Let Earth recieve her king.

WARNING: First of all, this is very long but very meaningful. Second, this is a blog about me. It is not me preaching to you. It is me sharing with you an important event in my life that I hope everyone gets to experience someday, whether it be through Christianity or any other religion. Feel free to comment positively or negatively, but please do not say offensive things. If you are going to say something negative, back it up with real facts. Insults mean nothing without a true reason...but I sincerely hope this blog will not bring anything negative, it is truly meant to be uplifting.



Recently, I've been born again spiritually. Throughout my entire life I have battled the idea of religion. I've went from half believing to atheism, to being agnostic. Now I am FINALLY comfortable saying i am CHRISTIAN.

I don't know what took me so long, but I think now is the perfect time to arrive as a Christian. I feel so alive...and of course its Christmas! What a great time to reflect on WHY Christ lived, HOW he lived, and what we are doing to remember him. Whether you believe he was the messiah or not, there is no doubt he was a great man who did his best to turn the world into a better place. It is remarkable he is remembered 2009 years later. I find it hard to believe he was anything less than the Son of God.

It is officially Christmas and I am overwhelmed with joy and love for Jesus and for everyone around me. I'd like to describe my love and my faith, of course that is a little difficult to do but I will try.

If I had to pick the reason I accepted Jesus it would be because I felt him through music. Music has always been one of the greatest joys of my life. I play many instruments and for years I have been a close follower of the music world. My iPod is filled with different band and genres...I truly love music. But not one song has touched me the way most of the worship songs and Christian rock songs I listen to. It all started when i started attending a Methodist church. I was raised Catholic and for years felt no reason to go to church. It was boring to me, I couldn't see the reason to believe in God if it meant suffering through a boring church service. Then I started going to a Baptist youth group...a flicker of religion struck me...but it wasn't enough to light a fire inside me. Then this summer I met Cindee, Dave, Frank, and Tonya. My dad is a juvenile diversion officer. Diversion is like a more mild and less serious form of probation...and Frank was on diversion. Frank was pretty messed up. Cindee and Dave adopted him a few years back after he was adopted then given up a few weeks later by another couple. He had a lot of behavior problems after being abused and neglected his whole life. Some of the things he did were absolutely terrible. But Cindee and Dave love him so much they wanted everything to be ok for him, to show him that he isn't alone in this world. My dad became good friends with Cindee while he dealt with Frank and after Frank got off diversion Cindee and Dave began to invite our family to come over and play cards and stuff. Cindee and Dave couldn't thank my dad enough for helping Frank. One day, I went with my parents to meet Cindee, Dave, Frank, and Tonya. Tonya is only a year younger than me. She was also adopted. She was so abused and neglected by her birth parents that she didn't speak or learn to read until she was probably 8 or so. She is almost completely caught up school wise, but she has a lot of trouble reading still. She learned to read too late and she might have been shaken as a baby, so she might have brain damage in that area. Other than that, she is completely normal and really has no other disability...I quickly became friends with her. She seems to really like me. So anyway, I met these amazing people and what makes them even more amazing is Cindee is actually a pastor at the Methodist church. At the time I met them I didn't know God. I had lost my faith long ago. But I saw how important God was to them...and I saw how much Cindee and Dave love Tonya and Frank, two kids who were so alone and abused. Two lost kids who misbehaved severely, but Cindee and Dave have been patient. I began going to Cindee's church...and I saw these miracles happening, there was so much love all around! I walked through the doors of the tiny chapel and pretty much the entire church was there to greet me! I had never received so many hugs and hellos at once, I wondered how these people were brave enough to show so much love to a person they didn't know at all! Then I noticed this love was not fake or forced, these people truly cared about EVERYONE in the congregation. I soon found out my favorite part of church other than Cindee's sermons was the prayers and praises part. Cindee would ask the congregation is there any prayers or praises to lift up to God. One by one people would raise their hands. Many asked for the church to pray for a loved one who was sick or injured. Others had praises to lift up, they said their loved ones had been cured of cancer or a surgery went well! I witnessed firsthand the power of prayer. As I went to the church more and more i saw how more and more prayers turned into praises...I began to see that there was no other explanation- only God could have done this. But I still had doubts somehow. Until I began to sing. I had never really sang in church, i never felt comfortable singing about a God i never knew...but here at Nation Chapel, we sing contemporary praise music...i felt more comfortable singing when there was a guitar, a bass, a keyboard, and a drum set rather than an ancient organ struggling to pump out slow hymns. One Sunday i began to sing...and at that moment i felt God, i felt an electric surge through my body and I finally accepted Christ in my life. Music had saved my life many times before, but it was nothing like this. A song never moved me like this. I began to cry because finally i found my place in the world and I knew that God had to be part of it now, there was no turning back. One day I was watching Fuse and the music video for All Around Me by Flyleaf came on. The lyrics told me it had to be about God, the video showed me that Lacey wasn't lifting up her hands for a dramatic effect. I looked it up and found out that Flyleaf is a Christian band. I didn't know that God could enter my life anymore than He already had...but he did at that point, listening to that amazing song. Here i found a rock band that sang the same message as the praise songs at church. I thought that was it...but now, just last week, i finally saw God in this world completely, of course, through music. I was watching a Flyleaf video on youtube. It was a cover of a song by a band called the David Crowder Band. Before the song started Lacey explained that it was about God, it was about how joyous it is to be Christian. The song is called You are My Joy. and i listened to it and the message just threw me another meaning to being Christian. At first I thought being Christian was something you did to get to heaven and to help others, somewhat of a task. But this song is all about God being the JOY in your life. The reason to be happy, the reason to live! Its a simple song, really. It repeats "You are my joy, you are my joy, you are my joy, you are my joy" many times...but it moved me. I started listening to David Crowder Band and i haven't looked back since. I told my mom that i wanted to officially join the Methodist church and she began to cry tears of joy. I never knew how important it was for her to see me finally accept Jesus after years of pushing him out of my life. I told Cindee and she hugged me and was excited to set up a day that she could introduce me officially as a member of the church. Christmas Eve mass I hugged Cindee before I left and she told me she loved me. I have never had someone that wasn't my family other than my ex boyfriend and my best friends who said they loved me, and for the first time ever i felt like i was part of someone else's life. I knew that Cindee, Dave, Tonya, and Frank were my family. I knew from this point on I would have another set of people to love me. One day i went to lunch and spent the day with their family and Cindee kept saying they had adopted another daughter for a day...it made me so happy.

This blog is long and i bet no one will really read it. If you have read it, by now you might think i'm some sort of religious freak...but this is who i am, this is what i believe. I am so happy to be alive right now even though everything in my life is sad. my last blog was a horrible moment of weakness where i admitted to being suicidal. I've always struggled with thoughts of suicide, pretty much my entire life. But now i know that blog was dumb...God is here for me, there is really nothing else i need. I have my music and i have my faith. I have great family and great friends. Right now it feels like my world is crashing down...but i know i'll be alright. I've been praying and going to church and hanging out with Cindee, Dave, Tonya, and Frank...i see miracles all around me...unfortunately i've heard of three deaths lately...Chris' grandpa died, Storm's grandma died, and a great man from church, Steve, just lost his father. But I've also witness life. A woman from church is winning her battle with cancer! They told her she was going to die, that chemo therapy wouldn't help, in fact they weren't going to give it to her. But she got better enough that they gave it to her and now she is recovering. She got up and sang a very beautiful O Holy Night at church today.

I am so thankful.

Thank you so much if you read this.