I Still Believe Page 16

Adrienne was thrilled to meet Melissa’s two sisters, Megan and Heather, about a month before our wedding, when she and my mom went to California to attend a retreat for pastors’ wives.

  Meeting Megan and Heather gave Adrienne the opportunity to express to them her admiration for Melissa and to learn more about her from her sisters. Adrienne got along really well with them from the start, and they stayed in contact with each other. During one of their later conversations, Heather told Adrienne that following Melissa’s death, she had grown closer to God; she felt more comfort from the Lord than she had ever experienced, and as a result, her spiritual walk was deeper than ever before.

  At the retreat for pastors’ wives, Adrienne also met Jon Courson’s second wife, Tammy. Of course, I had told Adrienne about Jon’s importance to me, how he was the speaker when I had rededicated my life at summer camp and how he had encouraged me and Melissa’s brother, Ryan, at his home after Melissa had passed away. As the second spouse of a husband who had lost his first wife through tragedy, Tammy was able to encourage Adrienne with valuable wisdom.

  Tammy told Adrienne, “There are certain places not to go in your mind, not comparing yourself.” Then to prepare Adrienne for what might come up in our marriage, she gave Adrienne examples of how she had handled situations and memories regarding Jon’s first wife.

  Although I had consciously avoided making comparisons between Adrienne and Melissa, there still were times, naturally, when Adrienne made comparisons in her own mind. When that happened, she and I would talk through it, but it helped Adrienne immensely to hear Tammy’s perspective.

  Because Tammy was the wife of a pastor who shared his testimony publicly, she also zeroed in on an area she knew would be vital for Adrienne to address before we married. Tammy asked a question that would have been difficult for me to answer if I had been Adrienne: “If Jeremy never shared about you from the stage, and only shared about Melissa, would you be okay with that?”

  Adrienne answered that she would be because she had witnessed some of what God had done not only through my testimony of walking by faith but also through the story I told of Melissa’s life.

  When Adrienne told me about her conversation with Tammy, she told me that question had been a good check in her heart to remind her that it wasn’t about her, or even Melissa, but about the work God was performing in countless people’s lives.

  And that was a good check for me as the one onstage sharing the stories and singing the songs from that season of my life. None of it was about me; it was all about God.

  CHAPTER 16

  REACHING THE ROOTS

  Adrienne and I married on December 15, 2003, in a small ceremony in Lafayette. Because my parents’ church was meeting in a coffeehouse at the time, we married in an older church that had huge stained glass windows.

  At the start of the ceremony, when I was at the front of the church gazing up the aisle for my first look at Adrienne in her wedding dress, my heart was pounding. When she took her place at the end of the aisle, I was blown away by how beautiful she was. I remember how big her smile was. I could tell she was just so happy, and that made me feel even happier than I already was. Adrienne was the perfect wife for me, a true gift from God and yet another sign of redemptive hope.

  My dad was performing the ceremony, and I looked over to see him crying. I thought, Oh my goodness, pull yourself together here. You’ve got to speak to the congregation in a minute.

  Instead of the traditional “Wedding March,” “Here I Am to Worship” played as Adrienne walked down the aisle. Our friend Jean-Luc led us and the congregation in a time of worship, and the Lord’s presence was strong in the church. That was exactly what we wanted, because we wanted a ceremony with God’s glory firmly on display to set the tone for the rest of our life together.

  Adrienne’s artistic flair also helped set that tone for the ceremony. As she prayed about our wedding, the theme of crowns kept coming to her. During one time of prayer, the Lord placed Isaiah 35:10 on her heart: “The ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” She took that as a promise for us from the Lord that all the sorrow would be removed from my life and that gladness and joy would overtake me and crown our heads.

  Adrienne liked crowns and reflecting on God’s royalty to begin with. On each of the invitations, she attached a small, wire crown she had made and wrote our promise verse from Isaiah under the crown. For the ceremony, Adrienne had made crowns for the flower girls and ring bearer to wear. From the invitations to the ceremony, we wanted it to be clear that Jesus would be King of our marriage.

  It was an emotional ceremony, and tears flowed throughout. I cried, Adrienne cried, my dad cried at the front of the church. My dad cried big time, just as he had while officiating at my first wedding.

  We made a change from the traditional vows. We wrote our own vows and did not include “till death do us part” or “as long as we both shall live.” Leaving out those two phrases had nothing to do with my commitment to Adrienne in our marriage. I was and am completely committed to her. But those phrases were difficult for me to think about—especially the first one. The word death seemed to leap out at me when I thought about reciting it during the ceremony. It struck a part of my emotions that remained tender. Adrienne was so understanding and supportive of that.

  I wanted to be sensitive to Adrienne, too. This was her first wedding, and I recognized that most brides grow up dreaming of their wedding day. Adrienne certainly had put a lot of planning and creative talent into our wedding, and I wanted it to be Adrienne’s big day. The radiant smile she displayed throughout the ceremony told me that it was.

  My mom later said that what most stood out to her during the wedding was how radiant Adrienne appeared in her gown. My mom talked about how, while Adrienne was living with them during our engagement period, she had witnessed Adrienne changing from a shy, sweet girl into a confident, godly woman. During the wedding, the completion of that transformation struck my mom.

  Adrienne and I were so excited to be stepping from that church and into the next chapter of our lives. After the honeymoon, we sold the house I’d had in California in only a month, packed up everything, and moved to Lafayette so we could be near my family when we weren’t on the road.

  Heading into our marriage, we had talked about having kids. Three or four sounded like a good number to us. We both really loved kids and looked forward to starting a family. In fact, we were so excited about starting our own family that, well, let’s just say it didn’t take long.

  We hadn’t decided to have a baby right away, but if I can get away with using a double negative, we didn’t try not to have a baby either.

  About two months after we married, we learned that Adrienne was pregnant. It wasn’t a major surprise to us, but it was for the people we told. I’m sure our announcement quickly made math majors out of some of our family and friends, calculating, If they married in December and the baby is due in late September, let’s see, that’s one month, two months, three months . . . Don’t worry: everything was biblical!

  In September 2004, Isabella Rose (Bella) was born. A year and a half later, Arianne Mae (Arie) joined the family. The girls were the most amazing blessings I could have imagined. Becoming a dad opened my eyes to a whole new perspective on life. Before they were old enough to crawl, and even before they were old enough to start moving around in their cribs, I watched in fascination as they began to discover the world around them.

  Studying them made me want childlike eyes to view the world God had placed me in. One thing I enjoyed about having small kids was observing how uncomplicated life was to them. Life is so simple for young children. It’s as we get older that we make life more involved and complicated and confusing than it needs to be. No wonder Jesus said this to a group of adults—his disciples—who were having a childish debate over which one of them would be the greatest in
heaven: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”11

  The births of Bella and Arie, however, also opened up a new set of fears for me. For a reason I can’t explain, after Adrienne and I married, I had never felt any fear of her passing away. But when both girls were born, I experienced anxiety and wondered, Would God possibly think of taking one of them home? I was so terrified that one or both of them might die that I would hold them tight and pray extra hard for their protection.

  That fear was very real. God had to persistently work on me in that area, as evidenced by the fact that a year and a half after having those fears with Bella, I experienced them again with Arie when she was born.

  TO THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

  One time when I was telling God how much I loved my girls and expressing how much I feared that one of them might pass away, God spoke to my heart gently, but also with a don’t-doubt-this firmness: Do you not understand how much I love you, Jeremy? I love you perfectly, so much more than you ever could love your children.

  I had been hoping that God would respond with something along the lines of “I love the girls, too, and everything’s going to be just fine with them.” But as I’ve learned with God through the years, He prefers to work below the surface of our problems. Although the fear of something bad happening to my daughters consumed my thoughts at times, the truth was that the fear was a surface issue, and God wanted to work on the root of my problem: I needed a better understanding of His love.

  I didn’t experience one of those instantaneous realizations, but God began walking me through a process of gaining a better knowledge of the depth of His love. The Bible says that “God is love.”12 His very character and essence is love. Love is who He is. I struggled to grasp that truth because I was thinking in limited, human terms.

  Our love is conditional. No matter how much we would like to believe otherwise, we will always attach conditions to our love. We can say we will love someone no matter what, but that will change if we are slapped by rejection enough times from that person.

  God’s love is perfect. His love has no conditions. No circumstances can change it. Our Lord, our King, sees every ounce of our being and—if we are completely honest with ourselves—the grossness of who we are. And He still loves us! That love shined so greatly on the cross.

  Our love can’t be perfect, but God’s love can’t be anything but perfect.

  We love, but God is love. There is an incredible difference between the two. I wish I could claim that I fully appreciate the difference. I don’t, even though I’m still trying to comprehend it.

  I have learned, however, that one way to free myself from living in fear—such as the fear of experiencing death—is to increase my understanding of how much He loves and cares for me. The more I embrace the depth of my heavenly Father’s perfect (unconditional) love for me, the easier it is to believe that all is well.

  Just trust Me, God was telling me. Trust Me. Trust Me. Trust Me.

  As I continued to pray, God reminded me of 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” That verse soothed my spirit, and I repeated the words in my mind when I felt myself struggling with fear, regardless of what it was. Taking my focus off my circumstances in order to consider how much God loves and cares for me has washed away plenty of my fears.

  But I do still experience and wrestle with fear.

  As I dealt with those early fears of one of my children passing away, I realized that I was afraid of the pain and heartache I had experienced with Melissa’s passing. That was some of the worst pain I could imagine, and I feared feeling that way again. Because I had come out on the other side of that experience, I knew that no matter what might happen to me, everything would eventually turn out fine. But I feared having to go through that pain again.

  I wished there had been a Scripture I could have flipped to that promised I would never have to go through that pain again. I’ve looked many times—sometimes desperately—and there is no such Scripture. But what I can find in the Bible is case after case of someone suffering and God walking with that person every step of the way.

  That’s where God was, working on the root of my fear. Gradually, He brought me to a place where I could proclaim, “Lord, I believe that You will walk with me through whatever pain I will have to face in the future. By Your grace, I will not be afraid of the pain.”

  Peter addressed our being able to rejoice in God’s sustaining power: “For a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”13

  Paul also offered insight on that subject in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18: “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

  Again, conquering fear and enduring suffering come down to having and maintaining an eternal perspective. That’s not an easy truth to hear during suffering because it certainly doesn’t seem like our troubles are achieving anything at the time, but suffering is temporary.

  I certainly didn’t feel that way during my period of suffering, but I learned over time that it is true.

  The suffering that God walked through with me has refined me. It hasn’t defined me; I’m not “the guy whose wife passed away and who has a powerful testimony because of that.” But it has refined me and deepened my dependence on God.

  Suffering digs to the very core of your soul and tests you, far below the shallowness of who you previously thought God was. Suffering asks,

  Are you really going to trust the Lord?

  Are you really going to worship the Lord?

  Are you really going to still serve Him?

  “Yes” can be the only answer to those questions when you have been taken to a depth where you can understand and truly know who God is—to where you can experience personally who He says He is in the Bible—and then have to walk in that truth.

  A friend suffered through the passing of his nineteen-year-old son. My friend told me, “Before this happened, I thought I had a strong relationship with God, but I was only in the meadow near the cross. After it happened, I went to the foot of the cross and stayed there.”

  As my friend and I learned through our experiences, suffering is an opportunity. Neither of us volunteered for our suffering. We had no option but to go through it. We did, however, have the option of how we responded. It was difficult, but we both chose to get up and walk to the foot of the cross.

  Honestly, I don’t believe I ever would have taken that journey if not forced to by my suffering. But trust me, once I made it to the foot of the cross, I knew I had never been closer to my Savior.

  CHAPTER 17

  ALL THAT TRULY MATTERS

  The Lord continued to use my personal experiences to give me songs that resonated with people. I was amazed by their stories of how the songs and my testimony had touched them and brought them encouragement and hope.

  The two years after Adrienne and I married saw tremendous growth for my musical career. Six singles off my first CD reached number one, and I received four Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association during that time. The success increased the platform from which I could share my message, thanks to more sales, more play time for my songs on radio stations, and more opportunities to headline tours.

  Having an expanding ministry, however, required more from me. There were more people involved in the process, more touring, and more logistics to think about and manage.

  Those expectations come with the territory of being part of Christian music, or any type of ministry for that matter. I was a preacher’s kid, I had attended Bible college, and I had good friends such as Jean-Luc in the Christian music industry, so I h
ad an introductory knowledge of how time consuming my calling/career could become.

  I knew the demands could become a potential trap and that Satan would love to throw me off track from my duty to fulfill the Great Commission.14 A good trapper will tell you that a trap works best when it blends into the surroundings and the trapee doesn’t know what it has stepped into until it’s too late and the trap has sprung.

  Fortunately, I had a loving friend who boldly took a step to save me before I unknowingly walked into the trap.

  I realized how busy I had become, but, hey, I thought that’s just what came along with our band’s success. Everything around me looked to be in good shape too. I was still seeking God and wanting to honor Him in everything I did. CDs were selling. The fact that we kept receiving story after story from fans indicated we were making the spiritual impact we wanted to make. At home, Adrienne and I were doing great. The kids were growing, and we were having wonderful times as a family.

  But the pace was relentless. A growing ministry meant more work so we could continue to grow and reach more people. We could hire people to do the work, so it wasn’t like all the work was falling on me. There was someone to arrange for the two buses and the two semis we took out on tour. There were people to unload the semis and set up all the equipment for each event. It wasn’t like the van-and-trailer days when I was involved in the driving, the unloading, the performing, the reloading, and then the driving again.

  So I wasn’t necessarily doing more work in that regard, but I was responsible for more. My name had become a brand. (I have mixed emotions about that part of our industry, for sure.) The two buses and two semis that rolled into town, and all the people associated with the tour, were part of the Jeremy Camp show. If a crew member was rude to someone, guess what? He would go unnamed, but the offended person would say, “That guy from Jeremy Camp sure was rude to me.”