Tender Savior, gracious Lord
How can I express
My grateful heart for all You do
How You love, how You lead, how You bless
Gentle Savior, loving Lord
How can I repay
The debt I owe for all You’ve done
Every moment, every hour, every day
Gentle
Gentle grace, gentle grace.
—“GENTLE GRACE” BY KATHIE LEE GIFFORD
In the mid-1970s I made a great deal of gospel music and performed all over the country, mostly in churches. Many of the people I met were wonderful, sincere, godly believers, but I didn’t love the experience of it because too many of them weren’t—namely some of the pastors. I witnessed a lot of greed, pride, lust, and ambition. It saddened me.
Even more than that, I knew deep down the church setting wasn’t the arena God had designed for me. I was too much of an entertainer, too much rimshot, pratfall, and goofball. Too Lucy Ricardo, not enough Sandi Patty (although I loved them both).
I recorded an album in 1976 called Friends with my sister, Michie. It was received nicely. Because of that Michie and I started doing quite a few concerts, conventions, and television appearances.
One day Michie and I were singing together at a church in Eugene, Oregon. Michie’s baby, Shannie, was three months old, but when Michie was pregnant, she had experienced horrendous gastric and intestinal problems. Months earlier she had called me into her bathroom to see (I apologize for this, but it’s critical to the story) an example of what she was experiencing.
“Kath,” she said sincerely and understandably concerned, “is this normal?”
I took one look at the blood and mucus, pus and fecal matter in the toilet. Even though I’d never been pregnant, I knew there was no way that was normal.
She saw five gastroenterologists after that and every one assured her she was fine; it was all part of the pregnancy process.
Back to our concert in Eugene. Michie completely collapsed after the service. We rushed her to Seattle, Washington, where my first husband’s parents lived. Paul’s father, a renowned abdomen surgeon, immediately placed Michie on the living room sofa and started an IV.
I took three-month-old Shannie and began the horrendous process of weening her off of her mother’s milk. She cried hysterically for days.
My father-in-law admitted Michie into Swedish Medical Center, where they tried to stabilize her for the next few days. Doctors told us that, in the condition she was in, she would never survive surgery.
Dear God, it’s hard to tell this story. I was up all night trying to get Shannie to take formula, then would go to the hospital and spend all day watching my beloved, emaciated sister lie in her hospital bed, hooked up to machines. A constant parade of doctors and nurses came in and out of her room.
She had acute ulcerative colitis. Hopelessness was the prevailing prognosis. She was seriously close to death, and I could barely look at her or her precious baby, who I feared would never know her amazing mother.
Finally, Paul’s father believed she had gained enough strength to survive the operation. My mother and Michie’s husband, Craig, flew in from Maryland. The doctors discovered that 80 percent of Michie’s five-foot-long large intestine was destroyed, leaving 20 percent that had the consistency of wet tissue paper. It had to be removed and an ostomy bag had to be attached to her small intestine.
To our amazement, Michie survived the operation, and we all returned to the Johnson home for some desperately needed rest. In the middle of the night, my father-in-law received a call from the hospital: Michie had had a grand mal seizure and was barely holding on to life. She needed her mother and her husband, and she needed her sister to stay home and take care of her only child.
The hours agonizingly blurred one into another. Michie went on to have two more grand mal seizures. The doctor told Craig that it was time to say goodbye. He cried into our mother’s arms, wailing, “God, Joanie, they’ve done such a number on her.”
Then Michie fell into a coma, a coma none of us ever believed she would come out of.
Mom and Craig and I prayed. What else could we do? Meditate? Do a rain dance? Check our horoscopes? Cross our fingers?
No, our only other option was to wait. And waiting is excruciating (especially for me, the worst waiter in the world). I went to see Michie in her room and sat down next to her bedside. I was furious with God. How could He allow such a thing to happen to this unbelievably faithful person?
It was during this time that Michie suddenly emerged from the coma. She looked at me and said, “Don’t curse God for this bag, Kathie. It means I get to live the rest of my life.”
As overjoyed as I was that she had survived the surgery and all the seizures, I was devastated that I had lost all faith that God could heal her. I was ashamed.
It took several years after returning to Maryland for Michie to recover. But she did. And then she began to share her amazing experience of God’s grace with others.
Shannie, though tiny, began to grow and heal too. One year after she was born we were told that she had pulmonary stenosis—a heart defect that would have to be watched closely as the days went by. A year later, after no problems in her health, Shannie went in for her regular checkup, and her doctors told her parents that she needed emergency surgery.
Shannie turned two years old at the Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC. We had a little party for her with the other precious children who were suffering from all manner of diseases. It broke my heart to see that so many of them were alone, with no one to suffer with them. They were wards of the state. Shannie was scheduled for surgery the day of her celebration.
“Juice, Mommy!” she said over and over again that morning. “Hungry, Mommy!” She wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything, and her surgery kept getting delayed. We did our best to divert her attention.
“Let’s walk down the hall, Shannie Roo,” I suggested, using the nickname I loved to call her. Shannie, as tiny as you can imagine a two-year-old could be, was prepped for surgery and wearing her miniature surgical gown. One of the indelible pictures seared into my mind is the image of her walking down the hall with her little bottom peeking out at me, dragging her carved turtle by a string. She had no idea what pain awaited her. No idea what trauma was about to be put on her beautiful baby body. No idea that she might have celebrated her last birthday.
Shannie was eventually put onto an adult gurney that was to be taken into surgery. Only Michie and Craig were allowed to accompany her to the elevator where they could kiss their beloved child goodbye. When the elevator doors closed, Michie watched her “I’ve got this” husband sob like a baby.
But here’s the reality: the day Shannie survived her surgery, two of the children in her wing died. We cried both tears of joy and tears of sorrow. Life is never so hard as on days like that when some are blessed to keep the one they love and others have to let a loved one go, and none of it makes any human sense.
Michie and I had been booked to go to Charlotte, North Carolina, to appear on the Praise the Lord telecast just two months after Shannie’s surgery. Obviously, I had informed the producers that it was a very difficult time for my sister. The last thing she wanted to do was leave her still-healing toddler to travel anywhere. But Michie was determined that God wanted her to tell her story of His faithfulness to her and her baby girl.
You see, there was a prevailing teaching at the time that sin caused all suffering and that God couldn’t work miracles without first a confession of sin.
None of this was biblically true, so I told the producers that Michie and I would only appear on the show if we were allowed to sing three songs and allotted enough time for Michie to tell her testimony: that no, God didn’t heal her instantly of her disease and no, He didn’t heal Shannie instantly either, but He got them through both seasons of despair and never left their sides. He healed them through prayers and doctors and medicine. And that, too, was a miracle!
The producers agreed to our terms, and Michie and I traveled to Charlotte for the broadcast only to discover that the host, Jim Bakker, was out of town. He was at a convention in Florida, and his wife, Tammy Faye, would be hosting that day’s telecast. That’s fine, I thought, as long as they comply with our understanding.
The telecast began with no mention of Michie or me as guests. It went on and on until it was almost time to wrap. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to the senior producer to express my frustration only to be told, “I’m sorry, but the Holy Spirit is moving.”
I exploded, “Well, the Holy Spirit is moving me to leave this place right now if you don’t honor the commitment you made to my sister!”
The senior producer looked at me, terrified. No one was used to this kind of reaction from me, but I didn’t care. I knew Tammy Faye was insecure and jealous of every other woman and hated to give up the spotlight, even for a second. I’d also heard she was having marital problems. I was truly sorry for her, but you don’t let those truths overwhelm the truth that you have made a promise. God expects you to keep promises just as He does.
We finally were called onstage and sang one song, but Michie never did get the chance to share her testimony. As the final seconds of the telecast were winding down, Tammy Faye pretended to care about my sister and her daughter, but when the light on the camera went from green to red, she walked away from her midsentence.
Something huge in me died that day. I determined I would never again take one penny for any Kingdom work. Never. And I haven’t.
Only later I would learn that we had been in Charlotte on the very same day Jim Bakker admittedly had sex with a twenty-one-year-old girl named Jessica Hahn. Compassion washed all over me for Tammy Faye and for Jessica Hahn. I could relate to both women for different reasons.
It would be years before I reentered the gospel world with a CD called Gentle Grace.
When it comes down to it, our convictions are about all we have. They determine who we are. On the other hand, we can’t control anyone else, but we don’t have to hang with them. It’s never too late to say when you’re done.