Daughter of Country Star Navigated Loss With Faith. She Helps Others Do the Same.
By Movieguide® Contributor
Mattie Jackson, daughter of country music star Alan Jackson, uses her story of grief to help others.
“My worst nightmare was, spoiler alert, losing my husband at 28 years old when we had been married just shy of a year. So I never would have chosen obviously that story to be my story, but what, you know, God did was fulfill this…young woman’s dream by taking her worst nightmare and pouring purpose into it. I mean, it just, it’s like mind-blowing,” she told Christian singer Matthew West.
Jackson detailed the tragic event when an accident on a fishing trip left her a widow.
“It had rained, and so it was just wet. So we go down on the dock, and the tide had come up. So there’s little metal steps to like climb back up on the boat. They were wet, and Ben just went over there to help some of us get back up, and his sandal hit it. He slipped and fell back and hit his head on the dock, and [it] didn’t seem, you know, traumatic at that point…[we] were obviously concerned, and we ran over, and he did kind of go unconscious for a minute.”
After going to the hospital, doctors learned the injury was much worse than expected.
“His brain [was] swelling and bleeding and like in cranial pressure was increasing pretty quick, and so that led to 12 days in there in the ICU in multiple brain surgeries and medically induced coma, the whole thing, and his body just couldn’t take it, and he passed away,” she shared.
Jackson explained how she had to navigate how to hold onto faith amid loss.
“It was a true face-to-face confrontation with you know these things you’ve always believed. Are you still going to be able to believe them?” she said.
Through the support of friends and family, she leaned on God as she worked through trauma.
She also wrote a devotional to help others through similar grief, titled Through the Valley of Grief: A 365-Day Devotional of Spiritual Practices for Hope in Suffering.
Whether your sorrow is recent, you’ve long felt the pain of a loved one’s absence, or you’re lamenting a difficult situation, this book is an honest companion, offering validation for the hard days and support through the psychological stages of grief,” a synopsis reads.
“This book is HIS words to the hurting, first to me and now to anyone suffering,” Jackson wrote on Instagram. “This book is a hardback record of how he makes beauty from ashes and is faithful to redeem and restore his people. This book has logged more hours of work and prayer than probably anything I’ve ever done.”
