Mike Rimmer talked at length to one of America's most gifted and distinctive CCM singers, KIM HILL.

Kim shares, "Well for me I held on to a couple of verses that I had known since I was younger. One is that the calls of God are irrevocable. I really held onto that. God's not like this 'big umpire up the sky' who's like, 'Three strikes and you're out! You're done!' He forgives us. He says he's faithful even when we're faithless. I held onto that verse a lot and I also held onto the verse that talks about, 'A smouldering wick he will not snuff out. A bruised reed he will not break.' And the verses where it talks about: he's near to the broken-hearted. He's near when our hearts are crushed. I just cried out to him. Just daily trusting him and asking him to direct me and to show me, do I continue to sing or not sing? Do I go and work at Gap? There was a point where I thought, I'll have to just go and get a whole different kind of career."

She explains, "Just slowly, over and over again the Lord would open doors for me to really minister out of my pain and my brokenness and connect with women in a very real way like I'd never connected before. It made me realise that it's that classic thing of, he doesn't use our strengths he uses our weaknesses and when we're weak he is strong. I felt over and over again that when I would be in a weak place at a conference that God would move through me to minister HIS power and HIS strength and HIS love. It's really about us just being a conduit. I'm just a vessel. It's not about me. I think we say that and we all know that but to be in a place where you're more aware of that because you realise you can't operate in your strength. It's really revolutionised my ministry and my career. I feel like now, people have me come to conferences and really a big thing that they want me to do is share about how God met me in the midst of my pain and disappointment. Because the reality is that everyone has that. They have some sort of brokenness in their life. It's just that some is more visible than others and some is kind of judged more harshly than others. But I think if we're honest about our pain and our brokenness and we're honest about where God has met us in the midst of that, I think it's healing for me and I think it's healing for other women to hear that they're not alone. That they're not the only ones going through hard stuff."

Kim is clearly flourishing in her new ministry and enjoying the doors that God is opening. Does the reward of being able to serve God in the depth of a new ministry make it almost worthwhile to have gone through all the pain? "One of my prayers," she confesses, "was that I would be able to be like Joseph and be thankful for what happened to me. And as awful as some of the things were that I went through I can honestly say I would have never been so desperate for the Lord. I would have never understood so many things about his love if I had not gone through what I had gone through. I think I have such a deeper relationship with God because I needed him so much more. I had grown up and had a pretty good life. I'd grown up in a Christian family. I'd been a good girl. I really had this very sheltered, very easy life. Things went well for me. I got a record deal right out of college. My songs went to number one. I had a lot of things that came very easily to me so it was easy to praise God and easy to be thankful for my life. I had great parents and good brother and sister and all that."

She continues to reflect, "So what I was faced with is, I felt like in many moments of God saying, 'Kim, will you bless me now? Will you praise me now or will you curse me because you don't get what you want? Because your life doesn't turn out the way you want?' I really do feel like, as I chose to bless him when I didn't feel like it, to praise him when I didn't want to, that he not only healed me but just helped me have a bigger picture of things. I do feel like I couldn't do what I do today had I not experienced what I have because I have so much more compassion for people than I ever had before. I just didn't 'get it'. I just didn't understand pain. I didn't understand depression. I didn't understand hopelessness. I didn't understand so many things that I now do. You can't take people where you haven't been. You can't encourage someone who is hopeless, I don't think, unless you've been there."

For many people who go through divorce, there is never any healing. The divorce continues to be the defining factor in their lives. They never feel healed and they never feel they can move on from that place. They can become bitter about their former partner. Kim agrees, "I think so. I think what's so painful about divorce; my mom and I were talking about this because my dad died two years ago of lung cancer at only 65. My mom has gone through a lot of hard things losing him. We've had a lot of really good conversations about how divorce is like a death and you grieve and you lose all this stuff. But it's ongoing. There's no finality to it, especially when you have children and you have to deal with your ex-spouse over and over again. It's like these wounds get reopened over and over again. Whereas my mom with my dad, it's over. And yes she has to grieve and it's really hard but she was saying to me one day, she said, 'I think what you have to deal with is harder than what I have to deal with. Because it's like, he's in your life and he's not really gone, but he's gone.' I talk to so many women that, it's just so hard because you have to forgive over and over again when things get reopened and you get re-injured. I talk to other women that didn't have children but they have just cut off that part of their heart, like you're saying. They haven't allowed God to heal them and then they'd become bitter. I think you have to really make a conscious choice not to become bitter because I think it's definitely probably an easier path to get on. I just take it day by day and I try to allow God to continue to heal me. I don't think it's like this one-time thing. I heard someone say before; it's like a burns victim. When they experience healing their skin heals different layers at a time and there are parts of them that are numb, they don't feel, because the pain would be too excruciating. So their skin heals in different layers. And I think that's kind of what happens to our hearts. I think there were parts of me that were numb five years ago that are now not numb but they had to be numb five years ago or I couldn't have made it. I think there's different levels of healing that we experience as we can. I think God doesn't give us more than we can bear."

The title 'Broken Things' is apt because across the songs the issue of brokenness is never far from the surface. Reflecting on the album as a whole, Kim says, "It's kind of my story and a lot of different women's stories. What I'm coming to understand more and more is it's not unique to divorce. We all have pain and brokenness. We live in a very fallen world. I just think one of the things that keep Christians locked up is trying to hide their brokenness and trying to cover it up. I think we find so much healing as we bring it out into the open and as we're honest about it. When I go to these conferences I literally watch women's faces change throughout the day as they realise they're not alone. As they realise that they're not the only one who's struggling. We have a time of prayer at some of the conferences I do where we have people stand up for different needs. When we have people stand up for marriages or divorce and half the room stands up it makes everyone else in the room realise, okay, this is a huge issue. And when we have people stand up if their kids are walking away from God or their kids are on drugs or whatever, a third of the room stands up."

She continues, "I think when we can get in there and be honest and be real and that, you know what? None of us has a perfect life. We desperately need God's help to make it in this world, not to just survive but to thrive. Not to just endure and suffer but to find ways to have hope and joy and peace in the midst of hard times. I just think that's the key. I think it's so opposite of what the world says; to pull yourself up and be strong and be together and put on a good front. I think we've done that in the Church for so long that people are burned out. People don't want to go to church and pretend. People don't want to put on a happy face. People want to go somewhere where they can be honest and real. I know for me, I see that happening at women's conferences. I see women getting freed up from that kind of life and find ways to really truly experience some of God's healing."

With all this talk of women's conferences and the issues that women face, isn't there a danger that the new album will be perceived as an album that is just for women? What about me as a bloke, is there anything on the CD for me? "I don't think it's just for women," Kim responds easily. "I have a lot of men coming especially because the style of music is more rock. I've had a lot of men tell me that they love the style of music. Definitely I think because I'm a woman and because of my experience the last 10 years in women's conferences there's a lot that is pointedly for women. But I didn't try to make it exclusively for women although I did try to think about the people I'm in front of, and I am in front of women a lot more than men. So I tried to make something that those women can connect with."

Listening to the album, there is so much that speaks into the heart no matter what kind of disappointment or pain you've experienced in your life. It's a classic case of the old playground phrase "it takes one to know one" so that God is using Kim to help others come free of the burdens of disappointment, pain and sin and step again into freedom in Christ. In a world where it is very easy to be the first to pick up a stone and throw it, it is good to know that we live for a God who doesn't write any of us off when we make mistakes. Kim Hill has discovered how to persevere in life and faith and her music is helping others to do the same.