Nala Ray
speaker
154 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Nala Ray’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Nala Ray.
Wow, that's awesome. That's the whole point about it.
So I actually grew up in Illinois, like a really tiny, tiny, small town. Um, my family dynamic, I'm the middle of five children, so a total family of seven. And, you know, we weren't Christians, especially when I was a kid, but we traveled a whole bunch because I was homeschooled. And so, uh, yeah, we traveled a lot in a camper just to like kind of see a lot of America, I guess, as a family.
Um, and it sounded all like great, you know, like as a kid, kid, like it was, it was pretty fun. Um, and then I guess like a couple, like when I was nine, my, um, dad cheated on my mom and then they got divorced for two years. Um, and so he left, he completely left the picture and moved to Mexico. So we didn't get to see my dad for like two years.
And we all, like all of us kids had no idea why, like we were just like, oh my gosh, my dad is gone now. He's not in the picture anymore. And then so slowly after that, my dad started reconnecting with my mom again, supposedly like they fell in love again, and then they remarried two years later.
So it was a really crazy story and but like a happy story for us kids because we're like, oh, great, mom and dad are back together again. So at that point, I was like 11, almost 12. My dad shortly after that started getting into ministry and like we started going to church. And then very shortly after that, he became like a Baptist pastor.
Um, we were, uh, pastoring like very tiny churches, like maybe total of like 45 people in a congregation.
And so, and that was also in tiny small towns in like the South. And, um, there was, we went through three like pretty big church splits. I couldn't tell you what the reason was for those like church splits. Honestly, I really don't know, but it definitely felt like one divorce after another, you know what I'm saying?
Because you continue to like, get to know the people of the church and start to love them. And then all of a sudden, like you're seeing this side of them that wasn't there in the beginning, like fighting, arguing, like disagreeing with your family. And then all of a sudden wanting your family out of the church. So yeah, it was pretty hectic as a kid, as like a younger preteen.
Well, before they got divorced, there was no sense of spirituality before that. Like none whatsoever. We never attended churches or anything like that. So it was just like,
doing our own thing as a family and but then after that he like slowly started getting into ministry like slowly going to church slowly started bringing his family into church they got married in the church that we were going to at the time it was a baptist church um and then we left that and that's um i was going to christian private school at that time very tiny tiny school uh for four years from like eighth grade no fourth through eighth grade um and then we went right back into homeschooling so
I mean, he was already pastoring churches and stuff and we were traveling to other churches so he could be the pastor of it and stuff like that.
No, it didn't feel random at all. It was just kind of like it kind of all of a sudden we started becoming spiritual. But then after that, we were going to church and he said he felt a calling on his life to be a pastor. So, you know, we just had to support him. So.
It didn't seem like it. Cause like they were married first before they got into Christianity again for the second time married and then slowly started being in the church more and more. And then that's when my dad felt the calling on his life to be a pastor. So, um, like as a kid, like when he was pastoring, I couldn't tell you one sermon that I remember or anything like that.
I just remember like all of us kids were like had to do things in the church. Like we have to show face for the church. You know, we have to be there super early in the morning, greet people as they're coming in, be on the worship team, be in Sunday school, like leaders of all these little tiny things. Like there was a puppet class.
Like we had to be involved in that because again, we're the pastor's family, stuff like that, you know? And it just felt so forced. It wasn't like, I actually want to be here. I actually want to do this. This is like, my dad and mom are telling me to do this. I have to do this.
Fourth. No, I'd say I was in fifth or sixth grade to 18 years old.
I didn't have friends. It was just my siblings. You know what I'm saying? Being at home a lot. I started working a job at 15. I wanted to be out of my house so bad. Like I hated my environment. I felt so alone and so isolated and just kind of like a caged bird, you know, and I just wanted to leave so bad because again, it just felt like
we have to do all of these things um and then I had my first boyfriend when I was 16 he was going to the church he ended up like was just crazy and like slashed the tires on my car and stuff we had to go yeah we had to get we had to get a restraining order against him and his family because they were just horrible people and so um like that was my first like dating experience um so
very intense it was horrible it was absolutely horrible but yeah so much of my life just changed constantly and then like the hurt from my parents going through those church splits and there were still trust issues from the cheating and like that carried out through their relationship and like they i in my head in my opinion it was never shown that like this was a really good healthy relationship
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