There are artists whose music marks a moment—and then there are the ones whose songs stay with us for a lifetime.
This week, Jen sits down with beloved returning guest Amy Grant to talk about her long-awaited new album, a project shaped by time, reflection, and a life that’s been fully lived. After a significant health crisis and a slow, intentional return to music, Amy is creating from a place that feels more open, more grounded, and more honest than ever.
Together, they talk about what it means to come back to yourself after everything changes, how creativity evolves over decades, and why the stories we tell later in life often carry a different kind of weight. Amy shares how her songwriting has shifted, the role of memory and perspective in this new work, and what it looks like to keep making meaningful art in a season that feels both quieter and more expansive.
At the heart of both this album and this conversation is Amy’s quiet but steady intention to be a witness—to tell the truth about a life as it’s being lived, and to honor the people who have shown up along the way. From deeply personal songs shaped by love and loss to collaborations with her husband, Vince Gill, and her daughters, this record reflects not just where Amy is now, but who has helped her get here.
This conversation is thoughtful, unhurried, and full of the kind of wisdom that only comes from living a long time and staying curious along the way.
Continuing on in our Flip the Script series, we look at not only the things that happen “to us,” but the things that happen “by us.” Our guest this week epitomizes a life that includes those things we weren’t expecting that alter our course (for her, it was a heart defect diagnosis) and those things that are very intentional, like new efforts to find balance and taking responsibility for steering our own lives. Singer/songwriter Amy Grant is no stranger to our show, or to our community. She’s that friend so many of us have walked with via her music, through her writing, through just the way she negotiates the world in a way that is present, centered and grateful. Amy has walked through her share of flipped scripts—including the end of her first marriage (she and Jen share their common experiences there), the aging of her parents and the final lessons they taught her, and most recently, the heart surgery she would have never expected to happen—in 2020 no less—right in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amy and Jen talk about what happens during seasons of loss and upheaval and how they listen to their bodies, their hearts and trusted friends’ voices to empower themselves to steer out of the storm. In it all, Amy believes that “the next opportunity, the next enlightenment, the next ‘everything’ for all of us is within reach.”
Say the words “Amy Grant,” and you launch a generation of music lovers into nostalgia. We’ve grown up alongside Amy, haven’t we? Who didn’t sing “Love Will Find a Way” or “Baby, Baby” into their hairbrush? Who didn’t feel a rush of pride when we saw our favorite Christian songstress—someone even our parents approved of—show up on VH1 and Top 40 radio stations? Amy navigated the whirlwind of success that enveloped her and the inevitable criticism it brought from those who thought she had left her roots behind to become the strong, gracious and gifted artist she is today. Those darker moments, which she describes as “a 10-year tunnel,” started with her very public divorce that found her emerging on the other side with a new sense of connection to God and to those who walked alongside her. With her career and her music still going strong, Amy’s devotion to family and community is firmly at the center, and she looks back at the tough times as bringing about a “very unique toolkit” that will be essential to help guide her children on their next great adventures.
