Finding Martha’s Place

ERICA: Martha Hawkins, thank you so much for being here.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Why, thank you.  I’m honored to be here today.

ERICA:            Now, your book, “Finding Martha’s Place,” you call it a journey through sin, salvation and lots of soul food.  As a child, I read that you were inspired to have a restaurant where people can come and relax and just eat and talk.  What  inspired that?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Because they could always do that at my Mom’s house, you know.  My Mom’s door was open for our friends to come and eat and it was so much fun.  And so I wanted a restaurant, but I wanted an old house, so when that person came there, they could feel like they was coming home.  And not only that, it has just been such a reaction with other people to be able to do that.

ERICA: Now, along the journey you had some very dark times.  By the time you were 21 you were a single mom,  hadn’t finished high school, divorced.  How did you feel at that time in your life?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Helpless and hopeless.  You know, looking at my life and calling myself stupid, how could I be caught up in a situation like this, and what was really going on because I wasn’t doing anything that I had dreamed that I was going to be doing at that time in my life.  So, I was just in a bad state.

ERICA: And things got worse.  A couple years later you had three major surgeries.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Yes.

ERICA:            You had your appendix removed, a hysterectomy, which is, for a woman –  (you’re 26 at this time) it’s already a very emotional thing, then you had a kidney removed.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Yes.

ERICA: Then, we go further a couple more months and you suffered a brutal rape. How did all of these events combined change your life?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Everything got packed on top of each other.  Just trouble after trouble after trouble.  And I couldn’t see no way out.  I couldn’t see nothing changing for my life.  And I ended up trying to commit suicide.

ERICA: That’s interesting because when you talk about it in the book, you say a voice spoke to you.

MARTHA HAWKINS:            Yes.

ERICA: And you talk about the domino effect.  Explain what the voice said and explain what you called the domino effect.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Well, the voice kept telling me how helpless and hopeless [my situation was]  that it wasn’t going to get any better, and that was the devil, you know.  And people don’t realize when people commit suicide, it’s a satanic spirit that be compelling them to do it.  Because you’re looking at your life and you don’t see no way out.  And you’re hurting, you know, you’re hurting so bad on the inside and you just want to stop the pain.

ERICA: Thank God your parents found you, or your dad found you.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Yeah, my dad and my son.

ERICA:            And you went to, what you call “the last place you could go,” this particular hospital.

MARTHA HAWKINS:            Yes.

ERICA: What was your turning point?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Getting the Word of God.  Thank God for the Gideons, I got the Word of God and I just started reading it and reading it and reading it.  And I found out that hey, Jesus loved me.  He died for me.  You know if it hadn’t been anyone else but me, He died just for me.  And it revolutionized my whole entire life.

ERICA: Was there a particular Scripture that, when you first read it, that really just kind of impacted you?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Well, Isaiah 61, every time I used to open the Bible, it would just go to Isaiah 61.  Even when I went home on a leave, from the hospital,  the Bible just opened to Isaiah 61.  And I’d throw it — throw the Bible down.  I said, “What’s going on?” ‘Cause I was afraid.  And not realizing that God was letting me know His plan and His purpose for my life.

ERICA: And so when you go through a lot of hurt and disappointment, of course, you know, your son’s father disappointed you, how were you able to trust God?  How were you able to read the Word and believe that there was a plan for your life?

MARTHA HAWKINS: Well, what I realized is a lot of the pain and stuff I allowed to happen because I made bad choices, and God gave me another opportunity, another chance to correct that.  And what happened was, that when I read the Word of God -hearing the voice reassured me that, “Hey, I love you.  I got a purpose, I got a plan.”  And it just — it just made all the difference.

ERICA:            The voice of love you call it.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Love, yes.

ERICA: I love that, the voice of love.  The voice of love told you one day that you were going to be great, beyond your wildest dreams.  Now, this time you didn’t have money.

MARTHA HAWKINS: I was on welfare. Staying in the projects. Yeah, I was in my bathroom and He said, “I’m going to make your name great.”  And I’m saying, “How, how are you going to do that? Lord, how are you going to do that?”  And never imagined the plan and the purpose that He had for my life.

ERICA:            And so how did Martha’s Place, the restaurant come to be?

MARTHA HAWKINS:            Well, I used to tell everybody about I was going to have this restaurant and what it was going to look like and going to have table cloths, napkins, and all that.  They used to look at me and say, “Yeah, mm-hmm.”  I had a bad track record, been in a mental institution, so who was going to believe me?  But for the first time in my life it didn’t matter who believed.  I believed, I just knew that God had told me that.  And so I just went out looking for that place, an old house.  And I used to cook cakes for this guy named Calvin Pryor, and he told me, he said, “Guess what? I got the ideal place for you.”  He said, “But right now it’s occupied.  And when it becomes available, I’ll call you and let you know.”  And two years went by and I was on welfare and I was staying in Cedar Housing Project when I started my restaurant.

ERICA: And the rest is history.

MARTHA HAWKINS: The rest is history.  That was 20-something years ago.

ERICA: And so, what would you say to a person right now who’s struggling with depression, they’ve had issues and bad things happened to them. What would you say to them?

MARTHA HAWKINS: What I realized –it’s just life.  You know, bad things are gonna happen to us regardless of what is going on in our life.  There’s just a season in our life for things to happen, whether they’re good or whether they’re bad.  But what I realized, that you got to latch onto God’s Word and you got to know that that Word is true.  And God is a faithful God.  And a lot of times we are just going to go through something ‘cause it is molding and shaping our life into who and what God wants us to be.

ERICA: Wow.  Well, Martha Hawkins, we thank you so much.  I’m going to get down to Alabama –

MARTHA HAWKINS: You got to.

ERICA: – because I’m going to get some of that food.  And I just want to say personally the book really blessed me.

MARTHA HAWKINS: Thank you.

ERICA:            I mean, when I read it, I told you before, I felt like I can do anything and I just know our audience is going to feel the same way if they get an opportunity to get the book as well.  So thank you so much.

MARTHA HAWKINS:            Thank you.