christian music superstar Lauren Daigle is returning to the music scene with an undeniable enthusiasm for her self-titled album and for being able to tour. But more than that, she’s diving back into music with a whole new perspective on her life and the place her career occupies within it.

“I’ve got probably the healthiest relationship with my career I’ve ever had, because it’s in balance,” said Daigle, who is scheduled to perform in August at the new Sunset Amphitheater in Colorado Springs.

“When I leave to go out and see the world, I get to leave with so much joy and so much passion because I know I’m going to get to come home and love on my family. And it feels very much in balance, but not just in balance as far as time is concerned, it feels very much in balance as far as passion is concerned and as far as joy is concerned.”

Getting to such a healthy place has not been easy for Daigle. She is 10 years into her music career and has come out of a period where she struggled mightily with anxiety and depression and faced serious uncertainty about how to go about a career that became all consuming as Daigle rocketed to the top of the Christian music world and seemed poised to cross over and gain a significant audience in the mainstream music scene.

“I got to a place of rock bottom as I’d known it up until this point, lots of sheer depression, anxiety,” she said.

Shaken by seeing the pandemic put her career on hold, and also upset over the political and social divisions emerging in society as a whole, the upheaval came to a head when Daigle suffered a severe panic attack.

At first, she was scared it was a health emergency, such as a heart attack, but a call to a doctor helped her understand what she was experiencing and how to breathe as she battled her anxiety.

What also helped Daigle was she had her mother, a best friend and her faith by her side, helping her as she rode out her fear and panic.

“My mom and my friend just sat with me throughout the whole thing. It lasted about seven hours, and was pretty intense,” Daigle said of her panic attack.

“They just encouraged me that everything was OK. So to say that even in the height of paranoia, even in the height of panic, God was still close and he showed me who he was through these people who just sat with me to support me and not judge for what was completely unraveling at the surface.”

It was a long road to recovery after that episode. Daigle’s family continued to provide support, as she entered into counseling to try to regain her emotional footing. Daigle said it took her two and a half years to really feel like herself again.

“Yesterday I was sitting in church and I had this moment of ‘Oh my gosh, look how far I’ve been able to come,’” she related. “I was in counseling at this one moment, and my counselor, who doesn’t use this type of jargon, she just looked at me and she said ‘I want you to understand that what has happened to you in your life, like the place you were in (back) then versus the place you are in now is an actual miracle.’”

Sign Up for free: Peak Interest

Daigle was still far from feeling normal and having a handle on her future when the time came for her to begin work on her next album. “My manager flew to my home and she was basically like, ‘OK, here’s the deal. What’s the verdict? Are you done with music for good? Or are you going to step back into this?’ Daigle recalled.

“I was at that rock bottom of uncertainty. I know this is silly, but there was almost this moment of wondering hey, is what I’m doing really making a difference or is it all just the illusion of?”

Daigle decided to move forward with music. But she didn’t know what kind of album she wanted to make.

Daigle credits her co-writers (which included new collaborators Amy Wadge, Lori McKenna, Jon Greene, Mike Elizondo (who also produced the album) and perhaps most notably, Natalie Hemby, who has co-writing credits on 10 songs on the full “Lauren Daigle” album) with essentially pulling ideas out of her that turned into songs.

“I feel like it actually forced me to find OK, what do I want to say? God, what do you want to say? How do I do this and what kind of messages do I need to be bringing for such a time as this, for this hour?” Daigle said. “How do I do that in a time when I feel like I don’t even feel like myself right now? It was really difficult. I’m not going to lie. It was really hard. But I think that’s actually why I love this record so much. It’s because I had to like grow with it, and kind of have growing pains with it and go through learning myself.”

The first phase of the project arrived last May with a 10-song self-titled album, and in September, it was released in complete form, with another 13 songs added from the same writing and recording sessions.

The writing and recording sessions were obviously productive, but what’s even more impressive is the “Lauren Daigle” album already represents her most ambitious, stylistically varied and accomplished work to date.

That’s no small statement for an artist who had reached rarified air with her first two albums, which together produced three No. 1 Christian singles (including the Grammy winning, six-times-platinum song “You Say” from her third album, “Look Up Child”) that propelled her into the front ranks of the Christian music scene.

The “Lauren Daigle” album has produced a No. 1 Christian single in “Thank God I Do” and the 32-year-old native of Lafayette, La., said in working with her new collaborators, she gained a new perspective on how to craft melody and make every note count and how to use story telling as a vehicle for examining the human condition.

The highly melodic pop balladry that was a cornerstone of the first two albums returns on songs like “Thank God I Do,” which touches on Daigle’s mental health struggles, “To Know You” and “Don’t Believe Them.” But Daigle’s New Orleans musical roots shine more than ever on “These Are The Days,” a rousing track that features full horn and string arrangements and gospel-ish backing vocals, while the brightly hued “Kaleidoscope Jesus” mixes a bit of New Orleans with classic Philly soul. “New” bounces along to a hip-hop cadence and a playful horn line, while “Waiting,” a string-accented mid-tempo tune, has shades of Beatles-esque pop and Motown.

Daigle is back on tour now, and is bringing a big production featuring a mix of songs from across her career.

“We are still bringing all the energy, all the fun. I think there is going to be 13 of us on stage, 13 or 14 of us, which I’m really excited about. We have our horn section, which I love because it brings that energy and the zeal and the iconic sounds of New Orleans,” Daigle said. “We’ve got a background vocalist section, drums, bass, guitar, all the things. It’s going to be really sweet.”