ANGELS & IDOLS
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Regie Hamm had been a wildly successful songwriter and record producer. He'd pulled himself up from a childhood of being a traveling musical gypsy - crusading in the world of Pentecostal churches and tent revivals to writing chart topping songs in the bourgeois world of Contemporary Christian Music. At the height of that career, in 2002, he left it to pursue his full potential as an artist and ...become pop star. With the release of a critically acclaimed CD and a hit song climbing the charts, his "destiny" was unfolding ...he thought. In the middle of his ascension to the top of the music world, he and his wife Yolanda flew to China to adopt a little girl. Those three weeks in China would change everything. He returned to the United States to find his hit song fallen from the charts, his tour dates cancelled and his bright future in shambles. He and his wife discovered the little girl they had brought home had a severe, mysterious disability that no specialist seemed to be able to pinpoint. The years that followed would be those of confusion, round-the-clock care giving, life-altering sleep deprivation, crushing medical bills, a career that was, by all accounts, over and ultimately financial ruin.
In the spring of 2008, at the absolute end of his rope, with no prospects and little hope left in his heart, Regie's wife urged him to enter the American Idol songwriting contest. With one week left until the deadline, he penned the words, "I'll taste every moment and live it out loud ...this is the time of my life," as a tribute to his long suffering wife, his beautiful, miraculous, adopted newborn son, and the lovely angelic special needs daughter who had sent his life into a tailspin and yet saved it at the same time. The song went on to become a smash hit for American Idol winner, David Cook and one of the longest running AC Billboard chart toppers of all time. It also inspired and galvanized an entire community of families with special needs children who shared his daughter's mysterious disorder ...the genetic disorder known as Angelman Syndrome. That community came together to form the FAST foundation.
This is the story of Regie and Yolanda's amazing journey from the high-rolling years of success in the music industry to the edge of superstardom - from the incredible and heart-breaking fall into abject despair and anonymity - to the purest redemption that would come from the most unlikely of places. "Angels and Idols" is the story of pride, brokenness, heart-break and ultimately rising from the ashes new and reborn. It's a story of surrender and forgiveness - doubt and faith - random events that turn out to be serendipitous. It's about hit songs, American dreams and Chinese babies. It's about orphans and lullabies. Adoption and seizures - hospitals and rock and roll. Alcohol and vitamins. Jesus and money. Lighting store jingles and the Olympic games. Hanging on by a thread ...and the sweetest salvation.
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