Rascal Flatts’ Jay DeMarcus Credits His Mother and Church With Saving His Life

Rascal Flatts’ Jay DeMarcus is sharing much of his personal life, including the fact that he gave a baby up for adoption, in his new memoir, Shotgun Angels: My Story of Broken Roads and Unshakeable Hope. The musician didn’t mind sharing even some of the more painful details in the book, in part because of his faith and his own mother.

“My beliefs and my faith are part of who I am, and I’m so grateful that I had the foundation laid early on,” DeMarcus shared with Big Machine Label Group. “My mom took me to church from my earliest memories, so I’m grateful to have had that foundation laid early, and it’s just part of who I am. I’m not a perfect human being by any stretch of the imagination, but there is always this little voice inside of me that keeps me where I know I need to be, and I’ve been really, really fortunate to have a mother that has spent many, many long hours on her knees praying for me.

“I guarantee you, I would almost bet everything I have, that that has saved me more often than not,” he added. “So, it sustains me. My faith and my beliefs.”

In Shotgun Angels, DeMarcus revealed that his mother offered to raise the baby that he and DeMarcus’ then-girlfriend decided to give up for adoption.

“It’s been difficult, because the pain is back up to the surface again, remembering just how sad and painful it really was to live through that time,” DeMarcus conceded to Billboard. “That feeling of being stuck with an impossible decision to make, with the young lady looking to me like, ‘What do we do now?’

“Abortion wasn’t an option for us, particularly at the time,” he continued. “We talked about getting married, but obviously for all the wrong reasons, and we talked about my mother adopting her at one time. We just made the best decision we could, and she made the best decision for her.”

DeMarcus later wrote a letter to his daughter, to be read when she turned 14.

“The most important thing to tell her was why we made the decision,” DeMarcus told All Access. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in her life, and that I didn’t love her, and that I wasn’t abandoning her. I wanted her to know that, because my greatest fear at that point in time was to have this little girl grow up and think that her mom and dad didn’t love her or want to be a part of her life.”

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Rick Diamond