“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,” Ephesians 3:17-18, New International Version

Guidry balances life as politician & as humble servant

Life experiences often take people down roads they might never have taken with understanding coming as an accumulation of lessons learned the hard way.

Born and raised in New Iberia, city councilwoman Sherry Guidry turned 45 in January, sharing her birthday with Martin Luther King. One of three children, the day came when Guidry and her siblings entered the foster care system. In spite of the challenges of childhood, and because of faithful caregivers, Guidry came to know and trust the voice of the Lord.

“Sometimes my mother had two and three jobs. We were always at the babysitters,” Guidry said. “Mrs. Betty Reedom was blind but we walked to St. Edward Church with her every Sunday, unless it rained — we would take a cab. She knew exactly where she was going and she knew when we were misbehaving or if we were too far ahead of her.”

Raised Catholic at early morning Mass, Guidry said they’d walk home and change their clothes, get on a church van and go where beautifully dressed women with hats would stomp the floor, play tambourines and clap their hands at the Church of God in Christ.   

“This went on for years going from a quiet sanctuary to the other. I didn’t understand until I grew older and developed a relationship with Christ. I can’t imagine going through life with no faith, nothing to lean on, nothing to fall on, nothing to grow in or grow through,” Guidry said.

Guidry came to depend on God as a child and knew he was real. Even though her mother worked hard as a single mother, she had “issues” and the children were placed together in foster care. Fortunately, the woman that took them in was a librarian and “the most soft-spoken, etiquette person you’d ever want to meet,” Guidry said.

The St. Martinville woman would take her wards to St. Jude, the sister church of St. Edward, where Guidry met an altar boy who would wink at her. At 18, when she had to declare emancipation from the foster care system under supervision of a responsible guardian, he became her fiancé and legal guardian. Twenty-six years and four children later, he is still her life partner and husband.

Before walking out her future, Guidry learned at the next two foster homes what it meant to long for more of God. Fortunately, during time at her second foster home, an “angel,” Sherry Carter, started talking randomly to Guidry at a store. The outgoing child asked the woman to take her to church. Carter not only picked Guidry up every Sunday, she stayed for the day experiencing a loving Christian home.

“I knew I was called to serve God from a small child,” Guidry said. “I always thought I was different, not that I was better, I felt lower. The people I was surrounded by in the foster care homes weren’t interested in books or learning. I use to say to the Lord, ‘what’s wrong with me? I’m not interested in playing dominos, gambling, I’m interested in reading books’ — that’s how I escaped a lot of the things around me — ‘I’m interested in You.’ ”

 She remembers the Lord saying He had given her a gift, “a special heart and I need you to use it to reach people.” Back then she didn’t know what it meant. Now she believes her heart for people is a gift from God to be used as a minster and a public servant — not a politician.

“When God gives you an assignment, he always gives you destiny partners and destiny helpers. All in one year, I graduated with my second degree in February, in April became a licensed minister at Faith Cathedral World Outreach Church and then I ran for city council all in 2016,” Guidry said.

Without any previous desire to run for political office, two years prior to the election the Lord told her, “I need you to run for that seat.”

“It took two years. You have to have agreement, even if God releases you to do something great or small. If you are married, you have to have the power of agreement because the truth of the matter is it’s not just me sitting on the city council seat, it’s my entire family. You must get them on your side,” Guidry said.

She is a minister at Faith Cathedral and received a lot of support as she ran for public office. She speaks about her life’s journey at schools, churches or whenever asked, including at a junior program for Westgate High School.

“I wanted them to know that if I could go through all that and make it, still be on the honor roll and still be a ward of the state, then there’s no excuse why they can’t,” Guidry said. “They went from talking and cutting up to silence, you could hear a pin drop. They started to pay attention. I know it’s rough — but with God — you have to develop a relationship with God. I have a double platform to minister, whether it’s a political realm or spiritual, I bring Jesus.

“It’s in my DNA, it’s in my fabric, it’s what I do. I’m not perfect, but I bring Jesus. If He’ll do it for me, He’ll do it for somebody else. I firmly believe that.”

Leadership, servitude and ushering are the themes the Lord has put on Guidry’s heart to operate in any given setting. Key is discerning which roll she is to walk in at each different occasion.

“You see something that needs to be done you’ve got to do it. Learn which position you take in every setting, that’s what I’ve been trying to practice,” Guidry said. “That’s how you know when it comes from the Lord.”