Laurie Lea and Rolanda Telesford

[00:06] LAURIE LEE: Hi, I'm Laurie Lee. I'm 73 years old. 74. On May 7, we are at the YWCA Brooklyn, and my interview partner is Rolanda Telesford And we are professional relationship.

[00:29] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And my name is Rolanda Telesford I am 48 years old. Today is April 29, 2022. We are at the YWCA Brooklyn. My interviewee is Laurie Lee, and my relationship to Laurie is professional. Okay, so, Laurie we're going to start our interview, so tell me a little bit. Let's start from the beginning. And so tell me a little bit about your childhood. You know, where you were born and how did you grow up.

[01:06] LAURIE LEE: I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. I had a storybook childhood. My dad was an engine, constructive engineer, so he had access to a small plane. We went to the Caribbean a lot. So I had an unusual felt, very loved and secure until about the age of eight, when we moved into this incredible mansion that my mother discovered nobody would buy because they thought it had roaches or something. And when we moved, the day we moved in, there was a snake on the front doorstep. The woman owner had hung herself on the living room chandelier, and all the rooms upstairs were blackened with bars because she was afraid her kid would get kidnapped. But everything just fell down from that moment. It was like a switch went on, and it was world war three at home. Mom and dad started fighting. I was kind of in the middle. My brother was seven years older. I had been born on his birthday. Absolutely adored me, and vice versa, of course.

[02:18] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So many simplers. You only had that one brother.

[02:20] LAURIE LEE: Mm hmm. And then after my dad died, ten years later, my mom remarried a wonderful man. That was so. I had a stepfather later in life, but it was very traumatic. It was. My mother just went walkers. I don't know what happened to her. Everybody has a history and a background and a reason. They are the way they are. Right. But it was so abusive and stressful. I got diagnosed with severe stress disorder, and I went off to college as far away as I could get away from home, and as far as they would allow me was Colorado. I was too young and dumb to think that I could have earned my own way and gone where I wanted. But anyway, while I was at college that second year, my father was murdered. And it was, I guess, because of the abuse all those years after age eight. And because of that, two weeks later, I developed a horrible eating disorder. Textbook case.

[03:36] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And that was why you were in college?

[03:38] LAURIE LEE: Yeah. It started right after dad was killed. And that lasted for 20 years because nobody was talking about it back then, I thought I was crazy. And I tried with all my power to stop. I couldn't. It just got worse and worse and worse, and I was hiding it. I was just filled with shame and, you know, living the surface life where everything looked wonderful, and underneath I was just, you know, it's a way to. It's a slow form of suicide, really. And what happened right after my father's death was my brother married a woman from Dallas, who I think she must have instinctively sensed that our family, there was something seriously wrong with our family. And so she set out to turn my brother and my. To turn my mother and myself away from my brother. And so I just felt after being his beloved little sister that went everywhere with him, suddenly I'm the black sheep of the family. So I just felt like, totally betrayed by these two men that I adored. And I think years, it took me till I was in my thirties to realize that I had made some kind of vow, which one does and is unconscious of, right, that no man is ever going to get close enough to me again to hurt me like that. So every man that I got into a relationship with, the minute they mentioned the m word, I was out the door and my friends would be, well, what's wrong with this one? What's wrong with this one? I would always have some reason why they were this or that, and I had to leave. And finally, when I was 32, it became very clear to me that this wonderful man came into my life. But I think I'm going to reverse just a second, because what happened was, after college, I came home to live with my mom, and we were fighting like cats and dogs. I was taking three four hour walks every day just to relieve the stress. I was miserable. My friends had all moved to different corners of the world, and my mom and I were going to fortune tellers and doing all this psychic stuff with a Ouija board, all of which I highly don't recommend. It left terrible repercussions. But anyway, for years after that, but one fortune, I mean, God can speak through anything, right? So for whatever reason he spoke through, this fortune teller told me that the following week that a woman was going to come to the door that I didn't know and invite me to work with her in clay, and that I should say yes. And so, sure enough, a week later, this belgian woman, Jeanne Gewert, knocks on the door and says she met me, you know, when I was six years old or something. I don't know what possible reason she had to know me or to invite me to work with her. She'd see. Seen me make little clay clowns or something in high school. I don't know what, but. So I said yes. She invited me to apprentice with her, and she was a brilliant sculptor, worked really hard, had a little house somewhere half an hour, an hour away from us. And so I did that. Jean Gewert. Oh, Jean Gewerthe. I think it was Jeanne. And then g e v a e r t. She was belgium. I think it was that.

[07:24] ROLANDA TELESFORD: This was the fortune teller.

[07:26] LAURIE LEE: Oh, no. The fortune teller told me that a strange woman was gonna come to my door, and that was yon.

[07:33] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Okay, so how long from when the woman told you that she was gonna come, did John approach your door?

[07:40] LAURIE LEE: The following week, just like she told us.

[07:42] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Wow.

[07:43] LAURIE LEE: Wow. Yeah. A few days later.

[07:45] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And so she shows up at your door and she says what?

[07:48] LAURIE LEE: She says, hi. I met you with her thick accent, you know, I saw your work when you worked with misses Heatley in a ceramics class, and I thought you looked like you had promise. And I would like to train you. I would like to take you on as an apprentice, and I train you in making sculpting and making moles and whatever you do for sculpture. And so I agreed. And she had a little house, and a woman was there, a young lady was there, a few years younger than me. Her name was Cindy Binkard, and she was a runaway from up north. She had found Jesus, and so she had run away, given away all her earthly possessions, and somehow wound up in the south and decided to go to nursing school. And she was living with John. She'd met John. And so I was a total atheist. My whole family were atheists. And here's this young lady playing these horrible music stations of rah, rah, rah. You know, other types of preaching.

[08:59] ROLANDA TELESFORD: It wasn't kind of like gospel music.

[09:01] LAURIE LEE: Yeah.

[09:05] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Of preaching.

[09:06] LAURIE LEE: Yeah. Constantly after me about Jesus. And I was constantly trying to get away from her, but I felt responsible for her. She didn't have a car, so I was always taking her to get her laundry or whatever. And so then I got my first sculpture commission, which was exciting, because I. I've been an artist. I was born an artist. I think I was drawing, age two. I can remember drawing and making paper installations, you know? And so I knew this woman from. She was a family friend, misses Thurman, and she had. When I was a child, she had given me my very first commission for $3 to sketch one of her children, I think. And I always remember that and somehow she came back into the picture and wanted me to make a bust of her, like a clay bust, like a chopped off head, and I didn't, like, chopped off head. So I talked her into doing this massive figure that was like the arms and, you know, half of a body on the basis that I would do it in resin, which was translucent, so it wouldn't look so massive.

[10:20] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So let me ask you this, because let's go back just a little bit. How did you find art for the very first time? How did that come into your life to begin with?

[10:30] LAURIE LEE: I think all children, most. I think all children are born artists. And I just never stopped. I just was drawing all the time over every surface I could find. And I distinctly remember making little installations of paper, like little houses and furniture and things. I moved around little miniature things. And, yeah, I was always. I drew a lot of porpoises, covered every mat and every coffee house we went to, I guess. So I was always drawing. And then when I went to college, I double majored in art and psychology. I was very interested in people. And then when I got out, my father had left me a small inheritance, like 100,000 or something, which was a fortune in those days. It enabled me to be able to. I taught and did small jobs and made art. And, you know, your rent was $80, and, you know, it was living with easy and cheap. And so I had. I was able to focus. I had a studio. And so I get this commission, and I'm in my twenties, I guess. And one summer, there was no air conditioning. So John goes off to Belgium for summer and leaves us in charge of her house, and there was no air conditioning. And misses Thurman would come over every day, and we were just drenched with sweat. I mean, it was so. I just remember how hot it was. And I work on this masterpiece all summer, and finally, you know, it's about complete, and everybody's like, oh, when's it gonna be finished? When's it gonna be finished? So meanwhile, I'm researching how to cast in resin. I figured I could figure that out while I'm making the sculpture, right? And so I had gone to colleges and the library and plastics companies. I went everywhere. We did not have google back then, and I just. And I didn't have the resources to know how to find it out. I just hit a wall, a stone wall. And so one day I go in and I see this big crack all the way down the back of the sculpture, and I'm like, oh, no. Because I knew what that meant. It meant I hadn't built the armature well enough. And in Jean's absence, and the whole piece was going to split in two, and my life was going to splatter on the floor, and that was my whole life. So this was a major crisis. I didn't have a life. That was my life. Right? And so Cindy steps up about that time, and she says, why don't we pray about it? And to my astonishment, I agreed, even though I was an atheist. So my first prayer. My first prayer was God. I don't believe you existed, but I need a miracle. That was it. And so.

[13:30] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And so what was that miracle?

[13:31] LAURIE LEE: I went to the Atlanta phone book. There were, like, five huge. I mean, it was a big enough city that you had five phone books. I flipped one open to a company that had nothing to do with art or plastics. It was like a brassiere company or something. I don't know what it was, but. So I called this number, and Cindy's like, what are you calling this number for? And I said, I don't know. I call this number. And I said to this woman, whoever answered, I explained my situation, expecting them to hang up in my face. And she said, well, I don't think I can help you, but I know a gentleman, Mister Harry Eaton, who might be able to help you. So she gives me the name of this man. I call him up. He answers, and he's an older man who's an inventor. He's been working with plastics ever since they came out. And he does tombstones, right? He does massive angels and all sorts of sculptures. So he's a caster. And so this total stranger. So I explained my situation, and he said, well, hang on, honey. I'll be there in an hour. So an hour later, he shows up from Palmetto, Georgia, with a truck and a crane. And he knew exactly how. So he hauls this hoist, this sculpture. He knows how to wrap it without injuring the clay. He hoists it up into the back of the truck. I jump into the back of the truck and ride off with a total stranger into the blue. And I just remember that whole ride, I'm in the back with the sculpture, and it was like I felt like I'd been hit with an iron frying. I mean, I was in talk about shock and awe. I was terrified, I'll be honest. I thought, oh, my God, there's a God, you know?

[15:13] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So that's how God finally revealed itself to you.

[15:17] LAURIE LEE: Like, this is what I can do. I didn't even care about the sculpture anymore. I was just like looking around me going, oh, no, where is he? You know? And so mister Eaton invited me to apprentice with him and we cast that piece, and that eventually made its way, that story made its way to that magazine Guidepost. And so he, I worked with him, we cast it in resident, and it turned out it was, you're not supposed to be able to cast thicker than two inches. We did it solid and it looked like pink quartz. I mean, it was just beautiful. And that was an interesting experience.

[15:53] ROLANDA TELESFORD: It was amazing.

[15:54] LAURIE LEE: Everybody loved it, you know, and the next day, campus crusade came knocking on my door. I don't know if you know who they are, but they have their four laws and they, and I wouldn't let them in. I still was like an atheist at heart, right? So I wouldn't let them in. But I listened to their spiel, I took their little brochure and I read it over every night for a month. And I just thought, I don't know about this, I don't know about this. I just felt like there's more to it. There's a price to pay, like everything, right? And finally I was reading some book on existentialism and it said, you know, you'll never know if something is true unless you quit looking at it intellectually and you dive into the middle of it and know experientially from the inside, you'll understand if it's true or not. And I thought, well, that makes sense. So I prayed that prayer and I asked Jesus into my heart. And I mean to tell you, my whole life started to change. I mean, I have witnessed not just my transformation, but many people who invite Christ into their heart. Cause there's this verse I love in revelation. It says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my knock, my voice and opens the door, I will come in and have a relationship with him. And so I always think of that verse. That's what I did. I opened the door and I said, come on in, whatever this means. And so I started going to their Bible studies or whatever, and somebody started shepherding me. And I still had that raging eating disorder I hadn't told anybody about. And let's see what else happened. Oh, yeah. One night, maybe a year or two after that, I woke up from a sound sleep. In the middle of the night. I woke up to hear this voice booming. It was. I guess it was God. I know it was God. It was so intense and clear that I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and I wrote down what he said.

[17:54] ROLANDA TELESFORD: What did he say?

[17:55] LAURIE LEE: He said, millions of people will see your work. Millions of people will know that I am goddesse. When I am lifted up high, I will draw all men to me. Many don't fear the ridicule of the press. Don't fear the scorn of important people. Many will see and hear and know that I am good. And so as a consequence, this, years later, when.

[18:24] ROLANDA TELESFORD: When your was put in the magazine.

[18:26] LAURIE LEE: Where I work with these, I had moved to New York City and this magazine came to take pictures and do my story. And I read in the back of the book, it said 30 million. The readership is 30 million people. So that's who saw that artwork that was in there. But I always thought, you know, over the years, I thought, is that it? And what, I mean, thank you, but is that it? And when I asked that question, I was reading Isaiah, and I looked down at the notes and it said, prophecy is given for the time that it's given, and it's also for the future. So I thought, okay, so it's also going to happen later. So that was kind of my answer to that.

[19:09] ROLANDA TELESFORD: That's good. So you've had a lot of miracles in your life, right, that brought you to the YWCA? You want to talk about that miracle?

[19:18] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, let's see. Can I talk? How much time do we. How are we? I'll keep going. I moved. When I was 39, I moved to New York City, and God delivered me from that eating disorder. That was another miracle through my aunt Christian aunt. Anyway, and did that story. And then I guess it was a wonderful time in New York in some ways, even though I had missed the boat for marriage, back in Atlanta, I dated several people. One man I was in love with died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and another decided he was gay. And another, you know, I went through, I felt like at one point, I thought, I feel like that girl had northern exposure. Every man that came near, something happened to him. But anyway, so I did go because I was in the top gallery when I was in Atlanta. When I got to New York City, I was just overwhelmed by 3 million artists in 500 galleries. So I never even tried to get in a gallery. I just went this other path. I went down the path of public funding and grants, and I got to travel around the world. So that was really cool. I had major museum shows in different countries. I've been all over the world. I had a. That was great. And then. But when I was in my fifties, my friends kind of jumped on me altogether and shook me, you know, by the hair, and said, you know, you're in big trouble. You're getting older. You don't have a husband, you don't have a job, you don't have a pension. You don't have any savings. You have nothing. And you're getting older. You're in deep shit. You better do something. Sorry. So I listened to them. Instead of asking God about it, I listened to them. And I thought, well, the only way I can save myself is by starting a business. So I went through four businesses, and the last one blew sky high. And when I.

[21:35] ROLANDA TELESFORD: What type of business was it?

[21:37] LAURIE LEE: It was. Each business was somebody else's ideas. They were all brilliant. They weren't my idea.

[21:42] ROLANDA TELESFORD: You don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time.

[21:44] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, well, this realtor I knew had been working on this last business for 15 years with Caldwell Baker. He had a buy in with them so that we could use their databases all over the United States. I mean, it was brilliant. We would have made money from the get go. But the other business partner was my closest friend that I went to church with, and she turned out to be a thief, and she stole the whole thing. I mean, it was a disaster. For a year, anyway. And so when that happened, I had literally given up art for seven years. And when that happened, I really was at the point where I didn't think I'd ever make art again because I'd given away half of my materials. I didn't have a studio. I just moved so far away from it. And I'm getting older, and I just thought, I'm never going to go back to it. But at that point, I guess I was living in this women's residency for two years in Gramercy Park, Salvation army. And they sold the building, so we all had to scramble and find another place. When you don't have a job to get a place to live, it's not easy, right? And so somebody said, well, the why doesn't require that. You know, all they'll do is kick you out if you don't pay the rent, right? So I came over to Brooklyn, and I met Martha Camber. And she said, well, if you come here. I've been working on this deal with the city for ten years, and in a few months, any woman living here will have a jump ahead of everybody else for the lottery for the apartments. And I said, well, you mean even if I've only been here? She said, if you've only been here as long as you're living here, you'll have, you know, and I. So I won an apartment, and she.

[23:34] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So you got through the lottery.

[23:36] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, I got through the lottery. That was another miracle. I guess we don't need to tell that story. Yeah, they. That was a total miracle. Well, you want me to tell it or not?

[23:45] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Go ahead if you want to tell.

[23:46] LAURIE LEE: It was two long pages of all these requirements.

[23:51] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Yeah.

[23:51] LAURIE LEE: And because I was living. I had a loft in Brooklyn. That was illegal, of course. And we sublet and so on the books. I had this enormous amount of money. It was just confusing because when you sublet, you're responsible for this major rent, but then you're also getting a huge amount of money. It was just I had income from all these different sources. So every single question, I knew that whatever I answered, it would open up.

[24:22] ROLANDA TELESFORD: This another door to some money.

[24:24] LAURIE LEE: Right? Oh, my gosh. And so I just remember getting a migraine that night. I was like, we can't do it. There's no way I'm ever going to get in. And then in, like, around 02:00 a.m. this beam of light shot through from somewhere, I don't know if it was a street light or what, onto this one line of this questionnaire. And I suddenly went, oh, my gosh. This whole thing is irrelevant because of this whatever it was. I told the why the next morning, and they're all like, Eureka, you're right. You're in.

[24:58] ROLANDA TELESFORD: You think that was another miracle?

[25:00] LAURIE LEE: Oh, it was definitely a miracle because all of them were trying to get me in. They needed. They had a deadline, and they needed to get a certain number of women in by anyway. So I got in, and then I had all this artwork still in dumbo that was getting damaged and destroyed because I lost my store. That's what happened. I lost my storage space. And it occurred to me because all of us artists that were in that storage space were going to have to not only this one man, this older man who's in art books coffee table, he's like a giant. He's like a well known professor, but he had massive, like, 1015 20 foot canvases. And he said, well, I'm just going to get. There was a dipsy dumpster. He said, I'm just going to bring all the artwork one by one and go, yes or no. I'm either going to throw it in the dumpster or go find another storage space. And I just was so horrified to think that you come to the end of your life, not only have you not sold your work. You can't even give it away. You have to pay for somebody. I didn't even tell them, you're going to have to pay them to let you throw it away. So I was just so horrified at that that I thought, I wonder if Martha could use these, at least the canvases for her. You know, maybe there's some artists in the building. And so I told her about all this artwork down there that was going to get thrown away. And she said, oh, let me send Keith down, the project manager. So he took pictures. We go down, and she's like, oh, I want it all. We'll hang it up in the y.

[26:42] ROLANDA TELESFORD: That's amazing.

[26:43] LAURIE LEE: So we bring all this artwork up, and then when we do, she said, well, do you have any work that you need to bring up? And I said, well, I got four or five major pieces that are getting destroyed that I have no place for. And she's like, well, pick a room in the basement, and we'll put them in and bring them on up. And so that was how I got there.

[27:04] ROLANDA TELESFORD: That's how you became the resident artist at the YWCA.

[27:07] LAURIE LEE: And then somewhere along the line, she asked all the artists in the building to hang up work, which we did. And then after that was over, she said, would you leave your work up? And I said, oh, sure, you know, great. And then two years after that, oh, she warned me. She said, you know, the board has selected all these, the history of the y in black and white photographs. That's going to have to go up, so you'll have to take your work down when they want to put that up. So I'm like, oh, that's fine. So the day comes, and she said, now we have to take it down and put up the photographs. So I'm getting ready to take all this work down. And then one day she comes to me, and she's like, I give up. She just laughed, and she threw her hands up, said, I give up. The residents are all yelling at me and telling me they want to want the photographs. I said, so I said, great. So now I have my work all over the lobby of the.

[28:07] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Yeah, and it's absolutely beautiful.

[28:08] LAURIE LEE: Thanks. So that's awesome.

[28:11] ROLANDA TELESFORD: That is awesome. So, Laurie you know, you've had a lot of miracles, and you come to the y and you become the resident artist. But what about relationships and love? What about relationship with love? Did you ever find love?

[28:24] LAURIE LEE: Yes. You did. I did. And when I was 32, God, one summer, I was so miserable that I finally just asked God what is wrong with me? I must not be in your will. And he answered me through three different sources. It's my will for you to be married. And so right after I heard that pretty clearly, I meet this wonderful, tall, handsome Englishman who loved to sail. He was in Atlanta for a year. He was working for this architectural firm. So we date for a year. He's ready to get married. He asked me to go to England and meet his family and sail around the world with him. He was like, wow. Yeah. This talented, wonderful man. And I was just so scarred and screwed up. I still was not well. I still had that eating disorder nobody knew about. And, you know, and I did exactly what the Bible says not to do. I shrank away in fear, and I did not go on its invitation. I didn't go to England, and I just went away. I said bye bye, you know, so it took me years. Then I spent the next ten years beating myself up for missing the boat. Right.

[29:37] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And so missed opportunity.

[29:39] LAURIE LEE: Yeah. And the way that I came to New York was actually through a relationship. I was in a. I had this great guy who was a believer. We went together for two years, and it was just that time we were like, you know, 38 or nine. It was time to get married, right? So we took the grand finale trip to Canada to meet my family in Canada and had this fabulous trip. We decide on, you know, we're going to get married. He proposes, we're going to get married, come back to Atlanta, and he meets another woman, and suddenly he's got to choose between her and me. So I said, choose, and he made his choice.

[30:19] ROLANDA TELESFORD: You made his choice real easy.

[30:20] LAURIE LEE: Yeah. I said, yeah. So we were just. I mean, to be honest, we were not in love with each other. We just. It was just that time to get married. We were really good friends. And so I said goodbye to him. I wrote him a dear John letter because he wouldn't choose, and I felt like that was his choice, but I couldn't get. He wanted to move to New York. He had spent two years trying to talk me into coming to New York. So I finally said, okay, I can see moving to New York with you. And when I said yes was when he flips out and meets the other woman. Right. But anyway, I couldn't get. I mean, I wasn't missing him for, like, three weeks. I couldn't get New York off my brain. I'm like, it got to be really irritating. And so I finally said, you know. Cause I wasn't in love with him, so I wasn't worried about missing him. I was.

[31:12] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Where were you guys?

[31:13] LAURIE LEE: Pardon?

[31:14] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Where were you?

[31:15] LAURIE LEE: Well, I was in Atlanta.

[31:16] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Okay.

[31:16] LAURIE LEE: I was still in Atlanta. And so I guess I was 39. We were 38 and 39. And so you come to New York.

[31:23] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Do you find love in New York?

[31:25] LAURIE LEE: Well, you know, what I did was I said, God, if it's you, then encourage me to go to New York. And if it's nothing, let me forget this. Why am I keep being bugged by this? And so that week, some stranger from the University of Georgia calls me up and offers me a residency in New York City, her apartment for the summer. And I'm like, okay. So I took a step by step, moved to New York. My first relationship there decided he was gay. The next one died. The next one, I mean, I went through a series of relationships, and then finally, about eight, let's see now, seven, eight, nine years ago. Well, I was in the last relationship I was in with this tall green Beret who's real brilliant and became best friends with my brother. And I was smitten by him. His name was Joseph. You probably saw him coming in and out. But anyway, we were in this relationship, and. But I knew that he was not a good marriage material, frankly. And he'd had anyway, and he had.

[32:38] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Some things going on.

[32:39] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, he had a terrible black widow relationship when he was younger, and I think he'd just never gotten over it. But at any rate, I met Tom probably eight or nine years ago. We had originally, apparently we had met each other like 15 or 20 years ago once. And I guess I was in one of my four businesses. And so I had taken his business card, which is what you do for network business. And I had, like thousands of cards, but I needed to call him, and because I ran out of thyroid medicine or something. And I remembered he and Kelly did. His wife did kinesiology, and they used to do it in health food stores, but they stopped doing that years ago. So I remembered him, and I went to the shoeboxes, find this card, which, out of thousands of cards, that was a miracle. And Colin, he answers the phone, and I said, could you help me out with this thyroid thing? He's like, okay, come over. So I go over to his place. We're on the roof. He has an apartment in Brooklyn Heights. And he starts pouring out his heart. He had just lost his wife of 36 years. And so I said, you're never going to make it without Jesus. So he prayed with me on the spot, received the Lord and got born again. I took him to Brooklyn Tabernacle. But I told him from the get go, he always tells everybody, he says, you always told me that you didn't have time for me because you had too many people in your life and not enough time. I guess I did say that, but he just kind of wormed his way into my heart. Well, what happened was he loved my art, and he started helping me with my art. And so. And I told him at the get go, you know, that I was in a relationship with this other man, and he apparently fell in love with me. And he used to write me these beautiful love cards. I mean, I must have 25 love cards from him. He finally stopped doing it after four or five years, he said, finally realized it was never going to, you know, you were never going to say yes. And I was okay with unrequited love, you know.

[34:52] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So on Tom's side, Tom always liked you.

[34:56] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, he wanted to get married the first year, but I was in this and I just couldn't see it because he was left a progressive liberal. I mean, he was into all this weird stuff. He didn't like the outdoors. He was a home. You know, I'm a inventor, a traveler. I love to sail in the outdoors, and he's more of a homebody. And I just thought those things were the most important things. Right.

[35:23] ROLANDA TELESFORD: But the art kind of bring.

[35:26] LAURIE LEE: Well, he did. Yeah, but he loved my art. He started helping me build those frames for those large pieces in the lobby and pretty soon at the, y'know. Yeah. And eventually he started, like, buying me stuff. He bought me a really good camera. He started buying my artwork. I mean, he literally became a patron, you know, to help me with supporting the art.

[35:50] ROLANDA TELESFORD: He was trying to provide. He was trying to provide.

[35:52] LAURIE LEE: Yeah. He just was a loving, caring person, generous to the extreme person. And he was just smitten with the art and me, I guess, and I. But the funny thing was, at the very get go when I first met him, I distinctly heard God say, tom is going to have to wait for you for seven years. And I'm like, no, dad, that's not.

[36:15] ROLANDA TELESFORD: It kind of reminds me of, that's not my plan of the biblical story with, like, Rachel and Leah trying to wait for Rachel that's been waiting for seven years.

[36:29] LAURIE LEE: And so. But I was like, no way. I just couldn't see it. I wasn't attracted to him in that way. I just adored him as a person, as a friend. Right. But I was smitten with Joseph, you know, so what can I say?

[36:43] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So seven years later, so seven years.

[36:46] LAURIE LEE: Later, that word haunted me. I could never get it out of my head.

[36:50] ROLANDA TELESFORD: And was it seven years?

[36:51] LAURIE LEE: And so as the 7th year is approaching, and I'm like, ugh. You know? And meanwhile, Joseph passed away. He got cancer and passed away this summer. But anyway, so I'm like, oh, no. And I still. I'm like, I don't love this man. I can't I marry somebody I'm not in love with? That would be terrible. You can't do that to somebody. But then I prayed the second smartest prayer I've ever prayed in my life. I said, God, you have my heart, and if you want me to marry Tom, then you got to change my heart. And when I prayed that, it was like the veil goes off of my eyes, my mind, my ear. All of a sudden, I'm looking at him with new eyes, thinking, Maya, you're an attractive mandehead.

[37:41] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So he went. He turned. He turned into a swan.

[37:49] LAURIE LEE: So then it was sort of funny because we, we didn't, you know, it was a little awkward because I'd been putting him off for all those years, right? And all of a sudden, I'm thinking, hmm, how am I going to start this up again? And so I sent him a card. He loves this card I sent him.

[38:09] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So what eventually happens with, well, we.

[38:14] LAURIE LEE: Finally decided yes, we loved each other. We were going to get married. And Covid hit. We went off to Pennsylvania for two weeks. It turned into two months. And we went through this nightmare process of getting married online. And they give you, like, once you register, which took months. Then they give you. Originally they only gave you a month to get married within that time period. Right. But because of COVID they said you can take as long as you like. So we were just taking as long as we liked.

[38:49] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So you and Tom are married.

[38:50] LAURIE LEE: So, yeah. So all of a sudden they said, no, now you have to get married by this date. So we had one week to get married to do everything, to have a zoom wedding. Yeah. We didn't even invite all our family.

[39:06] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So how does this marriage with you and tomorrow? Because you leave here and he lives, right?

[39:12] LAURIE LEE: Well, he has this apartment in Brooklyn, and now we just had a word that we were to sell it. We really feel like we heard from God that the real estate values are booming for a short period of time. So we are in the process of moving all his stuff. He has a house in Pennsylvania. And so we go there. We go back and forth.

[39:37] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So you make it work, right?

[39:38] LAURIE LEE: Yeah, we make it work.

[39:39] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So that's an amazing journey, you know, and thank you for sharing all of that with me. And so my last question, and just, like, in one sentence or two, can you just tell me what is the most important life lesson you've learned?

[39:56] LAURIE LEE: Oh, trust God.

[39:58] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Trust God.

[39:59] LAURIE LEE: Trust God. I spent many, many years, even after I became a Christian, I didn't trust him. I kept him at arm's length. And it literally, I think, when I was. I took a workshop called be transformed, and I realized that I had seen God like my earthly father. Distant. I was bitter. I just had, you know, I had. I had to learn that God really does love us, and all he wants is this intimate love relationship. And so I did finally yield totally to him. And that's the best thing anybody can do.

[40:39] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Aw.

[40:40] LAURIE LEE: Is trust him and surrender your life totally to him. Cause I always. I surrendered partially for a long time.

[40:46] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Yeah.

[40:47] LAURIE LEE: But when you do totally, then his will is better than anything you could possibly dream or imagine for your own life.

[40:54] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Yeah.

[40:55] LAURIE LEE: Yeah.

[40:56] ROLANDA TELESFORD: Well, thank you. I mean, your story has really. I'm a christian woman myself, so, you know, this faith walk is not easy. You know, it's not easy to just walk blindly into this world. But if we believe and trust in God, we know that it's all working for our good.

[41:10] LAURIE LEE: That's right.

[41:11] ROLANDA TELESFORD: So thank you, Laurie so much for sharing that story with us today. Thank you.