Before I was 14, I wanted to be a singer, an actor, or a hockey player. By 15, I knew I was going to be a singer.

I'm vulnerable reading people's comments on Facebook.

I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.

I was into acting as a kid. There was a time when I was 18 that I played the boy in a production of 'Equus' in Oregon, and I thought that was going to be my life.

There is an assumption if you are not religious, you have fallen, or you are further from God, or you are not doing the right thing. The judgment on me, with regard to my changes, is that he must be out all night partying or banging prostitutes and doing blow. This whole thing for me was absolutely the contrary. It was actually that God started to become very real to me, inside.

I started performing at home as a kid putting on shows and lip-syncing Michael Jackson for the grown-ups. Then, in musicals and plays in school. At 17, I was performing in coffee shops and in parking lots at Phish shows. At 18, I had a band that played local shows in the Northwest.

A lot of people in the religious world believe that by secularizing, or viewing the changes as secular, such as dropping the beard and changing my appearance, they consider this to be a fall.