This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 003 – Intro to Sharon’s Story on IWATF (Episode 76)

May 03, 2023

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon.

T: And this is our podcast, Feet of Clay…

S: Confessions of the Cult Sisters!

T: Ho-Kay Sharon, in April you were a guest on the podcast I was a Teenage Fundamentalist with Tory and Brian.

S: Yes, I was.

T: They actually title it “How Keith Green Arranged My Teenage Marriage”.

S: Mmmhmm.

T: And they’re billing it as part two from the show I did. I had gone on in March and shared my story, and I know you and I had talked about us getting together, and I said I really want your story to go live before our whole podcast goes live, right? And I thought well, I’m going to interview you, and you’re like no, no, that doesn’t sound right that I would interview you on our podcast so I had reached out to Troy and Brian and said I’d really like if you guys could do that interview, because Sharon, you and I go back 40 years; I know so much of your story, I really wanted to hear you tell it to people who weren’t quite as familiar with it. And I have listened to it, and there were many things I did  not know, in spite of us being friends for so long, and I think that really struck me – wow, because at the end when I left Last Days I was in your living room for months at a time, and I’ve heard little tidbits but there were points where my jaw was dropping, as I could gather that Troy and Brian’s were, because a couple of times you’re saying hey, you guys look stone faced.

S: I know, I know! Because obviously for the podcast it’s only an audio recording, but when we’re doing this they’re in Australia, I’m here in the US, and it’s a video thing like Zoom, and I’m just like – is it frozen? Is the image frozen? It was just so weird.

T: Yeah, because it is quite a story and I think I had said earlier on mine, one of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve looked back over time is just how young we were, right?

S: Oh my God, yes.

T: What children we were.

S: We were babies.

T: I can pull your pictures out and I can see the teenage face that you are, and trying to imagine everything that you’re going through in getting ready to be married. So I’m so happy that you’ve shared your story, and I guess I’d like to ask – I think this is probably the first time publicly that you’ve gone on record and shared it all, I don’t know if that’s for sure or not.

S: Yeah, publicly, yeah.

T: And how you felt, being interviewed and getting your portion of the story out.

S: Well, you know – actually, it was fun. I will say that. It was fun; prepping for it was kind of interesting because I’m like okay, let me make sure I can hopefully get the timeline right and think about this stuff. I’ve always joked about – you know, I had an arranged marriage. I’ve said it jokingly for decades, and you know what’s really funny, when I saw them first putting together the promos and they did that heading, Keith Green Arranged My Teenage Marriage, my first thought was oh that’s a little extreme, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that sensationalizing it? It’s not really quite like that. But it’s like, no, yeah, it’s exactly fucking like that.

T: It’s exactly like that. I can appreciate the environment, the whole brothers and sisters being separate; the whole you don’t date; we’re basically taught that we have to hear from God if there is going to be a mate.

S: Oh yeah, there’s no dating. There’s courting. You don’t date, because it’s really only about what will serve the Kingdom of God. That’s what it was about, that’s the mindset.

T: Yeah, and to see the influence that this older man had on your early teen…

S: He wasn’t THAT old!

T: I think when you’re 14 years old and there is somebody older that’s having such a profound impact and being seen as such an influence, speaking for God – it’s powerful. I can’t wait for people to hear it and of course this has also been able for us to launch our podcast, because there are entirely too many stories to tell in one hour.

S: Yeah you know, we’re going to have lots and lots of them. Hey, can I tell you something else though; when we finished doing that recording and I was on my own, and the mics turn off and I’m thinking to myself, I did have this thought of oh my God, what have I just done? And like and good, adult child of alcoholics, I have to say I felt these little twinges of guilt and disloyalty, of like, oh have I done something wrong? Have I been disloyal to Keith? Have I been disloyal to Jesus? It’s a funny thing, because those coping strategies, those emotions, all the stuff that was in us as kids with the various emotional neglect and abuse and all that stuff that we went through in our childhoods, which is what carried us into these crazy cult situations – in some ways that still can be the default setting, to be aware of.

T: Oh, absolutely.

S: So I’m like ohhh, I hope it was okay! And the 60-plus part of me goes hell yeah, that was good.

T: Well, I do say I think you were very kind. I think you were trying to be very fair minded and I think that comes through and I appreciated it. So much so that we’re not going to re-hash all that right here. What we’re going to do is we’re going to link that episode into our show notes. It’s I was a Teenage Fundamentalist, episode 76, so that you can go on, click through and hear Sharon’s interview with Troy and Brian.

S: That’s right. So our first two episodes we did – the first one was a link to your story with Troy and Brian; now we’ve gotten mine, so now we’re – after this we’re going to have to take off the training wheels, Tracey, and do episodes on our own. Because you’re the one that got us into this.

(laughter)

T: Oh, we are. And I can completely relate to oh my God, what have we done. I think this is really a kudos out to Brian and Troy for helping us get this started, and I think at the last one that we talked about, we were going to agree to go on every two weeks to try and bring a new episode.

S: I know, I know. We’re going to try. You’re going to keep us honest in that. Well, look. Let’s not just keep blabbering. Let’s let folks get on with it, so everybody go into the show notes and click onto the link to I was a Teenage Fundamentalist episode 76 and you can hear how Keith Green Arranged my Teenage Marriage.

T: Excellent.