God is Good (Part 2) - John & Donna Bishop

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God is Good (Part 1) - John & Donna Bishop
God is Good (Part 2) - John & Donna Bishop
God is Good (Part 3) - John & Donna Bishop

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For Better or For Worse

Guest: John & Donna Bishop

From the series: God is So Good

Bob: More than a decade and a half ago, John Bishop was experiencing headaches that took him to the hospital. He was diagnosed with meningitis, and then a month later, unexpectedly, his memory was gone. What happens to a person, to a marriage and a family, when everything about the past has been erased? John Bishop says you have to start back at the beginning, learning to walk, to talk, learning to love.

John: When she began to teach me, she said, "You're John, I Donna, we're married." I said, "Married? Married?" And she said, "Oh, okay, you forgot that. That means you belong to me, and I belong to you." I look at her, I say, "You my Donna?" She said, "Yes." That what I call her ever since – "My Donna." It was so easy to love her. She loved me so good.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, August 5th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. What would happen to your marriage if, all of a sudden, you were starting from scratch?

John: I tell people she taught me everything I know. Every woman dream come true – her husband forget it all, and she get teach him.

[laughter]

Bob: And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. In our years of interviewing folks, we've met a number of couples and heard some remarkable love stories, but the story our listeners are hearing this week is an all-time classic, isn't it?

Dennis: It may be the best. I mean, we've heard some great ones here, but we wanted to bring this story to you, as a listener. John and Donna were married in 1974. They had three sons. He was an evangelist for a number of years, pastored a church, had a ranch for young people that he helped staff and give leadership to.

Bob: It was back in 1995, though, that he was diagnosed with aseptic meningitis and had to be hospitalized, and normally you recover from aseptic meningitis and life goes on.

Dennis: But what happened was, it was like someone erased the chalkboard. All the memory, all of his understanding of all the basics of life were gone because of this disease.

Bob: This is a month after he's had his meningitis that he loses his complete memory. He doesn't know that he's married, he doesn't know what marriage is, he doesn't know how to talk, he doesn't know how to eat.

Dennis: He doesn't know who God is.

Bob: It's like starting from scratch and, obviously, that leads to an incredible stress on a marriage, on a family. I mean, what do you do from there, right?

Dennis: It's one thing, Bob, to have a life-threatening illness and live through that valley, but the story you're going to hear is all about how they picked up and began to live life on a daily basis.

Bob: Donna, it's almost like when you brought John home from the hospital, you were bringing home a newborn baby who had some adult-level functionality but some very baby-like qualities. Was he ever like a bad boy? When he was home from the hospital, were there ever times when you thought, "I'm going to have to" …

Dennis: Let's put it the way it is, Bob – did he ever pitch a fit?

Bob: Or a tantrum?

John: I can answer that – yes.

Bob: Did he go through the terrible twos with you?

[laughter]

Donna: Yes, he would – especially when it came to eating. He wanted to eat his dessert first. "Why do I have to" – you know, he was always asking questions, why he has to do this and do that, and it was funny, one time I came home, and he was trying to help me, so he was washing the dishes. When he washed the dishes, he broke a plate or a glass or something, and so he hid it in the trash, buried it in the bottom of the trash so I wouldn't know that he broke a plate.

So, you know, he was hiding things from me and sneaking around behind me when he was doing things he thought I didn't want him to do.

Bob: Now, here's your husband.

John: [laughing] Yes …

Bob: … acting this way, and you feel like you have to paddle him, spank him, for how he's behaving? How do you handle that, as a wife, when …

Donna: I'd be glad to spank him.

[laughter]

John: She never spanked me, but she had to get after me but, oh, she has been so patient.

Bob: When did you – when did it dawn on you that you had a sin nature – that deep inside of you is this rebellion that you want to be selfish, and you want things the way you want them. When did that register for you?

John: Once I began listening to the Bible on tape, I – for instance, Bob, I can remember first lie I told, and at least after the illness. In the hospital the nurses had asked me if I had taken something, and it was something I didn't like, and so I had thrown it away, and I told her I had taken it.

Now, I didn't know what a lie was, but I felt guilty. But later on I learned what lying was.

Dennis: I'm sitting here thinking when you hid the plate – that also had to result in some guilt.

John: Yes, mm-hm.

Dennis: So here is God convicting you of your need for forgiveness, your need for Savior. And yet you've already made that commitment as a young lad growing up. You don't happen to have that sheet of paper do you?

Bob: The page in your Bible that shares your testimony?

John: No, I didn't bring it. I sorry, I didn't bring it with me.

Dennis: Basically, what does that sheet of paper say?

John: Well, it tells about that Saturday night ...