‘Stop Lying on God’s Grace’: Pastor’s Wife Slammed for Ironing Husband’s Clothes So He Could Cheat with ‘Side Chick’ In Peace, Hoping One Day He Would Love Her Again
Another couple is causing mayhem on the internet.
Founder and senior pastor of Kingdom Church in Phoenix, Arizona, Reginald Steele and his wife Kelley Steele are airing out the dirty laundry of their marriage. The two were guests on the April 9 episode of the “Dear Future Wifey” podcast, where they discussed the hardships of their marriage and how their relationship with God brought them through.
The couple, who have been married for 32 years, were high school sweethearts, but from the beginning infidelity became a huge strain in their relationship. Reginald was a rolling stone for years but, according to the two of them, he was honest with Kelley about it and Kelley agreed to stick around under one condition:
“I was OK with it as long as I was first,” she said. “There’s a reason for that. I want the women to know out there. I didn’t know Jesus. I didn’t know who I was.” She then told Reginald to recite what he used to tell her earlier in their relationship.
He said he would tell her “You had no value and no worth. You did not know who you were.” The pastor would also tell his then-girlfriend, “You’re my starter, but I got other ones on the bench.’”
Kelley explained that it was what she was witnessing in her own home that made her stick around in her own situation. She claimed her mother left her father due to infidelity. But Kelley believed had her mother forgiven her father they all would have been able to be together as a family.
The summer before they were heading off to college, Kelley discovered she was pregnant. The problem was she had a full scholarship to go to college for classical piano. But after calling Reginald to tell him the news, she learned that he had been going to church and had given his life to Jesus. He convinced her to keep the baby and move back home where he would help her.
“When I found out I was pregnant, before we got married, I ended up getting kicked out of my house by my parents. They were very upset by me.” So Kelley moved in with Reginald and his parents.
The two eventually got married on March 13, 1993. They had already had their first son, who was 11 months old and Kelley was pregnant with their second. A few months after the two committed to each other, Reginald had a realization that would take their marriage down a dark path before it even got a real chance to start.
He told her “I never had fun.” Kelley said, “He left this ‘holy lifestyle’ back to smoking weed, drinking, chasing women. We would fight. Our house became the party house.” She said their marriage had gotten so bad to the point where she would be “chasing him with knives,” “jumping on hoods of cars,” and “fighting women.” At the time, they lived in government-subsidized housing and she realized that someone would either get hurt or go to jail, so she attempted to leave.
Kelley said her aunt had secured a job for her in Virginia, but as she was preparing to leave with her two children she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Kelley said she cried but had a dream the same night.
“I went to bed that night and I had a dream of him preaching,” she said. When he got home a few days later, not only was he mad that she did not follow through with leaving him, but he also shut down her dream of his future.
He said, “That mean I got to be disciplined and committed, and I’m not trying to be either one.” Recalling the moment, Kelly added, “And he said, ‘I’m gon’ keep smoking this weed and chasing these women.’ That’s what he told me.”
Just days after that, Reginald left again. Kelley said she had a moment where she felt like she was going crazy. She said she heard “the enemy” spewing hateful thoughts in her mind like “You should die. You’re not worthy of anything. You should end your life. He’ll never love you.” But, in that moment, Kelley called one the name of Jesus and she felt arms wrap around her.
“And that was my first encounter,” she said. “And I had a radical heart shift from that moment. I got in my word, under my word. I just completely changed as a person.”
With her newfound relationship with Christ, Kelley said she was able to ignore a lot of the turmoil in her marriage that she couldn’t ignore before.
“So if he would call me out my name it wouldn’t bother me because I allowed God’s voice to be louder than his,” she said. “And although he would go out for weekends I would literally help him get ready to go meet a side chick by ironing his clothes and getting him ready for the night. And these are all things I was graced to do. I would not encourage anybody to do that unless you are graced by God to do this.”
She said she endured all this because “I didn’t want him to be lost. I wanted him to be in his purpose because of that one dream I had that lasted about two seconds.”
Reginald, 53, corroborated her story by claiming he saw a vast difference in Kelley’s behavior after having her encounter with God. He said he saw his wife go from bleaching his clothes and throwing his toothbrush in the toilet, to asking him what he wanted for dinner.
One Instagram gossip site posted a clip from the interview that had fans spiraling in the comments.
One person said, “I would have been ironing his suit for his funeral.”
Another person wrote, “Stop lying on God’s Grace, it was your desperation and stupidity that made you do it.”
“Saying God gave you grace is disgraceful. God does not condone cheating! Little does she know the devil graced her smh,” said another.
Despite Reginald’s initial spurning the ministry, Kelley’s dream did end up coming to fruition. In January, he celebrated pastoring for 20 years with his family.
He and Kelley never made the decision to divorce because Reginald — who came from a two-parent household – didn’t want anyone else raising his kids. While that was true, his father, who was a pastor for 40 years, was also a ladies’ man who had 10 children with six different women. Reginald even said that all of his brothers were also “womanizers.”
Together the Steeles have five children total: Three sons, and two daughters all through the course of “6 years, 11 months, and 16 days” according to Pastor Steele. They are now grandparents to five grandchildren and are waiting to welcome their sixth one in the next few months.