From Small Town Texas To Ministering To Thousands

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them our
American Stories dot com. There’s some of our favorites. And
this next story is brought to us by a listener
Mike Chapman, who listens to us on ten forty who

(00:33):
out of des Moines, Iowa. Abraham Lincoln is one of
the greatest leaders in US history, but prior to his
being elected the sixteenth President of the United States, he
used his skills as a wrestler to win approval from
the masses. Mike Chapman has been writing about and researching
wrestling for many years. Is also the author of The

(00:56):
Sport of Lincoln. Here is Mike Chapman to this turning
point story in Abraham Lincoln’s life. Aside from my passion
for wrestling, I have long been intrigued by the history
of US presidents. That really began to blossom when I
was executive editor of the daily newspaper in Dixon, Illinois,

(01:16):
which is the hometown of Ronald Reagan. I was the
editor there from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety eight.
During that ten year period, I discovered that Dave Lincoln
had actually served in the very same location that is
Dixon today. Lincoln served there during the Black Hawk War
of eighteen thirty two, and that fact really inspired me

(01:39):
to learn more about Lincoln as a young man, which
in turn led me to the little village of New Salem, Illinois.
It is located about two hundred miles south of Dixon
and about twenty miles northwest of Springfield, Illinois. And what
a wonderful place that is for any history buff Abraham
Lincoln was born on February sixth, eighteen o nine and

(02:00):
raised in Kentucky, but when he was seven, the Lincoln
family moved to Indiana. He grew into a strapping young man,
nearly six ft four inches tall and weighing about one
hundred and eighty pounds. He first strolled into New Salem
in eighteen thirty one as a twenty two year old
looking for a new start in life, and soon he

(02:21):
became engaged in an event that was destined to play
a very important role in his career. It was called
scuffling or grappling, and in modern terms it is called wrestling.
But first a little background. Wrestling is often called mankind’s
oldest sport, as it is a subject in some of

(02:42):
the oldest pieces of literature known to exist. In the
Epic of Gilgamesh, composed an ancient samare which today is
now known as a rock. Nearly four thousand years ago,
a wrestling contest between Gilgamesh, the king of the large
city of Uruk, and a forest giant named Inkadou is
an important feature of the saga in the Bible. As

(03:03):
described in Genesis, the Hebrew patriarch Jacob wrestles with the
Angel of the Lord. After a struggle that lasted all
through the night, the angel gave Jacob a new name, Israel,
which loosely translated means contested with God. Some of the
greatest figures in ancient Greece, such as theseus Hercules and Achilles,

(03:24):
the most celebrated hero in the Trojan War epic known
as the Iliad, were wrestlers, and there are drawings of
wrestlers inside some of the pyramids in Egypt. Wrestling came
to the New World with the first colonists back in
the late sixteen hundreds that flourished along the Eastern seaboard
and moved west with the men who carved homes out
of the wilderness, and it was popular both as a

(03:46):
test of manhood and as a form of entertainment in
small villages like New Salem. It also attracted betting, which
made it even more popular. Today, a New Salem is
a beautiful state park with over six one hundred and
fifty thousand visitors a year. It is possible to walk
through the main gate and stroll down the same path

(04:06):
that a twenty two year old Abe Lincoln traversed in
eighteen thirty one. The village was founded in eighteen twenty eight,
and Lincoln lived there for about six years, serving as
a surveyor, postmaster, star operator, and rail splitter. It was
here that Lincoln got his first taste of politics when
he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly, and it

(04:29):
was also here, in eighteen thirty one that the Lincoln
legend first began to bloom thanks to wrestling. Lincoln came
to New Salem because he had received an offer from
a man named Denton Offit to work in his little
store situated on a bluff near the Sangamon River. They

(04:49):
had met some time earlier when Lincoln had worked for
Offit on his flatboat taking goods down the Mississippi River
to sell in New Orleans. Off It took a liking
to Lincoln and told him that he could work for
him in New Salem if he ever decided to venture
over that way. So now, when Lincoln arrived, off It
was in competition with another store just forty feet from his.

(05:12):
It was run by a man by the name of
William Clary. In the summer of eighteen thirty one, Clary
was selling liquor from his store and doing very well.
He charged twelve cents for a drink of brandy, gin
or whiskey, and twice that for his best wine. He
developed a good and steady business of local customers and
visitors from off the river. When river travelers came up

(05:35):
the bluff for a breaking their journeys, they were looking
for a place to drink a bit and swap tails.
So off It chose to build his store very close
to Clary’s, and the two men competed for business. Clary’s
store was at the top of the bluff, about forty
feet in front of Offa’s store. Travelers had to make
a choice between them as to which was the best
place to spend their small amount of money. Lincoln had

(05:59):
him trust off It with his wiry strength. Off It
had seen Abe pick up large barrels of whiskey and
other bulky items and carry them off with these. At
six feet four and four inches of height and carrying
close to one hundred and eighty pounds of sineway muscle,
he was very large man for that time. Off It
was a man who liked to talk a lot. He

(06:20):
is very proud of his new helper and boasted to
William Clary that Abe was the strongest man he knew.
But Clary knew a few strong men as well. They
were men of a different temperament than Abe. Lincoln loud
and beligerent when the liquor took effect. Wrestling was the
best way to determine what a man was made of.
The bouts in the thick grass between Clary’s store and

(06:43):
Offit Store or a regular occurrence in a true frontier style.
The ringleader of the bunch was a rugged farmer from
nearby Clary’s Grove called Jack Armstrong. Shorter than Lincoln, Armstrong
was much thicker and heavier. At age twenty seven, he
was five years older than name. Little is known about
Armstrong’s wrestling expertise, other than the fact that he was

(07:05):
considered the rough still the gang of the young men
who resided at Clary’s Grove and hug out at the
Clary’s Tavern. And when we continue more of Mike Chapman’s
story about Abe Lincoln here on our American Stories. Folks,

(07:32):
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America’s rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can’t
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their

(07:54):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we continue with our American Stories
and Mike Chapman’s story a listener about Abraham Lincoln’s wrestling

(08:18):
match that became the turning point in his life. Let’s
continue with Mike Chapman. Within a short amount of time
from Lincoln’s arrival a match was brewing, and talk soon
reached the point that if either man shied away, he
would be branded a coward. Tired of off its boasting,
Armstrong eagerly accepted the challenge of wrestling Lincoln offit. Offered

(08:40):
to bet anyone ten dollars that Lincoln would win. Money, drinks,
and various items were soon being waged all around the village. Finally,
the two men, Lincoln and Armstrong, met on the grassy
area between the stores to settle the talk. As many
as one hundred men gathered to seeing the contest, as
it was undoubtedly a major source of discussion in the

(09:02):
little village and the surrounding area. While Abe had the
advantage in hyped and leverage, Jack had the advantage and
experience and attitude. He was undoubtedly a more seasoned grappler
and fighter. According to all reports. Now, there were several
types of wrestling that were engaged in on the frontier.
One style was to where the two men agreed to

(09:24):
grab a hold on each other and see who could
throw who first. What it was was just a good
old fashioned scuffle with each man trying to throw the
other to his back and holding there. It was just
two men tugging and pulling each other in an effort
to subdue the other. Yes, footstomping was a frequent tactic,
as was higher pulling and thumbing of the face. In

(09:47):
nineteen thirty nine, a popular movie called Abe Lincoln of
Illinois was made from the Pulitzer Prize winning player the
same name, written by Robert Sherwood. In this film version
of the story, Lincoln, played purbly by Raymond Massey, tangles
with Armstrong, played with gusto by Howard da Silva in
a wild affair. It was a dramatic version, though certainly

(10:10):
looked good on film. Many stories had the match ending
with Lincoln on his feet looking down at the defeated Armstrong.
The Claire’s Grove boys, angry at seeing their best man beaten,
advanced on Lincoln, shouting at him and raising their fists.
An all out fight appeared imminent. Lincoln supposedly stood with
his back against one of the two stores fist clints,

(10:34):
and declared that he would take them all on one
at a time if necessary. However, Armstrong came to Lincoln’s
side and told his pills that Lincoln had beaten him
fairly and that he had proven that he was worthy
of their respects. Hebe Lincoln is the best fellow that
ever broke into this settlement, said Armstrong, he shall be

(10:55):
one of us. The Claire’s Grove boys backed off, and
Lincoln gained new status in the little village. He was
known from then on as a man not to be
trifled with, despite his infectious grin and considered good humor.
The fact was it seemed that Lincoln could defend himself,
and he gained immense stature due to his wrestling prowess,

(11:18):
so the main thrust of the bout could be described
like this. Lincoln didn’t really want to wrestle Armstrong because
he felt was building up too much as a fight
and not strictly a good natured contest. But when he saw, however,
one was talking about the match and making such a
big deal, he knew it was bound to take place eventually.
It is estimated today that nearly fifteen thousand books have

(11:41):
been written about Abraham Lincoln, more than any other figure
in history, with the exception of Jesus Christ, and many
of these books talk about Lincoln’s contest with Jack Armstrong
and its impact on his career. The most thorough discussion
of Lincoln’s wrestling background comes in the book Honors Voice
that Transformation of Abraham Lincoln, written by Douglas L. Wilson

(12:04):
in nineteen ninety nine. The book offers an entire chapter
nearly thirty two pages devoted to Lincoln’s wrestling prowess, appropriately
entitled quote, Wrestling with the Evidence. Here’s the key part.
Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and his eventual elevation
to the pantheon of American heroes have transformed his wrestling

(12:27):
match with Jack Armstrong from a rowdy initiation right in
an obscure pioneer village into a notable historical event end quote.
Wilson then quotes John T. Stewart, who knew Lincoln as
well as anyone and brought him into his law firm
in Springfield after Lincoln left New Salem. Quote this was

(12:50):
the turning point in Lincoln’s life, Stewart claimed, after the
death of his longtime friend, talking about the wrestling match
as a fitting into the New Salem wrestling match story.
Lincoln became friends with the Armstrong family and often visited
the Little Cabin in the months after the match with Jack.

(13:11):
Jack’s wife Hannah even knitted some shirts for Abe, and
Abe would babysit, sometimes rocking the cradle of their young baby.
Lincoln left New Salem after six years and moved to Springfield,
where he began his law career. Years later, he even
defended Jack’s son, Duff Armstrong in a famous legal case.

(13:32):
Jack Armstrong didn’t live long enough to see Lincoln when
the presidency, dying in eighteen fifty four at the age
of fifty. He has buried in an obscure out of
the way Frontier cemetery a mile or two from New Salem.
Unknown except for his grappling contest with a man who
became the sixteenth President of the United States and arguably

(13:53):
the most popular American ever, there are other brief references
to Lincoln using his grappling ski after the Armstrong encounter.
Some time later, while working in another tiny store in
New Salem, a man insulted several women customers with profane language,
and Lincoln asked him to stop. The man persisted and

(14:14):
said no one could make him stop. Lincoln challenged him
to step outside, flung into the ground, and stuffed weeds
in his mouth until the man surrendered. In August of
eighteen thirty four, while running for the state legislature, Lincoln
found the opportunity to show his wrestling skills once again.

(14:34):
During that time, he was running for office once again,
and this time he was elected to the state Legislature.
Just as Lincoln was getting ready to speak, a fight
broke out in the crowd and his friend was roughed up.
Lincoln jumped off the platform, grabbed his friend’s assailant, tossed
him a few feet, then strode back to the platform
and began his speech. And then there was also a

(14:58):
report of Lincoln losing a grappling contest. It occurred during
the Black Hawk Warriors sometime in the eighteen thirty one
thirty three period, and took place at Beardstown, Illinois, a
little village about fifty miles west of Dixon. The foe
was a man named Lorenzo dal Thompson, and many years later,

(15:20):
in eighteen sixty, while running for the presidency, Lincoln himself
talked about the struggle in an interview. Lincoln said up
to that time he had never been thrown, and neither
had Thompson. They squared off, grabbed hold of each other
before a large group of soldiers and struggled valiantly, but
Lincoln said he was thrown twice, declaring Thompson was strong

(15:44):
enough to whip a grizzly bear and the best man
he had ever grappled with. And then there’s this fascinating
tidbit from the Douglas Wilson book Honor’s Voice. He adds
that Abe’s mother, Nancy Hanks, liked to wrestle, and quote,
in a fair wrestle, she could throw most of the
men who ever put her powers to the test. So

(16:08):
let us conclude with this statement from Wilson’s book quote, legends,
by their very nature, are not so much factual account
as symbolic embodiments or expressions of what the facts represent.
In any case, Abe Lincoln’s wrestling prowess can best be
interpreted as representing Lincoln as a strong, determined, and fearless fellow,

(16:32):
ready to take on the task at hand and never
shrinking from the ordeal itself. After all, that is what
the man known as Honest Abe would want from us,
the pure truth, the facts, and nothing else. Abe Lincoln
was a wrestler. And you’ve been listening to Mike Chapman
tell the story of Abe Lincoln. The wrestler who knew

(16:56):
who knew? I didn’t, And I’ve read a lot about
Lincoln and well, some of the books he cited I
have on my desk. I have a stack of Lincoln
books I still have to read. And you can never
stop reading about Lincoln and Washington and some of these
great almost Titanic personalities because there’s just so much to them.
By the way, Mike spent his life as a newspaper

(17:18):
writer and editor in Iowa and also has spent fifty
years of his life writing and researching wrestling. He’s appeared
on A and E Network, ESPN, and the WWE abe
Lincoln and the wrestling match that became the turning point
in his life. Here on our American Stories, and we

(18:09):
continue with our American stories. Up next, we have a
story from Cindy Cruz Ratcliffe. Cindy is a wife and
a mother of three. He has been leading worship at
a church in Houston, Texas for over twenty years, but
she’s been involved in music starting at a very young age.
Here’s Cindy with her story. The very first time I

(18:35):
ever sing in church, I was three years old and
a group had come to my dad’s church to sing.
I can remember sitting in the church that night thinking
I want to do that, and so I asked my
dad after the concert if I could sing in church
the next Sunday morning, and he said yes, and so

(18:55):
I did. I was born into a preacher’s family in
West Texas. Of course, we lived in a very small
West Texas town. We were living in Stanton, Texas, which
if you’re a real Texas native, you know where that is.
It’s in between Midland and Odessa, where there’s absolutely nothing

(19:16):
but tumbleweeds and dust and pump Jackson. If you don’t
know what that is, those are those things that look
like hammers going up and down that pump oil out
of the ground. And that’s where I grew up. A
lot of my earliest memories were in church, you know.
I can I can remember sitting in church with my

(19:38):
two brothers in front, in the row in front of us,
and me sitting in my mom’s lap and my two
sisters on either side of her. And I can remember
when my brothers would act up in church, my mom
would march all five of us out, you know, and
then bring us all back in. It was humiliating, you know,
so humiliating. You’re like, I’m not doing that in church

(20:01):
ever again. You know, you know, those are just a
part of being in a pastor’s family. My dad, when
I was five, my dad got invited to preach at
a friend’s church for a revival, which was a series
of meetings every night of the week. And so he said,

(20:23):
you know, why don’t we get together and learn a
song each day and we’ll sing that song that night.
And so that’s what we did, and so, you know,
we learned five songs, and on the last night, we
had a little concert of all the five songs that
we had learned. And that’s kind of how we got started.

(20:44):
So when I was about nine years old, my dad
decided that he would go into what is called full
time evangelism. People would invite my dad to come preach,
and then we would come and sing in these little churches,
and you know, I can remember my dad bought a bus.

(21:07):
This was nineteen seventy two. My dad bought a bus
and we got on that bus and started traveling around
the state of Texas singing in churches. He would preach
and we would sing, and my siblings really became my
best friends because you know, we were in a different
place every week, and we spent a lot of our

(21:30):
time when we were on the road learning new music,
and we would harmonize on the bus, and you know,
it really developed our ear for harmony and music. I
don’t play an instrument, which is one of my big
regrets in life, but I have an unbelievable ear for music,

(21:51):
and it was developed in those moments, in those weeks
and months and years that we spent on the bus
learning music. And it was really exciting because all of
my siblings and I we did school by what they
called correspondents. Back then, they didn’t have homeschool. You had
to go through one of a couple of schools that

(22:12):
were out of Chicago, and all of the child television
and movie stars went through these schools, the Jacksons and
the Osmond’s, and you know, all of these young kids
who were performers, they all went to the same school
that we went to out of Chicago, and we traveled
the first probably ten years we traveled. I know my

(22:35):
mom still has the calendars. I helped her move recently
after my dad’s death, and we found a box where
she had kept the calendars of our bookings, and we
were on the road for probably the first ten years,
about three hundred and twenty days a year. It’s just staggering.

(22:57):
I don’t even know how we did it. And there
was not one church that we went into that my
dad didn’t say, listen, they’re not here to serve us,
We’re here to serve them. I think we recorded thirty
two albums together. We won a couple of Dove Awards,
and most of the music that was being released back

(23:20):
then was like southern gospel quartet music. But you know,
my family, we sang contemporary music, and we were all young,
we were teenagers. So even with my family, we were
kind of pioneers in Christian music at the time. And
some of the earliest, really big contemporary Christian artists were

(23:44):
inspired to go into contemporary music because of my family,
groups like Point of Grace and Stephen Curtis Chapman, and
so we traveled and sang and we did that for
about thirteen years, and then I got married at twenty

(24:06):
two to another Christian music artist and set up house
in Dallas, Texas, and built a studio. With my husband,
we began to produce music and we began to write
songs for other artists, and we had a very successful
production company, very successful music writing career. We wrote number

(24:29):
one singles for a lot of different Christian artists and
produced some secular artist as well, Paula Abdul and Gladys
Night and Steve Perry and Al Green. I mean, we
were just and very diverse, which I loved that about
the kind of music that we wrote and produced. So

(24:52):
we did that for about nine years, and then I
went through a very difficult, unwanted divorce. He came from
a very broken, dysfunctional family. There were signs in the

(25:13):
beginning of difficulty and trouble, and I thought, you know,
I can love and encourage and support him to where
we can get to a healthy place. You know, there
there were seasons of it being healthy, and then there
were seasons when it wasn’t healthy. And he chose infidelity,

(25:39):
and he chose alcohol, and I don’t know what else.
I just know there was alcohol involved. I really hate
to kind of put him in this position because you know,
he was a well known artist and it’s on my
Wikipedia page. So but he chose, he chose to walk away.

(26:06):
I did everything I knew to do to try to
save my marriage. And it was really difficult because, you know,
in the church world, especially in the denomination that I
grew up in. You know, first of all, there aren’t
a lot of female ministers, certainly not one who was divorced.
In fact, most men who were divorced were kicked out

(26:29):
of ministry as well. So you know, in my mind,
I thought, you know, this could be the end of
it for me. And you’re listening to Cindy Radcliffe share
her story growing up in West Texas and we’re talking
West Texas where pump jacks or architecture, and from there,

(26:51):
growing up a preacher’s daughter, just traveling from church to church,
three hundred and twenty days a year, like well Willie
Nelson would do. It’s living out of a bus. And
then marriage and then a divorce and what happens next, Well,
we’ll find out. Cindy Ratcliffe’s story a story of faith
here on our American Stories, and we continue with our

(27:39):
American Stories. We’ve been listening to Cindy Cruz Ratcliffe share
her story. We last left off with her husband choosing
to walk away from their marriage. Cindy felt her life
in Christian ministry was over, that she was a divorced
woman and there were no options. Let’s return into Cindy

(28:01):
for the rest of her story. In the early months
of my separation from my first husband, my best friend
gave me a book called The Bait of Satan, and
it really just talks about how the enemy wants to
hook you with unforgiveness and how that can drag you

(28:24):
down a path. Thankfully, I read that book and it
changed my world. I decided I was not going to
walk in unforgiveness, and I was going to let go
and allow God to do whatever he wanted to with
me in my future and not have a tether to
the past. I can remember driving up to an intersection

(28:48):
in Dallas, Texas, the exact intersection where I had seen
my then husband with a woman in the car with him,
and I remember sitting in that intersection, having that memory
and feeling no pain from that memory, and I know

(29:12):
it’s because I just decided in my heart that I
was not going to allow the enemy to ruin my life,
to destroy my life with unforgiveness. I pretty much lost
everything that was familiar to me. My husband moved to California.

(29:35):
It just I was left with pretty much nothing, and
a friend of mine, Bb Winans, who is a very
well known Christian artist, invited me to come to Nashville
to work for him, and really, very subtly, God began
to put my life back together. And while I was

(29:58):
in Nashville, a friend of mine from Oklahoma City who
was a pastor, he called me and he said, Cindy,
He said, I don’t know if you would be interested,
he said, but I feel like if you will come
to Oklahoma City and lead worship for my church. He said,
I feel like this might be the doorway to what

(30:19):
God has for you in this next season of your life.
You know, I just stepped out in faith and decided
I’m going to try this. We really ended up with
something special there. And I got a call from my
brother about eighteen months later and he said, I really
need some help building our music department at the church

(30:41):
in Tampa. Would you come and help me build there?
And so I did, and I was there for a
little right about it here, and I decided to go home,
and so I went back to Dallas and my pastor’s wife,
where I had attended church in Dallas, she said, we’re
starting a Saturday night’s service would you help us build

(31:04):
a team for Saturday Night’s service. She said, it’s going
to be like a younger audience, more contemporary. So that’s
what I did. And one day while I was leading worship.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but one
day while I was leading worship, I saw this young
man standing in the back of the auditorium and he

(31:26):
was dressed in a suit, and he looked like he
had just come from work. It was on a Wednesday night,
and he had his hands lifted in worship, and I
just thought, wow, this look at this businessman back there,
just really worshiping while he’s in church. You know. A
few weeks later I met him after the Saturday Night’s

(31:47):
service and he introduced himself and I introduced myself and
and his name was Marcus Ratcliffe. And we met in
March at church, and eight months later we got married.
And just before we got married, I got a phone
call from a gentleman in Houston, Texas by the name

(32:10):
of Joel Ostein. And Joel said, he said, my dad
passed away earlier this year, and I’ve just become the
pastor of the church, and I would like for you
to come down and just visit the church and see
what you think about coming to lead worship for us.
And you know, there weren’t very many female worship leaders

(32:34):
at the time. So Joel called me and said, would
you come down. And it’s crazy because I was literally
sitting at a Sonic drive in and I get a
phone call and that you know, famous Texas accent Cindy,
this is Joel Ostini. And I was like, wow, okay,
and he asked me to come down to Houston and

(32:58):
you know, just check out the church. And when I
got there, I could see that the music department really
needed development. It had not been a focus of the church.
So we sat down to talk about it and I
told him what my vision was. He began to say
what his vision was, and they just lined up perfectly.

(33:21):
And Marcus was a mortgage broker and very successful in Dallas,
and you know, we were literally just weeks away from
getting married, and so I was talking with Marcus about it,
and Marcus was just so generous and he said, you know,
I can do mortgage brokering from anywhere in the United

(33:45):
States as long as I have a computer. And he said,
I really feel like this is what God has for US,
and so we moved to Houston. We got married when
on our honeymoon, came back to Dallas, packed our stuff
up and moved to Houston. Began this journey twenty almost
twenty three years ago. It’ll be twenty three years in

(34:05):
October that we began this journey with Jewel. It’s been
fun because I don’t have all of the duties of
running the department anymore, which is nice, you know, but
I don’t have to do all of that, and so

(34:25):
I’ve been able to venture out into some other areas
that I’ve been excited to venture into, and one of
those is I’ve been writing a screenplay. You know. I
had been writing music. I’ve written music since I was
nine years old. I mean, I was a published writer
at nine years old. Had been writing for quite a while.

(34:46):
And my dad, when I was eighteen, brought me this
book called and it was one of a trilogy called
The Singer, The Song the Finale written by Calvin Miller,
and he wrote he brought this book to me, and
he said, You’ve got to read this book. And he

(35:07):
would begin to read passages out of this book and
literally cry while he was reading these passages because they
were so powerful. Just it’s an allegory on the life
of Christ, but it’s written around the themology of music.
And about seven years ago I came across the film
rights for it and purchase the film rights and began

(35:30):
to write the screenplay. So I’ve worked on this screenplay
for seven years. I would you write something, and I
would sit down and read what I had written to
my dad and we would both sit and cry together.
It was just beautiful. And I didn’t finish the screenplay
until last year, and my dad went to heaven before

(35:52):
I finished it. But I know that I know he’s
proud of what I’ve done. I mean, he encouraged me
all along the way of how I had kept to
the soul of the book and how it kept to

(36:13):
you know, the real message of the book. And it
was just so sweet to get to share so much
of it with him as I went through this journey.
I’ve just seen God take a little West Texas girl
who you know, was born out in the middle of
a bunch of doumbleweeds, and you know, put me in

(36:36):
front of very influential people, millions of people, to encourage
them and uplift them and lead them into God’s presence
through worship. And it’s been an absolute joy, even along
the hard places, even in the tough spots. My constant

(36:58):
has been the gift that God’s given me bringing me
closer to Him. And a terrific job on the production
by Faith Buchanan and a special thanks to Cindy Ratcliffe
for sharing her story. She had to decide at a
key juncture in her life whether to forgive or X.

(37:19):
I decided I was not going to walk in unforgiveness,
not be tethered by the past. The biggest and best
decision she made in her life. I lost everything that
was familiar to me, she said. And then she was
invited by bb Winans to work in Nashville worship leadership
letter to Oklahoma City, than to Tampa, than to Dallas
where she meets her husband, and then she gets that

(37:42):
call from Joel and twenty three years later leading worship
there and then writing the screenplay her dad always wanted
her to write. And we love telling these stories about
people of faith because, like the military, they lead lives
that include a lot of movement and worship leaders. By
the way, if you don’t know what a worship leader is,
it’s the person who leads the band. The story of

(38:03):
Cindy Ratcliffe. Here on our American story.