Weblog de Allie

so random

lightandmomentary — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:55:57 +0000

my brother sent me this, and it made me giggle.

Finally made it!

lightandmomentary — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:53:44 +0000

Welp folks, it took me a little over a year but I finally completed my drive from one coast to the other! I started off my trip last semptember when I left Avalon, New Jersey and last thursday I completed the drive by jumping in the Pacific in Oxnard, CA. Pretty awesome right? Anyhow, it was a great weekend of beaches, warm weather and roller coasters with my younglife kids. There was just something so cool about bringing these high schoolers to disney. The issues in their lives and the things they deal with on a regular basis are constantly stealing pieces of their childhood away from them, so it was nice for just one day to see them be kids again. Disneyland truly is one of the happiest places I have ever been and it was kinda nice for me to feel like a kid again too. I rank the rides of disneyland as follows:

5. Haunted Mansion (come on, it was decorated in Nightmare Before Christmas junk, how cool is that?)
4. Matterhorn Bobsleds (a classic rickety wooden coaster)
3. Indiana Jones (my YL girls can never comprehend how much my generation loves Indiana Jones)
2. Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (you get little blasters to shoot at stuff with while you ride, i loooooved it)
1. Space Mountain (who doesn’t love rollercoasters in the dark!?!)

So all in all it was a great weekend. I got to jump in the pacific for the first time (from this continent), got to watch my high school friends become kids again, and got to eat some In-n-Out burger along the way. Classic. Anyhow, thanks to those of you who prayed for my trip!! Now enjoy some cali pics!

Allie

lightandmomentary — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:09:01 +0000

It’s time

lightandmomentary — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:57:49 +0000

So sorry for the lack of blogging, but man sometimes life is crazy and the last thing I want to do is sit down and re-live the craziness of the day. But then sometimes and idea strikes you and you have to write. its time.

There’s a musician I know who is an awesome friend to Park City Younglife and just a really amazing singer and song writer. His name is Josh Rosenthal and as I was listening to Gotta Get Out, my favorite of all his songs, I was struck with clarity about my move here to Park City.

The song speaks of running from a town you’ve grown to hate, and just are dying to get out of. At first this seems to be so easily related to my life just cause I really did pack up and get outta town. But as I look at my life now and my life back east I realize it was never a town I was trying to get out of or a person I was trying to get away from, but really it was who I had become I was ready to get away from. And obviously my first few months here were not a huge change for me because in so many ways I let myself stay the same. I let my old bad habits stick around, I replaced old temptations with newer ones and searched in all the wrong places for the same old things…

Now as I start this journey onto Young Life staff I realize how much of my life has finally changed and how many things I still need to work on. I find now that I finally was obedient to what God was trying to tell me, it a little easier for him to start working on the rest of my life. I have left all my old identities behind. I am no longer am the life of the party, the drinker, the smoker, the guys girl, the daring one. I am no longer the good girl, the virgin, the churchy girl, the younglife leader, the great friend. I am leaving all identities behind, good and bad. A good friend of mine pointed out to me that I cling to my identities and those hinder my walk with Christ and even the good identities prevent me from finding and accepting my true identity in Christ. Truly the old has gone and I am no longer any of those things i used to once try so hard to be. So I guess I am finding new freedom in letting go of those old versions of allie and just clinging to the simplicity of my identity in Christ. Its has taken me a while to grasp all of this, but man it makes bad days easier and good days sweeter when I can find comfort in knowing that nothing in this world can change or take away the identity I have been given in Christ.

Of course this isn’t to say that I am not some of those things now and of course I am still keeping my good traits, but its when I let those things totaly decide who I am that it becomes a problem. So life is on the upward slope of cleaning up and simplifying. Its pretty awesome and definitely still rocky and painful. But freeing and full as well, and that really was all I wanted in the first place.

just allie

A classy cover song

lightandmomentary — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:12:33 +0000

Everybody’s Doing It

lightandmomentary — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:09:52 +0000

Thanks to brilliant boys like Kenny Hiser and Matthew Case I have discovered the nifty little online program called Wordle. Its this sweet tool that lets you enter a bunch of text and then it creates a randomly designed cluster of the words that usually ends up looking sweet. Matt did a real sweet one of the Sermon on the Mount which you can see here. You should play around with it next time you need a distraction from work or something, cause its great for that. I did a bunch of wordles this morning and my favorite was the one that was created from entering my blog website. Here’s how it looks:

Go Wordle!

I’m not

lightandmomentary — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:43:53 +0000

People ask me a lot about when I plan to move back east. Its a fair question I guess since I know some people were weirded out when I up and moved and i know that no one really knows how cool utah is. Well I have an answer now for all those who wanna know when I am moving back.

…I’m not.

So maybe I don’t miss the east coast weather and “mountains” but I do miss you all like crazy so start planning out your visit and I promise I will show you why I love it here.

A Moment of Clarity

lightandmomentary — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:55:28 +0000

Sometimes I feel like I spend so much of my time trying to figure stuff out. I feel like I run around all day doing stuff and inside my head my mind is racing around figuring stuff out as well. Sometimes I feel like I blurt out questions all day long at God without ever stopping to breathe or hear the answer. I know that for me listening to God and taking time for silence is a constant struggle and I think every once in a while God just feels the need to grab my attention and force me to hear Him out. This was one of those times.

As I sat on the grassy lawn of Red Butte Garden listening to KT Tunstall perform, I found my thoughts slowed down and in the silences of my mind came with amazing clarity the voice of God. Not actual words, but a feeling of knowledge and peace that has escaped me for a long time. I was suddenly made so very aware of God around me in everything. I saw God in the garden, in the mountains and in the sunset. I felt Him in the breeze and in the sun on my shoulders. I saw Him in the KT Tunstall, a beautiful petite woman with a soulful voice that appeared to explode out of her as if it was out of her control. I heard God in the melodies that traveled in the air, in the words of the songs, and in the tone-deaf voices of those nearby. All at once with overwhelming force I felt God saying “I Love You.” Its as if through all the beauty and wonder in the world around me God is just trying to say “I love you Allie! Can’t you hear me?” And most everyday I am too busy to notice and too busy to hear Him calling out.

But yesterday, perhaps due to the sensory overload, or maybe the calm produced by sweet red wine, I heard God’s declaration and could hear nothing else. Oddly enough at KT’s concert I listened, I mean really listened, to God for the first time in a long time. And this time the message was simple, “I love you Allie. Just wanted to let ya know.”

So I sat there, for the rest of the concert, silent yet surrounded by noise, and knew that I was loved.

Now my prayer for you and I both is that our moments of clarity are not few and far between and we can be silent and still everyday long enough to hear God saying “I love You” and really know that its true.

A strange and cheesy post for sure and I doubt it makes much sense or that I really captured what I was feeling last night. But hey, I tried.

woodleaf allstars

lightandmomentary — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:59:46 +0000

Well readers, Camp was awesome, so thanks big time for praying for “the youth” and their week. It was an amazing week of laughter, renewal, sore muscles, new experiences and incredible kids. I got a chance to watch broken kids stand up and dust themselves off, finally ready to take a step in faith, and kids that had forgotten old committments turn back toward the God they once found. Besides watching my girls (and our guys) learn and grow, I also learned a lot of lessons myself. As I sat during the twenty minutes and stared at the hundreds of kids sitting around in silence, I cried for the first time in a long time. I knew in my heart that God was working in big ways right then and also that there were still so many kids who haven’t had a chance to hear what those campers heard. It literally broke my heart to an extent that all I could do was cry. I learned that my passion for these girls is no accident and taking a position on younglife staff is exactly the right choice at this time in my life. God showed me a glimpse of how His heart breaks for those kids and showed me how He is gonna use that passion in me. I was reminded that although God gives us things to accomplish that we don’t have the capacity for, He does gives us things to acocmplish that He knows we can accomplish together if we can trust and let Him fill in our weak spots. I realize that although I am still terrfied for staff and for my all the things I lack going into it, I am excited that God has brought me to this place, I am pumped that I can trust enough to take this chance, and I am excited for God to move in big ways in PC YL. So yeah. I guess I am just really pumped for my girls and all they learned, for finally being sure of my staff decision, and for how siiiiiiiiiiiiick this next year of serving at PCHigh is gonna be!

thats all for now. check facebook for more camp pics (and note how sweet my volleyball uniforms were!) \

loving utah,
allie

“How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” -Anne Frank

Whoo whoo

lightandmomentary — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:42:09 +0000

We’re leaving for Cali in 3 hrs to spend a week in the Sierra Nevadas at Woodleaf for yl camp. SO PRAY Pray for the hearts of the awesome kids that are going on this trip, for the ones who stayed behind, for the energy/patience/wisdom/humility of the leaders and for the program team and summer staff of woodleaf, that God may use them to reach our kids this week and many more kids as the summer goes on.