SHAWN THORNTON: Growing up, my life was anything but normal--

but then so was my mom.

After waking up from a coma following a car crash,

her gentle and sweet disposition had

been replaced by violent mood swings,

profanity-laced tirades, and uncontrollable fits of rage.

A moment of frustration might make her hurl a knife at me,

my little brother Troy, or my dad, or just cuss us out,

only to shower us with love and affection

in the next moment like nothing had happened.

Yet this same woman was also a Bible reader, a Sunday school

teacher, and a friend to the elderly, poor,

and marginalized wherever she went.

How the same person could be a saint one minute

and a nightmare the next was a constant source

of frustration for our family.

Then, one day after decades of embarrassing outbursts,

a surprise discovery finally helped

us come to grips with my mom's mysterious condition

and brought me to a startling realization that changed

the course of my life forever.

Well, Shawn Thornton joins us now.

Shawn, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Andrew.

Good to be with you.

Your book is so transparent and you really

let out a lot of details that some authors wouldn't

be so brave to do.

Particularly when I'm reading about you as a young boy

up in your room with your dog, you're

just crying and hearing your parents fight--

it's really grabs the heart.

Now tell us-- the accident really changed her.

Yeah, it was before I was born.

She is in an accident when she's 14.

My mom-- she is in a coma then for three months.

She turns 15 in the coma and the person driving

was a boyfriend she barely knew, they were just

getting to know each other.

He was a senior in high school, so he

graduated while she was still in the coma.

And when she wakes up, she wakes up

with physical challenges-- she can't walk correctly,

she has balance issues.

Emotional challenges, so she has outbursts--

she can be calm one minute, depressed

the next, angry and upset the next over little things.

And then mental-- a lot of mental illness

associated with this as well.

So from the accident on then it affected my childhood,

our lives-- it was just chaos in our home.

And I'm struck by the fact in reading your book that you

really thought this type of behavior and family life

was fairly normal.

Early.

We hear that from children who grew up in an abusive home

or in a home with an alcoholic parent, who's

got a lot of issues, and then they

start realizing, wait a minute-- because if this

is all you know as a little kid, this is normal.

Then you start realizing, no, this isn't normal.

Then you get into your early teen years, for me,

and I started saying, I want out of this, this is so abnormal.

I want their life, I want to be in that house.

And then you start to discover, as I did, that wait a minute,

those other people have brokenness, too.

Maybe not the same extent or the exact same circumstances as me,

but we're all living in broken lives

and an all but normal experience because

of the fall of humanity.

Were you afraid of your mom?

I wouldn't say I was afraid of my mom.

She could get very angry and start

throwing things and cussing, but I put it

in the context of like her brain was short circuiting

and so I never felt afraid of my mom in that sense.

There were times I was scared that I wasn't moving fast

enough to get away from something or-- like that,

but I didn't live in fear of my mom.

One thing your book really sounds the alarm on

is we don't know what other families have gone through,

what they're going through, what individuals have

dealt with and struggled with.

You're a pastor-- how has your childhood affected

your ministry?

Well, even every week when I get up

to speak to our congregation-- we

have several services-- I pray and I talk to the Lord.

And I say, Lord, remind me that there's

a Shawn Thornton out there, there's

a John Thornton-- my dad-- or a Beverly Thornton-- my mom--

that maybe even on the way to church-- because sometimes

for us coming to church was chaos.

So I think about the people who are there--

they all look like-- we all come at our best to church

and we sing, we smile at each other, greet each other.

And so I'm constantly reminded that there's

someone who just heard the cancer word this week,

the divorce word, or there's something going on.

Why do we do that?

I guess I can't say everybody does, but a lot of us

when we go to church, we put-- we're Christ followers

and we should find identity and partnership with the other

in communion, but we put this mask on like, I'm fine,

I'm fine.

Why don't we allow ourselves to be more vulnerable?

It's interesting-- in our case, I think some of us

do it because we're hiding something.

We're hiding immorality and we've

seen that-- we've seen, unfortunately,

pastors and Christian leaders who the mask is taken off

and we find greed and arrogance and corruption.

But in our case, we weren't consciously trying

to hide this from anyone.

We've actually been shocked as a family

that people didn't know more.

People in our church and our family are saying,

wait, we didn't know, we didn't know.

We say, you didn't know?

We weren't trying to hide it in our case.

I think there are a lot of people just trying to cope

and church becomes a place where they

can be fed, be around other people,

experience some normality.

And so some yes, are hiding it and they're putting on a mask,

then others are just trying to make it to tomorrow

and they're just trying to have a little peace

for a few moments in their lives.

What about someone watching the program who

says, Shawn, there is brokenness in my family--

we would call it, I guess, dysfunction-- I'm broken,

we have been dealing with things or God hasn't showed up,

God hasn't remedied this situation.

What about how God uses quote "broken people"?

Well, I think sometimes God chooses

to take us through a season of brokenness

or in like my mom's case, it became brokenness

she had to live with it and it becomes a wound she carries

with her that affects us.

And I think that God uses that, like in my case--

I can speak to my situation-- all my mom's brokenness helped

shape my heart for hurting people

and for people who are going through chaos-- kids

growing up in tough environments or broken families,

dysfunctional families.

And so I think God uses those things for our good,

my good in my case and my story, for the good of others,

and then ultimately for His glory.

And so I think even at times He chooses not to heal,

He chooses not to fix because He has this grand plan He's

working where He's going to use our experiences-- as he has

in my life to develop in me a pastor's heart.

And we sometimes think if God is loving,

He will fix me or fix us, but that's not perhaps

the best theology.

No, it's not.

Even in Hebrews we learn that whom the Lord loves,

He chastens, too, so He goes as far as even disciplining us.

I think of it as parenting-- sometimes my kids

go through things and I might put a little Bandaid

on the cut, but I also know that it's good for them

to experience a cut or to go through some things

to grow and know that life has some hurts and frailties.

I think God knows that in the course of our lives,

what we face today-- like David facing the lion and the bear,

then he's ready for Goliath.

And I think in my case, I went through some things

and our family went through some things

so that God could use us in a different and even greater

way beyond that.

And there's great hope in this book

too because you call your mother your spiritual hero

in the midst of all this.

And at her funeral, you heard from people

who said her spiritual impact was just marvelous in her life.

It was huge because she noticed people

other people didn't notice.

She noticed the marginalized, she noticed--

And now you do too.

It's like a sixth sense for me because my mom had it

and I don't feel uncomfortable around people

who are different than me-- someone

in a wheelchair, someone who's got

autism, a child with autism.

And we all feel uncomfortable if it's different than we are,

but I don't run from that because my mom didn't

run from that.

She ran to those people, she loved them,

treated them with the same dignity she treated

the pastor or anyone else.

A special thing in your book-- you're

talking about what your church does now to minister to people

and I guess your church in California

had created some fake snow for a sledding situation

and a parent of a disabled child said, thank you,

you let children like mine go first

and we're not usually counted first.

The impact you're having it is terrific.

So we bring in 95 tons of snow to have this big event where

5,000 people show up-- and it's quite a process

in Southern California to bring 95 tons of snow and put it out

so we can do sledding once a year--

but it's an outreach community.

And what we say is-- even to the community--

kids with special needs can come and we give them

the first hour on the hill and nobody else can go out.

And this mom said, we usually get the leftovers.

Your church gave us the first opportunity on the fresh snow.

And she started crying and she said,

nobody's done that for our family.

And I link that back to my mom-- my mom

taught me to love folks who are a little different,

who are dealing with a physical or emotional or mental

disability, and love them just as much as you'd

love anybody else.

And you know where my mom got it?

She got from Jesus, so my mom taught me

how to live and love like Jesus.

Final question-- why the book now?

Why are you, at this point, telling about your story?

I've never told this story throughout 20-some years

of preaching every weekend.

I haven't told any stories of my child

because I think they didn't matter.

But I'm learning my story itself has impact

and people are finding an echo in their heart

to something that went on in their childhood, in their past.

And I'm finding that as I've told my story,

people are finding healing and hope just

through my own memoir.

And so now because God's maybe given me the maturity,

the ability to say, OK, this is what I went through,

this is my life, and God's going to use it for His glory.

And take down our masks.

Yeah, take down our masks.

Take off the masks.

Well, Shawn's book is called "All

But Normal" and it's available wherever books are sold.

We thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Andrew, so much.

Really appreciated the--