You're listening to Women in Peace Radio, where women in the marketplace connect with purpose and spirit, where the conversation covers all things women, business, and fascinating faith. And now, your host, Christy Lynn Olson. Hello, this is Christy Lynn Olson. Today, my guest from the book series interviews, We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight, Women of Faith in the Marketplace, is Lori Reese Patton.
Professionally speaking, Lori's career experience includes career criminal prosecutor, VP of governmental affairs for a telecom startup, and most recently, as a practicing lawyer and now chief learning officer for a law firm for the last 14 years. Lori has integrated her faith and life through active participation in church and community. Whether a young life leader, Sunday school teacher, infertility support group facilitator, Stephen Minister, or breast cancer survivor, Lori believes that we can use our life experience to show God's love and support of others. She is a graduate of Wesleyan Women's College and Mercer University Law School.
Now, let's listen in to part one of my interview with Lori Reese Patton. Well, it is with great pleasure that I want to welcome today Lori Reese Patton. She is the most amazing woman that I have met since I have been to Charlotte, and I really believe that. So, I'll tell that story in a minute, but Lori, welcome to the show today.
Thank you, Christy. I'm so glad, and I'm super honored to be here with you. Well, I tell you, I met Lori, for those of you who don't know Lori, I met her when we first moved to Charlotte, and she is one of those women that you meet, and you just immediately feel an instant sisterhood. That's the only way I could explain it, kind of the sisterhood of faith.
You're like, oh my gosh, not only is she a woman of faith, but she's fun, and she's vivacious, and she was definitely someone I wanted to get to know so well, and then about a year into it, we met a couple of times, and then she moved on me. And so here I am in Charlotte, and she moves, but it was such a good opportunity for her to move. And, you know, I have to say, Lori, you were so gracious in connecting me to doctors and dentists, you know, all those things when you move to a new community, and you're like, how do I find a doctor? How do I find someone cut my hair?
I mean, you were just that go-to person, and you really, it told me then that you were a connector. And so I'm going to jump right into this interview. It is no surprise that one of your highest strengths is connectedness. And I've seen that, and even in reading your chapter in the We Walked by Faith, Not by Sight chat book, you talk about connectedness.
So I just want to ask you, how has it been a constant theme in your life, and even how has it helped you in the workplace if you think about that strength connectedness? What does that mean to you? When I first read my Strengths Finder from the Gallup organization, I wasn't surprised as I read my top five, and I really thought about this connectedness one, which is number four for me. And connectedness has two, I'll shorten the definition, but it's about not only this ability to see how different things and people impact one another and to literally want to connect people with people and things and ideas, but there's also a spiritual component to connectedness, which I very much feel as well.
And that's a sense of what we're doing and the things we're engaged in, having some purpose. And like so many others, I struggle with that sense of purpose at different times and different points in my life, and yet I'm always looking for the purpose and what's going well as well as those things that don't work out well. There's a purpose. There's something for me to learn.
So the connectedness I absolutely see from growing up as a little girl. We moved a lot, several different cities, from kindergarten until I was in middle school. And going to a new school and new friends and new house constantly, every single year, there was a desire in me to get out. Literally, my mother said, I got my bike, and I went out to meet people and just introduced myself.
I don't remember all the details, but as she reflects back and tells me, I even brought mothers to meet my mother. And this lady's going to take you to the grocery store, and this lady's going to take you to the dentist. And it was something I obviously did naturally, and I've noticed in my work. I like it so much more if we can connect as a group or a team and really appreciate everything that everyone else is also bringing to the problem or to the thing we want to create because people have so many different perspectives, and they think in ways that I don't.
And so I see that connectedness there. And personally, like with you, I mean, how fun is it to say, let me share with you all these different people so you don't have to go through all of that. And it is a way, I think, that we can serve. We serve the Lord by also being a good neighbor and helping people.
So the connectedness is absolutely a part of my fabric. Wow, I love that, especially as a little girl. I think that's so amazing. That's funny?
Yes, and so it has. I love how God works because sometimes we get to a point in the bell to it and we don't know what our purpose is or we don't know what our gifts are. But if we really take a minute and think back to what we did as a child or how we reacted to certain situations, we do find clues. And so you definitely have that clue about connectedness.
And I love that you connected it with the spiritual component because you're right. Most people just think, oh, it's just being connected to other resources or networking and referral, but it is so much bigger than that. And with the spiritual piece, I always think, too, I've always wanted – that's one of my strengths. That's why I love asking this question because I also have always felt I needed to be connected to something bigger than myself.
So I don't know if that thought ever ran through your mind as well, but when you think of organizations or doing good things, I always wanted to be connected. So I bet you've seen some parallels there as well. No question. And I think about that.
Sometimes it's something to manage because we can – I can seek for such purpose bigger than myself that I might undervalue what I'm doing at the moment, the impact that I'm having, whether it's as a mother, as a wife, as a worker. However, sometimes I think we can overthink that desire to have that sense of purpose and don't realize I'm not present enough to just say, you know, my purpose is just in this moment to be a good soul in having this conversation or in doing my part on the scene or just listening to my husband and maybe not saying a thing. Sometimes our purpose is much simpler than we may try to make it out to be. Oh, that's a great response and great perspective, actually, to the gift.
So I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So you're a little girl riding your bike, introducing people to your mom and yourself, and you ended up in law school. And one of the things you wrote in your chapter just kind of stuck out at me because I think more women would have this answer than not if we're really honest. And you said, I would have said that I was a Christian in my early 20s.
I went to church and I prayed, but my mind and heart were not renewed. I was not truly changed. I was of this world while living in it. So here's the question, because I thought so importantly, and then you go on to talk about how did you see God's protection throughout all of those early years?
Because a lot of times we do say, yes, we're Christian. We go to church. We try and do all the good things, do all the right things. But there was that missing piece for you.
Yet through everything you went through in your early adult life, you found that God was always there. So how did that kind of show up for you? And was there a pivotal moment where you kind of thought, I need to change something? Gosh, I see the Lord throughout elementary, middle, high school.
My father was very involved in the church, and he was involved in leadership roles. But part of that meant that he was sort of beating the drum to say, come on, we're going to church and, you know, we'd fellowship and different things like that. And it wasn't that I begrudgingly went. I'm sure I did sometimes, of course, because I was in middle school and high school.
But the fact was there was this structure there, and the Lord was there, and I was surrounded by those people. And I remember that from the first grade on. And then I attended a Methodist women's college, and there was the Lord in that, and connecting with some wonderful Christian people. I mentioned in the book one in particular who made a huge impact on my life.
For my second semester of my freshman year, Mr. Rickert brought me in as an intern and then invited me to church with his family. And so, lo and behold, all the way through my college and into my law school years in Macon-Dorta, I was going to Vangelo Methodist Church, and part of it, there was an accountability to that, to be with that family. And it became a larger family and a family of friends to this day.
And so I see the Lord. I see how he just was always there. He was that presence. And even in my later 20s, as I was an adult and, you know, briefly married the first time, and as I mentioned, you know, some details in the chapter, you know, that did not work for a variety of reasons.
I had some poor choices that I made there later in my 20s. And yet, my two best friends from college stuck by me, and they were strong Christians, and they were living it, and were constantly checking on me, inviting me to church, inviting me to Bible study. And they didn't give up, even though they solved some of my choices. And they kept on me without me feeling burdened by them.
But at one point, they finally invited me, not only to come to Sunday school, but to a women's retreat. And it was that women's retreat, which I mentioned in the chapter, that the wonderful leader had me, had talked about the story of the woman as well, and how Jesus came to her. So so many things struck me about that. Here's this woman.
She had had many husbands. She was living with a man. She had made poor choices. She was not of the cultural realm of people who were honored.
And yet, Jesus wasn't ready to come to her and talked to her and talked to her about the living water. And that that was about really living with him and being with him and taking what he was offering. And that retreat leader told us to take these bottles and put in these bottles, whatever was burning us to put behind us and lowered it into this fake well. And I remember that being a pinnacle moment of me truly understanding what it meant to be forgiven and to move forward wanting, having a desire for Jesus.
And meaning that I also wanted to change a lot of other choices that I had been making. And I didn't want to make those anymore. You know, you brought up a great point. And you were so vulnerable in telling the story.
And one of the words that I think you even mentioned was the word shame. You know, and shame is a lie that we're told that we're not good enough. And that emotion that you felt and at that women's retreat, I have to believe that a lot of women did the same as you, did less than you, did more than you, but they walk around with this feeling of shame for so many years that they're not good enough. They can't do the right thing.
They're never going to get out of the place they're in. What advice, now if you have kind of that hindsight perspective, what advice would you give to another woman who might be struggling or sitting in that place of shame right now about not feeling good enough or my choices will never be forgiven? You know, how would you tell her to walk out of that or to move forward? What would your best advice be?
Well, it's funny if you say walk. I would say run and open up the story about women as well. And in fact, the more that I study the Bible, the more that I see how, you know, Jesus truly chose all of those people that we in our culture, particularly sometimes in America, we may look at and there may be judgment, whether it's a person who's very poor or a person who's very sick or a person who's committed adultery or a person who has even been murdered or committed a terrible crime. No matter what a person has done and no matter what the person did in the Bible, Jesus was never afraid to walk up to the people who were ridiculed by society.
Those were the people, in fact, that he would go to and there are very specific stories about him going to them. And when we know the history and the time that Jesus lived, it enriches the story to tell us that there was really nothing that Jesus wouldn't approach and forgive and offer love and healing. Nothing. No one's story was going to miss him.
There was not going to be anything that anyone could do that Jesus would say, uh-oh, you just hit the top point, can't forgive that one. There's nothing. And so I would say run to that and know that in that Bible, it's why he was talking about being the living water because those words truly have meaning when we read the Bible and we read the stories and we ask God with our whole hearts, you know, please forgive me. And God, you know, I want to know that you have forgiven me and help me to change.
And I know from my own experiences in reading the words on a page when it's quiet and I'm truly committed to it, those words can sometimes jump off the page. It's almost as if something really speaks to me. And I believe that's the way that God communicates to us and communicates through the Holy Spirit. Those words almost come alive.
And it's only through reading those stories and knowing those stories are for us. Those are our lessons. Those are the things we can apply. Then that's where we find our forgiveness.
Not only that God forgives us, but he doesn't want us walking around with shame. He doesn't want us limiting ourselves. He's given us life. He wants us to come down here and live full on and give it all and know that we will make poor choices.
As a parent, I get it. I see it. My child, I come to expect it. But you know what?
I do as a human parent. So I'm encouraged by that kind of love and forgiveness. I love what you said to live full on. And that is so true.
And when we think about our own children, how much more our Heavenly Father must forgive us on a daily basis. No, it really does put it in perspective. And Jesus was all about transformation and change. And that's exactly what you were alluding to is run on, full on, live your life.
And you can be healed. He remembers our sins no more. And I'm thinking in that transformation, not only for other women, but for you specifically, you came to this place in your workplace as a prosecuting attorney and things started shifting even in your attitude. And you started thinking, maybe I need to do something.
Can you share a little more about how that changed your outlook and what I would say is that I think I worked out a lot of my aggression, a lot of my frustration. I was not a rebellious teenager and I think in my 20s I rebelled. So I think I worked out a lot of that through those years. And my language, I cussed like a sailor.
I will tell you, I still, I do love Jesus, but I do still cuss a little. And I will say that it was atrocious then. And I was just rough with people, no grace, no mercy. And so when this transformation happened for me and it was transforming, I had such a thirst to teach Sunday school, to go to Bible study, to be surrounded with the people who were feeding my love and my desire to know the Lord more.
And so when I was back in the office, I wasn't going to every happy hour and then to the next bar to have a few more cocktails and staying out all hours. I just, I truly wasn't interested. And I really wanted to live a different life. I was having more grace and mercy in my workplace.
I wasn't as interested in the gossip at the water cooler. I literally, and I wasn't, I wasn't shoving it down anyone else's throat. I was just making the choice for myself. And yet still being pleasant and having lunch with people and I still really enjoyed so many of the people I worked with, but I was changing habits and I was changing attitude.
My attitude was different and it was not something I was trying to do. It was something I was feeling, something I wanted to do differently. And I truly have to tell you, I never had a lot of grace or mercy for the folks who were going to be put in jail, who were the defendants whose cases I was trying. I just didn't have any empathy at all.
And I found myself beginning to want to understand their stories. Why did these people do the horrible things they were doing? And the final case I had was a death penalty case and I got to know one of the defendants very well. And by knowing his horrific story and his background, I came to understand that even this person who had committed a crime that was a death penalty level crime, boy, there was such tragedy and such pain and such horrific things that had happened.
And I saw this person as more human and that's when I knew I had to move on, you know, before I became very jaded by what I was doing. So, you know, that's how literally it changed my attitude, my outlook and my behavior. Wow. And, you know, I love how you talked about understanding the story.
There's always a story on the other side of whatever we think we know. And I think that's probably been part of a lot of women who are in the workplace and they have this transformation and they start seeing the story from a different perspective. And we can't not change when we're also in his word and we're trying to be these strong women of faith. A shift usually does have to take place.
And so, you know, I think you embraced that. It sounds like you embraced that shift and it happened over a period of time, but you were in such a great place. that i'm believing it led you to you met this wonderful man named megan patton and you were able to you know kind of have i call it a um a do-over i mean in a way and i'm divorced as well got remarried and so i understand what that kind of looks like from a perspective especially from the christian church but so now you met this man of your dreams and you share in the book as well so now you kind of go from one thing to the next and you want to have children and you find yourself in um infertility battle i'm gonna call it a battle i think you would say the same i don't know what it is yes and so i'm thinking one of the things you talked about in the chapter is so you're in this place and you've got infertility stuff going on and a lot of women struggle with how much do they share with mentors supervisors people they work with because is the workplace going to think i'm weird or am i going to lose my job you know how did you handle that because you were definitely still working at the time how did you deal with what you share what you don't share and how does that work as far as transparency in the workplace i have always found that um being very transparent of course in a professional way but very transparent with my supervisor my boss which has most often in my three careers i've had uh most often been one of the higher ups if not the main the chief person i've always found that that is for me the way that i wanted to live and i wanted to be able to build that level of trust with that with that person hey this is christy again thanks for listening to part one of my interview with co-author laurie reese patten to listen to part two of this exclusive interview you need to download the free women of views app available on the apple store and google play store laurie's journey in her law career was just transitioning when she finds herself struggling with infertility and then later with breast cancer through it all laurie's favorite scripture is romans 8 28 and we know that in all things god works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose so don't forget download the app and go to the women of views podcast channel to find episode 18 with laurie reese patten and don't forget you can order a copy of the book we walk by faith and not by sight women of faith in the marketplace volume two is where you find laurie's story now available on amazon.com we also have a gift for you a free ebook devotional called love notes of encouragement for women of faith in the marketplace it's available when you download the app on the women of views network to download your free copy today exclusively available only to our subscribers