In this episode of The Good News, Angie Austin welcomes Samia Young, whose book ‘Samia, Come Forth’ chronicles her path from adversity to becoming a minister and mentor for young people. Samia shares her experiences dealing with childhood abuse, encounters with the criminal justice system, and the healing power of faith. Discover how Samia’s work in prison ministry and her plans for a nonprofit aim to provide transitional support for at-risk young women.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 04 :
there friend angie austin here with the good news really excited about today’s author samia young is joining us her book is samia come forth trading grave clothes for purpose and samia one of the reasons i’m excited about your book well being a fellow christian but we both lost a brother we both grew up in circumstances that don’t match our current lives you know very difficult upbringings like first you know 18 years and then Things started getting better for me. And I can tell by your story that we have a similar outlook on life and faith. So I’m really excited to hear about how you got through some of that childhood trauma. Welcome to the good news.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you for having me. And it definitely has been a journey, but I’m excited to share what the Lord has done. So thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 04 :
You are welcome. So first, just tell us a little about yourself, and then we’ll get into the book, Samia, Come Forth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I like to describe myself as a 30-year-old something woman, 30-something. I won’t say the exact age. Woman on fire for Jesus, honestly. I am Today I am a minister, I’m an attorney, I’m an author, but I always tell people that I started as a young child who was actually born into what a lot of people would call a dysfunctional family and into very unfortunate circumstances. And before I ever became an attorney or a minister, I was broken and rejected and abused by my family and by others growing up. And so, you know, that’s a little about me and the fact that I would describe myself as a textbook case of redemption in the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, when the press release came through, it caught my eye. It said, you know, talk about from jail to Jesus. And, you know, if you think about it from jail to attorney, like explain what happened in your younger life that you needed to be redeemed from.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, definitely. So I had my first encounter with the criminal justice system when I was 16 years old. And it was following basically three years of severe abuse where I was sent to live with a rather abusive family member back in Chicago. And as a result of the starvation and abuse that I endured, I actually was diagnosed with PTSD at 16 years old. And so that trauma remained untreated when I was sent back to live with my mother in Minnesota at 16. And so I ended up being triggered and found myself in a situation and exhibiting behaviors that landed me in juvenile, the juvenile detention center in Minnesota. And so that was my first encounter with the criminal justice system. And although it ended up being a petty offense, I just remember the first time that the handcuffs were put on me. And I, you know, I was a 4.0 student, brilliant in school, emotionally destroyed. I had heard the gospel for the first time at 14, believed, was saved. But those issues and that trauma was still underneath the surface and needed healing. And so as I went into my early adulthood years, some of those issues continued. And I, at 24, as an adult, got a DUI and just went through a bunch of hard stuff, right, from evictions to I often oftentimes we see that when people have run ins with the criminal justice system, there are usually other issues going on, whether it’s poverty, whether it’s trauma. And that was most certainly my my experience.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I read, too, about you getting married and divorced. And I find having in my teens, my mom was in Minnesota, and I ended up leaving to stay with a family member who was very abusive in Georgia, came back and lived in foster care in Minnesota. And I found that, you know, I’ve been happily married now for over 20 years and I have three kids, but I found I waited a long time to get married because I You know, there’s that fear of that everyone’s going to let you down or I don’t know if it’s abandonment, but maybe not worthy of love or not trusting anyone to really be there for you because the people that were supposed to be there, at least for me, weren’t. And so I didn’t really have a trust in people. I kind of felt like I was an island person. And I know my faith helped me overcome that, you know, to have like a foundation of my faith and the Lord and that love, you know, comes into your heart. They gave me more of like a familial foundation where I felt the love that I should have felt from my family. And so I think that love relationships, marriages, even committing to someone that was difficult for me because I didn’t trust anyone to be there for me. Did you feel that? Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, I love the way you just articulated that and can tell that you have a very powerful testimony. But yeah, to answer your question, I mean, that’s exactly it. I think even when I got married, in the back of my mind, I would always have this question of like, is he going to leave me? Like, like, will there come a time where he sees me for who I really am? And, and it’s not good enough. Uh, I, I would definitely describe it as the fear of abandonment. And, and for me, Angie, it was because I have been abandoned as a teenager, you know, similar left for three years with no parents, uh, you know, hearing nothing, being abused and, you know, those just deep rooted issues. And so, um, actually caused me to end up marrying someone who was a narcissist. So that’s a whole nother different story. And so of course my fear came to pass. My worst fear is like how Joe said, the thing, the very thing I feared came to pass. I mean, he in fact did end up leaving me, believe it or not.
SPEAKER 04 :
Um, you know, so many of my friends that have come from backgrounds like yours and mine have a bad paper. And so sometimes I have a girlfriend that picked, you know, her, uh, her stepfather’s in jail. She raised a brother, her boyfriend then went to jail and she’s raising that kid, her sister overdose. She’s raising that kid. Uh, you know, it’s just, oh my goodness. And then And her now husband is in prison. A current husband, just divorced, is in prison. And I thought to myself, oh, my goodness, like some of us have just a bad picker. And I vowed to not pick like that. I wanted the opposite of my father. We were estranged for like 35 years. And he was a professor, you know, very well educated. So I had like that, you know, perk that, you know, I like you. What? do you think that with the 4.0s that we were 4.0 students don’t you feel a sense of like I was trying to prove myself that I was worthy that I shouldn’t be rejected that I shouldn’t be abandoned that look at how great I am I’m like a 4.0 student I remember being in court once my dad didn’t want me to stay in my foster family because he was embarrassing so he wanted me sent to a different state so it wouldn’t tarnish his reputation as a professor in town and so he stood up in court and he said that I was um uh oh my gosh right it just basically meant um it always said incorrigible and i knew what it meant but when i looked it up it said unworthy of being redeemed and i was like how dare you like i am a straight a student how dare you try to stand up in court and lie about me like i was the perfect you know teenage girl i was like 15 16 years old i should not have um had someone say that to me in accordance And I wanted to defend myself because my cheeks were like burning and I was so enraged that he was misrepresenting who I was. But I thought how fascinating that it meant unable to be or unworthy of redemption when that’s what our faith is all about.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, that is. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I that resonates with me because I do. Of course, at the time when you’re overachieving and you’re doing all of these things at the time, I didn’t feel like I was doing it to try to prove anything. But in hindsight, I think I had done that my entire life. Right. You know, I’d even say even even all the way up until a few years ago in my early 30s and, you know, trying to be the best wife and trying to, you know, always trying to be the best, whether it’s in school, whether it’s in everything. And then it can turn into people pleasing because you’re trying to prove like, you I’m worthy of love. And I do think it’s rooted in those early childhood experiences, especially for me. I remember even as a little girl, I was an overachiever and I would have to ask my mother for chores. And I think there was something solidified in my mind that if I overachieved, then I would be worthy. That if I grew up and made something of myself, then I would be worthy. And we know, of course, from our faith that we were worthy from the minute that Jesus shed his blood. And, and if we never did anything else, but accept him as our Lord and savior, we were worthy, you know? And so it’s, yeah, that’s powerful. That’s powerful. What you said.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, when I look at, you know, what you do now and I, you know, still an overachiever, obviously you are that, you know, working, you know, with youth, you know, you’re working, you have a ministry, you’re an attorney, you’re an author and a mentor to young people. Can you tell us a little bit about your ministry and what you’re doing to mentor young people?
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. Yes. So the name of my ministry is Samia Young Ministries. And what I do is I’m I am specifically called to prison ministry. I do teach as well and have teaching videos. But so I have been going into the juvenile detention center in Cleveland, Ohio. And I just finished four months of teaching the girls a biblical curriculum that the Lord gave to me. And one of the series that we really focused on was titled The Power of Hope. And five of those girls gave their life to Jesus. You have to stop. That is OK.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re freaking me out. I named my daughter. My daughter’s name is Hope. And we were just talking over the weekend about when these little boys go. She goes to Christian college, and these little boys are in foster care, and we’ve kind of taken them under our wing. And he goes, there’s power in hope. And then he laughed. He goes, and your hope, because she has a really powerful hitting arm for volleyball. And so he was watching her game, but it’s just so funny, the power of hope.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, keep going. Sorry, I had to interrupt you. No, that’s great. I love that. Yeah. And so, you know, so I’ve been doing that series. And then beginning in October, November, I’ll be going to the women’s prison in Marysville, Ohio, and teaching another customized biblical curriculum. But that will more so be based on trauma and its impact on relationships and and using the Word of God to figure out how we can heal from that and move forward. And so my ministry is really for the lost. I’m actually in the process of developing a nonprofit that will entail providing transitional housing for young women ages 18 through 24. Oh, I love it. Oh, yeah. And the reason that age is obviously near and dear to my heart is where a lot of things went wrong for me, right? Like, it’s a tough age, and I just believe that if we can reach some of the young women at that time and give them the resources and it’d be Christ-centered, but then also practical, you know, from housing assistance to educational help to counseling, using everything that we have and that the Lord has blessed us with, that we can really change lives. And so that’s what my ministry is. It’s what I’m passionate about. Angie, I’ve done a lot of street ministry in my life where I would go alone by foot. I’ve seen gang members give their lives to Christ. I’ve seen prostitutes and drug addicts put needles down. And I counted an honor to have been able to witness that nothing that I’ve done in my life, including being a lawyer or anything else, can ever compare to the honor it is to be used by God to win souls and to see lives changed. That’s where I get my joy.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I think about the honor that would be, because I have interviewed in my studio, I remember three unchained angels, they called themselves, they led a ministry helping inmates when they got out of prison, and they were in for serious offenses, attempted murder, assault, but you know, like, not just your average, you know, bar fight, it was pretty serious. And then one was I’m trying to hire someone to murder someone. And the other was like tax evasion or something. So over the course of when they came in, there was three of mine, three, the three, when they came in together, three of them were like three of my most moving testimonies because to have, I didn’t help them get saved. They were saved while they were in prison, while they were incarcerated, but seeing grown men, hardened criminals, cry in my studio talking about the redemption and you know coming to christ is was so powerful to me i can’t imagine what it would be like to be on the street with them and you know i look at you and you’re you’re very attractive and i think oh my gosh it’s great to be out there you know but i know you you know spent some time in the south side of chicago but but how do you overcome your fear of being out there with gang members and being out there on the street? I, we did a little street ministry with my kids and they still remember when this, this young woman who I think was a lady of the evening, very malnourished, very, she, she, we had to call 911 because she overdosed or something in front of us. And my kids still talk about it to this day. And I’m like, and we were with a huge, you laugh. We went to an African-American church. We were the only white family. And I just, so my pastor Moreland hit the time. He said, um, Oh, you guys weren’t at church this weekend, so I have a very blonde family, right? And I go, how did you know I wasn’t there? He goes, Angie, are you kidding me? You’re kidding, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
That is funny. Right, right. You’re the only white blonde family in the church. You’re easily spotted. How did you know I wasn’t there? Oh, thank you for noticing.
SPEAKER 04 :
He’s like, please, Angie, please. So how do you feel like saved? Do you feel like the Lord just kind of, oh, we have to take a break. You’re listening to The Good News with Angie Austin. We are talking to Samia Young. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Hey there, Angie Austin here with The Good News. Welcome back. We’re talking to Samia Young, continuing our conversation. She is an author. She is an attorney. We’re talking about her street ministry, her ministry where she shares her testimony and ministers to young people. She’s active in the prison system. She just taught a four-month study to young people in the juvenile detention system. And so we’re continuing our conversation, Samia. about your book and about you know feeling not feeling fearful when you’re out on the street working with gang members and drug addicts and the book is samia come forth trading great clothes for purpose and you caught my eye when i saw a press release that said from jail to jesus so how do you overcome that fear when you’re bringing people to christ on the streets with gang members and drug addicts and you know it’s a little scary and you’re like a beautiful young woman
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, you know what? It’s a good question. And this is where I think it’s important to be sent. One thing that I was always taught by my current leaders and that I truly believe is if God sends you, then he will equip you, empower you, and give you the boldness that you need to go. And so I think the way that I answer that question is that I try not to go where I have not been sent. But if I know that the Lord has sent me, I go boldly. And from a practical standpoint, when I go, I’m not, like, dressed up in my lawyer attire, right? Yes, of course, of course. And with the juvenile detention center, you know, that’s a little different. But when we’re talking about being on the streets, it’s funny. I tell people I used to go and will go in what I call incognito. And the fact that I’m really dressed down, you would not know. necessarily that I was a minister until I start talking. I also do not preach at people. I start off with conversation. It’s really important. I think a lot of, to be effective, it takes a lot of discernment to know who you’re talking to. Wow. Wow. He would say, go grab $20, $10 Target gift cards or bring two Bibles. So God will give different instructions and directives. And as long as I stay within those parameters, I can honestly say I’m not afraid. There was one time where I felt fear, and it was I said Jesus, and a man stepped to me as if he wanted to hurt me. And I remember at that moment, the Lord gave me such a peace. And he said to me by his Holy Spirit that even if you get hurt for my namesake, it’s a worthy way to die. Wow. Because the reality is many of God’s servants, we know in the Bible, they lost their lives. They were willing to lose their lives for this. But that was only one time where I felt that I could get hurt. Glory be to God, I didn’t go anywhere. But besides that, honestly, I’m not usually afraid because I usually have that peace. You’ll know God’s sending you if you have peace. And if there’s no peace, I would say maybe wait. Ask God if it’s a timing thing, if you need people with you. I do think it’s preferable to at least have one person with you. I will say oftentimes the Lord has sent me by myself. But part of the nonprofit is I want to train other people with my customized biblical curriculums on how to to do street ministry and prison ministry so that we can have more laborers to work the harvest.
SPEAKER 04 :
Gosh, I wish we lived closer to each other. You remind me so much of one of my radio friends, Candice C. Jones. Candice C. Jones, you could be sisters. She is the president and CEO of the Public Welfare Foundation, and she’s very active in the criminal justice system for young people. And she does things like you do. You know, a lot of people don’t understand that, like, if you’re in foster care, like, you’re 18, you’re done. Like, you’re not equipped. Right now, I’ve got, you know, kids that are between 16 and 20 and I’m doing so many things to help them. I’m constantly on Amazon sending them, you know, their acne scrub, you know, their socks. They’re out of undies. I lost an earring. You know, I need a new Bible, you know. And so I’m like their one man, you know, shop for keeping their lives on track. And that means like, you know, making sure that, you know, they’re they’re healthy. food bill is paid and that they, you know, can go into the commissary to get their lunches or, you know, my son, you know, has moved into a house and just the little things he needs like toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I mean, imagine not having a me, you know, like, so these kids come out of, you know, the foster care system and they don’t have any help. So like you and Candice are kind of helping these kids transition and hers involves kids who’ve like been arrested and then she gets them like counseling help with their education you know tutoring um you know everything that they would need to get back kind of on their feet because as we know you get emotionally damaged in these horrible situations and when you talk about dressing the part to do street ministry um i’ve done a little bit but obviously denver is not like you know south side chicago um but my um brother when I lived in Los Angeles I worked for NBC Los Angeles and I was doing weather it was like one of my first days on the air so I was in my like you know perfect you know 90s suit you know like you know like something you’d see on the bad 90s like the mini skirt and like that you know like a light green suit you know double-breasted with the gold buttons that now everybody would laugh but then it was like I was like I really like the best fit ever and You know, and so I went to Central Jail to see my brother and I brought he’d been arrested. I have one brother that was murdered and one that is on and off the street still. And then one who graduated top of his class at West Point Military Academy who never used drugs. The other two were into drugs anyway. So I go to visit him and I’m all dressed up in my suit and I’ve got a Bible and I go in to see him and he’s in orange, an orange jumpsuit. And he’s in shackles on his ankles and his wrists. I don’t even remember. He never went to prison. It was always like some bar brawl street fight, you know, punching somebody kind of goofiness or breaking a window anyway. So I bring him the Bible and I don’t allow you to bring anybody anything, but I’ll never forget a Samia when, um, I was maybe lecturing him or like, what is going on with you? Like, you know, I put him in rehab twice, you know? So he, he says to me, you come in here, but he’s behind plexiglass in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs. And he says, you come in here and you ruin my serenity. And I banged on the glass. I was like, I go, hello, you’re in there.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m out here. You’re ruining your serenity. Yes. Come on. Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
But, you know, the damage that we go through, I think it just makes us hungry to help others and like pull them out of the mire they’re in and let them know that they’re worthy of a great life like you and I have now. And it’s hard for people that are in the darkness to see the light that we have. And so if they see our hand reaching down for them, you know, I gosh, if we lived near each other, you and I’d be out every weekend doing stuff.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I would love that. But no, I completely agree with you. It’s, you know, because we know what it’s like to deal with some level of oppression or trauma or whatever the thing is, when you know what it’s like, it does birth a desire for you to help other people. And I had said, I was speaking to someone in a podcast interview I did, and I said, you know, a lot of us, God is sending to go back and And he had shown me Harriet Tubman, but in the spirit that God is raising up a lot of Harriet Tubman to go back to what they have been freed from and to go back and to proclaim liberty to those who are still in captivity in those areas. So whatever that area is, God often is calling people once they’re free to go back and bring other people out.
SPEAKER 04 :
What was the turning point for you? As a teen, you were in this abusive household for three years. You get into some trouble with the law, even in your 20s, some bumps in the road. When did you transform? What was the catalyst?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. I’ll say this. So in the midst when I was being abused, I heard the gospel for the first time at 14. Someone had took me to church one time. When I heard it, I received it. And at 15, it was told to me that I was called to ministry. But because when I got sent back to Minnesota, my mother was a Jehovah’s Witness. I didn’t have the teaching. That is how I ended up going into, you know, when you don’t have community, you don’t have anyone to teach you and you’re a young person and you have trauma, it’s kind of hard to stay planted. So after it was all said and done, right. I go through the early adulthood years and from, I always tell people from 19 to 24, you, you probably wouldn’t have known I ever gave my life to Jesus at 14. I mean, I was, I, yeah, I was out here pretty bad. Um, but, After I got my DUI when I was 24 years old and prior to that, I had experienced evictions, homelessness, had been through a lot as a young person. And I remember there was a moment when I was on, I had got booked into jail for my DUI and I had two years of college done, had stopped going, hard to be consistent when you don’t, when you’re working three to four jobs, not sleeping, you’re trying to get by, life is hard. And so at that moment on that jail cell floor, I realized a few things. The first is that being smart is not enough. Being your intelligence without consistency, without integrity, it means it really, The second is, is that I needed to turn back to God. It was at that moment where I realized that if I did not turn back to God and then practically make better decisions, that I would find myself dealing with something way worse than a DUI. And I remember being in a jail cell floor and I cried out to God, which is something I hadn’t done for years. At 24, I cried out to him and I got on my knees and I bargained with God. I said, if you get me out, I’ll live for you.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m tired now.
SPEAKER 03 :
A few weeks before that, there was a bottle of antidepressants on my dresser. And I talk about this and I consider taking all of them. And so it was around that time. Oh my gosh, me too. I’m so glad because the Lord had spoke to me and I talk about this in a book and people say God doesn’t speak, but he does. He speaks in our spirits often. And I remember word for word and I can never forget when I went to grab that pill bottle, he said, if you do that, you will never be around to see the day when I turned this all around, but you have to be here to see it. A few months after I filed bankruptcy at 24 and And what that allowed me to do was to get my college transcripts released because, you know, I withdrew early. I owed balances. I went back to school. I registered. I finished my bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, graduated at the top of my class, and went straight to law school and graduated at the top of my law school class. And I also rededicated my life to Christ at 24. That was 10 years ago. I lived to see, and even though I went through, God never told us that we wouldn’t be afflicted. He never told us that we wouldn’t suffer. In fact, he tells us many are the afflictions of the righteous, but he promises that he will deliver us from them all. And that’s my testimony that even after I’ve been dedicated my life to Christ and saw such great, um, change and progress there, you know, there’s still always going to be some things you have to walk through. But I think the difference is this time is that I never walked away from my faith again. I never, I never, um, uh, I kept my praise. I, I, um, it wasn’t perfect, especially as you’re maturing in Christ, but, but I, I had consistently walked with him since 24 and never went back to, uh, Uh, uh, you know, making a poor decisions in that way. Now relationship, the, the man that I married, that was my God, just when you think you’re there, you end up finding yourself. But, um, I, God has been good to me, you know, in spite of it all. And I, and so that was really the catalyst, um, that 24, that’s really when I made up my mind, um, that I wanted a different life. And when I tell people I filed bankruptcy that young, they’re shocked, but it’s like, well, now I have an 800 credit, over 800 credit score. Right. So it’s like, it was worth it. I wait, I wait the cost.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. And you were able to go back to school. Oh, we’re out of time, but I really want to have you back. I really want to continue to talk about your work and you know, what you’re doing to help young people. Give us the best website to find you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, SamiaYoung.com.
SPEAKER 04 :
SamiaYoung.com and the book, Samia, Come Forth, Creating Great Flows for Purpose. God bless you, Samia. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you so much, Angie. God bless you, too. Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
In this episode of The Good News, Angie Austin welcomes Samia Young, whose book ‘Samia, Come Forth’ chronicles her path from adversity to becoming a minister and mentor for young people. Samia shares her experiences dealing with childhood abuse, encounters with the criminal justice system, and the healing power of faith. Discover how Samia’s work in prison ministry and her plans for a nonprofit aim to provide transitional support for at-risk young women.
