Parent Compass Radio

Guest (Female): I'm tired of seeing myself hurt. I'm tired of seeing my kids hurt. Why does this keep happening? [--Guest (Female)--] Leah since she was a baby.

Host (Male): I never thought that marriage would be that challenging. Welcome to an advanced course of death to self.

Guest (Female): My mom was just trying to protect me. She brought us up the best way that she could in comparison to how she was raised.

Guest (Female): My mother kind of went into a psychosis. Kind of made a plan to take us all to heaven. There's always a spiritual war for your life.

Guest (Female): We have a busy blended family.

Host (Male): Full of excitement and love.

Guest (Female): He loves to get the family together and watch football. He is just so adamant about that.

Host (Male): We have a Sunday dinner, yeah.

Guest (Female): Yeah. We make a Sunday dinner and watch a football game together. And my daughter and my son-in-law love football. Blake is an incredible photogenic memory for every rule that there ever was for an NFL game. Drew will kind of drift in and out because she's not really into football, but it's just so fun having everybody together. Our son-in-law Blake and our daughter Leah.

Host (Male): The Newlywed couple who I had the privilege of performing their wedding ceremony.

Guest (Female): Leah is a deaf teacher. We have another daughter named Drew.

Guest (Female): My siblings are fun. You know, Leah, she has a lot of friends. She grew up doing sports. She was in school a lot, very studious. Monday through Friday, she went to Austin Texas school for the deaf. I really care about them and love my family a lot.

Guest (Female): Leah has been deaf since she was a baby. Her mom was sick with pneumonia when she was pregnant with Leah, and when she delivered Leah, Leah was sick with pneumonia. The doctor said, you need to give her medicine, but it was strong medicine, it may stop her hearing and strip her hearing canal. But no medicine, she die. You decide. And so, mom and dad said, yes, give her the medicine. And she lived. When my husband Patrick and I married, the one that died in COVID. That is where my daughter Leah comes from. Her mother had died. She was seven when we got married. We were married for about 20 years, and then her father died. And so, I am her parent. I am her only parent.

Guest (Female): Mama, that, Leah. It's okay. It's okay. Oh, I love you. Oh, I love you too. Mommy. She's my bonus kid. I wanted more kids.

Guest (Female): But no more kids. And then she comes along. She's my bonus kid. I don't think I can live without her either. And she's part of my family and her husband too. He's my second bonus kid. I got two now. That's awesome.

Host (Male): We went to a marriage retreat the first week we got married. And we just dedicated our marriage to the Lord. And the Lord just perfectly impressed on my heart, Deborah, you are forgiven. Ron is forgiven for all his mistakes. This is a clean, pure, fresh start marriage for you guys. I'm going to be in it. I'm going to be running it. It's you're forgiven to lift off that burden off of me of any form of a relationship that Ron had had, any form of a relationship that I had had for this new marriage to be blessed by God, to be ordained by God. That was just such a beautiful thing to know.

Guest (Female): I wouldn't wish divorce on my worst enemy.

Host (Male): I never thought that, you know, marriage would be that challenging. Welcome to an advanced course of death to self.

Guest (Female): When I realized that I was going to live with a bullet in my back for the rest of my life. And I realized that my whole body remembered trauma. And I realized that when I thought about it, it hurt me emotionally. That's when I thought, oh, wait, uh, no, no, there's been damage.

Host (Male): Of course, I hadn't even been out of the Marine Corps a year when we got married. Yeah, you know, when you try doing an inspection over the ledges of doors for your wife, that didn't just doesn't go over. You know, near, near, well, yeah, when the drill instructor does it for the true. But anyway, we had three wonderful kids.

Host (Male): Pastor Church started a church in Denver, Colorado. I'm the eternal optimist. God's going to take the world by storm by the time I was 25. I'm going to go fishing for Moby Dick with a cane pole and bring the tartar sauce along with me, you know. Hey, if that's what I think God's told me to do, you know? And, uh, uh, she however was not that way.

Guest (Female): Relationships didn't work out. I had some really traumatic things going on as far as personal relationships. And then even after being a single mom, these people would be traumatic with my kids.

Guest (Female): It was just me, my mom, and my brother. She was a single parent. It was kind of difficult, especially because it's kind of like everybody around you has a lot of money, and then you're being raised by a single parent. It's a little difficult, but she did her best. She loved us, took us to church all the time.

Host (Male): Oh my gosh, was I shocked for her system? I mean, I'm shocked for most people's system, but really shocked for her system. And I didn't know, you know, how to be my part either, I think.

Guest (Male): I just thought, uh, uh, you know, gee, uh, Jesus is the answer. We'll be okay. I'm God's man of faith and power. We'll be okay, you know. And then unfortunately, we weren't.

Host (Male): Yeah, it was tragic and all the fallout effects. I did everything I could do to try to turn that marriage around.

Guest (Female): People get so hurt and they get so traumatized that their picker gets broken, so to speak. And they pick the wrong people and then unfortunately, it becomes a habit. I'm tired of seeing myself hurt. I'm tired of seeing my kids hurt. Why does this keep happening? I knew that I tried everything else and nothing's working. I needed to get healed by the Lord.

Host (Male): That's why so much of my ministry, the last 20 plus years has been trying to encourage men especially, that if there's any way that you can stay in that marriage, you need to stay in it. Well, you got your choice of which tuft to take. You get your choice of tough of, uh, uh, staying with that woman, working things out, going to the threshing floor, or you got the tough of being out there on the open season, not knowing what lies beneath that pretty face. Divorce is kind of an occupational hazard as a pastor. Yet, you know, God just worked in my life through it all, was gracious and restored me and put me back on platforms of churches I never thought I'd be on again ever in my life. That's where I got into media. K-Love Radio opened up. I was the Central Oklahoma voice of K-Love Radio for many years. I can attest to the grace and mercy of God.

Guest (Female): I allowed the Holy Spirit to come into me and come out of me and work in me. I started submitting my will to him. I started really getting healed. She brought us up the best way that she could in comparison to how she was raised. It's, um, kind of amazing.

Guest (Female): My mother had had me and then she had my brother and then she had a miscarriage. The miscarriage really kind of messed her up. She started having like a postpartum depression. She just kind of went into a psychosis, I guess. She had gone to the hardware store and got a gun and laid us down on her bed and just really kind of made a plan to take us all to heaven. Nobody knew that her brain was kind of going haywire and she was trying to take care of two little kids and probably didn't even know herself what was going on.

Guest (Female): My mom told me about that when I wasn't too young because you know, like a young kid can't really understand that, but maybe like around the time she went through it, like seven or eight. I thought it was, um, horrible. I've never met my mom's mom. I didn't have a relationship with her. And I can see why. Maybe I didn't understand that when I was younger, but then when I understood exactly what happened and everything that transpired, I understood my mom was just trying to protect me, which I'm thankful for.

Guest (Female): When I was seven and my brother was five, we were living in Pensacola, Florida. At the time, my dad was traveling quite a bit. He would sell things and then come back. But he'd be gone for long periods of time. Unfortunately, I think there may have been some sort of an affair going on of some kind, I'm not sure. But that's kind of the little bits and pieces you hear when you're a little kid and you don't know what that means. You don't know what that could be. I think that was another reason that my mom was kind of losing it. Something was going on in the marriage, and then she had this postpartum depression. Nobody knew. I think she just wanted it to be better and just go to heaven. She just, that's it. She was just tired of it, I guess. I think it was that with whatever was going on with her brain and a postpartum depression. Since nobody saw it and nobody knew, she didn't get any counseling for that. This was many years ago, when nobody got any counseling for that. There was no support system there to, oh, you're acting strange, what's going on with you, you know? It was all just inside her head. She just like began to live inside her head. She said, hey, you know, Debbie, you want to go to heaven? And I, of course, had been to Sunday school and I was like, yeah, it's a great place. I'll go to heaven. I know about that from church, from Sunday school. And, and, um, I said, can I take my dolls? And she's like, sure, you can take your dolls. And I'm like, okay, I'm down, I'm, I want to go. She kind of gave me, uh, a bunch of children's aspirin. Gave my, my brother a bunch of St. Joseph's orange little children's aspirin. Put a sign in the window of the home that said, do not come in, I have children. If you come in, I'll shoot. Laid us down on my parent's bed. Put towels over our head. Shot me three times in the back and shot my brother three times in the back and then shot herself in the head.

Guest (Female): The bullet's trajectory changed just a hair's breadth not to kill every single one of us. We were drenched in blood but we were all alive. Why, mommy, why? Why did you do this? And then the police were there almost immediately. I do remember them taking me to the hospital. The first thing they asked me was, did you take anything? Or somehow they knew that I had taken all this great number of children's aspirin that in itself could have killed me. They were pumping my stomach, they were pumping my brother's stomach. Satan was after me. Satan decided to destroy me from the time I was a child. But I did have the Holy Spirit and I did have Jesus, and it was like a war for my life. Satan has a plan to your life. God has a plan to your life. There's always a spiritual war for your life. What has happened to us? Our dad kind of disappearing, our mom kind of trying to kill us, and now this.

Guest (Female): I think it's devastating. It's extremely traumatic and can break up a family.

Guest (Female): My grandmother starts beating us psychologically, torturing, they were physically torturing. You're going to go crazy just like your mom. My mother was in a, what they used to call insane asylum. I'm going to be homeless like my mother. God, I don't have a mother. I don't have a father. I don't have anybody. I need Jesus. They had actually left a bullet in my spine that was too close to the spine to be removed. My mother was in a, what they used to call insane asylum. I couldn't see her. I think she must have grazed her skull instead of going straight in, because obviously if she had done that, she would have been dead. My brother was still in the hospital because he had to have a incision all the way down his chest to remove all the bullets.

Guest (Female): I think it's devastating. My grandma and great grandma. It's extremely traumatic and can break up a family. That's why even though we do have a small family, we have a very strong family. And we love each other no matter what. I look back and I know that the Lord was there, the Holy Spirit was there, his angels protected all of us right there in that second.

Guest (Female): What were the good memories? I've often thought about that. What were the memories that I remember were my family was together, they were intact. My mother was operating motherly, you know. We were happy. I remember one time, uh, my parents had stashed all the Christmas presents in this little pantry by the kitchen. And they had put a lock over the top. I was probably five, my brother was three. I was going to find out what was in that cabinet. I went in there and got on a chair, got up to the ledge, unlatched the ledge and opened the door and there they all were. I remember things like my mom would have all these manipulatives in the home. little blocks and clay and colors and crayons and ABC things, and she would teach us at home. She would teach us preschool at home. And, and I didn't know what that was. I just thought it was fun time with mom. She really wanted us to learn. She took us to Sunday school, she took us to church. My father didn't go because he felt like he was an agnostic at the time. So he didn't go, but he didn't mind her going, and didn't mind her taking the kids. I remember learning all about the Bible from real early. How many books there were in the Bible, Bible verses, and just really absorbing that and absorbing it from her. I remember she was very beautiful. My father was very handsome. I have pictures of them where they literally look like movie stars. It's unbelievable. He was from Philadelphia, she was from Alabama. Automatic conflict, north meets the south. But they seemed to be working it out.

Guest (Female): I was never really able to process it because immediately, we went to Mobile, Alabama to live with our maternal grandparents. And they were really awful. They were psychologically torturing, they were physically torturing. They were good Christian people, went to church every Sunday. I kept telling my brother, you know, maybe my dad our dad will come get us. We overheard a conversation with my grandmother and one of my mother's brothers that said that he was a scoundrel, that they hated him. He was the cause of all the problems that anybody had ever had in our family. And he had told him, if you come anywhere around Mobile, Alabama, I will kill you. I told my brother, uh, I don't think we're going to see our daddy ever again. What has happened to us? We have gone from this. Our dad kind of disappearing, our mom kind of trying to kill us, and now this. My mother became homeless and she was homeless for many, many years. She tried to go back to the hospital, get proper help for her mind. And she did. She got help. She started recovering. She got a job in Mobile, Alabama. She came over to visit. She brought over a big box of food, peanut butter and crackers and cereal and stuff that kids would like. And when she left, my grandmother said, uh, throw all that crap out, it could be poisoned. You're going to go crazy just like your mom. I mean, she was horrible. She had these heart problems. She had these diabetes problems. Everything was failing on her. When she would get these health problems, she would send my brother and us off to the orphanage. She would say, I'm tired of looking at your ugly faces, you know, or whatever choice words she would say. Because my grandmother would cuss like a sailor. And she taught me every cuss word there was in the book. I'll guarantee you that. That was a hard thing to deal with with the Lord later on in life. Most people think orphanages are bad. Oh, no. I love this orphanage. It was awesome. There was nobody screaming at us. There was nobody hitting us. There was nobody telling us we're going to go nuts. We had such a great time. Never had any therapy, never had any counseling, never had anybody talk to me about what had happened to me. Carrying all this trauma, I'm carrying all this everything with me. God just wanted to show me. People in this orphanage are good people. This is how you're supposed to live. This is how you're supposed to treat people. Not like that. And because I was seven, I was to the age of reasoning. I knew that my mother, my my mother had done this terrible thing. I knew that my grandmother was not treating us right. I knew that. I even had a point of reference for my mother and father when they did treat us right. One of the trips to the orphanage, they had this little white church, and I walked the aisle. God, I don't have a mother. I don't have a father. I don't have anybody. And these people that are taking care of me, they're not doing a very good job. I need Jesus. I need Jesus to come into my life. I need help. And I think Jesus did come into my life at that time.

Guest (Female): When I was 14 years old, she drove me up to the local shopping center. She said, get a job or don't come home. And she knew that my mother was homeless at this time. How do I get a job? I'm going to be homeless like my mother. God, please help me get a job. So I go into the first shop and I'm like, I'm here to get a job. Well, how old are you? I'm like, well, I'm 14. They're like, oh, well, in the state of Alabama, we can't hire till 15. I go to the next door and it's a Baskin-Robbins. Mrs. Stucky was there, the owner. She's like, how old are you? I'm like, I'm 15. You're hired. I'm like, okay, good. I'm working at the Baskin-Robbins several months. And, um, things at home just get really, really bad. My grandmother starts beating us. I'm like 5'10, she's like a grandmother. I just caught the belt. And I said, you know what? You're not going to do this to me anymore. When you stand up to the bully and you're no fun anymore, then you have no value to them. So her idea was just to kill me. And she threatened me with a gun. Can you believe that? After the trauma that I had with a gun. I knew that my life was in danger.

Guest (Female): I'd been trying to get help. I'd been going to my high school counselor saying, I'm getting beat up at home. You got to help me. They didn't believe me. CPS was called because they heard the neighbors' children screaming from the house. And it was this big $300,000 home. White living room with white lamps and white carpet and a white couch. Two little beautifully dressed children. Full of food in their refrigerator, full of clothes in the closet. They're like moving on. She told us, you tell them you're dead. I didn't know what to do. Miss Stucky came up to me one time at work and she said, Debbie, she said, are you being abused? And I'm like, yeah. Being abused? And there were scratches on my neck and there were scratches on my arms and bruises on my arms because you could see them because of my uniform. And she said, I am so sorry. She said, I want to help you. The next day when you come to work, I'm going to get you some help. I went home and I'd asked my little brother. I said, look, I'm getting out of here. Do you want to go with me? I want to take you with me. He's like, well, are you sure you're going to get away with it? I'm like, no. And he's like, well, no, I can't go with you. I'm an epileptic. I need my medicine. He had really severe epilepsy. He could have like 200 seizures in like an hour. I've got to go because she's going to kill me. So I packed up some little things. I put them out in the backyard, and I made my plan the next day to go to work. Every day after school, my grandmother would make my brother and I lay down for a nap for three hours. She didn't want to see us and she didn't want to hear us. I was in my uniform. I was under my covers. I was in my bedroom. And all of a sudden, she comes in storming, throwing everything off the dresser. She's got the belt, the belt buckle this time, swinging at me. She slings everything out of the closet. And she's like, I know you're lying to me. You don't have to go to work. I'm like, look, I'm in my uniform. I have to go to work. And she's just like, I know what you're up to. I'm not even going to say what she said to me, right? Because I blocked it. The Lord has healed me of it. We don't go over that anymore. I just said, I'm going. And so I left the house. I went and got my little bags and I ran to Baskin-Robbins. The police were there, the Catholic charities were there. They took me to a shelter. They examined me. They talked to me. They were like, they believed me. Thank you, God. Finally, I've gotten out of this horrible hell of a life. There was a court case. The city of Mobile and my grandmother against me as a 14-year-old girl. And St. Mary's Catholic Girls Home. The Catholic Girls Home wanted to keep me, and my grandmother wanted me to have to come back to her home. The judge said, let's let Debbie decide. I lived in St. Mary's Group Home for a couple of years until I graduated from high school. My grandmother had raised me to hate blacks, hate Jews, hate Catholics, hate Italians, hate Mexicans, hate anybody that wasn't like me. Well, when I got to this wonderful Catholic group home, dude, these people are great. I love them. That was the turning point in my life.

Guest (Female): In college and I was trying to get my life straight, trying to keep my life straight, because Mobile's kind of a wild town. That's where Mardi Gras was invented, not New Orleans. I was started to feel depressed, kind of out of it because that's what trauma does to you. That's what happens when you have no home life and you have no upbringing and you have no nurturing, no love. Maybe I can find my purpose in, you know, in partying. Mardi Gras balls and parties and dressing up. Couldn't find my purpose in that. Well, I'll find it in modeling. I went to New York and we were in the agency and had that whole jet-set lifestyle, thinking that all of that's going to bring me some sort of purpose to make up for my terrible childhood. I couldn't find my purpose in that. I wound up getting a good job in Dallas and I'm like, I'll find my purpose in in my work. Couldn't find my purpose in that. It felt like my past was overtaking me. I was being encompassed with negative. It was bearing down on me mentally. Everything would bother me. Scream. I would get upset. I would get anxious. I would get dramatically upset. My kids saw it, and even my spouse saw it, and even I saw it. And I was like, I don't want to be this way. Why am I this way? And I would even ask the Lord, make me a good Christian woman, you know? Because I'm not. It was because of all the trauma. It was because of all the abuse. It seems like a spiritual stronghold. I wanted to get rid of that. I need to learn about the Bible.

Host (Male): I don't know what's going on at my home. Grew up in a Beaver Cleaver type home. Totally different from my wife's. I was 11 years old. I felt the call of God to preach.

Guest (Female): God's like, hey, have you considered Ron Moore?

Host (Male): For what?

Guest (Female): I kind of encouraged her to do it too. I wanted her to date.

Host (Male): He's been a bachelor for almost 20 years. You say we're going to do things our way at our age, then usually means one of them's not getting your way. I just think of the difference that the gospel makes.

Guest (Female): Mental health issues. The trauma started healing, literally falling off of me. Lord, what is happening?

Guest (Female): I started taking women's Bible study two a days. Until I don't feel this way anymore. Until I get that trauma and that feeling of nothingness out of me. I'm going to be in the word.

Host (Male): I grew up in a Beaver Cleaver type home. Totally different from my wife's. I was a late-in-life child. Big surprise. Some people call accident, but I prefer to say surprise. My oldest brother is 17 years older than me. Lived in, uh, the same area of Oklahoma City all the time through going through school. I don't even know how many times I've read the Bible through. Let's just say it was a lot.

Guest (Female): Did my Bible study until I felt like every single Bible study was the same.

Host (Male): Questions rebound. I was 11 years old. I felt the call of God to preach. I'll never forget that uh, that revival meeting where I I was, you know, wrestled with for several nights. I said, I think God's calling me to preach and went forward, told a pastor.

Guest (Female): I had a teenager that started having some behavioral issues, mental health issues. And I thought, oh, no, I have seen this before. I do not like the look of this. I am not going back there, God. I should not have to go do this again. I'm not going to do this again. And he's like, yes, you are, but I'll help you.

Host (Male): The summer that I turned 14 at a youth camp. I had a radical experience with the Lord Jesus, with the Holy Spirit. I just know the spirit of God breathed on our cabin. I've never been quite the same since. I've had a lot. I have the low since that time, but I've never been quite the same since.

Guest (Female): We had a mental health ministry. I said, look, I don't know what's going on at my home. And she said, well, come to the class and we will help you. And I said, okay. It was amazing. They knew exactly what was going on in my home. They knew exactly that the counseling and the therapy and the help that my loved one needed. It was unbelievable what the Lord did.

Host (Male): Shortly after that, I was asked to, uh, uh, come preach down on Skid Row. 14-year-old kid, barely 14. I took a little Billy Graham track. I preached about five minutes for mom, then five minutes on my own notes and that was it, pretty much. That's all I had to say in 10 minutes. Yes, so.

Guest (Female): I learned so much in the class. I wanted to teach in the class. We had over 500 family members come through our classes in a 10-year period. It was so cathartic to my heart. I'm finally getting the counseling and the therapy and the talking it out that you need after a traumatic experience. And all of that trauma is just evaporating.

Host (Male): My high school years were filled with traveling with a couple big-time evangelists. You got to say it that way because it sounds bigger, you know. They were preaching at thousands. That sounds a lot more than thousand. Places were packing in 15, 20,000 people. Got to lead kids out on the street to train them to share the faith. See a lot of kids come to Christ. I had to tell people about Jesus.

Guest (Female): Lord, what is happening?

Host (Male): He said, you're forgiving.

Guest (Female): I did a word study on forgiveness in the Bible. There's like 70 words that mean forgiveness. Lord, who do I need to forgive? He's like, everybody. I forgave my mom. I forgave my dad. I forgave my grandmother. I forgave my relative that sat by and watched us get neglected. I forgave everybody that had ever hurt me. And, and not only that, I forgave everybody that had ever hurt my kids. It's like the dam just broke. The trauma started healing. And literally falling off of me. I just became like a different person.

Host (Male): My sister and I had a totally different dad than my two older brothers because my daddy came to Christ about eight years before I was born. From what I understand, uh, he was quite the hellraiser. I knew a daddy that I always saw reading his Bible and he was in church with us and, and, uh, uh, you know, I mean, just I just think of, okay, I'm going to do this that cramp. I just think of the the the difference that the gospel makes.

Guest (Female): This is my purpose. The comfort that the Lord gave to me, I was able to give to others. If you've been a victim of child abuse, if you've been a victim of severely mentally ill loved one, there's hope for you still. If God gave you breath in your lungs after this happened to you, there's hope for you. There's an amazing recovery process with the Lord Jesus Christ. As I helped other people and learn more about what had happened to me, my loved one had mental health recovery.

Host (Male): Stay-at-home mom, I never wondered if I was wanted or loved. They gave me a great foundation for life.

Host (Male): Out of high school was going to go to Bible college, went to a military cemetery. Never been to a military cemetery before. Walked around and I just felt like it was time for me to do my duty for my country. Fasted and prayed for three days. Felt like the go-ahead that God told me to go ahead and join the Marine Corps. Went home and told my sister, uh, she said, where's daddy's gun? And I said, daddy's gun, what do you want daddy's gun for? She said, I'm going to kill you. Said, if I don't, the Marine Corps will. Said, you can't make it in boot camp. You've never been in shape in your life. And I had, I had been in shape in my life. That very first forced jog. I just kept saying, I can do all things through Christ. I can do all things, I can do all things, I can do all things through Christ. I was able to observe that, son, you're going to make that run one way or the other. You're either going to make it with that drill instructor was boot up your rear or you're going to make it by putting one foot in front of another. I said, I think I'll put one foot in front of another. I'm telling you, you've never been blessed until uh, you're standing uh at at attention and one of the drill instructors says, boy, you tell me I'm going to hell? Yes, sir, the drill instructor does know Jesus. He's going to bust hell wide open, sir. Just said, yeah, different, different dynamic. I was stationed in Okinawa, had a spirit-filled chaplain come and heard me preach one night. He said, well, we need to, we need to get a revival meeting going. And so I just started, I started going all around the base. Just did one tour, and, uh, uh, you know, I had to, felt like I had to hurry up and get out because you know, when you're nearing 20, man, life's just going by so fast. Got to, uh, see a lot of folks saved. What a a great experience that was.

Guest (Female): When I was like 12 or 13, she met Patrick.

Guest (Female): He had two, I had two, so we had a blended family. We got married. We were married for about 20 years and then COVID hit. Our whole family got sick. My husband got sick, all my kids got sick, I got sick. I was on oxygen in the hospital. They told me, you're probably going to die. My husband needed to go to the hospital for COVID. They would not take him to the hospital. The ambulance would come to our home, examine him and say, we're not going to take you. I don't know why. I'm calling 911 from my hospital room for my husband to say, go out and get my husband and take him to the hospital. Nope, nope. And so my husband died. My husband was a Christian man. And so yes, he did go to heaven. But I felt like, okay, that's it. I'm done. Okay. Too much, too much for too many years. It's it's just I can't take it anymore. And then God said, you're not done. Lord, how can I get through this problem? How can you help me get through this problem? How can I rally the troops, so to speak, and how can I get myself back to where you want me to be? And so my church actually put on a grief share class for us. And then I went to another grief share class, which they recommend. And then I thought, maybe I should try dating.

Host (Male): Suddenly I find myself in my early 40s out on the open waves and, and uh, single again. I just had gotten to the point that, okay, Lord, if you don't want it, then I'm, I'm going to keep praising you and serving you and loving you. I felt like that he did have someone. The psalmist says, delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. And I knew that, uh, the desire of my heart was to be married. What a journey of God getting me ready too.

Guest (Female): There was a man that I had been listening to on my old Facebook page, name Ron Moore. And he did a morning cup of motivation. Three-minute devotional from a pastor's perspective, but it infused humor. And it was fun.

Host (Male): He's regularly handsome. I don't know where that came from.

Guest (Female): God's like, hey, have you considered Ron Moore? And I'm like, for what?

Host (Male): She, uh, uh, commented on one. I looked over her page and saw that, uh, we have, you know, just a gazillion friends in common. I sent her a messenger message. Hey, why aren't we friends?

Guest (Female): We went out on a date. We found that we had an awful lot in common.

Host (Male): We finally got together. It was just such a, here's my way, walk you in it. There wasn't just two people coming together, but two ministries coming together.

Guest (Female): Everything I thought that he was when I watched him on his Facebook show, he actually wasn't in real life.

Guest (Female): My reaction was happy because I knew that she was sad because of um Patrick passing away. She had healed, she had gone through grief counseling. Spent a lot of time in church, so I kind of encouraged her to do it too. I wanted her to date. But that it was kind of cool when she told me and showed me his picture and everything.

Guest (Female): We did want to have a biblical dating relationship that would lead into a Christ-honoring marriage, rather than how the world tells us. Why marry? You're in your later part of life. Just live together. We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to set that example for our children. He asked me to marry him. We started planning a wedding. We thought, well, we'll just have a little backyard barbecue at a friend's house. She says, oh, no, we have to have flowers and lanterns and beautiful things. Lights in the pool and we have to have music and a DJ and a cake and all this stuff. And so it turned into an actual wedding. It's like a gift that God has given us later in our life.

Host (Male): On one August afternoon, knowing that we had a family dinner coming up. Happened to see a farmer's truck by the side of the road selling watermelons. I was so excited to get this watermelon, a big honking watermelon. Get it in the refrigerator would be good and cold. At the end of Sunday dinner, I was all excited about doing the mind and mine thing, cutting the watermelon, slicing it very precisely and getting it out to each person.

Guest (Female): She comes out with this tupperware thing full of these little chunks of watermelon.

Host (Male): I said, what's that?

Host (Male): That's a watermelon I got chopped up. I said, oh, no, no, you didn't. You didn't.

Guest (Female): That took me 45 minutes to cut up that watermelon.

Host (Male): No, no, you didn't. You didn't. Yes, that is the man, that's the patriarch of the family's job, to get the cut up a watermelon. Um, we'll know next summer. Don't touch the watermelon. He's been a bachelor for almost 20 years. This is the transition he has to make. It's easier for her 'cause she's just a whatever, whenever type person. I believe there is an order of thing.

Guest (Female): I decided as a good mercy of my heart, and the Jesus Christ lived in my heart that I would give him transition time. I'm letting that go. I'm letting that watermelon go, you know? And and I'm just letting it go.

Host (Male): I may get a little uh, you know, nutty. Hey, hey, hey. It's good-natured.

Host (Male): Yeah, yeah, it is good-natured. Yeah. It's one thing when you're, um, you know, in your late teens, early 20s, when you got married. You know, you're much more pliable. Much more moldable. It's real romantic to say, oh, we're not going to do things his family's way or her family's way. We're going to do things our way. You say we're going to do things our way at our age? And that usually means one of you's not getting your way.

Guest (Female): And you may not get your watermelon cut up like you like it.

Host (Male): That's exactly right. I think that's why so many, uh, second, third marriages fail because they just don't want to work at it. They don't want to work at saying, okay, maybe I don't have to have this my way all the time.

Guest (Female): He did eat that watermelon. He did. So many people have not been taught about just keeping a a flow of forgiveness going. People will let stuff fester instead of, uh, keeping a short account of forgiveness or being willing to talk something out.

Host (Male): I forget what it was just, uh, not long ago. I said, okay, the Bible says don't go to sleep before you get this talked out. So we sat up in bed and we got talked out. It's those little things, little rips in a relationship that can cause a marriage to come apart.

Guest (Female): You've got to be willing to do those things. Forgiveness is a spiritual weapon. Even since we've been married, we've met other couples that got the direct hit of the enemy's sabotage and they did not put their spiritual armor on and they are no longer a couple. You have to activate the armor of God. And by activating it, you have to bring it to your mind. Each piece has a different, has a different defensive mechanism, a different strategy. We need to study spiritual armor. Understand our power that we have.

Host (Male): From my Marine Corps training, you don't go diddy-bopping through the streets of Baghdad with your cutoffs and T-shirt on because if you do, there's going to be bullets flying, bombs bursting. You're going to catch some of the shrapnel. And so that's why it is so important that we don't go to our workplaces or wherever without our armor because, man, the the enemy is there and, uh, uh, you just never know when life's going to turn on a dime. And you better be willing to take authority over that Satan in the name of Jesus. Stay in battle mode.

Host (Male): If you'll spend an hour alone before the father each day before you walk out the door. I'm telling you, it'll be a physical impossibility for you not to walk out the door filled with the spirit of God. When you know that you know that you know that God has spoken to you, it's like, wow, God's spoken to me. What you got the king of kings and Lord of Lord, who knows us by name, you know? That's what ought to just, uh, you know, light the fire under our. When we begin to get in our gut of guts, who we are in Christ. Man, we're the righteousness of God in Christ. We're a joint heir with Jesus. We're a child of the most high God. And we begin to go out, and I pray well, they realize, wait a minute. Man, the one who lives in me is bigger than that that enemy out there that's trying to bring me down. So he can just sit on it in the name of Jesus. Right. Your family, your marriage, your children, whatever is it is at risk, you have to start praying spiritual armor over that and fighting in the heavenlies. It is, it is a active job. The enemy has the same strategy for us that he does for every other Christian marriage. And we start fighting. That's what we're going to do.

Guest (Female): Depression is the number one malady in the world.

Host (Male): I could just veer over it and nobody'd know the difference.

Guest (Female): How do you do a marriage at any age?

Guest (Female): I really love God. Probably the only thing that's kept me alive and sane.

Guest (Female): You're going to go crazy just like your mama.

Host (Male): After what happened to us, why not?

Guest (Male): Lord, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm going to praise you.

Guest (Female): I know God.

Guest (Female): Blended families are the mix of different people from different backgrounds coming together to try and to live under one roof, or trying to have a family together. It's pretty cool, honestly. Nothing's perfect, obviously. There's maybe a bump in the road. You can move past it and still know that that's your family at the end of the day. Brother-in-law, stepdad, stepmom, sister-in-law, you can still move forward even though they're not blood related to you. My immediate family is just me, my mom. So I have like no family. So to add on to that and have like a blended family is pretty cool in my opinion. Ron is outgoing as well, just like my mom. He's kind of like the male version of my mom in my opinion.

Guest (Female): It's like he's a male version of me, baby. And I'm like a female version of him.

Guest (Female): They compliment each other well. Him and my mom are a really cute couple. He cares about our family. We care about him and his family. A nice blended family environment.

Guest (Female): We dedicated our marriage to the Lord. Here we are late in life. We've been offered this incredible gift. Incredible marriage with a person who has the same goals. We just want him to be served through our marriage and our family. That is exactly what has happened. It has been utterly amazing.

Guest (Female): I graduated high school when I was 16. Um, but I did the alternative school. I was modeling at the time as well. Went to New York Fashion Week, different things like that. Modeling agencies. I kind of was bullied a little bit throughout high school, so I just wanted to kind of get out of school early. I went from modeling to culinary school, which is kind of a contradiction, but yeah. Right now, I work in finance. I'm kind of just trying out everything right now. Just kind of figuring out what to do next. Right now, I think God is calling me to definitely help people. First, my family. My journey with Christ kind of started like right off the bat with my mom. Raising her kids in the church. It's been awesome. I really love God. I love Jesus. Um, I love reading my Bible, praying. Probably the only thing that's kept me like alive and sane to this day is God, so it's gotten more in depth of as I've gotten older as well. My perspective is more about what the Bible says and how, um, that can help you with your life.

Guest (Female): This is the kind of marriage we want. We want the stability of getting up in the morning and doing our devotional together and reading the Bible together and praying together.

Host (Male): You're reading the word. You're listening to the unadulterated voice of God if you're listening. This is the breath I breathe. This is the bread I eat.

Guest (Female): He draws us up together. If you don't have a plan, you're not going to read it. And even if you do have a plan, you're probably going to have a million things that come against you in spiritual warfare to stop you from reading it.

Host (Male): And I write devotional books, so I'm not against devotional books. But you know, they're just an appetizer. Go out on off-beaten paths of scripture. And it's amazing the nuggets that you'll find.

Guest (Female): That's when the Lord talks to us. The Holy Spirit is there when we're reading the Bible. That's why one of my favorite ways to read the Bible is verbally out loud.

Host (Male): All the angels.

Guest (Female): If I don't read my Bible every few days, she gets kind of crotchety. I get a little cranky. Wait a minute. Why am I cranky? Oh, I need to read my Bible. Even with prayer. If I get to start getting a little agitated, wait a minute. I need to pray. And it has a soul-soothing effect on me. I've gone through prayer book after prayer book. Write down my children's name and I write down what they're going through and I ask the Lord to give them a better victory. Not the plan that Satan wants for their lives, but God's plan for their lives. That is where I get the strength that I need from the Lord. It's through prayer.

Host (Male): Prayer is absolutely what just plugs us in, you know, to the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer begins to open our eyes as to who we are in Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit whom we possess. And we go out that door each day, knowing that, wait a minute, greater is he who's in me than he who's in the world. Watch out hell. We know who we are in Jesus. We know the weapons of our warfare for the left hand for the right.

Guest (Female): One of the neatest things that Ron says to me that makes me love him more is when he says, you know, I prayed for all of my children and all of your children. I prayed for all the children today.

Host (Male): Ah.

Guest (Female): And I'm like, that's so sweet. We pray spiritual protections over our families. Pray Psalm 91 protections over our families. We just keep that central focus for our blended family. A praying family is is something to contend with.

Guest (Female): There's about 6,000 people on his Facebook that he's ministered to throughout the years. I need to introduce my wife. He put me on his Facebook page and we did a little, you know, sit down, little talk, introduced uh Debbie.

Host (Male): That's pretty neat. He's putting her on there again. Well, we really didn't know that there was going to be this on-air chemistry. Let's do a Sunday night show. Ron and Deb unplugged. A show about something. We take a lot of different topics. Talk about them from a biblical standpoint. Always have a lot of fun. Doing the Newlywed thing.

Guest (Female): The children help us with the filming of our show. We'll have one of them doing the camera and one of them doing the song. We discussed things that were important to us like sex and the single Christian or, you know, church hurt. How do you do a marriage at any age? Or how do you do a blended family? We deal with a lot of issues that, uh, the church won't talk about. God wants us to deal with them. I made some grave mistakes that people just, uh, they can't believe I'm that honest. Oh my gosh, you shouldn't tell that stuff out there. He's like, I made a lot of mistakes. I'm like, I made more. And he's like, it's not possible. I'm like, trust me. But hey, I'm free, you know? And Jesus set me free. And, and so, you know, we need to be honest. It's not going to freak God out. He already knows what you're going through. Man, we just got to get real. And I think the world, they see us acting like we got it all together. Then yet they see that we don't. It does not advance the the the gospel when we put on this facade.

Guest (Female): When I was living in St. Mary's Group Home in Mobile, Alabama as a teenager, my cousin said, you need to get in touch with your dad. You've got a dad out there. Only thing I know about my dad is he lives in Philadelphia. That's all I know. She put an ad in a Philadelphia paper that said, Alan Zeswitz' daughter is trying to get in touch with him. If you know him, please have him contact her. One of his friends responded to the ad. And said, look, your daughter's trying to get in touch with you. Well, apparently he had been trying to get in touch with me too. He came and visited me. Then I started going to visit him, and we literally restored our relationship. It was such a blessing to me. That really was pivotal to him that I wasn't still holding something against my father.

Host (Male): Because one of the first questions I'd ask her, said, do you feel unconditionally loved and accepted by your dad? And uh, no, she didn't, but she told me how she dealt with it. Which is something that just key. When a girl does not grow up unconditionally loved and accepted by her dad. Typically, unless it's dealt with before the Lord with with some counseling. They'll go through guy after guy after guy. Trying to find that father's love. And we can't love them like a daddy can.

Guest (Female): My mom was tragically mentally ill and homeless. My relatives in California would see her. She knew where they lived. She would go to them for help. She would be so out of it mentally. They couldn't help her. And because they didn't really believe in any kind of mental health issue, she was out. She was out on the street. My grandmother told me and my brother, you're going to go crazy just like your mom. And it wasn't quite that nice. We really believed that we would go crazy. We really believed that at any moment, we could spontaneously erupt in crazy. After what happened to us, why not? When I was going to college in Mobile, Alabama, my mother just suddenly appeared. She's knocked on my door. I'm here. I'm like, you're here. Wow. Okay. And I still didn't know what to think about it. But she seemed innocuous enough. My mother came and lived with me. Since I was a starving college student. There wasn't a lot of groceries in the house. And she complained about that. And I said, look, mom, I said, I'll try to get more groceries in here, but it's kind of tight right now, you know, I'm in college. So anyway, she just disappeared. And then I hear she's in California or somewhere. So she was homeless mindset, homeless person. About 30 years ago. She approached my brother and my uncle. She said, they're telling me I'm dying. She started going to Circe Hospital again. The mental health place. They would come and get her on the weekends. They would take her out to eat and she would spend the night at their house. And they'd sit her on the front porch in the rocking chairs and they'd talk to her and be kind to her. God was so merciful to her for her last days to be spent with family.

Guest (Female): I think what may have happened with my mom's mom is she experienced horrific abuse from her mom. So whatever mental illness she was suffering from was brought on from a traumatic childhood in in my opinion. With me being raised, single parent household, you know, it's ups and downs. But nothing super traumatic like what she went through. Being brought up in a different environment and kind of being raised a different way. So I'm not concerned about me experiencing anything like that because we were, um, loved by our mom.

Guest (Female): Depression is the number one malady for human beings in the world. But the Lord does have solutions. A lot of divorces are due to mental health issues. Even if your spouse dies, there's still a lot of emotional baggage that comes with that. And your children are going to deal with it. Can that be dealt with? Yes, it can. But first it has to be addressed. It can be a demonic influence. It is a demonic influence. Just like drugs and alcohol are demonic influences. If someone has a mental health issue, and then they have a dual diagnosis of a addiction issue, and then it all gets clouded and people don't know how it actually started. And how it actually started was a mental health issue. And where does that start? There's some sort of precipitating event like what I went through. That causes a human being to be depressed, to give up hope, to want to kill themselves.

Host (Male): I've had times of depression. Uh, times, uh, I thought, man, I'm, I'm done. When I went through, uh, divorce. I remember driving from Oklahoma City down here thinking, you know, that third bridge embankment south of Norman, you know, I could just veer over it and nobody'd know the difference. Thank God I didn't.

Guest (Female): Now, we don't have to have a life sentence because we have a mental health issue. There is support out there. Part of it is education. And the more we become, um, able to talk about mental health issues, the more we erase the stigma. Christians did the first hospitals. Christians were the missionaries. Christians were the trendsetters. Christians need to be the trendsetters with this issue as well.

Host (Male): The last time I was really bonafide depressed was, uh, about almost 16 years ago. I was, uh, up in Denver, Colorado helping my sister and.

Host (Male): Somebody owed me money that they weren't, they hadn't paid when I had to bum $5 from her for gasoline. I lost it. I mean, I just lost it. I just start going downhill. You know, I was depressed and mad at God for two weeks. And finally then, and this has made such a difference since that time. Just to mentally think, I'd rather be in the camp of God, rejoiceng and praising God, not knowing what the same hell God's up to. Then outside the camp, bitter and angry, saying, Lord, what are you doing? I don't know what you're doing. Lord, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm going to praise you. I'd rather be praising you and feed on the joy of you than the anger and bitterness of depression.

Guest (Female): And there's the low times. Understand that God sees you. He sees you in your deep, dark depression negativity. And he's there. Just like when Jesus was on the cross and he was in his deepest suffering. He was seen by his father and he never left him. And he's always there for us too. We're not alone. I have Heavenly Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit here with me. I'm not alone.

Guest (Female): When a kid has lost like a mom or a dad or even a sibling, it's really hard for a kid going through that. It's going to be hard for a little bit. It'll probably be hard for a while, but the pain will get easier going forward and just always pray and read your Bible, have a good support system. God will bless you and help you take care of you going forward. We have to lay our children down at the feet of Jesus. From a very young age. Lord, this is your child now. Then they're on their own spiritual journey. But just because they're on their own spiritual journey, doesn't mean they don't need you anymore. Don't ever give up on your kids. Let them know that you love them. No matter what happens to them. They need to be able to rely on you. Because they're not going to be able to rely on society. If your child has made mistakes, it is your job to forgive them. And it's their job to forgive you. That upside-down forgiveness of Christ is just so, so important.

Host (Male): If you've never really given your life to Jesus, there's no better time than today. To just simply realize that what he paid for on the cross, paid for your sin. All past, present and future sin. The question is, are you going to receive that and make him the Lord of your life? Turn from your way of sin and self and say, Lord, I want to follow you. Whatever you're going through. You know, now is the time to just say, Lord, come into my life. I receive what you did on the cross as payment full for my sin. I give you me.

Guest (Female): God is love, and love comes from God. In first John, the Bible tells us that God is not only all-loving, but that he actually is love itself. The heart of the Parent Compass Television Show is to bring the transforming love of God to families everywhere. In every Parent Compass episode, true stories reveal family struggles and how their lives were radically changed by the love of God. Parent Compass, an award-winning television series is completely funded by people like you. If you have been touched by God and you want to share God's love to others, would you please pass it on? Jesus tells us to go into all the world and to tell about him. With your donation, you allow us to take this television show into many different nations and in many different languages, free of charge. And a portion of your donation goes to Parent Compass outreach to feed starving children. Your gift does so much. To make your tax-deductible gift, go to parentcompass.tv/donate. That's parentcompass.tv/donate. And thank you for sending love and hope around the world.