SEASON 2: EPISODE 08 TRANSCRIPT

Barbara Jenkins

Barbara Jenkins (00:05): Hope is a gift and the world needs hope. People need to feel that there's a reason to get up and to face the day because every day is new, every day is a wonder. There are surprises and joys and things to experience and having the attitude of being grateful just to be alive.

Dr. Greg Jones (00:27): Our world is facing significant challenges and at every turn, another conflict awaits. Yet we survive, we overcome, we even thrive by relying on an intangible but undeniable gift, hope. It fills us, connects us, highlights our individual purpose and unites us in the goal to do more together. Hope fuels us toward flourishing as people and as a community. My name is Dr. Greg Jones, president of Belmont University, and I'm honored to be your guide through candid conversations with amazing agents of hope, people who demonstrate what it means to live with hope and lean into the lessons picked up along the way. They are The Hope People.

Our agent of hope today is Barbara Jenkins, a woman whose life is a testament to resilience, faith, and the transformative power of hope. In our conversation, she shares her incredible journey from humble beginnings in the Ozarks to her famous three-year, 3,000-mile walk across America. Barbara's story is one of embracing life's messiness, finding strength in the face of challenges, and walking forward with faith even when the path ahead remains uncertain. With gratitude, humor, and a storyteller's heart, she reminds us to find the beauty in our roots and the grace in every experience. I want to just begin by asking you where you're seeing signs of hope in your own life today.

Barbara Jenkins (02:09): I think family. I see hope in my grandchildren. I see hope in my own adult children. I see hope in my friends. Everybody has ups and downs. The world is a mess. Life can be messy, but when you have people who see the bright side, they see the glass half full instead of half empty it kind of inspires everybody around you to think differently. Hope is a gift and the world needs hope. People need to feel that there's a reason to get up and to face the day because every day is new, every day is a wonder. There are surprises and joys and things to experience and having the attitude of being grateful just to be alive.

Dr. Greg Jones (03:01): That's beautiful. Part of what you've done in your life and in the books that you've written and in your story, you've been honest both about the messiness and about the hope. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about your upbringing. You talk about being a hillbilly from the Ozarks.

Barbara Jenkins (03:18): Yes, and I'm proud of it. A lot of people are ashamed of their poverty and where they came from, not me. I grew up in the Ozarks of Missouri. I was born in a little town called Doniphan on the banks of the Current River, and back then it was just a tiny little mountain town. All of my people were from the Ozarks. My granddad raised his family behind a team of mules. He had about eight boys and they were raised in the Ozarks. They were just poor as dirt, but everybody was poor. And so I was raised in the foothills of the Ozarks. I grew up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. My daddy owned a filling station, so he was a mechanic. My mother stayed home and raised us and we lived on the poorest side of town. It was a little four-room wood frame house. We had an outhouse. I didn't have an indoor bathroom until I was about 12 years old. We raised a big garden. My granny and granddad lived next door, and I call them my old angels.

And they had never had anything in their lives, just hard work, no material things. I mean, they still heated their home with a wood stove. I didn't realize how poor we were until I got in about middle school and especially high school. And then I went through periods of feeling ashamed that we were so poor. All my clothes were from Goodwill or my mother would make my clothes. But my mother and my dad, they were hardworking people. They were readers. They both only had an eighth grade education. So it wasn't that they had opportunities, it was just survival. And we lived in an area where all of our neighbors were on what was called commodities, back then it wasn't welfare, it was commodities. And none of our neighbors could read or write. And so my mother would read the mail for them.

And we had railroad tracks at the back of our gardens so I grew up with the house shaking at night because of the trains and the sounds of engines and lonesome whistles, and that was normal for me. So growing up poor, a hillbilly from the Ozarks, my people were proud, hardworking, industrious. There was a strong sense of right and wrong of, it's no sin to be poor, but it is to be dirty. Cleanliness was next to godliness. And my journey out of the poverty was really when I went to college. My parents could not afford to send us to college, but I'm the only person on any side of my family that has a college education.

Dr. Greg Jones (06:18): Wow. So you go to college and then through your faith in God, you end up going to seminary to do a master's in religious education. And that sense of faith really kind of gives you an orientation toward the future. While you're in seminary, you meet your future husband Peter, and you end up deciding to go on a walk across America. How'd you make that decision? And then what'd you learn as you embarked on that famous walk?

Barbara Jenkins (06:49): I was working on a master's in religious education at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. And so in the women's dormitory, a lot of the single guys would come over when we were cooking and we were cooking hamburgers that night. So some of the single guys came in and one guy kind of tossed a glass of water on a girl and it erupted into a water fight in the women's dorm. And we were chasing and screaming and throwing water all over the dorm. I know nothing like that happens here at Belmont. But anyway, it was hilarious. It was like a Louisiana thunderstorm. And I was chasing this one guy, I had a big pail or a bucket of water and I was going to throw it over his head. He ran out the doors of William Carey Hall and there stood this Viking and I took one look at him and dumped that whole bucket of water over his head and that's how I met Peter Jenkins, who was walking across America for National Geographic Magazine.

Well, we became acquainted, started dating, had a whirlwind romance, and then Peter says, I've got to get back on the road. And he was walking from New Orleans all the way to Oregon and wanted me to go with him. Okay, I thought, "Oh dear God, what's wrong with you? There's no way I'm going to do that." And he kept saying that he believed I was meant to go with him and that I should go with him. And so we had lots of discussion and lots of arguments about it, and I'd made the decision. I thought, "You go ahead and walk, and if we still feel this way when you finish this walk, then we'll get married. I'll finish my degree." And I was going to break up with Peter and I thought, "I'll give this one last chance." I prayed, I needed a sign from God. I needed something to tell me whether or not I should take on this great adventure.

So I said, "Peter, I'll go to church with you one last time, and if something doesn't happen, then you go on your way and we'll see what the future holds." We went to this church. It was not a Baptist church. It was an independent, charismatic church, unlike... It was non-traditional. They had big bands and people shouted and stuff. And so we got there late. There were about 2,000 people there. And I took Peter there because I knew it would be a very relaxed atmosphere and no one would really pay attention to how he looked because he did not fit... He certainly didn't fit the seminary role, and he certainly didn't fit a traditional Sunday service. There was no place to sit except on the front row. We had to walk down in front of thousands of people to the front row. And there we sat. I could look right up and see the wrinkles on the preacher's face.

That day, they had a guest speaker, and it was an old woman in a wheelchair. And I mean, I'm kind of blown away because we did not have women preachers in the Ozarks. And they push her out there in front of the microphone and she starts talking and she has this sweet, gracious voice and she begins telling a story. And back then everybody took their Bibles to church and you could hear the swoosh of all the Bibles as people turned to Genesis and it was the story of Abraham and Isaac and Rebekah. They were looking for a wife for Isaac.

So this old woman, and her name was Mom Beall. She says, "The title of my sermon today is," there was this hush, "Will you go with this man?" Well, I wasn't sure I heard that right. And then she said it again and she put her lips to the microphone and she almost shouted, "Will you go with this man?" And it was like a bolt of lightning hit me, and I knew that this was God speaking to me. Now, I don't know what this sermon meant to those other 1,500 to 2,000 people, but for me on that day, in that moment, in the context of my life, that was God's call on my life. Now, he didn't say, "You got to go." He asked me. He gave me the choice. And so I was just like a wet noodle. When that service was over and I leaned over and I told Peter, I said, "Yes, I will go with you." And that's how I decided to walk across America.

Dr. Greg Jones (11:41): That's an amazing story, and you narrate it beautifully in the book. It's inspiring to hear because the clarity of that will you go with this man and the adventure that it sets you on, you can't have been able to anticipate what you encountered, which you narrate so well as you journey through small towns and out on roads and amidst bad weather. If you go back to that time, what did you learn most in walking across America?

Barbara Jenkins (12:11): Well, just so your listeners understand, that walk took three years, 3,000 miles. I was carrying 35 pounds on my back. I learned it was a purging of everything in my life that I thought about myself, whether I thought I was smart, whether I thought I was beautiful, whether I thought I knew it all, it was a purging. It was coming to terms with a very basic essence of life. Who am I in this universe? And I realized that every day I was discovering that every single day we have to take life one step at a time. We cannot run and rush through. Even Jesus said, "Walk, don't run, walk." Well. I learned so many life lessons, perseverance, patience, endurance, faithfulness, discerning, learning how to listen to God.

When you don't have anything but just it's you out there on the road walking hour after hour and smelling the smells, hearing the sounds, seeing the clouds. I mean, every day was a new discovery. Every day had a new purpose. And I never knew where I was going to sleep at night. I never knew where the next meal was going to come from. I had to learn how to walk by faith. And that's a big lesson I think for all of us, no matter what your circumstances are in life, to learn, to walk by faith and not by sight. And what we want as human beings, we want to know what's ahead, how soon we're going to get there, what it's going to be like. We want everything planned out on this neat, nice little agenda. And when you're walking across America, you don't have anything except your faith in God and what's going to open up to you. And I mean, I experienced great adventures from... Oh my gosh, great dangers.

Dr. Greg Jones (14:32): One of the things when you talk about the purging, I think sometimes of the way in which God is like a refiner's fire, that it's painful when you're going through that and yet that's how you get the gem on the other side. And so much of the stories in your book is the difference between optimism and hope. That optimism is just, the world's going to be good and don't have to worry about anything, hope's rooted in God. And it is that refiner's fire because you encountered lots of obstacles, whether they were natural or human in those ways. How did you sustain that sense of hope and trust in God?

Barbara Jenkins (15:12): I think a lot of it was the grit from my hillbilly upbringing. I think a lot of it was just sheer stubbornness and determination. I did carry a small little Bible and I kept notes, journals, and I prayed without ceasing all day long for God's guidance, for help, for direction, because everything was an unknown. It's not like you know where you're going to work or where you're going to sleep or you know where your next meal's going to come from, so just because of those circumstances, it created a dependency, a dependency and an appeal to God, "Oh, help me. I'm helpless out here. I don't have the power to survive without your help." Now, that did not mean we didn't face a lot of dangers and obstacles from heat stroke to falling off of an ice glacier to being... I was hit by a car, and that's a story.

I was hit by a car in Sandy, Utah. We were walking into Salt Lake City, and it was the first time in the whole journey that we walked with our backs to the traffic. And Peter didn't want to, but I wanted to because there was shade. Peter's sister had flown out to walk with us a couple of days. And Winky, that was her name. I'll never forget, I was thinking about cold orange juice and scrambled eggs, and we were walking up this little incline, Winky and I are deep in some kind of conversation and we hear the screech of tires behind us, and all of a sudden there's this loud impact and we are hit squarely in the back and Winky is thrown up in the air like a ragdoll rolling over and lands. And then I'm hit squarely in the back and like Ragdolls, we go ka-splat on this green lawn. I didn't know it at the time, but we had landed on the lawn of a Mormon mortuary. And I always say, "Well, now there's some drop-in business."

Anyway, the ambulance took us to the hospital and I didn't know if I was paralyzed. I didn't know what. We're in the emergency room, go through all the MRIs, this and that. Well, I am bruised. The entire backside of my body is bruised. And about four or five hours later, the doctor comes in and he just said, "Well, there are no broken bones, no internal bleeding." And then he was out. Of course, I'm imagining, "Oh, I'm going to be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. This is it. My life is over." Well, about five or six hours later, I get up and I walk out of that hospital. I faced dangers and death more than once, and it was another time that I was spared. And I think I was spared for so many reasons. When I think back on those things, I'm not afraid. I'm not sorry they happened. I'm just so happy I'm here to tell the stories.

Dr. Greg Jones (18:45): Well, you tell them so well and you do it in the book. Many people know you best from A Walk Across America, and yet in your book, you carry that story both backward and forward to your upbringing and then your life since that walk, which has been a journey throughout your life of extraordinary success and also significant loss.

Barbara Jenkins (19:06): Yes.

Dr. Greg Jones (19:07): Talk about how you've maintained that sense of hope through the ending of your marriage, through the complexities of raising children. How have you navigated and sustained that sense of hope and also joy? You have such joy in your voice as you think about your life.

Barbara Jenkins (19:24): You know what, Greg, I have a happy mind.

Dr. Greg Jones (19:27): That's a great phrase.

Barbara Jenkins (19:29): I have a happy mind and I have a happy heart because I am grateful. I don't look at all the messiness of life. I don't deny it. I don't sweep it under the rug. I don't pretend it didn't happen or bad things don't happen. But even in the worst of times, there's hope, there's purpose, there's reasons. And God, oh my gosh, the hand of God is not so short that it cannot save. So I don't care what your circumstances are, how messy it is, God can redeem it. God can pull you out, whether you fall off a mountain or whether you go through a devastating divorce. And at the end of the walk, I went from sleeping in a tent to sleeping in the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Mayflower in Washington D.C. I went from not knowing where my next meal was coming from to being able to order anything I wanted off the menu because we were on the cover of National Geographic. We were the darlings of the country at that time. This was back in the 1970s. We were on the cover of National Geographic August 1979.

So I knew the extremes of life from poverty, from not having anything to being in the most luxurious environments you could ever hope for. So I think I was grounded because the wealth and all the sparkling things of life have never wooed me or deceived me into thinking that there's something that they're not, because lived on the other side. I know what it is to do without and to not have anything, to having everything. So I think hope is the constant through all of life, through all of the disappointments. And when you see God in every circumstance of life, when you can find God in there and you trust that he has a purpose for this, then somehow, you don't know how, but things are going to work out.

So this book, So Long as It's Wild, I tell the rest of the story after the walk ended and buying this gorgeous 200 acre farm and restoring this beautiful historic Victorian farmhouse and having three gorgeous children, and then finding out about Peter's infidelities and my marriage, my life crumbling. I had to pick up the pieces and raise three children and find a new Barbara.

Well, publishers didn't want to touch me because all of our fame and fortune were around Peter. So I struggled, and then other people recognized things in me, and I sat on boards. I was on two governor's commissions. I did all these things thinking, "I'm nobody. I'm nothing. Nobody cares." And just one door opened after another, and eventually I ended up owning a lot of property. I sold some property and ended up owning a lot of condominiums and developed a real estate business. And God had other ways and other things for me to do. So I found another identity. But through it all, through this tapestry of my life, God has developed in me a woman of strong faith. I know my voice. I'm not afraid anymore. And we just face each day with, "Thank you God, that I'm here. What do you have for me today?"

Dr. Greg Jones (23:32): That's a beautiful attitude. As we come toward a close, I want to ask about your sense of storytelling. You're an amazing storyteller. You do it with truthfulness and you also do it with a remarkable sense of grace. And I just want you to reflect for a moment on that storytelling, truth, grace, humor, how it all fits together in the ways in which you instill hope in your listeners, your readers, and all those who get the benefit of being in your presence.

Barbara Jenkins (24:03): All across America, all of life there are funny moments, and I think humor brings joy to life. I think humor helps us to face the hardships, and that's what I saw growing up as a hillbilly. They'd sit on the front porch or out in the yard under a shade tree and tell stories and just laugh and just have a lot of fun in lives. And I just think that helps bring joy, and it certainly brings hope because it lightens the load. It lightens the heaviness of life because as we said, life is messy and life can be very hard. But I'm telling you that when you focus and you cry out to God, "Help me." How many scriptures do we read or hear about that says, "Wait upon the Lord." And that's something I learned walking across America because you cannot rush walking across America, you have to learn to wait.

Dr. Greg Jones (25:12): Thank you for participating in this conversation with The Hope People. Our aim is to inspire you to become an agent of hope yourself, and to help us cultivate a sense of well-being for all. To join our mission and learn more about this show visit thehopepeoplepodcast.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, remember to rate and review wherever you get your audio content.