Purposefooled: Kelly & Jimmy Needham

Episode Transcript

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Purposefooled

Guests:Kelly and Jimmy Needham

From the series:Purposefooled (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:July 25, 2024

Kelly: I’m very careful to put anything on myself as an identity marker besides the very narrow lane of: “I am a child of God.” I feel very hesitant to attach anything else to that—mother, wife, author, neighbor, because all of that can go away.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Dave: This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann: When we first got married,—

Dave: Oh! We’re going back there?

Ann: Yes!

Dave: I did not know you were starting there. [Laughter]

Ann: I was so excited because we were going to change the world together: “We’re going to follow Jesus. We’re not sure what this looks like, or where He’s going to call us, but we’re going to follow.” I felt like my life had so much purpose as I was following Him.

Dave: Me, too.

Ann: And then, I remember getting to a point—you probably remember hearing this over and over, [where] we had three boys, five years old and under. I had this mantra in my head. Instead of being filled with this purpose, I started saying, “I have no life. [Laughter] I have no life.” Do you remember that?

Dave: Oh, yes. I heard it every day. [Laughter]

Ann: And I think what’s happened now—I see this happening with a generation of people—is that they have this purpose, and they feel like, “Oh, my purpose is going to be this grand, extravagant, life-changing…” They’re going to be on this platform that’s so big. I get a little frustrated by that, at times, because I’m thinking, “What happened to: ‘Let’s follow Him wherever He has us go?’”

Dave: So, we’re going to talk about purpose today. [Laughter] We have the Needhams in the studio. You already heard their voices over there. [Laughter] Jimmy and Kelly are with us.

Ann: Tell us what you guys do (besides parent your five children).

Kelly: Well, that’s about 90 percent of my life. [Laughter]

Jimmy: It is about 90 percent, yes.

Kelly: So—

Dave: —I mean, you have a one-year-old up to thirteen.

Kelly: That’s right! Yes, so we are in the training obedience stage of that 18-month early tantrums, all the way to 13-year-old tantrums—

Jimmy: —tantrums. Yes, that’s right.

Kelly: —of: “I don’t want to wear”—

Jimmy: It’s tantrums all around, basically. [Laughter]

Kelly: —“I don’t want to wear my helmet on the way to school.” “Sorry, on your bike by the road—no! We are going to do that.”

Jimmy: Yes, that’s right.

Kelly: It’s a wide spread.

Ann: And two of those kids are adopted?

Jimmy: Yes, that’s right—

Kelly: That’s right, yes.

Jimmy: —from India.

Dave: And you’ve got a podcast.

Kelly: We do! Yes. We have a studio in our little upstairs room. We love doing that together. It’s been so fun. For a couple of years, we’ve been doing that.

And then, on the side, while the kids are at school, I’m trying to find little ways to write, here or there, in seasons, different seasons. And then, Jimmy is a pastor at our church.

Jimmy: Yes, pastoring now.

Dave: How many years did you travel and tour in New Jersey?

Jimmy: I first got signed to a label when I was 19 or 20. And then, I kind of spent all of my 20s, and my early 30s, touring, doing that; making records.

And then, right around 30 or 31, I started to roll off the road life and started plugging more into the local church (the church where we were members). I came on staff and started doing that there. I still write music and do that sort of thing, but I would say the lion’s share of my time has been pastoring, preaching, leading worship; those types of things.

Dave: Well, talk a little bit about Purposefooled. Did you have the same experience that Ann was talking about, as a mom, like losing your purpose or direction?

Kelly: Yes! Actually, surprisingly, I feel like that moment happened for me before kids.

Dave: Ooh.

Ann: Oh.

Kelly: Really, when Jimmy music career took off, it really challenged me. It exposed those holes in my understanding of what makes life meaningful, what makes my activities meaningful, really early. We were 20 when we got married. We were in college together, expecting to have fairly “normal” jobs. And then, while we were engaged, he signs a record deal. We’re on the road; we get married; we’re traveling every weekend.

Ann: Wow.

Kelly: He’s doing concerts, signing autographs, and doing TV shows. And I’m just along for the ride, using a lot of my—I have a business degree—so, I naturally fell into this role of merchandise management, and road manager, and general manager, and do the website; all the things.

Ann: But—

Kelly: —Here I am, at these concerts. My husband’s preaching the gospel from stage. People are telling me, every day, “His music has changed my life!” All I’m feeling is: “I want to do ministry, too. And I’m stuck here”—

Ann: “What am I doing?”

Kelly: —“on the bench; on the sidelines,” doing the nitty gritty that has to get done, but it really was hard for me. I felt very unsatisfied in that space.

I felt it, again, in motherhood when I had two kids in diapers.

Ann: Yes.

Kelly: It was the same experience: sending him off on these tours and all this, and I’m home with kids.

Ann: “Bye! Have fun being famous while I’m wiping bottoms.” [Laughter]

Jimmy: Yes, yes. [Laughter]

Kelly: Exactly! I had one moment where you were at a photo shoot for your album, Clear the Stage. I literally have a baby on one shoulder. I’m in the same clothes I slept in, and it’s 3 pm. [Laughter] I think I have spit-up [on me]; the house is a mess, and I’m at home, texting him back. I remember getting on my knees in the bedroom: “Lord, help me excited for him and be happy. I’m just mad right now.” [Laughter]

Dave: Did you guys ever talk about it?

Kelly: Oh, yes!

Dave: Was that like a conflict in your marriage? Did it come out?

Kelly: Absolutely, it was a conflict.

Ann: Jimmy, what did it make you feel? [Laughter]

Jimmy: Yes, well, I don’t know. I think it took a little while for you to even be able to identify the feeling.

Kelly: Yes.

Jimmy: The feelings almost came first.

Ann and Kelly: Yes.

Jimmy: And then, the logic behind them came second.

Dave: Yes.

Jimmy: I think, early on in our marriage, it was more just like: “Oh, man! We’re fighting a lot,” or “There’s conflict,” or “My wife isn’t happy.” Neither of us kind of knew why. Would you say that’s true?

Kelly: Absolutely.

Jimmy: Eventually—

Kelly: —I did not have words for any of that. I was mad at my circumstances; that’s really what was happening. And I was mad at the Lord, ultimately, for that, but I was taking it out on Jimmy. I think that wrestling, for me—one of the biggest transformations that happened, as I started taking those things to the Lord—is realizing, “My deep ache is really that my life, my activity, and my work would be meaningful. It’s hard for it to feel meaningful when all I’m doing all day is changing diapers, and my husband is ‘changing the world,’ sharing the gospel,” right?

Ann: Yes.

Dave: Right.

Kelly: There’s this hunger for my work to matter. I think one thing I felt really comforted by the Lord, through His Word in, is that that longing is good; that’s actually a good longing, that I want my life to matter. That I want to do things that are meaningful is a good, godly longing. Jesus doesn’t despise it, and I’m actually made for something great.

Ann: Yes.

Kelly: But it’s actually bigger than my work; it’s bigger than motherhood. I think that even helped me, in motherhood, to think: “Motherhood isn’t enough. No, it’s not.” And if I were still on the road with my husband, that still wouldn’t be enough either. I’m actually made for something even more than that. Feeling a validation to those deep longings was what began to change things and actually grant me the contentment I knew that I needed to stay in the seasons that God had put me in.

Ann: Take us back there. How did that come about? Because I think, as a listener, and especially as a mom—where you’re just feeling, “What is my purpose?”—everyone has that thought. How did you get to that point of—did you come to a crisis point?

One of the things you just slipped in there [is] “…as I spent time with God.”

Kelly: Yes.

Ann: Sometimes, it’s easy for us to get resentful of our role and where we are in life, so we start pulling away, thinking that our happiness is going to come through being purposeful.

Kelly: That’s right: doing.

Ann: Yes, doing! That’s it.

Kelly: That’s right. We want to do for God. That’s what I was seeing in myself: “I want to do. Doing is what makes life meaningful.”

But it’s actually a noun that makes life meaningful. The person of God is what makes life meaningful. One of the first places that I saw this, I was reading a book about Corrie ten Boom. I don’t know if it’s a book her assistant wrote about the later years of her life. Corrie suffered a stroke in the last four years of her life. Her assistant is writing about watching this experience.

Ann: What’s the book called? Do you know?

Kelly: Yes, it’s called Safer than a Known Way.

Ann: I’d like to read that.

Kelly: Safer than a Known Way; it’s wonderful.

She watches Corrie go from this very busy, active-in-ministry woman in the later years of her life, in her 70s or 80s, to suffering a stroke and lying in bed, receiving care, and learning to communicate through blinking and all that; she watched her do it with grace. She says something in the book like this: “I realized in that moment that it was much more difficult for a very gifted woman like Corrie to do nothing when God’s will required it than to do much.” I was not the same after I read that.

Dave: Really?

Ann: Wow!

Kelly: I was not.

Dave: It just hit you.

Kelly: Well, I realized: “If God asked me to do nothing, that would be really hard for me,”—really hard for me. I want to do something! I want to be the active agent in the world change. And what if, through my circumstances, God says, “No. Actually, what I want you to do, to glorify Me, is to be still, to do nothing, to just receive.” I realized, “I think I have some misunderstandings.” Through that book—and then, I had two kids in diapers and Jimmy’s on the road—I think I felt this confidence to come to God and say, “Alright, help me understand what I’m missing.”

I remember reading [about] the apostles coming up to Jesus a couple of times, asking, “Who’s the greatest? Who’s the greatest in the kingdom? [Laughter] Come on, Jesus, let us know. I know there’s a ladder here!” You know, “Who’s at the top?”

I remember reading those moments—those conversations the disciples had with Jesus—and having this realization that He didn’t rebuke the question. He gave them a very direct, clear answer, which, to me, honors the question. He doesn’t look at them and say, “You fools! How much longer will I be on this…” He has moments like that.

Dave: Yes.

Kelly: He doesn’t. He says, “There are people who are great in the kingdom,”—He even says that—[Matthew 11:11]: “…of men born of women, John the Baptist is the greatest. But the least of these are even greater.” So, Jesus has an understanding of greatness, and He’s trying to pass it on to them. He loves the desire for greatness when it’s directed—

Ann: —that helps, to know that my desire isn’t wrong.

Kelly: That’s right; my desire’s not wrong.

Ann: Yes.

Kelly: That was so affirming to me; and then, it gave me the courage to go that whole path down with Jesus, to say, “Alright, if that’s true—if You care about my desire for greatness, You want me to be great, and I’m misdirected in trying to actualize that, then will You show me the real path?” And, “I’m going to study that: ‘What does Jesus have to say about greatness?’” I just took to the Word: “What does He have to say about greatness?” I realized, as I was reading, that He was actually not only teaching me about greatness through the Word, but in my life situation. With two babies and learning to serve them, He was giving me a training ground to actually learn greatness in experience as well.

Ann: Yes, yes.

Kelly: It just changed my experience of motherhood even, because even my motherhood now became not just about my kids and learning to be the best mom I could [be], but learning: “What is kingdom greatness to my Lord?” It became about Jesus. It elevated me, above my situation and my circumstances, to the right person of God, which is where I think that desire for greatness is actually actualized; in the very person of God.

Ann: When I surrendered everything to Jesus, I was 18 years old. I said to Him, “Lord, I’ll do anything. I’ll go anywhere.” I felt—in my spirit, I felt—this: “Oh, Ann, I have great things in store for you!”

But because, back then, there were no famous Christians.

Kelly: That’s right.

Ann: Maybe Billy Graham. So, when I heard, “greatness,” I wasn’t thinking of a platform; I wasn’t thinking of speaking. I was just thinking, “I will be used by Him,” which is all of us. But I’m seeing, as I talk to younger women today, [that] when they hear “greatness,” they want it to be. . .

I said, “What do you think? What does that look like?” They’ll say, “I can see myself speaking to millions.” And the next person—

Dave: —I can’t tell you how many times Ann has come home from an appointment with somebody in our church. “Well, how did it go?” “Well, they want a platform. They want to be a social media influencer.”

Kelly: That’s right.

Dave: “They think we do that.” I’m like, “That’s what they want to do?” [Laughter]

Ann: That’s their—

Dave: —she says this many times, like—

Jimmy: —that’s how you make it.

Ann: That’s their definition of greatness.

Jimmy: Yes.

Kelly: Right, and impact.

Dave: Right.

Kelly: In some ways, it’s a noble desire, misdirected.

Ann: That’s a good way to say it.

Kelly: I think women need—women and men need—the validation that “Your longing to be great,”—

Ann: —your dreams.

Kelly: —”to make an impact for the kingdom, is good.”

Dave: Right, right.

Kelly: But it’s misdirected into something that’s actually not in line with what Jesus teaches about greatness, because—

Dave: —It’s what Jesus did with the disciples.

Kelly: One of the first things He actually says about greatness is, He picks up a child—

Dave and Ann: —yes—

Kelly: —and He says, “Whoever becomes like this child will become great in My kingdom.” A child is really content at being a recipient. That’s how I ended up defining it in the book. Children are just recipients. They’re happy for everything to be provided for them and to be receivers of that. It’s actually growing them out of that—that we’re trying to move them toward adulthood, out of childhood—is to be contributors.

Ann: That’s good.

Kelly: When I think about my greatness in the kingdom: “How content am I to be utterly dependent on God in every moment of my day? To be a receiver of His strength in everything that I do?” That’s true greatness.

Ann: Let me ask both of you: “How do you do that? How do you sit before God and be that recipient?”

Dave: I mean, did it really change; this perspective? Because you’ve still got kids; you’ve still got spit-up; you still have poopy diapers.

Kelly: Yes.

Dave: It did?

Kelly: It did. I would say in that season, when I was learning that, it was probably one of the most significant shifts of joy, and contentment, and peace, and passion for God that I’d had in my adult life. So much so that you, at one point, said to me, “I feel like you’re having a revival or something.” He was coming—

Jimmy: —yes.

Ann: Really?

Dave: That’s what I was going to ask. Jimmy, did you see it?

Jimmy: Yes, there was an absolute shift. She was one way, and then, she—over time, and not even a very long time; over time—was not that way. The only difference in between that was some of these discoveries, these “Aha” moments, of, “It really is about me tethering myself to a Person, not an activity, that changes things.”

Ann: Kelly, how did you do that when you had these little babies? Because most of us, when we get in that stage, are like, “I don’t have time to read my Bible. I haven’t got time to do [anything]”—

Dave: You go lock yourself in the bathroom just to get a moment.

Ann: —“for myself.”

Kelly: Yes.

Ann: Because a lot of young moms are in that situation, where they feel spent; they’re giving everything they have away.

Jimmy: Yes.

Ann: How did you get those moments with Jesus?

Kelly: With little kids on my back. That sounds silly, but it’s true! I was in the living room; they were crawling around me. One of them—I have a picture of one of my kids napping on the floor—she was like six months old, on a blanket, [and] there’s a pile of laundry by my feet, [Laughter] and my toddler was playing in the background. And I’ve got my Bible open.

My answer to how that happened is, I was just hungry. I was really hungry for this problem to be solved. The same way that, if you’re hungry, as a mom—physically hungry, you’ll find a way to get a snack in. Somehow, it will be on the go; it will be with your kids. Or you will find a way to get sleep if you’re exhausted. My soul was hungry, and so I was eager for that.

And then, I was realizing, too, as I’m spending time with God: “This is my first commandment. Before I even get to the serving others—loving your neighbor as you love yourself—before I even get to loving my kids, God tells me: ‘Priority Number One, love Me with everything you have’.” I feel like it gave me permission as a mom, too, to supplant my kids from priority number one in my day. Jesus [should be].

Ann: That is hard to do!

Jimmy: Absolutely.

Ann: Many of us put our kids as number one.

Dave: How did you do that? What does that look like?

Kelly: Occasionally—and I don’t know who will love this—but occasionally, it meant: “I’m going to put a show on for my kids. I’m going to sit in the kitchen, and I’m going to read my Bible.” This is the only way, because, again, Jimmy was traveling a lot at that time. He was home every week, but there were some days in a row, where it was just me. That’s what I could do. I said, “Alright, you guys are going to watch a show, and I’m going to sit right here and read my Bible.” I didn’t know how else to do it.

Jimmy: It was Law and Order, wasn’t it? That’s what you normally put on. [Laughter]

Kelly: That’s right!

Jimmy: Yes, SVU. Yes. That’s awesome.

Kelly: Somehow, it captured their attention.

Jimmy: It did. It sucked them in. [Laughter]

Kelly: Or it was in the car: buckle them in, go for a drive; get a coffee. I’m like, “You guys are okay back there.” I’m just reading. They wanted to be with me, so I’m going to let them be with me, but I need to not be chasing them around the house.

Dave: Was there any resentment that Jimmy’s gone as much as he was?

Kelly: At first.

Dave: Because Ann had that when I would travel a lot. I’m not saying—we’re so much less than you guys—you probably had no struggles. We struggled with that.

Kelly: No, we struggled a lot.

Dave: I would even come home, and she would look at me like, “Seriously, you’ve got to leave again in two days?” “Ah, yes.” Some of it was [that] I was committing myself to too many things I shouldn’t have, but that brought some tension in our marriage. Did you have any of that?

Kelly: Oh, yes. [Laugher]

Jimmy: For a lot the time, we were actually—especially, in the early years, we were— traveling together, which that actually exacerbated it more than, in my opinion, more than being apart. I think there were hard things about me being away, for sure, but my memory was [that] the most difficult times were when we were traveling together.

Dave: Really?

Jimmy: Because now, as Kelly’s especially being confronted—I mean, you’re seeing the thing that’s sort of poking you.

Ann: Yes.

Dave: He walks on, and the lights pop on. Yes.

Kelly: What was subtly being communicated to me in those early years of travel is that: “I’m important because I’m married to Jimmy.”

Ann: That’s your identity, as his wife.

Kelly: Yes, yes. That’s the only category people had for me.

Ann: Right.

Kelly: It wasn’t wrong that that’s how people connected with me, but they were impacted by Jimmy. That’s why they were at the concert; that’s the reason they were there. They meet me, and the only connection they have is: “You’re married to this person, who has transformed my life through his music.” I’m hearing that all the time.

Dave: Yes.

Kelly: It took a lot of effort to, then, think, “Hold on! What is my identity?” Because I am a wife—and I am married to a very godly man, whom I love very dearly, and who I am so thrilled about what God is doing in him—but I had to work through that identity piece for myself. It was challenging. It was really challenging in those early years. And then, even off the road, it’s the same thing.

Ann: Oh, yes.

Dave: How do you understand identity now? That’s a big word.

Kelly: It is a big word.

Dave: And it’s big theology to understand who we are in Christ.

Kelly: Yes, yes.

Dave: And this ties into it so closely. How do you talk about it now?

Kelly: I’m very careful to put anything on myself as an identity marker besides the very narrow lane of: “I am a child of God.” I feel very hesitant to attach anything else to that—mother, wife, author, neighbor—because all of that can go away. I think even our travels to other parts of the world—to India, we have two sons from India—thinking:

“If you can’t universally apply this to believers around the world,” or “If I can’t have this identity in old age,” or “If God strips things from me in sickness—” We’ve watched mentors go through very serious [illnesses], who were active in ministry, to now, just receiving care—

Jimmy: —yes.

Kelly: “Can this identity stay with me through all of that?” If it can, then I’m good with it. I’m a creature, that’s part of my identity; I’m a human being, that’s a part of my identity; but then, in Christ, I am a child of the living God. That’s who I am, and that has to be enough meaning for me, and weight for me, to hold my whole identity. If it isn’t, then I’ve got work to do.

Everything else, though, I actually feel like I’m better as a wife, as a mom, as a neighbor, as a friend, when those things aren’t identity markers for me. I now can serve those people. That’s even what I noticed in our marriage. As soon as I was able to separate a little bit: “I’m not just a wife. God, I am Your child. You gave me marriage, and You can take it away one day.” Okay, now that I understand that, I can see Jimmy not just as my husband, but as my brother in Christ. I can think about how I can serve him instead of how I can use him to make me feel better as a wife.

Jimmy: Yes, and it’s not that we’re saying, “You can’t say, ‘I’m a Bible teacher,’ or ‘I’m a mother,’ and things like that. I think we need to appreciate the temporary nature of those titles.

Kelly and Ann: Yes.

Jimmy: Because if you do tattoo that on yourself permanently and then, like one of our mentors, who is one of the best Bible teachers we know, you get MS, and now, you can’t do anything, and your family is just taking care of you: have you lost your sense of who you are, because “Well, God has made me a Bible teacher?”

Maybe a better way to talk about it is: “God has made me a Bible teacher in this season until He changes the plans. But the one fixed given—the one thing that’s not changing—is that I am His son.” So, I think if we can appreciate that all those other identity markers are really temporal, but the one that sticks, that’s the one we need to live and die by. I think that sorts so many things out.

Ann: I think this is just rich, even as a listener, for you to ask that question: “What is my identity? Who am I?” But then, that other question, too: “What’s your purpose?” I feel like I just can’t get it out of my head: “Your purpose is a Person. It’s Jesus.”

Kelly: Yes.

Ann: So, ask yourself: “Is that yours?” or “Where are you finding your identity?” or “Where are you trying to get your purpose?” Because, as you said, if it’s in what I’m doing, that’s always shifting. It’s always changing.

Jimmy: Yes.

Dave: Well, it’s interesting: Ann, when she would lead the Lions’ wives’ Bible study, she would tell me this—I would lead it once a season, by the way; they’d have me come in; she didn’t even come, and have a husband—anyway, she said [she] would often ask them every season: “I want you to tell me who you are.”

Jimmy: Yes.

Dave: “You can’t mention who your husband is, what you do.”

Jimmy: That’s good.

Dave: “You can’t mention your occupation. Just tell me who you are.”

Ann: “[You can’t mention] where you went to college, any of your training, or even your job,” because these are incredibly sharp, beautiful, gifted women. When I asked that question—

Jimmy: —crickets.

Ann: —silence!

Kelly: Yes.

Ann: Because they had no idea; but if one of them—there was one woman one year—she said, “I am a child of the living God.”

Jimmy: Wow!

Ann: I was like, “Oh, she’s got it! She’s got it.”

Jimmy: That’s it. That’s exactly right.

Ann: It would be a great question to ask our kids, too.

Kelly: Yes.

Shelby: It’s so important to know where our identity rests: “Who are you? Who are you?” That’s a really good question—maybe, a great question—to ask around the dinner table tonight when you’re having a meal with your family. But then, make some qualifications with your spouse and your kids, and get to the heart of who they believe they are. Then, like we were just hearing, point them to Jesus.

I’m Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Jimmy and Kelly Needham on FamilyLife Today. Kelly has written a book called Purposefooled: Why Chasing Your Dreams, Finding Your Calling, and Reaching for Greatness Will Never Be Enough. Wow! What a title! [It’s] provocative and just one that, I think, so many of us need to dwell on in this culture that champions, perhaps, the wrong thing.

This book is going to be our gift to you when you give to the ministry of FamilyLife®. You can get your copy right now with any donation that you make. Just go online to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the “Donate Now” button at the top of the page. Or you can give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329; again, that number is 800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.” And feel free to drop us a donation in the mail if you’d like, too. Our address is FamilyLife, 100 Lake Hart Drive, Orlando, FL 32832.

It’s a fantastic conversation today, and I’m really looking forward to it continuing tomorrow. Jimmy and Kelly Needham are going to be back with the Wilsons to talk about overcoming insecurity and finding true fulfillment. That’s tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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