Chapter One

Firsthand Rubble
Bonnie’s Story

“Terrible trouble” arrives custom-made for each of us. My own season of trouble certainly seemed as terrible as anything I could imagine. Yet, what God allows others to endure makes my story seem like a walk in the park. I have never buried a child, I have never suffered through cancer or watched a loved one die slowly. But all pain is relative—all pain promises suffering.

There was a decade in my life that spanned an especially messy stretch of trouble, trouble that led me through a great testing of my faith. Many times I felt as if I were drowning in the challenges of my circumstances. I was dog-paddling with everything I could muster against a black tide of trouble, which left me exhausted emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

When I finally stopped thrashing in the water, to my surprise I was able to float. My astonished eyes saw scattered glimpses of light penetrating the darkness. Burned into me from my season of terrible trouble was the searing reality of Jesus Christ and His love for me. From this time on, Christ became piercingly alive, human, real—and I came to the truest, most intimate personal experience of the mystery and miracle of His grace.

God promises not to give us more than we can take. However, life piles misery on our heads until it feels like every last breath of our faith will be choked off. God is ever-present and faithful even in the screaming silence, and never leaves our side. But, although God never leaves us down for the count, it can feel as if He comes frighteningly close to walking away. I have felt the last strand of hope pull as far as it will stretch—near the breaking point—before peace came raining down. Perhaps that’s what it takes for certain stubborn, type-A, I-can-make-it-aloners! Maybe learning to trust God takes this kind of eleventh-hour faith where our hearts break open, allowing God’s grace to permeate our lives and become real.

Before that decade of my life, I had a predetermined set of expectations. Raised in a godly home and in a strict, legalistic church, surrounded by loving parents and friends, I was headstrong and naïve in my vision of how the drama of my personal life would unfold. Divorce would never be a chapter written into my life story. Single parenthood was a situation for weak, messed-up people. I was happy, and thought clinical depression was for other people—some-thing that you had like the flu, like Jack Nicholson experienced in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I knew nothing of grace, knew only of the “rules” put in place that were supposed to safeguard me from the messier experiences that tripped up the less enlightened. In my lifeless theology, I believed that if I did “A” and worked hard for “B” then God would be there to finish with “C.” Little did I know what was around the corner.

Despite my church’s condemnation of the arts, I grew up playing the piano, acting in local theater productions and in commercials, and modeling. I was trying to find “my gig.” One pivotal day when I was in my mid- s I was invited to sing background vocals for a young girl named Amy Grant, who was set to go out on her first tour with a band. Standing onstage with Amy, I experienced the joy of performing in my first Christian concert. I was flooded with gratitude as I real-ized I could become a part of a community of artists who used their gifts to represent their faith. I went on to sing with Russ Taff, and I started a comedy group called “Ariel.”

In the early s, I met Melodie Tunney and Marty McCall, and we formed the singing group First Call. We started with a bang: touring with Sandi Patty and recording the first of what would be projects in a -year ministry. At last I was a successful musician with a popular Christian vocal group and had, I believed, a rock-solid career. First Call produced projects in years, winning three Dove Awards, “Best New Artist,” and then “Group of the Year” twice, as well as five Grammy nominations. First Call was a passion of my heart, and I poured all of my creative energy into the ministry. We were flying high, and I believed First Call’s work was untouchable by failure.

Then the rug was pulled out from under me. First Call fell apart in a season in my life when the messiness of my divorce was still raw, and the impact of my personal healing still very uncertain. Amid controversy, we lost Marabeth Jordon, who had replaced Melodie, and all our hearts were broken. I realized how vulnerable we were to the same issues that seek out and destroy other relationships, marriages, and friendships.

So at the age of , I was a single parent with two small children. I was lost in a dark fog as to who I was as a woman and a Christian. Every morning, I woke up and struggled through another agonizing day of trying to make sense of the stress, finances, hormones, and fragments of failed relationships.

At one time, I was sure that if I found myself this broken, God would have no choice but to send me hurtling like flaming toast into the nearest abyss! But here I was. My terrible trouble came packaged as an unwanted divorce, single parenthood, the loss of my music ministry, clinical depression, and financial chaos.

I call myself a recovering basket case, because that’s the honest truth. I’m a poster child for a bumpy, messy life. During the ten years of attempting to adjust to circumstances I never imagined having to face, I fell down flat on my face over and over again. Failure moved in. I lived daily in fear of loneliness, of never being loved again—the aching reality of singleness tormented my dreams. At a certain point I just caved in, and I became very familiar with the condition of clinical depression. I felt more and more like I might end up in one of those psychiatric hospitals, staring out the barred windows, longing for death.

Tragically, divorce, single parenthood, and depression are so commonplace in our culture that they may almost appear to fall short in meeting the criteria for “terrible trouble” category. But I know firsthand now why God hates divorce—because it tears apart commitments, dreams, and the lives of innocent children.

Where once I was judgmental, my circumstances have granted me empathy. Now I relate to the vulnerable, frightened faces of single parents. When someone loses a job, I understand their fear and their concern about simple things, such as how to feed their family. I have lived through the terror of depression and the fight for life—literally, for the will to have some fight left. I remember how lonely I was, how much I prayed for another chance at marriage, how I was left at the end of myself, wondering if God had turned His back on me as a lost cause. I can still recall the bitterness of feeling forsaken.

If I ever forget, all I have to do is look at my old journal entries, such as this one:

May 1997

Such a dark struggle going on in the most vulnerable places of my heart. Intense moments of utter despair, disheartening waves of doubt that I will ever be out of debt. Fear that this endless traveling—leaving my children sleeping in their rooms while I fly off before dawn across the country to sing about a faith that at times feels hopeless—is madness!

I fight against the tide of loneliness.

I am so angry at God! I just want to punch Him— pound on Him—ask Him why He doesn’t hear my prayers. Yet, I know in the midst of feeling this that He does hear—I just do not see. Psalm —“His pleasure is in those who fear Him, who wait for His true love.”

It strikes me now that the “sweet-bye-and-bye,” promised-land-someday, pie-in-the-sky theology does little to quench the burning sting of pain here and now. I can’t even imagine the new heaven! I’ve got so much on my earthly plate. I don’t doubt where I am ultimately headed…I just grieve the loss of where I am.

Because I have walked through my dark valley, I have a passion to reassure others with messy lives about God’s love. As Anne Graham Lotz so beautifully puts it, “It’s when the Red Sea is before you, the mountains are on one side of you, the desert is on the other side, and you feel the Egyptian army closing in from behind that you experience His power to open an escape route. Power to do the supernatural, the unthinkable, the impossible.”

Standing with my back to the waters, alone and crying out to God, I turned the corner from despair and began my journey toward peace. I gave up. I let go of everything I had ever envisioned my life holding. I laid down every dream, every prayer, and every desire for relief before God and cried out loud—

I embrace the “No!” I choose to believe that You are God and You are the Father of my children and the Husband of my heart. Although your silence is deafening, I will find peace there. I know You hear my prayers, and You say you are not slow to answer, so I will live with joy in the “no’s.” Where You are, there is holiness. So I will lay down every treasure I have held to so tightly and find holiness in the places You have me. If I am broken and alone, and all looks like loss, I will believe that You will bring me out of this time in a stronger state of intimacy with You and Your Son than I have ever known.

I wrote a pivotal song about this bungee-jump of faith called “The Day I Lay My Isaac Down.” Realizing that dreams clutched too tightly become idols, I let go of my dreams and took a free-fall leap of faith into the abyss so I could trust in the character of God. My crash site was my salvation—because it was there that I finally broke apart and let in the mercy of Christ.

What appeared to be the end—was the beginning.

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Excerpted from God Loves Messy People By Bonnie Keen. Copyright © 2002 by Harvest House Publishers. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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