Paula White’s life started in what seemed to be an ideal situation -- the adored child of wealthy parents. Paula says, “My father took care of me every day. He would take me to breakfast every morning and then to the country club. My parents were both entrepreneurs and my mom ran the businesses. We owned toy stores and craft stores and restaurants and seafood chains.”
“I was always told I was Daddy’s little girl. I just knew that loving arm that would hold me and draw smiley faces on my pancakes. I would run into our toy store and want to get the latest toy off the shelf and my mom would say no way, and my dad would say, “Get whatever you want, baby.” Paula was five when her family moved from Tupelo, Missisippi, to Memphis, Tennessee and out of the blues, her life changed forever. “My dad came in one night and he’s been drinking excessively, he grabbed one hand of me and my mother grabbed the other and they began to pull at me like a Raggedy Ann doll. My Dad said, “Give her to me, or I’ll kill myself,” but Mum held on to me with her life. I had never seen a violent side to my father but he suddenly extended his hand out and began to bash Mum’s head in. The police came and took him away, and put him in jail overnight. He got out and took his life as he had said he would.
Paula faced a much different future without her beloved father to watch over her. Her perfect life became increasingly unstable and when Paula was six, the sexual abuses began. Some were caretakers, some neighbors, different people. It wasn’t a consistent abuse, but it was enough to do the damage that psychiatrists said that Paula would be dysfunctional all her life.
Paula says, “One thing just began to build in my life after another, there were the eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia, sleeping with different people, because I was looking for love and acceptance. There was such a fear in me that you would never come back, so do whatever you have to; hit me, beat me, call me a dog, do whatever, just don’t leave.” The odds that Paula would find Jesus seemed slim since she had never even been to church. “I never heard the Gospel till I was 18 years old. The name Jesus Christ, was synonymous to me as the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. I had heard the name but I didn’t know that He was the Son of God, that He walked the earth, that He lived, that He died, He was crucified on an old rugged cross, and that there was a God that loved me unconditionally.”
At 18 Paula was visiting the home of a friend. “I was sitting in the living room, and his uncle came in, looked at me and said, “I can see all your pain,” and I’m thinking, “How can you see any pain?” because I was a master at this time at masking any hurt, anything that would show the dysfunction. He began to pierce me with words that penetrated my being, saying, “I know what you’re going through, I know you’re hurt. I know your pain.” And he didn’t know anything about who I am nor my background. He got out a Bible, and said, I have the answer for everything that is hurting you, for every problem that you’ve faced.”
“He took me through the Word of God, showed me the plan of salvation, and not only did he lead me to the Lord, but he released me from all the things in my past and showed me the Word of God that I don’t have to be a victim to the things that happened to me. I had this supernatural encounter and I got saved, I got rescued and I was radically changed. Something exploded on the inside of my being, and for the first time in my life, I knew love.”
Paula set out on a journey to find out about God. “I held the Word of God up and said, “God, I want to know You, I want answers for life, I want to understand who You are. I don’t want to train wreck my life, I don’t want to go back to anything that had been a part of that dysfunction.”
Soon Paula was passionate about changing lives. “I found myself in the inner cities of America and all over the world for years, just hugging little boys and girls, telling them of the love of God, and picking up broken Paulas. I was holding myself and restoring myself, and giving the Word that changed and transformed me.
Paula married her husband Randy, and together they lead, Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Florida. “There are so many things God has given me; I have a wonderful husband, wonderful children, wonderful friends, a great church. My life is so satisfied and fulfilled in other areas that I focus on what God has given me and what I do have instead of what I don’t have.”
Most of all, Paula White is intent on passing on what she has to the people who need it most. “My greatest thrill is not preaching in a pulpit publicly, but it is going into a restaurant, and looking into a waitress’s eyes, and having the ability to see behind the package and see the depth and condition of her soul, and give her that same love that God gave me when I was 18 years old. “Life labeled me; people gave up on me, and thought that there was no hope. But, God takes the most broken people that have been cast aside and look like nothing but trash, and recycles them. He recycles that trash and brings forth treasure.”
