Although Steven Curtis Chapman is best known for his songwriting and singing, he and his wife have, Mary Beth, have taken on a new adventure in writing a book about their 40-year marriage.
In the world of commercialized music, theirs is a story of faithfulness and endurance that isn’t the norm. That’s what they tell in Still Here.
“Until now we have shied away from writing about our marriage because we thought it might be disappointing,” Mary Beth said.
Steven replied: “Probably one of the reasons we have resisted is not because we haven’t been approached over the years about writing a book together, its mainly because we’ve always said it would be a book of what not to do in a marriage.”
They laugh at that reality but quickly acknowledge they were “two very, very young people who got married and they embody the old adage that opposites attract.
“Those things become the very things that are the pebble in your shoe, the irritant,” he said.
“I was 19, Steven was 21,” she added. “We didn’t have a clue with what we were signing up for. We didn’t have a clue with where the Lord was going to take his career, our life, a lot of those external pressures. We were clueless. There were so many things to learn about relationships, about how to honor each other, about how to talk to each other. Honestly, there were days it was hard, and it wasn’t anything grievous. It was just the hard work of marriage.”
In that sense, they said, they are just normal and real people who happened to be on the public stage.
“It’s a pretty simple book that can be written in one sentence, and that is bearing with one another in love,” he said.
Bearing with another in love sometimes means seeking out a counselor to walk couples through marriage, and not just the difficult patches of marriage, Mary Beth said.
“Any time you’re reflecting in writing, and looking back, I tell people all the time, obviously Steven and I have a lot more time and memory in the rear-view mirror than we have in the front windshield. I think for the writing part of the book, some of it’s painful to recount and look back at. It’s also how sweet of the Lord to allow us to reflect and go, yes, we did that. We pushed the darkness back and, and you weren’t my enemy. There was a real enemy, you know, seeking to devour. There’s some clarity that has come with our almost 42 years of marriage. When you’re in the middle of the battle, you just feel like I’m ready to wave the white flag and give up. You get lost in the battle.”
Steven Curtis Chapman and Mary Beth Chapman
Reviewing those years of ups and downs and challenges and successes was encouraging, they both said.
“It’s not as easy sometimes to see it in the moments. I think so much of the reason we felt released to share the journey is because of that,” Steven said. “Because we’re at that place where we can say, ‘I waited patiently for the Lord, and he heard my cry.’ And you know, he lifted us out of the miry bog, out of the pit of despair, lifted us out of despair and put our feet on a rock and put a new song in our mouth, put us on a rock, made our steps secure.”
This book, he said, “is a celebration of that.”
Steven has been most in the public eye as a recording and performing artist with 59 Dove Awards, five Grammy Awards, an American Music Award and 10 certified Gold or Platinum albums. He recently was welcomed into the circle as an official member of the Grand Ole Opry and received the prestigious BMI Icon Award, alongside the likes of Dolly Parton, Paul Simon, Sting and Carole King.
Mary Beth is cofounder and chairman of the board of Show Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to adoption advocacy and support. Among its many initiatives, Show Hope has helped nearly 9,000 children find permanent homes. She recently was inducted into the Adoption Hall of Fame by the National Council for Adoption.
Both of them have written memoirs previously published. Steven wrote Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story, and Mary Beth wrote Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope.
Both have been open about the grief they experienced in 2008 when their 5-year-old daughter died after being accidentally struck by an SUV driven by their teenage son. That is among the many challenges they discuss in the new book, which takes a longer look at the daily ups and downs of maintaining a marriage.