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If I had been allowed to sing church choir when I was a girl, you might never have known Dolly Parton. It'd be Grace Bridges and Kenny Rogers singing Islands in the Stream.

I could have been sweet, given half a chance.

But God saw fit to make me hard.

So be it, I said. If this is my ministry, let me add it. I'll eat the core of the apple.

God said the last shall be first, and I said, hell yes, the first to bite God in the knee.

That's what makes this ministry so beautiful.

Here are my imperfections.

What are yours?

I always liked Grace Bridges.

And to prove how imperfect, I'm gonna sing for you.

Push up now.

I only do this once a year.

Go tell it on the mountain.

Women, as a rule, are rarely admitted to the ranks of evangelical leadership,

not unless they come packaged with a husband and some puppets.

Grace came with no perms or pastels.

She dressed in black and cussed and smoked and told the housewives of America to hide their money. The moral majority thought she was a bitch from hell.

I respected that. Grace was a compulsive liar when it came to her own biography. None of her memoirs

ever came close to the truth.

...