January 8, 2026 • 50 mins
This week on The Upload, host Brooke Taylor and co-host Pastor Mark Evans sit down with one of the most influential voices in Christian music, Steven Curtis Chapman, for a deeply personal and faith-filled conversation about transformation, tragedy, and the sustaining presence of God.
Steven takes listeners back to the very beginning of his faith journey, growing up in what he describes as a “little crazy” home marked by conflict, broken examples, and hardship. He shares how, as a young boy in Paducah, Kentucky, he witnessed a miraculous shift in his family during a revival at their Baptist church — a moment that forever changed the trajectory of his parents’ lives and planted the first seeds of his own faith. About a year later, a single verse from Revelation “I stand at the door and knock” became the moment Steven says Jesus knocked on the door of his heart, beginning a lifelong walk with God.
The conversation turns to one of the most painful chapters of Steven’s life: the tragic loss of his youngest daughter, Maria Sue. With honesty and grace, Steven opens up about how his family navigated unimaginable grief, how the shortest verse in Scripture “Jesus wept” took on profound new meaning, and how God met them in their sorrow rather than abandoning them in it. He reflects on how the Lord has faithfully sustained his family and how Maria’s life and legacy continue through their work with Show Hope.
Steven Curtis Chapman reminds us that faith is not the absence of pain, but the presence of God in the middle of it. This episode is for anyone who has wrestled with loss, questioned God in suffering, or needed reassurance that Jesus still draws near in our deepest grief.
🎧 Listen in for a powerful testimony of faith refined by fire, hope anchored in eternity, and the God who walks with us through it all.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I'm Stephen Curtis Chapman. I just would take my
daughter back if I had the option. You hobble with
that reality. You experience God in it, you experience healing
in it, and it's the already, it's that. Not yet,
you're still waiting for the ultimate wiping of every tear
from your eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And this is the upload.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
We're very grateful that you're joining us on the upload today.
Stephen Curtis Chapman is here, and I just want to
open by saying, you know you've written, you've sung about
faith for decades. You strip it all down, beyond music,
beyond all of the awards, beyond all of that. What
does the word faith mean to you today?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Good question. I mean the word faith first first word
that comes to mind. I guess if it's if this
is a word association game or quiz is survival? You know?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I mean faith is.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The only way that I know we survive. You know,
this world, fallen world that we are in. Jesus says,
in this world you will have trouble, you know, and
all of us know that at our own different you know,
different degrees and different levels of of that. The longer
we live the deeper uh, into that you know, troubled
(01:18):
world we find ourselves, and the deeper the trouble seems
to get. And yet surviving that, you know is I
don't know any other way, certainly from my own experience
and my families and things that we've walked through, apart
from faith in uh, you know, in in a God
(01:38):
who we have experienced to be with us in those
places and sustain us, you know, through that. So that's
that's the first word that pops into my mind when
you when you ask that.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Question, man.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And faith is such a cool and like loaded word too,
because it just the word can and the meaning can
change in so many different aspects of your life. If
whatever season you're going through, the trials that you're going through,
faith really is a survival tool, or it would be
whipped for you helping someone else survive something else. It's yeah,
it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It's kind of I'm in the middle of a tour
right now, kind of re visiting an album that I
did twenty five years ago, well twenty six ish, you're
un yeah, but it was counting twenty five, twenty six
whatever it takes, called Speechless, and the whole theme of
that of that album, you know, and it's just been
so cool to get to revisit it because it was,
(02:33):
you know, I was twenty five years younger, and I
was at a place in life where, you know, a
lot of things had good, bad, ugly, you know, all
that had happened. But to even get to revisit those
songs and the truths of some of the songs that
I wrote and recorded on that album, Be Still and
Know that I Am God, you know, so I'm forty
six ten. That was a song that was on that album.
(02:53):
Just the whole concept of being you know, speechless. You know,
it's kind of written around this phrase that my pastor
and I were talking about. He used the words gospel astonishment,
being so astonished at the message of the Gospel that
we are stunned, even guys like us who love words,
because he, my pastor, Scottie Smith and dear friend, is
(03:14):
the only guy I know who loves to use words
more than me. He makes up words actually in his sermons.
Half the time I go look it up, like, wait, man,
that's not gospelicious. That's one of his favorite words he
throws out all the time. That's gospelicious. You know that's
you know, it's that those kind of things that he
throws around, and but He's like, you know this, if
we really, you know, get a just a glimpse of
(03:37):
the goodness of you know, and the enormity of the
love and the grace of God for us, it would
it would you know, render even guys like us who
use so many words, you know, speechless, we don't have
words for it. And and so I think, you know,
just even getting to revisit all of that has just
even deepened again my understanding of faith and looking back
(03:58):
at the journey and getting to sing those songs and
just kind of be stunned all over again at the
goodness of you know, of God is faithfulness and the
pain on the journey, and yet how He has sustained
my family and me on our journey.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah. Well, I'm curious, looking back over your life, maybe
share a moment where you first felt like faith was
real to you, not something that you were taught or
something that you learned, where you just you just kind
of grabbed a hold of it and you're like, yeah,
this is it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, Well, I mean the first memory of that first
thing that comes to mind when you ask that question,
is I had seen a transformation to my family as
a result of faith in Jesus and my parents who'd
grown up around church and actually dragged a church every
Sunday because that's what you do in the buckle of
the Bible belt where they grew up in Kentucky and so,
(04:50):
but but it kind of moved away from it a
little bit, you know, in their teenage years, especially my
dad and so I grew up in a home that
was a little crazy, you know, my dad and mam
was sixteen when she married my dad. Dad had an
alcoholic father who was never He left home when my
dad was a baby, and so he never knew his father,
(05:10):
and so he grew up without a dad in his
life or really any father figure. So that resulted in
you know, just you know kind of what it would.
You know, he's a great still a great man and
new truth and knew and would say I still felt
like I knew, knew the Lord and wanted his presents
in my life, but I was just wandering. And so
he married my mom. My brother came along very shortly
(05:33):
after they got married, and she was still I think
seventeen when he was born, and so they was young
and it was a little crazy, and I grew up
in a lot of conflict and a lot of fights,
and there was just a lot of shame on my
dad and a lot of you know, just confusion. And
when I was about seven years old, my parents both
as a result of a there's a revival going on
(05:54):
in our little Baptist church there in Paduka, Kentucky, where
I grew up, all of that Baptist church. And as
God would orchestrate it, my mom, who had been going
to church every Sunday because that's what you do, dragging
me and my brother to church, she got my dad
to go for that revival and by the end of
that week, I just I saw transformation in my own home.
(06:14):
And it was very real, even to my seven year
old little self, because I just saw, you know, when
the fights would start to blow up, or when you'd
feel the attention and the conflict and you'd kind of,
you know, I'd start to get afraid.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
My dad would.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Stop and say, hey, wait a minute, we got to pray,
and we get on her knees together's family, and we'd pray,
and my dad would he didn't have really fancy prayers
he would just talk to God and say, God, I
don't know how to be a good dad. I don't
know how to be a husband. Will you please show me,
Please teach me. And so it's that humility and just
that sincerity of I really want to change. I want
(06:52):
this to change my life. And I saw it change
my mom and dad, and so I grew up kind
of watching that, and it was about It wasn't maybe
a year later, after seeing this transformation happening in my
home and in their lives, that we were sitting in
church together and.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
In a very very real, clear way.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I'll still I remember it all my life that the pastor,
Brother David McMichael, was quoting a revelation at the end
of his sermon, and I didn't pay any attention to
anything he had said. But when he said these words,
Jesus says, I stand at the door and knock, and
if anyone would open the door, I'll come in. And
when he said those words, it was it was just
(07:34):
as clear as anything I'd ever experienced, that Jesus was
knocking at the door of my heart. My heart was
beating fast, and I was like, what is going on?
But what his words? Those words are real and Jesus
is now knocking at my heart and having seen the
transformation in my family, that was, you know the beginning
(07:55):
of my faith journey. And what I understood even then
with that was, you know, he was a King James guy,
as I like to say, he was the O G
King James. You know, Jess says I'll come in and
SUP with him. Of course he lost me on that.
I didn't know what SUP meant and I was kind
of looking like, what is that, you know, but he explained,
you know, supper meal relation. It's like a relationship is
(08:17):
like Jesus says, I want to come have a relationship
with you.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I don't just want your Sunday mornings and your Sunday
you know, Sunday nights.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I want a moment by moment relationship with you.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And so that was for me the first of obviously
a lifetime of very real, tangible moments of my faith
becoming you know clear. But that was the first one.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I love that so much. I think the knocking on
the door of the hot you know, I think God
is knocking on everyone's hot you know. This week, my
nine year old boy, he knocked on his hot really
everything going on me and said, Dad, I want to
I want to stop reading the Bible every night. And
I'm like, all right, so let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I didn't have to make him. I didn't say, you know,
I was just like he came to me. I'm like,
that's the knocking, and we started reading. And two nights
later he said, Dad, I know God's real, but I
haven't ever asked him to be in my life seriously.
And so just hearing that story is making me emotional
because this week I saw that knocking and I saw
(09:21):
that door open in my nine year old boy, my
oldest son, and he just you know, we went through
and it was like, this is what it means, scripture
by scripture. Yeah, So for me, I think, what what
have you seen just in your own personal life as
a seven year old eight year old through that and
experiencing tension and seeing your parents on their knees when
they don't know what else to do. What does the
(09:42):
knocking look like even in your family, your kids' lives,
What's what's that look like?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Well?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I love that that story and of your your son,
you know, it is the way God will his spirit
will use you know, the things going on around us,
you know, the ways that it's part of the wonder
the mystery of God and his spirit. You know, like
(10:09):
the wind, you know, you know, Scripture says that, you know,
we can't see it coming and gone, we can't see
it moving. We feel the effects of it, you know,
we can see the effects of the wind. I saw
the effects of that in my parents at that point
in my life, and you know, I've watched it in
my own kids. My little girl Maria, who's with Jesus
now eighteen years she was five years old and getting
(10:35):
ready for school one morning, and this was a real
gift that the Lord gave us. When it was February
twentieth of two thousand and eight. She would go be
with Jesus in May of two thousand and eight, so
it was only a few months before an accident that
would take her life here on earth. And she was
(10:55):
getting her shoes on, getting ready for school, preschool, and
she went to this little preschool where they were learning
songs to get ready for their spring program, their graduation.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
She's getting ready to.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Graduate from preschool, and she said she was sitting on
her on the floor of her mom getting her shoes on,
and she said, Mom, does God really have a big house?
And Mom said, yeah, yes, and as far you know,
from what I understand and in the Bible, and she said,
does it? Does it really have a lot of a
lot of rooms in it? And so my wife it triggered.
(11:27):
My wife knew she was learning a song, Big Big
House by a group Audio Adrenaline Buddies of mine that
I toured with, and I knew that song very well
and she knew it, and she so she kind of
keyed in that she's asking about this song because she's
learning this song it's a big, big house with lots
of lots of rooms, lots of lots of food, big
yard you can play football. So my wife kind of,
you know, tricked her and just said, yeah, it does
(11:49):
have a lot of and it has a lot of
food too, and there's a big yard where you can
play football or whatever you want, you know, and really
looked at her like, Mom, how did you know? You know?
And she said, you're learning a song, I bet, aren't
you for your preschool your little program? And she said yeah.
And and so Maria, five years old, said, I want
to go. I want to go to God's Big House.
(12:12):
I want to go see it. Can I go? And
so her mom in that moment, and I happened.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
To be home. I wasn't on the road or anything.
She said.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
She called me and said, Stephen, I think you should
come in here. Maria is asking some questions that I think,
you know, it would be interesting to have a conversation
with her. So I remember I sat her up on
the kitchen counter so we were kind of eye to
eye and just talk to her about, you know, you
want to go see God's Big House. And I said, well,
you know, we actually get to go there if we,
(12:44):
you know, as we trust Jesus to you know, to
take us. He's the way we get to, you know,
to God's Big House and the Father. And tried to
explain as best I could, and in my head, in
my stupid, you know, adult brain, I'm going she's way
too young. She doesn't understand that, she doesn't know what
she's asking. But far be it from me to shut
(13:04):
this down. I'm just gonna We're going to ride this
wave and see what you know. And I said, do
you want to talk to God and just you know,
and talk to Jesus and ask him to, you know,
let you come to his house and come into your
heart and you know, lead, lead you through life.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
And she said yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And so her sister Stevie Joy, also adopted from China,
who was only about six months older than her. She
hears us talking, she's getting ready to and she's like, well, I.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Want to go. I want to go too.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So then I've set her up on the counter and
kind of talk with her and we pray, and you know,
at the at the point, I'm like, God, only you
know what's going on really in her heart. But then,
of course, you know, a few months later, you know,
when when she would go be with Jesus. That was
one of those amazing gifts that God gave us, just
that sense of this is where she wanted to be.
(13:54):
This is you know, and with all the sadness and
the grief and you know, not sticking some you know,
big Bible band aid on, you know, that wound of
our soul that'll be there until we see Jesus and
her face again. You know, it was an incredible gift
and a comfort to us, you know, to just that
moment that Jesus clearly knocked on her heart and in
(14:17):
his sovereignty, knowing you know, what he knows, and so yeah,
I mean there are the ways that he will use,
even you know, in your son's case. I mean, so
much that's going on in our world right now.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
You know he is questions.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, those questions that will come, and and just the
door that that opens for us to have those kind
of conversations. I just believe that's the Holy Spirit at
work in all of these things.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I have to say, like hearing all of this, it's
so encouraging for me. I have a four year old
and a one year old, and we recently, while I
would say over a little over a month ago, we
put them in a Christian like mother's day out program.
So it's out of church. It's you know, you think
she's four years old, she doesn't know anything or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
And it's so it's so amazing to see her little
(15:09):
mind go, mom, we forgot to pray for our food,
and she'll hold her hands and she'll say say the prayer,
or she her stomach was feeling yucky one day this
past week and she climbs up into my lap and
she goes, Mommy, can you touch my belly? And ask
God to make it feel better. And I was just like,
it's like it's those small things that they're paying attention
(15:30):
and they're listening, and they are learning about the love
of Jesus and they're learning about his kingdom. And I
just think just in the midst of tragedy, thinking back
to that moment where you're like, that was that was
for a reason? You know what I mean, it's just
so encouraging.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, And I love the knocking, you know, taking that
diverse in revelation and which is absolutely true for everyone.
You know, we say, God, shake toll, we say, but
I love it as questions. I wonder about this and
I think as kids, it's like my son's asking questions
all the time, why this?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
What about this?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
And understanding learning. Then you get a bit older and
the knocking, you know, it gets the questions are there,
but I'm less likely to ask the questions because I feel,
you know, pride or I feel like, you know, I
should know that. And I think just that's so encouraging
for me is to listen out and like you did,
a tune your attention to go, whether questions are lean in,
(16:26):
stop what I'm doing, focus in, and push through some
of the you know, maybe some of the barriers of
the subtleties in the questions, in the adults, in my
friends and people I do life that are around me
all the time and recognize them as that's God, the
Holy Spirit knocking on their heart, and to to tune
(16:46):
in and say, you know, hey, yeah, let's let's have
a conversation, Let's have a dialogue. I think with everything
going on right now, the world is so obviously binary.
I feel like there is such a more than it
ever has been before, a clear binary. Yeah, like it's
(17:07):
light and.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
It's dark, so much division.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah, and the dialogue, if the questions are the knocking
of the Holy Spirit, how important it is to open
up the conversations and also posture ourselves in a way
to be able to have those conversations with people and
people to feel like they can ask.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And so we love our pastor and friend for so
many years Scatti Smith. He always talks about, you know,
we're we are not called to be the fourth member
of the trinity, you know, and so often I think
we feel like and especially that's what I think happens
with just you know, I have to convince you have
to you know, uh, you know, make sure that you
(17:43):
you know that you get it, and you know that
is the job of the Holy Spirit. Our job is
you know, have the conversations, you know, the questions, stay
just you know, staying uh, keeping wonder in it and
curiosity and you know, I love you know, there's a
you know, uh G. K.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Chesterton.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know he talks about you know that that we're
the ones who grow old because we have sinned and
and we actually grow. God is infinitely young, and he
never grows tired of doing again and again the things
that show us his goodness, his love. Every morning, you know,
he talks about the sun to you know, God says
to the sun, do it again, do it again, you know,
(18:26):
and every you know, every night you know, the moon,
do it again. You know, come, and just that sense
of that God in the same way that God is
always knocking, He's always he's you know, he's given us,
you know, he's he's always revealing himself, you know, around
us in conversations and in nature and and always knocking.
If we just can have a child likeness enough and
(18:50):
humility to hear and listen and receive what it is
that he's.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Saying I.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Just keep thinking about people who are watching that might
not necessarily know the love of Jesus or might not
understand it is a better way to say it. But
walking through such a hard time in your life of
losing a child is one of the most unimaginable things,
you know, a parent can walk through. In those moments,
(19:17):
did God ever feel far away from you? Did you
ever have those questions of like you know, the why,
and those feelings of just grief?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yes, I mean you can't begin to you know. I
will say it this way is probably the best way
to try to answer that and explain it. You know,
I had always loved the psalms, and especially as a musician,
you know, and a Christian musician, the psalms are, you know,
(19:48):
just your go to. It's like this is the og,
you know, this is it. But like so many I think,
you know, you gravitate towards your love is better than life,
better as one day your courts. I mean, we sing
the songs that are all over the you know, modern
worship songs, all of those, you know, great declarations of
the love of God and the grace of God. I
(20:10):
had never really probably just skipped over the hard, you know.
I'm like, yeah, but I don't what's the how long?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
O Lords?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
And all of those things you know that are and
you not until walking through this that are really you know,
recognize and come to realize that most many of those celebrated,
you know, beautiful declarations that we make in our worship
songs actually come in the very same verse or the
very same passage in chapter you know, after the how long,
(20:41):
O Lord?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Are you going to forget me forever? You know?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And then there's this turn of soul? Why are you
so downcast?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Within me? Hope in God?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's like the Psalmist is, you know, is giving us
this incredible The whole process of this is where a
lot of life is going to be lived.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
How long? Oh Lord?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
This makes no sense. I don't get it. You're I'm
off the radar. If you even exist, you know, then
I guess you've forgotten me clearly, you know, And I'll
just grant you that you exist. But you forgot me
and and my plight and my pain and all of
that and what's so amazing? And I didn't I will
(21:22):
say that I really didn't understand so much of the
Psalms until walking through this, and suddenly those verses became
life for me because I was so desperate for someone
who you know, could enter into that pain, you know
with me and say and I suddenly those those were
(21:44):
that gave me, you know, voice to the things that
I was feeling, that distance and that and that how
long you know, oh Lord, thing that we feel in
those moments of God. I just I can't imagine this ever,
ever being anything thing other than just absolute you know, sadness, uh,
(22:05):
just you know, pain. And and yet what I have
learned from that and still learning is that, you know,
I'm so thankful, aren't we all as people faith that
God didn't edit out in the Bible what most of
us would have edited out of a book if we
were having it written about us and our our you know,
(22:28):
faith that we created would be, oh, don't put that
in there. You know, God, you know, absolutely, uh, you know,
inspired all of that to be included, because those are
you know, when we are so desperate to have that,
those you know, those places where what you know, what
the Psalmist teaches us that he did right, that he
(22:50):
got right in all of that, is that every at
every point he is bringing all of that and pouring
it out, you know, to God, and you know the confusion,
the sadness, the grief. You know, job is the same,
you know, we get all of that and then this
just resolution and for me, and I remember it very clearly,
(23:11):
and I've told this, shared this before, but you know
when when we first lost our daughter, and I remember
just at the hospital, Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, receiving the news
that that she hadn't survived, and just feeling this what
I call a black hole of despair. It just felt
(23:34):
like what I understand a black hole to be. It's
just it sucks everything into it and and and at
that point it ceases to be and I remember just thinking,
I I am being sucked into this, and I don't
think there's ever a I don't there won't be another
come out the other side. This is just gonna, you know,
(23:54):
just take take me. And I would start to feel
being kind of sucked into that black hole of hopelessness,
and then just again, by by God's grace, I would
take a breath and all that would come to mind
is Blessed be your name. You give and you take away,
(24:14):
Blessed be your name. And there was a song my
dear friend Matt Redmond had written that I knew that
song and I would just try to sing it, squeak
it out whatever I could get out, and and when
I would do that, it's like my next breath. I could,
I could breathe, but it's like I just taken my
(24:34):
last breath, but I just took enough to get out.
Blessed be your name, you give you take away, but
I'm gonna. I'm gonna bless your name. I'm gonna worship you,
And all of a sudden, I take a breath. I
was like, whoa, I got. I got breath back in
my lungs now for just a few more steps, you know,
and then start to feel that black hole pull me in,
and then it'd be that again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna
(24:56):
choose to trust you, bless your name, worse you. And
in that same sense of those psalms, it was just like, God,
this is what I feel. I'm gonna pour this out
to you, But so why are you?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So? You know?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I got this picture all of a sudden as I
was reading those songs that the psawmist is literally pounding
on his own chest, going, come on heart, you know,
beat soul, Why are you so downcast? Remember what is?
It's true? It is, this is all true. It's crazy.
The world is completely going nuts right now in our situation.
Our pain is so real and true and I don't
(25:31):
know how we're going to survive it. That's all true.
But what's what I'm gonna choose to believe is most
true is that God, you were faithful, you were good,
you were with us, And as crazy as that even
sounds to say it out loud right now, I'm going
to keep declaring it and saying And the more we did,
the more I felt that oxygen come back into my lungs.
(25:55):
And it was that daily, breath by breath, step by
step process, especially in the early you know, days and
hours of that, and God has just been faithful. And
we still have days, as we all do, and we
as a family still carry that broken heart, and some days,
you know, my bride will just still be so angry.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And I just don't get it. I still don't get it.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know, there's so many other ways God could have
done all these wonderful things other than this way. And
yet I'm gonna keep I'm gonna trust you God, and.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I love David as a man after God's own heart.
He's known, and as I'm hearing you share, I can't
help but think, like, God loves us so much. He
loves David, he loves you so much. He's wanting honesty,
you know, He's wanting not just the polished, not the
(26:54):
well rehearsed facade. And we sometimes I feel like we've
got to come and like he's this this big you know,
I've got to be all dressed up button. But God's wanting,
as you see in the Psalms, he's wanting. He's just
wanting you your heart, the honesty. And in the garden
when Adam and Eva, he's like where are you?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Why are you hiding?
Speaker 4 (27:14):
He's like, hey, it's okay. And shame keeps us, you know,
the pain of everything we're going through keeps us hidden.
But God saying, hey, I can handle your honesty. I
love you that much. And to see that, and that's
that's really hard, is too I feel like to be
that honest and raw. But reading the Psalms, you go, oh, man,
this is God's heart, is that he just wants to
(27:37):
know you in that way. And so to hear to
hear that so encouraging and just for many people that
you know, when you're reading the Bible, it's like, I
don't I've got to get to a certain point first.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I've got to get you know.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
But God say, no, wherever you're at, doesn't matter where
your outcomers you are, no matter how much it hurts,
no matter what you're going through, the loss of a
daughter bro unimaginable, but just shit, tell God this is
this is what I'm feeling, and let him heal that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Do you feel like post.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Now how many eighteen years you say, do you feel
like from a healing perspective? You say, there's moments and
there's times where you still struggle, you're still angry. What
where do you feel like from a healing perspective?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Is the is the goal? Is that?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Where do you explain to me the theology or the
thoughts or the wrestles with the level of healing of that.
Do you feel like, man, you're looking for total healing.
Do you feel like it's a part of just the
story and the scar that God's using Because I wrestle
with that, I wrestle with like God, full healing, partial healing, scars,
open wounds, That's.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Something we we say it was my son actually who
who have to give credit to him for this freeze
when he talks about our family, because my son's uh
Caleb and Will are now are now adults. They were
you know, teenage guys, junior senior in high school when
(29:09):
that when that happened, and so you know, journeying through
that together as a family. The impact that losing their
little sister had on them obviously incredible impact on them
as well. And uh, my son Caleb in an interview
they do music as well. Their band Colony House. Shout out,
(29:30):
uh a little shameless plug for the greatest rock band
on the planet. If you want to listen to the
greatest rock band ever since the history of the of
of you know, the world, Uh, check out Colony House.
Amazing songwriter, my son and drummer Will Franklin, his brother
and her other son. But he was talking in an
interview about our family and how have you guys, you know,
(29:53):
processed this and you know, because there, I mean, there
was a there was there were many moments in and
you know, in the earliest days where we really felt like, gosh,
I don't think we will ever. I don't think it'll
ever be feel appropriate to laugh again. I'd hear laughter,
you know, in those early days in some part of
(30:14):
the room, and I think, man, I don't think I'll
ever my heart will ever be light again to feel
it is appropriate to even laugh, because there's this weird
thing with grief, at least in our case, and you know,
it's stuff you wrestle with, like to honor the loss
and the pain and our daughter and her memory and
her life. It will never be, you know, okay, to laugh,
(30:35):
because that would somehow dishonor this this depth of sadness
and pain that we carry. We will carry with us
until you know, until we see her her face and
Jesus face. And then with time, you know, God does
give you back that gift of laughter, you know. With music,
and a lot of music that I'd written, I thought
I can't ever imagine, you know, standing on a stage
(30:57):
in your hat that says saddle up or following the
Lord to song that people that listen to my music
over the years know well called The Great Adventure that
is written actually at the time from a pretty dark
place where God just met me with his grace in
a way that made me go wow, Okay, this is
like God is calling us on an adventure.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
It's gonna go mountains, it's gonna go valleys. It's gonna
be hard, it's gonna be harder than you ever thought.
But I will be with you, and I'll be leading you.
And this is an adventure of following me. Will you
come with me? And so that song was written out
of that, but it became this, you know, summer camp
theme song for you know, everybody just you know, fisting
there like let's go, I'd love your horses. And so
(31:36):
I thought, will it ever be okay to play that
song again? Because you know that song is full of
you know, just joy and passion and let's go and
and you know, so with with time, Yes, I was
in singing that song now and it took on a
whole new meaning. You know, so many of the lyrics
that you know I had already written, all of a sudden, Okay,
(31:57):
these now even mean more. I can sing these with
a greater conviction and and all of that. But my
my son was asked in this thing about you know,
how's your family, uh, you know, doing and and all
of that, and he used this phrase, says you know
we we hobble, but I think we hobble well. And
it's it's kind of that same thing of we we
(32:19):
have been crippled, you know by this we uh, we're
not you know, the full healing I believe, certainly for
us is not going to come until you know, we
see Jesus uh, and until the day he finishes wiping
every tear from our eyes. I mean, verses like you know,
Jesus Wept became so like one of the most powerful,
(32:43):
precious verses in all of Scripture. You know, where when
I was a kid, that was just kind of almost
the that was the memory verse if you got called
on and you know, Sunday schools, like anybody got a
Bible verses, I got one Jesus. You know, it was
almost more of like a you know that I didn't
again and begin to understand the enormity of that story
to hear Jesus is knowing I'm gonna raise Lazarus from
the dead. I'm gonna turn this whole thing around. It's
(33:04):
gonna end up in a crazy party before this.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Day is over.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
But my friend Lazarus is going to die again, you know,
this side of heaven, I mean this isn't you know,
this isn't heaven. This is a final resurrection. But I'm
going to raise him from the dead. But still Jesus
stood there with his friends and entered into that moment
of grief and sadness and raged at death and wept
with his friends. And that has you know, I think
(33:29):
we are living in what C. S. Lewis calls the
shadow lands. You know, we're living with these broken stories
and broken hearts and even the healing you know that
comes carries with it. I mean, for years, we we've
got to operate through the work my wife and I
are part of advocating for orphans and adoption called Show Hope.
(33:50):
We got to work for ten years in China, very
specifically at a place that cared for children that have
some severe medical special needs. And the place was built
and honor and named after our daughter, Maria, was called
Maria's Big House of Hope, named after her, you know
entrance into you know, into the Kingdom by this song
Big House, and we thought, well, let's call it Maria's
(34:11):
Big House of Hope. It's where she wanted to be.
And we had to care for thousands of children for
about ten years because of things with governments and all
things that have changed in recent years, it became impossible
for us to continue that work. But for ten years
we got to see many, many children healed, put in
(34:32):
you know, into families, adopted children that weren't going to survive.
Many that did pass away, but they passed away with
dignity and with care and someone loving them and you know,
weeping for them. And so it was a beautiful place
that you know, that carried our daughter's name, and we
saw the beauty of that. It's like that is an amazing,
beautiful thing that that came, the beauty from these ashes.
(34:54):
But even that carried with it a sadness that we
wish selfishly this place didn't even exists, because my wife
would say, if she was sitting here, I won't I
would if God gave me the choice, I'm sorry and
I'll you know, lightning strike me. I just would take
my daughter back if I had the option. So you
carry that's the hobble. You hobble with that reality. And
(35:15):
yet God, you know, you experience God in it, you
experience healing in it, and it's the already it's that.
Not yet you're still waiting for the ultimate, you know,
wiping of the tear, every tear from your eyes.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I think hearing all of this, it just reminds me
of how we're not supposed to do this alone, right,
How we're not supposed to handle the grief we can't. Yes,
that's why he asks us to cast, you know, all
of our fears, all of our worries, all of our anxieties,
everything on him, because we're just we're just not meant
to carry it on our own. And I think it
(35:47):
is almost such a beautiful depiction of that, because you
are going to hobble until you see her face again,
you know. And I just think that that reminder of
we can't do this alone. It's just it's definitely something
that I keep thinking of throughout this and thinking of
somebody that's listening right now who has lost a child
(36:09):
or lost a spouse or someone they love. What would
you say to them as they walk through grief?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wow, Well, just first of all, one of the you know,
the great challenges. One of the great I believe lies
that the enemy of goodness and all things beautiful that
reflect the heart of God would whisper lies of you
are alone. You're the only person who has ever ever
(36:40):
hurt this way? And how dare God, you know, put
you through this all of those those kinds of voices.
And in fact, I mean just because I've put all
these thoughts in song lyrics, it's weird to say I
wrote this song lyric like, listen to the song, not
that it all just the You know that there was
(37:01):
a lyric in a song that I wrote, Don't Lose Heart.
You know that says you know, here's having it's another
sleepless night. You're praying hope comes with the morning light.
Right now, right now, you're feeling like you've lost his fight.
Fear is screaming out your name. You say, God help me,
and you wonder if he's even listening. The truth is
I've wondered the very same thing. So you don't have
(37:23):
to feel ashamed. Let me walk through this with you
and tell you all that I've learned to be true,
don't be don't lose heart. And it's but to your
point of we just we need we need each other,
We need, you know, others to come around us and
remind us of what is true. That God is with us,
that he is faithful, and for reasons that we cannot
(37:44):
understand because you ask the question why do you ask?
Do you ask the question? Why do you wrestle with that? Absolutely?
And we have learned you know that there's that's there's
not shame in that that God Again the wonderful thing
about scripture about the Psalms, that God never said, don't
you don't you dare ask? Why don't you dare question me?
You know that is not the heart of our father?
(38:05):
You know, we we begin to understand. It's probably the
most amazing picture that someone gave me. And in fact,
they gave me a literal picture of physical picture that
they founded this. And as I was wrestling with, you know,
all of the questions and continue to with God, why
why didn't you step in? Why don't you step in
(38:25):
in these moments? Because if I believe you are good
and and you know, all powerful, all present, you know,
I just can't. I can't understand that and don't understand it,
And no I won't, but I'm still going to wrestle
with those questions of why. And he gave me this
visual of a horse that is with all of its
(38:50):
strength just straining to charge in too, you know, to
a situation to rescue and you can see just the
the intensity and the eyes, you know, of this powerful,
strong animal just wanting to charge in to rescue. And
yet you see this this bridle being held back, this
(39:14):
restraining you know, being pulled back to where it's just
it's straining against it. You know, it's straining with every
every bit of its strength. And you pull the scope
back and realize that the horse is actually itself restraining itself.
It is actually holding itself back, pulling against wanting to
(39:37):
charge in. But for reasons that we won't understand this
side of heaven, that that restraining is actually the the
you know, the horse itself, and that for me somehow,
is just this incredible picture of Okay, God, everything you know,
in his goodness and his love wants to charge in.
(39:58):
And he has ultimately charged in and rescued and conquered
death in the grave and you know, as Tim Keller says,
you know, entered into you know, the darkness of death
and blew a hole out of the backside of it.
So it has been done. But we're still in that
and then already in the not yet a fully understanding
and recognizing that, and for reasons right now that we
(40:22):
cannot understand, wouldn't be able to God restrains himself in
some way that I don't understand the theology of it.
I'm sure there are plenty of theologians that could probably
do a lot better job of explaining that. But for me,
that was that was something to be able to hold
on to and and be able to bring in with
all of those why questions and be able to say God, ultimately, uh,
(40:45):
it is it comes down to I will will I
trust you. I either trust you or I don't. And
I'm going to all the all the chips are going
on that side of the table. I'm just gonna I'm
gonna trust you. And and as you know, my family
and I have done that. We've continued daily, three steps forward,
(41:06):
two steps back, sometimes thirty steps back, you know, in
that process. And God's good and faithful and kind in
that in that journey as we kind of hobble on.
But He has continued to meet us and and you know,
in our journey, and I believe he does, you know,
and for all of us in all of our journeys.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
I think that the idea of hobbling well is so
potent it's so potent. That's going to be my phrase.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I hobble.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
I don't know about well, but I want to hobble.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That's that's the thing, that's the goal is just it's
not to not hobble, but it can it can we hobble? Well,
that's what my son was saying. I believe is I
look at my family. You know, we're beat up, we
got war, you know, war wounds all over us. You
know we're hobbling. But you know we got that limp
that we're going to carry. But he said, I look
at my family, and I think I think, by God's
grace for hobbling.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Well, and we'll keep.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And as a father myself, I think I've learned that
a lot of the lens of my understanding, the very
limited understanding I have, comes from with my sons, with
my daughters, and I think of the verse. God will
permit the right just to stumble, but he won't let
them fall.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yes, that's good.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
And my son, if I just do everything from him,
protect him from everything, it's not helpful, it's not It
doesn't help him become a great man. And although it's
sometimes like you know, when he was younger, he would
jump off the bed try it too, and I'd be
right there and I'd stop him and save him every time. Yeah,
but then I realized, no, this, I can't do this
(42:40):
for the rest of his life. And so I don't
want him to hurt himself. I don't want him to
do a reversible damage. But at the same time, maybe
I'll just let him feel it a little bit and
guess what, It helped him realize certain things that without
if I had just been there all the time. And
so I think God is close to the broken hearted one.
I think two that he loves us enough. This is
(43:00):
really hard thing to understand, but consider it pure joy
when you face trials of many kinds, because through perseverance,
there's a maturity and a completion that's happening in you.
There's a process that's happening through the hobble that I
couldn't get otherwise, and that's kindness. And I understand that
as a father, but as a son, I didn't get it.
I didn't get it, and so when it's happening to me,
(43:22):
I'm like, God, why, And that's part of it. It's like,
trust me, son, I know what I'm doing, and I
say that to my boy all the time, and every
time I'm like, God, why, and it's just like, trust me,
I know what I'm doing, and I think that is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
It's hard.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
It's just this constant, this relationship. There's certain elements that
require that exists, that have to exist in a relationship
to be a relationship. One of them is trust. Another
one is that we have to have free choice. You
can't have a real relationship if it's if you don't
(44:00):
have free choice, and so out of the flow and
effects of that. And that's why I do believe that questions,
back to the knocking on the hearts, the questions that
we have are so important to lean in. God's not
afraid of your why. When my son asked me why, Dad,
I'm like, I give him the right answer. He might
not like the right answer, but I'm like, Hey, trust me,
(44:21):
I love you. I'm for you. I love you more
than you ever understand. And I think God, God says
that to me every time I cry out, I'm like God,
you see it in David in the Psalms back to that,
It's like God and God comforts him just Hey, I
know you don't get it, but just trust me. This
is an important part of a real relationship. This makes
it real, the fact that I don't just give you
(44:42):
all the answers.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
So man, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Well, as we wrap up, I just I'm curious to know,
is there anything specific we can pray for you about
in this season that you're in or walking into or
walking out of.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
You know, I'm really my brad Mary Beth and I
have forty one years married in just a few weeks now,
I guess about a month. And we've actually done the unthinkable.
For many years, we've been approached about would you guys
write a book together. She shared her story and her
(45:15):
journey in a beautiful way in a book called Choosing
to See After We Lost our daughter, But it kind
of her whole life story of you know, ended up
marrying a musician when she really probably would have much
rather married an accountant or someone who you know, had
a much more stable life and all that that's been
like for her And then me, I wrote a memoirs,
(45:37):
a book a few years ago of my journey and
just all of that. But we always have resisted because
our journey, our journey together has been you talk about
hobbling a boy, oh boy, we have. It's been a
it's been a hobbled journey. And yet here we are,
in fact books called still here, because by God's grace,
we're still here after these many years, and and so
(46:00):
thankful for it. Same way we've we've been sharing kind
of our story and our our our our journey, and
we've always resisted writing a book that might be looked
at as a marriage book because we we honestly feel
like we could.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
We can write a book on here's what not to do,
but the two do books that.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Mostly line the shelves of you know, the love languages
and all these things, do these things which are really helpful,
you know in some ways for a lot of people,
we don't. We don't have that story where like we
can just tell you all the things, the ways that
we've messed it up, and somehow God has been faithful,
and it's kind of like about two pages, we screwed
it up, and God's faithful.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
There's our there's our.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Book, that's the Bible, the Bible is not to do.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
And then and then God, God is grace, is merciful
and gracious. So we decide, well, we'll do this and
and uh, you know, I think this season of life,
just to answer your question, we just we our our
hope is we would seward you know, well this season now,
with all of the you know, the battles, gars and
the good and the bad and the ugly, you know,
(47:03):
we have again, by the grace of God, seven little
people call me Popops and her Grammy. They are the
great joys of our lives. Those are seven new chapters
in our life story. God has given us, you know,
in the last eighteen years to give us, you know,
that wind in our sails, that laughter in our hearts again.
And so just we want to share that, you know
(47:25):
that in a really faithful way, and just steward this
season of life, you know, in a good way. Just
enjoy each other and what God's given us together. Also,
you know, our work with Show Hope, we see the
opportunities greater than they've ever been for the church to
really you know, the mission of show Hope is to
(47:46):
engage the church to care for orphans and reduce the
barriers to adoption. And we are given opportunities to do
that in ways we never imagined. And so we just
want to keep being faithful with that we see opportunities.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
For that ahead.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
We don't have the energy we had when we were
you know, started this, you know, thirty years ago or whatever,
twenty five years ago, but we still have a lot
of energy, and we have a little bit more wisdom
maybe than we did then. So just stewarding all of
that well is probably the prayer we would ask for
them as we continue to hobble on.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
All right, well, I'm going to pray us out and
then we will wrap things up.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Amazing, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Dear heavenly Father. Lord. We just say thank you for
these microphones and the conversations that we've had through them, Lord,
and that everything that is coming out of our voice
is just honoring you, and we just say thank you
for that opportunity. God. We're just praying over Stephen today
and his family, him and Mary Beth as they enter
this new season and this new book. God, we just
(48:46):
pray that you would help them to steward this next
season well, that you would give them joy, that you
would give them just sweet moments with their grandkids and
their children. Lord, that you would just open their hearts
to know you, and that these new seasons, these new
bits of life, Lord, they would just get to know
you better.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
We just we pray over show hope, and we just
asked that you supernaturally just continue to bless this mission Lord,
and as as it continues to grow, and as that
could it continues to require more focus and more time
and energy. God, I just pray over Steven and Marybeth
that you would give them supernatural energy to be able
to put their their wisdom in it, their energy in it,
(49:26):
their lives in it, Lord, and you would just use
it to continue to bless so many lives.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
We just say thank you again for this podcast in
these microphones, and we just we're grateful for you and
the mission behind this too. In your heavenly name. We
pray Amen.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Amen.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
That's such a legacy Father, like annoying on your life.
And I just want to say that this generation is
starving for fathers. And I really pray over this book
and this whole next season just for the total blessing,
because there's still here. There's not many fathers that are
(50:08):
still here, Yeah, there's not. There's not many people who've
walked with.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
A hobble and kept the faith for the fight and
finished the race.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
You know, and the longevity is there, and so just
thank you, I honor you, thank you for the longevity
and just the humility and meekness of your life.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Thank you Venue, thank you
Hey, I'm Stephen Curtis Chapman. I just would take my
daughter back if I had the option. You hobble with
that reality. You experience God in it, you experience healing
in it, and it's the already, it's that. Not yet,
you're still waiting for the ultimate wiping of every tear
from your eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And this is the upload.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
We're very grateful that you're joining us on the upload today.
Stephen Curtis Chapman is here, and I just want to
open by saying, you know you've written, you've sung about
faith for decades. You strip it all down, beyond music,
beyond all of the awards, beyond all of that. What
does the word faith mean to you today?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Good question. I mean the word faith first first word
that comes to mind. I guess if it's if this
is a word association game or quiz is survival? You know?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I mean faith is.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
The only way that I know we survive. You know,
this world, fallen world that we are in. Jesus says,
in this world you will have trouble, you know, and
all of us know that at our own different you know,
different degrees and different levels of of that. The longer
we live the deeper uh, into that you know, troubled
(01:18):
world we find ourselves, and the deeper the trouble seems
to get. And yet surviving that, you know is I
don't know any other way, certainly from my own experience
and my families and things that we've walked through, apart
from faith in uh, you know, in in a God
(01:38):
who we have experienced to be with us in those
places and sustain us, you know, through that. So that's
that's the first word that pops into my mind when
you when you ask that.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Question, man.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And faith is such a cool and like loaded word too,
because it just the word can and the meaning can
change in so many different aspects of your life. If
whatever season you're going through, the trials that you're going through,
faith really is a survival tool, or it would be
whipped for you helping someone else survive something else. It's yeah,
it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It's kind of I'm in the middle of a tour
right now, kind of re visiting an album that I
did twenty five years ago, well twenty six ish, you're
un yeah, but it was counting twenty five, twenty six
whatever it takes, called Speechless, and the whole theme of
that of that album, you know, and it's just been
so cool to get to revisit it because it was,
(02:33):
you know, I was twenty five years younger, and I
was at a place in life where, you know, a
lot of things had good, bad, ugly, you know, all
that had happened. But to even get to revisit those
songs and the truths of some of the songs that
I wrote and recorded on that album, Be Still and
Know that I Am God, you know, so I'm forty
six ten. That was a song that was on that album.
(02:53):
Just the whole concept of being you know, speechless. You know,
it's kind of written around this phrase that my pastor
and I were talking about. He used the words gospel astonishment,
being so astonished at the message of the Gospel that
we are stunned, even guys like us who love words,
because he, my pastor, Scottie Smith and dear friend, is
(03:14):
the only guy I know who loves to use words
more than me. He makes up words actually in his sermons.
Half the time I go look it up, like, wait, man,
that's not gospelicious. That's one of his favorite words he
throws out all the time. That's gospelicious. You know that's
you know, it's that those kind of things that he
throws around, and but He's like, you know this, if
we really, you know, get a just a glimpse of
(03:37):
the goodness of you know, and the enormity of the
love and the grace of God for us, it would
it would you know, render even guys like us who
use so many words, you know, speechless, we don't have
words for it. And and so I think, you know,
just even getting to revisit all of that has just
even deepened again my understanding of faith and looking back
(03:58):
at the journey and getting to sing those songs and
just kind of be stunned all over again at the
goodness of you know, of God is faithfulness and the
pain on the journey, and yet how He has sustained
my family and me on our journey.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah. Well, I'm curious, looking back over your life, maybe
share a moment where you first felt like faith was
real to you, not something that you were taught or
something that you learned, where you just you just kind
of grabbed a hold of it and you're like, yeah,
this is it.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, Well, I mean the first memory of that first
thing that comes to mind when you ask that question,
is I had seen a transformation to my family as
a result of faith in Jesus and my parents who'd
grown up around church and actually dragged a church every
Sunday because that's what you do in the buckle of
the Bible belt where they grew up in Kentucky and so,
(04:50):
but but it kind of moved away from it a
little bit, you know, in their teenage years, especially my
dad and so I grew up in a home that
was a little crazy, you know, my dad and mam
was sixteen when she married my dad. Dad had an
alcoholic father who was never He left home when my
dad was a baby, and so he never knew his father,
(05:10):
and so he grew up without a dad in his
life or really any father figure. So that resulted in
you know, just you know kind of what it would.
You know, he's a great still a great man and
new truth and knew and would say I still felt
like I knew, knew the Lord and wanted his presents
in my life, but I was just wandering. And so
he married my mom. My brother came along very shortly
(05:33):
after they got married, and she was still I think
seventeen when he was born, and so they was young
and it was a little crazy, and I grew up
in a lot of conflict and a lot of fights,
and there was just a lot of shame on my
dad and a lot of you know, just confusion. And
when I was about seven years old, my parents both
as a result of a there's a revival going on
(05:54):
in our little Baptist church there in Paduka, Kentucky, where
I grew up, all of that Baptist church. And as
God would orchestrate it, my mom, who had been going
to church every Sunday because that's what you do, dragging
me and my brother to church, she got my dad
to go for that revival and by the end of
that week, I just I saw transformation in my own home.
(06:14):
And it was very real, even to my seven year
old little self, because I just saw, you know, when
the fights would start to blow up, or when you'd
feel the attention and the conflict and you'd kind of,
you know, I'd start to get afraid.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
My dad would.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Stop and say, hey, wait a minute, we got to pray,
and we get on her knees together's family, and we'd pray,
and my dad would he didn't have really fancy prayers
he would just talk to God and say, God, I
don't know how to be a good dad. I don't
know how to be a husband. Will you please show me,
Please teach me. And so it's that humility and just
that sincerity of I really want to change. I want
(06:52):
this to change my life. And I saw it change
my mom and dad, and so I grew up kind
of watching that, and it was about It wasn't maybe
a year later, after seeing this transformation happening in my
home and in their lives, that we were sitting in
church together and.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
In a very very real, clear way.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I'll still I remember it all my life that the pastor,
Brother David McMichael, was quoting a revelation at the end
of his sermon, and I didn't pay any attention to
anything he had said. But when he said these words,
Jesus says, I stand at the door and knock, and
if anyone would open the door, I'll come in. And
when he said those words, it was it was just
(07:34):
as clear as anything I'd ever experienced, that Jesus was
knocking at the door of my heart. My heart was
beating fast, and I was like, what is going on?
But what his words? Those words are real and Jesus
is now knocking at my heart and having seen the
transformation in my family, that was, you know the beginning
(07:55):
of my faith journey. And what I understood even then
with that was, you know, he was a King James guy,
as I like to say, he was the O G
King James. You know, Jess says I'll come in and
SUP with him. Of course he lost me on that.
I didn't know what SUP meant and I was kind
of looking like, what is that, you know, but he explained,
you know, supper meal relation. It's like a relationship is
(08:17):
like Jesus says, I want to come have a relationship
with you.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I don't just want your Sunday mornings and your Sunday
you know, Sunday nights.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I want a moment by moment relationship with you.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And so that was for me the first of obviously
a lifetime of very real, tangible moments of my faith
becoming you know clear. But that was the first one.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I love that so much. I think the knocking on
the door of the hot you know, I think God
is knocking on everyone's hot you know. This week, my
nine year old boy, he knocked on his hot really
everything going on me and said, Dad, I want to
I want to stop reading the Bible every night. And
I'm like, all right, so let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I didn't have to make him. I didn't say, you know,
I was just like he came to me. I'm like,
that's the knocking, and we started reading. And two nights
later he said, Dad, I know God's real, but I
haven't ever asked him to be in my life seriously.
And so just hearing that story is making me emotional
because this week I saw that knocking and I saw
(09:21):
that door open in my nine year old boy, my
oldest son, and he just you know, we went through
and it was like, this is what it means, scripture
by scripture. Yeah, So for me, I think, what what
have you seen just in your own personal life as
a seven year old eight year old through that and
experiencing tension and seeing your parents on their knees when
they don't know what else to do. What does the
(09:42):
knocking look like even in your family, your kids' lives,
What's what's that look like?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Well?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I love that that story and of your your son,
you know, it is the way God will his spirit
will use you know, the things going on around us,
you know, the ways that it's part of the wonder
the mystery of God and his spirit. You know, like
(10:09):
the wind, you know, you know, Scripture says that, you know,
we can't see it coming and gone, we can't see
it moving. We feel the effects of it, you know,
we can see the effects of the wind. I saw
the effects of that in my parents at that point
in my life, and you know, I've watched it in
my own kids. My little girl Maria, who's with Jesus
now eighteen years she was five years old and getting
(10:35):
ready for school one morning, and this was a real
gift that the Lord gave us. When it was February
twentieth of two thousand and eight. She would go be
with Jesus in May of two thousand and eight, so
it was only a few months before an accident that
would take her life here on earth. And she was
(10:55):
getting her shoes on, getting ready for school, preschool, and
she went to this little preschool where they were learning
songs to get ready for their spring program, their graduation.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
She's getting ready to.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Graduate from preschool, and she said she was sitting on
her on the floor of her mom getting her shoes on,
and she said, Mom, does God really have a big house?
And Mom said, yeah, yes, and as far you know,
from what I understand and in the Bible, and she said,
does it? Does it really have a lot of a
lot of rooms in it? And so my wife it triggered.
(11:27):
My wife knew she was learning a song, Big Big
House by a group Audio Adrenaline Buddies of mine that
I toured with, and I knew that song very well
and she knew it, and she so she kind of
keyed in that she's asking about this song because she's
learning this song it's a big, big house with lots
of lots of rooms, lots of lots of food, big
yard you can play football. So my wife kind of,
you know, tricked her and just said, yeah, it does
(11:49):
have a lot of and it has a lot of
food too, and there's a big yard where you can
play football or whatever you want, you know, and really
looked at her like, Mom, how did you know? You know?
And she said, you're learning a song, I bet, aren't
you for your preschool your little program? And she said yeah.
And and so Maria, five years old, said, I want
to go. I want to go to God's Big House.
(12:12):
I want to go see it. Can I go? And
so her mom in that moment, and I happened.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
To be home. I wasn't on the road or anything.
She said.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
She called me and said, Stephen, I think you should
come in here. Maria is asking some questions that I think,
you know, it would be interesting to have a conversation
with her. So I remember I sat her up on
the kitchen counter so we were kind of eye to
eye and just talk to her about, you know, you
want to go see God's Big House. And I said, well,
you know, we actually get to go there if we,
(12:44):
you know, as we trust Jesus to you know, to
take us. He's the way we get to, you know,
to God's Big House and the Father. And tried to
explain as best I could, and in my head, in
my stupid, you know, adult brain, I'm going she's way
too young. She doesn't understand that, she doesn't know what
she's asking. But far be it from me to shut
(13:04):
this down. I'm just gonna We're going to ride this
wave and see what you know. And I said, do
you want to talk to God and just you know,
and talk to Jesus and ask him to, you know,
let you come to his house and come into your
heart and you know, lead, lead you through life.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
And she said yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And so her sister Stevie Joy, also adopted from China,
who was only about six months older than her. She
hears us talking, she's getting ready to and she's like, well, I.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Want to go. I want to go too.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So then I've set her up on the counter and
kind of talk with her and we pray, and you know,
at the at the point, I'm like, God, only you
know what's going on really in her heart. But then,
of course, you know, a few months later, you know,
when when she would go be with Jesus. That was
one of those amazing gifts that God gave us, just
that sense of this is where she wanted to be.
(13:54):
This is you know, and with all the sadness and
the grief and you know, not sticking some you know,
big Bible band aid on, you know, that wound of
our soul that'll be there until we see Jesus and
her face again. You know, it was an incredible gift
and a comfort to us, you know, to just that
moment that Jesus clearly knocked on her heart and in
(14:17):
his sovereignty, knowing you know, what he knows, and so yeah,
I mean there are the ways that he will use,
even you know, in your son's case. I mean, so
much that's going on in our world right now.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
You know he is questions.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, those questions that will come, and and just the
door that that opens for us to have those kind
of conversations. I just believe that's the Holy Spirit at
work in all of these things.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I have to say, like hearing all of this, it's
so encouraging for me. I have a four year old
and a one year old, and we recently, while I
would say over a little over a month ago, we
put them in a Christian like mother's day out program.
So it's out of church. It's you know, you think
she's four years old, she doesn't know anything or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
And it's so it's so amazing to see her little
(15:09):
mind go, mom, we forgot to pray for our food,
and she'll hold her hands and she'll say say the prayer,
or she her stomach was feeling yucky one day this
past week and she climbs up into my lap and
she goes, Mommy, can you touch my belly? And ask
God to make it feel better. And I was just like,
it's like it's those small things that they're paying attention
(15:30):
and they're listening, and they are learning about the love
of Jesus and they're learning about his kingdom. And I
just think just in the midst of tragedy, thinking back
to that moment where you're like, that was that was
for a reason? You know what I mean, it's just
so encouraging.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, And I love the knocking, you know, taking that
diverse in revelation and which is absolutely true for everyone.
You know, we say, God, shake toll, we say, but
I love it as questions. I wonder about this and
I think as kids, it's like my son's asking questions
all the time, why this?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
What about this?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
And understanding learning. Then you get a bit older and
the knocking, you know, it gets the questions are there,
but I'm less likely to ask the questions because I feel,
you know, pride or I feel like, you know, I
should know that. And I think just that's so encouraging
for me is to listen out and like you did,
a tune your attention to go, whether questions are lean in,
(16:26):
stop what I'm doing, focus in, and push through some
of the you know, maybe some of the barriers of
the subtleties in the questions, in the adults, in my
friends and people I do life that are around me
all the time and recognize them as that's God, the
Holy Spirit knocking on their heart, and to to tune
(16:46):
in and say, you know, hey, yeah, let's let's have
a conversation, Let's have a dialogue. I think with everything
going on right now, the world is so obviously binary.
I feel like there is such a more than it
ever has been before, a clear binary. Yeah, like it's
(17:07):
light and.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
It's dark, so much division.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah, and the dialogue, if the questions are the knocking
of the Holy Spirit, how important it is to open
up the conversations and also posture ourselves in a way
to be able to have those conversations with people and
people to feel like they can ask.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And so we love our pastor and friend for so
many years Scatti Smith. He always talks about, you know,
we're we are not called to be the fourth member
of the trinity, you know, and so often I think
we feel like and especially that's what I think happens
with just you know, I have to convince you have
to you know, uh, you know, make sure that you
(17:43):
you know that you get it, and you know that
is the job of the Holy Spirit. Our job is
you know, have the conversations, you know, the questions, stay
just you know, staying uh, keeping wonder in it and
curiosity and you know, I love you know, there's a
you know, uh G. K.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Chesterton.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know he talks about you know that that we're
the ones who grow old because we have sinned and
and we actually grow. God is infinitely young, and he
never grows tired of doing again and again the things
that show us his goodness, his love. Every morning, you know,
he talks about the sun to you know, God says
to the sun, do it again, do it again, you know,
(18:26):
and every you know, every night you know, the moon,
do it again. You know, come, and just that sense
of that God in the same way that God is
always knocking, He's always he's you know, he's given us,
you know, he's he's always revealing himself, you know, around
us in conversations and in nature and and always knocking.
If we just can have a child likeness enough and
(18:50):
humility to hear and listen and receive what it is
that he's.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Saying I.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Just keep thinking about people who are watching that might
not necessarily know the love of Jesus or might not
understand it is a better way to say it. But
walking through such a hard time in your life of
losing a child is one of the most unimaginable things,
you know, a parent can walk through. In those moments,
(19:17):
did God ever feel far away from you? Did you
ever have those questions of like you know, the why,
and those feelings of just grief?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yes, I mean you can't begin to you know. I
will say it this way is probably the best way
to try to answer that and explain it. You know,
I had always loved the psalms, and especially as a musician,
you know, and a Christian musician, the psalms are, you know,
(19:48):
just your go to. It's like this is the og,
you know, this is it. But like so many I think,
you know, you gravitate towards your love is better than life,
better as one day your courts. I mean, we sing
the songs that are all over the you know, modern
worship songs, all of those, you know, great declarations of
the love of God and the grace of God. I
(20:10):
had never really probably just skipped over the hard, you know.
I'm like, yeah, but I don't what's the how long?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
O Lords?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
And all of those things you know that are and
you not until walking through this that are really you know,
recognize and come to realize that most many of those celebrated,
you know, beautiful declarations that we make in our worship
songs actually come in the very same verse or the
very same passage in chapter you know, after the how long,
(20:41):
O Lord?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Are you going to forget me forever? You know?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And then there's this turn of soul? Why are you
so downcast?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Within me? Hope in God?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's like the Psalmist is, you know, is giving us
this incredible The whole process of this is where a
lot of life is going to be lived.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
How long? Oh Lord?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
This makes no sense. I don't get it. You're I'm
off the radar. If you even exist, you know, then
I guess you've forgotten me clearly, you know, And I'll
just grant you that you exist. But you forgot me
and and my plight and my pain and all of
that and what's so amazing? And I didn't I will
(21:22):
say that I really didn't understand so much of the
Psalms until walking through this, and suddenly those verses became
life for me because I was so desperate for someone
who you know, could enter into that pain, you know
with me and say and I suddenly those those were
(21:44):
that gave me, you know, voice to the things that
I was feeling, that distance and that and that how
long you know, oh Lord, thing that we feel in
those moments of God. I just I can't imagine this ever,
ever being anything thing other than just absolute you know, sadness, uh,
(22:05):
just you know, pain. And and yet what I have
learned from that and still learning is that, you know,
I'm so thankful, aren't we all as people faith that
God didn't edit out in the Bible what most of
us would have edited out of a book if we
were having it written about us and our our you know,
(22:28):
faith that we created would be, oh, don't put that
in there. You know, God, you know, absolutely, uh, you know,
inspired all of that to be included, because those are
you know, when we are so desperate to have that,
those you know, those places where what you know, what
the Psalmist teaches us that he did right, that he
(22:50):
got right in all of that, is that every at
every point he is bringing all of that and pouring
it out, you know, to God, and you know the confusion,
the sadness, the grief. You know, job is the same,
you know, we get all of that and then this
just resolution and for me, and I remember it very clearly,
(23:11):
and I've told this, shared this before, but you know
when when we first lost our daughter, and I remember
just at the hospital, Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, receiving the news
that that she hadn't survived, and just feeling this what
I call a black hole of despair. It just felt
(23:34):
like what I understand a black hole to be. It's
just it sucks everything into it and and and at
that point it ceases to be and I remember just thinking,
I I am being sucked into this, and I don't
think there's ever a I don't there won't be another
come out the other side. This is just gonna, you know,
(23:54):
just take take me. And I would start to feel
being kind of sucked into that black hole of hopelessness,
and then just again, by by God's grace, I would
take a breath and all that would come to mind
is Blessed be your name. You give and you take away,
(24:14):
Blessed be your name. And there was a song my
dear friend Matt Redmond had written that I knew that
song and I would just try to sing it, squeak
it out whatever I could get out, and and when
I would do that, it's like my next breath. I could,
I could breathe, but it's like I just taken my
(24:34):
last breath, but I just took enough to get out.
Blessed be your name, you give you take away, but
I'm gonna. I'm gonna bless your name. I'm gonna worship you,
And all of a sudden, I take a breath. I
was like, whoa, I got. I got breath back in
my lungs now for just a few more steps, you know,
and then start to feel that black hole pull me in,
and then it'd be that again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna
(24:56):
choose to trust you, bless your name, worse you. And
in that same sense of those psalms, it was just like, God,
this is what I feel. I'm gonna pour this out
to you, But so why are you?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So? You know?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I got this picture all of a sudden as I
was reading those songs that the psawmist is literally pounding
on his own chest, going, come on heart, you know,
beat soul, Why are you so downcast? Remember what is?
It's true? It is, this is all true. It's crazy.
The world is completely going nuts right now in our situation.
Our pain is so real and true and I don't
(25:31):
know how we're going to survive it. That's all true.
But what's what I'm gonna choose to believe is most
true is that God, you were faithful, you were good,
you were with us, And as crazy as that even
sounds to say it out loud right now, I'm going
to keep declaring it and saying And the more we did,
the more I felt that oxygen come back into my lungs.
(25:55):
And it was that daily, breath by breath, step by
step process, especially in the early you know, days and
hours of that, and God has just been faithful. And
we still have days, as we all do, and we
as a family still carry that broken heart, and some days,
you know, my bride will just still be so angry.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And I just don't get it. I still don't get it.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know, there's so many other ways God could have
done all these wonderful things other than this way. And
yet I'm gonna keep I'm gonna trust you God, and.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I love David as a man after God's own heart.
He's known, and as I'm hearing you share, I can't
help but think, like, God loves us so much. He
loves David, he loves you so much. He's wanting honesty,
you know, He's wanting not just the polished, not the
(26:54):
well rehearsed facade. And we sometimes I feel like we've
got to come and like he's this this big you know,
I've got to be all dressed up button. But God's wanting,
as you see in the Psalms, he's wanting. He's just
wanting you your heart, the honesty. And in the garden
when Adam and Eva, he's like where are you?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Why are you hiding?
Speaker 4 (27:14):
He's like, hey, it's okay. And shame keeps us, you know,
the pain of everything we're going through keeps us hidden.
But God saying, hey, I can handle your honesty. I
love you that much. And to see that, and that's
that's really hard, is too I feel like to be
that honest and raw. But reading the Psalms, you go, oh, man,
this is God's heart, is that he just wants to
(27:37):
know you in that way. And so to hear to
hear that so encouraging and just for many people that
you know, when you're reading the Bible, it's like, I
don't I've got to get to a certain point first.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I've got to get you know.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
But God say, no, wherever you're at, doesn't matter where
your outcomers you are, no matter how much it hurts,
no matter what you're going through, the loss of a
daughter bro unimaginable, but just shit, tell God this is
this is what I'm feeling, and let him heal that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Do you feel like post.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Now how many eighteen years you say, do you feel
like from a healing perspective? You say, there's moments and
there's times where you still struggle, you're still angry. What
where do you feel like from a healing perspective?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Is the is the goal? Is that?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Where do you explain to me the theology or the
thoughts or the wrestles with the level of healing of that.
Do you feel like, man, you're looking for total healing.
Do you feel like it's a part of just the
story and the scar that God's using Because I wrestle
with that, I wrestle with like God, full healing, partial healing, scars,
open wounds, That's.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Something we we say it was my son actually who
who have to give credit to him for this freeze
when he talks about our family, because my son's uh
Caleb and Will are now are now adults. They were
you know, teenage guys, junior senior in high school when
(29:09):
that when that happened, and so you know, journeying through
that together as a family. The impact that losing their
little sister had on them obviously incredible impact on them
as well. And uh, my son Caleb in an interview
they do music as well. Their band Colony House. Shout out,
(29:30):
uh a little shameless plug for the greatest rock band
on the planet. If you want to listen to the
greatest rock band ever since the history of the of
of you know, the world, Uh, check out Colony House.
Amazing songwriter, my son and drummer Will Franklin, his brother
and her other son. But he was talking in an
interview about our family and how have you guys, you know,
(29:53):
processed this and you know, because there, I mean, there
was a there was there were many moments in and
you know, in the earliest days where we really felt like, gosh,
I don't think we will ever. I don't think it'll
ever be feel appropriate to laugh again. I'd hear laughter,
you know, in those early days in some part of
(30:14):
the room, and I think, man, I don't think I'll
ever my heart will ever be light again to feel
it is appropriate to even laugh, because there's this weird
thing with grief, at least in our case, and you know,
it's stuff you wrestle with, like to honor the loss
and the pain and our daughter and her memory and
her life. It will never be, you know, okay, to laugh,
(30:35):
because that would somehow dishonor this this depth of sadness
and pain that we carry. We will carry with us
until you know, until we see her her face and
Jesus face. And then with time, you know, God does
give you back that gift of laughter, you know. With music,
and a lot of music that I'd written, I thought
I can't ever imagine, you know, standing on a stage
(30:57):
in your hat that says saddle up or following the
Lord to song that people that listen to my music
over the years know well called The Great Adventure that
is written actually at the time from a pretty dark
place where God just met me with his grace in
a way that made me go wow, Okay, this is
like God is calling us on an adventure.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
It's gonna go mountains, it's gonna go valleys. It's gonna
be hard, it's gonna be harder than you ever thought.
But I will be with you, and I'll be leading you.
And this is an adventure of following me. Will you
come with me? And so that song was written out
of that, but it became this, you know, summer camp
theme song for you know, everybody just you know, fisting
there like let's go, I'd love your horses. And so
(31:36):
I thought, will it ever be okay to play that
song again? Because you know that song is full of
you know, just joy and passion and let's go and
and you know, so with with time, Yes, I was
in singing that song now and it took on a
whole new meaning. You know, so many of the lyrics
that you know I had already written, all of a sudden, Okay,
(31:57):
these now even mean more. I can sing these with
a greater conviction and and all of that. But my
my son was asked in this thing about you know,
how's your family, uh, you know, doing and and all
of that, and he used this phrase, says you know
we we hobble, but I think we hobble well. And
it's it's kind of that same thing of we we
(32:19):
have been crippled, you know by this we uh, we're
not you know, the full healing I believe, certainly for
us is not going to come until you know, we
see Jesus uh, and until the day he finishes wiping
every tear from our eyes. I mean, verses like you know,
Jesus Wept became so like one of the most powerful,
(32:43):
precious verses in all of Scripture. You know, where when
I was a kid, that was just kind of almost
the that was the memory verse if you got called
on and you know, Sunday schools, like anybody got a
Bible verses, I got one Jesus. You know, it was
almost more of like a you know that I didn't
again and begin to understand the enormity of that story
to hear Jesus is knowing I'm gonna raise Lazarus from
the dead. I'm gonna turn this whole thing around. It's
(33:04):
gonna end up in a crazy party before this.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Day is over.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
But my friend Lazarus is going to die again, you know,
this side of heaven, I mean this isn't you know,
this isn't heaven. This is a final resurrection. But I'm
going to raise him from the dead. But still Jesus
stood there with his friends and entered into that moment
of grief and sadness and raged at death and wept
with his friends. And that has you know, I think
(33:29):
we are living in what C. S. Lewis calls the
shadow lands. You know, we're living with these broken stories
and broken hearts and even the healing you know that
comes carries with it. I mean, for years, we we've
got to operate through the work my wife and I
are part of advocating for orphans and adoption called Show Hope.
(33:50):
We got to work for ten years in China, very
specifically at a place that cared for children that have
some severe medical special needs. And the place was built
and honor and named after our daughter, Maria, was called
Maria's Big House of Hope, named after her, you know
entrance into you know, into the Kingdom by this song
Big House, and we thought, well, let's call it Maria's
(34:11):
Big House of Hope. It's where she wanted to be.
And we had to care for thousands of children for
about ten years because of things with governments and all
things that have changed in recent years, it became impossible
for us to continue that work. But for ten years
we got to see many, many children healed, put in
(34:32):
you know, into families, adopted children that weren't going to survive.
Many that did pass away, but they passed away with
dignity and with care and someone loving them and you know,
weeping for them. And so it was a beautiful place
that you know, that carried our daughter's name, and we
saw the beauty of that. It's like that is an amazing,
beautiful thing that that came, the beauty from these ashes.
(34:54):
But even that carried with it a sadness that we
wish selfishly this place didn't even exists, because my wife
would say, if she was sitting here, I won't I
would if God gave me the choice, I'm sorry and
I'll you know, lightning strike me. I just would take
my daughter back if I had the option. So you
carry that's the hobble. You hobble with that reality. And
(35:15):
yet God, you know, you experience God in it, you
experience healing in it, and it's the already it's that.
Not yet you're still waiting for the ultimate, you know,
wiping of the tear, every tear from your eyes.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I think hearing all of this, it just reminds me
of how we're not supposed to do this alone, right,
How we're not supposed to handle the grief we can't. Yes,
that's why he asks us to cast, you know, all
of our fears, all of our worries, all of our anxieties,
everything on him, because we're just we're just not meant
to carry it on our own. And I think it
(35:47):
is almost such a beautiful depiction of that, because you
are going to hobble until you see her face again,
you know. And I just think that that reminder of
we can't do this alone. It's just it's definitely something
that I keep thinking of throughout this and thinking of
somebody that's listening right now who has lost a child
(36:09):
or lost a spouse or someone they love. What would
you say to them as they walk through grief?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Wow, Well, just first of all, one of the you know,
the great challenges. One of the great I believe lies
that the enemy of goodness and all things beautiful that
reflect the heart of God would whisper lies of you
are alone. You're the only person who has ever ever
(36:40):
hurt this way? And how dare God, you know, put
you through this all of those those kinds of voices.
And in fact, I mean just because I've put all
these thoughts in song lyrics, it's weird to say I
wrote this song lyric like, listen to the song, not
that it all just the You know that there was
(37:01):
a lyric in a song that I wrote, Don't Lose Heart.
You know that says you know, here's having it's another
sleepless night. You're praying hope comes with the morning light.
Right now, right now, you're feeling like you've lost his fight.
Fear is screaming out your name. You say, God help me,
and you wonder if he's even listening. The truth is
I've wondered the very same thing. So you don't have
(37:23):
to feel ashamed. Let me walk through this with you
and tell you all that I've learned to be true,
don't be don't lose heart. And it's but to your
point of we just we need we need each other,
We need, you know, others to come around us and
remind us of what is true. That God is with us,
that he is faithful, and for reasons that we cannot
(37:44):
understand because you ask the question why do you ask?
Do you ask the question? Why do you wrestle with that? Absolutely?
And we have learned you know that there's that's there's
not shame in that that God Again the wonderful thing
about scripture about the Psalms, that God never said, don't
you don't you dare ask? Why don't you dare question me?
You know that is not the heart of our father?
(38:05):
You know, we we begin to understand. It's probably the
most amazing picture that someone gave me. And in fact,
they gave me a literal picture of physical picture that
they founded this. And as I was wrestling with, you know,
all of the questions and continue to with God, why
why didn't you step in? Why don't you step in
(38:25):
in these moments? Because if I believe you are good
and and you know, all powerful, all present, you know,
I just can't. I can't understand that and don't understand it,
And no I won't, but I'm still going to wrestle
with those questions of why. And he gave me this
visual of a horse that is with all of its
(38:50):
strength just straining to charge in too, you know, to
a situation to rescue and you can see just the
the intensity and the eyes, you know, of this powerful,
strong animal just wanting to charge in to rescue. And
yet you see this this bridle being held back, this
(39:14):
restraining you know, being pulled back to where it's just
it's straining against it. You know, it's straining with every
every bit of its strength. And you pull the scope
back and realize that the horse is actually itself restraining itself.
It is actually holding itself back, pulling against wanting to
(39:37):
charge in. But for reasons that we won't understand this
side of heaven, that that restraining is actually the the
you know, the horse itself, and that for me somehow,
is just this incredible picture of Okay, God, everything you know,
in his goodness and his love wants to charge in.
(39:58):
And he has ultimately charged in and rescued and conquered
death in the grave and you know, as Tim Keller says,
you know, entered into you know, the darkness of death
and blew a hole out of the backside of it.
So it has been done. But we're still in that
and then already in the not yet a fully understanding
and recognizing that, and for reasons right now that we
(40:22):
cannot understand, wouldn't be able to God restrains himself in
some way that I don't understand the theology of it.
I'm sure there are plenty of theologians that could probably
do a lot better job of explaining that. But for me,
that was that was something to be able to hold
on to and and be able to bring in with
all of those why questions and be able to say God, ultimately, uh,
(40:45):
it is it comes down to I will will I
trust you. I either trust you or I don't. And
I'm going to all the all the chips are going
on that side of the table. I'm just gonna I'm
gonna trust you. And and as you know, my family
and I have done that. We've continued daily, three steps forward,
(41:06):
two steps back, sometimes thirty steps back, you know, in
that process. And God's good and faithful and kind in
that in that journey as we kind of hobble on.
But He has continued to meet us and and you know,
in our journey, and I believe he does, you know,
and for all of us in all of our journeys.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
I think that the idea of hobbling well is so
potent it's so potent. That's going to be my phrase.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I hobble.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
I don't know about well, but I want to hobble.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
That's that's the thing, that's the goal is just it's
not to not hobble, but it can it can we hobble? Well,
that's what my son was saying. I believe is I
look at my family. You know, we're beat up, we
got war, you know, war wounds all over us. You
know we're hobbling. But you know we got that limp
that we're going to carry. But he said, I look
at my family, and I think I think, by God's
grace for hobbling.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Well, and we'll keep.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
And as a father myself, I think I've learned that
a lot of the lens of my understanding, the very
limited understanding I have, comes from with my sons, with
my daughters, and I think of the verse. God will
permit the right just to stumble, but he won't let
them fall.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yes, that's good.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
And my son, if I just do everything from him,
protect him from everything, it's not helpful, it's not It
doesn't help him become a great man. And although it's
sometimes like you know, when he was younger, he would
jump off the bed try it too, and I'd be
right there and I'd stop him and save him every time. Yeah,
but then I realized, no, this, I can't do this
(42:40):
for the rest of his life. And so I don't
want him to hurt himself. I don't want him to
do a reversible damage. But at the same time, maybe
I'll just let him feel it a little bit and
guess what, It helped him realize certain things that without
if I had just been there all the time. And
so I think God is close to the broken hearted one.
I think two that he loves us enough. This is
(43:00):
really hard thing to understand, but consider it pure joy
when you face trials of many kinds, because through perseverance,
there's a maturity and a completion that's happening in you.
There's a process that's happening through the hobble that I
couldn't get otherwise, and that's kindness. And I understand that
as a father, but as a son, I didn't get it.
I didn't get it, and so when it's happening to me,
(43:22):
I'm like, God, why, And that's part of it. It's like,
trust me, son, I know what I'm doing, and I
say that to my boy all the time, and every
time I'm like, God, why, and it's just like, trust me,
I know what I'm doing, and I think that is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
It's hard.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
It's just this constant, this relationship. There's certain elements that
require that exists, that have to exist in a relationship
to be a relationship. One of them is trust. Another
one is that we have to have free choice. You
can't have a real relationship if it's if you don't
(44:00):
have free choice, and so out of the flow and
effects of that. And that's why I do believe that questions,
back to the knocking on the hearts, the questions that
we have are so important to lean in. God's not
afraid of your why. When my son asked me why, Dad,
I'm like, I give him the right answer. He might
not like the right answer, but I'm like, Hey, trust me,
(44:21):
I love you. I'm for you. I love you more
than you ever understand. And I think God, God says
that to me every time I cry out, I'm like God,
you see it in David in the Psalms back to that,
It's like God and God comforts him just Hey, I
know you don't get it, but just trust me. This
is an important part of a real relationship. This makes
it real, the fact that I don't just give you
(44:42):
all the answers.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
So man, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Well, as we wrap up, I just I'm curious to know,
is there anything specific we can pray for you about
in this season that you're in or walking into or
walking out of.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
You know, I'm really my brad Mary Beth and I
have forty one years married in just a few weeks now,
I guess about a month. And we've actually done the unthinkable.
For many years, we've been approached about would you guys
write a book together. She shared her story and her
(45:15):
journey in a beautiful way in a book called Choosing
to See After We Lost our daughter, But it kind
of her whole life story of you know, ended up
marrying a musician when she really probably would have much
rather married an accountant or someone who you know, had
a much more stable life and all that that's been
like for her And then me, I wrote a memoirs,
(45:37):
a book a few years ago of my journey and
just all of that. But we always have resisted because
our journey, our journey together has been you talk about
hobbling a boy, oh boy, we have. It's been a
it's been a hobbled journey. And yet here we are,
in fact books called still here, because by God's grace,
we're still here after these many years, and and so
(46:00):
thankful for it. Same way we've we've been sharing kind
of our story and our our our our journey, and
we've always resisted writing a book that might be looked
at as a marriage book because we we honestly feel
like we could.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
We can write a book on here's what not to do,
but the two do books that.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Mostly line the shelves of you know, the love languages
and all these things, do these things which are really helpful,
you know in some ways for a lot of people,
we don't. We don't have that story where like we
can just tell you all the things, the ways that
we've messed it up, and somehow God has been faithful,
and it's kind of like about two pages, we screwed
it up, and God's faithful.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
There's our there's our.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Book, that's the Bible, the Bible is not to do.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
And then and then God, God is grace, is merciful
and gracious. So we decide, well, we'll do this and
and uh, you know, I think this season of life,
just to answer your question, we just we our our
hope is we would seward you know, well this season now,
with all of the you know, the battles, gars and
the good and the bad and the ugly, you know,
(47:03):
we have again, by the grace of God, seven little
people call me Popops and her Grammy. They are the
great joys of our lives. Those are seven new chapters
in our life story. God has given us, you know,
in the last eighteen years to give us, you know,
that wind in our sails, that laughter in our hearts again.
And so just we want to share that, you know
(47:25):
that in a really faithful way, and just steward this
season of life, you know, in a good way. Just
enjoy each other and what God's given us together. Also,
you know, our work with Show Hope, we see the
opportunities greater than they've ever been for the church to
really you know, the mission of show Hope is to
(47:46):
engage the church to care for orphans and reduce the
barriers to adoption. And we are given opportunities to do
that in ways we never imagined. And so we just
want to keep being faithful with that we see opportunities.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
For that ahead.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
We don't have the energy we had when we were
you know, started this, you know, thirty years ago or whatever,
twenty five years ago, but we still have a lot
of energy, and we have a little bit more wisdom
maybe than we did then. So just stewarding all of
that well is probably the prayer we would ask for
them as we continue to hobble on.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
All right, well, I'm going to pray us out and
then we will wrap things up.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Amazing, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Dear heavenly Father. Lord. We just say thank you for
these microphones and the conversations that we've had through them, Lord,
and that everything that is coming out of our voice
is just honoring you, and we just say thank you
for that opportunity. God. We're just praying over Stephen today
and his family, him and Mary Beth as they enter
this new season and this new book. God, we just
(48:46):
pray that you would help them to steward this next
season well, that you would give them joy, that you
would give them just sweet moments with their grandkids and
their children. Lord, that you would just open their hearts
to know you, and that these new seasons, these new
bits of life, Lord, they would just get to know
you better.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
We just we pray over show hope, and we just
asked that you supernaturally just continue to bless this mission Lord,
and as as it continues to grow, and as that
could it continues to require more focus and more time
and energy. God, I just pray over Steven and Marybeth
that you would give them supernatural energy to be able
to put their their wisdom in it, their energy in it,
(49:26):
their lives in it, Lord, and you would just use
it to continue to bless so many lives.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
We just say thank you again for this podcast in
these microphones, and we just we're grateful for you and
the mission behind this too. In your heavenly name. We
pray Amen.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Amen.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
That's such a legacy Father, like annoying on your life.
And I just want to say that this generation is
starving for fathers. And I really pray over this book
and this whole next season just for the total blessing,
because there's still here. There's not many fathers that are
(50:08):
still here, Yeah, there's not. There's not many people who've
walked with.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
A hobble and kept the faith for the fight and
finished the race.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
You know, and the longevity is there, and so just
thank you, I honor you, thank you for the longevity
and just the humility and meekness of your life.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Thank you Venue, thank you
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