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By Michaela Gordoni
Any marriage will have things to work through, but when Steven Curtis Chapman’s parents got divorced late in life, he knew he had to do everything he could to love his wife endlessly.
The Christian singer said on a recent episode of Fox reporter Shannon Bream’s podcast, “We kind of figured that out on the way home—”
“—from our honeymoon,” his wife, Mary Beth, interjected.
When the honeymoon was over, Mary Beth felt sad they had to go back to school and work. She was in tears on their way to their new home together.
“This was not in a color brochure,” Chapman joked. “I didn’t see tears anywhere…And so, yeah, that was, I think, right out of the gate, we thought, this is different.”
Mary Beth explained that what she was attracted to in him is what started to annoy her, which is what most couples experience after marriage, she said.
“I do think we realized really quickly we’re going to need some tools to put in our tool belt on how to navigate a very long [road],” she said. “And, you know, so isn’t that just the Lord, right? To the refining piece that you said to go, hey, you know, your spouse is going to possess some things that are going to actually draw you closer to me and refine your, you know, rough edges as well, and refine it has.”
Chapman wrote the song “I Will Be Here” for Mary Beth 37 years ago. He wrote it after a difficult time during his parents’ divorce.
“It just really throws you in a tailspin,” he said. “But for us, so much of my parents’ marriage…their faith was so much a part of, you know, just their marriage…So when they divorced, it was very unexpected and just pulled the rug out from under me and us in a lot of ways.”
“And so that song, ‘I Will Be Here’…So many of the lyrics are, look, if we wake up tomorrow morning and…like my parents, suddenly, you know, the sun does not appear. And we’ve lost sight of love and all of this. I want you to know I’ll be here.”
“And so in the context of that, writing that song and my parents’ divorce, I think, is what sent us into our first counselor’s office to say, ‘Hey, just saying the word “divorce” is off the table. It’s not even our vocabulary.’”
From that time onward, they knew they had to work out any issues, get the tools they needed to love each other and communicate better and have a marriage that outlasted Chapman’s parents. Now, they’ve been married for 40 years.
He said on April 17, “‘I Will Be Here’ was written as a promise to my beautiful bride, Mary Beth…one that was never meant to just live in a song, but in a life together. A commitment to stay, to love, and by God’s grace, to continue to choose each other through every season.”
They write about their love, life and struggles in their book, Still Here: Life Together on the Long Way Home, which came out on March 24.
Part of their story’s description reads, “Marriage isn’t about perfection; it’s about God’s grace sustaining imperfect people through broken, beautiful seasons. The Chapmans’ 40-year journey proves that with total dependence on God’s faithfulness, forgiveness, and redemptive power, marriages can not only survive but become testimonies of His mercies.”
You can get their love story wherever books are sold.
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