For a while, TAYA wasn’t sure an album was going to happen at all. In theory, it was a simple plan—write and record her second solo record while touring the world with her husband and newborn. In reality, it became something closer to spiritual bootcamp.
Five months of suitcase living. Recording sessions crammed into hotel rooms between shows. A surprise cancer diagnosis. Surgery. Another diagnosis. Another surgery. A disorienting church transition. A crisis of identity. A complete overhaul of what she thought worship was supposed to be.
And yet, when The Reminder finally arrived, it didn’t feel like defeat. It felt like clarity.
“God stripped away everything I could lean on that wasn’t Him,” she says. “And what was left was His faithfulness. That’s the banner over this entire album. Not mine—His.”
The Reminder isn’t a comeback record. It’s not a rebrand. It’s not chasing a radio single or a worship playlist slot. It’s a collection of battle-tested truths—songs that held up under pressure, grief, fear and joy. Songs written in motion, between continents and cancer screenings, with a baby on one hip and a worship lyric in her head. These aren’t manufactured anthems. They’re survival songs.
TAYA knows the optics. From the outside, she’s the voice behind one of the most recognizable worship songs in a generation. But the version of her that wrote The Reminder is not the same person who first sang “Oceans.” She’s a mother now. A wife. A leader. A worshiper who had to redefine what it means to trust God when nothing around her makes sense—and still show up every night to lead others in singing like everything’s fine.
She doesn’t sugarcoat any of it.
“It was painful,” she says. “There were moments I wanted to walk away. But my friend told me, ‘The oil only comes one way—and it’s through pressing.’”
It wasn’t just one kind of pressure. It was the accumulation of a million small moments stacked on top of one another. The logistical chaos of dragging a six-month-old across hemispheres while trying to keep writing sessions. The emotional weight of leaving a church community she had been part of for over a decade. The exhaustion of creating art without a permanent home base. And then, the sharp disruption of a skin cancer diagnosis just weeks after giving birth.
She had surgery. She recovered. It came back. She had another. Still, she was expected to show up, write, record and lead like she hadn’t just been handed a life-altering diagnosis. In the middle of it all, she found herself clinging to a lyric she hadn’t meant to write: “This is a reminder. This is for my soul.”
“I was writing it for myself,” she admits. “It was the reminder I needed to sing over my own life. When you’re in the valley, you forget what you know. You forget what’s true. That’s what this album became—a way to remember.”
The songs on The Reminder aren’t tethered to her feelings. They’re not vertical worship filtered through emotional nuance. They’re confessions. Declarations. Scripture, sometimes almost word for word, set to melody. “We have a full-on church song now,” she says, grinning. “It’s based on Hebrews 1 and it has nothing to do with how I feel. It’s just truth.”
She talks about worship differently now. Not as a genre. Not even as a mood. But as a lifestyle. A theological response. A posture. And it’s been shaped not by stages, but by hospital chairs and 3 a.m. panic and FaceTime prayers in hotel bathrooms while her baby slept.
“My understanding of worship used to be that it was the slow song,” she says. “But real worship is obedience. It’s Abraham walking up the mountain with his son. It’s doing the hard thing God asks of you, even when you don’t understand it.”
That shift—from music to obedience—is part of what gives this record its weight. These aren’t simply songs you sing when you’re on a mountaintop. They’re the kind you hold onto when you’re in the middle of something you didn’t ask for.
Even her most familiar song feels different now. After more than a decade of singing “Oceans,” she still leads it occasionally, but not out of obligation. “I’ve never not sung it,” she says. “But I always try to make sure it’s still real. That I’m not just going through the motions.”
These days, her singing is less about soaring moments and more about solid ground. About staking a claim on truth even when everything else feels unstable. During one recent visit to the doctor’s office, before a follow-up biopsy, TAYA sat in the chair and wrestled with what she believed. The doctor couldn’t find anything visually wrong. There was a sliver of hope that maybe—maybe—she’d been healed. And in that moment, TAYA had to decide what to say.
“I looked at her, and all I could say was, ‘I believe in Jesus.’ That’s it,” she says. “Not eloquent. Not impressive. But true.”
The biopsy still came back positive. She had surgery again. But something had shifted. Her faith wasn’t in the outcome—it was in the one holding the outcome. Her songs now reflect that same clarity.
So what does she hope people hear when they listen to The Reminder? It’s not about remembering her story. It’s about remembering their own.
“I hope people are reminded of what God’s already done for them,” she says. “A verse. A promise. A moment where they knew He saw them. Everyone’s reminder is going to be different. But we all need one.”
She’s not trying to impress anyone. Not chasing platform. Not angling for influence. She’s just singing what she knows is true. And after everything she’s walked through, that’s enough.
Title: How TAYA Found God’s Faithfulness in the Middle of Everything Falling Apart
URL: https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/how-taya-found-gods-faithfulness-in-the-middle-of-everything-falling-apart/
Source: REL ::: RELEVANT
Source URL: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/rss/relevantmagazine.xml
Date: April 7, 2025 at 04:06PM
Feedly Board(s): Religion