Mothers & Sisters - "Never Say Never" - Kerry Anderson Talks to Kristin Pickett

In a Jacksonville gymnasium in the 1990s, a teenage Kristen Pickett leaned against a wall and told her father she would never marry a boy from Hilliard, Florida—a one-red-light town she despised. She eventually married Jesse Pickett, a Hilliard boy, became a pastor’s wife, and spent fifteen years planting a Reformed Presbyterian church in that same tiny town. Her story, told on the Mothers & Sisters podcast to host Carrie Anderson, is not a simple Hallmark narrative. It is a careful account of how sustained personal trial, disciplined prayer, and a willingness to be changed by hardship shaped a ministry wife’s life and work.

The Crisis That Remade a Marriage

Kristen and Jesse were high school sweethearts who married young, both expecting a life in ministry. Four years into the marriage, while Jesse served as a youth pastor at a small Southern Baptist church, he abruptly resigned. Then he stopped going to church entirely for one year and ten months. He became distant, cold, and silent. Kristen was devastated. She was teaching high school English, coaching sports, and living in a small community where everyone knew their family. Her parents had recently divorced. She called an older woman from her church, Miss Joan Connor, and asked whether she should leave the marriage. Connor told her: “If you leave, it’s hard to work on a marriage when you leave.” There was no abuse.