Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

During the finals of the Gospel Song Competition in 1998, a full house at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre warmed to the country-styled strains of Hold My Hand Today, performed by Glacia Robinson, a husky-voiced singer from Manchester.

Hold My Hand Today was a popular winner and prompted many in gospel circles to predict a lofty future for the guitar-strumming Robinson.

Things, however, have not gone entirely to script.

Little has been heard from Robinson for the last five years, although she released the album, I Shall Live, in the summer of 2008. The set was largely inspired by a debilitating illness she said that all but killed her.

Robinson describes her ordeal in The Testimony, one of the songs from I Shall Live. In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner from the United States where she lives, Robinson did not disclose her illness, but said at its worst, she was reduced to less than 90 pounds.

She also experienced internal bleeding and seizures, and her organs functioned at the rate of a seven year-old.

"I felt like I was dead but alive to watch. The excruciating pains consumed my body, crippling my ability to move, speak, eat and even think clearly," she said.

Robinson's health has been a mystery for sometime, and there were even rumours that she had died. She said that was not far from the truth.

"I was confined to a wheelchair with feeding tubes, heart monitors and pampers. But God wasn't done with me," she said.

The Gospel Song Competition gave her a national profile, but Robinson was not new to the song contest scene. She had participated in the Tastee Talent Contest before hitting the mark with the uplifting Hold My Hand Today, followed two years later by the equally successful It's Not Over Now.

Both the songs not only earned her fans in the growing gospel market, but won over secular fans similar to the Grace Thrillers a decade earlier with Can't Even Walk.

Tommy Cowan of Glory Music believes Robinson had an "amazing impact" musically.

"She had a unique tone, that country tone that Jamaicans love, but she also plays the guitar. A woman with a guitar in her hand will never be in need," Cowan said.

Although she recorded the song, Survivors, in 2004 to help raise funds for victims of Hurricane Ivan, Robinson says most of her time was spent in intensive care units at hospitals here and the US. Her recovery came full circle two years ago.

"I started over on a basic diet of natural juices and baby food. Even when the doctors told me there was nothing more they could do for me I continued to hold on to the word of God and that I'd be able to live again," she explained.

Favourable air time

Robinson regained enough strength to complete work on I Shall Live last year. She produced most of its songs, but shared duties with Jon Williams, and US-based Robert D. Watson, Maurice Gregory and Mark Brown.

The Testimony has got favourable time on local radio, so too the uptempo, Worship You Oh God. We Have The Victory, another track from the album, features Papa San.

Robinson said more recordings are in the works even as she continues her recovery and the promotion of I Shall Live. Enduring the illness, she added, has made her faith stronger.

"With God nothing is impossible, it's not over until he says so," she declared.