Maria and Bob Goff, What I Learned From Our Talk

Maria and Bob Goff, do you know the names? Sometimes you get the chance to sit down and chat with people like Bob Goff and Sweet Maria Goff, people who have helped shapes the lives of millions of people around the world. For those wondering, yeah you’re right, Bob is that balloon guy” who wrote Love Does????. And when I say that you sometimes get the opportunity, I mean sometimes in the same sense as winning the lottery (and not just because that’s how I felt that day).

I recently had the very rare chance to hop on the phone with both Maria and Bob Goff during launch week of Love Lives Here and here’s the full conversation for you to listen to:

Here are three things that learned while talking with Maria and Bob Goff:

Your Story Matters

I don’t think often enough how the story of my life would be summarized, but I do want a story that oozes of love like that of Sweet Maria and Bob Goff. If you do a search for Maria, here’s the first line of how the Internet summarizes her: Maria Goff has made a career out of loving her family and neighbors, raising her children, and turning houses into homes. Are. You. Kidding. Me.

Not only does her fabricated Internet bio wreak of love, but the way that she talks and laughs are equally laced with compassion and steady grace. We need to be a people that are quick to remember that our individual stories matter and we need to gladly welcome others into our story.

Case in point, Maria left me (a complete stranger) a voicemail leading up to our call and and closed in saying “I’m looking forward to our call!” How often do we feel that others are interruptions in our grand-narrative? And how often do we lose sight of our own grand-narrative? Your story matters and so do the stories of those around us.

In reading Love Lives Here, I hope that people will find that where they are is where love lives. —Maria Goff

Love Lives and Gives, Just Ask Maria and Bob Goff

Most of the time, I feel that I view love the same way that I view my car’s gas tank. “You’ve got 25 miles left to empty” Can you relate? I often think to myself, “If I could just do something for myself for a change!” We have turned love and time into some sort of currency in which we’re sometimes in surplus of, sometimes low on, and even sometimes indebted to others with.

Love doesn’t operate that way and might in fact need to be viewed in much, much the opposite light — particularly if you’re a believer. Love, patience, grace, kindness and peace are never-ending and always a welcomed reply in any situation. Yes… we get tired and distracted but if you’re a believer you no longer live and are now in Christ, you are now in love. Freely live in that love and freely give that love to others who deeply need it.

Love Laughs

Well, Jason. That’s strange. I know, but I don’t think I caught this until exchanging thoughts with Maria and Bob Goff from the comfort of my own home. If you know either of them, you know them for their absolutely crazy stories (“We are different in the way that we express ourselves and the way that we live our lives, and we know that,” said Maria Goff) and their exceptionally contagious laughs.

Interestingly on the tail of my chat with Barnabas Piper about faith and curiosity, Maria, Bob and I talked a bit about a child like faith. There is something to being a people who are unsettling and constantly curious. To being a people who enjoy being surprised (that’s how laughs usually come about, is it not?). To being a people who take great pleasure and joy in experiencing something new.

I think as we age, we become a people who lose site of the curious and forget to laugh, and to laugh deep. Love laughs, and love laughs deep like the Goffs do. You know, you’ll listen to a sermon or a lecture and you’ll hear someone highlight something noteworthy, saying, “If you don’t take note of anything else I say today, write this down…” Here’s my noteworthy tidbit for you to write down from the interview: Write down the laugh that you hear from the Goffs. Write it down on your heart and in your homes because that is love. Love laughs.

Watch the Book Trailer

Be sure to pick up your own copy of Love Lives Here Book by Maria Goff.