TYLER PERRY'S SPIRITUAL LIFE
“You give me these dreams and then you don’t see me through."
I’d written a book, a collection of inspirational insights and lessons. Now I just needed the right title for it. Then a friend wanted to talk. He was feeling pretty down about his life, and I urged him to see all the good things God had in store for him: love, compassion, peace of mind. If only he’d step up and reach up. “Higher is waiting,” I said. That was it, both my advice and the title of the
book.
We all have dreams deep inside of us. They just need to be pursued. Higher is waiting. It’s up to us to stay in the climb and claim it. Here are some of the spiritual principles I’ve come to trust. God loves us all.
I started out close to the bottom. We didn’t have much of anything, but I got plenty of love from Mamma and my Aunt Mae. I lived for our weekend jaunts out
to Aunt Mae’s from our place in New Orleans. Mamma would pick me up from school in her ’69 powder-blue Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She would turn up the volume on the eight-track player in the car’s dashboard and belt out the blues in her unforgettable voice (more on that later).
No matter how bad things got, come Sunday morning, Mamma would take me to church. Her uncle DJ was our preacher, and although I wasn’t always in the mood to hear
him, one sermon in particular touched my soul. “Children,” he bellowed from the pulpit, “God will answer your prayer. Just ask him. No matter what you’re going through, God will see you through it.”
That night, alone in my bedroom, I decided to put his claim to the test. While the moon cast shadows on the wall and the cicadas sang, I got on my knees, leaned my elbows on the bed, clasped my hands together and closed my eyes. “Let the
people who are living inside our TV step out and talk to me and love me so I can love them back,” I prayed.
As a kid, I had a pretty creative imagination. I thought that the TV characters on my favorite shows, like Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, were real people, about four inches tall, living inside our TV...
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