These days, Dolly Parton is busier than ever. The 73-year-old recently co-hosted the Country Music Awards and performed a special concert in honor of her 50th anniversary as an Opry member, one of the highest honors a country musician can receive. On top of all that, her new series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings recently premiered on Netflix.
And Parton has no plans of slowing down. She’s still striving to live up to the calling that was placed on her life as a young girl.
“My grandpa was a Pentecostal preacher. So healing and praying and being anointed and all that stuff was nothing new to us, cause we survived because of our faith in God,” Parton said in a roundtable for Heartstrings at her DreamMore resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
In her church, prayer often involved anointing people with oil. Still, Parton was confused when an older woman in their congregation delivered a special message to her one day.
“She said I was anointed and [that] I was going to do great things,” Parton recalled.
Parton wasn’t sure what the word anointed meant so she asked her mom.
“Mama said…that just means that God has his hand on you, that you may do something special,” Parton said. “But that triggered a faith in me, because I believe that I was supposed to do something good…I never let go of that because I always felt responsible to God that I was supposed to be doing something for God. And so I still feel like that. And I’m still doing it. Trying to.”
This spiritual calling has been a driving force in her life for decades.
“I really feel like I have a calling,” Parton said. “I feel like God had told me early on in a feeling that I was supposed to go till He told me to stop and He [hasn’t] said nothing yet about quitting. And so I ain’t said nothing about retiring yet.”
One way she maintains her energy is through a daily prayer ritual.
“Every day I pray for God to lead me and to take out all the wrong things, wrong people in my life, bring all the right things, right people in, and to let me glorify Him and uplift mankind,” Parton said. “Let me be a light, and a vessel to be used…I just really want to do what I can in this world to make things better, if I can.”
Parton recently recommitted herself to creating things specifically focused on bringing light and faith into the world—something she thinks everyone can do.
“There is a God light in all of us, there’s a God coal or whatever,” Parton said. “There’s something bigger and better than us and we need to connect to that to make us better people. And the more you can draw from that, the better off you are, not just for yourself, but for all the things from people that you can touch by believing that.”
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