Gary Chapman (Singer / Songwriter) Shares Moving Story of His Father Passing To Heaven

Is your journalists are six and 130 recording of Gracie and Johnny was just so grateful that she had given Colby on the between Gracie and John Erickson totter.

They got almost 90 years of disability and that's extraordinary. Then they sing the song together so I'm just grateful that she and Kim took the time today to call someone else on the phone that I wanted to have back for Easter Sunday particular because it's a very poignant story for him and I really want to share. He shared with me privately what you all to hear this to this Gary Chapman numerous awards. Psalms it that are just part of our daily life now and that he's written and so forth. You guys known for years. We gearing thank you for calling into the show and thank you for being with us. Tell us about Easter some years back, and what happened and I'm just to get out of the way and let you tell us because this is a powerful story. I want you to have all the timeshare that you need our brother and all. So good to hear your voice you glad glad she's doing better. I found how to make solo. Easter is always a special day, you know, if you believe in Jesus but it got more special to me. 11 years ago my dad lived with my wife Kathy and I Parkinson's for eight years, 30 cancer last two lawsuits of his legs during the last year and 1/2 or so, so we were always close, but just let it suffice to say we got much, much closer. I suspect the first tier to have a biological need a bed change my doctor and I got a chance to return the End he was a preacher's whole life amazing guy eighth grade education but voracious leader and was just incredibly smart, really funny. Justin amazing human said my whole life if I did want to be in task demands.

My dad was. I went and I'm so I'm still working on steelwork commodities amazing.

So when he when he got toward the end of his life. The despite having access to all the great drugs with the pleasure as you're heading out the door. He couldn't do any of that unlike you getting excited never ingested anything that altered his consciousness so he was just too awkward for me couldn't couldn't do it so the thing about him, comfort was me sit in on the edge of his bed employment and singing the songs he had taught me 50 years previous and then it was amazing. That was such an incredible time and those moments lives in me forever on Good Friday 11 years ago. That night he went into it, for lack of a better word and computing did not wake up on the shares from that. My sisters and nurse my sister Betty lived in town were all very close. She came over the house and then she actually made a pallet next to his bed and she was she was not leaving. I didn't have a grenade so I couldn't get out of the house. She's just she's there. And now Easter Sunday morning and let it just let it suffice to say this got small-town preacher. His whole life he could've done much more that that's what he was called to do and he knew it and he was joyful when it that he will. That's who he was. His entire life he lived really really well and he died better.

She absolutely jiggled all the way to begin to quit back backup from from did Friday. The last two weeks of his life. He she changed all of us are God changed all of us to him, and yet 1 More Way to get out. Sometimes a search on his people think I'm crazy and that I'm just beyond caring, I was down there with them one day and is the was just sit there in his recliner and I looked over at him and he was competing just locked up and respond to X next to Colin's name alone. I like smacking them basically build a couple times but did have an is much as we knew he was at the end of life. I thought we should. That should that was 49 nondramatic that is completely nonresponsive. I couldn't find calls.

It did seem like he was grieving, downspouts, brother and sister told well it happened about three or four. Five minutes. I don't know what it was Pete. She came back and we came back he was. He was laughing that he had a lot to say they had been visiting with his mom and dad other brothers. He was one of six boys and a girl and his brothers that had died. She had been visiting with all of them they could stop Ptolemy about Okay. He proceeded to do that counted up the memories and think it's great times in that last two weeks of his life, one particular point in time was my brother was in the room when it happened. And every time it was something really specific, really telling that nobody else knew of my brothers. The pilot has been his whole life started out as a crop duster just just a wild child about it being a captain on Southwest Airlines for 35 years. He's now had nothing education department for the Windsor County Sheriff's Department's helicopter guy P total two planes last year and he caught, dusted, and he decided that he had a guardian angel moves to Oxbow she killed and no demanding that he didn't tell anybody. Tell me where close as brothers can get it until his wife couldn't tell anybody lest we have a God and his angels, dad took his little triple, but was in the room came back and motioned them over between them, got them to get real close to him talk is to try to get his voice remained in close.

He said I just met Ralph.

He told me to cook.

He told me you've given them fits your whole life and you need to slow down a little bit okay my brother just hit his knees if you knew him you know how funny it is that that is what he would baby thank you those moments are just incredibly precious within that Sunday morning back to Sunday morning right at sunrise. Easter 11 years ago today to the day my sister heard his breathing changed around 5 o'clock in the morning. She, curled up in bed with interested check on Ben Hur thought she she heard voices in the room up above the master suite and in the house is up above his area and that she heard voices she felt well during Your linkages is at least a one have to wake them up.

Only I was not awake. I always very very much in the middle of the best dreams I've had so far on this planet and in my dream, which played out almost to a T. Two hours later my brother and sister and I were standing outside on the driveway watching the people from Harper chills Memorial Gardens wheeled his body out to go to the funeral home just sit there watching it standing there in the driveway and just in an instant. She was there with us only made me look like I just died of cancer. She was about beast. He was so gorgeous. He was so beautiful I've never seen anything or anyone. So perfect and beautiful in my life. I could not stop staring at him.

It was overwhelming and he's talking he's just going not even nothing, just as happy as you could be.

He looks to be about 35 just in the absolute peak of life just muscled out the trash can. I can't tell you how perfect you look when I could not focus on what he was saying as I remember thinking I should really pay attention because of that decision stuff and I couldn't do it because I was lost and help beautiful. She was the one thing I remember saying them saying was kids is much as I tried my best to teach you about heaven.

I was right, but I was wrong because there are so much more in line in that moment my phone rang in this claim that it was my sister telling me that he had just taken his last breath without question for me. God allowed him to stop by my dream and do believe that Janet that that morning has become the fulcrum point of my life because I don't I don't just believe anymore. I walked the ologies church when I was six years old and I have believed from the moment I've tried my best, with varying degrees of success is my Wikipedia page actual text. I had I been his. From that moment, but during G.I. difference in the leaving and knowing I know and I will always know that it's really you. Heaven is real and the time that we invest in each other trying that we give to the hand be in the hands and feet of God in whatever form it takes is the only thing that matters.

Nothing else is going to have any value and all pictures just as changed as change in a dramatically numb, grateful more than a contract. Well, I got this is what had you on because that is such a profound story and I've got just a few minutes left the one of things that you learn to use the TP set. There is that you played and I know you play these great hymns that you do on your Facebook page website you been playing himself for some years. I remember when Gracie's grandmother died and her sister was on one side and that you had two granddaughters gracing her sister and they saying hymns to her that she went on to glory me that's that's out there that's the way it should be beautiful and about these hymns and why they are so wide you been resurrected, not resurrecting the but you been reintroducing them to people and introducing some people for the first time and while these are so important.

We only got just about a minute or two but just talk about that for just a second. While that's important. God is called calling him a week you found on Facebook you will be surrounded by about 65,000 people now that will feel just like you did do some still live for hundreds of years because there week their lives because of the very same Holy Spirit that inspired and still breeds in them today. If you'll just give them a minute. They all come out of one of two or a combination of two things extreme pain, extreme joy and most of the time. The two are inseparable and the back. When people write songs not for money but because they knew they had to because God said right this. They were very pure amazing song.

It's been my joy to two.

In many cases, actually resurrected because a lot of them are Gail Finney Crosby Road 67 songs and most people know about 10 of so the others it's an amazing joy to do it. Gary I want you to know how much it means to me personally, just to hear the story and and I know that our audience finds screaming the whole country is just you know flipped upside down right now. People very unsettled and Internet unsettled this when we speak with that conviction that you have that knowing you know what if these Lord at all. He is Lord of all and this is something we hang onto thank you very much. I like all this on the on the page on the podcast when we put this out as will as I want people to know these hymns and love them as much as I know you do and I do thank you for taking the time to cultivate me to thank you dear chap this is over the character. This funeral, this is the show for you as a caregiver help you stay strong and healthy will see an adjustment. Think about all the legal documents you need power of attorney will, living wills, and so many more than about such things as disputes about medical bills. What if instead of shelling out hefty fees for a few days of legal help paid a monthly membership and got a law firm for life while we are taking legal representation and making some revisions in the form of accessible, affordable, full-service coverage. Finally, you can live life know you have a lawyer in your back pocket who at the same time is an empty it's called legal shield and its practical, affordable and a must for the family caregiver visit caregiver legal.com that's caregiver legal.com. Isn't it about time someone started advocating for you www.dotcaregiverlegal.com on independent associate.

Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you. I'm gracing Rosenberger in 1983 I experienced a horrific car accident leading 80 surgeries in both legs and became it. I questioned why God allowed something so brittle to happen to me that over time I questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God that understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with help more than a dozen years we been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people on a regular basis. We purchased ship equipment and supplies and with the help of inmates in Tennessee prison. We also recycle parts from donated lambs all � is to point others to Christ.

The source of my help and strength, please visit standing with help.com to learn more and participate in lifting others, and that standing without.com I'm gracing.

I am staining with help and I and us today is the joy of the Lord. Your strength, that is, there's a very specific reason I picked that song when I asked Gracie to consider singing that with Russ Tethys from her new record the scope resilient and because that's how we do it.

That's what we that's that's how we do this, we anchor ourselves in this and and as we listen to John Erickson taught a and kin taught in the first hour talk about this at this little one when amazing sign it is to people around us in our culture that we are not miserable as we are going through some of these things were things I admire about Gracie the most is that she belly laughs like a drunk Viking and she has this infectious laughter and zest for life. She really loves to live life and even though right now. She still dealing with the tail end of the covert virus. She's she's got it, but she's moving through it and she's going to be okay and is but she is not willing to be sidelined to the best of her abilities and I know a lot of people that are like people are willing to just kind of like I want to be a part of this is to what why would God do this would but but when you see the implications of the resurrection and what that means to us as believers in this as she and Johnny saying on the same record because he lives we can face tomorrow. Because I know I know I know he holds the future. Do you know that it's really important for us to be able to articulate this to people around us. This is something Nemo can you say it to someone else because of what where they can look to for help. What's out there, what's to sustain you through what Johnny lives with what's going to sustain you through what Gracie lives with or assist caregivers watching somebody suffer like this.

I watch Gracie suffer for 34 years. What sustains you and six drugs, alcohol, what none of those things work and an edge is you heard from Gary that he's anchored himself with Gary Chapman here.

Reason just of the last segment anchored himself and that knowledge and that's why we do what we do because we've seen these things and if we allow ourselves to get freaked out by these crises that come our way and they will come away.

You can't sustain free For that long after couple decades.

You have to figure out something else because you can't just stay freaked out all the time and and I look at I want to bring something to you from CS Lewis wrote a a a essay about living in the atomic age and I put this on my blog and hope for the caregiver.com is good. Hope to caregiver.com/blog that's the one the first ones out there and I just replaced atomic age with coping like teenage and how you live like this and here's what he said excuse me.

That's not the bar, such as hayfever people to how we do this, he said, I'm tempted reply why is you would've lived in the 16th century, when the plague visited London almost every year you would've lived in a Viking age when raters from Scandinavia to make land and cut your throat any night, or indeed as you are already living in an age of cancer, syphilis, paralysis, error rates, age of railway accidents or motor exits. In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.

Believe me, dear Sir or Mdm., you and all whom you love her already sentenced to death long before the COBIT 19 and quite a high percentage of us are going to die in unpleasant ways. We had indeed one great advantage of our ancestors anesthetics, but we have that still it's perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of a painful or premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances in which death itself was not a chance at all but a certainty. This is the first one to be made in the first action is to be is to pull ourselves together loose as if we are going to be destroyed by this then let it when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, praying, working, teaching reading, listening to music, bathing the children playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts think we do that right now with the governor say that, but not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about a virus. My wife has this virus thanked it. It may break our bodies, but it doesn't have to dominate our minds and this is from CS Lewis back in 1948. This is the message that I want to hang onto as we deal with these challenging times that were dealing with okay I just just wanted you to hang on and am bringing these guest on the show because I want you to hear from lots of different voices from lots of different walks of life who have wrestled with these things with half tough circumstances and are anchored more and more in their faith.

Standing with the presenting sponsor of the show, and when Graca found that organizations standing with. We named it specifically for that reason that we are standing literally standing. She is literally standing up to prosthetic legs with hope knowing that this is not enough wish hope that conviction and part of that is this week give up this show and then we have the prosthetic limb outreach and you've heard her story and we have inmates that work with this at a prison in Tennessee and by core civic and is one of the many faith-based progress because they know the faith-based programs also anchor people who are in a prison and pointed to a place of safety where they can rebuild their lives and they help us recycle prosthetic limbs broken items from broken people and we were working with broken people to do it and they were going to help more broken people were all pointing to the one who is broken for us once again part be a part of that anchor yourself in that of knowing that you know what he who began a good working you is faithful to complete these Lord at all is Lord of you believe that if not today is the great day to start doing to believe that just ask Holger scared him with discarding good hope for the caregiver.com for more blogs free podcast is free all these things are out there for take advantage of helping caregivers make better cared