Feeling more comfortable in the studio allowed Schultz to relax and give in to the emotion in each song as opposed to worrying about the technical aspects of the recording. The heart of Mark Schultz really shines through on every track—through both his voice and through his songwriting. “Broken and Beautiful” is Mark’s most personal collection to date, and it already being heralded as a landmark album in an already stellar career.

One of the highlights of the record is “Everything to Me,” a song Schultz co-wrote with Cindy Morgan. “I was adopted and I just wanted to write a song about it,” says Schultz. “So we started into it and we got the first two lines: ‘I must have felt your tears when they took me from your arms/I’m sure I must have heard you say goodbye.’ And Cindy just lost it because she’s a mother with two kids.”

Cindy and Mark discussed the love and courage it must take for a woman to give up a child, knowing she could never give her child the things he needed. “I’ve had such a good life. I have the best parents in the world so I wanted it to be a song to thank my birth mom for giving me the opportunity to live,” he says displaying the kind of transparency that makes people immediately connect with his work. “It’s almost like taking her hand and walking her through my life when I was little and playing baseball with my dad, the prayers at night with my folks, and my mom reading ‘Goodnight Moon.’ Then back to what would it be like if we met on the street. Would you know it was me? Would you just kind of know?”

Schultz hopes the song will bring peace to women who’ve given children up for adoption. “I loved the line that says, ‘Was this the dream you had in mind when you gave me up? You gave everything to me.’ I think hopefully birth moms will hear this song and just say, ‘You know what? I feel good!’ I would think there’s a certain amount of wondering they would do and that it would be really, really hard. So I wanted to say to my birth mom and all birth moms that life is pretty precious and just to get the chance to live is pretty awesome.”

“Walking Her Home” is another emotionally riveting track that chronicles a couple’s relationship from their first date until the wife is called home to heaven. It’s easy for the listener to picture the love and commitment as Mark’s voice so perfectly conveys the emotional nuances of this special love story.

“That song is about a kid making a promise to a dad,” Mark explains. “Before the couple’s first date, the dad says, ‘Promise me you’ll never leave her side.’ And he doesn’t through the whole song. Right before she passes away, he’s holding her. So, that story coupled with the right melody and music grows and it gets bigger. That’s not to say the other songs without a story can’t do that, but for some reason I love to be able to actually see the story in my head while you hear the song. You can envision it in your head. You can paint the pictures and whatever you put in your mind, you become. I think if you play a song over and over and over again, your mind will help you play that in your real life. I think that’s important. People can spend their life being busy and the reason that song cuts through because it slices all the way through the fluff stuff, the busyness and it cuts right to the heart of everything.”

“She Was Watching” is a poignant song about a little girl seeing her parents live out their faith and wanting to be like them. It’s a powerful message to parents. Schultz says the inspiration came from a sermon. “One of the lines from the sermon was ‘Faith isn’t taught, it’s caught by your kids.’ They are listening a lot more when you are actually acting it out,” Schultz says. “It really is about kids watching and that’s how they model after their parents.”

Faith and family values were an integral art of Schultz life growing up in Colby, Kansas. After graduating from Kansas State University, he moved to Nashville in 1994. “I became a professional waiter,” he says with a grin, recalling those early days of paying his dues in Music City.

During a particularly discouraging time as he was trying to get his career off the ground, his parents came to visit. Standing outside the famed Ryman Auditorium, his dad looked at Mark and told him he’d play there someday. At the time, Mark couldn’t even imagine it. He was serving as the youth director at Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church, and though kids and adults at his church loved his music, he didn’t know if his audience would ever extend beyond his church walls.

It soon did. With encouragement and help from his church family, Schultz rented out the Ryman Auditorium to put on a show. “Everybody at our church chipped in,” he recalls. “You had moms that were bringing the food and bringing the choir robes. I thought if I don’t sell this thing out, I’ll look like a big moron, but at least it was on my own terms and I wanted to do it. If I failed, I failed, but I would fail doing what I wanted to do.”

He didn’t fail. The auditorium filled with enthusiastic Mark Schultz fans. Record executives who had come to check him out were left standing up in the back because they couldn’t even get a seat. They loved what they saw and Schultz soon had a record deal.

So much has happened since then. In less than six short years, he’s become one of Christian music’s best-loved and most respected artists. His days as a “professional waiter” are long behind him. “Sometimes I’m really blown away that it’s 2006. My first record didn’t come out till 2000,” he says. “To have seven No. 1 radio singles, it’s been a cool thing. It’s been fun. When I walk out at a concert, I talk before I sing and it’s almost like I can feel the crowd breathe and we kind of come together. They feel that connection. I’ve had people say they felt like I was in their living room, playing songs and telling them stories.”

Mark Schultz will continue drinking in life and sharing his experiences in songs. Married in 2005 and having recently moved from Nashville to North Carolina, there’s a lot bubbling up in his life to provide plenty of grist for his creative mill. He remains appreciative yet somewhat surprised at his platform. “I always joke that I’m not that great of a singer,” he says. “I’m not a great songwriter and not a great piano player, but to be able to do all three of those in front of people, they communicate something. They can feel the heart when I’m singing the songs and that’s what moves people.”