[SPEAKER_02]: Viewer and listener discretion is advised.
[SPEAKER_02]: This podcast may include discussions of sensitive topics such as violence, abuse, sexual trauma, addiction, grief, and mental health challenges.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please listen at your own pace and prioritize your will being.
[SPEAKER_02]: This podcast is intended for educational and inspirational purposes only.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or other professional services.
[SPEAKER_02]: Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapeutic relationship with the host or guests.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you need support, we encourage you to seek care from a licensed mental health professional or another qualified provider.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our mission is to share authentic stories that educate, inspire, and remind you that healing growth and transformation are possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, all, welcome to the very first episode of the Cosie Plays podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am your host, Whitney Banks, licensed mental health therapists and faith-based relationship coach.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is going to be a space that is curated towards real conversations about healing, personal growth, faith, and building healthy relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some welcoming all the vulnerability here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Each episode will be curated with either real stories from real people, or I'll be sharing insights and perspectives to help you navigate life with more clarity, intention, and prayerfully some peace.
[SPEAKER_02]: So get cozy and join me as we grow, reflect, and do live together one conversation at a time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for today's guest, it brings the story of both raw and meaningful.
[SPEAKER_02]: His story speaks to where he's been, what he's survived, and how transformation is really possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: at the living of life shaped by some difficult choices and spinnets and tie-by bars.
[SPEAKER_02]: His journey has taken a powerful turn towards faith, accountability, and personal growth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, he is an author, podcaster, and mentor who shares unfiltered lessons about what it takes to change your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody, please welcome Joe T. What up, Doug?
[SPEAKER_01]: How you doing today, Joe?
[SPEAKER_01]: Feeling great, I am, um.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of shocked right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are your shots?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just watch, you do your first edge of ducing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, flawless.
[SPEAKER_01]: One take.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: One take here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I practice a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm feeling great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you're gonna do a lot of dig and then a lot of people have enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I've done any of you, so yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't get into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever you're willing to talk about, we're gonna go there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing's off the day.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, well, let's start.
[SPEAKER_02]: But who are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Give us some context and background.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like where are you from?
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, most I am a man of the most I am a man of the faith of, I believe in the word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, I'm gonna go with, I'm a father and I want to go with that second because, you know, of course, I fulfill that at one point and I've enjoyed being able to have a starting place.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm from Springfield, Tennessee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, I am an author that is something I still enjoy doing right now, I do music, I've got in a doing film, I'm about to become a husband.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, man, it's really talent, it's really talent.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, to sum it up, man, I'm a, I'm a, what's the word, uh, creative?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to go with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like, I like to create, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to, if it's in my mind, I like to figure out how to bring it into fruition.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is because I come from a background of where with great people, great talents, uh, great minds that were just, uh, unfortunate, and unfortunate, unfortunate situations to where they
[SPEAKER_01]: make these things come to life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And being on the side now where it's like, you could do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this, this, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, I'm going to ask some more questions about that later, but I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK. How did you grow up?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what was that experience like for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, horrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're honest.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at looking back at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, as a kid, you think in you, it was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, my mom and dad wanted to be because they're boys in the city.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, my dad, two life sentences in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: going to see him in prison was crazy for the first two or three times, but it was weird because I actually ended up, I feel like embracing and adopting that culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was almost intriguing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right off the back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when we're going to visit my dad, it of course they tell no, this is what you don't, you don't want to live this way because this is where you're going to end up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It took us out of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you go in the prison, you watching a bunch of inmates dress down still.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got on jury, they got nice clothes, they, I mean, not nice clothes, they clothes aren't they got nice shoes on and then how they come and tell to you, you know, it's just like, okay, they cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_02]: How old are you when you started going?
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say a problem about
[SPEAKER_01]: 10, eight, nine, 10, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, nine, ten, but my childhood was, it was a childhood though, like we had go cars, you know, we played basketball, you know, basketball was my first love, I hated school, I hated school, I got an older brother, younger sister.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm from a little small town, so it wasn't much to do, and I feel like when you don't have much to do your mind, you've got to live off imagination, you learn to do things and figure out the ways to have fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course we play it all, the games.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then everybody played around the world, which I always wanted to know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, who started this thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did he give from Dallas?
[SPEAKER_01]: I waited 10 to 10 years from Tennessee, I waited Dallas.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, with the, uh, uh, was it really like green light?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother May I.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like I was wondering who coined these things like when I go to other cities and had these conversations maybe like, yeah, we did it too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be like, how did that spread across the world like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: The culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what the game was when you brought a square.
[SPEAKER_01]: For square.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for four square.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: We play a y'all play for square.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We play for square.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hago get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to use the word, the NIGGA knock.
[SPEAKER_01]: We play them games.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had a real childhood, I had a real childhood, like we experienced outside, sleepovers, you know, we don't live in that world.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't live in that world no more.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a scary part.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like kids today, they will never know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Never know.
[SPEAKER_02]: They will never know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you grew up pretty much doing other things
[SPEAKER_02]: When do you feel like life-shifted for you like how old were you?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm gonna say after I head or chicken parks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chicken parks, that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Watch chicken parks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chicken parks are most killed me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they couldn't, they couldn't heal them because when I caught them they went inside my body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I ended up being in the hospital for, I want to say two, three months.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my heart actually stopped at one point.
[SPEAKER_01]: They ended up bringing me back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my mom and I were say that I was a different child after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, how are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just around the time, I was a little bit with after I was molested over four.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say it probably around seven, eight, nine, ten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somewhere around there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: She always said I had more energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was, I talked to more.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like I was a different child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I feel like after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was before being molested.
[SPEAKER_01]: Melissa came after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like after that things started kind of.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was curious about more things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I realized a lot of things as far as my mom was born for him who said the dope, this function.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started noticing this function at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't okay with my environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: going to my friends house as I can see things differently as far as both them having their actual biological mother and father.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way they were organized and structured went to church on Sunday getting picked up from school.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we were out somewhere, how they parents always came and checked on them and how we could probably be out in the we out.
[SPEAKER_01]: We wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say, I'm going to say
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that is my blowing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the, in this day, age, I've never thought about people still potentially being at risk of losing their life from chicken parts because they used to say, you get to start or you get to park and you're fine before.
[SPEAKER_02]: But wow, that had to be terrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, oh.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one moment I look back at, cause I was real sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm even after we left the hospital.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't walk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of times, if I stood up, I would pass out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember, this was around my time.
[SPEAKER_01]: My sister was born too when I came home.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to hold my sister and they gave it to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I stood for maybe five or 10, six and I passed out and dropped it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I remember them trying to take me my mama trying to take me back to the hospital one time and this is a question I was said I had talked about it in my brother-up in my book that I remember being in the back seat laying down blank at home and we got to the hospital and couldn't find a parking space.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember my mom was saying, man, forget that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't find no parking space and we just live.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always wonder, like, what would that be?
[SPEAKER_01]: If I were to get a super duper sick, like, but then, you know, I try to talk it up to black women frustrated too much going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gotta go to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ain't got time to be dealing with this sick incident.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just hoping God take care of it and not realize the severity of just saying, forget it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it figure you know, whatever half a half a book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's wild.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was obviously life's changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You said you also got Melissa?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you okay to talk about that?
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cursing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Baby Sidnaus.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was sitting in the literal room in my brother's playing the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I can still see every time vividly, like literally every day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Colors, males, um.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my brother said, he wanted something, and she would tell him, you hold him up to go in there and fix your own, like, mornin' there and get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He got up, went in the kitchen to get it with something neat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she told me to go clean the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had just got through cleaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's how we was able to play the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm like, clean wood, and she got kind of aggressive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is going to clean up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I went in there, like, she,
[SPEAKER_01]: point now small thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I went in the room, she came in the room with me and see it in the double clothes in the door and then it escalated from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I look back at the situation was, once I got older, what was weird, I was able to see like how she was teaching.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was able to say she had to learn that somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was repeating a cycle.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure even with the words.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm proud of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Round same age.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say 19 and 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause had the band.
[SPEAKER_01]: She had the band.
[SPEAKER_01]: 18, 17, 18.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we found that later on in life did a.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our husbands were molested about they did it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fortunately, a lot of things generally happen that way when people are silent, I'm so sorry that happened to you, but I'm glad that you, it appears you've done some work to overcome that and to find, I guess, a way past it to navigate life.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize what happened to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in the cell with my daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, when we talk about them things, his boys growing up, it's just kind of looked at like, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost bragging rights.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, and you know what, it's our community that does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it breaks my heart.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've had some homeboys telling me stories of like, I lost my Virginia this age and I'm like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I was confused at time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember warning to our members thinking like, what if I say this like, what happens to the family?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then even after that, I, because I had felt good, but it was wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was also, possibly wanted it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could remember any time that I would get around her, or go to the house, I would get in the bed with her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would roll over the top over.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was me kind of signaling, hey, if you want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, yeah, man, I didn't even want to come to have promiscuous, I was, I feel like the people around me don't even, the people around me didn't even realize like how they feel when they came to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of, of course, I was called names, but nobody actually ever tried to get to a root of a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Many people don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's scary because they have roots to things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if they ever identified them or ever got down to it, but it's like you know you operate a certain way because of a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people are unaware.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what most of my job is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ask a few people, do you know why you do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nine times out of ten people are like, I have no clue.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a huge portion of working with him is walking through, how do we think we got here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or what is driving this in you?
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of the healing and breakthrough comes from finding the root of that thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it could be a says, so you would be surprised.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people don't self-reflect.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people are not self-aware enough to assess like, where did this behavior come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why am I the way I am?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a good thing that you got to that space.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you get there on your own or was it like, through therapy?
[SPEAKER_01]: I took a form with everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I first got like the problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: My first probably like two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a council.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was pretty much a therapist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we did, I think it's called an eco-ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we went through like mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: My granddad and my great-granddad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like who was incarcerated?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who did certain things?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who were women now as a zoo-born girl?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like who's connected now to these dots?
[SPEAKER_02]: She did family systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it connected a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, some of these things I thought about, but it was different, you know, getting a professional perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: To really get to the to the root of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, as far as the being Melissa, Ben, uh, I was telling the story of my daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't responding like, you thought he was most people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was talking about sex period as a kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened to you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And when he said it, it kind of struck my ego.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, do what?
[SPEAKER_01]: And a woman took none from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that, then I had to sit in that and realize like, now, yeah, that's exactly what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, somebody has to do some research somewhere as to why it's treated that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: In our community, I've talked to, I have clients from all races and backgrounds.
[SPEAKER_02]: And anytime I've encountered black men specifically, who has been abused by older woman, that's the narrative that they went with younger, just like, oh, I lost my virginity at this age.
[SPEAKER_02]: Versus, someone took advantage of me or I was molested or whatever the case may be.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, okay, that's a big deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I want to say this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, most of me feel like that when it comes to women, just in general, regardless of what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just true.
[SPEAKER_01]: A man, I've had trouble admitting I've been, uh, mentally abused.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't say verbally abused.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you're not thinking, you don't want to accept it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can happen to you as a man from a woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Men can absolutely endure domestic violence in any type of abuse, sexual assault, any of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think it's talked about enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: People almost, it's like society will laugh and and look at you as a weaker, you know, person if you admit something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And where did we get so twisted to where that's normal?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there's no thing, there's no culture thing, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is twisted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it bothers me so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've had a client in the past called the cops on his then wife who was physically abusing her him because he didn't want to retaliate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I retaliate.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to share this how he put it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was like, I'm just going to call the cops.
[SPEAKER_02]: The cops came and left.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't arrest her.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: He had a black eye and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was upset because he was like, if I hit her, it would have been no question about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had a, I've called a police on the girl and got her locked up and put her hands on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was posted on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the women, I'm talking about just bash to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: For what?
[SPEAKER_01]: What you got to think you're locked up, you were home for that she got cute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do what you want to meet her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like that was that was even that was super shocking to me and then turned into what what did you do do what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow then okay, so we have some narratives that we have to decrystall and I call you because that's crazy like Of course now if I'm the man and I box her out now, I'm crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, yeah, that's that's the same so What led to you doing time and prison?
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you get there?
[SPEAKER_01]: I was sitting on the porch, chilling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got a car from my home boy who just got locked back up that I got in his trouble with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had accidentally shot somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened?
[SPEAKER_01]: He got into it with this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was trying to.
[SPEAKER_01]: pew pew him and a bully ricochet off the ground and he hit this girl in the neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: She ended up living.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he called me and he said he needed somewhere to stay and being in the streets at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was without it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a shenanigans.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all my yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can, you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got you come on out here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when he got the after a few days, he started talking about him needing bomb money and he going to need a lawyer, but he couldn't hustle.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: man, we need to hit a leak, and I'm with all that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when he said, and I'm like, man, let me call, because we stand in Clark's beer, which is 45 minutes from spring for you, where I live.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, let me call one of my cousins, who was like my right-hand man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: He locked it right down too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or he'd been locked up on 15 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Might be more than 15 or 16.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I call him, I asked him,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, is it, is anybody you got your eyes on?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and it kind of went from there, you know, Kidnapping, Robbery, and what initially started out as a first degree, murder, getting dropped down to a voluntary manslaughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was four of us, two of us done time for men, the guy who, the guy who pulled the trigger, both of us ended up getting 10 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do want to say this, it took me a while to accept and admit that I was just as guilt as a person who pulled the trigger because the street codes and guidelines, what
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, this is, this is all the part of the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the guy dead, lost his life.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in the streets.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we choked that up too.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what goes on in the streets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You, um.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, it took me about two and a half years to even realize, like, now this ain't this ain't it, but that's how I ended up catching the charge and what I went to prison and you did how much time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ten years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went in in 2007 and got out in 2017.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you said you were in there with your father?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's my brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: It won't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Me and my dad, me and my dad were sellers, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: How was that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I had it in my rounds of being with him all day, every day in that environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a bit of sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was actually what changed my life, but you know, initially, when me, my brother and my dad at one point was at the same institution, when I got there, my dad had just got into some trouble because he was selling tobacco along with other things, but I think they caught them for the tobacco.
[SPEAKER_01]: And before we got what they call on the compound together, I actually saw my dad coming to the hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: And where I met, I met a unit that called it close security.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because in prison, what you got, you got close security, you got, um, Max was security.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you got general, then you just got general population, general population where everybody is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get in trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your points go to a certain level.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go to close security.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like 222.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're saying you're saying you're saying 222 hours a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get out two hours a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some places it's 23 hours a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get out one hour a day, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to close the kid and I can see the door, which is all connected to the hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no, I heard somebody say my dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be Joe when they got you back in front of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like a big Joe and I look out the deck at the door and I see my daddy pushing his car to the hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even in that moment, I would out of way renew.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like, okay, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause he had sent me a cell phone back there at this time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm trying to call him figure out why he was coming to the hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: But uh, by the time I was getting ready to get off a close.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my brother had got to the prison at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was at what they called a bottom of the hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I ended up getting my brother moved to the top of the hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: My dad ended up getting out of the hole and all of us were at the same unit for the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when my dad had worked at the town, he was a clerk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was real cool with a supervisor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So his supervisor, when he would go to work, he would call to the unit and have me and my brother come down and basically kick it with him on his work day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, it was so weird at times, you know, just sitting there and really like real lives and like
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all here together, we're all here together, but that was the beginning of it because he ended up getting moved to another prison, brother ended up going home and I got moved to the other prison with.
[SPEAKER_01]: My dad, me and my brother actually got to fight and in the cell together.
[SPEAKER_00]: What of wood?
[SPEAKER_01]: A radio.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother, my brother's a big time throughout the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dindu Drugs, Bridge Smart at School, to me probably wanted a top five basketball players at one point in the state of Tennessee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't graduate because he was sure to have opened my point, or have a credit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was contributed to when he started hustling.
[SPEAKER_01]: He started getting money.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother probably had a hundred thousand dollars when he was 17, 18 years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: in a small town, that's equivalent probably back then to a half a million me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, for five cars, doing what they want to, 10,000 dollar chains, and that was... You went high in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my dad couldn't make to him to the guy he was getting drugs from prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I always say it's somebody to put something in my brother's weed.
[SPEAKER_01]: because he started tripping.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some of the family or doctors would say it was because he was born pretty mature and later on in life like something just triggers the man and it's I don't I don't know what happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm glad you brought that up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: your weed does not have to be laced for you to go into psychosis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your weed does not have to be laced for you to have a mental break or a shift.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could be the thing that unlocks what was already there and open it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I first started working in this field, I did my internship at a Psychiatric Hospital.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we had a reoccurring client.
[SPEAKER_02]: We would call them frequent flyers because they just come back over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: The only reason this man would ever end up in there is because every time he smelled marijuana, he would end up inside Cosa's out of his mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't I know who he is?
[SPEAKER_02]: What he's saying?
[SPEAKER_02]: What he's doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once even after the highest war now, it would last for about a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he would go back to normal like nothing happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as girlfriend at the time was trying to get him to stop,
[SPEAKER_02]: But he was restifying and when he went, let it come.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he would just keep coming back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I explained him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, there's a chance that one day you go into that space and you don't come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's what happened to my brother, man, and when we was in the set again, he was, he was still trying to somewhere, I feel like, treat me like, you know, I am a little brother, like he was trying to treat me like a little boy, though.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was always really the big brother, like I was the one he caught when people didn't pay him as money and I would be pulling guns out on people and smacking people and spitting on people and my brother told me to come and get that and they would still be scared and calling and be like, hey, you know, sent your brother over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need you to call him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had done so much for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my brother had got Rob on time for twin grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ended up hitting the lick one time for $120,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gave my brother $60,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and he didn't break bread with me after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I gave my money money.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like I was a big, I played a big role in his street success.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now we're sitting in this room.
[SPEAKER_01]: My dad is going, and my dad was grandfathered in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he had a boom box.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's count time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm hustling at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got heroin in the cell.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got cell phone and cell.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got weed and cell.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got tobacco in the cell.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got seven and a half, eight more years to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, parole done.
[SPEAKER_01]: I already put me out three years for me to even get a chance to get out early.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if I got to do it, I got to do another seven and a half, eight years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's count time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was be quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've all come in here and search this sale and find, obviously, if I could get a free charge and possibly give more time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my brother, I'm letting him sleep on the bottom bunk at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's sitting right next to the radio and he playing the radio.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I told him I'd say, hey, bro, you got to turn it off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm affiliated at the time, GD.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother was GD, but he had with a cow get out, got out count.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was like, now, Brian, turn it off, nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, if the police coming here then you taking all of these charges.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother at the time probably got like two months left, maybe four to five days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he looked me dead in my face and said, oh, I ain't taking no charge for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, I tell you what, I said, off in the turn there's radio off or if they come in here you take I'm telling you you taking each charge and he was like, nah, but at the time I moved and he kind of bucked me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I snatched the radio, pulled it out of the blue and slid it under the bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I walk out, he'd go under the bed, I, they were all going to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I make a long story short.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of, I feel like I kind of blacked out like I felt like, I already done risk my life for the streets and come to find out that all of that's a mirage.
[SPEAKER_01]: All these people who said that they were going to be there and we're going to ride it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is ain't nobody sending me no money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just got put out for three years on parole.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girl is already gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now my flesh and blood who in the cell with me is still playing with me is still, I don't realize life don't get for real.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I told him I said, bro, I said, man, you touched your radio, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you jump at me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, bro, you jumping me again on Granddad and man's going down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it had enough been for my neighbor.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how far it actually would have went.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just so happened, and the police came by and seeing, we didn't even know, like I had my foot on his neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the police came by, but they didn't say none, they just, what they called the cold.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the time they did come, he was washing blood off his face.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I told him I was like, man, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we go to the home of whatever happened after this, I said, somebody, one of us got to get out of the seal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, I ain't going nowhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, well, I tell you what, I'm going to call out the folks up here and we're going to sort it out, because at this point, you can't be in the seal me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you my brother, but I'm doing time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to look at you as a seal mate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I had the adapt to what was going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, me and my brother ended up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that goes into a perfect segue of what moment did you realize I got to do something different?
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to shift my life, I got to change.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, what did the beginners stages of that look like for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, uh, before I took the time, like I kind of knew, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a scary part because I didn't know how.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just a thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just something that I know every dude in the street won't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though when you live in it, you have a dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like people who have a life sentence in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: They keep telling themselves they're going to get out, even though they don't know how.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it helps them cope.
[SPEAKER_01]: So dudes who really trapped in the streets and think and one day, that's just a way of coping.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew from the beginning, but it actually hit me, being in this, with me and my dad, they got in the cell together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got up to use the bathroom and I watched my hands and I looked back at him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was kind of snoring.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's laying a sleeping on his back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're in the center, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we got dope in the center.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I mean, Gaze to a correction officer, like, we're doing time, like, we're on the streets, like, like an ain't nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm like, he got two life sentences.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm frankly gonna go home guaranteeing the next two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: My sentence is short.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my daughter going to be 14, like I'm I'm literally going back to society.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been selling dope my whole time in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been pretty much gained back in my whole time in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been having to be manipulative and cunning and strategic and calculated with everything like if I don't start trying to think of different ways sometimes so I'm taking that out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was the yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you didn't know how to start, but where did you start?
[SPEAKER_01]: The most hot forced me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ah, tell me that story.
[SPEAKER_01]: When my daddy, when I left the prison, when me and my postwork, we end up getting separated again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I go to another prison when my daddy's brother, my uncle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said in the five years, he was a guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a guy who was a crew.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he had changed his life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to send him dope to prison.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, soon as I got there, man, I asked the lady that I was like, do you know Christopher Williams?
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, who are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, two?
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, yeah, she was like, here in the unit, you're going to, um, I feel like I, I always knew I had a calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I could, it would play in the moment where I saw God in my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a moment where,
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt his presence say like I had to be stripped of everything I was getting close to home.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I get here and I go in this unit one more, I go in knock on the door and they have been locked down for like two three weeks because the officer got stabbed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the second worst prison in the state called West Tennessee West High.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not going
[SPEAKER_01]: He got a miss in two, but he was like, well, so he don't even know who I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like you know, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he started squinting, he was like, Tommy, and what they call him, my dad is brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, now, it's nephew.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, nephew, I'm like, yeah, he's going straight into a spout talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, look, nephew, I don't know if you're still a 50.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know if you're still a 50, but I ain't no none of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to get in my life to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is what I'm on.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to hit, if you want to help, if you're doing right, I got you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're doing anything, I'm saying that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't, I'm like, do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just have to help, I'm like, I literally, this is, I first five minutes of the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, if I'm being honest, I was kind of scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had already got out of being affiliated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't affiliated when I was in the cell in my daddy, but I still had the security of the affiliation because my daddy was the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though he was retired, we were still respected.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had at that time been labeled a snitch because I was dealing with the officer.
[SPEAKER_01]: who didn't get fired, but I got moved to another prison in prison politics.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to put this label on him and now I'm going to the second worst prison in the state.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they got cell phones in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: So somebody could easily, I ain't affiliated with him or I ain't got no protection.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been stripped of everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: He going to another prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: They could easily carve before I even get there and say, hey,
[SPEAKER_01]: This dude name is such a such a such he used to be such a such he came out here that he don't got moved and they don't told on his policies.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could easily get killed as soon as I get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm kind of spooked when I get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when my uncle say that,
[SPEAKER_01]: I ain't as genuine as it turned into, it was a cover, like I'm with it, because I knew I needed some kind of protection at the time, but it turned into really striking my curiosity, old time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he tells you, he ain't doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you eventually go to him and say, hey, man, like, teaching what you know, what is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: He kind of, he kind of, he kind of, oh, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: He helped me a lot, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: He helped me because I ended up in the set with his best friend, who still my spirit to advise it to the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK. And of course, they would talk every morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would always be around their conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they talked about the word a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted them people, like if I'm in, like I'm on practicing to the best of my ability.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm also wanted them people who want to see it work for somebody to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to, I watch my family, all my life talk about the Bible, speaking at fake tongue in every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it, fake tongue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: How you know they were fake in it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, because it ain't biblical the way they do the term.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but they were doing it with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it was never an interpreter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most black churches can't tell you what somebody's ever even said.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's time they speak it's not biblical.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in the book of Acts, when they spoke in the tongue, it said that they were able to understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have the gift of interpretation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have the gift of interpretation.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've never seen nobody, I have never seen nobody at that time interpreted it, you know what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course it's here you not to do unless you have one, I'm never there part.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to go back to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so
[SPEAKER_02]: You were saying that, you know, they spoke about the word all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they spoke about the word all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, I was, I was, I was watching my family, like had to leave the oven open for a heat.
[SPEAKER_01]: By hand on bills.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I said don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Renaissance out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: working, in fact, the rest of us struggling, barely able to pay car notes in, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people who went to church, I didn't see the hell of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you read the scripture clearly, his people were always wealthy when they went and bonded to the disobedient.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the key.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I looked at, when I was looking at, I'm like, I don't need to see some.
[SPEAKER_01]: because I've seen what success looked like in the streets.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you said in dope, I've seen dope boys with can't depend on a cause and nice rims and hair bone jury.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen $56,000 that a dice game that come from the streets.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen what were the success come from when you practicing a certain thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: If the enemy can give his children gifts, the scriptures say, so can the most have where are your gifts, where are your things?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only do you not have the tangible things, your spirit is ugly.
[SPEAKER_01]: We always into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We always be, we always, so I wanted to see the character of God, even though I didn't know what it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he coming to say it one day at Monk City.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I heard you used to rap on the streets.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, yeah, you're like, let me hear one of them verse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started rapping.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm cousin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: You never met.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a trick though.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like, I got to tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to, he was like, do a positive song.
[SPEAKER_01]: No cusser.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they hear what they're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Call a radical annoying at worship.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm getting emotional now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: because I had, I had, I've had encounters that at times, now where I haven't been able to reflect like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know how I'm here, but talking about this, I remember how I'm here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do this all, he here, he said I want you to perform at the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come down and I'm kind of weird because I'm still street to an extent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: These gang members that help, like man, they're not trying to hit us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a testimony of really my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I started, everybody started standing up, everybody, and when I finished the song, like everybody was like, I want to hear it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was my first like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I could do this, which made me curious to learn the word at that time too, because I wanted to be able to explain the word, not just me rapper, Colonel, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a little bit after that, I had a parole day coming up, my third parole.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm playing church at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing the things where I'm thinking, God, I'm going to be like, I'm going to turn you loose this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no.
[SPEAKER_01]: They denied me, my third time told my head to do the remainder of my sentence, and I'm in the sake of where it's prison in the state, and I'm mad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I spent all my drugs money that I had made when I came to the prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: I probably had $10,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm back going to the child.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've never had to go to the child hall at the time in prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've always had officers bringing food, or I was just eating commissaire.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my mind had been stripped.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have no, uh, say so and nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: No more.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no authority.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no power.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just regular, little Joe with this boy, uh, playing church.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember walking back feeling, uh, like guy had deserted me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I was trying to do the thing, I was like, I see, see this vibe, that's a mess with this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because this is what it seemed like everybody was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody was trying to do a thing to get the benefits or response from, response from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times, you didn't have to turn around and cope with, now maybe that wouldn't his wheel, or maybe won't, or I'm like, not that ain't how that go to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was important.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people in terms of faith don't realize
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of us treat our relationship with him as transactional and he wants a relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants to know you.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants you to know him and I always put it in terms of like, if you had a friend that only showed up to birthday parties and came to the house to check off a box.
[SPEAKER_02]: only call you when they need something, but they were not there for you doing life with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You wouldn't want to be with that frame on food with that frame.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fit.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a fit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so thankfully, guys, not that petty.
[SPEAKER_02]: But in the same sense of me, he wants intimacy with us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think a lot of people fail to realize that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the part that opens you up to real change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Facts, in this, what end of happening?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I got back to the show,
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, everybody asks me what happened, and they told me to do the remainder of my balance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm kind of, I'm stressed, I'm mad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my seller found that, finally asked me, like, what I was going to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, man, I'm a writer, book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he started laughing like he kind of chuckled like, oh wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause they're what everybody said it for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody in prison, I've been writing books and writing books.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I told them right then.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, man, I'm in my pack.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm on the top of a heat with a dizzy, just lean on what happened to me and it's in the right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had a, I got a lamp that's connected to my bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just turned the light on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just started writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wrote my first three books and cared the rise for.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what I did was I kind of took on the role of the main character was what's supreme.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a character who's struggling with getting out of a lifestyle and a mindset and he's been introduced to church, but he don't kind of what I'm feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my selling was a quick with that word and I'm worth my uncle.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I got to certain points with the character that he was struggling with, I would ask myself, like, what's a good scripture that'll fit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: For what's going on right here?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he would start keeping me scriptures.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where I call this part of my testimony.
[SPEAKER_01]: God tricked me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would read the scriptures that he gave me, and he'd like, I wouldn't say it then to myself, but I'd be like, hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of need it, so, you know, in playing Churchill going down there, you know, I'm here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The testimony is I'm here in the past, I'm here in the preaching and now yeah, that's that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to start it intimately, the intimacy of the relationship and really.
[SPEAKER_01]: Read his word and see him who I am in him and what he is like my benefit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started seeing it and this one scripture that really I still hold on to the to this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay When a man weighs please the most I have to make even his enemies be appeased with him when I read that in progress.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember saying
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're going to have to get right because if you're going to do this, yeah, I got to see what there's like, you know what I'm saying because I needed it, I knew I'm like man off in a good home, like I don't ride phone, I don't shop folks, you know, I've did a lot of things, you know, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of things, you know, I'm going out here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been gone 10 years, you know, I found a lot of enemies.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to see what they look like to make them be at peace with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: There.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's how I ended up writing the first book and that's how I ended up really getting a relationship with God and what changed it's me.
[SPEAKER_01]: actually studying and reading the word versus going to church in here and what I think I'm entitled to with no, uh, active service, no, you know, like what like you don't want to get everything from nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is an obligation on everybody, but when you walk in in there and his kingdom and you really serving, then these things come and know, I've watched the manifest in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're several different reasons.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in changing, well, let me get, no, I'm skip that because we're getting close.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to be able to ask this question, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So after you went through that, and you started to evolve in your journey.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of things, we have to grieve and let go of for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: How did changing impact, like your relationships and the type of relationships you got in afterwards?
[SPEAKER_01]: The relationships I had before I went in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you had to grieve those on sewer and then after coming out, what did that look like dating making friends like, what did you do with the building?
[SPEAKER_01]: It felt like I was on an island.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It felt like it felt like, you know what, we don't have to kick it with the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other than that, you know what I'm saying, but I was beautiful, it kept me grounded.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It kept me.
[SPEAKER_01]: alert.
[SPEAKER_01]: It made me realize like how we end up in predicaments and certain circumstances and situations like you can green.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can feel like you're grieving something that you actually need to cut off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I miss my homeboy still to this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing I that I feel at times is missing is being able to
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have a mindset to do this though.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, like they probably still think I'm selling dough because they might will not believe that what has happened is actually possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm positive, they think I'm selling dough.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when they come to that, when I first came home and just talking to people and watching people
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you have to allow the most how to reach people from seeing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when I first realized this fire that I had, I thought I could go and carry everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You think you could just go and change.
[SPEAKER_01]: You think you could say, shake them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you see what happened from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you see, you see this change that happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why you can't just be like, you know what I'm with it?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the character went through that too?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I went through a lot of,
[SPEAKER_01]: what I still say now, trust in the process.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, yeah, that's a huge part of any journey to change and the ocean growth is trusting the process, especially especially your spiritual journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he become before everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of his ways are not our ways, so a lot of things don't make sense, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Great, great.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, what does forgiveness and love look like for you today?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I know that has changed as well over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: For forgiveness, I'll come to understand this for me first.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's for self first.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a, I have the ability to sometimes empathize on the level, or I didn't think exist.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: on the basis of really understanding what his forgiveness is for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he say, uh, he throw it into the sea of forgetting the forgiveness, and it's far from the east side from the west.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scripture when he say, uh, you can't be forgiven unless you forgive the scripture when he tell them, first one without seeing cast the first song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know exactly where he removed from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to hold somebody in a place because of a fence against me or something they said or did or hold them to that, I'm gonna keep myself in prison first.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, secondly, I just know that it's just not right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You spoke on our fence.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever read the book The Beta Satan by John Bavir?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think any Christians should read that book.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it called?
[SPEAKER_02]: The Bait of Satan by John Bevere.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a book about offense and the heart posture that we're supposed to have as followers of Christ towards it and how it can lure you into just being present, like you said, and trapped, or sitting, and all these other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a really good book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm telling you what it exposed to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did one of my first videos that went viral on the internet when I came home was about forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was crazy because I was experiencing, and I still experienced now.
[SPEAKER_01]: People not okay with my success because of my background.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at times, it was like, I would hear him and sense him saying, you see how they don't wanna let go of what, and who you used to be, and just overlook everything I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't never want to be that person like I don't want to be that person that's missing the new thing based on
[SPEAKER_01]: and I don't never want to be sitting in it and not being able to give glory to the most high for what he's doing because I feel a way about a thing back then, like you're missing his hand trying to focus on what a person said or did.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have ever long to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's painful because it's like, and they say they're my children.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're a norm about a love of one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: That same scripture took for give or platter.
[SPEAKER_01]: You the same way the platter me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's layers to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's layers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can, I ain't saying, it should just go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything I did, I ain't saying, but your posture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You check yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: They both, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a question for you there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I almost get to it and come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also want to say, I know you're getting there in a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we got to touch on that real quick.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also since you said that, what's something that you said online?
[SPEAKER_02]: That you said 10 toes down, but you got like a lot of slack for where a lot of
[SPEAKER_02]: problems for your opinions or thoughts, processes and a lot of little.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK. Well, yesterday, I see it's about making the break-up with making.
[SPEAKER_01]: I took a lot of slacks from black women.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you say?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I didn't watch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said he never wanted her.
[SPEAKER_01]: He never wanted to be her.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you say that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it was crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's crazy for black women to say they're supporting a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're encouraging a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I listened to the man of a man.
[SPEAKER_01]: because the mind of the man is saying, I want to experience what you have displayed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he, this is my opinion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he experienced her and my opinion, he, it was no longer there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me ask you something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever been unfaithful to somewhere?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You didn't want that person?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what I'm feeling to be serious about and what I'm not feeling to be serious about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, but have you had a serious situation where you were like, because of the other struggles that you're dealing with?
[SPEAKER_02]: You were unfaithful.
[SPEAKER_01]: You regretted it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was just a lack of discipline in our head.
[SPEAKER_01]: That wasn't that I knew in my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't going to deal with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK. That was just a flat out on Facebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, how can we say that he just doesn't have a lack of discipline versus he doing his mind?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what she said, she said he told her
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, lack of discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna go biblical if I say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, cause we, I responded to one girl that brought up the word.
[SPEAKER_01]: She brought up God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, how can you include God in this conversation when she has not displayed the attributes, the character and integrity when it comes to the word?
[SPEAKER_01]: All of her success has been obtained worldly.
[SPEAKER_01]: She gets a worldly response.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say in that you can,
[SPEAKER_01]: be pairing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can do all the right things and check out the boxes and get what we've been steal get what I said everything that she has displayed clearly that is the response we've watched every woman and every man get we don't have a success story from the industry entertainment athletes
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything where women have been over sexualized have been marketed with a body bunch of twerking bunch of we have not seen it even then I mean we have not seen no successful rapper in you know in a committed marriage We may see Gucci over time, but we ain't seen it We've saw the same scenarios happen over and over and over and over and over and over
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my opinion, and then I was saying, as a man, I said, okay, he probably did won't her at a time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You take Megan anywhere around your friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a man, if you catch her, your mind going to start thinking about her videos, your mind going, your mind going
[SPEAKER_01]: These things are why it's an issue when it draw you away.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scripture said, let no one say when he tempted, that he tempted by the most high.
[SPEAKER_01]: A man that's drawn away by their own desires.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it's you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You put these things out here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you want this man to have a secure mind?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vice versa with a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: You play hunting me in the ol' guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: He got a track record of what they call being the sneaky sniper.
[SPEAKER_02]: I see more issues with things that I can't agree with you there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say that because we see what the media wants us to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know them behind closed stores.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's hard to make an assessment, but it's somewhat spent shown by that's, especially as an artist, they put on a person a character, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They are who they are on stage.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not necessarily who they are behind closed stores.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's actually literally for God to judge to see that portion, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause we don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But somebody can make assumptions about you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure they, hey, I don't know you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I judge you from a clip or this or that, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why you just gotta be real careful with that one, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other aspect of that,
[SPEAKER_02]: relationally speaking, they both went wrong somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: He has a lot of unchecked things discipline-wise.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was something she probably ignored and missed in her healing journey or her brokenness that were size that it could lead to that, right, if she's wanted something wholesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I'm after disagree, because I'm gonna say like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Especially, I don't know how relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if big everyone to come here, that would be great to talk to her, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But just, he could be doing something with her behind co-stores that we don't know about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some artists that take a place where she's had a heart posture change, and she's trying to figure out how to change the rest of her life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we know what that journey looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got my own story.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a question for you as a believer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scriptures say, we know a tree by that fruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I believe it's a phrase to say that's not a believer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why we want to say we don't know that relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_02]: You judge them by their fruit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you just said a few minutes ago, the transformation is not overnight, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It takes a while for us to get their fruit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the fruit, they're actually talking about fruit of the spirit, which is Galatians 522, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I love to join the piece, the kindness, the gentleness, the cell patrol.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, all of that, long stuff right, all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you know that she's none of those things?
[SPEAKER_01]: We watch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does she produce?
[SPEAKER_02]: She produces an image that obviously doesn't blow a fuck up, correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: As a believer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: What she put out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody, could they talk about discipleship?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's discipling somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you producing?
[SPEAKER_01]: And not not not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then why would you want a different result?
[SPEAKER_01]: Kingdomly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Black of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_02]: Same reason that what you described earlier with people in the community from where you're from.
[SPEAKER_02]: Going to church, doing all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're expecting these certain results, but they're not getting them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Black of knowledge and application, I've been guilty of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just being what you call that.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did they say?
[SPEAKER_02]: You struggle in the fence or you're a lukewarm Christian because you don't really understand what the word of God truly means and what it truly means to repent and submit to Christ.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to understand that first.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of people have blinded that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just like they lack self-awareness that we talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: After 10, 15 years in the church,
[SPEAKER_02]: They can, and it's sad, it depends on what they're doing in their own time.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people will rely on their pastors or preachers.
[SPEAKER_02]: for their biblical feeding and their understanding of God and his word rather than taking the time to do with themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And over time, if you continue to do that, that pastor preacher does gonna become your voice a guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't know if they're telling you to truth, if they're giving you everything that you need for conviction or any of that, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: When the scriptures say work at your own salvation, what's very intremely.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're supposed to.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you never read the Bible, how you gonna know that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a question in the comments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever heard that script?
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to put a challenge on your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second question.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say, we can turn them, grow up to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they here do separate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can turn it, it's something that you can see that the thing different, but it's we can turn.
[SPEAKER_02]: not at first.
[SPEAKER_02]: When they're growing together, they look the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a believer, over time, you say you can face Christ, it's saying that the Spirit is willing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pleasure's weak.
[SPEAKER_02]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: He who is in Christ is a new creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thanks to God, we'll be whole.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our thanks have become new.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's say to be transformed by the renown of your mind, not be to be conformed to this world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, what does light have to do with darkness?
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, come out from amongst them, talking about unequally yoke, which has nothing to do with relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does righteousness have to do with unrighteousness?
[SPEAKER_01]: What does light have to do with dark?
[SPEAKER_01]: Lack of knowledge at some point is an excuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awareness at times could be an excuse to an extent Because you telling me not let's leave your past out Let's just look at your community and lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at your parents Grand Paris.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at have you ever said to yourself
[SPEAKER_01]: I have become what I said I wasn't going to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever said to yourself, this job was never designed for me and I suppose it'd be doing us on meals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever been convicted of disobedience and steel said to yourself, I ain't carrying the do-no discipline to myself because that's too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever said to yourself, I'm so tired, I'm tired because this is where I got.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm tired of watching people die, my friends die, overdosed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've shot folks, I've robbed folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: I made a good drink, bleached one time I almost killed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I thought was my child.
[SPEAKER_01]: I watched my mama struggle all her life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I watched my granny and them struggle all their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: My uncles, my cousins, I watched them have children.
[SPEAKER_01]: And more children have the child daddy, the last two, and we're for quarter, one of them in jail, one of them is from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the next one won't polygamous relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you still keep,
[SPEAKER_01]: going.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's at what point are you saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wasn't aware at what point are you saying, uh, I just did knowing why why do we allow people who say they can fest-crice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get on their knees and pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to church every Sunday.
[SPEAKER_01]: A 10 Bible study.
[SPEAKER_01]: Watch these things on TV.
[SPEAKER_01]: Watch your services on TV.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to people and minister to people from their hurt place and still say, well, I didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do we allow?
[SPEAKER_01]: As believers are, because I'll be,
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no issue with if the spirit moves and tells me, hey, that ain't me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no issue with saying it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just had an experience yesterday.
[SPEAKER_01]: On his podcast, something that I heard clear, I went, I didn't know though, got confirmed yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I literally heard, that's not me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And something a conversation came up and a person said, I can't believe, so when we have a conversation while I'm saying, boosted go to church every Sunday, he pay his tides.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't be knowing why certain believers don't be won't say that's a devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: or why pastors when people die who live the life in iniquity never wanted to turn, never wanted to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: They preach them into heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Scripture don't say that, bro.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have, as believers, it's like we want to say, now everybody got tired.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody says, everybody says, everybody say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody says, everybody say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody says, everybody says, everybody says, be patient with deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not even that, it's just, I think it's a lot of people out here trying to play Holy Spirit Junior.
[SPEAKER_02]: Holy Spirit's who conveys.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not our job, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You can observe, can judge, but we also have to be mindful of our own food and what we produce, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And how we carry ourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our first commandment is to live with all our heart and mind and soul and then love our neighbors.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not walking in love and just land the food of the Spirit yourself, even in how you address these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you're stumbling too.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: You gotta be careful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to spend on a dress.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: When you say how you address the thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because...
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, okay, we don't want to gossip.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't want to be sensational in all of these things, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's depending on as a believer, if you're a believer with a platform or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you speak on something, you have to be mindful of the impact that it's gonna have.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it becomes this argument over intent versus impact, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hold Megan accountable for influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody's a cast to be accountable for their own influence, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's also a so much use of believe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know that, she might not be able to believe her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if she's not, she's not subjected to the rules and laws that we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I was just kidding.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if either of them are going to die.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can get your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can get your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we support, within the church, which is the body of Christ, we're supposed to correct each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a way to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We call it behavior.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have relational equity and proximity with someone, you tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, we don't have relational equity or proximity to either one of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it should be an addressing of behavior, versus saying, this person did this, this person did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And before you even get there, are they believers?
[SPEAKER_02]: If they're not, of course they're going to do what, whatever's in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what the world does.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if so, that ain't our business.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know to do with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have another pose recently, why I brought up the, I brought up the one and it was a conflicted back and forth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Between the, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: People say they're in the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_02]: I bet, I like the one that's cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't met him, but like seeing what he's trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not a little bro.
[SPEAKER_02]: I get it, I get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so let's get to the point of, you know, wrap it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do want to talk about, you get a merit next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, are you prepared?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the best we've ever had.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if so, what did you do to prepare?
[SPEAKER_01]: What did I do to prepare?
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a bunch of brothers, man, and it's married.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that I listened to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have heard one thing I've noticed on my parents' special, my relationship with God, when people say, want to become comfortable before the structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime it ain't that he's just telling you because it could be telling you to avoid what you could potentially do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm very like, I should have communicated this or my wife never even asked me of that and she didn't expect that and I was doing this and they turned you into something that she never even asked.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've just been eating a lot of wise counsel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only that, like I'm,
[SPEAKER_01]: real being on self-reflecting like real like I'm not beating myself up where it about what I may do wrong or what could go wrong go
[SPEAKER_01]: coming to a moment of, I didn't sign up for this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I really started to look at marriage like the biggest closest reflection of my relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna be beautiful, just as well, it's gonna be nasty.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: And just to remain present in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did a lot of mental preparing, a lot of spiritual preparing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the biggest thing I've been doing is communicating exactly how I feel more, like right there versus letting it faster and sick, and then not include her in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because about two weeks ago, two, three weeks ago I had told her like I've been watching porn more than I ever had in my entire life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it's coming from, but I feel like to get it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: give her access, maybe to go pray or talk to me or or not let the enemy play on her mind at thinking, I'm in the bathroom for 30 minutes because I'm taking something bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will really out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm watching something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I shouldn't be watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's just things like that, you know, and checking in on her and just not assuming everything is okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like let's put this thing on the table and try to figure this out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just try to be more mature.
[SPEAKER_01]: and certain things, but also preparing to always enjoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because sometimes I get sick of always trying to figure out a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this, we always trying to figure out what's wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we need to work on, what we, hey, what we traveling to, you're no less like, like I told you, we talked about, you know, having fun, like let's have fun, you know, with this day and two.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's scary though, to an extent.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of the men in my family has been married, none of the women.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have, for my bloodline, I don't have no examples of, you know, what they look like, I know what's in the bloodline though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm aware of behaviors, my assets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you been able to crucify your flesh in those areas?
[SPEAKER_01]: in a lot of them practicing as I go in a lot of them areas and that's where I have been able to turn down the anxiety of saying this is going to be a practice in a lot of things I need to allow my partner in and not get three years down the line and neither of us are saying what you signed up for a thing that I never allowed you in on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never communicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never gave you access to help me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never, and now you're just saying, but you married me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why would you, if you didn't, why a lot of people ain't talking?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've talked to a lot of men who didn't feel like they could say a thing because it was going to turn into a, it was going to create a new security that they didn't want to create.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm asking for help and now it's turned into something about you, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been real big on saying, I don't all want to die and nobody else is prison.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to die in my own need to be an open, gives a person to give a person a choice
[SPEAKER_01]: that opportunity to help you.
[SPEAKER_02]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just make sure that we have to make sure that we're doing the practical things as well, to get in the air, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a big thing, but I can understand why it is scary.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a big decision, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: I always tell people the biggest gift you can give your partner is being committed to your inner work.
[SPEAKER_02]: and being a better person, a better version of you, whatever that looks like, spiritually and practically, those Christians will love to leave therapy out therapy and Jesus will go together, real bad, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: I go to bed, they do, they go together.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you apply, you know, your spiritual practices with practical things that you can learn and therapy with the things you struggle for.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get the most bang for your butt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So last question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, last two questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: What would you say?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you had an opportunity to have a conversation with your younger self, what would you say to him?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm proud of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That brought up something for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: My life is surreal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get, I tell you, I tell you, bro, I tell you about a time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I've had a break in a, I'm waking, I'm waiting to wake up to say I knew it was a dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my life, that real, like my life, that real, as far as like restoration, like out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I've lived the joke moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wasn't even the faithful servant that he gave the enemy permission to go and say, because he knew I wasn't going to turn.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was the disobedient one that he's still seeing shit to trust me to a minister's word, to trust me, restore my relationship with my daughter.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my mom, like it's a lot of things like,
[SPEAKER_01]: even like when my granny passed last year, when my mama caught me, I remember getting out the phone and I was like, I should be good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's granny.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some told me like, you need to pray.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I pray and I said, I'm about to get on this road and drive down there if it's your way that you are about to take her, at least let me see her.
[SPEAKER_01]: We drove 10 hours, two hours later she was gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I have a lot of moments where I know like I conversion with me and it be, it ain't a lot no more.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's just to be like a wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the, the child of me felt.
[SPEAKER_01]: rejected abandoned, restricted, left out, unheard lonely, lost, confused, with so many questions that I had, that I watched when he said what the enemy meant for evil, the most high attorney and usually for good, in order for many people like to be safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't wanna,
[SPEAKER_01]: I ever get to the place where he'll meet understand as before.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when I'm saying these things were posted happen to me, because then that would make me frustrated with the most high at times.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: They happen and still he gave me the ability to see they serve a purpose and to watch my life now for the get married like all my favorite people
[SPEAKER_01]: My partner in life is special, her love and ability to understand me is spooky.
[SPEAKER_01]: My moments of not knowing how to embrace things, she's helped me communicate and accept love in ways that to me just didn't exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people I watched guy put in my life to help better me as a man, as a father, as a friend, business, a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said in the same for 10 years, but for that, I was in and out of Juvee, like I was in and out of Juvee from 14 to 17.
[SPEAKER_01]: At 17, I would now to couple of months.
[SPEAKER_01]: I caught in the 10th of Murray case and did in a year, did a year and then was out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think seven or eight months before I caught the case, it sent me the prison for 10 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I spent the majority of my 10 days years.
[SPEAKER_01]: like incarcerated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come home, I'm 18.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come home 28 29 lost and stuck in 2007.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we were selling dope and doing what we were doing and dress the certain way, I watched him
[SPEAKER_01]: Shout to that little boy me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It all matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so yeah, I'm proud.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I encourage other people to talk to their younger selves if you can.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do this exercise where I have clients, especially if you struggle with self-imagine things, to find a picture of them younger self, speak to that picture, the way that you speak to yourself now, if it's not healthy or you know, pour into them because
[SPEAKER_02]: We all have a little girl, a little boy still in the spite and for the things we didn't get when we were younger.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes, actually most of the times, it becomes then our job to now parent that part of us, and love that part of us into healing so that they're not in the front seat driving, making our decisions for us, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not as real.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I love that for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's real.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the last thing, what would you say to people right now
[SPEAKER_02]: A season of transition, maybe they've had a bunch of unfortunate things happen in their past.
[SPEAKER_02]: They want a chance they don't know how, what would you say to encourage them?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good though.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I promise you it's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, when I first moved here I remember seeing a guy walking him in this girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were walking and they were holding him and they walking their dogs and I remember they made calling it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was walking the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why did they resist?
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's why I came from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know I understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I seen a dude throw his girl up in the pool.
[SPEAKER_01]: She came down and he kissed all the
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like those things that I've grown from like it's okay, like even in my transition and in learning like what I'm good at at times it's tedious it's it seemed like it take a lot of energy a lot of space and ADHD because
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I look at the examples of people who didn't lock in, I clearly see the result of if I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: So look at your examples and see what you don't want to be or can tell you to do and realize that if you don't do that, that is your,
[SPEAKER_01]: My do has freed me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Financially, spiritually, it's separated me from a lot of people that when I'm in to go and that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: My mental is stretched.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that takes a lot too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And stretch in my mental.
[SPEAKER_01]: I realized there were a lot of things that I had to unlearn, and except that I do not know.
[SPEAKER_01]: You do not know everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, nobody, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that will keep you stuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: You keep you stagnant because you're not open to receive new information.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to stay where you're comfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: My daddy used to tell me all the time, people continue to do what worked for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you continue to do what works for you, you're not being stretched, you're not growing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're repeating what everybody called it, it's the definition of insanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it may look like you're growing a time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you got a little more money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some more people came around for a time, but you don't say it a lot of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: maintain it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You came down, just it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it does not stretch you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard TD Jake's preacher one time, and he said, when he went from one to ten, he hit a cylinder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had to turn that ten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone from 11 to 20.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes you can go from that one to ten and because I haven't had this level of success or had people around me that was just mature.
[SPEAKER_01]: That, hey, don't manipulate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't take advantage of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: don't bring that old wine and don't don't you do that over here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to ruin a thing, circle background ruin a thing, circle background ruin a thing, and be missing you to common denominator.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at that 11 to 20, I had to really start realizing that my set head to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been so worth it, painful, lonely at times.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it has made me,
[SPEAKER_01]: grateful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, grateful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have the ability to appreciate things and be grateful when I was operating from a certain place.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fair.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the way for the people,
[SPEAKER_01]: best aware of what a people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Joe.
[SPEAKER_02]: This conversation was beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: You great, it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love that much.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got more questions for you to ask you some of the stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was thinking, I was like, uh, we gotta do this again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, guys, this input today has always controlled the controls and be the best version of you that you could be every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so next time