GoodRadio.net
July 2, 2002
Chris Lemke
Before you read the article, allow me to say thanks to Andrew, Lori, and Jennifer for helping to accomodate the interview with Amy. The interview took place at Vince and Amy's home last month on Tuesday, June 17.
To say that "Christian radio" has been guarded about playing Amy's music since her divorce is an understatement. Over the past few months, more and more of those stations that "pulled her music" have added her back into rotation, especially since the release of Legacy, Hymns Of Faith.
As for the interview itself, it was the first time I had ever met Amy. I was introduced to a person who was very kind and hospitable - very non-pretentious. I was impressed by a person who, more than anything, wanted to please God in what she said and what she did in her walk with Christ. The primary reason for this interview was to hear more of her experience, her walk that has taken and continues to take her through valleys and to mountains alike. Pray for her, and for others as well, especially for those who serve by leading others to Christ. May the person of Christ be seen and known by all that we say and do.
CL
An Interview with Amy Grant
CL: You’ve done 25 years [in music], you wanted to go back to do the hymns… Was something more to it [than just marking 25 years]?
AG: Well, honestly it was just marking 25 years but sometimes the most unlikely situation that you walk into intentionally ends up having the most profound effect on your life. And in an attempt to go back and honor the songs that had shaped me as a child I found myself singing through hymnbooks for weeks at a time, singing songs that I hadn’t sung in 20 years. And then recording some of those songs, it was like returning to the motherland. Recording these hymns was a big dose of "you remember whose child you are."
CL: In those 25 years, some have asked, "Are you an 'artist' or a 'minister?'"
AG: I think a lot of times if you’re self-conscious about whatever impact you’re trying to have then you’re probably not having an impact at all. And I think over the years when people have come to me and said, "this thing that you did really impacted me" -- it was always something that was completely disconnected from what was a conscious outreach on my part. And so I just feel like sometimes even saying the words "I’m a minister" - it seems overly aware of something that everybody should be.
Also, I think I was so young when I started singing. I was in college. I would go to frat parties; I would go to one thing or another, just fun, kid, growing up kind of things. And my experience was... as soon as you met somebody, and if they thought you had some kind of an agenda that involved them, they immediately close a door on some level. And I think when you say to somebody, "I am a minister," you have said, "I have an agenda with you; you are going to be affected on some level by what I’m about to do."
CL: It’s not a banner that you tout but you are aware that you are a minister.
AG: Just like everybody else.
CL: You’ve got a song on the new project, What You Already Own. You talk about your desire, and the struggles that you have, and then you come to the end of it and say, "This is what I want to do; this is what I’m willing to do: I want to be faithful, I want to be trusting, I want to do this…"
AG: That’s probably just the human experience. We have expectations of ourselves, and hopes and dreams. Sometimes we don’t even know that we had expectations until we fall short and you’re picking yourself back up and saying, "God re-remind me of my value in your eyes and that I mean something to you" because that helps me value myself in such a way that I live differently.
CL: How long ago did you write the song, What You Already Own?
AG: It was the fall of 1998.
CL: So if I do my math, you were in the process of going through the divorce at that time?
AG: Yeah, well privately. We went through from September through December for four months of pre-divorce counseling. I knew what was going to happen. Gary knew what was going to happen. But we hadn’t told the children or anybody.
In the last few years, I've had people come to me saying, "Can I tell you my story and will you tell me what you think?" At the end of the day, no one person can dictate, or browbeat, or shame another human being into saying what vow they can and cannot fulfill. And I think to break a marriage vow is the heaviest weight any person ever bears. Any judgment that comes from an outside source is nothing compared to the judgment that person weighs on their own heart. But that dynamic, what causes people to come to that point... ultimately I think it’s when they lose all hope. If there is even a flicker of hope in somebody that it might be different or nurturing or just something, and I think it’s different for different reasons. I’m not talking about myself right now.
CL: I would guess that people have asked because of their situation. They’re looking to you, maybe in a sense inappropriately, because I’d venture to say that you’re probably pretty much just like everybody else...
AG: I don’t think that they’re looking inappropriately. I think they’re looking at somebody saying, "You’re a believer. What’s your feeling having gone through this?" And it’s very easy for me to say, "Here are the pros and here are the cons." And I’m not telling them what to do but, until you’ve lived through something, you really don’t know the human experience of it, and nobody’s going to be like mine.
There are things that I think surprise people [that] are really deep down [that] you need to reconcile and that is still God’s desire either inside or outside the context of marriage. But there is something inside the heart of every person - I think probably compelled by the Holy Spirit - reconcile, reconcile, reconcile. It might not be in the context of you both have rings on your left hand, but it’s still in there and I think when I tell people, they are surprised. Especially if you’re involved in an extended family, the severing of that family is excruciating, the loss of personal history and things like that.
I just feel like that if somebody is in a situation where they’re just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and relief from the situation and you just go, "Well there are other things to take into consideration..." I’ve had it go both ways. I had two men that I have talked to that came in the dark of night that have said, "I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Will you just really talk to me about what your experience was like?" And both of them left and went and reconciled their marriages. And I’ve had people go, "Oh she’s been through a divorce, run away, she’s an advocate for divorce." And I’m just an advocate for healing.
CL: There are a lot of people out there that are saying, "How can that be when it didn’t happen with you guys? With you and Gary?"
AG: I think I ask myself the same question... And I still feel that way [even] without dredging through all the years of our marriage, which had some wonderful aspects and obviously some hard aspects or we would still be married. There are times that I just go, "At what point could we have had the right input that could have helped us to develop the tools?" Do I think it could have turned out differently? Well sure.
CL: Knowing that God is about reconciliation, and knowing the counsel that you were receiving, you finally made the decision. Do you feel that the two became congruent with each other – what God wanted and what you decided to do?
AG: Are you asking me do I feel that I ever heard from God that the right thing to do was file for divorce? I can’t say that I did that. The best way I can describe it is that I got to a point in my life that I felt like I was living in a created reality but it was not real to me. And when you can’t find solid ground you feel lost. And at some point in time I just thought, "I am disappearing here." And the disappearing started a long time ago. And a survival kind of instinct comes into play.
I remember after I was living on my own and talking to a missionary woman and I said, "Sometimes I look back and go 'what a selfish decision on my part.'" And she said it was selfish. She said sometimes survival - not just physical survival - but survival of some part of yourself that is important enough to fight for it is a primal selfish response. That’s what survival is. And wanting to be the good girl, wanting to be seen as the good girl, wanting to have people’s approval, I had to put my grown up clothes on to say – you’re right, what I did was a selfish thing. But it was born out of a place not saying, "Hey, I think I’ll go wreck a bunch of lives here."
To say at some point I have to invest in a situation that doesn’t feel like my own personal charade... it’s a disservice to everybody. And I think that I probably had a lot of extenuating circumstances. I am a firm believer that there are good and bad combinations of people. It’s not about good and bad people; it’s good and bad combinations.
I do think that sometimes people can bring out the bad things in each other. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s invisible from the beginning, and that’s just what you should be aware of. Unfortunately, I guess it seems we all have our greatest wisdom by the time gray hairs are poppin’ out and we’ve lost our back molars.
CL: In the process, going through the divorce and everything, you mentioned having that "lost" perception of where you were. How did you "get found" again? How did you go through the process of being found, by God and people that continued to care about you?
AG: I think first that the lost process happened over a decade. [For me], there was a sense deep shame. And I think I just, little by little, kept having experiences where I felt like a divine hand was lifting up my chin.
I think that our salvation is all about our sin being forgiven. But that is such an elusive experience. When you have something, you really fail in the eyes of your children, or your family, or anyone that might be watching that the steps toward really believing that you’re forgiven, and receiving that, and then feeling it. Those [experiences] are powerful and forever life altering.
It’s the exact same forgiveness that I was celebrating when I was in 7th grade and walked the aisle at Weston Church of Christ and was baptized on a Sunday night. It was like when I was recording this Legacy record and singing the song My Jesus I Love Thee. And the first verse is:
"My Jesus I love thee. I know Thou art mine.
For Thee all the folly of sin I resign."
And how I knew that at seven years old, and eight, nine, and ten, and knew all the verses to that hymn, and the youthful zeal of faith in Jesus... the response to a line like that is, "Well, Duh. I’m not going to cheat on a test, or lie, or be ugly." Then you live life and you wind up just in so many different scenarios tromping through muddy water, not being honest with yourself, and everything. And singing this song for the recording this record, the last verse:
"In mansions of glory, in endless delight,
I’ll ever adore thee in heaven so bright.
I’ll sing with a glittering crown on my brow..."
I had such a giant lump in my throat trying to sing that. And it’s because I know that crown is not on my brow because I did it all right.
CL: Which then you get a deeper understanding of what grace is all about...
AG: Oh my goodness, unbelievably yeah. I remember back in 1986, and that had been such an awful year. A lot of personal struggles for me and I walked into my brother-in-law who was my manager then (and still is), and I just said, "I don’t think I should ever get up on stage again." And he said, "Did you ever think you were up there because you were doing it right?" He just said, "That’s the beauty of singing to people about the mercy of Jesus is because it’s outlandish, it’s crazy."
CL: Well you think about our whole understanding and perception of church, [rhetorically speaking] we go to church because everyone there has it right...
AG: We kind of get it backwards.
CL: Yeah, exactly. We look at today’s church as a country club instead of the hospital that it’s supposed to be.
AG: Yeah. I remember the first time walking down front. It was maybe 2 ½ years ago, the first time I had gone down front during a prayer time, and the church I was attending at the time was not even really a "go down front" kind of church. But the pastor was just kind of starting to have prayer time... I didn’t care what anybody thought.
CL: Do you feel you got wise counsel from your friends, from yours and Gary’s friends, from Vince’s friends and everything, on this whole process?
AG: I think I got great counsel. And at some point in time I think I made a decision based on a lot of factors that played into that decision. I think that I sought people who I respected that would help me carry that out in the most respectful way possible. Did I feel like a milkweed in the wind for a long time? Yes, but at some point I stopped feeling like a milkweed in the wind.
CL: [Let’s go back to "basics" for a moment:] our purpose is to point people to Christ... [As a Christian,] I must live by a higher standard. That standard comes from the Bible. And I’m not always complete in getting to that standard. I stumble. And when I do fall, I’m [ever thankful for] God’s grace, but know with that grace comes responsibility. I’m responsible to you to show you who Christ is. Frankly when we talk about Amy and Vince, yeah, there were mistakes, but God is gracious...
AG: You know it’s funny, I will say this. I think because I developed a relationship with Vince while I was married to Gary, people have presumed a lot about what the context of that relationship was. And there is a part of me that is so protective of Vince because I want to shout from the mountaintop his respect for me was such a healing part, such a huge part of my recovery and I have so much respect for him. He is an amazing man, so kind and gracious, and respectful. The one hard thing about any of these interviews is that he tends to be looked as the cause of my problems or the scapegoat, or oh this was the mistake.
CL: Well, I’m sure you’ve heard it several times - how convenient that you got divorced and he got divorced at the same time and you just put two and two together...
AG: I’m not saying that we didn’t befriend each other and lean on each other and all of that. But if there is anybody that I would ever take the stand for as a character reference it would be that man.
CL: Let me ask you what my responsibility is to you as a fellow brother in Christ. What do you need me to do for you? How can I best serve you or could have served you in going through what you went through and then even today, how can I best serve you?
AG: Well, it strikes me as a slightly odd question.
CL: Because?
AG: Because, well my first natural response is, if and when I ever come to mind then say a prayer. I feel like that is our responsibility to everybody. But then beyond that I would say nothing. I feel like that for any person that has gone through a hard time, there are people immediately around them that are there to lean on and to be leaned on. And beyond that circle really the only effect any of us can have on each other’s life is to pray.
More Articles