Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [20]
Hold my hand and have no fear
’Cause I, I will be here
I will be here when you feel like being quiet
When you need to speak your mind, I will listen
And I will be here when the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying, we’ll be together
’Cause I will be here
Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the future is unclear
I, I will be here
As sure as seasons are made for change
Our lifetimes are made for years
So I, I will be here
“I Will Be Here”
Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman
One dark and stormy night, Steven’s older brother Herb came rap, rap, rapping at our front door.
He was wet, upset, and told us that that Steven’s parents were divorcing.
We were shocked . . . but it wasn’t like it had come out of left field, really. There had been plenty of signs that all was not well with Herb and Judy.
Still, we never thought it would come to this. Steven’s dad had assured him that they were just working through issues. He said that “divorce is not a word in our vocabulary.”
So how had it entered their vocabulary?
We understood stress and hard times in a marriage . . . that was to be expected. Steven was praying for his parents constantly, even asking people during his concerts to join him in prayer for his mom and dad.
But as we continued to try to walk with Herb and Judy, we started hearing two distinctly different sides of the story. Steven started feeling like he was the parent-counselor to two adolescents. His parents had been his spiritual heroes, and now he was talking to them in pretty candid terms about unhealthy choices they’d been making and how they really needed to do whatever it took to save their marriage.
“Don’t worry,” his dad said in a phone call. “We’ve signed legal papers, but we’re not divorcing. It’s more of a legal separation. You know how lawyers are. We’re just protecting ourselves.”
We felt like it was just a matter of time before things slipped further down the slippery slope, and we were right. The next thing we knew, in spite of our daily prayers and earnest conversations with them, Steven’s parents chose to divorce.
This was devastating for Steven. His parents had been spiritual models for him – and rightly so – after they came to faith in Jesus when he was about seven years old. They had modeled prayer, repentance, commitment to God’s Word, connection to the body of Christ . . . all the right things.
Further, they had talked through divisive issues in their relationship when Steven was growing up, rather than just sweeping them under the carpet. They had done their best to not let the sun go down on their anger. Even though there were plenty of arguments, his parents usually ended up on their knees together, asking each other for forgiveness and asking God for strength. They had also counseled many other couples who were going through difficult times in their marriages. They loved serving God together in their church.
So it was pretty surreal for Steven to see them come to the point of divorce. Bit by bit, they had allowed the faith that had held them so tightly, and had saved them so radically, to lose its hold on their hearts. I believe they began to listen to the wrong voice in their heads; subtle lies influenced their decisions, and they couldn’t see how irrational they were becoming.
In addition, they had lost their commitment to the accountability of their fellowship of believers. As a result of some church politics, the pastor who had been an integral part of their faith journey was asked to leave the church. This eventually led to bitterness, which Herb and Judy kept inside. They gradually slid away from fellowship. Once they were isolated and separated from the group, it was as if Satan had moved in like a lion, now able to take them down as individuals.
Aside from the terrible sadness we felt for Herb and Judy’s pain, the hard thing was that we had consciously decided, early in our marriage, to model our relationship on theirs. If their relationship was failing, we now had to wrestle with questions