Christian singer Franni Cash says discovering Jesus’ grace changed her understanding of God as she healed from the controlling religious community of her childhood and found her own voice outside We the Kingdom.
“He was so loving. And gracious with me,” Cash told RELEVANT in an interview published Oct. 29, describing how encountering Jesus challenged the angry picture of God she had carried for years.
Cash’s debut solo album, Here I Am, arrives with a story that stretches well beyond a career change. In the interview, she talked about years of therapy, learning to enjoy music again and building a healthier relationship with her family after stepping away from their band.
Movieguide® previously covered Cash’s account of her childhood and the faith behind her songwriting. Her latest conversation spends time on what healing has looked like since then, including the work that happened away from a microphone.
Cash told RELEVANT that her parents sought counseling during a difficult period in their marriage and eventually joined a religious community she describes as a cult. She said the family left when she was 17, but relief did not immediately erase the fear she had learned there.
Her parents quickly sought therapy for the family, she said. Cash described finding help through EMDR and brainspotting after struggling to speak freely in talk therapy, and said she has continued therapy for ten years.
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“You can’t just slap a Bible verse on it,” Cash said, explaining how she sees the relationship between Scripture and the work of healing. She described needing help to reach a place where she could absorb biblical truth.
We the Kingdom initially gave her somewhere to process that shared history. Her family understood experiences that other people found difficult to hear, she explained, but she eventually recognized that she also needed to discover who she was apart from the group.
Stepping away has not meant abandoning those relationships. Cash told RELEVANT that she and her family are now closer than ever, with greater health and respect rather than the enmeshment she described from before.
That move followed a chapter that included a 2021 Grammy nomination for Cash in the contemporary Christian performance/song category for “Holy Water.” Now, her label’s listing for the 13-track solo debut puts her own storytelling at the center of Here I Am.
Even listening to music took some practice. Cash recalled a friend encouraging her to revisit records she loved without trying to turn the experience into work, and she described a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway when a familiar song suddenly reached her differently.
“It was like I heard music for the first time,” she said.
The album title carries a connection to her younger self, too: Cash said she had planned to use it for a record when she was 16. She and her father, producer and songwriter Ed Cash, wrote the song that eventually supplied the title for her solo debut. Returning to those words now gives her a way to describe where she stands after years of healing.
“Now here I am, kind of on the other side of healing,” she said.
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