:59
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody can love you like that.
• 1:52:01
  SPEAKER_06: That love that makes you feel whole and at peace and put together and and that love, that love doesn't come from a person.
• 1:52:13
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:52:13
  SPEAKER_06: That love can only come from God.
• 1:52:16
  SPEAKER_06: Right, yeah, you know, and I mean I've been single for eight years.
• 1:52:20
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I don't miss, I I I have I am lacking nothing.
• 1:52:25
  SPEAKER_06: I told my friend the other day, because you know, she and I were talking and she said, Are you ever gonna get married again?
• 1:52:31
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, honestly, probably not.
• 1:52:34
  SPEAKER_06: I said, unless, unless God puts somebody in my path, and when I see that person, my instant thought is, okay, that's what I'm missing.
• 1:52:44
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's gonna be something that I'm missing that I don't even know I'm missing, I don't even realize I'm missing.
• 1:52:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's contentment, there's fullness, yes, the Lord, yeah.
• 1:52:54
  SPEAKER_06: Fullness, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_06: There is that.
• 1:52:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't, and I think until someone experiences that, to me, that is a miracle for my life because um I've never had that either until now, you know, over the last several years.
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I would have never thought that it would be possible to feel full and content in being single and and just being alone with the Lord, you know, uh until you really experience the fullness of him.
• 1:53:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you just it's just something that I want for everyone.
• 1:53:43
  SPEAKER_02: I want people to know the Lord in this way because he, you know, it's not just a saying when someone says, Oh, God is good, you know, he's good all the time.
• 1:53:56
  SPEAKER_02: It for those of us who have really experienced that goodness and his power to change our lives, like those, it's not just words, it's it it it's loaded with meaning, yeah, you know, because we know him from an experiential place, yeah, and not just, you know, because it's a nice song to sing.
• 1:54:20
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:54:21
  SPEAKER_06: I've had I've I've had people ask me, how can you believe in a God that you can't see?
• 1:54:29
  SPEAKER_06: You know, how can you believe in something that you can't see?
• 1:54:33
  SPEAKER_06: And I I have two responses to that.
• 1:54:38
  SPEAKER_06: Number one, I believe in God because I've seen the devil.
• 1:54:43
  SPEAKER_06: I've seen what the devil does.
• 1:54:45
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:54:46
  SPEAKER_06: I've seen his handiwork in my life.
• 1:54:49
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:54:51
  SPEAKER_06: But even more amazing than that, I've seen God.
• 1:55:01
  SPEAKER_06: I've seen too much.
• 1:55:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:55:04
  SPEAKER_06: I've seen too much.
• 1:55:07
  SPEAKER_06: Every time I look in that mirror and I don't hate that person, right, right.
• 1:55:13
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:55:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:55:16
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I was powerful.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_06: I um I was there was a moment of surrender a couple years ago, just a couple years ago, where you know, my my adult kids had got mad at me and they weren't talking to me, and you know, and and I just I was on my living room floor at three in the morning crying out to God and just basically telling him, What do you want from me?
• 1:55:40
  SPEAKER_06: And um, and just this stillness came over me and I and I heard him, not audible, of course, but just the word this this just surrender.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_06: This is all I want you to do, is surrender.
• 1:55:57
  SPEAKER_06: And I said, Okay, I I'm all in with or without my kids, which of course I want them in heaven, of course.
• 1:56:07
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to let God be in charge of that.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, with or without them in my life.
• 1:56:16
  SPEAKER_06: If I'm all by myself for the rest of my life, it's not gonna feel good.
• 1:56:20
  SPEAKER_06: I I have huge abandonment issues to this day, you know.
• 1:56:25
  SPEAKER_06: Rejection is a very horrible feeling that triggers all kinds of craziness in me, you know.
• 1:56:33
  SPEAKER_06: God helps me manage it, you know.
• 1:56:37
  SPEAKER_06: But the thing is, is that I can choose to live a life without him.
• 1:56:49
  SPEAKER_06: But why would I want to?
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_06: It's so ugly.
• 1:56:53
  SPEAKER_06: The the world is gonna be ugly with or without him.
• 1:56:57
  SPEAKER_06: The world is ugly with or without God, right?
• 1:57:02
  SPEAKER_06: But with God, I have something to look forward to.
• 1:57:08
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:57:09
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I never met my dad.
• 1:57:13
  SPEAKER_06: The only conversation I ever had with my biological father was when I was 30 years old on the phone.
• 1:57:19
  SPEAKER_06: He said, Stop looking for me, you're gonna ruin my life.
• 1:57:24
  SPEAKER_06: So I've never had a conversation with my dad.
• 1:57:31
  SPEAKER_06: And the one thing that I look forward to in my entire existence is the day that I get to meet Jesus.
• 1:57:41
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know, not that I want to meet him today, like you know, like I don't want to die, but I'm saying, you know, that I'm gonna get to meet my dad and he's gonna wrap his arms around me and he's gonna tell me, good job.
• 1:57:54
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, good job, baby girl.
• 1:57:56
  SPEAKER_06: I'm proud of you.
• 1:57:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know, and there are times, you know, when he puts a person in my path and I'm able to talk to them and help them and in some kind of way, you know, where I'm able to be his his mouthpiece or his hands and you know, his feet or whatever, to where I'm able to just show his heart to people.
• 1:58:22
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that when I walk away from that situation, you know, it's not a sense of pride where I'm like, you know, where I feel like I'm all that, it's a sense of I know my daddy's proud of me.
• 1:58:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know, yeah, I know he's proud of me.
• 1:58:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, like I did what he wanted me to do.
• 1:58:42
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, and that and that that that's the most amazing feeling.
• 1:58:46
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, so I could I could live this life without God, but why would I ever want to?
• 1:58:53
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 1:58:54
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's not worth it.
• 1:58:56
  SPEAKER_06: Nothing compares.
• 1:58:57
  SPEAKER_06: No, yeah, no.
• 1:58:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I say that I, you know, I've told people that before, like, gosh, if if it wasn't everything, why do you think we would be doing it?
• 1:59:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, especially after you've been in the world and you've tasted all the things that the world has to offer, you know.
• 1:59:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's things out there that are enjoyable, but yeah, nothing compares to the love of God and a life with God and his voice and his presence.
• 1:59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is the greatest thing.
• 1:59:34
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:59:34
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, the thing is, it is true that drugs and alcohol will make you not feel the pain, but it makes you not feel anything.
• 1:59:46
  SPEAKER_06: Right, right.
• 1:59:47
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it numbs to all the good stuff also.
• 1:59:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, yeah.
• 1:59:50
  SPEAKER_06: And and the thing is, is that this with God, I get to feel the pain.
• 1:59:59
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I get to cry.
• 2:00:01
  SPEAKER_06: You know, I used to think that crying was a sign of weakness, and I read something somewhere that says crying is proof of life.
• 2:00:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:00:09
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it's it's proof you're alive.
• 2:00:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's the first thing you do when you're born is you cry.
• 2:00:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you know, and so it it's it's that's good, yeah.
• 2:00:22
  SPEAKER_06: You know, yeah.
• 2:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Diane, um I'm glad that the Lord rescued you.
• 2:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: Me too, yeah.
• 2:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm glad that I have a chance to know you and um thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 2:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: I know there's layer and layer and layer, but God is doing the work and so many people, I think, and really calling his children home.
• 2:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, for anyone that's out there, um if you don't know the Lord, you know, I bet if you stopped and took an inventory of your life, you would see his hand weaved through the little parts and and um stages of life.
• 2:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he is always there, he's he was always there with me, always there with you.
• 2:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: We just, you know, hindsight is always twinny-twinny, but you know, um, give him a shot.
• 2:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're a backslider, you know, it's so different when you come back to the Lord as an adult, and you can take off the idea that you had of him and really see him for the first time, you know, in your adult self and try to be objective and get to know him other than what you were taught as a kiddo.
• 2:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, that's my heart is that sharing these stories like Diane and the others that's been on the podcast is that you would just consider giving God another chance in your life and see if he's not different than what you thought he was.
• 2:02:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:02:07
  SPEAKER_02: When you were younger, because I promise you, he's so much better.
• 2:02:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's so much he's so much better.
• 2:02:14
  SPEAKER_06: And I if I could just say one thing is ask yourself, did you ever, did you ever really invite him to the party?
• 2:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and did you really ever know him?
• 2:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, yeah.
• 2:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, thank you, Diane.
• 2:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, ma'am.
• 2:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: And God bless you.
• 2:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 2:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm excited to see how your future unfolds, how all of our futures unfold.
• 2:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: God is doing, I think, a new thing.
• 2:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's, you know, uh doing more and more and more, and it's exciting to be a part of it.
• 2:02:51
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for sharing your testimony.
• 2:02:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you believe for your kids, God's gonna honor your prayer.
• 2:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's gonna honor all of our prayers.
• 2:03:01
  SPEAKER_06: My kids are amazing.
• 2:03:02
  SPEAKER_06: I love them and they love me.
• 2:03:03
  SPEAKER_06: And I I, you know, I want to see them in church.
• 2:03:06
  SPEAKER_06: My granddaughter comes with me sometimes.
• 2:03:09
  SPEAKER_06: You know, yeah.
• 2:03:09
  SPEAKER_06: God is good, God's got them.
• 2:03:11
  SPEAKER_06: I know I know He can He can do for them exactly what He's done for me and so many other people.
• 2:03:16
  SPEAKER_06: So I believe that 100%.
• 2:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, God bless you.
• 2:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 2:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: For everyone out there, if you are a backslider or you have a testimony to share, please reach out to us.
• 2:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to hear you.
• 2:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if this story has resonated with you, please share it.
• 2:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: That helps us out a lot.
• 2:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Mostly we just want people to hear the good news of Jesus.
• 2:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll see you again next week.
• 2:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are so glad you joined us.
• 2:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a story of redemption or have worn the label of a backslider, we would love to hear from you.
• 2:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to support our ministry, your donation will be tax deductible.
• 2:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: Visit our website at Kathy Chestane.com.
• 2:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you will tune in for our next episode.