‘What Matters With Liz’ Episode 12: Amy Grant Shares How Healing and Faith Inspired New Album ‘The Me That Remains’
The beloved musician reveals how she went from surviving a traumatic brain injury and open-heart surgery to her first album in 10 years
Key Takeaways
- Amy Grant survived open-heart surgery and a traumatic brain injury—and wrote an album about it.
- Slowing down during recovery unlocked a new depth of creativity in the legendary songwriter.
- Grant says her faith has evolved over the decades but Jesus remains the one being she trusts.
Amy Grant has six Grammy Awards, 26 Dove Awards, and a music career that spans genres and generations. But this conversation isn’t about awards and accolades. It’s about what happens when life cracks us wide open and we face unimaginable struggles. It’s about embracing stillness and looking inward for answers…and the freedom and strength that emerge.
The Me That Remains (available May 8th) is Grant’s first album in more than a decade and, in many ways, her most personal. After undergoing open-heart surgery and surviving a bicycle accident that caused a traumatic brain injury, months of slow recovery unlocked a new depth of stillness and creativity in the songwriter.
On this episode of What Matters with Liz, Grant opens up about her challenges, how they changed her, and who she is now. As she sings on the title track, “Life cut me wide open, when my head hit the ground. Wasn’t my time for dying, guess my soul just stuck around. Out of this wreckage, I’m beginning to claim the gifts in the healing—and the me that remains.”
Watch What Matters with Liz Episode 12 here or listen on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.
Watch Episode 12 right here! ‘What Matters with Amy Grant: Creativity, Stillness & The Me That Remains’
In this episode, Amy Grant shares:
- How a bike accident and traumatic brain injury (TBI) changed her life
- Why slowing down and simplifying led her to write new music
- Her advice to those in a season of uncertainty or rebuilding
- How her limitations changed the way she writes music
- Her songwriting process and why it’s all about saying “something that matters”
- Why people in their 60s need music that reflects their perspective
- How the Covenant School shooting in Nashville impacted her
- The tender final moments of her mother’s life and how they changed how she sees death
- What the hit song “El Shaddai” means to her—and how it almost didn’t make the album
- Why she crossed over from Christian music to mainstream pop
- How her faith has evolved
- Why she embraces the mystery of faith–and why Jesus remains the one being she trusts
- Which three songs in her music catalog are her favorites
- How The Book of Forgiving by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu led her on a path of forgiveness
- Why she’s committed to Compassion International–and the story of how she reconnected with her first sponsored child
- How a checkup with husband, Vince Gill, led to the discovery of her previously undiagnosed, rare congenital heart defect
- The untold story of reclaiming her great-grandfather’s legacy in a six-year legal battle
- How small everyday choices can have a huge impact
- How you can give to others while honoring your capacity
- Why “every good thing starts with gratitude”
This conversation reminds us that self-exploration, expression, and evolution is a lifelong journey and that discovering new versions of ourselves, while honoring who we’ve been, creates a dynamic and beautiful life.
Faith, mystery and a song that almost didn’t make the album
The episode digs into Grant’s spiritual life and how her faith has evolved through years of hardship and healing. She talks about embracing the mystery of faith and why, through every shift in her thinking, Jesus remains the one being she trusts.
That theme connects to one of her best-known songs. Grant reveals that “El Shaddai”—the hit that helped define her Christian music career—almost didn’t make the album. She also discusses why, decades ago, she crossed over from Christian music into mainstream pop, a move that was controversial in some circles at the time.
Why slowing down reshaped her songwriting
Grant also explains how simplifying her life and accepting her physical limitations didn’t shut down her creativity—it reshaped it. At this stage of her career, every lyric has to earn its place by saying “something that matters.”
She also makes a heartfelt case for music written with women her age in mind. Listeners in their 60s, she suggests, deserve songs that reflect the perspective of a life lived—the losses, the gratitude, the questions that don’t get tidier with time.
Small choices, big impact
Toward the end of the conversation, Grant returns to a steady refrain: small everyday choices can have an outsized impact, and giving to others is most sustainable when it honors your own capacity. You don’t have to empty yourself to be generous.
“Every good thing starts with gratitude,” she says—a line that doubles as a thesis for the album and the season of life that produced it.
She also names the three songs in her own catalog that are her personal favorites, a rare moment of self-curation from an artist who has spent four decades writing for other people’s playlists.
What remains
The conversation circles back, again and again, to one idea: that self-exploration and growth are lifelong work. Discovering new versions of ourselves while honoring who we’ve been, Grant suggests, is what keeps a life dynamic instead of static.
Or, as the podcast puts it: what matters is what remains.
What Matters with Liz airs every Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts, with highlights and behind-the-scenes clips shared on Instagram and Facebook.
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