Name: BILL LEE SPEECH: Tennessee Governor Delivers Powerful and Unforgettable Words | AC14
Uploaded: 2026-02-12T05:56:55.000Z
Duration: 15 min 25 s
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But please welcome as our final speaker tonight, this morning, the 50th governor of the great state of Tennessee, Bill Lee.

I spoke to Zach a few minutes ago and said we should just not do this last speech.

I assured him I would go quickly, but it is a real honor for me to be here.

I came to this first National Prayer Breakfast 25 years ago or so.

Never imagined that I would be on stage, much less speaking.

And look, I realized that I am actually the fill-in speaker for the one who was proposed to be the keynote speaker.

And if you think you're surprised that I'm the keynote speaker, I just found out yesterday that I was the keynote speaker.

Where we find ourselves in places that we might never have imagined that we would be.

We all have days in our lives that we've always remembered.

Maybe the day you were married, or the day your parents divorced, or the day your first child was born, or the day your dad died.

Those days that make up the story of our life.

I heard it said that the days of our lives.

There are days in our lives that can be described by a simple sentence.

Then there's other days that chapters are written about.

And on that day chapters were written in the story of my life.

I lived a life most men dreamed of living.

Beautiful wife, beautiful kids, beautiful home, sprawling farm, prosperous business.

But on that July afternoon that I drove home from work and I saw my son fishing and my other son playing.

And my daughter was on a mission trip and my 4 year old was on a horseback, was on a horse with my wife.

And I drove up the drive of my home and thought about the fact that I must be the most blessed man ever.

A few minutes later I heard far away cries of a four year old.

And I knew that something was terribly wrong.

And I jumped in my truck and I drove as fast as I could.

And I found my wife lifeless on the ground next to a horse.

That day in my life, my life took a very dark turn.

The questions from a 4-year-old and a 9-year-old and a 14-year-old and a stunned father who doesn't have any answers for them.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, her confusing grief was so bad she actually got a gun and shot herself in an attempted suicide, which she survived miraculously.

But on that day, the trauma of that for my family was overwhelming.

And on the brink of failure, the days of my life had become chapters of grief and brokenness and sorrow.

And I remember a few months after my wife had died, we had this old farm cemetery.

It was beautiful iron fence and ancient tombstones out there, or hundreds years old tombstones.

But a family cemetery shaded by big trees, a beautiful spot.

And I had ordered a marker for my wife's life, my wife's grave.

And it was the day that these guys were supposed to deliver that marker.

And I sat there on a bench and these two guys showed up in a truck and erected the marker, put it up and drove away, kind of leaving me bereft.

And I walked up to the cemetery marker and this beautiful marble carved Celtic cross with Proverbs 31 on it.

And then four names of my children on the circle and my wife's name on the bottom with the day she was born and the day she died.

And I stood there looking at this and it was very surreal.

It is funny, isn't it, how life will take you places and you will find yourself in a place you thought you might never be.

I knew that I would have a tombstone right there beside her.

And as I stood there contemplating that, I thought I had this thought that went through my brain.

I wonder what she would say to me, standing right here.

I know she's still alive, more alive than ever.

The thought came to me what she would say is what God would say and is saying.

There are very few things in life that matter and we should be about them.

And as I walked out of that cemetery, I didn't know what the days held for me ahead.

But I knew that I would ask God for the steps to move forward.

Sometimes following God doesn't always mean that it's going to work out the way that we want it to.

After all, Jesus did say that in this world you'll have many troubles.

But he also said, I will overcome the world.

And in my life, that truth then became real.

And he became real to me like he had never been.

now I began to know him in a way that I'd never known him before.

He became a healer and a redeemer and a dispenser of hope.

The most tragic days of my life were strangely becoming the most transformational days of my life.

But what was happening to me, I would never trade.

I started to realize that, at least for me, to the degree that a man is broken, he can experience wholeness, or the degree a man understands pain, he can feel real joy.

For the first time, I really believe I understood the brevity of life.

My children and I, in a healing process, tried to get out of ourselves.

I took my kids to Haiti and worked in an orphanage.

I went to Mexico and built homes for the impoverished.

I went to Uganda and South Sudan and worked in a refugee camp and built a home for trafficked girls.

I worked in the inner city at an at-risk youth program for kids and ultimately got involved in education reform and public policy around education, working with those underserved kids.

I worked in a prison reentry program and a prison ministry, mentoring men coming out of prison, got involved in criminal justice reform.

This path of actually getting involved in public policy is what made me run for governor of Tennessee in the first place.

I met and married the most remarkable woman in the world.

The story of my life was again filled with pages of certainty and a belief in God's goodness that was forged not only in prosperity, but

As governor, I've had the opportunity to experience things as a more purposeful and meaningful person than I ever was before.

I've had the opportunity to experience things that might never have otherwise.

The miracle of an adoption ceremony for a foster child through our Department of Children's Services, or in a tragic flood that we had in Tennessee, being on the site, praying with a family who just lost their home, everything, including their father.

The moments that I have had, that and many other, have been incredible privilege and honor for me.

As governor, I've had the opportunity to grant pardons to deserving individuals.

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BILL LEE SPEECH: Tennessee Governor Delivers Powerful and Unforgettable Words | AC14

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