Heather Bellamy spoke with Paul Poulton

Heather: Describe some of the journey of what you went through in seven years of not being able to have children.

Paul and Lorraine Poulton with their son Isaac

Paul: We never got down about it. I think it's easy to want a miracle or God to answer a prayer and he doesn't answer and God's like that; we can never twist God's arm behind his back. Sometimes he answers our prayers and sometimes he doesn't and he's got his own reasons. That's what being a Christian is; you trust; you don't get angry with God; you don't get bitter.

We saw some people who had got children and they didn't treat the children right. It would have been easy for us to say, "How come God doesn't give us kids, but gives them kids and they behave like that"? But we didn't; we never did that; we were always positive and joyful about it. There's this scripture that says, if you delight yourself in the Lord he will give you the desires of your heart and we did that everyday. Lorraine and I would pray and we'd even dance around the room, just full of enthusiasm and joy. The joy of the Lord was our strength. We even do it now, now and again. We didn't get down about it at all.

Then when we had the miracle and I remembered there was an incidence where my faith worked well, but you don't sometimes realise its working. I'd been having these letters from different parts of the world and I kept the stamps from them and I put them in a book and Lorraine said to me, "Why are you keeping stamps"? I said, "Well, boys like stamps don't they"? I felt that when we have a baby, a grown up boy, that he'd like these stamps and they're such nice stamps from different parts of the world. She said, "Oh you think we'll have a baby then"? I'd not thought about it too much before that but I said, "Yeah I do. I think God will bless us in that area". I've still got the stamp book. As it turns out my son is not that interested in stamps, but he kind of likes it; he's got it in his bedroom. It wasn't so much for him, but it's more for me because it just showed me I did have faith. We had a baby and it was great. Not that we're special people or anything, we're ordinary people.

Heather: Does your son like music, picking it up off his Dad like you did off yours?

Paul: You can never get your kids to do what you want them to do. I wanted him to play guitar but he's ended up playing drums. I like running and football and he likes reading. He's more of a quiet contemplative son. I used to say, "Do you want to come out for a bike ride"? He would say, "Do I have to"? I've never tried to shape his thinking how I think it should go. It's what talents has he got that can be used and what's God got for his life that's important.

Paul and Lorraine Poulton

Heather: You touched on the whole thing of humility with me off air. Is that an important theme in your life?

Paul: It has become one. It didn't start out as one. When I read the Bible and I'd go to church it's amazing how many times people talk about humility and I never even noticed. It's like yesterday I was on a course and the guy showed us how the mind works and he showed us these pictures. He said count how many pens are in there. We all counted the pens and we all got different numbers. Then he showed us the picture again and in the left hand corner it had got exactly how many pens there were written in bold letters. There were 24 people on the course and not one of us saw it. I thought that's interesting none of us saw the writing as our mind was going down that one route. It's like that with humility; it's one of the main themes in the Bible, but I'd missed it. It was like I was looking at the wrong thing.

I started to learn about it because when I was ill; when you're lying on your back looking up, you've got nowhere to look but up. I was getting close to God and I would be crying and the Lord started showing me things that I needed to know and one of the important lessons I learnt was about humility, brokenness and being broken before him. There's a story in the Bible about a lady who brought this jar of perfume and she smashed the perfume, which was a nice alabaster jar and the perfume came out. Sometimes in our lives we have this shell around us and we might have some treasure in it, but unless it's cracked the treasure won't come out. People say, "Ah he's never a Christian look at him", because maybe he's not broken. He might be a Christian; he might believe in God, but he's not got a crack anywhere. Then you see him and you just see a little crack and you think oh actually I think I can see a little bit of something coming out of that guy; yeah maybe he is a Christian. Christ must come out of us if we're Christians. It's like the perfume comes out of the vessel. That was a very important lesson for me. If I'm broken before Christ; if I'm humble, then he flows through me.

Heather: Can you give some examples of what you mean by that brokenness and humility from your own life?

Paul: It means when someone hurts us, or someone says something about us, we don't retaliate in a vindictive way; don't have bitterness towards people; just lay down your arms. We turn the cheek and Jesus said to go the extra mile. All that's humility because there are sometimes we have these little tiny arguments that grow and grow and grow and they fester and they get bigger and they end up as giants in our lives. What started out as a little bit of unforgiveness can end up as real solid hatred in our lives; we just hate that person and we don't know why. We can't even remember what the original argument was about, but we can't stand that guy or that girl. Sometimes brothers and sisters don't speak, or even parents don't speak to their children. Children don't speak to their parents sometimes, because this pride has been allowed to grow and it's got so big it's like a big gulf between the two parties. I think Jesus spoke about it as well you know, when the rich man died he was full of pride. There's no way he could get over to Abraham's side, but Abraham was full of humility. The rich man had got so much pride in his life; he wouldn't even help Lazarus who was a beggar outside his own house when he was alive. There is this great gulf that people can't bridge and if we're humble it never starts to grow, or if it has started to grow it has to be broken and smashed. If we say Lord make me humble, that's a good prayer. If we say Lord keep me humble, it's pre-supposing we're already humble.

Heather: So you're a singer/songwriter and have been a musician all your life, how do you handle criticism of your music?

Paul: Yeah I get that. It always hurts a bit. It's surprising, but each time it happens I have to put my own preaching into practice and say ok that person's got his opinion, I'm not going to fall out with him. He might be a nice guy and he can help me in other areas of my life, but he doesn't like my music, ok that's fine. When you're a musician everybody's not going to like your music, that's a fact, but there will be people around the world that will like it. What you've got to do is find out where those people are and each musician, even if it's weird music, you will find an audience somewhere. It's made so much easier these days with the internet; you can find an audience easier.

Heather: As a musician you obviously write your own songs too. Where do those songs come from and what are you trying to do with your music?

Paul: My album called Too Twitchy; remember Lorraine and I, we were very twitchy about getting married with each other and the whole album is based around relationships. We live on an estate. It's only about seven years old the estate and we've made friends with the young couples there, but it seems like they're splitting up. They've got these relationships and they're caving in. Lorraine and I try to talk to them. Loraine's been around people's houses on the estate talking to people 'til like one in the morning trying to help them and get their marriage back on track, but it's not easy keeping a relationship together. I write all these songs about relationships and people really identify with them as well. When I was in America somebody travelled three hours to come to a gig because he'd heard a song about marriage that I'd written on the internet and he wanted to come and he brought his wife as well. He said come and listen to this guy sing, because they had been having terrible difficulties.