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No Compromise— Six Time Grammy Award Winner
CeCe Winans, Shares from Her Heart on Music, 
Marriage, Motherhood, and How She Manages to 
Keep Her Family First

A Keeping Family First Exclusive Interview
by Anita S. Lane  

When you hear the name “Winans,” you immediately think, “gospel music.”  And CeCe Winans does it well.  Starting out at age seventeen, CeCe joined the gospel music-making legacy begun by her brothers “The Winans.”  

CeCe Winans has since won six Grammy Awards and a plethora of Stellar and Gospel Music Association awards over the years.  Yet CeCe Winans is more than a gospel singer.  She is a wife of twenty-one years, and a mother of two who says that being a mom is her favorite thing to do.

I was privileged to sit down with CeCe Winans and her husband, Alvin Love.  Together they shared priceless nuggets of wisdom for husbands, wives and families.

CeCe, it’s been 18 years and you’re still going strong!  Your latest CD “Purified,” is getting rave reviews.  And…you’ve got some family help from your sisters Angie and Debbie—your nephew, Mario Winans and your son, Alvin.  What was it like working with them?
Great!  Every project we put out, you’re going to find family on it somewhere.  And that’s a plus—having a family where everyone is involved in music.  But it’s the first time that I ever worked with a producer who called me “Auntie.” So that was strange.  It was like, “Okay…time is moving on!”  And my son is an incredible writer, so he wrote on a few of the songs.  Then we did a song called, “Always Sisters” that I wrote and sang with my younger sisters, Angie and Debbie.  It’s real important to realize that with your sister, you have to cover one another and lift each other up, as opposed to tearing one another down.

When we think of inheritance and things that are passed down from generation to generation, we often think of money.   But it can be more than that. Would you say that the music ministry is a heritage that has been passed down in your family?  
For sure.  My mom and dad both sang.  Their family members were musically inclined and sang.  So it’s definitely a gift that’s been passed down.  But one of the greatest aspects of our heritage is holiness and being taught God’s way.  To me that’s the priceless part of the heritage we have.

By looking at you, it’s hard to believe that both of your children are actually adults now. How are you handling the empty nest period? 
It’s kind of hard, you know.  I’ve been real busy since my daughter left to live on campus, but it’s still hard.  I’m like, “I don’t believe she’s gone.” My son has been on a campus a few years.  He’s 20 and she’s 18… It’s a happy/sad thing.  You’re happy to see that they are doing well and branching off into their own lives.  They love God and you can’t ask for that as a mother.  That’s my number one prayer that they both would love God and they do.  But they left me!

What’s been the most rewarding aspect of motherhood?
There are so many rewarding things about being a mom.  It’s my favorite thing to do.  From the time you find out they’ve been conceived you’re excited, you’re waiting to meet them, you’re shopping for them and you’re wondering what they’re going to be like.  Are they going to be more like your husband, yourself or a mix… And then they get here and it’s just, “Oh God.”  You can’t explain the joy of motherhood. 

Then you have the challenges as they get older because it’s your job as a mother to mold them, to shape them and to be an example so that they will turn out to be wonderful, caring human beings.  With all the things they have to fight against, it’s a challenge.  But motherhood is just awesome.  To see them accomplish their dreams, find their friends and their way in life.  I think the most rewarding thing is just to hear them say, “mom.”  To hear someone say “mom” with affection and tell you how much they love you—and being needed is an incredible thing.  To give of yourself.  That’s the greatest part about love and a lot of times we forget that.  We turn it into something selfish but love is selfless and giving of yourself is one of the most joyful things about being a mom.

You’re in the limelight.  How do you keep your children grounded?
You have to keep your priorities straight.  I have to balance the time I’m away from home.  When they were preteens I took them out on the road with me.  My husband, the kids and myself, we spent together on the tour bus.  That’s where we lived.  I did that to make sure so that I could be involved and that they didn’t get far from where they should be during those rough years.   You adjust your life accordingly.  Your kids come first.  I’ve never gotten that twisted, that is, the importance of keeping your marriage, your kids and your home together—as opposed to being gone and not knowing who they are.  It’s been challenging.  It’s not an easy thing, but it’s something that God has given me grace to do because He’s called me to do what I’m doing.

You have so much on your plate— you have your own record label, a clothing line that’s coming out as well as a jewelry line you’re working on.  In addition to your phenomenal music career.  How do you manage to keep family first?
Well you know, if you were to just read about me in the magazines you would think I was Superwoman.  And I am so quick to let women know that’s not true.  I think a lot of time when we read as women read about different women—even myself—we go to measuring yourself by that.  But there is only so much time in a day.  And the reason we can do all the things that we are doing is because we have a great team of people behind us.  When it comes to the record company we have someone who runs that.  So we just oversee things.  With the clothing and jewelry line we will have a whole different team of people involved with those.  So don’t think I’m Superwoman because I’m not.

You mean you’re not in the backroom between songs beading jewelry?
Noooo… [smile]  Now I might sketch out some things and that’s just because I have an eye for what I like and I what I want the line to be like.  So I will be involved, but only at a minimum because you can only do so much and you can’t wear yourself out.  My marriage, my children and being at home at my home church—those are the things that keep everything together.

You’ve remained involved in your local church.  Is that important, and how do you do that with your schedule?
Oh, man.  It’s so important.  I’ve been out on the road now for a total of 16 days straight.  I hardly ever do that because it’s so important to be fed the word of God from your home church.  Even though we’ve been to church while we’ve been on the road.  As I continue to pour out I have to go in somewhere and be filled up.  And then it’s so important for me to have my whole family together on Sunday and go to dinner together.  

Unless you nurture your relationships you won’t have any relationships.  And that’s just the truth anywhere from God to your children, to your neighbor to your sisters.   If you don’t nurture a relationship you won’t have it.

What keys have you found to making your marriage last all these years?  You’ve been married 21 years and that is really a feat in today’s society!  And I have to say that it’s such a blessing to have your husband, Mr. Alvin Love here with us!

CeCe:  We got married very young.  I don’t think I really had a clue what I was getting into.  I was just so in love with Mr. Love.  I have this wonderful last name that I don’t get a chance to use often. But marriage is a real serious thing.  I think I had the idea that everyone else had, that as long as everything is peachy—which they have been for the most part— that I’ll stay in this but when I really learned what commitment was and what marriage was about I got scared.  We had already been married for like 11 years and doing great but we went to a marriage conference at our church.  We went saying, let’s just go and have fun.  We don’t need any help or anything.  But when they broke down what marriage was about I looked at him and I was like, “Whoa…”

Alvin :  They talked about what was really behind the covenant and what God intended it to be.  They used the example of God’s covenant with us and He will never divorce himself from us no matter what we do.  God never leaves us as opposed to our marriages where as soon as problems come up we want to talk about splitting.   He also talked about the salt covenant, where you take salt and your wife takes salt and you put it in a bag and shake it together.  Divorce is like trying to take all your salt out of the bag without removing any of her salt or vice versa.  You can’t do it.   I think if people knew that before they got married a lot of times they would look at their commitment a little bit more.

CeCe:  I think so many people go into marriage thinking that they have an option to get out. 

Alvin : Yes, thinking, "Well, if it doesn’t work we can always get a divorce…"

CeCe:  And it’s not an option.  And when you go into marriage with divorce not being an option and you have two people willing to submit, there is nothing God won’t work out.  But you have to have that mindset that heart for God, and be willing to say, “Yes, Lord” no matter what you go through.

Alvin:  Another thing too, is that we’re friends.  And that’s very important.  We were in another city recently and I was talking to a lady who was driving us around.  She had been divorced for eleven years and when I talked about “friendship” in marriage, she said, “You’re right because even though I was married to my husband we didn’t really didn’t enjoy being together that much.”  There were other reasons why they came together.  You have to be friends.  You have to like the person.  It’s good to love them but you have to like them too.

CeCe:  You gotta’ like ‘em. You have to laugh!  We laugh a lot.

Alvin:  We enjoy being together.  We don’t have to have someone with us to make it complete.  Like some couples…“Well who’s going with us?  It’s just going to be you and me? That’s no fun!”  But we can have fun, just the two of us.  We don’t need anyone to help us bring our marriage to another level.

So do you do the whole “date night” thing?
It’s funny. We’ve always done that.  We don’t label it “date night.”   You know how some people have kids and they let the kids destroy their marriage. You can’t do that and for some reason we kind of knew that from the beginning.  So I’ve always had great babysitters on hand.  My mom or my mother in-law…  We’ve never let our lives stop.  Then the Lord blessed Alvin to start traveling with me full-time after he had worked at Xerox for like 16 years.  So he’s been traveling with me full-time now since 1995, so we’re always together.

You have lots of date nights!
Yeah, people are like, “How do you two stand each other you’re together all the time.” But we are friends.  We are brother and sister in Christ and we are in love at the same time.  But do we have to make sure that we plan times where we can rest?  Yes.  Alvin used to be my manager when he first started traveling with me. And that wasn’t good because we could in bed at eleven o’clock at night and he would say, “Baby, what about the interview…” I’m like, “Oh no! This is not going to work.  I need my husband.  We’re going to get someone else to manage and we’re going to be husband and wife.  So there will be changes you have to make along the way.  Just change them.  Be honest with one another and say, “You know what, this is not working for me.”   Sometimes we’ll find that we’ll go years in our marriages not being honest with one another and then we wonder why we feel the “love” is gone.  It’s because we don’t take the time to nurture problems when we have them.  So, stop!  If it’s not working, rearrange it.  But that doesn’t mean you have to break up. 

Just change it.  Tell each other.  I think counseling is a good thing.  When we got married we didn’t have a lot of marriage counseling going on.  But now-a-days there is so much out there that people can take advantage of but they would rather get divorced than go see about it.  It’s okay if you need to go talk to somebody.  There are great counselors out there.  Work it out!

This interview is a part of an ongoing series in which I interview women who are successfully pursuing their passion.  What is your passion? 
You know, that’s a good question.  I would have to tell you my passion is to serve the Lord. That is just my greatest passion.  Now God has gifted me to sing.  My passion is being a mom.  I think a lot of times women have been put down in so many ways when they choose to be a housewife…a mother.  There is no greater calling than that and there really shouldn’t be any greater passion than that, but we all have gifts and talents.  

So I’m doing the clothing line and that’s going to be fun, but I don’t think I have any one passion that sticks out more than any other except for worshipping the Lord.  I just get the chance to do that full time as my ministry and as my career.  He’s my passion.  He really is.  And nothing comes close to that.

You have a heart for young people—and ministering to girls in particular. You’re the host of the Always Sisters Conference in Nashville .  How did that come about?
I started out singing professionally when I was 17.  It’s been a long time now.  Ever since then I’ve always gotten letters from young girls.  At that time I was young.  I always received letters about how I ministered to them and now that time has gone on, I get letters from girls asking me to be their mom. Some of these letters are from women older than me.  But I realize that it’s a spiritual thing more than anything.  God has called me to pour into the younger generation.  It had been on my heart to do for several years and I just kept putting it off.  I was doing this and that and speaking is something that I kind of ran from.  I didn’t want to be a speaker.  But my life and the way it’s evolving—it’s turning into that.  I think I’ll probably be speaking more in the future than singing.   So I’m real excited now. 

I realized I couldn’t wait any longer.   Our girls need more role models.  A lot of them don’t have moms.  I was blessed to have a great mother and a wonderful grandmother to reprimand me and to teach me what being a lady was about, how to be a wife and a mother, how to serve God, what holiness looks like and how you should behave yourself… and a lot of girls today don’t have that.  I had too many mothers almost.  We were in the church and the mothers at the church would tell you what you needed to know.  Of course, when you’re young, you’re like, “Oh gosh, somebody give me a break.”  But as you get older you learn to appreciate that wisdom and that covering and the fact they cared enough to take out time to correct me.  They cared enough to pray for me. 

So this “Always Sisters” conference is my way of pouring back and giving back to the younger generation.  Some of these girls have very low self-esteem.  Some of them are dealing with eating disorders.  Some of them are living with aids.  Some of them are in sexual, immoral situations.  Some of them never had fathers so they are looking for love in all the wrong places.  So we will deal with self esteem and teach them who God says they are.  My Pastor will share from a father’s point of view and Kirk Franklin from a brother’s point of view so that they’ll know what young guys are thinking and how they should carry themselves.   So, I’m excited.

The first “Always Sisters” conference took place soon after our interview with CeCe and was a great success.  Participating guests included “Mary Mary,” Lisa McClendon, Nicole C. Mullen, Kelly Price, Mom Winans and many others. The next conference will take place in August 2006 in Nashville , Tennessee .  For more information, visit http://alwayssisters.com

You mentioned holiness.  I’m thinking of your clothing line…
Yes…that’s one of the reasons for birthing it out. When you go and the world’s fashion says the style is for your neckline to be down to your belly button and you go look for a dress and all the clothes are showing everything. It’s like, “Wait a minute, guys…”  Now this fall, dresses are long and they look very sanctified out there on the runway.  But you’ll go shopping and the trend is “minis.”    I was looking for suits once and all I could find were these short dresses up to my thighs and I was like, “No, this is not going to work.”  Then you realize that you don’t have to be a believer to not want to be naked.  Who said you had to show everything?  It’s not like you want to lose any of the style, either.  So we’re trying to create a line that will reflect holiness—modesty, but at the same time, be second to none when it comes to fashion.

That’s important.  We need that balance and we need that alternative.
Yeah, you don’t want to look like an old woman just because you don’t want to show everything you have.  So we’re excited about that.  I’m really excited about those things that are going on behind the scenes so we’ll see how long I’ll be up front.

What accomplishment or success in your career were you must surprised by? 
I think I’ve been surprised by all of it.  But the first Grammy I won, I was just like, “Wow…”  You grow up as a kid watching the Grammy Awards on television never thinking that you would be able to use that speech that you’ve been practicing on for years.  I think every step of the way I’ve been surprised.  Even now…that I’m still in the game.  I’m still doing what I love to do and what God has called me to do—that people care enough to continue to go out and pick up our music.  I don’t take anything lightly because people don’t have to do that.  Each stage has been surprising.  I look back over my life and it’s like, “Wow…” I’ve won so many awards.  I’ve sold so many records.  And still I’m still in a position of no compromise.  God is just great and I’m surprised by all of it.

This is anniversary issue of KFF.  We’ve been at it a year now.  And when I thought of who I wanted to grace the “cover” of KFF for this month, I thought of you.  You epitomize all of the things I think are important.  You have your marriage, your family, your career and you’re still loving the Lord… and it’s hard to find examples like that nowadays.
You know, it’s getting scary. It is hard.  And it’s sad.  When you begin to stick out because you’re doing the simple things that God requires, it gets scary.  Me and Alvin are not doing anything that’s so great. We just love the Lord and our goal is to hear him say, “Well done.”  People look at us, yet it shouldn’t be out of the norm.  It shouldn’t be a big deal. 

For Christians, especially—
Yes, in the church.  You know what I’m saying?  I look at Alvin and I’m like, “Babe, God’s heart has got to be breaking.”  I know there are people out there, and there are, but you don’t see a lot of them in the limelight.  But God is good.

What is the most challenging aspect of your career?
There have been a lot challenges.  People sometimes don’t feel like you have them because you’re up front.  First of all our career, our music.  Being a gospel artist. Right away people put you in a box and a lot of doors will shut.  So we’ve always been fighting to knock certain doors and barriers down.  That’s an on-going challenge. We’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go as gospel artists and as gospel music.  That’s always disheartening because you put everything you can into a CD and you know you’ve been blessed to do great music because of great producers and people behind you, and still for the most part, never get the fair treatment that you should get.  But we do what we do for the Lord anyway.

Then, the racism in the Christian marketplace –it’s a sad thing but it’s a real thing.  And it’s not the heart of God.  That’s another disheartening thing that you continue to chip away at.  All I can do is chip away what God will allow me to chip away while we do what we do, but it’s still there.  And if we don’t knock down the walls, then the next generation is going to deal with the same thing.  That’s been rough.

Then just, the thing of balancing everything.  It’s not something that you put in place that stays in place.  You have to continue to revisit that area of your life for every stage of your life.   When the kids are little, you have to treat that a whole different way.  For me, when the kids got a little older and I did some overseas travel, that was rough.  I would call home and they were happy as a lark. Then you still cry because you’re like, “They’re not missing me.”  You’re happy that they’re doing great and that God is providing and taking care of them, but at the same time it’s not easy a lot of the time.

What do you want your legacy to be?
I want my legacy to be that I was a true servant.  The legacy shouldn’t be about me, but it should bring glory to God—that she stood for what God required.

As we part, I’d just like you to take a moment and speak a word of encouragement to our audience of moms, who may have gifts and talents, desires and dreams that they are just sitting on.
We heard Myles Munroe preach a message, and everybody should get it, but his message was entitled, “Die Empty.”   He said that the graveyards are full of  dreams, hopes, desires and potential that was unfulfilled.   When I heard it, I said, “Wow.”  He said that God gives us all dreams and he gives them to us so that we will fulfill them.  So, “Go for it!  Just go for it.  Life is short. Go for it!”  

You’re a wife and a mom.  God will give you something to do at home, you know because you have to keep certain things in order. God is a God of order so you have to do what you’ve been called to do. Maybe you’re going to do them but you’re not going to do them right now.  But that doesn’t mean that you cross it off.  You wait till later and do them, but do it.  Go for it, because you’re going to bless somebody.  You’re going to be a blessing to yourself of course, because you’ll be more fulfilled, but God always blesses you to bless somebody else.  So when you fulfill those dreams you’re going to be a blessing to somebody else and you’re going to bring glory to the kingdom of God. So, I say, “Go for it.”

That’s awesome.  Thank you.  And obviously you are going for it.  You’re doing a great job! Thank you so much for your time.  I wish the very best for you and your family. 

Thank you, and I wish you the very best with this magazine. 

Thank you.   

Visit CeCe's Website;  http://CeCeWinans.com

Visit Always Sisters girls conference website:  http://alwayssisters.com 

Win a copy of CeCe's latest CD, Purified!

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