Lydia Caesar - Daughter of a Preacher

 

So, I currently live in St. Louis, but I'm born and raised in Hollis, Queens, New York. New York in the house. [audience laughter] I am a church girl in every word, every sense, okay? I'm what they call a PK. This is an acronym for Preacher's Kid. My grandfather founded a church, a storefront with a handful of members. By the time my father grew up, the church grew as well, by the thousands. My dad took over the ministry. We have international churches, branches. My dad's sermons were picked up by a radio broadcast that's heard by the masses. So, I'm basically saying all of this to say that my dad is kind of a big deal in the church community. 

 

I got used to being called Pastor Caesar's daughter, as I was a little girl growing up. I'm a Leo. So, the attention that came from being a part of the first family was okay. I didn't mind it so much. But at the same time, this fishbowl life that we lived in, it had a lot of pressure. I was the second born of four kids. My dad is a total family man. We went to church every Sunday, as you would expect religiously. No pun intended. [audience laughter] We went to Sunday school, junior church, Friday night youth services. We even went to Christian summer camps. And to be honest, I loved it. I would not change the way I was raised for anything in this world. I actually began to love God for myself. I developed my own faith, not because my parents forced it on me.

 

So much so that, by the time I turned 16, there was a group in my church called Purity with a Purpose. And I joined this group. We were young girls who said we were going to save ourselves for marriage. We were not going to have sex until we met our husband, the man God had for us. We had a ceremony where we got these 14 karat gold rings. I still have mine on today. It had "purpose" engraved on the inside. This was all me. Nobody said, "You must do this." But even though I had my own faith growing up, I was this sort of wild child. 

 

My mom says that when I was small, I wasn't even three, she said she went out and bought a book called The Strong-Willed Child. [audience laughter] Like, she needed a manual for me. She said I was so different from my older sister. My older sister was mild-tempered and she didn't give them any problems. But I questioned everything. I had a rebuttal for everything. For example, my sister was not allowed to go to her prom. My parents said it was a party, and there was going to be secular music and dancing and that is what they do in the world. We're in the world, but we're not of the world. We're set apart. So, partying is not what believers do. She said okay and she didn't go. I was watching. I was going to my prom [audience laughter] and I had a perfect lawyer-like Christian response as to why I should be allowed to go.

 

When my prom came around, I said, "Mom and Dad, if we look at the text, Jesus' first miracle in the Bible took place at a party. [audience laughter] The party was popping, because they ran out of alcohol. And our Lord and Savior turned the water into wine. So, how can parties be off the table?" By the time I was done, we were prom dress shopping. [audience laughter] This is the kind of Christian that I am, that I was, that I've always been, a free thinker. Even the way I dress, I always wore bright, bold colors. I wore clothes that fit my curves, like a show-off at church. 

 

This didn't always go over well with people. They judged me a lot. I'm the preacher's kid and I just wasn't supposed to be that way. But, okay, also, there were these women, these Holy Roller women. I mean, they were so holy and I felt especially judged by them. They wore turtlenecks up to here. They wore dresses down to their ankles. I was never going to be like them. It was a tall order of holiness that I felt like I was never going to be. 

 

I actually avoided these women. But sometimes I'd see them in church. One lady, whenever she'd see me, she would hug me. While hugging me, she would rub on my thigh to see if I had on a slip. [audience laughter] And if I didn't, she would chastise me. I mean, make me feel like I was going to hell for not wearing an undergarment. Another woman told me that my hopes and dreams, I wanted to entertain and sing, she told me that that was of the world and that a woman of God has no place entertaining. I was supposed to be in the pulpit, spreading God's word.

 

I just felt like I wasn't free to be who I wanted to be just because I'm a PK. I hated that feeling. But what helped me was my dad. He had this saying. He would say that “Our faith is not so much about religion and rules and dogma, but it's about a relationship with God. And that relationships are flawed just like we are.” I loved that. That helped me make it through the times when people in my church made me feel like I wasn't so much a part of the church family. 

 

So, by the time I turned 18, I started college. I didn't go away. I stayed home. While in school, I met this guy and we fell in love and we started having sex. [audience chuckle] Now, sex was complicated for me, because I liked it. [audience laughter] But at the same time, it came with this guilt. I had made a covenant, and I knew that I was not supposed to be having sex before marriage, but it was very, very hard to stop. So, it was like a back-and-forth thing. 

 

One day I remember feeling this weird, keen sense of smell and this insane nauseousness. I went and got a pregnancy test, and it turns out that I was pregnant. Now, this is the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. I fell into a deep, deep depression. I didn't even know what depression was until this time in my life. I'm a preacher's daughter. Getting pregnant and not being married is a mess. And I said to myself, “Lydia, this is going to be the hardest thing that you have ever had to deal with.” 

 

I was a freshman. I had the rest of my life ahead of me. I had these huge dreams. I was not ready to be a mom or to deal with all of that, just all of the mess that was going to come along with it. And even with all of this weight on, it felt like the world was literally on my back. The thing that was the hardest for me was how am I going to tell my dad, how am I going to tell my mom and my church. I decided to tell my mom first. She and I are really close. I also knew that even though she'd be disappointed, that she was going to be the most level-headed about it. So, I told her and it went how I expected. 

 

And then, it was time to tell my dad and I knew that that was not going to go the same way. But I called my boyfriend and said, “Look, we have to do this together.” So, we told our parents that we wanted to sit down and have a meeting with them. So, we met in our house, and I'm on the couch with my boyfriend, my mom's on the other couch, my dad's on the stairs. My mom's pretending that she doesn't know. [audience laughter] Shoutout to moms, because they keep their daughter's secrets. [audience laughter] 

 

I think my dad just kind of thought that maybe we were going to get engaged, but that wasn't it. My boyfriend is the one who actually said it. He said, "Bishop Caesar--" By now, my dad is a bishop, so he's just climbing. He said, "I'm sorry, but Lydia's pregnant." And it was silent. My dad didn't say anything for at least 20 seconds. When he opened his mouth, he says, "How could you do this to me?" And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I could totally understand why he said that. We live in a fishbowl. My dad, my family is the standard. People look to us to be perfection, to not break the rules. If anybody, if anybody in the Caesar family was going to screw it up, it was going to be me. 

 

I can just imagine. I could see it unfolding. I could see myself walking in church Sunday after Sunday, my belly growing. I'm just wearing the shame. I could see those Holy Roller women being like, "See, that's why you shouldn't have been wearing them outfits," or whatever they were going to say. I just could see it unfolding. I said to myself, “Okay, you're in the choir and you're in the acting ministry.” At that time, in my church, if you commit a sin that people can see, a visible sin-- I mean, because we all sin behind closed doors. But if you got pregnant or had an affair or something like that, you had to sit down from your ministry during that season. You couldn't minister while in your sin. 

 

I knew that I was going to be in church, but not ministering. I wasn't going to be acting and I was going to be getting big, and people were going to be asking and buzzing me, gossiping. It was going to be like this domino effect of my congregation finding out. That was like a nightmare to me. So, I made a decision that I wanted to announce my pregnancy to the entire congregation. I told my parents that this is what I wanted to do. My dad, he was indifferent at this point. He really just wanted everything to go smoothly. But my mom loved this idea of me being able to control the narrative myself. So, she and I wrote this speech. 

 

The Sunday had come where it was time for me to go to church and tell this to the congregation. And that Sunday, I walked into the church-- This is my church. I know these people. I've been in that pulpit a million times, singing and speaking and ministering. But this day, I felt like an outsider. I was so nervous the whole service, I just sat there looking at this paper. [scoffs] Then my dad finished his word, and he says, "At this time, my daughter Lydia has something that she'd like to say to the congregation." And I stood up. 

 

I was too scared to walk even up on the pulpit. I just stood in front of the church. I had on this burgundy skirt and a white blouse that I got out of my mom's closet. It was a way big. I did not want to be judged. I stood there and I looked out. 500 faces looking back at me. People who I knew, they watched me grow from a girl to the young woman that I was. I started to read. Basically, what I said was that I made a mistake. I started having sex and I got pregnant. And that I had let myself down, I had let God down and I had let my family down. And that God, my family, they forgave me. I asked for my congregation to forgive me as well. I also asked them that this is going to be a hard time for me, so please help build me up, not tear me down during this time in my life. 

 

My face was down, and I was just looking at the paper. When I lifted it up, one by one, I just see people start standing up. Next thing you know, the whole church is on their feet, and everybody's clapping and people are crying. And I'm crying. I'm like, “Oh, my God. Why are they clapping?” I didn't know what to expect, but they were supporting me. It was over and I sat down. At the end of service, one of the Holy Rollers comes up to me. I'm like, “"Oh, God." [audience laughter] She says, "Lydia, I just want you to know something. I had my first child out of wedlock. It was really hard for me. But you know what? God had my back and He has yours. You're going to be okay. You're stronger than you think." 

 

And then another lady, another one from the Holy Roller crew, she told me all three of her kids, she wasn't married. She said that she can't imagine how it is for me to have to deal with it as a PK and that she's there for me if I ever need to talk to somebody that she's there. Another lady came up to me and she hugged me. While hugging me and tears streaming down her face, tears coming down my face, she said, "Lydia, I've watched you grow from a little girl to this fierce young lady that you are today. I would have never been able to stand up here and tell my sins to the congregation. You are going to be a shining example, and your testimony is going to heal and help so many other young women who will go through the same thing as you." 

 

And of course, there were the naysayers, "Bishop Caesar can't even control his own family," blah, blah, blah. But it came back to me what my dad had taught me my whole life, was that those people who are talking and saying all this negativity, those people are probably super religious. They probably don't have a relationship with God. The people who opened their arms to me and were there for me, those are the ones with a real relationship. My church family, I learned something else about them that day, that they were exactly that, my family. They helped me raise a daughter that I did not think I was strong enough to have. Thank you.