Still Here: Why We Finally Wrote a Book Together on Staying Together by Mary Beth Chapman

For years, people have said to Steven and me, “You should write a book on marriage.”

Even early on—after the amazing gift Steven gave me in the song “I Will Be Here”—people began to think, Well, they must have it all figured out.

From the outside, I suppose it might have seemed like an obvious idea that we should write a book about marriage. Steven has written so many songs throughout his career about love and commitment … about choosing each other and choosing family. Our lives have unfolded publicly in ways we never quite expected. People have seen the beauty of our family, the journey of adopting our daughters, and the unimaginable grief of losing one of them. And through all of that … we’re still married.

The only problem: our marriage.

If people only knew how much conflict we’ve had over the years. If they only knew how many hard conversations and painful seasons we’ve walked through. If they only knew how much fighting there has sometimes been between us.

We were married so young, and I was missing a whole lot of tools in my marriage toolbelt. Thankfully, along the way, we have had wise counsel and trusted friends who were willing to walk with us through some of those hard seasons. None of them ever told us we should separate or divorce. But Steven and I have often said that if we had ever come to that conclusion ourselves, some of those wise voices might have simply said, “We understand.”

I laughed out loud one day when I read a quote from Ruth Graham, the wife of Reverend Billy Graham. When someone asked her if she had ever considered divorcing Billy, she shook her head and smiled and said, “Divorce? Never. Murder? Often.”

I remember reading that and thinking, Now, there is someone I could be friends with. Not because I didn’t love Steven—oh how I love this sweet, creative songwriter of a man. In fact, many of the qualities I admire most in him are the very things that first drew me to him when we were dating. And then, we got married. 

Yet somehow, the very same differences between us—the ones that once seemed so charming—suddenly became the things that could irritate us the most.

We still loved each other. But I realized pretty quickly that marriage is a choice—a choice that, in many ways, is meant to make us holy, not necessarily happy all the time. (Thank you, Tim Keller, for putting words to that truth.)

There have been seasons when Steven and I wondered if we even liked each other very much. We loved each other, but living together through stress, grief, parenting, and two very different personalities sometimes made that love hard to find.

And yet, often the clouds would part and the sun of this amazing family and life God had given us would break through. In those moments, we could SEE clearly again that what the Lord had brought together was good and beautiful. But just like life itself, those clouds could roll back in again.

If we’re honest, I think most of us live in that space—sweet and sour, joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment. And maybe that tension is actually an invitation to know Jesus more deeply.

Pretty early on, we knew we could never write an “answer book” on marriage. You know the kind: Do these five things, and you too will win at marriage and life. No way. We couldn’t write a book that pretended we had it all figured out. That wouldn’t be honest, and it certainly wouldn’t be helpful. In fact, many marriage books—without meaning to—can make people feel like their own marriages must be failing because they don’t look like the ones being described.

That’s not the story we wanted to tell. But we did realize there was something we could share. We could talk about grace. Lots of grace. We could talk about what it really means to bear with one another in love—not in theory but in the messy reality of two imperfect people trying to keep a promise they made many years ago. 

Steven and I have now been married almost 42 years. And the longer we’ve been married, the more we’ve come to understand something we didn’t fully grasp when we were young and standing at the altar, thinking love alone would make everything easy. (Hahaha … we had no idea.)

Faithfulness in marriage is inseparable from forgiveness. You simply cannot have one without the other.

Every marriage will have moments when promises are strained by disappointment, misunderstanding, selfishness, or pain. There are days when loving each other feels easy and joyful, and there are days when loving each other requires humility, patience, and a willingness to begin again.

(Full disclosure: I still feel like I have so much to learn. I am very much still a student of marriage—and of my husband.)

Our story has had all of those days. What has kept us here is not that we are especially wise or strong. What has kept us here is the grace of God that keeps meeting us in our weakness and reminding us that love is not just a feeling—it is a commitment renewed again and again.

When our first granddaughter was born in Ireland, I remember Steven and I standing hand in hand beside Eiley’s crib. In that moment, the reality of our entire journey—the good, the bad, and the ugly—came flooding into my heart. The beauty. The pain. The disappointments. All of it.

I looked at Steven and said quietly, “We could have missed this.” We could have forfeited this life … this family … this moment of standing here together as grandparents.

And there we were—standing hand in hand, still deeply in love, though now with a few battle wounds, some scars, and a whole lot of grace given and received along the way. The journey. The process. The chaos. The years.

This book shares stories of the ways we have hurt each other and the ways we have learned—sometimes slowly—to extend grace. We share the lessons God has been faithful to teach us along the way. And we share the hope that even when marriages feel fragile, God’s grace is still strong enough to restore and renew.

In many ways, this book is the story of how we went from Steven writing the song “I Will Be Here” when we were young to now being able to say, decades later, that we are still here. Still learning. Still growing. Still choosing each other.

If this book does anything, I hope it reminds people that a lasting marriage isn’t built on perfection. It’s built on grace, forgiveness, and choosing each other again and again—sometimes day by day. And if we are still here, it is only because of the grace of God.