By Michaela Gordoni
Editor’s Note: This story describes self harm and suicide. If you or someone you know struggles with these issues, please dial 988 or reach out to Lifeline.
“Worship Through It” singer Tasha Layton tried to take her life before she gave it to God.
“I was hurting and I wasn’t getting help in the church,” Layton recalled. “I didn’t even know who to go to for help. I needed either hope or meditation or some mantra that I could convince myself that I was okay.”
Layton was “catatonically” depressed. She didn’t talk and barely ate or moved.
“I was at rock bottom. And at the end of that road of searching out all these other religions, I tried to take my life,” she said. “I went into my college dorm room and I put a loaded gun to my head and it didn’t go off.”
Related: Tasha Layton Reflects on How God Used Her Time on AMERICAN IDOL
“I thought, ‘God, maybe I’m still supposed to be here. Maybe you have a plan for my life,’” she recalled through tears. “And I thought, I’ve got to force myself to go back to church.”
She turned back to Christianity because she realized it was one of the only religions where your pursued by the creator.
“Jesus pursued us. He came down to earth,” she told CBN.
She went back to church for one year and went up when the pastor did an altar call. When she did that, she felt free from the darkness that had held her down.
“It was like all of that numbess of not feeling anything, being so depressed and feeling so alone, it was like it all came pouring out,” she said.
“I felt God’s truth move from my head to my heart. And that started a trajectory of healing in my life and I remembered the call of God on me when I was a teenager and I decided to pursue that again,” she said. “And I ended up going to seminary in California and then when I graduated I was a worship pastor in a church.”
“Some friends of mine were auditioning for American Idol and had asked me if I wanted to do it and I ended up making it. I was on the same season as Tori Kelly, Lauren Daigle. It was fun,” she said.
Then, it finally hit her that maybe she should be singing for God, through her career.
“I made the transition and ended up singing professionally. That’s when I decided to move to Nashville and pursue music and write music for myself.”
Now, she pours her life’s stories into her songs.
“My songs are my life story,” she says. “They are my testimonies, and God has used very personal things in my life to become pretty universal for the listener.”
“I pray that when people hear my story…that they can see the hand of God in all of the places — the mountaintops, the valleys, the crooked places — and that that, in turn, would cause them to see God’s hand in their own story,” Layton said. “God will use whatever we’re willing to give Him, and with Him at the wheel, we are sure to have an incredible ride.”
Read Next: Tasha Layton: Early Church Experience Changed ‘Trajectory’ of Her Life
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