I wrote... a book?

I wrote a book!

It's a devotional book aimed for Christian teenagers (13-up) that had/are having a hard time going through late grade school/ high school (much like myself). I have felt for a long time that I was supposed to do SOMETHING to encourage this age group, but didn't know how God would use my talents yet.

Since I was young, I have always wanted to write a book. From age 6-8, I wrote a book entitled "All About Jenny" where I talked about how 'Jenny's' dad was in the military and they moved around a lot and she had trouble making friends. (Hm...sound vaguely familiar of my own life?) I still have the typed out part in my keepsake chest, but I worked on this 'book' for almost 2 years and filled up 4 notebooks with my ramblings about "Jenny".

When I was 14, I went to a Christian conference/retreat/camp-thing for teens. Throughout the 4 days I was there, the conference's main speaker was a younger-man who spoke every evening, then at the very end, he would promote his devotional book that was supposed to be "insight for teens" to help us grow in our walk with God. This book was endorsed by the Christian conference and they traveled around the US. The speaker, himself, was- to my memory- a decent speaker. He brought up good, insightful topics and then preached on them for the allotted 20 minutes or whatever the evening service time-table was. Naturally, I was excited to buy this devotional book at the end of the camp/retreat week since it had been talked about every night.. so, with my $20 spending money, I bought this book and took it home to read.

...I had never been so disappointed in my life. It was like this book wasn't even written by the same person! They literally copy-pasted some bible verses on some of the pages and then said almost nothing for the rest of the 130 (or so) pages. It offered no real answers, no real insight, no real THOUGHT, it just felt like he slapped down something into a book and since he had the conference endorsement behind him, publishing the book was an easy way to earn some extra money.

Looking back now, this book was a blessing. It was then, that I decided I would write a better devotional book than the one I had just read.

I tell you this personal story because I think it adds to this book. This has been an idea I have been working on now for over 12 years: compiling some topics I would have liked to study, and actually thinking about the topics and what I could change in my own life to be a better blessing to someone else.

There's something absolutely terrifying about putting myself in the spotlight and opening myself up to of the ridicule of the internet...but

I'm proud of this book. I'm finally fulfilling a promise I made to my 14-year-old self. Instead of listening to that voice in my head that tells me that "it's not ready" or that "I'm not good enough"... I'm finally stepping out taking a chance.

I know this is the part where I'm supposed to promote myself, but I'm not going to do that. This book doesn't have anything profound or new in it, and I'm by no means claiming to be an expert on the subjects discussed. This book is simply meant to bring forward biblical standpoints and offer guidance on real-life topics that teens face.

Prayer, Self-Image, Dating, Forgiveness, Sin, Money, Accountability, and Laziness are a few of the 19 different topics that the book talks about.

In this book, I also share some of my personal experiences with some of the struggles I had, and offer (what I hope) is encouragement to anyone going through something similar. That being said, the book is written as though I was sitting down and talking to someone one-on-one. It's not very formal, I don't use big words where they aren't needed in an attempt to sound smarter; a devotional is supposed to be personal, so that's how it's written.

At the end of each section are a few questions, or space for the reader to journal their thoughts. As a teen, I related better to studies that I could physically write out what I was thinking, so I wanted to design something similar.

**There are two little errors that I found when editing it for the final time- and after some thought about it, I decided- I'm going to leave them. There is a run-on sentence where I missed a punctuation somewhere in the "middle days" (days 9-15) of the study, and on one of the days, the "your" should have been "you". If you choose to read the book, if/when you find them, just fix them for me- after all, I'm not perfect. I also couldn't afford to pay someone thousands of dollars to professionally put this book together for me, so it was all done by myself. (Hence, the errors). Micah helped me design the cover since I...stink at designing. Colors and fonts are his thing, not mine!

If you would like to read it, the link is below.

Twenty Days by Kim Ilbery


 As I stated before, it's aimed towards teens, but I tried to write it so that anyone could benefit from reading it. You can't search for the book online, you HAVE to have that link. I don't have it opened up for public view. (So please, let me know if that link doesn't work!)

A book like this might not be your cup of tea, and that's totally fine. I'm by no means trying to force it on anyone, but after a lot of back and forth thought, I have decided to open it up to anyone that would like to order a copy. Who knows, maybe some of the words I have written are what someone else needs to hear.

One of my goals for 2017 is to embrace change and do some things that are "scary" to me. Finishing a personal book and opening it up to the internet is a pretty big item on the "scary" list...so, what better time to start conquering my fears than right now?

Side note***

I believe my next writing project will be to compose my own cookbook. I've been saying for a few years now that I wanted to put my favorite recipes into one place, versus right now where I have three recipe card boxes and then random sheets of paper and backs of envelopes where I have quickly written down recipes.. oh, I forgot to mention the best part!

Currently, All of these recipes are not organized on any sort of way and are all thrown into a cabinet in the kitchen so if I want a specific one...It's like my very own treasure hunt! ....Yeah, so I think I'm going to start compiling that in 2017, and maybe by Christmas I'll have one put together...But we'll see :)

2017 already has some big adventures in store for us!