"My Prayer For You" & "Miracles"
From the Integrity Music release
Miracle Or Not featuring Alisa Turner
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Episode Transcript
ERIC HUFFMAN: One night, when we were nineteen years old, my then fiancée, Geovanna, woke up with and awful feeling that something terrible had happened to me. Against her wishes, I was making the five-hour drive to see her after I had finished the late shift at the movie theater where I worked. When she woke up, she looked at the clock; it was just after 1 a.m. We didn’t have cell phones yet, she couldn’t just call me, so she got on her knees and started to pray. About fifteen minutes later her phone rang. It was my mom. “Have you heard from Eric?” She asked her future daughter-in-law. “I just had the worst nightmare and I need to know if he’s ok.” Then the two most important women in my life began to pray together over the phone for my protection.
ERIC HUFFMAN: As it turns out, I really needed those prayers. I shouldn’t have been driving at all that night. I was too exhausted to make it. I had driven that same route a hundred times, but this time it lolled me to sleep. The last thing I remember was being a few miles outside of Lufkin, Texas, which would have been around 1 a.m. What happened next, I’ve never been able to explain. Not even when I was an atheist could I find a rational explanation for it. I woke up, slouched way down in the driver’s seat, with my right hand resting in the six slot of the steering wheel. I was still driving. Granted, I was only going about forty miles and hour on the highway, but still, it’s better than being dead ir stranded in a ditch.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Here’s the crazy part: I was in a completely different town, thirty miles away from the moment I had drifted off to sleep. When I came to, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I remember crying and saying “thank you, thank you,” to God. I couldn’t wait to tell Geovanna about this crazy thing that had happened to me, even if it meant I would have to wake her up when I got there. But when I arrived, she came running out the front door in her pajamas at 3 a.m., and she gave me the biggest hug. I looked into her eyes and I could tell that she had been crying. Before I could say anything, she said, “come inside. Your mom is on the phone.”
ERIC HUFFMAN: A miracle is defined as a supernatural interruption in the natural order. Miracles can’t be proven or disavowed by science. If they are true, they happen outside the laws of physics. For this reason, many people struggle to believe in the miraculous at all. They tend to see events like mine twenty years ago as coincidences and nothing more. But what about you? Do you believe in miracles? Today on Maybe God, two miraculous stories. First, a Nashville star whose journey inspires everyone around her to see God’s miracles, even in life’s most painful moments. Also, the miracle baby that many in Houston are celebrating this Christmas.
[Music]
ERIC HUFFMAN: Singer-songwriter Alisa Turner is a rising star in the Christian music world. In 2017, she signed with Integrity Music in Nashville, one of the largest labels of its kind in the world. And today, her music videos have over three million views on YouTube. Her hit song, Miracles, was even recognized by Christian music giants like Lauren Daigle. Alisa is not someone you’d expect to hear singing about miracles. When I heard her story for the first time, I remember thinking, wait, when is the miracle coming? God didn’t show up when she needed Him the most.
ALISA TURNER: My life has been good. God has been good to me. Even thought I will walk through life with a bit of a broken heart, I walk extraordinarily loved. And so, I can promise you that whatever you are walking through, He has not forgotten you. He has great plans for you. He is still writing your story. Sometimes you have to remind yourself to find the joy on the worst day of your life, find the joy, because He doesn’t ever stop providing it.
ERIC HUFFMAN: A few weeks ago, Alisa flew from Nashville to Houston to lead music at my church. Physically, she doesn’t demand an audience. She’s really petite, and standing alone on that big stage, she almost looked frail. When she spoke, her voice was smooth and soft, like a whisper. I wondered if she would be able to hold the room’s attention for the whole hour. And then, she started to sing.
[ALISA TURNER SINGING]
ERIC HUFFMAN: When the last service was over, we invited Alisa into the Maybe God studio to share her heartbreaking but miraculous story with our podcast listeners, starting with the long road to becoming the accomplished artist and worship leader she is today.
ALISA TURNER: I started when I was fifteen. I’m thirty-five now, so it took almost twenty years, so never give up on your dreams, kids.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa grew up in North Carolina and spent most of her childhood at church with her father who was a worship pastor. That means he led their congregation in worship through music every Sunday. Alisa says church felt more like home than anywhere else. She loved being a part of the music ministry, and most of all, she loved being with her father. From a young age, she was a self-proclaimed Daddy’s girl.
ALISA TURNER: He was truly the greatest example of God’s love. I had a lot of friends growing up that did not have great family situations or fathers that were really present, so my dad kind of took in any and everybody. Despite troubling times, hard times, later on in my life, I can look back to my childhood and I am in complete blessing to have my parents and knowing the way my dad loved me is like scratching the surface on the way my heavenly Father loves me.
ERIC HUFFMAN: By the time Alisa was twelve, she would spend hours sitting at her piano writing her own songs.
ALISA TURNER: I loved the way music moved me, and so I just became addicted to wanting that movement and that feeling. I wanted other people to feel it as well. It can evoke emotion, whether if it’s a memory or happy or joy or sadness, but it just helped me feel through things. Music became this processing—you know everyone has their outlet or avenue where, it’s like, how you vent or how you process things, so music became mine, even at an early age.
ERIC HUFFMAN: When Alisa turned fifteen, she was discovered by record executives in Nashville. At one point, they even talked to her about a possible development deal, but Alisa says the doors closed for her as quickly as they opened.
ALISA TURNER: I remember initially feeling devastated, because you’re young and you’re like, ok, they didn’t want me, so then who is going to want me? But I thought, this burning desire, this passion, this fire in me to do music would not go out. If it did, I would have just said, ok, I’ll just pick a different profession or whatever, but it wouldn’t go out no matter even when I wanted it to, so I thought, I’m just going to have to make this work. I thought, well, the industry doesn’t want much to do with me so I’m just going to go out on the road and I’m going to build this with the people. Because the people seemed to always love what I was able to bring.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa’s family convinced her to go to college, but the nineteen-year-old just couldn’t ignore that burning desire. Alisa wanted to be writing music and performing full-time. Before anyone could talk her out of it, she packed up her car, ditched college, and drove to Nashville.
ALISA TURNER: I don’t know how I did this, but I found my way. I always say, I’m going to find my way, and so I found a job and found some roommates and did the starving artist, truly, putting demos on doorsteps and just playing for whoever would give me the time of day. Nothing in that first year I went to Nashville, nothing really happened. And so, it was discouraging, but again, that fire in me to do what I was doing would not go out.
ERIC HUFFMAN: One year into her first full-time attempt at launching her music career, Alisa faced her first devastating setback.
ALISA TURNER: It was a Saturday evening and I was at dinner at one of my dad’s favorite restaurants, and I thought, I should call him. We talked at least twice every day, and I said, “Hey dad, guess where I’m at?” It’s this restaurant called Cooker’s, and we always went there just for the biscuits. And so, we just chitchatted, and it was totally normal. He hung up the phone and I remember I walked across the street to the mall, and if you have ever been through trauma, you remember everything about it. The moment I got a phone call from a hospital, I remember the store I was in; it was a Lady Foot Locker; I remember where I was at in the store, I remember the angle my body was, it was just crazy to me.
ALISA TURNER: They said they were looking for a relative of Ross Turner, and I said, “I’m his daughter.” And they wouldn’t tell me anything, they wanted to get in touch with my mom, so I had to hang up the phone knowing something was going on but not knowing any details. It was hours later my brother finally called and said, “Dad had a heart attack and he died, and it was just instant.” It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes after he and I talked. Apparently, he started having chest pains, he drove to the hospital just down the street from the church, and he collapsed in the doorway. It’s still so hard to process, like that whole life was here and now it’s not.
ALISA TURNER: I know where he is, and that’s a beautiful gift and there is peace, but goodness, the devastation and the gaping hole that grief just kinda fills up for a while. I always referenced grief as, initially, like this elephant on your back where you are completely immobile and paralyzed, and eventually, you learn how to carry it, and so the elephant goes in your arms. It’s still heavy, and it’s still painful and it hurts, and you don’t quite know how to do it, but you never move on, but you start to learn how to move forward. With a lot of help from friends and family, and of course, the Lord always watching over me, I found my way.
ERIC HUFFMAN: With that heavy grief, that elephant now in her arms, Alisa packed up her car and for the second time, she left North Carolina in search of an audience for her music.
ALISA TURNER: I packed up my blue Honda CRV and I went out on the road. For the first two years after that, I basically lived in my Honda CRV. I would shower at truck stations, which are surprisingly very clean. They provide you towels and all kinds of stuff. It’s a little awkward; there’s a waiting room at these Flying J’s that’s, like, full of truckers, and then it’s you. It’s like, yes, I’m one of you, but you make it work. I have so much joy in getting to do what I feel like I was built to do, and so, that overrode anything else that was difficult through that season. I got to love on people and I got to share my story and I got to hear theirs and I got to sing songs over them, or with them, and that was just the light of my life.
(Alisa speaking to The Story Houston’s congregation)
ERIC HUFFMAN: Two years after her father’s death, Alisa was still on the road performing for anyone who would listen, when she began to experience some strange symptoms. First, she started forgetting the lyrics to her songs onstage. Then, her words began to slur. Her health was getting worse and worse until she was finally forced to leave the road and go home. That’s when she was diagnosed with Lyme disease.
ALISA TURNER: Funny how a bug bite can kind of take you to death’s door. I had been sick for a long, long time, because I had the bug bite, actually, when I was a little girl. I knew we had tick bites but we didn’t know that Lyme disease was a big thing, and we even had doctors say, “If you haven’t been to this part of the country, then don’t worry about it.” Well, that was very, very bad advice. Lyme disease is everywhere, all over the country, all over the world, in everybody’s backyard. And so, had I gotten diagnosed and treated right away, it would have been a month of Doxycycline for twenty-one days, of once a day, but by the time we finally diagnosed it I was completely bed ridden.
ALISA TURNER: I had to leave the road. I thought I would just go to some doctors, get some answers and get back on my feet. That was not the case. I got so sick. It was almost like once I stopped what I was doing, my body totally crashed. It only got worse for a while. Even though we had the diagnosis, it was so tricky on how to treat it. It had atrophied my muscles, so I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t swallow, I had a feeding tube. Everything had to be done for me, so I kind of laid there like a vegetable. Had it gotten any worse, they would have put me on more of a breathing tube. Everything in me was growing weaker.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa was bedridden for three years, housebound for another two. Doctors tried everything: IV antibiotics, immune therapies, even drugs used in chemotherapy patients. After years of very slow progress, Alisa was finally able to get out of bed and back on her feet.
ALISA TURNER: I have enough fight in me to get up and walk through the days that are still filled with pain, but not total dysfunction. I have these few sayings that I mostly, I say to other people, but I mostly say them to myself. I say, “whatever it takes, I will do whatever it takes and just keep going.” Even if you don’t know why, or you don’t feel like what you’re going to keep going into is that you have any idea how to do, I’m going to show up. I’m just going to keep going and know that the Lord will meet me in it.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa still struggles daily with the effects of Lyme disease. On her Facebook page, it’s not uncommon to see a photo of her sprawled out on a couch backstage in between shows. People ask her all the time, “How do you still believe in God? Why aren’t you angry with Him?”
ALISA TURNER: Let me just say, oh, I’ve been very angry. I have cursed the heavens, I have. I have had an absolute temper tantrum, and it’s so funny, anytime I go through that it almost feels like I’m this—I mean, I go into this childlike state of, like, just anger and irrational feelings and fears, and then it’s like, once I’m done I feel like the Lord is like, “You’re ok now? Ok, well let’s stand up and let’s keep moving forward. I mean, let’s not make a big scene.” There’s just something I know, it’s like, something in my gut that I just don’t doubt it. I just have this understanding that life is hard, but God is still good.
ALISA TURNER: Life is going to throw you a lot of things that are hard to walk through, but God is there to walk you through it. It doesn’t mean it takes it away or that God is going to prevent certain things, although, I have no idea how much God probably has intervened. You just—we’ll never know that. It’s almost like a father and a child or a baby, I mean, how many things did your parents do for you when you were a baby that we have no memory or recollection of? So, I know He is taking care of me far more than I am humanly able to even grasp, but I just, I know that life is going to be hard.
ALISA TURNER: I just know that it’s not God sitting up there in the heavens saying, “I’m going to put you through this, and then that, and you’re going to learn this..” By all means, the Lord does teach us things through our hard times, but I feel like some people think God purposely says, “Ok, now it’s your time to—I really want to run you through the mud so I can teach you something.” He’s going to redeem it. He’s not up there with this big, crazy plan. He’s right there with you, in the dirt, in the worst days of your life, and He’s just going to keep ushering you through it.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa doesn’t believe that God gave her Lyme disease, but she does believe that He brought joy into her darkness. Just when she was able to restart her life and begin thinking about her career again, she met Jaime, who is now her husband.
ALISA TURNER: It takes a lot for someone to come stand by your side when you’re that unwell and just start life with you. It was very difficult those early years. We didn’t get any kind of a honeymoon period, I mean, it was hard stuff right at the top, but there was still a lot of good and I always say, I said it in service, “find the joy. Find the joy.” There’s always something to be thankful for, and so, I was thankful to not go at it alone.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Now this is one of the hardest parts of Alisa’s story. I know this is the part I struggle with the most. Trying to understand how and why God didn’t prevent her from experiencing heartache over and over again. What stands out about Alisa is how she continued to find the joy in her pain, even to see the miracle in this next part of her story. Within a year of getting married, the newlyweds found out Alisa was pregnant, even though doctors told her she would never be able to conceive.
ALISA TURNER: Huge surprise, because from the damage that Lyme had done to my body, we thought—the doctors had told us that there’s no way you can get pregnant, so, huge surprise. Both excitement and absolute terror, because you’re like, “wasn’t expecting that, have no idea how to do this,” but again, it’s a baby, and he made me a mom. Early in that pregnancy we found out he had a birth defect, and we knew very early on that when he would be born, he would pass. So, we were given this decision to make, like, do you want to go through with the pregnancy even though you know what’s going to happen, or do you want to just go ahead and end it now?
ALISA TURNER: The doctor we had at the time had never had someone want to carry a child, but I had to figure what I had peace about. At the end of the day, I knew, as horrific as it would be in some ways, that I want to keep him as long as I can. Even if it’s just me getting to know him while he is in my belly. Because in the belly, he was safe. He was still forming and growing, and things like that, and I felt him move. And so I cherished it. I was such a perspective shift, I had to start looking at not just what would be, in some ways, taken away, but I had to look at what had been given, and I had all this time left before I gave birth.
ALISA TURNER: I felt like a ticking time bomb; as soon as I would go into labor, he would start to die. That was the most—I don’t know how you manage an emotion or thought like that. You kind of go into survival mode for a long time, but I knew I was just going to embrace anything I could from it. And again, he made me a mom, and so, I wouldn’t take that back for anything. I got to love him for the time I had him.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Jaime and Alisa named their baby boy, London. After his birth, London lived only seventy-one minutes. He took his last breath in Alisa’s arms.
ALISA TURNER: I always say it was the best and worst day of my life. I remember when the nurse came around every couple of minutes, took his pulse, and I’d always watch her finger because it would go with the rhythm of his pulse. The very last time she came, her finger didn’t move, and it was like, you hear this big gasp in the room and you just, like, you can just feel everybody’s hearts completely shatter, as well as mine did.But I always remember looking up at that moment. You could not have fit another person in that hospital room, and I thought, goodness, when you have that many people say, ‘hey, I’ll show up and be with you in the worst moment of your life,’ that is why God is still good.
ALISA TURNER: He has surrounded me, beyond surrounded me, and then double-triple layered it with people to walk with me through this, to just love me. And so, still the hardest day of my life. I think my biggest breakdown moment of that was being wheeled out of the hospital, and I just completely lost it. It felt very empty from what should have been there. But God still redeems, and He still brought peace despite the sadness being there. And again, that elephant on my back that I’ve learned how to move with and know that though I walk with a bit of a shaky, broken heart, which will always be, I have so many blessings. And I take that with me too.
[SINGING]
ERIC HUFFMAN: Alisa admits that sometimes it feels like her prayers to God have gone unanswered. But instead of fixating on the times she’s felt disappointed by God, she chooses to focus on all the ways God has provided for her, taking care of her, and mended her broken heart. A few years ago, Alisa moved back to Nashville for the third time, carrying an even larger elephant in her arms, but with more fight in her than ever before. Nearly twenty years after that first attempt to launch her music career, she was signed to Integrity Music. In May of 2018, she released her first album.
ERIC HUFFMAN: And today, she is traveling the country sharing her music and her story hoping to show people how God’s greatest miracles aren’t the times when someone prays and he supernaturally intervenes. The best miracles are the ones no one ever asks for but everyone receives. Existence itself is miraculous. Every life, no matter how long or short, is itself a miracle. Human life, with our self-awareness and our ability to conceive of meaning and purpose is especially miraculous. And then, there is the most powerful word in the world: love. Love has no explanation, it just is. The near universal human experience with the transcendent love of God might be the greatest miracle of all.
ALISA TURNER: I think I sing to Him because it’s the way I say I love you. I think worship is one of the most beautiful sounds He will ever hear, and so, if I can do that all my days, I feel like I have loved Him back well for all the ways He’s loved me when I didn’t love Him, when I didn’t want anything to do with Him, when I felt like He’d let me down. He just stood there, He never walked away. He doesn’t abandon His children, even when you don’t realize He is there. Now that I have kind of come full circle through a lot of those hard things, I’m not letting go of Him ever. If I can tell Him every single day that I love him, whether if it’s through my words, through my prayer, through my worship, I’m not going to miss a chance to do it. He deserves it.
[SINGING]
ERIC HUFFMAN: There’s something about a new born baby that feels like hope. Alisa showed us how, even if you’re only able to hold your baby for a short time, it’s a miracle. At my church, The Story Houston, we’re celebrating our own little miracle this Christmas: eight-week old, baby Peyton. His parents, Preston and Brooke, have been coming to The Story for two years.
BROOKE: You hear us talking about you, huh? My pregnancy was really easy. I mean, it was great, I felt like. And then, my twenty-week ultrasound, which actually I ended up postponing, I think it was two or three times, until I was twenty-three weeks, and they were like, “you can’t postpone it anymore,” because he had to travel for work and I felt like that was a huge God thing. For some reason, I really wanted him there, and I don’t know why. I think it’s because God knew that I was about to hear some tough news and couldn’t handle it without him there, so—I’m going to get emotional talking about this.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Twenty-three weeks in to what seemed like a healthy pregnancy, doctors told Brooke and Preston that their first child had a serious and rare condition called transposition of the great arteries, which means that the two main arteries leaving his heart were reversed.
PRESTON: There’s about 2,000 babies a year in the US born with this condition, and it just means that the heart would continue to circulate deoxygenated blood. So, instead of bringing new, oxygenated blood into the circulatory system, that kind of just circles in one loop and the blood going through the body continues to circle and doesn’t get new oxygen.
ERIC HUFFMAN: If Peyton had been born thirty years ago, he wouldn’t have made it more than a year. Thanks to modern medicine, this birth defect is no longer a death sentence, but it does involve open heart surgery almost immediately after birth.
BROOKE: Pregnancy has always kind of scared me, so we had been praying together every night prior to then. After we found out this diagnosis, he would call me at work and we would pray together in the middle of the day, we would pray together at breakfast, we would pray pretty much all day, every day.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Brooke and Preston weren’t the only ones praying. By the time Peyton was born, they believe over a thousand people were praying for them, many of them complete strangers who had heard their story on social media or through their churches. On October 18, 2018, Peyton was born by C-section. Brooke and Preston weren’t able to hold him. While Brooke was still recovering on the operating room table, Preston followed doctors as they raced baby Peyton to the cardiovascular ICU.
PRESTON: I couldn’t hold him because he was in kind of an incubator being surrounded by a bunch of cords and has different IVs going into him and things like that. So, it’s tough to see because you want to do something about it but you can’t. You kind of feel helpless in the circumstance.
BROOKE: But he would give us some encouragement. When Preston or I would put our hand out, he would squeeze our hand. So, even though he was completely sedated and very out of it, that was his way of saying, “I’m ok.” So, that gave us a lot of comfort. I think that was God showing us the light at the end of the tunnel through Peyton. He was saying, “It’s ok, you’re going to get through this.”
ERIC HUFFMAN: Baby Peyton spent four days heavily sedated in the ICU, breathing through tubes. Monday morning, nurses prepped him for open-heart surgery. Two of the best pediatric heart surgeons in the country were assigned to Peyton’s case. Some may call that luck, but Brooke and Preston knew that was part of God’s plan.
PRESTON: You’re kind of just praying the whole time because you don’t know what else you can do. For someone who likes to control things, you kind of feel totally helpless, which is a weird feeling.
BROOKE: We both of us have always said, “Give it up to God, give it up to god,” but it’s easier to say and think that you’re giving it up to God, and then when you actually go through something like this it really, really is completely out of your control. There’s nothing you can do to—you really do have to give it up to God. I couldn’t get myself through this. I couldn’t rely on my husband to get me through this or the words of other people to console me and comfort me. The only thing that comforted me was knowing this was all in God’s hands. Knowing that brought us a lot of comfort and peace.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Peyton’s surgery lasted several hours. When the doctors came out, they reported that the surgery had gone well, and his heart was healing faster than expected.
BROOKE: Obviously, the doctors and nurses and surgeons played a huge role in the success of his surgery and all of that, but they said that they had never seen a baby deescalate so quickly after surgery, meaning, he was off of all of his pain meds within, what, a couple days, which is apparently unheard of. Also, I think he was a 9-pound 8-ounce baby, so he was a really big baby, and I think God knew what He was doing there too. I think there is a reason he was so big to kind of help strengthen him for his recovery. Peyton’s story is a huge testament to the power of prayer. I had never witnessed anything like that first hand, it was miracle after miracle after miracle.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Even doctors and nurses called Peyton’s recovery miraculous. He was released from the hospital a week early, without pain medication. Today, aside from a scar over his heart, there’s no way of telling this little 8-week old has been through so much in his short life.
BROOKE: He’s just so alert and so aware and squawks and screams like a normal baby. When I look at him, I just think he’s a true example of God’s miracles.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Brooke and Preston have been believers their whole lives, but this experience has strengthened their relationship with God. Witnessing God’s miracles in their own lives made their prayer life less of a routine. Now they realize how much their family needs God’s intervention. Baby Peyton’s story also continues to inspire everyone who prayed for him. Just a few weeks ago, Brooke was running errands around Houston when she was approached by a total stranger who recognized her as Peyton’s mom.
BROOKE: It’s just encouraging to know that so many people were praying for this little guy. I really don’t know that we would be here today if it hadn’t been for the power of prayer.
ERIC HUFFMAN: Peyton’s story is a miracle, an answered prayer. Stories like his are the ones that warm our hearts and give us hope, but Alisa is convinced that her baby, London, was a miracle too, even though the outcome was much different. A skeptic might hear that and say, “Christians can’t have it both ways. You can’t get away with calling answered prayers and unanswered prayers miracles. It’s got to be one or the other.” But I’m not so sure. If existence is miraculous, then all existence is miraculous. If life is a miracle, then every life is a miracle. Miracles can’t be defined by outcomes or circumstances when every breath you take is a miraculous gift. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, once wrote: Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles… To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle…
ERIC HUFFMAN: Miracles happen every day. Seeing the miracles is a choice we all get to make. This Christmas, I hope you’ll choose to see the miracles of life and love all around you.
[SINGING]
JULIE MIRLICOURTOIS: Maybe God is produced by Julie Mirlicourtois and associate producer Brandon Duke. Our editor is Brittany Holland, and the sound engineer is Aubrey Snider. The Maybe God theme song was composed by Nathan Bonnes. To download Alisa Turner’s debut album, Miracle or Not, go to her website, alisaturner.com. And check out our brand-new website at maybegodpod.com for more information about any of our episodes. While you’re there, send us your doubts, questions, or feedback and don’t forget to spread the word about Maybe God by leaving your review wherever you listen to us. Thanks everyone. Happy holidays, and we will be back in early 2019 with a brand-new season.