Laura Story: When Normal Blows Up in Your Face

We've had to begin to embrace that this is part of our lives. And it's not that God couldn't completely heal my husband.

I know that God can, but for whatever reason, he hasn't chosen to do it in the timeframe that I expected. He hasn't chosen to do it in the way that I would have wished. And so I really, I have a choice. I can either trust that his plan is best.

I can either trust that his character is good or I can't call him Lord anymore. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today.

So what's one thing that we did before the pandemic that you hope we never, ever go back to? I don't know. Do you have an answer?

I have an answer. What? I mean, I immediately think we were crazy. I'm going to say I was crazy. Traveling the country, doing marriage conferences, saying yes to almost every ministry opportunity. So we were on planes, we were in hotels, we were in churches speaking, doing great things.

But it was, we were fried. I'm shocked that you're saying yes. You thrive on this schedule. You are so happy. She's so happy right now.

I am so like, thank you, Jesus. She was telling me over and over, we got to slow down. We got to slow down. I thought you loved it, though. I know. And what did I say every time? Oh, we're just in a season.

It'll end quickly. And the season kept going. I kept saying yes. I'm blaming you.

And I wanted everything back to the way it used to be. Yeah, normal. Yes. You know, and so, you know, when the pandemic hit, you know, now we're doing marriage conferences from our bedroom, which we turned into a studio.

Yeah. I would, you know, tell a joke in our marriage conference. And I go, hey, you're laughing, right? Because you don't know. Nobody's there out there.

Somebody put in the chat that that was funny. But it forced a new normal. You know, at first it was like, I don't think people's lives can be changed through video.

And they can in a powerful way. And so I'm like, hoping we never go back to that. And the reason we're talking about this is what? We have Laura Storey with us today in the studio. Laura, welcome.

Yay. Thanks so much for having me. You're sitting over here trying to jump in as we're having this little conversation. No, I'm just listening and learning. Whenever I'm with you two, I just listen.

I just soak it all in. Like our kids. Our kids never said that to us. They never said we're learning from mom and dad.

You should be thinking what not to do. Oh, we just got it. Your book is So Long Normal, Living and Loving the Free Fall of Faith.

What a great title and subtitle that we can dig into a little bit. Well, I mean, it obviously sounds like you're saying the same thing. So Long Normal?

Yes. Does that mean we don't want to go back to normal? Well, I think a lot of it is the past couple of years that have shown us how kind of fixated we can be on things getting back to normal, how much we can place our hope in, how things could just be normal and sturdy and reliable and things not get canceled every time I turn around. But I think what it's kind of opened our eyes to is we're looking to this world for a sturdy foundation that we should have never expected in the first place. And as believers, the scriptures speak very clearly that there is only one sure and steady thing, and that that's God. So if nothing else, we've really learned to no longer allow our hope to be set on the things of this world, on the normal of this world, but to set it upon our God.

And how did that work for you? Because you're a songwriter, singer, traveling artist. Oh, it's just your third book. Yes. Yeah, I mean, you've got kids. The past two years, interesting.

You're married. So your whole life had to be shut down as well, right? Yeah. And so me writing this, you know, there have been books before that I've written, like, I've been kind of thinking about or studying something for a couple of years and, oh, I'm going to write a book about it. This was very much what I was learning in real time. And that was a little bit scary.

So even, you know, if you pick up the book, you may go, oh, it sounds like she's very much in process. So I was kind of responding the same way that everyone else was. Those very early quarantine days of everything's being canceled. So for me, I was completely off the road, just like overnight. Yeah, the same thing you were talking about where I probably had 40 to 50 trips, two to three of them being international trips.

Basically, everything was canceled. Yes. And, you know, so there's this anxiety of this thing that's my job. And you are the provider in many ways.

I'll tell you the funniest thing, and moms can relate to this, especially working moms. So I went from, you know, my Friday nights being spent on stage where people are like clapping for songs I've just sung to fixing dinner every night, fixing three meals a day for all of these people and them kind of turning their noses, oh, this. A little different reality.

You're like, people actually clap for me, you guys, come on. So it was very, very jarring, but it really made me look at myself and go like, who am I apart from this thing that I do? Well, Laura, just give us a snapshot of your past. Yes. Of what's happened.

Yes. So a big part of our story, which I think is what you're referring to is, so my husband, Martin and I have been married for 18 years. And they've been wonderful years and hard years. And anyone that's been married more than like 18 minutes can be wonderful and hard at the same time. It took us about eight.

Yeah, y'all are quick learners. But for us, it got hard pretty quick when Martin was diagnosed with a brain tumor within our first two years of marriage. I mean, he fell asleep driving, right? Yeah, it was about a year of them trying to figure out what the problem was. And so when we finally got the news that it was a brain tumor, we scheduled the surgery, we were planning on going in and having the tumor removed, and then maybe be in the hospital about a week, but it ended up we were there for about three months, and he endured a lot of complications. And when we finally left, finally left that hospital three months later, we were so excited about leaving, but it was clear to us pretty quickly that our life that we had known before, we couldn't necessarily return to it. Martin had a pretty substantial brain injury due to the surgery and the complications. And so that really for us was the beginning of embracing a new normal.

I was going to say you would never return to that normal that you used to have. Yes. And it's such a confusing thing. Also, not just as young, newlyweds, but as believers, I think that we'd had this picture of what our marriage was going to look like. And even on some level, the picture of God's good plan for our lives. And even though the Bible doesn't teach this, I had somehow come to believe if I can just pray enough, be good enough, then God eventually will work things out the way that I think that he should for my circumstances.

Exactly. And so the past, I guess, 16 years has been a lot of us, you know, obviously growing in our faith, but more than that, I feel like so often I'm praying that prayer that Jesus did in the garden right before he faced the cross where he says, God, you know, I wish things were different, but not my will, but yours be done. Now, was that a journey or did that come quickly? I mean, I'm thinking it was a journey.

For me, it would be a... Yes, it is a journey. And if you came and saw us, if you watched us day in and day out, you may wonder why we're not further along in the journey than we are. But it really is, it's something where we've had to begin to embrace that this is part of our lives.

It's not a season that we walked through. And that's tough too, because as a minister, as a songwriter, I grew up in church hearing people give testimonies about God's goodness. And it always went something like, this bad thing happened, I surrendered it all. And then all of a sudden, God fixed everything.

Yeah. And it took me a few years to realize it's just not going to be our story. And it's not that God couldn't completely heal my husband. I know that God can. But for whatever reason, he hasn't chosen to do it in the timeframe that I expected. He hasn't chosen to do it in the way that I would have wished. And so I really, I have a choice.

I can either trust that his plan is best, I can either trust that his character is good, or I can't call him Lord anymore. Wow. And you're saying that, I think a lot of us say that, especially with what we've gone through these last few years, it's like, we just want to return to normal. And you're saying, is that a worthy enough goal? Yeah.

Yeah. And God never speaks in scriptures about normal being the goal. One of the neatest things, as I was writing the book, I think I started off thinking, I just want to encourage people just to not place their hope in normal and, hey, we're going to make it through this and it's going to be okay. God's with us. But the more I began to look at the scriptures, it actually was pretty exciting because what I began to see, it's not just that God is with us in our shakiness and in the chaos. What I saw was story after story of God doing incredible works through individuals that every single one of those began with him calling them away from that which was familiar and that which was comfortable.

Oh, give us an example. You think about Mary, you know, you think about the normal first years of marriage that she was expecting, and then all of a sudden, she finds out that she's pregnant before the wedding with the Son of God. How about that?

Yeah. Like, seriously, it shifted everything in her life. It truly did. But the neatest thing is to see that Mary's response was she simply says, Behold, I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.

And just this posture of, okay, this is not what I saw coming. I guess I'm not like Mary. Wait, what are you doing? I need some more details, Angel. Angel that just showed up in my bedroom.

I need some more details about this. But rather, Mary just says, I'm your servant, but let your will be done. Although I just got to mean, I'm sure you feel this. Sometimes it's so hard. Oh, even when I read the title of your book, So Long Normal, I'm like, no, I don't want to say so long normal. There's a part of me that's like, I like the familiar. I like knowing what today is going to carry tomorrow. And then when that doesn't happen, there's this disappointment that grips us at times. We're like, oh, I'm disappointed. I like normal. But... Well, one of the things that I even talk about in the book is that we don't need to beat ourselves up about desiring normal.

Yeah. Because in a lot of ways, we were created for that. We were created for the stability and the protection of the garden. You know, we were created to live in such sweet community with our father that it kind of makes sense why. Because a lot of what we want from normal, we think about like, what am I looking for?

And just hoping things will get back to normal. Well, we don't want our hearts to be broken. We don't want our expectations to be dashed.

We're looking for predictability and protection because we were created for that. And one of the stories that I talk about a little bit was looking at the Israelites that are, they've left Egypt. They've left the yoke of slavery in Egypt, and they're headed to the Promised Land. And they get in such a weary state.

I don't know if this sounds familiar at all. They get to such a weary state that they begin to think about, oh, wasn't it so great? All we had in Egypt.

Yes. But they began to think back to it and just kind of painting pictures way better than they had it. But the thing, I think it's Psalm 90, where the psalmist talks about the Lord being their dwelling place from generation to generation. And it's not going back to the old way of stability. And it's not even placing our hope upon a stability in the future that may or may not come. It's believing our stability now is found in a person.

The Lord is our dwelling place and we can rest in Him. I have a good friend. Her son was diagnosed with cancer when he was 10. And the family was rocked and devastated and it was stage four. And so they really thought that this son would not make it. And she said every single day she was like, I just want my life back to what it was.

I just want to get back to normal. And so every single night she said, I could not get through an hour without God. And I was on my knees begging God, I pray God that you would let him live. And she said, I have never, ever felt the closeness of God the way I did. She said, I felt his presence in a way that I felt him next to me. I had his peace.

She said it was supernatural. And so miraculously, he was healed. He went through treatment.

He's now close to 30 and he's becoming a doctor. But she just told me the other day, she said, this is going to sound crazy because I was begging God to get back to normal. And now that I'm back to normal, I'm petrified because I miss the days that I needed Jesus so desperately because now I can get through a day without him and that scares me to death. Wow. Wow, even how we do ministry and how we reflect God to others. You know, when things are normal, we have a way of coming across as very independent and self-sufficient.

Yes. But the scriptures teach us so clearly that God is most glorified in our dependence. And when our need for him is showcased, when our weakness is seen, his strength is seen all the more through us. So I can definitely say that what we walk through as a family, and not walked through, but what we currently walk through, it puts us in a place of dependence, both on God and on others. It puts us in a place of utter neediness. Like, I can't even begin to tell you how not put together we are. If you were to come to my house, you'd be like, whoa.

Whoa, you might call like some government services or something. But the truth is, is we are needing this for God is seen very clearly. And I used to think that was a bad thing.

Yeah. But now I know that his strength is seen through my weakness. And I know that not just in a, oh, I know that verse, but I know that in a very real and tangible way. Yeah, it's interesting even listening to you just make those remarks. You're, you got a smile on your face.

You're laughing. It isn't just, you know, he's my source of strength. It's actually, you tell me if I'm reading it wrong, but he's even your source of joy in the middle of the valley. There's a verse in Proverbs 31. And it's funny when women talk about Proverbs 31, you're like, oh, there's not a whole lot that I can relate to there. But it talks about how this woman says she clothes herself in fine linens, and she laughs at the days to come. I've always looked at that verse and thought, if someone was describing me, it would probably be something like she clothes herself in free women's event t-shirts.

And she lies awake at night, wringing her hands at the days to come. Oh, I think a lot of us do that as women. I'd say that that is who I've been for a long time. But a few years ago, I just came to a point where I said, if I believe God to be who He says He is, then I cannot live that way any longer.

What happened that took you there? Well, I turned 40. I turned 40 and had one of those, like, well, when I grow up, I'm going to be more spiritual. When I grow up, I'm going to be this, I'm going to be that. But realizing, I don't really know what it was, something about being older. You realize, I am grown up.

Well, the other thing is, not to go too deep on this, but when you have children, you begin to see things about your life that you didn't see before. Oh, let's talk. They're like, I'm here.

Yes. What did you see? Things like, so one of my twins, so we have a nine year old named Josie, twin boys, Ben and Griffin, and then our little Timothy, who's three. And then one day, this was just a few months ago, Benjamin, I'm doing bedtime with him. And he says to me, Mom, I want to have a day that's so stressed out. What?

I said, what? And he goes, just where, like, you pick us up, and we're going so fast, and we're running to this and that, and we're just so stressed out, and we just do so many things so fast, and we're so stressed out. And I'm thinking, oh, my gracious, this is what I'm teaching my children. And back to kind of the Proverbs 31 picture, you know, I truly want to be that person that when my kids look at my God through me, when they begin to learn about who God is, do they really believe, not just through my words, but through my life, that He is provider.

If I tell them He is our provider, He is enough, we can depend on Him, but I'm going to come up with plan A, B, C, D, and E just in case, or do they see me trusting God so much that I truly can be that woman that laughs at the days to come? How do we do so long normal? How do we do it?

It's so easy to hold on to it and almost grasp it. You know, it's almost like our security. And you're saying, no, it's time to say goodbye to normal. How do we say goodbye? Well, I think there's some people that are being called to say goodbye to normal and whether that's just a new chapter that they're just not quite ready to leave that old chapter. For some people, normal is a goodbye to them, whether that's the end of a marriage or whether that's just the next season of life that's, you know, a new job, just something that's happened to make them need to embrace it. I think more than anything, it's acknowledging that, and I just said this earlier, but acknowledging that the stability and security that we're looking for in our circumstances, circumstances will let us down, that we can only find that temporarily.

But the fact that we have someone, you know, the person of God, that his character is sturdy, the fact that his nature is unchanging, the same to yesterday, today and forever, and his promises are rock solid, that that's the sturdiness and that's all the sturdiness we could ever need is found in him. And I know that that's a hard thing, especially when people are going through such tough chapters. I think the bigger thing that God has been showing me regarding that is that sometimes he allows those faulty, less secure normal, sometimes he actually sovereignly allows those things to come out from under us because of his love and mercy. When I was a kid, I was raised as a military brat, meaning my dad was in the Air Force and we traveled all the time. So normal for me was constant change.

And I remember going through that and just despising the fact that it was constantly shaking up my life, the moves every year or two, constantly shaking things up and making me feel like I longed for a different life. But looking back on that now as an adult, the change is what made me who I am today. So my normal, even though it didn't feel like normal, was actually something that God was using and weaving all through my childhood to prepare me for the ministry that I'm in today.

And now I'm grateful. Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking today with Laura's story to help us understand that normal, quote unquote, normal can be thrown out of whack in our lives. And it's often what God uses to shape and form us more into the image of his son, Jesus.

And that's always, always a good thing. She has written a book called So Long Normal, living and loving the free fall of faith. We believe in this book. And when you head over to familylifetoday.com and make a donation of any amount, we want to send you a copy of Laura's story's book, So Long Normal. This book will help you process the trauma of loss of your normal in the past, learn to rest in God's plan for you instead of constantly trying to control your circumstances and so much more. When you go to familylifetoday.com and make a donation, you can request your copy there and we'll send you one as a thank you gift. Or you could call us at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Often when we think about normal, we want things to be just easy. And so many times in marriage, when we're examining both us and our spouse, things are not normal.

Things feel very out of whack, in fact. And that's one of the reasons why we at Family Life have created the Weekend to Remember event. Today is the last day that you could sign up and get 43% off as a couple when you register at familylifetoday.com. When you go to a Weekend to Remember event, you're making a new commitment to your marriage and you're going to see what God will do in the short course of three days to transform not only your relationship with your spouse, but your relationship with God as well. And when you make a new commitment to your marriage, you can discover that he can not only repair your relationship with your spouse, but you can see him repair your relationship with him as well. Head over to familylifetoday.com.

Find a location that's near to you, or you could pack up the car and head out on a vacation, or you can jet off to a new location that's kind of far away and enjoy a weekend with your spouse. All of that is available at familylifetoday.com, or you could pick up the phone and call us at 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now, if this content today from Laura Storey or any of our Family Life programs have been helpful for you, we'd really love it if you'd share today's podcast with a family member or a friend. And wherever you get your podcasts, it could really advance the gospel effort of what we're doing at Family Life if you'd scroll down and rate and review us. Now, tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be talking again with Laura Storey about the fact that sometimes God changes our normal for a very specific purpose. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.