Ricky Skaggs is alive and well.
In a new interview with People, the 15-time Grammy winner and country music legend revealed he underwent a quadruple bypass heart surgery this past summer.
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He explained that the trouble arose the day before he and his wife were set to travel to North Carolina for the birth of their grandson. He’d just gone through his six-month checkup and CT scan, which discovered his heart problems.
“Scripture tells us God always knows the thoughts of man,” Skaggs said. “That was proven to me at that moment because while I did not speak it from my mouth, I thought about putting the angiogram off for a week. When I thought that thought, it was like I saw the Lord with a jeweller’s eyeglass on. He was peering at me but never said a word. But just by His look, I knew He was saying, ‘Absolutely, no.’ It put the fear of God in me. He had given me so many grace situations, but He was serious that I needed to take care of this now.”
Four days later, Skaggs went under the knife for the major heart surgery.
“I have thanked the Lord hundreds of times that I wasn’t out in the middle of Texas on a tour bus, miles away from a hospital,” he said. “It was a major blessing I didn’t have a heart attack. Nothing was hurt, and nothing was destroyed or irreparable. It was just by the mercy and grace of God that all of this happened in this way.”
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The musician said that during the first half of 2020 he noticed symptoms that worried him and directed him to take his health seriously.
“God gives us grace, but we all have a tendency to kick in the boundaries of that grace,” he said. “Sometimes, we are like a bull running through the fence of grace. But then, there comes a time when He has to come after us. I knew that I couldn’t stand in the shadows of my heart situation anymore. I had been fearful of a heart attack or getting a stent put in all of this time, but now, I was in a corner. I had to address it.”
Skaggs also recalled meeting with his surgeon after the procedure.
“He told me that when he was finished with the bypasses, he literally was holding my heart in his hand, and my heart literally leaped in his hands when the blood started flowing through it again. I just started bawling. It was the most incredible thing I have ever heard in my life.”
He also added as a message to everyone else, “Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today. That surgery gave me a brand-new heart. Not only a real heart, but a spiritual heart that has now been cleaned out, so I can hear Him better than ever before.”
