The Dr. John Delony Show - Off the Record: Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

🔥 Microhabits for a better marriage. Download the Together app. Find more from Steven Curtis Chapman. Find more from Mary Beth Chapman. Read their new book, Still Here.   On today’s episode, John sits down with Christian music legend Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth, for an honest conversation about marriage, fame and the power of therapy.   Next Steps: 🎉 Enter the Ramsey Cash Giveaway for a chance at $500 weekly prizes and a $10,000 grand prize! Daily entries increase chances of winning. ❤️ Get away with your spouse today! 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John’s Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch   Connect With Our Sponsors: Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Go to Capstone Wellness to learn more. Get up to 20% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe.  Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers!  Working knives for working people—go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! Head to Shady Rays and use code DELONY for 40% off two or more polarized sunglasses.  Get 25% off your order at Thorne.   Visit Zander Insurance or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today.   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That song kind of blew up and people started using it at weddings and publishers came and said, you know, that's a big song. You should write a book about your wonderful marriage. Have you been fired by a counselor yet? Because we've been fired. Because we know we're not out of the woods until we walk into heaven. I mean, we're not. This ain't behind us. We had some really tough almost call it moments.

There were days where it's like, I'm not working on this today. You can do that. What up? Welcome to. Another special episode of Off the Record with John. I'm John Deloney, host of the Dr. John Deloney show. And I've started incorporating more conversations with people that I love, people I'm interested in, people who inspire me. And you all continue to say, hey, have more of these conversations.

So we're having more conversations. And we've started this little, named it something different, called Off the Record, and it's been a blast. This time I'm sitting down with the great and powerful. Stephen Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth Chapman. Now, if you don't know who that is, in the contemporary Christian music world, this is like Garth Brooks of that planet, right? I grew up a punk rock kid and a metal kid,

but I did go to Sunday school, and even peripherally, I knew who Stephen Curtis Chapman was because he was the legend. He was the ultimate, right? He's won about $8 billion awards, of all kinds for his music, his songwriting, and he's been married for decades to Mary Beth Chapman.

Now, here's where this conversation is important. They have a brand new book out called Still Here. And it's a discussion on the challenges they've experienced being married and how they've stuck it out and hung in there, despite the loss of a child, despite all sorts of challenges professionally, personally, And so we dig into that in this conversation. How does somebody of his caliber, of her caliber, decide we're going to stick it out and stay married, especially when things get really, really hard?

Now, if you're listening to this and thinking like, right, it makes sense to be like, well, I'm not married to super musician or I don't even listen to Christian music, I get it, but this conversation is a really powerful one. And so it applies to my house. It applies to your house. It applies if you've been married for a long, long time. It applies if you're in the middle of a marriage, it's just drifted apart. This applies to you if you're thinking about getting married to somebody and you're thinking about asking them. And you don't even know how it's going to look five, 10, 20, 40 years from now. This is a powerful conversation.

So buckle up for a great conversation with my friend Stephen and his amazing wife, Mary Beth, as we talk about their marriage and their brand new book still here. So I was shocked at how when I was sitting down thinking about the moment, like, in my head it's a singular moment. And my wife jokes, she's like, we had that like happened five times, like over the course. We've been married 23 and a half years. When we sat across the table and we were like, hey, is this it? Like, we have to call it.

Like, the thing we had is over. Do we want to do something? We want to build something else because this thing's over. And so writing it down for me, I was shocked at how much of that began to become real again. I thought that we had, I thought by moving through it, the feelings of that stuff was over. Yeah. How was writing this? Did that stuff come back?

Some of those old stories, old, like conflict moments? Yeah, I think, I think it does. And for us at the same time, I won't put words in your mouth. Oh, you go. I think it also, I have found that doing some of these interviews, it's been reassuring to go, wait, we did that. We had some really tough, almost call it moments, like really hard, really hard. It's been a journey.

And yet doing some of these interviews and the writing process, it's been like, we no longer did it. We conquered it. We made it. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and it's both. It's both, right? Because it's like, there were days where it's like, I'm not working on this today.

You can do that. I can't. I can't. It really does feel like, you know, those the stones of remembrance, you know, in the Old Testament and the Israelites, you know, those Ebenezer stones, you know, going to build those and, you know, stack those stones up. So that when you come back here years later and, you know, your kids and grandkids are going to go, what's that? What are those stones tagging? What's that about? You know, and you're going to have an opportunity to remember again.

well, God did this right here, and the waters, you know, the Jordan were held back and we crossed over and this crazy miracle thing that you're going to need. And I feel like, yeah, that's part of what has been a real, in a way, it's funny, Scotty Smith, and we'll probably say his name a hundred times as we're talking, because he's written on just about every page of that along with us because he's journeyed with us as our friend, pastor, yeah, confident. But first, one of our first and main counselors probably through many of our years and would direct us. So I think you need to go talk to this person. Now I think you ought to go talk to that person. But he would talk about things that God uses almost as a Trojan horse. You know, some of these things that you, God's in this and doing something. And you think it's this, but it's actually, he's actually doing something bigger.

And you might, you know, you won't even see it. And I think this book in some ways has kind of been that for us because it's, I'm not, it sounds funny and we kind of lightheartedly say this. But it was really scary even going into this process, even after 41 years, because we know we're not, we're not out of the woods until we walk into heaven. I mean, we're not. And I mean, the enemy is not, you know, said, hey, yeah, I guess they, you know, they made it. this far, so let's go find somebody else to pick on. No, it's like holding my beer. Let's do you want to dance.

Let's dance. Exactly. So going into this, there were moments even early on where I thought, well, crap, this is really going to be bad that we get, you know, about three-fourths away through this project and we have to call the publisher and go, is it a problem that we actually are divorced now? Is that going to be an issue with this? You're probably going to, you know. Exact conversation with my wife.

I'm like, the subtitle is how I lost my marriage, writing a book on marriage. Exactly. That's right. So, I mean, and that was a real thing. And yeah, I think for me and for both of us, we're hearing ourselves even in these interviews. And we did the audiobook for it, which that was even another, like, are we going to survive this? Because we're going to go back through all this and read it to each other. And I know my wife well enough to go, wait a minute. I said, I said, well, can I do, can I retract that? Because I don't feel like that right now. But it was, it's been so good to just, I think, hear our own voices and each other's voice. says reaffirm and, you know, sort of confirm the things that are here that are to God's glory and this is what God's done. This is what our journeys look like. We're still in it. We're still in process. But we did finish it and we're still married.

And that's good. You know, anytime you're trying to step, you know, and push darkness back and help somebody, you would be foolish not to think that the enemy is not going to rear its ugly head, which is why I keep telling Steve, maybe we should like, let's go start a casino. It's right. Maybe we should do something where the enemy's not like, I'm not on that.

Yeah. Go ahead. So how'd you all meet? Oh, this is fun. So my maiden name is Chapman. Did you know that? Gross. It is gross.

And awesome. And he's from Kentucky. So it's all work. That is right. That is right. We met. At Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana. And we shared a mailbox because our last names were the same.

That's how we met. Yes. True story. It was meant to be true story. And so I saw his name. He saw my name. I chased her down. Well, I saw her first walking across campus and a friend of mine,

literally we were walking to cafeteria and this beautiful brown-eyed girl that I'd never seen on campus before walks by. And he waved and say, hey, hi, Mary Beth. And I'm like, who is that? Because we'd been there a couple of years. This is my third year, and she was a freshman. And he said, I met her last night at an orientation thing. And he was going to check out, I'm sure, all the new incoming freshman. And he said, her name is Mary Beth.

And I remember him saying, wait a minute, I think her last name's Chapman. You guys, y'all can like be related. And I was thinking, I hope not. Yeah, and although I'm from Kentucky, so that doesn't matter. It could be. It could be, you know, that's... Which explains our kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we met at her mailbox, and or I saw her name, and then because I was already, had seen her and thought, man, she's quite lovely. A founder in the cafeteria, saw her, sent out some spies, like, watch for this girl. She's coming across campus. Now, this was before cell phone. phones, computers, you know, barely. This is before electricity. But hold on, I got to say this.

This before fire. This used to be called romantic, and now it's called stalking, right? Yeah, exactly. I used to, like, leave a class early. Yes. Just because I knew the woman is my wife now was walking across campus to go to her next class. Exactly what you did. And we just bump into each other.

Yeah. I just happened to be standing out. That would be weird and creepy. Yeah, it was. She was like, man, he left class for me. Yeah, it was super intentional, right? Like, this was before computers and Internet texting. I mean.

And I had a friend. Friends would call, and we had one phone on the dorm floor and ring Chapman. And it was like, my buddy, Dave. Dimitia. Hey, Mary Beth's sighting. 12 o'clock. She's coming across campus. So I would just happen to be standing out in front of my dorm at the same, you know, at that time.

And so that's kind of a met her, asked her on a date, took her to red lobster, popcorn, shrimp, and cheddar bay biscuits. Yeah. Fell bit biscuits. You know, and yep. So how soon after we all married? We met in September, got engaged in March, and got married in October. Oh.

And following. Yeah. And I was 19. So we lost the holy headlock and wedlock on it. On it. I'm trying to think now I worked at universities for 20 years. I can't imagine the phone call from the parent of the freshman girl saying you gave my daughter a shared mailbox with a junior. dude in college?

I probably won't do that. That's awesome. Yeah, I was a freshman. And so we made the decision then to move, you know, things where he was writing at the time. We didn't really know what was happening. I mean, but he was writing and you thought you could move here. He transferred to Belmont. I'd had a few songs cut and published.

Well, no, actually, I guess the first song cut. What was the Imperials? Imperials. But were we dating and I told you about that? had already, I can't remember. I think it was happening why we were dating. Yeah. Anyhow, we moved here and I got a job and you went to school.

That's right. I did. I took my royalty check. My first songwriting royalty check is what bought her engagement ring. Nice. All, what, $800 of it? A little tiny. It's a canardly diamond.

It's a canardly. Conardly see it. But it's there. It's there, baby. It's one of those rare canardly diamond. That's right. Okay, so what was, when I sit down with couples, especially behind closed doors, they'll come and stay at our house for a couple of days or they'll come meet us here in Nashville. One of the universal beliefs they bring with them is if we could just, if we could just get stability economically.

If we could just if his job would hit, if this business would just boom, then. all this other stuff takes care of itself and y'all are a good outsized like so far outside the bell curve that it becomes a fun case study for for me like you've had to add three or four mantles to you don't have an award on your mantle you have five you have to have nine mantles right and so I can imagine the person watching this or listening to you guys story and say yeah but all these things were taken care of. You got the fame and the fortune and the money and the success and the yacht and amazing.

And I've told you this privately. Like your kids are like some of my favorite people on the planet because you let them, I can see since being in their presence, A, they're super respectful and kind and just lovely humans. But they didn't have parents who said, y'all are going to live the life we want you to live. I can see, I can experience in them.

I had two parents that said, oh, that's who they are. Our job is to help them become the best version of that, right? Which is, golly, dude. It's a guy who's worked with young people in my whole life. It's like, when you see them, you feel them, you're like, that's it. That's how you do that, right? So, but you have that.

And yet this book exists. So what do you say to the couple who's sitting there thinking or the person who's saying, man, if I could just, like, what do you say to that couple? I'll see with that. Well, I, yeah. And part of the reason this book maybe took as many years as it did to write is because of that very thing, I think so much of our journey. And this is probably more on me, but I think both of us are a little bit guilty of this or fall prey to this. but I think for so many years, I was convinced that,

because we're as broken and as big of a mess, I mean, honestly, we don't joke when we say, the reason we didn't want to write a book, people kept approaching us, publishers, ever since I wrote the song, I Will Be Here, which is 37 years ago now, and that song kind of blew up, and people started using it at weddings,

and publishers came and said, you know, that's a big song, you should write a book about your wonderful marriage. And we always said, the only marriage book would you write is what not to do, how not to do it, right? Mistakes to avoid.

You know, the guys who write the books are the guys that have, you know, the scars to prove. You know, they're, you know, they're, well, they're experts. You know, you write your five love languages and your 10, you know, keys and hidden keys of successful, all that, and we're like, we just don't have any of that. And there was a lot of, especially in me,

better thing in both of us, if only we could, if we can just get to the, right conference, if we can just get to the right counselor, if we can just read the right book. You just get your calendar figured out. If I can just get my calendar figured out. And then go to the counselor and we sit down and say, we just need to get figured out how to do the calendar. And there were even moments where, you know, okay, if I need to quit doing this, because people could look from the outside to your point and say, yeah, it must be nice, you know.

But then we could flip that around very easily and go, yeah, it must be nice. to not have the expectations and the pressures. And, you know, people say, what's it like to win a Grammy Award? You know, and I'll say, man, it's awesome for about 15 minutes. And that's when all the high fives are happening. But you walk out of that, you know, out of the press room and you walk into the, you know, room with your manager and your, you know, booking agent and your record label. And everybody's like, man, the next one.

Well, boy, well, think of what we can build on with this. And the next one. And the pressure hits. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, it's the, in the pressure. So, you know, all of that is amazing and incredible as it is, is a whole lot of then pressure, expectation.

How do you manage it? How do you, you know, love family and raise your kids and care for your wife? And you look and you see the toll it's taken on her. And then I'm sitting with my, you know, manager and record label in tears going, guys, I think I might have to pull the plug on this because I'm not going to lose my marriage and my family over this. And so we pray through it. And, you know, and then, of course, the pressure that puts on her to go, oh, great, I'm going to be the one responsible for completely demolishing, you know, a God-calling career that's on, yeah, no pressure there.

So it is, there's a lot of layers of, you know, hard to that. And I foolishly can see now. And it's really taken, I mean, this is not something I figured out in 10 years. It's 40 years almost and still figuring it out that that, that. Boy, if only we could get to the right conference, if we only read the right book, the right counselor could just fix us and tell me, give me the workbook, give me the thing to do, I'll do it. And both of us that way. And realizing we are so much more complicated, complex, and the truth is, you know, what, what is Oswald Chambers, you know, says what we call the process, God calls the end. You know, we want to see it as, you know, we just want to find that end, that fix.

And God says, hey, trust me and do the next thing and keep trusting me. And this journey is where I'm going to show up. And it's going to be way more complicated because you're not, you know, you are too sinful people trying to love each other and be on the journey. And there is not going to be a fix for this. It's called heaven. You're longing for that, and that's a great longing, but you've got to keep longing for that and realize that what is it, you know,

what's it going to be like to show up today and keep loving each other and bearing with one another and the ways you're going to disappoint each other and hurt each other, and can you keep doing that and trusting me, you know, for the grace that you're going to need to keep doing that. And that's a lot of the marriage books and things even that we would get, just set us up for disappointment because it's like, man, we're on page 10 and we've already screwed up everything on every page. We haven't done the date night right. We haven't done this right. We can't seem to get that together. And then there's just more shame and more, well, we've just screwed this up, I guess. We're never going to make it. I get existential. I'm like, oh, maybe we're not

supposed to be together. Or maybe I'm like, maybe I made the wrong call and let's just call it for what it was and it was fun and good. But let's, yeah, it's existential. This is, this is, this is, so there's a big chunk of people of various faith communities who listen to this show, and there's a big chunk of people who don't. So this might sound like a strange question, and push back on me if I'm wrong here, for folks inside of faith communities to ask this question. Often when folks, when they're trying to stay married, they've got young kids running around, they've got careers and try to manage it all, and they're in a faith context.

the advice is often you just need to give it over to God you just need to pray more you need to kind of almost what you said like follow these steps and do these things yeah yeah what I have found in again this is anecdotal

and push back and say John that's screwed up and that's wrong I often see folks quote unquote trying to give it to God or look to the heavens as an avoidance mechanism of look into the mirror here's what I I'm bringing to this thing.

And here's what I need to go work on for me so that I can show up and give myself away to this person for the rest of my life and hope to God she does it back, right? Is that ring true? It's just a constant avoidance of who's that man or woman in the mirror that needs a lot of work, right?

And prayer is part of that work, of course, and it's got to be rooted into something big and strong. But man, there's a lot of avoidance, I guess, is the right word. Sure. Yeah. You want to know? I just, yeah, I would echo that. I think there is a lot of, you know, if we can, you know, pray harder, you know, meet with our small group more, you know, whatever, whatever it is, you know, get with our pastor, get with our counselor, and not have the willingness to realize.

I think for me, I spend, I think I spent a lot of our early, ongoing, you know, married. going if I could just get him to, if he would just, da-da-da, if I have to listen to blah, blah, blah, or, you know, and there's a lot of I-I-I, which is interesting because I think in, in 2026, there's a lot of focus on people being, I have to be my, I have to be my best me. And if I can't be my best me, then, you know, I can't, I can't, you know, serve him well or whatever.

There's truth to that, right? We need to take care of ourselves. Obviously, we need to take care of ourselves and be healthy. and all those things. And we need to realize that there is a center when I look in the mirror and there's a lot of, I'm a selfish, you know, I want what I want, how I want it. And I think it's taken a lifetime of, you know, realizing it more and more and more that this book could have been written in one sentence.

And that is how do we bear with one another in love? How do we esteem the other more important than me? you know, how do I just, I have my desires, I have my wants, how do I take it to, you know, yes, taking it to God in prayer and going, you know, and I have an enemy, it's not him, he's not my enemy, there is an enemy, and how do I, you know, purge the, you know, the selfish nature myself too? So I think what you're speaking is a lot of truth, a lot of truth that we by nature are unwilling to look at our own, you know, log in our eye because we're constantly picking at the same. spec, you know, of you just need to be better at this. And, you know, I would be happy if you would da, da, da, da, da, da, instead of, you know, looking inward a little bit. Yeah, I think it, it's interesting. When you said that, I thought about the one counselor who, you know, so going named who's been so many, so many, so much of counseling. Yeah, so much, too much. Too much.

Chapman, you, I'll be the first to say we're over-therapized and pretty significant. Yeah, yeah. Have you been fired by a counselor yet? Because we've been fired. I'm a terrible client. I'll say being. We've been let go. We've been like, we don't think we can help you.

Sorry. I think we're, I think you're beyond, yeah. We don't even know why you're still married. At least says we're determined. Good for you. But we got no, we got nothing else to help you. I'm like, well, okay. Thank you for being honest enough to tell us that.

But I was going to say there was one who is now passed on as with Jesus, but told me that I prayed. Chappan, you prayed too much, you need to stop praying so much, you know, which was like, okay, well, what in the world? But to your point of if, if prayer is, you know, an avoidance to, you know, to say, hey, just need to keep, you know, just keep talking to God about, well, but what are you praying? You know, because the reality is, you know, I think early on in our, and I'm totally owning this. I'm, you know, telling on myself and exposing my stupidity was praying and using prayer as an opportunity for me to still keep sort of lecturing or preaching at my wife.

Like, Lord, just help my wife to understand that, you know. I was just like, wow. Yeah, help her to have a better attitude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like. Then those weren't prayers you prayed to himself. No, no, those are public prayers. She ain't going to interrupt. Can she interrupt the prayer?

Hopefully she knows, you can't do that. But she would. It turns out. But I needed to. But I think, you know, one of the things we even talk about in this book and something that I just feel like I am still learning about, you know, the God's Word and Scripture is, and this isn't a Christian, you know, thing to say. This is just my experience is that, you know, go figure the one who I believe, we believe, came up with the idea of marriage and relationship in the first place, you know, the one who created it created us not for a relationship with himself and with each other. Actually, it turns out, you know, scripture is so brilliant with the things that it teaches and tells us, if we just have eyes to see it, ears to hear, and go look in the mirror with the light of scripture. It's not an escapism, but it is, you know, verse after verse, truth after truth of you, you are, if you're going to love another person,

you're going to esteem them more important than yourself. You're going to lay your life down. You're going to die to yourself. You're going to recognize your own need for grace. for, you know, for what only God can do through, as we understand it, through Jesus, to keep changing you into that person. You're longing for something. You're made for something that you're never going to get in this world, C.S. Lewis,

you know, you're going to have those longings awakened in something and those echoes. And that's not a bad thing. What you're longing for is what you're made for. Eden, perfect relationship. You're longing for that, but you're not going to get it this side of heaven. That's coming, that's out there. But can you keep trusting God to keep changing you and recognizing the longing that you're having

that's going to make you, you know, and there is a real enemy who hates everything that's good and beautiful and reflects the goodness of God. So we're going to be battling that. It's just all of those realities. So, you know, all of it is, look in the mirror, see the reality of who you really are apart from.

the grace of God. And then that's going to keep, that's where you're going to keep recognizing that there's hope for even as broken as it might feel right now, but it's only going to be found there. I think that's been so much the journey for us and, and the lesson for me that has been pretty transformative over the last decade of my life has been recognizing that when I would hear the word grace, for whatever reason, and this might be my own interpretation, of it is I would exhale. It would give me permission to just be as I am. And what I took that is, be as I am, like, you're worth being loved.

And I took that too far to say, so you don't have to do anything. Yeah. And so it was, it was actually an exclamation point was put on actually by a fitness guy who, I've struggled with body image issues since I was a kid, disorder eating stuff. And he said, hey, if you go to the gym every day because you think you're gross and you're disgusting, and this is what you get. This is your punishment for being unattractive. And you have to go beat yourself up. He said, you'll quit every time.

But he said, if you wake up every morning and say, I get an hour to go feel good, to take care of myself so that I can love my wife and my kids and my community well. He goes, you'll do that the rest of your life. And this idea of grace being, no, no, you're worth being loved. so get off your butt and go see a counselor go get the medications you need go ask for forgiveness go do like go do these things that I was like no I'm just good right

put your phone down like these like when you said that earlier the number of times I've told my wife like if you don't want me to go on these next five events just tell me and she's like I can't so that I can be blamed for that too financially and emotionally and you're going to be here

just sitting in front of TV. Right. So like get up and do something about it. And it, that action oriented, I guess I just missed it. I'd missed the whole thing that I thought I could think my way into this. And even for folks who are listening who aren't a faith community, I hear it. I seem to listen to another podcast. I need to read another book, another book, another podcast, and a book. I feel like we're at a place now where we pretty much have all the information. What we need to do is ask my wife, hey, how can I love you? And go do that. Right. And what I need to do outside? of our bedroom and outside of our home

so that I can refill my picture so I can go make sure all my families can I can, right? It's a weird balance but man what a mess. So what are some keys you all have learned can we get sideways a bit? This is just coming to me. Kelly always gets

nervous when I do this. What's a couple of things over the years you all have and think of speaking to your younger selves? Yeah. You have looked in the mirror and said I need to, like, me always wishing Steve or me always wishing Marybeth would be different. That's not serving us here.

I need to do something different. What does that look like in y'all's lives? Let me go first. Yeah, you can go first. Yeah. I've got it. Well, I, this is funny. I think, I don't know if we told the tattoo story in this or not,

but this is a fun one. I think we told this in maybe my book and you told your version of it and yours, because we've both written memoir kind of books before this together. But it was one of the first times, and it continues to be a lesson that I think, you know, I continue to learn. But I remember this being sort of one of the first monumental moments of me having to learn and recognize how different we are wired and made. embracing that and you love it

can I pause real quick yeah can we see something yeah as I asked us as you're answering this question yeah yeah yeah he's getting tighter yeah yeah he's just like yeah yeah yeah yeah it's so good so good I don't

I don't want anyone to see me yes yeah nobody watches this show we uh we we had been married at this point I don't know maybe we had all our kids 15 years something. I was in Branson with Jen.

Spying on Will Franklin who was at camp. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, maybe we were 20. So he'd get so homesick. Yeah, this might have been, I guess it could have been 20 years ago then or something. But we, she got, she had always talked about one to get a tattoo. And because her dad had one really, you know, on his arm, just a very kind of typical of his generation, sort of a sunrise, and he would always say, yeah, I was dumb.

I was young and foolish and went with a bunch of buddies and, you know, got kind of crazy and got tattoos. But she always, as a little girl, just thought this was kind of cool. And it was, again, one of the things that attracted me to her when I first met her, I still remember she had on matching denim skirt with a denim jacket, kind of rock and roll. So wild. She was cool. Canadian, had these buttons, had these.

These button, had these, at the time, you'd wear these like rock and roll, you know, buttons round. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Ramones's buttons, I remember those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or kiss, you know, or whatever. And she had, she had these, you know, three or four rock and roll looking kind of buttons on her jacket and kind of biker sort of vibes, you know, and just cool denim. And, but they were, it turns out the buttons were these little precious moments for those older generation will know.

If you love Jesus. Yeah, they're little, they're little. They were little like figurines that you would get at the Hallmark store. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they made buttons that said things that had little inspiration. Like one was a little girl nose to nose with a goose, and it said, Honk if you love Jesus. And it was this little cute little big-eyed girl.

So there were all these, like, sweet. So it was like, wow, that's even cooler, you know, because she is like a rock and roll. That would have been a deal break. Yeah, precious moments rock and roll. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, because I'm coming from like so super-stress.

laced. Oh, okay, got you. Yeah. And anyway, so we're in, you know, years later, she's always, we'll throw out this idea. I want to get a tattoo. And I'd be like, no, why would you ever, why would you want to do that? And now this was way before tattoos were even cool. Because now they're like, you know, you're not even taken seriously as a worship leader

if you don't have, if you don't have visible tattoos, like, that got to know Jesus. What's he even? You know. So, so, but this was way before then. And trust me, this was like tattoos were, you know, marking your body is no way, you know, this person. That was before they knew Jesus. Clearly, if they had tattoos. Yeah, yeah, it made you unemployable.

And it made you, you know, almost. Yeah, those people. But she was bound to determine anyway. Took the kids to camp. My buddy, Jeff Moore and my best friend, you have more in the distance of those. Yeah, I listened to music back in those days. And I were on a tour. she was in with Jeff's wife taking the kids to summer camp and she calls me and says,

hey, Jan and I went, drove past, guess what there is here, I saw a tattoo place. And I'm like, and she said, well, I might have gone in. And I'm like, and, you know, and I'm like, the wheels have totally come off. And she finally confides, I might have got this. little tiny tattoo on my ankle. And, bro, I mean, I was losing it. You freaked out. Yeah, freaked out.

Because I'm like, number one, like, why would she do that? Why would she do it knowing that I really was not for this? And so then I spent the whole time getting from where I was, which is way down south and Florida, we, Jeff and I were on a bus, got back to Nashville and then went to Branson, Missouri to get to where they were. He and his wife, we were going to spend some time together. And the whole time I'm praying, turn. to talk myself, God, I know my wife's different.

I need to embrace this. But man, I'm so, this is just really hard, really a struggle. And show up at the door. She's sad and tears in her eyes because she knows that I'm disappointed. And yet I'm trying to embrace it. I'm trying to get to a place. And that was one really, I remember very monumental. And the whole thing I was wrestling with was, God, you gave me

this very differently wired, her experience, everything about this, and how do I love and embrace her and celebrate even that difference, you know, in all the right ways? And yet, man, I'm really struggling with this. And so over, I think, the course of our journey and our life, you know, there's, there have continued to be those kinds of things where it's just, I mean, I've written songs about it, wrote a whole song, how do I, how do I love her? I mean, that whole song, I remember when I wrote that on the All About Love record was just, now there's this woman that is so, she's wired differently. And it, you know, sometimes it's not, I mean, it sounds so silly.

Maybe you're wired differently. Like a, well, yes. She, that is implied in, she's wired differently than I am, not saying you're wired wrongly. I'm the one wired wrong, okay? Well, just go ahead and say, no, we're both just wired, made differently. Differently. The way God made us. big fat tattoo now down and then I end up with a tattoo he's got two I got two I'm one right

here on my arm and and let's say I'll pay for your next one that'd be good oh yeah I know I'm I know I'm talking to John yeah yeah it's right you know when you said Unemployable we always used to with our boys it's like look go just go you do whatever you know do you be your best you whatever you want but you know like maybe stop stop where you can put it like you can you know do a collared shirt where if you ever if you ever need you want you know you We always used to say, if you ever need to meet the president of the United States, you can just cover it up. You know, what was it last year? Well, Franklin walks in, big fat monarch just across, you know, just his hand.

I'm like, oh yeah, it didn't go over so well. But that's okay. It's awesome. But there's something disempowering about, and I guess some couples, I'm, I actually think that's cultural, because I think kids now get that, that you are responsible for your self and your body and your spirit and your whatever. And the challenge I see now is young folks figuring out how do we create this other thing called a marriage together. Yeah. Yeah. But I grew up, you grew up, which in a, I don't think it's very healthy, but it's like, no, you do what I say.

And then my wife's like, you do what I say. And there's this competing like, I don't like it like this. So this is over. I'm like, well, I don't like it like this. This is over. And we didn't see any of that. And I think either your parents exploded and you saw, I don't. I don't want that kind of warfare in my house.

Or I think my generation of parents, maybe y'alls, was take your fights in the back room. We don't want to scare the kids. And so I had no lived model of this thing successfully resolving itself. And so we just went to war. I think for us, that was one of our early things, you know, for you and I. He lived by the motto in scripture, do not let the sun go down on your anger. He came from a home where they talked and all that. I'm like, hey, I just took a five-philo.

I'm ambient, I'll see you tomorrow. And he's just like, what? I'm going to the underworld. I'm going to the other. Oh, man, that's true. Yeah, he would. I'm like, babe, we're not going to figure this out tonight. And I have to work tomorrow.

I'm going to go. That's funny. My wife has a no, no discussions after nine. Like, it's just over. Man, I can we get to 9 p.m. Let's adopt that one. I don't know that we do that. I know.

Because she gets wound up about midnight and it's like, okay, hey, what about this? And I'm like, oh, no, no one can bring up a big thing. And unless the fight is make her break. Yeah, yeah. We'll think after we've slept in eight. Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, that whole, don't let the sun go down deal. I mean, that got, that, that, that, it ended up with a hole in the drywall on my side of the bed in our first six months of marriage because she fell asleep in the middle of my best point. And I'm like, you can't, how you can't, wait, you can't do that.

I'm like, what do I do with this? this craziness inside of me to try to fix it. I have to fix it, fix it, fix it. You know, it's just been a big part of the journey of our. I think, too, for us, we made so many misstep. Number one, I was 19 when I got married. Think about that. I'm like, what were our parents thinking?

You know, we just got married and didn't really know each other as well as we thought we did. And so it was out of the gate. It was like, oh, this is going to be a long life. and we need to at least begin to try to put some tools in the tool belt because, you know, the idea is that we're going to go the distance, but I don't know how we're going to. Like, it was really, really hard. And then obviously career, all those pressures take off. Then he became who he became. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I signed up for this, you know, and I can't.

I always felt like I couldn't be his bride. I'm like, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm like, you know. So how do you, you, y'all have an outside exposure. Again, outside of the bell curve of the normal, but every couple I talk to, universally, the one whose wife is an attorney and he has to go to the dinner. And he's like, man, I don't, like, I'm going to go. They're going to look at me. They're going to, like, want to know who you're married to. Y'all are in an outsized, like, y'all can't have a bad day in public, right?

You can't. Or it ends up all over everything. And or you can't snap at a waiter. You can't have a, like, how have you managed the glass house of it all? That was, like, three years ago, and again, we're talking. There's obvious levels between what me and my wife experienced, what y'all experienced. But it was three years ago that my wife and I were like, hey, we got a new marriage. We got to re-center this thing because everywhere I go, I'm John's wife.

And they want to see if I'm laughing at your stuff, if I think you're darling like they do. And the worst for her was, this strange. just came up and started talking as though she knows my husband better than I do. And she would get in right, like, in rightfully so. It's hard. It's very hard. So how have y'all navigated that? Because this isn't just for famous folks.

This is for anybody whose spouse, they have to show up for their spouse somewhere and feel like their own display or have to perform in some way. It's tricky. Very tricky. Well, I don't even know how you do this, but we both of us come from very simple families, very simple lives. I'm from Springfield, Ohio. He's from Paduca, Kentucky. And so we're like, how are we going to do this and be as normal? Like, what's that, right? What's the definition of normal?

As normal as we can be. You know, it's just I remember taking Emily, when she was in first grade, and it was going to be our first year at C. where they would end up going to school most of their life. And that would have been in 1991. So right at the, you know, kind of peak, and, you know, he was who he was. And I remember a teacher. No, it was not a teacher. I forget that.

It was a parent. Reached over, I was meeting people and stuff. And she pinched Emily's cheek. And she was like, what's it like to have a famous dad? And she just had this look on her face like, is he something? sick is he what's wrong like what's wrong with my dad because we've always just dad's been dad you know this is what dad does and you know trying to have that normalcy um but it's been very very difficult there's been times where i could you know i'm out like a horse running to the barn i

can't wait to get to the car so that i can have my implosion or my you know sad or my you know and you know you have to find the humor in it as well along the ways you have to um do things differently like hey I can't I can't do that I can't don't have them ask me to do this I'm not that person don't have them asked me to do that um how do you know that's a good way like the first interview you were asked to do before I knew uh yeah they pulled me out of this is our first of awards they pulled me out of the audience like I get a tap on my shoulder and his manager at the time was like hey come here come here and I'm like I thought something is wrong I'm like I don't know what's going on they take me out they're like hey this will be great we're gonna for Sheila

Sheila Walsh was emceeing it, and they're like, Stephen has no idea, but we're going to put you on stage. And then when he's done with his old set, he comes over and it will be this interview. But when he turns around, it'll be you and Sheila and him and you'll talk. I mean, this is like out of the gate. And I'm from a family that sweeps everything under the rug, like quiet, quiet, quiet. And I'm like, I hadn't found any voice yet, let alone one in front of a couple thousand people. And so he gets done singing and turns around. And I'm...

I start walking to the couch. and I see my wife sitting there. And he knows. The look on his face is like, oh, my gosh. Seven, eight years. This is my first record was out and it was starting to happen. And, you know, and I see her sitting there and I see the panic in her eyes. And I'm immediately like going, oh, no, oh no, oh no, oh no.

This is bad, bad, bad, bad. And she's like, how did she get there? And so they asked her questions like, so Mary Beth, what's like, well, you know, and I'll just jump in because I'm like trying to save her. And I'm trying, and we walk off the stage. There was an elevator at T-PAC. It was at T-PAC, and we'd get in the elevator with his manager and the doors closed. He's kind of thought it was great. He's so great.

He's amazing. We love you, Dan. Yeah. But she, like, starts sobbing as soon as the door's closed. And he's looking at me like, what's wrong? And I've gone, don't ever ever do that again to my wife because that is not her place. I can do that. You can throw whatever at me. That's my, I've signed up for this.

She did not sign up for this. And so there's, you know. And I obviously have come along with. I've had to learn those. Oh, gosh. How have you navigated? And this is very personal. Forget the audience for a second.

Yes. Yeah. Very same, similar situation in my house. And I find many, I don't see any successful couples when, in any business, when the spouse wants to have equal footing in their world, right? Like if you're an attorney and your spouse is always throwing like, did you put my thing in the case? Like that's always going to be not good. Yeah. Yeah.

But the other side of that is I would want nobody. I would trade all of the applause for my wife to think I'm funny. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I would trade all of the applause for my wife to be like, yeah. That's the smartest psychological insight I've ever heard. And I've had to wrestle with. that woman will storm the gates of hell for me.

And she is as ride or die as they come. And she doesn't think I'm funny. Yeah. I have a question for you then. Can I interview you for a second? So what happens when? This is great. This is great.

Yeah. So what happens when you're like, hey, I want to try something out on you and you tell me what you think. Because I'm thinking about using this here or here or here. And she looked at you and she says, I don't get it. It's not funny. Here's the thing. We've had to learn in pretty, I've had to grieve, and I wish I had a different word for that.

I've had to grieve the fact that the thing that I get paid to do is the thing she loves the least about me, right? Like that's the thing that she said, I would love you if you were a fireman. And she said, you'd probably have a better body too. Right? Like, I would love you if you're a fireman, right? And so the way I try to impress the world

is the thing that's least impressive to her. So these are boundaries she drew really on that I fought and that I went and sought elsewhere, which is never good, until I had to sit in, if you, like, she would say, I don't mind giving you feedback on an idea. What I don't have the capacity for is to manage your ego

on the back end of whatever feedback I just gave you. I would prefer if you didn't. Like, I'm not the right audience for you. And so that's been a hard thing. That's hard, right? There was expectation, I think, put on me early on. We dubbed myself Joe Q Public because he would bring a song, and it would be, hey, what do you think? Play it.

And it's, I'm darned if I do and darned if I don't. I have to navigate it. I have to thread the needle, right? And it's like because there is ego. I mean, it's just create. It's like you're saying, here's my baby. Is it cute or is it ugly? Right.

You know, I'm not going to tell anybody. And you're lying either way. I'm just like, the truth hurts. Shoot, shoot, shoot, you know, and we're different. And so, like, things, I'm going to like certain things. And then I'm like, gosh, how do I, if I'm on it? What if I don't like it? If I just don't like it, do I just say, I love you, but I don't like it?

There's an ego that's not stroked. And then he's hurt. And then I'm like, oh, I just can't. It's very, very, very hard. I had an experience. I didn't run a joke by her, but I said the joke out loud in the call. Yeah. She's like, that's not funny at all. And I was, and I was, I was, my kids were laughing. I was like, that's a funny. Yeah. I tried it on stage and it crushed. And on stage, on stage, in front of an audience. She wasn't there. You did. But inside, I was like, yeah, I told you. Like, I'm totally divorced from what's happening with the audience. And I'm just like, God. John won. I mean, the score is like 9,000 and 60 to 4, but I was like, N5. And five. Yeah. So obnoxious. So dumb of me. Yes. How have you navigated?

being a person who thinks outside the box and feels big, and that's what makes you our good. But that makes it hard to be engaged. I mean, they're hard to be married. It just does. Yeah, it does. And in the early days, you know, that's where the comparison and the, you know, I mean, she used to love every song I wrote,

and every thing I did was amazing and funny. We joke a lot. In fact, I've got a country song. I haven't finished it yet. But there was a point where our son, Caleb, we were somewhere, and Julia, was talking, that's his wife, talking about how amazing Caleb is, her husband, our son. He's so amazing. And she said he's so amazing. And we were with, some of our dear friends are Julia's parents, mom and dad.

They kind of grew up together and they ended up getting married. It was an arranged marriage. It was awesome. So we're very good friends with her parents, Dr. Reggie and Karen Anderson, two of our dear friends. And we were somewhere in Reggie and I looked at each other and said, remember when we were amazing? Remember back when we were amazing? I was like, man, those were good days. Back when we were amazing.

That's a country song. I know. So I've got a country song in the works back when I was amazing. And it's a good one. But because that's, there's part of that thing again. You know, we don't marry. And that's one of the things that we've been. talking a lot about, I think even with this book, one of the things you hear couples say and

young, you know, couples say or people who are just, you know, struggling and decide to chuck it is they're just changed. That's not the same person I'm married, you know. And it's kind of like, duh, of course it's not. That's not the best part of it. Yeah. That's not the best part of it. Yeah. It's not the person you married because you didn't marry a mom and you didn't marry a, you know, in most cases anywhere, at least, you know, for us and a guy who was trying to navigate a career and provide for his family and take all the, you know, the expectations of the world and be this and not be that and do. And, you know, we didn't, that's not who you married. You married a college, in our case, a college student who just thought everything you did and said was the funniest most

amazing thing, you know, up to a certain point. And then things start to change. And as far as, you know, navigating that is, again, it's one of those longing for what, you know, how it used to feel and what it was, and yet also realizing letting that stuff you're talking about earlier, the mirror, that's when the mirror comes up. If you let it, you can either choose contempt and go, why didn't she get it? Or try to convince, or go into which I've done all of the above,

try to convince, well, no, but did you get, did you really listen to that and get it? You have to love this because I'm such a, you know, people pleaser, and you are the number one, you said it. If you love me, yeah. You know, everybody else can all, I don't care, take all the Grammys, take the rest of it. You know, just let my number one fan be my number one fan on everything. And she is.

She is my biggest, you know, biggest fan throughout life and yet also my toughest critic. And I am the artist and the writer and all the things in part that I am because of that, because she has been honest and hasn't just, oh, everything you do is amazing and wonderful. but then the ego that gets bruised and says, wait a minute, what if you don't, you know, you don't love that? You didn't, you don't do it. Well, you know, and it's that then I think wisdom teaches us, you know, and it's never easy to hold the mirror up again and go,

what's this, what is this thing that is flaring up in me at that? It's pride. It's, you know, it's my ego that is demanding. wait, you have to love this, or is it even okay to go, you know, some of the things she's not going to love and there's going to be a joke that she didn't think it's funny,

but everybody else is going to really think it's funny and you're going to be able to go. Both of those things are okay. Both are okay. She doesn't have to love everything. I came home from my first big comedy show and the room sold out. It went pretty well for the first one.

And I left the green room early, which is the favorite part of hanging out with comics is hanging out of the green room, right? I left early because I was coming on for my second standing ovation. I was going to walk in that door and she was going to be like, I walked in the door and she looked at me and I was like, and she said, hey, she looked at her watch. Is there any chance you could take Hank to school in the morning?

Like, I've got to get this and I get to get her daughter over here. And I went, yeah, I can take him. She's like, oh, thank you. She gave me a hug, give me a kiss and said, I'm going to go to bed. and to say I was deflated was the like and then I went to really like I mean I went to the whole thing and only because I've been working hard for a long years I waited a day and then I approached myself I looked at the mirror and said hey what is it why did that make you so frustrated yeah and then I was able to what you mentioned like sit down and

and you use invitation language like, hey, here's the story I made up that you weren't that impressed, whatever. What I come to find out, her story was, and it was such a powerful thing was, the last month has been about me celebrating you. I took all, you were in your head right in the set. You've been going every night of the week down there

to try to get time on stage. You've been, and I covered all of that. And I hate being at comedy shows, because everyone wants to see if I'm laughing, and they want to see if how I'm wrecked. And I came. And she's like, and I was like, oh, you celebrated me for a month straight, right?

And then you were able to exhale when this thing was over. And then I had to do this, what I think has become the hardest, but the easiest thing. And I'm interested to know how y'all do this. I had to say, okay, can I tell you a way you could love me? And it's silly. And she goes, I would take any of that. If I walk in after I just went into a speaking event or did a show, would you just ask me one question? What was your favorite joke you told?

or what was your favorite, whatever. And I said, if you'll just do that, and then I tell her, and now it's kind of become a joke. She's like, who was the favorite one? And I'm like, it was it, but I'm just waiting. But it's a way I gave her a clear roadmap. Here's how you can love me in this moment.

I think we need to remain curious, right? We have to be curious with each other instead of judgmental and. What does that look like? I hear that thrown around. What does that look like practically feel? Like, I'm like, you know, I'm, you know, I don't mean this in a negative way,

but, you know, like we can be over it, right? You know, to your wife's point, she celebrated you for a month. We're freaking getting ready to do that, right? Okay, I carry these tours. I'm at home. I'm in the same four walls. I see all the things at home that either, you know, are not going well or aren't getting done or, you know, whatever. And I'm like, you know, and yet at the same time, his world is a different city every night.

He's trying to do this, you know, the revival of the speechless tour. And, you know, it says, how can I be curious? Well, I know, I'm not very curious at midnight when he's finally able to, you know, get to a car. The show was awesome. Right. And at the same time, he also has come full circle to go. I've noticed that a lot of times now I'm getting that bedtime call at intermission. Yeah.

Because he knows I might just be asleep at midnight when he's like revved up because, you know, his adrenaline's going and all that. But I have to be curious, right? It's like, you know, did you get to see some show Hope families? Was there a lot there? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what was fun, you know, whatever. And then the goofy stories of, you know, people dancing to Cinderella or I will be here, all the things. You know, just still being curious and being curious about other things that he's interested in, not just, you know, career.

Although that tends to be a lot of what we talk about. I mean, he's very curious. He tries to be very curious with me, which is cute. Yeah. But we're learning. I send the long text messages and I get back smiley face. Yeah, that's the other thing. He thinks he thinks he does.

We don't get into that one. Oh, emotional. That's how a text messages are for. Yeah. It's like, yeah. It's like, I just told you. This is Shakespeare. I just poured out my heart to you.

And I'm like, I had a thumbs up. Thumbs up. I'm like, stop. He goes, why? Are you mad at me? Oh, and then here we go. I'm like, how I'm not mad at you? It's texting.

It's supposed to be one symbol. It should communicate everything. I've got to get going. Yeah, yeah. And that, yeah, he's very loquacious. I love that word. Very period deficient and loquacious. He's been described that before.

Shout out, Steve. Yeah, shout out. But I think, I think, another. thing that's been important for us because we have had so many missteps. And really, honestly, the hope for this book is just that people go, they're actually real. You know, they're just, you know, people who, you know, it really is two centers trying to figure out how do you stay married, be married. And I think our children, it was really important that our children read this and read it

for the honesty that is in it is I think it's been important. important for us as we've journeyed in this marriage as to, we've made so many missteps as to how do we repair that well in front of our children and, um, and, um, asking for that forgiveness and saying, okay, mom and dad, okay, we really blew that and, you know, having them at least model the repair what it's like to step into a humble, humble moment of needing to ask each other for forgiveness. And so our son has dubbed us the hobblers. He said that we hobble well, that we haven't, we haven't done it perfectly, but that we

hobble well. That's not like the hobblers. Yeah. That's a good side project name. Yeah. So y'all had, so most of my career has been sitting with people in the wheels have fallen off, like when whatever's going on in their life, right? And then there was a season when I would do my work during the day at the university.

and then I would show up for the police department, and I was called like a crisis intervention guy. So if something happened, police are trained to show up to a scene and work at crime back, right? And my job was to come in and sit with whatever just happened, right? And that got me really interested in, showing up to the scene after scene, after scene, home after home on any number of things,

and watching instantly two people, four people in a family unit, extended family, everybody's bodies taking over and handling that differently, right? And one person wants to know all the details, all the facts, all the whatever. Another person is just walking down the road and another person is screaming and like it's, but everybody's, like literally your body takes over and handles it differently. Right, right, right. And so that got me interested in just in the therapeutically, like, what happens? Right. You all went through a very public loss, right, a very public loss, which I can't imagine the nightmare layer on top of the worst pit of hell a parent can experience. And then you got to do in front of everybody. Everybody wants to

know about it, which sounds like nightmare on top of nightmare, right? But if I'm honest and I look at the data, the loss of a child almost always, not always, often breaks up marriages. Yeah. Yeah. And the best I can distill that down is people agree. differently and they grieve at different paces and in different ways walk through the like navigating that yeah yeah for sure i mean that's that is all of all of the things that we uh we knew i mean we were told immediately marybeth tells this our god was quick to tell us day one pastor friend counselor that we were going to have a journey in front of us said you know most 90 percent of marriages or i'm sure it's a you know, you can read different numbers, but it's way up there of marriages.

Don't survive the loss of a child. And what's crazy is at the moment, you know, I remember both of us thinking, I know for sure, I was thinking it, like, you know, I know that's true, I hear that, but we've already been through so much, we've walked through so much, this is obviously dwarfs, everything else. But it's not like we're, it's not like we've been just skipping along through life. We've, we know every, even before that, we knew every counselor. in Nashville and built wings on their homes with what we had invested in trying to keep this ship afloat and keep us moving together, loving each other, never a question.

I love this woman. I just, you know, how are we going to survive each other? How are we going to survive this, all this that's, you know, getting poured on top of us? But so I think immediately it was like, I understand I hear all that. Yes, and nodding going, I know it's going to be hard. But I right now can't imagine anybody on the planet. I've never needed, you know, more for us to just hold on each other. And I think we both felt that way. But, you know, it is a, it's exactly what you said. The grieving process is so different

for every person. It's part of the reason why I'm, you know, my wife laughs. I'm a skeptic of most of the, you know, put you in a box here, a one, two, three, you know, otter, beaver, you know, whatever, you know, Hawaiian. I love me like a pony. Yeah. He says, I go to 11. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Are you a wing four or three? I'm, I'll just go to 11. I'm with you. I'm with you. But, but I don't know there's good, you know, in that. But the realities were so much more complex and complicated. Every time I try to do that stuff, I'm like, well, I'm that today. But depending on what's happening around me, I'm that.

And I think that way and I think that way. And I think grief exposes all of that just on steroids of how complex we are. And what do we do with the rage and the anger? Because death and especially the death of a child, even as believers in this is not the end of the story, believers in one who has conquered death in the grave and all of those things that anchor our hearts down, the hope that we have, you know what you know, but you feel what you feel.

I found believers to be more angry. Yeah. Oh. Because, hey. Yeah. I didn't drink and smoke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You broke our contract. Yeah. You broke our contract. That was me. That was me. Yeah. I was, wait. Yeah.

We did everything you asked. It feels like we have done every thing you asked us to do. We stepped into the world of adoption. We stepped not only for ourselves, but. for a lot of people. Yeah. You know, and his ministry. And that was me.

That was my, I was very, very mad for a long, long time. And I still can get mad when I think about it. But I, you know, I think for a mom, we do very, very grieving very differently, grieving very publicly. I immediately had a child that was not going to lose, extremely worried about. And your other children, right? That's right. So it was a fatal blow we feel like from the enemy to go. We don't, I don't like what this family's about.

I don't like what this family's doing. And I'm just going to try to take them out. That's how I kind of viewed it. And I was mad at God because he didn't protect us. Like, you could have stopped it. You could have just this could have not happened. And the wise and the blame, all of it. Like you name it.

It happened. Did you all experience the, I can't believe you're not over it yet? I can't believe. Let's go to dinner. How can you possibly go to dinner? Yeah. Yeah, all of it. I don't know that we ever,

I don't know that we ever were able to say, I can't believe you're not over it yet because we're not over it. You know what I mean? You don't ever get over it. But it's like, you know, it's like, you know, we've got to keep moving four. And I think as a mother, like, I can't believe you're laughing. You know, I'm in full tree. That's funny.

Right. And as a mom, I'm in full triage mode. I'm putting my needs aside. I'm even thinking about me. It's like I got to pick shrapnel out of five children. And like, who needs the most triage first? Like, okay, we got to, and you're immediately meeting a bunch of people you never wanted to meet. And then they become your closest people because they're helping with the counseling of the littles and the two and three times a week.

And, you know, your whole world shifts because we're trying to survive. You know, again, then we're trying to pretty quickly. We tried to huddle together as a family and say, hey, we're going to make these decisions together as far as what we do and don't talk about, you know, who we do and don't talk to, you know, but it can only be managed to a point. You know, it was chaos. And so you don't think about each other for a while because we're parents. It's like we're right here. And then all of a sudden, we're looking at each other and you grieve differently than I grieve.

And then he'd have a good day. And I'd be like, I don't know how you can have a good day. I'm having a terrible day. And, you know, it was just, it's messed up. And, you know, you obviously just do the best. best you can. I mean, other than, you know, I feel like the Lord gave us some really beautiful pictures of what it's like to love fiercely your family and protect your family and gave us glimpses of knowing how real it is. When you lose at that level, you taste, you really do taste

and see that the Lord is good in a really weird way because there's just been this devastating loss. but then you see very clearly for a while. It's like somebody just takes all the filters off. And so there were pieces and times of that journey that it was a gift, but then you felt guilty about that too because it's like, I'm feeling guilty about it. I feel like this is guilt, but it's at the cost of a horrible thing and all the things.

So it is, I tell people all the time I went on a free fall of faith. I was like, I was just falling through the air and that I eventually landed on the firm foundation that is Jesus, you know, a face planted. And on any given day, I still feel like, yeah, fallen a little bit. But it was really, really hard to navigate. And he did beautiful leading our family, but it wasn't for the pain of heart.

It still isn't at times. Dads are not great. How have you navigated that? I say not great, dads are awesome. I mean, in those situations, because it's easy to say, I'm just going to pick it all up and carry it. But I'm not going to feel it.

feel any of this. Yeah. And it comes out in weird, absolutist, angry, weird, or detat. Like, how have you navigated that? Well, I will, I mean, there's so many ways to try to answer that. And, you know, do we have, like, another four hours and, you know, and let's, you know, let's take it. We need something, yeah, more than water here.

But, but, I mean, the. first, you know, things that come to mind, the Psalms became so much more real to me. And I mean, this is not, I know, again, referencing what you said earlier, you know, we speak to, you speak and have the platform, you know, in a wonderful way to speak into people that are not necessarily of a faith community or, you know. Sure. But I only have one way to answer that because I wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation. We wouldn't be married alive, probably, because there were a lot of.

lot of prayers. I mean, honestly, for this first time I, you know, that I pray, God, you know, I got through today, but please don't ask me to do another day. I just, can I not wake up tomorrow? Can we ignore that for a second? Yeah. That's the most common thing I hear is I just need to go hug my kid. Yeah. And I'm out. I just want to be done. Please, please help me not wake up tomorrow. Yes. People of faith and not faith. Yeah. Just don't be here tomorrow. Right. Yeah. And never, you know, making plans to take that in my own hands, but just God begging, God. to let me not have to endure this pain. I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how to navigate it. I don't know how to love my wife and I see her hurting and I want to, you know, respond right. And I'm, you know, the closest person in. So that's where all the anger is going to come and all the hurt. And I don't want to hurt anymore. I don't want to hurt her. I want to, you know, respond wrongly and all of that stuff.

And the one thing and it was right. actually, you know, I tell this story, but from the very beginning when we found out that, you know, Maria, our daughter had not survived the accident that took her life. It was that feeling of just, like, I don't know how I'm going to keep breathing. I don't know how I'm going to lead my family all the weight of that. How do I, you know, how do I do this? How do I keep myself moving forward? and how do I lead a family and just hold on to anything that will anchor us down because I'm just feeling like these waves are just washing over me and my family around me. And it was, I use this kind of word black hole, just feeling like I'm sucked into a black hole.

And once I go into it, I'm not coming out. And I would take a breath and just this, the thought that came to my mind was, blessed be the name of the Lord, you give and you take away. I am going to choose with whatever breath I have, and I hope it's my last, but I'm going to go out saying, God, I have to worship you, I have to trust you. Otherwise, I'm going into this black hole of despair and hopelessness, and I'm gone. And so I would take a breath, and when I would take that breath in and then exhale, God, I trust you, I don't get you, I don't like you, I'm mad, but I'm going to trust you and I'm going to worship you.

I would find that the next breath in was I had a little bit more oxygen. And it was like the clarity for just a minute would sort of, the cloud would sort of clear just enough to go, wait a minute, that feels like I might be able to survive. But then the dark kind of comes back in and you start, then I say it again and I say it again. and that became, I started to read, you know, go to the Psalms, and I started to find all these places where, you know,

this amazing verses that so many songs are written about and worship songs that we sing in church that are better, better as one day in your courts and a thousand elsewhere and your love is better than life. And then, no, no, all these things, I always felt like, why am I not getting at God? Because everybody else is so much more engaged with these Psalms, and I believe them, and it's true.

But suddenly I was like, wait a minute, that very chapter starts with, how long, the Lord, are you going to forget me forever? I'm down, I'm done for. This is the last, you know, I'm done. But then if you read long enough, I start seeing, so, why are you so downcast in me? Hope in God. Like talking, you know, the Psalm is talking himself almost into, I have to keep remembering where my hope comes from. And I got to keep going back to that.

Otherwise, I am, you know, going down for the last time. And so that was that journey in that process for us was, I felt like that was the like three steps forward, two steps back, sometimes 20 steps back. But it was just continuing to anchor to that hope that, God, you, everything we feel right now. And that was the hardest thing for me, just letting her and being safe enough in that truth that, you know, I can let her go wherever the emotions are going to take her and not feel like, oh, I got to fix it. I got to fix this. She's feeling hopeless.

She's feeling, you know, it's like, God, you're going to take her on her own journey. But what I can do, the most loving thing I can do is just keep running back to what is the only thing that will sustain my heart through this so that there is, and if I can hold on to that anchor as a father, as a husband, then they will be able to hold on to that anchor as well, through maybe even through me. It's going to be their own journey, but I want to be that anchor in trusting you

and running back to this, because that's the only hope that we have. Thank you all for hanging. Yeah. Thanks, brother.