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120. Our Story for His Glory with Mercedes Cotchery **Transcription Below** 1 Corinthians 12:31 NIV “Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way." Mercedes Cotchery is a devoted Christian, wife, and mother. Her name, Mercedes, means Our Lady of Mercy and bestows its honor from the Virgin Mary. In her spirit, she has become a woman of many mercies, and a mother of many children – her name manifesting itself into her destiny. As she thinks about her family, she likes to think that they are all chosen. She is a proud mother to five children – Jacey (13), Nicholas (9), Joshua (9), Journey (7), and Nile (3). They mean the world to her, bringing her immeasurable joy and invaluable life lessons from their day-to-day experiences. Every single day she learns something new about the people they’re becoming, about herself, and she sees the world a little brighter. Now, she lives a life where most days she is able to stay at home with her children, homeschool them, and flourish together. Currently living outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, she is also an NFL wife to Jerricho Cotchery. This has been an amazing journey, and it’s what brought them to the Queen City. They’ve been blessed to grow their love, grow their family, and grow in the Lord together. The great state of North Carolina has also blessed her with a unique opportunity to own a furniture store. She believes in helping mommies all over find and pull out the phenomenon within them, to discover and celebrate their gifts of being Phenomenal Moms, or what she likes to call PheMoms. She even has a blog that is dedicated to the essence of PheMoms everywhere, to marriage & mommy moments, baby beauty, birthday parties, and families growing phenomenally in Christ. Mercedes believes in pollinating beautiful experiences, and is also a speaker available for engagements and events related to home schooling, marriage, being a PheMom, and adoption. Connect with Mercedes On Facebook and Instagram: @mercedescotchery and @designavenuehome Mercedes Cotchery Website Design Avenue Home Website Thank You to Our Sponsor: WinShape Marriage Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message. I am thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, Winshape Marriage. Their weekend retreats will strengthen your marriage, and you will enjoy this gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse. To find out more, visit them online at Winshapemarriage.org. Thanks for your sponsorship. This conversation was such a gift. Mercedes Cotchery is my guest today, and she is a captivating storyteller and humble daughter of the King. We are going to cover topics relating to marriage, parenting, homeschooling, and race. And she covers everything with grace and truth. [00:01:19] I hope you enjoy this time as much as I did. Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Mercedes. Mercedes Cotchery: Thank you for having me. Laura Dugger: Can you just begin by telling us a bit more about yourself? Mercedes Cotchery: Yeah. I'll keep it simple. I'm a wife and a mother and a furniture shopkeeper. Together my husband and I have five children. This week, Lord willing, we will welcome our 24-year-old niece who will become a resident within our home as well. And so we are gonna work to kind of help her figure out what she wants to do in her career and also, by God's grace, try to disciple her and keep her just under our care. Laura Dugger: Wow, well that's a lot to unpack right there. But let's just start with marriage. How did you meet Jericho, and what ups and downs have you experienced in your marriage? [00:02:18] Mercedes Cotchery: So we met on the campus of NC State. And I know the exact day and everything. October 27th, 2001. We were introduced by mutual friends. Honestly, what has led to most of our downs, you know, was just that when we got together, neither of us knew how to appropriately live as a godly spouse for the other. Just kind of reflecting on it now, I feel like we simply thought that the institution of marriage in and of itself was enough to right our wrongs. So, you know, with fornication or any of the other things that we might have done prior to being married, I think we thought that marriage would kind of satisfy that. It wasn't a spoken thing that we thought, but I guess our habits or the way that we lived kind of spoke to that. Laura Dugger: What kind of families did you both come from, or also church families and belief systems? [00:03:20] Mercedes Cotchery: So my husband, by God's grace in general, he was raised to believe in Jesus Christ, and he was expected to attend church. Now, he was a teenager. I wouldn't say typical, because some people grow up and never steer away from God. But he was, you know, not always obedient with what his mom's wishes were, but he never spent a day not knowing or believing in God and Jesus. As for me, my mother did her very best, but my background actually was Jehovah's Witness. So when I was about four, my mom was napping. I don't remember the exact age, but when I tell this story, I say four. But my mom was napping on the sofa, and she woke up to me sobbing. And she asked what was wrong, and I just said with tear-filled eyes, "I don't want to die." And so she jumped off the sofa and called my aunt, who is and was at the time a Jehovah's Witness, and we began having Bible study. [00:04:22] I would continue to have these studies both with my mother and on my own until I graduated from high school. I never was baptized in that faith or anything like that. What that faith did for me was it just gave me rules, I guess. There were certain boundaries that I didn't cross, but there were some that I did, but I don't consider myself having been saved during those years. And so that was kind of our background. And so then we get together, and I had a weird kind of thought process. I believed that I only committed two sins when I met my husband. One was fornication, and the other was profanity. Other than that, I just thought I was perfect. So I would always kind of have these conversations with God because, you know, I still prayed and all those things. I'm not saying that those prayers were being answered, but I'm just... you know, with us, the culture that we grew up in, life being so hard and pressing upon you, you don't grow up not believing in God. [00:05:25] That was just foreign. So I naturally prayed and all those things. And so I would always just kind of try to, in my own kind of twisted, weird, misinformed kind of way, but this just shows you how gracious God is. I would just say to Him, If you would send a husband my way, I would give you my heart. I'd give my life to you. I would get saved and live my life for you. That was always kind of my prayer once I got to college. And especially in 2001 because prior to that, my family had experienced a hurricane and lost our home and lost everything. So I was kind of just displaced and having some issues in my relationships with my girlfriends. And so I was really beginning to pray more and more for a spouse. So when I literally met my husband on October 27th, the next day was a Sunday, and that following Monday was going to be my birthday. So some of my friends got together and had a dinner for me, and they invited him the day after we met. I went home that day from that dinner, and I just prayed, and I just said, "Lord, you know, I just met this gentleman, but if you'd have him be my husband, I think I could live forever for him, and I think that I could live for you with him." [00:06:36] Me feeling this way about my future husband wasn't because he was just some model citizen. He did have a candor and a demeanor about himself that I was not accustomed to coming from a young man. He was very soft-spoken, very tender, very gentle, and I think that that is what made me think that he was the guy for me. We've been together ever since the day that we met. And so I started asking my husband, my future husband, just questions to see where he was, who he was. You know, could you be with a girl that you didn't have premarital sex with? I'm just a girl on the scene, and he's thinking, okay, oh my gosh, what is going on? But he would answer the questions because he was just that polite. So he's like, yeah, you know, I could be with a girl that I wasn't intimate with. And then I asked him, well, how many children do you want? Do you believe in God? Just started asking him all these things. [00:07:33] He doesn't know, but I had been praying some things to God, and I was ready to start living my life. I was older. I'm older than my husband, so I was just ready to start living my life. And so he answered the questions, and we just kind of continued to court and be together. And 13 months into our relationship, he proposed to me. Laura Dugger: Wow. I love hearing the background of that story. Can you also unpack a little bit then of your faith journey and your testimony? Because you said you wouldn't consider yourself saved before. So when did all of that change? Mercedes Cotchery: So it gets tricky. You know, often in church, and I'm defining church as the collective church and not just the building for now. So often with church, people like to say, "Oh, I got saved on this day, and they give you specific things." I consider the year 2004, even though I started making these steps in 2001 and probably well before that. [00:08:33] 2004 was the year that I consider that I was saved. So with me kind of growing up being a cultural Christian, and then I know that gets tricky because I mentioned Jehovah's Witness, but me being a cultural Christian, I aspired and desired to live for God. I just didn't know what that was, what that meant, what that looked like. I still hadn't even heard the gospel yet when I was probing my husband and asking him all these questions. But the Lord had just so gracious and merciful, has been and was, at the time, just so patient with me. I was working at a pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline. So as I was studying at the university, I was also simultaneously interning at a pharmaceutical company. The last department that I worked in at this pharmaceutical company before I would get married and move to Long Island, New York, there was a gentleman there, and he also went to NC State. [00:09:36] He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. He was about a year older than I was, and we called ourselves pals. He was Chinese, and I just loved this friend so much. He never told me that he was a Christian. I just knew that he was. And so the Lord saw fit for my time with him to line up with my time meeting my husband. So as the Lord was having me have this paradigm shift that I really didn't know that I was having, I was still thinking that I was in control, and I was just trying to order my steps and get ready to become what I thought was a good Christian, Hal and I, we were working on some physical test with the drug that we were working on, and I just started asking him questions about God and Jesus and he just started answering them for me. He invited me to attend church with him. Now, because of my experience with Jehovah's Witnesses, there were things about the Orthodox Christian faith at the time that I wasn't ready to accept. [00:10:41] And so going to this particular non-denominational church was just what the doctor had ordered for my heart. They weren't pushy. You didn't have to look a certain way. We were just an eclectic bunch of people. Now Hal was the only Chinese, and I was the only Black American there, but none of that mattered because we were all just really unique. The church met in a unique spot. Hal introduced me to the pastor and invited me to a community group, and I just kind of slowly began my life. Then I would eventually get baptized by this pastor. He did our premarital counseling. And I'll never forget the day before I got baptized in [Raleigh or Durham? 00:11:25] he just took a few moments, this pastor, to just explain a few things. Even when I look back at it now, I can't believe th…
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