“My daddy was the light and love of my life, the greatest influence on my life,” Gifford shares. “His death impacted me in ways I’m probably not even aware of yet. They say that the depth of your pain is always commensurate with the depth of your love. When you watch someone so close to you truly suffering, and yet battle a horrible disease with such grace, integrity and faith it really humbles you. You realize how much you really don’t have that kind of faith. It’s so easy to say, ‘all things work together for good for those who love God’ when you’re talking about someone else.  But when it’s you going through it, you realize your own hypocrisy, shallowness, and how much lip service you’ve been giving. But my daddy had an unwavering, unshakeable faith. He was the inspiration to me. I’m so grateful to have had a father like that – someone in my life who just lived it.”

Gifford says her father’s death capped off a seven-year period of difficult family times. In 1997, her husband, former football star Frank Gifford, had a highly publicized affair. And just one year earlier, Gifford herself had become a tabloid target when labor activists said her Wal-Mart clothing line was produced in foreign sweatshops – news that came as a complete shock to Gifford. Through the ordeal, Gifford turned into a vocal proponent for child-labor regulations, but her family had already become prime candidates for tabloid fodder.

“As a family, we went through one blow after another,” says Gifford. “It was a very, very hard time for us, a real test. With all of that combined, I was at such a hurting place. But it’s in those moments that we realize our faith is not just something we have, it’s something we have to do.  It’s got to be a living thing. We have to exercise it – it’s a muscle. When we have the discipline to exercise that muscle, that’s when the healing happens. When we exercise our faith, we get it back in abundance.”

"Gentle Grace" allowed Gifford the opportunity to explore those feelings of hurt and pain she had carried, while experiencing the grace and mercy that followed. It became a very quiet time of reflection, she says, during which she began to write about everything.

“I’ve understood about God’s love since I first walked into that movie theater in Annapolis, Maryland some 40 years ago and asked Jesus into my heart when I saw 'The Restless One,'” Gifford shares. “But understanding His grace really takes a lifetime, I think. This album sounds like it has the weight of the world in it because it has the weight of my world in it. It’s all the experiences I’ve had over this dark, lonely seven-year period in the desert, walking with the Lord through the desert and realizing that He’s the only one that can get us through that.  It’s about getting better, not bitter.”