Meet Ragina

From “Dear Diary” to “Dear God”

When I was in elementary school, my family visited an amusement park. Of all the things a child could want there, I desperately wanted a little book in which I could write. After searching for just the right one, I found it—a pocket-sized Judy Jetson diary with a lock and key. To this day, I remember it as one of the most important purchases my mother ever made for me.

Within those little pages, I discovered a place to put my deepest thoughts and feelings. I had found a way to process life through words.

As I grew older and received Jesus as my Savior, my diary gradually became something different. My entries no longer began with Dear Diary. They began with Dear God. My diary became a prayer journal—a written record of my conversations with God, my questions, my struggles, my prayers, and eventually the answers I watched Him provide.

I didn't know it then, but God was teaching me to put my heart on paper.

A Love for the World God Created

I grew up in the woods, about three-quarters of the way up a hillside along Shawnee State Forest in southern Ohio. The woods weren't someplace we occasionally visited. They were home.

I spent countless hours exploring them. I played hide-and-seek in the dark with my cousins in the woods surrounding our house. Every school day, I walked up the hillside from the bus stop at the bottom. As I grew older, I would sometimes take a book into the woods, find a fallen log, and sit reading in the solitude, far enough away that I couldn't see my house.

Other times, I would simply sit and listen. I loved the sound of the breeze moving through the treetops, the rustling of a chipmunk among the leaves, or a squirrel scurrying up and down a tree trunk. Whatever the weather, the woods felt like home.

My father shared that love of exploration. He often took me hiking at Old Man's Cave or through Shawnee Forest, sometimes with my Australian Blue Heeler joining us.

And we explored far beyond southern Ohio. Over the years there were beaches and lakes, boats and bicycles, parasailing and jet skiing, snorkeling in the Caribbean, a hot-air-balloon ride in Maine, Niagara Falls, deserts in the American West, and snow-covered mountains in Colorado.

Today, my husband and I have raised our children amid the rolling farmland of Pennsylvania. Here, gardening has taught me to appreciate creation in an entirely new way. I've learned the names of plants, how different seeds germinate, how vegetables grow, and even how to identify the insects in my garden—which ones I want to welcome and which ones would happily eat the garden before my family gets the opportunity.

The little girl exploring the woods never really stopped exploring. She just found new things to investigate.

A Love of History

My love of history came largely from my dad.

My parents divorced when I was five, so I generally saw him every other weekend. When we were together, he would tell me about the latest history book or article he was reading. Every year, he would also take me on a week-long vacation. Along with all the kid-friendly fun, there was often a historical site somewhere in the trip.

In the evenings, Dad loved watching historical documentaries. I can still remember lying beside him and falling asleep while they played on the television.

Somewhere among those books, conversations, documentaries, vacations, and historical sites, his fascination with the past became mine. Eventually, that interest led me to earn a teaching degree preparing me to teach grades 7–12 in history, psychology, and sociology.

Years later, my love of history and my love for God's Word began coming together. My husband and I began visiting the Creation Museum, reading their magazine, and purchasing books to continue learning at home. I was especially fascinated by their large biblical timeline.

The Bible was God's Word, but its events had also happened in history. Its people had lived in real places, among real nations and cultures. I wanted to know more. Where did these people live? What was happening around them? How did the nations interact? What happened to their descendants? What can history and archaeology help us understand about the world in which the events of Scripture occurred?

Those are questions I still love investigating today.

The Teacher Who Didn't Want to Teach

Perhaps God has a sense of humor.

Beginning around third grade, my mother developed a habit at parent-teacher conferences that drove me crazy. She would bring me along so I could show her my classroom, my desk, and where I sat and introduce her to my teachers. Then I would wait in the hallway while they discussed how I was doing.

Unfortunately for them, I have always had exceptionally good hearing. I could hear practically everything they said without even trying. And every year my mother would ask essentially the same question:

Why did she keep asking that? I didn't want to teach anybody! She continued asking that bothersome question all the way through high school. By graduation, I had my own plans. I was going to be an architect.

So I enrolled at Ohio State University as an architecture student. God, however, had other plans.

During my freshman year, I began to realize that architecture wasn't where God wanted me. I then considered pursuing music, but that door closed as well. Finally, one Sunday I went to the altar and surrendered the question to God. My life was His.

I believed God was directing me to leave Ohio State and attend Shawnee State University in my hometown—which happened to be the last college I wanted to attend. I pleaded for another option. I even told God I would live at home if He would just let me attend a different nearby college. But the conviction remained: Shawnee State.

Eventually, I went to the campus and sat down with the course catalog. No architecture major. No music major. I was devastated. Why would God bring me to a college that didn't offer what I wanted to study?

I finally surrendered that question too: If You want me to go here, fine. But what am I supposed to study?

I began looking through the catalog again. Sociology sounded interesting. Then I discovered I could pursue it as part of a teaching degree that also included history and psychology. A teaching degree. After all those years of listening to my mother ask that question, I could do that.

Then I discovered something else: although I couldn't major in vocal music, I could pursue it as a minor. That was enough. I went straight to the registrar's office and registered.

God had taken the girl who insisted she didn't want to be a teacher and put her on the path toward becoming one.

“Bring Them Back In. We Will Have Class.”

After receiving my teaching degree, I substitute taught for a few months before God moved my husband and me to Pennsylvania.

During our second week there, we attended a church whose youth leaders had recently left to become missionaries in another country. During the service, I noticed children leaving their parents and gathering in the lobby. Curious, I followed.

To my dismay, I discovered an adult ushering the children outside to play unattended in the parking lot.

She called them back. I gathered approximately twenty children, took them to the largest classroom I could find, opened the Bible to Genesis, and began teaching.

That was the beginning of my children's church ministry. I've been teaching in church ever since.

Meanwhile, I transferred my teaching credentials to Pennsylvania and spent about two years working as a core substitute. Later, a teacher preparing for maternity leave discovered that I was certified in her department and asked me to take her classes while she was gone. I agreed and worked as a short-term substitute until Christmas.

Before long, however, my own family began growing. I put my public-school teaching career on hold to raise my little ones, and eventually homeschooling became one of my passions.

Looking back, I suppose my mother really was onto something.

Why Write Now?

Writing never really left either.

For years, ideas for things I might someday write filled my mind. I brainstormed topics with my husband, but I rarely put them on paper. And yet God wouldn't let me get writing out of my mind.

Then I heard a sermon by Calvin Ray that addressed a question I had carried with me about a Psalm I could not forget. Something happened. A story began pouring out of me.

For all those years I had thought about writing. This time, I couldn't stop until the story was written. And now I can't stop until that story reaches the reader for whom it was intended—even though I pray many others will benefit from it along the way.

I have come to see writing much like teaching. When I discover something wonderful, I want to share it. Sometimes that means digging through Scripture, history, maps, and archaeology to understand an ancient people such as the Sidonians. Sometimes it means exploring a question about God's creation. Sometimes it means writing a story that allows a child to look at an ordinary part of the world with fresh wonder.

Different subjects. Different audiences. But the purpose behind them is the same.