Singer and songwriter Amy Grant has undergone a lot recently, particularly brain issues and open heart surgery, but was helped through it by faith and prayer, as she recently told the world on social media.
She did so in the caption of a picture of the scar from her heart surgery that she posted on Instagram, discussing prayer and how it helped her through the injury. In that post, she said:
Hi everybody…. I know there is so much going on in the world right now. This is a crazy, broken, yet beautiful time. And in the midst of all of that – in the midst of all of our awareness and becoming and learning to love and see each other – I’ve had this really unique experience of having an unanticipated open heart surgery. The only way I can explain my experience would be to ask you to imagine a non-runner who was signed up for a marathon. I didn’t want it, but I had to have it anyway and it was a week ago Wednesday. And as people heard about the surgery I started getting messages: “I’m praying for you” …“I’m praying for you”.
People I worked with decades ago, people who have come to my concerts or listen to my music, my work family, people on social media, and my own friends and family all offered their prayers. And now, ten days later, I just want to say, from the moment I went to the hospital, if it really were a marathon race, I felt like I got into that runners block and as soon as it was time for the race to start there was this massive West Texas wind at my back.. just pushing me through. Even stuff I was really scared about felt like nothing more than just a deep breath and something supernatural pushed me through it. My recovery has honestly felt miraculous. And so I want to say thank you to each person who said a prayer for me. Prayer changes everything. Let’s keep those prayers going for our country and lets turn all the brokenness into love and seeing each other. I love you. Amy
She also said, in an interview about discovering her need for heart surgery while on a routine doctor’s visit:
“They were doing an ultrasound of my heart and the doctor came in. He said, ‘Vince, this is the kind of situation where Amy would be fine, fine, fine and then one day it would be catastrophic.’ And we don’t know when that would be, but it would have to be sooner rather than later.”
“I just think sometimes in all of our jobs, we have what we’re trained for, and then beyond that, there’s an intuition and inspiration. And I think Dr. Cage did everything that was required for testing for what he thought might be an issue for me because my father had [heart bypass] surgery, but beyond that, I don’t [know].”
“I’ll sing to the day I die. Music… that changes everything. Music takes any manual task and suddenly you’ve got a soundtrack and you’re in the movie of your own life and the sun is shining and music changes everything.”
Grant has, however, angered many Christians with her decision to host her niece’s same sex wedding and use of the Bible to justify that decision. She did so in an interview with the Washington Post, saying “What a gift to our whole family to just widen the experience of our whole family. Honestly, from a faith perspective, I do always say, ‘Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: love God and love each other.’ I mean, hey, that’s pretty simple.”
Bart Barber, leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, said what many Christians were thinking about that in a statement, saying “Moments like this provoke substantial angst in the hearts of those people in congregations like mine who have enjoyed the music of folks like Grant and Gill, who have counted them as ‘one of us,’ and now have to figure out what to make of this.”
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