Laura Story is a popular singer-songwriter, worship leader, and author. For more than 20 years her husband Martin has been battling the debilitating effects of a brain tumor. Laura and Martin are walking a difficult path. And it’s by no means over. But through it, they have experienced God as their sustainer.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Steve Sunshine:
We live in a time of unprecedented comfort. We value safety and security, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy for us to be shaken when the straight road we’re on takes a sudden curve and seems to be pointing us in a direction we don’t want to go. Welcome to the Shaken Podcast. I’m Steve Sunshine. Your confidence, your mood, your perspective, even your faith may be shaken because of something that’s happened in your life. Jesus told us we’d have trouble in this world, so we’re shaken but not surprised. He also said, “Take heart. I have overcome the world.”
In this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations with people who have or are going through life altering hard times and have found that God was with them in the midst of it all.
Laura Story:
Faith is trusting God when we can’t understand what he’s doing. Faith is stepping forward even when he hasn’t given us the blueprint that we wanted. And it’s just believing that everything, and this is hard, even as I say it right now, I know that it’s hard. It’s believing that everything that has entered our lives, good and bad, have all been filtered through the loving hands of God.
Steve Sunshine:
That’s Laura’s story. She’s a singer, songwriter and worship leader. You have probably sung some of her songs at your church and you’ve probably heard her music on the radio, too. But just as her career was taking off, she and her husband, Martin, encountered a health crisis that has lingered for over 20 years.
First of all, I think about your story, Laura, I think, which is almost a pun, Laura’s Story story.
Laura Story:
People will ask me if that’s my stage name, but I’ll say no. It’s just the name that my parents gave me when I was born.
Steve Sunshine:
Well, I get that, too, with Sunshine as a last name.
Laura Story:
Oh, I bet. I bet.
Steve Sunshine:
So, you wrote a song called Indescribable, that Chris Tomlin performed, and then your professional life, I think, changed at that point and it must’ve felt at that point like everything was going right.
Laura Story:
No, that’s a great way to say it because, so I got a call from my friend Ed Cash, who was a buddy of mine. Now he’s the We The Kingdom guy. But before that, he was just a producer in Nashville that I had known from Young Life, back when he and I were both Young Life leaders in college and Ed had just started recording. Actually, he was towards the end of recording Chris Tomlin’s first album. So now you think of Chris Tomlin as like Chris Tomlin, but back then it was just this regionally known worship leader in Texas. So I got that call from Ed, it was the Monday before the Saturday that I was marrying my husband Martin, and he said, “Hey, you know that song Indescribable that you shared with me? I’ve just shared it with this guy Chris, that I’m recording, and would you be okay if he recorded it for his album?”
And I was familiar with Chris from his song, Holy Is The Lord. It was a huge honor that he would even consider recording it, but even then, I was in the midst of the last minute wedding details, I’m not sure if I really could have wrapped my head around what happened next. And they ended up choosing the song as their radio single, which was a big deal for a lot of reasons because back then, so this was coming up on 20 years ago, radio wasn’t really playing a whole lot of worship.
Steve Sunshine:
That’s right.
Laura Story:
Maybe a little bit, but not like it is now. And so it was a big deal ‘cos I think, it was hard for me to even picture radio playing a worship song and then the fact that mine was one of the first ones to get out there and serve in that way, it ended up being a lot bigger than what I expected. But I’ll tell you, Steve, it was neat as a newlywed, I was so grateful that I wasn’t the one that was out there doing it. I was so thankful that I got to be the songwriter before I really was the traveling and touring artist. ‘Cos I was able to spend at least a few years just focusing on how to be a wife and Chris and his guys could be out there playing this song. But it was really a neat thing to be part of.
Steve Sunshine:
Well, and that song has touched a lot of people as have a lot of your songs. You transitioned into being that artist that you were talking about. And at what point, how much later was it that Martin started having some health problems?
Laura Story:
So that year after Indescribable came out was, it was pivotal for two reasons. First of all, the song Indescribable had, because it was a song used in churches, a friend of ours who was working as a videographer for the church where I serve now, in Perimeter Church, he had shared the song with their worship leaders, their congregation, and it really had connected, so much so that they said, “Man, if you ever thought about taking a ministry job here, if you want to come and be on staff at Perimeter Church.” And that was something that on one level, I’m not entirely sure I’d ever really thought of that because I was raised in a church, a wonderful big Baptist church, First Baptist Spartanburg, and I was raised in a church. We had a big choir and a big orchestra. And so our music director was a guy in a suit that would direct the choir, direct the orchestra.
And I thought, well, I certainly can’t do any of that. And so this idea of being a worship leader on staff at a church was a brand new thing for me. So we came here to Perimeter and it was initially, my husband was planning on attending grad school and he attended about a semester and a half of grad school here in Atlanta. But it was after we’d been married about a year and a half. We’d been at Perimeter about five months when Martin started having just some weird health symptoms. So he ended up being diagnosed with a brain tumor. But initially there were no headaches. There were the regular signs that, I mean, who knows what the regular signs are, but the things that I think that would’ve made us think that something like that was wrong. None of those signs were there. He just was forgetful every now and then and he was really tired and he would just fall asleep all the time and we just weren’t sure what was wrong.
And this actually happened a little bit, the months leading up to us moving to Atlanta. And that was scary as well because at the time we were living in upstate South Carolina, Spartanburg, we were actually living in Greenville right down the road from Spartanburg. But both sets of parents were from Spartanburg. And the idea of moving away was already something big for us, even though it was two and a half hours down the road. But when he started experiencing these health issues, it made it all the scarier to think about moving. And we ended up, Perimeter was so gracious and encouraging us to come anyway, which I’m so thankful, now looking back, and I’m so thankful that we did. So within our first five months of being at Perimeter, Martin was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Steve Sunshine:
Wow. Tell us about what went on through your mind and through your heart at that time.
Laura Story:
So many things. As newlyweds you do this premarital counseling, whatever they call it, and you’re learning how to share a bank account and try to alternate holidays, spend Christmas with this family and Thanksgiving, all these logistic things. But no one covers that chapter of, what do you do when one of you faces a life-threatening illness within your first two years of marriage? So in a lot of ways we were just making it up as we went along. We met with a neurosurgeon and even God bringing us to Atlanta, we met the surgeon who literally had written the book on the type of tumor that Martin had. So even seeing God’s hand in all of that. So we met with this neurosurgeon and heard about the surgery Martin needed. And, Steve, you ask about what went through our minds and hearts. I think initially we didn’t necessarily understand how big of a deal it was.
And I know that sounds funny because it’s a brain tumor, of course it’s a big deal. But I think that in our youth we thought, okay, he’s going to have the brain surgery, he’ll have the tumor removed and we’re just going to get on back into the life that we envisioned that was our life together. And in some ways that was true, but in a lot of ways that couldn’t have been further from the truth. ‘Cos what ended up happening, Martin had that initial surgery. We were at the hospital for about two, two and a half weeks. He went home and within just a few days, developed some pretty serious complications, went back into the hospital and those, I refer to those as being our harder weeks of those sleepless nights of me sitting in that neuro ICU unit and wondering night after night whether or not he would make it through the night. He was hooked up on all the machines and just pleading with the Lord for him to wake my husband up the next morning.
And ultimately we ended up being in that unit for, I think it was about two months. And then eventually we were able to, Martin would just slowly get better, but he had developed a brain infection as a result of the surgery and the tumor. And so he had to relearn how to walk. He had to relearn how to, I remember him, we ended up at a step-down unit before they sent us home. And I remember him learning how to use a knife and fork to cut his spaghetti and me showing him, reminding him how to do it. And there were some comical moments even in the midst of this. I remember even us being at this rehabilitation place, it was the first time that he had eaten a meal that wasn’t him sitting up straight in the hospital bed.
And so he was in a wheelchair still. And I remember pushing him to the cafeteria, and I know it sounds silly, but it was the most freedom he’d had in months. And I remember him cutting his spaghetti with the fork and the knife and he looked at the table next to us and there was a guy there who was pouring a packet of Parmesan cheese on his spaghetti. And Martin, he couldn’t talk very well at the time, but I remember him saying, “Cheese, cheese.” And I thought, oh great, he’s starting to remember, he remembers that he likes cheese with his spaghetti. And so I got him a packet of cheese and he opened it all by himself and poured it straight into his milk. And I thought, okay, slowly, this is going to be a step by step process of exactly, but it was a good picture of what things would look like. A healing and a rehabilitation that was a lot slower than what I initially thought it would be.
Steve Sunshine:
What has the progress been like since then?
Laura Story:
Yes. So, finally discharged from the hospital and Martin just started this slow process of recovery. And now, I would say, he’s doing really well. And I so I appreciate everyone who has asked, everyone who’s prayed, he’s doing really well. He still lives with a brain injury. And that’s a hard thing logistically because he has had to develop a lot of new ways to do pretty much everything. He has a short-term memory deficit. He has a vision deficit and is unable to drive. He has a lot of just stamina issues. His pituitary gland does not work. And so he takes a lot of medication. He has to regulate his medication. And trying to do that with a memory deficit is a huge challenge. So even though we’re 18 years out from his brain injury, there are some things that we’re still learning how to do. There’s some things he’s still learning how to do.
And I’ll tell you this, too. I say it’s been a challenge logistically. It’s also been a challenge spiritually. We believe God to be all powerful. We believe him to be sovereign. We believe him to be a God who heals, a God who answers prayers. So sometimes it’s hard to know how to hold those things to be true. How do we reconcile that with the life that Martin lives every day where he hasn’t received that healing, where God has in its or our prayers the way that we thought he would.
Steve Sunshine:
I am glad you brought that up because one of the things I’ve been wanting to do with this podcast is to talk about that. Talk about God is all powerful. He is all good, he is all loving. He does heal sometimes and sometimes he doesn’t. And I’m afraid that a lot of people have been given the idea that if they just have enough faith that’s going to heal the person in question. And it’s much more complicated than that. And somehow you have to be able to say in the midst of the trial, well like Job, though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him. You want to trust in Him whether the outcome is what we want or not. How have you navigated that?
Laura Story:
That’s a great question, because there’s so many stories, whether it’s our story or someone else that you know where God, he hasn’t brought that healing, but then maybe their next door neighbor has experienced that healing. So it’s this question of how do we reconcile that? And one of the things, it’s interesting you even use that word faith. Okay, so what is faith? Because a lot of people would say faith is believing that if you pray hard enough, then God will answer the way that you want Him to, which is, that’s an odd way to think about it because in that scenario, it really puts us in charge of the outcome. It really puts us in that role of God to say that if I pray hard enough, then my will will prevail, then my plans will come to fruition, which I don’t necessarily think that’s what faith is.
And you look in the Bible and you see so many different instances of God healing, but you also see, I’d say probably equally the same amount of God sustaining. So you see some instances where Jesus shows up as the Savior, as God shows up as the Savior. He’s pulling David out of a pit. He’s parting the Red Sea. He’s doing all these miraculously fantastic things in which his name is glorified. But you also have this whole other set of stories where rather than saving, he’s simply sustaining. You think about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego where you’re thrown into this fiery furnace that God totally could have saved him from, but instead they’re in that furnace with the Lord and without being burned. And so when you look at God saving and God sustaining, I would say when he is sustaining us in the midst of a trial that for whatever reason he decides to sovereignly leave us in, I believe that his glory is displayed just as much when he’s sustaining His power and his glory are display just as much when he is sustaining as in the situations in which you save it.
Steve Sunshine:
I think that’s really true. That’s really good. I think of Paul and the thorn. We don’t know what that was. We know that God didn’t take it away. That’s exactly it. Grace is sufficient for you. That’s been huge for me. I can see where it would be for anybody who wants to walk through whatever the trial is with God. My grace is sufficient.
Laura Story:
I’ll tell you another way that I’ve seen this so clearly, and we are feeling this all the time, of God showing us ways that Martin’s disability has made us weak. Paul talks about God’s strength being displayed in our weakness. It’s made us weak. It’s made us dependent on others in situations that we wish that we were more independent. It’s made us a whole lot less self-sufficient. But one of the ways that I’ve seen this, I’d say maybe the clearest is the way that God is using my husband’s disability in the lives of our children. Our family looks different. Our family looks very different than other people’s families. But the verse speaking of Paul, in the writings of Paul, the verse that comes to mind so often is this Romans V verse where Paul tells us to rejoice in our suffering. You’re like, “Oh, no, please don’t tell me that.
But he says, because your suffering produces endurance and your endurance produces character and your character produces hope and hope does not disappoint. So when you think about that list of things that we gain by suffering, and when I say I see it so clearly in the lives of my children, you think about these things like character and endurance and hope. These are all things that I pray would exist in the hearts and lives of my children. But what Paul is saying is rather than sending my kids to a class on this stuff, the right Sunday school class, the right vacation Bible school that focuses on character or endurance, Paul actually says, “It’s the trials that I allow my children to walk through without.”
I want to be the rescuer. I want to be the savior. I don’t want have to watch them go through something hard, but the Lord actually says, no, no, no. It’s the hard that produces the character and the endurance and the hope in the hearts in the lives of your children, and how much more so is God doing that in my life? But I have to be careful not to wish away the hard just because of how much I want life to be easy and manageable.
Steve Sunshine:
That’s not a popular parenting style anymore. It seems like, just for the last generation or so, we’ve become very overprotective in a lot of ways. I mean, I don’t know whether you, you probably do remember this. Being able to run around the neighborhood going wherever you want, be home by dinner, that kind of thing.
Laura Story:
Yes. You and I were raised in the era of lawn darts, all these toys that have been banished.
Steve Sunshine:
I remember as a kid thinking, I’m not sure this is a good idea. So a lot of things about being a faithful Christian involve holding things in tension. And I think this is a great example of that because you would be absolutely right to see God as the sustainer and you would be absolutely right to continue to pray for healing. And again, going back to scripture, I think of the garden in Gethsemane, Jesus asks the question, “Will you take this from me?” And then he submits and that’s hard. It’s hard but …
Laura Story:
And that’s such a good picture there, of that tension.
Steve Sunshine:
If it’s good enough for Him, it’s got to be good enough for us, is the hard truth. And I think He, going back to God as the sustainer, he gives you the strength to be able to do it, if you’re willing to lean into it.
Laura Story:
That’s so true. And I think a lot of it is having a theology of suffering, having an understanding of truly what the Bible teaches about suffering. You and I have known each other from Christian radio circles for quite a while. I went and visited a station down in Houston, Texas. They were doing an event right after the massive flooding. Do you remember that?
Steve Sunshine:
Yes. Hurricane Harvey.
Laura Story:
Yes, that’s exactly what it was. Hurricane Harvey. And it was this situation where a bunch of artists went down and did this benefit at the station for that community. But I remember meeting people and they were telling me stories about, you would go down one street and there would be homes that were untouched. You’d go down the next street and there’d be homes that were completely destroyed. And so it’s this community with a lot of people just with so many questions trying, how does our faith fit into this? One of the things that I remember sharing that night, I said, “I can’t necessarily tell you the answer for why bad things happen. I can’t necessarily say why this specific thing happened to you or it didn’t happen to you, or this specific thing has happened to me.” I said, “All I can do is tell you what the Bible says.”
And the Bible gives us two very clear reasons that bad things happen. One, we see in Romans V, again Romans V, this must be like the day for Romans V. In Romans V, we see how through the fall sin entered the world. And that’s everything from addictions to infertility to hurricanes, everything bad, sin enters in Mars, the creation because of the fall. And that’s one of the two answers we get. But the neat thing about it is that’s not the only answer we get. And even in this hard scenario where we see sin existing in our world right now, we know that it won’t always be this way. We have a promise that Jesus will come back and make all, as it says, I can’t remember who says it. I think it’s some literary reference that all sad things will come untrue. I’m going to remember an hour later who said that.
Steve Sunshine:
It sounds like CS Lewis.
Laura Story:
It does sound like CS, he probably said it first, even if he wasn’t the second person that said it. But when you have these two answers, you don’t just have Romans I, you also have John IX. In John IX, the disciples are looking at this person that’s born blind and they said, “Jesus, whose fault is this?” And isn’t that where we always go? I want to blame, this is hard, this hurts. I want to blame somebody. Whose fault is this? And rather than just giving the Romans V answer, which is a legitimate answer, Jesus actually says, “This man was born blind, that the works of God might be displayed.”
So when we face hard things, when we face diagnoses, when we face natural disasters, prodigal children, no matter what it is, that where we are praying fervently that God would change this situation and he hasn’t yet, I think it’s helpful to keep in mind, first of all, these things exist because of the fall. These things also exist ‘cos God is desiring to do something in us and through us because of this broken situation.
Steve Sunshine:
That’s very powerful and true. How is Martin doing today? How are you guys doing?
Laura Story:
Yes, that’s a great question. And it depends on the day. Our story isn’t one that, whenever I’m telling our story, I’m not telling about something that happened to us as much as it is something that’s happening to us. Because Martin’s disability, his health is up and down. We had a few years where Martin wasn’t in the hospital at all, and then this past November he was back in the hospital with what was just an infection that might mean you and I might just be in bed for a week. For him, it was more of a major medical issue, and in some ways we were back there, just right back there, reminded of how this is just part of our lives, long-term. But he is doing well. He is fighting for joy in the midst of disability.
Martin is a great man and oftentimes when we have, the things we talk about, he reminds me so much of the psalmist that says, “How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever?” Because he’s very honest about how hard life with disability is. But he also echoes towards the end of a lot of those sweet psalms. You see the psalmist choosing specifically, Psalm 13 is the one that comes to mind, because he begins with saying, “How long ago, oh Lord?” But he ends with saying, “But I’ve trusted in your loving kindness and my heart will rejoice.” And so it’s this, it’s not that his situation has turned around so quickly in those eight verses. It’s more that he’s just made a decision that he will still trust God. Again, back to the whole idea of faith and what faith actually is. Faith is trusting God when we can’t understand what he’s doing. Faith is stepping forward even when he hasn’t given us the blueprint that we wanted.
And it’s just believing that everything, and this is hard, even as I say it right now, I know that it’s hard. It’s believing that everything that has entered our lives, good and bad, have all been filtered through the loving hands of God. That is a hard thing, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve and doesn’t mean that we don’t come to the Lord and say, “God, this is really hard.”
One of the things I feel, sorry, I’m just now I’m going off. You ready?
Steve Sunshine:
You’re doing good.
Laura Story:
One of the things I feel like is actually detrimental to how people experience Christians is sometimes I feel like Christians are too quick to say, “Oh, but it’s okay ‘cos God works all things together for good.” And that truth, I mean it obviously is true and good and helpful, but you also see that it’s okay for Christians to grieve loss. It’s okay for Christians to admit that this is hard and this is painful, and this is not how I wanted my life to look. This is not how I wanted my marriage to look.
So sometimes I feel like we’re too quick to, almost like, it’s like we’re defending God. No, no, but God is still good. It’s like, God is good, but this is hard. And I feel like, yeah, it’s like when Jesus meets Mary and Martha at Lazarus’ tomb and he knows what’s about to happen. He knows he’s about to resurrect Lazarus, but he sees the brokenness. He sees his friends weeping and he just weeps with them. He doesn’t sit back with a smug look like, oh, you have no idea what I’m about to do. He just grieves with those who are hurting, and he grieves the fact that death is even a reality. He grieves the fact that disease is a reality and that that’s the heart of God. And I feel like sometimes as believers, we need to sit in that grief a little bit more.
Steve Sunshine:
Well, we’re never told not to grieve. I’m sure if God didn’t want us to, he would’ve made that clear. In fact, we’re told to grieve with others who are grieving, so that’s where we’re supposed to be. That honesty is, I agree, it’s something the church could use.
Just as a total aside, something you mentioned about moving to Atlanta and the medical care. My wife and I moved to a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan in the southwest corner of the state, which is where she grew up, and my dad doesn’t live too far from here in Indiana. And one of my concerns was with Parkinson’s, is there a movement disorder specialist anywhere around here? The answer is no, except that my general doctor has a twin who has Parkinson’s, and he told me that the best clinic in the country is in Chicago, which is a train ride away from here. So, that was God showing up in a way …
Laura Story:
That’s amazing.
Steve Sunshine:
… that I didn’t expect.
Laura Story:
Well, even that your doctor has a vested interest in caring for people with Parkinson’s. That’s amazing.
Steve Sunshine:
So God shows up, and I actually don’t even like that expression. God shows up. He’s always there, but he makes himself known in ways that will surprise you and will get you through whatever it is you’re going through if you’re willing to go with Him. That’s the trick, though, is to keep trusting him. Laura, I’m really glad that you joined us, and I’m glad that you have the platform that you have. You’ve used it very well. Laura’s written a number of books, and there’s one particular song of yours, Blessings that I think goes right at this in a way that’s very tender and very biblical. So if you have a chance to YouTube that, if you haven’t heard it, I would recommend that if you’re going through something like that. But my wife, Gaye and I will be praying for you and Martin and …
Laura Story:
Oh, thank you, Steve.
Steve Sunshine:
… really appreciate everything that you do.
Laura Story:
Well, thank you so much. I know that I could say the same thing for you. You have been a well-known and respected voice in radio for so long, and it’s so neat to see you facing something really hard and saying, “Okay, God, I want to see, I know that you will not waste this.”
Steve Sunshine:
That’s what I want.
Laura Story:
I want to see what you’re going to do through this. Well, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, so you will be in my prayers as well.
Steve Sunshine:
I appreciate that, Laura. Laura’s story. She’s a singer and songwriter, and you can find her music everywhere. Author, too, and worship leader of Perimeter Church in Atlanta. Thank you, Laura.
Laura Story:
Hey, thank you.
Steve Sunshine:
Laura’s latest book is called So Long, Normal: Living and Loving the Free Fall of Faith, and you can find links to that and her other books and her music at laurastorymusic.com. I’m Steve Sunshine. Thank you for listening to Shaken. If this episode has been meaningful to you in any way, please help us spread the word. You can do that by sharing the podcast with a friend or on social media. You can also give us a review and subscribe, too, because that’ll help people find Shaken. And you’ll find new episodes on your favorite podcast app or at purposely.com
