TD Jakes — He-motions
The enemy knows that if he kills your man or your son or your father, he doesn't have to kill you. You'll spend the rest of your life with your heart broken over who fell apart, who didn't love you, who didn't raise you, who didn't turn out like you thought, who wasn't there for you. He'll break your heart with what he does to your son and what happened to your father, or what happened to your husband or your boyfriend, and he'll break your back as you carry a weight that you were never built to carry because you had no man to stand by your side.
That's why when the baby Jesus was born, Joseph had to take him down into Egypt and hide him for 2 years, because Satan had a contract out for men, and he was willing to kill every male child until he got to that child, because the prophecy in the book of Genesis said that "the seed of the woman would rise up and bruise the head of the seed of the serpent". My sister, he's not after you. He's after your seed. Well, what seed does a woman have? The woman's seed is her son. The prophecy is in the male child, the Hebrew word Zera. He wants to kill your seed.
David is the canvas on which I paint, because David is the first kid that I see that God called to be a king while he was still a kid and said, "I have found a man after my own heart". And that was one of the reasons Samuel had trouble finding David, because Samuel was looking for a man, but God was talking about a boy. Why did God call the boy a man? It's because God knew that he had the power to make the boy become what he called him. Are you hearing what I'm saying? And so, I wanna share with you that there is a king in every kid, and there is a kid in every king. And you'll never be the king that you were created to be until somebody looks at the kid in you and sees the king in you and pulls out of you who you were destined to be.
So Samuel opened up his horn of oil and poured it lavishly on the head of David, until all of David's clothes, stinking though they were, were saturated with the anointing of possibilities and potentials. And most men die with needles in their arm, sick, diseased, and in trouble because nobody ever looked them in the eye and told them, "I see the king in you". Because when somebody sees the king in you, it makes you control the kid in you. But in the absence of a kingly prophecy, you're left to be a kid, kids, playing in the toy chest of your childhood. Oh, and the toys we play with, toys. Where my boys at? Every boy in here knows his toys.
My brother says the only difference between a man and a boy is how much he pays for his toys, but some of the toys we play with have no price at all, if you count money as the only price you pay. But there are some things that you play with that cost more than money. It's your toys that's killing you, the temptations of your youth: toys. So at the risk of ruining your reputation, my brother, I would ask you, while you are sitting here listening at me talk, if you would be man enough to open up your toy chest and let's look in the box at what you like to play with when nobody is looking. Because somewhere in your toy chest, sir, is your kryptonite. And until you define your kryptonite, you will always be vulnerable to destruction.
Hmm, I think much of who I am today is the result of the fact that my mother had a proclivity of looking me in the eye and making me think, when I was just a child, that my thoughts were important, as she cooked our dinner, and I sat by the table ambling on and on, mountains of meandering words and heaps of foolishness. She signified my thoughts with her attention and made me think that I was wise, when I was just silly as a fool. But the brightness in her eyes convinced me that there was something in my head worth preserving, so I tried many drugs and got stuck by none of them and kept on walking through the drug phase of my life.
When all of my friends died with needles in their arms, I resisted the needle because of the gleam in my mother's eyes, who somehow was able to see the king in me while I was still just a kid. And so, I thought it was responsible of me that I would invite the women into this conversation, as I stood at the checkout counter in the grocery store, and I saw walls of women's magazines: "Women's Today" and "Essence" magazine and "America's Woman" and all kinds of great magazines. They are absolutely wonderful magazines, and they give you all kinds of information. "Five ways to keep your sex life alive". "Ten ways to make your husband come back home". "Three things that a man really wants from his woman".
But if you would check, most of the articles are written by women, and then I understood after 28 years of counseling couples how many times I wanted to get up behind the back of the man that the woman was trying to win because the marriage was falling apart, and I wanted to say, "Don't say that". She thought she was winning him, but she was pushing him farther away, because she doesn't understand how a man thinks, and she doesn't know how to talk to a man. And in her effort to win him, she is losing him, and she can't figure out why he is fading away. And so, I thought it was incumbent upon me that when I wrote the book and when I did the conferences to include sections for women to read, too, as I attempt to translate the language of manhood. You see, we speak a different language, and we approach things differently.
Let me share some things with you, and I think you can see what I'm saying. When women talk, they talk in circles. It reminds me of a plane about to land on a runway. When a plane is about to land on a runway, it doesn't come straight at it. It circles around and around, and then it makes its approach, and then it makes its descent, and it hits the runway.
Listen to me, fellas, most men don't understand this about the woman. That when the woman starts complaining about cutting the grass, she's really worried about something that happened at work. But she hasn't hit the runway yet. She starts talking about the grass. You went out there to cut the grass, thinking that will satisfy her. You come back, and she's still mad because it wasn't about the grass. She was circling the runway. She never hit the ground. Women talk in circles. Men talk in straight lines.
I come in, and I ask my wife, "What's for dinner"? That's what I really want to know. She says to me, "Well, I was getting off work, and I recognized we didn't have nothing at the house to cook, so I knew I had to stop by the store to get something. I was gonna go to Big Bear because they had a sale on, but the traffic was backed up all the way up 75. I had to go down 35 and up Euclid. I came up Euclid and got to... Now you know I hated to pay full price for chicken when I knew that right over at Big Bear they had it on sale, but I went ahead and got it anyway. And while I was in the store, I saw some ice cream and some chips. I ran into Fred's wife. Can you believe it? That girl is pregnant again. Anyway, I got back home". Can't you just say, "Chicken"?
Men talk in straight lines. Women talk in circles. And the reason that they talk in circles... it's not a criticism. It's an observation. It's an explanation for men, because the Bible says that if a man is going to stay with a woman, he has to dwell with her according to knowledge. And the reason that we don't stay is because we don't understand. He will only dwell with you if he can understand you. That's why he wants to know what's wrong with you. Now when you start crying and saying, "I don't know," it endangers his ability to dwell, because he walks away confused. And when he becomes confused, he becomes frightened. And when he becomes frightened, he becomes withdrawn.
And suddenly he's physically there, but he's emotionally unavailable because he can't figure out what's wrong with you. Where are my fellows at? Am I right about it? Can I go a little bit deeper tonight? The woman processes externally. So whatever the woman is worried about, that's why she wants to talk about it. Fellas, you have to understand that women process by communicating, by talking. When something is really bothering her, she wants to talk about it. So she's ironing and suddenly she's talking about, "These kids are driving me crazy. I can't believe I got to go down to that school again, and I just got..."
The reason she's talking about it is not that she wants you to fix it. She doesn't want you to resolve it. She doesn't want you to straighten it out. She's thinking about it. And when a woman thinks, she talks out loud. I know. I feel you. Where my sisters at? Now, sisters, let me explain something to you. While you're talking about what's going on with the kids and how it's worrying you and it's driving you crazy and it's getting on your nerves, and you look over to him, and he's playing with the remote control, you look at him and say, "That's what's wrong with you. You don't care about nothing going on in this house. It's our kids going to hell, and you're sitting up there watching a football game".
Let me help you with this. Men process internally. Listen, sisters. This is really important. The more something bothers us, the less we say about it. When a man is really worried and really upset and really frustrated, this is what he says... Absolutely nothing, because what you do externally we do internally. We go in our cave to process the issue. And because you think that we don't care because we don't verbalize, you say we are not emotional. I say we are he-motional. He cares about it just as much as you do. He just doesn't communicate it like you do.
So the problem that you talked to him about on Monday, and he didn't say nothing about it but kept playing with the remote control and looking at the movie, flipping from channel to channel, here he comes to you on Thursday and say, "I've been thinking about what you said". And by then you'd forgotten, "What are you talking about"? Here is the problem. We go inside the process. You go outside the process. Here is the problem, though. Sometimes men go in, and we can't get back out, and we get trapped on the inside because we can't find a solution. And when a man can't find a solution, he becomes imprisoned.
I wanna tell you what's dangerous. The most dangerous thing that can happen to a man is for him to be in prison, solitary confinement. The very first thing that God teaches us about men, he says, "It is not good for a man to be alone". And the truth of the matter is there are men all around this room, who went in their cave to process something years ago. Some of them went in the cave in their boyhood, trying to figure out why their father didn't stay. Some of them went in the cave over their first wife who left them. Some of them went in the cave over the job that fired them. And when a man can't get out, all he does is bring his toys into his cave to keep him comfort in his pain. And it's not the toys that have him addicted. It is the gross loneliness of having no one who understands the dream that died on your way to masculinity.
So, my sisters and my brothers, I came to blow the whistle and sound the alarm and tell you that there are men in this room and at your dinner table, going to your school. They are your sons, your husbands, your boyfriends, and your lovers, and they are secretly dying in their cave. They are in solitary confinement. They are alone, and they do not tell you because they cannot speak.
Why would a preacher stop preaching for a minute and go this deep into personal relationships? I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you why. Eighty percent of the suicides that occur in this country are committed by men. Eighty percent, not fifty, not sixty, not forty-five, eighty percent of the people who drive cars off cliffs or stick guns in their mouth and blow their brains out are men. Let me go deeper. Men are 3 times more likely to commit suicide in the middle of their lives, their 40s and 50s, than any other time. To get to the middle of their lives and suddenly decide, "I'm not gonna get out of this mess. I'm not gonna get out".
When I was teaching this in my church, one young man stood up, and he said, "Pastor, I hear you. I understand you. I'm glad you're teaching on this". He said, "But I just wanna know one thing". I said, "What, son"? He said, "Will I ever be happy"? He said, "I think I can hold on if I knew that someday I will be happy". And he said, "I just want to know will I ever be happy"? He said, "I'm not talking about pleasing other people, and bringing my truck over to help grandmama move, and fixing somebody's flat tire, and being there for every crisis in everybody's life, and being everybody's Superman". He said, "I'm not talking about performing and putting on airs and making points on the team of life". He said, "I just want to know will I ever be happy? Me, not make other folks happy. Will I ever be happy? When will it be about me"?
Mother's Day is a big day all over this country. It starts about March, the marketing for Mother's Day. All the kids are running all over the house getting ready for Mother's Day. It's a big event. All the stores have got all kinds of music, all kinds of songs. Everything ready for Mother's Day. They get all kinds of gifts, all kinds of flowers, all kinds of cards. Father's Day passes by so quick. If you blink, you won't even know it happened. You will get some little raggedy tie that they bought on your credit card, some color that you don't need, that looks like the tie you got before. And that's how they celebrate us when we stay, but they curse us when we leave.
Are you hearing what I'm saying? And so, they die and they die. And when we die, we die with our lips closed, because we are taught not to say anything. At little ages, they tell us, "Come on, Junior. Big boys don't cry. Suck it up, boy. Suck it up". So we suck it so far up, we asphyxiate and die, and the light can go out of his eye 10 years before his body leaves your house. You're not losing us in the straightaway. You're losing us in the straightaway. As long as everything is straight and normal and predictable, we do real good. It's in the turns, when you go this way and I go that way. You're losing us in the turns. See, when it's my turn, you have to move the way I move. You have to deal with it the way I deal with it. If I don't come unglued, you can't come unglued. If I'm quiet, you gotta be quiet. When I get ready to talk, you gotta be ready to talk because this is my turn, and you're losing us in the turns.
I'm gonna identify some turns for you. Can I do that? If he's a man who loves to work and responsible and take care of himself, and all of a sudden he loses his job, for him it's a crisis. He's in the middle of a turn. He becomes somber, silent, quiet, reserved, angry, confused, intimidated, and he's in a turn. You gotta be careful what you say to him right now. You gotta be careful how you react to him right now. He's sensitive. He's vulnerable. He's in the middle of a turn. If he gets to the middle of this life, and he's got crisis with the kids, and his parents have died, now he's in a turn. Death is a turn that's unbelievable.
If he develops a sickness in his life, something goes wrong in his body he's in the middle of a turn. And if he gonna make it in the marriage to 50 years and 60 years, you gotta be careful. It ain't the straightaways where you're losing us. It's in the turns. When he gets in a turn, you can't let your mouth take over the situation. You gotta flow the way he flows, because he's gonna turn, and you will lose your son or your husband or your boyfriend or your father. You'll lose him in the turns, and you'll never even know that he fell off, and you're riding the bike alone.
I guarantee you tonight, as I hasten to a close, that there are men in this room who are in the turn through their career, in their life. They climbed to the top of the mountain, became successful, only to find out there's nothing up there. There are men who are going through changes in their life, developing sickness, and burying loved ones, and they are afraid and stressed out and worried, and they are talking to absolutely no one. And they're sitting here tonight, and they're looking at me, and they're looking through the windows of the mask of who they pretend to be, and they are shocked that I would deal with the issue and that somebody would talk about where they are. But they are in this room tonight. They are here, and I'm gonna tell you about all of you nightlighters, sneakers, and hiders, and down-low livers, and whoremongers, and hypocrites, and got girlfriends on the side.
And during the day you're Deacon Wilson, and in the middle of the night you're on the Internet. You're "wet willy" on the Internet, playing games trying to recapture your love relationship. Let me tell you what you are. You are scared. You are scared you're gonna die in your cave alone. You are scared that you don't have it anymore. You are scared that you're not gonna be able to work things out or be who you wanna be, and you do what every boy does when he's stuck in the cave: you drag your toys in the cave with you, and you play with your toys in the middle of the night to comfort yourself and the pain of your aloneness. I wanna tell every man in this room who's ever screamed in the night, who's ever woke up in the middle of the night worried and sick and tasted the bile in your mouth, frustrated and at the end of your rope, and you wonder, "Does anybody know that Superman is tired and that I'm frustrated and that I am afraid and that I am dying while I'm living"?
I came all the way from Texas to tell you that God can hear your... He can hear your... He can hear your... That's why David loved God. It wasn't for the palace. It wasn't for the mansion. It wasn't for the chariot. It wasn't for the horse and buggy. He said, "But I love the Lord because he heard my cry, and he pitied every groan. And as long as I live and troubles rise, I will hasten to his throne". And Jonah said, "Out of the belly of the fish cried I, and the Lord, the Lord heard me". That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to tell you tonight you might be in the choir stand, you might be in the balcony, you might be in the upper floor, you might someday be listening to this tape, reading my book, or listening at my music, I came to tell you that God can hear your...