Natalie Grant and her husband, Bernie Herms, in a Facebook photo posted Dec. 29 in a pediatric ICU where their daughter, Gracie, was battling severe asthma complications.More Info
Several Nashville-based acts were among the contenders at the 60th annual Grammy Awards, in genres ranging from country to blues to pop. But it might have been the gospel artists with the best stories to tell.
NASHVILLE – Natalie Grant found the note scrawled in her 6-year-old daughter’s handwriting: “I am prayering for my mom & her canser.”
The popular Christian singer and her husband, music producer Bernie Herms, had struggled with how to tell their three daughters – Sadie, 6, and 10-year-old twins Grace and Isabella – that their mom likely had thyroid cancer. Grant didn’t want to scare the girls, but she knew her doctor was convinced she had the disease.
The couple sat their daughters down, and Grant gently explained it was possible she had cancer. But if she did, she said, the surgery was easy and she was going to recover.
“If you say the word cancer to a child, it doesn’t matter if you say there’s a 90 percent chance I don’t, they are living in the 10 percent,” Grant said. “I watched this situation grip all of them with complete fear. But I also watched it grip all of them with complete faith.”