News// Charlotte Ritchie: The Song that Got Her Through…
Listen to Charlotte Ritchie sing the song that has become her ‘life song’ during this season of life. Who knows, it might become yours, too!
Click to listen “My Father’s Angels.”
Mark Lowry has often said from the Homecoming stage, that the only difference between artists and audience members is… the artists have a microphone. Everyone struggles. And being an artist, or being in ministry, or holding any kind of leadership role in no way makes a person immune from dark seasons when hope seems gone.
Charlotte Ritchie’s beautiful smile and pure, angelic voice certainly might not give any outward signs of the deep waters she has walked through in recent years; but here she talks about one song that kept infusing her soul with hope when she literally felt too overwhelmed to breathe. Now Charlotte shares her story of hope and the song she feels has saved her life in many ways…
When Landon was about 2 ½ years old, he started having night terrors. It all started [in late 2005] with bad dreams, then progressed to complete panic. He would wake up sweating and screaming… scared to death. It was horrible.
Greg and I started teaching him Bible verses dealing with fear. He loves music, so I taught him a song Bill and Gloria wrote with Dony McGuire (which I learned when I was a little girl), ‘My Father’s Angels’ *. We thought it might be a song he could sing whenever he was afraid. It really helped! The song seemed to settle him down whenever he felt afraid.
The following year, 2006, from start to finish was the most difficult year of our lives. On January 13th of that year, a close family friend died very unexpectedly during a routine surgery. The doctors gave her the wrong medicine and she was gone, just like that.
There was a moment during her funeral that is forever frozen in my memory. I remember looking over at her daughters on the front row, watching them grieve… I was overwhelmed and crying as I thought to myself, ‘What in the world would I do if I was in their shoes and that was my mother? I don’t think I could handle it…’
Within four weeks of that horrifying moment, I was in their shoes. My mother passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Her sudden death came on the heels of Greg’s best friend, Doug Riley, losing his life in a sudden accident at age 35. Then just weeks later, it was Anthony Burger. He passed away while we were with him on the Homecoming Caribbean Cruise.
This was the darkest, most fearful time of my life. I started worrying about everything… every time Greg left the house or I got an ache or pain I would panic and think, ‘What if we’re next?’ I felt like I was being completely smothered by fear. Throughout this time I had to get up on-stage and sing, but I felt like I needed to put on a mask and pretend that everything was okay when, in reality, I felt like the air was being sucked out of me.
I think sometimes we’re ‘allowed’ a certain amount of time for grief. I didn’t feel like it would be okay to fall apart 6 or 8 months later. I’m sure I put that [expectation] on myself, but I just wanted the world to stop for a minute so I could get my breath.
One day I was at home and struggling with all this when I heard singing coming from Landon’s room. He was three years old at the time, and as I moved closer to his room I could hear his little voice singing… ‘They’re all above me… beneath me… before me… they’re all around me. My Father’s Angels all protect me everywhere…’ Hearing his voice sing those words, knowing the terror he had experienced just a few months earlier… wow. He has no idea how he helped me that day. I started bawling because in that moment I knew I was not walking through this dark place by myself. From that day forward, I started feeling more and more hope. I knew that I would make it through this.
Later, when I started working on my next CD, “Bridges Over Blue,” and I asked Gloria for some songs, she sent me a CD and, of all the songs she could have sent, “My Fathers Angels” was one of them. I knew right away that I had to record it and share it with other people who might be dealing with fear.
Since the CD has been completed, I have sung “My Father’s Angels” in my solo concerts and so many people have responded as I did to this song. One guy in particular stands out in my mind. We sang in his church one week and he got a copy of the CD. A week later he lost his mom suddenly. He told us that someone went through her purse after she passed away and found a little angel. They gave it to him, then when he went out and got into his car to go home the CD in the car was playing “My Fathers Angels”. He played it over and over again and it really comforted him that day.
It was just a choice I made – to record that song. Years ago, Bill and Gloria made a choice to write a simple, cute little song, probably not having any idea how powerfully it would be used. But a song like “My Father’s Angels” is like this secret weapon that has a way of creeping in and becoming very important to our faith.
“My Fathers Angels” will go to radio in March 2010 as a single and it is our prayer that this simple message of hope keeps reaching the lives of hurting people and reminds them that we are most certainly not alone… even on our darkest days.
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“My Father’s Angels’ – lyric by Gloria Gaither, music by Bill Gaither & Dony McGuire
Click here to purchase “Charlotte Ritchie: Bridges Over Blue.”
