Undivided by Vicky Beeching

Author:Vicky Beeching
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

19

Saddleback is one of the biggest megachurches in the US, with a weekly attendance of over twenty thousand people. When I heard I’d been invited to sing at their big annual worship conference, I was delighted.

Blow-drying my hair in a hotel room, I was rushing around to get ready for the Saddleback event. I looked in the mirror and noticed something strange; a white mark had appeared on my forehead. The heat of the blow dryer had made the rest of my forehead bright pink, but one patch, about two inches wide and stretching from my hairline to my eyebrow, was white.

Baffled and worried, I looked again. I had no idea what it was or what I should think. It wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t hurt. But there it was: a stark white ridge running down my forehead, as though I’d covered that area with sunblock and then got the rest of my face sunburned. I grabbed a brush and began styling my hair so that my bangs (or “fringe,” as we say in the UK) hid that part of my face.

A knock at the hotel room door interrupted my thoughts—it was time to go to rehearsal. I had no margin for error, as Saddleback’s timing ran like clockwork, with state-of-the-art staging, lighting, sound, and visuals. Their volunteers were, by day, professionals who ran lights and sound for places like Disneyland. So it was high-tech, and I couldn’t be even a minute late to my rehearsal slot.

A friendly woman in an SUV drove me onto the huge Saddleback campus, and as soon as we arrived, I was swept up in a blur of busyness. The white mark had been put entirely out of my mind, and it would stay that way for weeks, as the workaholism I’d developed over the years kept me moving forward to the next gig, the next plane ride, the next hotel, the next rehearsal. The lifestyle I’d created to drown out my inner sadness and loneliness had me on autopilot, and now it was preventing me from having a moment to investigate what might be wrong with my skin.

After a couple more months of intensive touring, I noticed a sudden drop in my already dwindling energy. I began to feel drowsy most of the time, and the musicians who traveled with me saw it too. A few nicknamed me Sleeping Beeching, as I’d fall asleep at the merchandise table after concerts, at the airport restaurant, or between sound check and the worship meetings.

One backup singer joked about starting a Twitter account called Sleeping Beeching, where she’d post pictures she snapped of me napping in weird places. It was nice to laugh about it; it helped. But more seriously, my band agreed that it was worrying. It made me think of the white mark again. “I must get that checked out sometime,” I said, wondering when I’d be back in Nashville for more than a night, so I could visit a dermatologist. But that plan kept getting waylaid by the next tour date, and the next.

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