Yes, Lord, I'm Comin' Home! by Lesley Sussman

Author:Lesley Sussman [Sussman, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55387-4
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

(photo credit 12.1)

Marty Raybon (Shenandoah)

Although surrounded by all the trappings and rewards of Country music stardom, singer and songwriter Marty Raybon sensed that he was headed in the wrong direction. The thirty-seven-year-old lead vocalist for Shenandoah, one of Country music’s most successful groups, was raised in a Christian home and had pledged himself to God when he was only six years old.

But when the superstar looked at himself in a mirror, all the Alabama-born entertainer could see gazing back was the face of a “hell-bound pagan”—one who had forsaken his spiritual roots.

Early one morning, while recovering from a hangover and feeling “burnt to a frazzle, and at my rope’s end,” Marty decided that he had enough. He began to pray and it was then that he experienced a miracle in his life.

Over the years, Marty has endured his share of heartbreak and trial—including a bitter lawsuit involving the use of Shenandoah’s name and his mother’s diagnosis of cancer.

The award-winning performer credits his newfound faith with helping him get through those difficult times, testifying that “in the midst of these things I knew that through the power of faith and prayer that God would take care of me …”

Marty Raybon’s roots run deep in the fertile soil of music, family, and faith.

Growing up with two brothers and two sisters in Sanford, Florida, his early years were saturated with hard work as a bricklayer, church activities, and tight, bluegrass harmonies which he sang in a family ensemble, the American Bluegrass Express.

At age six, his parents were divorced. It was an event which Marty recalls left him feeling more confused than hurt. “Let me say in all honesty that I never came off with a feeling that I had lost something very valuable in my life,” he proclaims in a warm Southern drawl.

“I never felt hurt or insecure about that. It was a conflict that my mother and dad had. It did not have anything to do with us kids. In fact, my mother and dad loved each other so much that they remarried sixteen years later.

“And they continued to shower love on us continuously—even after they were separated. The three months out of the school year that we were off, we went and spent it with my dad.

“And the nine other months we spent with Mother. And we’d see our dad on the weekends, too. So I didn’t feel like I had to walk around in life with a chip on my shoulder because things between them didn’t work out.”

Besides continuing to bestow love upon their children after their divorce, Marty’s parents continued to provide them with religious instruction as well. Marty, however, remembers not paying too much attention to those lessons.

“I just kind of scuffled through it more or less. I was just a six-year-old kid and I thought I knew lots about religion, but I didn’t know the first thing about a relationship with God.

“We were raised Southern Baptist and Mama took us to church and when I would go see Daddy it was the same.

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