I don’t know why I did it. I would sit in my beanbag chair in front of the television and watch Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power” and be transfixed. He was an unassuming and approachable, charismatic and positive thinking preacher—kind of like if Mister Rogers ran a church. He spoke in a way that my elementary school mind could process, and millions of others, as well, since his show was the most popular hour-long church service in the world.At its peak the church had over 10,000 members. Schuller was the Joel Osteen of his day. He wrote dozens of books, selling millions with titles like Way To The Good Life (1963), Move Ahead With Possibility Thinking (1967), Self-Love (1975), You Can Be The Person You Want To Be (1976), Toughminded Faith for Tenderhearted People (1979), Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (1982), Tough Times Never Last but Tough People Do (1983), Living Positively One Day At A Time (1986).
Schuller opened Garden Grove Community Church in 1955 at an old drive-in movie theater, allowing people to sit in their cars and hear the sermon. He then built a facility where he could preach to 500 cars as well as people sitting inside the church. This eventually turned into the famous Crystal Cathedral, which is everything you’d think it’d be—a grand and glorious testimony to the goodness of God. And I helped build it.
I would regularly send in a portion of my allowance to support his ministry, and in return he’d send me thank you gifts, a small ivory cross which was my favorite. It was a great symbol of my belief and a connection to something bigger than myself.
It’s hard to know exactly what I was connecting with during those moments in my beanbag chair. He was unquestionably planting seeds of hope and optimism in my tiny brain, evidence of which can be seen in my music today. He told me that whatever hardship comes your way that it’s possible to make it through without becoming a victim of it. He spoke to the hurting, the struggling, the lonely, those wondering if life was ever going to get better. For some reason, even at that young age—when I felt so different from other kids my age, oftentimes getting beat up for it—I desired to know that life does get better, that hope is real, and that God loves me. Robert Schuller convinced me of this.
So when my Grandma Bob demonstrated her unbelievable strength in dealing with my Grandpa Kenny’s Alzheimer’s disease, I got it. I knew what she was doing, and I wanted to do that too. She taught me never to give up when times get rough. She told me the worms only pick at the best apples, and that while she felt, at times, like a fish on a hook—trapped—that if she struggled hard enough it might be possible to break loose.
I don’t understand why I had a fascination with God at such an early age, much less a TV preacher. But I do know for certain that from a very young age, I had the feeling that things could be better than they were. That relationships don’t have to be fractured. Dreams don’t have to be squashed. And that somehow, somehow in the magic seeds of faith, I could catch a glimpse of this better life—a life without pain or hurt or separation or frustration. Robert Schuller confirmed that for me, and then helped me put words on it.
I still believe things can be better than they are—even though I’m constantly tempted to focus on the way things are broken. How it all hurts more than I think it should. But to me, the fact that I even feel this way, is proof that there is something inside of me that knows what unbroken feels like. Something I believe was placed inside of me from a very early age.
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