25 
25 Alan and I did not appear on Duck Dynasty until season four, so we have not dealt with the spotlight in the same way others in our family have. We learned about it in an entirely different way that was sometimes just as intense. We were in the ministry for many years, and I found out soon after we started that a minister and his wife live in a glass house. Somehow, it seems that everyone sees, hears, and knows everything that goes on in your life! We quickly learned that we needed to be totally transparent. Now our lives are open books. If people need to know something about us, we want them to hear it from us in the most straightforward way, not through the grapevine after it has been embellished or misinterpreted.
We also want people to know it was God’s power that helped us deal with all the difficulties we have faced through the years. Typically the church is a place where people find hope and healing, but in any church, there are some people who want to know all the “juicy stuff” about the minister and his family. This goes on everywhere. We are all human beings; some of us want to find the positive attributes of a ministry family, and others, unfortunately, want to find out the flaws and less-than-desirable qualities of church leaders. During our years in ministry, Alan and I learned to speak openly about our flaws and to accentuate what God has accomplished through us in spite of them.
I think one of the saddest things about living in a glass house, especially in the ministry, is that the children of the minister suffer so much during their growing-up years. Some people think the minister’s sons or daughters should be perfect. These people do not take into account that they are children, and they will make mistakes—as all children do. There is no “special potion” we as ministers get to rub on our kids to make them act a certain way! We rub Jesus all over them with our love, devotion, and acceptance of them, but they still make mistakes, just like their minister parents! Okay, enough preaching. I think I might have started meddling. Whether a family lives in the spotlight because of a ministry position, a television show, or some other reason that brings visibility, there are special challenges that come with the increased visibility.
When Alan and I look back on our years in ministry, we have a lot to be thankful for. We worked with a truly great church, we had some exciting opportunities to travel and do mission work overseas, and we served God alongside some incredibly faithful and really good people. We were always aware of those things. But we were not aware at the time that God had something else in store for us and that He was not only using our time in the ministry to help people in the present but He was also using it to prepare and train us for our future. Without the experiences we had and the lessons we learned back then, we would not have been prepared for the life we have today.
We often hear about people, especially young people, who are desperate to become “famous.” We see people who think everything in their lives would be wonderful if they could just make it big and become a star. Many of them do not realize there is a price for fame and that there are both positive and negative aspects to living in the public eye. Without a well-grounded life and a strong support system, being a star has the potential to devastate individuals and their families.
We believe God prepared everyone in our family in different ways for the visibility we now have. For Alan and me, living in the glass house of ministry gave us a very firm foundation for the limelight of the entertainment world. God always knows what’s ahead for all of us. In His love for us and His desire for us to be blessed, He prepares us. When Alan and I worked at the church, we never dreamed we would someday be so involved in a TV show. God trained us in the relative safety of a church setting for everything we would deal with in the realm of television. He let us grow and make mistakes in front of a small, loving audience before He put our family in front of the whole world. We are very thankful He gave us the training we needed over a period of time, among family and friends, instead of just letting us wake up one morning with our last name as a household word.
I always want to tell people who have big dreams that we just never know what’s ahead. We have to embrace every season God takes us through, trusting that He will use each one for our good and for His glory. We have to believe that if He wants to put us in the spotlight, He will prepare us for it and do it in such a way that we can handle it well.
I cannot imagine what Duck Dynasty would have done to our family had we not been ready for all the changes it brought and had we not been grounded in our faith and our family. A lot of people crave overnight success, but we are glad that did not happen to us. We see the wisdom and love of God in our lives as He spent years with us behind the scenes making us ready for the high level of exposure our family has today.
One thing that sets Alan apart from the Robertson men who frequently appear on Duck Dynasty is that he does not have a beard. In fact, when the media heard he would appear on the show starting in season four, lots of headlines and articles identified him as “the one without the beard.”
By the time a large audience began to hear about Alan and about the two of us as part of the Robertson family, we were well established in knowing that very little matters in life except pleasing God, pleasing each other as husband and wife, and honoring our family. We had learned the hard way that we could not please everyone around us, so we do not spend much energy trying. We do our best to live our lives with integrity and to love and serve the people around us. We make plenty of mistakes, but we recognize them, own them, and make our apologies. None of us has any room in his or her life to judge the others. Rather, we work to love and forgive each other. Our family has hearts that seek after God; I can say that with total confidence about each and every person in our family, and we all do the best we can to fulfill our responsibilities and enjoy the life God has given us.
Because of the publicity our family receives, we are responsible for holding our standards high. We want to be good examples. That starts at home long before it shows up in front of the camera. Though I do not often appear on Duck Dynasty, I do participate in plenty of casual conversations about the show with my sisters-in-law and Miss Kay. We talk about the fact that the impact of everything they do is magnified because they are in the limelight. The way they dress, the way they talk to their husbands and children, the way their children talk to them, the way they control their actions, and all kinds of other things make statements about who they are. Alan’s and my children are grown, but we have grandchildren who have to learn these lessons too. We must teach each generation about these truths. Once a show is filmed and goes on the air, they do not get a do-over and they do not get to go back and tell the world what they really meant. An audience takes things at face value and draws their own conclusions, which means first impressions are extremely important.
First impressions are just that—first impressions. You only get to make that first impression one time. If a person gets to know you and interact with you, a bad first impression can be changed. But with television, people do not get to interact with us and see us at our best. Our best has to be what we put in front of the camera every time it’s on. We hope and pray our family is making an excellent impression on the world through Duck Dynasty, giving people a lot of good laughs. But even more important than the laughs, we want to be true to the fact that we love God, we love each other, and we desire—through the show—to honor Him, to honor one another, and to affirm the goodness of faith, family, and the true love of Jesus.