God & Granddaughter, Haley Inspires Collin Raye

This is from the CMT blog: Collin Raye called me from the hospital. That's just how his life is these days, now that he is the very hands-on grandfather of a little girl with an undiagnosed neurological condition. So while there was a time before Haley, 9, was born that Raye did phone interviews from home, a recording studio or a tour bus, things are just different now.
"My kids need me. They just need Poppy around," he told me. And while he does everything he can to help his daughter, Britanny, care for Haley and her younger daughter, Mattie, he still feels helpless sometimes. "I've always been the patriarch and the fixer," he says. "But the day to day now is a constant battle."


But like any good songwriter, Raye says, you do everything you can to ease the suffering with your music. So he tried for years to write a song about Haley, but he just couldn't. So he prayed. Then one day on a flight to a show, he said, "This song just fell out of heaven onto my tray table. I scribbled it out in 20 minutes. God was saying, 'This is what I want you to say.'" The result is "She's With Me," a very moving song with a very sad video to go along with it. It's a long way from Raye's big heyday hits like 1993's "That's My Story" and 1997's "Little Red Rodeo," but songs -- like life -- tend to take you down paths you never knew you'd be on.


Here is Collin Raye on Huckabee:



This is the same song but with more pictures of Colin Rayes Granddaughter, Haley.



Collin Raye, his family, and especially his Granddaughter are in my thoughts & prayers.