Sanctus Real are performing at Easterfest in Toowoomba QLD and ‘The Rock’s Been Rolled’ in Taree, NSW this month. Lead singer Matt Hammitt spoke with Behind The Music’s Wes Jay about how he and his wife faced every parent’s worst nightmare.

In April 2010, during the routine ultrasound which revealed Matt and Sarah’s third child was a boy, the doctor also identified a heart defect in the baby, eventually diagnosing their son with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.

“The doctors told us that he might live, but it would be a long road,” Matt says.

Matt began writing songs for what has become a solo side project called Every Falling Tear and songs such as Promises for the new Sanctus Real album Run.

“I had a lot of questions: where was God in all this, and what was He trying to teach us? They were questions I’d never had to ask before in my own life. Why did this happen?”

“I had a couple of friends who’d dealt with a lot of tragedy. They encouraged us to cling to the promises of God in the Scriptures.

“Psalm 139 really spoke to us, where it talks about us being fearfully and wonderfully made, that God knit together the child in the womb and even before he was born he knows our days and everything about us.

“I was encouraged to remember that this applied to our child with half a heart. So whether his life would be only in the womb, or he survived a few days, or many years, he was made perfect by God and that God has already numbered his days, and already knew the reason for his life.”

That’s when Matt and Sarah decided to name him Bowen, a name which means ‘small victorious one’.

“We clung also to John 9 because the disciples had asked the very same questions I was asking when they saw the man born blind. That parable spoke to me so deeply because the disciples learned that that tragedy displayed the workings of a miracle. I embraced that thought and it brought me a tremendous amount of faith.”

Bowen was born on 9 September 2010 and was taken almost immediately into his first open heart surgery. Matt and Sarah spent the next three months in a hospital at his side–praying–not even sure he’d make it. Today Bowen is a thriving two year old, but he is still fragile and anything could happen with one more open heart surgery ahead.

“The biggest change in my life now is my ability to be grateful for every day that God has given us. All these experiences have burnt away my reliance on anything but Christ. I no longer put my faith in what I see here, but in what’s to come.

“If things don’t go well for us in this life, if we lose Bowen… if we don’t have Christ or the hope of what’s to come, then it’s a sad story. If we have that hope of what’s to come, it’s not so sad at all, it’s really incredible.”

Matt and Sarah continue to share Bowen’s remarkable story at www.bowensheart.com.

You can see Matt and Sanctus Real perform at:

• Easterfest (Toowoomba) with Relient K, Audio Adrenaline, Lecrae on 29-31 March.
• ‘The Rock’s Been Rolled’ with Luminate, Safe Haven, and Cameron Semmens is on Wednesday 27 March, Taree Baptist Church.