Jacqueline Jakes.

heck out Jacqueline Jakes at a Potter’s House event and it’s poetry in motion. She is confident, charismatic and attractively comfortable in her 50s (they say the 50s are the new 40s). She pours her focus into challenging cups of outreach, capturing her interest. She evokes engaging smiles, warm greetings and concerned gazes. Another noticeable thing is the absence of visible emotional scars. But move in closer, with purpose and a healing need, and she will tell you that in her lifetime she’s been “ground to powder.”

Akin to greatness (she’s Bishop T. D. Jakes’ sister), does Jacqueline – like Oprah – have a Gayle to help get her through the tough times? She takes a minute, a chuckle invades her voice, and she returns, “No, I don’t have a Gayle like Oprah. I have many friends, though.” Besides friends, she says she has a loving family. “I’m a very, very wealthy woman, and I’m not talking about money.” 

“I’m finding that I also have many daughters,” she says. Jacqueline, 57, an author and manager of the Partner Relations Department of The Potter’s House based in Dallas, Texas, is the biological mother of one daughter, Kelly, 34.

Jacqueline Jakes in her office. Photographer: Mike Taylor.

“Partners” she explains, refers to a dedicated, covenant group committed to prayerfully and financially sow into The Potter’s House / T. D. Jakes Ministries to provide relief, leadership and spiritual guidance on a local, national and international level.

“I have one daughter. My marriage did not last long enough for me to have other children.”  With a gleam, she adds, “I’m a grandmother of a 10-year-old grandson and a 2-year-old granddaughter.”

Her other “daughters” are the many women to whom she ministers with love and wisdom. 

Love, strength and wisdom

The conversation moves deeper as she talks about partnering with Kelly to impart into her two children the wisdom that is now three generations strong. The love, strength and wisdom-teaching, Jacqueline says, “stems from my mother, the foundation that I got from her.”

Jacqueline proudly says her mother, Odith Jakes, was an educator; but she educated her children at home before she educated them in the school system. With a determined tone of voice, she says, “She taught me about character and taught me how to think.” Like Jesus, her mother used parables to create learning opportunities. “Everything was a lesson,” Jacqueline says.

The family, she explains, grew up poor in West Virginia. “We had a broken-down sofa. I remember my mother teaching me how to stand up, sit down, cross my legs,” Jacqueline recalls. “She taught us to walk straight. She taught me how to conduct myself, how to speak. We couldn’t afford to go to charm school, but I had charm school at home. Our goal was to be good citizens.”  

From their father, all three siblings (Thomas Dexter, now Bishop T. D. Jakes; Ernest; and Jacqueline) learned ethics and loyalty. “Our father died when he was very young,” says Jakes, “I think Daddy was 48.” They lost their mother in 1999.

Stepping forth from mom’s foundational guidance

During her adult years in West Virginia, in the bud of her youngest brother’s (Bishop Jakes) ministry, both Jacqueline and her older brother, Ernest Jr., moved on to separate lives and careers. She moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for eight and a half years at the American Psychological Association, where she learned about print media and publishing. She later worked for Jimmy Carter’s President’s Commission on Neighborhoods. After deciding she’d rather rear her daughter back in West Virginia, she returned “home” and worked for the state government.

Meanwhile her baby brother’s ministry bloomed and he asked his sister to do a magazine for the ministry. “I was glad to do it,” she says, “I knew how to do it.” Jacqueline kept her full-time job and did what many faithful church members do – rush home from work, tend to their families, then head to church to keep the lantern burning. Ernest worked too. Today, Ernest lives in Dallas, still supports the ministry and is a real estate agent. “And he’s doing well, even in this economy,” boasts his little sister.

Jacqueline Jakes at the TBN Studios, Irving, Texas. Photographer: Sylvia Dunnavant.

She says she was proud and happy for younger brother, Thomas Dexter, as his ministry grew. Even as a little boy, she says, “he was always a leader.” Laughter abounds when she recounts instances of being in trouble as a little girl and “Tommy” consoling her. He recounts recollections as well, of how she consoled him.

During the early days of the Bishop’s ministry, neither she nor her brothers foresaw the magnitude of what was to be. “It was a God thing,” states Jacqueline. “God moved him.” Her brother’s opportunity to move to Dallas, she explains, was something that he first tried to hand to someone else.  But, she says with a hindsight chuckle, “As my mother would say, ‘God dropped it in his lap.’” She adds that “when he made the decision for them to move, 50 families went with them to Dallas.” 

It was their mother’s foundation at work, Jacqueline maintains. “My mother brought us up to say that we could go as high as we wanted to go, we could excel. My mother built character,” she says.

And the legacy of her mother resides in the seed of the fruitful relationships Jacqueline enjoys with her own daughter, her grandchildren and in the relationship she has with her two brothers. She jokes and says, “I’m a rose between two thorns.”

The four Ms of M-Power

Jacqueline, born on Christmas day, is the “gift” that Bishop Jakes describes as “too precious to give away.” Her wisdom, he writes in the Foreword of Jacqueline’s fourth book, “Sister Wit: Devotion for Women” (AOL TimeWarner, now Thorndike Press) is obtainable for every wounded heart in need.

Jacqueline Jakes at the 25th Anniversary Celebration for Bishop T. D. Jakes. Photographer: Mike Taylor.

Many young women, worshiping and working alongside Jakes and/or living in the communities of her awareness, gravitate to her side for “mothering.” Bishop Jakes maintains it’s due to her qualities shared by a cadre of thoughtful women, especially mothers: “mentoring, ministering and a muster of courage.” 

And if it’s true that the power of mustering, mentoring, ministering and mothering stems from the depths of personal testimony and the willingness to share it, then his big sister, expresses Bishop Jakes, brims with power. 

Jacqueline moved through marriage and divorce and single parenting. In 1982, she suffered a major illness with subsequent brain surgery and a 10-year war with depression, panic attacks, anxiety and other ailments associated with the surgery. Perhaps the worst of it, she comments, was the struggle to appear strong for family and friends while suffering in silence.

During those years, she says, “There were times when I could hardly get up, when I could hardly move, when I was very dysfunctional. It’s hard to explain to those who haven’t been through it. I was living in a world of my own in darkness and sadness.”

“I never got mad at God,” she says, “but I always wanted to know, ‘God what did I do to cause something like this to happen in my life?’  I went through a lot of changes, but I never, ever got angry with God.”

She fought back, and she immersed her being in the God she knew. She ponders a flashback, recalling the days and nights she spent, “laid down on a little burnt-orange sofa. I was reading, looking for the Scriptures that would tell me God is still a healer today. Because I always knew God was my way out.”

Her struggle birthed in her a brand new attitude. The lesson, she says, is discovering, “what’s really important in life.” So in her public speaking engagements as well as her private encounters, she mothers and mentors, and ministers and musters courage in the women who consult her by phone and mail, searching for a lifeline.

Jacqueline Jakes speaking at The Potter's House of Dallas, Inc. Photographer: Ron Sanders.

“I’m not interested if people like or don’t like the way I look or wear my hair or what size I am,” She states. “I think that’s trite, petty and Hollywood. I don’t have time for that. I have fewer years in front of me than I do behind me, and I can’t spend my time thinking about what people are thinking about me.” 

Instead, Jacqueline clarifies, “I’m trying to help somebody who’s in trouble. She maintains that she stays on the lookout for the saints who have been ground to powder, those who could use a little mustering, mentoring, ministering – and mothering.

To learn more about Jacqueline Jakes and her upcoming speaking engagements, visit www.jacquelinejakes.org.