“I was just raised with a stark understanding of who God was and how hard He was so when I started getting a little bit older, the devil, he knows you got a future, and he’s after you even when you’re young, so I just started rebelling,” says Kim Jones-Pothier, aka Real Talk Kim.
Five years ago, Real Talk Kim was virtually unknown. Then she turned on her smartphone and started recording a video about her miserable reality. Something struck a chord with viewers. Nearly overnight, she became a viral sensation. Viewers found her honest, er, “real,” talk refreshing, and suddenly, people wanted to know more about Real Talk Kim’s testimony and how God made an impact.
It’s all detailed in her new book, When Your Bad Meets His Good.
Her story begins with strong Pentecostal roots.
“I was raised United Pentecostal and raised in this religion that said if you get divorced, you are going to hell on a Slip ‘N Slide,” she says.
That thought process didn’t really deter her. By 18, she’d run away and married a boy. Three months later, the couple divorced, and Jones-Pothier jumped on the Slip ‘N Slide.
“Like I’ve already messed up so much, what’s the point?” she says.
She turned away from ministry.
As a student of Rod Parsley, she thought she’d turned around. And then she met another boy.
Seventeen years and two kids later, she divorced again.
“We were both raised in ministry, and we were praise and worship leaders in churches and had just horrible marriages behind closed doors, and we couldn’t talk about it,” Jones-Pothier says.
Ten years into her marriage, her husband turned to alcohol.
“It was all happening due to my own storms that I was created because I couldn’t surrender because I was rebellious,” Jones-Pothier says.
In 2006, at age 36, she moved back in with her parents, her 7- and 9-year old boys in tow.
She was miserable. And that’s when God spoke to her.
“I was like, ‘If You’re not going to heal my marriage, then at least take the pain away.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to heal this marriage because you never asked me if that was your husband. You’ve been fighting this thing for 17 years. You’ve told him for 17 years, “I don’t need no man,” and then you got one, and you’re at a place now, Kimberly, where you’re either going to get powerful or you’re going to stay pitiful, and you’re going to keep repeating … the same cycle because nobody in your little unit family is fixing anything. You’re blaming the world,’ He said, ‘So I’m not taking the pain away. You get up and walk away from it.’
“Man. I’m so thankful that God went like raw,” Jones-Pothier says.
So she took five years and just focused rebuilding her life around God.
But that’s just the beginning of the story. Listen to the podcast to hear her full testimony.
