Finding Her Voice

After injuring her voice twice – leaving her unable to sing – alumna and George Fox employee Hayley Cummings came to an epiphany: She would continue to love and serve God even if she never regained the gift she held so dear

As the music played, it was all Hayley Cummings could do to get a grip on her emotions.

“Why, God? …”

The age-old question surfaced as those around her blissfully sang along to the worship set in church, unaware of the heartbreak of the strangely silent woman sitting nearby. Her voice gone, she could only mouth the words to the praise songs she used to belt out with such ease.

“I remember so many Sundays kneeling at the altar or sitting in my seat, broken,” she relates as she fights back the tears, her voice trailing off. “There was a time I just dreaded going to church because the people all around me were singing and praising God, and I couldn’t. I felt I had lost a part of myself – a part of my identity. I so wanted to tell them all, ‘This isn’t who I am! This isn’t me! You don’t know the real me!’”

Meanwhile, internally, the questions kept coming: “Why has God allowed this to happen?” … “What does he want me to learn from this?” … “Should I even be upset about it? So many others are going through such harder things” … “Is this punishment for all the years I took my voice for granted?”

And, the scariest of all: “What happens if this God-given gift – something so precious to me, something so intertwined into the fabric of my very being – never returns?”

Seeds Planted

Cummings was destined to fall in love with music. The daughter of parents who traveled the country in a secular band before transitioning to music ministry, she was exposed at an early age to a wide range of musical genres, from gospel and R&B to classic rock and pop.

It was no surprise, then, that she incessantly wanted to watch Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz  and The Sound of Music, and to audition for school shows. She was a regular in church productions in the second and third grades, all the while experiencing the highs and lows of the stage. One of her earliest memories: failing to land a solo in a fourth-grade show. “I later found recordings of myself practicing in my room, thinking, ‘How could they pass on me? Look how good I can do this solo!’” she recalls, laughing.

More often than not, however, she wasn’t getting “passed up.” By her freshman year at Roosevelt High School in Portland, she landed the coveted part of “Liesl” from her beloved The Sound of Music. More theatrical performances followed. At home football and basketball games, she was the go-to person to sing the national anthem – which she got the opportunity to sing before a Portland Power women’s professional basketball game and, later, a Portland Trail Blazers NBA game.

“It was a combination of the environment I grew up in and, I would say, a DNA thing,” she says of her gravitation to music. “I was around it all my life. My dad would quiz me with, ‘Who sang this song?,’ and I’d listen to all kinds of music – The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, and later Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Whitney was probably the biggest influence early on.”

Cummings also fell in love with gospel – particularly the sound of urban contemporary gospel singers Walter and Tremaine Hawkins from the Love Center Church in Oakland, California – serving as inspiration for her future as a worship leader. In particular, when she later faced her vocal challenges, the song I Never Lost My Praise by Tremaine resonated with her.

The seeds had been planted. Cummings was ready to showcase her talent in the next phase of life. Upon graduating from high school in 1996, she was excited for the chance to attend a Christian university – George Fox – and fully embrace the musical and social opportunities that college life afforded.

She didn’t know it then, but she was about to face her first test.

A Time to Flourish – and a Test

As much as she loved music, Cummings intended to major in elementary education when she arrived in Newberg, but she soon discovered the teaching gig wasn’t for her. She decided to “take a chance” and major in the thing she truly loved: music, with the thought of pursuing a professional singing career.

In part, her decision to do so was inspired by the presence of Artist in Residence and Director of Music Ministries Derric Johnson. To say Johnson was a high-profile hire would be an understatement. He wrote more than 150 songs, 23 cantatas and 2,800 musical arrangements, but his biggest claim to fame was serving as the creative consultant for Walt Disney World, where he arranged and produced Epcot Center’s The Voices of Liberty – among the country’s most revered a cappella groups – and the Christmas Candlelight Processional, Disney’s most popular live show.

Under Johnson’s tutelage, Cummings flourished. She sang solos in choir and landed a part in a musical her freshman year.

“At this point I was really doing music for personal fulfillment,” she says. “I wanted to honor God with it, but I didn’t have the resolve to do ministry. I was thinking more about the opportunities to sing at places like Epcot, on Broadway, in a band, or professionally.”

But just as she began to pursue her dream, her voice began to fail her.

“It started my freshman year – just this off and on struggle with raspiness,” she recalls. “I felt like, at times, I was a baritone. I had no idea what was going on. It got to the point I realized I needed to go to a specialist.”

The prognosis: She had a nodule – similar to a callus – in her vocal cord, most likely caused by overuse. The cause, to her, was clear: As a cheerleader in high school, she had “screamed her lungs out” consistently, as she puts it, not aware of the damage it was causing her vocal cords.

Surgery followed. She was then told not to speak or sing for 10 days. She carried around a clipboard so she could write her thoughts out. It was around this time the university’s theatre department announced it would be producing her favorite musical – The Sound of Music.

She couldn’t sing for her audition, so she provided the videotape of her national anthem performance at the Blazers game. Much to her surprise – and delight – she landed the leading role as “Maria von Trapp.”

In time, Cummings recovered. “I just thought, ‘OK, I’m not cheerleading anymore, so I’ll be fine,” she says. “Back then, I didn’t give a lot of thought to protecting myself – of taking care of the voice God had given me. I just went my way, singing every chance I got.

“Thankfully, as a vocal performance music major, I had access to voice lessons and learned more about proper breath support, vocal technique, and care, though it was exclusively from a classical singing perspective. I still had to do a lot on my own to figure out how to transfer those skills to jazz, gospel, Broadway and pop.”

In addition to Johnson, Cummings points to the tutelage of professors Kenn Willson and John “Doc” Bowman, as well as voice teacher Maggie Daane, for helping her hone her craft. In time, more singing opportunities followed – she did some commercial jingles, for which she earned royalties – and performed in a band, Red Letter Legacy, led by singer/songwriter and fellow alumnus Thomas Payne, for a short time.

But a new chapter in her life was about to begin.

A Shift of Gears

Not long after graduation in 2000, Cummings’ focus shifted. Though her love of music never died, the dream of becoming a professional singer didn’t come to fruition. Instead, she dedicated her life to her husband, Jon, and their family. The couple had their first child in 2003, Corinna, and Asher followed two and a half years later.

“I got some recording projects here and there – and I did some YouTube stuff for fun – but I had to completely switch gears,” she says. “I had two kids that I was homeschooling, and I was working in the mortgage industry, so I just shelved that [musical] part of me. I just thought, ‘It’ll always be there. I can revisit it later.’ When you’re young, you take things for granted.”

She sang a bit on her church’s worship team, and her two children followed in her footsteps, eventually developing a talent for singing, playing piano and songwriting (Corinna), and playing guitar and bass (Asher). She later had two more kids – Talia in 2015 and Ezra in 2017.

“It started to hit me, right about when I was turning 40, that I don’t have forever,” she says. “I don’t want to go travel around the country. I’ve got kids! But how do I reconcile my values of caring for my family, wanting to be home with my kids, and wanting to use this gifting that I care so much about? It’s such a big part of who I am, so I decided to get back into music – to do something with it.”

Jennifer Fulwiler’s book One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions and Saying Yes to Them Both – the tale of one woman’s quest to embark on the wild experiment of chasing her dreams even as she had kids in diapers – served as inspiration for Cummings to pursue her love of the craft.

The Loss

Ironically, just as she vowed to start singing again, tragedy struck in 2018. After an enjoyable night with family friends having dinner and playing games, Cummings woke the next morning to discover her voice was hoarse. At first she didn’t think much of it, but after three weeks passed with no improvement, she knew something was seriously wrong.

“It all came back to me – that fear that hits you,” she says. “I definitely recall having some fear and depression around it when I was 19 – that fear of the unknown – but that all resolved itself relatively quickly. This time, I was like, ‘Uh oh. How can this be happening a second time, God? What are the chances I’ll come through this again? Just as I was about to get back to using this gift you’ve given me, it’s being taken away?’”

A specialist determined she had severely bruised her vocal cords. She was told it was the result of “being a vocal overdoer.”

“That’s when I started feeling shame – ‘Do I talk too much? Did I bring this on myself? Am I being punished for the way I am?’” she says. “All those questions start filling your head.”

Again, surgery was required – only this time things didn’t improve. She spent the next several months – from January to August of 2019 – struggling to find her voice. “My son Asher was going through puberty, and I kinda sounded like that, where your voice gives out. I’m like, ‘Guess we’re doing this together, man.’”

It was then she hit her low point. It was hard to get excited about church. She felt like a part of her had died.

“By this point, we had been going to our church in Forest Grove [Crossroads] a couple of years, and nobody there had ever heard me sing,” she recalls. “Asher and Corinna were blossoming – singing, writing songs, traveling to conferences to sing. And I’m thinking, ‘I so want to do this with you!’ I was happy for them, but at the same time I was stuck on the sidelines.

“I began questioning myself. Was I too inward-focused? Maybe my identity shouldn’t be so wrapped up in this. There are others with more serious problems. Am I wrong in chasing after this?”

A second surgery was performed in August 2019, and while it helped, recovery was slow. It was then she heard the words that were music to her ears: Her specialist recommended she start singing again. “He’s like, ‘I know you don’t feel good about your voice, but we need to get you singing again. I think your morale is going to go way up if we get you singing.’”

The Gift Returns

It was at her lowest that Cummings had an epiphany: She had to let go and totally trust God. Recalling the words of Job – and the lyrics to a worship song she once sang – “God gives and takes away, he gives and takes away,” from Matt Redman’s Blessed Be Your Name.

“I said, ‘OK, God, I’m going to continue to praise you no matter what,’” she says. “You hear about people who have suffered the loss of a gift – an athlete who loses a limb – and you have to be OK with letting go. At the same time, I was figuratively saying, like the woman with an issue of blood, ‘If I could just touch the hem of his garment, he’ll heal me.’

“I didn’t want to, but I made a ‘deal’ with God. Not sure that’s something we’re supposed to do, but I did. I told him I would use this gift for his glory if he restored it.”

Cummings enlisted the help of a habilitative vocal coach, Sarah Maines from The Mainstudio in Portland, and immediately the two formed a tight bond. Slowly but surely, the confidence began to grow. Voice lessons served as therapy, and Maines became her counselor and confidant. “I will be forever grateful to her for the care and dedication to my vocal healing,” she says of her coach.

Through diligent practice and expert coaching from Maines, Cummings began to regain her voice. Among her first chances to showcase “the return” came in February of 2020, when she performed a solo at a long-awaited choir affinity reunion in Bauman Auditorium.

“This had been a dream of mine for 10 years – to get this choir reunion organized – and in 2020, with the help of several choir alumni, we finally managed to get it on the calendar. It wasn’t long after my second surgery, so I wasn't sure I could sing, but I did. The whole event was wonderful. Derric and his wife Debbie were there. About 100 of us showed up, which is incredible. I worked diligently with [former alumni director] Sara Reamy and choir alumni James Eide, Stephanie Marr, Tanya Morgan, and Brett and Margo DeYoung to help make it happen. I’ll never forget it.”

Two and a half years later, Cummings’ connection to the university was deepened further with her hiring in the advancement office, for which she serves as the assistant director of donor relations. It was Reamy who recommended she look into applying for the position. “It’s the perfect job for me because I’m all about people and relationships,” Cummings says.

Today, Cummings is following through on her promise – she’s using her talents for the glory of God, leading worship at her church and in George Fox all-employee meetings, as well as for a church-hosted recovery group. She also had a leading role in her church’s Christmas play the past two years, and in 2023 she returned to the Bauman stage to perform in Fox Got Talent, the university’s annual talent show.

“As I prayed, I pleaded with God, ‘I just want to use this to glorify you,’” she smiles. “That’s truly at the heart of what I want to do. And he’s answered my prayer. Now, any time I can say yes to the opportunity to lead worship, if at all possible I’m going to say yes. ‘I’m here, God. Use me.’

“In my heart I feel like God is saying, ‘This is going to be a whole new chapter for you, and you’re going to be able to use your voice to glorify me in ways that you never did before.’”

A worship song she frequently leads at church, Goodness of God, resonates as she reflects on the peaks and valleys of her life – and the lessons she’s learned from both. A lyric in the song – “With every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God” – serves as a fitting life motto moving forward. “Don’t take any gift for granted, don’t give up on God, and don’t lose hope,” she says, matter-of-factly, “because he hasn’t abandoned you. Your story isn’t over yet. He who began a good work in you will complete it.”