🇺🇸Crescentia DeGoede

Hosts: So, Crescentia, to get started, what's a particular memory that stands out for you that sums up your experience of growing up in the church?

Crescentia: Well, there are many different memories, but one that comes to mind is my experience of winter retreats. I took part for most of my life growing up in the Chahakwa Family Ministry winter and summer programs, and sometimes there were spring programs too. By the way, this would be young people coming together from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, various different Unification Church communities. So it was kind of a special opportunity to have a deeper experience in your faith, but also to make new friendships. I always looked forward to that, especially coming from a city where the closest Unification Church family was 20 minutes away, and the closest building was an hour and a half away. It was such a joy to find other people who shared my faith, because the students I was in classes with couldn't quite understand some of those experiences of faith that I had.

Crescentia: On New Year's Eve, the tradition would be that we would do a reflection of our year. We'd think about what were some of the highlights, what we were grateful for, what could have been improved, any regrets, anything we wish we could have done differently — and then hopes and dreams and goals for the coming year. A lot of people do that. But what was unique is that we would gather around a bonfire with all the members of the retreat, and we would be invited to toss our regrets into the fire to burn them up and burn them away so we'd have a fresh start for the year. We'd also come into fellowship through singing together, kind of worshiping together. When you hear the fireworks going off and people cheering in other places, we would be singing around the campfire — these holy songs and fellowship songs. Then the countdown would be to have a prayer. One leader of the retreat would offer a representative prayer to close out the year and usher in the new year. And then we'd go into a unison prayer where all the people would be praying at the same time. It's a chance to have this personal time with God and start your new year off with God. For me, that is a pretty good summary of growing up in the Unification Church. New Year's is celebrated in a pretty different way than your average person, I would say.

Hosts: Yeah, New Year's used to be called God's Day for us growing up.

Crescentia: That's right. The next day, families would come from all over for a really big celebration. We'd have a talent show, people would bring potluck food, and we'd enjoy the food together, enjoy the talent show. People would be catching up that maybe hadn't seen each other in a year. It was really one of the highlights of the year for a lot of Unificationist families to celebrate God's Day together on the first day of the year.

Hosts: Definitely for me, it was probably my favorite holy day that we had growing up. In our family, my dad would only let us open one Christmas gift on Christmas. We had to save all the rest of them to open on God's Day.

Crescentia: Oh, that's tough as a kid.

Hosts: Let's just let our listeners know that that's not a Unificationist tradition. That was just our family's tradition. Because in his mind, he wanted to emphasize that Christmas as Jesus's birthday was still special to honor and celebrate, but the most important was that connection to God. So it was the best day of the year — go to church, the festivities and the party, and then come home and tear into the presents.

Crescentia: There's actually one other experience I wanted to share, because I wanted to share one that was more of the communal experience, but I thought it might give you a sense of my family experience too. A lot of Unificationist families engage in the practice of reading scripture together as a family. If you're around Unificationists, you may hear it called hoondokhae. I grew up doing hoondokhae in the morning with my family — I had three siblings, my mom, and my dad. We would sit down together on the rug in front of the altar where we had a photo of our Father and Mother Moon. We'd have our holy books there, and song books so we could sing holy songs together. That would be sometimes 5 o'clock, sometimes 6 o'clock in the morning, depending on when my parents could get us all up for this reading. For me, it was a good experience, because we would read the scripture, and then my parents would ask us what we thought about it. Each of us could ask questions, give our reflections. Sometimes it led us to share about things that had come up in the day before, or in the week, if we were going through challenging things. We actually had this time to connect as a family with scripture as part of the experience. That was very much a defining factor of my faith as a young Unificationist.

Hosts: We had a similar tradition. I think my parents tried the 5 a.m., didn't roll with us — none of the kids were morning people. Especially when you start school at 7:30, you're like, no. So we would do it in the evenings when we were all together as a family. There was also this tradition that every eight days you do what we call a pledge service. It's like a rededication to God for the week, and to yourself and your family. My dad would start with the youngest, because the youngest never got to talk. The older siblings would just be raring to show off what they knew. It was a pivotal experience for sure, to be asked what you thought about these deep concepts — about God's heart, about the purpose of family. We didn't so much go into what happened in our week; I think it was more intellectual. But it was a really pivotal experience.

Crescentia: Well, I admire you guys. I wish I could have been with your families, because my experience growing up was so different. I was so annoyed that we had to do it. I was that quintessential rebellious teenager who was trying to sit in a way where I could kind of sleep but still be sitting there, because my dad was making us do this. Bless him, he would try to engage us and ask, what do you think? And I'd be like, I don't know. Okay, like, I don't know. What do you think?

Hosts: I'm sure we all got to that stage as teenagers. I'm trying to think back — probably. I just wouldn't wake up. And there was a certain point where my parents would just give up. Not on doing it, but on the kids who didn't show up. If they're not here, they don't need to be here. But speaking of rebelliousness — that comes from the struggle, right? So I'm curious to know, what were some of the things that you may have struggled with growing up in a Unificationist faith upbringing? What were some of the challenges for you?

Crescentia: I don't know if I'm a typical young Unificationist in this way, but I'll just share one of my experiences. Because I chose to be a Unificationist from a young age — to be engaged in our community and adopt this faith as my own — I wanted to find people in my school that I would feel comfortable with, who also were people of faith. There weren't other Unificationists other than my sister, who was in high school with me. But I just didn't want to feel alone. Loneliness is something I struggled with as a Unificationist. Even though I had friends and we connected and had fun and did different things, in terms of being able to really share some of my deeper beliefs and my relationship with God, that was a lot harder. Does anybody else understand? There's this term we use, being a blessed child, which means that you're born out of a marriage that was blessed by Father and Mother Moon. It's something that's supposed to be special, but it can also make you feel like, well, why isn't everybody a blessed child? Why aren't we all able to experience what this means?

Crescentia: I didn't want to be stuck in that feeling of loneliness, so I looked for others who were like-minded, who also were strong in their faith. I came across the Christian club in my high school, with a variety of Christians from different denominations coming together that would meet up once a week to pray, to study the Bible, to have discussion and fellowship and just enjoy each other's company. I soon became secretary, one of the administrators, because I'm a leader type. I wanted to have a say in how things were run, so I became secretary in the club, and I became very close friends with the president, the vice president, and the treasurer. We were really a tight-knit group.

Crescentia: After a time, though, they wanted to know more about my particular denomination — and I'm using air quotes for this — of Christianity, because we're not really a denomination of Christianity, but that's how they understood me to be. As I shared some of our beliefs with them, particularly describing my affection for Father and Mother Moon, who they meant to me and what I believed their mission was, this became a problem. They were sharing about it with their parents, asking their parents questions about the Unification Church and about Reverend and Mrs. Moon, and they started to, for lack of a better word, persecute me. I was made to feel bad about what I believed in and why I believed it. They actually asked me to step down as secretary of the club, which was really hard — because I didn't really care about the position of secretary, but these were my friends, these were people I'd become connected to. We did navigate it, and we decided after a while to put the differences in our faith aside, and we did maintain friendships. But there was a period of time that was very tough, where they were grilling me about certain beliefs and I didn't even fully understand my beliefs. I didn't even fully understand what was different about the different denominations of Christianity versus what's different about being a Unificationist. So there was a lot of discovery in that period of time — some of it good and some of it really painful — that to be a Unificationist means to be someone that's different, and not everybody's okay with that. That was one challenge that I had.

Hosts: Wow, that must have been so tough — to think that you'd found your brothers and sisters of faith, surround yourself with like-minded people, and then come to that point with them. I came to a similar point in high school as well. Two friends would take me to Waffle House every Wednesday or Thursday morning before school, because they would drive me to school. They took turns because I didn't drive at the time, and I didn't realize what was happening. I thought we were just having cool discussions about the Bible and faith, and actually, they were trying to convert me. They were literally trying to save my soul. They told me one morning, and I was blindsided. I was like, wait, what? I thought this was mutual. Genuinely, I had that experience over and over again growing up in the South — this sincere belief that I was going to hell and I was a heretic, and people told that to me directly. That's a really tough experience from people you consider friends and still want to have a close relationship with.

Hosts: In the intro, you talked about at 13 having this experience where you dedicated yourself to God and the Unification faith, and you had this deep experience with God and Father and Mother Moon. Can you talk about that?

Crescentia: Yeah. It's as real to me now as it was over 20 years ago. Coming back to that environment of the camps — I was at a summer church camp, and on the second day of the camp, there's always a candlelight prayer. I'm realizing that prayer is a big theme in my life. We come together as a group, the worship songs are being sung, and then there are some testimonies shared by a few different individuals, where they described really connecting deeply with God personally and having some transformation in their life around some challenging issues they were going through. Then everyone's given a candle, and you're invited to go out into the field and pray as you hold this candle and have some personal time with God.

Crescentia: That particular evening, it started to rain as we were singing and holding onto the candles about to go out into the field to pray. At first it was just little drips, and then it started pouring rain, so we couldn't actually pray with our candles. I had really wanted to pray. Earlier in the day, we had some time to study the Divine Principle. We were engaging with the topic, and I was feeling some kind of — I guess the best way to say it is — stirring in my heart. I wanted to meet God. I really wanted to meet God. I wanted to have a personal connection with God that touched my heart. I was actually really disappointed when this rain started to pour down and we couldn't pray. We were all told to go back into our cabins. It started to thunder and lightning, so we were told to go back to our cabins to be safe.

Crescentia: Well, call this religious rebellion. I did not go back to my cabin.

Hosts: It still counts, Crescentia.

Crescentia: I went back towards my cabin, but I went out in the pouring rain. It was thundering, it was lightning, and I prayed. I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed, and I felt God. I felt God so deeply. Actually, I felt God through Jesus. When born-again Christians ask me, have you been born again? I say yes, because I was connecting with Jesus's heart. I was connecting with what Jesus came to do on this earth — to bring God's love, to bring salvation to humankind, to allow people to feel deeply that they are precious to God and that they are meant to live a life that is good and brings goodness into this world. I felt that, but it didn't stop there. I started to feel sadness. I started to feel pain. The world that Jesus had longed for was not the world we were living in. There was suffering in this world, and misuse, and abuse, and selfishness, and exploitation. Just the sadness of this world and the pain of this world hit me so hard. I felt that Jesus was sad about it — which is a teaching that Father and Mother Moon bring, that Jesus was unfulfilled because he died too soon and couldn't carry on his mission and bring total salvation in the way he had hoped to. He said he would come again.

Crescentia: This is all in this prayer that I'm having, with the pouring rain all around me, the lightning coming down. I felt Jesus was leading me to Father and Mother Moon, where he helped me to experience the sadness that he felt that the world was in the state it was. Then — this was quite a journey, and there were no drugs in me whatsoever, I just wanted to be clear, this was completely a prayer-oriented experience — I was led to this place of ecstatic joy. I was just deliriously happy. That happiness came from: oh my gosh, Father and Mother Moon are on this earth. They have come to carry on this mission that Jesus started over 2,000 years ago — to bring all people to a deeper understanding of their value, who they are as God's sons and daughters, and to live in a way that would be selfless and unconditionally loving and create together this beautiful, peaceful world that God has been dreaming about. There was so much joy. So much excitement that, oh my gosh, Father and Mother Moon are here. I'm alive at this time. Not only that, but I'm a daughter of a family that was blessed by Father and Mother Moon. I have a special connection and opportunity to be a part of this unfolding process.

Crescentia: Then I came back into the cabin, where the other girls of my cabin had dutifully gone after they were told. I just started hugging each one of them and telling them how precious they were and how valuable they were. We all started connecting together and feeling God's love together as a group. That was such a pivotal moment for me at 13. After that, so many things have happened in my journey of faith — so many challenges have come — but that is like an anchor that I always go back to. It was this very real and very personal experience of who Father and Mother Moon are, who Jesus is to me, and what it is that I'm trying to do in my life as someone who's following these teachings. From that time, I was personally motivated to study the teachings myself, so I could understand how to apply them, live out this faith, and support people on going this journey — whether they were born into it or to invite them to become a part of it.

Hosts: Wow, that's so special to have such a powerful experience at such a young age. It took me many more years to have one of those kind of moments, or something close to that. You mentioned there have been many ups and downs for you over the course of your spiritual journey. Was there a pivotal moment or a time in your life when you consciously decided to stay with the church because you were just so challenged? A lot of people I know that I grew up with chose not to stay, and no judgment for that. But what was it that made you decide to stick around through all of those struggles?

Crescentia: There were actually two critical junctures that occurred for me. The first was in college, and then the second happened after I was married and pastoring. This first one in college — I think this is a common experience for a lot of young Unificationists. I was really challenged that I had these ideals, these beliefs about the kind of person I wanted to be and the kind of world that I wanted to help create. But around me, I saw a lot of people that had no concept of that, and it didn't even seem like they were that interested, to be honest, in the pursuit of that kind of lifestyle. On top of that, in the Unificationist faith, the understanding is that you are going to be supported by your parents in finding your future spouse — not necessarily that they're going to select that person and tell you, okay, you have to marry them and that's it, but that they would offer a suggestion of a person to marry, and then you would make the decision to marry them.

Crescentia: I had always thought I would do this, but I was meeting some really great guys on campus, and the question of would it be easier or better to date and find someone that way really hit me hard in college. I was sort of hit with this crossroads, because what I felt — and I don't know if it would have been true or not — was that if I chose to date and find a partner that way, I would not feel comfortable in the Unification community.

Hosts: Just to clarify to our listeners: we don't encourage dating growing up in the Unification faith, for a number of different reasons. Faith-based, but also practically speaking, you're not emotionally ready to commit to a relationship when you're a teenager with raging hormones, right? So just to give a little context to your struggle — but please continue.

Crescentia: In high school I was grateful for it, but in college it felt like a pretty big restriction, as the reality of wanting to pursue a relationship hit me harder. With that came questioning other beliefs as well — the validity of those beliefs. Is it really solid? Is it really worth it to have to pursue a life that's quite different from everybody around me? I came to this — no one was asking me to make this choice, but I felt I had to make this choice. I am either going to date and pursue a life outside of this church, still having spirituality in some way but not really be a Unificationist anymore, or I'm going to pursue the traditional path within the community and be supported to find a partner by my parents.

Crescentia: I ended up having a really important conversation with my dad, where he didn't push anything on me, but he asked me some very good questions to help me figure out what did I really want in my life? What was really important to me? What did I value? As I shared that with my dad, it became really clear to me that having a really solid marriage and having a family that could naturally have God be a part of that, and also being able to be connected to a faith community, raising up kids in a faith community, was so important to me. Whatever concerns or questions I had about faith-related things could work themselves out, but I realized that this was important. So I chose to pursue continuing on with this faith and being a part of this community. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to my now husband of 12 years, and I'm really glad I made that choice.

Crescentia: So fast forward a year into being blessed to my husband and being married, and we were pastors of the Philadelphia Unification Church. We were very excited about the vision that was being put forth about the Lovin' Life Ministry. It was kind of a launch of a new version of the way we operated as a Unification Church. Part of that was to encourage young pastors to step up, to encourage young people to take more ownership over the culture of the faith. That was really exciting for Layton and me to be a part of. So we chose to become pastors in Philadelphia, and it was not easy. Pretty much the majority of the congregation were older than us. I was 24 at the time when I was pastoring the community. But I was full of idealism about what this could be and how this could operate. Within the framework of Lovin' Life, I felt there were a lot of resources being shared, a lot of different innovative ideas for how to engage the community better. It was also a little bit easier because there was a broadcast being offered from the main church that allowed the Sunday service to be more of something that we facilitated for the community, rather than having to put on the whole production by ourselves. So for us as young pastors, it actually made it a little easier. We could focus on doing fun things for the community — creating social environments for the members to connect with each other, holiday celebrations, scripture studies — which we really enjoyed.

Crescentia: Then something catastrophic happened. Our founder, True Father, passed away. It was so unexpected, and it was so hard to digest. The rock of our faith was gone. All of a sudden, he was gone. On top of that, our national pastor — we found out that she had done something we weren't expecting her to do. It was pretty heart-wrenching, let me put it that way. We were kind of misled, let's say, by what she had done. This was pretty tough as a young pastor at the time, because a lot of my younger congregation, who I had made a lot of effort to engage in community activities, felt betrayed by what had happened. They felt hurt. They felt that their trust had been broken, because they really believed in the vision that had been put forth in this ministry. When the pastor did something that went against the values of the community, that hurt them personally. My husband and I struggled — how can we pastor this community when our national pastor is not upholding some of the core doctrines of our faith?

Crescentia: So we went into a state of prayer about it. I'm a person who doesn't like to hold bad feelings towards anyone. I also can't say that I can understand anybody fully, right? Each person's going through their own experience of life. So I made a determination, especially as I was ministering to other congregants who were also processing this, particularly the younger members, the difficult feelings that were coming up, and encouraging them to forgive. Encouraging them to try to look deeper than the surface level to understand, and even ask the question themselves: what does this faith mean to you? What does being a part of this community mean to you? I decided I wanted to forgive.

Crescentia: I really started to think about the circumstances that our pastor was in. The challenging circumstances — it was not easy for her to put herself forward like that. She was doing something revolutionary, and she was inspiring a new vision. But at the same time, she had a ton of pressure on her. She was pretty plain that she was in a difficult situation in her family, that her family life was tough. She was just honest. It was tough. As I put myself in her shoes and tried to imagine what it was like for her to lead this national congregation, to put forward this revolutionary vision, it fostered a lot of compassion in me for why she made the decision that she did, and even to understand why she went about things the way she did.

Crescentia: As I chose to forgive and let that go, it also challenged me to consider — why am I upset about what happened? It's because I really believe in this. I really believe in this community, and I want to see this community thrive. I want to see us continue to connect as brothers and sisters in this faith. I was so inspired by that vision, because I saw that with the younger energy coming in, maybe some of the things that I didn't particularly like about how our Unification Church was operating — I could do something about that. I could be a part of the change in that culture. Just because Lovin' Life Ministries had died, didn't mean that I still couldn't do that. I didn't have to rely on the ministry as it had been put forth to be a change agent in the Unification movement. That actually launched me toward the path that I got on with going into the Marriage and Family Ministry and going into pastoring, because I realized: yeah, I can start to make a positive impact on the culture of our movement.

Hosts: That's so interesting. That was such a hard time in our movement. It was probably one of the toughest moments to face. I know it's hard for you to talk about because you don't want to cast blame or anything like that. But the reality of the situation was seeing the national pastor — it emerged that there had been an infidelity, and we are such a family-driven movement, right? With such an emphasis on the holy marriage Blessing, I can see how that would just rock people to their core, and feel so hurt and betrayed. I'm really curious — when I hear you talk about your journey through that, because I think a lot of people can get stuck in that anger and that frustration and that hurt. I'm sure a lot of people felt betrayed in a sense. You talk about really wanting to move through that. What was it that you think gave you that willingness to consider things you maybe hadn't thought about before, or to consider a different perspective? For me, talking to people one-on-one, like you mentioned, she never skirted around the reality of her family situation. When you really think on that, it's like, well, would you wish unhappiness on someone else? Most people are like, well, no, of course not. But sometimes it's really hard to get past that feeling of being betrayed. What was it that gave you that desire to move through it, to consider other options, to be a little bit more open to other perspectives?

Crescentia: I remember back to my time in college, when I was at that crossroads — to date, or to have my parents support me in finding a partner. The desire to date was so strong because it was very natural. Everyone around me was dating, and I was meeting very nice guys that I could see sharing values with. I started to imagine: okay, what if I had chosen to date, and what if I had found my partner that way? What if I had to try to navigate being a part of the Unificationist faith as someone who had chosen a partner that wasn't Unificationist? Would I have experienced judgment from some of my family members, from some of the Unificationist members? How would I have felt if I had not been given the benefit of the doubt — that I still cared about them, that I still cared about this faith, that I still believed in the value of marriage and family, but that I had chosen a different way to get there?

Crescentia: I really put myself in those shoes. When I could do that, when I could exercise that kind of thinking in my mind and extend that to our national pastor, I realized that I wanted to give her the same kind of compassion and benefit of the doubt that I would want if I had chosen that other path. So many of us are faced with these different kinds of paths in our life, and we choose maybe one way and we can forget where we were. We can forget. I saw, unfortunately, many young people around me casting judgment toward someone when I knew very well that they had similar struggles. So why place this kind of judgment on this woman? Instead, choosing to recognize that we're all in this struggle to live out our faith, and we do the best we can. That gave me a lot of strength. I also realized: that's the kind of person that I want to be — someone who extends grace to others.

Hosts: That's amazing. I honestly think that that is one of the hardest attributes of faith to really live out and practice. Some people might say that being in a public-figure position gives you more right to hold them to a higher standard, or gives us collectively more reason to judge when things are not the way they should be — because they're asking us to live a certain way, and then we find out they're not living that same way. What would you say in that situation? Did that part of the compassion you wanted to cultivate, did that aspect of it ever cross your mind as you were working through your feelings?

Crescentia: It did. I did want to hold her to a higher standard, to be honest. She's our pastor — she's challenging and encouraging us to hold ourselves to a higher standard, to pursue a faith-based life. What I realized is, well, I'm a leader. I could see that I was not doing everything perfectly. I was making different mistakes. I wasn't always as pious as I should be, or kind as I should be — if this is the standard of what the leader should be, I knew I wasn't meeting all of those standards. So just because that woman was one higher step up than me in a leadership position, did that not mean that I should expect that likewise she has also more challenges that she's facing? With more responsibility and more privileges also comes more challenges. When I considered that, I had to go there and say: all right, if I'm hoping that people will be gracious with me when I make a mistake, when I'm not always the best version of myself, I would also like to do that for her, for our pastor.

Crescentia: I also went back into the Bible. If you look at the figures throughout biblical history, very, very few of them were perfect. In fact, most of them were incredibly flawed characters. Just look at Peter. God somehow managed to use them because of their willingness to serve, their willingness to trust in God, their willingness to do something courageous, to have faith, to go forward. God managed to work with those people, even if they weren't faithful in their marriages, or even if they hurt a person. Some crazy things have been done by biblical figures in history — some actually murdered someone, and yet still God managed to use them. That's really extreme. But I saw that God is bigger than any one particular person. God is bigger than any one particular moment in any person's life, and can use that person as a whole if they're willing to give and they're willing to serve. I saw that God had absolutely worked through our national pastor to do something awesome in our Unification movement.

Crescentia: Even now, when I reflect back on it — and this is interesting because this hadn't occurred to me till now — because of what Lovin' Life Ministries started, some amazing developments happened as a result after that, where young people stepped up again and again to take our movement to another level, and to expand what we've been able to do and how we present ourselves to the wider community. I want to credit that to Lovin' Life Ministries and our national pastor at that time, because she had the courage to step up and try something different.

Hosts: That's so beautiful. I really appreciate you sharing that heart. Through my own faith journey, and listening to others — Tony Robbins has this great quote: you're going to blame somebody, you better blame them fully. Blame them for the bad stuff, but blame them for the good stuff too, because both are true. To me, that's kind of become my gauge of healing for myself. Have I really healed from this experience where I can come through to the point to be grateful — even though it was a really crappy situation, and maybe it never should have happened, but it did, and it's part of my story, and actually it's brought me to where I am now? To be grateful for the things that I've come away from that experience with. So I want to say thank you for sharing that. I think it's such a beautiful expression of the journey that you've been on.

Hosts: Since that time, you've pastored another community in Clifton, you've had a few kids — you had no kids at that time, and now you have several. You're living your best life as a mom, maybe taking a break from the public eye. What sticks with you? What keeps you inspired? And what traditions are you passing on to your kids?

Crescentia: Well, what sticks with me is that faith is every day. Our True Father and True Mother emphasized over and over again that God is in the family and that the family is the school of love. This is a cornerstone of our Unification teachings. So I keep that with me really close to heart. When I'm struggling with my husband — oh, this is just God.

Hosts: Wow, you could give a seminar in the future.

Crescentia: Check me out. I'm good. About to launch a ministry, actually. When I'm struggling with my kids, when they're doing something that makes it hard for me to be as unconditionally loving toward them, that's my moment to say, okay, this is really where I can practice being more unconditionally loving toward my children. Loving them when they're cute and sweet and funny and happy is easy. Loving them when they're refusing for the 20th time to put their dishes in the sink, or not antagonize their sibling —

Hosts: I'm right there with you. Right there with you. Being a channel for God's love. Calm the voice down. Say it sweetly. But firmly.

Crescentia: Firmly. Firm but loving. For me, those are the moments. I have an ongoing saga with my mother-in-law — another seminar, you know? Love the most unlovable. Mother-in-law, I love you. There are so many faith lessons that are actually most applicable in the day-to-day experience. What I've come to realize in this journey is that to really be a person of faith means to invite God into every day, and also to close my day with God. I ask God to help me to be the daughter that he and she would have me be, and to be the mother to my children and the wife to my husband — that I can express God's love to them on God's behalf. That gives me strength. It gives me energy.

Crescentia: I do go back into the scripture, and I pull out certain scriptures and read those to encourage me as I make this practice to really be unconditionally loving, and to keep people in prayer. My friends — even people — I'm not a pastor anymore, but of course pastorally I'm connected to so many people. So I touch base with them and see how they're doing, and if something comes up that they need, I pray for them. Sometimes right there on the spot, but often just in my own daily prayers.

Crescentia: With my children, I have a lot of little things that we do to keep the faith alive in our family and to foster growth in their lives and their spiritual development. They're little souls. I try to remember that they're little souls — not little monsters, although sometimes they —

Hosts: Change the wording. Little souls.

Crescentia: Yes, they are. Some of the things that I grew up with that I really loved — we have some holy days in the Unification tradition that were created by True Father and True Mother to help us connect with God and strengthen us in our faith practice. One of the things that's done on those holy days is to make an offering table, as it's called, where you put some special foods — fruit, snacks, cake, flowers — and you make this offering table to God, to honor God, to celebrate with God. This is exciting and excruciating for children, because the treats are in front of them but they cannot touch it until the service is complete. You must engage in the prayer, and you must study the little scripture. Once all of this is done and you say the final prayer, then you get to celebrate together with God and enjoy all of these treats, these delicious items. My kids look forward to this, and we do this on their birthdays too — we celebrate their birthdays this way with the offering table. What's been very fun is, as they're getting older — my daughter's seven now — they get to take part in the making of the offering table. They get to put the cloth down, wash the fruit, say the prayer to bless the items. It's actually very fulfilling to see my kids get excited and inspired about this tradition.