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Stellar Award-Winning Gospel Artist James Fortune Turns Page on Domestic Abuse & Divorce, Pens New Book!

Hello World,

I believe the God we serve is a God of second, third, fourth, etc. chances if we repent from what we’ve done wrong and attempt to live on a righteous path. Stellar Award- winning and two-time Grammy Award-nominated Gospel artist James Fortune says he is on righteous path following a devastating derailment.

Along with ELOHAI International Publishing & Media, Fortune has announced his first book Destiny Derailed: How to Get Your Life Back on Track by Leveraging your Past and Repurposing your Pain into Power. He chronicles his journey of healing and restoration after a major derailment —public scrutiny following domestic violence that occurred in his home and a subsequent divorce — in 2014. Destiny Derailed is a self-help memoir designed to empower every person who has been knocked off course, experienced loss, let themselves down, or thought that a situation they’ve experienced disqualified them from God’s promises. Destiny Derailed aids in giving readers the encouragement and biblical foundation needed to navigate any tough situation by seeking and believing in God’s promises.

With the recent release of his album “The Collection,” which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Gospel Chart, recent marriage and newborn baby, Fortune is a testament to the restoration power of Jesus Christ and proof that a destiny derailed is not a destiny denied. He hopes it is the first of many great informative and life-changing books.

Praise for Destiny Derailed:

“Instead of hiding in the shadows, James most effectively ministers from the broken place and
disarms devils by pointing the finger of responsibility at the one where it all began—himself. Let
this work bless you and teach you the most valuable lesson of all: saying yes to God DOESN’T
eliminate your frailties-it simply gives God permission to get glory out of them.”

Pastor John Gray, Relentless Church

“This book is so full of healing. James literally poured out of a beautiful place of transparency. By
the time you are done, you will be walking in complete healing! Forgiveness will set in, and
shame will be completely gone. Your scars will be turned to stars. People with the worst past can
indeed make the best futures.”

Real Talk Kim, Church of the Harvest, Fayetteville

“Whether you experience a private or public catastrophic decision, disastrous failure,
or a heinous attack on your life, when you are a child of God, your greatest setback
can be the precursor to your greatest comeback.”

Pastor Charles Jenkins, Fellowship Chicago

To buy Destiny Derailed: How to Get Your Life Back on Track by Leveraging your Past and Repurposing your Pain into Power, click on the link.

James Fortune is an award-winning gospel music artist, father, husband, and author. He lives in Houston, Texas and is best known for his transparent records that speak to the hearts and souls of his listeners. Learn more at mrjamesfortune.com.

Any thoughts?

 

 

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Greenleaf Recap Season 3 Episode 3: Chain of Command…

Hello World,

I thought a major bomb was dropped in last week, but this week’s bomb, which I will reveal later in this Greenleaf Recap Season 3 Episode 3, tops last week’s bomb Greenleafers! Yes, I know Lady Mae announced that she was divorcing Bishop last week, but we saw that coming. I did not guess that what was revealed tonight would be revealed tonight and so cavalierly too. But we will get to that later!

Tonight’s episode was entitled “Chain of Command,” and in keeping with that theme, I will proceed…

Ball & Chain…

So many of OWN’s “Greenleaf” episodes start with Lady Mae sitting at a table somewhere in her fabulous home and tonight was no exception. With her this time, however, are her daughter Grace and her granddaughter Sofia. They casually discuss weather. Sofia comments on the rain the night before and Grace says, “Everything was washed clean.” Lady Mae invites her granddaughter, not Grace, to have supper with her. Nothing too out of the ordinary happens until Marisol brings a manila envelope to her. Beware of being brought manila envelopes. I would endeavor to say that very few of them contain happy things. What’s in Lady’s manila envelope are papers asking for the dissolution of marriage between Lady Mae and the Bishop. Yes, Lady Mae threatened divorce last week and Bishop acted on that intention this week! Seeing the shock on Lady Mae’s face, Grace asks her what is in the envelope. Very rarely does Lady Mae having anything nice at all to say to her daughter. And she is true to form tonight! “After the way you spoke to me last night, if you weren’t family, you wouldn’t even be living in this house.” And then she storms off. I can’t say I blame her. She got grimy with her mother last night and then wants to get all in her grill the next day?! Chile please. With her grudge against Grace intact, she leaves the premises, racing off in her car.

Back at Calvary, instead of Bishop looking like he’s scored a victory in serving his ball & chain before she can serve him, he seems nervous. To make matters worse, his baby daughter Charity is waiting for him in his office. He’s got no patience this morning and refuses to coddle her per usual. Now that Charity has quit the tour, she announces to her father that she wants to preach! “If I’m goong to stay here, I want to move forward with my career.” She tells her father that she even has a sermon idea and everything…something about souls are songs and God being our heavenly choir director. Say what Charity?! She needs to stick making melodies because her sermons won’t be saving souls! After Bishop jokes about wanting to be a baker before he became a bishop, he tells her, “The call to preach is not anyone’s plan B.” That will preach Bishop! The chain of command will not be changing anytime soon.

Speaking of the chain of command, the daughter who Bishop believes is called to minister, Grace, meets with a donor to her legal fund for victims of domestic violence. At Rochelle’s urging, the donor gives a sizable amount to Grace in her office. Shortly afterward, Bishop asks Gigi has she seen her mother. After she tells him no, he tells what he has done!

Also on the chain of command, but at another location, is Jacob. Tasha slithers into Jacob’s office to tell him that she has noticed many torn envelopes in the offering. She thinks one of the ushers from the first service is stealing from the offering. Jacob tells her that he will be meeting with the ushers to see if he can sniff out the thief.

Chain of Fools…

Lady Mae is a lot of things, but a fool aine one of them. With the quickness, she consults with a lawyer regarding Bishop’s request for the dissolution of their marriage. This is one of my favorite scenes in tonight’s episode! Lady Mae tells the female lawyer that Bishop, a “shepherd of 4,000 souls,” has cheated on her with her sister and now he is taking up with a woman half of his age in addition to other scandalous secrets! The lawyer says, “Hypocrisy! Abuse of power! Sounds juicy!” The lawyer seems so delighted by the prospect of attacking this soon-to-be-sullied shepherd that Lady Mae is a bit hesitant to proceed. “Are you a Christian?” she asks. She replies, “No, and you’ ll be thanking me later that I’m not.” LOL. With a $10,000 retainer, she can start right now. However, Lady Mae is not the first soon-to-be former First Lady that she has represented in a divorce. She tells her that her expectations must be realistic. Lady Mae says, “I just want what I deserve.” The lawyer lets her know that what she deserves has nothing to do with what she will get. “Once your bishop is done with you, it’s Cinderella time. At midnight, the party is over.”

Well those words were enough to send Lady Mae to the club. At first, I thought it was Mavis’ club, but Mavis wasn’t anywhere in sight. When will Mavis return by the way? At the club, Lady Mae orders a Brandy Alexander. I’m not into alcohol like that but it sounds like a classy drink, so classy and rare that Lady Mae has to instruct the bartender how to mix it. As she sips, her face is aglow in the blue lights of the establishment.

Lady Mae aine no fool but her baby girl Charity can really be foolish. After Jabari hangs up on her last week, that woman calls him up and tells him she misses him. Within a minute or two, Jabari hangs up on her again and continues his conversation with the woman sitting next to him.

Back at Calvary, Grace has to speak with a reporter who was originally scheduled to speak with the missing Lady Mae. Lisa Noland from The Memphis Monarch is working on an article about the rise of women’s leadership in church. Since Grace used to be a journalist (Has she said that before? I don’t remember.) she takes pity on the journalist and decides to be her source. You know that once Lady Mae finds out, she will be hot!

Bishop still hasn’t heard anything from Lady Mae and now he is downright worried. He heads over to Triumph to see if Jacob has seen his mother. When Jacob tells him that he hasn’t seen Lady Mae either, he tells his son that he has filed for divorce from his mother. Bishop tells Jacob this sweet story about when he asked Lady Mae to marry him the first time. She said, “No” because she had “other plans.” To put a fire under her, he told her that he packed up his storefront church to follow her. I guess he wanted to show her that he was serious. Well, that was enough for Lady Mae to accept his proposal after all. “She’s the same woman as she was back then.” Apparently, Bishop thought that filing for divorce would shock Lady Mae into seeing how wrong she was to threaten divorce and back away from that proposition. It looks like his gamble backfired and he will be the one looking foolish in the end.

Unchained Melody…

Charity continues to be a lost soul as this episode unfolds. When she goes to pick up Nate from Kevin’s new apartment, instead of finding Kevin there, Aaron is there. Aaron is playing with Nate and has even bought him a new toy. She asks,”Are you moving in now?” As a matter of fact, since Aaron did receive a job offer, he will be moving into Kevin’s home. In last week’s episode, the prospect of Kevin and Aaron living together was upsetting to her, but in this week’s episode, she was more upset that Aaron has a new job on the horizon. “I’ve got my own things going on too,” she tells Aaron before taking her son and driving to Nashville!

As she enjoys the music, Lady Mae is still drinking at the club. In fact, Vernon the bartender thinks the drinks must be so good, he is considering adding the Brandy Alexander to the menu! Lady Mae even invites two other women to come to her table, telling them she will pay for their drinks! She asks them if they have heard about a famous preaching woman on TV named Maxine Patterson. When they tell her they have heard of her, Lady Mae tells them that Maxine was her college buddy and they once were going to Howard Divinity School together. At that very same bar, Lady Mae told her friend Maxine that she wouldn’t be going to divinity school with her after all. She was in love and had to stay in town. But now she has regrets. “You give your whole life to a man and in one fell swoop, he takes it all away.” Lady Mae sings the blues. And she is drunk. She is so drunk that she decides to stay at a motel next to the bar. “It may not be what you’re used to, but it’s clean,” Vernon tells her when she asks about the conditions. She stumbles to her motel room where she watches her old friend on TV.

Finally at home, Bishop still hasn’t heard from Lady Mae! And then she calls Sofia and tells her that she is sorry she won’t be making it for supper with her. She also asks Sofia to tell everyone that she is fine and will be back in the morning. Bishop hears and takes the phone from her but Lady Mae hangs up without saying a word shortly after hearing Bishop’s voice. Bishop pretends that he has a quick conversation with her although the dial tone is on the other end.

At Darius’ home, Grace reveals her reservations about Rochelle. “I can’t help but think this whole thing is about Rochelle Cross.” Darius offers to have a friend at the police department check out Ms. Cross.

After arriving in Nashville following a seven-hour drive, Charity busts into a rehearsal and tells Jabari she wants to come back on the tour. Jabari aine trying to her at this point. “I thought you loved me,” she says. He says, “I did.” Ouch. “I gave you what you said you wanted,” he says. Charity agrees and reaffirms that she is back. But Jabari says it’s too late and that the woman on stage (the woman he was talking to when Charity called before) has taken Charity’s spot. “Go home. I don’t want you here.”  I say, “Good riddance.” If you don’t want me, I aine beggin’ you to say.

Chain Gang…

Conspiring like some criminals, Rochelle and Tasha meet at a bar. Tasha says, “How did you get the IRS to reopen the case?” I should have known that Rochelle was behind this IRS shakedown. She’s a crafty one, ain’t she? Tasha expresses a bit of remorse about conspiring against Jacob. Tasha asks, “Don’t you ever worry about God?” Rochelle spits out “James Greenleaf killed my father. It wasn’t just Basie’s father. There are two generations making a mockery of religion…We have to stay the course. I have no time for backsliders.” And this is the revelation that we Greenleafers have been waiting for! The caretaker who died in the church fire that Bishop started to get insurance money was the father of Basie and Rochelle!!! I thought she would have revealed that information in some heated argument with an adversary, but it just came out of her mouth like it was nothing.

Remember Rochelle was once a member of Gethsemane Baptist Church and Gethsemane was the garden where Jesus prayed before he died on the cross. If Rochelle Cross has anything to say about it, she will be offering up Bishop for him to atone for his killing her father. And Bishop did remember that the caretaker had a daughter…Is Basie younger or older than Rochelle? Hard to tell…

Although we know that Rochelle is up to no good, Darius tells Grace his contact didn’t find anything on Rochelle, but his contact did discover a list that the IRS is using to come after churches in which the shepherds of the church didn’t pay taxes on their personal income. And Calvary is at the top of the list!

Speaking of criminal behavior, Jacob meets with the ushers to determine who has stolen from the offering, but all along he thinks his daughter is the culprit. She is the only new usher after all. After the meeting, Jacob busts into Zora’s room as Zora insists she did not steal. After turning her room upside down, he discovers bills in a box! “You lied to me,” he screams to his daughter. Kerissa, who didn’t think her troubled daughter was also a thief, is aghast!

On the other hand, Lady Mae, after having sobered up, returns to Calvary as calm as she wants to be. She asks Karine to schedule a flight to Atlanta. “I’m going to visit an old friend.” We know that is Maxine Patterson aka ThePatti.TheLaBelle baby! At Karine’s desk, she notices that Grace is on the front cover of the newspaper. “The reporter had a deadline and Grace handled it,” Karine states. I’m sure that Lady Mae will go off on Grace about this at another time.

And at the very end of the episode, Bishop, dressed in blue, finally sees Lady Mae at Calvary. He tells her his filing for divorce was a “stupid mistake.” “Let’s just start over,” he says. “We can’t, James,” says Lady Mae, who is dressed in black and resolute. AND she thanks him for filing the papers!!! She says it was her mistake to marry him and make their lives together her calling when she was called by God on her own. She’s ready to move on to “anything other than being at the mercy of a man who plucks at the web of my absurdly constructed life!” What a line!!! Regarding the divorce papers, she says her lawyer has begun to work on the case. “It’s time to go,” she says finally.

And sadly, a lone tear slides down Bishop’s downcast face. The chain of command is being broken…Lady Mae wants to head her own church!!! Y’all know when it’s all said and done, they will get back together…eventually…and what a wild ride it will be till then!

Thank you sooo much for reading my Greenleaf Recap Season 3 Episode 3: Chain of Command and my other recaps so far. If you would like to keep up with OWN’s “Greenleaf,” and my recaps, please click on this link to subscribe to my blog 🙂!

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Resilience & the Bible: How to Use Scriptures to Bounce Back From – Domestic Violence & Divorce

deborah resizeHello World,

Welcome to the fifth installment of my seven-month interview series entitled “Resilience & the Bible” which is about how Scriptures can be used to bounce back from the trials we all have to go through from time to time. Once a month since October, I have featured someone who has used Bible verses to bounce back! If you know of someone who has bounced back using Scriptures and would like to be featured on my blog, please e-mail me at jacqueline@afterthealtarcall.com. Since this is the last day of the month that we celebrate Valentine’s Day, I wanted to interview someone who bounced back from lost love in the form of divorce and was able to find true love, not only in Christ but in a new and healthy marriage!

How to bounce back from domestic violence and divorce is the focus of this month’s “Resilience & the Bible” blog post. I am pleased to introduce author Deborah Hall-Branch, who is a domestic violence survivor, mother of three daughters and a happy wife of nearly 22 years. However, during her first marriage, she was beaten by her ex-husband. Branch credits three Bible verses for helping her to be a survivor of and thrive after domestic violence.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  2 Corinthians 4:8-9

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:6-7

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

When and why did you get married the first time?

I got married, I believe, we were young, when I was 18. We were junior high school and high school lovers. We met in junior high school. We didn’t really date although we called ourselves dating, and then we went to high school together, and we stayed together. After our last year of high school, we got married. He was in the military, and we got married. I believe that was 1972. I have so put this out of mind, but I believe it was 1972. I was raised in the apostolic faith, and we did not believe in divorce. And if you had a boyfriend, which was something new for them to allow me to have, you know a boyfriend coming around and coming to your house, they automatically felt like if this child don’t get married, they’re going to get involved intimately, and then we’re going to have a baby on our hands, and that’s going to be a stain on the family and the church. And so they said, ‘We’re just going to get them married.’ I was living at home with my mom in Philadelphia where I was born and raised. My boyfriend was a preacher’s son in the Church of God in Christ.

Tell me about your marriage. Was it a good marriage in the beginning? When did your marriage change?

He went off to the military, and he got involved in drugs and started using them heavily. And that became our life. His drug addiction became our life. And then it became his abuse. It was the military, addiction and abuse. When he got out of boot camp, they sent him to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He was there for about a year and half, and then they sent him overseas to Madrid, Spain. We had two little girls, one behind each other. I stayed at home with my mom and kept the girls there. When we first got married, we were young and we were happy. We called ourselves a little family. He was really a nice guy. I thought that we were in love with one another and to this day, I believe it was love, but we didn’t understand the format of love.

He had started using drugs when we got in high school, but he kept it a secret. I didn’t know about that at all. But just before he enlisted in the military, he became withdrawn and he was hardly ever home. And I started seeing signs of drug use. He wasn’t bathing as much because he was a well-groomed man. He believed in being well-groomed and clean. He wore the best of everything, and I just started seeing him going down. And because I was sheltered in my youth, I didn’t know that what I was seeing were the signs of drug addiction. We stayed married for 14 years. Probably only four of those years were good.

Then he started beating me, and I let him. He tore down my self-esteem by saying things to me like, ‘Nobody’s going to want you but me,’ ‘If you leave me, nobody else is going to take you in,’ and ‘You got two children. Nobody else is going to be bothered with that. They’re not going to take you and them.’ And I started believing it. My mom knew what was going on, and my father just didn’t bother with it. My mom used to say, ‘You need to get out of it. You need to get away from him,’ but I just believed that was a way of him showing me his love. That he was just having bad days because of the drugs and so I needed to understand or find out a way to make his days happy so that when he would get high, he would not beat on me.

He didn’t abuse our girls physically, but what I discovered later on as I became more in tune with what was happening to me was that they were being emotionally abused.

How and when did you decide to leave and divorce your ex-husband?

One day, a little something in me that I know now is the power of God, didn’t feel like playing house with the devil anymore. Believe it or not, I put him out, packed up his stuff and put him out! I surprised my own self. I couldn’t believe I got the courage to do it, to put him out. He came home one evening and we got into a big fight, and he went to bed. The next day, he got up and he was sick. He was sick all of a sudden. I know it was the drugs. And I took advantage of that time when he was down. I knew he couldn’t fight me back. So I just packed his stuff up and told him he had to go. He was so sick that he didn’t fight me back. He just left and went to his parents.

When he left, he didn’t try to come back but he became my tormentor. He would come to the house and bang on the door and try to force me to let him come in. He would stand out in front of the house and just stand there. And me and my girls would just lock ourselves in the house, and I would peep out of the window. Sometimes, we would be too scared to lay down and go to sleep because we thought he would break in on us. And this went on for some time. Sometimes when I would leave to go to work, he would follow me to the bus stop. They were tactics to keep me in bondage to him and his abusive ways. I finally divorced him in 1986, but I kicked him out years before then. In my mind, I was still in bondage to the affirmation of faith that I grew up with that did not believe in divorce whether you were abused, whether it was adultery or anything. You were married until death did you part.

What convinced you to finally divorce your ex-husband?

It had to be the power of God that started working in me that convinced me to divorce him, to set me free because I knew without a shadow of doubt that I didn’t have it in me. I would have just put him out and we would have remained separated for the rest of our lives. One morning I just woke up. I had started a new job and the people that I was around, they were outgoing people, they were party people. I had never been around those type of people before. And it was doing a change in me. A young lady was working in my office, and she reached out to me and we became best friends. And she started showing me there was more to life than what I knew. And I started allowing all of that to deprogram me because I had to be deprogrammed from fear. I was reading a newspaper one day at work on my lunch break, and I just happened to go into the section where the attorneys advertised their businesses and I saw where one attorney could file for your divorce and it would cost you but x amount of dollars and so I called him. I went to him and saw him, and I was fearful the whole time because I wondered what my family was going to say, was my ex-husband going to retaliate against me, but I went through with it anyway.

How did you change after your divorce?

I started going to a new church, not the church I grew up in, and I found a freedom I had never known about before. It was an evangelistic church. The pastor at this church used to be a member of the church I used to go to when I was growing up, but I didn’t know him then because I was a child. His teaching was free from what I raised up in, and I was just loving it. I started going to theology school which was a big change because at my former church women just didn’t do things like that, and it was just a whole brand new life for me. The name of the school is Deliverance Evangelistic Bible Institute in Philadelphia, and I got an associate’s degree in Theological Studies.

How did you meet your current husband and were you against marriage at that point?

I never said I wasn’t going to get married again because I loved married life. I just said I wasn’t going to let anyone in my life until I had discovered my own life. I met my current husband at the new job I where I was working when I met the outgoing friend. We working at J.G. Hooks, a clothing manufacturer. He was working there when I started and his testimony is that when he first saw me, he told the guys he was working with that he was going to make me his wife. I didn’t even like him at first. He would speak to me every morning, and I would just growl at him. This went on for about a year and a half.

When did you things change between you and him?

Finally, he invited me to go to dinner one day. I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ He said, ‘No, I just want to take you to dinner.’ I said to him, ‘Well, I’m going away for the weekend. I’ll think about it over the weekend when I’m gone, and when I come back, I’ll let you know.’ Well, I figured when I came back that he would have moved on away from that and wouldn’t want to go out with me. But when I came back, he said, ‘Well, did you make up your mind?’ I said, ‘You still want to go?’ And he said, ‘Yeah!’ So we went out that Saturday. He was so nervous when he went out. He was knocking things over. I just sat there and looked at him and laughed. I took my hand and put it on his hand and said, ‘Calm down. Why are you so nervous?’ He said, ‘I’ve never dated no one like you before. You’ve got so much class and you’re nice.’  He was 28 years old at the time, and I was 29 or 30 somewhere in there. That night, he also took me to see Stephanie Mills and the Whispers. We went to the show first and then he took me to dinner and then he told me he wanted to take me by his family. He also took me to meet his family. I thought that was really weird. He took me to meet his mom, his dad, his siblings, his nieces and nephews, all in that one night. I don’t know what he told them, but they were all excited and happy like we were in a relationship and would be engaged. But I believe he must have told them what he told me later on, he said he knew we were going to be married

What happened then?

After that first date, though, he asked me out again, but I said no. I wasn’t really into being in a relationship then. I was just getting to know me, and me and my girls were having a wonderful time. I was feeling happy, and I didn’t want nobody infiltrating that. I felt God’s peace like I had never felt it before. And that peace felt like protection to me. But he kept asking me out, and I got tired of it. He was asking me out every other day. That went on for about two months. I finally said, ‘Okay, I’m going to give him one more opportunity.’ This time we really got a chance to talk, and he shared some things with me about his life. He loved his parents. He loved his sisters. He loved his nieces and his nephews. And they were a very close-knit family. That really impressed me, but he wasn’t a Christian at the time. He was religious at the time, but he eventually did become a Christian. So we kept going out, but we didn’t share it with our co-workers. We dated for about three months before I let my daughters really get to know him. Before then, I really watched him around his family, particularly how he handled his nieces.

How did he propose and when did you get married?

We got married on October 22, 1994 after we dated for three years. Believe it or not, he bought my rings after the first time we went out. He didn’t know if I was going to go out with him again or not. And he didn’t know my ring size or anything. They are beautiful rings. They look like a rose with a diamond in the middle. He came over to my house, and the girls rallied around him because they loved him by then. All of a sudden in the living room, he got down on one knee and he pulled this ring out. He said, ‘Deborah, would you marry me?’ My mouth flew open, and I said, ‘Where did you get this ring?’ He looked at my mother, who was living with me, my father was dead by then, and said, ‘Would you allow me to marry your daughter?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I looked at her like, ‘How you gonna say yes, and I haven’t even made up my mind yet?’ But I said, ‘Yes.’ I told him, ‘I’m probably gonna have to get this ring sized,’ but it fit perfectly.

How is this marriage different from first marriage?

My husband is a very compassionate, loving guy, not to say we haven’t had difficulties in our marriage, because we have. But I told him in the beginning, I would never ever live in an abusive situation again.

How did your Scriptures help you to bounce back?

Well, the first one helped me because every day, I made a new decision over my life. And I demanded things of myself in order to begin the process of bouncing back after my divorce. The first thing I demanded was that I be truthful to myself. That divorce happened, and it was nothing that I did although I probably could have helped some things, but it was gonna happen. So I made some demands of myself to change the outlook of my life. I had to face the fact that it was over so I forced myself to get dressed and go out, see new people, start enjoying life. If I had to, I would have moved out of the area I lived in. I started declaring God’s word into my life each and every day and 11 Corinthians 4:8-9 were some of the Scriptures I used as my declarations.

And with 1 Peter 1:6-7, by that time, the Lord had started letting me understand that trials are gonna happen in your life and sometimes, you would feel like just giving up. With me looking at those Scriptures, I came to realize it was never really about my ex, it was all about me and my faith and that I was being tested in the fire. By me being tried in the fire, it was going to give God glory.

11 Timothy 1: 7 helped me to discover that I did have power because the abuse had lowered my self-esteem. I discovered that God had not given me a spirit of fear so where that fear came from, it didn’t come from God. And then I learned that love was not abuse. I used to think that when you hit me, you loved me. I know now that real love doesn’t hurt you.

THEONA coverDeborah Hall-Branch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After working many years in the health field, a job separation nudged her to begin writing about her life’s experiences. Deborah is a multi-genre published author and co-author who speaks and teaches about abuse warning signs, its devastating aftermath and how to break free to women, children and men.  Her most recent work is  THEONA, “tantalizing faith-based women’s fiction with a surprising end.” For more information, go to deborahhbranch.com.

For more Bible scriptures online, go to BibleGateway.com.

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