Surely Mary and Joseph, that young, Middle Eastern couple, although they believed that by some miracle Mary was pregnant with the Messiah, had no premonition of how significantly their own simple lives would radically change the world, or that their names would be known 2,000 years later. In the same way, we have no idea of how God will use our simple, imperfect lives to give life abundantly to the world. Fr. Richard Rohr says,
"Participating in Christ allows each of us to know that 'I don’t matter at all, and yet I matter intensely—at the same time!' That’s the ultimate therapeutic healing. I’m just a little grain of sand in this giant, giant universe. I’m going to pass in a little while like everyone else will. But I’m also a child of God. I’m connected radically, inherently, intrinsically to the Center and to everything else."
But the fruit that our families will bear, the good deeds that we do and will do, are not always the ones that we expect to do. Certainly, our families are not always what we expect them to be. Our family's challenges aren't what we expect, any more than Mary expected an angel to ask her to bear Jesus. And the terrible crosses we suddenly have to bear are not what we expect or want.
But, on May 21 the unthinkable happened, something so terrible that Steven would scream "God, you can’t let this happen … You can’t ask this of us!"
- Mary Beth vividly remembers how on that Wednesday afternoon, Emily was at work, Caleb was playing his guitar in the family room, Will had driven over to school to try out for a play, and Steven and Mary Beth were working on plans for the wedding at the dining room table. The three little girls were running in and out of the house, playing. Maria ran up and asked Mary Beth to get her Cinderella Barbie's gloves on, then ran off outside again to play at their playground in the back. Steven, taking a call on his cell phone, went out on the front porch for better reception and saw Will returning, slowly turning his old Land Cruiser into the driveway which winds into the backyard.
- Later the parents would find out that Maria, lively as ever, wanted to be lifted up onto the monkey bars, and Shaoey wasn't strong enough to lift her. Hearing Will's Land Cruiser coming down the driveway, Shaoey told her younger sister, "Here comes Will! He'll help you get up on the monkey bars."
"Will!" Maria yelled, running towards the car as Shaoey reached for her too late, and screamed "Stop!" Hard-headed Maria kept running. Too little and too quick for Will to see her as he made his final turn. Mary Beth heard the screaming in the kitchen. By the time, she tore out of the house, accompanied by a sobbing Shaoey, Will sat in the driveway holding Maria, crying and pleading for her to wake up, both of them covered in blood.
"Mom!" Will screamed. "I hit her with the car."
As Steven and Mary Beth and rescue personnel did rescue breathing and chest compressions, Caleb, Will's brother, wrestled him to the ground as he tried to run away, and took the bloody shirt off him, throwing it into the pond. David Trask, Steven's road manager, and a family friend arrived. Immediately he ran to Will, who collapsed in his arms. Mary Beth recalls, "David held him. He, of all people, knew what Will was going through. When David was seventeen, he was driving down a crowded street and a little boy darted into traffic. David had hit him - fatally. Will sobbed as he lay in David's lap. David stroked his hair. 'Maria is in God's hands, Will. She's in God's hands.'" (from "Choosing to See," by Mary Beth Chapman.)
Maria was placed into an ambulance, and another friend, Rick, arrived to drive Mary Beth and Steven to the hospital. Mary Beth recalls, "As we followed the ambulance down the driveway, we saw David holding Will in the front yard. Steven lowered his window.
"'Will Franklin!' Steven yelled at the top of his voice, though he wouldn't even remember this later. 'Just remember, your father loves you!'" Then Steven beat his fist on the window, over and over, asking God to please, please breathe life into Maria. Mary Beth sat next to him, crying, screaming, praying, phoning friends. But at the hospital they were taken to a small room past the ER where doctors and nurses told them that they had done everything they could, but Maria had passed away. They took the stunned parents in to see her. Mary Beth gently placed her hand on her husband's back.
"We've got to let her go, Sweetie. It's time to let her go."
Mary Beth and Steven prayed and kissed their little daughter's forehead, and knew that they were placing their child into the arms of Jesus. But, then and in the months and years that followed, they were crushed by grief, and at times the family was broken apart by anger, irritability, guilt. Mary Beth honestly reveals that they were placed on various medications, and each had separate professional counselors. "We didn't know how we were going to take the next breath," Steven Curtis Chapman says, "I'd go to where nobody could hear me and scream until my voice was almost gone. It sure didn't and still doesn't make sense. But I never felt like God had abandoned us."
How could this broken family hold together, much less minister to others or radically change the world? And yet they did, because of an unshakeable belief that their lives did matter in God's eyes and that God would use their brokenness and pain for His own purposes. Sometimes they questioned that Faith, questioned God, but they kept up their family support system.
The first Christmas without Maria, Mary Beth remembered that Mary and Joseph also had to pray the prayer that all parents hesitate to pray for their children - "Thy will be done." That Christmas she remembered that Christmas led to the cross, but that the cross led to Easter and the joy awaiting all of us of eventually being reunited with those who have gone before us.
Mary Beth's deepest prayer was that although she had lost Maria on that day, she did not want to lose a deeply broken Will. She prayed fervently for him. She saw him loved by his family and teenage friends, always praying, going steadfastly to counseling. Miraculously, Mary Beth envisioned that one day Will would be able to tell the story of that terrible day - and give praise as he told of how God healed him.
She dedicates her book to Will: "You have been entrusted with a terrible pain. I'm so sorry. I wish as your Mom I could take it away, but I know God has a plan for you to steward this story well and to minister to others through your suffering. You are my hero, as well as Maria's...she loved you so much as do I!"
Mary Beth knows that no matter how much joy she has in her life, she will always go through those times aware of her brokenness and sadness. She says, "As far as getting over it, I won't. There is a part of me that will be and is forever changed and different because I buried a child at five years old. ....But ultimately, God wanted to use our family to live out this kind of story on earth. I only pray that when people see us battling it out and crying our guts out and loving till it hurts, that they know that we are doing our best to honor the One who blessed us with Maria for five beautiful years." (from "Choosing to See.")
And the prayers of this family bore fruit. Eventually Emily, Caleb, and Will all married, and had children of their own, and Caleb and Will have their own alt rock band, Colony House. (Caleb writes music and sings; Will is the drummer.) Caleb wrote a song dedicated to Will and and about Will and Maria called "Won't Give Up." This is the bridge:
Too many dreams I didn't want to dream
Too many nights alone where I can't sleep
I've got the devil on my back
Trying to take home from me
But I see Jesus out in front
He's reaching back for the lonely
Reaching back 'cause He loves me
I take His hand because she loved me."
Steven Curtis Chapman perfectly captured his own devastating pain and his faith in this song, written after Maria's death:
Heaven Is The Face
Steven Curtis Chapman
Heaven is the face of a little girl
With dark brown eyes
That disappear when she smiles.
Heaven is the place
Where she calls my name
Says, "Daddy please come play with me for awhile."
God, I know, it's all of this and so much more,
But God, You know, that this is what I'm aching for.
God, you know, I just can't see beyond the door.
So right now
Heaven is the sound of her breathing deep,
Lying on my chest, falling fast asleep while I sing.
And Heaven is the weight of her in my arms,
Being there to keep her safe from harm while she dreams
And God, I know, it's all of this and so much more,
But God, You know, that this is what I'm longing for
God, you know, I just can't see beyond the door.
But in my mind's eye I can see a place
Where Your glory fills every empty space.
All the cancer is gone,
Every mouth is fed,
And there's no one left in the orphans' bed.
Every lonely heart finds their one true love,
And there's no more goodbye,
And no more not enough,
And there's no more enemy (no more).
Being a holy family doesn't mean that our family and faith can't be fractured sometimes, that we never stumble and fall. Certainly the Chapmans have! They've endured perhaps the worst pain that a family can suffer: one member accidentally killed another member. They have screamed out their anger and pain, to God, and to and at each other. Steven shouted, "God, you can't let this happen. You can't do this to us."
But, as Mary Beth says, they did not allow Satan to crawl into the cracks of those fractures and divide them. They allowed God to be the Center; they placed their trust in Him. A father, Steven, cried to his son, Will, who had just mortally wounded his daughter Maria, "Just remember, your father loves you." Isn't that what God calls to us whenever we have done something terrible - "Remember, your Heavenly Father loves you"?
All families are holy families, works in progress. Both whole and fractured. Both forgiving and being forgiven. Both grieving and rejoicing. If a family puts its faith in God as its Living Center, every family member will receive abundant life and, in God's own time, bear great fruit.