TAMPA, Fla. (WordNews.org) Jan. 12, 2013 – Jamie Grace, fresh from the “Eye On It” tour with top-selling Christian music artist tobyMac is on yet another tour – the Winter Jam – that will take her to about two dozen states with the likes of Sidewalk Prophets, Royal Tailor, Newsong, and, of court tobyMac.
It’s been a busy first-year-out-of-college for Jamie (it hasn’t even been a year, she graduated from college in May). Last year, she received Gospel Music  Association’s Dove Award for New Artist of the Year. Her debut album, “One Song at a Time” had the chart-topping tune “Hold Me” on it.
Jamie told WordNews.org that people might be surprised about where her songs come from.
“My songs, they’re coming from my journal, they’re coming from my prayer time,” she said. “It’s funny because us songwriters, I think—I can’t speak for all songwriters but at least the one’s I’ve spoken to—I think when people hear songs like ‘Hold Me’ or Toby’s song ‘Get Back Up’, and we like to think they come from these super confident moments.
That they come from these moments when we’re like, God, you’re awesome. I love the way you hold me. We lose our way, we get back up,” Jamie said, citing the lyrics to both her and Toby’s songs.
That’s now how it happened though.
“Most of my songs on my album came from crying,” she said. “Like, I’m a girl. I cry a lot. It’s like a thing, I’m always crying. I’m a very emotional person.”
And she’s not alone. She said she gets together for a good cryfest –aka Bible study—with fellow Christian music stars Mandisa and Francesca Battistelli.
“We get together and we cry,” Jamie said. “Hold Me came from a place of me just begging God to hold me and begging Him for His comfort. And that song ‘You Lead‘ came from a time when I said, ‘God, I don’t feel like getting out of bed, I don’t feel pretty, I don’t feel good enough to do this—like, why are you using me.’”
She gets a kick out of knowing God can use even those low moments for His glory.
“It is such a blessing to see when I play my shows, to see these 10- and 11-year olds and see them with their eyes closed and their hands up and just screaming, ‘You lead and I’ll follow’ because I remember writing that line, laying in my bed and not wanting to get up. Seeing these girls worship to that, it’s just such a blessing. It’s the moments that I’m realizing, Wow, God, it’s crazy. He’s using me when I don’t think I didn’t think I would recover for some time.”