Kent Bottenfield - 'Take Me Back'

The title track on his release, "Take Me Back," paints a very different picture from that of a man with everything. That song looks into the life of a man who had all of the trappings and went through all of the right motions, but on the inside he felt a loss of something that all of the fans, the cheers and ESPN couldn't fill.

"Where have I gone to, where have I run? Who is this person, that I have become?" ... "At times the truth seems faded, from black and white to gray. Clouded by a circumstance, at times the truth seems to get in the way."

"How Long," "Come to Me" and "Wash Over Me" each add more brush strokes to that picture, to clearly show a man with a God-sized hole inside of his soul. Kent acknowledges that he did feel like he had lost some of his connection to God during that time - when his baseball career was at its peak. "I'm not making excuses - but when you get into that kind of world you can become reliant on yourself. It can be very easy to think that you are something ... that you really are somebody. That can hit some of the strongest Christian people that I've seen. I've seen that happen in the game where they can tend to feel really self-important. I don't think I was characterized by that, but there were certainly times where I felt that. The game feeds it. People always wanting a piece of you, a piece of your time. 'Everybody wants to be around me. Everybody wants to talk to me.' They make you feel important because of what you do, not because of who you are," Kent explained.

"It made me think when I was young, I learned You gave Your only Son to set me free. I let my life get in the way..."

That revelation brought back the promises that God has made to all of us ... and Kent expounds on that hope in "Rain" and "Trusting in Love." "A Prayer Away" is the cincher ... from your feet to on your knees. He moves into the grand finale of a man who has truly come home in "Great is Thy Faithfulness," "Amazing Grace" and "You're There."

Listen to this album and you'll find yourself able to relate in some way or another to what Kent Bottenfield is talking about. And if you haven't hit your own point of realization of being just "A Prayer Away," maybe this album will be what helps move you to that direction.