The Healing Journey

July 20, 2023

“The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”
– Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Grief alters our lives forever, in ways we least expect.

Four years ago country music artist Granger Smith and his wife Amber lost their 3-year-old son River in a drowning accident, and that tragedy turned their world upside down.

At the time, they wrote in separate social media posts: “I have to deliver unthinkable news. We’ve lost our youngest son, River Kelly Smith. Following a tragic accident, and despite doctors’ best efforts, he was unable to be revived.”

“We made the decision to say our last goodbyes and donate his organs so that other children will be given a second chance at life.”

In the years that followed, they donated thousands of dollars in River’s memory to different charities for children. Recently, Granger announced that he was leaving his music career for a ministry in his local church.

“It’s a story of a guy who, you know, had what he always dreamed of having. And I’m turning it back over. I’m turning it back in for a life at the local church, but I believe that’s what I am called to do,” he said during an interview on the program “Sunday Night in America.”

Tragedy, for some, can lead to a loss of faith. For others, their faith is strengthened.

“I wish I knew the formula for whether or not that’s going to make you bitter or better,” he said. “I cannot take credit myself for the radical transformation that the Lord did in my life through this tragedy. And sometimes, when that soil is cultivated, and we have to dig deep, and we can’t find it within ourselves, the Lord comes in and shows himself in a very profound way — in a way that I cannot take any credit for. What I do know is now I have something to do with this, now that this gift was given to me in a time that was the darkest tragedy of our life. Now, I have a purpose to go out and share this message of what happened to me for other people who are probably going through the same thing.”

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