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The linoleum was probably brown and tan, he says, but Smitty doesn't recall exactly. Nor does he recall how he got there, face down on the kitchen floor of his Nashville apartment, crying. What he does remember—vividly so—is what led to that uncomfortable evening in November, 1979. After all, it had taken three years to wind up there, sprawled across the cool, hard linoleum. A lot of misspent effort had gone into this brokenness.

That evening, alone with his depression and regret, Michael W. Smith was certain of one thing: He could not go on as he had been. There had to be a change. A change he was powerless to bring about on his own.

You'd have to say that Michael had had it good. His church appreciated him. His family loved him. His dad spent time with him. Ask Michael about his early memories in Kenova, West Virginia; he has three answers: baseball, baseball, and baseball. His dad had been in the minors, and young Michael remembers pulling on his dad's over?sized uniform and playing ball with him. And through those times with his dad, he picked up an ability and a love for sports that stuck with him.

As you might guess from his keyboard work, piano came early, too. Music is a theme woven through Smith's life. A warm spot. A place of security, perhaps. It was through church music—a youth choir at his Baptist church—that Smith found a circle of supportive, Christian friends. They prayed together. Studied Scripture together. Worshiped together.

Looking back, Michael describes the high?school Smitty as intensely religious. "I wore this big cross around my neck. I was a Jesus freak to the max. It was very real to me."

And what had been the doorway to such aggressive faith?

Music.

Music, and a small group of friends to lean on. Michael had undergone an intense spiritual experience when he was 13. Following that, he got involved in Bible study with these friends who were a lot older than he was. "All my friends my age were out drinking beer and being kind of crazy. Me, I was over there with my older friends, with my Bible, singing, praying, studying. I was into it."

To hear Michael describe it all now, childhood, right up through his high-school years, was happy. Secure in his parents' love. Involved in church. Close to God. So what went wrong?

Why'd Smitty go off the deep end?

It began in his junior year, 1976, this radical, negative change. How can you describe it? Michael simply flipped out. First, he drifted into a hypocritical, double life; then he ran from faith altogether. It didn't help that Michael lost his "support group." Those older Christians moved away, went off to college, took jobs, got married. As that group changed, Michael struggled to find support; he simply did not have the strength to stand alone without that circle of stronger, helpful friends. He felt a growing loneliness. And he slipped away from faith.

"I started kind of 'going out to lunch.' When I graduated, I don't know if I was mad at God or what. I don't know. But I just lost touch."

This about-face put his parents' values, his church's beliefs, God himself, behind him. Smitty soon turned from it all and walked away.

But walked away to what?

Michael had only three aspirations over the years: When he was 8, he figured he should be either an astronaut or a professional baseball player. With a few years of maturity, he dumped both of those ideas in favor of a career in music. One year of music studies and goofing off at a local college only bored him, and put him in closer touch with the wrong kind of influences. Yet his musical interests—writing and performance—continued to grow. A friend, Shane Keister, a session player in Nashville, had encouraged him, "If music's really in your blood, you should probably move to Nashville."

Michael figured he had a musical gift. Perhaps he felt that was all he had at the time. And he didn't want to get stuck in little Kenova, West Virginia, for the rest of his life. He made the 300-mile jaunt to Nashville and, among other things, met with Randy Cox, who later published his songs. That was all the encouragement Michael needed. He packed up his belongings and stuffed them in his rusty, Army-green Chevrolet. His Mom threw her arms around him, kissed him and, as he puts it, "started bawling." Her boy was moving away.

Away from her.

And further away from God.

"I really started losing touch when I moved to Nashville, around April of '78. I was smokin' marijuana, drinking, doing some other drugs; just being crazy, you know. My mom and dad knew what I was doing. Mom later told me that she had found a bag of pot under my mattress when I was still living at home. But they never hassled me, they just prayed for me. And I felt convicted by God. Every time I'd wake up I knew: This isn't me. But I couldn't change myself."

Once settled in Nashville, Michael struggled to connect with the music industry. He did have a contact with Shane, and, to pay the bills, was able to get a landscaping job with Shane's brother, Beau. He also co-wrote a few songs with Shane's wife, Alice, a songwriter for Paragon. Days were spent landscaping, trying to make ends meet. Spare moments were spent trying to write songs. Trying, always trying. Trying to pay bills. Trying to write songs. Mostly trying to survive.

Then the checks started showing up in the mail. Every two or three weeks. Twenty-five dollars here. Fifty dollars there. And always with a note; Michael describes them as "awesome letters from Mom." Messages like: You've got to trust in the Lord, Mike. Things are not going to happen for you until you get your heart right with the Lord. Here's $50. Spend it wisely. Love, Mom.

But he wasn't spending the money wisely. His life was reeling further out of control. And somehow, his parents knew it.

"On one of my visits home—soon after my move to Nashville—Dad took me aside, out on the front porch, and talked to me about smoking pot. It was really strange. A very simple, direct message: 'You're going to have to quit smoking this marijuana. You know it's not right.' He wasn't hard; he was just so gentle, and all I could say was, 'I know, Dad. I know.'

"What could I say? I couldn't defend myself. What was there to defend? Dad was right."

Nevertheless, Michael returned to Nashville unchanged.

Within a few months, things were looking brighter musically. Opportunities were coming up to do some club work. His parents had signed a promissory note so he could buy his first synthesizer, and he was busy polishing his keyboard skills. Then Smitty received a particularly significant call from a band that was looking for a keyboard player. Here was the chance to play five nights a week, promising about $1,200 a month.

"I went over and met the guys in the band. They were all long-haired rock 'n' rollers. Somebody had a joint lit, but I didn't think anything of it. These guys were really good musicians. I liked them and they seemed to like me. I thought, This is the ticket! Three hundred dollars a week, no slaving away to plant shrubs. I'm finally going to get to do what 1 really want to do. So I joined the band. I moved in with one of the band members and his wife; they needed help paying the rent. That's when I found out this guy was a drug dealer. There were all kinds of drugs coming in and out of this place. I still can't believe that all of this happened to me.

"I was at a crossroads: If this guy got busted, I would get busted, too. And I was also feeling this heavy conviction from God. It was like, here he was, protecting me, but I felt so unworthy. So guilty. But I stayed there for two or three months, doing the club thing. Then I moved out. And I felt so relieved to put that behind me.

"A month later, one of the guys called to let me know that Red, one of the drug contacts who was always coming over and bringing two, three, 400 hits of LSD—all kinds of stuff—had been found on the interstate with four bullets in his head. And I'm thinking, I lived over there! What's going on? It really flipped me out. And I just kept thinking, Oh, God, what am I doing? Get me out of this thing. That's what I begged for every night and every morning when I woke up."

This prayer, calling out, flailing to reach God, was not new to Michael. Less than a month into his "crazy mode," he had started praying: "God, get me out of this . …" But he went on in his guilt-stirring ways for three years. Three years, as he now describes it, of "just floating out there, not quite able to grab onto God, yet feeling Satan really had a grip on me."

After quitting the band (chalk it up to fear and guilt and musical differences), Michael moved from job to job: waiting tables, selling clothing, bottling Coca-Cola. Whatever. He was drifting. Drifting from job to job. Drifting further from God. Drifting deeper into debt. He soon owed the bank $1,400, but had no income. He was living on Miller, crackers and bologna, and growing tired of the crackers and bologna.

Perhaps it was his indebtedness, and the sense of failure it brought, that finally put him over the top—the feeling that, in yet one more area, life was out of control.

"I came to the end of myself. I just decided that I couldn't live that way anymore. I became deeply depressed. Things were not happening musically—my only dream. Financially, things were out of control. I knew I was hurting my parents and disappointing God. And, perhaps most painful to me, I knew I was a hypocrite. I would be with friends, all of us high on alcohol and pot, and, through that drug-and-alcohol haze, I'd end up talking about God. 'Look here,' I'd tell them, 'I am the biggest hypocrite in the world. Look at me: I'm smoking a joint. But you guys need to know that Jesus really is the answer. And I'm going to get my act together someday.'

"As hard as I tried, I just could not run away from God. And always, always, I would pray, 'Oh God, just let me have peace of mind.' The faith I knew was right was always hanging over me. Always."

That November night in Nashville, 1979; that night in the kitchen of his apartment; that night on the linoleum floor, the full weight of his wasted living fell on him. He buckled under the burden of his guilt and restlessness. And he cried: "Lord, I can't do it. I am really going to commit my life to you. I want you to intervene in my life."

Sounds familiar. Wasn't this what he'd been crying to God about for three years already?

Not quite.

"Up to that point, I would pray, 'Oh God, get me out of here. Do whatever you've got to do. Break my legs, whatever, just get my attention.' Then I would kind of leave it all alone and say, 'Where's the joint, man?' But that night was different. That night I just got sick of it. I knew I was never going to be happy until I got myself right with God. That night I finally said, 'OK, God. I'm yours.'

"I prayed that prayer, and when I woke up the next day, I felt refreshed. I felt like it was a new day."

One of the first things Michael did the next morning was to call home. "'Mom,' I said, 'I really think I've had a change.' I'd never made that sort of claim before. Oh, I called them all the time. My parents meant a great deal to me. My relationship with them gave me a sense of security. I called them all the time, but I avoided the specifics in my life. And I never claimed to be 'transformed' only to go back and do the same things, even though I prayed constantly. But this was different. I knew something had happened to me."

After the call home, Michael stopped by Paragon. "To hangout," he says. And Randy Cox, his contact there, told him about a group called Higher Ground that was looking for a piano player. Randy wondered if Michael might be interested.

"That kind of blew my mind. You know, the day after my Big Encounter with God. I was feeling better about myself. But still, this opportunity when I most needed it was such a surprise from God. I thought, By God's grace I'm going to make it. So I went and hung out with these guys. We hit it off. So I joined the band.'"

That night Michael called home again. "I'm going to be in this gospel group," he told his mom. And she was encouraged. "I found out later that Mom had been on her knees every night praying for me."

And within Michael, finally, the change began.

"I remember smoking my last cigarette on my way to meet Higher Ground. We were scheduled to take off for Florida almost immediately, and I said, 'This is it: my last Belair.'

"My experience with Higher Ground was a time of healing for me. I was with the band for eight months, singing in churches, and just spending time with those guys. We were in the Word and some of those churches we went to were just phenomenal. We met some genuine people.

"The guys in the band were funny, too. We laughed. I would come home on weekends and my side would ache, I would be so sore from laughing. And I think all that laughter was good for me, too—just being with Christian brothers and having a great time.

"I wasn't getting high anymore. Within two weeks' time I straightened up a lot. It was really a pretty quick change. Definitely, something happened to me."

That initial change gave Michael the hope that greater changes would follow. "So I prayed and continued to ask God to give me the strength to stay close to him."

Also during this time, Michael continued to co-write songs for Paragon, working with the other artists and eventually with Gary Chapman. "I guess I felt that God was really starting to bless me. I'd known I had that potential for a long time. I just had to make the turn."

Michael soon grew frustrated with Higher Ground, feeling it was time to move on, time to focus on his writing. Paragon signed him to a one-year songwriting contract. "I wrote 100 songs that year—probably seven of them were good, the rest were just throwaways. But I had to go through that, you know. Just write them out. And I grew a lot that year."

In the months that followed, Michael collaborated with the Gaithers and others. And he met Amy Grant, played keyboards with her band, co-wrote material with her and met her managers, Dan Harrell and Mike Blanton, who now also manage him. But more than business contacts, these new friends became a new circle of support for Michael.

Michael soon met Deb in a hallway at the Benson Company. "It clicked both ways," he says with a sly grin. First date: immediately. (And a call home to Mom.) Two?and?a?half weeks later: Debbie meets his parents. One week later: engaged. Four months later: married. And it's safe to say that Debbie has been a stabilizing influence in his life, too.

The changes in Michael since that night in November, 1979, have been radical. They have not been instantaneous. And they have not happened apart from the support and encouragement of other Christians.

Looking back, Michael sees it like this: "I became a Christian when I was 10. And from 10 till 18 I had a great foundation. My time with other Christian friends, even though I turned away from it all for a while, was a major part of me being where I am today. It would have been a different story if, when I turned to Christ, I'd been starting from scratch. It would have been far more difficult."

Instead, Michael turned back to build again on a foundation he could never fully deny. "And it was like, 'Welcome home!'

"I was the Prodigal Son."

Read more from 'Bands & Artists'

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