Upon arriving at a Nashville area coffee shop and shaking hands with Jeromy Deibler it was evident that our time together would not be your normal artist/writer conversation. The backdrop of the interview pretty much yanked that perception off the shelf quickly. Knowing what the Deiblers minus the FFH tag had walked through in their personal lives prior to the rebirth of the band, I knew Jeromy would have a lot to share.

After being on the road for 10 solid years, the group decided to hang up their road sign and take a breather back in 2006 for a bit. No timeline. Just an extended break so everyone could be with their families and take on some new experiences for a spell.

But husband and wife Jeromy and Jennifer Deibler couldn’t have known what journey they were to embark upon when the decision was made to step back and stop touring for what was meant to be for a number of months – not years – at the time.
Jeromy shares, “We really never put a timeframe on the sabbatical or anything, we simply said it was time to invest in our families. Putting a timeframe on it would have placed a hold over everyone, placing a post in the future that we would have continually been forced to deal with. So we didn’t do that.”

“Jennifer and I brought the subject up to the other guys, because they needed to be involved in the decision making process. So we continued to do touring for another six months after that, making good on our dates we had already set up and then stepped away from everything that was tied to FFH.”
As they walked through that tough decision, the obvious conversation turned to the “What do we do now” question, which he and his wife saw as an opportunity to explore a new frontier.

“Earlier on I had gone on a 10-day mission trip to South Africa and while there I was invited to come back at some point in the future for a longer stay,” Jeromy states. “During the process of setting a cut-off date for shows, Jennifer and I decided that we would spend some time in South Africa. I felt like God was telling us to go, and we could use some of the time to rest from the touring lifestyle; so we went.”

He tells of a much simpler life while moving his family and serving at a Church in South Africa for a planned six month visit. A time of wide open spaces, a slower pace of life, and a more relationship-driven atmosphere altered the mindset of the Deiblers while there, and upon their return to the States.

“People who haven’t been there can’t really comprehend the free feeling that environment brings and even get annoyed when we bring it up. I don’t know if we’ll ever go back, but it made us crave for the simple form of life they live over there,” he says. Little did they know that while Jeromy was experiencing little nagging pinches and mild numbness in his hands and arms from time to time during and before their South Africa experience, internally his body was doing things that would cause havoc once he arrived back stateside. He explains, “ We ended up coming back to the U.S. a bit early because Jennifer was pregnant with our second child and she really wanted to be here during that whole process. So while rejoicing with that scenario and coming fresh off of our break, we decided not to go back on the road right away and concentrate on family for a bit longer.”

That was another tough decision for the family however, as they hadn’t done any shows for several months. Contrary to popular belief, artists don’t make a lot of money when they take extended breaks from doing shows and music. Even with a successful career behind them. And FFH continued to receive plenty of offers to get going again with shows around the country. That made the decision to hold off even tougher.

Once they got into their ‘new normal’ as Jeromy put it stateside, his nagging pinches and numbness was getting worse and spreading. Three months before their daughter was born, he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

“I had not felt right for almost a year,” Jeromy looks away with a bit of concern on his face. “So the final diagnosis was both a relief and a bit of shock. I was getting numb in different parts of my body and didn’t have a clue why. I would wake up with my left arm a little numb, and then by
the end of the day would be in terrible pain. We went through checking for pinched nerves, and a few other things, but nothing made sense. Being a guitar player, it wasn’t really convenient to have that going on either. Finally the doctor did an MRI of my neck and ended up having that appointment that nobody wants to have. After showing me the slides of the MRI he basically said he didn’t know what I had, but there was very visible plaque in the middle of my spinal cord. That was the first time any doctor had told me it could be MS.”

He went through bouts of both hands being completely numb for weeks, then one month where one of his legs would just do strange things making life anything but normal. One night his stomach and ab area went numb, making him and his family perplexed and scared about his future. He even spent one month on the couch in serious pain. But Jeromy says that wasn’t the worst part of their now forced extended sabbatical.

“The waiting was the worst. After knowing you have MS, and I had stage two of the disease, you normally go right into treatment. But my doctors were unsure of what to do right away, so they did more tests and debated on whether I should join a clinical trial. But the approval process of what they were talking about couldn’t take place for another six months. All the while Jennifer was going through the pregnancy,” he shares.

Jeromy’s clinical trial finally started, and after a few treatments he felt pretty good. Another ‘new normal’ stage he mentions with a smile. Once the immediacy of not having to deal with the MS situation wasn’t taking place every day, in late 2008, they decided to try to get back out on the road on some level and begin communicating with people about what God allowed them to walk through since their last tour a few years prior.

But getting back out on the road after a very long break isn’t easy. “You can’t simply jump out on the road again one day and resume your tour schedule,” Jeromy says with a grin. “You have to notify a lot of people and then kind of wait and see who responds. We really didn’t get back on the road for months until sometime in 2009. That was obviously tough financially.”

So why go back to music after walking through the valley of not knowing what was happening, and then facing a debilitating illness? “Every time I got to the point of giving my music back to God, I couldn’t shake my role in the Kingdom, beyond being there for my family, was to communicate to people. To be one of His communicators,” he states.

“Some of us are supposed to communicate with written words, while others tell stories, and others have the opportunity to build things. I simply asked for confirmation to do something else if that’s what God wanted me to do throughout the whole experience. But He never took my gift back. He simply wanted us to wait on Him and His timing.”

Once the cobwebs were shaken off and they were ready to resume singing live, the couple quickly came to the conclusion that they were to do it as FFH, not as something else. “There was no need to reinvent ourselves,” Jeromy admits. “The story that we wanted to tell was part of what we had walked through. As the primary writer for FFH over the years, the lyrics sounded like the band and not something from a brand new entity.”

Jeromy and Jennifer made it clear that facing MS was not the headline or the main reason why they took so much time off or out of the spotlight. That was part of the process, but waiting and asking, and waiting some more, was the real headline that they now share out on the road with all who will listen.

And now, as the Deiblers are experiencing their own Wide Open Spaces in life and the pursuit of what God has before them, they seem content. Not with what could happen in the future, but with what is happening – today. With no strings attached or any outlandish expectations.

Jeromy admits he really doesn’t have a favorite track on the new project that came out in May. With all that they have lived through over the past four years and him actively writing along the journey, that’s not all that surprising. “It’s a retrospect of where we have been, but also where we are going. We didn’t know if there would ever be another record to produce honestly.”

He continues, “The thing that we now try to apply the most to our lives is the relationship-driven lifestyle that our friends in Africa showed us while there. What might be a 15-minute meeting here turns into an afternoon get together over there. They love to meet and have tea together. Even people you don’t even know will show up and stay at your place for hours simply learning things about you and enjoying your company.”

As we begin to leave the coffee shop I ask him one more question, asking him if he had something to share with radio and the industry as a whole. He pondered that for a moment, then sat up and said, “Radio has always given FFH great support throughout our time as a group. We were on radio before we signed to Essential and had a charting single before that all came down, so we are very thankful for the radio stations that played our music and help us impact people’s lives through their station.

“I would love for radio to play a role in our reemergence as we reach out to people in a fresh way. Radio is already helping us get the word out that we are back and recording music again. People wouldn’t know that without the support of Christian radio. And now that we are an independent band again, it’s even more vital to field some support from radio. So for those that have given us a voice on your station, we are very thankful.”

by Rick Welke, Christian Music Weekly (CMW)
Subscribe for free at www.christianmusicweekly.com/newsub.shtml