By Sandra Varner | SPECIAL TO SACOBSERVER.COM

Bishop T.D. Jakes discussed his upcoming movie, "Not Easily Broken." Jakes quickly alleviates any preconceptions one may have about his stature. He is warm, engaging and fluid during our discussion about the challenges couples face everyday and how to hold a marriage together, the nexus of this film project, opening in theaters on January 9 from Screen Gems.

Sandra Varner: Given the years of consistent work you have done fostering relationships, you are considered a “go-to person” among the top advisors of all stripes; what unique pressures come with that distinction?

T.D. Jakes: (Laughs) You know anytime people respect you it gives you a great deal of responsibility to try to give them your best answer. Sometimes I don’t have enough time to find within my own soul the best answer because I tend to be a person that needs to deliberate over something and come back the next day and tell you what I think. For those people who are briefly in and out of your life [sometimes] you don’t have the luxury of reflecting overnight and coming back the next day. Then you’re worried if they got what they really should have gotten out of it … I’m very into people and I’m very much a people person.

SV: When we talk about love and all that it means universally, and, reference to the fact that you preach about it often, when we narrow it down to love between a man and a woman, what is love and when does one know that it exists between them?

TDJ: Let me answer that metaphorically; if a wound occurs and the skin specialist wants to do a graft, there is a time period where both the skin that is torn and the skin that is replaced are independent one of the other; somewhere along the way they start to connect and begin to mesh together, one cell at a time, and I think the same thing is true of a relationship. When two people come together and all of a sudden they cease to be two people --in a conversation, in a moment over dinner-- suddenly they have become attached to each other in an inextricable, indefinable way and at that moment, love begins. Love begins when I cannot get free from you and you cannot get free from me; it starts that day.

SV: When two people profess their love for each other --and certainly with that love are challenges [that] one cannot anticipate-- there does come a time in life when you have to decide when to hold on and when to let go. We see that scenario in this film. In real life, when couples come to you and they feel there is no place else to go but apart, how do you help them decide when to hold on and when to let go?

TDJ: It’s a great question. The way I answer that today is so differently than how I would have answered it even 10 years ago. There was a time in my life when I would never counsel people to let go. Now, I’ve got a new book out, titled, “Before You Do,” and in it I spend a whole chapter talking about when to give up and when to walk away. There are times when there are differences that are so distinct and so profound that the relationship cannot be salvaged. I think domestic violence is what taught me that (lesson). I used to send people back home with prayer and say to them, ‘God’s going to work it out,’ until I found out I was sending them home to be beaten to death and some were being murdered and so on. And, maybe God is working it out, sometimes, by you drifting apart. I had never opened my mind to that possibility. Let me tell you a quick story. A lady came and brought a little boy into my office and she started taking the young man’s shirt off. All down his back, down to his backside, were gaping wounds where her husband had beaten him with a bicycle chain and left him hanging onto a wall, denying him even medical help. Many of his wounds had even healed inside out. He had been beaten by his father because the boy made a “B” on a test at school. Suddenly I recognized that them going back home to their situation was not the same as me going back home to mine. And, I learned not to give “canned” answers to critical situations. So I do think there are “some” times when things have gone beyond human healing.

SV: Coming face-to-face and embracing the destiny God has for you and the path he has placed you on must be daunting at times; what has been the most challenging conversation you’ve had with God as he has allowed you to touch peoples’ lives in the most intimate way?

TDJ: (Laughter) I have them all the time; that’s why I started laughing when you asked me that question. Years ago, the whole idea of going into the ministry was a huge problem for me. I didn’t really want to do that and I didn’t really feel competent or capable to do that; it was a really big struggle and a huge conversation that went on for many, many years. Now, more recently, there has been an opportunity afforded me to go mainstream with a television talk show and I gave as much conversation to God about that as I did about going into the ministry. It’s a huge paradigm shift for me and I wasn’t sure that I could make that shift at my age (51) and stage in life and yet the opportunity was there. I think open doors can be scary. You know, we spend so much time telling people how to respond to closed doors that we don’t minister to people about open doors and open doors can be terrifying.

SV: The Hollywood community and its’ process for telling romantic stories tends to fly in the face of “real life” committed relationships; with this film project do you feel there are reconciliations to be made given the work you put forth and your commitment to “real life” relationships versus what we see in make believe romances?

TDJ: I think that what I see is indicative and reflective of the times that we’re in but, I wrote the movie to say, for example, that men do care about relationships and they don’t want their marriages to fail. This film is a story about love from a male perspective which is very unusual. Most love stories are written by women to women. Not Easily Broken is from a male perspective; the conversations between the men allow the woman to eavesdrop on what men talk about when women are not around. What I’m doing is just mirroring - in the movie - what I see happening in the world. The fact that the wife in this story makes more money than the husband and his struggle to find his identity within the substratum of who she is; the influence of her being feed by her mother and being feed by him over who’s going to lead in this relationship are all contemporary issues that we find everyday. Does he fit into her world; in business meeting settings? The intimidation that goes on around the dinner table; the struggle over money is paramount at this time. Domestic violence is on the rise; marriages are falling apart because they don’t have enough money to make ends meet. This film reflects all of that. I wanted to say a lot of important things in this story without hopefully becoming confusing. So I think mine is more honest than something that’s developed in a stuffy office with people smoking cigars and making decisions about people that they don’t know: these are people that I know. These are people I work with everyday, these are my cousins, my aunties, mothers, grandmothers and so on; they’re all on the screen in front of you and I find that we will go see a film when it really does look like us: if it’s honest, if it’s real. I tried to make the film gritty enough without making it vulgar so that it is believable and I think we did that.

SV: Speaking of real life, the images in this film are quite powerful and realistic; so much so, they mirror our present day scenario of seeing the first White House mother-in-law. Whether it’s been done before, we haven’t heard about it in contemporary times. Here we have in "Not Easily Broken," a mother-in-law that is pivotal to the plot of this story. Would you care to comment on how close your story is to what we are witnessing in the age of Obama?

TDJ: (Laughter) Well, I hope Barack doesn’t have all of the problems my character has with his mother-in-law (more laughter). I interpret the move that the President-elect and the First Lady have made to move his mother-in-law into the White House is to keep it real and to have a safe place for their young children. I think that’s very, very important. I think it’s a wise move because my mother-in-law was very, very strong in helping to baby-sit our children. I think Michelle and Barack Obama understand that they want their children to have normalcy in an abnormal world and the safest way to do that is to have a village of your relatives to help under gird what’s important to you as a person. I think it’s an asset to have your mothers and mothers-in-law, even if they do kind of cross boundaries sometimes, to protect your children in the very complicated world that they are going to live in.

SV: Yes, we have the blessing of seeing a powerful and positive image in the White House as this young, strong and loving Black couple will represent the United States. How does it make you feel because you’ve been on this path for a long time promoting loving family relationships and now to see the image of the Obamas at this level; will you use this example as a reference point or will you treat it guardedly?

TDJ: First of all, it makes me feel good to see a family - a Black family - survive the vicissitudes of life who are educated and articulate and intelligent. It’s all that we want our children to be. As a parent, it gives me fuel to say to my sons, ‘See, you can make it to the White House and have a family with you too.’ I think its (The Obama presidency and family life) going to make new role models for us; it’s going to affect what the rappers rap about. I hope it affects what the poets write about because it has redefined the stereotypical images of what an African American is in this country. I think it has huge ramifications, however, I do want to stop short of lifting them up as Gods because one of the worst things that can happen to a person is to become such a personality that you lose your right to be flawed and earthy and have mood swings and make mistakes and do crazy stuff. Sometimes people can idolize you to your own destruction.

SV: That is sage advice indeed. I, too, must ask you about another positive African American endeavor that you are involved in, Ed Gordon’s “Daddy’s Promise,” an initiative designed to focus the attention of the African American community on the positive relationship that can and should exist between fathers and daughters. How did you become involved?

TDJ: Ed approached me about it during the Essence Music Festival and I thought it was a great idea. I’ve got two daughters and I just had the privilege of walking my daughter down the aisle. It was such a wonderful moment. My daughter was preparing to walk down the aisle with me and she was behind the door leaping up and down when she saw her groom on the platform. For a minute, she was that three-year-old in the toy store who had seen a toy that she wanted. Walking her down the aisle, she was moving so fast, I whispered in her ear, ‘Slow down baby, make him wait. This is your moment.’ It was a great moment that few black women have: to have a father walk them down the aisle or who never really got to see a father’s love. For my daughter to go from my hand to his was a great moment. So when Ed came along and shared his Daddy’s Promise project it really resonated with me. It will afford a great opportunity to strengthen fathers and daughters and I think it’s important because as a father of daughters myself, I always knew the significance of a father to a boy, but it was only in my daughter’s older years that I recognized the significance of a father to a daughter.

SV: In closing, for me, the most moving aspect of this film is the scene between the daughter and the mother discussing the mother’s failed relationship with her husband. As a Black community, we don’t always get to deal with that slice-of-life reflection, openly or often. More times than we’d like, mothers and daughters differ in their views on men and I was surprised to see that aspect in this film.

TDJ: Let me tell you something, that’s my favorite scene in the whole movie. I think it is the most important scene because Black women don’t talk about that, and that aspect is a h-u-g-e issue. Often, mothers tell their daughters that they have to be strong and tough and by the time they get through tutoring you on how strong you need to be, they tutor you away from ever having any love in your life. I purposely meant for that to be in the film so we could look at it and talk about it and draw our own conclusions about it.