FamilyLife Today®

Matt Hammitt: For a long time in our marriage, I felt her tone might have made it hard for me to hear what she was saying without me feeling attacked.

Sarah Hammitt: I definitely was.

Matt Hammitt: There was something very different in her tone and demeanor that didn't show that secondary emotion of anger. It actually showed her primary emotion to me, which was actual hurt.

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: I'm excited to have Matt and Sarah Hammitt back with us today. This is going to be a great conversation that's continued from yesterday.

Ann Wilson: When did you end up writing this?

Matt Hammitt: In 2008 when I came home and she had this serious conversation with me. The lyrics of this song really do paint what happened. It says, "Picture frames, I see my beautiful wife, but on the inside I can hear her saying, lead me." I was sitting at our dining room table across from her looking over at our wedding photo where she is just glowing with anticipation and joy of the future that is in front of us.

Seven years later, here is my bride with red eyes, puffy face, tears rolling down her cheeks, just brokenhearted. Part of what was hard is, obviously, there were things we could point at to say, "I could do this better or that better. I did this wrong or didn't do this at all," but there were still so many things I didn't even know exactly how we had gotten there. That was the hardest part.

That, for me, was such a cry for help. It was her cry for me to lead her and to lead our kids, but my cry had to be, "If I'm going to lead this family, God, how are You going to lead me?" That is really the dual heart of the song: the family crying, "Lead me," and then the husband and father just saying, "Lord, give me the strength to do it because I certainly don't have the wisdom on my own."

Ann Wilson: Where were you when you wrote this?

Matt Hammitt: At our dining room table. I wrote the first draft and then later took it in with a friend, Chris, our guitar player, and a guy named Jason Ingram, and just said, "I think this song needs to be heard." The president of our record label had heard the demo and he said, "I really want you guys to go and put the bow on this song." So we went in and really fine-tuned the song and made it what it is now.

I wrote the first draft of the song at that table. I called Sarah back in, I played it for her, and she said something like, "Oh, it's a song you think I want."

Dave Wilson: That is intense!

Sarah Hammitt: People have said, "Do you cry when you listen to that song?" I say, "Not the way you think I'm crying." It's beautiful. I love the song. It is so redemptive to our conflict because I have screamed at the Lord like, "Why? Why would You put two people who have conflict like this together? It doesn't make sense. Please use this." And sure enough, through that song, He does, and He has in other ways as well.

Dave Wilson: Have you ever felt that something happens in your marriage and it becomes a ministry? Because I know Ann has felt that. It was like, "We had this fight over something," and I'm like, "This will help couples. Let's tell this story." She's like, "No, this is our private thing."

Sarah Hammitt: I haven't minded it as much as our kids.

Matt Hammitt: We haven't gotten there yet with our kids. Don't write any songs about how your kids were growing up bad. Your kids haven't been bad.

Ann Wilson: We used things that happened with our kids as an illustration to something in a sermon.

Dave Wilson: That makes sense. They'll be like, "Really?" The interesting thing is, in the moment, they didn't say anything because I asked, usually, "Do you mind if I...?" and they said, "Go ahead." But now as adults, they say, "What could we say, Dad? We're not going to say no. And then you tell the story and the whole church hears it and we felt like we were used."

I have told pastors, "Don't use your kids for stories. They're going to say yes, but I'm telling you, this could come back later." When I look back, I think, "This sermon doesn't work without this story." Guess what? It would have worked fine. A song might be different. You need that bridge, but a sermon's going to be okay without that one illustration. In the moment you think it's got to have it, and I used my kids.

Ann Wilson: But your comment, Sarah, is like this scratch in the record. Here's this beautiful song and people are saying, "Did you just cry?" What were you wanting?

Sarah Hammitt: I really think the song is beautiful. It's been so used, but I really wanted real change. I didn't want words; I wanted to see it. I wanted action, not words. These were words and I thought, "Okay, we'll see."

Matt Hammitt: What's really funny is the first time I showed up with brownies at Sarah's house when I first met her. I brought her brownies and she said, "Oh, I don't like sweets." I've known from the very beginning that I married a woman who is a truth-teller, 100 percent. I chose her that way.

You even said at the beginning of your book when you talk about your soulmate, you feel like Sarah is your soulmate. I just felt that thing. For me, I've learned to find humor in it. It hurts my feelings still sometimes and she is really direct. Regarding our fight yesterday, my part in that is that when she's so direct with me, sometimes it hurts my feelings still. But you learn to laugh about it.

The really funny part about that statement she made about the song was that when I speak live and I tell this story, I actually stop telling that part because there are times where I would tell that part where she comes back in the room and she's like, "Oh, it's a song you think I want," and some crowds just think it's so funny. But there were enough times where people just look at me like, "She's mean!"

Sarah Hammitt: Like you're ruining the song! They want it to be like she walked in the room and fell into my arms and said, "Thank you."

Matt Hammitt: That would have been nice, but no.

Ann Wilson: I can remember the first time I heard it. I remember where I was. I was on 59 driving to the office and it started. Sometimes you don't catch the words of songs, but you started singing and I remember turning it up, cranking it, and I do remember tearing up. As a woman, that's exactly what I'm hoping for. As a man, I think it's like a prayer, like, "God, I can't do it." That resonated. That's what I wanted Dave to do. I think that's what a lot of people are feeling. I remember saying to Dave, "You've got to listen to this new song," because it was playing constantly.

Dave Wilson: And then I was convicted. Thanks, Matt.

Matt Hammitt: A lot of guys have a love-hate relationship with this song. A lot of times people come up to me still and say, "I remember when that song came out and I just remember turning up the radio for my husband or sending it to him." I'm always looking at him like, "I'm sorry. Sorry, not sorry, but sorry."

Dave Wilson: It is interesting that you wrote it with two other men who can really resonate with what you're saying because it goes from Sarah's plea to, "I can't do this without You guys. You've got to lead me." It's beautiful, the transition you, Chris, and Jason wrote. It's amazing.

Ann Wilson: I wonder even of the conversations that occurred all around the world after listening to that.

Matt Hammitt: We've had people get remarried. They have written us and said it articulated their heart and they were able to share it with him, he understood it, and then they got remarried. We were just like, "Whoa, wow."

Sarah Hammitt: It is divine.

Matt Hammitt: It really has. We've had couples where both people have heard it and it brought them back together. The craziest story I ever heard about this song was there was a woman who told me she was about to leave her house. She was walking out the back sliding door and she was getting ready to meet a man who she had been having an emotional affair with for the first time at a hotel.

Ann Wilson: Come on.

Dave Wilson: I read this in the book.

Matt Hammitt: She said that as she was walking out, "Lead Me" came on the radio in her house and she fell to her knees crying. She repented, told the guy she never wanted to talk to him again, repented to her husband, confessed everything, and restored their marriage.

You hear a song like that and you're like, "By no means do I take the credit for that." What I get to say is, "Thank You, Lord, for allowing me to carry a song that You could use in that way."

Ann Wilson: And it comes out of your own pain.

Matt Hammitt: Out of any creative purpose out of that pain. That was my heart's cry all the time with the conflict: "Please just use this. What is this? It feels so useless." For it to be used that way just feels redemptive and a gift.

Ann Wilson: Sarah, had you not ever spoken up? Because that is the thing.

Sarah Hammitt: I had spoken up a lot. I have always been very direct about my feelings. I love to feel close to him and anytime I feel disconnected, I'm able to say, "Hey, I feel disconnected. I'd like to reconnect." He knew that I had felt that way, but for some reason, you tell this story that I had told you that many times, but that was the time you could hear it.

Ann Wilson: What happened that time?

Matt Hammitt: Sarah is very direct. In the same way I'm sure I can come across in ways that I don't think I do, she's probably the same. For a long time in our marriage, maybe I felt her tone might have made it hard for me to hear what she was saying without me feeling attacked. I definitely was.

I think there was something very different in her tone and demeanor that didn't show that secondary emotion of anger. It actually showed her primary emotion to me, which was actual hurt. I could actually see the hurt. It wasn't behind a shield; it wasn't behind a sword. It was like she set all that down and let me actually see what was really happening.

Ann Wilson: That right there is so true. That's a great teaching point for all of us in conflict because so many times Dave and I had fought, I would yell at him, "You're never home!"

Dave Wilson: Remember the woman said she doesn't yell?

Ann Wilson: I did then! But he didn't hear that. That's what I'm saying. When we use our words as weapons and it's harsh and we can make our spouse feel like the enemy, there's something about when we can reveal our heart in a tender way that maybe opens the ears more. When I told you, "I have nothing left," that's the first time I feel like you really heard me.

Dave Wilson: She didn't say it yelling; it was tender.

Sarah Hammitt: It's hard to get there, though, sometimes. I had given up.

Matt Hammitt: Maybe sometimes you have to give up. Reach the end of yourself and you just don't have anything left and you can actually exhale and go, "Oh, this is what we actually feel apart from everything we're striving for." You can almost see that. There's a picture there that's really interesting.

Dave Wilson: What happened then in your marriage after the song and your career takes off? People assume it's an overnight, "Everything is better."

Ann Wilson: It doesn't usually work like that.

Matt Hammitt: No. What I felt was spoken to me through her words that I could articulate was that as I asked the Lord to give me wisdom, I felt like He was telling me my good intentions were worthless until they became actions.

That journey is the one that I'm on today. That's what I call my "Lead Me" journey: my journey of moving from being a man of good intentions to a man of action, especially as the leader of my home. That is the journey I started, but it was like the very beginning of me really pressing into that.

The craziest part about this is that the very song I wrote about being a more present husband and father comes out in 2010, goes to the top of the Christian music charts for three months, and takes me away from home even more. Irony of the song.

The beautiful part of that, however, is that over the course of the next five years or so, as we toured all around and got to be in front of thousands and thousands of people, her words and that prayer of that song being sung back to me by thousands of people are also the words that ended up calling my heart back home.

It is definitely a happy story in the end in terms of what that song did even in my life. In 2016, I played my last show on a "Love Like You Mean It" cruise with Sanctus Real.

Dave Wilson: We were there!

Matt Hammitt: My very last show in the middle of sea. I passed the microphone to the new singer and he sang a song and closed out with their first song they'd written together. It was a very bittersweet moment for me.

Ann Wilson: What was it like for you, Sarah?

Sarah Hammitt: It was complicated because I love the band and it was my baby too. It was hard to navigate, but it has been wonderful. I have my husband, he's my leader. He is leading us and it has been amazing. He is so close to the kids. His relationship is unmatched, really. It's phenomenal with the kids.

Dave Wilson: I watch it on Instagram when you post stuff and my question is, "Is it as good as it looks?" because a lot of them are fake. I can sense it's genuine and you're saying it is.

Sarah Hammitt: Well, I'm a truth-teller, so I would tell you. Is it perfect? No. There is some conflict with the kids, and we have young kids still. So we don't have major issues, maybe they happen over time, I don't know, but so far his relationship with the kids is phenomenal and they feel very loved by him and that's really what I wanted. I wanted them to know their dad, to feel their dad's love, and for him to be present in their daily life. And he is now. So it's awesome.

Dave Wilson: You have been home nine years. Not home like you don't do anything, but you're off the road like you were.

Matt Hammitt: Totally. I still travel and speak, but still, even this year was what I would consider a very busy year with speaking events and some of the music stuff I've been doing, but it still was like half of what I did with Sanctus Real.

Sarah Hammitt: And he'll take a kid with him.

Matt Hammitt: Yeah, I take my kids with me. We plan special trips. If I know I'm going to a cool city, I'll plan a day in the front end and back end and do a three-day trip with the kid.

Ann Wilson: He does really special things with them.

Dave Wilson: This Valentine's Day, what if you skipped the roses?

Ann Wilson: Okay, that's fine. Well, maybe not. And you dove into conversations meant to draw you closer, the ones you were secretly too scared to have.

Dave Wilson: "Marriage After Dark" is FamilyLife's newest podcast where a real married couple talks openly about healthy, God-honoring intimacy.

Ann Wilson: Yes, the stuff you never ask your pastor or your friends. For more, go to familylifetoday.com/marriageafterdark because intimacy shouldn't stay in the dark.

Dave Wilson: Now how hard was it the day you decided? I know it was a process, but when you walked into the band, they probably didn't know for sure.

Ann Wilson: I'm thinking, too, as you said that, of listeners who are feeling that nudge like, "I just haven't been home. This job is tearing me away," whether it's a husband or wife. That decision is a big one.

Matt Hammitt: There was a season where I felt that I wanted to get off the road. It was a season of restlessness. I felt the Lord still speaking to my heart that He wasn't done with me yet in that season, as bad as I wanted to amend this divide that I felt with my family when I was on the road. I hated the way that felt and I knew that I wanted to please her and love her well, and same with the kids.

But I always look at each season of my life and you see the restlessness and then you feel the relief. I knew that out of that restlessness there came a definitive moment where God was releasing me to go, even though He was preparing my heart for it.

It was really, really difficult. I wanted to try to find a way to keep one foot in the boat, to put my tiptoes in the water to walk to Jesus, but keep my one foot back in the boat and hope that was good enough for the Savior. But no, He was calling me to walk all the way out. Those were almost the words I heard, that He was calling me out all the way out. I knew that it wasn't a "Hey, I can kind of be the singer of the band, kind of do a few shows." I knew that He was calling me to start a brand-new season of life and ministry where my family was first and didn't know what He was going to do after that.

Dave Wilson: But when you told the band members...

Matt Hammitt: Oh, it was really, really difficult. They were sad, obviously upset, confused, since it affects their future. And they are still going with the new singer and doing great. God had a plan for that ministry to do what they are doing. Ultimately they were fine; ultimately they understood. But in that moment, their lead singer is walking out. The primary songwriter, a huge part of the face of the band is just gone and I think they felt derailed, like, "What do we do now? We spent so much of our lives building this."

Dave Wilson: And probably fearful financially.

Sarah Hammitt: Oh, yeah. And we were praying for them that whole time.

Matt Hammitt: I remember the weight feeling like, "Lord, what is everybody going to do?" We had 12 people on the bus with us. We had lighting guys and sound guys and monitor guys and tour manager and bus driver and all this stuff.

Dave Wilson: You carry the weight of all that.

Matt Hammitt: I remember thinking, "What are all these people going to do?" There was a point where I almost felt like if I could articulate what I felt the Lord was whispering to me, it would be, "Oh, you are the only child of Mine that I love? I love all My kids. I am going to take care of them too. It is not yours to worry about."

Ann Wilson: I had this situation. I was leading a women's church ministry at our church and I felt God calling me out of that. I remember saying to this woman, "I don't know what to do. I feel like God is calling me out, but I don't see anybody to replace me." This woman, a mentor, says, "Wow, you must be something."

I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Well, if God can't replace you, then you must be really something." It was so good but so convicting. God can choose somebody else who will do the same thing. It might be different, but it will be good. I just need to be obedient to the call.

Dave Wilson: Pick up "Lead Me" by Matt Hammitt at familylifetoday.com. Click on the link in the show notes and it is a story and a truth that will change your life as well.

Ann Wilson: We know life is full of challenges and families today need biblical truth more than ever. Isn't that true?

Dave Wilson: That is true. And as a FamilyLife partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources.

Ann Wilson: So let's make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to familylifetoday.com and click the donate button.

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.