Laura Story: The Change You Never Wanted

We didn't like each other, and we didn't like ourselves, and it just was a tough time. And a lot of it was because we were just kind of putting on a happy face. Rather than acknowledging that the change we had gone through was hard, the loss we'd experienced was real.

And once we had people help us understand what good biblical grief looks like, we could really grieve the things that we had lost. 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 it isn't every day you have a singer-songwriter in the studio at Family Life Today. I'm so excited. And she has her guitar out. You're so excited because somebody else is playing the guitar besides me. No, I love that when you wait.

Some of that's actually skilled. We can start a band together. That's what we can do.

I can get a bass. But we got Laura Storey back in the studio in Family Life Today, and she's already got the guitar in her hand. Laura, we're excited that you're here again. Oh, y'all are so sweet. And thanks for having me. It's just sweet to be with you guys.

It's fun. Yeah, so what are we going to hear right now? So I have a new song. So I have a book out called So Long Normal.

And then the song is called Hello Unknown. And so it's for anyone that has kind of been forced to embrace a new normal. I don't know if anyone can relate to that. Wasn't it 15 days to stop the spread? Wasn't that the original thought? We'll get back to normal in a couple of weeks? And then even asking the question of when are things going to get back to normal?

We kind of all realize we're so prone to want things to be normal again, or want things to be sturdy again. So this song talks about just the excitement of God's plan being bigger than just returning to normal. And I think it's Ephesians. I know Paul said it. I think he said it in Ephesians. It talks about God doing exceedingly more than we can think or ask. Ephesians 3.20, it's one of my favorite life verses. You're reminded that normal is way too small for God, for what God has in store for His children.

So this is kind of a fun, hopefully a song that gets people excited about leaving normal. On a road that someone else paved before me. I need a plan that both my eyes can see. But you've called me to mystery.

I am, let me know of everything I've known. Farewell, predictable. No more pain and safe. I'll free fall into faith. I'll say goodbye, control.

No, oh no. I'm prone to find a way to skip the heart. The very trials you would use to refine me.

There's beauty you create through every scar. But only from willing. Lord Jesus, from willing. I am letting go of everything I've known. Farewell, predictable.

No more pain and safe. I'll free fall into faith. I'll say goodbye, control.

Hello, unknown. What if I follow where you lead? What if the narrow road is steep? You know the plans you have for me.

And what if it's through the valley deep? What if it's only you and me? I still have everything I need.

Jesus, you are everything I need. I am letting go of everything I've known. Farewell, predictable.

No more pain and safe. I'll free fall into faith. I'll say goodbye, control. Hello, unknown. Hello, unknown.

Hello, unknown. Wow. Yay. That's good. So good.

I wanted a cajon. I was like, come on. I know, I needed a drummer on that one. Talk to us about what that song means to you. Because you've walked through, we all have, leaving normal as you write about So Long Normal. So how do you get an excitement about the abnormal?

I know it's not abnormal, but it's not normal. I mean, it's hard to write a song in a positive note of what we've been through, but you're always looking at, no, what is ahead? And this is a good place to be that we've left normal. And one of your lines was, we're free falling into Jesus. And I don't want it to sound like I haven't grieved at all the loss of, we're calling it normal here, but the loss of things, whether that's with COVID or even with our own story with Martin and I and the things we've walked through with our marriage and our family with his brain injury. Because I think at the very beginning of it all, we spent our first like four or five years in a little bit of denial. I'd say that we definitely were, it's not even so much we were in denial, but as believers, we didn't know how to grieve.

We knew that we had gone through this complete change and where expectations seem to have been dashed in a lot of ways and everything about our future ended up looking different. But as believers, I think we kind of felt like we needed to just kind of put one of those Romans 828 bandages on it and go, we believe all things working together for good. We trust God. Well, even James considered all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials. And when you're not counting it all joy, you just kind of feel like, well, I'm a lousy Christian.

I must not trust God. And so it was probably five years into things with Martin's brain injury that we kind of were at the place both in our marriage and in our personal lives where it was very much a crisis of faith. We didn't like each other and we didn't like ourselves and it just was a tough time. And a lot of it was because we were just kind of putting on a happy face rather than acknowledging that the change we had gone through was hard. The loss we'd experienced was real. And once we had people help us understand what good biblical grief looks like, we could really grieve the things that we had lost. So what does that look like?

How did you do it? Yeah, one thing acknowledging that grief is not the opposite of faith. I think for a while, for some reason, I just thought I can't be sad about what's happened if I really trust that God's gonna work it together for good. One psalm that was especially helpful, Psalm 13, where the psalmist says things to God that I was like, are you allowed to say that?

It was like a bad Facebook rant and I'm going, how did that get in the Bible? But he says, how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I take solace in my soul?

Just this long complaint. Honestly, he was just being honest about how weary his soul was. And you see that in different places in the Psalms.

Did you read that and think, that is me. That's exactly what I feel. Yes, because there are so many moments when we're honest that it does feel like God's hiding from us. Or it does feel like he has forsaken us. We know that his promises are true, but somehow we can't quite figure out why it doesn't seem to be applying to me in this particular situation. I'm thinking of the people that have lost loved ones with COVID and they couldn't even be with them. That deserves to be grieved, you're saying. Yes, especially when you're thinking about, God, I know that he has this plan for abundant life for me. And then you're going through this situation where your husband has this brain injury that you've prayed and prayed every day for God to heal and he hasn't yet. And you're going, God, it really does feel like you have forsaken me.

And so I think being able to be honest about that was really helpful. But I love, even in that Psalm, this almost doesn't stop there. Yeah, I was just looking at it.

Yes. And it's six short verses. You have time to stop. Whatever you're doing, just stop and read it right now. Read it, Dave, read it to us. Okay.

Why not, right? Give me a moment here. Do it, go on. I'm grieving through this whole process. And it is written by David, but it says, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? That's just two verses.

Yeah. And then verse three. Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Lift up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him. Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. And then the last two. It's like two, two, two.

Yeah. Last one turns. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Well, when you think about kind of what David lays out there, he begins his worship of God with honesty. He begins it with his grief. It's not that we have to check it at the door and put on smiley faces when we come into church.

Yeah. But he's honest with God about the sorrow that he feels, but he doesn't stay there. You know, the Bible talks about us grieving, but not as those without hope.

I love just the, even the progression there of, okay, so what's our role in this? We're honest before God, and then we trust. He said, I've trusted your loving kindness. My heart will rejoice in your salvation. And then I think this is especially special for me because it says I will sing. I thought of that for you too.

Yeah, because you have dealt bountifully with me. And it's like he's turning around and looking at his life and God's track record of faithfulness. And he says that is worth singing about. And I think sometimes when we read a psalm like that, we tend to think it's quick. It's six verses. So verse one is how long.

Verse six, he's trusting and singing. And you're like, that took two minutes, three minutes. But it often can take days, months for you. It took years. It takes years for all of us. But I think it's also like I appreciate the progression in the psalm, but it's not necessarily that he moved from a place of grieving to a place of rejoicing.

I think what I've learned is you can, yes, these things can happen simultaneously. And your praise can begin prior to you understanding why the things that are happening to you are happening. Your praise is, it's kind of your response in the waiting. Worship isn't this thing you do after God's explained it all.

It's this thing, especially like I think about the life of Job. It's not at the end that he says, though you slay me, I'll worship. It's not when he begins to see God's hand more clearly. It's in the midst of it, he says, the only way I'm going to get through this is to continue to sing. And for me, as I've just five years, I talked about us kind of hitting a really hard season for each of us personally and for us in our marriage. And I wrote, I'll say a journal entry that ended up being a song. And it was probably the most honest and the most vulnerable I've ever been in songwriting. But it was a song called Blessings. And I began by talking about just my fears and my doubts and then asking these questions of, God, is it possible that you could use all of this pain for your glory? Is it possible that it's the sleepless nights that are actually providing me that closeness that I've so long prayed for to have with you? It was that song, again, not writing about some truths that I've mastered, but I feel like it's what God knew that I needed to sing night after night for the next 10 years. Because it's not about everything's resolved and my soul can be okay.

It's, no, no, no. As long as I have the Lord, as long as He is with me, as long as I'm clinging to His promises, things don't have to be okay in order for me to be okay. The first time I heard that song, Laura, I can remember where I was. It's kind of funny how songs kind of connect.

I remember I was driving on the highway and I turned, because I had never heard it, it was new, out. I turned it up and I just wept because I was thinking, whoa, someone's being incredibly honest of what this feels like when you're in pain. Man, there's so much truth, even the line, what of a thousand sleepless nights? I mean, I hear that and I'm like, oh, no, no, I don't want a thousand sleepless nights.

But the presence of God in that is even worth it. Tell us the story about your kids. Well, it's not even really about my kids. It's more about me and how you find out more about what you believe when you have kids, because you see what you're modeling, because they'll really show you how it out.

Oh, they will definitely call it out. One of the verses that I've been thinking about more now being a parent is in Romans 5, where Paul talks about rejoicing your suffering because suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. And it's so often as a parent, like I want to see my kids grow in those virtues, like of endurance and character, and can't I just put them in a Sunday school class to teach them these things? Because as a mom, you don't want them to go through pain.

And that's the thing. So that's been hard thinking about with my kids that my job isn't necessarily to protect them from suffering or to teach them to wiggle out of situations that are hard because I truly want to see that in their lives. But I'm just as guilty. I'm just as guilty of wanting to learn things like endurance and character and hope through the latest Bible study. If I could just learn these things some other way, but Scripture is so clear, and not just there, but throughout Scripture talking about that deep work of the Spirit that comes only through how we meet with God and our suffering. Are you different based on the suffering that you've been through?

Oh, absolutely. Who would you be if you hadn't gone through it? And I'm certainly not as different as I wish I was.

I'm certainly not as much like Jesus as I wish I was. But there has been somewhat of a freedom. You know, at the Proverbs 31, woman who laughs at the days to come, there's been somewhat of a freedom when your life gets knocked so far off the tracks that you think of this idea of a family trying to keep up with the Joneses.

The Joneses are like on a different planet. Our life looks so different than most people's lives that that's not even an option for us. And there's something that's freeing about that. There's something that's freeing about how we have to function because of my husband's disability. So we have one driver in the family.

Martin's unable to drive because of his vision. So we do less activities. I don't think we're going to get to heaven and go, oh, I just wish I had been busier. And God's not saying, wow, too bad, guys.

I plan for you to do a lot of activities. That is exactly right. Or with Martin with his disability, sometimes we just can't move at as quick of a pace. It's just how we are. And so we find ourselves just going at a slower pace sometimes. And that's always a blessing. We've learned so much about how our greatest fear having kids was how Martin's disability would negatively affect our children.

Okay? That was Martin's greatest fear. I knew God would take care of it, but I think when I'm really being honest, that was a big fear of mine as well. And what we're seeing and learning is, yes, things look different for our kids.

Yes, there's limitations that we can't, we're not going to sugarcoat. But Martin's disability has been one of the clearest ways we have seen God work in our family. It's been one of the clearest ways we've seen God work in the lives of our children. I was picking up Josie from preschool. This was a few years ago. And I take my kids on the road with me.

So we'll be on the road until like late at night or early in the morning, however you want to see it. And we had had one of those where I brought Josie to preschool on probably five hours of sleep with a terrible mom. Yeah, I get it. But I was picking her up and the teacher said, hey, can I speak to you a second?

Oh, boy. I'm like, no. And she pulled me aside and she said, I want to brag on Josie for a second. And I'm thinking, okay, this is not at all what I was expecting to hear. And she tells me about a boy who was joining their class who had some pretty severe learning disabilities and how Josie had been so just kind of attuned to making sure he was getting in the line when he needed to, make sure he was keeping up with everything.

And the question she asked me, the question she asked me, she said, so what have you done as a mom to teach Josie to be so compassionate towards people with disabilities? And I just, I wanted to laugh. And then that week I had just had such a tough week. I think I had been driving around so much and I had been working so hard. And sometimes it's like, God, I know you're working it all together for good somehow, but I'm just not seeing it.

But she asks me this and I had an opportunity to say to her, I don't know if you know, but my husband has a brain injury and pretty severe learning disability. And that is what God has used to develop that character, that endurance and that hope in our children because He promises He's not going to waste our suffering. He's going to use it. I remember Chuck Swindoll years ago, I heard him say, your pain will never be in vain. And I've heard so many pastors, and Dave, you've said this, is our pain when we give it to God can become our platform in some ways.

I've been thinking about your daughter. Who knows what God will do with that? And your kids, their heart and compassion, you know? God is shaping them and their character in these beautiful ways that you would have never chosen for your... Absolutely not.

You had never chosen that for you guys. And yet God and His goodness and His mercy will use that for good. Amen.

And I'm so thankful that He does. As I look back on my life, the areas that have been the most difficult and most uncomfortable are the prime areas that God has worked in my life to bring me not only closer to Him, but closer to my spouse, closer to my kids. The fact is, you lean on God more when you're in places of discomfort. Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking today with Laura's story, and she has pointed out that principle to us. What we want to be normal is often not what God wants for our lives, because we want normal to be easy, and God wants to use the circumstances and people in our lives to draw us closer to Him to go deeper and become more godly people. Laura has written a book called So Long Normal, Living and Loving the Free Fall of Faith. This is a book that talks about things like finding true community and encouragement in our struggles with uncertainty, discovering comforts and gifts to steady us on our journey, as opposed to releasing us from our difficult circumstances. When you head over to familylifetoday.com and make a donation of any amount, we are going to send you a copy of Laura's story's book, So Long Normal, as a way of saying thank you for contributing to the ministry effort of family life today. We care about getting resources like this into your hands and into the hands of anyone, so that God will be glorified not only in our personal lives, but in our marriages, as we parent, and as we're neighbors as well. Again, you can head over to our website, familylifetoday.com, make a donation of any amount, and we'll send you a copy of Laura's story's book. Or you can call at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. And while you're at familylifetoday.com, if you wanted to see Laura's story perform her song, Hello Unknown, she did that in the Family Life Studios, you can find that link at familylifetoday.com and watch that video of her performance. Now tomorrow, David and Wilson are going to be talking with Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Shoemaker about Jesus and gender, rethinking our identities and roles and relationships around Christ, instead of what the culture communicates. That's coming up tomorrow. On behalf of David and 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.