God is at work and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs. truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope.
Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. The story of the prodigal son is one of the most powerful depictions of God's grace and unconditional love.
Now you can bring that moment home with The Prodigal, a breathtaking print by award-winning artist Morgan Weisling. With your gift of $150 or more, you can receive this special edition print, or make a gift of $300 or more, and Morgan will personally sign your print. Visit focusonthefamily.com slash print today. This program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is made possible through the gifts of generous friends like you. This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.
And I said, It is dark.
So dark we can't see. But in a little while, It's gonna get light. What hope? And You just need to remember I'm right beside you and I'm not lost. That's Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recalling his reassuring words to one of his children as they walked through a very dark valley in their family.
You'll hear their story and more encouragement on today's Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller. John, everyone experiences tragedy and loss at some point in life. It's inescapable. I'm often reminded of the story of Job in the Bible and the testing the Lord allowed him to go through and how he remained faithful to God through many trials.
In modern times, there are people who've experienced a lot of suffering and sadness, and yet they serve as great examples to others. Our guest will encourage us to hold on to Jesus through the storms of life. And I'm speaking of my friend Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. He has an inspiring story to share, a story of hope.
So stay with us. Yeah, he's written a book called This Road I'm On: The Power of Hope in the Face of Adversity. And we have that here at the ministry. Governor Lee is the 50th governor of that state. He began his term in 2019.
And Jim, you had this conversation at the Tennessee State Capitol. And so let's go ahead and hear that conversation now on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Governor Lee, it's great to have you. I'm focus on the family. Thank you.
Welcome. Proud to be here. This is a great state. Uh it's the best state in the country. We have uh Long history of Fiscal stewardship, I'd say that.
And that makes for a stable environment and good for the people. We have very low taxes and very low debt. Uh sort of Financial principles that have set us up for success from an economic standpoint.
So, yeah, plus it's just a beautiful place, and the people are remarkable. My family's been here for seven generations, so I don't know any other state, but I think it's the best place in the country. What's fun about watching you is you're unlikely to be governor. You're a business guy. You weren't in politics before, never even on the school board.
What in the world sparked you to get involved and to become governor of Tennessee? You know uh We all have a long Arc of history in our life, right? That trajectory that leads us. And we can kind of see it all come together when you look back, but. It was not likely that it would turn out that way if you were looking forward.
In my life, but I got involved. The short answer is, I got very involved in some issues. I worked in a prison reentry program for 25 years, a ministry, and I got really interested in how. Department of Correction works and how you know, the criminal justice system operates in the state. And As such, I got Interested in the Policy and the public policy around that issue.
Also, I worked in the inner city in an at-risk youth program and Uh Mostly for very underprivileged kids and boys in particular, in this one program I was involved in. I saw some real disparities in the way education opportunities were Available to children in this state. And I got really interested in education, and especially for the underserved, and education reform, and got involved in public policy there. I ran a business, I cared about business issues, so as I Born out of my interest in business and also the sort of non-profit work I was doing. intersected with and touched government and public policy.
And that's what sparked this idea, hey, maybe I should get involved in public policy. And government. You give me the impression it wasn't quite a happy tone like that. It was more like, maybe I should get involved in that. It was a really hard decision.
Because it needs to get started. It was a really hard decision. Let me ask you this. You have a farm. You have had your own share of chaos in your life, and I want to turn into that now.
You speak about how picking blackberries. Taught you so much about life. You got to share this with the rest of us so we can learn from it. How does picking blackberries help you? I kind of forgot about that chapter until you brought it up.
It's been a bit of, oh, Yeah. Yeah, as a little kid, we used to pick blackberries on the farm and loved it. I sold them. You know, we'd pick them and put them in jars and sell them to. people in the city that couldn't pick blackberries and uh It's a Terrible job.
I mean, it's in the middle of July. It's hot snakes, it's hot, there's chiggers, you have to. Good. We put gasoline all over our bodies, which you wouldn't do anymore, but we did to keep, it's a terrible job. There's thorns, black ray bushes are filled with thorns.
It takes A tremendous amount of struggle. Sure. Pick blackberries. But there's nothing like them. And I remember my mom used to make blackberry cobbler.
Only on days when it would snow in the winter because It would We loved snow, it was such a beautiful, but it would remind us of the hottest days of the summer. And what we had to go through to get that blackberry.
So To enjoy the blackberry cobbler in the winter. It's a little bit like. Life. At least my life, my life's experiences, what I have come to believe about my own life is. You can only fully appreciate What you are, what you have, or maybe better put, it's to the degree that you've experienced brokenness, you can experience wholeness.
To the degree that a man has. Felt pain he can feel joy.
Sometimes hardest things in life. If we lean in and allow God to use them. can create a breadth of understanding in our life that we could never have had before. Yeah, and that's a big benefit. Carol Ann, your first wife.
She's passed away, but we'll talk about that in a moment. You struggled to have children. I believe Jessica came along. And even Jessica, the pregnancy with her was from the doctor's perspective. Maybe something you should reconsider.
I believe I have that story correct. Speak to what happened there in the profound nature of a misdiagnosis. Yeah, we were she had tested positive for a fetal anomaly And um We kind of had to make go through a weekend or a week. of s thinking that that's what we were dealing with. And the doctors obviously said, you know, you have options here.
We didn't. Think we had an option, but we still had to process what this was going to be like and. what might happen if that were true. And then it was a false positive. Mm.
We weren't gonna do anything about it otherwise, but Uh it was Quite an eye-opening experience to go through that. But speak specifically in the book, you said something like, Okay, this is what it is. We will be the parents of that child. That's right. Before you got the rediagnosis.
That's right. We sat on the back porch and said, You know what? If this is what it is, it's what it is. This is what God's. You know, this is what he's called us to be and do.
And we'll be the best parents to that child that That they could have possibly had. And I remember making that decision, and then a week later. They came back and said.
Well, that's not the situation. Your baby looks healthy.
Well, that gives you an insight into the risk associated to misdiagnosis, right? You could have easily said, okay, well, let's abort that child. Not easily, but you may have been that couple that said, let's abort the child, and the child was actually healthy. But even if we weren't Yeah. Even if we weren't the couple with the healthy child.
We knew for us. That would be the right thing to do, and that there would be some redemption in that. And you see it all the time.
So you went on to have four children. You had twins. Four miscarriages and a stillborn in there before we had. We had a lot of pregnancies, a lot of trouble, a lot of difficulty, a lot of grief, but. A lot of blessings.
But you had twins. What's that like being father of twins? I've not had that before. When you had trouble having babies and you couldn't, you kept having one pregnancy after another, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's two of them laying in the same bed. It was.
An incredible blessing.
So, moving to that day. Still is. They're 33 now. Oh, that's good. Hopefully, as rambunctious as they were as well.
One of them has four sons, the other one has two daughters and two sons.
So, is it true that grandparenting is really you and your grandchildren having a common enemy? You're just adult children? Much better than being a parent. Let's speak to the really difficult day that you had. I think it was in 2000.
Yeah. What happened on that day? Waved to my wife and my four-year-old as they rode out across the creek and on horseback. On horseback. Yeah.
And I was coming home from work. And the next, you know, within a short period of time, I heard my four-year-old crying and way off in a distance and Found my wife. Lying beside a horse. And Never spoke to her again. It was a Horrific.
experience that turned my life completely upside down and Yeah. a life most men only dreamed of and It felt completely shattered all in one afternoon. Um very dark. Season very tough. Four little kids: four-year-old, two, nine-year-olds, fourteen-year-old.
Um And we had to start life over. Yeah. Yeah. One of the comments you made in the book that really caught my attention, I believe you're talking to Jessica then, you're 14 year old or And just Or maybe it was your your son, actually, where you said, we're in a dark place. Yeah.
We're going to need to stand here for a while. I'll stand with Jesus, you stand with me.
Well, he was beautiful. He was scared of the dark. Huh. And before any of this happened, he was scared of the dark. And I knew that.
He never wanted. And he was also scared of the woods. He was nine. Yeah. And we live out in the country in the woods, but he had a he was.
Afraid of the dark, and he's afraid of the woods. And in the middle of the night. We all laid in the same On the floor in pallets for a few weeks after that happened, so we could all be sleeping together, me and the four kids. And um Until one by one they got tired of it. But he, at two in the morning or three in the morning, he just, I knew he was awake and.
And it was just a couple of nights after his mama died, and he said that. He said, Dad, I. I feel like It's dark and I'm in the woods. And I'm lost. Wow.
Yeah, and I remember little nine year old kid. the greatest expression of his grief would be. Those are the worst things he could think about. And that is what He felt like. It just hit me.
I was nine when my mom died. Yeah. And that's an awesome way to express that. Yeah, that's the best way he could put this. Especially at that age.
Yeah. And I told him, I said, you know, here's the thing. It's so dark. That you can't see me. But I'm standing right beside you.
and I am not lost. Because Jesus is standing right beside me. And I said It is dark.
So dark we can't see. But in a little while, It's gonna get light. What hope? And You just need to remember, I'm right beside you, and I'm not lost. That is so good.
Um When it happened, she was airlifted. You were on your way to the hospital. Um You had to stop for something, and somebody asked you a question: what was it? And how did it get you to think? About Your reply.
Yeah, I stopped by a little store and um The gas said How you doing? And you're in the midst of this chaos. And I kind of looked at him and I was like. Doing fine. And I remember thinking, My life is In utter chaos.
My wife is. And a helicopter. My kids are You know, my life is in utter chaos at the moment. I'm terrified. I'm driving to the hospital.
By myself. Mm-hmm. The disconnect. of the rest of the world. From my life, it was so evident in that little conversation I had where a guy was like, How are you doing?
I said, I'm just fine. I couldn't possibly stop to explain to him how my whole life, and interestingly, the world moves on when your life falls apart. Everyone else is just fine, and the world is moving on. And you have to stop and deal with this. Event that stops your world, and it's a hard adjustment for people to make.
It is, it is. I'm thinking of the benefit, the beauty of you being there for your children. I mean, not every child has that benefit. I have a loving father. I have a blessing of having.
an unusual relationship with my kids that most dads don't get to have.
Now, most dads didn't go through that either, but most dads don't get to have. A relationship with their kids that was as intense. or as Unique And special and marvelous, and extends even to this day that my relationship with my kids. You did something in that environment that really caught my attention. You have a business, so it it allowed you to be perhaps a little freer to be spend the time with the kids that you wanted to, but you made a purposeful decision To spend an hour a day individually with each of your children during this.
morning period. What sticks out in your mind about that kind of quality time? What sticks out is that it was remarkably painful. Um The weeks following that were some of the most excruciating weeks of my life. And part of that was because you You wake up to what's really happened, and you particularly wake up and watch it start to unfold in your children.
And you realize you're in pain, but you realize just what agony this is for your children. And you spend individual one-on-one time with them and they will talk about it. eventually, some more than others and some So they were remarkable times with my kids.
So poignant and so filled with, but They exposed. and revealed to me Just how hard this was going to be for my kids and for my family going forward. It was a sweet time. It was bittersweet. I mean, I talk about it in my book about bittersweet and You know, it's bittersweet.
There's... It was the worst of time of my life and some of the most powerful. Powerfully wonderful things were happening in my life at the same time. I remember my teenage daughter even saying to me, I feel like something is happening really good in our family. And I remember thinking, that's one of the most offensive things I could.
think of because we've lost This important part of our family. But she's kinda right. Like something was happening that was Powerfully good. And it's hard to see when you're in that. That bottom floor, when those circumstances occur, it's.
But when you start feeling it. Yeah. And the Lord comes with hope. It's a power. You know, I interviewed John Lennox, who was the professor emeritus at Oxford in mathematics.
An unlikely Christian, really. He would say of himself, Yeah, rarely do I meet people in my profession that believe in God. But he said that the difference for him. was hope. In all of his colleagues' profession of life, he said, What they're missing.
is hope. I saw that so much through that season, especially with my kids. One of the things they needed to know was. There will come a day I remember one of my sons saying, We'll never go on vacation again, will we? I can remember Yeah.
I can remember how that felt. That's why it still brings back that. I love the tenderness. But I remember saying, you know what? We will go on vacation one day again.
We will, and it'll be fun. We won't this year? But we will next year and just little They just needed to have hope that, you know what, this is, we are going to move forward. And for me, who my hope was in the Lord, you know, it was real hope. And then I could convey that to kids.
And that's what it's about. Governor Wright, near the end here, we only have a few more minutes. That wasn't the end of the pain, though. In the book, you talked about Jessica.
Something that our families encountered, my wife, she's lost two siblings to suicide. And you had that dark day where She made an attempt in that regard. Talk about that briefly and then. Yeah, that was maybe a more. Almost a more traumatic day for me because it had come on top of so many other things.
How many years after just about a year? And just a year after your wife passed away. Yeah, and she had. It's a tough thing for a 14-year-old girl to lose her mom. And then a lot of other circumstances around it, but Mental health is a struggle for teenagers in the first place, and then a trauma in the middle of that.
Um A total miracle. that she lived and But another life flight, another phone call, another. Reliving all of that. Oh my goodness. One year later, going to the same trauma unit and the same floor, and just reliving that nightmare all over again and thinking, not knowing what the outcome was going to be.
I mean, I showed up at the hospital when the helicopter was landing, and I didn't know if she was alive or not. And um Uh It's crazy. Yeah, there was more pain. But you know what? There was also this hope of a redemptive Nature of God, somehow this feeling that all of these things were working toward.
Something good. It's really hard to explain that, other than you know that that's how God works. You started singing, right?
Well, just, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, you just. I mean on the way to the hospital. Uh the more you're forced to Rely on the Lord.
The more everything that matters is stripped from life, On Earth? then the things that really do matter are magnified in your life. He was magnified in my life because a lot of the things that. Seems to be so important, we're gone and And when that happens, This whole hopeful, redemptive Bittersweet. Wonderful taste stuff becomes real and more and more evident in your life.
And then you actually see it start playing out. I mean, like. You know. Maria And my the next chapter of my life and redemption and wholeness. Wholeness and multiplication of the goodness of God.
It's a wonderful thing. That is so good. And you and Maria now have been married for how many years? You shouldn't ask me. Fifteen and almost sixteen.
We'll leave it at that. I won't impress you anymore. And of course, people are listening. Jessica today, how is she? She's thirty seven years old and she has three kids and she's a remarkable woman of God and um And she's a deep, rich person who understands.
the complexities of life and wouldn't say everything's perfect and easy and It hasn't been for me, it won't be for her, it's not for any of us in many ways, but there's a certainty that comes With Um riding out a storm. In a boat that is anchored. There's a certainty that comes with that. And for most of your life, when the sea is calm, Everything's fine, but there's also a certainty that the next storm. The anchor will hold.
Yeah. Governor, here at the end, there's probably two to three million people listening. There's bound to be people in there that feel like they're in that storm today. Right now, they're experiencing it. Your story is very.
unfortunately very much like Job. Things taken from you, but you didn't become bitter toward God. What would you say to that person that's going through a dark time in life where, as you described earlier, everything is dark. You're in the woods, as your son said. What would you say to them to have hope?
There's only one thing that was hopeful for me. And it was because I knew him. And I knew him before it happened, and I was really glad I did. Because when it happened I already knew him. And I'd already trusted him.
I'd already had. I mean, I already decided to follow him, but I had no idea. That He would be that. For me. I understood enough about the cross and blood, that he would be my Savior for eternity.
But I didn't know he'd save my life on earth. And save me from chaos. I didn't know he'd do that, but I... I found it out. And that I would just say that There is, at least, all I can talk about is my own experience.
I can't ever say to other people, this is what's going to happen, or this is what you, I don't have any certainty for you. But I know for certain for me that those First nights Alone. There was Only one hope. and I knew what it was. Hmm.
And Yeah, without it, you know, I don't know what to do.
Well, you have lived John 10:10, which is the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. You've experienced that. But it goes on to say, but I've come that you might have life and life more beautiful. It's really funny you say that, because I used to talk after this and give and I would say, you know, I used to think abundant life was joy and happiness and peace and prosperity. I've come to believe that abundant life is joy in the midst of sorrow, and peace in the midst of chaos, and prosperity in the midst of want.
abundant life transcends our circumstances on life. And he alone Has that abundance for us. No matter what life on earth is doling out to us at the moment, we have access to that abundant life and it's a good thing. Yeah, Governor Bill Lee, Governor of Tennessee, I think you're qualified for leadership for so many reasons beyond just good judgment. Just your entire life, God has.
Looked after you, and in turn, you have looked after others. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.
Well, this is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I hope that this conversation today has given you hope and peace in the midst of any storm you might be going through, or maybe it's encouraged you in some other way. John, I want to refer back to something Governor Lee stated a moment ago because it. Bears repeating. He said, I used to think abundant life was joy and happiness and peace and prosperity. I've come to believe that abundant life is joy in the midst of sorrow and peace in the midst of chaos and prosperity in the midst of want.
He said that abundant life transcends our circumstances in life. I so agree with that. It's a profound statement that was born out of painful experiences, and there are some deep spiritual lessons for us in those words. I'm thankful for Bill's great example and his love for the Lord. And I'm also thankful that God has restored so much in his family's life.
If you need counseling to help you address a hurt in your soul, please know that we have caring Christian counselors who will speak with you and pray with you. I just need you to call us to schedule an appointment. I also encourage you to get Governor Lee's book with more of the story. It's called This. Road: I'm on the power of hope in the face of adversity.
And I think it's one of the strongest lessons about being a faithful Christian and walking this life out, regardless of your circumstances. And when you can make a gift of any amount, monthly or one time, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for helping other families. Yeah, invest in the lives of others and donate today when you call 800, the letter A and the word family: 800-232-6459. Or online you'll find us at focusonthefamily.com slash broadcast.
Well, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. God is at work, and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs Truth.
Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope. Visit TruthRising.com today. That's TruthRising.com. Yeah.
