Anchored by Grace: Mel Langston’s Journey Through Adversity

https://www.mosac.net/

https://mellangston.com/

https://youtu.be/MXWNXSDhDdY

Jan's Substack: @janjohnson3

Mel Langston's testimony is a poignant story of overcoming adversity through faith. 

From the very start, her life was a testament to miracles, as she was born amidst familial turmoil and her mother's battle with cancer. 

Despite a childhood marked by loss and isolation, Mel found solace in church, learning scriptures that would become her spiritual anchor. 

She ran away searching for connection, but discovered it through God's love. 

Her journey through various states and life changes reflects a profound resilience and commitment to faith, ultimately anchoring her in a community of love and biblical truth.

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Transcript

Jan: Welcome to Just Talking About Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus. I'd like to welcome Mel Langston today to our episode.

How are you, Mel?

Mel: I'm really well this morning. Thank you.

Jan: It is nice day. It's not totally sunny, but it isn't pouring down rain sideways. That's a good thing, right? Right.

Mel: Yeah. It's bright and white and warmer.

Jan: Tell us a little bit about your testimony.

Mel: Okay. I think that my testimony actually began before I was born. Because I consider myself a miracle that I was born.

My mother and father, sort of a post-World War, during World War II, kind of a story from Arkansas. And my. My mother's first husband was off at war. And my father, who was 50, probably 58 years old at that point, and my mother was probably about 34 at that point, fell in love.

And when her husband came back from the war and when my mother, my father's wife, found out about it, there was a big explosion in a little town called Blytheville, Arkansas.

And my father was very well known. And so they left town and they went and got married and they divorced. They went and got married, spent time in, I think, in Florida.

And then they came back to Memphis, and they bought a house. And I was born at the time, my dad, right around the time he turned 60.

And during the time that I was in my mother's womb, her cancer metastasized. She'd had melanoma five years before and had her postpartum checkup. When I was six weeks old, it had metastasized to her stomach, and that gave her six months to live.

Jan: Oh, my.

Mel: So she died when I was roughly five and a half months old. But at that time, because my father,

it was the biological father,

my two sisters who were 10 and 12, half-sisters, 10 and 12, they went back to live with their dad and their grandparents in Arkansas.

And I was left with the nanny and my father, and he found somebody before I was a year old to take care of me, to be his wife, stepmother. Never was close to her.

I. For a long time, I sort of called her names that are not nice, but she just, she. I believe she did the best that she could. But I. They never told me that my stepmother wasn't my mother.

So until I was 10 years old. So 10 years old, I found it. I. In a. In the back of a album, the birth certificate to each one of them.

And I said, who is this? And neither one of them will tell Me would tell me so that I had not seen my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, nor my two sisters since my mother had died.

Later on, many years later, my sister said they dropped by, but I didn't. When I was like, around 5 or less, but I didn't know who they were, so I never knew them.

So anyway, when I found that out, I went offline. It wasn't until I was older I understood sort of the trajectory. But by 11, I was running away from home.

I lived in downtown Memphis. I would wander around in Overton Park and walk down in the bayou. And I get picked up by the police. And by 12, I was smoking and drinking and running away by.

I was in juvie. I was engaged at 14. I got in lots and lots of trouble, and my father kicked me out periodically. I went to ninth grade. He sent me to a residential school in Georgia.

I ran away.

Police picked me up, brought me back to Memphis. The next year, he sent me off to Blackrock, Arkansas, to my maternal grandmother. But by then, that was the first time I'd ever met her.

Okay, and my two sisters. But by then my grandfather had died, so I never got to meet him. And then I lasted that year. But I could see God's hand all the way through.

It was like I. When I was a little girl, my dad didn't go to church, but he would drop me off at the Baptist church. And I memorized scripture. I can still remember it.

And then he dropped me off at the Methodist Church because I went to Brownies there. He never took me to church. I didn't learn scripture or anything at the Methodist church.

But I did go until he didn't want to take me anymore. So I had some rudimentary understanding of Christ. And then they sent me off to a camp in Arkansas, Hardy, Arkansas, for about three years.

And I can still remember a chapel on a Sunday morning when somebody was presenting Jesus. It was the first time I'd ever really understood the gospel. I remember weeping. I remember hearing about the cross, hearing about.

Hearing about his death and crying. I can remember that up right up to where I was sitting. I can still recall that. I knew I had a desire for God, but I was so broken.

I mean, other stuff went on in my childhood, you know, that wasn't good. But basically, that's a general outline. But when he. When he sent me off to my sisters and when I was 15, up in Vermont, my stepsisters in Vermont, she had accepted Christ just a few, three or four years before then.

We didn't grow up Together. She was older than me, and anyway, she had accepted Christ and she had three little girls, and she was like this amazing mother. Wife. And what you were used to seeing.

Oh, no side note. I was raised in Memphis, Tennessee. If you ever saw the Help. The movie. Yeah, okay. That was me. I was raised by a maid. So I was completely isolated.

I mean, I was alone. I was the only child in a home that didn't have love. My father never recovered from my mother's death.

I was told that he was affectionate, and he laughed and he told jokes and he.

Jan: But you never saw any of that.

Mel: None of that. I never got any of that. I heard that from my half-sisters, my. My mothers, and I never got any of that. And my. My stepmother wasn't affectionate at all.

And so I really lived a very isolated.

And I felt rejected from earliest, earliest, earliest. I really believe I was rejected in the womb because his older children completely rejected my mother. They wouldn't have anything to do with him until she died and then they came back in his life.

Jan: What made you want to run away at such an early age?

Mel: Oh, I didn't know.

Jan: You just.

Mel: I didn't know.

Jan: Started.

Mel: Started thinking out at night. Had no clue, I think that I was.

I wasn't close to my parents anyway,

and I. I have no idea. I just started. I would sneak out. I. I went. I remember going down to Dr. Braun's house, two doors down and sneaking in their house and getting Nancy Braun, one of their older girls, after I did.

And the police brought us back one night. And obviously Dr. Braun never let me spend time with his children anymore anyway. I don't know. There was just something in me that was so disconnected to everything.

And disconnected is a really good word because my sister just the other night said something about my. My half-sister. I've still got two. Those two are still alive, those two half-sisters in Arkansas.

And I'm going to visit them at the end of the month. But she said something about that was what was going on. She said, I, you know, sort of like I figured this out.

You know, you kept searching for connection for your whole life. You know, we weren't. We weren't having a deep conversation or anything, but I lived in a total of like eight states, owned multiple homes, multiple businesses,

farms, moved, moved, moved, moved. You know, for years and years and years and years. This is the most. There were only about two houses, maybe I don't think more than two.

That we stay two Christmases at.

Jan: Wow.

Mel: Yeah.

Jan: That would be Hard. I mean, that happens with, you know.

Mel: Military, three different Bible colleges, you know, younger. And then when it got bad with my husband and it was bad inside me, I just sort of like alcoholics. You know, Anonymous says, you know, geographic change is, you know, like, you think you're going to find something different, so new beginning,

you're going to start over. It's going to be still.

Jan: You, you're still.

Mel: It's not ever better. Well, it was really. It didn't change him, so. And my. I was trying to just do what God wanted me to do and to be a good wife and to say,

do the. Do what God wanted me to do. So I was. It's interesting when I look at this whole trajectory of my life and the way I've lived it, and somebody would look at it and say, well, that's crazy.

How could you be a Christian when you were doing those crazy things and you were still walking with God? But I learned really, really, really early, like in that Christian school that I went to where we memorized tons of scriptures to have a quiet time every morning, to spend time in the Word,

to stand on the promises of God, you know, loved worship from the very beginning,

loved Bible study from, you know, and that's why I kept going to Bible college. And I, you know, I just taught Bible classes. This was back in my 20s. I was teaching Sunday school from like 19 forward in children's church and Sunday school superintendents and all that kind of stuff with a man that was not a good man.

Jan: But that man didn't need to define you.

Mel: No, he actually didn't. Except that I. Except that I'm still living the. I'm still living the effects of having lived with him.

Jan: Sure.

Mel: Yeah. The residual effects are my kids that have suffered so badly and the effects on my. Their relationship with me because I was married to him. I always tell people, it's like when you have a husband and a wife, even if it's only one of them that's doing something,

kids see them as one. And it's not like a divi. Divisible thing. You know, they see them as one and therefore they blame both for whatever happened to them. Even if it's atrocious, even if it's like, awful, they still blame both.

So. And I can. I get that.

Jan: So you at some point really grasp onto who God was in order to direct you to going. Being part of a church, being part of a ministry and that kind. I think, I think too, it's just amazing how many people I hear Talk about,

oh, I just got dropped off at Awanas. I got dropped off at VBS or whatever, and that was there. It just shows how important that whole ministry, the whole thing is, you know, And.

And for those that are teaching whatever, that you might just think, oh, I don't know if I'm really having any effect on anybody, but truly, truly, you are dropping the word of God for whatever age they are, or showing love, compassion, kindness.

Mel: Yeah.

Jan: You know who God is? His characteristic. Telling the stories of his faithfulness. All of that just keeps. It's gonna be there, and you're planting those seeds. It's just amazing.

Mel: The word of God.

Jan: Amazing.

Mel: Yeah. That's like, number one for me.

Decades ago, I realized there's two really important things to me but I don't do. I do other things. Is the word of God and words. I love words that written poetry since about 1978.

So I love words and I love the word of God.

And I guess. And I. I've equated that also. I love words. Okay. So I'm using words all the time in my job as a therapist, so I sell words.

Jan: Yeah, I kind of like words, too. Yeah, you like words, too? Yeah.

Mel: Because you write words and talk words.

Jan: I write words, I talk.

Mel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jan: But what is it? The word of God, you know, with.

Mel: A capital W.

I think the thing I didn't say there in that relationship is when I found God at 16, the first thing I really understood, he was my father.

Jan: And seeing that, because that can be a hard thing.

Mel: Well, I still do it, but I can remember periods of time where the. The, you know, I'd wake up in the morning, and the very first things were, father, Father, Father.

You know, just crying out to him, first thing, first breath, Father, father. But I didn't have one. And then I had him.

And from the word I learned immediately, he was faithful. He was true, he was kind, he was gentle, he was merciful. He was always there. He loved me beyond my understanding.

And he has been with me and some in places where other people will say, well, how'd you go through that? I was like. There was a time when my husband left me in Glacier national park with four children,

the youngest one six months. And he just walked off into the woods and didn't come back for three days.

The forest rangers brought food to me and diapers, and I sat there. I wouldn't leave because I thought he was going to come back out. Grizzlies, they wouldn't let me Sleep in the tent.

Because we were tent camping up on Glacier national park because there were grizzlies, they'd had grizzly sightings. And one of those rangers actually brought me a signed copy of the Night of the Grizzlies from two years before.

He'd been one of those that killed the grizzly, you know, the eight people. 

But I was never afraid. I had like a couple of Christian books in my Bible. We had lots of toys in the. It was a big Dodge van.

We had everything that we needed. And it rained and we'd walk to the bathroom. I can still see it and feel it. But I wasn't afraid ever. Ever. But I wouldn't call anybody to ask for help because I didn't want anybody in my family to know how bad my husband was.

So I kept that secret for a long time. Wasn't the first time he'd gone off and done something crazy at all. But I remember I didn't. I didn't call until the day that I really felt like I was getting paranoid.

I felt like I was. I was getting. There was something in my brain that was sort of like. And I could tell. And so I went up there and I called and he came back that afternoon.

But I had called my stepmother and my older. Older half-sister. My, you know, my. My father's daughter, one of them, because she. There's three there and they were going to come out and get me.

And then I called back. So now the whole family knew the story. A little bit of the story.

Jan: A little bit anyway.

Mel: A little bit of the story of my life. And it affected. And that was fine. It was good. I was carrying secrets around that I wouldn't tell family, you know, so now I tell people families are only as sick as the secrets they keep.

Jan: There's all kinds of novels written that way, right?

Mel: Yeah. Yeah.

Jan: But I think there's something about the voices in our head that tell us you can't tell or that you can't share that or you have to be this kind of wife or you have to be.

You know, it's. It's like I think we have to think about where are those voices coming from? That's a God thing that's telling me that maybe not, you know, who's.

Who's defining who we have to be.

Mel: Yeah.

Jan: You know, so.

Mel: So I've been a therapist for 35 years. So sometimes I begin as. And it's Like, I always tell people I just caught that, but, you know, I do. You know, it's like we speak the truth in love because that's what the word of God says.

And if we do it respectfully and kindly, we just do it.

Jan: So a lot of the work that you've done has been around trauma.

Mel: Yes.

Jan: What are some defining things that help people who have been through trauma?

Mel: Defining things that are helping people to.

Jan: Go through things that are like, what are the kind of things somebody could grasp on to perspectives to get beyond the hurt.

Mel: We're talking about somebody with the word of God that knows the Lord is clinging to him,

cling to the word of God, promises in the word of God,

lamenting prayers, lamenting being honest with our. In our relationship with God, forgiveness so that we're clear and letting go of all the inside us, you know, and we're clear with God and getting help, going through trauma therapy as needed.

You know, I work with a lot of people with trauma. That's why I started doing what I was doing. Because what I went through, everything God led me through, you know, led me to where.

Where I am now. Absolutely everything. I mean, absolutely everything.

Jan: So isn't that where. Where the Bible says to thank God in all circumstances?

Mel: In all circumstances.

Jan: Because you look at something, you say, you know, you gotta be crazy. Why would I thank you for this?

Mel: Right. Yeah.

Jan: And yet you look in hindsight and how many things that you went through that you can thank him for, because now there's purpose in it.

Mel: And that's why we have to trust in the moment and just. And thank him. Yeah. And that's really hard. I mean, it's really so. It's really hard, but it's doable because I can do it now.

Like, I had Covid, and it was like I was thanking him for having Covid because I had a nice rest.

Jan: Right.

Mel: It was funny. That's a funny story. But, you know, I'd been trying to memorize Psalm 91, and at my age, it was harder to memorize. Right. And I had just kept trying.

I couldn't get past about verse three or four, you know, and by golly, during the time I was down with COVID I got to memorize Psalm 91. I was doing a deep dive into some other stuff.

You know, I just had a good.

Jan: Rest and put it to music. But those. That's why it's so easy to memorize scripture with music, you know, worship songs and whatever.

Mel: I know. So you put it In.

Jan: And it has a different part of your brain that it does.

Mel: A different part. Yeah. But giving thanks in all things and for all things, you know, because we try to judge in our own little human mind, our teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, little bitty teeny human mind, whether it's good or bad.

And so this is something I often tell people is that we judge that it's bad. But then a year later we look back and we, oh, losing that job was really a good thing.

I got a better job or something else.

Jan: Or I learned something in the midst.

Mel: Yeah. Or there's opportunities to learn and change and grow. And I learned myself that adversity. So I have read Streams in the Desert. I don't know if you're familiar with Mrs.

Charles Kalman's streams in the desert since the 60s. Since the 60s. And she was, you know, a missionary in. In China, I believe. And it's all about suffering and adversity and how God works through that and what he teaches us in it and how, you know, she uses lots of poetry and great quotes from people.

It's a wonderful little devotional which I actually give out to people. You know, there's so many verses in the Bible that says adversity, adversity. You know, when you were talking about what you were doing, the stories that we read in the Bible, the positive things people do come out of the adversity,

you know, where would Joseph be, you know, where would David be if he hadn't gone through the bad stuff, learned how to trust in God, you know.

Jan: Yeah. Because of each of those things, you are gaining knowledge of, you know, and understanding. You gain knowledge and understanding and you.

Mel: Get the character of God and then you get the personal experience, that experiential knowledge of God. That's what causes you to be able to trust, you know, in that no matter what thing.

Like when I had. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I didn't have any fear. And I. Because I. Well, I'm not gonna say because I did anything. I just didn't have any fear because he had implanted in me a knowledge of who he was and how he'd always taken care of me up to then and how I'd always shown up every time I needed him,

every time through. Through thick and thin, through bad stuff, he always showed up. And so. And he directed my path. Like when I went off to grad school, I knew where I was going to go to grad school, but I never had heard of the town, you know, I just heard this word Boone,

and I went off to Appalachian State University. And God directed my path to work in the field that I worked in then, to move from there into what I do now.

So, you know, I've had a very diverse career, but I believe that he has orchestrated circumstances every step of the way to get me to where I am now, which is where I am now.

Still working at the grand old age of what I am,

which is sort of a grand old age.

Jan: So, you know, we say that we want to be like Jesus until it comes to adversity,

you know, he ended up dying. Look what he went through. You know, if we really want to be like Jesus, we're going to have to accept those things that happen.

Mel: Yep. And even death. Because he said, you will suffer as I suffered. And he said, you have to be willing to die. And I'm going to share this in this little group, I think it was Quetzals was the name of the little.

Was like a little, like a sorority type club in. In the. In Bob Jones Academy. That's where I went off to school in Greenville, South Carolina. So you got to join one of these little clubs.

And they met once a week. Well, and the one I was in, we got down on our knees in one of the classrooms before that meeting every single week and sang Galatians 2:20.

Sang Galatians 2:20. And I sang it to a group a couple of weeks ago. And then the next week, this gal came back in the group and she wanted me to sing it again because it really is.

You know, when you sing something, you know, it's that singing scripture. But that's saying, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ, let's say the life I live in the flesh, I live by my faith in the Son of God who loved me and died for me.

And then he says I'm supposed to be willing to die for him. And that's just who we are. That's supposed to be our identity. So I just. I have so much joy.

Okay. And I do. I smile. I smile a lot, you know? And I think if people knew, like, the underneath. I wrote a poem about maybe it's been a year called Underneath.

Underneath is always grief. Underneath is always grief. And it's the iceberg. It's like I compared it actually in a group last night to contractions. You know, when you're having a baby, you learn these ways.

I did, because I had six babies by Lamaze. Right. So I learned how to breathe and learn how to relax. I learned how to have a focal point. And then I go those contractions.

And it keeps me above the contractions, you know, so I'm not really focusing on or feeling the pain.

So it's what I feel like God does with, with joy when we know he's in our life and with. We can have the joy up here and the griefs down here.

And it keeps it. He keeps us above that. And I. I love all the verses in the Word that say he carries. He carries me. He carries me. He carries me.

Because sometimes I feel like he's just carrying me all day long in different. You know. And I think. I mean, I don't think I'm all alone, but this is something that I.

That has just really been meaningful to me, that he carries me and that he's carried me through stuff where I could have fallen into a crack so many times. It would be unbelievable to even say how many cracks, you know, when.

When I was running away and doing bad stuff and being with bad people, all of that stuff and trying stuff and could have, but it didn't. He sort of, sort of.

He kept me all along the way and I've really felt, always felt. He held me and he carried me all the way along and then he directed my path. So trust in the Lord with all your heart.

I often tell people like left foot, right foot, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll make sure he'll direct your path.

And then Romans 8, 28, other foot.

Jan: All things work together for good to.

Mel: Those that love God. So you trust in all things.

He will direct your path and all things will work together. And there's a bunch of alls there, and I believe in alls.

So all things are going to work together if we trust him with all of our hearts. So of course I'm imperfect. I know that. One of the prayers a while ago, several years ago, I learned on my own, I would just.

I'm aware I'm weak, frail and sinbit. We all are, but lots of times people don't really recognize or acknowledge it. I've just had so many opportunities in my life to see how weak I am and how frail I am and how bent to go the other direction I am.

But he always straightens me back out, you know, always when I've gone like that, he just gets me right back on the path where he wants me to be.

Jan: Because when you're weak. Then he's strong.

Mel: Then he's strong.

Jan: You have the opportunity to be looking at, where do we draw closest to God? It's in the middle of our trials.

Mel: And that's why Paul said, glory in your. You know, I take glory in your weakness, not in your successes. Glory in your weaknesses. Yeah. So I am thankful. God has given me a lot of privileges.

Privileges. And in the work that I've done, privileges in incomprehensible privilege. And we haven't even talked about, you know, because I was able to write a book and it was able to develop Mosaic and I was able.

Not very active in it, but moderately active. Other people do most of the stuff there, but without what I went through, that wouldn't be there.

And it's really hard for me to say. It's hard for me to say, well, anything about that. Not. Not that I can't talk about it, because I do. But it's hard for me to say, well, that was good, because things happened to my children shouldn't have.

That's really, you know, that's a really difficult thing. I'm not going to even try to verbalize that. But I know that God turned it into a way that it blessed other people because I'm.

Because of what I went through as a mother of sexually abused children, then I'm able to. I was able to do what I've done and reach out to mothers and write a book to mothers and to give them what I never had, which was a book.

Anything. Tell me what to do. Because there was no such thing. And to be able to, you know, to like, have a website or a chat page where people can go and get support.

And. And I. I do Zoom, Zoom meetings sometimes on there, but mostly other people do stuff.

Jan: Now, how can people connect with you?

Mel: In what way?

Jan: I mean, are you on socials or. You have a website? You have things. What?

Mel: I don't have a professional website. Well, I.

I do. I do. Mel Langston. But I do. But nobody ever contacts me through Mel. Listen, I get contacts through the MOSAC website.

Jan: Okay, so where. Where would somebody find the mosac? Spell it.

Mel: M O, S A C. Okay. Mothers of sexually abuse children. No, It's a. It's a.net.net.net.

Jan: Okay.

Mel: Yeah. But, yeah, I do have a website. That's funny because I forget that I have a website. It's really a very good website. Mellangson.com.

Jan: You should all visit there.

Mel: But no, well, yeah, well, it's just. It's just sitting there. I just do what I do and forget it. I don't think I've touched it in so long. It's ridiculous.

Jan: Where could people find your book?

Mel: Amazon or Barnes and Noble or lots of places. Amazon's got it at a very cheap rate so that people don't have to pay very much.

Jan: Yeah, okay. I can put links in the show notes for that, too. What final words would you like to leave our listeners?

Mel: Hmm.

I remember that I'm thinking about speaking or sharing with you this morning. I was thinking about that. What's the most important things that have carried me through my life? You know, and we only learn about God from His Word.

And it's like nothing else is more important.

I think if I could say anything, because I, I talked to so many Christians and I know so many that don't. Don't. They allowed a little bit of time for God's Word.

And it really is, you know, and even if we thought it 10% of time in God's Word, that's a whole lot more hours than you know, but we should spend as much time as possible in God's Word and, and in prayer and worship and worship and the sacrifice of worship.

That's something I learned way back in that. I remember by mid-80s, I learned how no matter what I felt like, no matter what was going on, no matter if my heart was breaking and I was to just go into the church and put my arms up and just worship him and worship him and there was always such relief.

Relief, you know, in.

Jan: Yeah.

Mel: And joy. And joy in worship, just. But offering the sacrifice of praise, which is really like what we were talking about, giving thanks in the midst of. Giving thanks to him in the midst of knowing who he is.

He's sovereign. He's in control. He's omniscient. He is here with me all the time. He will never leave me. He'll never forsake me. And keeping that. No matter what happens.

I love no matter what verses in the Bible. No matter what happens, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, no olives on the vines or no cattle in the barn and no sheep in the fold and the mountains crumble.

Doesn't matter. You know, He's God and He's the one that created the stars.

200 billion, trillion or whatever.

Jan: And who are we to.

Mel: Yeah, trillions of. Yeah. Who are we to question the, The. The Creator of the universe, the one that sustains our very breath? He knows what's best for us. Always. And I don't know what's best for me.

Jan: Yeah.

Mel: So if he shifts things around for me, I know it's for my good and just to trust him. Trust him. Praise him.

Love him with all of our hearts. And love his word and listen to his spirit and seek after him. Seek after him. Seek after him with all of our hearts.

Yeah. Make him first. First in our lives. Yeah. And then everything else will fall into line in the way he wants us. Wants it to.

Jan: Yeah. Thank you, Mel. This has been enriching. Wonderful. Thanks for joining me.

Mel: It was my privilege. I really appreciated the opportunity. Thank you very much.