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Ginny Owens hates it when people yell at her. "Just because I'm blind," she says, "doesn't mean I can't hear."

And just because she's blind doesn't mean she can't "see" what's going on around her. Ginny is incredibly perceptive. She can actually tell when somebody's staring at her.

"Maybe not from across the room," she says. "But I can usually tell when people are just watching me."

That's how it's always been for Ginny, who recently released her second CD, Something More (Rocketown), the long-awaited follow-up to her smashing 1999 debut, Without Condition, which led to a Dove Award as New Artist of the Year.

Success came swiftly for Ginny. And she accepts it somewhat reluctantly.

"It's been a little bit crazy and weird sometimes," says Ginny. "It can be a struggle not to let pride and affirmation be on the same level as God. In the Christian music industry, we somehow think God and fame can fit together nicely, but they really don't. We're either serving God, or we're serving ourselves. I struggle with that.

"Some days, I think success has made me meaner, or more jaded anyway. But other days, it makes me stronger, because I realize God is indeed in control. I hear stories about how my music has affected people, and I am amazed by that. I've heard from students who've been into drugs, who have questions about faith, whose parents have been divorced, and they say my music has helped them. Just hearing their stories has made me sit and contemplate what's really important."

Which is why she titled her new CD Something More.

Though success is still relatively new for Ginny, the spotlight is not.

People have been staring at her since a rare eye disease left her blind by the time she was 2 years old.

"It was always hard for me to fit in," she says. "At school, everyone seemed to want someone to pick on, and I was often that someone. My parents got divorced when I was 9 or 10, and that already singled me out. But the fact that I had an obvious disability made it easier for people to single me out. There were definitely times when I was picked on, or the odd man out."

Much of the taunting stopped after elementary school, but some of it continued even into high school.

"There were times I'd walk down the hallway and accidentally tap somebody with my cane," she says. "And some of those kids would say the meanest things, things I can't repeat. I remember one time somebody actually said, 'Do you have a sight problem or something?' And they were dead serious."

The problems weren't limited to school. They showed up at church, too, though in a more subtle way.

"We had this huge youth group," she says, "and it was just very hard to make friends with people who didn't really see me as one of them. They saw me as some strange bird. They kind of talked to me in a sweet, very condescending voice. It was easy for them to say Jesus loves me, but they didn't really know how to love as well. That was always the tough thing."

As a result, Ginny was often lonely.

"I remember sometimes thinking that Jesus was my only friend," she says. "I realized he was going to be the only constant in my life—the only one who wouldn't let me down, the only one who really knew and really cared about everything I went through."

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