(gong ringing)
- I felt really scared.
- I don't belong.
- I didn't know how
I was gonna pay the bills.
- I had missed it.
(low dramatic music)
- I had enough fun,
and it wasn't fun anymore.
- I completely lost it.
- I just don't know how to live.
- I'm gonna die.
(rock music)
- I didn't trust men.
- I think I was angry that I didn't have legs.
- I didn't have a normal relationship with food.
- And though I still loved that woman,
we hated each other.
- I got a rude awakening about who I was,
and what my color was all about.
(heartbeat thudding)
When I was about five years old,
my uncle, he took me out in the backyard one day.
He goes, "Okay, I want you to stand right here."
And he got down in a football stance.
- [Jessica Voiceover] I was put up for adoption by a young
16-year-old Russian girl and due to a birth defect,
she just wasn't able to care for me.
- At 19, I fell in love with my wife.
Life's perfect.
Why wouldn't we just jump in a car right now,
drive off to Vegas and get married
at the first little chapel that we see?
And that's what we did.
- I was elated, man.
I mean, man, he's gonna show me something about football.
- What I was born with, it's called fibular hemimelia.
So basically means I was missing
all the bones in my lower legs.
- I decided that I needed to lose some weight.
I was a very normal sized 17-year-old girl,
but I wasn't perfect, and I needed to be perfect.
- And he took off as fast as he could go,
hit me, I flipped over, rocks and dust flying,
and I cannot believe he had hurt me so badly.
- So imagine being a three-year-old,
seeing your mom abused.
I could remember saying,
"Nobody else will ever hit my mom again."
- I'd gotten myself into this pretty severe eating disorder.
When I would eat something,
I tried to make myself throw up
and used laxatives, a whole box at a time.
- Within a year and a half, having our son,
we're fighting like crazy.
We didn't feel a connection.
We were jealous.
- And he said, "Shut up!
Stand back up there."
I don't wanna stand back!
Shut up, bam, get back up there, bam!
Five, six times, bam!
- There's another incident where another guy
is putting his hands on her,
and as a five-year-old,
why are you trying to fight a grown man?
- I was missing half of my body.
Maybe that's why my birth mom didn't want me
'cause I didn't look like a normal person.
- He stood me up and he says, "Let me tell you something.
You are black.
You live in Alabama.
Whites can never be trusted.
You always have to keep your guard up
and you better understand
you are never gonna be treated equal."
My life changed that day.
I believed my uncle and I graduated with honors
in living that life.
I was driven by hatred.
Driven.
(intense music)
- I'm punching holes through the walls,
holes through the windows, shouting and spitting
and saying foul words to this woman that I love.
- I started this cycle of feeling very guilty.
- A cycle of always protecting.
- Well maybe we should get divorced.
Fine, I'll get divorced.
You're pushing yourself into a corner.
- My idea of dealing with it.
Let's just fight.
- What I heard a lot of is that God made me this way.
You know, telling a little eight-year-old girl that
who's gone through a dozen surgeries,
I just didn't want anything to do with a God
that made me this way.
(peaceful music)
- What that did was turned me into a vicious little machine
I couldn't turn off.
- It was taking such a toll on me, physically,
mentally, and emotionally.
- Why do I wanna drink?
Why do I wanna look for ways to be satisfied elsewhere
than just what I have?
Why is this isn't making sense?
- I was always angry with everything that I did.
- My hatred grew so badly
that I ended up
not liking blacks either.
- I literally tried to kill somebody.
I tried three times,
but it didn't happen,
but it still mentally did something to me to where
every male relationship that I had, I ruined deliberately.
- [Brian Voiceover] I've already blown it.
I've already got divorced.
- I felt ugly inside.
- I thought Martin Luther King, I mean he abandoned us!
Don't fight back?
No, mm-mm.
- I don't care if I live, I'm getting suicidal.
- No one could help me.
- I was knocking people down, stomping them.
- Slipping into depression.
- That's when I began to get into more fights.
That's when I got in trouble with the police.
- We turned over floats.
We set them afire.
Burn, baby, burn.
- And it just hurt all the time.
- And once I flipped the switch,
there was no turning it off.
- I was miserable.
- White people have made it miserable.
- And it became, you know what?
F this.
- But there was this emptiness.
- I hated myself.
(mournful music)
- One day I found myself
talking to a room of men,
150, 200 men doing a seminar,
and it just hit me like a ton of bricks,
and I just started to weep.
I told the guys, I said, "I hated every guy in here.
Not because of what you did to me.
Because of what you did to my mom."
And once I stopped
and just listened to what God was telling me,
when I tell you that thing was broken off of me.
When you feel true deliverance, it's like a weight.
It's literally like a weight
that's taken off of you
that you just can't describe, you can't explain.
And I think that day
was the beginning of true healing for me.
(soft music)
- I thought Christianity was the white man's religion.
I go, "God, I don't know if you're real,
but my life is miserable.
And so, here I am.
I'm yours."
- I found this woman
and I had known her the last couple years
and I just said,
"I wanna give God my whole heart for once."
- I didn't need any of the Sunday school answers.
I needed to know
that I didn't have to be in control anymore.
And I needed to know
that someone else was.
- I prayed with her and as soon as I prayed
it was the first time in my entire life
that I felt enough.
- Am I still angry?
That is a crazy question.
I'm not, I'm not angry.
- I'm definitely a work in progress.
- I still struggled a lot for a lot of years
but he made it easier
every day until I finally got to the point
where I felt like I could say I'm healthy, I'm okay.
(hopeful music)
- I'm sure it took some time to get that language
out of my system or to deal with issues of pride
but I just knew that Jesus had begun something in my life.
I'm remarried to that woman
because Jesus Christ made himself known to me that night
and He forgave my sin.
I am by no means the same person.
- I dropped that hatred for whites into the love of Christ.
And that's why to this very day,
I will fight for white, black,
red, yellow, brown, because the love of Christ changed me,
protected me, accepted me,
and I do the same for all people.
(gentle music)
♪ In silence, with blindness ♪
♪ Through darkness, I'll walk with you ♪
♪ When time's up, when they find us ♪
♪ I promise, I'll be with you ♪
♪ Forgotten, I'm calling ♪
♪ In the garden, I wait for you ♪
♪ On eggshells, in bad health ♪
♪ Gates of hell, I'll walk right through ♪
♪ Don't blame me, no maybes ♪
♪ Betray me, and I'll come for you ♪
♪ Until then, I'm all in ♪
- My name is Ken Hutcherson.
- My name is Jessica Long.
- My name is David Mann.
- I'm Ashley Rawls.
- My name's Brian Sumner, and I am second.
♪ I (I), won't (won't), give (give), up (up) ♪
♪ I (I), will (will), stand (stand up) ♪
♪ I'll die for ♪
♪ I'll fight for you ♪
♪ For you (for you) ♪