Music star Amy Grant seeks ‘eternal significance’

Health Beat caught up with Christian music/pop star Amy Grant on a warm Friday afternoon as she prepped dinner for extended family at her Nashville home.

Grant, 54, is also gearing up for her keynote speaking engagement at Spectrum Health’s third annual Candid Conversations event beginning at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, at the Jenison Center for the Arts, 8375 20th Ave.

Despite earning six Grammy awards and 22 Gospel Music Association awards, Grant remains down-home real. She’s laughed. And she’s cried.

She’s exalted in the triumph of sitting atop the Billboard charts; she’s journeyed through the depths of losing friends to cancer. She’s part farm, part fame; part sojourner, part superstar.

Life is a metaphor of sorts to Amy, living it, both mysterious and miraculous.

Today, she tightly hugged her and Vince Gill’s youngest daughter as the 14-year-old stepped into her first day of high school, tight-roping the delicate balance between fitting in and standing out.

Tomorrow, she knows is never promised—for her, for cancer patients, for anyone.

Through more than three decades in the music and motivation business, she’s learned it’s not so much the presentation that’s important, it’s more being present in the moment.

Here’s what she had to say about life, love and motivation:

Q: Thank you in advance for sharing your time with our community in October and for carrying on Betty Ford’s legacy of having candid conversations and sharing education/awareness about breast cancer. We know you have an incredibly busy schedule–why did you feel it was important to support the Candid Conversations event?

A: I just always welcome an invitation to be a part of things that broaden my world. I really appreciate and I feel enlarged by gatherings that have a purpose. Women’s cancers have touched my life. My father spent his career in radiation oncology. Just being my father’s daughter, I grew up with the concept and hearing often about people living with cancer.

Between now and then my preparation for the event is to spend time contemplating events and stories from my life and lives of my friends that I feel like I could weave together in a way that would touch people. I’m not sure what it’s going to be yet.

I’ve spent the morning cleaning the refrigerator and part of the pantry because I was traveling four days this week. I’ve invited extended family for dinner. Part of it was seeing what’s good. What’s in the garden, in the fridge, what short list do I have to go to the grocery for. A meal is that way and a speaking engagement is that way. We’re going to grill steaks. I’m going to make a fresh pasta dish, salad and Brussels sprouts.

Q: Could you share the history of “Welcome Yourself”?

A: Years ago somebody wanted to get married on the hillside at our farm where Vince (Gill) and I got married. As a thank you gift, the family gave me a book on entertaining. The pictures were so beautiful. I loved reading the copy as much as the pictures. This woman said the most important thing about entertaining is to welcome yourself to the party first before the guests arrive.

I needed to hear it at the time. I think I’ve slowed down a lot. I’m not trying to accomplish so much now. I used to just be so anxious about using every possible moment for presentation that I would get to the moment of even a family gathering, Easter, Christmas morning or a birthday, and I would be frazzled by the time it happened.

We’ve changed in life because of a lot of things, experiences that continually shape us. I wrote that song with Beth Nielsen Chapman, who is a breast cancer survivor, whose first husband died of cancer. She talked about how out-of-the-blue tragedy just strikes out of nowhere and that it really forces you to immediately become a participant in your own life. When she was talking, I remembered that book.

It was so different because it was about hosting a party. We talked about how many of us don’t invite ourselves into the moment that we’re in. We sort of hover above it, distracted by something else. I think that’s a challenge every day. I find when I’m most anxious, I will just take a deep breath and say ‘be where your feet are.’ Don’t ask ‘what if, what if?’ Remind yourself what is. I think we’re well into our 30s or 40s before we take a deep breath and say ‘I’m supposed to be one of a kind.’ Saying ‘I’m not like them” gets exhausting.

“Welcome Yourself” is all of that. I think anytime we can have a conscious-directed conversation about anything is great, especially as women. I think that, as women, we just add the majority of the color and flair to the world.

Q: What message do you hope that song instills in listeners?

A: To me, it’s the same message to all of us every day—to be present in the moment. Like I said, what I hope to do is come with some specific stories and illustrations from life. I just think people remember stories. I don’t work off a script.

I always take my guitar even if I’m not set up to sing. Invaribly, something reminds me of something and I say ‘it’d be so much easier to sing this.’

Years ago I saw Maya Angelou speak. I was so taken with the journey we went on through her words, it was like stories, song. It was just so captivating. I’ve never even said this out loud until now. I think I was so captivated by her presentation that I think I have tried to emulate that. Thank God she didn’t dance.

Q: Why is breast cancer important to you?

A: I have breasts (laughter). I know so many women, good friends, like not in distant circles, in close circles. I went to an all-girl high school. There were 82 people when I graduated. How many have been diagnosed with breast cancer? Maybe eight so far. My sister-in-law. I bet I could name 12 people right now, but their names wouldn’t mean anything to you.

Last week, a friend of mine came by. She had had a mastectomy. They found something on the other side. She’s an old friend. I wrote a song about her and recorded it years ago: “Ask Me.” (Grant relayed her friend’s story of sexual abuse as a child).

I lost one of my best friends to ovarian cancer in October of 2009. Oh, my goodness, the world shifted on its axis with that one. She had two separate periods of remission. We were taking a walk one day. She described every detail. I was just so curious. If I could just put all this in a capsule, how I see life. She said, ‘I still call it the gift of cancer, even if it takes my life.’

I was invited to a dinner maybe a year ago in a very nice condominium in downtown Nashville. The invitation was: Let’s have dinner and talk about death. I thought ‘this is so weird.’ We had two tables of people and it was just amazing. It was a great reminder that in our culture we are too afraid to talk about death. We live differently because we don’t allow death to be a natural part of life. The dinner conversation was really amazing. Everyone went around the table and said the name of a person who is no longer living and why they matter to you. You talk about ripping the outer layer off!

Just talking to you is making me wonder what my talk might be like. I feel incredibly humbled by the opportunities I’ve had in life and the lack of inflicted pain. It makes me really want to live silently and serve other people. That sounds like a stupid thing for an entertainer to say. My older life looks substantially different than my younger life.

Q: How has breast cancer awareness changed in the time you’ve been promoting it?

A: I never remember my mother talking about breast exams. I have three older sisters. I just don’t remember hearing about breast exams growing up through my 20s. I don’t know when people start getting breast exams. Maybe all this has kind of come of age, during the time we grew up.

It’s just a normal part of conversation now. Asking, have you had a mammogram? It’s a way you check up on your friends. Same with colonoscopies. When you get to a certain age, when you’re having a glass of wine or cup of coffee with friends, you talk about it, you know what I mean? It’s just found its way into casual conversation.

Early detection breast cancer can be the easiest thing to beat and can also be the biggest bugger because it can come back. Anything that’s attached to hormonal organs I think has a different sort of energy. I’m saying that because of my friend with her ovarian cancer. I just think awareness about all these issues is important. People just talk more than they used to about medical things.

Q: How has breast cancer impacted your life and music?

A: Sure. I think loss and hope, fear. All those things have found their way into my songs and some of those dynamics came out because of cancer.

Q: What are your hopes for the Spectrum Health event?

A: I don’t know yet. I think life is so much more of an adventure than we allow ourselves to imagine. I think a really great adventure is not just the story that goes without a hitch. I think wherever anyone might find themselves in life, just like me, where am I in the adventure?

How many times do I not understand the circumstances of my life? What if we are letters in a much bigger story? My hope is that maybe part of the adventure is that what feels like nothing is really a letter in a much bigger story.