Sometimes what you think you want is not what you want at all.
From the time she was 12 or 13, Cyndi Thomson thought she wanted to be a country singer. "My mom and dad were very supportive when after a year of college I moved to Nashville." She worked as a nanny and at cleaning houses until she met a record producer and got a publishing deal.
Most of Nashville's "overnight success" stories take five years. It took Thomson only two. She had a recording contract with Capitol Records, a gold album and a No. 1 song ("What I Really Meant To Say") to her credit. She toured with JoDee Messina and Alan Jackson, performed at concerts with Trisha Yearwood and Martina McBride. Some people thought she had it made.
But Thomson discovered it was not what she wanted. "I couldn't continue that lifestyle. It was not what I imagined it to be," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Franklin, Tenn., where she and her husband, Daniel Goodman, now live.
"It wasn't because I got married," she says of leaving the music business. "I just knew there were other things I wanted to do."
It wasn't easy to leave. "It took a lot of guts. But it was a God thing, too. I prayed about the decision, and I knew he was guiding me. I knew I would not be happy living my life out in the limelight."
But that doesn't mean she's turned her back on music, and when she was asked to record a song for "Amazing Grace 3: A Country Salute to Gospel," the 24-year-old singer jumped at the chance. "I was raised in the (Southern Baptist) church. I sang in the choir."
She loves gospel music, she says, and the way it makes her feel. She got to pick her song for the CD, and she chose " 'Tis So Sweet To Trust In Jesus."
"I've always loved that one. For me, my whole life I've learned that's the only way to live — to trust in him."
The CD includes a variety of other gospel songs performed by noted country artists including Keith Urban ("I'll Fly Away"), Sara Evans ("Sweet By and By"), Trace Adkins ("Victory In Jesus") and Dierks Bentley ("It Is No Secret") and more.
Produced by Sparrow Records, it brings together contemporary country artists who pay tribute to traditional gospel songs for a third time. And Thomson was honored to be included.
Still, she looks back with no regrets. "How many people can say they did what they wanted to do?" She says there's a 50 percent chance that before she dies she'll want to come back. "Life takes you on such a ride. Who knows what will happen?" But for now, "I garden, I clean the house, I have friends over. I have a very normal life."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com