FamilyLife Today®

Sarah Hammitt: If you're going through trauma, it's important to look at how trauma manifests and then learn about it and then watch yourself. You fragment and you detach and you withdraw from each other. Had I known that's what you do when you have trauma, then we wouldn't have made some of the mistakes we made.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Got Matt and Sarah back. Let's talk about going from good intentions to real action. Talk to the husband or wife who's listening or watching and is like what Ann's saying, what you felt. They've been feeling it for a while. That step out of the boat is that first step, that faith-filled, scary, I don't know if this water is turning solid or not. I know He's calling me, but this boat is my comfort. The paycheck's coming in, security and identity. That's real.

Matt Hammitt: Identity, that's real. That's right. I do want to answer that question. I want to say one quick side note. You're talking about identity and this does tie into the answer to what we say to those people. I was talking with my friend, Jim Wallace. He's an apologist, J. Warner Wallace.

Dave Wilson: We've had him on. He's amazing.

Matt Hammitt: He said something to me about identity that just rocked my world. It's the visual that I hesitate to share because you hope people can get what I got out of it. Whenever we talk about who we are, it's "I am a musician" or "I am a show host" or "I am a father, I am a husband."

He was saying what's interesting is "I am this or that," but God is just "I am." To get to who we are, we have to go through Him. I loved that visual. How many times we try to pass over who He is to get to who we are or what He wants to try to get to what we want. To get to who we really are and to get to what we're really meant to do, we have to go through Him. That's the only way we can find our identity.

Dave Wilson: Someone should write a song about that.

Matt Hammitt: That visual just stuck with me. If you know that the Lord is speaking to your heart about who He's called you to be outside of the identity or vocation or the current season that God has called you to now, if He's calling you to something else and He's calling you out of it, remember where your identity is. Go through Him. Go back to who He is. Go back to finding your identity in Him.

If you're finding your identity so much in what you want to be beyond Him or outside of Him, then that moment of surrender and trust. We don't trust Him to carry us. We don't trust Him to allow our steps to go across the water because we think we'll sink. But from my experience, from my testimony, as scared as I was to step, as scared as I was to walk, when I kept my eyes on Jesus, who I was in Him and what He was calling me to do, every step became a miracle.

I could look back at every step and see that not only was it a miracle, but it was such a blessing. I hear my wife say to me today, "Wow, He really is leading us." Do you know how bad I wanted to hear those words back then? How much it hurt to hear the words, "Hey, you're not stepping up." I want to. I'm trying. This journey that I talk about, this "Lead Me" journey of saying good intentions to real action, to hear her say those words even though we don't have it all right, it's like, okay, thank you, Lord. Forgive me the grace to take each step in the right direction. The blessing that's there for you is so rich.

Sarah Hammitt: At this point I don't identify with that girl who's crying and saying lead me. I don't feel that same way. Somewhere along the way it's shifted. There was no pivotal moment. It was just time after time of fracture and repair and learning and growing and then here we are.

Ann Wilson: Sarah, what would you say, and maybe Matt you too, to the husband or wife that's listening that's saying, "I've spoken the truth or maybe yelled it and I'm still living in this fractured state. I don't see any changes coming and I've been praying a long time and waiting."

Sarah Hammitt: Loving Jesus and fearing the Lord over your feelings and being consistent. Just keep surrendering, praying, and trusting. Ultimately we survive because we love God the most, not each other. That's why we're still together.

Matt Hammitt: I also think of a word like faithfulness. We look at it as a word that is the end game, but faithfulness is actually the hard thing we're doing right now. It's the step that we're in. What does that word even mean if today I'm not, again back to action, today when things are hard, when things feel horrible, when I feel stuck, when I see no end, that is faithfulness. Walking that out right here, right now, today. God honors that even in those moments when we can't see it. That's the hard part of living out that word and words like it.

Ann Wilson: I was thinking as you guys were talking, we've talked about this love story of God's love for us. The Greek word is agape love. It's what He calls us to do in a marriage, which is unconditional love. It's not the feelings kind. It doesn't mention that. We were speaking at this thing the other day and I looked up what the definition of agape love is.

Agape love is a selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial love that is often considered the highest form of love. It's a deliberate choice, not based on feelings or attraction. It involves goodwill and commitment to the well-being of others even when they are undeserved. We can only get that kind of love through the Father. That's the only way we can love unconditionally because it's the Gospel. You guys are a beautiful picture of that.

Sarah Hammitt: Thanks, it's been wild. It's not perfect.

Dave Wilson: Pastoring 40 years, I think the majority of the church is good intentions. They're good people. They have good intentions. Very few act because that's a hard thing to do. I want to do the right thing. I'm going to do the right thing. I tell my wife I'm going to and then you just don't.

I told a guy five, seven, eight years ago, here's Ann's visual to me recently. You're running and I've got a hold of your belt loop on the back and my feet are up in the air and I'm just running with you. She goes, "I can't run like this." To maintain the relationship with our kids and everything, we have to slow down. We have to start saying no.

Matt Hammitt: You haven't done it yet.

Dave Wilson: We just are starting to say no and it's still crazy but it's less. We can see it coming. But it's those good intentions, but you've got to make the hard call, which you guys have modeled to do. This is a great conversation, but before we continue, let me say this. We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. That's what being a FamilyLife Partner is all about: helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann Wilson: And we'd love for you to join us. So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today. This new song is incredible. You've done a bunch more songs, actually. But there's this other one that's pretty special, too.

Dave Wilson: Give us the backstory on this one.

Matt Hammitt: "Days God Gave" is my latest single that I put out with Gotee Records. I just realized early this year when my daughter went to Upper Room School of Ministry, even though it was for a temporary amount of time, it really hit me like a ton of bricks how fast it all went and how fast it's all going.

This song is a song about presence. It's a song about what do you want to look back on when you're old and gray. You want to look back on all those faces in the photographs that are smiling back at you. What do you want them to be saying to you and speaking to you? For me, I really want those faces to communicate to me that I had lived a life of faithfulness and love and just loved the people that God's given me so well, and that they would hopefully love me back, too.

Ann Wilson: Matt, you're on the road, things are stressful in terms of coming, going. Sarah, you're raising your kids, but we haven't even talked about your son who had a heart condition, which as a mom there would be no greater stress on me than a child who struggles with their health. Give us a little snapshot of his life.

Sarah Hammitt: We were talking about "Lead Me" and how it went number one and it took him to the pinnacle of his career. But actually, as it was number one, we got the news and we were sitting bedside in the hospital with our third child who was dying with heart disease.

Ann Wilson: He was dying.

Sarah Hammitt: He did not die, but he was dying. He was critically ill. He had open heart surgery. He was on ECMO. He was not doing well. When I was pregnant with our third child, at the six-month ultrasound, we found out that he had hypoplastic left heart. He only had half his heart. They told us that if he made it to birth, he would likely not live past five. In the midst of this "Lead Me" journey, we had all of that as well.

Matt Hammitt: "Lead Me" had hit number one for three months on the Christian music charts.

Sarah Hammitt: The entire time. During that time we were in the hospital with Bowen and it did look as though we were going to lose him at times. We didn't know if he was going even survive. It was really wild being at the pinnacle of our career at that moment but being at one of the lowest places for us as parents just grieving, not knowing whether or not Bowen was going to survive. There were so many really close calls with him.

He was in the hospital for three months when he was born and then we brought him home. Matt had to hit the road because we needed to pay the medical bills and we needed income. He couldn't stay home. I'm placing an NG tube and have a child who's got a fresh open wound on his chest and up through the night.

Ann Wilson: How old were your other kids?

Sarah Hammitt: Two and four.

Dave Wilson: I thought you were an amazing guy, but I think she's a saint.

Sarah Hammitt: We both had to do our jobs because I need him to work and he needed me to take care of Bowen. It was interesting. We didn't really understand grief before that because we really did have a pretty easy life to that point. We hadn't had any tragedy. Once that happened, we realized that as a couple you grieve differently. When you have a chronically ill child, 85% will divorce.

Ann Wilson: How did it affect you guys?

Sarah Hammitt: The way I processed and the way I fought was I was present 6:00 a.m. to midnight in the hospital with Bowen. Then I would go to the Ronald McDonald House and sleep and that was it. That's all I could think about while he was critical was getting him well, understanding what was wrong with him, and being an advocate for him.

Matt Hammitt: I just felt like I didn't know where I fit in. She asked every question. She was right at the bedside. Anytime a nurse would come or a doctor would come, she'd boom right in with all the questions, right in with all the stuff. I just felt like so many times like I just didn't even know how to fit in there.

I would sit with her a lot of those hours, but the way that I felt most useful was I basically started keeping our family and friends up to date on what was going on and asking them to pray for us and giving them daily updates. At the time I just started a little page that was really meant for our family and friends and then we ended up having a million people come to that page to read about what was happening and pray for us.

I found purpose there. What was interesting is the ways that we coped with it differently did really make it difficult on our marriage because she was so tied to Bowen's bedside every second that she resented me in the times that I would ask her to even, "Hey, can we get lunch? Can we go for a walk? Can we just get our heads together as parents?" I needed a wife too to walk through it with. I wanted to be together but she's like, "How can you ask me to leave his bedside?"

Sarah Hammitt: And how can you not understand all these medications and when they're to be given? Why can't you wrap your head around all the details with me? We grew contemptuous. We grew apart and we were grieving differently.

Ann Wilson: I'm thinking of our listeners who have maybe a child with special needs or a chronic illness. Give them some tips or regrets.

Sarah Hammitt: I should have had more empathy on his way of processing. I felt hurt and I should have just been more understanding that he needed me. I should have pulled away and gone to lunch with him and trusted that the Lord was going to—and had my mom sit bedside. That's fair. He's my husband and I care about him and his relationship and his feelings. In that moment it's like I couldn't see anything else but Bowen because it was so acute. We've done better as he's gotten older. I can definitely balance all the relationships and he isn't the center of everything.

Ann Wilson: Which is good news for the listener. He lived and he's 15.

Sarah Hammitt: He lived. He's still technically very critical but currently he's wonderful. Living a very normal life at home by himself right now with his siblings.

Matt Hammitt: He is a very musical kid. He loves to write music. He's got Logic on his computer and records music and is always having song ideas that he's producing. "Dad, come here, check this out. I want to make an album." He's so cool.

Sarah Hammitt: If you're going through trauma, I think it's important to look at how trauma manifests and then learn about it and then watch yourself. You fragment and you detach and you withdraw from each other. Had I known that's what you do when you have trauma, then we wouldn't have made some of the mistakes we made.

Matt Hammitt: We would have looked for ways to be more gracious to each other, even just internally. Those conversations we have with ourselves when we're upset with our spouse, the lies we tell ourselves, the stories we create, maybe we would tell ourselves more gracious stories about each other.

Dave Wilson: There's marriages that the husband feels like it could go either way but I think the husband can feel detached when there isn't trauma. Just that my wife is more connected to my kids than me. She really doesn't want to pull away from them. "Leave me alone. I want to be a mom. They need me." We've been there. You can do it as grandparents too. Same thing can happen. You feel like I'm not priority in your life anymore, the kids or the grandkids are. That's a tension.

Ann Wilson: I can remember when my very best friend, my sister, was dying. She was diagnosed and died within five months. Dave's guys in his group came to be in and said, "Hey, Dave needs you." I was with my sister part of the time and she had four kids. Different state. I was so resentful of his friends and Dave like, "Get your stuff together because my sister's dying and I'm going to be with her right now." It felt like he was whining.

Dave Wilson: And guess what? She was right.

Ann Wilson: I think we were both right. I think it's both.

Dave Wilson: No, she was right in that one. I said something to my guys one night like, "Man, Ann's gone a lot and stuff." I didn't know they'd go running to her. "Hey, Dave is really struggling." I didn't say I was struggling. I just said it's been hard.

Ann Wilson: Honestly, I wasn't giving one thought to how Dave was doing because I was wrecked and my sister was wrecked. But I'm married and he's struggling too and I need to give some time and attention to Dave. But on the other side, give your wife, give your spouse grace. They need to be where they need to be right now and you're going to make it.

And those are the most beautiful love stories when we walk through the valley and the mountain top together. I'm just thinking of Sarah in her overalls, dancing in the sun with no shoes. Think of all the things you've gone through since that night. And that's true love. Way to go.

Dave Wilson: By the way, you can get Lead Me at familylifetoday.com. Go to the show notes, click on the link. Still out there, still available and you've got the song to go with the book.

Ann Wilson: Where do they download the song?

Matt Hammitt: Anywhere you listen to music.

Dave Wilson: Guys, this has been really fun. Thanks for having us on. Thanks for your honesty. Next time you're in Orlando touring or something, you're welcome to come in here and do anything. Welcome to Orlando.

Matt Hammitt: Appreciate it, man.

Ann Wilson: We would love to pray for you. I would personally love to pray for you and we even have a team at FamilyLife that can pray for you. Just go to familylife.com/prayforme.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Crew Ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.