65 days. In the woods. Unplugged, and off the grid.
That’s what Zahriya Zachary signed up for when she applied for the 18 Inch Journey, a discipleship school in North Carolina, founded and led by Jonathan and Melissa Helser, the husband and wife duo behind familiar anthems like “Raise A Hallelujah” and “No Longer Slaves.” The intense program afforded the burgeoning singer-songwriter the time and space to dissect every aspect of her relationship with Jesus at a pivotal season in her life.
“While I was there, I just really started thinking about how much the Lord has stayed with me over the duration of my life,” the newcomer reflects. “The road is very narrow to following Jesus, and I just got to the point where I was like, ‘OK, Lord, I really am going to need You to help me stay on this road.’ It’s not even that I want to get off. It’s just that sometimes with life, I do get tired, and I feel like I can’t stay; I can’t do this.”
Those feelings birthed “Stay,” Zachary’s stunning debut radio single that earned her a spot on Air1’s “Class of 2026 Emerging Artists” list. She wrote the original track with GRAMMY® Award-winning songwriter and producer Bernie Herms and April Geesbreght, who helped her bring the intimate ballad to life. “It came from a deeper place of surrender for me,” Zachary shares of the song’s genesis. “It’s when I’m staying hand-in-hand with Jesus, when I’m leaning against Him, that I find the ability to stay. He actually gives me the strength to stay. It’s a long-haul friendship. I want to stay with Jesus when I’m 80, 90 and gray and still do this.”
That’s one reason she committed to a rigorous curriculum that removed her from everyday life for two months in her mid-20s. On the precipice of a career in Christian music, she suddenly realized the race ahead was not going to be a sprint; it was going to be a marathon. And she needed to invest in the right endurance training from the start.
“I had no intention of getting into this world of Christian music, but I remember when I got into this, I started observing people who have been in it for the long haul — people who have been in it for 30, 40 years — and just realizing that the group’s actually really small,” she offers. “I’ve talked with people like Natalie Grant and Cece Winans, and I realized the people who have been in it for the long haul have prioritized being a disciple of Jesus.”
Long before Zachary was deep in the woods intentionally learning how to be a lifelong disciple of Jesus so she can lead others for decades to come, she was a young athlete devoted to sports — especially basketball. That is until a knee injury during her sophomore year of high school permanently sidelined her. “It honestly took that knee injury for me to realize how much I actually loved music,” Zachary reveals, adding that up until that point music had always just been something she did for fun, while athletics primarily drove her attention and ambition.
It wasn’t until college, however, that she genuinely felt a divine directive to lead worship as a vocation. Prior to that clarity of calling, she was a philosophy major preparing for the LSAT and a future career as an entertainment attorney. “I remember the Lord asking me, ‘Will you do worship with your life?’” Zachary shares, “and I was like, ‘What? I’m supposed to go to law school. What are You talking about?’”
At first, she assumed that might look like taking a staff position at a church and leading worship in the same place every Sunday, but it soon morphed into a different opportunity. Make no mistake, Zachary’s still leading worship, but sometimes traditional sanctuaries take the form of unorthodox venues in different cities nationwide. And now, with the release of her 13-song debut, “Rediscovery,” she’s broadening her reach and depth of experience.
The road to “Rediscovery” was an arduous process encompassing three-and-a-half years of writing alone, during which Zachary penned hundreds of songs across co-writes with notable lyricists like Rita Springer, Benjamin William Hastings and Dwan Hill (The Choir Room), among others. But really, her journey to “Rediscovery” began when she was a little girl in Houston, Texas. “Growing up, my life centered around family. At one point, we lived in the same neighborhood as my aunt, who’s one of my best friends, and I could bike to her house. That was the norm for me as a kid — spending a lot of time with my grandma and my aunts,” says Zachary, an only child. “It’s actually formed so much of who I am and how much relationships mean to me.”
While her childhood felt light and free, as she got older, life — as it so often does — began to shape Zachary’s theology. “The journey that I’ve been on is getting back to 6,7-year-old Zahriya, returning to my younger self in a really beautiful way,” she says of crafting her first record. “This whole process has been me getting back to that raw, awesome pure form of myself.”
Hesitant to even believe she had what it takes to make a full album, the theme of rediscovery emerged during a phone call with a friend. “I just remember telling my friend that I felt like the Lord was always angry with me,” she recalls, “and he asked me, ‘Why do you believe that?’”
That single rebuttal pushed the aspiring artist down an unexpected path — one filled with more questions than answers. “All of a sudden, it was like this beaming light illuminated this shadowy area of my life,” Zachary says. “I didn’t realize I thought God was keeping tally marks against my shortcomings. For the first time, I realized the Lord has so much capacity for my humanity.”
That was also the moment the philosophy major in her resurfaced. Before she even recorded the first song, she wrote out a mini-dissertation for what would become “Rediscovery.” “I love a thesis moment,” she eagerly affirms. “Basically, I wrote out this whole thing, and then I said, ‘This is my rediscovery of the radical love of Jesus Christ.’”
Zachary’s personal rediscovery quickly became an unraveling as she peeled back layer after layer of the false truths she had quietly been believing. “It was almost like the Lord came and tilled the ground of my heart and just said, ‘Let’s talk about all of this,’” she describes. “I feel like His voice even started changing. It wasn’t as sharp.”
Gradually, she recognized the cracks in her theology for what they were: lies.
“Lies are OK with not being questioned,” she offers. “They’re really OK with being in the corners of our lives.”
For her part, Zachary did some house cleaning, sweeping out the cobwebs that had unwittingly taken up residence in the dark corners of her mind. “I feel like this project was the unwinding of belief systems I’ve had around God,” she reflects, “not to deconstruct, but to rediscover the meaning of the Gospel in a really beautiful way. Even though it’s been hard, it’s been such a gift to have those lies illuminated.”
It also enabled her to open her heart up to the kind of love she deserves, leading to her engagement to Cadence Helser, the son of Jonathan and Melissa Helser. The couple is set to marry this summer in the groom’s native state of North Carolina, which Zachary will adopt as her new place of residence. She’s already gushing about the tight-knit community she’s found there, as well as a deep sense of home.
Simultaneously, she’s finding a new home in the Christian music community, where she’s been welcomed with open arms. In just a short time, she’s already collaborated with a wide array of artists, including Brian Johnson, Edward Rivera, Rave Jesus, TEMITOPE and Patrick Mayberry on his inaugural No. 1, “Lead On Good Shepherd.”
Meanwhile, the original, introspective worship she explores on “Rediscovery” is also providing fresh language for listeners’ respective relationships with God. Yet, despite being given an unforeseen platform from which to share her recent discoveries on faith, life and God, the rising singer recognizes the unraveling that started with “Rediscovery” will remain a lifelong endeavor. And she’s quick to admit she might never have all the answers. She simply hopes her music becomes a safe space for people to ask hard questions and untangle their own fabricated truths that might be keeping them from becoming everything they’re meant to be. “The relief I’ve found isn’t necessarily within the resolve but in the fact that Jesus is OK with holding me in the tension of it all,” Zachary reasons. “I’ve realized my history with the Lord is enough. It’s valuable, and it’s worth singing about.”
