Why Dolly Parton Asks God ‘How Can You Use Me?’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Dolly Parton is sharing how she trusts God with her dreams and prayers.
“I dreamed big and I prayed big,” she said of her life. “Then I worked like the dickens at the opportunities the Lord put before me.”
Parton detailed her upbringing in a one-room cabin with a dirt floor, saying, “That hard life — or at least what some might call it—was a blessing. I learned if you didn’t get something the first time you tried again and again until you did or something else came along that you probably were supposed to get in the first place!”
Eventually, she became one of the biggest names in the music business, with hit songs and blockbuster movies under her belt. Parton decided she wanted to use her power to help others.
“‘How can you use me?’ I ask God. ‘What can I do today?’” she explained. “I’m a light sleeper, and I get up in the wee hours of the morning. That’s my prayer time, the easiest time to reach out to God, in the quiet and calm before everybody has woken up and phones start buzzing and e-mails ding.”
Parton continued, “I’m alone with God and can ask for his direction. Dreams flood in, dreams so big they seem unattainable. How can I do that? How is that possible? I’ve learned over the years to trust the dreams to God. No telling what will happen. And it will happen if it’s supposed to happen.”
The country music legend often talks about her faith and the important place it holds in her life.
“My faith impacts everything that I do because I do believe that, through God, all things are possible,” Parton said in an interview with Fox News. “And so I always ask God to bless everything that I do and the people that I work with and to bring all the right things and right people into my life and to take the wrong ones out. So, I try to just live through love as much as I can. And so I just think that my spirituality has been a guiding light in my life and my strength, really, in my creative energy. And my spiritual energy has really been a great force to keep me going all these years and still being productive.”
Her faith even influenced a recent single, “Don’t Make Me Have To Come Down There.” Parton had a dream about God looking down at the state of the world today.
“It’s a song that came to me in a dream and I felt like it was worth putting out there,” Parton explained. “Something special — well, it’s special to me.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the role faith plays in Parton’s music:
Dolly Parton recently shared her frustration with how the world has lost sight of God and no longer looks to scripture for guidance in her song “World on Fire,” featured on her upcoming album “Rockstar.”
She sings: “I don’t know what to think about out / When did we lose ‘In God We Trust?’ / God Almighty, what we gonna do? / If God ain’t listening and we’re deaf, too?”
Through the lyrics, Parton expresses her anger that people have stopped listening to God and what has become of the world because of that.
“This was important, [but] it wasn’t political at all,” she told TalkShopLive’s Nancy O’Dell. “Though I did say greedy politicians, but this is all over the world…We are not paying attention. We are just letting the world burn down around us with all the greed and hate. And it was all bottled up in me, and I needed to say something because I felt like I should.”
- Content: +3Share:
- Content: +2