But basically I think for me, the only true 'stage fright' I’ve ever dealt with was I guess just the form of the overall anxiety in my life. You know like, just how I was doing emotionally. So the worst time I ever had a sort of stage fright was when I was getting performance induced asthma. It’s kind of like sports induced asthma, but it’s more stress related. So, it was really debilitating. At first I kind of started with a cold and then a cough that just wouldn’t go away and then suddenly I started having asthma. So at first I just thought it was regular asthma. I went to the doctor and they gave me an inhaler, and I went through all that, and the inhaler did help. But then they had given me like a sample inhaler, and then I went back to go get a prescription and to get it filled it was like $350 a month to have that inhaler. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is more than a car payment, I can’t afford this medicine.” So I was like, "What am I gonna do?" And what I had to do was really get serious about prayer in my life and praying and meditating on God’s Word. That was the only way I was able to overcome it, because I had to get up on stage and sing. I couldn’t not sing because we had show’s and everybody was counting on me! And the band, you know everybody else in the band gets a paycheck because we play shows and that’s how they pay their rent. So I just had to sing it but I couldn’t afford the inhaler to be able to do it to help the asthma. So I just had to get my heart and my mind centered back on God. So what I would do is, for at least, forty-five minutes to an hour every day I would go and get in my prayer closet, however for me it was my bunk on the tour bus. And I would just go through deep prayer. I would slow my breathing and slow my mind so that I could actually focus and talk to God. And that really changed my life so much, because suddenly I spent all that time you know talking to God, reaffirming what was true, and that helped to defeat all of my fear! And then I could go onstage and sing without having asthma attacks. So you know it was really a scary and hard time for me, but really I think God used it, obviously, to help bring me closer to Him, and to realize that the truth comes from Him. I didn’t have to worship my fear.
"I didn't have to worship my fear."
~Dawn
Crown of Beauty: What advice do you have for young people about doing the right thing, even if it seems scary and takes a lot of courage?