Off the Record: Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman

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That song kind of blew up and people started using
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it at weddings and publishers came and said, you know,
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that's a big song. You should write a book about
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your wonderful marriage.
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Have you been fired by a counselor yet? Because we've
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been fired.
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Because we know we're not out of the woods until
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we walk into heaven. I mean, we're not.
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We had some really tough. almost call it moments. There
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were days where it's like, I'm not working on this today.
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You can do that.
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What up?
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Welcome to another special episode of Off the Record with John.
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I'm John Deloney, host of the Dr.
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John Deloney Show, and I've started incorporating more conversations with
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people that I love, people I'm interested in, people who
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inspire me, and you all continue to say, Hey, have
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more of these conversations. So we're having more conversations and
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we started this little, named it something different called off
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the record.
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And it's been a blast this time.
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I'm sitting down with the great and powerful Stephen Curtis
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Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth Chapman. Now, if you
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don't know who that is in the contemporary Christian music world,
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this is like Garth Brooks of that planet, right? Um,
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I grew up a punk rock kid and a metal kid,
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but I did go to Sunday school. And even peripherally,
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I knew who Stephen Curtis Chapman was because he was
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the legend.
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He was the ultimate, right?
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He's won about 8 billion awards of all kinds for
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his music, his songwriting. And he's been married for decades
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to Mary Beth Chapman. Now, here's where this conversation is important.
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They have a brand new book out called Still Here.
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And it's a discussion on the challenges they've experienced being
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married and how they've stuck it out and hung in
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there despite the loss of a child, despite all sorts
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of challenges professionally, personally.
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And so we dig into that in this conversation.
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How does somebody of his caliber, of her caliber decide
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we're going to stick it out and stay married, especially
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when things get really, really hard? Now, if you're listening
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to this and thinking like, right, it makes sense to
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be like, well, I'm not married to super musician or
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I don't even listen to Christian music.
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I get it.
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But this conversation is a really powerful one. And so
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it applies to my house. It applies to your house.
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It applies if you've been married for a long, long time.
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It applies if you're in the middle of a marriage
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that's just drifted apart. This applies to you if you're
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thinking about getting married to somebody and you're thinking about
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asking them and you don't even know how it's going
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to look 5, 10, 20, 40 years from now.
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This is a powerful conversation.
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So buckle up for a great conversation with my friend
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Stephen and his amazing wife, Mary Beth, as we talk
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about their marriage and their brand new book still here.
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So I was shocked at how when I was sitting
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down thinking about the moment, like in my head, it's
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a singular moment. And my wife jokes, she's like, we
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had that like happened five times, like over the course,
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we've been married 23 and a half years. When we
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sat across the table and we were like, hey, is
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this it? Like we have to call it. Like the
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thing we had is over.
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Do we want to do something? We want to build
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something else because this thing's over.
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And so writing it down for me, I was shocked
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at how much of that began to become real again.
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I thought that we had, I thought by moving through it,
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the feelings of that stuff was over. How was writing this?
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Did that stuff come back? Some of those old stories, old, old,
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like conflict moments.
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Yeah, I think it does. And for us at the
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same time, I won't put words in your mouth. I
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think it also, I have found that doing some of
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these interviews, it's been reassuring to go, wait, we did that.
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We had some really tough, almost call it moments, like
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really hard, really hard. It's been a journey. And yet
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doing some of these interviews and the writing process, it's
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been like, We no longer did it. We conquered it.
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We made it.
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And yeah, and it's both. It's both, right? Because it's
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like there were days where it's like, I'm not working
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on this today. You can do that. I can't. I can't.
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It really does feel like, you know, those, the stones
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of remembrance, you know, in the Old Testament and the Israelites,
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you know, those Ebenezer stones, you know, going to build
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those and, you know, stack those stones up so that
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when you come back here years later and you Your
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kids and grandkids are going to go, what's that? What
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are those stones tacking? What's that about? And you're going
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to have an opportunity to remember again, well, God did
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this right here. And the waters, the Jordan were held
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back and we crossed over in this crazy miracle thing
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that you're going to need. And I feel like that's
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part of what has been a real, in a way,
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it's funny, Scotty Smith, we'll probably say his name a
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hundred times, as we're talking, because he's written on just
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about every page of that along with us, because he's
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journeyed with us as our friend, pastor, but first, one
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of our first and main counselors, probably through many of
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our years and would direct us. So I think you
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need to go talk to this person. Now I think
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you ought to go talk to that person. So, but he,
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he would talk about things that God uses almost as
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a Trojan horse. You know, some of these things that you,
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God's in this and doing something and you think it's this,
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but it's actually, he's actually doing something bigger and you might,
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you know, you won't even see it. And I think
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this book in some ways has kind of been that
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for us because it's, I'm not, it sounds funny and
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we kind of lightheartedly say this, but it was really
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scary even going into this process, even after 41 years,
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because we know we're not, We're not out of the
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woods until we walk into heaven. I mean, we're not.
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And I mean, the enemy is not, you know, said, hey, yeah,
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I guess they, you know, they made it this far.
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So let's let's go find somebody else to pick on.
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No, no.
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Hold my beer.
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Let's dance.
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Let's dance.
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So so going into this, it was there were moments
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even early on where I thought, well, crap, this is
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really going to be bad that we get. you know,
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about three-fourths of the way through this project, and we
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have to call the publisher and go, is it a
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problem that we actually are divorced now? Is that going
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to be an issue with this? You're probably going to,
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you know.
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Exact conversation with my wife.
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I'm like, the subtitle is How I Lost My Marriage, Writing.
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A Book on Marriage. Yeah, so I mean, and that
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was a real thing. And yet, I think for me
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and for both of us, we're hearing ourselves even in
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these interviews. And we did the audio book for it,
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which that was even another like, are we going to
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survive this? Because we're going to go back through all
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this and read it to each other. And I know
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my wife well enough to go, wait a minute. I said,
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can I retract that? Because I don't feel like that
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right now. But it's been so good to just, I think,
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hear our own voices and each other's voices reaffirm and
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sort of confirm the things that are here that are
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God's to God's glory. And this is what God's done.
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This is what our journeys looked like. We're still in it.
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We're still in process, but we did finish it and
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we're still married. And that's good.
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You know, anytime you're trying to step, you know, and
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push darkness back and help somebody, um, you would be
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foolish not to think that the enemy is not going
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to rear its ugly head, which is why I keep
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telling Steve, maybe we should like, let's, let's go start
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a casino. Maybe we should do something where the enemy's
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not like, I'm not on that. Go ahead.
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So how'd y'all meet?
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Oh, this is fun. So my maiden name is Chapman.
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Did you know that?
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Gross.
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It is gross. And awesome. And he's from Kentucky, so it.
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All worked out.
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That explains it.
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We met at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana, and we
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shared a mailbox because our last names were the same.
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That's how we met. Yes. True story.
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It was meant to be a true story. And so
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I saw his name, he saw my name, and I
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chased her down.
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Well, I saw her first walking across campus, and a
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friend of mine, I literally, we were walking to cafeteria
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and this beautiful brown eyed girl that I'd never seen
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on campus before walks by. And he waved and say, Hey, hi,
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Mary Beth. And I'm like, who is that? Cause we'd
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been there a couple of years. This is my third,
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third year. And she was a freshman. And he said,
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I met her last night at a orientation thing. And, uh,
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he was, you know, going to check out, I'm sure
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all the new incoming freshmen. And, uh, And he said,
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her name is Mary Beth. And I remember him saying,
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wait a minute, I think her last name's Chapman. You guys,
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y'all can like be related. And I was thinking, I
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hope not. And although I'm from Kentucky, so that doesn't matter.
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It could be. It could be.
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You know, that's... Which explains our kids.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we met at her mailbox. And
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I saw her name. And then because I was already...
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I had seen her and thought, man, she's quite lovely.
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I found her in the cafeteria, saw her, sent out
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some spies, like, watch for this girl. She's coming across campus. Now,
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this was before cell phones, computers.
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Babe, this was before the internet.
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This was before electricity.
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But hold on, I gotta say this.
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This was before fire.
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This used to be called romantic and now it's.
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Called stalking, right? Yeah, exactly.
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I used to like leave a class early just because
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I knew the woman who's my wife now was walking
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across campus to go to her next class. And we
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would just bump into each other. I just happened to
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be standing down. That would be weird and creepy. She
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was like, man, he left class for me.
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Yeah, it was super intentional, right? Like this was before
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computers and internet, texting, I mean.
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And I had a friend, friends would call and we
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had one phone on the dorm floor and ring Chapman.
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And it was like my buddy, Dave, hey, Mary Beth sighting,
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12 o'clock, she's coming across campus. So I would just
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happen to be standing out in front of my dorm
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at that time. And so that's kind of, I met her,
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asked her on a date, took her to Red Lobster. Popcorn, shrimp,
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and cheddar bay biscuits fell in love. So how soon.
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After were you all married?
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We met in September, got engaged in March, and got
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married in October.
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Oh.
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Yeah, when I was 19. So plus the holy headlock
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and wedlock on it.
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I'm trying to think now. I worked at universities for
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20 years. I can't imagine the phone call from the
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parent of the freshman girl saying– You gave my daughter
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a shared mailbox with a junior dude in college?
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I probably won't do that. That's awesome.
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Yeah, I was a freshman. And so we made the
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decision then to move, you know, things were, he was
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writing at the time. We didn't really know what was happening.
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I mean, but he was writing and you thought you
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could move here. He transferred to Belmont.
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I had a few songs cut and published. Well, no, actually,
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I guess the first, The first song cut.
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The Imperials.
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Imperials. But were we dating and I told you about
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that or had I already? I can't remember.
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I think it was happening while we were dating.
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Yeah.
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Anyhow, we moved here and I got a job and
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you went to school.
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That's right. I did.
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I took my royalty check. My first songwriting royalty check
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is what bought her engagement ring.
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Nice.
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All what? $ 800 of it. A little tiny. It's a
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canardly diamond.
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It's a canardly.
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Canardly see it, but it's there.
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It's there, baby.
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It's one of those rare canardly diamonds. That's right.
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Okay, so what was.
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When I sit down with couples, especially behind closed doors,
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they'll come and stay at our house for a couple
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days or they'll come meet us here in Nashville. One
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of the universal beliefs they bring with them is if
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we could just... If we could just get stability economically,
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if we could just, if his job would hit, if
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this business would just boom, then all this other stuff
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takes care of itself. And y'all are a good outsized,
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like so far outside the bell curve that it becomes
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a fun case study for me.
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Like you've had to add.
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Three or four mantles to, you don't have an award
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on your mantle. You have five, you have to have
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nine mantles, right?
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And so.
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I can imagine the person watching this or listening to
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you guys story and say, yeah, but all these things
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were taken care of. You got the fame and the
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fortune and the money and the success and the yada and, and,
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and amazing. Like, and I've told you this privately, like
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your kids are like some of my favorite people on
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the planet. Cause you, you let them, I can see
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since being in their presence, a, they're super respectful and
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kind and just lovely humans. But, They didn't have parents
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who said, y'all are going to live the life we
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want you to live. I can see, I can experience
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in them. I had two parents that said, oh, that's
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who they are. Our job is to help them become
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the best version of that, right? Which is, golly, as
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a guy who's worked with young people my whole life,
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it's like when you see them and you feel them, you're.
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Like, that's it. That's how you do that, right? So,
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but you have that. And yet this book exists.
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So what do you say to the couple who's sitting
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there thinking, or the person who's saying, man, if I
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could just, like.
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What do you say to that couple?
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Well, man, part of the reason this book maybe took
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as many years as it did to write is because
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of that very thing. I think so much of our journey,
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and this is probably more, on me, but I think
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both of us are a little bit guilty of this or, or, um,
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fall prey to this. But, um, I, I think for
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so many years, uh, I was convinced that, uh, cause
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we're as broken and as big of a mess. I mean, honestly,
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we don't joke when we say the reason we didn't
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want to write a book, people kept approaching us publishers
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ever since I wrote the song, I will be here,
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which is 37 years ago now. And that song kind
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of blew up and people started using it at weddings
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and publishers came and said, you know, that's a big song.
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You should write a book about your wonderful marriage. And
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we always said the only marriage book would you write
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is what not to do, how not to do it, right?
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Mistakes to avoid. You know, the guys who write the
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books are the guys that have, you know, they're, you know, they're,
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you know, they're, well, they're experts. You know, you write
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your five love languages and your 10, you know, keys
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and hidden keys of successful marriage. all that. And we're like,
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we just don't have any of that. And there was
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a lot of, especially in me, the other thing in
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both of us, if only we could, if we can
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just get to the right conference, if we can just
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get to the right counselor, if we can just read
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the right book.
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You can just get your calendar figured out.
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If I can just get my calendar figured out and
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then go to the counselor who says, and we sit
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down and say, we just need to get figured out
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how to do the calendar. And there were even moments where,
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you know, okay, if I need to quit doing this,
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because People could look from the outside to your point
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and say, yeah, it must be nice. But then we
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could flip that around very easily and go, yeah, it
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must be nice to not have the expectations and the pressures.
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And people say, what's it like to win a Grammy award?
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And I'll say, man, it's awesome for about 15 minutes.
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And that's when all the high fives are happening. But
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you walk out of that, out of the press room
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and you walk into the room with your manager and
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your booking agent and your record label and everybody's like, man,
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the next one, boy, well, think of what we can
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build on with this.
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And the pressure hits. And it's just, it's the pressure.
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So, you know, all of that is amazing and incredible
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as it is, is a whole lot of then pressure, expectation.
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How do you manage it? How do you, you know,
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love a family and raise your kids and care for
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your wife? And you look and you see the toll
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it's taken on her. And then I'm sitting with my,
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you know, manager and record label, in tears going, guys,
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I think I might have to pull the plug on
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this because I'm not going to lose my marriage and
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my family over this. And so we pray through it. And,
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you know, and then, of course, the pressure that puts
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on her to go, oh, great, I'm going to be
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the one responsible for completely demolishing, you know, a God-calling career. Yeah,
348
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no pressure there. So there's a lot of layers of,
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you know, hard to that. And I foolishly, can see now.
350
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And it's really taken, I mean, this is not something
351
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I figured out in 10 years, it's 40 years almost,
352
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and still figuring it out that, boy, if only we
353
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could get to the right conference, if we only read
354
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the right book, the right counselor could just fix us
355
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and tell me, give me the workbook, give me the
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thing to do, I'll do it. And both of us
357
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that way. And realizing we are so much more complicated, complex,
358
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and the truth is, what Ms. Oswald Chambers says, what
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we call the process, God calls the end. We want
360
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to see it as, we just want to find that end,
361
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that fix. And God says, hey, trust me and do
362
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the next thing and keep trusting me. And this journey
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is where I'm going to show up. And it's going
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to be way more complicated because you're not, you are
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too sinful people trying to love each other and be
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on the journey. And there is not going to be
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a fix for this. It's called heaven. You're longing for that.
368
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And that's a great longing, but you got to keep
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longing for that and realize that what is it, you know,
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what's it going to be like to show up today
371
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and keep loving each other and bearing with one another
372
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and the, the ways you're going to disappoint each other
373
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and hurt each other. And can you keep doing that
374
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and trusting me, you know, for, for, the grace that
375
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you're going to need to keep doing that. And that's
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a lot of the marriage books and things even that
377
00:19:08.109 --> 00:19:11.779
we would get just set us up for disappointment because
378
00:19:11.859 --> 00:19:14.539
it's like, man, we're on page 10 and we've already
379
00:19:14.559 --> 00:19:17.019
screwed up everything on every page. We haven't done the
380
00:19:17.079 --> 00:19:19.500
date night right. We haven't done this right. We can't
381
00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:21.680
seem to get that together. And then there's just more
382
00:19:21.769 --> 00:19:24.910
shame and more, well, we've just screwed this up, I guess.
383
00:19:24.950 --> 00:19:25.789
We're never going to make it.
384
00:19:25.829 --> 00:19:27.630
I get existential. I'm just like, oh, maybe we're not
385
00:19:27.650 --> 00:19:28.329
supposed to be together.
386
00:19:28.759 --> 00:19:33.769
Or maybe I made the wrong call and let's just
387
00:19:33.809 --> 00:19:35.230
call it for what it was and it was fun
388
00:19:35.250 --> 00:19:36.990
and good, but let's, yeah.
389
00:19:37.009 --> 00:19:37.690
It's existential.
390
00:19:38.410 --> 00:19:40.970
This is, so there's a big chunk of people of
391
00:19:40.970 --> 00:19:43.589
various faith communities who listen to the show and there's
392
00:19:43.589 --> 00:19:46.259
there's a big chunk of people who don't have notes.
393
00:19:46.279 --> 00:19:50.839
So this might sound like a strange question and push
394
00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:51.880
back on me if I'm wrong here.
395
00:19:52.839 --> 00:19:56.700
Um, for folks inside of faith communities to ask this question.
396
00:19:59.240 --> 00:20:02.819
Often when folks, when they're, when they're trying to stay married,
397
00:20:02.839 --> 00:20:04.680
they got young kids running around, they got careers and
398
00:20:04.700 --> 00:20:05.789
try to manage it all.
399
00:20:06.710 --> 00:20:07.349
And they're in a.
400
00:20:07.349 --> 00:20:12.279
Faith context and, The advice is often you just need
401
00:20:12.440 --> 00:20:13.700
to give it over to God.
402
00:20:13.940 --> 00:20:15.700
You just need to pray more.
403
00:20:15.819 --> 00:20:17.480
You need to kind of almost what you said, like
404
00:20:17.759 --> 00:20:22.400
follow these steps and do these things. What I have found,
405
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:25.309
and again, this is anecdotal and push.
406
00:20:25.150 --> 00:20:27.029
Back and say, John, that's screwed up and that's wrong.
407
00:20:28.150 --> 00:20:32.849
I often see folks, quote unquote, trying to give it
408
00:20:32.890 --> 00:20:35.210
to God or look to the heavens as an avoidance
409
00:20:35.269 --> 00:20:36.430
mechanism of looking.
410
00:20:36.190 --> 00:20:39.299
To the mirror. Here's what I'm bringing to this thing.
411
00:20:39.579 --> 00:20:42.279
And here's what I need to go work on for
412
00:20:42.339 --> 00:20:44.500
me so that I can show up and give myself
413
00:20:44.539 --> 00:20:46.680
away to this person for the rest of my life
414
00:20:46.779 --> 00:20:48.559
and hope to God she does it back, right?
415
00:20:48.579 --> 00:20:50.059
Does that ring true?
416
00:20:50.079 --> 00:20:54.549
It's just a constant avoidance of who is that man
417
00:20:54.650 --> 00:20:56.849
or woman in the mirror that needs a.
418
00:20:56.890 --> 00:20:58.809
Lot of work, right?
419
00:20:58.849 --> 00:21:00.490
And prayer is part of that work, of course, and
420
00:21:00.529 --> 00:21:02.390
it's got to be rooted into something big and strong.
421
00:21:03.009 --> 00:21:04.690
But man, there's a lot of.
422
00:21:06.309 --> 00:21:07.839
Avoidance, I guess, is the right word.
423
00:21:07.859 --> 00:21:10.079
Sure. Yeah.
424
00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:14.400
I just, yeah, I would echo that. I think there
425
00:21:14.579 --> 00:21:18.019
is a lot of, you know, if we can pray harder,
426
00:21:18.940 --> 00:21:21.880
you know, meet with our small group more, you know,
427
00:21:22.009 --> 00:21:24.490
whatever it is, you know, get with our pastor, get
428
00:21:24.529 --> 00:21:31.049
with our counselor, and not have the willingness to realize.
429
00:21:31.069 --> 00:21:34.599
I think for me, I think I spent a lot
430
00:21:34.630 --> 00:21:38.890
of our early days ongoing, you know, marriage, going, if
431
00:21:39.029 --> 00:21:43.750
I could just get him to, if he would just da-da-da,
432
00:21:44.289 --> 00:21:47.390
if I have to listen to blah-blah-blah, or, you know,
433
00:21:47.509 --> 00:21:50.519
and there's a lot of I-I-I, which is interesting because
434
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:54.059
I think in 2026, there's a lot of focus on
435
00:21:54.119 --> 00:21:57.579
people being, I have to be my best me. And
436
00:21:57.920 --> 00:22:00.279
if I can't be my best me, then, you know,
437
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:03.039
I can't, you know, serve him well or whatever.
438
00:22:03.079 --> 00:22:03.180
Right.
439
00:22:03.390 --> 00:22:04.910
There's truth to that, right? We need to take care
440
00:22:04.950 --> 00:22:07.109
of ourselves. Obviously, we need to take care of ourselves
441
00:22:07.210 --> 00:22:09.829
and be healthy and all those things. And we need
442
00:22:09.849 --> 00:22:13.029
to realize that there is a center when I look
443
00:22:13.069 --> 00:22:16.089
in the mirror and there's a lot of, I'm a selfish,
444
00:22:16.910 --> 00:22:18.440
you know, I want what I want how I want it.
445
00:22:19.029 --> 00:22:23.970
And I think it's taken a lifetime of, you know,
446
00:22:24.019 --> 00:22:28.339
realizing it more and more and more that this book
447
00:22:28.359 --> 00:22:30.440
could have been written in one sentence. And that is,
448
00:22:30.579 --> 00:22:33.319
how do we bear with one another in love? How
449
00:22:33.380 --> 00:22:37.000
do we esteem the other more important than me? You know,
450
00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:39.519
how do I just, I have my desires, I have
451
00:22:39.559 --> 00:22:42.799
my wants. How do I take it to, you know, yes,
452
00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:45.740
taking it to God in prayer and going, you know,
453
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:48.519
and I have an enemy. It's not him. He's not
454
00:22:48.539 --> 00:22:51.599
my enemy. There is an enemy. And how do I,
455
00:22:52.069 --> 00:22:55.150
you know, purge the, you know, the selfish nature of
456
00:22:55.170 --> 00:22:57.450
myself too? So I think what you're speaking is a
457
00:22:57.509 --> 00:22:59.650
lot of truth, a lot of truth that we by
458
00:22:59.710 --> 00:23:02.960
nature are unwilling to look at our own you know,
459
00:23:03.160 --> 00:23:06.359
log in our eye because we're constantly picking at the spec,
460
00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:09.380
you know, of you just need to be better at this. And,
461
00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:12.119
you know, I would be happy if you would da-da-da-da-da
462
00:23:13.380 --> 00:23:16.099
instead of, you know, looking inward a little bit.
463
00:23:16.839 --> 00:23:21.029
Yeah, I think it's interesting. When you said that, I
464
00:23:21.049 --> 00:23:24.529
thought about the one counselor who, You know, so go unnamed.
465
00:23:24.549 --> 00:23:27.190
There's been so many, so many, so much counseling.
466
00:23:27.210 --> 00:23:29.970
Yeah, so much, too much.
467
00:23:30.170 --> 00:23:34.190
Chapman, I'll be the first to say we're over-therapized in
468
00:23:34.210 --> 00:23:35.380
a pretty significant way.
469
00:23:35.819 --> 00:23:37.859
Have you been fired by a counselor yet? Because we've
470
00:23:37.880 --> 00:23:38.380
been fired.
471
00:23:39.859 --> 00:23:43.500
I'm a terrible client. We've been let go.
472
00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:46.119
We've been like, we don't think we can help you.
473
00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:50.099
Sorry. What does that say? I think you're beyond, we
474
00:23:50.119 --> 00:23:51.839
don't even know why you're still married.
475
00:23:51.859 --> 00:23:52.900
At least that says we're determined.
476
00:23:53.099 --> 00:23:56.180
Good for you, but we got nothing else to help you.
477
00:23:56.200 --> 00:23:58.490
I'm like, well, okay. Thank you for being honest enough
478
00:23:58.509 --> 00:24:00.029
to tell us that. But I was going to say
479
00:24:00.069 --> 00:24:04.210
there was one who has now passed on as with Jesus,
480
00:24:04.250 --> 00:24:07.210
but told me that I prayed. Chapman, you prayed too much.
481
00:24:07.230 --> 00:24:11.589
You need to stop praying so much. Which was like, okay, well,
482
00:24:11.650 --> 00:24:15.859
what in the world? But to your point of if
483
00:24:15.940 --> 00:24:20.109
prayer is an avoidance to say, Hey, I just need
484
00:24:20.119 --> 00:24:23.910
to keep, you know, just keep talking to God about, well,
485
00:24:23.950 --> 00:24:26.650
but what are you praying? You know, because the reality is,
486
00:24:26.789 --> 00:24:29.869
you know, I think early on in our, and I'm
487
00:24:30.450 --> 00:24:34.829
totally owning this. I'm, you know, telling on myself and
488
00:24:35.349 --> 00:24:40.660
exposing my stupidity was praying and using prayer as an
489
00:24:40.690 --> 00:24:43.579
opportunity for me to still keep sort of lecturing or
490
00:24:43.640 --> 00:24:46.150
preaching at my wife. like, Lord, just help my wife
491
00:24:46.190 --> 00:24:49.450
to understand that, you know, I was just like, wow, yeah,
492
00:24:49.789 --> 00:24:53.789
help her to have a better attitude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
493
00:24:54.250 --> 00:24:56.670
And it's like, then those weren't prayers he prayed to himself.
494
00:24:56.690 --> 00:25:00.029
No, no, no, these are, these are out loud. She
495
00:25:00.089 --> 00:25:02.869
ain't gonna, she ain't gonna interrupt. Can she interrupt a prayer?
496
00:25:02.890 --> 00:25:06.079
She's hopefully she, she knows you can't do that. Um,
497
00:25:06.130 --> 00:25:09.480
but she, she would, um, it turns out, but I
498
00:25:09.519 --> 00:25:13.259
needed to, but I think, you know, what I've, one
499
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:14.980
of the things we even talk about in this book
500
00:25:15.039 --> 00:25:18.440
and something that I just feel like I am still
501
00:25:18.660 --> 00:25:25.849
learning about, you know, the God's word and scripture is,
502
00:25:26.140 --> 00:25:29.049
and this isn't a Christian, you know, thing to say,
503
00:25:29.089 --> 00:25:33.450
this is just my experience is that, you know, go
504
00:25:33.490 --> 00:25:36.630
figure the one who I believe we believe came up
505
00:25:36.670 --> 00:25:39.660
with the idea of, of marriage and relationship in the,
506
00:25:40.619 --> 00:25:44.150
first place, you know, the one who created us for
507
00:25:44.789 --> 00:25:48.690
a relationship with himself and with each other. Actually, it
508
00:25:48.730 --> 00:25:55.009
turns out, you know, Scripture is so brilliant with the
509
00:25:55.069 --> 00:25:59.049
things that it teaches and tells us if we just
510
00:25:59.089 --> 00:26:01.769
have eyes to see it, ears to hear, and go
511
00:26:01.809 --> 00:26:07.750
look in the mirror in light of Scripture. It's not
512
00:26:08.089 --> 00:26:13.099
an escapism, but it is. you know, verse after verse,
513
00:26:13.160 --> 00:26:17.849
truth after truth of you, you are, if you're going
514
00:26:17.869 --> 00:26:20.009
to love another person, you're going to esteem them more
515
00:26:20.049 --> 00:26:22.250
important than yourself. You're going to lay your life down.
516
00:26:22.509 --> 00:26:25.130
You're going to die to yourself. You're going to recognize
517
00:26:25.470 --> 00:26:30.819
your own need for grace, for, you know, for, for
518
00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:34.559
what only God can do through, as we understand it
519
00:26:34.579 --> 00:26:38.420
through Jesus to keep changing you into that person. You're
520
00:26:38.480 --> 00:26:41.750
longing for something. You're made for something that you're never
521
00:26:41.789 --> 00:26:43.009
going to get in this world.
522
00:26:43.069 --> 00:26:43.410
C.S.
523
00:26:43.470 --> 00:26:45.359
Lewis, you know, you're going to hear those, you're going
524
00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:48.180
to have those longings awakened in something and those echoes.
525
00:26:48.759 --> 00:26:51.880
And that's not a bad thing. What you're longing for
526
00:26:52.039 --> 00:26:55.440
is what you're made for. Eden, perfect relationship. You're longing
527
00:26:55.460 --> 00:26:57.019
for that, but you're not going to get it this
528
00:26:57.059 --> 00:27:00.559
side of heaven. That's coming. That's out there. But can
529
00:27:00.619 --> 00:27:04.799
you keep trusting, you know, God to keep changing you
530
00:27:05.259 --> 00:27:07.440
and recognizing the longing that you're having that's going to
531
00:27:07.480 --> 00:27:09.880
make you, you know, and there is a real enemy.
532
00:27:10.279 --> 00:27:14.079
who hates everything that's good and beautiful and reflects the
533
00:27:14.500 --> 00:27:16.920
goodness of God. So we're going to be battling that.
534
00:27:17.039 --> 00:27:22.819
It's just all of those realities. So, you know, all
535
00:27:22.859 --> 00:27:25.680
of it is look in the mirror, see the reality
536
00:27:25.740 --> 00:27:29.259
of who you really are apart from the grace of God.
537
00:27:29.640 --> 00:27:34.329
And then that's where you're going to keep recognizing that
538
00:27:34.670 --> 00:27:37.230
there's hope for even as broken as it might feel
539
00:27:37.609 --> 00:27:40.150
right now. but it's only going to be found there.
540
00:27:40.230 --> 00:27:43.009
I think that's been so much the journey for us.
541
00:27:43.089 --> 00:27:47.839
And, and the lesson for me that has been pretty
542
00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:50.819
transformative over the last decade of my life has been
543
00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:56.319
recognizing that when I would hear the word grace for
544
00:27:56.359 --> 00:27:58.779
whatever reason, and this might be my own interpretation of
545
00:27:58.819 --> 00:28:01.859
it is I would exhale. It would give me permission
546
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:05.609
to just be as I am. And I, what I
547
00:28:05.670 --> 00:28:08.670
took that is be as I am like you're, you're
548
00:28:08.690 --> 00:28:13.230
worth being loved. And I took that too far to say,
549
00:28:13.250 --> 00:28:14.410
so you don't have to do anything.
550
00:28:14.589 --> 00:28:14.789
Yeah.
551
00:28:15.599 --> 00:28:19.309
And so it was, it was, it was actually a,
552
00:28:19.859 --> 00:28:22.740
a exclamation point was put on actually by a fitness
553
00:28:22.799 --> 00:28:26.920
guy who, um, I've struggled with body image issues since
554
00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:29.400
I was a kid, disordered eating stuff. And he said, Hey,
555
00:28:30.019 --> 00:28:32.240
if you go to the gym every day because you
556
00:28:32.259 --> 00:28:34.839
think you're gross and you're disgusting and this is what
557
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:38.299
you get, this is your punishment for being unattractive and
558
00:28:39.079 --> 00:28:40.559
you have to go beat yourself up. He said, you'll
559
00:28:40.579 --> 00:28:43.240
quit every time. But he said, if you wake up
560
00:28:43.299 --> 00:28:46.819
every morning and say, I get an hour to go
561
00:28:47.119 --> 00:28:49.920
feel good, to take care of myself so that I
562
00:28:49.960 --> 00:28:52.009
can love my wife and my kids and my community well.
563
00:28:52.390 --> 00:28:53.690
He goes, you'll do that the rest of your life.
564
00:28:54.369 --> 00:28:57.150
And this idea of grace being, no, no, you're worth
565
00:28:57.190 --> 00:29:00.130
being loved So get off your butt and go see
566
00:29:00.170 --> 00:29:03.099
a counselor. Go get the medications you need. Go ask
567
00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:07.339
for forgiveness. Go do these things that I was like, no,
568
00:29:07.359 --> 00:29:12.289
I'm just good, right? Put your phone down. When you
569
00:29:12.309 --> 00:29:14.509
said that earlier, the number of times I've told my wife,
570
00:29:14.670 --> 00:29:16.529
if you don't want me to go on these next
571
00:29:16.589 --> 00:29:18.529
five events, just tell me.
572
00:29:18.549 --> 00:29:21.420
And she's like, I can't. So that I can be
573
00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:22.259
blamed for that too.
574
00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:26.869
Financially and emotionally. And you're going to be here moping,
575
00:29:26.900 --> 00:29:30.289
just sitting in front of the TV. So like get
576
00:29:30.349 --> 00:29:33.950
up and do something about it. And that action oriented,
577
00:29:33.950 --> 00:29:36.250
I guess I just missed it. I'd missed the whole
578
00:29:36.250 --> 00:29:38.940
thing that I thought I could think my way into this.
579
00:29:38.940 --> 00:29:40.910
And even for folks who are listening who aren't of
580
00:29:40.950 --> 00:29:43.289
faith communities, I hear it. I seem to listen to
581
00:29:43.309 --> 00:29:45.269
another podcast. I need to read another book, another book,
582
00:29:45.289 --> 00:29:48.230
another podcast, another book. I feel like we're at a
583
00:29:48.259 --> 00:29:49.519
place now where we pretty much.
584
00:29:49.420 --> 00:29:51.940
Have all the information. What we need to do is
585
00:29:53.119 --> 00:29:55.049
ask my wife, hey, how can I love you? And
586
00:29:55.089 --> 00:29:55.670
go do that.
587
00:29:56.130 --> 00:29:56.410
Right.
588
00:29:56.630 --> 00:29:58.220
And what do I need to do outside of our
589
00:29:58.539 --> 00:30:00.259
bedroom and outside of our home so that I can
590
00:30:01.599 --> 00:30:04.319
refill my pitcher so I can go make sure all
591
00:30:04.339 --> 00:30:07.579
my families can, I can, right. It's a weird balance,
592
00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:09.750
but man, what a mess. So what are some keys
593
00:30:09.789 --> 00:30:15.630
y'all have learned? Oh, can we get sideways a bit?
594
00:30:15.809 --> 00:30:17.750
This is just coming to me. Kelly always gets nervous
595
00:30:17.769 --> 00:30:18.250
when I do this.
596
00:30:18.269 --> 00:30:18.369
Sure.
597
00:30:19.230 --> 00:30:22.029
What's a couple of things over the years y'all have,
598
00:30:22.269 --> 00:30:24.630
and think of speaking to your younger selves.
599
00:30:24.769 --> 00:30:24.970
Yeah.
600
00:30:25.589 --> 00:30:28.990
Y'all have looked in the mirror and said, I need to, like,
601
00:30:29.849 --> 00:30:32.190
me always wishing Steve or me always wishing Mary Beth
602
00:30:32.210 --> 00:30:32.920
would be different.
603
00:30:33.259 --> 00:30:35.480
That's not serving us here. I need to do something different.
604
00:30:35.940 --> 00:30:37.480
What does that look like in y'all's lives?
605
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:41.259
Let me go first.
606
00:30:41.319 --> 00:30:43.319
Yeah, you can go first.
607
00:30:43.819 --> 00:30:48.740
Well, I, this is funny, I think, I don't know
608
00:30:48.779 --> 00:30:52.359
if we told the tattoo story in this or not,
609
00:30:52.460 --> 00:30:56.619
but this is a fun one. I think we told
610
00:30:56.660 --> 00:30:59.019
this in maybe my book and you told your version
611
00:30:59.059 --> 00:31:01.660
of it in yours because we've both written memoir kind
612
00:31:01.700 --> 00:31:05.369
of books before this together. But it was one of
613
00:31:05.410 --> 00:31:09.910
the first times and it continues to be a lesson
614
00:31:09.950 --> 00:31:14.509
that I think, you know, I continue to learn. But
615
00:31:14.529 --> 00:31:16.170
I remember this being sort of one of the first
616
00:31:17.369 --> 00:31:25.529
monumental moments of me having to learn and recognize how
617
00:31:25.690 --> 00:31:30.319
different we are wired and made and embracing that.
618
00:31:31.099 --> 00:31:32.460
You love it.
619
00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:33.339
Can I pause real quick?
620
00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:33.660
Yeah.
621
00:31:33.700 --> 00:31:34.660
Can we see something? Yeah.
622
00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:38.839
As I ask this, as you're answering this question, Steve's
623
00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:40.880
getting tighter and tighter.
624
00:31:40.940 --> 00:31:42.460
Yeah, he's just like.
625
00:31:42.559 --> 00:31:43.039
It's so good.
626
00:31:47.299 --> 00:31:48.740
I don't want.
627
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:49.819
Anyone to see me.
628
00:31:49.940 --> 00:31:50.339
Yes.
629
00:31:50.519 --> 00:31:50.819
Yeah.
630
00:31:51.359 --> 00:31:56.859
Um, no, we, we, uh, we had been married at
631
00:31:56.900 --> 00:31:59.980
this point. I don't know. Maybe we had all our
632
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:01.769
kids because 15 years or something.
633
00:32:01.809 --> 00:32:02.609
I was in Branson.
634
00:32:02.630 --> 00:32:04.049
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
635
00:32:04.630 --> 00:32:06.650
And I'm spying on Will Franklin who was at camp.
636
00:32:06.769 --> 00:32:09.529
Yeah, that's right. So yeah, maybe he wasn't.
637
00:32:09.569 --> 00:32:11.130
So he could, he'd get so homesick.
638
00:32:11.230 --> 00:32:13.509
Yeah. This might've been, I guess it could have been
639
00:32:13.509 --> 00:32:17.960
20 years ago then or something, but we, uh, she got,
640
00:32:18.569 --> 00:32:20.289
she had always talked about wanting to get a tattoo.
641
00:32:20.829 --> 00:32:24.130
And cause her dad had one really, you know, on
642
00:32:24.150 --> 00:32:27.829
his arm, just a very kind of typical of his generation,
643
00:32:28.210 --> 00:32:30.829
sort of a sunrise. And, and he would always say, yeah,
644
00:32:30.910 --> 00:32:33.630
I was dumb. I was young and foolish and went
645
00:32:33.670 --> 00:32:35.910
with a bunch of buddies and, you know, got, got
646
00:32:35.970 --> 00:32:39.170
kind of crazy and, and got a tattoo. But she always,
647
00:32:39.369 --> 00:32:42.230
as a little girl, just thought this was kind of cool.
648
00:32:42.329 --> 00:32:44.900
And it was, Again, one of the things that attracted
649
00:32:44.940 --> 00:32:46.819
me to her when I first met her, I still
650
00:32:46.859 --> 00:32:51.390
remember she had on matching denim skirt with a denim jacket,
651
00:32:51.769 --> 00:32:53.589
kind of rock and roll. So wild. At that point,
652
00:32:53.650 --> 00:32:54.309
she was cool.
653
00:32:54.569 --> 00:32:56.430
Canadian. Canadian sexy.
654
00:32:56.470 --> 00:32:59.009
Had these button, had these, at the time, you'd wear
655
00:32:59.029 --> 00:33:01.450
these like rock and roll, you know, buttons around.
656
00:33:01.549 --> 00:33:01.910
Oh, yeah.
657
00:33:01.950 --> 00:33:03.710
You'd do Ramones buttons. I remember those.
658
00:33:03.750 --> 00:33:07.349
Yeah, Ramones or Kiss, you know, or whatever. And she
659
00:33:07.609 --> 00:33:09.650
had these, you know, three or four rock and roll
660
00:33:09.690 --> 00:33:13.240
looking kind of buttons on her jacket. and kind of
661
00:33:13.289 --> 00:33:17.069
biker sort of vibes, you know, and just cool denim.
662
00:33:17.309 --> 00:33:19.910
But they were, it turns out the buttons were these
663
00:33:19.950 --> 00:33:23.549
little precious moments for those older generation will know.
664
00:33:23.690 --> 00:33:25.150
If you love Jesus.
665
00:33:25.450 --> 00:33:28.009
Yeah, they were little like figurines that you would get
666
00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:31.549
at the Hallmark store. But they made buttons that said
667
00:33:31.589 --> 00:33:34.690
things that had little inspiration. Like one was a little
668
00:33:34.730 --> 00:33:36.809
girl nose to nose with a goose and it said,
669
00:33:36.849 --> 00:33:38.670
honk if you love Jesus. And it was this little
670
00:33:38.950 --> 00:33:41.589
cute little big eyed, you know, girl. So there were
671
00:33:41.609 --> 00:33:44.410
all these like sweet, so I was like, wow, that's
672
00:33:44.470 --> 00:33:47.190
even cooler, you know, cause she is like a rock
673
00:33:47.250 --> 00:33:49.890
and roll, precious moments, rock and roller.
674
00:33:49.910 --> 00:33:50.170
Yeah.
675
00:33:50.230 --> 00:33:54.470
Yeah. So, so, you know, cause I'm coming from like,
676
00:33:54.970 --> 00:33:57.210
so super straight laced. Okay.
677
00:33:57.230 --> 00:33:57.509
Gotcha.
678
00:33:57.529 --> 00:33:57.789
Yeah.
679
00:33:58.250 --> 00:34:02.549
And, and anyway, so we're in, you know, we're, you know,
680
00:34:02.589 --> 00:34:05.349
years later, she's always, we'll throw out this idea. I
681
00:34:05.369 --> 00:34:08.929
want to get a tattoo. And I'd be like, no,
682
00:34:09.050 --> 00:34:10.639
why would you ever, why would you want to do that?
683
00:34:10.699 --> 00:34:13.460
And now this was way before tattoos were even cool.
684
00:34:13.559 --> 00:34:16.099
Cause now they're like, you know, you're not even taken
685
00:34:16.139 --> 00:34:18.239
seriously as a worship leader. If you don't have, if
686
00:34:18.260 --> 00:34:21.150
you don't have visible tattoos, like that guy didn't know Jesus.
687
00:34:21.210 --> 00:34:24.489
What's he even, you know? So, so, but this was
688
00:34:24.650 --> 00:34:27.409
way before then, trust me, this was like tattoos were,
689
00:34:27.929 --> 00:34:31.219
you know, you know, marking your body is no way,
690
00:34:31.659 --> 00:34:34.400
You know, this person, that was before they knew Jesus, clearly.
691
00:34:34.420 --> 00:34:36.320
It made you unemployable. Yeah, yeah.
692
00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:39.000
It made you unemployable. And it made you, you know.
693
00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:40.139
One of those people.
694
00:34:40.199 --> 00:34:43.019
Yeah, those people. But she was bound and determined. Anyway,
695
00:34:43.820 --> 00:34:47.820
took the kids to camp. My buddy, Jeff Moore, and
696
00:34:47.860 --> 00:34:49.739
my best friend, you have more in the distance.
697
00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:50.469
I remember them, yeah.
698
00:34:50.570 --> 00:34:52.750
Yeah, I listened to music back in those days. And
699
00:34:52.809 --> 00:34:57.469
I were on a tour. She was in with Jeff's wife,
700
00:34:57.630 --> 00:35:01.639
taking the kids to summer camp. And she calls me
701
00:35:01.699 --> 00:35:05.980
and says, hey, Jan and I went, drove past, guess
702
00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:08.429
what there is here? I saw a tattoo place. And
703
00:35:08.449 --> 00:35:11.630
I'm like, and? And she said, well, I might have
704
00:35:11.650 --> 00:35:17.329
gone in. And I'm like, and? And I'm like, the
705
00:35:17.369 --> 00:35:22.289
wheels have totally come off. And she finally confides, I
706
00:35:22.699 --> 00:35:25.340
might have got, I got this little tiny tattoo on
707
00:35:25.380 --> 00:35:29.300
my ankle. And Bro, I mean, I was losing it.
708
00:35:29.320 --> 00:35:29.780
You freaked out.
709
00:35:29.840 --> 00:35:30.760
Yeah, I freaked out.
710
00:35:30.719 --> 00:35:33.500
Because I'm like, number one, like, why would she do that?
711
00:35:33.820 --> 00:35:36.380
Why would she do it knowing that I really was
712
00:35:36.500 --> 00:35:40.050
not for this? And so then I spent the whole
713
00:35:40.090 --> 00:35:43.250
time getting from where I was, which is way down
714
00:35:43.449 --> 00:35:45.969
south in Florida. Jeff and I were on a bus,
715
00:35:45.989 --> 00:35:48.750
got back to Nashville, and then went to Branson, Missouri
716
00:35:48.769 --> 00:35:50.750
to get to where they were, he and his wife,
717
00:35:50.769 --> 00:35:52.090
because we were going to spend some time together. And
718
00:35:52.110 --> 00:35:54.679
the whole time I'm praying, trying to talk to myself, God,
719
00:35:54.980 --> 00:35:57.519
I know my wife's different, and I need to embrace this,
720
00:35:57.860 --> 00:36:01.480
but man, I'm so, this is just really hard, really
721
00:36:01.539 --> 00:36:05.559
a struggle. And show up at the door, and she's
722
00:36:06.320 --> 00:36:09.070
sad and tears in her eyes because she knows that
723
00:36:09.179 --> 00:36:12.010
I'm disappointed, and yet I'm trying to embrace it, and
724
00:36:12.050 --> 00:36:14.690
I'm trying to get to a place. And that was
725
00:36:15.010 --> 00:36:18.610
one really, I remember, very monumental moment And the whole
726
00:36:18.710 --> 00:36:23.400
thing I was wrestling with was, God, you gave me
727
00:36:23.579 --> 00:36:29.079
this very differently wired, her experience, everything about this. And
728
00:36:29.300 --> 00:36:34.809
how do I love and embrace her and celebrate even
729
00:36:34.869 --> 00:36:38.690
that difference in all the right ways? And yet, man,
730
00:36:38.710 --> 00:36:42.150
I'm really struggling with this. And so over, I think,
731
00:36:42.210 --> 00:36:46.000
the course of our journey and our life, You know,
732
00:36:46.079 --> 00:36:49.239
there have continued to be those kinds of things where
733
00:36:49.260 --> 00:36:51.699
it's just, I mean, I've written songs about it, wrote
734
00:36:51.719 --> 00:36:53.579
a whole song. How do I love her? I mean,
735
00:36:53.599 --> 00:36:55.159
that whole song, I remember when I wrote that on
736
00:36:55.179 --> 00:36:58.360
the All About Love record was just, now here's this
737
00:36:58.420 --> 00:37:03.199
woman that is so, she's wired differently. And it, you know,
738
00:37:03.260 --> 00:37:05.300
sometimes it's not, I mean, it sounds so silly.
739
00:37:05.559 --> 00:37:06.880
Maybe you're wired differently.
740
00:37:07.019 --> 00:37:12.340
Like a. Well, yes, that is implied in she's wired
741
00:37:12.380 --> 00:37:16.239
differently than I am. Not saying you're wired wrongly. I'm
742
00:37:16.280 --> 00:37:18.019
the one wired wrong. Okay, well, let's just go ahead
743
00:37:18.039 --> 00:37:21.599
and say it. No, we're both just wired differently. You'll
744
00:37:21.940 --> 00:37:23.159
be good to know.
745
00:37:23.179 --> 00:37:25.119
He has a big, fat tattoo now.
746
00:37:25.179 --> 00:37:26.280
And then I end up with a tattoo.
747
00:37:26.300 --> 00:37:26.980
He's got two.
748
00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:27.539
I got two.
749
00:37:27.559 --> 00:37:28.860
I have one right here on my arm.
750
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:31.550
Let's say I'll pay for your next one.
751
00:37:31.699 --> 00:37:33.929
Oh, yeah, I know. I've got a couple. I know
752
00:37:34.010 --> 00:37:37.289
who I'm talking to. John, the tattoo guy.
753
00:37:37.309 --> 00:37:39.550
When you said unemployable, we always used to do it
754
00:37:39.570 --> 00:37:42.989
with our boys. It's like, look, go. Just go. You
755
00:37:43.030 --> 00:37:47.809
do whatever. Be your best you, whatever you want. Maybe stop.
756
00:37:48.070 --> 00:37:50.300
I've told my kids, wait until you're 25.
757
00:37:50.280 --> 00:37:53.090
So you can do a collared shirt where if you
758
00:37:53.139 --> 00:37:54.760
ever need to, we always used to say, if you
759
00:37:54.780 --> 00:37:56.400
ever need to meet the President of the United States,
760
00:37:56.739 --> 00:37:59.719
you can just cover it up. What was it last year?
761
00:37:59.739 --> 00:38:03.800
Will Franklin walks in, big fat monarch, just across, just
762
00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:06.039
his hand. I'm like, I didn't go over so well,
763
00:38:06.119 --> 00:38:06.840
but that's okay.
764
00:38:06.940 --> 00:38:07.500
It's awesome.
765
00:38:07.900 --> 00:38:13.500
There's something disempowering about, and I guess some couples, I
766
00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:17.340
actually think that's cultural because I think kids now get that,
767
00:38:17.920 --> 00:38:21.139
that you are responsible for your self.
768
00:38:21.019 --> 00:38:23.389
And your body and your spirit and your whatever.
769
00:38:23.530 --> 00:38:25.969
And the challenge I see now is young folks figuring
770
00:38:25.989 --> 00:38:27.570
out how to, how do we create.
771
00:38:27.349 --> 00:38:29.630
This other thing called a marriage together? Yeah.
772
00:38:30.130 --> 00:38:30.269
Yep.
773
00:38:30.829 --> 00:38:32.900
But I grew up, you grew up, which in a,
774
00:38:33.469 --> 00:38:37.190
I don't think it's very healthy, but it's like, no,
775
00:38:37.710 --> 00:38:38.550
you do what I say.
776
00:38:38.869 --> 00:38:41.570
And then my wife's like, you do what I say.
777
00:38:41.969 --> 00:38:45.000
And there's this competing like, I don't like it like this,
778
00:38:45.039 --> 00:38:46.559
so this is over. I'm like, well, I don't like
779
00:38:46.599 --> 00:38:46.980
it like this.
780
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:49.719
This is over. And we didn't see any of that.
781
00:38:49.739 --> 00:38:53.320
And I think either your parents exploded and you saw,
782
00:38:53.360 --> 00:38:55.159
I don't want that kind of warfare in my house.
783
00:38:55.420 --> 00:38:58.449
Or I think my generation of parents, maybe y'all's, was
784
00:38:59.469 --> 00:39:01.090
take your fights in the back room. We don't want
785
00:39:01.110 --> 00:39:04.309
to scare the kids. And so I had no lived
786
00:39:04.389 --> 00:39:06.829
model of this thing successfully resolving itself.
787
00:39:07.429 --> 00:39:09.030
And so we just went to war.
788
00:39:09.269 --> 00:39:11.829
I think for us, that was one of our early things,
789
00:39:11.929 --> 00:39:14.840
you know, for you and I. He lived by the
790
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:17.380
motto in Scripture, do not let the sun go down
791
00:39:17.460 --> 00:39:19.699
on your anger. He came from a home where they
792
00:39:19.980 --> 00:39:22.559
talked and all that. I'm like, hey, I just took
793
00:39:22.599 --> 00:39:27.210
a five-kilogram Ambien. I'll see you tomorrow. And he's just like, what?
794
00:39:27.230 --> 00:39:27.969
I'm going to the underworld.
795
00:39:28.010 --> 00:39:29.150
Yeah, I'm going to the underworld.
796
00:39:30.260 --> 00:39:33.139
Oh, man. That's true.
797
00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:35.710
I'm like, babe, we're not going to figure this out tonight.
798
00:39:35.789 --> 00:39:37.909
And I have to work tomorrow. I'm going to go
799
00:39:37.929 --> 00:39:38.090
to sleep.
800
00:39:38.170 --> 00:39:41.170
It's funny to see that my wife has no discussions
801
00:39:41.230 --> 00:39:41.610
after nine.
802
00:39:42.190 --> 00:39:43.070
Like, it's just over.
803
00:39:43.170 --> 00:39:43.369
Man.
804
00:39:43.449 --> 00:39:44.219
If we get to 9 p.m.
805
00:39:44.239 --> 00:39:45.110
Let's adopt that one.
806
00:39:45.219 --> 00:39:47.679
I don't know that we do that. No, we don't.
807
00:39:47.699 --> 00:39:50.760
Every so often. Because she gets wound up about midnight
808
00:39:50.820 --> 00:39:54.179
and is like, okay, hey, what about this? And I'm like, oh, no.
809
00:39:54.179 --> 00:39:54.760
9 o'clock.
810
00:39:54.940 --> 00:39:58.360
Like, no one can bring up a big thing unless
811
00:39:58.400 --> 00:39:59.579
the fight is make or break.
812
00:39:59.900 --> 00:40:01.239
Yeah. Yeah.
813
00:40:01.360 --> 00:40:03.260
We'll think after we've slept and ate.
814
00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:06.260
Oh, that. Yeah. I mean, that whole don't let the
815
00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:08.960
sun go down deal. I mean, that got that. That.
816
00:40:09.510 --> 00:40:11.619
It ended up with a hole in the drywall on
817
00:40:11.659 --> 00:40:14.119
my side of the bed in our first six months
818
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:15.940
of marriage because she fell asleep in the middle of
819
00:40:15.980 --> 00:40:19.480
my best point. And I'm like, you can't. I'm waiting. Wait.
820
00:40:19.699 --> 00:40:21.619
You can't do that. I'm like, what do I do
821
00:40:21.639 --> 00:40:24.690
with this craziness inside of me to try to fix it?
822
00:40:24.699 --> 00:40:25.360
I have to fix it.
823
00:40:25.679 --> 00:40:26.329
Fix, fix, fix.
824
00:40:26.349 --> 00:40:28.449
You know, it's just been a big part of the
825
00:40:28.489 --> 00:40:29.849
journey of our.
826
00:40:30.530 --> 00:40:34.630
I think, too, for us, we made so many missteps.
827
00:40:34.889 --> 00:40:36.769
Number one, I was 19 when I got married. Think
828
00:40:36.789 --> 00:40:41.699
about that. I'm like. What were our parents thinking? You know,
829
00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:45.070
we just got married and didn't really know each other
830
00:40:45.130 --> 00:40:47.510
as well as we thought we did. And so it
831
00:40:47.570 --> 00:40:49.750
was out of the gate. It was like, oh, this
832
00:40:49.829 --> 00:40:51.869
is going to be a long life and we need
833
00:40:51.909 --> 00:40:54.590
to at least begin to try to put some tools
834
00:40:54.650 --> 00:40:57.849
in the tool belt because, you know, the idea is
835
00:40:57.889 --> 00:40:59.809
that we're going to go the distance, but I don't
836
00:40:59.829 --> 00:41:03.030
know how we're going to. Like, it was really, really hard.
837
00:41:03.150 --> 00:41:05.989
And then obviously career, all those pressures take off. Then
838
00:41:06.030 --> 00:41:08.429
he became who he became. I'm like, oh, I don't
839
00:41:08.449 --> 00:41:10.050
know if I signed up for this, you know, and
840
00:41:10.110 --> 00:41:14.670
I can't. I always felt like I couldn't be his bride.
841
00:41:14.690 --> 00:41:16.929
I'm like, you know, I want a tattoo, you know,
842
00:41:16.949 --> 00:41:17.550
I'm like, you know.
843
00:41:17.590 --> 00:41:21.690
How do you, y'all have an outside exposure again, outside
844
00:41:21.710 --> 00:41:26.429
of the bell curve of the normal, but every couple
845
00:41:26.469 --> 00:41:31.550
I talked to universally, the one whose wife is an
846
00:41:31.610 --> 00:41:32.690
attorney and he has to go.
847
00:41:32.650 --> 00:41:34.769
To the dinner and he's like, man, I don't like,
848
00:41:34.789 --> 00:41:36.150
I'm going to go. They're going to look at me.
849
00:41:36.210 --> 00:41:37.809
They're going to like, be want to know who you're
850
00:41:37.829 --> 00:41:43.320
married to. Y'all are in an outsized relationship. Y'all can't
851
00:41:43.340 --> 00:41:45.860
have a bad day in public, right? You can't.
852
00:41:46.239 --> 00:41:49.460
Or it ends up all over everything. Or you can't
853
00:41:49.500 --> 00:41:52.659
snap at a waiter. You can't have a, like, how
854
00:41:52.679 --> 00:41:54.800
have you managed the.
855
00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:56.079
Glass house of it all?
856
00:41:56.420 --> 00:41:59.159
That was like three years ago. And again, we're talking.
857
00:41:59.949 --> 00:42:02.429
There's obvious levels between what me and my wife experienced
858
00:42:02.449 --> 00:42:04.949
and what y'all experienced. But it was three years ago
859
00:42:04.969 --> 00:42:07.150
that my wife and I were like, hey, we got
860
00:42:07.170 --> 00:42:09.070
a new marriage. We got to recenter this thing. Because
861
00:42:09.309 --> 00:42:12.139
everywhere I go, I'm John's wife. And they want to
862
00:42:12.179 --> 00:42:15.519
see if I'm laughing at your stuff, if I think
863
00:42:15.559 --> 00:42:18.519
you're darling like they do. And the worst for her
864
00:42:18.559 --> 00:42:22.300
was this stranger just came up and started talking as
865
00:42:22.360 --> 00:42:24.639
though she knows my husband better than I do.
866
00:42:25.550 --> 00:42:30.789
And she would get enraged. And rightfully so. It's very hard.
867
00:42:30.809 --> 00:42:33.210
So how y'all navigated that? Because this isn't just for
868
00:42:33.230 --> 00:42:37.170
famous folks. This is for anybody whose spouse, they have
869
00:42:37.210 --> 00:42:39.809
to show up for their spouse somewhere. And feel like
870
00:42:39.829 --> 00:42:41.780
their own display or have to perform in some way.
871
00:42:41.800 --> 00:42:42.360
It's tricky.
872
00:42:42.619 --> 00:42:48.239
Very tricky. Well, I don't even know how you do this,
873
00:42:48.300 --> 00:42:52.719
but we both of us come from very simple families,
874
00:42:52.760 --> 00:42:56.260
very simple lives. I'm from Springfield, Ohio. He's from Paducah, Kentucky.
875
00:42:57.630 --> 00:43:00.530
And so we're like, how are we going to do
876
00:43:00.570 --> 00:43:03.389
this and be as normal? Like, what's that, right? What's
877
00:43:03.409 --> 00:43:06.449
the definition of normal? As normal as we can be.
878
00:43:06.630 --> 00:43:10.059
You know, it's just. I remember taking Emily, she was
879
00:43:10.099 --> 00:43:11.699
when she was in first grade and it was going
880
00:43:11.719 --> 00:43:13.940
to be our first year at CPA where they would
881
00:43:13.980 --> 00:43:16.159
end up going to school most of their life. And
882
00:43:17.400 --> 00:43:20.349
that would have been in 1991. So right at the,
883
00:43:20.989 --> 00:43:23.829
you know, kind of peak and, you know, he was
884
00:43:23.849 --> 00:43:27.230
who he was. And I remember a teacher. No, it
885
00:43:27.269 --> 00:43:30.550
was not a teacher. I forget that. It was a parent.
886
00:43:31.099 --> 00:43:33.519
Reached over, I was meeting people and stuff, and she
887
00:43:33.599 --> 00:43:37.000
pinched Emily's cheek. And she was like, what's it like
888
00:43:37.039 --> 00:43:40.400
to have a famous dad? And she just had this
889
00:43:40.460 --> 00:43:44.510
look on her face like, is he sick? What's wrong?
890
00:43:44.530 --> 00:43:47.469
What's wrong with my dad? Because we've always just, dad's
891
00:43:47.530 --> 00:43:50.070
been dad. This is what dad does. And trying to
892
00:43:50.110 --> 00:43:55.329
have that normalcy. But it's been very, very difficult. There's
893
00:43:55.349 --> 00:43:57.170
been times where I could, you know, I'm like a
894
00:43:57.210 --> 00:43:58.829
horse running to the barn. I can't wait to get
895
00:43:58.869 --> 00:44:00.949
to the car so that I can have my implosion
896
00:44:01.070 --> 00:44:04.449
or my, you know, sad or my, you know. And,
897
00:44:04.469 --> 00:44:06.210
you know, you have to find the humor in it
898
00:44:06.429 --> 00:44:11.389
as well along the ways. You have to do things differently. Like, hey,
899
00:44:11.829 --> 00:44:12.489
I can't do that.
900
00:44:12.630 --> 00:44:12.909
I can't.
901
00:44:12.949 --> 00:44:14.869
Don't have them ask me to do this. I'm not
902
00:44:14.909 --> 00:44:16.949
that person. Don't have them ask me to do that.
903
00:44:17.980 --> 00:44:19.059
That's a good one.
904
00:44:19.099 --> 00:44:21.559
Like the first interview that you were asked to do
905
00:44:21.619 --> 00:44:22.260
before I knew.
906
00:44:22.280 --> 00:44:25.760
They pulled me out of, this is our first Dove Awards.
907
00:44:25.780 --> 00:44:27.739
They pulled me out of the audience. Like I get
908
00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:29.849
a tap on my shoulder and his manager at the
909
00:44:29.869 --> 00:44:32.110
time was like, hey, come here, come here. And I'm like,
910
00:44:32.429 --> 00:44:33.769
I thought something was wrong. I'm like, I don't know
911
00:44:33.789 --> 00:44:35.039
what's going on. They took me out and they're like, hey,
912
00:44:35.070 --> 00:44:38.730
this will be great. We're going to, poor Sheila. Sheila
913
00:44:38.750 --> 00:44:42.179
Walsh was emceeing it. And they're like, Stephen has no idea,
914
00:44:42.219 --> 00:44:43.760
but we're going to put you on stage. And then
915
00:44:43.780 --> 00:44:46.170
when he's done with his little set, He comes over
916
00:44:46.190 --> 00:44:47.889
and it'll be this interview. But when he turns around,
917
00:44:47.949 --> 00:44:50.409
it'll be you and Sheila and him. And you'll talk.
918
00:44:50.429 --> 00:44:52.210
I mean, this is like out of the gate. And
919
00:44:52.269 --> 00:44:55.210
I'm from a family that sweeps everything under the rug,
920
00:44:55.250 --> 00:44:57.610
like quiet, quiet, quiet. And I'm like, I hadn't found
921
00:44:57.750 --> 00:45:00.429
any voice yet, let alone one in front of a
922
00:45:00.469 --> 00:45:03.750
couple thousand people. And so he gets done singing and
923
00:45:03.789 --> 00:45:04.730
turns around and I'm.
924
00:45:04.750 --> 00:45:07.929
I start walking to the couch and I see my
925
00:45:07.969 --> 00:45:08.909
wife sitting there.
926
00:45:09.170 --> 00:45:12.719
I mean, we've been married probably seven, eight years.
927
00:45:12.760 --> 00:45:15.710
This is my first record. was out and it was
928
00:45:15.730 --> 00:45:18.480
starting to happen and you know and And I see
929
00:45:18.519 --> 00:45:20.619
her sitting there, and I see the panic in her eyes.
930
00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:23.239
And I'm immediately like, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.
931
00:45:23.260 --> 00:45:24.820
This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
932
00:45:25.139 --> 00:45:27.159
And she's like, how did she get there?
933
00:45:27.260 --> 00:45:29.880
And so they ask her questions like, so Mary Beth,
934
00:45:29.920 --> 00:45:31.599
what's the best thing? Well, you know, and I just
935
00:45:31.659 --> 00:45:33.989
jump in because I'm like trying to save her. And
936
00:45:34.030 --> 00:45:36.110
I'm trying. And we walk off the stage.
937
00:45:36.219 --> 00:45:37.469
There was an elevator at TPAC.
938
00:45:37.489 --> 00:45:38.130
It was at TPAC.
939
00:45:38.210 --> 00:45:40.050
And we get in the elevator.
940
00:45:39.570 --> 00:45:42.170
With my manager who kind of thought it was great.
941
00:45:42.250 --> 00:45:43.190
Oh, this is so great.
942
00:45:43.230 --> 00:45:44.610
We love you, Dan.
943
00:45:44.849 --> 00:45:48.679
He knows it. But she– like start sobbing as soon
944
00:45:48.699 --> 00:45:50.539
as the door is closed. And he's looking at me like,
945
00:45:51.119 --> 00:45:54.659
what's wrong? And I've gone, don't ever, ever do that
946
00:45:54.679 --> 00:45:56.780
again to my wife. Cause that is not her place.
947
00:45:56.800 --> 00:45:57.500
That's, that's it.
948
00:45:57.780 --> 00:45:59.619
I can do that. You can throw whatever at me.
949
00:46:00.010 --> 00:46:02.050
That's my, I've signed up for this. She did not
950
00:46:02.090 --> 00:46:04.530
sign up for this. And so there's, you know, and.
951
00:46:04.530 --> 00:46:06.750
I've obviously have come a long way and I've had
952
00:46:06.789 --> 00:46:08.050
to learn. Oh, okay.
953
00:46:08.230 --> 00:46:11.110
But how have you navigated? And this is, yeah, this
954
00:46:11.190 --> 00:46:13.210
is very personal. Forget the audience for a second.
955
00:46:13.230 --> 00:46:13.449
Yeah.
956
00:46:14.849 --> 00:46:17.349
Um, Very same, similar situation in my house.
957
00:46:17.699 --> 00:46:22.719
And I find many, I don't see any successful couples
958
00:46:23.039 --> 00:46:26.880
when in any business, when the spouse.
959
00:46:28.059 --> 00:46:32.070
Wants to have equal footing on what in their world.
960
00:46:32.130 --> 00:46:32.369
Right.
961
00:46:32.429 --> 00:46:35.650
Like, like if you're an attorney and your spouse is
962
00:46:35.670 --> 00:46:38.349
always throwing, like, did you, did you put my thing
963
00:46:38.369 --> 00:46:38.769
in the case?
964
00:46:38.789 --> 00:46:40.769
Like that's always going to be not good.
965
00:46:40.869 --> 00:46:41.050
Yeah.
966
00:46:41.369 --> 00:46:41.550
Yeah.
967
00:46:41.670 --> 00:46:47.119
But the other side of that is, I would want nobody.
968
00:46:47.139 --> 00:46:51.530
I would trade all of the applause for.
969
00:46:51.409 --> 00:46:52.710
My wife to think I'm funny.
970
00:46:53.469 --> 00:46:53.849
Oh, gosh.
971
00:46:54.010 --> 00:46:54.250
Yeah.
972
00:46:54.710 --> 00:46:56.730
I would trade all of the applause for my wife
973
00:46:56.750 --> 00:47:00.510
to be like, yeah, that's the smartest psychological insight I've
974
00:47:00.570 --> 00:47:05.050
ever heard. And I've had to wrestle with that woman
975
00:47:05.190 --> 00:47:08.659
will storm the gates of hell for me. And she
976
00:47:08.719 --> 00:47:09.019
is as.
977
00:47:09.050 --> 00:47:11.960
Ride or die as they come. And she doesn't think
978
00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:14.059
I'm funny. Yeah. I mean, she doesn't think much.
979
00:47:14.079 --> 00:47:15.559
Okay, I have a question for you then. Can I
980
00:47:15.599 --> 00:47:18.340
interview you for a second? So what happens when– this
981
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:18.719
is great.
982
00:47:18.739 --> 00:47:19.159
This is great.
983
00:47:19.619 --> 00:47:23.090
So what happens when you're like, hey, I'm going to
984
00:47:23.110 --> 00:47:24.510
try something out on you, and you tell me what
985
00:47:24.530 --> 00:47:27.210
you think because I'm thinking about using this here or
986
00:47:27.269 --> 00:47:30.230
here or here. And she looks at you and she says,
987
00:47:30.250 --> 00:47:32.610
I don't get it.
988
00:47:32.610 --> 00:47:33.690
It's not funny.
989
00:47:33.710 --> 00:47:36.369
Okay, so here's the thing. We've had to learn in
990
00:47:37.389 --> 00:47:40.809
pretty– I've had to grieve, and I wish I had
991
00:47:40.829 --> 00:47:43.630
a different word for that. I've had to grieve the
992
00:47:43.670 --> 00:47:46.010
fact that the thing that I get paid to do
993
00:47:46.900 --> 00:47:47.780
is the thing she.
994
00:47:47.699 --> 00:47:48.739
Loves the least about me.
995
00:47:49.840 --> 00:47:53.480
That's the thing that she said, I would love you
996
00:47:53.500 --> 00:47:54.260
if you were a fireman.
997
00:47:54.780 --> 00:47:56.340
And she said, you'd probably have a better body too.
998
00:47:56.500 --> 00:48:00.409
I would love you if you were a fireman. And
999
00:48:00.510 --> 00:48:03.960
so the way I try to impress the world is
1000
00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:06.920
the thing that's least impressive to her. So these are
1001
00:48:06.960 --> 00:48:10.179
boundaries she drew really on that I fought and that
1002
00:48:10.340 --> 00:48:13.800
I went and sought elsewhere, which is never good, until
1003
00:48:13.880 --> 00:48:20.469
I had to sit in. She would say, I don't
1004
00:48:20.489 --> 00:48:23.409
mind giving you feedback on an idea. What I don't
1005
00:48:23.469 --> 00:48:26.150
have the capacity for is to manage your ego on
1006
00:48:26.170 --> 00:48:28.210
the back end of whatever feedback I just gave you.
1007
00:48:28.969 --> 00:48:32.289
I would prefer if you didn't. I'm not the right
1008
00:48:32.329 --> 00:48:32.869
audience for you.
1009
00:48:32.889 --> 00:48:35.269
Yeah. And so that's been a hard thing.
1010
00:48:35.349 --> 00:48:38.929
It's hard, right? There was expectation, I think, put on
1011
00:48:39.139 --> 00:48:43.940
me early on. We dubbed myself Joe Q Public because
1012
00:48:43.980 --> 00:48:46.199
he would bring a song and it would be, hey,
1013
00:48:46.670 --> 00:48:50.650
what do you think? Play it. And And I'm darned
1014
00:48:50.670 --> 00:48:52.050
if I do and darned if I don't. I have
1015
00:48:52.070 --> 00:48:54.329
to navigate it. I have to thread the needle, right?
1016
00:48:54.429 --> 00:48:57.389
And it's like because there is ego. I mean, it's
1017
00:48:57.889 --> 00:49:01.190
like you're saying, here's my baby. Is it cute or
1018
00:49:01.250 --> 00:49:03.519
is it ugly? You know, I'm not going to tell anybody.
1019
00:49:03.539 --> 00:49:07.920
You're lying either way. I'm just like, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot,
1020
00:49:07.980 --> 00:49:11.179
you know, and we're different. And so like things, I'm
1021
00:49:11.199 --> 00:49:13.639
going to like certain things. And then I'm like, gosh,
1022
00:49:13.659 --> 00:49:15.199
how do I, if I'm on, what if I don't
1023
00:49:15.280 --> 00:49:17.079
like it? If I just don't like it, do I
1024
00:49:17.099 --> 00:49:19.019
just say, I love you, but I don't like it?
1025
00:49:19.550 --> 00:49:22.280
There's an ego. that's not stroked. And then he's hurt.
1026
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:25.880
And then I'm like, oh, I just can't– it's very, very,
1027
00:49:26.079 --> 00:49:26.760
very hard.
1028
00:49:26.860 --> 00:49:27.780
I had that experience.
1029
00:49:28.619 --> 00:49:30.320
I didn't run a joke by her, but I said
1030
00:49:30.340 --> 00:49:32.199
the joke out loud in the car.
1031
00:49:33.099 --> 00:49:36.179
She's like, that's not funny at all. And I was–
1032
00:49:36.199 --> 00:49:38.260
my kids were laughing. I was like, that's a funny–
1033
00:49:38.750 --> 00:49:40.789
I tried it on stage and it crushed.
1034
00:49:41.369 --> 00:49:44.570
And on stage, on stage, in front of an audience,
1035
00:49:44.590 --> 00:49:47.710
she wasn't there. But inside, I was like, I told you.
1036
00:49:47.869 --> 00:49:50.510
I'm totally divorced from what's happening with the audience. And
1037
00:49:50.590 --> 00:49:54.260
I'm just like, God, John won. I mean, the score
1038
00:49:54.280 --> 00:49:56.360
is like 9,060 to four, but I was.
1039
00:49:56.480 --> 00:50:01.119
Like, and five. So obnoxious. So dumb of me. How
1040
00:50:01.260 --> 00:50:02.679
have you navigated.
1041
00:50:03.900 --> 00:50:06.079
Being a person who thinks outside the box and feels
1042
00:50:06.159 --> 00:50:07.570
big and that's what makes your art good?
1043
00:50:08.099 --> 00:50:10.909
But that makes it hard to be engaged. I mean,
1044
00:50:10.929 --> 00:50:11.570
they're hard to be married.
1045
00:50:11.610 --> 00:50:15.489
It just does. Yeah, it does. And in the early days,
1046
00:50:15.949 --> 00:50:20.469
you know, that's where the comparison and the, you know,
1047
00:50:20.750 --> 00:50:23.050
I mean, she used to love every song I wrote.
1048
00:50:23.150 --> 00:50:26.530
And everything I did was amazing and funny. We joke
1049
00:50:26.550 --> 00:50:28.449
a lot. In fact, I've got a country song. I
1050
00:50:28.489 --> 00:50:32.349
haven't finished it yet. But there was a point where
1051
00:50:32.610 --> 00:50:38.880
our son, Caleb, we were somewhere in Julia. was talking,
1052
00:50:38.920 --> 00:50:45.340
that's his wife, talking about how amazing Caleb is, her husband,
1053
00:50:45.599 --> 00:50:46.079
our son.
1054
00:50:46.420 --> 00:50:46.900
He's so amazing.
1055
00:50:47.039 --> 00:50:49.639
And she said, he's so amazing. And we were with
1056
00:50:49.860 --> 00:50:54.150
some of our dear friends, Julia's parents, mom and dad.
1057
00:50:54.530 --> 00:50:56.070
They kind of grew up together and then ended up
1058
00:50:56.150 --> 00:50:58.230
getting married. It was an arranged marriage. It was awesome.
1059
00:50:58.949 --> 00:51:03.730
So we're very good friends with her parents, Dr. Reggie
1060
00:51:03.809 --> 00:51:06.599
and Karen Anderson, two of our dear friends. And we
1061
00:51:06.619 --> 00:51:08.639
were somewhere in Reggie and I looked at each other
1062
00:51:08.699 --> 00:51:11.739
and said, remember when we were amazing? Remember back when
1063
00:51:11.780 --> 00:51:14.809
we were amazing? I was like, man, those were good days.
1064
00:51:14.849 --> 00:51:17.090
Back when we were amazing. That's a country song.
1065
00:51:17.250 --> 00:51:17.630
I know.
1066
00:51:17.650 --> 00:51:19.489
So I've got a country song in the works back
1067
00:51:19.510 --> 00:51:21.789
when I was amazing. And it's a good one. But
1068
00:51:22.510 --> 00:51:25.059
because that's, there's part of that thing again, you know,
1069
00:51:25.340 --> 00:51:27.099
we don't marry. And that's one of the things that
1070
00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:29.619
we've been talking a lot about. I think even with
1071
00:51:29.639 --> 00:51:32.340
this book, one of the things you hear couples say
1072
00:51:32.380 --> 00:51:36.360
and young couples say, or people who are just, you know,
1073
00:51:36.639 --> 00:51:39.619
struggling and decide to chuck it is they're just changed.
1074
00:51:39.639 --> 00:51:41.380
That's not the same person I married, you know, and
1075
00:51:41.420 --> 00:51:44.079
it's kind of like, duh, that's the best part of it.
1076
00:51:44.139 --> 00:51:45.940
That's not the best part of it.
1077
00:51:45.960 --> 00:51:46.119
Yeah.
1078
00:51:46.139 --> 00:51:47.960
That's not the person you married because you didn't marry
1079
00:51:48.659 --> 00:51:51.159
a mom and you didn't marry a, you know, in
1080
00:51:51.199 --> 00:51:54.280
most cases anywhere, at least, you know, for us and, and,
1081
00:51:54.400 --> 00:51:57.489
and a guy who was trying to, navigate a career
1082
00:51:57.630 --> 00:52:00.849
and provide for his family and take all the, you know,
1083
00:52:00.909 --> 00:52:03.909
the expectations of the world and be this and not
1084
00:52:03.949 --> 00:52:06.510
be that. And, you know, we didn't, that's not who
1085
00:52:06.530 --> 00:52:08.929
you married. You married a college, in our case, a
1086
00:52:08.969 --> 00:52:11.469
college student who just thought everything you did and said
1087
00:52:11.530 --> 00:52:15.389
was the funniest, most amazing thing, you know, up to
1088
00:52:15.409 --> 00:52:18.159
a certain point. And then things start to change. And
1089
00:52:18.539 --> 00:52:22.719
as far as, you know, yeah, navigating that is, again,
1090
00:52:22.980 --> 00:52:27.199
it's one of those longing for what how it used
1091
00:52:27.219 --> 00:52:31.130
to feel and what it was, and yet also realizing,
1092
00:52:31.269 --> 00:52:33.550
letting that stuff that you were talking about earlier, the mirror,
1093
00:52:34.030 --> 00:52:35.980
that's when the mirror comes up. If you let it,
1094
00:52:36.110 --> 00:52:40.190
you can either choose contempt and go, why didn't she
1095
00:52:40.210 --> 00:52:43.820
get it? Or try to convince or go into which
1096
00:52:43.880 --> 00:52:47.000
I've done all of the above, try to convince. Well, no,
1097
00:52:47.019 --> 00:52:49.199
but did you really listen to that and get it?
1098
00:52:49.500 --> 00:52:52.150
You have to love this because I'm such a, You know,
1099
00:52:52.210 --> 00:52:55.750
people pleaser. And you are the number one. You said it.
1100
00:52:55.809 --> 00:52:59.409
If you love me, you know, everybody else can all.
1101
00:52:59.610 --> 00:53:01.989
I don't care. Take all the Grammys. Take the rest
1102
00:53:02.030 --> 00:53:04.800
of it. You know, just let my number one, you know,
1103
00:53:05.019 --> 00:53:09.239
fan be my number one fan on everything. And she is.
1104
00:53:09.320 --> 00:53:14.880
She is my biggest, you know, biggest fan throughout. life
1105
00:53:15.179 --> 00:53:18.699
and yet also my toughest critic. And I am the
1106
00:53:18.820 --> 00:53:21.320
artist and the writer and all the things in part
1107
00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:23.840
that I am because of that, because she has been
1108
00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:26.840
honest and hasn't just, oh, everything you do is amazing
1109
00:53:26.860 --> 00:53:31.550
and wonderful. But then the ego that gets bruised and says, well,
1110
00:53:31.570 --> 00:53:34.309
wait a minute, what if you don't love that? And
1111
00:53:34.389 --> 00:53:42.590
it's that then I think wisdom teaches us And it's
1112
00:53:42.619 --> 00:53:44.829
never easy to hold the mirror up again and go,
1113
00:53:45.449 --> 00:53:50.530
what is this thing that is flaring up in me
1114
00:53:50.710 --> 00:53:57.449
at that? It's pride. It's my ego that is demanding,
1115
00:53:57.650 --> 00:53:59.849
wait a minute, you have to love this? Or is
1116
00:53:59.909 --> 00:54:02.849
it even okay to go, some of the things she's
1117
00:54:02.889 --> 00:54:04.150
not going to love and there's going to be a
1118
00:54:04.190 --> 00:54:06.449
joke that she didn't think was funny. but everybody else
1119
00:54:06.510 --> 00:54:08.190
is going to really think it's funny and you're.
1120
00:54:08.050 --> 00:54:09.329
Going to be able to go. Both of those things
1121
00:54:09.510 --> 00:54:10.030
are okay.
1122
00:54:10.070 --> 00:54:12.309
Both are okay. She doesn't have to learn everything.
1123
00:54:12.329 --> 00:54:17.469
I came home from my first big comedy show and
1124
00:54:18.309 --> 00:54:20.329
the room sold out. It went pretty well for the
1125
00:54:20.349 --> 00:54:23.309
first one. And I left the green room early, which
1126
00:54:23.530 --> 00:54:25.690
is the favorite part of hanging out with comics is
1127
00:54:25.730 --> 00:54:27.800
hanging out in the green room, right? I left early
1128
00:54:28.219 --> 00:54:30.340
because I was coming on for my second standing ovation.
1129
00:54:30.380 --> 00:54:31.469
I was going to walk in that door and she
1130
00:54:31.489 --> 00:54:33.659
was going to be like, I walked in the door.
1131
00:54:34.679 --> 00:54:39.719
And she looked at me and I was like, and
1132
00:54:39.760 --> 00:54:42.010
she said, Hey, she looked at her, watch it. Is
1133
00:54:42.030 --> 00:54:44.590
there any chance you could take Hank to school in
1134
00:54:44.610 --> 00:54:46.789
the morning? Like I've got to get this and I
1135
00:54:46.809 --> 00:54:49.610
got to get her daughter over here. And I went, yeah,
1136
00:54:49.750 --> 00:54:51.869
I can take him. She's like, Oh, thank you. She
1137
00:54:51.889 --> 00:54:53.230
gave me a hug, give me a kiss and said,
1138
00:54:53.250 --> 00:54:56.860
I'm going to go to bed. And to say I
1139
00:54:56.920 --> 00:55:00.420
was deflated was the most, like, and then I went
1140
00:55:00.460 --> 00:55:04.400
to really, I mean, I went through the whole thing.
1141
00:55:05.179 --> 00:55:09.690
And only because I've been working hard for long years,
1142
00:55:10.789 --> 00:55:13.869
I waited a day and then I approached myself.
1143
00:55:14.050 --> 00:55:16.030
I looked in the mirror and said, hey, what is it?
1144
00:55:16.250 --> 00:55:17.750
Why did that make you so frustrated?
1145
00:55:19.110 --> 00:55:23.199
And then I was able to, what you mentioned, like
1146
00:55:23.340 --> 00:55:26.599
sit down and use invitation language. Like, hey, here's a
1147
00:55:26.619 --> 00:55:29.360
story I made up that you weren't that impressed or whatever.
1148
00:55:30.039 --> 00:55:32.320
What I come to find out, her story was, And
1149
00:55:32.360 --> 00:55:36.099
it was such a powerful thing was the last month
1150
00:55:36.159 --> 00:55:39.650
has been about me celebrating you. I took all, you
1151
00:55:39.690 --> 00:55:41.650
were in your head right in the set. You've been
1152
00:55:41.690 --> 00:55:43.409
going every night of the week down there to try
1153
00:55:43.429 --> 00:55:46.010
to get time on stage. You've been, and I covered
1154
00:55:46.070 --> 00:55:49.190
all of that. And I hate being in comedy shows
1155
00:55:49.210 --> 00:55:50.570
because everyone wants to see if I'm laughing and they
1156
00:55:50.590 --> 00:55:52.769
want to see if how I'm right. And I came
1157
00:55:52.789 --> 00:55:55.380
and she's like, and I was like, oh, you celebrated
1158
00:55:55.389 --> 00:55:56.530
me for a month straight.
1159
00:55:56.610 --> 00:55:59.219
And right. And then you were able to exhale when
1160
00:55:59.239 --> 00:55:59.780
this thing was over.
1161
00:56:00.500 --> 00:56:02.360
And then I had to do this, what I think
1162
00:56:02.380 --> 00:56:04.920
has become the hardest but the easiest thing. And I'm
1163
00:56:04.940 --> 00:56:08.570
interested to know how y'all do this. I had to say, okay,
1164
00:56:10.510 --> 00:56:11.809
can I tell you a way you could love me?
1165
00:56:12.010 --> 00:56:14.949
And it's silly. And she goes, I would take any
1166
00:56:14.989 --> 00:56:15.250
of that.
1167
00:56:16.210 --> 00:56:18.090
If I walk in after I just went and did
1168
00:56:18.110 --> 00:56:20.179
a speaking event or a show, would you just ask
1169
00:56:20.199 --> 00:56:20.840
me one question?
1170
00:56:21.260 --> 00:56:23.019
What was your favorite joke you told her? What was
1171
00:56:23.039 --> 00:56:25.460
your favorite whatever? And I said, if you'll just do that.
1172
00:56:26.489 --> 00:56:27.849
And then I tell her. And now it's kind of
1173
00:56:27.869 --> 00:56:29.920
become a joke. She's like, ooh, what was the favorite one?
1174
00:56:30.150 --> 00:56:31.869
And I'm like, it was this, but I'm just waiting.
1175
00:56:32.590 --> 00:56:35.079
But it's a way I gave her a clear roadmap.
1176
00:56:35.099 --> 00:56:35.860
Here's how you can love me.
1177
00:56:35.900 --> 00:56:39.559
I think we need to remain curious, right? We have
1178
00:56:39.820 --> 00:56:43.679
to be curious with each other instead of judgmental. What
1179
00:56:43.699 --> 00:56:44.519
does that look like?
1180
00:56:44.599 --> 00:56:45.860
I hear that thrown around. What does that look like
1181
00:56:45.900 --> 00:56:46.469
practically for you?
1182
00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:50.230
Like, you know, I'm curious. I don't mean this in
1183
00:56:50.269 --> 00:56:52.570
a negative way, but we can be over it, right?
1184
00:56:54.090 --> 00:56:56.650
To your wife's point, she celebrated you for a month
1185
00:56:56.769 --> 00:56:59.469
when you were freaking getting ready to do that, right? Okay,
1186
00:56:59.510 --> 00:57:00.480
I carry these tours.
1187
00:57:00.860 --> 00:57:01.480
I'm at home.
1188
00:57:01.940 --> 00:57:04.159
I'm in the same four walls. I see all the
1189
00:57:04.199 --> 00:57:07.480
things at home that either are not going well or
1190
00:57:07.539 --> 00:57:11.199
aren't getting done or whatever, and I'm like, you know,
1191
00:57:11.519 --> 00:57:14.219
and yet at the same time, his world is a
1192
00:57:14.260 --> 00:57:16.730
different city every night. He's trying to do this, you know,
1193
00:57:16.750 --> 00:57:20.070
the revival of the speechless tour. And, you know, so
1194
00:57:20.150 --> 00:57:22.380
how can I be curious? Well, I know I'm not
1195
00:57:22.400 --> 00:57:26.679
very curious at midnight when he's finally able to you know,
1196
00:57:26.719 --> 00:57:27.199
get to a car.
1197
00:57:27.239 --> 00:57:28.500
The show was awesome.
1198
00:57:28.599 --> 00:57:32.199
And at the same time, he also has come full
1199
00:57:32.239 --> 00:57:34.679
circle to go. I've noticed that a lot of times
1200
00:57:34.719 --> 00:57:38.639
now I'm getting that bedtime call at intermission because he
1201
00:57:38.679 --> 00:57:42.210
knows I might just be asleep at midnight when he's
1202
00:57:42.250 --> 00:57:44.570
like revved up because, you know, his adrenaline's going and
1203
00:57:44.610 --> 00:57:46.969
all that. But I have to be curious, right? It's like,
1204
00:57:47.369 --> 00:57:49.170
You know, did you get to see some Show Hope families?
1205
00:57:49.369 --> 00:57:50.969
Was there a lot there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know,
1206
00:57:51.050 --> 00:57:53.139
it was fun. You know, whatever. And then the goofy
1207
00:57:53.159 --> 00:57:55.380
stories of, you know, people dancing to Cinderella or I
1208
00:57:55.400 --> 00:57:58.019
Will Be Here, all the things. You know, just still
1209
00:57:58.039 --> 00:58:00.840
being curious and being curious about other things that he's
1210
00:58:00.880 --> 00:58:03.460
interested in, not just, you know, career, although that tends
1211
00:58:03.500 --> 00:58:05.019
to be a lot of what we talk about. I mean,
1212
00:58:05.039 --> 00:58:07.179
he's very curious. He tries to be very curious with me,
1213
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:11.329
which is cute. Yeah, but we're learning. I send the
1214
00:58:11.349 --> 00:58:13.909
long text messages and I get back smiley faces. Yeah,
1215
00:58:13.929 --> 00:58:14.570
that's the other thing.
1216
00:58:14.789 --> 00:58:15.590
We don't want.
1217
00:58:15.510 --> 00:58:18.530
To get into that one. Dad, that's not what text
1218
00:58:18.550 --> 00:58:19.679
messages are for.
1219
00:58:19.699 --> 00:58:21.159
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like.
1220
00:58:21.179 --> 00:58:23.980
I just told you, this is Shakespeare.
1221
00:58:24.039 --> 00:58:26.460
I just poured out my heart to you.
1222
00:58:26.500 --> 00:58:26.869
Thumbs up.
1223
00:58:26.960 --> 00:58:27.519
Thumbs up.
1224
00:58:27.599 --> 00:58:28.340
I'm like, really?
1225
00:58:28.360 --> 00:58:29.199
That's all I get?
1226
00:58:29.219 --> 00:58:29.659
He goes, why?
1227
00:58:29.820 --> 00:58:31.500
Are you mad at me? Oh, and then here we go.
1228
00:58:31.579 --> 00:58:33.039
I'm like, I'm not mad at you.
1229
00:58:33.079 --> 00:58:33.699
It's texting.
1230
00:58:33.739 --> 00:58:35.139
It's supposed to be one symbol.
1231
00:58:35.260 --> 00:58:36.340
It should communicate.
1232
00:58:36.760 --> 00:58:37.280
Everything.
1233
00:58:37.360 --> 00:58:41.099
I've got to get going. And that, yeah, he's very loquacious.
1234
00:58:41.340 --> 00:58:44.400
I love that word. Very period deficient and loquacious. He's
1235
00:58:44.440 --> 00:58:45.380
been described that before.
1236
00:58:45.400 --> 00:58:47.000
Shout out, Steve.
1237
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:51.559
Yes, shout out. But I think another thing that's been
1238
00:58:51.699 --> 00:58:56.429
important for us because we have had so many missteps
1239
00:58:56.489 --> 00:58:59.690
and really, honestly, the hope for this book is just
1240
00:58:59.730 --> 00:59:04.099
that people go, they're actually real. They're just– You know,
1241
00:59:04.099 --> 00:59:07.530
people who, you know, it really is two centers trying
1242
00:59:07.530 --> 00:59:09.829
to figure out how how do you stay married be
1243
00:59:09.849 --> 00:59:12.630
married and i think our children it was really important
1244
00:59:12.650 --> 00:59:16.050
that our children read this and read it for the
1245
00:59:16.409 --> 00:59:20.429
honesty that um is in it is i think it's
1246
00:59:20.469 --> 00:59:23.440
been important for us as we've journeyed in this marriage
1247
00:59:23.500 --> 00:59:26.239
as to um we've made so many missteps as to
1248
00:59:26.320 --> 00:59:28.559
how do we repair that well in front of our
1249
00:59:28.579 --> 00:59:34.010
children and um And asking for that forgiveness and saying, okay,
1250
00:59:34.070 --> 00:59:38.389
mom and dad, okay, we really blew that. And having
1251
00:59:38.429 --> 00:59:40.710
them at least model the repair, what it's like to
1252
00:59:41.110 --> 00:59:46.360
step into a humble moment of needing to ask each
1253
00:59:46.420 --> 00:59:50.699
other for forgiveness. And so our son has dubbed us
1254
00:59:51.099 --> 00:59:54.559
the hobblers. He said that we hobble well, that we
1255
00:59:54.599 --> 00:59:56.699
haven't done it perfectly, but that we hobble well.
1256
00:59:56.719 --> 00:59:56.949
Hobble well.
1257
00:59:56.969 --> 00:59:58.030
That's not like the hobblers.
1258
00:59:58.070 --> 00:59:58.409
Yeah.
1259
00:59:58.550 --> 00:59:59.530
That's a good side project name.
1260
01:00:04.059 --> 01:00:07.340
So most of my career has been sitting with people
1261
01:00:07.360 --> 01:00:09.940
when the wheels have fallen off, like when whatever's going
1262
01:00:09.980 --> 01:00:10.940
on in their life, right?
1263
01:00:11.719 --> 01:00:12.920
And then there was.
1264
01:00:12.860 --> 01:00:15.260
A season when I would do my work during the
1265
01:00:15.280 --> 01:00:17.369
day at the university, and then I would show up
1266
01:00:17.909 --> 01:00:22.190
for the police department, and I was called like a.
1267
01:00:22.369 --> 01:00:23.829
Crisis intervention guy.
1268
01:00:23.869 --> 01:00:27.539
So if something happened— Police are trained to show up
1269
01:00:27.579 --> 01:00:30.460
to a scene and work at crime back, right? And
1270
01:00:30.539 --> 01:00:32.980
my job was to come in and sit with whatever
1271
01:00:33.019 --> 01:00:37.360
just happened, right? And that got me really interested in
1272
01:00:37.559 --> 01:00:40.280
showing up to scene after scene after scene, home after home,
1273
01:00:40.480 --> 01:00:46.360
on any number of things. And watching instantly two people,
1274
01:00:46.539 --> 01:00:52.000
four people in a family unit, extended family, everybody's bodies
1275
01:00:52.409 --> 01:00:56.360
taking over and handling that differently, right? And one person
1276
01:00:56.400 --> 01:00:57.889
wants to know all the details, all the facts, all
1277
01:00:57.909 --> 01:00:59.050
the whatever. Another person is.
1278
01:00:59.050 --> 01:01:02.269
Just walking down the road and another person is screaming
1279
01:01:02.489 --> 01:01:05.170
and like it's, it's, but everybody's like literally your body
1280
01:01:05.210 --> 01:01:06.280
takes over and handles it differently.
1281
01:01:06.340 --> 01:01:06.760
Right, right, right.
1282
01:01:07.099 --> 01:01:10.039
And so that got me interested in just in the therapeutically,
1283
01:01:10.079 --> 01:01:11.599
like what happens.
1284
01:01:11.619 --> 01:01:12.019
Right, right.
1285
01:01:12.739 --> 01:01:15.500
Y'all went through a very public loss, right? A very
1286
01:01:15.539 --> 01:01:18.840
public loss, which I can't imagine the nightmare layer on
1287
01:01:18.900 --> 01:01:22.139
top of the worst pit of hell a parent can experience.
1288
01:01:22.619 --> 01:01:23.760
And then you got to do it in front of everybody.
1289
01:01:23.800 --> 01:01:25.670
Everybody wants to know about it, which sounds like nightmare
1290
01:01:25.710 --> 01:01:30.469
on top of nightmare, right? But if I'm honest and
1291
01:01:30.510 --> 01:01:33.570
I look at the data, the loss of a child
1292
01:01:34.449 --> 01:01:39.030
almost always, not always, often breaks up marriages, right? Yeah.
1293
01:01:41.070 --> 01:01:44.429
The best I can distill that down is people grieve differently.
1294
01:01:44.929 --> 01:01:47.289
And they grieve at different paces and in different ways.
1295
01:01:48.769 --> 01:01:51.489
Walk through navigating that. Yeah.
1296
01:01:52.710 --> 01:01:56.679
For sure. I mean, that is all of the things
1297
01:01:56.719 --> 01:02:01.159
that we knew. I mean, we were told immediately.
1298
01:02:01.179 --> 01:02:04.139
Scotty was quick to tell us day one.
1299
01:02:04.159 --> 01:02:05.300
Our pastor friend, counselor.
1300
01:02:05.340 --> 01:02:06.699
That we were going to have a journey in front
1301
01:02:06.739 --> 01:02:06.980
of us.
1302
01:02:07.489 --> 01:02:11.000
We said, you know, most 90%. percent of marriages, or
1303
01:02:11.079 --> 01:02:13.519
I'm sure it's a, you know, you can read different numbers,
1304
01:02:13.559 --> 01:02:15.960
but it's way up there of marriages don't survive the
1305
01:02:15.980 --> 01:02:19.260
loss of a child. And what's crazy is at the moment,
1306
01:02:20.300 --> 01:02:23.489
you know, I remember both of us thinking, I know
1307
01:02:23.590 --> 01:02:26.269
for sure I was thinking it like, you know, I
1308
01:02:26.309 --> 01:02:28.570
know that's true. I hear that, but we've already been
1309
01:02:28.610 --> 01:02:31.190
through so much. We've walked through so much. This is
1310
01:02:31.369 --> 01:02:36.070
obviously dwarfs everything else, but it's not like we're, it's
1311
01:02:36.090 --> 01:02:38.989
not like we've been just skipping along through life. We've,
1312
01:02:39.190 --> 01:02:41.840
we know every even before that, we knew every counselor
1313
01:02:42.360 --> 01:02:45.650
in Nashville and built wings on their, you know, homes
1314
01:02:45.989 --> 01:02:49.289
with what we had invested in trying to keep this
1315
01:02:49.670 --> 01:02:52.789
ship afloat and keep us moving together, loving each other,
1316
01:02:52.809 --> 01:02:55.349
never a question. I love this woman. I just, you know,
1317
01:02:55.889 --> 01:02:57.389
how are we going to survive each other? How are
1318
01:02:57.409 --> 01:02:59.909
we going to survive this, all this that's, you know,
1319
01:02:59.929 --> 01:03:02.289
getting poured on top of us? But so I think
1320
01:03:02.909 --> 01:03:05.630
in immediately, it was like, I understand I hear all that.
1321
01:03:06.010 --> 01:03:06.349
Yes.
1322
01:03:06.429 --> 01:03:07.889
And nodding going, I know it's going to be hard,
1323
01:03:07.949 --> 01:03:11.929
but I right now can't imagine anybody on the planet.
1324
01:03:12.260 --> 01:03:16.070
I've never needed, you know, more for us to just
1325
01:03:16.110 --> 01:03:17.550
hold on to each other. And I think we both
1326
01:03:17.590 --> 01:03:22.170
felt that way, but you know, it, it is, it
1327
01:03:22.309 --> 01:03:25.530
is a, it's, it's exactly what you said. The grieving
1328
01:03:25.610 --> 01:03:30.690
process is so different for every person. It's part of
1329
01:03:30.730 --> 01:03:34.659
the reason why I'm, you know, I'm, my wife laughs. I'm,
1330
01:03:35.170 --> 01:03:38.829
a skeptic of most of the, you know, put you
1331
01:03:38.869 --> 01:03:42.710
in a box. You're a one, two, three, you know, otter, beaver,
1332
01:03:42.730 --> 01:03:45.630
you know, whatever, you know, lion. I'm a pony.
1333
01:03:45.650 --> 01:03:46.710
Love me like a pony.
1334
01:03:46.750 --> 01:03:50.380
He says, I go to 11. I'm not a number.
1335
01:03:50.429 --> 01:03:51.030
Yeah, yeah.
1336
01:03:51.050 --> 01:03:53.920
Are you a wing, four, three? I just go to 11.
1337
01:03:53.900 --> 01:03:54.440
That's it.
1338
01:03:54.519 --> 01:03:55.559
I can't figure it out.
1339
01:03:55.619 --> 01:03:56.440
I'm with you.
1340
01:03:56.760 --> 01:04:00.679
But I know there's good in that. But the realities
1341
01:04:00.719 --> 01:04:03.900
were so much more. complex and complicated. And every time
1342
01:04:03.940 --> 01:04:05.949
I try to do that stuff, I'm like, well, I'm
1343
01:04:05.989 --> 01:04:08.869
that today, but depending on what's happening around me, I'm that.
1344
01:04:08.969 --> 01:04:10.590
And I think that way. And I think that way.
1345
01:04:11.170 --> 01:04:16.170
And I think, you know, grief is, exposes all of
1346
01:04:16.230 --> 01:04:21.599
that at a, just on steroids of how complex we
1347
01:04:21.739 --> 01:04:24.480
are and, and what do we do with, you know,
1348
01:04:24.719 --> 01:04:27.679
with the, the rage and the anger because death and
1349
01:04:27.719 --> 01:04:31.530
especially the death of a child, even as, Believers in
1350
01:04:31.550 --> 01:04:34.110
this is not the end of the story. Believers in
1351
01:04:34.590 --> 01:04:36.829
one who has conquered death and the grave and all
1352
01:04:36.849 --> 01:04:39.239
of those things that anchor our hearts down, the hope
1353
01:04:39.280 --> 01:04:41.840
that we have. You know what you know, but you
1354
01:04:41.880 --> 01:04:42.639
feel what you feel.
1355
01:04:42.659 --> 01:04:44.579
I find believers to be more angry.
1356
01:04:44.940 --> 01:04:45.380
Yeah.
1357
01:04:45.599 --> 01:04:50.179
Because, hey, I didn't drink and smoke. I do all
1358
01:04:50.420 --> 01:04:51.300
the rules.
1359
01:04:51.320 --> 01:04:52.590
This doesn't happen.
1360
01:04:52.730 --> 01:04:53.630
You broke our contract.
1361
01:04:53.650 --> 01:04:54.230
That was me.
1362
01:04:54.550 --> 01:04:55.429
That was me.
1363
01:04:55.550 --> 01:05:00.280
I was, wait, we did this. Everything you asked. It
1364
01:05:00.400 --> 01:05:03.940
feels like we have done everything you asked us to do.
1365
01:05:03.940 --> 01:05:07.420
We stepped into the world of adoption. We stepped not
1366
01:05:07.519 --> 01:05:11.269
only for ourselves, but for a lot of people, you know,
1367
01:05:11.329 --> 01:05:15.030
in his ministry. And that was me. That was my,
1368
01:05:15.510 --> 01:05:18.050
I was very, very mad for a long, long time.
1369
01:05:18.070 --> 01:05:20.380
And I still can get mad when I think about it.
1370
01:05:20.409 --> 01:05:23.190
But I, you know, I think for a mom, we
1371
01:05:23.230 --> 01:05:29.079
do very, very grieving, very differently, grieving very publicly. I
1372
01:05:29.119 --> 01:05:32.760
immediately had a child that was not going to lose,
1373
01:05:33.239 --> 01:05:37.820
extremely worried about, and your other children, right? And so
1374
01:05:38.260 --> 01:05:40.820
it was a fatal blow, we feel like, from the
1375
01:05:40.900 --> 01:05:43.559
enemy to go, I don't like what this family's about.
1376
01:05:43.639 --> 01:05:46.929
I don't like what this family's doing. And I'm just
1377
01:05:46.949 --> 01:05:48.510
going to try to take them out. That's how I
1378
01:05:48.570 --> 01:05:50.909
kind of viewed it. And I was mad at God
1379
01:05:50.969 --> 01:05:53.320
because he didn't protect us. Like, could have stopped it.
1380
01:05:53.449 --> 01:05:56.269
You could have just, this could have not happened. And
1381
01:05:56.429 --> 01:06:01.110
the whys and the, The blame, all of it. You
1382
01:06:01.130 --> 01:06:02.130
name it, it happened.
1383
01:06:02.150 --> 01:06:07.260
Did you all experience the, I can't believe you're not
1384
01:06:07.300 --> 01:06:09.940
over it yet. I can't believe, oh, let's go to dinner.
1385
01:06:09.960 --> 01:06:11.289
How can you possibly go to dinner?
1386
01:06:11.449 --> 01:06:14.730
Yeah, all of it. I don't know that we ever...
1387
01:06:15.139 --> 01:06:17.059
I don't know that we ever were able to say,
1388
01:06:17.079 --> 01:06:18.440
I can't believe you're not over it yet because we're
1389
01:06:18.480 --> 01:06:18.920
not over it.
1390
01:06:19.079 --> 01:06:20.179
You know what I mean? No, you don't ever get
1391
01:06:20.199 --> 01:06:20.380
over it.
1392
01:06:20.380 --> 01:06:21.579
But it's like, you know, it's just like, I can't
1393
01:06:21.619 --> 01:06:22.699
keep you just sitting there.
1394
01:06:22.719 --> 01:06:23.639
We've got to keep moving forward.
1395
01:06:23.699 --> 01:06:25.059
And I think as a mother, like I'm in.
1396
01:06:25.099 --> 01:06:27.460
I can't believe you're laughing. I can't believe that's funny.
1397
01:06:27.519 --> 01:06:27.800
Right.
1398
01:06:27.880 --> 01:06:29.909
And as a mom, I'm in full triage mode. I'm
1399
01:06:29.929 --> 01:06:33.010
putting my needs aside. I'm not even thinking about me.
1400
01:06:33.070 --> 01:06:35.989
It's like, I got to pick shrapnel out of five children. Yeah.
1401
01:06:36.559 --> 01:06:39.900
Who needs the most triage first? Like, okay, we got to.
1402
01:06:40.280 --> 01:06:43.780
And you're immediately meeting a bunch of people you never
1403
01:06:43.980 --> 01:06:46.400
wanted to meet. And then they become your closest people
1404
01:06:46.460 --> 01:06:49.630
because they're helping with the counseling of the littles and
1405
01:06:49.690 --> 01:06:52.670
the two and three times a week. And, you know,
1406
01:06:53.030 --> 01:06:57.610
your whole world shifts because we're trying to survive. You know, again,
1407
01:06:57.630 --> 01:07:01.269
then we're trying to pretty quickly. We tried to huddle
1408
01:07:01.309 --> 01:07:04.309
together as a family and say, hey, we're going to
1409
01:07:04.329 --> 01:07:06.329
make these decisions together as far as what we do
1410
01:07:06.389 --> 01:07:08.289
and don't talk about, you know, who we do and
1411
01:07:08.329 --> 01:07:11.860
don't talk to, you know, but it can only be
1412
01:07:11.920 --> 01:07:16.239
managed to a point. You know, it was chaos. And
1413
01:07:16.300 --> 01:07:18.480
so you don't think about each other for a while
1414
01:07:18.519 --> 01:07:21.599
because we're parents. It's like we're right here. And then
1415
01:07:21.659 --> 01:07:24.110
all of a sudden we're looking at each other and
1416
01:07:24.369 --> 01:07:27.150
you grieve differently than I grieve. And then he'd have
1417
01:07:27.170 --> 01:07:28.829
a good day and I'd be like, I don't know
1418
01:07:28.869 --> 01:07:30.010
how you can have a good day. I'm having a
1419
01:07:30.030 --> 01:07:32.610
terrible day. And he, you know, it was just, it's
1420
01:07:32.650 --> 01:07:38.500
messed up. And, you know, you obviously just do the
1421
01:07:38.539 --> 01:07:42.440
best you can. I mean, other than, you know, I
1422
01:07:42.860 --> 01:07:47.619
feel like the Lord gave us some really beautiful pictures
1423
01:07:48.239 --> 01:07:52.449
of what it's like to love fiercely your family and
1424
01:07:52.489 --> 01:07:56.809
protect your family and gave us glimpses of knowing how
1425
01:07:57.869 --> 01:08:00.800
how real it is when you lose at that level,
1426
01:08:00.840 --> 01:08:03.139
you taste, you really do taste and see that the
1427
01:08:03.179 --> 01:08:05.840
Lord is good in a really weird way because there's
1428
01:08:05.860 --> 01:08:08.679
just been this devastating loss. But then you see very
1429
01:08:08.780 --> 01:08:11.320
clearly for a while, it's like somebody just takes all
1430
01:08:11.360 --> 01:08:14.760
the filters off. Um, and so there were pieces and
1431
01:08:14.800 --> 01:08:17.930
times of that journey that it was a gift, but
1432
01:08:17.939 --> 01:08:20.029
then you felt guilty about that too, because it's like,
1433
01:08:20.050 --> 01:08:23.890
this is guilt, but it's at the cost of a,
1434
01:08:24.069 --> 01:08:26.600
of a, of a horrible thing. And, All the things.
1435
01:08:27.079 --> 01:08:30.899
So it is, I tell people all the time I
1436
01:08:30.939 --> 01:08:33.020
went on a free fall of faith. I was like,
1437
01:08:33.060 --> 01:08:34.930
I was just falling through the air and that I
1438
01:08:34.970 --> 01:08:38.590
eventually landed on the firm foundation that is Jesus. You know,
1439
01:08:38.609 --> 01:08:40.829
I face planted and on any given day, I still
1440
01:08:40.850 --> 01:08:46.329
feel like I'm, yeah, falling a little bit. But it
1441
01:08:46.390 --> 01:08:49.439
was really, really hard to navigate. And he did beautiful
1442
01:08:49.640 --> 01:08:52.260
leading our family, but it wasn't for the faint of heart.
1443
01:08:52.300 --> 01:08:53.819
It still isn't at times.
1444
01:08:54.199 --> 01:08:59.800
Dads are not great. How have you navigated that? And
1445
01:08:59.859 --> 01:09:00.539
I say not great.
1446
01:09:00.699 --> 01:09:03.260
Dads are awesome. I mean, in those situations, because it's
1447
01:09:03.500 --> 01:09:04.880
easy to say, I'm just going to pick it all
1448
01:09:04.920 --> 01:09:06.920
up and carry it, but I'm not going to feel
1449
01:09:06.960 --> 01:09:12.649
any of this. And it comes out in weird, absolutist, angry, weird,
1450
01:09:13.750 --> 01:09:15.850
or detached. How have you navigated that?
1451
01:09:16.810 --> 01:09:20.300
Well, I will. I mean, there's so many ways to
1452
01:09:20.579 --> 01:09:23.539
try to answer that. And, you know, do we have
1453
01:09:23.579 --> 01:09:28.779
like another four hours and, you know, and let's, you know,
1454
01:09:29.079 --> 01:09:31.180
let's take it. We need something.
1455
01:09:31.380 --> 01:09:31.880
Yeah.
1456
01:09:31.920 --> 01:09:37.229
More than water. But, but I mean, the, the first,
1457
01:09:37.590 --> 01:09:42.510
you know, things that come to mind, the Psalms became
1458
01:09:44.130 --> 01:09:46.289
so much more real to me. And I mean, this
1459
01:09:46.350 --> 01:09:49.979
is not this, I know, again, referencing what you said earlier,
1460
01:09:50.029 --> 01:09:52.199
you know, I know we speak to, you speak and
1461
01:09:52.439 --> 01:09:55.640
have the platform, you know, in a wonderful way to
1462
01:09:55.680 --> 01:09:57.819
speak into people that are not necessarily of a faith
1463
01:09:57.859 --> 01:10:00.260
community or, you know. Sure. But I only have one
1464
01:10:00.300 --> 01:10:02.090
way to answer that because I wouldn't be sitting here
1465
01:10:02.100 --> 01:10:06.449
having this conversation. We wouldn't be married alive probably because
1466
01:10:06.470 --> 01:10:08.449
there were a lot of prayers. I mean, honestly, for
1467
01:10:08.470 --> 01:10:11.270
this first time, you know, that I pray, God, you know,
1468
01:10:11.470 --> 01:10:14.000
I got through today, but please don't ask me to.
1469
01:10:14.329 --> 01:10:16.630
do another day. I just, can I not wake up tomorrow?
1470
01:10:16.750 --> 01:10:18.609
Can we ignore that for a second? Yeah. That's the
1471
01:10:18.649 --> 01:10:21.609
most common thing I hear is I just need to
1472
01:10:21.630 --> 01:10:22.409
go hug my kid.
1473
01:10:22.890 --> 01:10:23.050
Yeah.
1474
01:10:23.149 --> 01:10:24.090
And I'm out.
1475
01:10:24.310 --> 01:10:25.170
I just want to be done.
1476
01:10:25.229 --> 01:10:27.210
Please, please help me not wake up tomorrow.
1477
01:10:27.270 --> 01:10:27.470
Yes.
1478
01:10:27.689 --> 01:10:28.710
People of faith and not faith.
1479
01:10:28.750 --> 01:10:28.850
Yeah.
1480
01:10:28.869 --> 01:10:29.510
Just don't be here tomorrow.
1481
01:10:29.710 --> 01:10:33.890
Right. Yeah. And never, you know, making plans to, to
1482
01:10:34.229 --> 01:10:36.569
take that in my own hands, but just God begging
1483
01:10:36.609 --> 01:10:39.689
God to let me not have to endure this pain.
1484
01:10:39.729 --> 01:10:40.989
I don't know how to do it. I don't know
1485
01:10:41.029 --> 01:10:43.390
how to navigate it. I don't know how to, you know,
1486
01:10:43.609 --> 01:10:46.109
love my wife and I see her hurting and I
1487
01:10:46.189 --> 01:10:50.649
want to, you know, respond right. And, um, you know,
1488
01:10:50.829 --> 01:10:53.489
the closest person in, so that's where all the anger
1489
01:10:53.529 --> 01:10:55.409
is going to come and all the hurt. And I
1490
01:10:55.569 --> 01:10:57.869
don't want to hurt anymore. I don't want to hurt her.
1491
01:10:57.890 --> 01:11:00.609
I don't want to, you know, respond wrongly and all
1492
01:11:00.649 --> 01:11:04.489
of that stuff. And, and the one thing, and it
1493
01:11:04.550 --> 01:11:08.170
was right, actually, you know, I tell this story, but
1494
01:11:08.909 --> 01:11:12.310
from the very beginning, when we found out that you know, Maria,
1495
01:11:12.819 --> 01:11:17.600
our daughter had not survived the accident that took her life.
1496
01:11:17.840 --> 01:11:22.220
It was that feeling of just like, I don't know
1497
01:11:22.260 --> 01:11:24.180
how I'm going to keep breathing. I don't know how
1498
01:11:24.619 --> 01:11:27.520
I'm going to lead my family all the way to that.
1499
01:11:27.560 --> 01:11:29.819
And how do I, you know, how do I, how
1500
01:11:29.840 --> 01:11:32.140
do I do this? How do I keep myself moving forward?
1501
01:11:32.159 --> 01:11:34.420
And how do I lead a family and just hold
1502
01:11:34.500 --> 01:11:37.539
on to anything that, that will anchor us down because
1503
01:11:37.579 --> 01:11:41.300
I'm just feeling like these waves are just washing over
1504
01:11:41.579 --> 01:11:45.859
me and my family around me. And it was, I
1505
01:11:46.479 --> 01:11:49.140
use this kind of word, black hole, just feeling like
1506
01:11:49.199 --> 01:11:51.260
I'm sucked into a black hole. And once I go
1507
01:11:51.279 --> 01:11:54.880
into it, I'm not coming out. And I would take
1508
01:11:54.899 --> 01:11:58.479
a breath and just this, the thought that came to
1509
01:11:58.539 --> 01:12:04.479
my mind was, blessed be the name of the Lord,
1510
01:12:04.550 --> 01:12:07.789
you give and you take away. I am going to
1511
01:12:08.329 --> 01:12:11.170
choose God with whatever breath I have, and I hope
1512
01:12:11.210 --> 01:12:14.109
it's my last, but I'm going to go out saying, God,
1513
01:12:14.289 --> 01:12:18.390
I have to worship you. I have to trust you. Otherwise,
1514
01:12:18.430 --> 01:12:21.750
I'm going into this black hole of despair and hopelessness,
1515
01:12:21.869 --> 01:12:24.489
and I'm gone. And so I would take a breath,
1516
01:12:24.729 --> 01:12:29.760
and when I would take that breath in and then exhale, God,
1517
01:12:29.800 --> 01:12:31.579
I trust you. I don't get you. I don't like you.
1518
01:12:31.640 --> 01:12:34.659
I'm mad, but I'm going to trust you, and I'm
1519
01:12:34.680 --> 01:12:37.340
going to worship you. I would find that the next
1520
01:12:37.399 --> 01:12:41.029
breath in, was I had a little bit more oxygen
1521
01:12:41.229 --> 01:12:43.670
and I could, and it was like the clarity for
1522
01:12:43.729 --> 01:12:46.770
just a minute would sort of, it would, this, the
1523
01:12:47.050 --> 01:12:50.369
cloud would sort of clear just enough to go, wait
1524
01:12:50.390 --> 01:12:54.029
a minute, that feels like I might be able to survive.
1525
01:12:54.149 --> 01:12:55.989
But then the dark kind of comes back in and
1526
01:12:56.409 --> 01:12:58.460
you start, then I say it again and I say
1527
01:12:58.479 --> 01:13:03.640
it again. And that became, I started to read, you know,
1528
01:13:03.720 --> 01:13:05.520
go to the Psalms and I started to find all
1529
01:13:05.560 --> 01:13:09.569
these places where, you know, this, amazing verses that so
1530
01:13:09.609 --> 01:13:11.970
many songs are written about and worship songs that we
1531
01:13:12.010 --> 01:13:15.409
sing in church that are better, better is your, you know,
1532
01:13:15.449 --> 01:13:17.789
better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.
1533
01:13:17.829 --> 01:13:19.569
And your love is better than life. And then all
1534
01:13:19.590 --> 01:13:21.069
these things that always felt like, why am I not
1535
01:13:21.130 --> 01:13:23.409
getting it? God? Cause everybody else is so much more
1536
01:13:23.449 --> 01:13:26.390
engaged with these, these Psalms. And I believe them and
1537
01:13:26.470 --> 01:13:28.569
it's true. But suddenly I was like, wait a minute,
1538
01:13:28.590 --> 01:13:32.100
that very chapter starts with how long, Oh Lord, are
1539
01:13:32.109 --> 01:13:34.539
you going to forget me forever? I'm, I'm down. I'm
1540
01:13:34.579 --> 01:13:37.859
done for this last, you know, I'm done. But then,
1541
01:13:38.720 --> 01:13:41.909
if you read long enough, I start seeing, so why
1542
01:13:41.970 --> 01:13:45.289
are you so downcast in me? Hope in God, like talking,
1543
01:13:45.829 --> 01:13:49.050
you know, the Psalm is talking himself almost into, I
1544
01:13:49.130 --> 01:13:52.449
have to keep remembering where my hope comes from. And
1545
01:13:52.489 --> 01:13:55.220
I got to keep going back to that. Otherwise I am,
1546
01:13:56.060 --> 01:13:58.380
you know, going down for the last time. And so
1547
01:13:58.520 --> 01:14:03.640
that was that, that journey in that process for us was,
1548
01:14:03.659 --> 01:14:07.800
I felt like that was the, like three steps forward,
1549
01:14:07.819 --> 01:14:10.399
two steps back, sometimes 20 steps back, but it was
1550
01:14:10.479 --> 01:14:15.380
just continuing to anchor to that hope that God, you, it,
1551
01:14:15.899 --> 01:14:18.039
everything we feel right now. And that was the hardest
1552
01:14:18.060 --> 01:14:22.909
thing for me, just letting her and, and being safe
1553
01:14:22.970 --> 01:14:28.050
enough in that truth that, you know, I can let
1554
01:14:28.250 --> 01:14:30.670
her go wherever the emotions are going to take her
1555
01:14:31.109 --> 01:14:32.409
and not feel like, Oh, I got to fix it.
1556
01:14:32.409 --> 01:14:34.960
I got to fix this. She's feeling hopeless. She's feeling,
1557
01:14:35.239 --> 01:14:38.800
you know, it's like, God, you're going to take her
1558
01:14:39.000 --> 01:14:43.000
on her own journey. But what I can do, the
1559
01:14:43.079 --> 01:14:47.300
most loving thing I can do is just keep running
1560
01:14:47.340 --> 01:14:49.779
back to what is the only thing that will sustain
1561
01:14:50.140 --> 01:14:52.970
my heart through this so that there is, and if
1562
01:14:53.050 --> 01:14:55.369
I can hold on to that anchor as a father,
1563
01:14:55.789 --> 01:15:01.590
as a husband, then they will be able to hold
1564
01:15:01.649 --> 01:15:04.189
on to that anchor as well, maybe even through me,
1565
01:15:05.350 --> 01:15:07.930
It's going to be their own journey, but I want
1566
01:15:08.010 --> 01:15:12.350
to be that anchor in trusting you and running back
1567
01:15:12.409 --> 01:15:14.550
to this because that's the only hope that we have.
1568
01:15:15.899 --> 01:15:16.539
Thank you all for hanging.
1569
01:15:16.840 --> 01:15:18.199
Yeah. Thanks, brother.