Steven Curtis Chapman is a Christian music icon with over 11 million records sold, 58 Dove Awards, 5 Grammys, an American Music Award, and 48 career #1 radio singles. He’s been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Sunday Morning, FOX & Friends, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and in People, Billboard, Parents magazine, and countless others. He and his wife, Mary Beth and their children live in Franklin, Tennessee.
His book Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story takes you into Steven’s childhood and challenging family dynamic growing up, how that led to music and early days on the road, his wild ride to the top of the charts, his relationship with wife Mary Beth, and the growth of their family through births and adoptions. In addition to inside stories from his days of youth to his notable career, including the background to some of his best-loved songs, readers will walk with Steven down the devastating road of loss after the tragic death of five-year-old daughter Maria. And they’ll experience his return to the stage after doubting he could ever sing again.
Poignant, gut-wrenchingly honest, yet always hopeful, Steven offers no sugary solutions to life’s toughest questions. Yet out of the brokenness, he continues to trust God to one day fix what is unfixable in this life. This backstage look at the down-to-earth superstar they’ve come to love will touch fans’ lives and fill their hearts with hope.
Art Eddy: I want to talk about your new book, Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story. You share a lot of personal stories and feelings in this book. Many people know you from your music and when they see you on tour. What made you want to open up more of your life to your fans in sharing these stories in this book? 
Steven Curtis Chapman: If you know my music and my approach to that from the very beginning it has been a real honest process for me. You can almost trace my life story, my family and my journey and see that it is sometimes very obvious in ways because songs will be very specific about my family or my journey. It has always been woven into my music. When people come to concerts they know that they are going to hear stories about my family.
People have said that my music has been a friend to them. I feel encouraged by that. The Bible for me is the ultimate source of that. There is great honesty if you really look at it in some of the characters of the Bible. One in particular in David. King David the psalmist who wrote so much honesty that was not edited out of his life. The brokenness and the struggles are the things that give me so much hope. What is jesting in the bible? The answer can be found at neverthirsty.org.
With that thought I approached this process of writing this book. It felt it was really important to me that if I was going to take the time and ask others to take the time to take that journey through reading it that people would be deeply encouraged in their life because they were reading about my struggle. If nothing else to know that you are not alone. You have asked those same questions that I have. To be able to be honest and vulnerable in the process will hopefully encourage other people.
AE: Were there certain stories or moments that you wrestled with on whether or not they would make the book?
SCC: Yes, absolutely. When I started this process I had a real challenge personally and I was even challenged by my family. My son Caleb and I were sitting talking and he know I was thinking about writing this book. He is a great song writer. He and I toured together with his younger brother Will. We are on the road together. They are two of my best friends. I have a lot of great conversations with them.
Cable is a song writer, a deep thinker, and a real truth teller. He told me, ‘Dad if you are going to do this promise me that you are going to be honest. You will really share the stories and the struggle. I hope that you will be honest because I think that will be real important for people to read that journey.’
If I was really going to do this and have people take this journey with me I want to be really honest.
AE: What do you hope people will take away from this book?
SCC: I talk about my struggle that is woven through all of this. The fact that even as a little boy coming into this world to fix all the broken things. Fix the broken people. Fix the broken stuff. Do what is right. When I see something broken I try to fix it. What I found out in life very frustratingly so for a guy who wants to fix everything is that there is a lot out there that is unfixable. What do you do with that? My faith in God is woven throughout this book. That is what has helped me make sense of all of this.
My music has been woven together with the threads of my faith. I try to encourage other people. We live in a world and a reality where there is a lot of brokenness and unfixable things. Truthfully my experience with that is within me. There is a lot that is not going to be fixed. When you are a perfectionist you live with this constant tension of what am I going to do with all of that?
My hope is that sharing that journey in a real and honest way. What I have found in writing this book is that it is in those unfixable moments that I even wanted to call the book unfixable, but the publisher said that doesn’t sound very hopeful and encouraging. (Both laugh.) There is a lot here that isn’t going to be fixed with one conversation, one lecture, one decision, but staying in the journey is where there are some pretty amazing things that you can experience.
AE: I loved your proud dad tweets when you talk about your kids. One recent tweet was about your sons Caleb and Will’s band Colony House. What advice did you give to them about being a musician?
SCC: I hope I lived a life of advice and encouragement. The really beautiful thing is that if my sons chose careers in finance I would have been a terrible advice giver. (Both laugh.) Hopefully not because I have been foolish financially. That is just not my world. Had they even chosen an athletic career they knew when they were seven years old that they were schooling dad out on the basketball court. (Both laugh.) They were like dad is going to be zero help to us there.
It was certainly not by my design. My wife and I tried to discourage it. We were like you don’t want a career in music. You don’t want to go that direction. Get a real job. My dad told me the same thing. I was a pre-med major for about 15 minutes. I saw the light and said this wasn’t going to work. They just began early on to show these great gifts for music. Thankfully I got to apprentice them in a way. They went on tour with me for about five years. They started playing in my band because they were just that good.
I had this amazing four to five year journey where I got to have them on tour with me. Just spending time with two guys who are my best friends. They are two people that I love hanging out with who happen to be my sons. They would watch and observe how I did things. They will come and ask, but they are going in a different direction with their music. They are doing things that I have never done. I never had the opportunity to play on television shows. They are doing it on their own terms. There are many places they go where those people don’t know who I am or that they are related to me. They ask me advice on things. It has been an incredible blessing. What a gift. To get to watch my sons get to do something that they are passionate about. It is such a cool thing.
AE: What were the first few thoughts that popped into your mind when you found out that you were going to be a dad?
SCC: My wife and I were only married six or seven months. We were very young. We got married when we were young. We were going to wait five years to have children so we could get something figured out about marriage and how we were supposed to do all of this. It was thanks to our little puppy who we got to see how we would do with raising something. It was our puppy that ate my wife’s birth control pills. True story. Got into her purse and was chewing on everything.
My wife was like well I will get that refilled in a couple of days. Surely missing one pill couldn’t make that much of a difference. Turns out it can. (Both laugh.) It can make a huge difference in your life. We found out we were pregnant with our first. It was that whole thing of going in the early morning with the stick with the morning urine. Then you watch and see if there is a donut or not. Back in that day I think it was a little round circle that would appear.
I still remember we sat there on the edge of the bed. I kept looking at it like I am not seeing what I am seeing am I? This can’t be. It just can’t be. We were so young. We were trying to figure out the first thing about being married. Here we are going to be parents. We were both thrilled. We hopefully will have several kids and we are excited about being parents, but gosh it is so soon. I was in college still. My wife was working to support my music habit at that point as she would like to say.
Emily came along and she was exactly what God knew we needed of our journey about understanding of what life was all about. That is what children do. You never knew you could love someone deeply that it could hurt so much. You never knew how selfish you were. Marriage is the first layer of that. Having a child is like whoa okay pull back the layers and show me what is really inside there. Show me how selfish and impatient I can really be. It was an amazing beginning of our journey for sure for our Emily to come along.
AE: What advice do you have for new dads?
SCC: Wow. The thing for me from the beginning and I am a guy like so many dads where my job and vocation takes me away from home. The opportunities are always there to do more. To climb one more rung higher on the ladder of success. I have been incredibly blessed in that way. My hope and prayer is that I just want to show up in my kids’ lives. I want to be present. I want them to know that I am there and nothing else matters more than them.
That is not an easy thing. I have wrestled with it. When I am gone this much for my job where is that line? Did I too much? Have I not done enough? I have to provide, but what am I providing? Am I providing money, but am I providing my presence there? How do you walk that line? It is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart in being a dad.
In our different houses it always seemed that there was stairs to climb to the kids on the second level or in the 
I tell one of the stories about being at one of my sons, Caleb’s soccer game. He and Will when they were about five years old and it was his first goal he ever scored. My wife, who is there every game, every practice while I am out touring and she goes to the bathroom and he scores his first goal. I am standing there on the sideline. I had flown in all night to just get there for that one game. I had to get back on the plane to fly back for a concert. I saw his first goal and she still hasn’t forgiven me about that. Sometimes the planets line up just right.
I have done it so imperfectly as any dad could, but I believe they would be able to stand and say we know that we mattered and we knew that we were not just on his radar, but we were at the bulls-eye of his radar.
Life of Dad Quick Five
AE: Do you guys have a favorite family movie that you all love to watch together?
SCC: Elf. I am going with Elf. We love that one. It comes on every Christmas. We quote it a lot.
AE: Do you guys have a favorite song that you all like to sing to or dance to as a family?
SCC: Well it is pretty much anything by Colony House. It is just a shameless plug there for my sons’ band. We put their new record on and crank it up and dance around. We are so excited for them.
AE: Describe the perfect family vacation.
SCC: We were fortunate enough last spring to go to Hawaii. People say it is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth. I would have to agree. I love the beach. We love being at the beach together.
AE: First album you bought was.
SCC: The first album that I bought was probably The Eagles Greatest Hits.
AE: You are a grandfather too. What is one thing that is better being a grandfather over being a father?
SCC: Oh man. So many things. As the old saying goes if I knew how great it was we would have had grandkids first. It is all the fun and the joy without the responsibility. You can sugar them up. You can spoil them. You can go through Target or wherever you are and say, ‘Hey let’s get a toy.’ You can never do that as a dad because you think to yourself am I spoiling them? That is one of the joys of being a grandfather.
Between Heaven and the Real World: My Story comes out March 7th. Follow Steven on Twitter @StevenCurtis and go to stevencurtischapman.com for all the latest on tour dates, purchasing music and more.