LaQuita Monley | Teenage Pregnancy, Making Tough Decisions, & Finding Our Identity

“In that adult decision, came adult sized consequences.” – LaQuita Monley

Teenage pregnancy, making the hard decisions, success when the school system is against you, a lunch break wedding, 5 children later, the military life, years of personal and relational unrest, and how a Subway footlong meatball marinara extra cheese with bacon sub changed lives forever. All of these real life scenarios were not only experienced by today’s guest, but overcome. See how she did it, and more importantly, how you can too. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the LaQuita Monley story! 

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LaQuita Monley wears many hats. In addition to being a devoted wife, mother of 5 and grandmother of 5, she also operates in purpose and expertise as a savvy real estate investor, transformational coach, teacher, trainer, and international speaker certified with The John Maxwell Team. From the United Kingdom to Kenya, Germany, and back to the United States, LaQuita’s mantle is to charge others with the task of progressing into the best version of themselves. La’Quita loves to equip individuals, organizations, and ministries to unlock their full potential and live out their mission in the most authentic way.

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Transcript

LaQuita Monley Teenage Pregnancy Making Tough Decisions and Finding Our Identity S5 E93 

Hello friends. Welcome to this week's remarkable episode of the podcast. The LaQuita Monley story. In this episode of the podcast, LaQuita talks about teenage pregnancy. She talks about getting married during a lunch break. She talks about five children and years of a rough marriage where they're going back and forth with.

We want to stay. We want to go, we want to stay. We want to go. We talk about the life-changing moment. That healed things for her and her husband. We talk about [00:01:00] finding balance. We talk about making sure that we know our identity so we can find our purpose and joy in life. There's so much real practical and transparent content.

In this video, please listen, watch take notes, but more than anything. Apply what liquid is teaching us. She does a fantastic job of using her life as an example for us to learn from the good, the bad and everything in between. So enjoy this episode of the remarkable people podcast, the queen of Monley story.

RPP E93 LaQuita Monley: Hey, LaQuita, how are you today? 

I am good. I'm good, David, how are you? I'm fantastic. Now for our listeners, we've had serious technical difficulties and I [00:02:00] know this is going to be a great episode because even though I had COVID liquid and I talked and I remember it, which is very unusual for me because I have a memory that only remember certain things.

So all of her data has been purged from the system, but like I just told you in the interview, you heard her credentials, you heard part of her story. This is going to be a fantastic episode, but for her and I on this side of the camera and Mike, it's been very unusual. So you're ready for this. I am ready.

I am ready. All right. So like our podcast for those who've listened to many episodes, or maybe it's your first time liquid, you're going to share your story. Start off. Where were you born? What was your upbringing like? And bring all the highs and the lows into the story. And then while we're going through it, we'll just dialogue and ask questions to each other and.

When you get to something you really were able to [00:03:00] overcome or achieve, we're going to stop and break it down to, okay. You not only did this, but how did you do an impractical step? So we can too. Then at the end of the interview, we'll transition to where's the Quita today. Where are you going? And how can we help you get there?

Sound good? Sounds good. Sounds good. All right then where were you born? Were you born in America? Were you born in Egypt? Were you born in Antarctica? Where, where are you from? I am from small town, Mississippi. So born and raised in this small town called McComb, Mississippi was there until I was 18. And at age 18 and we'll get there in a minute.

I'm trying to I'm skipping ahead of myself. Right? So it's all right. Hey, for all the mistakes I've had at the beginning of this, you are good to go, but yeah, no, start off and talk about, cause our formative years, like, you know, do you have a mother and a father, just a mother, just a father, your brothers, sisters, we a good, healthy upbringing.

Was it terrible? You know, whatever it was. What made you, [00:04:00] you so like most small town America in my city, in my area where we lived at in my city, everybody knew everything. And so I grew up, I was blessed. I not only did I grow up with my parents, but my grandparents and my great grandparents as well. So come from a really, a really large family.

My parents actually have the boy and girl next door story. So literally I could walk from my mom's parent's house, two doors down and be at my dad's parents' house. So, and my aunts and uncles lived all around. Right. Like everybody in our area was related. So I would say that I had a really good upbringing now, you know, no family is without issue.

No city is without issue. So yes, there were issues that happened while growing up, however, by and large, I had a very positive upbringing born and raised in church. [00:05:00] However, being the first grandchild on my dad's side of the family, my dad's mom tend to spoil me more. So I did eventually end up living with my paternal grandmother for the majority of my life.

I have two brothers and sisters, my parents at a total of three kids. I'm the oldest and I'm the only girl. So in that, in that with living with my grandmother, that gave me what I think now sitting on this side of life there's a lot different perspective. And gave me the ability to mature and think think more outside of the outside of the box, if you will, then my generation and, and we'll get to there.

We'll get to that. That's really a significant piece of my story as well. Having been raised by my grandmother instead of in the house with my parents I met my husband [00:06:00] at age 15 P and I went to the same high school. I it's crazy to think. Right. Right. You know, in 1992, right. 1992, small town, Mississippi.

I had only recently been legally allowed to date and I say legally allowed. That was with my father's approval. Of course, like most teenagers, you got to do stuff when they don't know it.

Or Alicia think they don't know what we're going to sensor. This is the first episode will be censored for my daughter to listen.

But all the fathers listening are like, are you're right? So he was one of one of my first boyfriends that, you know, came home to see my parents and all of the good stuff I was raised in a really today by today's standard, it will be called strict. [00:07:00] I would say I was raised the right. You know, you know, you, young male wants to go out with your daughter.

Then he has to accomplish two mountains. The first mountain is being brave enough to ask the young lady out. And the second mountain is okay. Now you got to go out to my daddy and get him to agree. And then if he agrees, then we'll see each other's family on Sunday at church. Because again, it's a small town.

So we were either going to visit his church, or you got to convince your parents to come to my church so that my parents can meet you and see you. And perhaps we can have a Sunday meal, you know, to decide if we will ever make it out to the movies. Yes. And they should never go to a movie. You can't talk at star, don't touch my daughter.

Don't don't touch Laquita, get the hell getaway. It's kind of how it happened. But so, you know, I met my husband when I was age 15. I was a freshman in high school. Basketball player, really, you know, honor roll [00:08:00] student, ran track all of, all of these great things. Like I had aspirations at that time to go to Jackson, state university with my high school, best friend.

And we were going to become at that time, I'm kind of old, I'm older now. So I don't remember what she wanted to be, but I remember what I wanted to be at that time in life. I wanted to be an attorney. Well, Dave, like most young people you think you have like. You know, Palm of your hand, you know what you know, when you think that your parents don't want to do anything.

So my husband and I at boyfriend at that time, we made a decision one day that caused us to become teenage parents. And so now I'm looking at life like, wow, not only can I not run track, not only can I not play basketball, but what in the world is going to happen to me with college? How am I going to go to college?

My husband had already graduated by the time [00:09:00] we became teenage parents. He had already graduated high school because I met him in my senior year. And I became pregnant in my junior year. So he was, he was done with high school where he was getting ready to go into the military. So I'm thinking my entire world has come to a complete end and had no idea what I was going to do.

I had no idea when you got pregnant, was he at first like, Hey, no, we're going to do this together. Or was it like, Hey, we're going to split? What was his reaction? Cause that's a pretty intense moment for anybody let alone a teenager. Right? So funny part of the story, maybe they're unusual, but in our, in our dating and talking, you remember, I said, I wanted to be a lawyer.

We'll end that piece. I didn't want any children.

If I had one, I could negotiate [00:10:00] maybe two. So the one

key on the other hand wanted a large family. I did not, that didn't fit in my plan. I didn't want, that's not what I wanted for myself. So when he initially he initially is the first person to say, Hey, you're pregnant. I think you're pregnant. I had no idea. It wasn't even on my mind. And he said that, and that was my first lesson in men pay their significant others.

Quite a bit of attention. I have no idea. And he S he noticed it. He suggested that I take a pregnancy test. And after a disagreement there, I eventually ended up taking the pregnancy test. And lo and behold, yes, I was pregnant. I was like, oh, no, this is not happening. This is not happening at [00:11:00] all. And my husband at that time, he was like, well, if my opinion counts for anything, then I want you to keep our baby, if my opinion counts for anything.

So, and at that moment, in my mind, your opinion doesn't count because you're not the one dealing with this. You're not the one going through this. You're not the one having to deal with this again, we're teenagers. So that was my first real adult moment. Like, you know, your teenage love and you're talking about marriage and all these wonderful things you're going to do someday.

We'll in that moment, all of those visions, those teenage visions, I finally saw them for what they were. They were teenage visions. This is real life we're talking about. This is no more hypothetical. Maybe if this is real. And right now, really I did not see a future for me, not the future I [00:12:00] planned. I saw that as being completely gone down the toilet, how was I going to make it?

And so my husband was supportive, may not be the right word. He understood that he couldn't stop me if I wanted to have an abortion, but he was very clear that that was not what he wanted me to do. Yeah. And then this was during the nineties. So we have listeners from over 90. We have listeners from over 90 countries.

So cultures are different all over the world, but within America, there's regional differences for sure. But going back to the nineties when you and I were in high school, It was still taboo. Yeah. Like you don't get an abortion and I don't support a divorce and I don't think you do either, but you're talking about your story and what you're faced with at that time.

And everything's going through your head. So that's really awesome that he stood up and he was like, Hey, but what's interesting is, you know, if we went back another 10 years, it wouldn't have, it would have, the [00:13:00] argument would have been, Hey, we have this baby. You're not getting an abortion. And now in the nineties, the argument is, Hey, if I have any say in this, I don't want you to get an abortion.

And today it's like, shut your damn mouth to the men. I'm doing what I want. I want to do such a moral downslide. And it's like you and him or me and my, whoever it is, people did this. It's not the baby's fault. And the society has trained us. That women make the decision and they're in distress. I wouldn't make a decision under stress in my adult life.

Not about even a baby. I mean, I wouldn't make a big financial decision. So you're telling a girl who's scared and then teenage years, and you have to make this decision. You can't tell your parents at this point, did you do it on your own? Like this all go, did you make a really good point within America?

We have different cultures and within different parts of America, I'm from the south south white, like [00:14:00] Mississippi is the south. There's no such thing at that time. At that time coming from my family, that you make a decision by yourself, that's just not happening. You know, it just wasn't happening. And it coming from either one of our families, my husband's comes from a really, very large, very close knit family as well.

So once I took that pregnancy test and realized that I was pregnant, the next thing was okay, who's going to be our advocate like, and our mind, oh my God, who do we tell that can help us tell our parents so that we can both live to see another day? Right? Like especially him. I mean, back where my mentality is that man is about to die by the father at that point.

So, and that's another funny bit to the story where you're right. That's another funny, I'm not, I'm not a prophet. I'm a man. I know somebody hurt my daughter. I [00:15:00] squared God. And the fact that he needs to take care of that, baby would keep him alive. Other than that, I beat him like a pinata. Oh, well, I mean, you, you speak in truth, sir.

You're speaking truth. So we thought about it and my dad's brother, my uncle, my aunt Margaret, she was the first person to come to mind is like, oh, everybody listens to her. And everybody loves her. We got to find Margaret and we need to. So, and I could not tell a family doctor, because again, I'm from small town, Mississippi.

I wouldn't, I didn't even go to the family doctor to confirm the home pregnancy test because he would've told on me and I wasn't quite ready yet. Back then it wouldn't have mattered. I wouldn't have mattered. It would have the phone call, whatever happened. So, you know, you, you didn't do that. Right? So we took the pregnancy test and then [00:16:00] I went to our county health department.

One of the most awkward experiences I had at that point, because I've never been, so here we are trying to figure out this process. So they get, do the actual test test to confirm it. And the health department was right next door to the hospital. And my aunt worked at the hospital. So once the pregnant, once the health department confirmed it, me and my husband and my cousin, it was a whole thing.

Two, three of us skipped school that day. My husband was the only one that didn't have to skip because he wasn't, he wasn't in school. So we had a group and we walked across, told my aunt Margaret what happened. And she agreed to arrange the conversations between the families as to how we want to move forward on this thing.

So my husband went home, spoke with his family, my aunt. I spoke [00:17:00] with our family. And so eventually on a Sunday after service, our two families are having a conversation at my grandmother's house. Who, okay, this is what happened now, how are we going to move forward? Traditionally, it would have been my dad with the shotgun.

However, my father-in-law was a man's man. He's gone home to be with the Lord now, but he was definitely a man's man. And before my father could get the opportunity to say, Hey, Mary, my daughter, my father allowed was like, Hey, you're marrying that girl. You did it. And this is what you're going to do. And I'm like, wait, who said anything about getting married?

I'm still trying to process the fact that I'm pregnant. Can we, can everybody just calm down? And again, it's funny now it was not funny. Then it was [00:18:00] not hilarious at all. Because at that, at that point, I'm like 16, almost 17. And all of these adults are having conversation and it's like, me and my husband are just sitting there in the midst of that conversation.

One, what is the right way to approach the situation? And so eventually my dad is like, Again, I emphasize the fact that I'm the only girl, right? So my dad is like, okay, what do you want to do? What is it that is on your mind? And I like that. I don't want to be married in high school. It's bad enough that I'm pregnant.

I don't even want to be pregnant, but I don't want to be married with a kid in high school. I re I mean, I can't push rewind. All I wanted to do was play basketball and run track and go to college. Like the rest of my friends, that's all I really wanted to do. So we can't undo that. [00:19:00] I took some time to pray about it.

My husband was initially a little offended that I'd been wanting to get married. But I was kicked out at this point. I'm thinking like, you know, you've been as a teenager, you'd tell you the one you think you like, oh, I love you. And you're all of this amount. And that situation though, real real is, is knocking at my door.

And I'm thinking, I don't know, like so many things that I don't know, you know, I thank God for the foundations that he and I came from, the strong families that he and I came from, because nothing about how we started our adult life was, would have been on any type of foundation. Had we come from different families.

Yes, we made a mistake. We made a mistake. We made a decision that caused us to become teenage parents. I did eventually say, okay, no, [00:20:00] I'm not willing to get an abortion. My original thought was I was going to get the abortion was not sure how I was going to be able to live with it mentally or emotionally after the fact.

But that seemed like the answer to all of the problems to make these go back to quote normal. After I made the decision that said, okay, I want to keep my child. I'm going to keep the baby. We are going to do the best we can with what we have. My husband's initial plans was he was going into the reserves.

And so the reserves could pay for college. And so we were both being in college at the same time at home. He changed those plans. After I decided that I was going to keep our child, he went into the reserves, took a full-time job, and then upon graduation, he would, we would then get married and go to his first duty station.

Well, while we were working those bits out, his [00:21:00] oldest sister comes to us and says, Hey, listen, you guys had plans that you wanted to, I'll tell you what I will adopt the baby. And out, keep the baby and raise the baby. And if you guys decide, you want to come back after you finished university and all of those things, so you want to be parents then yes.

Or if you decide not to the hour, raise the baby on your own. So I was like, wow, we thought about it. It was, it was such a blessing. I was for like, absolutely for, because at that time she lived in new Orleans. And so she driven up after finding out everything that was going on and all the commotion course that was happening.

And she drove up one weekend and as she pulled us to the side, you know, and said, Hey, listen, I've been thinking about it, praying about it. This is what I'm can do so that you guys can continue to [00:22:00] start life off without those stresses. And so that you won't, you know, now that you've made that decision, that you're not going to have an abortion, you guys are going to raise, you want to have your baby, listen.

If you want to still do something different, you don't raise have the baby. Then I'll, I'll take care of the baby before me. And we took some time to think about it. And we came back to the decision, like, no, you know, we made the decision, don't know how it's going to work, but if I'm going to go through nine months of pregnancy giving birth, I'm going to raise my child the best way that I can.

And we'll just have to believe God for favor and that's exactly what we did. So gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, March 3rd, 1995. Totally changed my life. Funny, they, I never changed a diaper before in my life. [00:23:00] Now you're going to get lots of practice. Oh my goodness. So when my son was born and he took his first poop and I'm looking and I'm like, oh my God, what is that?

And my husband comes from a big family. He had nieces and nephews already. You've been changing diapers and younger cousins. And he's like, you don't know what you're doing. No idea, sir, no idea, because I was pretty much raised like an only child. I'm the oldest of the grandkids. Right. And I went to stay with my grandmother.

There was nobody there, but me and my grandma had like mate and a diaper. He's like, you've never babysit for what I didn't babysit that wasn't I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go play basketball. I wanted to run track. I want to do those things. That was my life. So he taught me how to judge a Bible.

He taught me how to do quite a few things [00:24:00] when it came to how to care for a cattle cat. So we had an interesting four days in the hospital. She was here. He was there from. Delivery until it was time for everybody to go home because no, we did not get married at that point. So they have baby went home, he went home.

I did finish high school and I was just going to ask you that if you were able to finish, if you did a GED, how did you do that? That was, that was a challenge even in itself. Because again, like you said, in the nineties, in the south to be pregnant, as a teenager was a taboo, it was pretty much okay.

Your life is over young lady. We're going to teach you how to utilize the local county welfare system and good luck, pretty much what it was. And I thank God for my social worker because I was a teenage pregnancy. I was considered [00:25:00] high risk. And so I was assigned and a social worker and one of my visits with every visit I had to see her and on this one particular visit, she asked me, excuse me, what did I want to do for college?

Had I started applying to schools and different things cause she had access to all of my school records. And, and I told her no, they want me to go to the vocational school and you know, finish, like I said, with the GED and learn home-ec skills and get an apartment. And as she looked at me, she said, well, who told you?

You had to do. And, and I gave her the names of the principal at that time. And she said, that's not state law. They may be school preference because they're worried about the liability and insurance, but that's not the law you don't have to do that. Can Vince you to do that. And you do [00:26:00] it that's you, but you don't have to do that.

She was looking at your records. You can get into any school. You want to end the state. And if you want to go to Jackson state, you can go to Jackson state. These schools even have programs. Now for teenage mothers, I had no idea, no one had told me because the focus was she showing she needs to get to the vocational school, do that GD program and get her out of regular school.

So after she told me that I made the decision, like no, with my parent and my husband's support, I want to stay in school. And that was those last few months of my pregnancy with the office. Some of the, one of the roughest points in my life, because not the schoolwork was hard. School was easy. School was easy.

It was the pressure from the certain members of staff and certain teachers who didn't want me there. [00:27:00] And it, again, that time we're thinking about that, keep in mind the time. And what I represented at the time, and nobody was happy to hear that, and nobody was happy to see that. And so I would get from people just blatantly telling me that I'm a bad example to people just insinuating it.

One of my really good friends at that time, I was on the phone with her one night and her mom picked up the other line and she began to tell me, call me everything, but my name and the child have done. And let me know how worthless I was and that I would never be anything and never amount to anything.

And that from that moment, but what I was never allowed to call her home again and never to speak to her daughter, I had anything to do with her daughter again, it's like, whoa, that's the, that's the spirit of Christ right [00:28:00] there. Representation right there. Right? Yeah, no, no, no, no. We're to call each other out in sin.

We're to love each other back, but we're not supposed to burn and crucify people

bonded and crucified found in life where I think we're the same age. I'm 45. And you don't have to disclose that. But the older I, and your son's birthdays, my birthday, March 3rd. Yeah. But no I found the. The more life we live, you know, when we're done and learned what we need, we'll go into eternity, right.

That God will take us home. But even when we don't do something, when it's someone else's sin against us, you always have the people that judge you and blame you, you know, job's friends kind of deal. And it's tough and it's harsh to stay right when they're accusing you or wrong. So let's do [00:29:00] this.

You made a decision to date, you made a decision to have sex. Yeah. You made a decision to keep the baby. You made a decision to stay with your boyfriend back then. You're your husband. Now you made a decision not to give the baby up and you made a decision where at the school point to continue your education.

So we're going to pick up the story there. But even though you were a young girl, you were making good decisions, even after some bad decisions. And now you're older and you can look back and reflect. If someone's listening, who is in that situation, they're a 16 year old girl. There are 22 year old guy, or they're a 52 year old guy or gal.

Talk about how do you make decisions? What do you think is a good [00:30:00] decision-making process? When we don't know what to do? How does Laquita make decisions? That's okay. Back in prayer. Now that's the Quita today. What Laquita back then did not realize was my foundation and my upbringing, not just in church, but in my family.

My grandmother is an amazing intercessor. Prayer makes up her household, right? Everybody looks to her for guidance and leadership, my whole life. Right? If there was a problem, there was her there in prayer. What I did not realize then was how her prayer life was impacting my life. How the time that she took the lessons that she would teach me the conversations that she was [00:31:00] having, that I thought I wasn't listening to, or the, my Sunday school teachers and you know, other, other men and women of God in my life at that time who were speaking great things until my life that I thought I wasn't listening to, because what they were saying in those moments were not lining up with the bit what, what I wanted to do.

What I later figured out. It's those bricks, those pieces to the foundation that actually helped me make good decisions because they became my reference points of what I learned. Like, okay. When I thought I did not understand the scripture, I thought I did not understand the Bible. I thought, okay, these parables that they make us learn in Sunday, school didn't mean anything.

They actually meant a lot. And being, I was living out the scripture, raise a child up in the way that they should go there. When they are older, they will not depart. Even [00:32:00] though I made a decision, my husband and I made a decision to have sex. And then that decision I became pregnant, even though we made those decisions, those lessons that we didn't think we were listening to those conversations, the prayer life that, you know, cause at that time, as a teenager, my grandmother will be praying and it will be annoying.

Like why she's so loud? Why is she praying at four o'clock in the morning? Why can't I hear it? Like

closed and that back then, and now you're like, oh, I love my grandma. Why couldn't we all have a grandma? I'm like that, man. I love my grandma. I love my grandma. You know, as a teenager. I had no idea why I was making these decisions. It felt like the right thing to do based off of everything that I learned at that time, like, okay, what, what's the difference between right and wrong?

My references came [00:33:00] from the way I was raised and who I was raised by my grandparents, my parents, my aunts and uncles. You know, I looked around, not that I didn't know people that came from a one-parent household. I did know people that came from one parent household. I knew people who had a two-parent household, who their parents weren't legally married.

They were what we called. Check-in common law. I knew people came from single parents, but by and large, everybody that I know love and trust, there's a nuclear family unit. And so the decisions that we made were in an effort to be good people and to hopefully one day be a good parent, even though it wasn't what I really wanted to do at that time.

I came from the generation where you make the hard right decisions right now, because in the long run it'll work out. Now I [00:34:00] realized that it was the power of prayer from my husband's family and from mine that helped to guide us in that decision-making ability. Now sitting where I am in life right now, definitely our foundation is the word.

Our decision-making ability comes from the answers that we receive from the Lord. When we break mark everything that we do naturally, spiritually business, it, everything that we do is based off of his word and his doing that has not led us long. And it won't. Yeah. And that's, if you're listening,

decision-making can be two plus two is four. But like what liquid is saying is even though she wasn't going to God at that point in her life, she had people in her [00:35:00] intercessory prayer on her behalf, kind of protecting her. And when we go to God, it doesn't matter where we're at. When we pray. It's us talking to God, just like one another and he'll answer it.

So answer it through the word of God. And you can read your Bible will answer us through the holy spirit inside of us. If you've trusted him as your savior, who answer you he'll he'll answer through other people's circumstances. It could always be different, but you'll know it's God, because there's peace and contentment and there's okay.

We got this. There's a strength in it. Even if it's scary, there's peace and contentment with God. And I keep thinking about. I guess as a dad and my daughter's 18 this month, it's tough to even imagine a girl getting pregnant in high school. So I can't help, but think his parents must have saw [00:36:00] something in you that they liked.

And your father must've saw something he liked in him and my way offer. Is that correct? I mean, at that moment, I'm sure they wanted to punch him, but did they actually, did they see something in him even while, because you know, you could say just because somebody is pregnant, I don't think they should get married because you don't want to make one bad decision, turn into a lifetime of bad decisions.

And so for them to encourage marriage, goodness, and greatness on him prior to me saying, hi, everybody I'm pregnant.

So, okay. So there, there was that. I'm not making it, there was,

yeah, because I'm going to be honest with you. If a guy came in and you know, I want to do everything I can to support my kids, but if a guy or girl was with my kids and then it got to that point, I can live in a condo and I'm thinking I'm gonna throw them over the balcony unless I believe they [00:37:00] benefit this child.

So it's, it's hard. It's hard to think this way.

Out of all of my grandmother's sons there only two of her sons did not go in the military. So, and my dad was one of them and my oldest uncle, he did not get to go in the military. Everybody else did. So two uncles went to the army. The uncle went to the air force. And I remember shortly after me and my husband started dating.

He comes to pick me up and my uncles were home on leave. And I'm thinking, oh my God. And I call my grandmother mama. So I'm like, mama, please, please don't let them, don't let them hurt him. Like, don't let them scare him because I liked him when I want him to come back. He survived. She did not stop it, but [00:38:00] no wait, man, that's their, that's their, that's their right as your uncle to do that.

So I re I remember standing in the kitchen and watching him, his car come into the driveway and they were all sitting outside, like waiting, just waiting to pounce on him. And my grandmother saw my face, her and my aunts. And they were, they were just, they found it so funny. I was so sad. I was like, I was crying.

Like, please, you guys are just going to let them do this. Like, you're just gonna let them take him. Yeah. I don't, I don't agree with that fruit cake that came up with evolution very much. But in this case only the strong will survive. If they're worthy of you, they need to survive the fire. Oh. And he survived praise God, he survived.

But they just came and got me away from the door and brought me back into the into the den [00:39:00] area when the ladies were, cause it was a bar cookout. Right. Brought me back to the den area where the ladies were and they were laughing and having a good time or he'll make it if he doesn't make it. He's not the one.

Exactly. Exactly. Are you kidding me? That you see all of them, all of them out there. And again, this is prior to me getting pregnant,

he, he survived. So, you know, when they did find out eventually I will not say it was immediately. Eventually my dad started talking to him again and not grunting. Eventually, eventually when he, my dad started really talking about. With my husband probably a year after our first duty station go into our first duty station.

Because at that point he was still, like you [00:40:00] said, he was still trying to come to terms with my daughter was pregnant and issue a baby. And you did it. And this is, you know, my it's not a funny topic, but I can just connect with you and our listeners can do it, girl. You're probably like, what's wrong with David, but I'm telling you as a guy, there's like fire building in me right now.

And it's not even me. We can like, we can laugh about it now. Right. We can laugh about it now. And it's funny and I, if we didn't have a daughter, we have one girl and she's the next to the youngest. And when she started dating, my dad had a good time laughing at my husband

an amazing time, laughing at my husband. But nice. So now you just gave it away a little bit. You said you have a daughter, the only daughter. So before we get there, [00:41:00] let's go back. So we left off before I interrupted you. I just wanted to make sure we covered that. So you're at the school guidance counselor, or I'm sorry, the social worker, and she's filling you into the truth that the school system tries to discourage that you can finish school.

You can go to college, you can fulfill your dreams. It's going to be tougher, but you can do it. So pick up with your story from there and look later. So once she told me that, oh, I was resolute in my decision. I was in my decision. My husband was waiting for me because at this particular point he was making sure that I got to all of my prenatal appointments.

So I told him when we got to, when we got home we told my grandpa, my parents and my grandmother, that this is what the rules really say. And this is what we can do when, so it's like, okay, it's going to happen. And it got, so it got so petty [00:42:00] David that when I had to be out for maternity leave, instead of just, even though I had the absences excused, because it was a doctor's excuse, the principal was like, oh no, if you don't go to summer school to make up those days, you won't walk for graduation.

Are you kidding me? Not my grade. The grades, my grades were fine. So they made me go to summer school and, oh, by the way, We're not going to offer the courses that, so I maybe go to summer school for English. I was taking advanced prep, English who goes to summer school for advanced English. The kids in advanced prep.

Don't go to summer school. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's a class that's above and beyond the standard curriculum. Right. And so my English teacher try her best to advocate on my behalf. She really did. [00:43:00] She tried her best to advocate on my behalf. It was totally unnecessary. She'd given me all of my work because I was pregnant.

She made sure that I got all of my work prior to going out on maternity leave. And while I was on maternity leave, I just heard all of that. My teachers made sure that I had the work that I needed to do the six weeks that I was out. So it wasn't for grades. So they said, oh no, you're going to do this course.

And of course we don't offer it. So you have to go to the neighboring county. Then they were in school district to take it and you have to pay to go to the neighboring school district to take it. So my husband my parents were at my dad was like, okay, it's your fault. You pay for it. And she's gonna want, I don't care how you get the money sign, what you're paying for the class and whatever other beings I say.

So my husband did, he paid for the classes and. Nature of, I got to summer [00:44:00] school. Cause now school, I had to go 20 miles out in one direction to go to class from 8:00 AM to 12 and then come back. So eight weeks, how long was summer? Summer? I want to say it was like five or six weeks of the summer. And some are in the self is so easy and cool.

Right when we got there that sarcasm again. Yeah. Right. So I, they, they, by day three or four of summer school, the teachers will like, why are you here? Because my school districts, that's why I'm here. Like it's stupid. So I had to share my story with the summer school teacher. And she said, well, baby in there.

And she, so she went to try to get me out of summer school. So the school district that I was at saw the foolishness. So now you don't need to be here. This is a waste. [00:45:00] Someone who needs this space should be in this space. Cause there's only so many slots, right? I'm already not a student in your district and I don't need to be here.

They would not allow, they would not allow them to circumvent the system to let me just go and say that, just keep the money, say that I was there, check the box. They would not allow that my district, my school district would not allow that. So every day I had to at least show. And she'd give me a Popsicle Popsicle and pass out the paperwork.

And that's really because of why are you here? So he, we did that like, again, it's not funny now. I mean, it wasn't funny then. Cause I had to get up early, pay for it. We had to pay for daycare, you know? So when I asked her, did you ever find out what their problem was? It was it one individual? Was it just want me to set the precedent?

I've all of the pregnant [00:46:00] girls prior to me and one other young lady had took the bait and just went on off into the sunset. Me and the other young lady stood our ground and was like, no, we're not doing that. We are not doing that. Not only we had a, we had a bad decision moment. That doesn't mean that we're not capable.

So not only that we continue in pursuing our academics, both of us were athletes. We also continue to condition our bodies after having children to then come back and participate in track and participate in basketball because both of us wanted to go to college and that was scholarship money. Right.

They did not want that precedent to be set to. I've made my mind up and both of, so we did that. [00:47:00] And after that more young ladies begin to take that option. Yeah. And I think that's a great life lesson that you're explaining, because whether you're a young teenage girl who's pregnant, or whether you're a 35 year old, man, who's under pressure at work.

You did everything. You can, you follow the rules, you worked within the system. But when it was all said and done, you're like, all right, let's do this. You persevered, you didn't whine. You didn't complain. You didn't quit. You didn't throw a hissy fit. You didn't resort to violence. I don't know why I said that with violence, but you finished the course and you did what you had to do to get by, get through it.

But I'm super proud of, and that's a great example. Like obviously we want to do everything we can within the system to make it work. Right. But if it's quit or do their jump through their hoops, jump through the hoops and then feed it to them [00:48:00] later. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's it because the victory is in no matter how difficult you try to make the path, I am not going to give up because this here's the deal.

Here's my, this is my goal. This is my dream. So like, if, like you said, young women or middle-aged women, I don't care who you are. You know, if you're listening, but especially young women, even today, With all of the resources that are available today versus what was available in the nineties. Here's the deal having a baby as a single person is never easy.

Having a baby as a married couple is never easy. It's just not an easy thing to do, but it's possible. My, my situation was not ideal. My situation was not ideal. Did I, did I come from a strong family background? Yes. What makes, but that is not what makes my situation different. What caused me I had, and I know for a fact what caused [00:49:00] me to be able to be successful in the midst of this situation is my family dependency on the Lord.

At that point of my life, I was taught to value life. Yes, I made a bad decision. Don't sit there and go. I don't have to stay there. That decision didn't have to define me now, based on that adult decision that I made, because in saying I'm w I knew perfectly well that having sex was something that I should not have been doing at my age, but I made an adult decision to do it.

And then that the adult decision came adult size consequences. And so now I have to make the decisions to deal with those adult sized consequences, the best way I know how, and that meant some inconvenient. In my life, some extra hurdles that I was going to have to jump through. And at that point I had to believe that my husband [00:50:00] then boyfriend, who was saying, okay, I'm going to be here with you.

I'm going to support you was going to live up to what he said. And that's probably a podcast for a different day. Young ladies know, be smart and making your choices and that department. And so far as choosing who your partner is going to be, who your husband is going to be. I have to make those decisions because me making a lot of the decisions that I made, I was able to do that because I wasn't doing it alone.

Like I'm saying, I, but I want everyone to be very clear in that I is a week because I made those decisions with having conversations with him. It's not like, okay, I went home, but I went to my room. I thought about it. And then I just showed up one day and told him, no, that's not how that worked. You know, we were having these conversations when he's picking me up in the morning, he's checking on me, seeing how it was when it was, it was not easy getting up everyday and going to school, being pregnant was it wasn't [00:51:00] easy everyday facing the ridicule and the comments and all of those things from students, from teachers, from administrators while being pregnant, and then coming back after having the baby the same thing.

So that, that required me and him for a level of conversation to include. A lot, like we were having legitimate adult conversations where he was having to build me up. He was having to encourage me. He was having to hug me when I was crying. You know, he was coming by on, you know, when my lunch break was to check on me and see how I was making it through the day, not just with school hard, but checking on me emotionally, because there were no cell phones, so he couldn't call me or text.

So he had to figure out in his day how he was going to check in on me to make sure my day was going well and that I was holding it together and I was holding it up [00:52:00] because the victory was showing everyone who thought that I couldn't, that not only will I graduate, but I will also graduate with honors because I made a bad decision.

Then. I mean, I was a bad person. Then that mean that lack would follow me the rest of my life because of that one bad decision. Yeah. And I'd like to point out a couple of things. Number one, your husband is a remarkable man because he is, I've never looked up the statistics, but I know it's exponentially different.

The number of men that stay verse run, and then for him to be so supportive and encouraging that just as a truly great human. And one of the things that, one of the things that are the soul, and I'll say our social worker, because that's the role that she took. One of the things that I realize now is as strategic points in our life and vision, joining the [00:53:00] Lord had appointed specific people to show up in our life at a specific time to deliver us what we needed to make it to that next point in our life journey.

And our social worker was that person. She come to do a home visit one day and my husband was there. And you know, in the end that conversation, she said, you know what? And I can't remember what the statistic was. She knew it. And she was rattling off some numbers. And she said, you know, in our community, in the African-American community, we have a lot of fatherless homes.

And she said, and I believe that it's because there's not enough people teaching young men how to be fathers. So they're paying me to be your social worker. But if the two families will allow me, I'll help both of them. And [00:54:00] that's exactly what she did for like six years. That's amazing. So you were in high school, like in, my son was born in 95, so we met her in 94.

Her last official unofficial communication with us was in our third duty station, which was Fort Lewis, Washington in 2000.

And she said something that made a lot of sense. Like we came from two very strong families. So the foundation was there a lot of anger and emotions, of course, because of the situation. Like, I don't want the listeners to think that all your family was so wonderful and there was no arguments and everybody just came together in love and prayer and then session.

That's not exactly how that went. It, it went like that, but that's not how that went. Yeah. It wasn't smooth. You know, there's a couple of things to point out. We can choose our sin, but we can't choose our [00:55:00] consequences. And eating is something that, you know, if you tell people this, they look at you, like you're a freak and, but it's the truth.

And I do believe that the majority of people in their hearts today know it's the truth and believe it's the truth, but they just don't follow it. But the fact is we shouldn't be dating until we're ready to settle down and get married. We shouldn't be sharing our bodies and our minds that intimacy, not just physical, but our, even our emotional intimacy until we're ready to get married.

And you know, you, me, so many people, we fall to the temptation. We have sex before marriage. And in that. Even if you use contraception, it can fail. And so it's like, we can't be judging each other. We need to help each other and encourage each other. And then, you know, your consequence, you got pregnant.

Right. But that's a beautiful thing too. So saving takes everything. That's good. [00:56:00] Marriage love sex children, any perverts it. So it becomes a burden. So just, if you're listening to this liquid, his story is real and honest and thank you for sharing it. But all of this is a blessing that Satan try to pervert.

It's not God doing any of this, but what I find amazing, what I'm loving about your story is I think it was Einstein. Don't quote me on this. But he talked about, you know, when we make bad decisions or bad logic, he was talking with regards to just science. He's like, it takes 10 times the power of good thinking to fix a mistake from bad.

So you're sitting here and you've already kind of made some bad choices, but to see you and your husband stay together, stay focused. And again, it wasn't easy, but you stayed the course and did it. So pick up from there because we kind of skipped a point. You finished school, you graduate with honors. At what point do you get married?

At what point does he join the [00:57:00] military? And also you mentioned earlier he was going to join the reserves. Did he go into the full military? Or do you stay in the reserves? Cause you're saying duty stations, so great questions. So once we made the decision that, okay, yes, we'll go to I'm not having an abortion.

I'm going to have our son and I'm not going to give him up for adoption to your sister. We're going to raise our son together. Then he makes the decision, okay, I'm going to go on the reserves. But instead of going off and going to college, he went to the reserves and he stayed local and he took a job locally so that he could be there with me to support me through the pregnancy.

So during the first parts of my pregnancy, he was already in basic training. So [00:58:00] my husband came home for good. You went basic training AIT. And he was back by January of 95, just two months, a couple of months prior to me having given birth, he was back and he was in the reserves because he wanted to be there to express those last few months of me being pregnant and to be present when I gave birth, when I graduated.

So I graduated in 96 in may of 96. In June of 96, he went active duty. Got you. That makes sense now. And so by July of 96, we were at our first duty station, Fort hood, Texas. So the piece there is we, he comes back to get me and [00:59:00] I am still not sure I want to be married as, I don't know if I want to be married, but by that time I did know I was not spending in McComb, Mississippi.

That was not happening. I don't want to say here. I was supposed to go to university of Southern Mississippi. I'd been accepted into the program. Another bad decision that the Lord work together for. Good. Right. I should have went to USL. Did not do all of my due diligence because again, I'm still young and stupid.

So there's a school here. You came, you found college. He said, Hey, you, you can come to CTC central Texas colleges right here by the base, found a certain apartment. I'm coming home for the fourth. Be ready and we'll leave. Well, because I didn't know that I, I we'd said, okay, I don't want to be married.

I'm going to go and try it out. And I'll go to [01:00:00] CTC for that. Instead of letting my school guidance counselor know, as I should have. I didn't, because I knew Ms. Nash was going to tell my parents and I did not want to tell my parents or my husband's parents, that we were going to be shocking and not married because we were supposed to be married in February of 96.

I was supposed to be, but that's actually interesting too, because in the military or, I mean, you can get your own apartment and do what you want, but for you to have benefits in coverage, you need to be married. So yeah. Get to that. You're getting to the point then. Sorry, I'm not trying to jump ahead. No, you're good.

I'm just thinking ahead here. I'm like, wait the mask. Not adding up. Okay, go ahead. Because we were on smart yet. We were, we were, we were getting there. So he did, we didn't know about benefits and all of that. What I wanted to see at that point, because [01:01:00] you made a good point earlier about, we should not date until we have the intention of being married right now, even though we're married, I would say, and we both say this when we're speaking at a different marriage events, the worst decision of my life that we made was to have sex.

That was the worst decision. Not because we got pregnant, but because of the emotional baggage that. The w brazen are raising our oldest, that was a cakewalk dealing with all of the emotional soul ties and all of those things that happen after you start having sex with a person, and you're not emotionally mature, and you're not ready to be married.

That was far worse than the pregnancy. And it caused you to make a lot of foolish decisions, lots of foolish [01:02:00] decisions. And that's whether you have a child having my son was the blessing, having sex before we were ready to be married. That was the mistake. That was the mistake in the relationship. Yeah.

And people don't understand. They listen to the world that isn't the TV that's are these actors and actresses. And it's the best illustration I've ever seen is when you take two pieces of paper and glue them together, those pieces of paper are whole. And then you come together as one and you become stronger.

But if you try to rip those apart, you destroy both. And every time you have sex with somebody, you're ripping parts of yourself and leaving parts of them. And if you don't think that's true, you got to have some serious realists, that true self. You need to look inside yourself because we have so many broken people, myself included.

I made a mistake before I [01:03:00] was married. And then I thought, okay, I'm married for life. You know, after 21 years did everything I could. And then in divorce and there's serious damage and baggage. So for people who are going on and they're calling it body counts, like it's fun and a game. And let's see how many people we can have sex with your current and yourself.

And then you talked about abortion. We talked about abortion. I personally don't know people are going to get hate mail and I don't care. Cause if you're listening and you're not having sex or you're having sex and you haven't got pregnant or you are pregnant, have to make the decision. I'm going to say it I'll be the bad guy because I'm not a bad guy.

I'm doing it because I love you. I don't know one woman who had an abortion that didn't suffer mentally and emotionally and spiritually for the rest of her life. Now there's healing that God can give. That is not an easy thing to recover from. It's true. I mean, that's real, you know, knowing I know quite a few women who had abortions and they would tell you you're spot on [01:04:00] it.

It's tough. Yeah. It's something that I don't care what scientists or whoever else says from the moment of conception. That's a life. If you got to kill it, it means it's. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I tell you gotta kill it. One person was arguing with me about that. And I'm like, at the moment, this, the man, you know, listen, boys have penis, girls have vagina kindergarten and from the eighties, right.

But at the moment you have sex and that sperm and that egg meat, boom it's life, it's construction. And then somebody who was arguing me, I'm like, all right, I got bleach and ammonia. I'm gonna pour them together. What's going to happen to you. It's like a flame throw up your nose and you're going to die. I said, I'm just going to say you already dead.

You know, you went to students like the plans was having her and her husband was having problems conceiving. And so we were not in this country, we're in another country. [01:05:00] And so they were using the medical experts in that country to help them to concede because it was cheaper and that country than it was in, in our country.

And so she, they paid thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. Right. And she called me and she said, I am so mad, but she is a believer, amazing woman of God. Amazing. And she said, Hey, all this and she hadn't vitro, and I'm not speaking against fertility treatments at all. It's, I'm speaking about a moment.

I'm speaking about a moment. So she, she had the treatment and so the, there were several eggs that were fertilized. I have to make the decision to keep some, then use some. And when she had that process, her doctor told her. Now the best thing that you could do now is go home and have sex with your husband.

And so the question was, well, why, because there is a moment and the doctor used these words [01:06:00] that they call it a God moment. What they don't tell us is how many people do not get pregnant, even within vitro. Even though the, even though the embryo is fertilizing, it's, it's technically pregnant in the lab does not mean your body will accept it.

And so the most success that they get, the higher success rates are when the couple actually have sex. So my question was okay then who did it? Was it the in-vitro that was successful? Or was it God's moment? We don't know, but that's a moment that science has not been able to reproduce effectively inside in a lab.

Yes. But inside of, you know, so beautiful, a beautiful they do have an amazingly beautiful. But, and if she was not happy, then he was liked by us who was not happy. That's literally spent tens of thousands of dollars, [01:07:00] tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, in this, in this, yeah, go, I'm sorry. There's a delay.

Go ahead. My life, God, what God intends to happen is going to happen. And so if I can't, if you're telling me that, and in order for me to ensure that I'm pregnant, I still have to do this. That means that life did not happen until that moment. You can say that as scientists for people who are purposely getting pregnant, but people who just did not on purpose, not, you know, use contraception, you're telling me that don't work for them, but it works for you in vitro fertilization.

Patients who are purposely getting pregnant and paying tens of thousands of dollars to be pregnant. That moment of conception is to start a life for them. But for the person who had the drunk one night stand, who now [01:08:00] wants to have an abortion because I had the drunk one night stand is not for her. Make it make sense.

Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't make sense and it's totally wrong. And again, people can hate me, but I'm going to speak the truth in love because I was born to a mother and father who were not mad. My father told my mother to get an abortion and she wanted it after I was born. He abandoned me. So I know that women have a very hard time making this decision.

It's not easy, but it wasn't my fault or your fault, or any of our listeners fault what their parents did. They chose to have sex. Now they have to live with the consequences. They can't just take this act. And they're told it's not a big deal when it's going to hurt, it's murdering the child. It's [01:09:00] hurting them.

There's so many issues that destroys, like you said, you made a great point. You said when you guys got pregnant, it didn't just hurt you too. And the baby, it put ripples of discord among your families, right? It's a ripple effect in your life. Yes. And it can be a positive way or a negative way Haven. But when it comes to, you know, babies and abortion, you know, we could talk about this all day, but man, it is life it's life at that exact moment.

And you have the same liberals and just sameness. I don't care. It it's, it's evil if you support abortion. And they're saying, you know, you have some kind of you know, some Eagle, some Eagle is rare and it's an endangered species and it has an egg and they'll protect that egg. But they're saying the life, if you mess with it.

Yeah. The GERD still developing in that egg, but an egg inside a woman is not [01:10:00] valuable. That's just, it's just the lie of the devil. So let's do this. Let's keep going with your story though. So you're with your husband, he finds a school for you. He finds an apartment, you know, for you guys to move into take us from there to today.

So after we get here and 96 and we're at the school getting registered that's when we realized, oh, we made some terrible decisions because now I've got out of state tuition because I'm not married. And I can't go to school because who's going to pay for that, who can afford that. That's not happening.

And if you're not from America, typically out of state tuition, university, college, whatever you call it, it's about three to four times as high. So if you were going to pay $20,000 to go to school, if you're out of state, it could be 60 or 80,000 for the exact same education, but [01:11:00] you're not from state. Yup.

And so that was a thing that did not happen. And what began to happen was all of our bad decisions up until this point was starting to bubble up and bubble over. And I didn't realize that at the time. I was pregnant. So then I found out I was pregnant with our second shot, second child, and I'm upset.

Can't go to college, I'm pregnant. I'm stuck in this house. My husband's on his first duty station, lower enlisted. So he's never home. He's always doing the grunt work and I spiral into a depression. And by the time I didn't even realize I was in the depression at that time. And so I ended up having a miscarriage that just made the depression worse [01:12:00] because here I am having this miscarriage 500 plus miles away from home.

My parents were upset with me because why did you make this decision to go and not be married? You should have went to school so that you don't got all of these things. My husband's not having a good time at work every day. There's an issue at work. And so we were teeter-totter and not even realize that if he was going to have a career or not, because where he wasn't taking his frustrations out on me, you was letting the people on the job have all of his frustrations.

So that was not working out for him really well on that end. And. So after after the miscarriage. And so this is baby number two, after the miscarriage we ended up getting pregnant again. [01:13:00] And so we were on our way from a prenatal appointment. And my husband asked me, he says, are you ever going to marry me?

And I said, one day and I went to sleep because I was very tired. He was on his lunch break. And when I woke up, we were at the courthouse. So he said, well, if you're really going to marry me one day, then let's go get a license. So he's calling my book. I'm like, okay, like, okay, fine. Again, young, not realizing how things work.

We are. Because in Mississippi we had done this. And so I had to do the blood tests and wait 21 days and all of these things and that's, what's going to happen here. And we get in there and the little lady behind the counter says, oh, the JP has an appointment open in another 20, 30 minutes. You guys want that appointment?

I'm standing at the window saying, [01:14:00] excuse me. Ma'am what are you talking about? Don't we have something like that. She was like, no, baby, that's not the one

she said, no, but he's active duty in Texas. So you can get married to. What took a turn to say something, this brother gone left and went to the ATM and pulled out warm money. It was back and was like, yes, we're taking that appointment. And so they're like, what are we are we really have no old him. He looked and he says, you said we were going to get married one day.

This lady said today could be that day.

God am I getting married? Oh my God. And so then I'm standing there trying to rationalize with [01:15:00] him. We're Texas guys. If you've never been to Texas, it's not that far different from, I mean, it is big different from Mississippi, but we still got very strong Christian values running through most Texans it's.

So the JP comes out in this big cowboy hat and his spring tied his suit and everybody could see, I was nervous and one of the way out, and he took one look at my pregnant self and my husband, he was like, Nope. Sorry, you heading home, my side, you don't even know me. And every excuse that I could come up with, which were legitimate excuses like that at that moment, because we did not even have a rain.

David, we were at a prenatal appointment. We hadn't had this conversation. It was just something we were discussing in the car, ride home. He was on his lunch break. That's a good lunch break. That's a great lunch break. February 25th[01:16:00] 

because his buddies at the base, like, so what'd you get for lunch? I got married. Yeah, exactly. That's all legitimate. And on lunch, I'm married. So, okay. I got to ask the question. This, this is a great story. So does he go back to work?

So you get married and he's like, all right, I gotta punch in. Sorry, honey. That's crazy. The crazy cool. But crazy back then at that moment, it's like, whoa, what just happened? That is exactly what I was thinking. Like what is happening here? It's so we're standing there and we're exchanging the bowels. Right.

And they're waiting on me to say my part and he's looking like, are you serious? Are you not

just anybody here? Find this awkward with me. And the answer was, I was the only one [01:17:00] trying not to be married. I mean, and the JP is still the JP today. Like we go to the courthouse we have to go to the courthouse, unfortunately to do some evictions. We're evicting some tenants and we looked and he was still the JPL.

I was like, wow. I had the pleasure to have a quick conversation with him. Of course he did not remember us, but he remembered the year. And that was his first year as a JP, some pictures. And he was like, wow, you guys are still married. Yes. But I tell you what, my wedding day, that day it is memorable, but not like most brides, like I was beat, I was almost a runaway bride, like terrified because am I really getting married?

And on the way home, he was like, he was holding my hand and say, okay, everything is going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And I'm like, you don't even know that. [01:18:00] Like how do you know then the funniest part was my mom was visiting us. So she, my son, our oldest son was home with her. She had come to visit to check out where we were living.

And so we get back in and I'm just plopped down on the chair. I'm still in the days. And I hand her the marriage license. And she's excited, but at the same time, she was like, you did it without me. And I'm here. You could have at least come to get me. I didn't know. I promised it was not a plan. Like I did not leave to go to get married.

We just wanted to get subway, mom. And now we're married. Literally. It's funny. You said that that's what we were doing. Are you serious? I craved meatball subs when I was pregnant. So I go to the prenatal appointment, stop by subway, get me my required sandwich, get me home. So he could go back to work. That is what was supposed to happen.

We did get the subway, [01:19:00] but is we need to get subway to sponsor this episode. They should, because that was my wedding day meal ever narrow. So subway, you do great things. You help her have beautiful babies. And she got married. That was a celebration who needs a cake? We just need subway. Keep up. This could be a new, you could be a new, a forget, Jared and the $5 foot long.

You could be the new promotional campaign. I should be the new promotional campaign because we had a foot long bone marrow and arrow add bacon and extra genes. That was your celebration. That is so cool. Right? All right. Well, so what goes on from here? You're married. You're kind of in shock. Like what just happened?

A lot of shock. I'm in a lot of shock and to be honest, So much of the first bits of our first half of our adulting life I spent [01:20:00] in shot, I didn't really realize how much shot he was in because I was too tunnel focused on all of the things that I was dealing with internally as well. So I'm pregnant with baby.

Number two, I had a miscarriage still trying to figure out how to raise baby. Number one. And baby number two was here and they are two years apart. Now I'm a new wife. What does that look like? What am I doing? I don't even know how to do this. And again, we're 500 plus miles away from home. This is in the 90.

So I couldn't call because calling cost money, writing a letter by the time the letter gets there and their response gets back, the situation is so bad. You can't fix it. So we are, it was forcing us to grow up. Lots of arguments that even like lots of every, at least once or twice a week, we were getting a divorce because we could not figure out how to communicate.

We could not figure out what life was supposed to look like. You know, forcing it to look like his household [01:21:00] for send it to look like my household or each of us trying to force our, our adult. Right? Like he's, he's an adult man. And you doing what I'm saying? Oh no, I'm this independent woman. And I do not have to do who you say.

This is what I want to do. So we went through those for number of years. We did not stop having children though, because baby number three came shortly after baby. Number two was born. Almost people think they're twins still. So, no, there's an old saying we had Irish twins because Irish, you had huge Irish Catholic families in new England.

So Irish twins are when they're like 18 months or closer in age. Yeah. So you had Irish, I believe. Forgive me if I'm I believe that's an Irish twin. I I'm pretty sure 18 months or less as an Irish twin, but if it's wrong, go ahead and write me at me at David Pascoe, one.com and I'll put a retraction informally.

Well, they are 15 months apart and many people [01:22:00] have thought that they were twins throughout their life even now because they're so close together. So you know, baby number, so oldest born in 95 next middle-sized is born in 97. My daughter in may of 97, my daughter is born in August of 98. So we were spitting them out and still not liking each other a lot.

Like we're constantly bumping heads about every little thing. So he gets orders to go to Korea and 1999 and I decided, okay, I guess it's going to be. You're going to Korea. I can't go to Korea. So I'm going home to Mississippi. And while you're gone for that year, I'm going to set myself my life up and figure out how to do this as a single parent.

And we're going to get a divorce. And I'm saying [01:23:00] this because this is what was in my head, but this is also the conversation or we were having, because things had gotten so bad. We went to, we'd gone to the chaplain a few times to have marriage to have marriage counseling, to try to work things out.

But at that point we weren't mature enough as individuals to quite figure out how to fix the marriage. So while he was in Korea, we ended up, we did have a few conversations close to the time he was to get back and he asked, okay, let's give it one more, shot, less, less. See that we've spent this time apart.

Of course, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? We spent this year part, let's go to Fort Lewis and see if we can figure this thing out and see if communication will get better. So I said, okay. So he comes back from Fort Lewis, we get all packed up and we [01:24:00] drive from Mississippi to Fort Lewis and things did not get better, but did not get better.

They were good for a little. But again, the maturity issues, trying to figure out what life looked like and what model that we were supposed to follow, you know, and the military community can be a toxic community. I love my military community, but it can be a very toxic community. The divorce rate in an average home Christian or non is sadly 50 to 60% in military.

I've seen stats because we live in a military community in Pensacola and I've seen stats over 80% and they said special forces is like 90% divorce rate. So it's just because the nature of what you do separated the mindset it's government. Oh, the government, you know, not being run [01:25:00] well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That part like, you know, and just, I can, I can say this, it doesn't even matter. Who's sitting in that seat, Republican or Democrat. It's just that community is built off of a class structure on purpose. And so that creates a divide anyway, because you're divided, you, you're purposely creating a divide in the ranks.

And in some ways, you know, you, everybody got to have a title and a position, you do this and that, but that seeps into so much of the. Yep. And so where people should be able to bond cohesively and be able to partner with each other and help one another. They're just certain written and unwritten rules that don't allow that.

And, you know, there are certain written and unwritten rules. The advocate for the works, they advocate for separation, that advocate for adults that [01:26:00] don't that on the outside, they want you to look great. The, the, the husband, the wife, the 2.5 kids and the happy home, they want you to look like that on the outside at all times.

But on the inside, if those issues are happening, what they don't want to happen is those issues to spill over and interrupt the mission. That means you need to live in Kentucky while your husband is living in Fort drum in New York, then that's what you need to do. So it's not conducive for marriage. You have to fight for that.

And what Laquita and I are saying, isn't saying, I, we both love God. We both love America. We both support the military. We both know amazing people in the military, and we're just saying the structure of most governments and most military forces. Is not conducive to a [01:27:00] successful marriage these days. So that's the point we're trying to get again, before I get hate mail.

I don't want it. Don't do this. Don't do that. They'll be like, Hey, you looking up to this woman and she's talking about, she's a proud army wife. I am, I really am a hundred percent. We're just trying to stress the point that not it's hard enough to stay married today, let alone to stay married while you're in the military with multiple kids.

And it's just tough. So keep going with your story. And by the way, I do want to throw in a correction. Irish twins are 12 months or less, so I am wrong. I apologize. So my kids and your kids are not Irish twins. Yeah, just couple of months there. 15. I was a little three months shy. Try harder next time. No.

All right. So now you guys come back, you're hoping for success. And then you hit the bumps again, and it's just conflict resolution. We're taught stupid things in school, but we're not taught. We're not taught budgeting. We're not taught conflict [01:28:00] resolution and we're not taught so many fundamentals of wife that we need, but we're taught about, you know, artsy, froofy stuff.

And we're taught about, you know, what the author's dog's name was things that don't matter. So now you're in reality wife and reality and we're failing at adulting. All right. So keep going. We were, but we were failing at adulting like miserably. How is it all turned around? We make it we make it through Fort Lewis, Washington, and in 2002 we'd back it up a little bit.

So in 2001, I come to a determination that I knew this is not happening. We'd had an argument. He made a decision that I asked him not to make. So he made it anyway. And that decision came back to bite us in the bud. And he was, but [01:29:00] by the grace of God, he did not get kicked out of the army behind that decision and excuse me.

So, and with the decision he was on my brother-in-law because my, my brother-in-law my husband, one of my brother-in-law to come and live with us initially. I said, okay, after my brother-in-law got there, file one another kid, because he was a teenager. He was in high school. I don't want to send them back home.

I can't deal everything we're dealing with. I can't deal with it. And he was getting in trouble not, and he wasn't a bad kid. He was just machines and lazy. He'd always missed the bus and I didn't want to take him. I love you. But you were annoying to hear this podcast follows me

now. It's Clinton married. Cause his wife might be screaming at him right now. See, I told you and she was his girlfriend at the time, so yes. Okay. Okay. All right. We'll keep, [01:30:00] well, your family's got some, some similarities. So you were teenage sweethearts and now him and his wife are teenage sweethearts.

That's pretty cool. It annoyed me then, but he loves his brother and his brother is like his hero. So he had my brother-in-law is also military he's in the air force. So yes, a lot of, a lot of similarities. He met his wife in high school and they have a happily ever after as well. And then, so what's going on?

So now you take him in which, like you said, it's a teenager when you got little kids and it's just more, more stress in work, more stress and work. And I St Claire home and he said he was going to do what? Then he was like, no, I'm keeping him because by this time I w what I want the audience to know is it wasn't that we were just, he wasn't just flexing his man.

I'm in charge muscle. My father-in-law had passed away. And so my brother-in-law needed that male structure. And my husband is the oldest son, [01:31:00] and he was stealing a deep sense of responsibility. There I'm very deep sense of responsibility. Even though I know why he said no, didn't make me happy about it.

Like, I know why he didn't send his brother back to Mississippi, but I was not happy at it because now I've got five kids. I don't want five kids. So anyway, and clicked got in trouble one day and it wasn't even Clinton did the thing. One of the, our neighbor kids would steal bikes and he went, this kid went down to the officer's quarters.

The senior, the bilberry officer's quarters were right by our quarters, went and stole some kernels kids' bikes. And they were in our driveway because my husband as a mechanic, so my husband had all the tools. And so the boys who stole the bike was came over to borrow tools, to strip the bike down and who was standing outside with them.

But Clint [01:32:00] and then my husband were at a hail and farewell party. And so of course, chain of command figured out who's porters. Those is who's. Who's your NCO, who's your OIC. We happened to be at the lessee's house at the party. So the OSC gets the phone call and interrupts the party. Who's got to go home and go sort the situation out.

Oh, I was just gonna say to our listeners, you aren't used to a military living. If you get pulled over for speeding. Normal life you get pulled over for speeding. And if you get pulled over for speeding on the military base, you have more consequences and a harsher. I mean, I mean, how would you explain it?

Because there's job consequences. Yeah. It's like, okay, you are, you're the happy greeter at Walmart. You get pulled over for a ticket. And next thing you know the area [01:33:00] general manager of, of the tri-state area is calling you and asking you why you got pulled over for ticket. Why does it matter to you?

It matters in the military. It matters. Everybody knows what happened and you can get demotions. I mean, if you have personal things happening in your life, you can get demoted. So it affects your job, your family, everything, it's all interconnected, everything, everything is connected. And then you said he stole a superior spice.

That's not a good idea. And of course kids, right? Like he didn't even, he wasn't even the one that stole the bike. He was just a dummy that, that caught, like you knew they stole the bikes. Why? Let them tear the bike down in my front yard, send them to the house, let them borrow the toolbag at their house. I get the two bad back, but no, you want to fit in.

So my brother got the tools you could strip it to here. So we get that. [01:34:00] Thank God for grace and favor and understanding with my husband, Shane and come in and it didn't get us in as much trouble as it could have. So on that day, I said, you know what I'm done. This is too stressful. So my brother drives trucks and I called him.

I said, cliff, where are you? I'll be in your area. And I'll be in your area next week, actually. And I'm stopped in for a couple of days. Is that okay? That's perfect. Will you have a load? Will your trailer be empty or will it be full here? He goes, I'm empty. Why? Because I'm going to fill it with my stuff and I'm riding home with you.

So he goes, all right, we'll talk about it. When I get there. Good brother answer. I'm telling you what's happening, [01:35:00] telling you what's happening. So after that I found out I was pregnant before he could get there. I found out I was pregnant with our youngest son and then my whole world spirals out of control.

Again, it was already out of control. What is really out of control now? And I told my husband because I was. So the doctor to get, I was on birth control. I went to get my birth control. I wasn't getting a Depo-Provera and for the men that's listening, it's a shot. And they come out and say, oh, Ms. Molly, congratulations.

I'm like, congratulations for what that I won a prize. I've been four years on this thing about getting pregnant and you're telling me I'm pregnant. Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? I looked at this one. I couldn't ever remember how that happened. I mean, I know how it happened, but I can't even remember that because we've been in such turmoil for so long.

It's like, when did we do that? I don't remember, but obviously we [01:36:00] did because I'm pregnant. So for the second time in my life, I'm considering abortion for the second time in my life. And this time I was actually going to go through with it the first time it was a conversation. This time I took the action steps, I found out what the clinic was.

I was determined to go, went to the clinic, to the first appointment. And that's what I found that I was way more pregnant than I thought I was because the baby had a heartbeat and everything, because in those appointments, you have to do a celebrate mental that just messed my head up and got the bags of medication that you're supposed to take.

And that was to come back for the follow on appointment and. My husband is he's really quiet through this whole process. It was really, really quiet through this whole [01:37:00] process. And to be honest, I, I didn't have a lot to say either. It's just that we knew we didn't want to be together. Did he know you were pregnant and you were thinking about an abortion too.

And so the sonogram, he had to come and get me from the, when they told me that it was, I didn't take it. Well, he had to come get me from that appointment. Gotcha. So the sonogram didn't mess you up. It kind of woke you up. It was like

conflict because conflict caused great conflict, but that was a good conflict. Right. And the end in the end, in the end, it's like, cause I'm now it's like, wow.

Cause at that point, like I've never really felt the baby move or anything. If they would have told me I was pregnant, I wouldn't have known, I was very pregnant to hear a heartbeat. You're very pregnant and they heard [01:38:00] the heartbeat loud, loud, and clear. And you could see the baby moon and the sonogram. So we were talking about it and of course he's never the advocate for that.

And I was torn because now I have to make this decision again. And to me in that moment, it's not messing with anyone else's life, but mine because all of our other three children were already in school full time. I finally was able to go to college. I was in college full-time I was working full time because my children were in school.

Full-time and now I'm the person that has to push the rewind button or the pause button. Once again, in life it's like, okay, you've been able to follow your career. You've been able to follow your dreams, your education, your professional endeavors, all of these things you've been tracking in life. I've been [01:39:00] changing diapers.

This is not fair. Why is this happening to me again? If we don't even like each other, so Zola make the decision and say, okay, I'm not going to have the abortion. I was not happy. That had to be one of the lowest points in my life. Because to say, I felt like a failure is an understatement. And by that time I was fully aware that I was depressed.

I had experienced postpartum depression after Davante, my middle son, and I experienced postpartum depression after Denise, my youngest daughter. But at this point I was just full on depressed and I fully recognize it. And I I sought. Treatment and the other with the postpartum, I did do treatments through postpartum, but I would never could just continue it on [01:40:00] at this point because I didn't want to hurt myself.

I didn't want to hurt him though. I like, I really wanted to harm my husband because to me at that point, you were the reason for all of my problems. I was not yet owning my responsibility and making the decisions that I made. So he was the target of all of my anger. And I was able to find a really great therapists, really great therapists.

And those sessions helped a lot. They helped me to see quite a bit and helped me to come to terms with my decision, because the decision to not have an abortion meant I was making the decision to start my mommy clock all over again. And once again, I did not have to stop going to college and didn't have to stop working, but it surely was going to make things more difficult and it did, it did.

And our youngest, Mr. David [01:41:00] was born. Today's his birthday, April April 11th, 2002, man. We got some serious birthday coordination's going on. So April 11th, 2002. Young master David comes into this world, right? Obviously I did not get in a truck and go back with my brother. Well, you must've been right with God at that point to name him, David, I mean, come on.

So to be fair, I know I'm being stupid, stupid, cause it's mine, David right now, my grandmother we allowed my grandmother to name him and she picked me. So she's right with God. She, she is, well, we were, I mean, just so many, so many issues throughout the pregnancy, physical issues, emotional [01:42:00] issues. Just a lot of, I mean, it wasn't a good pregnancy at all.

Am I, again, my husband, once we made that decision, he said, you know, we're going to be okay. Or I remember I was laying in the bed one night and I had my back to him because that's how I've been sleeping for weeks months because I'm angry. So, and he just reached over and grabbed me one day and hugged me.

It was like, it's going, I know you don't think it, you don't like me, but it's going to be okay. I don't think it's going to be okay. And my husband's name is Ben. I was like, it's not going to be okay. I don't know what we're doing or how we're doing. It's not going to be okay. We can't keep adding. To the situation that's not.

Okay. So we get prepared to come to our next duty station and the next leader station was Fort hood. Cause at this time nine 11 has [01:43:00] happened and we knew he was going to go to our rec just by nature of he's an intelligence analyst and those guys were going over there rapidly, frequently. So we knew he was going and we had a marriage that was not okay.

So in August of 2002, we moved to Fort hood, Texas with a marriage that was not okay. And that this point now I've got legitimately five children that belonged to me. My brother-in-law was no longer living with us. We have five kids, a Rocky marriage and no money. And now he's going off to fight a war and we're not w we're nowhere near, okay.

These circumstances is what finally drove me to my knees. And we were visiting we're visiting a ministry. My parents, my mom lived in Texas at that time. She lives here in Coleen. And so we were visiting her church and [01:44:00] the pastor preached a message. And the title of the message was come to the other side.

And in that service is when I was like, okay, If you don't fix it, it can't be fixed. And I don't even know how you're going to fix this. Have no idea how you're going to fix this, but I bought it the Lord into my life as an adult, you know, being raised in church is one thing, but having a relationship with the Lord as an adult, it's a totally different situation.

And that began my journey of having a relationship with the Lord and being did deploy in a excuse me, March of 2003. And David turned one in April of 2003. And so my husband was there for that initial invasion of Baghdad [01:45:00] for that for the conflicts in Iraq. And he would go a month. Was he still a mechanic at this point?

Or was he at the front lines? What was his role? No, he was a military intelligence analyst. So when he went to Korea, Korea, he changed his career. So he was only a mechanic from 96 to 90 to 95, no 96 to 97, 98. And the reason why I'm asking you is cause for, for myself and for listeners, your role during a conflict changes the level of stress in your families.

Because obviously if someone is an analyst and they're in an office back in America, that's relatively safe, but you know, when he's a mechanic, that's dangerous. And then when he's, you said, now he's doing intelligence, which ups at another level. So every [01:46:00] time he's getting a promotion, you're probably getting more anxiety, correct.

All the time, all the time. So he's a he's an intelligence analyst at this one. He just changed over when he became an intelligence analyst in 1999. And you're right when they're in Garrison, which is means they're home and those don't break or nine, five, like everybody else it's nine to five, like everybody else.

But when they are not in Garrison, that changes completely. And he was always attached to some special forces unit because so these intelligence, so there's that, and people can infer what they will bear, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And you don't have, you don't have to go into it. The whole point was you're not already having stress and conflict and then act of war.

It's wow. Okay. This has just taken it to the next level, next level. So [01:47:00] you're in church. You hear a preacher. He, God, he shares a message. God laid on his heart and it essentially changes your life. So I want to bring up two points. Number one, for myself, for Laquita, for you. If we're not in a church that preaches the word of God, we're not hearing it.

And we're missing those opportunities to get our life, right? Yes. Number two, Laquita heard the invitation and she took it. Yes. And you know, so whosoever shall call upon the name of Lord shall be saved. It doesn't matter what you did. Doesn't matter who you are is just trust God. Not believe in God. Trust God.

Even the demons. The difference between a demon and an angel is one decision angels chose to stay with God, demons chose to follow Satan. That one decision damned into the lake of fire forever, or you and me, [01:48:00] we need to make the right decision to choose God. And to trust him to know he's going to save us for eternity, not just believe he's real and do our own thing.

So at that moment of your life, after being in church and having a family with religion, that's when the relationship became real to you. Is that what was that when I'm hearing? That is exactly it. That's exactly it. Bring us from there. And if you want more information on a relationship with Christ, reach out to me, reach out to Laquita.

This is the most important thing in the world. As whole podcast is about glorifying God, by helping you helping me, we help each other and it starts with salvation. And then we tell others. So if you don't know Christ as your savior and have that peace and joy that, you know, whether you die today or in 50 years, you're going to spend a tourney in joy and love and peace with God, reach out to us and we'll help you find them.

It's not hiding, but will increase, explain the [01:49:00] truth and you can decide what to do with it. Right? Right. Absolutely. Because that's what it's all about. Is this, the other been that relationship with Christ, religion is one thing and religion has killed a lot of people, innocent people, a lot of people on purpose for relationship, that relationship is, is what sets the captives free.

And hearing that message is where my relationship with him began. And I, that I be, then I began to realize that a relationship was possible. So and that's important. What Laquita just said is this, when you're really honest with yourself about who you are, me too, we know what a dirty scumbag we are.

And if God can love us for who we are, man, we can easily love somebody. So, if you're wondering why so many marriages are failing, because they're not starting with our relationship with God personally. Yes. And if someone doesn't love, God [01:50:00] loves a choice. Yes. And you can be in a marriage in love them and then choose to love somebody else.

When you love God and you have a proper relationship, it doesn't matter if you hate your spouse at that moment, you love God and you have a healthy fear of God, and you're not going to go out and get a divorce or commit adultery or do something stupid because your first love is with God. And then the rest of marriage does fall into place.

So I'm not trying to step ahead, but it's something that our marriage is in a countries and families falling apart. That's and that's really what you said. There was really a good synopsis of the lessons that we would learn from that point, moving forward, like what we realized in that relationship with me developing, starting my relationship with Christ in that moment, the Lord showed me something critical.

And that moment that was a war [01:51:00] being fought on two fronts. Yes. In the natural and Iraq and Afghanistan before the Monroe family, it was being fought on some fronts in Iraq and in Texas, while my husband was doing everything that he needed to do by the grace of God to do his job will bring his team.

And himself, the Lord was working on a work in me. And that war that I was fighting was a spiritual warfare where the enemy didn't want to let me go, but I didn't want to remain where I was. And so that war was over my identity. That was the time that I realized, okay. I have no idea who I am. And the only way for me to discover who I am is to first discover whose I am.

And now that I've discovered that I am a daughter of the king, what does that mean for me? What does it mean to be a daughter of the king? What does it mean [01:52:00] to be a woman of God? What did God create me to do? Why did he create me? What is his purpose and plan and mission for my life? For that year, the Lord worked those things out in me.

He began to show me and how did he show me through the time that I spent in prayer through the time that I spent studying God's word, the time that I spent fellowshipping with like-minded believers that I spent learning and growing and being connected to a local ministry that's word-based spirit field, the spirit led.

Those are the key tools there, discovering who I am by knowing whose I am and doing that. When Rebecca says that we'll get the. And we write it down and we make it plain. You cannot receive the vision. If you don't have a relationship with the one that gives the vision. And in developing that relationship with Christ, he was able to clearly show me why he allowed me to be born on this earth.

[01:53:00] Why he allowed me to go through the things that he allowed me to go to? Yes, I make those bad decisions, but he also showed me how though. I felt like he had not been intervening. He had been intervening the entire time. And in now in that moment, he was still getting intervening. And so the things that I desire most that I was wanting from him most, I was a starting point to make those things happen because there was a lot of expectations that I had of my husband that only the look of the field.

I had some unrealistic expectations of being as it related to how he was supposed to fulfill me in his role as a husband that never belonged to him. You made some really great points about marriage. We'd go into marriage, being ready for the wedding date in the wedding night, we do not go into marriage, being ready for the covenant.

And that's, that is the important part going into, into the marriage and understanding [01:54:00] that as a covenant agreement between God, you and your spouse, that's another. And love is a choice and we're choosing to make that choice every day and we're choosing to become better people, better human beings, better men that have women every day and what I can grow and mature and develop in who I am and who got called me to be that causes me to be able to balance more effectively the hats that I wear as wife and mom and now grandmother, but it started out and making that decision.

Everything in life starts with a decision and that decision to give my life to the Lord, to develop a relationship with Christ is what made the difference and the turning point and in my life and in my relationship with coming out of the [01:55:00] depression at this point of being in a depression, I've been in a depression, literally in looking at in therapy, I've been depressed.

That's the day I found out I was pregnant with my first son. I just didn't realize it. And at that point in therapy, this is 2001. I pregnant that in 1994. I've been dealing with depression for years, and now in 2003, and I'm having this divine encounter and an amazing. I'll never walk into freshen again.

Does that mean that depression won't try me. No, it's going to try me, but now because of my relationship and my maturity level in God, I can recognize the onset of that. And I'm equipped to deal with it through his word. Am I saying that therapy isn't necessary? I'm not saying that there are some amazing, and I [01:56:00] advocate for spirit field therapists.

God gave them a gift and a talent to be able to help us. And if you need that, get that help. But what I'm saying here is with the help that I had gotten, my breakthrough moment happened with my relationship with the Lord. Amen. 

Let's talk about depression a little bit because there's so many people struggling with it. Not just women with postpartum, but people who have been beat up by life, like your expectation and your goals. And you know, it's not matching up to the reality. So you clearly had a moment where you came to know God.

And for some people that is a switch, it's like flicking a switch, addictions, go away. Their free depression goes away. They're free, but say it, and even in the best, Christian will always try to bring them [01:57:00] back into bondage. One of the, you know, the prince of preacher is Charles Spurgeon. He suffered with depression.

He was known to struggle with depression. So what are, and maybe it was as simple as you trust in Christ as your savior, the depression melted away. But how, if someone's listening and they're struggling with depression, what have you done or seen. In your life that you recommend to our listeners. So what's a starting point and maybe some steps to keep out of depression each day.

I wish it had went away like meth, but it was not that simple. Like, you know, I know some people who, like you said, and that moment of salvation and they received the holy spirit into their life. Boom. It's like a clean slate in that moment. I didn't get the clean slate moment. Neither did I,

no. I mean, there's [01:58:00] things that God did radically change my life, but as time passed and circumstances happen, whether it was my choice in sin or just being the, the recipient of someone else's sin, I allowed life to get me down. And there's times that I really struggled with depression. So for me, for our listeners, what's helped you.

What have you seen work? So, for me, it was in that time that I spent studying God's word, what I found from myself and the depressions that I struggled with, had to do with my self worth. It had to do with my identity. And like, so let's, let's use this for an example, but my favorite synoptic is Luke. And really because of the wording in Luke three and four.

But in, in Luke chapter three and I'm gonna paraphrase it a [01:59:00] little bit. A lot of it, I'm a paraphrase it. And look, chapter three, Jesus asked John the Baptist to baptize him and John, the Baptist says, no, I need to be baptizing. You I'm going to, I'm not even worthy to tighten up your sandals. You know, I can't do this.

And Jesus says, no, no, we got to do it. So the scripture can be fulfilled. And so John does it. And immediately when he comes out the water, the scripture says a straight way. You know, the, the spirit of the Lord speaks comes down in the form of a dove upon Jesus. You can audibly hear the father say, you know, this is in my beloved behold, this is my beloved son in whom I am.

Well-pleased immediate Satan and chapter four. The scripture tells us that immediately Jesus is driven into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights to be tempted of the devil. And the first thing that he says, if that will be the son of [02:00:00] God, then turn these stones to bread. If thou be the son of God, the scripture says that if you jump off this cliff, he going to catch you and you won't, you won't even hit the ground.

If you be the son of God, like every part of that temptation, he challenged Jesus's identity and. That was one of the first things that really jumped out at me and came to tank that really blessed to me as I started studying the scriptures that helped me as it related to my depression, or people might call it.

What is it another time that she use right now? Oh, I can't think of it in a moment. It'll come to me. There is a term, but really for me, the depression had to deal with was I good enough? Was I smart enough? You know was I a good mom? Was I go? Why they just [02:01:00] challenged everything about who God created me to be.

And when I saw that, when when the Lord just illuminated that for me,

the moment that Jesus was proclaimed to be Jesus to the world, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. We have to understand people got Beth from your moment of conception and your mother's womb. Not only did the Lord, no view and concentrate you into himself. And he gave you a purpose and he has a plan for your life.

The enemy understands that as well. So he does everything that he can. From that moment to try to derail you and detour you from your destiny. And the best way to do that is battling you in your mind, because if he could consistently and continuously thought of you, when your mind you won't do anything, nobody else has to stop.[02:02:00] 

We'll stop ourselves. So learning who you are, who God created you to be is fundamental. It is absolutely fundamental because just like Jesus began to walk back with the word and telling Satan what the word says. That's what I had to begin to do. So when the enemy would try to flip my mind, but negative thoughts through the time that I spent studying God's word now, but I have built up my defense system.

And the important thing is I had to believe it though. A lot of times you don't, we can quote the scripture, but do we believe it in our heart? I had to believe in my heart that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God that I'm passionate, created in his image and in his likeness. But he gave me dominion and power over every creeping thing that people do upon the earth.

I have to believe that in know that I have to know that every promise in the [02:03:00] word of God is yes. And amen to me. Why not? Because I deserve it, but because my I'm entitled to it because I'm a daughter of. I am a child of the most high God. So for every negative that the enemy tries to cause me to receive.

I now in turn, he was scripture am able to quote back the positive. So if he says I'm less, I say, I'm more than a conqueror. If he says, oh no, you're not special. I, and I say, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. So for me, it's coming into understanding just how great God was, is, and just how great I am because I'm living and breathing in born and quoting those promises.

And it's an everyday thing. It's not a full-time thing. It's an every day thing. And in those first years of being a new baby [02:04:00] believable, it was something that I had to do numerous times a day, numerous times a day. I woke up with the word. I spent time. I made time for the word in the middle of the day.

And before I went to sleep, it's the word I had to saturate. My husband was gone for a year. I believe because God needed that time with me to build me up. It had nothing to do with being, it had nothing to do with our marriage, our marriage in trouble. Absolutely. But he needed me to know who I was because life had been.

Yes. I made some bad decisions. Yes. I made some good decisions. Yes. We decided I decided not to have two abortions. Yes. He delivered me through two miscarriages. Yes. We kept our marriage together. Yes. I made some BMS of decisions. I made some decisions to do that. That did not mean that the cares of this world had not sifted me [02:05:00] to the point of empty I was.

And through God's word, I was built up again. Accommodation. Yeah. So where does life go from there? You have this year. And also, I do want to put a whole more thing. When you were talking about savings, putting wise in your head and you're speaking, you're, you're reviewing scripture is true, which it is. You spoke the truth out loud, correct?

Not just read it, not just meditate on it, speak the truth out loud. That's a biblical model that Jesus and Christ did. And the garnish acidity, the loser, Satan tempts Jesus three times and all three times Jesus responds back out loud with scripture. Yeah. There's power in the word of God. So make sure you're expressing it.

Oh, wow. Don't [02:06:00] be crazy and screaming stuff on the bus. Right. But when you're alone with God take time and when it's appropriate, share it out loud, share it out loud. Like I, in that time I became radical in my pursuit. So maybe a little weird what I'm about to say, but I'm very mine. I'm a mom of five little people running around and my alone time was very little.

So I began to put stickies in the places that I knew I would see them that I use the most. And so on. My toilet is where I spend a lot of time, not necessarily that I was actually using the bathroom. That was just the only quiet spot in my house where nobody would say, mommy, mommy, mommy. So I, I knew I could get that time for those who are going to have kids yet, this a real thing.

You're going to find out real soon. It became my sanctuary. Like, [02:07:00] and so, you know, I be sitting there with my script, with my Bible or a note pad or sticky and writing it down. And I just begin to stick them on that, on the bathroom wall, in front of me or on my mirror, because I knew I was coming. I would see myself in that mirror every day and brushing my teeth in the morning, you know, getting ready, dressed, whatever.

I began to put the scriptures that just really spoke to my heart. Writing them down, putting them in visible places. And I began to change my environment and setting the atmosphere that was conducive to building me up. So that meant that even if I even changed the things that I listened to, the music that I listened to, it had to be something that was edifying.

No more sad love songs, but that year, I don't know how a Dell has any listeners, her music depresses me. I don't know how people just don't like, just get in bed and never wake up. I can't, there's certain people that'll [02:08:00] just make you sad. No, I I'm. Della's beautiful voice and her people love her, but dude, if you're going to be depressed, don't listen to a Dell that stuff's not going to help.

I had to just really change everything about because here's the deal. Whether you do that or you don't, the enemy has an assignment. And the one thing I can say, he's diligent. He's never slack on his work. He does it all the time. Whether or not we do our part is irrelevant to him. He is always going to be on the attack.

It is up to us to Mount a defense. And to become on the offense instead of always running away on the defense. And so when I say that I became radical it's because for me, that was radical. That put me out of my comfort zone. I had to chose totally, totally change my life and my thinking and that included the [02:09:00] people in my life as well.

Now I didn't run around just telling folk who had me in my life, because you don't know what I didn't do that. I didn't do that. That's stupid, please don't do that to people. What will happen? However, the more you change people, either those people that know and love you will either change with you or they'll separate themselves from you.

And that's what happened that people get to separate themselves from me. Not because I was telling everybody that was going to burn in hell. If you did not say, it's just that when you get an, a positive place in your life and you're trying to move forward in a positive direction, people who are not ready to make that growth with you, they won't.

So they'll navigate and go towards people who are more like them. And you'll begin to attract to you what you need. The world calls it, the law of attraction, the scripture calls a fellowship of like-minded women. That's really what it is. Fellowship of like-minded [02:10:00] believers. You will find your environment to be different.

And one that was, that will build you. Now, again, the enemy is always on his job. He just because I overcome depression does not mean that the enemy does not still throw things my way to try to cause me to fall into a depression. Now I can see the signs. Now I understand what I shouldn't be doing or what I need to be doing.

Right? Like there's some things in my life that I know I can never do again. If I, if I start to do those things again, I'll spiral out. So I can't do that anymore. There are some new things in my life and disciplines in my life that I know have to stay in place. And that keeps me safe. That keeps me on a firm foundation that keeps me moving forward and that and that personal responsibility is mine and mine alone.

My husband can be as wonderful as he wants to be. There's nothing that being can do to [02:11:00] prevent me from going into a depression. My parents can prevent me from going into a depression. My, our pastors and our, you know, our friends can't prevent that. That's my responsibility. And the Lord has given me the keys and the tools to do that.

So now I have to do that. So, and it's work, it's work, but it's so worth it. You know, it is so worth it to, to walk in that freedom to walk in that Liberty, bad stuff happens. Things that overwhelming happen. I can't stop it. But what I do have control over is regulating my thoughts and bringing those thoughts back on this objection, to the word of God and where I focus on his word.

And some days are a bigger fight than others, but the key is not to give up the fight. Amen to that. Now transition this. So you're growing, you're seeing the differences in the change and you're putting the [02:12:00] work in, how does that translate into your marriage and family? Funnily enough, it didn't go well at first it did not go well.

It first are you saying that things might get worse before they get better? That was a pure new England sarcasm right there. If you didn't catch it.

And I'm glad you asked, because a lot of people even immature Christians who are sharing our faith, they kind of share it in that way. Like, oh, you gotta do is believe in Jesus and everything will be better. And then people do it and they're like, oh, that's a lie that's been happened. Let me tell you the truth.

It did not make all of my problems go away in an instant. It caused some new problems. It caused some new problems, but the, but is he is the solution. He is the answer. It comes down to us. Learning and growing in [02:13:00] relationship with him and now having a mature response to the problem, the problems in shift, it's like all of us who know how to cook, right?

When you have a grease fire, those of us that know how to cook and was taught proper in the kitchen. You know, you don't put water on that. Fire water might put certain fires out, but it doesn't put a grease fire at that will burn your house down. That's what life was. My life was the grease fire. And my relationship with the Lord was now me learning how to properly smother that fire with the right response, instead of always throwing water and making that blaze bigger and bigger.

Before my relationship with the Lord, I was still in a lot of water on grease fires, burning stuff up, burning myself, burning the people around me, burning, just burning down my house, my life and my marriage, my house now that I'm mature and growing in my relationship with God and my responses are now becoming different [02:14:00] just because my responses were coming different, did not mean that the people in my life were responding positively to that.

I remember at my husband and I had an argument over the phone. He was in Iraq and he says, what do you mean? You want to understand where I'm coming from? I never said that before ever in an argument that I wanted to understand his perspective. Never had. I said that he desired me to, there have been many occasions prior to them where I told him, listen, if you wanted that type of woman or you wanted me to be that way, you would have married.

The other woman, you wouldn't marry me. You a matter of the other woman, I'm not changing it for you. This is who I am like, it love it or leave it. And I would tell him that regularly. And now all of a sudden I'm telling him that I've changed. He's seen the change. And now not only that, I want to understand his perspective.

He had no clue what to do with [02:15:00] that. It's like, who is this person? What did you do in my wife? Like, what is this madness? And it did not have a positive effect at all. And so he was, when he came back, we were having a conversation. He's like, I can't compete with Jesus. How would you change? Because the Bible said it I've been begging for these changes, you know, at this point 10 years.

Right. And got married in 97. And now this is 2004. What would I use? Like, okay, what's up with that. And so it did create some problems because my husband did not receive price at the same time that I did. He went away to him. He left dealing with one crazy one. And now he comes back home to a different type of crazy woman.

He's like, make up your mind, [02:16:00] Tracy. You want to be like, that actually brings up a good point. You know, we talk about that a lot on this show, it says a false balance is abominations Lord, but a just weight is his delight. We're to find balance in our lives. Yes. Too much or too little of anything is crazy.

We need to find the balance. So if you're like spinning versus at your husband or wife, that's probably not going to go well, if that's all you're doing. Yeah. I didn't get that memo in time. Yeah. And if all you're doing is cussing him out or her out, that's probably not going to help either, but you need that balance of action and love.

Yes. You know, the Bible talks about that. Clearly the husband and wife who model price love will ultimately win the other over, but just slapping them in the head verbally. Yeah. And he came back to the Bible, thumping out of the door now woman, like, [02:17:00] what are you doing to my children? All right. So bring us through it.

So what happens, bring us through the time, because we're going to go through this moment. How did you find balance? How did your husband come to know Christ and how did you come to today? So, unfortunately, even though my husband was clearly telling me that I needed to find balance, I could not do. I could not hear that.

He would say to me, my family and friends call me fascia. And he was like, Quasha, I can't even have a conversation with you. Like, I can't have a normal conversation with you anymore. It's impossible. And I just thinking, what, what do you mean I'm having the normal conversations? No, you're not like I cannot have a normal conversation with you.

This is crazy and I can't continue try to compete. So now we're having a Rocky marriage for a totally different reason. And so I'm busy trying to cast the devil out of my home and thinking, you know, [02:18:00] I need to set up all night prayer vigil because the devil is running rapid. When, what was running ramping in my home, it's really what you just said.

A lack of balance and immaturity, and that was not representing Christ in a good way. At all, was a lawyer winking at my ignorance for a season. He did praise the Lord. He did. He kept me and my family together while I was yet being foolish. We ended up in 2008 out of a lot of near death experiences in Iraq.

My husband was there for his final before the Tarek was number three for three, three, number three to Iraq, and he had a moment. That he should not be here, but he is here. And [02:19:00] in that moment, he, he called me and he told me what happened. And at that moment we prayed a prayer together. We pray their salvation prayer together, and his life has not been the same since life has not been the same.

Amen. And for those who, for those listeners who don't know what the salvation prayer is, explain that. So the salvation prayer is when you walk through the scripture with an unbeliever and they receive Christ into their life as the Lord and personal savior, they recognize him for who he is and the sacrifices that he has done.

And we just see them and so our life, and we declare that Jesus Christ as well. Yeah. And it's not a magic set of words. Like you have to say these words in this order, but what it's doing is it's realizing that [02:20:00] of ourselves. We cannot and not doing anything. Yeah. And there's no way we deserve or can achieve attorney with a perfect, holy God, not perfect.

We can be perfect. God says to be perfect. It means to be. It means to be whole not without sin to be holy means to be without sin. A lot of people mix that up. Like nobody can be perfect. Yes, they can because it's a daily walk and it's to be whole, and God says, be perfect as I am for RG as, as you know what I mean?

So those are, that's a very misunderstood word, but to be whole and holy, we cannot be. So when we recognize that we can't achieve eternal life in heaven without Christ, that's the moment of salvation and that's a last, a moment of salvation. And so so yes, that happened in, you know, a and we, he gets back from Iraq [02:21:00] and oh nine and we, and we are back in counseling because in this moment we're saying, okay, because again, we're at a place where he did not like owl.

I don't even know if I'm gonna be married to you. He did not want to be married. He did not want to be at this point. He didn't want to be married. And I was doing everything that I knew to do in that moment to save my marriage. So Bob, he, he has that experience. He comes back and it says, okay, we're going to, we knew we were on orders to go to England.

And so what we're going to do now is we're laying all of our cards on this. And we are, we're in therapy and we're dealing with everything from past infidelities to, you know, what's going on with our lack of communication, conflict. Like you said, conflict resolution, our issues that we had with how we both, [02:22:00] you know, saw our relationship with price growth, everything is on the table.

And we're talking these through with our pastors on a weekly basis. And so this is what we have out on the table. How are we going to move forward? Or do you want to move forward? Because at this point, like, okay, no, nobody has advocate for divorce, but then we have grounds for divorce. We did, we had grounds for divorce and to move forward because of the infidelities, but what was our decision going to be?

And so the decision was for the first time in our life, we actually have a foundation to make it work, to make it right. Are we going to end the marriage? Are we going to cause this call this our new beginning in Christ together. And we [02:23:00] decided to call it our new beginning in Christ together. So in 2000, January, 2010, we went to England.

Our new beginning and Christ together. And so glad that we did so glad that we did not only now we've faced some challenges in England. We face some challenges, but it was a good thing that you were now for the first time on one accord in all of the years that we've been married up until that point got married in 1997.

It took us until 2010 to get on one accord. And now that we're on one accord, if we were in a place now to be the husband and wife, we needed to be with each other, but most importantly, to be the parents that we needed to be. And that's where my balance finally kicked in. Like I finally recognized my lack of balance.

We were with [02:24:00] found a church home and we were having family meeting over Sunday dinner to let the children know, Hey, we're going to join this church. And our children told us very clearly because they're teenagers at this point, the oldest is in the ninth grade. The youngest is in the second grade.

And they told us very clearly that how they had not appreciated our lack of attention as parents, me, because of me running around trying to be the super Christian site in him because of the absence due to his military service. Yes, they understood that daddy had a job and that's his job. But as a kid.

What does that mean? Like that? You said the only reason, like, this is the only reason why I didn't argue about moving is because, and this, this is the children talking. Well, three of them, my oldest son argued the entire time about moving. But the [02:25:00] only reason that the, the ones under him were not really busing was because they wanted their dad.

And we told them if we moved to England, daddy did not have to go back to Iraqi anymore. And so they wanted him to understand that the only reason we are not complaining is because you promised us that you be home and you wouldn't have to go back to Iraq. Mom, we love Jesus, but we do not want to be in church every day.

When we go out, can you please stop talking to the people, the church, people that know you all the time, they we're supposed to be out on the family, family. They, I mean, they made it very clear because in our family meetings, we give them the opportunity to say what's on their mind in a respectful way.

Yeah. Because they need to be able to have a form to express themselves. Now we did let them know. We wouldn't [02:26:00] necessarily go, always agree with what they said, but we want to know how you feel. We need to know how you feel. And they told me. And for the first time, no, after we heard them out, it was sobering.

It was really, really sobering life. They read our mail and after they left and we went out for a walk and we decide, okay, we don't know how we're going to fix it or whatever we got to do, whatever Jesus says do, but he has given us an opportunity now not to continue to screw up our kids. So let do this.

Like, we need to be there for each other. And we need to this whole time, we've been saying we're staying together for the kids, but stand together for the kids in a toxic situation is not the answer. So less that creating these toxic situations and really allow the Lord to show [02:27:00] us what balance is now.

It's not 50 50. Sometimes it's 75, 25. Sometimes it's 90 10, but balance is giving what we need it in even a situation when it's needed. That's what balance means to a marriage. That's what balance means to a marriage with children, punctually at your best, your hundred, giving you 110 at all times, and how you're able to do that.

Is that you can only do that through delete. And then I got another holy ghost. We have to be healthy whole individuals in order to show up in our marriages, the, when they need to, and to show up as parents, as we need to. And in 20, in January of 2010, our children checked us. We thank the Lord for the opportunity and the understanding.

And from that point to this point until it, from that point till today, yes, lots of mistakes have been [02:28:00] made, but we have been a one or four only by the grace of God and the mistakes, like the mistakes we made when they were little, we can't fix them. We can't erase them. We can acknowledge them. And moving forward, we were able to spend that seven and a half years overseas from 20 January, 2010 until March, 2017.

So, yeah, right at seven. And in those seven years, the Lord blessed us to be able to be the parents that we needed to be for our children and to be able to be there for one another, when we needed to be, to build a farm foundation in our marriage.

And today, where are you today felt today? 25 [02:29:00] years married, praise God, 30 years of relationship, five adult children, five grandchildren enjoying life is empty nesters and just loving Jesus. To now we're in the, in the new stages of developing our own ministry, praise God. And a lot of that ministry, the foundations of our ministry are discipleship, evangelism, discipleship, and marriage.

Why those three, because those are the three tools that the Lord has consistently use to develop us evangelistically because somebody spoke to us discipleship because somebody has been discipling us through this journey to become strong word-based and spirit filled believers and in marriage because the family [02:30:00] strong families create strong communities where we love Tony Evans, strong families, strong communities, strong communities create strong cities, strong cities, great strong state strong states create a strong country and a strong countries create a strong world.

How do we do that? It starts with one individual, one family at a time. And our goal is our ministry as well. Walking walking in faith and build a team of people. And we're all about building kingdom people. Amen. And I want you to that process. You walk through, some people have heard that before somebody who've never heard it before, but if you're listening to Laquita, rewind this and listen to that again, when we are at peace with God and ourselves, [02:31:00] then that goes into our relationship with our spouse and then our children or family.

And then that echoes that wave. We talked about before, good or bad, the butterfly effect, wherever you want to call it. It's not the butterfly effect. That's reality. It's two plus two is four. So what liquid is sharing is a hundred percent sure it starts with us and our relationship with God and then our spouse and their family, the church, the community, and it just keeps growing.

So I couldn't agree more. So between your birth and today, is there anything else we missed before we move on to where he touched on where you are today and where you're going, but before we get into the, like how can we conquer an Alyssa contact you? Is there anything we can do to help you? Is there anything we missed that we want to cover or a final thought or something that you want to make sure the audience is really considered.

I guess more like a final thought what I want the audience [02:32:00] to really, if they don't get anything, what I want them to take away is the importance of knowing whose you are to know who you are when I know who Christ is. And I know who God created me to be. That's my foundation to understanding my identity and my purpose.

When I know those things, everything else in life becomes easier to manage everything because everything in life hinges on our identity. When I know who I am, and I understand the purpose and the reason God created me and what I'm supposed to be doing, it's easy to get to those four values and to walk out that purpose, understanding that will keep us from getting in the wrong relationships, [02:33:00] platonic as well as romantic understanding that will cause us to be less likely to get involved in the wrong career fields, the wrong Frances, what everything about life hinges on our identity.

If they don't take anything away from what I said, I want them, I want everyone to take that away. My whole journey. Start it because I did not understand who I was and what God created me to be, which caused me to make some bad decisions. And even when I made the good decision to receive him and grow a relationship with him, when I still didn't fully understand his purpose and plan for my life.

So I lived life out of balance as a Christian, but balancing that out and walking out in purpose fast transformational. So that will be the takeaway. If they can take anything away from anything I said, was that transformation and [02:34:00] understanding who I am, who God created me to be, what my purpose is and how to start to pursue that purpose.

What a passion. Amen. So you've just helped us and shared so many truths Laquita, how can we help you? Where are you today? Where are you heading? How can we as listeners help you get there? So today I am a transformational coach what the John, what the John Maxwell leadership team and how the listeners can help me as I, I actually have a book coming out in may May 14th.

My book is called redefining success, eight tools to a growth mindset, and it is a. Christian from a biblical perspective through some of the things that I share today are in the book. Actually, there's some of the sh the life [02:35:00] experiences I've had today, the tools that I've learned in order to develop a growth mindset and develop the transformation and to becoming the woman of God that God called me to be.

So the support would be by the book, by the book, leave me a review. You can go out to my website right now@wwwdotliquidremodeling.com and pre order the book. And as well as if your listeners are looking for a coach or a speaker for an event I would love for them to reach out to me. I do one-on-one coaching.

I do coaching. And as well as speaking both in ministry settings at women's groups, women's conferences we do, I do do some leadership training as well through our, through the John Maxwell material that I have. And yeah. [02:36:00] Now is there, we got your website and I'm going to put links, like always I'll put links in the show notes, but is there any other way you'd like for people to get a hold of you or is your website the best.

So I'm on also, well, I don't know why all social media has always something new popping up, but I'm on most major social media. So people Google Laquita, Mon like L a Q U I T a Monley M O N L E Y. They'll find my LinkedIn, my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, as well as my YouTube channel as well. So, and my podcast, let me not forget my podcasts and liquids toolbox.

So I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you want to know or speak to me or have more media contact with me, do social media, I am the person that manages my social media. So if you send me a message or you make a comment, I do tend to that pretty regularly, really regularly. If you message me [02:37:00] and I'd be happy to check.

Awesome. While the Quita thank you for being with us today, you truly have a remarkable story. It was a pleasure to get to know you better for our listeners. Like our slogan says, you've just heard Laquita. You've just heard awesome truth. She share with us, her successes, her failures, everything in between, but don't just listen to this great content, but do it, repeat it each day.

So you can have a fantastic life on this earth, but more importantly in attorney to come. So I'm David Pascoe alone. This was the remarkable liquid. We wish you only the best. We love you. The Quita. Thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for having me, David. It's been my pleasure, that amazing shelter, great conversation.

Oh, anytime to our listeners, we love you. Reach out to Laquita. If you need something, reach out to me and more than [02:38:00] anything, reach out to God. He loves you more than we ever could. So until the next episode chat.

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