Still Here at 60 Years Old: Faith, Marriage, and the Empty Nest

Excerpted with permission from Still Here: Life Together on the Long Way Home by Mary Beth and Steven Curtis Chapman Copyright 2026, B&H Publishing.

Sometimes it feels weird. Being sixty. Being home in the empty nest. It’s also busy, just like your own life is busy. As busy as before, maybe even busier in certain ways, but without having the same kind of bounce to it, or at least the same kind of ability to bounce back from it. Even the anniversary cards look old now, all lacy and gold foil—the kind our grandparents thought were appropriately classic, but it’s been a long time since then, hasn’t it? (We don’t look that old, do we?)

But, our life has been a wild one, no doubt. Some of it’s been like a dream. The commercial success has certainly been beyond anything we ever imagined. It’s provided us opportunities to experience a life full of so many amazing things. But success also brings along with it a whole lot of invisible baggage that you find yourself unpacking over time. We find it funny, for example, at sixty, having all these Doves and Grammys and gold-colored albums on the studio wall—all this crazy collection of goodness all around us—how often we’re here in this house, just sitting here, all super quiet, so all alone.

You wouldn’t think it, would you? Surely, we’ve got a million other things we could be doing. And we do. Surely, we could call anybody we want tonight and ask if they’d like to get together for dinner. Perhaps that’s semi-true. But pretty rarely is our life a walk on the square on a summer night with a knot of good friends and a dish of yummy ice cream. Sometimes it’s just lonely, just us, knowing we’re probably the last people someone would think to invite to be in their small group at church.

But otherwise, we’re pretty normal, we think. We still fuss over little nothings when we’d be better off just letting them go—although, to be fair, we don’t give nearly as loud a voice to it as we once did, which was a lot. We’ve found it’s more fun now being proven silently right than trying to loudly argue our case for it. We can also escape into television binges when we should probably be doing something more productive, more important, more conducive to being a “good Christian.” Which we still often do, of course. But we do get tired a lot. We tap out. We tempt easily into stuff like that.

See, we’re all more alike than we let on.

Probably the biggest thing, though, more than all the other things, more than all the other topics of conversation that can heat up in our life, is the fact that one of us (guess which one) is hoping we could finally be close to being ready to start slowing down a little bit? Maybe? And yet the other one can’t seem to stop running like a squirrel in all directions, unable to turn off whatever motor is supplying the energy for all that. The story of our life, so much of it, has felt like that. It’s still like that. Stirred up and unsettled like that.

But . . .

We’re still here.

And you’d be surprised how often that’s what people tell us they think about the most when they think of us. Like, whenever we post a picture of ourselves or of our family doing something, even if it’s nothing particularly special, just something wholly ordinary, they don’t make many comments about the fifty #1 songs. Or the concerts. Or the radio hits. Sure, there have been and continue to be so many stories, from so many folks who’ve journeyed with us, about how much the lyrics of a certain song or a certain album have connected with their lives and encouraged them on their own journey. And we are truly grateful for every one of those stories. But what we love most is people telling us, when they think of the Chapmans, they mostly just think of how they feel seeing us still together. Still here.

Because isn’t that what really matters? We realize not everyone is able to tell that story. We realize, too, that we wouldn’t be telling it either if not for so much grace and so many second and third and fifty million chances at trying to get ourselves back to where we could speak to one another in our inside voices, and then just choosing to keep after it . . . again.

The truth is, though, no matter where we’re finding you today, there’s still a legacy of commitment to God and commitment to each other that is still yours to grasp and go forward with—starting now, even if didn’t start before. Because life is hard for you too. You’ve been battling it out too. You’ve been struggling through the wars in your own life too. And you need to believe you can still hang in there too, in spite of all the times (like us) when maybe you didn’t do what you were supposed to do.

Well, now you can. And now you will. And by the grace of God, we’ll be doing it too, right along with you. Just being here. Just showing up and staying here.

Let’s do it together.

The reason we’re still here at sixty is not because we’re better than others. We’re still here at sixty, because we’ve seen the worth of it in others, because of the “still here” encouragement and example of so many others. And though we hope we still have a ways to go—and, for sure, we still have a lot to learn—we plan on being here the whole way through. To still be standing when the music stops. And we’d love knowing you’re somewhere doing the same thing. Same as us. Burning the same light for other people to see and to keep heading toward.

Sixty is not the new forty.

Sixty is the new forever.