Here’s how this story ends: I leave the music business.

I signed a record deal in 2000, started touring by bus and getting played on radio stations not long after that, and eventually I started making money from music. What a strange and wonderful thing it is to do something so enjoyable and get paid for it.

We built a house with a lot of the money. It had two ovens for my wife, a big back yard with a swing set for the kids and a basement that could someday become a studio for me.

In 2005 I kissed my wife and kids goodbye and headed out the door to meet Yanci. She was five back then, brown-skinned, very proud of her Sponge Bob shirt, slurping from her big bottle of Gatorade. The Gatorade was mine, technically. I had to share it with her as a sort of apology for making her throw up by holding her hands and spinning her around like a helicopter.

Yanci and I spent one day together. I pushed her on swings. I let her put bows in my hair and paint my fingernails. She tried to teach me Spanish and laughed at me when I couldn’t. I tickled her for that until she cackled “sorry” a dozen times quickly. She traced my hand in crayon and I traced hers. She sat on my shoulders and ate a rainbow popsicle as we walked through the market, patting my hair and face with her sticky little hands.

She ate at a restaurant for the first time in her life that day. I remember she ate only half of her hamburger before wrapping the rest in a napkin so she could take it home and share it with her little sister. Then we climbed on a bus and she fell asleep on me – her sweaty cheek pressed against my chest as we made our way back to her city.

I watched her sleep and felt the volume of everything else in life decrescendo. Every ambition, worry, problem – it all just slipped into its appropriate place somewhere in the background. I think this is called perspective. I’m not sure. I haven’t experienced it often enough.

There was a time when Yanci ate only once every three days. Her father was an addict. Her mother was a baker. And that’s about all I know of Yanci’s life before Compassion International started meeting her physical and spiritual needs through a church in her neighborhood.

How could I ever be the same after seeing the change $32 a month could bring to a child in the third world?

I came home and sold my house. We live in a much smaller one today. We canceled our cable, stopped eating out as often, changed the way we do Christmas, stopped buying clothes when fashion changed and started shopping only when what we have is worn out. I started cutting my own hair – which probably shows. Basically, we decided to simplify our lives so that more children like Yanci could simply live.

And I left the music business.

I’ve continued to record and tour, but I don’t do it to sell pieces of silicon to Christians anymore. Making money and fans from music is not my ambition. Releasing children from poverty and Christians from affluence is. Since I met Yanci, I’ve done nothing but play and speak on behalf of the poor at no expense to the churches and colleges that so graciously host me every week. Thousands of children have been sponsored as a result – children who now eat, learn to read and write, receive medical care, and hear daily how much they are loved by God.

But best of all, I’m in the business of compassion now – the business we’re all made for. Music is just one tool of the trade.

Shaun Groves defies typical expectations and simple labels. He is an insightful songwriter, one who displays such incredible lyrical prowess that his musical peers nominated him for Songwriter of the Year solely on the strength of his 2001 debut. He’s also a solid on-stage performer as the lanky Texas native can hold his own whether standing solo before a college crowd or fronting his band at a youth event or festival. And to listen to Shaun Groves’ music showcases a complete and talented artist in full bloom, constantly reaching for excellence.

However, none of these positions—songwriter, performer, and artist—totally grasp the significance of the man or what he hopes to convey to audiences everywhere.

More than a musician, Shaun Groves is a communicator, a man full of messages and ideas that he hopes to translate through a variety of media. A writer, teacher, preacher, father, husband… and yes, most definitely a songwriter, performer and musician, Groves encapsulates everything that one would hope an artist could be. His songs reflect the bare-bones honesty of a searching, passionate faith. Unafraid of the questions or of stepping on toes, Groves sets his sights as high as possible, aiming to pursue profound theological truths in the most accessible lyrical metaphors he can create.

You can learn more about Shaun and his ministry at his website or blog.

To get a taste of his music download free, Kingdom Come. To learn more about sponsoring a child through Compassion International click here.