The sky’s growing darker as the evening draws near.
The storm clouds have gathered
And the shadows are gone.
When all hope has faded,
Replaced now with fear,
Tell me what can we depend on?
We can depend on His Word
When all hope is gone
We can still depend on,
We can depend on His Word.
—“WE CAN DEPEND ON HIS WORD” BY KATHIE LEE GIFFORD
Many years ago, so many I can’t remember, I was singing a song into my father’s movie camera. (This was ages before the iPhone.) I stopped singing a capella at one point and said, “Where’s da moosic, Daddy?” I can still hear my daddy so tenderly respond, “Oh, honey, you have to learn to make your own music.”
It has taken me a lifetime to learn to make my own music. For decades I sang and recorded hundreds of songs by brilliant composers—everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Bergmans, Sondheim, Hamlisch, and others, never dreaming that my father literally meant what he’d said. Sure, I’d written silly songs my whole life, little ditties and novelty songs. But, as is often the case, one day it all crystalized.
I had just closed on Broadway. I had been taking over for Carol Burnett for three months in a Sondheim “review” called Putting It Together—one of the most profound professional experiences of my lifetime. It was exhausting but thrilling.
Right before my debut, a stagehand strike was looming, and it looked like I might not get the chance to actually perform. I did my one and only run-through with the cast, costume, sound, and the orchestra, then went to my dressing room to await the legendary Stephen Sondheim and be the recipient of his even more legendary “notes” on my performance. As I waited alone for that knock on my door, I had a few moments to ponder the extraordinary significance of the moment I was living in: about to make my lifetime dream of performing on a Broadway stage come true. It was mind-blowing to me.
Stephen arrived and graciously praised my performance, giving me (blessedly) just a few benign notes.
“That’s it?” I asked him, incredulously.
“That’s it,” he responded. “Just show up.”
And then I said to him, “You know, Stephen, even if I never get to make my Broadway debut, I will have gotten from this experience everything I could have ever dreamed.”
He nodded. “Because you did the work.”
The strike was averted, and I did debut on December 7, 1999, to the best reviews of my life. Something I wasn’t used to at all, believe me. Executive producer Rob Burnett had been in the audience my closing night. The next day he called me and asked me to be the first woman to host Late Night with David Letterman.
I was stunned but flattered. I said something like, “You bet your ass, mister.”
After hosting the Letterman show, I knew without a doubt I was to move on from Live with Regis and Kathie Lee and into a whole new season of my creative life. I remember clearly hearing the Lord’s voice above the audience’s applause after my monologue. “Take a mental picture, Kathie,” He said to me. “This is the moment your life changed.”
The next day I told Regis. Hard as it was for both of us, he understood. Then I announced my decision on the air on Monday.
People think you’re either crazy or incredibly ungrateful when you walk away from that kind of success. I was neither. I was totally grateful for the unprecedented opportunity I had had with Regis and equally grateful for the thrilling yet unknown opportunities that awaited me.
I had to leave. Artists die on the vine unless they are creating, and I had already squeezed every ounce of creative juice I had out of my fifteen amazing years with my dear friend and partner.
I had been in a velvet rut: making TV history, making a boatload of money, yet dying inside to get to those big-bucket dreams. It was time. So I walked away in July 2000 to an unknown but exciting future.
But nothing ever actually turns out the way you think it will, does it?
Sometimes it’s even better.
Think about your own hopes and dreams. Is there something you’ve put up on a shelf, telling yourself, “Maybe someday” or “I could never do that . . .”? It might be time to dust that thing off and take another look. Or maybe, like me, you find yourself in a velvet rut that simply makes it too easy to stay. Give yourself the gift of dreaming because it’s never too late to leave a good thing.