Voice From the Vault: The Reba Resurrection (Part 1 of 2)
“To sing, or not to sing? That is the question.”
This 2009 Fox News feature about my musical pursuits is a bit surreal to look back on now, hearing my younger self talking about what I’ve experienced chasing my music dream. Seeing my sweet husband, also in this interview, championing my determination to succeed is both an endearing souvenier of my life’s journey, and a recorded time capsule of the before…
Before I lost my singing voice.
Before I laid it all down and surrendered what I thought was most important.
Before I stopped chasing the dream, and started chasing Jesus.
Sometimes, we have idols in our lives and don’t even know it. My music dream was one of mine, and God used The Perfect Storm to capsize my dream-boat.
The Perfect Storm was giving birth to our two sons.
Perfect… because I wouldn’t trade either of them, or giving birth to them, or being their mom, for the world.
Storm… because having our boys nearing age 40 put my hormones into a hurricane tailspin. I learned quickly that gettin’ older is for the birds. And I don’t mean songbirds!
Within a short time after our boys were born, I was having full-blown pre-menopausal symptoms including severe, chronic migraine headaches that kept me sick in bed for days at a time. Some hormone treatments I tried had a detrimental effect on my vocal cords, and…well, long story short --
This songbird couldn’t sing anymore.
Even sitting on the sideline of our older daughter’s soccer games confirmed there was something very wrong: a cheer or “whoop!” bellowed from my lawn chair came out in a weak, hoarse croak. I was unable to sing in the recording studio anymore, or perform in Bluebird shows as I'd done for years. As the weeks turned into months with several treatment approaches having little or no impact, I stopped trying to solve it.
Instead, I surrendered it to God. I prayed He would bring me a solution for the tumult my body was in, and as for my music – I gave that to Him, too. I gave up writing. I gave up performing, and recording in the studio. I gave up singing altogether….even in the shower or in my car.
As the months turned into years, I thought my music and my singing were a thing of the past. What I didn’t know was that despite my mindset, God would unlock the vault of the past, and vault [raise up] what was in it, in a new way.
Essential oils came into my world and had a significant impact on the healing of my vocal cords over the next several years. But just as my years of singing had been, quite suddenly and literally, halted, my desire to return to singing or writing was also halted. I could have continued writing even without my voice. But by my own choice, it was now figuratively “buried in a locked box in the back yard”, along with my desire to sing.
I was truly grateful for all my years of singing and writing. For songs that had been recorded on albums of other music artists. And most of all, that coming to Nashville had led me to my husband and 3 beautiful children. But as far as my music was concerned, that time of my life was over.
The discipline and determination with which I’d once pursued my music dream was now focused on pursuing a closer walk with Jesus, a deeper knowing of His Word, and new discoveries of how His Kingdom operates.
A verse I’d once written on my bathroom mirror to memorize, many years earlier, came to life as it never had before:
“Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” - Jeremiah 33:3
The more I sought after God, the less important my old dream was to me. It paled in comparison to the wonder and joy and fulfillment that filled my heart, with His presence and all of His kingdom revelation I was learning, when He became first in my life. Singing in my car was replaced with praying aloud in my car, and listening to the radio was replaced with soaking in sermons and teachings of amazing Bible teachers, past and present. I often would listen (and still do) to chapters of the Bible in audible form.*
I became accustomed to speaking earnest prayers of gratitude to God like this one:
“Thank you Lord, for not giving me the level of success I always prayed for in music. Because if I’d had the kind of success I wanted, I would have never wanted to chase after You, the way I do now. The rewards are so much greater!”
I was truly content to never sing again, or write again, or ever perform again. God had given me “beauty for ashes”, just as Isaiah 61 says. But after 5 years, I would soon learn that He wasn’t done with the ashes.
Out of the ashes of my music dream, God was about to do something out of the blue…with a red-headed country music star named Reba.
reSOURCES:
*Free Bible on-line (click speaker button on page for audible): https://www.biblegateway.com