Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
—Matthew 10:39
From the moment Jim and Tammy took us under their wing, everything seemed to get better and better. The show was a huge hit. The PTL Singers’ first record sold off the charts. All our dreams were coming true.
But in 1983, everything began to change.
It all started with an announcement CeCe made to each of us individually, and then to the family as a whole, at the age of nineteen.
“I’m getting married.”
I was shocked, and so was the family, except my two other sisters, Angelique and Debra, who were fifteen and twelve at the time, respectively, who were not affected by CeCe’s decision.
This was so shocking to hear because CeCe was not the dating kind. Growing up, she didn’t show a lot of interest in boys. She was more focused on heavenly things. This announcement blindsided us. No one saw it coming.
Alvin Love. Yes, the brother-in-law-to-be had the last name Love. Can you imagine how much love flowed from our hearts?
I racked my brain but could not figure out where this marriage talk was coming from. When did she even meet Alvin? CeCe and I were still living in Charlotte, North Carolina, but with success we could afford to visit our home in Detroit more often. And it was during one of those visits that our brother Ronald introduced CeCe to Alvin. The introduction I can’t remember. Alvin came down to visit us in Charlotte, and what went on between the two of them is lost in my memory.
At the Sunday service in Charlotte, before Jim preached his sermon, CeCe told me she was going to marry Alvin. I told her right then and there that I was not attending her wedding. I also told her how her decision was selfish and the biggest mistake of her life.
The whole family felt that the dating process was too short for CeCe to really know Alvin. Add in the long-distance relationship. Yes, distance makes the heart grow fond, but distance also leads to good behavior when you finally see each other face-to-face. And what you get is your best self with the person’s best self. There’s really no time to confess your other side, that other side we keep hidden, that other side that only time can reveal, that other side that completes the picture of the other person and allows us to make a more informed choice.
The age gap between Alvin and CeCe was seventeen years! He was the ripe old age of thirty-six.
I want to be fair. Was there anything about him that should have caused CeCe to second-guess herself, to make her think she was making a horrible decision? No. But what was clear to me at the age of twenty-one was that if she went with her heart and did marry Alvin, life for the both us would change drastically. That’s why I thought her decision marked the worst day of my life and our career, which had just left the runway.
Priscilla Marie Winans, which is her full name, had drawn a line in the sand, and no matter what Daddy or Momma said, her mind was made up and couldn’t be changed. And CeCe had some firepower when her age was questioned. She could remind my mother that she had been only seventeen years old when she said, “I do,” to my father. And Dad was CeCe’s age, nineteen! They were babies in love and babies in marriage! For the most part my mom and dad had a great marriage.
My mother at the age of twenty-five had already given birth to seven boys! The thought causes me to still buckle at the knees. It also caused my mom and dad to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, to pay the bills, feed, and clothe us. No easy feat, but they did it.
One thing Alvin had going for him was his employment at the Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). He was a handsome fella and seemingly mild mannered. But was this the facade to keep us away from learning and knowing the real Alvin that the eyes couldn’t see?
Why was he still single? Was he once married and now divorced and not sharing that information with CeCe or our family? If this was not the case, then why would he want to marry a teenager? These were questions raised by the Winans family; CeCe was not budging.
During that church service when I told CeCe I was not coming to her wedding, I knew it was an awful thing to say. I knew I broke her heart. But CeCe and I were close not only in age but in life. My father taught us that we were responsible for each other. Was I my sister’s keeper? Yes! According to my dad, when one of us was down, all of us were down; and when one Winans wins, all Winanses win.
CeCe and I went to elementary school together and even graduated from high school together. CeCe graduated two years earlier than expected because she didn’t want to be in school without me; at least I believe that’s why she did it. Even in high school we shared lockers and classes together. Some even thought we were not really brother and sister because we had fun being together, which wasn’t reality for a lot of other siblings. When I said I wasn’t attending the most important event of her life, it struck her in her heart.
Then Pastor Jim Bakker took to the pulpit and preached about love. When he concluded the sermon on the true definition of love, I turned to CeCe and said, “I’m coming to your wedding.”
My heart was conflicted, but beside all my doubts and fears and anger, love had just trumped them all.
CeCe, with tears running down her face and giving God praise as she always did, then asked, “BeBe, will you sing at the wedding?”
My answer?
“Don’t get ahead of God. I’m just coming.”
There were moments in my early career when I just felt like this whole thing was not going to work out. And when those times emerged, my mother and father were there to keep me from giving up those dreams. They also put me in my place when I wanted God to blot out the day Ronald introduced CeCe and Alvin.
In those situations, God helped me understand what faith really is. Faith is all those moments in which we are not in control of what’s happening. Those moments when life is not working out how we planned. In those moments, I learned that I need to stop leaning on my own understanding and accept, by faith, that God’s plan was at work.
The other question was: “If CeCe really goes through with this, where will they live? Alvin is employed at a great company, which happens to be in Detroit, not Charlotte. Oh my Lord, she’s going to leave me and all that is happening for us in North Carolina and move back to Motor City Detroit! And then, they will start having kids right away, if, for no other reason, so that Alvin can enjoy them and grow older with them.” (In my eyes, he was already old.)
CeCe’s marriage meant the end. CeCe and I would have to break the news to Jim and Tammy. How and when would have to be carefully thought out and well executed.
My conversations with CeCe followed a pattern. I was convinced that her marriage meant abandonment—of me, of our dreams, of everything we’d worked so hard to achieve. She insisted that it meant none of those things. I struggled to believe her. I struggled to understand why God would lead us to Pineville, open me up to the possibility of a successful career as a singer—something I dreamed about my entire life—only to have it swept away with two words: “I do.”
CeCe understood my frustration, and she shared my love for what God was doing with our careers. She also told me about her dreams to build her own life, with a family. She believed she could pursue building a family while she was building her career as a singer with me. She promised that she was not giving up on “BeBe and CeCe,” but she admitted that she might have to leave PTL.
To me, they were one and the same. I couldn’t separate them like she could, and it made me angry. I felt she was abandoning everything we worked for and was thinking only about herself. I had to find peace and release my fears and let her pursue her true love and what she wanted.
I learned the bond between brothers and sisters is strange. It’s almost as though the years of shared experiences and countless memories allow you to say the worst possible things to one another, knowing deep down that the love you share will eventually cover over the hurt you feel. It’s the only way to explain why, after all that CeCe and I had been through together, I could look at her teary eyes and stay stone-faced and silent while she pleaded with me. My words were not right, but we do tend to hurt the ones we love with the deepest blows.
I’m sure we prayed different prayers. Her prayers probably asked God to change my mind and to help me see more clearly that this was exactly what was planned before the foundations of the world and that in no time Alvin and I would bond like twin brothers. Mine were not so Christian, asking God to send an alien from Mars to kidnap Alvin and wipe our memories that Alvin ever existed on Earth.
I can still hear that simple message Jim preached about love. The question he asked us that day was, “How do you love God, whom you cannot see, and not love your brother, whom you can see?” I felt those words lodge in my heart and a lump rise in my throat.
“It’s a gift!” Jim lifted his hands. “God loves us despite all the things we do wrong, whether we agree or not.”
His words faded into a blur with the organ music behind him, as the Scripture rang in my ears. How do you love God, whom you cannot see, and not love your brother…or sister…whom you can see? The answer to that question is simply: you can’t.
I am glad that I allowed God’s words in that moment to cut me deep and cause me to look down at CeCe and see the little girl I used to share a church pew with, the little girl who shared classrooms with me, who substituted Vaseline for lip gloss, the little girl with a dream in her heart, the same dream as I had in mine.
I cleared my throat and whispered, “I’ll be at your wedding.”
I wrote a song for the celebration entitled “I’m Gonna Miss You.” I sang it with my brothers as CeCe walked down the aisle to meet Mr. Love.