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After the back-to-back deaths of her husband and father, Yolanda Bennett, an Atlanta-based hairstylist and mother of two, fell into a deep depression while also becoming dependent on prescription drugs.

Remarkably, Bennett’s downward spiral came to an overnight stop after tuning in to an awards show in which Marvin Sapp was performing “Never Would Have Made It.”

Inspired by the song, Bennett quit her medications cold turkey the next day and began turning her life around. Her story is the inspiration behind this weekend’s gmc TV World Premiere Original Music Special: The Song That Changed My Life.

The network’s latest installment in the reality series chronicling the impact of inspirational music by great artists, the show interweaves Bennett’s story with candid interviews with Sapp, who tells how the song came to him during a dark time of his own, when he was grieving the loss of his father in 2007.

Sapp, who had been extremely close to his father, had broken down and while sitting in the pulpit with tears just rolling down his face, began singing “Never Would Have Made It.”

“The next thing I know, the church just erupted,” says the 45-year-old gospel artist. “It was amazing.”

As amazing as it was, Sapp had no thought of recording the song he’d just basically ad-libbed that afternoon, and to this day, doesn’t take credit for its success.

“MaLinda was the one who kept pushing me to record it and put it on the album. What I can take credit for was being the type of husband who listened to her.”

“Never Would Have Made It” went on to become No. 1 in gospel radio for 47 weeks and remains the longest-running No. 1 single on radio across all genres. It was named the Top Song of 2008 by The Associated Press.

But as with Yolanda Bennett, after recording the song, Sapp also suffered the loss of his beloved spouse.

“Just to hear the testimony about how life just ain’t fair and you feel like you can never rebound, and then someone says or sings something that gives you strength enough to move forward, I can relate to that. She wasn’t the only one that was going through it, ’cause I was going thru it myself,” Sapp relates.

And so meeting Bennett and her family first-hand proved just as therapeutic for Sapp.

“You never think that the words that you share or sing will have that type of impact and when they do, you say ‘wow.’ Scripture says it’s the foolish things that confound the wise. To get the opportunity to meet people your music has impacted is amazing. It keeps me encouraged to do what I’m doing,” says the artist, who reveals that a song he recorded called ‘Place of Worship’ is what gets him through daily.

“I don’t think you’re ever totally through the grief period,” Sapp says, and then pauses for a moment, before becoming reflective. “I spent all of my adult life with MaLinda and she was a perfect fit because we grew together. It will be two years in two weeks since her death, so I have good days thinking of her and then bad days when I miss her.”

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article courtesy of watchgmctv.com

 

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