Episode Twenty-One: The Interview - Pastor Debria Upton

Episode 21: In this longer episode, we hear how at camp in her teens, Debbie was part of a larger group who got lost in the woods. Listen in on how she found the way, not only for herself but her friends as well.

Transcript

So we came back to another stopping point,

And it was not pitch black,

But it was really getting dark in the woods.

You know,

I said,

Lord,

I've been asking for help.

And I said,

I've been asking you to help me.

And I said,

I'm gonna ask you to help us,

Because obviously we may be here all night,

Just as clear as day.

And then I knew it was Jesus when he appeared and spoke to me and he said,

Feed my sheep and come this way.

And it was to the right.

So we got through and it was really funny because there was like total silence.

And I'm going,

Did anybody else hear or see this?

The first question,

Which is always so interesting to ask,

Especially people in the cohort,

Who I already know,

I say,

How do you define yourself or describe yourself as a human being?

And I had no idea it would be such a loaded question for so many people.

So that's my first question.

A child of God.

And the first question,

I'm gonna ask you to help me,

Because I know you have a lot of people in the community and I know you have a lot of people that are in the community and I know you have a lot of people that are in the community.

So I'm gonna ask you to help me.

I'm gonna ask you to help me.

I'm gonna ask you to help me.

And the first question,

Is that it?

That's it.

I grew up in a religious household.

My father was a deacon at the Southern Baptist Church that we attended.

My mother sang in the choir and did all those wonderful things helping out in Bible school,

Sunday school,

You name it.

I was in what was called girls' auxiliary.

It was for girls that studied the Bible and were to develop into the Proverbs woman.

And so I actually accepted the Lord at a very,

Very young age to the point where my grandfather had been ill.

And that was a time when they didn't allow children to come see people in the hospital.

And so he passed away.

I guess maybe a couple of years,

Two or three years later,

My mother had to go into the hospital and my child like mine basically perceived that mother was going into the hospital and probably could die.

And I very nonchalantly asked my father in church,

If mom died,

Where would she go?

And he told me heaven.

And I said,

Well,

Then I wanna go there too.

I'll never forget the minister asking me a bunch of questions.

And one of them was if you were on top of the roof of your house and your father was standing there and saying,

Jump,

What would you do?

And I said,

Well,

I would jump.

And he said,

Well,

If that was Jesus standing there telling you,

What would you do?

And I said,

Well,

I would jump.

And so he looked at my dad and he says,

She has a stronger faith and belief system than half of the congregation does.

I can remember being in element,

Well,

No,

I actually was middle school because sixth grade was put into the middle school setting when I was there in sixth grade.

And I can remember kids laughing and taunting me and saying,

Well,

I bet you don't know the facts of life.

And I just turned to them just a matter of fact,

I said,

Yes,

I do.

And I said,

You're born,

You can't change that.

And you're gonna die.

And life is what you make of it during that time.

And they just looked at me and it never even,

The sexual part never even crossed my mind.

And they were like in shock that I had responded,

Those are the facts of life.

Well,

That's amazing.

Cause your response was so much bigger than they could have ever,

Their minds are probably like,

They're like,

What,

What did she just say?

What just happened?

What just happened?

My dad was the perfect example of who a physical God.

I mean,

And I know people have horror stories with their dads and I was very blessed.

He showed me how to be Jesus to the world.

We would go out to eat on Sunday and my mother was the rule.

She wanted to follow the rules.

And so for her,

My dad did that.

So she didn't have to cook on Sunday.

And she was like,

I'm not gonna do that.

And then she just kind of took it as a rule.

And I said,

I'm not gonna do that.

And she was just really worried cause I grew up when the blue laws kind of went by the wayside on Sunday.

But these people have to work on Sunday and my dad would just smile and so forth.

And almost every Sunday that we went to church and then we left church and went to a cafeteria,

Usually it was close to where my dad worked.

There was always someone asking for a handout and my dad would never give a handout.

But instead what he would do would invite them to dinner with us.

And many times there'd be other people from the church that we,

And my dad didn't do it to say,

Hey,

Look at me.

He was genuinely,

Sincerely concerned about them.

He'd tell them they could get whatever they wanted to eat.

It didn't matter.

And he wanted them to get a good meal.

And he would always invite them to sit at our table and eat at our table.

Most of them would not.

You know,

They would sit at another table or whatever.

And the wait staff knew my dad.

Cause I think he would go bring businessmen there for lunch during the week.

And so all of the wait staff who were African-American knew my dad,

First name basis.

And he was always a generous tipper with them.

That was like the best example of what Jesus would have done.

It's like witnessing God on earth.

Because I think the other really sweet and wonderful portion of that story is that your father was also removing the shame and how they felt isolated from society by saying,

Please sit with us,

Please eat with us.

You are welcome.

Like welcoming the stranger.

It's so powerful.

But there was one man who dad,

I can see him so clearly.

And he had,

He was a truck driver and he'd made a long haul.

And it was a,

Everybody had gone home for Christmas and he hadn't made it back in time.

So my dad left his paycheck at the office and so forth.

And so the gentleman came to the house.

My dad gave him the keys to go to the office and get his paycheck.

He came back and dropped off the keys.

And we usually had church people that came by on Christmas.

Even my mother did this big buffet or whatever.

So when he came back,

My dad asked him if he wanted to come in and have something to eat.

He said,

Oh no,

No,

No,

It's okay.

But he saw me by looking at packages by the tree.

And so he came over and he asked me,

He says,

What are you hoping to get?

I said,

Well,

I asked Santa for a piano.

And I didn't call it piano.

At that time I called it pickernanner.

And he goes,

Oh,

Oh,

He says,

When you get one of those,

Oh,

You'll have to let me.

And he played.

There's so many folks down in the New Orleans area.

Music is just,

It just oozes out of them.

Nobody taught them anything.

It just oozes out of them.

And he says,

You'll have to let me know when you get your pickernanner.

He says,

I'd love to.

And he just kept reinforcing that.

My dad came back to get the keys from him in the living room where I was.

And that's when my mother had asked him if he would like to have something to eat.

And he says,

No,

No,

No,

No,

It's okay.

There were some folks from the church that were already there.

And there was some uncomfortableness,

Not from my parents,

But that was present in the room.

And for me,

That made,

That,

I guess that was my first awareness that somehow or another for a black man to be talking to a little white girl was not appropriate,

But my dad was like that.

Yeah,

It sounds like your dad really modeled complete and utter love for the other human being,

No matter what.

But what I also think is really,

Really amazing about that story is that you're a kid,

You're little,

But even you caught the tension in the room.

And so it's like,

As a child,

You're having a conversation with someone you just met and you both liked the same thing.

And it's so wholesome and it's so hopeful.

And then you feel that unease in the room or that distrust.

And it kind of alters everything for you inside.

Yeah.

And for him,

The feeling came from him and that he was uncomfortable and that the temperature in the room was not the same as if it had best been my mom and dad.

I think that's what I'm really looking forward to.

Ridgecrest is in North Carolina.

It is,

At the time we went,

It was a senior high youth retreat type of,

Was centered more on music,

Hymns,

Scripture,

That kind of thing.

And prior to that time,

I was not really allowed to go off to places.

And I don't know how it happened,

But my mother ended up being talked into being the nurse for the trip.

I mean,

When you talk about the mountains of North Carolina,

It's similar to here in Colorado.

I mean,

You're on this bus and you go winding around the top of the mountain and you look over and there's nothing there.

It's that kind of thing.

And she liked that particular area too.

So we'd gotten up there and the kids had said that they were gonna go on a hike and that they were gonna use the guides,

The counselors from Ridgecrest.

They were gonna lead them,

Cause there were all kinds of trails.

And I did like to do hiking.

I did that with my aunt up in Illinois every time we came for the summer.

So I liked hiking.

And so they convinced my mother to let me go.

We proceeded to go and have a lot of fun,

But I kept noticing that we were going off trail,

On trail,

Off trail,

On trail.

And it appeared to me that we were repeating the same area.

I was not a boy scout or a girl scout or anything like that.

So what was supposed to have gotten us back by four o'clock or whatever for dinner,

To be cleaned up and all for dinner,

Ended up being very late until when the sun was going down,

We were still in the woods and it was dark.

It was getting dark.

And every time we stopped,

Well,

Let's go this way,

Let's go this way.

And so the guys that were leading kept saying,

Okay,

Let's stop and have prayer.

And so we'd stop and we'd have prayer.

And it just felt like it was hollow.

It was just like,

Well,

That's what we should do,

Right?

Cause we don't want to say we're lost,

But we're lost.

So anyway,

We came back to another stopping point and it was not pitch black,

But it was really getting dark in the woods.

And I said,

Lord,

I've been asking for help.

And I said,

I've been asking you to help me.

And I said,

I'm going to ask you to help us because obviously we may be here all night.

And my mother's probably having a cow right now.

And so just as clear as day.

And it's the picture that the Russian girl drew is who I saw.

Was not the blue-eyed,

Blonde-haired Jesus that I grew up with.

It was a totally different person.

And I knew it was Jesus when he appeared and spoke to me.

And he said,

Feed my sheep and come this way.

And it was to the right.

And so we got through and it was really funny because there was like total silence.

And I'm going,

Did anybody else hear or see this?

And it was like,

No,

They didn't.

And so I just said,

Let's go to the right.

Oh,

Well,

We've already done that.

I said,

Well,

Would it hurt us to do that again?

And so we went to the right and about a half a mile,

I was close enough that as we started walking,

You could begin to hear road noise.

And so we went about half a mile and there was a highway.

And as soon as we stepped out on the highway is this big old gaggle of 12 teenagers,

12,

You got that,

Right?

There a white pickup truck pulled up.

Now my mother had told me,

Don't talk to strangers or any of this,

Whatever.

He rolled his window down and he spoke directly to me.

He didn't speak to anybody else.

And he says,

Looks like you guys could need a lift.

Would you like a lift?

And I said,

Sure.

And I got in this cab and a friend got in the cab with me.

And then the rest of them piled in the back.

And so as we're going,

He goes,

Well,

Where are you guys going?

And I said,

We are at a retreat up at Ridgecrest.

And he kind of chuckled and said,

Well,

You know,

I'm coming home from work.

He said,

I don't always go this way.

It's kind of the long way to go,

But it's so pretty up here.

And he said,

Something just told me to come this way.

And so as we're driving,

We pass a state line.

And I'm like,

Where are we?

He says,

Looks like you wandered in the woods until you just crossed the state line.

So we get back to Ridgecrest and it's already like seven o'clock,

It's chapel time.

There are leaders are just kind of panicking,

Pacing back and forth.

And so are the counselors who were supposed to be taking care of us from the Ridgecrest area.

And so we pull up and forget about dinner.

Do you know,

Go straight into the chapel and see all of us had said during this time that if God get us out of there,

We would give our life.

We just turn our whole life over to him.

He could do,

We could,

We do whatever he wanted us to,

You know,

So we all went forward.

And of course,

May,

The speaker just,

He was elated and all.

I think I was the only one that really seriously had that encounter and really meant it.

And so I think that's what I'm really excited about.

I love that they're like,

We're not gonna say we're lost,

But let's pray.

Yeah.

Like if we avoid using the word lost.

We're not lost.

Yes.

I don't think that story is crazy at all because,

You know,

I think you were praying with your heart.

And I think it's really interesting that it was when you said,

Will you save us?

That that figure appeared.

What is the image of Jesus that the Russian woman made?

I don't know that.

It's not a woman,

It's a girl.

It's a girl,

Okay.

The figure I saw many,

Many years later,

They tried to do a 3D rebuild from the Shroud of Turin.

And my husband thought I was absolutely crazy.

Cause when they came up with this clay figure and the hair and stuff,

I went,

That's him.

And my husband's like,

What are you talking about?

And I said,

That looks like who I'm at and what?

He goes,

Okay.

You know,

I think you had a really profound sense of God from a very early age and this experience at that retreat just cemented it for you.

I also think from a very early age,

You felt called.

Yeah.

And so that kind of call is so intoxicating because you kind of know where it's going to lead.

But I also have heard that it's,

You know,

Some people dread it because it's going to involve a lot of work.

So it's like,

You know,

What does it mean really to be a true servant?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right,

Folks.

We've officially reached season three of Bite Sized Blessings.

That's episode 21,

If you're keeping count.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey.

It's been a true privilege hearing the stories from people,

Stories that have changed their lives,

That have affected them and that have reminded them that the universe always has their back.

I'd like to thank Debbie Upton for sharing her story today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Agnese Valmaggio,

Luis Mayorga,

Frank Schroeder,

Raphael Crux and Alexander Nakarada.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to songs,

Books,

And change makers I think will inspire you and lift your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Debbie and be open to the miracles that will show you your true path.

Fears of peace build onagues.