Reagan's book

This is an exerpt of Reagan's book that she is working on. I got teary reading it and just had to share. It is much longer then this, but I just picked a small section. Can't give away the whole book...

I live on a farm and used to only listen to country music. I thought K-Love was weird and the songs were all worship and boring.  My youth minister was like my best friend and she gave us dance classes that involved a K-Love song. We listened to K-Love to give it a try. I went on K-Love.com and there was a 30 day challenge they wanted everyone to try where you listen to K-Love for 30 days and see how it changes your life. I kept bugging my mom every morning on the way to school to listen to K-Love and so did my sister. We heard a couple songs we liked and today, I don’t listen to anything else. It might seem dumb to you, but I encourage you to give it a chance because it really does change your life when you are surrounded by words of God that are more catchy than what teenagers listen to these days.

I used to think that Jesus never performed miracles anymore. He’s not on Earth, how can he show a miracle? Well, I have 4 dogs. 2 of them are big puppies that like to run away with their mom. We were calling for them one day and 2 out of three of them came back. We searched all night. In the morning, my dad called the Humane Society and they had a boxer but no collar. My parents went to get what was hopefully our dog. They called us to tell us that our dog Bruiser got hit on the highway last night at 4:00 p.m. and they were about to give up hope and put him down when my dad called them. We took him to our vet and they performed the surgery. His leg was broken but today, he just limps around with a few scars. That night, I thought he was dead. I asked God for a miracle, looks like he heard.  My friend from the cross country team’s dad got in a car wreck and wasn’t hurt at all. Not only that, but later, I found out he hit a semi-truck. I got to see a picture of his car and everyone including the police is surprised he’s not dead. God is performing miracles all the time. I mean, who thought they would allow us to open a prayer group at our school?

What I don’t get is why atheists celebrate Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of Jesus being born on earth to save us from our sins. Christ-mas is a mass, or gathering, of Christ, our savior. Today, people just do it for the presents and say, “it’s not about the presents; the true meaning of Christmas is giving,” but that’s not the true meaning either. We use it as an excuse to buy ourselves things and spend more money.  When I have kids, I want to throw Jesus a birthday party every year as a tradition. I’m not going to introduce my kids to Santa Claus either. I was listening to K-Love the other day and this mom came on air and said last Christmas her daughter was 2 years old and she brought her downstairs and said “hey, it’s Christmas, Santa came, let’s go see your presents.” Her little girl said back “but mommy, it’s Jesus’ birthday.” That was touching and inspiring for a lot of people I hope. This year for Christmas, I’m not focusing on the presents. I always say it’s not about the presents but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them.

Do you ever think about God in different ways? Like, I love church, but I don’t like Greek gods and worship and praise. But then, I think about K-Love and I love the words praise and worship. I guess I just like to keep things simple. Love God with all your heart and do things to please him. But that’s also what sounds weird to me; “do everything to please your God.” I just think about it as making my best friend happy. I also don’t like saying “your God (suggesting there is many gods you can choose from).” Because to me, there is only one God. I think of God as a name, not an object or general category.

When I pray, I talk to God like he is my friend but I’m never sure if he wants me to be serious, or if he has a sense of humor. I like the last one. I don’t think God would be mad at me for laughing in a prayer. I mean, I’m praying to him the whole time I’m writing, and I’m not always talking directly to him.

Have you ever heard the saying “when you open the bible, the Devil gets a headache and when you pray, the devil faints.” I can just picture the Devil fainting every two seconds. He would never even have time to get up.

Have you ever heard the song on K-Love “You Can Change Who You Are”? It says “You can never fall too hard, so fast, so far that you can’t get back when you’re lost. Where you are is never too late, so bad, so much that you can’t change who you are.” I was at lunch in the cafeteria one day with my friends and two of them go to the same church and were talking about a guy there. They were arguing that he had changed, no, people can’t change, no, people can change, back and forth. The whole time, all I could think about was that song and I knew who was right because people can change. If you find God, everything about you would change.