The Story of How George Strait's "Love Without End, Amen" Came to Be

Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here, and Eating While Broke is back for Season 4 every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows.

Come hungry for Season 4. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts.

I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes, or villains, or often somewhere in between.

Listen to The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is My Legacy. And we continue here with our American stories. And up next, a story about a song, the story of how George Strait's Love Without End, Amen came to be. Songwriter Aaron Barker's son was born just two weeks after he turned 17, but he wasn't filled with dread at the prospect of being a father at such a young age. Barker's own father, it turns out, wasn't present in his life. What better way to make up for that absence, he figured, than to have a boy, a buddy of his own. He told a local reporter in Nashville in 2014, laughing at his naivete.

This is Barker talking about this very thing at a songwriter's event in Huntsville, Alabama. And so that was kind of a revelation to me at that point in our lives growing up together. It turns out it wasn't just Barker's son who had a hard time sleeping that night. The father was still trying to process what had happened to him. He had his own doubts about how he'd handled things, not certain he'd administered the proper dosage of discipline to his son.

No father ever is. So Aaron Barker did what a songwriter who happens to be a Christian would do. Let's take a listen. The song is the answer I got that night. It was about four in the morning and I also had a co-writer on this. It was God. That's when I learned God writes them and lets me put my name on them. And he didn't even take publishing on it. The answer to that question he was asking God and to which God had an answer turned out to be the song Love Without End, Amen, which soon wound up in country legend George Strait's capable hands.

The rest was history. The song spent five weeks at number one on what is now called the Hot Country Charts in April of 1990, giving straight his first multi-week number one song. His prior number one songs, all 18 of them had spent only a week at the top of the charts. Why did the song resonate with so many music lovers for so long and why does it still resonate today?

Barker had his own explanations, one that had less to do with earthly concerns and more to do with those of an eternal variety. The song tells the story of a troublemaking son who's sent home from school one day for fighting only to find a father who, before disciplining his boy, shares some secret words his own father had shared with him when he'd been in trouble. In the second verse, the narrator has himself become a father and passes along the very same secret words his father had shared with him on a night his own son tested some boundaries. In the third and magnificent final verse, the narrator dreams that he's died and he's standing outside heaven's gate. It is followed by the final chorus, repeated for a third time, but now imbued with a spiritual dimension, a deeply Christian dimension that emphasizes God's unconditional love for all of his sons and daughters. Here is Barker himself singing that third verse and final chorus. Last night I dreamed I'd died and stood outside those pearly gates Suddenly I realized there must be some mistake If they know half the things I've done they'll never let me in Then somewhere from the other side I heard these words again They said, let me tell you a secret about a father's love A secret that my daddy said must bring us See, daddies don't just love their children every now and then It's a love without end, ain't it? It's a love without end, ain't it? Thank you.

All right. For all the fathers out there doing our best to love our children, we're thankful. Barker chose to memorialize his deepest struggles and questions that fateful night. His story is the story of all of us who carry the name of Father with pride. All of us who believe that being a good father is the world's most important work.

All of us who believe that, in loving our children unconditionally, we come close to being God-like here on earth. It's not too late to join the best club in America, the Father's Club, and experience love, unconditional love that never ends. The story of how George Strait's love without end, amen, came to be. The story of fatherhood and so much more, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here, and eating while broke is back for season four. Every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howie turning Big Max into Big Moose.

Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows. Come hungry for season four. Dressing, dressing.

French dressing. Exactly. Oh, that's good. I'm AJ Jacobs, and my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, The Puzzler. Something about Mary Poppins?

Exactly. This is fun. You can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. Listen to The Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to my legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is my legacy. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now, women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find, because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes, or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.