I listened to a cable show called Behind the Scenes Remastered while I ate breakfast this morning. They presented a fascinating story about the difficult life of the singer Meatloaf. The narrator spoke of a time “Meat” couldn’t sing anymore. When he tried to record after his first hit album, he couldn’t sing notes he used to and he had lost strength in his voice. Also he fought with his co-partner and good friend, Jim, about who should be in the band. Things seemed to be falling apart.
Meatloaf didn’t know if the problem with his voice was physical or mental, so he went to doctors, psychiatrists, and even hypnotists, but no one could help him. He was close to a nervous breakdown. He said he sat in a corner and just cried.
Times like that are when a person needs a friend the most, and his wife was that for him. She never gave up.
Eventually he found a psychiatrist who “made him face up to the life he both craved and hated.” He had gone to another psychiatrist for about a year, but this doctor walked in and said, “What’s the problem?”
Meatloaf said, “People are calling me a star…and I don’t like it.”
The doctor said, “Okay. Can you call yourself a star?”
“No.”
They met for a time. Then one day the doctor asked, “Can you call yourself a star?”
Meatloaf said, “Okay. I’m a star.”
“Okay. You don’t need to see me anymore.”
Meatloaf looked at him and said, “But I don’t believe it.”
The doctor said, “It doesn’t make any difference whether you believe it or not.”
With God’s help, Meatloaf found his voice again after that.