Ups and downs in life are very important to keep us going, because a straight line even in an ECG means we are not alive.

Life will put many red lights in front of you, but sometimes we must push on the gas and trust God.

Wherever you are in your journey, I hope you, too, will keep encountering challenges. It is a blessing to be able to survive them, to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other-to be in a position to make the climb up life's mountain, knowing that the summit still lies ahead. And every experience is a valuable teacher.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you've had a bunch of bad days and there's different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.

Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.