STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN FINDS HOPE IN TRAGEDY
In new book, the Christian music singer leans on faith to carry him through
Ken Abraham and Steven Curtis Chapman sat face-to-face on Chapman’s back porch, looking each other in the eyes as Chapman relived May 21, 2008, the day his then-teenage son Will hit his 5-year-old daughter Maria with the SUV. It’s a story he’s told before. As Will drove the Land Cruiser slowly up the driveway, the rambunctious Maria darted out to meet him as her older sister screamed for her to stop. The fatal accident has been the dominant chapter in the family’s story for eight years — but Chapman doesn’t want the tragedy to define them. On the 30th anniversary of his first album, the Grammy-winning Christian singer teamed with Abraham, his longtime friend and New York Times bestselling author, to co-write his biography. “Between Heaven & the Real World: My Story” is in stores now. The book chronicles Chapman’s journey from his childhood in Paducah, Ky., through his courtship with his wife, Mary Beth, to Nashville where he’s enjoyed decades of success as a Christian music singer. Chapman’s self-effacing humor shines through the book as does his honesty about the struggles early in his marriage and the faith that carried his family through international adoption and their darkest days after Maria’s death. “He was so willing to look me in the eye and tell me that story,” Abraham said. “There were times neither of us could talk. His courage in reliving those horrific moments, …” he said, trailing off. Chapman described the process as “scabs getting torn off.”
“It was a process of … allowing myself, this one time, to go as deep as I needed to go to take people with me on that journey,” Chapman said.
In the book, Chapman describes sitting in his dining room with his wife — each working on projects for their oldest daughter Emily’s upcoming wedding. When younger daughter Shaohannah (Shaoey) got home from school, Mary Beth gave the babysitter the rest of the day off, and Shaoey and youngest sisters Stevey Joy and Maria went to play outside. Maria wanted help reaching the monkey bars, and when she noticed Will driving down the driveway, she ran toward the SUV.
Chapman was on the phone on the porch with his manager when he heard the screams. He rounded the corner to see his daughter laying lifeless in the grass, his wife trying to clear blood from her nose and mouth to give her CPR. He remembers the confusion and chaos of taking over CPR as his wife called 911. Initially Chapman thought Stevey Joy had been injured. Maria had changed into her sister’s clothes and there was so much blood, in the moment, Chapman couldn’t tell it was Maria.
The paramedics arrived and as Mary Beth screamed at them to save her daughter, Chapman started praying “at the top of my lungs.”
“God, you can’t let this happen. … You can’t ask this of us.”
Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Lifeflight helicopter arrived to carry Maria to the hospital. Chapman was rushing to the car when he was confronted by a policeman who demanded to interview Will about the accident. Chapman said Will would talk to the police, but not then. When the police officer wouldn’t back down, the singer yelled in his face and the officer relented.
As Chapman and his wife drove the car down the driveway toward the helicopter, they saw Will and older son Caleb on the ground by their pond. After the accident, Will started running. Caleb chased him, tackled him to the ground and held him as he sobbed — reiterating that the family loved him. Caleb ripped Will’s blood-soaked Tshirt from his body and threw it in the pond, saying, “We’ve got to get this off of you.”
When Chapman saw his boys on the ground, he rolled down the window and shouted, “Will Franklin, I love you. Your father loves you.”
Chapman was determined not to leave the hospital without Maria, writing that he would bar the doors and keep praying until “God brings our little girl back to us.”
It didn’t work that way. When the couple arrived at the emergency room, doctors told them they had done everything they could but Maria hadn’t survived. Mary Beth screamed and cried and Chapman asked to see Maria.
When they were led in, Maria looked like she was asleep. Chapman prayed for the next five minutes until his wife told him Maria was with Jesus. The singer wrote that he wanted to crawl into bed beside his daughter, but he had five other children who needed him. Chapman was aware that the doctors and nurses in the room were watching him, and he was “overcome with the sense” that he should say something.
“This is what everything in life comes down to,” he told them. “And if somehow this moment right now could change eternity for you, that would honor my little girl’s life.”
Chapman wondered how his family was going to survive. They mourned, prayed, leaned on hope, faith, friends and family.
Almost nine years later, Abraham noted that Chapman still carries the pain just below the surface. Seven months after writing the chapter about Maria’s death, Abraham said, he jokes with Chapman about sending him “a big bill for his therapist duties.”
As painful as writing parts of the book were, Chapman is thankful for the opportunity to remember his entire life in such detail.
“I don’t know that we do a good job in our culture of sitting and remembering our story, even the sad parts, and honoring those because they are all part of who we are,” he said. “All the twists and turns and missteps and mistakes and the failures, for me, being able to remember and trace the steps was an amazing process.”
With Chapman, Abraham’s goal was “to get his heart on paper.”
“He knew it had to be done and was willing to go there with me,” he said. “He didn’t keep digging those holes. He was always willing to come back up. There’s some fun stories in there. People are going to be encouraged. The takeaway is that no matter what you face in life, with your faith in God, you really can overcome.”
Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227, ciwatts@tennessean.com or on Twitter @CindyNWatts.