Love Freed Me with Jannise Jackson

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Memories. Regret. Alone. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Passion. [00:00:04] Speaker A: Guilt. Loneliness. [00:00:06] Speaker C: Peace. [00:00:07] Speaker A: Relationships. If you put God first, you'll never be last. [00:00:11] Speaker B: This is Grief at the Cookout, hosted by DiCarlo Raspberry. Hello, family. Welcome to grief at the cookout. Today I am joined by a very dear friend of mine, someone whom I consider a sister, Janice Jackson. Janice is an Oklahoma native, a minister, psalmist, conference organizer, educator, and author of the book entitled Love Freed Me my Journey to Healing. Today, Janice and I will discuss her journey to healing and how love became her freedom. [00:00:57] Speaker C: Hey, SIS. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Hey. [00:01:01] Speaker C: Welcome to the cookout. [00:01:05] Speaker A: Thank you for having me at the cookout. I love it. Come on. [00:01:10] Speaker C: How are you doing? How's your day? [00:01:13] Speaker A: I'm well, I'm well, I'm about to say what day it is. Great. [00:01:22] Speaker C: It's Monday. [00:01:23] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, it's Monday. Monday that I don't have to work for somebody else. [00:01:31] Speaker C: We give God glory. You well, you know, again, welcome to Grief at the Cookout. My very first guest on the very first episode, we have again Janice Jackson. So what we do at the cookout, and it's a tradition and we're going to start it today and it's just going to forever. Forever. Keep going on. I'm going to ask you one simple question. [00:02:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:02:01] Speaker C: What is your favorite cookout food? The baby shower. The outside cookouts at Fort Dupont. The family reunions. When you want to grill something, what's your favorite cookout food? [00:02:21] Speaker A: I could say so many things because cookout food is the best, period. Right. But I believe my go to at every cookout is a cheeseburger. [00:02:35] Speaker C: Oh, what you put on the cheeseburger? [00:02:38] Speaker A: A cheeseburger with some mustard. I prefer barbecue sauce over ketchup. So a little barbecue sauce, bacon and. [00:02:50] Speaker C: Cheddar cheese, caramelized onions. [00:02:53] Speaker A: Oh, bless the Lord. It I'll take it. I'll take caramelized or I'll take red onion, but yeah, that's it. Give me a little cheddar, little bacon, little mustard, barbecue sauce, thin layer of mayonnaise and or miracle Whip, whichever you prefer. [00:03:20] Speaker C: But yeah, on a brioche bun. On a brioche glory. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, on a brioche bun. Yeah. Good. Little sweet and buttery. Straight off the grill. [00:03:34] Speaker C: Got a good straight off the grill. Nice and brown. [00:03:37] Speaker A: God is worthy. [00:03:38] Speaker C: Wait a minute. Well, there you have it, folks, that's Janice's favorite cookout. Know we got to open up on a good high note right there. I love it. So Janice, you are an author of a book which is also the title of our podcast episode for today called Love Freed Me. How long did it take you to write that book? [00:04:08] Speaker A: It took me about twelve years to fully complete the process. It was something that was I want to say, I'm going to use the word, I don't want to be so churchy, but you all forgive me. It was something that was birthed through pain and we're going to delve well into it during this episode. But it was something that I started doing literally just kind of journaling my feelings after experiencing a loss. And it took me twelve years to complete it because there were some things that I wasn't sure that I wanted to delve in and or dive into. Life happened in the process and it just took a while. I believe now, knowing how the mind of God works and how the purpose and the plan of God works, I believe that the Lord could not have allowed me to release it without going through the process of the twelve years. And so the Lord allowed me to pin this project. And I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud. It is my testimony as to the love of God, how it freed me. But not only that, how would the love of God chase the seed, the planter, and everything else in between? And that's what we're going to talk about. [00:05:31] Speaker C: Oh my. Now, wait a minute. So you said you experienced a loss that ultimately had you decide to begin to write this book. Can you touch on that particular loss? [00:05:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. The loss that I experienced was the loss of the only man that I've known as a father. In him being my father, he was also my abuser. So I lost, what culture would say a part of me as someone who reared me. I personally say that I had griefed him years prior to him actually passing. I was going through the formality of someone dying, but he had already been dead to me, if you will. So it was the loss of my father who raised me and my abuser at the same time. And I did not know any other way to cope in that season and in that moment without putting my raw feelings and emotions on paper I never expected anyone to have to read. They were to be journal entries, if you will. And then as the Lord began to heal and deal with me, or deal and heal me in the same process, it turned out to be a book. [00:07:04] Speaker C: That'S interesting because you say you lost the father figure, but as well as your abuser. Now your grieving process for that, was that solely on you? Meaning you were grieving the anger, the hurt, all of that, or were you grieving that as well as grieving the fact that he was dead to you? [00:07:36] Speaker A: Um, I was grieving in the instance of as to where I pinned when I started pinning this book, I probably more so was grieving the fact that probably more so. The fact that he was my father in that moment. In that instance. It was later on, in years after his death, that I had to process the hurt, the pain. Although I had thought I processed the hurt, the pain, the agony, the abuse, the let down, all of those things, I thought that prior to him dying, I had processed that right. But it wasn't until after his death, me going through that process, and then years later, that I realized that I had not processed it properly. I literally put my emotions in a box, which is what we tend to do all the time, and we mask it as processed, but it's not processed. We like to give it a title, but we really haven't done the work to do, so so in that instance where I started pinning this book, yes, I was processing the fact of this is the person who I've known all my life, who raised me, that's all I knew. So I was processing that and trying to figure it out. What do I do here? [00:09:16] Speaker C: And so that grief that led you to a book. In your book, you also talk about and we're going to be jumping around, you all just going to have to go get the book, folks. It's called Love Free Me because it's a whole lot, and we don't even have all the time to really delve into everything in this book besides me knowing Janice personally. But in your book, you talk about reuniting with your birth mom. Now, if you can just kind of give the people just an overview of your birth mom, the fact that you're also a twin, you do have a sister, and how you got to the place of your adoptive family. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Okay, sure. So, interesting enough, I was born to a young lady who is 13 years older than I. She had me at the age of 13. It was a product of molestation and rape. And let me first say this. I cannot tell her story for her, right? I can only tell my version of what I know. And until I'm told something different, I'm going to stand on what I know. But nevertheless, she had us at a young age. I'm sorry, we were a product of molestation and or rape, and she did not know at the time that she was pregnant. And then when she come to find out that she was pregnant, life happened for her. And as you can suspect, a twelve or 13 year old child pregnant really does not have an opportunity to make decisions for themselves. Someone is making the decision for them because they are an adolescent. And in that my mother was forced to give us up for adoption, we ended up becoming wards of the state, if you will, and we ended up in the custody of social service, foster care system, things of that nature. It was then. Brown I believe, if I'm not mistaken, we probably did live with my mother for maybe the first year and a half of our lives. And I think life happened for them, which caused her not to be able to keep us. I believe life happened, but I also believe a decision was made for my mother that she necessarily couldn't have a voice to voice her opinion. But nevertheless, we were adopted, my twin sister and I. And as you know, with adoption, sometimes people want two, sometimes people will want one child. It just so happened to be the plan of the Lord. I believe it was the plan of the Lord that he preserved us to be able to be together, because the Lord knew what we were going to encounter growing up. But we were adopted into a Christian family, and in that, we had to deal with life circumstances of our own. But going throughout our whole life, we wondered who we were, where we came from. We were given stories. We were told odds. We were told everything concerning our biological mother. We lived with that for 34 years. 34, 35. 34 years. We'll say 34. It was on my 35th birthday that the Lord kindly orchestrated something that would change, literally change the trajectory of our lives. And I received a Facebook message from a young lady who said, I'm your sister. I believe I'm your sister. And she starts giving pertinent, detailed information. I thought I was being pumped. I thought somebody was playing a game on me. People are people, and you just never know. And so I was like, this got to be a joke. Whatever. I called my sister, told her I received this message. I read it to her, and she was like, don't call them until I get there. And so she ended up coming to where I was. We called the number back, but we didn't get an answer. So I just left a message and was like, which? It was like, maybe somebody's really playing a game. And it was later that evening, the young lady called back, and she started talking to us or what have you. She was like, I'm here with my mother and my brother. But there was still never for me at that moment, there was never a connection that this was my biological mother. I'm just thinking that someone reached out to me and was like, I'm your sister. DA DA this, DA DA. It didn't one plus one wasn't equal to two, right? And I think because I was probably more so in my mind than really trying to figure out the whole process. Nevertheless, they wanted to know what we knew and let me back up. Let me backtrack the person. How I knew it was, I had an inkling of an idea that it was true because they gave direct information that only the parties of my sister, the adoptees well, we being the adoptees, our adoptive parents, and only my biological mother would have known. So when she gave that information, it was like, if you were born on this day at this particular hospital, if you still go by the names of X, Y, and Z, then I know that this is you. So when she said that, I was like, hold up. How do you know that information? So it kind of gave me that. Okay, to pursue it a little further needless to say, we told them our part of the story, what we knew. And the first thing that the lady, she was crying. And the first thing that the lady said was, I never abandoned you. And it was from that moment forward that there became a peace and a calmness over the entire conversation that I knew that it was God. And we talked for a couple of hours that night. We exchanged numbers. And me being the type of person, you know, thank God for social media. I started searching on social media, trying to find what I could find, and I didn't find much. But the next day, she started sending pictures. Janelle and I had never janelle, which is my twin sister, we had never saw baby photos of ourselves. The next day, she sent baby photos, and that is when I knew it was real. And I was like, wow, okay. But I still didn't believe it in its totality. I was just like, she's related because I can see my sister in her, but I couldn't see me in her. And that's a whole nother conversation. [00:16:39] Speaker C: But you all do look alike now. I saw the picture, and I said, dag, you look like she just spit you out. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:16:54] Speaker C: That's not even the whole book. That's just a portion of part of a chapter of, you know, of just what's in this book called Love Freed Me. But when we're talking about grief, what this podcast is to do it's to realize the grief, but then also normalize the grief, which is the absence of joy. And so in your childhood, because I can only imagine that through everything that you have been through, you have went through a lot of grief. But have you really processed the whole grieving? Were you able to grieve each moment that brought you so much sadness? [00:17:45] Speaker A: No, I'll be honest. I have had to more so in my adult years opposed to my childhood years. I've had to deal with the various stages of grief. Even if they're 6ft under, even if they're living my grief process, I'm still grieving. I'm going through the process of dealing with it properly. Even now, there are aspects of it that you think you're over until something else happens and it rears its ugly head. And then you have to go back to the root of the problem and say, well, what is that? And then going back to the root of it, you just be like, oh, I never dealt with the initial root of the problem, with the root of the situation. And so it's a work in progress. But I've had to go back and dig, do the work that it protect that for me. I've had to go back and do it. And it hasn't been easy, but it's definitely worth it. [00:19:03] Speaker C: It's a marathon, not a race. Listen, it's a marathon, not a race. It's a marathon, not a race. [00:19:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:19:15] Speaker C: Because what I'm really interested in is how you got to the point of love and how you found love and when did you recognize love was actually true. But before we get to that point, the various stages of grief that you recognize as an adult, can you recall in your childhood when there was absence of joy for you, like the actual onset of grief? Although can you recall like, the first time before all the other times that you went through? [00:19:56] Speaker A: Probably at the age of had to be seven or eight. So anything prior to the age of eight I've suppressed very is deep, right? And I don't know if I'll ever dig that would really take some hypnosis for me to go back that far, but I can recall definitely at the age it had to be either was seven turning eight, or I had just turned eight. And I remember something was my we had an animal, and I was afraid of animals. I think this is where my fear of animals really became the dog. [00:20:55] Speaker C: I remember that. [00:20:59] Speaker A: We had a dog. We had a dog named Bear. And my God, did he look like one. A dog named Bear. I don't remember the breed, any of that, but we were living in Detroit at the time, and the dog was outside. We had an animal inside. It was a cat, I believe. And for whatever reason, I was supposed to go outside and do something with the dog. And I was terrified because he got real excited and his weight was probably two or three times more than what I weighed at the time. So he would get really excited. And I was trying to tell my mom, like, can you come outside with me? And she was like, no. And my father was like, no, you're going to go out and you're going to do it yourself, whatever. So nevertheless, the cat was trying to go outside in the same process. And I remember trying to block the cat from going and for whatever reason, the cat just lunged at me as if I was trying to attack it. And literally, I had the scar to this day, but literally me trying to block the cat out of the way, I hit my arm on the glass pane. The old screen doors, houses with older I'm telling my age now, but the older screen doors that had the glass in the middle of the so I'm trying to brace myself, but also block myself from being attacked by the cat. And I remember getting this cut, and I remember crying and saying to my parents, like, nobody going to take me to the hospital for this. And my father was like, you'll be fine. You'll live. But I knew that there was a shard of glass in my hand, in my wrist, and I kept saying, there's a piece of glass in my wrist. And no one would listen to me. No one would listen to me. No one would listen to me. And I think that is at the point where I started grieving. The fact that nobody cared and nobody listened, nobody heard my plea and or my cry of pain to do anything about it, that's a whole nother message. But anyway, sorry. [00:23:40] Speaker C: If you can sum up how many years that you have been dealing with grief from the traumatic experiences from your childhood, how many years can you say that you've been walking this marathon or walking this race or walking this long hallway of grief from childhood feeling like no one listened to you from being touched as a child? And when you recognized it in your adult years, how many years is that? [00:24:21] Speaker A: So I'm going to say I didn't really I'm going to say probably a good 20 years. [00:24:32] Speaker C: 20 years. How did you function? [00:24:37] Speaker A: The grace of God? I don't know. [00:24:43] Speaker C: That's a long time. How can one function just from the interpersonal grief that you dealt with, not even like work grief or dealing with disappointments at work, but dealing just with the things you had to grapple with and the traumatic childhood that you had for 20 years? How were you able to function, to even have some type of social life, to be able to go to church? [00:25:15] Speaker A: Hindsight being 2020. And what I know now is that church was designed and I've said it before I said it in my book. I probably say it every time I do a conversation. That the greatest thing. Although my home was dysfunctional in many, many aspects, the greatest thing that they could have ever done was introduce me to Christ. Because of that foundation, church became my safe haven. It became my place of comfort. So even when I didn't understand the elements of grief, knowing that I felt safe in a place of church gave me the sense of normalcy that I needed, if you will. I was a functioning addict. I mean, it's just like anybody else who deals with any other type of things of that nature. It was functioning. I was functioning. A functioning addict, dealing with grief and really not knowing that I was really dealing with grief, you know what I mean? Not totally comprehending the fact that for me, at certain stages of my life, especially in my adolescent years, the way I lived was normalcy to me. I didn't know anything different until I got outside of the home and I saw things done differently. And then I had to unlearn a behavior that was taught to me. So it was normal to live. I thought it was normal to live the way that I lived. And when I didn't realize that it was normal was that it was like, oh, fool you. You was chucked. [00:27:28] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, because that's what we do growing up in our families. We learn this is how we function, this is what we do. And then when we go beyond the walls of our family, of the whole entire family, we see how different people lead different lives, how they communicate, how families communicate, how you realize that there are some people that have great families, and either they appreciate it, or either they don't appreciate it. And you say, man, if I had that growing up, if I had that, if all you all was just able to just come together, then things would. [00:28:13] Speaker A: Be just so totally different. The chaotic part of it is that I've had to filter a lot of the negative parts of it because, let my family tell it, my life was great. That's their point of view. My point of view is something completely different. And so I'm learning even now as I've matured in various areas of my life, that we will not always agree. But you have to respect my point of view, and I have to respect your point of view and find a common ground. It's been a hard process. I've had to filter what I say or the way that I say it because I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings or I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to defame the name of someone. And the crazy part about this book is that one side of my family read it to see what I said about them. The other side of the family, well, both sides of the family read it to see what I said about them, and they missed the whole they missed the point of the book. [00:29:30] Speaker C: That's a problem because, one, we have to normalize that we as black people and in our community and in our families, that we actually go through trauma. We have to normalize talking about our trauma. It's not okay. It's not okay for people to think, well, that was just a normal life. Me being touched, me being raped, me being molested, terrorizing me with a dog, or not showing any type of sympathy or empathy towards me in my childhood, that is just okay. And then they like to sweep it under the rug. No one wants to talk about it, but as soon as we start to expose it, then it's a problem. And that's why I also think that even as growing up, god can handle it. God can handle it. Yes, god can handle it. But there's also a therapist. There's also a counselor. And necessary they don't want us to go to those different measures because they don't want us to talk about those different things because that's how you normalize the fact that, hey, I have been through trauma. I have been through hurt. I have to talk this out, and I have to talk this through so I can be better for the next person. [00:30:50] Speaker A: And I even remember from the age of 1918 or 19 up until maybe 30. So I'm the type of person, I think, because I was going through what I was going through. I needed someone to listen, just listen to me. I don't need you to necessarily give me a response. I just needed to vent. Because for 15 years, I had to hold my abuse in silently. We're told that what goes on in this house stays in this house. Number one. [00:31:19] Speaker C: This ain't Vegas. This ain't right, right. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Then you're told, two, you better not tell nobody but God. Three, if you open up your mouth to anybody, I kill you. So now I got all of these stipulations that I'm trying to like you're telling me to live this life, I got to do it silently, and you threaten to kill me in the process and all of these other things that I have to deal with, right? So for 15 years, all while the abuse was going on, I had to remain quiet, mute, if you will. I couldn't even tell my mother. I couldn't tell my sister because my sister, although we lived in the same household, we were raised to fight each other, meaning we were raised to hate each other. And for a long time, and my God, it's been a process. I'm just going to be real, right. My sister and I were so at ODS with each other, but we knew that we were all we had, but to some extent, we couldn't stand each other. But that's because how we were raised. But I'm saying all of that to say that it wasn't until let me backtrack. So for a long time after for the 15 years of silence, right, when people would start to listen to me, oh, I would dump it all on them. And I know they would probably be like, what in the she's crazy, like something's going on. It wasn't a healthy way of dealing with it. I was just only talking to anybody that would listen at that point. But it still left me in a place of after I was finished having a conversation with them, it would leave me in a place of, well, what did that accomplish? Denise like, how do you feel? Any better? And I realized that I wasn't feeling better. So I said all of that to say that it wasn't until about let me see. Yeah, somewhere around there, maybe a little bit before then, 2016, 2017, somewhere in there, I was like, I'm going to seek professional help. Professional help. [00:33:39] Speaker C: And I was going to ask you that throughout this whole process, did you ever sit down with a therapist or a counselor? [00:33:48] Speaker A: Not as a child. [00:33:51] Speaker C: Well, I wouldn't even expected that with. [00:33:54] Speaker A: What you went right. [00:33:56] Speaker C: But going through all those years. [00:34:00] Speaker A: As an adult, I want to say maybe even 30, if I be honest. I believe somewhere in there that I really was like, I can't do this by myself. Yes, I was going to church, and yes, prayer is something that I was reared up in, so I knew the power of prayer. I knew that church was my foundation, but I needed something else in conjunction with that. And so Jesus and therapy makes I started I went out on this quest of trying to find someone who I trusted enough. And I'm not even sure that I really trusted them enough, but I just knew that common sense said to me, you can't do this on your own. So I remember even going to one clinical therapist, if you will, my nice way of putting it, right? Remember going to a clinical therapist, and the first thing they say was like, oh, you have PTSD, and we're going to prescribe you this medication. That's what you gathered from my first visit. Okay, no problem. So then I said, that's not the avenue that I need to take. So I then began to pray, ask the Lord for some instruction. And then that is when he led me to the person that I literally just she became my best friend, if you will. And I remember even our first conversation, she was like, what do you hope to gain out of this? And I was like, I really don't know. But I know that there's something that I need to deal so I can really move forward. I'm tired of going through this process. I'm not whole, and I want to be whole spirit, mind, soul, and body. And I remember even talking to her, and I was talking to her, just kind of sharing certain things. And she was like I think at one point, she was like, I need you to breathe. Like, breathe. And it was in that moment that I was like, okay, not only are you listening, but you're going to give me I'm going to be able to walk away with the tools that I need to be able to do the work to get to where I'm trying to go. Best decision I ever made for myself. And ultimately it helped because it aided in this twelve year process. It helped me deal with things that I necessarily did not want to deal with in the twelve year process of writing the book. It aided, it really helped. So I still keep that line of communication open, not as frequently as I needed it in the beginning, but the line of communication is there. Praise God. [00:37:02] Speaker C: So now, after experiencing the trauma that you went through, everything that you did go through, because this is a safe space, but also to be really honest and transparent, because again, people, this is a marathon and not a race. What things are you still grieving with as it pertains to your current state, your current state of mind? [00:37:39] Speaker A: This is going to be twofolded. I'm going to answer it in two ways. I'm going to answer it from the perspective of adopted family, and then I'm going to answer it from the probably it'll be really three folded. [00:37:49] Speaker C: Got you. [00:37:50] Speaker A: From the aspect. Of adoption family, the aspect of biological family, and then the aspect of Janice the woman. Okay? So in the aspect of adoptive family, what I am grieving is I am grieving the fact that it is still something that is being brushed under the rug, not dealt with, not dealt with. It is something, and not just in my situation, because what I understand is that everybody had things going on in their household, in their lives, things of that nature. But the fact that now that I've taken the steps that I've taken to go through the healing process, I see so many family members that are bound with grief, but they're not even willing to humble themselves to be able to deal with it. And the first avenue of dealing with it is to be as open and honest and communicate, and they're not willing to do that. And so in that aspect, I'm grieving that it is still not a conversation. It is still a silent drug that is eating at the core of that family unit. In that instance, grief as it pertains to knowing who my biological family. I'm grateful. And I mean this in the most purest way I know how to. My heart is pure and I can't what's the word I'm looking for? Try to figure out what other people may think the intent of my heart is in this situation, but I mean it from a pure place. I am ever so grateful that the Lord spared our lives, meaning my sister and I, but also the fact of my biological mother spared our lives. To be able to be in a place where we are now, where we know who we are, we know the role, we know that we exist in each other's lives. Right? I grieve the fact that it is very disheartening to still not be able to communicate what happened the way it happened. What I know is that what my mother went through, and I put it in the book that sometimes we end up having to go through generational curses, and we don't understand how we think generational curses only come from an aspect of the people that we live with. We know it really goes back to the people before you. Right. What I know is that my mother endured rape and or molestation and then promiscuity, that I and my sister endured rape and or molestation, and it's a generational curse. Right. But I'm determined that it's not going to be the curse of my lineage. Right? So not only am I doing the work of healing for myself, I'm really doing the work of healing for my mother, because what I know is necessary for me, my family needs, but they may not go through it and get it in the same avenue in which I pertain to go get it. Right. They may feel uncomfortable. [00:41:49] Speaker C: Right. [00:41:50] Speaker A: So in that instance, I grieve the fact that there's still some sense of silence in my biological family. And I want nothing but my family to be whole spirit, mind, soul, and body. And that is my prayer. I also understand the assignment that the Lord has placed on my life to bring my family out of darkness. And so I have to be very strategic. I'm being very strategic. How I maneuver, what I say, what you know, things of that nature as it pertains to Janice, the woman I am. Grieving the fact that it took so long for me to get to this place of freedom. And. [00:42:38] Speaker C: Do you think that's that that's by is that by choice or is that because you realize that you had to go through a process? [00:42:49] Speaker A: I realized I had to go through a process. And as uncomfortable as the process was, now looking at the fuller picture, it was necessary to be able to bring a person who birthed me out of darkness is rewarding. Not rewarding in the sense of, oh, Janice is great, but it goes back to the love of God, the agape love of God and how it chased I me, the seed, my mother, the planter, and everything else in between. [00:43:33] Speaker C: And that's a good segue to the actual word love. When you discovered the word love, did you actually know what it meant? This is a trifold question. We discovered the word love. Did you actually know what the word meant? And then with love, when did you actually realize what it means to you, what love means to you? And then how did that love actually free you? And then you might as well sum it up and say, what the love free you from? Because that's the most important question. Because honestly, as we're sitting here talking about it, we're talking about trauma, we're talking about grief. We're normalizing actually having the conversation about talking about it because we realize that in so many forms, we can't really sit and talk about it like we really want to. And yes, we're still being respectful to our family members, and yes, we do do that. But when we're actually talking about this grief process, because love is what it actually freed you, like, really delve into that, talk about that, because that's what's really going to help someone, is to actually understand what love is for them. How can they actually cover it? [00:45:15] Speaker A: So good segue in the book, yes, I talk about the things that I've had to endure, but I couldn't talk about those things without first understanding that there are four parts to the word love. Come on, types of love, if you will. [00:45:42] Speaker C: You all write this down. Get your pen and paper. This is service for today. [00:45:46] Speaker A: So you have four types of love. Okay, so the four types of love, one is agape, and it's the unconditional love of God for man. Again, that's agape. The unconditional love of God for man, which we as if you are we strive, right? We strive to have that unconditional love because we're honest, because we're made out of dirt, we're born in sin, we're shaping iniquity all of that stuff, right? So that's something that we have to work for. Our love is conditional. Our flesh, it's conditional, right? So we strive to experience the agape love of God, right? The next type is arrows. That is the intimate love between a husband and a wife. You have Philia, which is the affection between in regards to friendship. It's that type of love that is for friendship, brother, sister, things of that nature. And then you have storg or yeah, I'm going to say a storg. And that is the love and affection between parents and or children. And now, knowing that there are four types of love because at first, when you think of love, you just think of that. You think of a feeling, right? You think of an emotion, you think of what it gives you butterflies on the inside. We equate our feelings to love when in all actuality love is something that has no feeling, it's unconditional. Whether I like you today or tomorrow, whether you've done something to me today or tomorrow, my love for you is not defined by that, right? But we as humanistic nature, it's our innate nature to relate it to a feeling of some sort. So for a long time, I only understood I lived in a place of love that I should have never experienced. I lived in eros love, but I should have lived in the place of agape. [00:48:35] Speaker C: Okay, you got to keep going because this is good to me. [00:48:40] Speaker A: So I lived from a place of intimacy, of a type of love based off of the actions that were done to me and or with me, okay? When in all actuality from my parents, I really should have only known the storage type of love or the storic type of love which is one that a parent has for their child and or a child has. It's a very tender yet pure place of should be of love. It shouldn't be tampered with, it shouldn't be intertwined with anything else. It should just be a pure place of love, one that a child has for their parent. One that a parent has for their child. Right? But again, because we know that we experience things off of emotion and things of that nature and feelings, we sometimes introduce other types of lifestyles that we should have never even entered into. So I lived from a place of storage I'm sorry, a place of eros love opposed to a place of stored or agape. How did I get to the place of agape love? I got to the place of agape love by trusting the one I knew who gave me life, which was not in the physical form, but who gave me life in the conception of his mind being Christ. Trusting the one who, before I entered into my mother's womb, the Spirit, the Godhead who knew me. Trusting that God. Trusting God enough to say, you knew this was going to happen, so I'm going to trust you. That you're going to get me out of it. So I had to walk through agape in the form of being abused, being molested, whereas to some people where they could have lost their mind, maybe where I should have lost my mind, I didn't. Which spoke to the agape love of God that he had for me, right where I could have been strugg out on drugs and or anything else for that matter, spoke to the agape. It reminded me that no God's hand is there all along. It didn't work out the way that I intended. This isn't what I'm used to. But if this is all going to give God glory at the end, he knew now in 2022 that I would be sitting on this podcast with you and talking about the love which is speaking to the agape love of God. Because if I can save Janice, not just from the molestation, the rape, the sexual promiscuity, the miscarriages if I could save Janice from herself, of her way of thinking, of her own self sabotage if I can save her from that, and she knows that I brought her through it, she's going to lead somebody else back to me. Which speaks to the agape love of God. That's good. So when I learned to cast my cares on Him truly, and he began to lead and guide me and do the work to be able to get to the place of where I experienced the agape love of God and I'll be honest, the agape love of God really didn't transcend into my life until I forgave. And that's what I talk about in this book. Forgiveness led to my freedom. I hope I'm answering your question. [00:53:10] Speaker C: No, you are. [00:53:12] Speaker A: Forgiveness led me back to the place where I was able to look the man who had abused me for 15 years, to look at him and say, I love you, and did not mean anything but what it meant. And it was forgiveness and doing the work as the process. In the process, it was forgiveness that was able to give me the strength and the ability to be able to bury him and be by my mother's side the entire time and walk her through the process. It was the agape love of God. [00:53:58] Speaker C: That ultimately that experiencing of the agape love that led you to the experiencing. [00:54:05] Speaker A: Of the to be free. Yeah. And forgiveness led me to the freedom. [00:54:13] Speaker C: So your understanding of the four different types of love, to experiencing, to realizing what you are operating out of at one point, but also to experience the agape love led to you being able to walk through that process of forgiveness. Because forgiveness is a process. It's just not something that you can just be like, I forgive you. Right? This is not something that you can just wake up and say, I forgive you. It's a process because trust has been broken. And for some people, like even myself, once trust is broken, it's either over or it's like trying to really repair what that trust is and trying to look beyond that and look past that. And that's hard because I ain't God. It's hard, but honestly, realizing that experiencing that agape love led you to the process of forgiveness, to freedom. [00:55:29] Speaker A: Yeah, because I had to learn that even in spite of me, God loves me. [00:55:35] Speaker C: Right? [00:55:36] Speaker A: And in order for God, it wasn't until we hear it all the time, but it's not until you experience it for yourself. You pray all the time, and you'd be like, yeah, God hears my prayers. He answers my prayers. But if I have an ounce of hatred or malice, anger, bitterness, if I have unforgiveness in my heart, god ain't hearing nothing. [00:56:02] Speaker C: I'm saying, listen, not a thing. [00:56:05] Speaker A: And so it's not until you deal not until you deal with the matters of the heart. And I mean really. Deal. I'm not saying that you're going to wake up today and you'd be like, all right, today I'm going to deal with the matters of my heart. And you ain't going to feel some type of way. No, but when you deal with the matters of your heart, and dealing with the matters of your heart is not even doing it for anybody else. It's being honest with yourself and saying, I'm doing this for me. And at first, I thought that I was doing the work so that I wouldn't have to live with this scarlet letter over my head, right, of, oh, you're adopted. Oh, this, all of those things. I thought I was doing the work for the opinions of others when I actually had to go back and say, no, I'm doing this for me. And for a long time, I looked at the offender as the problem, and God even checked me one day and was like, he'd been dead, so now check you. Check your heart. And when the Holy Spirit said to me that one day, it was like, check your heart, I was like, hey, hold up, hold up. You're supposed to be on my side. But Holy Spirit, you really have to check your motive, and you have to check really do the hard work. And when I noticed that I was blaming everybody else instead of looking at, hey, look at your part. I'm not saying that my part had anything to do with the molestation, with the abuse, with any of that. Me existing did not have anything to do with it because hurt people hurt people. And that's a mindset, and that's a whole nother conversation for another day that we're not going to delve into goodness me, however, but I had to do the hard work and not put it on nobody else and say, create within me a clean heart of God or God. I want to be more like you. And the only way I know to be more like you is to dump this on you. Cast your cares on me, for he cares for you. And I had to just cast my cares. And I'm saying even within, especially since we've been in this pandemic, let's be real, this pandemic has brought out a period of we've all been isolated, right? But what happens when you're isolated with yourself and you thought you were over. [00:58:49] Speaker C: Certain things, and then you realize you're not over it. [00:58:53] Speaker A: You ain't over it. [00:58:55] Speaker C: And if you have not taken the time to deal with yourself through the time that you had, my God, I mean, you got to do the work. Say it all the time, I'm here to help you do your work, but you honestly have to do the work. But again, I think the problem is a lot of people is looking for this work to be just easy, like, you just wake up and do it. [00:59:19] Speaker A: It's not going to be handed to you. [00:59:20] Speaker C: Right. You have to take the initiative to do it. You got to realize that. You got to recognize it, and then you got to work through it. But working through it is actually realizing, hey, look, I'm not at that place yet. I can't do that. [00:59:33] Speaker A: But it also causes, if you're not. [00:59:35] Speaker C: There, right, but it also causes for you to not continually hurt yourself in the process. Why put yourself through the same thing with the same persons or the same situation where you know it's going to bring about the same thing, the same type of hurt that you have already been dealing with? At some point, you have to make a change to say, okay, what if I decide not to do this? What if I decide to recognize this, realize it, and say, okay, I'm not actually going to go down this particular route. I'm actually going to do this to actually bring about healing to myself. You can't make nobody have insanity is. [01:00:17] Speaker A: Doing the same thing over and over. [01:00:19] Speaker C: Again, right, and expecting a different result. [01:00:26] Speaker A: But you have to be intentional about it. And if you're not intentional about your healing, your healing not what they did to you, right. But intentional about doing the self work, if you're not intentional, you'll keep going around a mountain, never accomplishing anything, and it defeats the purpose. And until you necessarily do the work, you won't experience the goodness of the land. You won't experience what life has to fully offer. I believe that I'm living some of my best days in this season in the last maybe five to ten years, maybe five to ten years, maybe ten years. Ten years is a stress, but definitely in the last five years. [01:01:27] Speaker C: No, but I mean, I would even say, well, we knew what the restoration process would look like. And can it be safe to say that those last years that you've been experiences have been the restoration of what you have, in part, lost? Yeah, right. I'm living the restored time that I kind of missed out on, but it's all a process, and there's nothing wrong with being and walking in this particular process. I mean, honestly, I'm pretty sure that people who have been through or close to what you have been through have either taken their lives, decided they had nothing else to work for, to live for, or they are angry, they are bitter, they are mad. And again, they have nothing to look forward to because they haven't taken that initiative. And taking that initiative is hard. It's not easy to take that initiative. [01:02:40] Speaker A: It is not easy. [01:02:42] Speaker C: But if you're going to choose, it's not easy, right? But it's a choice to do it. [01:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. I mean, either you're going to stay stuck or you're going to move forward. You can't do both. You can't be stuck and forward at the same time. It's impossible. It's impossible. But whatever avenue you choose, do what's going to be best for you. And I promise you, if you just choose the best, choose life. Choose forward movement. If you choose life, you'll get what you're looking for. And I chose life, and I'm determined to live it more abundantly because that's the promise of God over my life. But I'm determined to live it. I'm determined to. Now, granted, I have my moments. We're all human. I have my moments. But I don't want to stay stuck, right? Not there. I'm going to go forward. I'm going to move forward because that's what it's requiring of me. [01:03:52] Speaker B: Family realizing, understanding and experiencing love led Janice to forgiveness and freedom. I encourage you to be kind to yourself, love yourself a little harder, and love yourself unconditionally. You might join in grieving, but you're going to come out healed. I love you and thank you.