From there, she decided to start attending a church that was more than an hour away and where no one knew her. “I didn’t feel anything for a whole year and a half. I just forced myself to go because I thought, ‘You know, faith is a decision, and at some point, it’s going to stick,’” Tasha recalls. “It was a small, loving church and that’s what I needed. After all the hurt I had experienced, I needed to experience God’s love… I realized that whole year and a half that they’d been loving me, they’d been loving me back to God and back to my calling.”

With a renewed faith and sense of purpose, Tasha enrolled at King’s Seminary in California, packed her bags and headed to the West Coast. “My mom always said, ‘You can’t steer a car that’s not moving,’ and so I thought, ‘I can at least get moving.’ Within a few weeks, I had a bed; I had furniture; I had a car; I had a job. Everything that I needed was provided for, and those three years of seminary changed my life,” she says, adding, “Seminary’s not just about what you’re learning; it’s about the transformation that takes place in your life during that time.”

After her painful church experience, Tasha had laid down singing, resigning herself to the fact that perhaps music wasn’t her calling after all. Yet, after being asked to lead worship at a women’s event during seminary, she reluctantly began to find her voice again. “I knew that God was wanting to heal that part of my life,” Tasha contends. “I thought, ‘OK, maybe this part of me isn’t dead, and God is breathing it back to life.’” She soon began leading worship at a local church and music began to take a more prominent role in her life. She eventually ended up auditioning for Season 9 of American Idol—something she’d never thought she’d do. She was cut along with now successful “Idol” alums Tori Kelly, Lauren Daigle and Luke Edgemon.

A few months later, she got asked to audition as a background vocalist for a Rihanna/Kesha tour and much to her surprise, she got the job. Although it was an amazing opportunity, something within her felt it ultimately wasn’t the best fit and she turned it down. Within hours, she got a call to audition for Katy Perry’s upcoming tour and it was there that Tasha immediately sensed the people and the overall environment were more in-line with her personal and professional objectives. “I was the last girl of the day to audition…I got the job and we left for Madison Square Garden two days later,” Tasha remembers. “We were one of the biggest tours in the world at that point, and it was an amazing ride.”

Her tenure with Perry allowed her to see the world, taking her to more than 40 countries around the globe. During that time, new doors were also opening for her as a vocalist, and Tasha was soon doing session work for high-profile clients, including Disney, Nickelodeon and Cirque du Soleil. However, the leap from worship leader to background singer wasn’t without its challenges. “Making the transition between worship leader, where your job is to get out of the way, to background vocalist on a tour like that, where if you’re not noticed, you might lose your job—that was a tough transition for me,” Tasha reveals. “I think it was God shaping me, preparing me for what was next.”

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