In this moving episode, Angie Austin delves into the power of forgiveness, exploring the impact of letting go of past grievances on personal well-being. Sharing poignant family stories, including hardships and estrangement with key relatives, Angie unveils her personal journey through forgiveness and how it has shaped her life today. Through candid reflections, listeners gain insight into how forgiveness can foster peace, build resilience, and improve relationships across generations.
00:27:51 Jim Stovall’s Inspiring Encounter with Ray Charles
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to the good news with Angie Austin. Now with the good news, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, it’s the good news with Angie Austin. Angie Austin here. Yesterday, you know, I talked a little bit about things, you know, to let go of from your past. And I don’t think I talked enough about forgiveness because it’s kind of like my thing. I’m like the CEO of forgiveness. I’m like the forgiveness ambassador. Um, And I’ve told you before, it’s partially because my mom’s been stuck in the past and I really think that it’s put gray glasses on her entire life, like sunglasses that make the world darker than it needs to be because she’s been unable to let things go and she’s been so angry about things. But if you meet her, she’s as sweet as can be. I mean, the nicest lady is so sweet, loves to laugh. But then when she gets angry, she’ll erupt over like a sock that was left by the front door, the kid’s backpack that was brought in, which don’t get me wrong, that irritates me too. But I call it her roller coaster of rage. where she goes from the happiest, sweetest grandma to the most enraged, angry grandma, just like off the hook, right? And so I think that a lot of that goes down into unforgiveness because then she’ll bring up things from the past with the same rage like she had the day after it happened, right? And it’s 70 years later or 75 years later in some cases, but the anger is still there to the same degree that it was 75 years ago. And it’s been like built up. So that’s why I’m such a big fan of forgiveness, because, you know, there’s a lot for me and my mom, you know, to forgive from the past. I mean, I probably told you about my brothers. One was murdered and one was homeless most of his life. And another graduated in the top one percent of his class at West Point Military Academy. He’s an engineer. And he and I never used drugs. I really don’t even drink. I mean, it just doesn’t interest me. And so I’ve just kind of steered away in the opposite direction of all that stuff because of my family issues with all of that. But anyway, the one that was murdered, he was violent when he drank. And he, when he got out of the military, had combat boots. And he kicked me in the face. And it caused a lot of damage to my face, my nose, et cetera, when I was 16. And I didn’t have any resentment towards him later on in life or anger. I had more pity, I would say, because I was able to forgive him and because I knew that he had a lot of issues and a lot of pain and maybe even just plain old mental issues. He was diagnosed at one point in time as schizophrenic bipolar disorder. bipolar disorder, schizophrenic, manic depressive, like a lot of different diagnoses. So I didn’t hold a grudge against him at all. And my little brother also very violent. He’s a couple of years younger than I am. And I don’t have any anger when he calls me. I have empathy, like sadness that he calls himself a self-made. It makes me sad to even say it. A self-made orphan. Because, you know, no one in the family talks to him but me. And he also, I believe, struggles with mental illness. But all of us exacerbated, of course, by alcohol and drug use. Okay, so let’s get back to my point. Forgiveness. I just think it’s so important because it enables you. Well, first of all, as Christians, I believe we’re called to forgive others as the Lord has forgiven us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right?
SPEAKER 04 :
And secondly, as everyone always says, you’re not necessarily forgiving them for them. It’s for you to let go of all of that baggage. And I’m not looking anything up. I’m not giving you any expert tips. I’m just telling you my own experience of how it has freed me from a lot of things. And I do believe that it has been kind of a gift from God in a way that I am so grateful able to forgive and i don’t hang on to things and my mom has a really great memory and she can remember every offense i always joke around about the chinese food offense uh 30 years ago and we got chinese food in my aunt’s house my mom said no one asked her what she wanted and keep in mind she’s brought this up in the last 10 years so this wasn’t she didn’t bring this up then She brought it up to us later in life that no one asked her what she wanted when we went for Chinese food. And my first thing was, well, why didn’t you say, hey, guys, before you leave, I’d like to have blah, blah, blah. And my brother said, well, mom, did you get what you wanted? And she said, yes, I got plenty of things I liked. He goes, well, then what’s the issue here 20, 30 years later? Why are you bringing this up? And she can remember probably what we all ordered that day. She can remember the years of all the cars that she purchased. So maybe part of my gift is that my memory isn’t as good as hers. And so I don’t hang on to things. But again, I do think the forgiveness aspect is a big part of it. Okay. So with that said, with my dad, there were… Okay, you can forgive someone and they can still want to keep… some kind of personal offense or vendetta or argument going with you for years and years and years. With my dad, when I say we were estranged for like 35 years, my parents got divorced when I was 12. And he was an alcoholic. He was very violent, mostly towards my mother, but towards my brothers, not really me. And he was a binge drinker. So he was a professor. He had his Ph.D., He was a tenured professor, so he worked like, I don’t know, 30, 40 years at the same university, highly educated. In the time he spent in law school, he was a straight-A student, just very gifted. But anyway, so I admired him in a lot of ways. We got along great, really well. Other than his drinking and his bouts of embarrassment to me, we got along actually fairly well with all that said. I think he and I are a lot alike in terms of our verbal skills, our ability to joke around and speak. He announced a lot of basketball games at his university for decades. You know, was an announcer, started the radio station there. So anyway, he and I kind of kind of got along in the midst of all that turmoil. But I knew because I had a bedroom next to my parents. I knew that when he got drunk, that the abuse was pretty severe. And then I’d see my mom the next day and I’d see, you know, black eyes or just tears. I took her in for x-rays once, and the doctor said, did she suffer a lot of abuse? I said, yes. There must be fractures or something, whatever is evident in her x-rays of her head and back and neck that she sustained injuries. So with my dad, going back to him and how I was able to forgive him, because I think he was the biggest one for me to forgive because I really grew up without him. He said if we didn’t choose to live with him, which we did for a while, and he drove us cross-country, me and my little brother, and dumped me on my grandma’s steps because my stepmom really didn’t want us around. So that was from Minnesota to Colorado. So it was a long drive to dump your kids. So… Even though he said, I’ll disown you if you don’t choose me. Then when we did, he chose his new wife, well, his girlfriend, I think at the time, over us. And then after that, I did spend some time in foster care with different relatives and blah, blah, blah. Wasn’t the most pleasant from 12 to 18. Not so fun. Well, none of it was really fun, let’s be honest. Okay, but with him, my point I want to make about forgiveness is that you might have to do it over and over and over again. So I did make some attempts to reach out to him in my childhood. He would change his phone number so we couldn’t reach him. He’d send a pittance. I think it was $150 a month for child support. My mom never fought it. Being a professional victim, she never looked out for herself and tried to do better. I mean, the guy was a professor, for goodness sakes. He could afford more than $150 a month. Okay, so I’d reach out for him from time to time. He’d send that money, and then he’d send, like scribbled on the back of an envelope, some kind of a lecture or something to me, even though I was a straight-A student. I worked full-time all through high school and college, seven days a week. I only took vacation time to do my finals because I wanted to excel and work my way out of poverty and make something of my life. All those times I reached out to him, like imagine that you get, I got his phone number once from my aunt and I call him and he’s so shocked that I have his phone number. And the next time I attempt to call like two weeks later, again, straight A student working full time, he’s changed his number again. I mean, imagine the rejection that you feel like your own father won’t even let you have his phone number and you’re like a 16, 17, 18 year old. who’s excelling and working and doing so well in this horrible environment of low-income housing with a couple of drug addict brothers still around and they’re abusive and blah, blah, blah. Again, my point is you might have to forgive them over and over and over again. So reached out those times. Then when I was about 19, I did go to visit him. It was okay, but he wanted to lecture me a lot. He was very self-righteous that somehow the affronts that he felt he’d suffered from the family. He was pointing the finger of blame at me. And I’m like, well, that’s ridiculous. I was from zero to 12. What could I have possibly done to ruin your marriage and make you be a violent alcoholic? I knew that was insane talk. And it was like him trying to protect himself. My stepmom’s like, well, he was a good father. And I’m like, who are you talking about? Of course, I never confronted them like that. But there was a time… I was a little bit older and I tried to go out again. And, you know, the visits weren’t, I paid, I arranged, I’d get a hotel, I’d buy my ticket. And of course he’d take me out to dinner or something like that. But, you know, it wasn’t like a great vacation. It was like, okay, but it was him like wanting to let me know how right he was. Right. And then my other siblings, you know, they didn’t come. I went on my own. So again, forgive, but then you are re-offended, right? So then I have to forgive him again, because once again, you know, he’s harmed me with what he has to say to me when I come to visit in an attempt at reconciliation. So again, my point is, and I know I digress, that you have to forgive over and over again sometimes. So then I go out there again when I’m maybe late 20s, early 30s, somewhere in there, maybe one or two times in there as an adult. And it was, again, okay. But there was no bond. He wasn’t coming to my wedding. He didn’t know anything about the birth of any of my children. By that point, I’d really given up once I got into my… After those maybe two, three… visits between about 19, because keep in mind, he never made any attempt for us to see him between 12 and 18. He didn’t send any ticket. He didn’t ask for me to come visit. He abandoned us 100%, except for the $150 a month, of course. So re-forgiving. So at that point, you know, once he says, you know, he wasn’t interested in coming to my wedding. He wasn’t interested. And I had children. And he found out through the grapevine. He would ask other relatives what was going on, blah, blah, blah. Out of the blue, he calls me up about, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago. 12 years ago. It was 12 years ago. And he said, I don’t know who gave him my phone number, but It’s fine. I answered the phone, and he’s the only one that calls me Angela. So I heard him say, Angela, this is your father. And I said, oh, I know it’s you. You’re the only one that calls me Angela. Hey, Dad, how are you? And I knew the second that he spoke that I had forgiven him. There was no anger. There was no animosity. There was nothing. So think of all those times over the years that I had to forgive him when he wasn’t ready to be forgiven. And then when he came out to my house, I don’t know if I can get all of this in before we take the break, but… When he came out to my house and he was sitting in my living room, he didn’t come out of his own volition per se. The University of Colorado wanted to give him some kind of award for academics and sports because he was a wrestler and he was a really great student. And so he went out on the football field during halftime and received this award. So he wasn’t coming out for me or my kids, but he did know my kids knew nothing about them. I mean, when I say nothing, they didn’t even know his name. And that wasn’t for me to be mean. I think I mentioned to you yesterday, that wasn’t for me to be mean. That was for me to say, I don’t have anything good to say, so I don’t have anything to say. Like, why bring it up when I’m not going to tell my kids anything pleasant, right? So what’s the purpose? Although my mother would tell them all kinds of horrible stories. I mean, they know every horrible story from my mother that there is to know. But he’s sitting on my couch. He’s met my husband. He’s met my kids. He’s thrilled. He’s in tears. And we were speaking and it was something about forgiveness. And he finally wasn’t self-righteous and pointing the finger anymore or anything like that. And I said, Dad, I’ve forgiven you. There’s nothing to apologize for anymore. Like, let’s just move on. Like, it’s done. He sobbed on my couch like he had just seen someone sobbing. hit by a car and died. You know what I mean? He sobbed. His whole body was just wracked with violent sobs, and he’s sobbing. And he said, I know I can tell that you forgave me. And then I do have a picture of it. Sometimes I post on Facebook about forgiveness, and it shows us hugging. And so I guess my point to this forgiveness is it’s a gift from God. It has freed me from the pain of my past because I’ve forgiven everyone in my family that I had any kind of issues with. It’s not just for you, and it’s not just for them. I believe we’re called to forgive as Christians, but it really has allowed me to be a good mom, I think, too, and a good friend and a good wife, etc. So there’s my spiel on forgiveness. I thought I’d better make that a little more clear to you all since I didn’t go into enough depth, I don’t think, about forgiveness yesterday. All right, we’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
Centennials, tuned to Colorado’s mighty 670 KLTT.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Jim Stovall joining you from Oklahoma. Oklahoma City, is that correct, Jim? Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Tulsa, Oklahoma, but close enough.
SPEAKER 04 :
Tulsa. And I am in Arizona, in Tucson today. I was in Phoenix yesterday, Tucson today. So kind of joining you from across the country. And we’re talking about Jim’s Winner’s Wisdom column. And today we’re working on the column titled Willpower. So what are we learning today, Jim?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, about 35 years ago, in the late 80s, I became a public speaker because due to the success of narrative television, and we got an Emmy Award, and I’d been an Olympic weightlifting champion, and the people that wanted to promote our work told me, Jim, if you would get out and do these arena events, we believe we could book you and increase your impact for your books and future movies and the other things we do. So I became a speaker and I joined a group called the National Speakers Association.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, a wonderful group of people. And, you know, it’s all about the business of becoming a professional speaker. I learned a great deal in my time there in NSA. But I did some research and that group was founded by a man named Cabot Robert. And He had been at his prime in the 50s and 60s, and he was a retired lawyer, a great and eloquent speaker. I only ever knew him through his recordings and his books. But several years ago, one of my book publishers sent me a 50-year-old article that Cabot Robert had written about when he was a very young man. He went to a Chamber of Commerce speech. And he was inspired to become a speaker because that day the speech was given by Will Rogers. And he said it was just such an amazing experience for him. Well, my publisher sent me this because I have a book out about Will Rogers in a novel I’m doing. And it’s kind of the subject of our new movie, Will to Win. But Cabot Robert recounted this experience of getting to hear Will Rogers. And Will had a very simple success principle, three principles he gave that day. One is know what you’re doing. Number two is love what you’re doing. And number three is believe in what you’re doing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wow. Okay. So no love, believe.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Know what you’re doing is simply a matter of being competent at whatever you do. And especially now in the 21st century, more than a century ago when Will Rogers said this in the 20s or 30s, it’s more important to know what you’re doing and If you were trained five years ago or eight years ago, you are obsolete. It’s not something you can do once and check the box anymore and say, well, I know what I’m doing, because the state of the art changes so much. And then you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing… You will be competing with people who do, and you just won’t stay the course. And then you’ve got to love what you’re doing, because life’s too short, and the line between work and play has blurred to a great extent. There’s just no substitute for loving what you do. George Burns probably said it best. If you love your work, you never really work a day in your life. You just have fun all the time. And so, you know, know what you’re doing, love what you’re doing, believe in what you’re doing. And, you know, Will Rogers was a very simple man, and he had simple principles but very powerful. Cabot Robert was a very eloquent man, a lofty speaker. But when it comes right down to it, you know, I think principles are more important than rhetoric. You know, now it’s great if you can have both. But, you know, no matter how lofty or grandiose you can speak, at the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to deliver something that really matters to people. Otherwise, it’s just, you know, smoke and mirrors. And so I just I was so taken by this. 50-year-old article where Cabot Robert is recounting something that happened 50 years before then. So 100 years ago, he’s at this meeting inspired to become a speaker over these three simple success principles.
SPEAKER 04 :
So in terms of how you format your speeches, and I know that depending on who books you, that there are different, you know, bullet points per se on what you speak about. But let’s talk about how you formulate your speeches. And you can use, you know, a topic as an example if you want. I’m curious.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I have three hours worth of material, and it’s kind of like a train in my mind. And I kind of hook up or unhook different cars on the train, depending on what I’m going to talk about. Oh, that’s cool. And my topics are, number one, we all have the right to choose, so we are where we are because that’s where we chose to be. Number two, you’re one quality decision away from anything you want because you can sit right there where you’re listening to us right now and you can change things. because you’re one quality decision away. And then of course I wrap it all up by saying you change your life when you change your mind. Everything that’s ever been done, everyone that’s ever succeeded, at some point they went from the idea of I’m not doing that to the idea of I am committed and I’m going to go do that. And that’s the beginning of everything. Every building you’ve ever seen at some point was nothing more than an idea in someone’s mind. The car you drive was an idea in someone’s mind. All great success was just an idea at some point that someone committed to, and they made it reality. Emerson said there’s nothing capricious about nature, and what he meant was it doesn’t fool us. If you can conceive of something… And believe it, you can achieve it because nature would not allow you to have that drive or that desire without the ability to do it. Nature gave birds the instinct to fly. He didn’t give dogs the instinct to fly. Dogs are not frustrated because they can’t fly. They never thought they could. But birds have this overwhelming desire to go fly. Well, we all have those things inside of us that we’ve always wanted to do. And by virtue of the fact that the desire is there, we have the capacity to do them. So the question is never can we. The question is always will we. And I just I see so many people that are living so far short of the promise and the potential that they really have for their life.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. And repeat that again. You see so many people living so far from the potential they have in their life. Is that what you said?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, the promise and the potential, so far beneath what they could do. I mean, the best people don’t always win. Yeah. I tell the kids at the Stonewall Center for Entrepreneurship, I always use the beta VHS example. Beta versus VHS. Because these kids, that’s ancient history to them. But I said there was a day before everything was digital, everything was on tape. And there were these two formats that came out at the same time. And beta was higher quality. It was smaller. It was less expensive. It was better in every way. But VHS dominated digital. Because they understood, they were committed, and they realized people don’t buy tapes. They buy programming. They buy content. So people, you know, they went out and spent all their money and effort and energy getting the content people wanted. Beta just said, well, we have better technology, so that’s going to carry the day. No, it doesn’t. Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
and you know is the best people the best products don’t always win the people that do are the people that understand the marketplace and the people that are willing to commit and hold on to that dream they have oh that makes me giggle because one of my best friends from high school karen uh my best friends in high school were sharon karen and aaron and angie um yeah so um yeah so sharon karen and aaron but karen’s dad it was like we’d want to watch movies right but he had beta And then she’d just go on and on about, he says, better technology, beta is better, blah, blah, blah. And we’re like, well, we ran into VHS. He’s like, well, we just have a beta machine. And so she’d always go into how her dad, you know, said it was better quality, you know, and kind of giggle about it because it didn’t help her at all when it came to technology. us wanting to watch a movie, etc. But I didn’t know why VHS won out. That’s interesting that they then made sure that they had the best movies, etc. programming on VHS.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. And we learned this here. I’m speaking to you from my business, the Narrative Television Network. People don’t watch television. They watch programs. And You know, and people don’t look at tapes. They look at a program. And so whatever technology brings that to them, that’s what really matters. And people don’t even watch channels. They watch programs. And that’s what people do, and that’s what controls it, you know. And, you know, I’ve written 50 books, and, you know, Some books may have a great cover and great artwork and wonderful paper and all this stuff. But bottom line, nobody’s going to buy a book for that. They buy it for the content, the topic, the subject, the story. That’s what makes it go.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, when you talked about that second topic, it was your only one decision away from like a big change. Tell me that topic again and explain that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, we all are in places. Shortly after losing my sight and beginning to learn to live my life as a blind person, which I’ve done for 35 years now, I moved into this little 9 by 12 foot room in the back of my house. I thought I would never leave again. And the thought of running a television network or writing 50 books or making movies or speeches or talking to you on the radio, that would have seemed as foreign to me as going to the moon. And I sat in my little room. I thought I would die in that little room. And then finally, one day, I got to the point where… I finally realized whatever it is out there I’m afraid of, even though I’m blind, whatever it is out there cannot be any worse than spending the rest of your life in this little room.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so I ventured out of there. And, you know, it took a lot of fear and trepidation and, you know, a lot of hard work and angst. But I’ve created the life that I enjoy today. But it all started when I made that one quality decision. I’m getting out of here.
SPEAKER 04 :
Now, when you told me that the first time you said no one was more depressed than I was in that little nine by 12 room. And then one of those days, didn’t you go to the fair and stumble upon something when you were losing your sight?
SPEAKER 05 :
I did. Once I finally got out of there, and I’d lost my football career because I was going blind, and I went to the fair. Two amazing things happened that day. Number one, I saw an exhibition from the previous Olympic Games, and I actually went over there to watch the girls, the gymnasts. But right after they were up, the weightlifters came out, and I thought, I could do that. I became the national champion and got to finish my athletic career as an Olympic weightlifter. Then I went on down the midway, and there was a big sign in front of the arena that said, free concert. I went in and sat there. My life got changed that night because I got to see Ray Charles. We became friends later in his life and mine. But that one day, I was wondering, can blind people do anything? I never saw nothing like Ray Charles. That was the most amazing day of my life. Eventually, I lost all of my sight, and he and I became dear friends. Ray’s the one that taught me how to sign my name. I used to think it was so cool if anybody ever wanted your autograph. Now I have to do it hundreds of times a day, and it’s not as cool as I thought it would be. But I remember when Ray was signing autographs, and I didn’t know how you did that when you can’t see. He showed me how to do it, and it was years before I could write anything other than Jim Stovall and Ray Charles. That’s all I knew how to write.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I just love that story because I’ve probably heard it three times in our decade or so of being radio friends. And I I can’t believe like I always talk about like God winks, you know, and you’ve got like a double God wink. You’ve got a God blink with both eyes because here you were depressed in that room, losing your sight. And you’ve got direction on where to go with your athletic career without sight that you could you were like, oh, I can weightlift if I can’t if I’m blind. And then secondly, you met one of the most famous blind people of all time, you know, 30 some odd years ago, Ray Charles, and that he became like a mentor to you. So it doesn’t get any better than that, huh?
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. I remember late in his life, he did one of his last shows here in my hometown, and we sat backstage and talked, and I remember him thinking, and he asked, he said, do you think they’re really angels? I said, well, I do, yeah. He said, what do you think angels look like? I said, if I have any angels, Ray, they look like Ray Charles, I’ll tell you, because you showed up at the day and time I needed you, and you’ve always been there, man.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, love it. I love it. Jim, always a blessing to have you on the show. We’re out of time, unfortunately. Take care, friend. Thank you. Be well.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
In this moving episode, Angie Austin delves into the power of forgiveness, exploring the impact of letting go of past grievances on personal well-being. Sharing poignant family stories, including hardships and estrangement with key relatives, Angie unveils her personal journey through forgiveness and how it has shaped her life today. Through candid reflections, listeners gain insight into how forgiveness can foster peace, build resilience, and improve relationships across generations.
