Article Courtesy of Celebrity Baby Blog
In the February issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, singers Amy Grant and Vince Gill open up about life as a blended family of seven.
Both entered their 2000 nuptials as parents — Amy to Matthew, 22, Millie, 20 and Sarah, 17; Vince to Jennifer, 27 — but it is their only child together, 8 ½-year-old Corinna, that has united the extended brood.
“[Corinna’s birth was] a great blessing for us,” Vince says.
“All of a sudden, we all had something in common. And we didn’t know it at the time, but it really provided a sense of glue.”
The timing of their union raised eyebrows, especially amongst Amy’s Christian fan base, but the 49-year-old songstress says she had bigger priorities.
“I don’t mean this in a flippant way, but I was so unconcerned by what somebody who I would never meet wrote in a rag,” she explains. “I felt like I had flipped a car over three medians and I was trying to figure out if my children — if we all — still had a pulse.”
And while Matthew, Millie, Sarah and Jennifer were all breathing, it couldn’t be said that they were doing well, either. “There have been a lot of hands-down, pivotal turning points, with a lot of words and tons of emotions,” Amy admits before adding,
“It was a long haul to feel like a family again. The parents have made a choice, but none of the kids have made the choice. And wherever it’s going to wind up, you’re not going to get there quickly. You just have to give people their space.”
Similarly, the couple make it a point to acknowledge the importance of their respective pasts. “The one thing we never tried to do is to say that life began for us the moment that we said ‘I do,’” Amy reveals. “A whole lot of life had gone before that, and it was worth, in time, integrating in a healthy way.”
