Hey everybody it's Paula welcome back to journeys of faith so you may have already

surmised this about me but I had a weird childhood it was pretty strict I wasn't

going to Backstreet Boys concerts or in sync concerts though I wish I was I was going to DC Talk

Amy Grant and Michael W Smith concerts and that leads me to this week's guest and that would be Michael W Smith.

He is a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter.

He's won three Grammys, 45 Dev Awards,

an American Music Award.

He's also super tight with the Bush family and performed his hit song

Friends at George H.W. Bush's funeral. That was a personal request from H.W.

Friends is just one of his many hit songs, and the backstory about how that song came to be is

insane.

We're going to dig in.

Michael also reveals to me that he has dealt with depression.

He tells me about a moment early in his career that he just snorted something and thought

his life was over.

He recalls crying out to God, don't let me die.

In this episode, I hope you get a feel for the fact

that just because you're a leader, it doesn't mean that you're immune to your own

struggles. So here's Michael W. Smith on week's episode of Journey's of Faith and did I mention that he was at my wedding?

Listen and he'll find out how.

So here we are just outside of Nashville, Tennessee in the recording studio of Michael

W Smith. Yes, welcome. This is pretty cool. So we're sitting in your dining room and in your studio, just to give people a little bit of color commentary. It's a pre-civil war home.

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