"I remember I had ‘How Great Thou Art’ in the set," Cindy says. "And I felt like when I sang ‘How Great Thou Art’ I had such a feeling of completeness to be singing about something that was hopeful and that had depth." She smiles and sums up her experience at Dollywood, "It was then that I really felt like I wanted to sing about God and about his hope."

Just over a decade later Cindy’s career seems to be going better than she could’ve ever imagined. One look at her press sheet makes that obvious.

To date, she’s recorded five critically acclaimed albums, won multiple Dove Awards, garnered eight #1 hit songs, and proven herself as one of Christian music’s premiere—and prolific—songwriters. She’s even been a featured "Live Chat" on Crosswalk.com’s music channel, has begun writing songs for movie soundtracks, and risked the Y2K bug on January 1 to join mainstream phenom, John Tesh, in New Zealand to record a lyric for Tesh’s upcoming album, Millennium. Add to that a just-released "best-of" collection of her music, creatively titled The Best So Far and it’s safe to say that Cindy’s come a long way, baby.

So she reports that most of her time toward the end of last year was spent at the piano, paper and pen nearby, creating new songs of faith and life to go on the upcoming album. She finished the bulk of the writing in September of 1999, and logged time in the studio in November to get it ready for release this spring of 2000.

Excitement begins to fill Cindy’s voice as she talks about this album, and one gets the feeling this is her new favorite subject. "It’s really a happy record," she says. "Hopefully, not happy without depth, but it’s a record that’s really upbeat."

She pauses, not wanting to give the wrong impression, and quickly points out "It’s not a dance record at all. I’m not trying to go back to the first three records! I’m not doing that. I’m just wanting to do something that’s hopeful and that’s upbeat and that really lifts people up when they hear it."

She sighs slightly. Like the rest of us, She’s watched the news reports of the last several months. Horrendous fighting and brutality in Kosovo. Tragic violence like the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Like the rest of us, she has not come away from those events untouched.

"We have to get back to being peaceful with each other," she says firmly. "We cannot keep on fighting and being at war." Because music is her tool, Cindy has turned to melody and lyric to contribute to that peace process, creating a new song called "In the River."

"Kosovo, from a war standpoint, and the Littleton, Colorado [shooting] were very much inspirations for ‘In the River,’" she says. "We need to find peace between our countries and you’ll hear that in the song."

But world peace wasn’t the only inspiration for this song; personal peace played a part in its creation too. Cindy says, ""In my own family too, the differences that we have and our differences of opinion—there are things we just don’t agree on. And sometimes it’s hard to get past the things you don’t agree on to just say, ‘I still love you. You’re my sister. You’re my brother.’" Those feelings, close to home, make "In the River" more personal, more real than just another "make-peace-not-war" anthem for Cindy.

Still, Sigmund and Cindy are committed to making it work. To that end, the two often sit down to plan job schedules, tours, appearances and such to maximize their time together. At one point in their young marriage, the couple had to endure three months apart from each other—and they learned from that. Now they’ve promised to never plan to be away from each other for more than eight days at a time. And they’ve been creative, even touring together as a team, with Cindy performing her music and Sigmund doing selected readings from his books.

Although it can be hard to invest in a marriage and maintain the hectic celebrity schedules Cindy and Sigmund do, they’re determined to live happily ever after together—and are willing to pay the price for that. "This is what we want to do," Cindy says. "This is what we want to make our priority."

And children? Could happen anytime—and Cindy looks forward to the day she becomes a Mom. In fact, other than music and faith in Christ, she says that marriage and children are the only other things she feels strongly enough to commit her life to.

For more information on Cindy Morgan and other Christian artists, visit our friends at the Music Channel at crosswalk.com!
http://music.crosswalk.com 

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