Citizen ATX
Citizen ATX
Changed | Chet Burchett
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Welcome our first guest of the new series; Chet Burchett! Chet shares with us his incredible story and testimony and walks us through what it looks like to experience continued faith and hope in Christ in the midst of loss.
Hello there and welcome to the Citizen ATX Podcast. My name is Matt Gillam, and we are beginning a new series this week talking about change. Now, here at Austin Baptist Church where I serve, our pastor is walking through a series talking about uh folks who had life-changing experiences with Jesus. And as part of that series, wanting to expand a little bit and look into the situations we face in real life, we wanted to do this series where we talked about how Jesus interacts in our lives when we when we face change as well. And so today with me, I've got my friend Chet Burchett. Hey Chet, how are you today? I'm fine, Matt. Yeah. I hope you all can hear those dulcet bass tones coming from across the desk. Chet, I I do have to say, I think you sound more like a Texan than anybody else that I've ever met.
SPEAKER_00Well, I am a Texan. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So Baytown, I mean you're deep deep in the heart, right? Well, so Chet, let's let's do a little bit of introduction for the folks so they can get to know you a little bit. Um so like w where are you from? Uh you said Baytown, obviously, but kind of let's talk a little bit about uh life journey.
SPEAKER_00Um it's I was born in Baytown. My father was a naval officer, so um I grew up all over the U.S. Uh college was the I went to Baylor University and uh Sikkim. College was the college was the 11th educational institution of 13 years. So we moved a lot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but uh I went to Baylor, came out of that as a journalist. I was a newspaper reporter um and started in Waco, did the O Towns, Amarillo, San Angelo, ended up in Houston. And then my wife and I, my wife Marcy and I, we were in Houston, and the time was coming to start a family. And newspaper work is nights, holidays, and weekends. So I went into PR, went into public relations. Um that job took me from Houston to Chicago. Um then I became chief executive officer of a large agency called Burs and Marceller for the US and I moved that took me to New York. Okay. And then from PR, I went into the went to work for the world's largest trade show and exhibitions company, Reed Exhibitions, and um ran the Americas, and then ultimately ended up as a global CEO, and that took us to London. Okay, okay. And I retired there and came home a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_04All right, yeah. So I mean, that's why I think it's so funny. It's that we're talking about the whole that you have such a Tex Texan affect, but you've lived in New York and Chicago, Chicago, and uh in jolly old London and all that. One of the stories listeners I like talking about with Chad is when he tells me about his uh barbecue expertise there in London and the the barbecue competition team you guys had there.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, well, actually in London, I was the only guy that actually understood barbecue. But um but I did cook with a competitive team out of the Mississippi Delta that I met on a mission trip a million years ago. And we we did we did the world championship seven years. Yeah. So it was fun.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so you you know, you know, listener, that that's we always we're always gunning to see how we can get Chet to smoke some brisket or some I guess pork shoulder, really kind of the more.
SPEAKER_00It's uh I'm I'm a Texan, so I count beef as as barbecue.
SPEAKER_04There you go. All right. Well, so tell uh tell us a little bit. I think w part of the real focus of the conversation of what we wanted to talk about today, especially with life change. Yeah, you had made mention that y'all started your family in Houston. Um and so then you had you had two sons. Right. And so uh why don't you tell tell us a little bit about kind of the family dynamic there? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Well, we had two. Uh our first was Chet. Um he was named after my father, actually, not me. Um there was Chet, and then about four and a half years after he was born, Garrett was born. Both in both while we were in Houston, and I guess Garrett was about eight months old when we moved to Chicago. Okay.
SPEAKER_04And so then from Chicago, then y'all wound up in uh Connecticut. Um so New York, but we all lived in Connecticut.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we lived in Connecticut.
SPEAKER_04And so tell me a little bit about kind of how the the the growth of the family dynamic was there, like your the church that y'all were a part of, uh kind of what your community looked like there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think um, you know, like a lot of people, I uh was accepted Christ. I grew up in a Christian family. And um but in my teenage years I sort of wandered off because I thought the wilderness was an interesting place to look at, and I stayed there for about 20 years. Um when we got to Chicago, we started going to uh Wheaton Bible. Okay. An amazing experience. And that was really where Marcy and I both, our faith walk became very real. When we got to Connecticut, we ended up in a small Baptist church. I should point out there are no large Baptist churches in the Northeast in the Northeast. Um and it was uh it was Wilton uh Baptist, and it was uh 60, 70 people, really. It was like a a family. Yeah. Um, and that's that's where um a lot of things uh changed for us. I was called as a deacon. Uh I ended up teaching, uh my wife was head of the Sunday school program for many years, but I taught uh first youth, and then I ended up teaching adults for about 10 years. Um and it was a really it was the central pivot really for for us and for our life, both boys. Uh Chet played guitar in the in the on Sunday mornings and um and it was it was a great experience for for everybody, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, so then um, you know, obviously today when we're as we're talking, a lot of this story is going to rotate around Chet and around his uh around his life. And and so if you'll uh what were some of the circumstances around because he was um he grew up how long what how old was he when he y'all moved to Connecticut?
SPEAKER_00He was in the seventh grade. Seventh grade. So yeah, he he grew he grew up, I mean, middle school, high school was was there in Connecticut. Um my son was a musician and and a poet, and I think uh probably would have ended up uh being a very talented marketing guy, but uh he didn't realize that that's really what he was doing. Um but he was into music and had a band, and um and I'm not gonna say that my son was a choir boy, but he was uh he was not. Um but he was a good kid and he had a wonderful heart and great empathy. Um he got out of uh when he was finished with high school, he went up to Boston, he was at studying at the Art Institute and was doing really well. He was good grades, he was happy, great girlfriend. Um and uh he called his mom after a weekend snowboarding trip with Ivy, his girlfriend, and said, Hey mom, could you send me my gloves? Sent her a picture of he and Ivy and you know in the snow. His friends came over on a Saturday night. They were planning a St. Patrick's Day party, which you can imagine in Boston is a big deal. And uh for reasons that none of us will ever know, he woke up on Sunday morning and just decided he didn't want to see Monday. Called a friend and told him that he'd left the door unlocked and he was gone.
SPEAKER_04Well, so I mean that that happened on a Sunday, and I know when you when you've talked to me about the experience, I mean you were y'all were at church that morning, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I taught a lesson. Yeah. In fact, it it'll come up as we as we talk that that that day's lesson, I believe, was a provision to prep to prepare uh me. Because it was Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Don't don't be anxious about anything, but in all things with prayer and thanksgiving, put your request before God, and a peace that transcends understanding will certain will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That was the lesson. The last thing I said in the lesson that morning to the adults was you know, life's pretty good right now, everything's all right, the economy's good, we're all in in a good spot, but it's not always going to be that way. And the last thing I said was, and when the storm comes, faith has to matter. If it doesn't, it's not worth very much. And then I went home. And at five o'clock that afternoon, the police came and told us our son was gone.
SPEAKER_04Man, well, and shit. I mean, I and first of all, I do want to I want to say thank you to you for sharing this story because I know how difficult these kind of things are, and I know that you guys have have talked through this many times over the years, but I do hope listeners that y'all understand as well that when we share these kind of stories, these are heartfelt, these are these are um these are coming to the the center of truth. Uh and Chad, I love the way that you put it where you know you talk about the fact that when the storm comes, like it's not there's not really an if about it in in the lives of believers. And so what so what were kind of some of the circumstances that y'all faced uh moving on from five o'clock on that evening?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean I mean it it's it it's indescribably awful. Okay, and it doesn't ever go away. Um my wife, uh Marcy, to her it's very important that people understand that we didn't thrash around trying to find faith or trying to find Jesus in the midst of all of this. We had been discipling for a long time. Right. And as Marcy says, the roots of the tree ran deep. And I'm not sure that we could have withstood the storm if we were trying to figure things out on the fly. Um it was a you know, I'm I'm not one of these people that has regular conversations with God. I mean, I pray, but it's not like you know, I get a return call. Yeah. Um I know people do, and that's fine, but that's that's not my experience. But um, you know, immediately afterwards, I mean the first thing we did was we call our pastor Jason and and he came over and uh and there was a s a literal storm coming, a blizzard, one of the spring blizzards. And our our younger son Garrett was at a at a boys' boarding school upstate Connecticut. And so we called the school and they shut down the Wi-Fi and the internet so he wouldn't hear something via the social media. And Jason drove through a building snowstorm to try to get up there so we could get Garrett and get him home and um and tell him. And uh my my mind, the only way I can describe it is it was like static. It was like white noise. I couldn't, I mean, Jason would be talking to me and I'd see his lips moving and you know no conscious thought about anything other than just trying not to vomit. Right. And um and and all of a sudden there was a it was as as if uh a small clear bell rang, just a tone, and all the static went away, and I had I was given two thoughts. It was an external input, it was not something I came up with. And it was two things. One is you will focus on what you have and not what you've lost, and two is you will not be defined by your grief. And it was and I turned around and I told Marcy and I just made it as a declarative. That became uh a mantra that uh a meditation that I hung on to every day in the months and the years that passed. Um you know it it and it was so it was in that moment. I mean, it's not like you know, Jesus like suddenly showed up, you know, on the scene. I mean he was central to our life anyway.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00I really do believe that it was the Holy Spirit's way of giving me something to hang on to um that was practical. I'm a practical guy, so it was easy for me to focus on. And the problem with grief, I think, is that people get they get lost in it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not saying, by the way, that um that we didn't get lost and suffer, but but we always held to a sinner. And I think that that was the the blessing of faith. Um you know, people ask, and it it's interesting after the fact. Um I mean of course believers come around you and that's that's a good thing. Our church family was amazing. Right. But then there are all the people who know you um who are who are not believers, right? Yeah. Um and the most well, there were two questions. One typically other Christians would ask me, Are you mad at God? And it'd be like, No, I'm not. And I and I'm I'm not. I I never was, nor was my wife. Um but then unbelievers would say, Okay, Chet, now you tell me how you can believe in a God that did this to you.
SPEAKER_03Man.
SPEAKER_00Right? Yeah. And that got asked frequently, not just in the aftermath of Chet's death. And by the way, when your son is on the front page of the newspaper, yeah, uh, you pretty much can't avoid the conversations.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00But all through the years, when I lived in England, which is a very secular society, right? Right. You would get I would get asked this question, how can you believe in a God that that did this?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And of course, my response consistently was, well, God didn't do this. We live in a broken world. Yeah. Yeah, but he could have stopped it. It's like, well, of course he could. But, you know, he could stop the cancer that killed my father, who was a deep, devoted believer. You know, he could have stopped all sorts of things, but ours is a broken world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And being a Christian doesn't give you access to an easy walk. Right. It's not any different for me than it is for the guy down the street that's never set foot through the door of a church. We both have to walk through a broken world. Yeah. The difference is who we walk with.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So what my response was to people when they would say this was, well, actually, no. God prepared us in ways that we did not understand at the time. So two years earlier, Chuck was out with his friends. He was senior in high school. Yeah. He came in. Um, I was out of town on business as I usually was, and he came into the bedroom as he always did at night to let his mom know he was home, yeah. Safe. And um, the lights are off, there's no light, and he said, Mom, I'm home. She goes, Good, I'm glad. And he goes, Mom, I've decided it's time for me to get baptized. No.
SPEAKER_04Very, very single-minded kind of guy, right? Yeah, yeah. It was well dependent.
SPEAKER_00Think about it. He, you know, he this didn't happen at church or church camp. It wasn't after a Sunday service. It was just something he'd been thinking about. He was a believer, but he decided it was time for him to get baptized. So he did. And that picture sits on our piano today, and it's a source of comfort. So there was that. Yeah. Um, there was Christine, who was a 19-year-old girl from Baylor who came in to be a church intern and stayed with us that summer. Chet was still there, so she knew Chet. Um, and she went home and she started calling us every Sunday. Yeah. Now she has a wonderful family. I met her parents. Her parents are very nice people. But Christine called us as if she was a daughter. She came back and helped with Chet's funeral. She came back the next summer as an intern, then she lived with us while she finished her master's in sociology. She's a missionary in Lebanon now. And she still calls us every week. So God gave us Christine, who, for all intents and purposes, is a daughter, and then there was another young woman, same age as Chet. Um, Claire, who was the daughter of good friends of ours in the church and through circumstances ended up living with us for the better part of a year. Um Claire, um, Garrett considers Christine and Claire sisters. He wanted to know if you should sign them down as siblings when he went to college, you know. Um and they go on vacations with us. They I mean, so God gave us people to love. He gave us young families in the church. I'm Grumppa to a gaggle of kids in Tennessee. And they just consider Marcy and I their third set of grandparents. So he gave us people. He prepared us in in other ways. Um and I and I I I mentioned this earlier. The morning that Chet, the day Chet died, that morning's lesson was Philippians 4, 6, and 7.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now, I didn't choose it, it just showed up on the schedule of what I was teaching. But I had spent uh a week preparing for the lesson and studying and praying on it and thinking about it. And what does it mean to have peace in spite of your circumstance? Yeah. And I believe that was uh another part of that preparation. We were given people who would love us and who we could love in return. We were given um the certainty of salvation. And we were I was given an opportunity to prepare myself without understanding why for what is there's two promises in the gospel, right? That I said well, there's more than two, but the the two that the two that I hang my hand on is number one, um eternal salvation, not through anything we do, yeah, but through faith and God's grace. The second is that verse in Philippians, which is this is a broken world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and the the only difference between a Christian and a believer and someone who isn't, is that in uh a set of circumstances we have the capacity to receive a divine peace that allows us to walk on and not get lost. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not asked I'm not saying that was easy. Yeah. Because it's not.
SPEAKER_04Well, and I think w especially when you make the statement about um the way that believers approached you with it. Um I think I think many of us who who are believers struggle with that idea that we can't that they that we can live this both end existence where both we have this peace and we lived in a in a broken world. I I think it's easier sometimes for people to conceive of the world of, well, it's either all good or it's all bad. And you know, w it is one of those amazing things of what God does with our grief in the midst of a broken world, right? Um And so for for you, uh how how did life change after uh Chet passed? Um was there anything in in your family or any anything like how did like I mean obviously there were big there were huge changes that happened as a result of it, but I mean what what would you say were some of the things that changed in the the aftermath of all that?
SPEAKER_00Well somebody who had suffered a similar loss. Okay. Um which I'd been unaware of, right? But it was somebody I had known.
SPEAKER_04Well, and that and that's uh one thing I do want to say, it's amazing how often in grief people bring out those who have been who we had no idea had face a similar one.
SPEAKER_00No, it's a it's a secret society to which nobody wants to belong.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but what what Celia said to me was the person you were died with your son. Because that was the father of two boys and all of those things. That's gone. Yeah. The person you become depends on how you manage this forward. All right. And I think that is a that is a true statement. Because my wife and I had two sons, we had expectations, you've got dreams, you know, you're talking about, well, maybe we have a little when we retire, maybe we have a place on the East Coast because Chet will be out here, he's a musician. And then it's just gone. Yeah. And you have to pick it up and carry forward. Um, and that's not um, it's not an easy thing. So when you ask, you know, how did things change? They changed. I mean, fundamentally, um, everything changes. Garrett went all of a sudden to not having a brother, and that's a hard thing to watch.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um at the time he was how old was he? Fourteen. Fourteen, yeah. Fifteen, yeah. Yeah, fifteen. And that was tough. And he's got to walk, I can't walk it for him. Right. You know, I can't walk it for my wife. Um, you know, so you're you you kind of struggle through it, um and you hope that you gain some you hope that you gain something out of it. Um and there's no there's no victory in this kind of a loss. I mean there's you know nothing nothing can make that go away. Um But I think probably for my wife and I both, we became through hard lessons, we we became aware of of how to sit with people in grief. Um you know, because words, they are no words. Right. They're no words. Um but presence is important. And I had a friend, and my wife had a friend, who would show up at the house whether we wanted them to or not. And sometimes would s in my case, my friend would sit with me on the back porch, and there were times and he never said a word. He would just sit there for an hour, hour and a half, and then pat me on the knee and get up and leave.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And my wife's friend would show up and With her dog, and they would take the dogs for a walk. And whether my wife wanted to or not, she would go walking with Barb a couple times a week. And and so we learned the importance of presence. Yeah. We learned the importance of being able to absorb pain. Yeah. And I think a lot of people get very uncomfortable around pain. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, because it's it's to that same thing. We want to think it's either all good or all bad. So if there is any bad, we've got to figure out a way to avoid it. And um, you know, I think one of the that kind of leads to one of the big questions I think that comes into this series about change, um, and it's about the redemption of things that happen in that. And so have you seen your experience redeemed or how how has has have you seen your experience redeemed uh in this world with in your walk with Jesus? I mean, have you s have you has it given has this experience and granted, as I'm saying this, it it always sounds a little crass to say, well, what did you gain out of this experience or how did you use this experience? But that's the reality. When we're changed, we we have to use the experiences that we've had to shape who we are. And so how how have you seen Jesus re interact through your life as a result of what you and Marcy and Garrett went through?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I think it's um I think it's very fair to say that that for my wife and I both our faith is stronger because it's been tested. Um, you know, the Bible talks about the crucible, right? Refiner's fire. Um we came through the other side. And there is a great blessing to know that you can survive something like that, and that you can come out the other side intact. So there is that for us. I think our faith is stronger. Um I think we're better able to sort of manage life's disappointments, if you will. There's been another aspect, and it's and it's it's it's popped up over the over time frequently, and that is that people who are in pain look at us, and they want to understand how we're still standing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so there's been an opportunity to to witness. My wife, when we were in London, a woman came to her that she knew socially, and she was struggling with the loss of her mother, and she said, I don't understand how you've managed to go forward. That led to my wife and her being in an extended Bible study. I had a guy come to me that worked with me, and his daughter was dying of a brain tumor. There was nothing they could do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And she died about a year after Chet, and we sat. Jason, our pastor, wrote a book for other ministers called Faded Flowers. Right. And it's a collection of his Linton sermons that year after Chet died, but also reflections. He asked for permission to be able to talk about Chet.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And so if a minister has benefited from that or someone did reading it and and is better able to deal with loss, um, I would say probably that's that's for us, that's been I don't know that I would use the word redemption. But if out of our grief and pain we've been able to help or been able to serve as an example to someone else, then I suppose that's that counts.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I I do think it absolutely does, because you know, it if if we continue to live in a world where we try to pretend that pain is not real or that suffering is not real, um, you know, what all that all the the the reality of grief does is it isolate people. It pushes it, it pushes them away from others. And so the fact that, you know, God God and J and Jesus has used you to close that isolation gap between those who are struggling and other people. I mean, to me, and the thing that I hear throughout your story is that that the the reality of the the strength of the roots of the faith that you had that was developed in in you over years, and then the community that came around you in the time of need. And then from that, you becoming that community for other people. Like I I see that as uh you know, and to be fair, yeah, this is not, I would say, just this radical life change in you, but it is a radical life change that you had to walk through.
SPEAKER_00I would I would put it I would put it this way. Um absent our faith, I don't think we would have survived. I don't think our marriage would have survived. I don't I don't know how I could have picked him up and put them down. Absent that faith, I don't know if I could have survived. Because of our faith, we were able to come through the other side of it. And and I guess that's the most important thing for me. It's what I hold on to. God did not promise us an easy walk, He promised us peace that other people can't understand. And that's what I hold on to since March the first, so many 13 years ago. That's what I hold on to every morning, every day that I get up is God has given me the ability to carry forward in a broken world. And I sometimes don't understand it, but I do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, thank you, Shet, for coming in, for sharing this story with us. Um, you know, this is and we and we hope, listener, that whatever kind of life circumstance you're facing right now, if if there if there is grief, if there is difficulty, if there um is pain that you're that you're experiencing, know that that God doesn't want you to go through it alone. He He wants you to do it as part of a community. And also, I hope that you hear in Chet's story the the importance of what faith does. It gives us something stronger than ourselves to hold on to. It gives us a horizon and an anchor to hold on to. Um and also I I do I also hope that you hear in the midst of this that pain is real and the emotions that you're gonna face as a result of that are real and th and those things are okay. Like and these are things you have to face in the in the midst of that journey. But again, think as you consider yourself this idea of change, how are how are you, listener, um finding your anchor of faith today? And what community are you connecting in with to walk on this journey together with? And then finally, what is it that you in with the life experiences God has put you through, the change that you've experienced, how are you taking that and then going and being a comfort and a strength to others? And so, Chet, thanks for joining us today for the Citizen ATX podcast. And uh anything, any last things you want to say for the listening world out there? No, I'm I'm sure they've heard enough from it. All right. Well, thank you, Chet. And so, on behalf of Lauren Ortiz, Carlos Jordan, and myself, thank you for listening to the Citizen ATX podcast today, and we will talk at you later.