AT2W

Bishop Long’s Wife Vanessa  Spoke Out About Why She Chose to Stay with Husband

During the women’s ministry at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Vanessa Long spoke on the struggles she endured during husband Eddie Long’s sexual misconduct allegations in 2010 and her subsequent filing for divorce in 2011, a petition which she ultimately chose to close and dismiss.

“I was in the middle of a storm, and I got off the ship,” Long metaphorically explained of her marriage struggles to the hundreds of women attending the Heart to Heart women’s ministry on Aug. 21, which is coordinated by New Birth Baptist Church and serves as a speaking forum for Christian women.

“I realized that the best thing I could do was to let you see me as a woman, just like you. A woman capable of making good decisions and a woman capable of making bad decisions.”

“Instead of condemning myself, I can use what happened as an opportunity to minister myself to someone else going through a storm.”

Watch the video below and read our response below!

AT2W’s Take: We have to say that we never saw this coming. We can not believe our ears on this one. After all this time, it took Vanessa Long, in her own time to tell what she was going through during her husband Bishop Eddie Long’s sexual misconduct scandal with 4 young men.

At this moment, we feel moved by the speech Vanessa Long gave. AT2W staff sat at our roundtable some time ago during the peak of the sex scandal and wondered what would become of Vanessa Long. We gave our views and opinions on what we felt she should do as a public figure in the matter. Though it is a private matter, she did make it public to divorce her husband at one point. Also, when she withdrew, many of us couldn’t understand why. In some ways we still can’t fathom the idea of staying with a man who never fought the allegations as he said he would do like David in the bible. But she has spoken her peace. We at AT2W, discussed the idea of her coming forward one day and speaking to women about her experience in this ordeal. We know that many women in the ministry or married into the husband’s ministry, have a ‘closed mouth policy’. Many of them just won’t share what they experience because of their positions and the shame on the church.

But we are happy to know that she actually used her annual Heart to Heart Women’s Conference to minister to women about her so very public ordeal with her husband’s allegations. She actually used this platform to reach out and show she is a woman like all others and they needed to see her be just that- a woman.

Congrats to First Lady Vanessa Long! She will now open the door for other first lady’s in the ministry to speak out and use their personal ordeals to help the very people who follow their ministries and abroad.