FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.

On the cusp of summer in 2004, more than a year into his latest tour as a Christian pop star, Ray Boltz took a break for what was supposed to be a family vacation. All through the previous months, plying the country with two semi-trailers and a dozen musicians and crew members, playing hits like “Thank You” and “The Anchor Holds,” Mr. Boltz had felt something unbearable, something paralyzing.

Carol Boltz, his wife of 30 years and his best friend, sensed the isolation and yet could not reckon its cause. The life Ray was leading, after all, was the life they had set out on together way back when he was a teenager with a guitar at a Christian coffeehouse near their Indiana hometown. That life had brought awards, gold records, a comfortable home for their four children.

So she gathered herself and asked him what was wrong. “If I tell you about certain things I’m going through,” he told her, as she recalled in a recent interview, “you won’t love me anymore.”

She told him nothing could change her love. But then she asked something else. Was Ray thinking of hurting himself? Yes, he answered, he thought about it every day.