A Whirlwind of Events

I haven’t blogged in a long time about anything of real significance, and that’s mostly because I put that 23 limit on my blog for May, which was a fun idea until about May 4th when I realized I was out of things to make lists about. But some of those 23ers were real rockstar posts, my favorite being 23 Questions.

I thought I would take a second…a week into June, and recap the whirlwind of events that took place during May, which turned out to be my favorite month of this year so far. (Shocker there..)

Well, May came with snow. So that just sent me into an all out, rage blackout - I mean snow in May? Is that a joke? I did a lot of hanging out by myself in the weeks preceding Blair’s departure from the great state of Colorado. And the time came for goodbyes, but not before we attended a Brooke Fraser concert together in downtown Denver, which I knew would be a pivotal point in my life, but didn’t know just HOW pivotal it would actually be.

A not so quick story of encouragement: The first 4 months of living in Colorado were a rough transition for me, as I moved here alone and knew not a single person. So I got really involved with KLIFE and went to church and did all the things that you think you are supposed to do to make friends. I met Blair Week 1 who provided me with such sweet accountability for the next few months. However, in March, Blair got an awesome job offer in Texas (IRONY) and decided she would be moving away in May.

I would like to say that I quoted scripture to myself in that moment and told myself that God works all things together for his glory, or something super holy. But in all honestly, I was like what the heck, God?! This isnt fair! Like a whiny 2 year old. Inevitably, I started preparing myself to have an extremely lonely summer. I thought maybe it was just supposed to be a time for me to get really close to the Lord with no distractions, and at some level I came to a peace about that. I kind of saw it as my own little desert season, and I listened to that Hillsong song a lot and cried in my car while exploring the wonderland that I live in. Around April, I knew it was going to be really hard, but it became a lot harder than I had even expected and I was scared that I was going to get depressed again or something.

I got so sad that I even thought about moving back to Texas because it seemed so easy to move there and live within driving distance of every person that I loved. I was really lonely all the time and had nobody to hang out with except the family that I lived with—who by the way have been God’s absolute gift to me because I learn so much living with them. Almost every weekend I went to lunch alone or went on a walk and I saw a ton of movies by myself. That’s a humbling experience and it makes your heart do weird things being alone.

It was excruciating, being someone who loves being surrounded by people. All of my closest friends were making life transitions like moving to Belize or getting married or spending the summer at Kamp, and I felt like I was stranded in Colorado “attempting” to live my own dream. I thought dreams were supposed to feel like floating and bouncing on clouds that taste like marshmallows. I had felt so called here for so many months and this is how God repays me? Oh ye of little faith! I clearly have a serious lack of eternal perspective, but two months by yourself can feel like years.

I have been blessed with the privilege of keeping in touch on a weekly basis with a YWAM friend who is easily one of the most wise girls that I know. I was talking to Kelsea during our Thursday afternoon catch up phone call and was telling her how it was going to be a really hard summer and that I was going to be really lonely and I didn’t know where to find friends. I felt like I had done everything I was supposed to do and just really hadn’t found cool girls who love Jesus to hang out with. I longed and yearned for gospel community like I had been so spoiled with in my senior year at A&M. I said a lot of this and was fighting back tears, you know, so that I didn’t make a fool of myself in the middle of Whole Foods.

So Kelsea said, “Have you actually asked God to give you friends?”

And as profoundly simple as that seems, I thought about it, and the answer was no, I hadn’t actually asked Him directly to provide friends for me. I just kind of assumed that he knew that’s what I needed, I mean, he is God and all right?

As a side note: we learned a lot about praying out loud during YWAM and I was at the end of my rope one night soon after this and just said (out loud in my car): “God you know that I need friends. You know that I am lonely more than I know it myself. You are the one who created me relationally and you designed me to function best in Christian community. I have done everything that I know to do and I don’t know where to find cool/funny..its important/fun Christian girls in Colorado. So I need you to show them to me. I need you to give me friends. Because you can and I cannot, (as usual). I cannot be alone all summer, I will go insane. You know this. Please give me some friends that I feel like I have stuff in common with and that love You more than anything in this world because I don’t want to be mediocre, and I want to surround myself with people who love you. If you could do that sooner than later, it would be preferable. I love you and I really am sorry that I am such a titty baby about all of this.”

C.S. Lewis says “Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say, there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you say, ‘You must do this, I can’t.”

So about eh, 2 weeks later, as aforementioned--I went to a Brooke Fraser (my favorite Christian artist) concert in downtown Denver with Blair-my best friend in Denver that was moving away. Let me just say that the concert was absolutely amazing. The tickets were a birthday present from my mom and it seemed right as it was Blair & I’s last hoorah together.

We ran into this girl that we both knew from Kamp, who was attending the concert with one of her friends from Denver. So I got to talking to her friend and it turns out that she had just gotten back from a year long mission trip and she played soccer in college and is so funny and fun and pretty and loves the Lord so so much. So I brutally admitted that I was short on friends and she asked me to come to church with her (a church I had never heard of). I said that I would and gave her my number not really expecting much from it because people say a lot of stuff that they don’t mean and never follow through, you know?

She called me the next day. She invited me to go to dinner with her roommates that Friday night I was like …sure I guess. I figured it would be so awkward being all of her roommates and then me, but I went anyways. It was SO FUN. They are hilarious and they all do missions and they were all athletes in college. It was actually pretty bizarre how comfortable I felt being the first time I had met basically all of them.
I hung out with this little group Friday, Saturday, went to church on Sunday, joined their small group bible study on Monday night, and then helped one of them do Support letters that Wednesday. We planned camping trips and adventures in the park and concert dates.

I was completely in a whirlwind. I literally felt like we had been friends forever. They are so much like me (there is like 8 of them) and they are so funny and amazing. I might move in with them later this summer. So isn’t that just the bees knees!!? God totally provided friends out of NO WHERE. During a concert that I got as a birthday present. I wasn’t looking for friends, they just fell in my lap. All because I directly asked God to give them to me and He did. Praise Him.

All this to say, God provides. EVERY TIME. In His perfect timing. His grace is sufficient, and he tells us to ask him for what we want in prayer. Since meeting them I have spent consistent amounts of time with them and continue to grow in my love for them and for the Lord who just dropped them in my lap. Through them I have met a number of other friends, both guys and girls and am just swirling in joy for the Lord. May and June have been the most amazing gifts, and I can honestly say that God just lavished his love on undeserving, whiny me.

So I am loving Colorado. I really feel like I am exactly where the Lord wants me to be. I am starting a small group with Bethany, who is the first friend I made at the concert. I am so excited to see what the Lord will do.

In this summer of growing heat (FINALLY), I am basking in the glory and joy of the Lord. I read this from a woman who I greatly admire and respect:

“Part of me wonders:
Would the summer be so sweet, if the winter weren’t so bitter? And would the bitter winter be so bearable if the summer’s promise weren’t so sweet?

The Lord, in His providence and sustaining grace, is kind to mingle the two. In the cold of winter, we carry the warmth of the Son through Whom the promise is made to be with us “always to the end of the age.” And in the season of colorful communion, we carry the heavy reality that green will give way to gray, proving that we are not home yet.

For now, I will live in the season I feel swirling about me. I will drink it in, savor it as a foretaste of heaven: a blazing Son, a forever respite from a worn-out world and constant company, face-to-face with my Savior and the saints around the throne.“

Let us revel in Isaiah 43:18-19 on this beautiful summer day, which says “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

23 Things, The Bucket List

1. Road trip to visit all 50 States of Amurica.
2. Bungee jump in New Zealand.
3. See Mumford and Sons in concert. (June 17-18)
4. Ride the halfpipe….(WELL).
5. Run a Half Marathon, preferably White Rock.
6. Backpack around Europe.
7. Grow a garden. Successfully.
8. Own a Cabin in the Mountains where I can snowboard all day and then eat waffles for dinner and drink holiday beer, and listen to music as loud as I want and dance hard with my husband.
9. Buy a BIG dog that will wrestle me.
10. Become a master chef, even if it means cooking only for my immediate family.
11. Spend a significant amount of time on an island.
12. Attend the World Cup.
13. Attend the Winter X Games.
14. Marry my best friend.
15. Adopt at least one child.
16. Learn to fix a car.
17. Become fluent in another language.
18. Fall in love with as many things as I can.
19. Laugh until I cry. Often.
20. Have missions be a crucial part of my life.
21. Heli ski (snowboard).
22. Own a lake house and a boat and spend every weekend of my summers on the lake, teaching my kids to wakeboard and having tube wars.
23. Write a book.

23 People

23 People I would marry on the spot:

1. Cam Gigandet.
2. Chace Crawford.
3. Liam off 90210 (Matt Lanter).
4. Taylor Lautner.
5. Josh Hartnett in Pearl Harbor.
6. Paul Walker.
7. Orlando Bloom.
8. Ryan Reynolds.
9. Zac Efron.
10. Jim off the office (John Krasinski).
11. Adam Gregory.
12. Bono.
13. The lead singer of Mumford and Sons...I have no idea what he looks like.
14. Channing Tatum.
15. Ryan Gosling.
16. James Franco.
17. Christian Bale...only if he has his raspy Batman voice.
18. Chandler off Friends (not Matthew Perry).
19. Joshua Radin.
20. Dave Barnes.
21. That Australian guy off the Last Song.
22. Matt Chandler.
23. Alexi Murdoch.

23 Things I Miss about Childhood

1. Running through the corn stalks. My grandparents had a garden in their back yard and I could get lost in the corn stalk aisles. It was really fun to see who could run through them the fastest. You would get scratches all up and down your arms, but that just made the game even better. Who had the worst battle scars also meant who ran the fastest.

2. Jump Jumps: Those magical places where we could jump against the walls in sweaty abandon. here we had access to jump perfection. These days kids have jump castles, jungles, obstacle courses…which just proves that there is no limit to the size and shape of our ability to inflate rubber into a jumpable delight.

3. Lucky leaves. On the playground during elementary school, when I wasn’t chasing Jackson Tan around the big tree, I was catching Lucky Leaves. I am fairly positive that I made this game up in Kindergarten so I am wondering why I didn’t patent that shiZ and make some quick cash. The goal was (during autumn) to catch leaves as they fell from the trees, before they hit the ground. If you caught one you got a wish. And I wish I knew what I wished for in Kindergarten so I could tell you whether or not the magic is real.

4. Building mud bombs. At Sunshine School while Madison Russell was reading on a 5th grade level, I was building mud bombs with Sky Ashley to throw at her. And I kept one of said mud balls until about 7th grade. It was crusty and disgusting, but it was a piece of my childhood that I wasn’t ready to give up.

5. Picking Honeysuckles, and eating their honey. Did anyone else do this? Cripes honeysuckles smell amazing, and just one whiff can take me back to age 7.

6. POGS and SLAMMERS. I was the POGS Queen and my castle was atop the Big Red Slide at Sunshine School.

7. Bikes and buried treasure. My mom still recalls to this day when I told her that my life was over and that I would never have friends again because Beef and Cara lived down the street from each other, and I lived in BFE. They rode their bikes together every day and I sat on my dock and mourned the loss of my social life. Instead of giving up though, I just moved into Beef’s house for a summer and rode my bike with them. And we made a package of all of our greatest and most prized possessions along with our deepest secrets and sent it down a river (READ: sewage pipe) in hopes that we would someday find it. We haven’t yet.

8. Writing notes in church: Remember passing the bulletin back and forth during the sermon with notes of who had a crush on who and where we were going to eat lunch? It was a real buzz kill when you forgot your pen and had to use one of those gnarly miniature golf sized pencils that the church keeps in the back of the pew. I would rather not write than use that tiny half-pencil…especially since my hands
have always been so large, it was borderline impossible to write with such a small utensil.

9. The lack of body odor/hair. Remember when we could run all day long and not smell like death? Remember when we didn’t have to shave our legs? Back in the day when tube socks covered the hair and nobody cared. Ah those were the days.

10. My mom’s packed lunch. I wish that my mom would still pack my lunch for work. Because she would give me my sandwich ingredients in separate baggies so that my sandwich wasn’t soggy by the time I ate it. And she would pack strawberries and a baggy full of sugar to dip them in. And of course oreos for desert, which would WITHOUT FAIL, end up in my eyebrows.

11. Jump Start 4th Grade Haunted House. Did ANYONE play this awesome computer game!? This was the greatest game known to mankind. Jump Start 1st-3rd grade sucked and every Jump Start after 4th was lame, but they really hit the jackpot with this one. Cacka would agree, and Beef wouldn’t know as she wasn’t allowed to play games with haunted houses. Buzz Kill.

12. AOL/AIM. If I could count how many hours I spent talking to people on AOL/AIM …..well I would have counted a lot of hours. This was the only avenue to Middle School social life. If you didn’t have Instant Messanger you were a nobody. And so I’d be damned if Allypoo11 wasn’t online Every. Single. Night.

13. Vacation Bible School. The week you spent at church, playing games, learning songs, and eating generic cookies. Ah, bliss.

14. Feeding the ducks. I do not know why feeding the ducks was so fun as a toddler, but man oh man was it like the jackpot of afternoon activities. Birds creep me out at this point in my life and therefore this hobby would no longer prove enjoyable. But 4 year old Ally would differ.

15. Follies Practice. How Donna Middleton got a group of 10 5th graders to learn an organized dance to Elvis songs is something that I will never know or understand. I only hope that I can ask her one day when my future imaginary kids are driving me insane, I will just whip out the memory box and teach them our 5th grade rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes”.

16. Birthday dance parties in the Eagles Nest at Northridge. Ah the greatest parties were dance parties at Northridge Country Club. The blissful awkwardness of dancing with the opposite sex builds like a tower of ill placed jenga blocks. And everyone went big or went home. We had Elvis impersonators, choreographers for the sock hop (thanks Ali Burrow) and we even invited the people from the grade above us. Cripes, they could have made a TV show about PG’s middle schoolers.

17. The days when you could wear tennis shoes with ANY outfit.

18. Ryan Holman.

19. That Nokia phone that had the game “snake” (we are fairly positive that Emily Middleton may or may not still own her Nokia from 9th grade.) Anyways snake was the best thing to hit cellular devices since cellular devices themselves. It was a pixely version of heaven.

20. Making up Dances. This was the only thing acceptable of a sleepover between the ages of 8-15. You had to make up a dance if people were staying the night at your house. You could get creative and include a trampoline and shampoo and multitask, like Beef and I. Or you could record said dance and watch it when you are 23 and laugh, such as the time when our band, BAAM, (Bethany Ashton Allyson Megan) made up a one hit wonder routine to “Baby Got Back”. I could still perform at least the first 10 seconds.

21. Sonday’s Camp. Oh the beautiful bliss that was sleeping in uncomfortable twin sized bunk beds with over excited counselors waking you up at the crack of dawn to paint your entire body blue and orange and gear up for an entire, and I do mean from SUNRISE to SUNSET, day of screaming. What did we scream? Well we cheered for our church, our towns, our state, or just insignificant noises at the top of our lungs and we played trash cans as drums. We had blue and orange floaties, we had bandanas, we had matching socks and we had t-shirts. We were color coordinated and louder than a thunderstorm. Rain or shine, we rose the flag of extraordinary over the other mediocre churches who didn’t have the budget for matching shirts and proved what it really means to be a Christian by shouting out the letters that spelled the town where we came from. TEX – ARK – ANA - FBC. We were like Titans at that Christian Summer camp and I loved it.

22. Power Rangers, and pretending that I was the pink one.

23. Fraggle Rock.

23 Reasons to love Betsy

Here are 23 Reasons to love and be thankful for Betsy (AKA my mom):

1. She loves me, Brit, and Carson more than anyone else in the world.
2. She laughs at my jokes…even when they aren’t funny, but more often when she doesn’t get them.
3. She still cries whenever we talk about losing the High School Volleyball State Championship…not because she gives a crap about the State Championship, but because she remembers how much it devastated me, and she empathizes sometimes a little too well.
4. She wore KEDS until about 3 years ago.
5. She will pat you relentlessly…but attempts to refrain from making red marks on her daughters’ legs, arms, backs because she knows it infuriates them. And she loves us enough to not pat. That’s SAYIN' something.
6. She always talks in a happy voice. Unless you say something mean to a sibling and then you get ‘The Look’.
7. She is the most selfless person alive.
8. She gave me the genetic gift of never being on time, and flying by the seat of my pants.
9. She gave me the genetic gift of being nice to others and genuinely caring about them.
10. She still loves Winnie the Pooh. Like REALLY loves him.
11. She cries anytime the Texas A&M Fight song plays.
12. Her favorite movie is likely Finding Nemo.
13. She’s beautiful—especially in that Glamour shot from before I was born, right mom?
14. She wants everyone to be happy….and for everyone to have the same amount of happiness—even steven.
15. She sends me CD’s with the lyrics to Mark Harris “Find your Wings” and makes me listen to it in my dorm room as she talks me through why the lyrics apply to us. I must get my love for lyrics from her.
16. She is funny…mostly when she doesn’t know it.
17. She always keeps her nails long, and she likes them painted. She keeps dirt out from under those suckers too, even if she has to flick all day long. We do not share this quality.
18. She can ROCK some gaudy jewelry from Dressin' Gaudy.
19. She prefers polka dots to anything else.
20. She sometimes drops a cuss word (hesitantly) and it has really been a bonding factor in the last few years. *The first time I ever heard her say a cuss word was when I disobeyed her on a stressful morning the day of my 6th grade Bon Voyage party. I spilled something in the car, (after she had asked me to hold it-I sat it down) and she said damnit. I cried when I got out of the car and called my Grandmother to see if she was even going to come to my party. She came. And hugged me a lot. And wasn’t even mad at me. I was relieved.
21. She would do anything in her power to make me happy.
22. She loves the people around her like Christ calls us to love them.
23. She is the best mommy in the whole world, and I feel so blessed to call her mine. Not like anyone could deny it anyways…we look identical.

Pictured above is my other mother, my aunt Trudy who I love dearly. They are both rockin' some hair glitter in this pic haha, and matching scarves!

Happy Mother’s Day!

23 Birthday Wishes/Memories

I feel very privileged for another year of life to be beginning as of tomorrow. So here is 23 birthday wishes combined with my favorite birthday memories.

1. WISH: That I could spend tomorrow with all of my favorite people...MAINLY BRITTNEY LYNN RICE (...impossible)
2. MEMORY: Last year when Megan saved my birthday. Read more about that here: Megan Saves the Day!3. WISH: That I could fly.
4. MEMORY: When I turned 21 and had a joint birthday with Lindsey Roloff and both Beef and Meg were in attendance. And Becca was there. It was fun until Meg fell asleep in Daisy Dukes……then all my best friends from college like Candace and Alaina threw me a small party at their house called Allypalooza. Some girl showed up who was univited...remember Beef?
5. WISH: That tomorrow would be sunny and warm.
6. MEMORY: When my boyfriend and friends threw me a joint surprise 16th birthday party alongside Cara (Cacka) Rochelle at Chils. I was really mad at him that day for not hanging out with me (he was secretly planning the party) oops.
7. WISH: The movie Burlesque on DVD.
8. MEMORY: Mine and Beef’s joint birthday in the 6th (?) grade in which an Elvis impersonator came and embarrassed us to the point of tears. It was so tragic and awful and I think it was only in the last year that Beef finally forgave her mom for allowing it.
9. WISH: That my boss would order me to wear sweat pants to work.
10. MEMORY: My 6th birthday at Skate America, when they pushed me around in the huge skate and everyone chased me. That was so fun. You got to ride around in it for the duration of 1 song of your choice and I am fairly positive that I chose “Achy Breaky Heart” –luckily my musical preferences have improved.
11. WISH: That Blair would not move away.
12. MEMORY: My 17th birthday party when Andrew had my birth
day party at his lake house all weekend. I got to invite my 5 best friends and he invited his 5 best friends and it still stands as one of my favorite birthdays. We had tube wars and played Frisbee and jetskied and wakeboarded and played washers and layed in the hammock and laughed and ate cake.
13. WISH: A yellow cake with chocolate icing.
14. MEMORY: My 10th birthday party where we had a cookout on our dock and I wore my yellow flower overalls that I wore to essentially any special event that year. It had a matching hat.
15. WISH: A hug from my little brother.
16. MEMORY: When my roommates and suitemates had a birthday party for me the night before we moved out of the dorms freshman year of college. They went crazy with crafts and made me all kinds of things, got me a cookie cake and an elephant card. A great way to turn 19.
17. WISH: An iPad 2.
18. MEMORY: When I woke up to my entire house decorated with streamers. We had an all day party which involved a lot of craziness and birthday crowns and sonic drinks with the windows down and Becca driving me around in her white xTerra. And a massive, and I do mean massive, dance party in my living room which lasted the majority of the night.
19. WISH: That I could visit Becca in Belize because she lives here:20. MEMORY: My 18th birthday...I am having trouble deciding exactly how my 18th birthday was spent, but I know for a fact I spent it with Ali Burrow and Emily Middleton. Probably included some shenanigans.21. WISH: That Edward Cullen was a real person.
22. WISH: That I could spend tomorrow at the lake, wakeboarding and laying out and playing loud music.
23. WISH: That 23 would be the best year of my life thus far.

23 Questions

1. Why is Blair Whitley moving ironically to Texas, adding her to the list of people that are too far away from me?
2. Why do I feel the need to be overly competitive in every aspect of my life, like for example, who can be in their pajamas in bed the fastest? (I always beat my roommate)
3. Where the hell is Carmen San Diego?
4. Why would a guy with a Christian fish on his car cut me off when merging lanes this morning?
5. Why does anyone on God’s green earth own a Kia after that God-awful commercial with the oversized hamsters?
6. What the hell was Peter thinking when he fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemene?
7. Why is it rendered socially unacceptable to kick people when they piss you off?
8. Why did I think it was a good idea to attempt to order my food in Spanish today at Chipotle? I ended up with the wrong order and laughing at what I think was a joke that I didn’t understand.
9. Who let the dogs out?
10. Why does 9am-5pm pass so slowly, but 9pm-5am passes so quickly?
11. Why hasn’t Texas seceded yet?
12. Who thought it was a good idea for Donald Trump to run for President?
13. When is it appropriate to drop it like it’s hot?
14. Why can you never figure out how to open your eyes in real life, when you have subconsciously been made aware that you are dreaming?
15. At what age is it appropriate to start using terms like ‘the good ole days”?
16. Why does the guy beside me drink out of his coffee cup like it is the goblet of fire?
17. Why do personalized license plates exist?
18. Why does the lady at the bank assume that because I am not a child that I do not want a sucker?
19. Why do I always sit near the guy at church who has his own loud rendition for every worship song?
20. How the hell do you exit Ikea?
21. Where can I purchase one of those chairs that will transport me up and down the staircase to my basement?
22. How many rounds of defensive driving does it take before you cease to get speeding tickets?
23. Why doesn’t every snack have a prize at the bottom like Cracker Jacks? Cracker Jacks suck. Put something legit at the bottom of a pack of nerds and I’m golden.