When Dr A'Shellarien Speaks...Empowerment Happens

Monica, can I use you actually to gather the, uh, the cards here? I want to say, first of all, thank you. Um, I didn't even know all of that. My introduction to Dr. Lang— transparent moment— was, um, me having a conversation with someone, and I'm like, yeah, I think me and Arnold need a tune-up, right? And Arnold's my husband, if y'all don't know that. And I was like, babe, what do you think?

What do you think?

We should, we should go get a tune-up. You know, we get these tune-ups, whether it be counseling, inner healing, heck, sometimes deliverance, right? And, um, Dr. Lane's name came up. And I'll be real transparent, we went to one session and haven't been back. Let me tell you why. One cop— it was like 2 hours, supposed to be 1 hour.

So much came up.

And then, am I right? We were talking about this the other day, just in one conversation with you God, I felt like, revealed a stumbling block in our communication that was there for like 15 years, and we only been married going on 17. And here's— and we're not going to talk about that, but the statement that she said to us very quietly and very meekly was, hmm, it sounds like you both have a lot of unspoken contracts. And I never heard that term before, but as soon as she said it, I'm like You're darn right. And so since that time, we've been, we've been talking about these unspoken contracts, and there's so many, there's so many. So we'll, we'll probably do a marriage, um, we'll do a marriage thing, but I'll explain what unspoken contracts are. Yeah, yeah. And do we— we may even do them with ourselves.

Yes.

But let's talk about our topic today. So the topic that we're going to talk about today, guys, is it's okay to not be okay. It's okay. And, and we're sitting in physically in a church, and many times in the body of Christ we're made to feel that it's something wrong with you when you're not okay. So what happens is we learn to put on what?

Masks.

And sometimes our masks become a part of our identity and we forget that we put them on. And we never took them off. And, and so today I wanna— I want us to challenge that. I want— I want Holy Spirit to just like walk the room and, and maybe tap us on the shoulder to say, do we still have a mask on? So in that though, it's okay to not be okay comes up this topic of trauma. You guys say trauma. Trauma comes so many different ways, right? And, um, before I even jump into all that, I would love for you to, from your experience, um, in, in this field, how do you identify trauma?

I would say trauma is anything that makes you feel like you can't breathe. So I think about, I think about being a woman, right? And so one of the things we have as Black women in particular is this: it doesn't matter what happens, I'm gonna get it done. It doesn't matter what's going on in my life, I'm gonna make it happen. And so now clinically, there was a Black woman syndrome because we, we hold our breath in our new normal to function in survival mode. And survival mode has become our new normal, so we don't even know we're in survival mode. But in survival mode, you're not being authentically who you are. And so whatever causes you not to breathe and be authentically who you are is trauma. And it doesn't matter what society tells you trauma is. Now, trauma is a loss, trauma is grief, trauma can happen to your body, it's an injury. What they don't always talk about is that that soul injury. They don't talk about the internal, that inner emotion, that brokenness that comes when somebody says something. Like, think about when you were a little girl, right? So here's, here's what we're not taught as little girls. We're not taught that we were created to make the not good good. Now, where do I get that from? Genesis. God spent 6 days creating everything, said everything was good. This one time in the Bible said it was not good, as that was when the man was alone. He said it's not good for a man to be alone. And so God put that man to sleep and created fashion crafted, designed a woman to fill that spot. Now, when you're with a man because he's lonely, he'll walk all over you.

Yeah.

And you become his doormat. But when you're with a man because it's not good for him to be alone, you know that you add value to his life. So if you learn that you're created to make the not good good as a little girl, you will never allow a man to treat you anything less than who you are, because you were created to make his life better. Now you have a lot of women who, because of mass incarceration, because of slavery— you know, if you read the Willie Lynch Letter, you'll see how they specifically targeted the Black woman in slavery, because they understood that if they get to her, she'll get to the rest of the family. So now she will raise her daughter not to rely on a man. She'll raise her son to be physically strong but mentally weak so massa don't get him. And so generation after generation after generation, we've raised our daughters to give and to give and to give but to be emotionally disconnected. Yes, we've been acculturated to be emotionally disconnected from our children, from our life, and from our men. Why? Because massa took them. So how can you authentically love your children knowing that master might take them? How can you authentically love your man if you know master might take him? Now, even after we were quote-unquote set free by emancipation, it's instinctive in us, right, to make it work. So how do I make it work? How do I still have joy? I raised my daughter to be just like me. Emotionally disconnected, with no real joy. No real joy, because you can't have real joy and be traumatized, because at some point it's a lie. That's true, right? So now you got— so then you come through, then you got the Jim Crow laws, right? So you're not good enough now, right? So let me even go— so my Master of Sacred Theology was based on womanist theology. The whole issue between white women and Black women— it was intentional that white women would hate Black women because master saw us and was like, mm-hmm, look at all that, I need me some of that. Now how can I have me some of that without my wife saying to me, don't get none of that? So now you demonize Black women and say we're oversexualized. She walked past me with that booty. She walked past me with that voluptuous boot. She walked past me with them eyes, honey. You can't trust her because every time she come in here, she's slinking around. So I want you to notice the difference between the sisterhood when it's just us. It's very different than when white women are in the room because their loyalty is to whiteness, not sisterhood, right? So then you have that dichotomy of we're sisters, but I gotta keep you at arm's length. So now you have to do what they call code switching, right? So when you with the sisters, you can say what you need to say. You know, my husband getting on my nerves. You know, my kids is ungrateful. But as soon as that's over, you gotta get your mind right because you gotta get back in the race. You understand? So that ability to balance what society is telling you and then what you're really feeling. So trauma comes in any area of that. If your mother was emotionally disconnected because she's trying to figure it out, so now you like, my mama don't love me. But it wasn't that she didn't love you, she can't give you what she didn't get. That's right, that's right, right? And a lot of times as young women, we don't understand that in the, in the fight, right? We in the fight, but we don't understand that mama only gave me what she could have, right? What she had. It's not until you have your own daughter that you like, oh my goodness. I don't know how many times I picked up the phone, I was like, I am so sorry. Sorry. I look at my daughter, I'm like, I am so sorry, right? Because now as a mother, I understand that my, my intentional movement towards my daughter gave her an unintentional trauma.

Mhm.

And it's not until you become self-reflective that you realize that, that all of us are going through this mode of trauma And trauma, we sort of rest in the trauma now because now we like, that's just part of life. You know, people say, that's my lot in life. It's not. It's not. And it's not until we come to the understanding that we've been lied to. Yeah, you know, Brown says that you tried to manipu-dip me and I can't be manipu-dipped. So if you haven't seen the play I Can Do Bad All By Myself, go watch it.

It's so good. I, I have this follow-up question, um, You said so much, but when you think about— I almost feel like then to some degree everyone has a form of trauma. Yes, right. And so my goal is let's all get healed from this trauma, but what are the steps to even realizing— like, if you're in this room, how do you say, wait, okay, that's me? Like, what are those identifying steps that I suffer from trauma? And is that connected to PTSD.

So PTSD is related to an event that you can't stop thinking about. So PTSD is more about remembering the event and how do you process the emotional response to what you remember. So we see it a lot in soldiers because we train them like machines and we say, go over there, do what we tell you to do and don't question it. Then when they come back broken, we're trying to figure out what do we do with their brokenness. So that's where you got soul injury, you got moral injury. When you think about trauma, you have to understand that we compartmentalize trauma because it's too painful, right? And so there's some traumas that we put away to protect ourselves, and those traumas that you put away to protect yourselves those traumas need to be opened up in a clinical setting, right? So you can't— you can't— as a clinician, I can't open Pandora's box knowing that I'm not going to be here to help you walk through it. So really what you have to do is deal with the surface stuff first. Don't go too deep because you're not ready for that. So just think about what is the hardest thing that that you deal with right now. So maybe that's your spouse, and maybe your spouse is talking to you in a condescending way, and it drives you insane, and you can't figure out why. Well, that's a trigger somewhere. So if you sit in that moment, you say, why does it drive me crazy? This is just an example. I don't know if that's what y'all going through, but— and you say, why does it drive me crazy, this condescending way that he talks to me? You can trace it back and say What other areas in my life does condescending talk happen? And you go back, just go back. Maybe happen with your brother. Maybe it's only associated with a man. So it happened with my brother, it happened with my father, it happened with my grandfather. So you see that over time you figure out how to manage your emotions around this trauma, and it becomes your new normal. The whole time you're manifesting it in a different way. So now you become passive aggressive. So what is passive-aggressive? If you ever say that you're going to use the silent treatment, that's passive-aggressive anger. You are absolutely livid on the inside. Now here's the thing, a lot of men could care less. They want you to stop talking, so you give them what they want anyway. You like, I'm not going to talk to him for 5 days. He like, thank God. Right? So you just have to take an inventory of yourself. You think about what is causing me the most anxiety in this moment. Now I have to tell you, when I had a daughter, a prophet came to me. It was such a struggle to have a daughter. I never went because I have two sisters and it was just traumatic being the middle child. So I didn't realize that it manifested in a way that I didn't want to have— if I had a daughter, I I only wanted one. I didn't want her to have sisters because of the trauma I went through. So when I had a daughter, it was so hard because the only person I've ever hated in my life is my little sister. Hated her with a passion. Passion. Never hated anybody like I hated her. And so when I had a daughter, everything that my daughter did reminded me of my sister because my sister— everywhere I went, she had to go. Everything I did, she had to do. Shoes I got, she had to get. So my daughter was like, everything I did she had to do. And I was like, this is my daughter, it's not my sister. But it was just, it was so traumatic for me that it was hard for me to process sister-daughter. So she, I love her, right? But this prophet came to me, you know, I was raised in ministry, healing, deliverance. So this prophet came to me and she started talking to me about my daughter. She said, God said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah with your daughter. So that set me free because it helped me understand where my trauma was coming from. So here's why I'm saying that. When you figure out what the root of the trauma is, that's where you'll be set free. It's not necessarily just in knowing what it is, but you got to connect it to a root so that it can be— it could be— you could take it up from the root and say, like, it's one thing to say, devil, I, you know, I decree and declare, I'm calling the thing to be not as though they were, and I'm doing this and that. And ain't nothing happening. Ain't nothing happening but a bunch of words. It's not until you dig down and pull it up from the root that you can say, all right, devil, I'm done.

That's right.

That's where it comes from.

It's so good because the overarching theme is like, we have to do the work. Yes. Come on, prophesy to your neighbor and say, you got to do the work, whatever, whatever it is. I, um, I want to get to the PTSD a little bit. I know that's, um, so I, I heard you say that PTSD, you know, in the form of soldiers is, it's one way, but then it could reflect in our lives outside of being a soldier as a trauma that we just cannot get over. Um, what are some, what are some other symptoms that someone could say, wow, I believe that I have PTSD, you you know, in connection to this situation, right?

So think about your sleep patterns. Think about, um, if you can't sleep or if you're sleeping too much. Think about if you can't eat or if you're eating too much. If you have a memory that keeps popping in your head and there's nothing you can do about it, then that triggers something else, right? So PTSD is related to— if it was a fire Um, so think about as a woman, if you had to give your baby up either for adoption or you had to get an abortion right now. People just minimize the emotional magnitude of that, but maybe in your head you hear babies cry, or maybe every time you walk by a store you see some baby clothes, that triggers that trauma that happened to you. Now whether or not that's something you willingly did or whether it's something Grandma made you do, or Mommy made you do, or the man you were with made you do it, or you felt like you didn't have any other choice— regardless of what the reason was, you made the choice. Every time you remember that moment, you can't move from it, right? It's kind of like unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is not about forgetting, it's about what do you do when the memory comes back, that you don't hold that person hostage to your unmet expectations.

Yeah, right.

So that's what forgiveness is, that every time I remember, I decide that I'm not going to let it hold me hostage. So with PTSD, it's more of a chemical kind of a thing, right? That's why people take medication, because you don't have the ability to speak to that thought and that thought move. So even though we try to slap some oil on it— and I'm a firm believer in healing and deliverance, I'm also a firm believer in clinical process And so when you have something that just keeps coming and keeps coming and keeps coming, it's like a little kid, right? Like, Mommy, can I go to the bathroom? Mommy, can I go to the store? Mommy, can I go to the store? Mommy, can I go to— so Mommy, you said I can go to— Mommy, you said— Mommy, remember you said I could go? Mommy, yesterday you said I could go to the store. That's how this thought is. It just keeps coming and it keeps coming and it keeps coming, and you don't have the ability in and of yourself to speak to that thought and say, go away. That's when you know clinical intervention needs to happen.

There's so many good thoughts in this, like being in the church. I know some people in here may not, you know, be a part of a church or in church, um, every week, but one of the things that I see in my role is a stigma of going to therapy. Yes. And, um, so many people— I, we've referred— I am a proponent of healing, deliverance therapy. Um, all of those things. I— we go through it, right, ourselves. And but yet in the church, they'll keep saying, you know, I— can you just pray for me? And so many times, you know, I told this one girl, I said no, because at some point it's not about prayer, it's about you getting help to walk through this process, to do the work. And Holy Spirit— here's the interesting thing though— Holy Spirit is like a counselor He is the counselor, he's a psychologist. So there are seasons and times where he's like, that's the root. I'll be in the bed and he'll bring— when Daddy said that, that's the trigger, that's why husband— Holy Spirit is so amazing. And so it's not just about prayer, guys. That's what I'm saying, like, prayer is great, let's keep praying, let's keep interceding, but what is Holy Spirit revealing to you in prayer? Because prayer is— we've made it us yapping and talking when really it's receiving, right? So if you don't get anything, maybe we need to change the way we're praying. Holy Spirit, you know all things, you know what's going on. Where is this coming from? That was that night, 2 AM. Deliver me or take me out, right? Give me 21 days. Let me start revealing the roots of this depression, this oppression, and, and where there's a foothold for the enemy to rightfully be able to come into your life. You guys, you understand what we're saying?

Um, what—

on that same topic, what stigmas, um, have you seen addressing mental health in the church?

So many. Um, I've heard people say If you don't speak that over your life— I've heard people say if you accept depression, that means you have no faith. Uh, where, where, where is your stick-to-it-ness? You know, God is bigger than any problem or situation, you know. So there's this big, um, tension between science and faith, spirituality and medication. And so that has been instilled in the church mainly because I will tell you from a cultural perspective, um, just look at how slavery has put Black folk into one little pot, right? And so the reason why we have call and response is because they didn't want us to learn the truth, right? So how do I hold you hostage? I don't give you the information you need. So if I tell you— if I, if I— so as the, as the leader of the Black group, I'm telling you don't trust the white man, but that's where the medicine is. Then I, I am— I'm unintentionally causing you not to reach beyond what I'm giving you. So you went from one oppressor to another oppressor. So sad to say, the church has done a terrible job of opening up who God is, right? And so we hold people hostage to one way of receiving God. So if God said, I am all things, but the Black church has taught us I'm all things as long as connected to the white man. I'm all things as long as it's not connected to the system. I'm all things unless it's connected to the cops. I'm all things unless it's connected to this. I'm all things unless it's welfare. I'm all things unless it's this. Then over time, generation after generation, then we say God is this right here. Don't go outside of that because it's not safe. So it wasn't— I would say that it wasn't intentional, but just the movement to always do that has caused us to distrust. Now I will say that the system, you know, gives us reason not to trust. Look at what happened to the Tuskegee Airmen. I mean, they give us reason not to trust. However, we got Black folk who are clinicians, so we got to be able to trust them. Yes, right. But the stigma is slap some oil on it, pray about it, and you'll be just fine because Jesus did it. But I tell you, the Bible says there are other things Jesus ideas that are not in this book. And so there are other ways of healing that we don't even get to see.

That's so good. So here's, here's another follow-up: thoughts on the church not teaching us on how to process through pain. You know, I see this a lot with, with loss or just grief, or you're working through a marriage and the wife cheated on the husband, the husband cheated wife, and you're like, y'all just gonna be fine, you know, we just gonna keep praying about it, and you send them on their way. Um, and this is not about bashing the church. Everybody knows that I'm a pastor in here, but what I am about is undoing what religion has done to God's people. I am not okay with God's people being the most— the brokest, depressed, down-out people. And so what we're trying to expose here, guys, is some of the tactics, I believe, of the enemy that was so sewn into the body of Christ that leaves us broken.

Yeah.

And, and so what I see is a lot of people not being taught on how to process through pain when realizing that sometimes it takes time, right? Like, and it's so— it's okay, it's okay to grieve that, that family member, that mom, that dad, that, that loss, that relationship. I mourned There was a relationship that still has not come back together, but I literally mourned that relationship almost like a death for years. He would tell you, I would just wake up crying as if this person died because I was mourning that person not being in my life, right? Yeah. And didn't really have a reference point on who to talk to about it. So what are your thoughts?

A pastor can't give what a pastor doesn't have. And most pastors aren't trained in grief and loss. They're not trained in, um, so you're, you're— it wasn't always mandatory to go to seminary. It wasn't always mandatory that you had to go through a training process. People felt a call and then they just kind of was like, God called me to this. But you got to do the work that comes with being, leading with people, right? So you got to learn how to communicate, you got to learn how to listen, right? You got a lot of pastors who are not equipped, and then you have pastors who are living a double life. So why am I going to tell you about pain and I ain't even talk about my own? Now you got to consider that that's not on the plate right now. That's not— we're not talking about that, because if I tell you to deal with your pain, and that means I have to deal with mine. And it's not easy. And so if that is not part of the curriculum, if you will, of how you train to become a pastor, then you're going to be ill-equipped. And it's just like when somebody dies, we say some of the silliest stuff, right? Why would you tell a parent when their child died, God wanted another angel? How is that helpful?

That's right.

Why would you say to somebody who just lost their mother, God God wanted them in heaven. Why is that helpful, right? But we use these little clichés because we have no skills when it comes to uncomfortable conversations. And so therein lies the problem. It's uncomfortable. We'll sing it, some glad morning when this life is over, I'll fly away to be absent from the bodies, be present with the Lord. But in that dying moment, they're like, nah, I'm good, I ain't ready, I ain't ready, I ain't trying to go with Jesus today. So in the hard conversations, right, if I'm struggling in my marriage, how I'm going to tell you about yours? All I'm going to tell you is slap some oil on it, pray about it, and get out of my office so that I don't have to deal with what's going on in there. Wow. And so there is the truth, that they're not equipped. And then it's hard work. It's hard work. And you got to be able to hold the space so people can wrestle, right? And if you don't know how to hold the space. So let me tell you what it means to hold space, right? So with these two, right, it wasn't my job to tell them the answer. My job was to hold the space, which means that I'm the least anxious presence in the room, and I fill the space with the love of God. And when you fill the space with the love of God, then the truth is going to come up, because a lie can't rest in the spirit of love. So as long as I'm holding the space Right? And so because I've been a hospice chaplain for 14 years, I know how not only to hold the space, how to control the space, and how to manage the space. So for me, I'll walk into a room and it'll be chaos because somebody's dying, but because I've learned to manage the space, when I come into the room, then I control the atmosphere. So if I'm taking the atmosphere and I'm saying, devil, you got to get out of the atmosphere, and love has to fill the atmosphere, then that means anybody who is anxious calms down. Yeah, that's how you hold space. Yeah. And pastors are not taught to do that because we're taught to manage the space in a different way. We're taught to get you so riled up. Now, for those who are money hungry, we gotta get you riled up so you give. We gotta get you riled up so you come back. We gotta get you riled up so you won't go to nobody else's church. We gotta I get you riled up so that you like, I'm on team Lang, baby.

It's the truth. And it's witchcraft. Yes, it is. It's become witchcraft in the church. And that's a whole other topic. Let's bring you back for that one. And you hold the space so well. That's, you know what, Like I said, we were talking and it, it was Holy Spirit revealed, but it was safe. This is why, like, some, some people in the room, I, you probably, people probably call you, text you like, this girl, should we give— I refer to safe places because there's safety in a multitude of trained counselors. And we recognize there's some things like, oh, we need Dr. Lang. We going to pray for you, going to love you, we going to father you, going to mother you, but There are certain things that we need to be okay with.

I want us to be okay with going to a Dr.

Lang or someone like Dr. Lang. It's okay. Turn and tell your neighbor, it's okay, baby. I'm serious. I have just this desire that you guys become whole. God doesn't want us ministering ill. That is not him. He's not a narcissist, like, right? You know what I mean? Like, anyway, so we gotta move on because I know it's getting late. So listen, here's, here's 2 more questions, and then I would love to open up the floor for their questions. Um, we talked about this a little bit, and you cannot get over— or we can't ignore this word trigger. And, um, so when you hear this word trigger, uh, it happens in the church, you know, You, even from a pastoral perspective, I can feel prophetically when people are being triggered, right? And I'm like, okay, what did I say? And once you get to talk to them, you realize, well, my last pastor said that or did this. And triggers— I feel like people get triggered all day long. Would you guys agree? Like, it's a real thing. The question is, I'm just going to ask you, is our triggers healthy? Like, are they that sign that says, you know, hey, is it like pain where pain says pay attention, something's wrong? Um, and or how do we get over them? Because who wants to be triggered all day, right?

So think about a trigger like you would think about a warning sign, right? And so you could— like, we used to play the game red light, green light. Anybody ever played a game where like you're like And so let's suppose every time you play red light, green light, whenever it was time to get to the green light, somebody would trip you and you would fall every single time. You'd be almost saying they would trip and fall. Then every time you would think about a game, every time you would think about competition, it would be a trigger. You would think about, I failed, I failed, I failed, somebody made me fall, somebody made me fall, somebody made me fall. And so then transpose that onto a barking dog. So let's suppose you went around the corner, you got bit by a dog. So now every time you hear a barking dog, you think about, I'm gonna get bit, I'm gonna get bit, I'm gonna get bit, I'm gonna get bit. Now inherently, that's not bad because it's going to keep you safe. But if you take it out of context, then it becomes a problem. So triggers are not bad in and of themselves, it's still up to you to manage what they mean to you. So I, I have triggers. There's some things like I— all right, so I wasn't raised in the church, I was raised in the synagogue. So when people tell me that I can't do something because I'm a girl, that triggers me, and that could send me over the edge because that is my— don't— what? So now, so now I'm gonna prove to you that not only am I qualified, I'm overqualified, and I'm more qualified than you. So now let's play this game right now. I could do that, right? So the trigger is for me to say, decide how you want to walk forward, right? And so I could walk overly sensitive, right? And I can take everything in offense and be like, you not— now look at me right, call me major, do this and do— or I can say, okay, now this is a trigger Let me get my mind right because they don't really know me, right? So it's really a way for me to help manage my emotions around what I'm about to walk into. And so you decide for yourself how those triggers— either you control them or they will control you. Now they're going to be there as long as you don't go to the roots and pull them up. So if you keep being triggered by something, that lets you know that you didn't dig deep enough to pull it up, because there's nothing too hard for God to do. Yeah. So if you're still being triggered by stuff, then now you have to figure out what didn't I let go of? I didn't dig around this, or maybe I'm digging in the wrong place and that's not the root of this trigger, right? Because some triggers are mirrored like a mirror, and you'd be like, I think it's that, but it's not really that, right? It's really something else. And so it's just really a way for you to figure out how am I going to walk forward in my truth, right? Because it doesn't matter what other people say about your trigger. Who cares what everybody else is saying your trigger means to you? You have to figure out what it means to you and how it's negatively affecting your life, because it's still a warning sign. If I walk into a place like— okay, so I'm the first woman chaplain not only in Delaware but also at NGB. So when I walk into a room My spidey senses are going up. So first I'm looking, are there any other Black people in the room? Most of the time there's not. I'm looking to see, are there any other women in the room? Most of the time there's not. So I'm looking for safety measures. So depending on what I see in the room depends on where I sit in the room, not unless I have assigned seat. As a chaplain, I normally have an assigned seat, so I sit in that place. So what trigger is like, how do I know where to sit in this space? Think about it that way. So I'm walking in The trigger is there, and I'm like, okay, that's a minute to pause. I call it give yourself the space and the grace to be in the moment to figure it out. Don't overreact, right? Because sometimes we, we just react to stuff and we make it worse. Take a minute and pause. Give yourself the grace and the space to say, wait a minute, something doesn't feel right. Scan the room. Scan the room, scan yourself, then make an intelligent decision.

This is good, guys. Pause. Turn to your neighbor, say pause. Give yourself the grace in the space. Grace in the space. So basically, until it's uprooted, we can turn the trigger into a positive. Because I know sometimes with me, I'm like, oh I get mad that I keep getting triggered. Is it just me?

Like, I'm like, dang, why do I keep—

why do I keep letting this— you know the person, you know the people, you know the people that trigger you, and you know it, right? And you have the conversation, even sometimes the template response, but yet it still triggers you. So it's, it's just a, it's a, it's a fork in the road opportunity to say, all right, I gotta go deeper. No condemnation, no shame, right? This is good. We're probably gonna get triggered later on, so we'll all be like, all right, fork in the road, pause, right? All right, let's do some questions. I know it's getting late. Who has the questions?

Okay, we'll walk around here. We got more of the mikaelin.

Oh, okay. Oh, Christianism. Okay, thank you. All right, so we're going to read some questions. All right, this is for you. As you were acquiring more seminary education, how hard was it to decipher from things you were taught to what you believe to be true?

What a good question. So for me, I have an eclectic faith background. So we didn't really go to church unless my grandma said so, or periodically. We didn't go very often. And then we started when I was about 7. It was her AME church. And then when I was 8, we went to the synagogue. And then I was— so while I was going to the all-Black synagogue, I was going to an all-white Catholic school. And so then after that, I went back to the AME church, then I went Pentecostal, then I I went Baptist, then I went back to the AME Church. And so for me, I've never conformed to what people said. Like, I can't remember not knowing who God is. I remember learning to pray when I was 2, and when I learned to pray, in my mind I said God heard me. In my mind I said God loves me. I didn't need anything else after that. So no matter what I've been through in my life, God has always been present. I don't remember not knowing. And so even when I went to seminary, I learned a lot of the truth, but the synagogue had taught me some of the truth anyway. And so for me, I wasn't shaken by it. It affirmed that a lot of this stuff that we do in this westernized, westernized, colonized understanding of who God is was made up anyway. So for me, I was like, bet. So what you telling me is the Sabbath isn't on a Sunday, the Sabbath has been on a Saturday, Friday night, Saturday, which is what the synagogue taught me. And the Catholic Church moved it to Sunday as a movement of power to say, now we hold the spiritual essence of everybody's life, right? So when I, when I did the work and found out that every denomination come from the Catholic Church, and every church you go to has liturgy that comes from the Catholic Church, and then you had all these Crusades, they was killing folk who weren't Catholic. Then let's talk about the witch hunt, then let's talk about all this other foolishness. That just released me from having to conform to a lie that the westernized, colonized— and I say that intentionally— westernized, colonized church has been feeding us. It's been a lie. And so I was then released and was like, I ain't doing this foolishness anyway.

Real. All right, how do you handle— there's a general question, but how do you handle people or family that continuously hurt you, and how do you get to the place of forgiving and moving on and learning how to let go?

Here's what I'll say: forgiveness is— unforgiveness is being in a jail that you have the key to and you refuse to let yourself out. Because while you're worried about them, they ain't thinking about you. They done gone on with their life. And then unforgiveness is you trying to hold them to your unmet expectation. You are not God. They don't owe you nothing. And so when you release people— because that's really what it is— when you release people from your unmet expectations and just put them where they belong. That's what I say. Just tell me the rules of engagement. If you're gonna be a liar, then you're in the liar pile, and I don't have to give you my time or my space. If you're a fornicator and an adulterer, I'ma put you in that pile. And I don't— listen, everybody starts up with a clean slate. When you prove to me that you don't deserve or earn the right to be in my space, That's no longer my fault, and I don't care, right? Because if you decided, that was your free will, right? So the problem is that we try to, we try to overcompensate for other people's free will. And the question is, you can't change anybody anyway. So now you've willingly turned over your power to them. So now they're holding the keys to your life. Why? So when you think about your family, you think about your friends— we've all been traumatized, right? But you think about how much power you've given them to control your life. And when you decide enough is enough, or you decide enough is no longer enough, right? Because enough could be enough, or enough could no longer be enough. I don't want just enough. I deserve better. You know, you got to be like David, right? So David walked up where his brothers were. His father told him, go bring your brother some lunch. And he was like, Dad, you know— this is Dr. Lang version— Dad, you know they don't like me. We don't bang like that. Of course, that ain't in the Bible, y'all. That ain't in the Bible. He's like, no, I didn't bang with them like that. They don't like me. I ain't going. He said, come on, man, take the lunch to your brother. So David shows up and he says, listen, I'm bringing y'all some lunch. Brother's like, what do you want? They was all scared. David's like, what's going on? They was like, yeah, there's a giant down there, you know, he trying to mess us up. David said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine? Now the grit that he had to say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine, is the grit that you need to have when you allow people to hurt you. You already know who they are, you know how they coming. So now you say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine who done walked up in my space thinking they going to change the atmosphere? You got to get an attitude with the devil. Tell that devil, get away, sit down. I'm not today, devil. You're not coming over here today. And that's how you do it. Every single time you get around people who trigger you, you have to decide, why did you give them the power to do so? What is it about them that's more important than you. That's not being selfish, that's having self-care.

The look though, a balancing question, cuz we are City of Love, right? And, and that is self-love. But how does that display— like, how do you display love with all of those details that you just talked about?

You got to get your mind right. You could love somebody from afar right now. Think about if somebody was punching you in the face every single day, every single day they was beating your behind. And the Bible say love those who despitefully— pray for those who despitefully use you. Are you like, Lord, do you mean them? That's why I wrote that book, Does Love Cover That? I was married to a habitual cheater, habitual cheater. I was a pastor, he was a minister of music, habitual cheater. Every church we went to, he had to have an assistant, right? And then eventually, yeah, baby was the choir director. I got a bonus daughter. And these jokers still told me, you the pastor, you can't leave because the saved wife covers the unsaved husband. What does that mean about a lying cheater who on the keyboard? Because clearly that ain't what we talking about. So I was mad. I wanted him to get hit by lightning on the keyboard in the middle of praise worship. I did. But nobody was holding him accountable, right? But you know all that stuff, right? You know he got a lust demon. Well, when somebody gonna lay some hands on him? Because clearly y'all think it's all right. So finally, you know, I said to myself, you know, does love cover that? And love don't cover it. Our love doesn't cover that. It doesn't cover everything. I can love you, but I need communication, I need integrity, I need honesty, I need trust, I need transparency. Love ain't enough, baby. And whoever told you that is lying to you. They just lying to you. So how does that manifest? Because you sit in a posture of love, right? Because we are in the— made in the image of life of God. So we are love. Love is what we do by the fruit of the spirit— kindness, goodness, grace, right? So it's really about what is in your mind in the moment that you think about. How do I manifest love in the midst of a chaotic situation? How do I manifest love with folk who despitefully use me? Because you understand that you're not held accountable for what they do. You are held accountable for what you do. And the Bible says when you go to the altar and you take your gift to the altar and you remember that your brother has all— or sister has all against you— so it's not about whether or not you was right or wrong, it's not even about whether or not you did it. If they have something against you, you go be reconciled and then come back. That means I can't even bring my gift to God if there's some problem. That causes me to be humble. That causes me to say, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and whatever foolishness is in me, help me get rid of that. So if you spend all your time getting your mess out, then you don't have time to worry about anybody else. So you could be the city of love and walk in a posture of love knowing that there's going to be some triggers. You be like, bless they spirit. Just bless their spirit, Lord. Help me not to cuss nobody today, Lord. That's very loving. Lord, fix my face today during service because there's a spirit of evil in the building. You got to talk to yourself, just say the right stuff.

All right, we got 2 more questions and then we're going to and we'll close, we'll close in prayer. But, um, here's a relevant question: is how— what advice do you have to heal from a long-term breakup relationship?

It goes back to why that person has more power and why that person matters more than you. Think about why are they more important. Why does it matter more to you that, that they choose to be with you, right? Because obviously they chose not to be with you, so now it's their loss. So why are you minimizing who you are in relation to who they are, right? We say, God, I want you to send me this. God, I want you to do this. But then we take a bunch of foolishness. So Mr. Right can't come if Mr. Right Now is in the way. So now you got to get in nigga would listen right now, say, get out the way, bro, you holding me hostage to my future. Like, I'm telling you, my ex-husband, I'm just like, why you just— why you waste all my time? Love my kids, love my kids, let me just say I love my kids, right? But you wasted my time, bro. You, you robbed me of the opportunity to be loved by a real man.

Wow.

So why, why am I giving you any of my You robbed me, sir. When he had the baby with the choir director, I said, you gave one of my babies away willingly. So you robbed me, sir. So now I can't fool with you. But you talked to him today and he said we should still be married. That's a negative, sir. So you just have a—

you have—

you have to raise your, your understanding of who you are to a higher level. If he didn't earn the right to be in your space, because you were created to make the not good good, it's not the other way around. The Bible don't never tell women how to treat their husbands. It tells them on a number of occasions in Malachi The Bible's Malachi's talking, and the guy coming to the altar, he said, what happened? The Lord said, I saw what you did to the wife of your youth. I saw what you did, and now you on my altar with all these tears. I don't see none of that. Isn't she made by the same Creator as you are? She's the wife of your covenant. You never see that with women. Why? Because I believe God had a conversation with her before she was taken to the man. And God probably said, listen, you about to walk into a bunch of foolishness. I'm gonna tell you right now, you don't need him, but he sure need you. I'm gonna tell you, you can do this whole thing by yourself because I created you in that way. You can multitask, you can do this, you can do that. You could do the nurturer, you're loving, you're this. But I'm telling you, your assignment is him.

Wow.

I need you to do your assignment.

Wow.

So when you look at your husband, you say, oh, baby, it's my son. Baby, it's my son. Kenneth is my son. And he's pushover.

All right, we got one more question. This is so good. All right, so, and this is relevant. It says, what can you do for a person who continues to come for prayer from you but they don't want to acknowledge that they need, or admit to acknowledge that they have inner healing, that they need inner healing or deliverance? So basically they just keep coming and say, I need prayer, I need prayer, and you're telling them, no, you need, you know, counsel, deliverance, inner healing.

Well, if somebody keep coming to you—

somebody say medicine.

You need medicine, baby. If somebody keeps coming to you and they're asking you for what they don't understand, there are two things happening. Obviously they think you have what they need, and then you are not articulating articulating in a clear manner what they need. They keep coming back for a reason. Yeah. So now your prayer has to be, God, how can I articulate what they need in a way that they understand? So your frustration is a distraction from their healing because they're coming to you repeatedly for a reason and they're not getting what they need. Now, somebody is lying. Somebody lying. Either you lying saying you got power you don't have, or they lying saying they need something they don't need. But if God is in the midst, when you know better, you do better. Too much is given, much is required. So we always have people saying, can you pray for me? Can you pray for me? Pray and pray for me. Can you pray for yourself, bro? Yeah, sis, how about for the next 3 weeks, we're gonna have a prayer coaching session. Are we just gonna talk about what is prayer and how to get a prayer through? Because you can't allow the devil to distract you from your ministry. Yeah, so you got to know your frustration is a distraction from the very thing God called you to do. And so if you're getting frustrated, you know that either your prayer life, your fasting life, your consecrated life is off-kilter. Because why are you getting frustrated because they asking for you what you said yes to God about. Don't get mad at me because you said yes to God. Do what you're supposed to do.

Can we just all say ouch? God forgive me, I didn't write that question, but it's relevant. Here, here's one last one I just realized that I skipped over, and this is interesting because I was talking to my human resource director and I had an employee that was thinking about going on leave of absence. So she came to me, you know, as her leader, and said, I'm thinking about doing a leave of absence. I talked to HR and they said that leave of absence in the United States is the number— excuse me, mental health is the number one reason why people are applying for leave of absence in the United States. And here's the question. The question in the room says, what is the best way to tell employer that you need a mental health leave of absence?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Well, I'll tell you what you don't do. Don't go in there busting up in the place, talk about, I need to take a break, and then they gonna give you one. Absolutely. I would say, um, the best way to do that is to be consistent, right? And so there are times when you have— depending on where you're working, you You have to sow seeds first. You can't just— because if your, your work environment is not acculturated to say that mental health is important, then you're walking into something, you're going to lose that battle from the beginning. So you have to be strategic in how you introduce the subject, because for some employees, that's not even a valid excuse. They're like a suck it up and drive on mentality. And so So if you— you have to be strategic in your thinking and how to present it. And so let's suppose you work in an environment that's just really high tension, right? And you say— you put a plan in place the same way you do with everything else. You say, Boss, ma'am, sir, you know, I thought about what's going on and I'm really stressed out about it. So maybe that's the first meeting. I'm finding it very stressful. I've reached out for some help and I just want to let you know that this this is the path I'm taking. So maybe the next week you go back and say, you remember last week I was saying how I'm really stressed out? So you have to create a history of you having this conversation, because if it ever has to go on paper, you would say on, on first week Monday, I went to the supervisor, and the following week I said to the— you have to have a paper trail, right? So just like in the military, if something needs to happen, I have to have a paper trail to say this is the conversations I've had. This is the trajectory of how this is moving. And so you just have to be strategic. And if your organization is not mental health friendly, then you have to sow seeds over time and have documentation so that by the time you get to HR, you'll have paperwork to say, listen, I— and then call somebody like me and I'll put it on the memo and say, listen, I don't—

we—

she need a break.

Yeah.

Well, she gonna bust up in here and tear the whole joint up. I'm not gonna put that in the memo, but you see what I'm saying?

But you gotta create a paper trail, which is why, again, I'm gonna put my plug in. Why even if you are going to your employer, you have to seek medical—

yes, medical attention. And having that, uh, right, helps.

You guys enjoy this talk.

So I created something for each and every woman in the house. Um, so my new book that's sitting over there is called Spiritual Awakening. And so I wrote that book because, um, there's a whole— there's a history of us minimizing who we are in relation to our faith when it comes to mental health and trauma. And so one of the things I wanted to do was put together a way for people of faith to walk through a trauma healing process that's not intimidating. So I call it SHIFT—Spiritual Healing Inner Emotions Focused Therapy. So the inner emotion is the brokenness that we feel. And so this paper I give you is a definition of trauma, what the biblical foundation is, which is Psalm 42. There's no way you could believe trauma is not real unless you read David. David was full of trauma, lamented about trauma. So then I tell you what shift is. And then I give you a little exercise, what I call your head work, your heart work, and your hard work, and how do you shift through trauma. Um, so I created a course, I created a mentoring program that I could walk with you through it. And so, but this is just a little snippet. And then in the book you'll see the process that you go through. We talk about trauma, we talk about biblical examples of women, and I intentionally only use women because we have a lot of trauma stories in the Bible that nobody talks about, like Esther. We be like, yeah, she the queen, yeah, but she was in the first beauty pageant. She was taken from her family and stuck up there with a bunch of women who had to sleep with the king regardless of what they wanted to do. So we don't talk about none of that. We don't talk about Mary was 15 years old. Let's go back to Hagar and how they went to Egypt and got her so she had to sleep with the old man because the woman couldn't have no baby. So now you got me hemmed up with this old dude, I got to have his baby, and then you got an attitude with me because I got pregnant by your husband, man. But you ain't gonna find that in the Bible. So I give you this paper just to kind of introduce you to the process.

So can you guys give a clap to her? Listen, I think there's more of us in this room than there are books on the table. I'm gonna say that again. It's more of us in this room than there are—

I got more books in the bag. Well, that was my marketing setup.

All right, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I'm gonna sell her out.

I look good. You still— more of us. No, seriously, there's more of us in this room than books on the table. Yes, she does have more, so— but I would love it if everyone was so into to her ministry. I'm just gonna be real transparent. I've read her resume and she said, 'I'll come for nothing.' And so we're going to take up an offer, but she just wants to give us information. She is— I've talked to her without her sending me an invoice. This is just who she is. And even the invoice you sent me, I'm just— listen, we only bring people that we know. That love God, that love you, and that want to sow into your life. So it's honoring of us to sow back into their ministry. So please, let's just clear her table.

How much are your books? $15.

Okay, so they're $15, guys, um, and we can, we can do that. So let's just transition. You have something?

What's your Cash App? Oh, so my Cash App is dollar sign D-E-S-A-K-A-J-O-F-L-O. Did I spell it right? D-E-S-A-K-A-J-O-S-F-L-O. That's okay, Joe's Fluff.

Okay, so yeah, so Cash App. And are you gonna help me? Her sister here will help with her product table. It's D-E-S-A-K-A-J-O-S-F-L-O.

It's a special today because online you get it for $21.99, so get it today at 1:15. Okay.

Yes, so we have two— we, um, and did you want to go over your gift that you wanted? And she just keeps on giving, and so she wanted everyone to leave with a gift, and so I'll let you— I'll let Dr. Lynn share with you.

So let me tell you what everybody can a gift with every purchase of your book. Let me tell you what you get. So some of us are, uh, connected to, or might be broke, busted, disgusted, and can't be trusted, and our credit is jacked up. So I got into this ministry to help people who need to fix their credit. So I'm going to give everyone— at the back of your book there's a QR code, and so here you'll get a free credit analysis. It won't cost you anything. Just put the information in and then I will pull up all your stuff and give you a free credit analysis of what you need to do. Okay, everybody gets that. And for coming today, you get a free 3-day, 2-night getaway. QR code is in the back of the book. You can go where you want to go. You go to Florida, you go to Vegas, you can go to wherever you— I don't know where you want to go. Free 3-day, 2-night getaway. It's in the back of your book. Come on. All right, y'all don't know how to receive a gift.

When she told me, I was like, yes, God, thank you, thank you so much. All right, guys, stand to your feet. We're going to pray over you, and we also want