Teena Myers

I initially met Dr. Kathy Baker when a friend invited me to her monthly interfaith Bible study. It is impossible to accept every invitation I receive, and I politely declined.

The next day, another friend called. “Teena, Pat and I are going to a Bible study led by Kathy Baker on Saturday. You want to come with us?” When something repeatedly comes to my attention, it’s a clue God is leading.

Carol parked her car in front of LongueVue House and Gardens. We walked into the beautiful setting and listened to an intriguing message. At the conclusion of the meeting, I introduced myself and Dr. Baker consented to tell me her story.

Her father, C.A. Beason, paced in the hospital waiting room, anxious for news. His wife, pregnant with Kathy, had experienced many difficulties throughout the pregnancy. She had already lost two babies, and he did not want to lose another one.

A somber doctor walked into the waiting room. C.A. braced for bad news. “You’ll have to choose,” said the doctor, “your wife or your baby.”

He couldn’t choose. “Where is the chapel?”

C.A. was no stranger to the things of God. His father and his wife had converted to Christianity. Disillusioned by the hypocrisy he witnessed in church. he abandoned his father’s God and wasn’t interested in embracing his wife’s faith. But his circumstance demanded help from a higher power. He sat in the dimly lit chapel and made a deal with God. “If you will give me my wife and my child, I’ll give you the rest of my life.”

He walked back to the waiting room pondering what to tell the doctor. The doctor met him in the hall. “I don’t know what happened, but your wife and baby girl are fine.” God had given him two lives for one and then balanced the deal by calling Kathy to serve him before she was born (Galatians 1:15).

“All I knew was Christian parents who loved God and me,” said Kathy. “I knew that I was called to preach the gospel at a young age. In everything I did, God exalted me. I was the shiny pebble.”

Kathy adored her father, who was larger than life in her eyes. He always told her that she could do anything she wanted to do until Kathy shared her calling. Kathy and her father were returning home after a Wednesday night service about missionaries. She looked at her father and said, “One day, I’m going to preach the gospel.” Her father rested his hand on his beloved daughter’s shoulder and said, “Honey, I know you are very special, but girls don’t do that.”

Kathy’s perfect world crumbled when her father barely survived triple bypass surgery. He returned home frail; months elapsed before he could walk. His brush with death made eight-year-old Kathy aware of the need to secure her eternal future. She had always communed with God through her music but felt prompted to do more. She yielded her life to God and asked to be baptized in water.

The following year, Kathy awoke to her mother’s cries of pain. “Find your father, I’m sick.” Kathy ran outside in her pajamas to find her father, who arose early to walk around the block for exercise. Still weak from his surgery, her father found the strength to run home and call the doctor. Kathy stood in the hall and watched her mother being wheeled out of the house on a gurney and into the waiting ambulance. That was the last time she saw her mother.

“All of a sudden my whole life was upside down. My mother was gone. My father slipped into a deep depression and became emotionally detached. In the middle of school, I would close my books and walk home. My nine-year-old mind reasoned I was in a bad dream. If I went home, everything would be different. Finally, my father threatened to put me in a boarding school if I couldn’t control my behavior. Even though he was very compassionate, I felt rejected. Instead of boarding school, he enrolled me in a church school. It was the best thing he could have done for me. I survived by burying myself in church activities. “

Kathy did well in her new school and her life was returning to normal when her father remarried. His new wife was insecure in their relationship and jealous of her husband’s love for Kathy. She made the next five years of Kathy’s life a hellish nightmare. Separated from her father’s help by her stepmother’s deception, Kathy longed for the day she could leave.

Five days after graduating from high school, Kathy moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to attend William Carey University. “My sudden departure broke my father’s heart. He was never aware of the troublesome relationship I had with my stepmother. I had to leave to survive. This time, I coped with life by burying myself in college activities.”

During her sophomore year, Kathy’s father was diagnosed with cancer. Radical surgery at Boston General Hospital’s Cancer Center failed. He was fading fast by the end of her sophomore year.

“His looming death was more than I could handle, so I enrolled in the summer semester to avoid going home,” said Kathy. “My brother came to the college and warned me that if I didn’t come home, I’d never see him alive again.”

When she returned home, Kathy didn’t recognize the man resting in the recliner. Her “General,” as she affectionately called him, the man she adored who could do anything, was thin and frail. She spent every waking moment with him for two weeks. The night before he died, he called her to his bedside with the nickname he gave her, “Doodie Doll, I’ve got two things to tell you. One, you can do anything you want in this life if you want it enough. Two, don’t ever forget that I love you.” Kathy hugged him, “I’ll see you in the morning, Daddy.” Her brother entered to sit with him and Kathy went upstairs. Her father died at 5 a.m. the next morning.

“My brother decided a trip would help me deal with my grief, so I went to Corpus Christi to visit friends. Three days later, my sister-in-law called. My brother had died. I returned home to bury another family member. Life didn’t make sense. I was an orphan and now my brother was gone.

I returned home for a not-so-merry Christmas. I came downstairs in the same dress I wore to my father’s funeral. My stepmother flew into a rage when she saw the dress. She ordered me to change clothes and then demanded that I move out of the house. I had no place to go, and I was scared.”

Kathy put her clothes and jewelry in the cream-yellow Monte Carlo her father bought her shortly before he died. She knew no one would be at the college, but having no place else to go, she headed for Hattiesburg. Tears streamed down her face as she pulled onto I-10 East. When she saw the exit for Read Blvd., she remembered Word of Faith, the church her brother and sister-n-law attended. She had met Pastor Charles Green at her brother’s funeral. It was Sunday; she was dressed for church, so she pulled into the parking lot.

The service had already started when Kathy walked through the wooden double doors. “The decision to visit Word of Faith changed my life. The instant I heard the worship, I knew I was home. To me God is in music. That is where I find him and know him best,” said Kathy. By the end of the service, Kathy knew she needed to stay in New Orleans.

“I was twenty-one when Pastor Green preached a message that redirected my life. My Baptist training taught me women can’t preach the gospel, but I couldn’t deny the calling tugging at my heart. In the sermon, Pastor Green explained that knowing we had a calling wasn’t enough. We had to surrender to that calling. I met with Pastor Green the next day to explain that I had always known I had a calling.

He leaned back in his chair and cracked up laughing as only Charles Green could do. Then he said, ‘I was wondering when you were going to figure that out?’ He didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it. He didn’t tell me I was crazy. He believed me. I enrolled in Word of Faith’s Bible College.”

Pastor Myrtle D. Beall, the founder and pastor of Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit, Michigan, took Kathy under her wing. Affectionately known as Mom Beall, she spoke regularly at Word of Faith. Kathy went to the altar for prayer after one of her sermons. Pastor Beall looked at Kathy and said, “O my! Who are you? You are very special.” Then she turned and said to Pastor Green standing behind her, “Charles, she is very special.” Pastor Green nodded in agreement.

Pastor Beall became Kathy’s mentor and unraveled decades of teaching that women can’t preach the gospel. They talked by phone for months. Whenever Pastor Green’s family went to Detroit for a convention, they brought Kathy with them.

“Pastor Beall knew the kind of resistance I would face,” said Kathy. “Breaking through the glass ceiling would not be easy. I was a keynote speaker at a worship conference in Dallas with a thousand in attendance. The man who spoke before me started with scripture in Genesis and went to Revelation explaining why women should not be in ministry. You could have cut the tension with a knife. By the time he finished, I wondered if I had erred when I entered the ministry. I went to my hotel room in tears and called my husband. He prayed for me and encouraged me to do what I do best.

The man who introduced me at the next session said, ‘Well, you have to admit that any woman who has the courage to stand up here now deserves a standing ovation.’ Everyone in the audience stood up and cheered.”

A woman in ministry is a controversial issue in the church. I’ve learned to resolve difficult questions by comparing the words attributed to man in the Bible with the “thus saith the Lord” scriptures. Micah Chapter 6 begins, “Listen to what the Lord says…”  The Lord listed the good things he had done for Israel. First item on the list, he brought Israel out of Egypt. Second item,  “I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.” Clearly, God sent three people to lead Israel, two men and a woman. That one statement from God trumps all scriptures that appear to deny women a place of leadership.

On occasion God brings someone into my life whom he wants to help, but he doesn’t tell me his plan. Both Kathy and I believed God had connected us for a reason. I met with her periodically to film her teachings for my faith blog. At the end of a session, I was packing my equipment when she asked me to stay.

She did not look at me as she told me why. “Teena, after my stepmother threw me out of the house, I moved to Texas where a coworker raped me. I became pregnant with his baby. With no family left to support me or the financial means to raise a child, I gave the baby up for adoption. Thirty years later, he found me. I want you to write a book about that experience.”

Kathy was convinced I was the one to write her story. But she had no idea how much of her time I needed to write her memoir. I consented to do it for a share of the royalties, knowing I may never see a penny. The odds of completing the project were low, and I was right. The demands of her ministry made it impossible to write her story. But I had enough information to write an essay that I sold to Cook Publishing for their Sunday school material.

Even though the book was never completed, God used me to fulfill her desire to share her story. The reach of an independently published book is small. Especially for people with a small following. Cook Publishing shared her story with an audience of 250,000 and paid me $450 for 1,600 words.