I emerged from the stall. I bolted through the ladies’ room door, making a beeline for Steven. I could see him through the chaos of small children, balloons, and games.
As soon as our eyes met, Steven knew.
As I made my way toward him, a lady came up to me. “Aren’t you Mary Beth Chapman?” she asked.
Thanks to Steven’s growing career, he was starting to be recognized in public. But this lady wasn’t connecting because of Steven.
“I think you used to work with my sister at Friendly’s Ice Cream!” she continued.
Maybe she didn’t see the tears streaming down my face.
“I’m sorry,” I babbled to her. “I just did this pregnancy test in the bathroom, and I haven’t told my husband yet, and he’s right over there, and I’m a little discombobulated right now . . .”
“Oh!” said the lady, thinking she had just gotten a little too much information. She quickly made herself invisible. I barreled toward my husband and buried my head in his chest, weeping.
Little Emily Chapman looked up at me.
“Mommy!” she said. “Why are you crying?”
“Well,” I said, trying to be an adult, “you know how there are sad tears, but there are also happy tears? Mommy just found out she’s going to have another baby!”
Emily stood there, staring at me. She jammed her hands on her hips, then burst out, “What in the world are we gonna do with another baby?”
I lost it. “I don’t know!” I wailed. “That’s why I’m crying!”
When I look back to those Chuck E. Cheese days, I can see a lot more of the picture than I could then. Back then I was just putting one foot in front of the other – what else can you do?
Now I see my life at that time like a big weather map. There were high pressure systems building, then dramatic lows that would bring in thunderstorms. There were calm periods as well. But what was brewing was a perfect storm.
Once I accepted the fact that we were having another baby, my pregnancy was fine. As God would have it, Yolanda, Sherri, and I all had the same ob-gyn, and all three of us were due on Valentine’s Day 1991. It was fun, but I’m sure the doctor thought it was also kind of weird.
We knew from an ultrasound that our new baby was a boy, and I was grateful. Since he and Caleb were going to be so close in age, it was great that they would have each other to do boy things together. I wanted to name him Levi Franklin; Steven wanted to name him Will Franklin.
The birth went well. I had a third C-section. Before they sewed me up and I went off to drug-induced la-la land, I was instructing Steven to make sure to mark the baby with a Sharpie so the hospital wouldn’t mix him up with some other baby. (Can you tell I had control issues?)
“What about his name?” Steven asked, wondering just what he should write on this child.
“Oh,” I said, loopy from drugs. “You see what name works best for him.”
Even in my drug-induced state, though, I knew what would happen. Sure enough, I woke up and my son was named Will Franklin. My choice never had a chance.
So here we were, blessed in a million ways. Three healthy children under the age of five. Steven’s growing success meant that we had been able to buy a beautiful piece of land in Franklin, and we were building a Victorian farmhouse with lots of room for the kids to play.
Steven’s second album, 1988’s Real Life Conversations, earned him four big hits, including the number one song “His Eyes,” which also received the Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year award from the Gospel Music Association in 1989. That year, he also won a GMA award for Best Songwriter of the Year. Released later that year, his third album, More to This Life, contained four number-one hits and in 1990 earned him an unprecedented ten nominations at the GMA Awards. He won five. His next album, For the Sake of the Call, contained five number-one singles and earned him another slew of GMA awards and his first Grammy in the Best Pop Gospel Album category.
We couldn’t believe all this was happening. We felt so grateful to God.
Steven was getting ready to release a new album, The Great Adventure, and would be doing big-venue concerts in just a few weeks. Our lives now included managers, booking agents, band members, crew, assistants, trucks, and tour buses.
My mom arrived to help take care of Emily and Caleb as I recovered from Will’s birth. She cooked and of course cleaned, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and set everything in order. I couldn’t have made it without her. But every evening, about a half hour after dinner, my stomach would start hurting.
I ignored it; Steven was kicking off his “Great Adventure” concert tour with a seven-day rehearsal at Reunion Arena in Texas, and I was determined to get there for the opening night.
One night I woke up at about 3:00 a.m. The pain in my abdomen was nauseating and intense, radiating to my back. I literally had to crawl to my mother’s room.
“Mom!” I whispered to her. “Wake up! I don’t mean to alarm you, but if you don’t get me to an emergency room, I’m gonna die!”
She flew out of bed, we called a friend to come stay with the kids, and Mom took me to the emergency room, where I had an ultrasound.
“Honey!” my doctor told me the next morning. “You’ve got a couple of huge gallstones!”
I didn’t even know what those were, but the nice people at the hospital got them out of me with a little laser surgery. I hurt all over from the effects of that, and the, well, gas buildup from the procedure, but I was not a person to be stopped by mere physical agony. I flew off to Dallas that very weekend for the first show of “The Great Adventure” tour.
Again, we were blessed. And to everyone else we looked like a beautiful family of bouncy, blond children, a handsome, gifted husband soon to be a big celebrity, and the lovely wife with the big white smile. That would be me.
But there was something wrong with this happy picture, because the lovely celebrity wife, wrestling with dark tides inside, was about to have a breakdown. And I couldn’t figure out why.
10
My Friend Prozac
When my spirit faints within me, you know my way!
Psalm 142:3 ESV
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.
Psalm 69:1–2
People who don’t know much about depression often think of it as great sadness, and while it is that, it is so much more. I was sad, mad, frustrated, fearful, reclusive, critical, overwhelmed, and hopeless. No one wants all these adjectives . . . and certainly no one wants to live with a person who’s experiencing them.
And here was Steven, trying his best to understand, but because of his positive outlook on life, it was hard for him. I felt like he was just clueless to what was going on inside of me. We’d moved into a new house, I had three children under the age of five, and it was up to me to multitask my way through all kinds of challenges each day.
Meanwhile, Tigger the optimist was getting ready for his biggest tour to date. It would be full of ministry opportunities and happy fans who would applaud his performances and confirm how talented he was.
So as far as Steven’s managers, promoters, and music team were concerned, the single focus was “The Great Adventure” tour. As it became more and more apparent that I was overwhelmed and hurting, managers said they could pull the plug on the tour at any point so Steven could care for his family. I knew that a lot of money had already been invested and spent to get this tour off the ground . . . and the way the business works, no matter what, this Great Adventure tour would happen. Therefore, Mary Beth needed to keep herself together.
But I couldn’t.
Steven would come home from the recording studio or rehearsals to find me curled up in our bed crying. Emily had started kindergarten. I loved having little Caleb and Will at home . . . but then there were times when they were right under my feet while I’d furiously clean the house, pay
bills, do laundry, and try to keep our domestic life afloat, while continuing to manage various business aspects of Steven’s career.
Sometimes I would just stop, sit, and cry. Other days, I would actually crawl under my bed or in my closet. I was physically and emotionally depleted, and though I’m a real pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of person, I could not pull myself up and out of this any longer.
One day before Steven was to leave on the tour, we were out on the driveway talking with Steven’s manager, Dan Raines. Dan was discussing plans that were taking me by surprise. I like to schedule things on the calendar, be prepared, take care of details, and not get caught by something unknown. I had asked over and over to be given as much information as possible.
But I was now hearing about all kinds of add-ons . . . more shows, television opportunities, interviews . . . things that would keep Steven out on the road longer than I’d been told. This was great for his career . . . but this latest batch of last-minute information sent me over the edge.
I started crying and couldn’t stop. I was way beyond the point of caring who saw me. Complete breakdown. I wanted to die. Steven actually carried me into our house, me kicking and screaming all the way.
Dan was very wide-eyed but compassionate. He told us about a good friend in his small group from church who was a psychiatrist. “Maybe we ought to see about getting you an appointment,” he told me when I was calm enough to hear anything.
I knew nothing about psychiatrists, except they were for crazy people. And that definitely wasn’t me, even though I’d always felt half-crazy and now was flipping out in the driveway and hiding under the bed.
Actually, I had always been quite open to getting counseling help as Steven and I struggled with some of the difficulties in our marriage. We knew the value of having trained people walk through hard places with us.
So I met with the doctor. We talked for some time, and he said to me, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term ‘clinical depression,’ but I believe you’ve suffered from it for a long time.”
I thought back to my high-performing childhood and the pain and shame of my adolescence. The doctor was right.
It was a relief to know that what I suffered from had a name. At the same time I felt guilty and ashamed. Like everything was my fault. I had no logical reason to be depressed. I had a wonderful, loving, faithful husband and healthy, great kids. We were financially blessed. I wasn’t living in poverty, persecution, or pain. Why should I be depressed?
What I began to understand was that this was a medical condition. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t a response to my environment. It had to do with my brain chemistry and coping mechanisms that I’d developed over a lifetime. I began to see that I’d carried this for years, that depression had been the filter through which I had experienced much of my adolescence and everything since.
It obviously had affected my marriage as well. And now, with the depression diagnosis, it felt like any problems or differences between Steven and me were automatically my fault, because, well, I was depressed. This dynamic meant that I now carried more guilt, thinking every difference between us was because I wasn’t able to let go or lighten up, no matter how hard I tried. It often came down to this: Steven’s fun and spontaneous outlook trumped Mary Beth’s need for planning almost every time.
Depression also affected the way I reasoned, the way my brain itself perceived everyday life. While Steven might see a problem as an inconvenient obstacle he just had to figure out a way to bounce around, I saw problems as insurmountable mountains.
The doctor prescribed an antidepressant, which was the good news.
The bad news was that the Prozac took a few weeks to ramp up in my system and take effect. So there were many dark nights when I was battling intense emotions of fear and anger, and Steven was on the road. He’d call late at night, after his show, and I concentrated on putting on a brave, fake front.
It was so hard, because sleeping was the one time I was at peace, and he could usually only call after we were all in bed. I would try and tell him news and funny stories about the children. But I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to go back to sleep.
As I said, when I was first diagnosed I felt like I was to blame for everything and anything that had ever gone wrong. Later it would be important to discern ways that Steven’s personality and patterns had also contributed to our conflict. We still had to do a ton of work to untangle issues in our marriage and why we both responded certain ways to certain situations. But it helped to know that we were normalizing my brain chemistry so I could perceive things better.
That was good.
But it was not enough, on its own, to really transform me. What I found is that my depression actually became an opportunity to acknowledge to God that He was literally my only hope. In the darkest, loneliest times in the middle of the night, I realized that Christ is truly all I have. I realized that everything else – everything – is fleeting.
If I put my security or peace of mind in my husband, children, or home, I would only continue to wrestle with life and how out of control it felt. I’d already seen how a home and possessions can burn, and I knew that no matter how precious a relationship with a loved one is, it can be lost in a moment of tragedy.
I also knew quite clearly that I couldn’t rest my hope or security in how I looked or how productive I was, or anything else that had to do with my hardworking, churning, anxious personality. If my outlook was dependent on me and how together I was, I’d have no peace.
Depression became my friend, in a strange and painful way, a pushy friend I really did not want. But this strange friend made it so clear to me that I couldn’t just buck up and feel better, or try harder and do better. I was helpless.
My husband could not fix me. My closest friends, who somehow loved me too, could not fix me. And Lord knows I could not fix myself. If I wanted to live in a different place than this dark cloud of fear, anger, and sadness, I had to realize that this burden was way too heavy to carry alone. God and God alone was the One who could take the depression and turn it into something teachable. All I had to do was the hardest thing possible for a person like me: I just had to be willing to give up control and give in to Him, and let Him use this cross in my life.
This was passive in the sense that I had to give up my will, but active in the sense of the action that required. It was also active in the sense that there was plenty of work I had to do if I wanted to get better.
But the first step, before my efforts, was to realize that the essential transformation inside of me would not come through my work, but as a gift of grace from God Himself.
When I was growing up in church, no one talked about this. My expectation then was that Christians were strong and victorious all the time. If someone was struggling with something, it was because his or her faith was not strong enough.
Now, thankfully, you hear a lot more in most Christian circles about brokenness. Most people I know are quite fond of the apostle Paul, not because he was a superachiever who spread the gospel throughout the known world, but because he realized that his pains and limitations were what kept him dependent on Christ. He knew he was a mess.
He said that we carry around the knowledge of Christ like a treasure in “jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:7–10 ESV).
I could relate with that.
The Prozac was not an instant fix-it kind of drug. It was medication, like high blood pressure medication. It treated my symptoms. As I started feeling better, I could then work on the root of the problem and begin to heal from things in the past. It helped me clearly think about how God’s grace applied to me.
I believe that Steven’s success, and the f
act that it put both of us in the spotlight, was part of God’s plan to glorify Himself through my struggles and inadequacies. I am the absolute least likely candidate in the world to be a “Christian celebrity wife.” I’ve always wanted to be just like Beth Moore when I grow up . . . so wise in the Word, a prolific speaker, great hair, and in love with Jesus! Or Ruth Graham, married for a lifetime to Billy, spunky and beautifully graceful all at the same time. Or Mother Teresa, who simply lived love through her actions.
But God made me the way He did and gave me the story we’re living. And even though I am not your usual candidate for celebrity wifedom, I believe it is all about showing off His glory. If a lot of people are watching our faith journey, our marriage, and our family because of Steven’s musical success, then that’s great, because it will help to shatter the illusion that Christians are supposed to be perfect.
People need to know that Christian leaders, singers, preachers, writers, whoever, are as cracked and broken as the next person. Maybe more so. Hopefully they are in positions of leadership, though, because they are serious about following Christ, and so people can see that real success in the kingdom of God is not about being strong and looking good and knowing all the right answers. It’s about continually yielding oneself to Jesus and determining to take purposeful little steps of obedience, and the ragged reality that it’s all about God and His grace at work in us.
I still have awfully dark days. I still take medication. I still see a counselor. I wish God would take my depression away. But so far He hasn’t, and perhaps that is because He’s using this as a way to keep me dependent on Him. I have to get my worth from Christ and Christ alone.
It’s a journey. I recognize the dark tides that can push and pull me to places I don’t want to go. So I anchor myself to the One who can take me where I do want to go.
I take a perverse pleasure in so many of the Psalms, and I am so absolutely grateful to God that He would include the wild writings of a guy like David, who clearly had his ups and downs. I can relate with the pain and great sweeps of melancholy in the Psalms. But I can also relate with the way David always returned to his hope in the Lord. His pain was real, but so was his hope. And in spite of being slightly crazy, David knew that the Lord God Himself knew him before he was born. He is the One who will cause our stories to ultimately end secure and well, right in His arms.
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