Singer Craig Morgan’s Emotional New Song Helped Him Heal After His Teen Son’s Tragic Death

(www.people.com)

It’s been almost three years since his 19-year-old son Jerry died in a tragic tubing accident on Kentucky Lake in Tennessee, Craig Morgan lay in bed wide awake earlier this year.

On this particular night, Morgan was once again feeling the deep heartbreak stemming from the loss of his son. Eventually, the country singer prayed and fell asleep.

Suddenly, he woke up.

“It was 2:30 in the morning and there I was, singing the entire chorus in my head before I even woke up enough to put the words down on paper,” Morgan, 55, tells PEOPLE about the moving story behind his new song, “The Father, My Son and the Holy Ghost.”

“It was the first time something like that had ever happened to me,” he says.

For the next four hours, Morgan wrote down lyrics that would eventually turn into the first piece of new music Morgan has released in more than three years.

Morgan quickly shared the song with family and close confidants, and in June, the “That’s What I Love About Sunday” singer stepped onto the stage at the Grand Ole Opry to debut the song publicly.

“I walked off the stage, thinking I might never perform it again,” says Morgan about the emotional moment. “But standing there was Ricky Skaggs, and he told me that I simply had to perform it again. I had to get through this and find a way to share this song with as many people as I could.”

So he went into the studio and recorded it, and yet another piece of his heart began to heal.

“I attribute my healing to my faith,” says Morgan, who converted to Catholicism just over two years ago. “It’s still difficult. I mean, Jerry is the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about when I fall asleep. There are times when I am angry and I don’t understand it, and then there are times that I am joyous that we had him for 19 years. You have to let those joyous moments steer you away from the anger. I pray about it all the time. I don’t understand it and I probably never will until I get to heaven.”