Trace Adkins has revisited the night his ex-wife shot him many times over the years, but in his latest appearance on "This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von," the country star described something new: what it actually felt like in the seconds after the bullet hit.
"Your body protects you" in a moment that serious, Adkins explained, saying the shock kept him from feeling the wound at all. "I just remember getting up off the floor and then taking a few steps and then going back down, and that's all I remember."
Adkins walked Von through the moment itself with characteristic dry humor. "That took it a little far, I thought," he said of his then-wife, Julie Curtis, pulling the trigger during a 1994 argument tied to his drinking. "That was totally uncalled for. Just leave. Let's just call it quits, we don't have to go that far." He said he'd reached toward Curtis to take the gun from her when it went off. "She put it under my left arm, and the bullet came out under my right arm. So it went straight through." He believes she never understood what the weapon could do. "She thought it was a toy," he said.
He didn't press charges, and he confirmed Curtis eventually apologized - though he'd already made peace with her long before she did.
For a man who has spoken openly about his Christian faith and appeared in "I Can Only Imagine," that order of events tracks with a truth found throughout Scripture: forgiveness offered first, reconciliation completed after. Thirty years and four marriages later, Adkins seems to have simply let both happen in their own time.
Related Article: Country Singer Trace Adkins Opens Up About Forgiving Ex-Wife Who Shot Him: "She Didn't Mean to Hurt Me"
