There was never a time in her life when Crystal Goh, 33, was not surrounded by songs.

“My father loves to sing. He would have the radio on all the time. The house was always filled with music and he would sing at the top of his lungs.”

She was even named after American country music singer Crystal Gayle. Like her namesake, Goh had a lovely voice and a penchant for performance.

Goh giving a public performance in 2015.

“My favourite earliest memories were of me singing, dancing and performing for my family. I always thought of my voice as my main instrument.”

With plans to be a professional singer-songwriter, Goh picked up the guitar on her own to “accompany my singing and also to be taken more seriously as a musician”.

Which was why when she realised that she had lost her voice, she was devastated.   

A song is silenced

In 2011, Goh woke up one day to discover that she could not speak. She was working as a writer at an international Christian charity then.

“I’m not sure why but I didn’t realise that I had lost my voice till I stepped into the office. There was a work-in-progress meeting and everyone had to give an update.

“It was then that I realised I couldn’t speak. When I tried, it sounded like I had a very, very bad flu.”

Thinking the condition was the result of lack of sleep as “that was the period when I was working a full-time job while doing singing gigs in the evenings”, Goh went to see a GP. Then another, and another, and another.

“It didn’t hurt but when I tried to speak, it sounded like I was being strangled. To speak each word, I had to take a deep breath. It was very tiring. I couldn’t sustain it.”

When Goh lost her voice, she thought it might have been from over-use, lack of rest or a virus.

When the weeks turned into months and it was clear that the condition was neither the result of stress nor the flu, Goh turned to specialists. Several.

One finally gave her the diagnosis – spasmodic dysphonia. For reasons unknown, the muscles that helped produce her voice was experiencing periods of spasms, causing interruptions in her voice and making it hard for her to speak. It was a rare neurological disorder with no known treatment or cure.

“I immediately started crying in front of the doctor when he told me.”

Her condition was all the more devastating because she believed God had called her to be a singer.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to be a singer-songwriter since I was a youth was because a prophet had prophesied over me in church that one day I would sing and bring people to Christ.

“When I lost my voice, I thought: How can it be? I was supposed to be singing. It was a huge blow to me.”

No healing

 In the weeks and months that followed, Goh “tried very hard to believe I could recover”, buoyed by the prophecy from years earlier.

“Every day I thought I would wake up and be cured, and this nightmare would be gone,” she said.

Work became a challenge.

“I had really very, very wonderful colleagues who would pray with me, who were very understanding of the situation. But I felt I was not giving value.

“There were so many meetings that you have to talk and brainstorm ideas, and I couldn’t contribute.”

She had to go for voice therapy to help her recover some of her speech.  

“I had to learn to swap out certain words like those with the letter A. I learnt to take deeper breaths before saying certain words.

“I managed by interspersing my speech with a lot of filler sounds like ‘er’ to give myself more time to compose myself before saying something.”

But mostly, she withdrew – from the world, her friends and life. After about six months, one of Goh’s good friends asked her to sing a song she had written for her wedding.

An invitation to sing a self-penned song at a close friend’s wedding forced Goh to find the courage to perform once more.

“She knew about my condition but she had a lot of faith. She thought that if I sang, I would recover. I thought God would be moved and I would be completely well.

“I forced myself to practise and to show up. If not for that event, I may have completely shut myself off,” said Goh.

Though her voice was still breaking with every few words, Goh turned up and sang, explaining first to the guests the reason for the tremor in her voice.

To her surprise, people came up to her after the song and told her they were moved by her singing.

“That incident helped me to see that I didn’t need to sing to perform. I could still sing to connect with people.

“God was doing something to my identity, helping me to see that I was not my voice and that I could still be accepted even without a beautiful voice.”

But the healing she had hoped for did not happen.

“I went home feeling cheated by God. I had put myself out there but I didn’t get healed. I cried a lot.”

Beautiful gems

Once more, good friends rallied around her. One lent her his house so she could have a silent retreat.  

“He knew I didn’t have my own space or the money to go for an actual retreat. So, he let me use his house while he was at work.”

One day, while spending time with God there, Goh was irked by the loud sounds from the construction site nearby that seemed to go on for hours.

“Again, I felt very cheated by God. Isn’t it quiet time? Why is there so much noise? Don’t You want to let me have quiet time?

“Then, I felt God speak to me in my spirit. He told me He was going to do a reconstruction in me. As much as I wanted it to be quiet and beautiful, it would take a while for me to be rebuilt.”

During that period, among the many people praying for her was her boss.

“She told me that God had a verse for me and she gave me Isaiah 54:10.”

When Goh read the entire chapter, “everything clicked” because, in it, the prophet talked about singing and bursting into song, and made reference to rebuilding the city of Jerusalem with beautiful gems.

“I knew that God was going to do something. I think God is very close to the broken. We tend to hear him better when we are going through tough times.” 

Goh took a year to meditate on the chapter. Out of that season, she wrote a song, There Will Be Spring, about the hope Isaiah 54 talks about.

“I don’t think I would have been able to pull through it if I were not a Christian,” she said.

Dust to diamonds 

By then, 2012 had all but come to a close. Goh had been voice-less for over a year and a half.

“I had just written There will be Spring and I let my friends listen to it. They thought the song would encourage people.”

So, that Christmas Eve, Goh and a few friends went to a home for girls to share her song and her story. It was there that she saw a great need among the underserved youths. She began volunteering at the home, hoping to bring healing through creating music. 

The next year, she quit her job to do this work full-time. That was the start of social enterprise Diamonds on the Street. Two friends later joined her.

“I named it Diamonds because these precious stones emerge after being tested under pressure and heat.”

Diamonds on the Street helps at-risk youths turn their life experiences into songs. The programme, which “came about with lots of trying and lots of mistakes”, teaches the teenagers to use stories and music to explore their relationships and feelings so they can better understand themselves.

Goh sharing stories at a Diamonds on the Street event in 2014.

“We create a safe space for them to reflect. For many of them, it is the first time they get to talk about their sometimes traumatising or shameful past,” Goh explained.

Since then, Goh has helped more than 200 vulnerable youths. One particularly memorable teen she helped was a 15-year-old girl who was estranged from her older sister. Hoping to reconnect with her, the girl wrote her a song. After her sister heard the song, the two were able to talk more openly and their relationship improved.

Close to 200 youths have benefitted from Diamonds on the Street.

“Music can be a tool to communicate difficult emotions, and help us connect and know that we are not alone.”

Diamonds on the Street works with schools, homes and the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

A fork in the road

As she worked on Diamonds on the Street, Goh’s voice quality slowly improved. She began to be more audible although her voice still trembled on bad days.

Youths whom Goh worked with under Diamonds on the Street at their graduation showcase.

What should have been a cause for great joy, however, became a major crisis of faith.

“I began to feel that the Christian faith was too simplistic. I believed but I didn’t really understand. I could see God working but I couldn’t use my intellect to explain it.

“Because of that, I began to doubt if it was really God that was healing me. I was also meeting a lot of people who had overcome their challenges in other ways without God.

“I became adamant about using my intellect to explain things and solve my problems. I think I lost my way a little.”

Goh left church and began to wonder if Christianity was truly the only way. “I thought it felt too exclusive. In my work, I was trying to be inclusive. I felt it went against my work ethics.”

A trip to the United States for work also gave Goh the opportunity to explore other beliefs and practices.  

“I met people who were very inclusive in their beliefs. Even Jesus was included. It wasn’t easy to differentiate it from Christianity if you don’t study and understand your own faith.”

Time to come home

None of her friends knew her struggle. They only knew she had stopped going to church.

“I felt like they might not be my friends if I told them,” said Goh.

One day, an old friend from church asked to meet up with her.

“The first thing he says to me after not talking to me for some years was: ‘God told me to tell you to come home’.

“He thought it meant that I was not rooted in a church and to go back to my church. So, he began telling me all the perks of the church,” Goh remembered with a laugh.

A few days after that meeting, another old friend called her, inviting her to an evangelistic meeting. Goh had received too many of such invitations since she left her church. She was sceptical.

“At that time, I thought she was probably looking through her contacts and had no choice but to ask me.”

But the words “come home” echoed in her heart and, despite herself, Goh accepted the invitation.

“I went half an hour late, hoping to sneak in but, to my surprise, there were only 10 people there. There was nowhere to hide.” 

Goh sat through the worship and message, mentally criticising and rejecting everything. But then, she found herself inexplicably weeping. 

“I knew that physically I wasn’t able to cry. I was so against everything in my mind and my heart. It was something spiritual. I’ve never had such an experience before.”

At that meeting, Goh also said a prayer. She had been struggling with unforgiveness. 

“I had tried everything to overcome it but it didn’t work. So, I asked God to help me to forgive and take away the bitterness.

Every time Goh faltered in her faith, godly friends would come alongside her with prayers and words.

“And I felt the burden just lift, literally. That instant made me realise that God is powerful.”

After that, every day for six months, that friend who had asked her to the meeting would message or call her and pray with her.

“I’ve never met somebody so fervent. She helped me to warm my heart back to God because my heart was quite cold.

“She got me back to the discipline of hungering for God, meditating on His word and praying. My faith just shot up. I started evangelising to people.”

Goh would take walks in the park and “pray for my family who are not Christians, for those I was sharing my faith with and for the nation”. She also found value in studying apologetics, or the defence of the Christian faith.

“Ravi Zacharias became my best friend,” she said of the late apologist and his writings.

“Before, when I felt close to God during worship songs, it was just emotions. There was not a lot of knowing God. In His mercy, He let me explore.

“I learnt that I may not know everything but I can know enough to make a decision about my faith.” 

Now a freelance writer, music teacher and singer-songwriter, Goh has been exploring in other ways as well. She has since earned a Master in Music Education at the National Institute of Education to better design her music programmes.

As a musician, she has performed in front of more than 10,000 people at local and international events including UNESCO-NIE Centre for Arts Research in Education 2018, TEDxP&G Singapore 2016 and the Generation Now 2015 Conference in Washington.

Goh performed and shared her story at the inaugural TEDxP&G Singapore 2016 which saw close to 500 P&G APAC employees attending the event.

“I’m a very curious person and God knows that. He very mercifully allowed me to journey and He showed me that His truth is a lot more powerful.”

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