The book is called, "I Will Survive ..." Do you feel like now you're in a stable place?

The book is a journal of how to survive. I've been through a lot. I mean, I've lost everything in my whole life. I've been rich. I've been poor. I've been through so many deaths. I've had my reputation just ruined and had to build that back again, and husbands and cancer and prison, and I survived it. I made it through. And I want to tell other people how to make it through those same type of things.

It's sort of a new way of ministering, isn't it?

Yes. So many times I thought it was all over, that I would never get to do another thing, and I'm going back on Christian television again. We're starting over again, and there's nothing wrong with starting over small again. When people fall down and they feel like they've had it and there's nothing left, they just need to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and say I'm going to start again.

Were there days when you thought you wouldn't be able to do that?

Oh yeah. There were many days I thought, "I'll never be able to start again. It will never work. Everything's been too destroyed." But something inside me kept saying -- I mean, I know it was God -- you know, nothing is ever destroyed as long as you know me.

Did your faith ever waver? In the book it sounds like it did a little bit right after PTL collapsed and Jim went to prison.

Oh, I think everybody's faith would waver in a situation like that. I was so disappointed that God would allow all that to happen. But after the fact I realized that He allowed it for my good.

There's a verse in Isaiah that says, "For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. In everything give thanks." Oooooh, that's hard. Oh, man. Be thankful for losing everything? Give thanks for divorce? Give thanks for two husbands in prison? That's almost an impossible thing. Give thanks when your brother dies, when your mother dies, when your dad dies, when your aunt dies, when your sister dies, when your best friend dies? I lost all of those people within just a few months. And we're supposed to give thanks? That's what the Bible says.

Why in your book did you soft-pedal around the whole Jerry Falwell thing? You didn't soft-pedal in the documentary made about you a few years ago, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," in which you indicate that he deliberately brought down PTL, smearing your and Jim Bakker's reputations, and betraying what you thought was a friendship. Yet in your book you don't name him as the man who destroyed PTL.

I did name him, but my book company asked me not to.

They were worried about lawsuits?

I don't know. I suppose. But I did it before and there was no problem. I've always been very honest with the Jerry Falwell thing.I would love to talk to Jerry. I would just say, "Why? I forgive you, Jerry, but why? Can you explain why you put your arms around us and said that you would help us and then you took everything from us?"

Do you feel that part of your mission is to open people's eyes to people like him?

No, I don't have anything against Jerry. I really don't. But I do think that the truth ought to be told. I think people ought to have to live the truth.

How do you not have something against someone like that?

Because, you know, back in the olden days, when you killed somebody, rather than putting you in prison, they would strap that dead body onto your back, and what that dead body ended up doing was killing you.

And Jerry Falwell was strapped on my back. I carried him with me all the time. I hurt all the time. It was all I could talk about. It was all I could think about. That hurt was unbearable. And one day, I felt like God said to me, "Tammy, lay him down. Lay him down at the cross that I bled and died on. Just lay him there and I'll take care of him." And I literally, physically, pretended like I was unstrapping a body from my back, and I laid it down, and when I did, I got peace for the first time. Because, see, holding bitterness and holding unforgiveness only hurts you. It makes your blood pressure high. It makes your heart rate increase. It does all these bad things to you. And why destroy yourself over something they'd be glad about? I mean, he'd be glad to know if I was still hurting.

He's still out there preaching.

Yeah, I know.

How can --?

How can people hear [about how he betrayed us] and so many things like that and they're proven to be true and still it not faze them? I don't know the answer to that question.

How can people tell the difference between a Jim Bakker, who you say is an honorable man, and a Jerry Falwell?

You know, I really don't think you always can. If people know God you're supposed to be able to tell the difference. But you know, sometimes we as Christians get so busy, that we don't have time to stay in contact with God, and that's when we make mistakes in judgment.

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