Free It's All About Him by Denise Jackson Page B

long. And, thankfully, Mattie
’s colic got better, and she became the cheerful, easygoing person she still is today.
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    WITH RECORD ROYALTIES ROLLING IN, ALAN PLEADED WITH ME. “DENISE,” HE SAID, “YOU KNOW YOU REALLY CAN QUIT YOUR JOB NOW!”
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    Newly energized and feeling stronger, I was able to interview and hire housekeeping help and a nanny. For the first time in our lives, we weren’t watching every penny. We bought furniture. Fun clothes. Cars.And after taking repeated leaves of absence from my flight-attendant position at US Air, I was finally able to let it go. I had held on to that job like it was a security blanket, thinking that if Alan’s success and all our new money suddenly evaporated, I could always return to flying. But with record royalties rolling in, Alan pleaded with me. “Denise,” he said, “you know you really can quit your job now!”
    Good Enough?
    We stayed in Crystal Gayle’s rental home until we found the house we wanted to buy: a historic Revolutionary War–era farmhouse with ten acres around it and pastures for horses. Renovating, furnishing, and decorating it took a lot of time and focus.
    By this time Mattie was toddling around and talking a little. Alan bought me my first full-length fur coat. I put it on, twirling for our little daughter. Mattie reached up to me, petted the thick, smooth fur, and shouted, “Doggie! Doggie!”
    Soon after that we were in Washington, D.C. President George H. W. Bush loved country music, and Alan was asked to perform at the historic Ford’s Theatre for the president. Afterward, at the White House, I smiled and shook hands with George and Barbara Bush. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, seeing the scene and thinking, How can this be real? How can all this be happening to us?
    The White House was one thing. Life on the road was a little more raw. By this point Alan had been in People magazine’s “25 Most Beautiful People” issue; he was Nashville’s “Best New Male Artist,”“Star of Tomorrow,”winner of “Album of the Year,” and country music’s latest sex symbol. Here in the Real World , with sales over one million, had gone platinum. The attention was intense. At concerts and events, women reacted to Alan like he was Elvis. The media scrutiny was ever-present. You never knew when you’d turn around and a photographer would be in your face. The challenge was to look good, all the time.
    All this “worldly” focus on image and appearance was superficial, sure . . . but I didn’t have any other deep concept of real significance and identity that could counter it. The Christian faith I’d grown up with wasn’t really a part of my everyday life, so it wasn’t the basis of my self-image. I was caught up in the illusions of a People -magazine world that worships at the altar of celebrity, beauty, wealth, and fame.
    The Gospel had told me the truth that I was special and significant simply because I was a child of God, not because of how I looked or how many good things I’d done. The songs of my youth had told me that “Jesus loves me, this I know, ’cause the Bible tells me so.” I knew that Jesus loved me “just as I am,” as the old hymn put it. And I had sung more times than I could count:
    Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
    But now I wasn’t turning my eyes upon Jesus. He seemed far away and irrelevant, the soft-eyed Savior whose portrait hung on the wall of my church fellowship hall back home. And the things of earth were not “strangely dim.” They were as clear and sharp as the glossy magazines with Alan’s picture on the cover and maybe a shot of me inside, on the red carpet at the Country Music Awards, wearing some sparkly designer gown.
    I wasn’t