Unlocked Family Secrets Season 1 Episode 1

Reality Realm US

Unlocked Family Secrets Season 1 Episode 1  #UnlockedFamilySecrets #RealityRealmUS Reality Realm US

Transcript

00:00We are a church who believe in Jesus Christ!

00:07I was the first lady of a mega church, and we had it all.

00:12The big house, fancy cars, and a loyal congregation.

00:17But everything that glitters ain't always gold.

00:21And we were hiding a big secret.

00:23We have this perfect marriage, worship life, and family life.

00:30We were a classic American, black, Christian family.

00:34Wait, what? Paul.

00:36He did what?

00:38I had to hone in on my secrecy skills and lie.

00:43We were just all beaten up by the trauma of it all.

00:48The secret broke us.

00:50Lydia lost everything that she had.

00:55Secrets are poison.

00:57And they will kill you.

01:00I just can't believe Mother has all these pictures of my family.

01:16I know.

01:17I'm Lydia Meredith, published author, pastor, luminary, activist.

01:22I'm a mother of three magnificent sons.

01:26I have six grandchildren.

01:30That's Dennis and I riding a motorcycle together.

01:33Oh, man.

01:36You all are such a beautiful couple.

01:38When I think about my life, my faith has always been my driving force.

01:44And the church has always been my refuge.

01:48But it's also a place where I learned that deep secrets and keeping them is what's expected.

01:55I was born in 1952 in Macon, Georgia.

02:03That was when the civil rights movement was just beginning to start.

02:08But still, Jim Crow was a reality.

02:11I had five older siblings and four younger.

02:17We didn't have a social life except for church.

02:21Wednesday was Bible study.

02:23Friday was singing, choir rehearsal, and Sunday was church.

02:27I was always so narrowly focused on being everything my dad wanted me to be, because that was my hero.

02:37My father didn't go any further than the third grade.

02:41So he wanted all of his children to be very well educated.

02:47My mother was the disciplinary.

02:49If you did something you weren't supposed to do, then, you know, you just expect a real beating.

02:58So I was like the perfect kid, because my goal was to make straight A's and not get a beating.

03:09Lydia was the smartest sister, ambitious.

03:15She got a scholarship to Vanderbilt.

03:22In 73, I had finished my engineering program.

03:27In 1975, I had earned my master's.

03:31Life was moving perfectly according to plan.

03:35I moved to Birmingham, Alabama to start a new job, and I had a serious boyfriend.

03:41And then he wrote me that Dear John letter explaining he wasn't ready to make a commitment.

03:48I was devastated.

03:50After I got that letter, that's when I heard an inner kind of spirit voice say,

03:58Dennis Meredith is going to be your husband.

04:02Dennis was the youth pastor at Sardis Baptist Church, where I sang in the choir.

04:09I saw Lydia for the first time, it would be back in 1977, and I was attending Sardis Baptist Church.

04:21I had seen him, we had hung out.

04:23I was never interested in him.

04:25But every mother that had a single daughter was in his face, because Dennis could dress.

04:32Lydia was not first lady material.

04:37Lydia was very loud.

04:39She came to church, oftentimes with raggedy jeans on.

04:43But she was pretty, you know, and she had some pretty legs.

04:48I wasn't paying him no attention, because I made more money than him.

04:53My mother had taught us to marry up.

04:56And I knew he wasn't making what I wanted him to make.

04:59But then the voice said, you're going to marry Dennis.

05:04Over time, I started seeing Dennis in an entirely new light.

05:10And I bought a nice house.

05:12On the corner lot in a white neighborhood.

05:15She has a housewarming.

05:17So she invited me over.

05:18You guys came to my housewarming.

05:23Remember?

05:23I remember I came with Dennis.

05:24And Dennis was at the housewarming.

05:27Y'all interrogated him.

05:28Said, don't you like my daughter?

05:30Embarrassing.

05:33And so her mother looked at me.

05:35She said, Lydia, this man is a nice.

05:37You might think about marrying him.

05:39And I was like, oh, shoot.

05:43We were friends.

05:44We had someone.

05:44We just hanging out.

05:45And then I had that voice.

05:48I heard something.

05:49I don't know what it was.

05:50I know.

05:50And look at us right now.

05:53A match made in heaven.

05:59Then one night, he came over to fix my television.

06:03And I fixed him something to eat.

06:06When I tell you that woman could cook, do you hear me?

06:10I'll never get she fried me some fish.

06:12Well, I got through and I said, hmm, I better marry her.

06:17And we just started dating.

06:20My family loved her.

06:22My mother was like, Dennis, you got to marry this girl.

06:25To my surprise, he said, Lydia, I think we need to pray about getting married.

06:34But later, he said, I changed my mind.

06:36I think it's too early.

06:39I said, all right, bye.

06:42I went home and I started praying.

06:45I said, God, if this is not supposed to happen, just take these feelings away.

06:51Honey, when I got up off my knees, Dennis was knocking on my door.

06:54I don't believe in premarital sex because the Bible say this.

07:03But that night, we kind of did the do, you know.

07:07She was the best I'd ever had.

07:14After that, we prayed all weekend.

07:17And then, I do recall doing the one knee and, you know, just saying, let's get married.

07:24I want to marry you.

07:27We were married in December of 78.

07:32Everybody named Mama came.

07:35The church gave me the most beautiful wedding you had ever seen.

07:39She loved Dennis.

07:42They were just inseparable.

07:44We made the decision to have children immediately.

07:51And Taylor was born in November of 1979.

07:57Child, me and my son.

07:59Oh, we were together everywhere.

08:01I was just so happy.

08:05And then, Mikey was born in February 1981.

08:11Then, Dennis got his first church.

08:14Mount Zion Baptist Church.

08:17We still in the honeymoon stage with two babies.

08:20And the sex was amazing.

08:22He was an amazing dad.

08:24It was the best years of my life.

08:26I had the marriage and home life I'd always imagined.

08:31Until one night in 1983.

08:34We went to a choir rehearsal or some church event.

08:38I'm exhausted working all day.

08:41And I went to bed.

08:43I was at church.

08:45And when I left, something said, you know, go home.

08:50I didn't go home.

08:50Two o'clock in the morning, I get this call.

08:56Your husband has been arrested.

08:59I couldn't believe you.

09:02Arrested for what?

09:03Dennis and I, we had this perfect marriage and family life.

09:13And out of the clear blue sky, I get a call about two o'clock in the morning that Dennis

09:18was arrested.

09:20I couldn't believe you.

09:21Not my husband.

09:24It was on a Monday night in the summer of 1983.

09:28I was thinking, how am I going to get out of this?

09:31What am I going to do to hide this?

09:34So I called my neighbor next door and asked her to come over and watch the kids.

09:38So I went downtown to pick Dennis up.

09:42I didn't want to call Lydia.

09:44I think part of that was motivating.

09:46Let me get out of this.

09:47Go home.

09:47And she would never know.

09:50But the police called Lydia.

09:52When I walked into that police station, he had his head hung down and he was in tears.

10:04The policeman said he was in a theater and he solicited a planted male police officer.

10:15It was entrapment, but, you know, I shouldn't have been there.

10:18That didn't make sense to me because he was all over me.

10:22And he seemed like he was happy with the sex.

10:26I didn't even know what solicited meant until afterwards.

10:30I was brokenhearted.

10:32I was humiliated.

10:33And so I just shut it out.

10:42And then Lydia bailed me out.

10:45I expected outrage.

10:47But her response was, it's like she dismissed it, like buried it.

10:56He cries the entire ride from the police station to the house, and I was silent the entire time.

11:04And so I went to bed, and I had stopped speaking to him.

11:09My first thought was that I didn't want to lose my marriage or my children.

11:15That was always a forefront.

11:18And then we said he was sorry.

11:22And I'd never do it again.

11:23And I believed him.

11:26So I was willing to say, hey, that's over now.

11:29I didn't want to ever confront this painful experience again.

11:33Because Dennis was pastor at Mount Zion Baptist Church.

11:36We didn't want it to get out that he was involved in a scandal.

11:41Had I gotten exposed, they probably would just, you know, voting me out of the church.

11:47But she covered.

11:48She never said anything.

11:50Dennis continued to pastor at the church.

11:53But soon he started telling me he wanted a change of scenery and a fresh start.

11:59He decided he wanted to go to seminary.

12:02So he put in applications for seminaries.

12:06He was a gifted preacher.

12:08And so he could go wherever he wanted to go.

12:10But he decided he wanted to move to California on all places.

12:15I said, oh my God, he wants to go across the country.

12:19I wanted to get the hell up out of there and go to California.

12:23In some respects, I was running from what had happened.

12:29After the move to California in late 1983, Dennis and I got our groove back.

12:36And while he was still in seminary, he got an offer to become a pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Oakland.

12:45I was going to work for Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

12:48Dennis was excited about rebuilding his ministry life there.

12:51After we got there, you know, Lydia had Eddie.

12:54Then Dennis got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go on a month-long missionary trip to Africa.

13:06He came back really excited about ministry.

13:08And he tells me about opportunities for him to go to different churches and preach.

13:13And he would travel with these pastors all over the place.

13:17Over the next several years, even though he was in and out, Dennis was a model pastor, an attentive husband, and a loving father.

13:29My parents were the perfect complement to each other.

13:32I saw a lot of love between the both of them, especially my mother towards my father.

13:37We were just tight-knit, extremely affectionate.

13:40There was never any tension.

13:41We had weathered the storm until one Saturday in 1991.

13:55I remember one day, I go out in the garage, and I find a video.

14:03And it's a video of men having sex with men.

14:07And I am in shock.

14:13What is this?

14:14Where did this come from?

14:16Why is this in my house?

14:20Lydia puts this video in my face.

14:24What is this?

14:25She's angry, too.

14:28And so I said, it's a porn video.

14:30I like to look at porn.

14:33And she said, but you're a preacher.

14:34And so I told her how I looked at porn all my life.

14:40Cognitively, there was a connection.

14:43From when he behaved that way eight years ago, when he was arrested, obviously there was a connection.

14:50And I was upset.

14:53We argued all day, all night.

14:58And so we got up normal Sunday morning, went to church.

15:06You know, I'm not confrontational.

15:08But something in me just said, tell the truth.

15:12That Monday morning, I called her on a job.

15:16And I said, Lydia, if you're willing and ready, I'm going to tell you everything.

15:21I had come home from work.

15:28I was nervous because I still didn't have any answers.

15:33We retreat for the evening, you know.

15:37He sits on this orange chair that's in our bedroom.

15:43He said, I'm bisexual.

15:44And I told her everything.

15:49My sexuality, the infidelity, the sex with men, all of it.

15:57I let him finish talking.

16:00I didn't interrupt him at all.

16:03He had been doing the entire marriage.

16:06I was ready to collapse.

16:10And I'm thinking, she's going to divorce me.

16:14He said to me, it's just sex, and I love you, and I want my family.

16:23And I believed him.

16:29Lydia says, we'll get therapy.

16:32We'll figure it out, because I'm not going to divorce you.

16:35And because I wanted my family, and I wanted my marriage, I said, yes, okay, we will figure

16:42this out.

16:44I listened to this Christian radio broadcast, and they were talking about conversion therapy.

16:52I said, oh my God, I can't believe I'm hearing this.

16:55And I told Dennis about it.

16:59And we researched this organization called Merrimerth and Meyer Clinic in Los Angeles.

17:04After a week in the clinic, they come to me and say, um, well, since you have such a high

17:16sex drive, we want to give you something that's going to curb that, take away, you know, that

17:22desire.

17:24I'm like, what the hell is this?

17:26I called Lydia.

17:29I said, just forget it, because, I mean, we enjoy our sex, so just come home, Dennis.

17:33They gave me a list of therapists when I checked out.

17:41So we picked a therapist who was not in our area.

17:44And so she diagnosed me as a workaholic, and she called him a sex addict.

17:54We agreed to do the work for the sake of our marriage and our family.

18:00So I focused on my work-life balance.

18:03And Dennis promised to stop having sex outside of our relationship.

18:09I tried to be better as a wife and as a mother.

18:15Every week, we would go out, just the two of us, and have quality time together.

18:21But Dennis would tell the therapist I didn't give him enough sex.

18:25And I said, oh my God, how much sex does he want?

18:29The therapist tells us, do not judge his addiction, because addiction is addiction is addiction.

18:35And we go to her for about a year.

18:41It was at that point that I said to myself, I'm a bisexual man, and to hell with all it is trying to get rid of it.

18:54And so I knew I violated her trust.

18:58What's interesting is people demonize the cheater, and they think you don't feel.

19:03Well, that's not true.

19:05When you love somebody, you hurt like they hurt.

19:08I was just a hoe.

19:11I just continued to do what I was.

19:13But I didn't say anything to Lydia, because she thought that I had changed.

19:19He hid it.

19:20It was nothing in me that made me think that he wanted anything different than to be with me and save his family.

19:32I didn't see anything else except a faithful husband and a great father.

19:37I believed in our marriage, and I believed that he could stay faithful.

19:44So I was determined to make sure our skeletons remained hidden and that everything appeared to be normal.

19:52My mom worked a lot.

19:55You know, my dad, most of the time, was at home with us.

19:58He did a lot of the cooking, a lot of the helping with homework.

20:03It was the classic American Christian family.

20:07We prayed before our dinners.

20:09We went on family trips.

20:11Our parents were extremely affectionate towards each other.

20:15We knew they were in love.

20:16I didn't know at the time, but rumors started to spread throughout our church family like a wildfire.

20:29One Sunday, this girl comes up to me and says,

20:32Your husband is a hypocrite.

20:35I saw him with such and such and such, and he was clearly effeminate.

20:41I said, Well, I promise you, he's not a hypocrite.

20:43And I didn't entertain that any further.

20:48And I remember this one lady came up to me, and she said,

20:51They say, You're a homosexual?

20:52We ain't never had no homosexuals in this church until you got here.

20:57Everybody knows the musician, the chairman of the trustee board,

21:01the president of the choir.

21:02They were gay.

21:03But, you know, I just kind of shrugged her off.

21:05I said, Oh, well, I didn't know nobody was gay in this church.

21:08And I walked away.

21:09For me, it was solving the problem.

21:12My focus, my vision, always goes to how to fix it, how to make it work, how to succeed, how to win, how to get what I want.

21:22That's the way I am.

21:25We shut down all the talk immediately.

21:31And I'm going to make right here and right now work for us and going forward.

21:36I don't care what you tell me.

21:38You're not going to sit here and talk about my husband.

21:41With the gossip surrounding Dennis at the church, I didn't know what to believe about him and his relationship with men.

21:56I know they would have put me out because they were totally against same-sex love.

22:03If I get exposed, it's not going to be good.

22:07By 1994, Dennis and I left Mount Calvary Baptist and the rumors behind in Oakland.

22:14This was about our family, and there were better opportunities for all of us in Georgia.

22:19So we moved across the country.

22:22We got a call about Tabernacle Baptist Church having a vacancy in Atlanta, Georgia.

22:28So they invited us to come.

22:32God has no picks and choosers.

22:35God loves everybody!

22:36And that was the first time I worked with my husband.

22:42I started to be the church administrator.

22:46His income was tied to the growth of the church.

22:49But when we first started, there were so many empty seats.

22:53You could throw a football and wouldn't hit one person.

22:56After that first sermon, the word got out.

23:00The tabernacle had a new pastor under new leadership.

23:06When we first got here, it was the first Sunday of April.

23:09It was on the Easter.

23:10Yeah!

23:11But you know, my sermon, I'd always preach when I got a new church, was moving forward.

23:16Right, right.

23:16And this congregation, we grew this church.

23:20You had people in the aisles.

23:21Dennis tore up that church.

23:27Women was going crazy.

23:30I mean, it was pandemonium.

23:33And before you know it, you couldn't find a seat.

23:38I grew the church from probably 120 people to maybe 800 and something.

23:46Over the next few years, our church thrived.

23:54And our family seemed stronger than ever.

23:56It felt like the troubles Dennis and I had were finally behind us.

24:01And then, as he began to feel himself, his power, he started to abuse it.

24:10Doing anything and everything he wanted to do.

24:12He just went berserk.

24:16Coming in late.

24:18Staying out all night.

24:21I did not know that he was still doing what he had promised me he wasn't going to do.

24:28And then, one day, he told me he had gonorrhea.

24:32And I needed to go get myself checked out.

24:35And I was like, are you kidding me?

24:38I know she was pissed as hell.

24:44And so, you know, I was broken.

24:47And then I had to figure out, you know, what do I do now?

24:52I did not think about how his behavior could create a scandal.

24:59The fear was around the family, keeping the family together.

25:02Because family was number one for us.

25:05It wasn't the church wasn't number one.

25:07The family was number one.

25:09Once again, Dennis promised to be faithful.

25:13Looking back, it's hard to understand why I believed him.

25:16But we agreed to continue working on our relationship.

25:20Then he decided to build me my dream house.

25:23To me, that was the ultimate expression of commitment to our future.

25:33It took about two or three years to do that.

25:37And that absorbed my disappointment, my attention, and all of that.

25:45The home was completed in 1998.

25:51It was a seven-bedroom house, five bathrooms.

25:55I mean, we were making good money.

25:58Big home, Mercedes cars.

26:03It was the life.

26:05Our parents would take us on a family trip every year.

26:10Whether it was to the beach, or to the cabins, or to go skiing.

26:16But, yeah, like, we were really, really close.

26:19At the time, I just don't remember my parents doing a lot of going back and forth in front of us as children.

26:26Or being privy to, you know, marital issues.

26:31Even though there was harmony, I was consumed by the idea that someone would learn Dennis' past and blow up our lives.

26:43Then I found out we weren't the only ones in the family keeping a secret.

26:49Mikey comes home from school.

26:53He's a freshman at Shorter College.

26:55It was on his birthday, Mikey comes in the kitchen, he says something I want to tell, you know, you and Mom.

27:02And he tells us that he was gay.

27:05And I was just shocked.

27:08It was in 2000.

27:09I was 19 when I came out the closet to my parents.

27:12I knew he was different from when he was born.

27:15But when he announced he was gay, I was devastated.

27:19In the summer of 2000, the Meredith family experienced our latest secret.

27:28When my son, Micah, came out.

27:31He just announced it and walked out.

27:33Didn't give us time to discuss it or anything.

27:36I said, you know, big deal to me.

27:38In my mind, I thought, you don't have to be like me.

27:40Don't be like me.

27:42Follow your conviction of being gay and just be.

27:45But Lydia was not open to it.

27:47I was afraid because I was over the HIV ministry at the church.

27:55And I had seen men dying.

27:58I had seen boys dying.

28:00And I knew that he was at risk.

28:04I didn't even think about Dennis and HIV.

28:07And that's the strangest thing.

28:09I never thought that I could get HIV.

28:12But I thought about my baby and HIV.

28:17I hadn't been out of the closet a year.

28:20And then I contracted there.

28:22I was 20.

28:27I was in Florida.

28:28And Dennis calls me.

28:30And he tells me that Mikey is HIV positive.

28:33I took the next plane back to Atlanta.

28:35And I was there within a couple of hours.

28:40And his daddy is crying.

28:42I'm crying.

28:43His brothers are crying.

28:46He was really scared.

28:47I was pretty scared, too.

28:49But I just felt like in that moment, I could tell my brother, we're going to find a way for this to be okay.

28:56That was one of the most horrific points in my life.

29:01But I believed God was going to save my son.

29:05You know, my mom was like, you're going to live.

29:08You're going to be okay.

29:09Even though that we had medicines and stuff like that, at that point, I still was thinking, you know, I'm going to die.

29:18It took me about four years to where I wanted to live and to where I felt like I can have a good life.

29:28It was a moment of reckoning.

29:32My son was living his truth.

29:35But for nearly 20 years, Dennis and I had been hiding ours.

29:39And now, our kids were having to face the gossip about his double life.

29:45The image of our perfect family was cracking.

29:50I started to hear things about my father being promiscuous.

29:55You hear people, they say things like, yeah, your daddy was in the park.

30:01I was like, what?

30:03What's the park?

30:04They be in that bathroom.

30:05They be in the bushes.

30:07And I'm like, my dad would never go in a park and behind bushes and, you know, stuff like that.

30:12So I was shocked about that.

30:15One Sunday, Dennis preached a horrible sermon.

30:19And I was sitting next to his mother.

30:21And his mother said, now, you just look around.

30:24Now, whoever he's f***ing is right in front of you.

30:29The rumor was that Dennis was seeing LeVar, the man he'd begged me to hire as a teacher in the child care center I had been running for a decade.

30:41And I called Dennis.

30:43And I asked Dennis, was this true?

30:45He didn't deny it.

30:46He did admit it was true.

30:48And I said, how could you do this to me?

30:51And she's very angry, because how dare me bring my lover into that school?

31:01And that was wrong.

31:02That shouldn't have happened.

31:04He had been bringing LeVar in front of my face all of this time, family meals, the church, my house.

31:16And he was sleeping with him.

31:19I said, I feel like you have hit me with a truck.

31:25And you just keep running over me with the truck.

31:28I was 27 years old when I met Dennis.

31:34He was 53.

31:37I met him November the 14th, 2005.

31:40We were at a place that's called Insurrection.

31:43One of them sex places.

31:46I saw this tall, interesting man.

31:48I thought that he was some basketball player.

31:51Only to find out he doesn't even know anything about sports.

31:54So we exchanged numbers.

31:57The next day I was at his house.

32:00I don't know what it was about him that I just could not let him go.

32:04I started seeing him on a regular basis.

32:08Sneaking around.

32:09And that's when it started getting messy between me and her.

32:15Dennis had had multiple affairs before.

32:17But each time, he told me it was just about sex.

32:23And that he still loved me.

32:26This time was different.

32:29I knew he was in love with him because he wasn't in love with me.

32:35He didn't have to tell me.

32:38At that point, my priority was more him than her.

32:41This relationship with LeVar is the most important relationship to me.

32:44In late 2005, I finally decided I would no longer be the secret keeper.

32:52I was going to speak the truth.

32:55I said, I can't keep dealing with this drama.

32:58I needed to tell the boys what was going on and not try to protect Dennis like my mother protected my daddy.

33:05She never told us that daddy was cheating.

33:07I ended up doing the same thing, protecting Dennis.

33:14We were in the house.

33:17We were upstairs.

33:18And, you know, my mom was upset, obviously.

33:22You could tell she had been crying.

33:24My dad, you know, said he was kind of sitting there.

33:26He had his legs crossed like this.

33:28And he was kind of looking down.

33:30And she said, I want to tell y'all something.

33:31And then my mom kind of comes out and says, yeah, your daddy was messing around with some man.

33:40Wait, what?

33:41Pause.

33:42He did what?

33:43With a man.

33:45Uh, did I hear that correctly?

33:48I was like, why is she doing this?

33:51But, you know, I deserved it.

33:52You know, I done my crap.

33:53I felt like my stomach had just dropped to my, um, my feet.

33:58And it was just like, what is going on?

34:02My dad's secret ripped our family apart.

34:11In front of the congregation, family, and friends, me and Lydia looked like the perfect couple.

34:18He didn't announce anything to the church, but we were separated.

34:24I met LaVar in November 2005.

34:26I asked him for us to be exclusive in January.

34:30LaVar presents this, uh, life for me that is so comforting.

34:36And so, at that point, he moved into our condo.

34:40And we're actually living together.

34:42You know, my dad literally moving on with somebody else, it forced a change.

34:49We were just all beaten up by the trauma of it all and the drama of it all.

34:57It felt like he was choosing that new family over the family that had been ride or die all these years.

35:06And LaVar, you know, I had all the hate in the world for him.

35:09And it was just like, dude, there's no way you'll be accepted, like, by any of us, man.

35:15And so, it was 2007 when I filed for divorce.

35:23I was dumbfounded.

35:24I couldn't believe it.

35:26They were just a perfect family.

35:29And the next thing I knew, she said, I can't take anymore.

35:32It's over.

35:33She went into that marriage so innocently, and it just tore her up.

35:40Lydia lost everything that she had.

35:44Later, I found out that they stayed together to keep the family together.

35:48You know what I'm saying?

35:50But I don't want you to stay in a marriage, you know what I'm saying, where you're getting cheated on.

35:53You should have left my father when it first happened.

35:57The secret of my dad's sexuality, the secret of his infidelity, his double life, it broke us.

36:05And I saw how she was hurting.

36:07I saw my mom literally deteriorate.

36:12She became, like, this big.

36:15Because emotionally, she was just ripped to pieces.

36:20I was empty.

36:21I was broken.

36:24I was fractured.

36:25I was stampeded.

36:26I was crushed.

36:30I was alone.

36:31I was in therapy at that time.

36:37I started going to seminary to try to make some sense out of my life.

36:41I said, this is just too crazy.

36:43This is just something I didn't anticipate.

36:47My marriage has ended.

36:49I just got to come to some kind of reckoning of what's happening in my life.

36:56One Sunday, I just said, I'm going to tell the church who I'm with.

37:03Y'all been asking questions.

37:04Am I dating somebody?

37:06Yes, I'm dating LeVar Brickett.

37:08Stand up, LeVar.

37:10And I stood up, and that's when everybody could put a face and name together.

37:16I'm like, what the are you doing?

37:18It was a crazy, crazy moment.

37:21Some of the people in the church already knew who he was and what he was doing.

37:26You know what I'm saying?

37:27So like, okay, pastor, congratulations.

37:29You came out.

37:30But then there were people that just got up and like walked out.

37:33And when I saw people walking out, I was like, he's ruining, you know, what we built here.

37:39But by now, the congregation is 85% gay.

37:43I lost people announcing that LeVar and I were together.

37:47And I gained a whole lot of others.

37:48Because then they said, he's really one of us.

37:51He's a gay man.

37:56It took many, many more years of therapy to unravel the decades of secrets that tore my family apart.

38:06But through it all, I learned how to heal and be true to myself.

38:12I had to start over with a love life, start over with a church life.

38:17I was alone.

38:19And that space of isolation is when I penned the gay preacher's wife.

38:24I had so much shame.

38:26I had so much anger and contempt.

38:30And I knew what I needed to heal.

38:33And that was to forgive Dennis.

38:37If I could reach that mark of forgiveness, I would be free.

38:41I knew if I didn't forgive Dennis, that my family would always be fractured.

38:49So I did the work to forgive.

38:52Okay, here we go.

38:57And I want you to follow me in and bring these two dishes.

39:00Here we go!

39:02Ooh, look at that.

39:06Grandma's famous banana party.

39:07If you look at my family today, you see a blended family.

39:14You see two dads.

39:16You see six grandchildren, three sons.

39:19You see a gay son, two straight sons.

39:22You see nothing but love, compassion, and happiness, and acceptance.

39:28But it, I promise you.

39:30The only person in the entire world that could have done this was her.

39:34It just wasn't overnight.

39:35It was years of healing, years of acceptance.

39:39This is a journey.

39:3918 years of the day.

39:40It's been a journey.

39:41It was a journey of our family.

39:43And now we're stronger than we were before this all happened.

39:48God put me and her together, and God put me and him together.

39:51It was very difficult.

39:52But we're good friends.

39:55Me and Lydia, I think we're at the best place we've ever been.

39:58There are no secrets.

40:00And I think that's a wonderful way to live with people you love.

40:05Dennis' secret deconstructed my life.

40:09But it gave me the kind of faith that has made me stronger and wiser.

40:16Here's my husband.

40:17And this is my ex-wife.

40:19And I'm sitting in between them, and we enjoying being here.

40:22And eating her dessert.

40:23And eating her dessert that my ex-wife cooked in my husband's kitchen.

40:30I could not be that person today if I hadn't gone through that.

40:34And I know that I'm supposed to use my experience to help others.

40:42Secrets are poison, and they will kill you.

40:46Nothing but pain comes from that space.

40:48But forgiveness will set you free.

40:52When you're looking for something, there is this euphoria when you find it.

40:59But then you have more questions.

41:02There was a secret.

41:04Her origin.

41:05The full weight of the story, this is pretty ugly.

41:08Mom took this secret to the grave.

41:12Your ass will catch up with you.

41:14That storm is coming.

41:16It was just too much.

41:17I remember saying that I want to stop.

41:19And then I started weeping.

41:22It felt like a world break.

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