The Death of Tammy Faye Messner / Bakker

Saturday evening, while taking a break from housework, I walked into the bedroom to find my husband watching the Tammy Faye interview on Larry King. I could see that she was very sick and probably dying of cancer, but I did not know the whole story. My memories of Tammy Faye were the PTL club, and the PTL scandal is what sticks in my mind about her. I’ve since looked up what she did before; the 700 club and starting TBN before moving on to PTL and building Heritage Park. I remember watching them and thinking about what a drama queen she was, and about how much money they were raking in. I knew that Jim had gone to jail after a big investigation and that she had remarried. Since then I had seen her on Hollywood squares, but did not know what else had happened since then. I did not know about the Jerry Falwell scandal, how he had taken PTL and dismantled it for his own gain. I do remember that they were the first of many ministries that went down or were discredited around the same time. I think they were the first if I’m remembering right. There was a cry around the Christian community that God was punishing leaders for being not being honest in their ministries; however I remember also a local minister that responded by saying that the pressure put on these people was tremendous, and that we have no idea what they had been through.

After that Tammy Faye married Messner; she went on reality TV and tried to change her image and continue her ministry in a different, more personal way. She seemed to become more real underneath the unreal makeup. The one thing I was really surprised to read was how the gay community welcomed her after her divorce from Jim. It seems they saw some common ground there that I never dreamed of. She reached out and the gay/transgender people responded. While reading a short bio of her life, it occurred to me that this woman never let the turkeys get her down. As person after person took advantage of her and dumped her, she just kept rolling with the punches, moving on and moving on. Going from Christian celebrity to secular; puppet shows to reality shows, this lady never gave up, ever. Not even when cancer took over her life, she never gave in. Witness the interview she granted a day before her death, during which she had to stop to catch her breath every few sentences. No matter how I remember her; the crazy lady on Christian TV who never thought saying or doing anything was too much (some of her early hospital bedside broadcasts were jaw droppingly frank) or was ever too tired to carry on. I’m not saying she’s gold, she certainly had bad judgment in many aspects of her life, but I think we can learn a life lesson from such a determined, optimistic lady, who always figured out ways to make lemonade out of her lemons.

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