By Gavin Boyle
As she celebrated her 70th birthday, Reba McEntire shared her dramatic birth story and praised her mama for the family she raised.
“The first thing I thought of this morning was I’m so glad Mama feels better today than she did 70 years ago. I’m also glad she kept me,” McEntire wrote on Instagram. “I’m the third of four kids. In March of 1955, Alice was 3 and Pake was almost 2 years old. Being the rowdy mischievous kids they were, they had Mama so tired that when her water broke in the middle of the night, she changed her nightgown and went back to sleep!”
“When the labor pains got more intense, Daddy drove her to the hospital in McAlester. I was breach, so the doctor had to turn me around and get me headed out in the right direction. I was a dry/breach birth with only gas to help Mama get through it. After all that, she kept me. So glad she did…” McEntire continued. “God blessed me with the best family and the best aunts, uncles, and cousins a kid could ever wish for! And what a life He’s given me.”
“Thank you everyone who has wished and sang Happy Birthday to me last night and today,” McEntire added. “I love you with all my heart! You have made my life better, more fun and have enriched my life beyond my wildest imagination. I’m so grateful and thankful to God and my Angels for continuing to guide, direct, protect, and give me my marching orders 🙂 And for putting each of you in my life.”
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McEntire has been close with her mom her entire life. When she passed away in 2020, the singer nearly ended her career due to grief. Her mom was her inspiration, and she felt she could no longer sing now that her mom was gone.
“Oh I didn’t want to [sing]. I told my little sister Susie when we were working at the house, I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to sing anymore,’” McEntire recalled. “She said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I always sang for Mama.’ Mama was the one that inspired us kids, taught us kids how to sing, tok us to our singing gigs and was our biggest cheerleader.
McEntire, however, did not give up singing, and now she relies on the Lord before every performance, asking Him to guide her through her songs.
“I don’t have any [pre-show] rituals,” she said. “I don’t have anything that I have to do before I go out except pray. I ask the Holy Spirit to walk for me, talk for me, speak for me and sing for me. And that always gives me the confidence to take that first step and go have a good time.”
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