The Robertson family may seem like they have it all, but as Alan and Lisa Robertson reveal in a new interview, the two of them have made their share of mistakes.
Alan, known as “the beardless brother,” is Kay and Phil‘s oldest son and served in the ministry for 25 years before joining the family business. Together, him and Lisa have two daughters, Anna and Alex, and four grandchildren.
While both Alan and Lisa are now strong in their faith and try their best to lead good, Christian lives, they both admit to having troubled pasts. In the first part of a three-part interview series with Focus On The Family, Lisa opens up about her childhood experiences that led her down a rough road later in life.
Lisa says that as a child, she lived in a house with her grandmother and uncles, and that one of her uncles was an alcoholic and a drug addict who started taking advantage of her:
“At seven years old, when I was seven, and that’s the earliest memory that I can remember, he started molesting me. And that lasted until I was 14…so at 14 I just said ‘no more.’ Whenever something so traumatic happens at seven and goes on for so long, it really does mess up your emotions. It messes up how you feel about yourself.”
Because of her experience with her uncle, Lisa felt that her purpose on Earth was “to please men,” and so she constantly searched for her next “conquest.” But she said that when she first saw Alan in the sixth grade, she saw him as her knight in shining armor that could rescue her.
However, Alan was dealing with his own demons at the time. As he reveals, he had “a darkness” in him starting at the age of 14. He made friends with people who enjoyed partying and heavy drinking, and started trying to hide his “double life” from his parents. At the same time, he says he brought Lisa down with him, leading her into the same troubled lifestyle.
“I was willing to do anything to be with him,” Lisa says.
After he graduated high school, Alan says that he got deeper into his alternate lifestyle, and that Phil finally found out and told him, “Al, you can’t stay here and influence your brothers if you’re going to live the way you’re living. So you’ve got to change or hit the road.”
Alan decided to leave, breaking things off with Lisa and heading to New Orleans at the age of 17 in an attempt to find himself. But in the end, he only got into even more trouble:
“I got into drugs and that sort of thing. Finally started having a relationship with a woman…she was 26 and married, and told me she and her husband had been separated, I think she said for 11 months. But it turns out it was two weeks. I left her apartment one Sunday morning, and her husband…he had flattened two tires on my car…he comes up behind me and starts cursing me, and he picks up a tire tool and just starts wailing on me.”
Alan says that he managed to get away and ran to a 7/11 store where he called the police. When he met up with the cops, they told him the lady’s husband had a gun, and had almost made it to the 7/11 store when the first officer showed up.
That moment was the reality check Alan needed, and he decided it was time to go home.
In their interview, Alan and Lisa have just hit the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their troubled pasts. You can listen to the first segment in their interview series in full here.
At least we already know that Alan and Lisa’s story has a happy ending, since they have now managed to turn their lives around thanks to their faith and family.
