Natalie Grant Reveals What She Builds Life, Career On
By Movieguide® Contributor
Christian singer-songwriter Natalie Grant appeared on the “Jesus Calling” podcast and shared how God worked in her life and career as an award-winning artist.
“We can choose to not fear even when things seem so scary,” Grant said. “We can have an anchor knowing that God’s love will never let us go. The world is unpredictable, but we don’t have to live according to that unpredictability because we have something that is predictable, that is certain, that is sure, and we can build our life on it, and that’s the love of God.”
Grant shared that she didn’t always have musical ambitions. She went to college to be a school teacher, but a group called “Truth” visited her church, and she auditioned.
“I said yes to traveling with this group when they came through my home church in Seattle,” Grant said. “But the way that I got to a full-time music career is definitely not something that happened overnight.”
“As I traveled with this group, I began to feel like, ‘Wait, this isn’t just a gift of singing that I have,’” Grant continued. “I think I have a gift for communicating. I began to notice when I would sing, there was something that happened in the atmosphere, and I could tell it was deeper than just a song and a voice. And so that’s one of the reasons that I chose to go into full-time Christian music.
Grant took a leap of faith and moved to Nashville without a record deal and very little money in her pocket. She lived with friends and took small jobs to get by. Eventually, she got to perform in front of a record company executive.
“They wanted me to do a full concert for them so they could tell whether or not I could actually sing,” Grant said. “They were like, ‘Hey, we need to see what you actually do.’ And I didn’t know anyone, so I didn’t know any musicians. I don’t play an instrument. I sing. That is my instrument.”
“Somebody from the record company recommended a piano player, and his name was Bernie Herms. I ended up hiring him to play music, to play the piano for me for that first concert. And that didn’t just end up being that he would be my piano player, he ended up becoming my husband.”
“That was such an incredible moment of meeting somebody that was going to actually do more than just give me a career. It’s now almost twenty-two years of marriage and writing and producing and creating music together,” she added.
Grant also shared her experience with thyroid cancer in 2017. The doctor told her that she would survive, but they would have to remove a tumor on her vocal nerve. They said she would likely not sing again; if she did, her voice would be different.
Movieguide® previously reported on Grant’s cancer diagnosis:
The fear of not being able to sing anymore sunk in, as being a singer was her identity—or so she thought.
[Grant said,] ‘I think the Lord was giving me the opportunity to say, ‘No, even if this is taken from you, who you are is still intact.’ And God says, ‘Who I am, it’s still completely intact. Your circumstances don’t determine My goodness.’’
“The night before my surgery, my miracle was penned in my journal as an overflow of what God had been doing in my heart,” Grant posted on Instagram. “I wrote, My outcome does not determine God’s goodness; and I wholeheartedly believed it.”
After her surgery, Grant’s voice coach asked, “Why does your voice sound so good?” Grant said, ‘I don’t know, but it came out so much easier than I thought it was going to.’ From the get-go, we had this confidence all of a sudden.”
“Obviously, the end of that story is that I can still sing. In fact, my voice came back stronger than it ever has been,” Grant said. “And a lot of people will say, ‘What a miracle.’ And I do know that is a miracle, but I have to honestly tell you that I actually view that more of just a gift—a gift from God, a blessing from God that He didn’t have to do.”
Grant continued, “But what I feel was the greatest miracle that came through that season was that I came to a place in my own heart and in my faith before I ever knew what my outcome, what the answer was going to be before I ever knew how it was going to turn out, I could say, honestly, my outcome does not determine His goodness. That He is still good, that He is still faithful, that He is still true, that He is still worthy, that He is still loving.”
