Christina McAllister grew up outside Tulsa, and her grandfather called her Mac from the day she came home from the hospital. By twelve she was singing on the youth worship team at Harvest Hill Church, a big regional church that recorded its own worship albums, and by sixteen she was leading the Sunday night service.
In her senior year of high school her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Christina drove her to every chemo appointment that winter. Her mother is healthy today, and Christina says that year is when her faith stopped being something she inherited and became hers.
On the drives to treatment the two of them sang "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," her mother's favorite, with the radio off. In the hospital parking lot one afternoon Christina wrote a song of her own on the back of an appointment card. She called it "Waiting Room."
She works at her aunt's dog-grooming shop, and she fosters rescue dogs out of her apartment, usually two at a time. Every one of them leaves with a bath and a family.
At twenty-one she auditioned for a national TV singing competition and made the top ten. She didn't win. She sang "Waiting Room" on the show, a label called the week she was sent home, and that song became her first single.
She loves a good blowout and a sequined stage outfit, and she'll tell you the sequins are for the people in the back row. Offstage she's usually at the shelter.
Christina stands for shelter dogs and for the people who sit beside someone they love through the worst year of their life.
