I needed a reminder

Why my Life is Blessed and I Should be Thankful:

1. I have an incredible man in my life who supports me, challenges me, and brings me closer to God. He is the only man I have ever loved and I deeply want to marry him someday.

2. I have thusly paid for my college education without the use of school loans.

3. I have great friends(like Josh, Sarah, Ethan, Julia, Monica, Ashley, Hannah, and so many others) who make my life wonderful, happy, and full.

4. I have a fantastic roommate, Ginny, that I get along with swimmingly and I can laugh for hours on end with.

5. I have a talent and an outlet for my creative expression through dance. I have been equipped with the tools and encouragement to form pieces that satisfy my need to say things I can't express in words and opportunities to share that with others.

6. I have a mum who is my biggest cheerleader, pushes me to make the best decisions in life, is ALWAYS there when I need encouragement, prayer, or a hug, and keeps me on track with life.

7. I have my second mum, Lea, who prays with me whenever I need it, is there to vent to, asks me good questions, and provides a wise perspective on life.

Sometimes, I get hit with the jealousy monster in a MAJOR way. Like, to the point where seeing people post things on facebook about awesome things they did or are going to do makes me sick to my stomach and breeds this intense hatred for what their life looks like as opposed to mine. I hate that this happens. I hate that I cannot be happy for other people for how God has uniquely equipped and blessed them, because all I can think of when I hear or see it is, "That should have been me. That is who I was supposed to be." I don't know how to counteract this. I know that these other people, their lives aren't perfect. I don't know how they have suffered in the past or how they are suffering now. I don't know what their home life is like, or what their daily struggles are. I have no basis to my ridiculous jealousy, yet it still continues to fester. Sometimes I feel like if only I knew that their life wasn't perfect, if only I could understand what they have gone through, then I would be able to accept how God has blessed them and know that it isn't the way I was meant to be blessed. Or maybe I should be able to accept that regardless...

Miracles.

That video represents one of the most incredible things I have had the privilege of experiencing. When I met Dan, he was a self-proclaimed agnostic who didn't want to say the word "God" out loud. Through the miracle of God's work in his heart and life, almost exactly one year later, he was baptized on the Spring Break trip in Tennessee. That week held a lot of meaningful and wonderful conversations with each other. Before the trip I was worried about spending such an intense week together, I was worried that we would be clingy and not meet other people, or that Dan just wouldn't experience things to the depth that I did. But my fears were unfounded(surprise surprise) and the week was a great growing experience for us as a couple and gave us a chance to refocus our relationship on God, rather than on each other.

I realized while in Tennessee that when we are "at home" at Purdue, whenever we talk to each other, it usually revolves around what happened that day in our lives. But in Tennessee it revolved around what God was doing in us each day. We were so much more aware of God's working in our lives rather than focusing on ourselves.

It's been a struggle being back to keep that our focus. We so easily slipped back into what WE are doing, and what is happening in OUR lives, we lost sight of God, again.

It's my prayer that we will intentionally grow our relationship as a couple, focused on God's desires for us, rather than our desires for ourselves.

I'm still alive.

I know it's been a while, but to be fair, I was in Tennessee on Spring Break and then trying to be a good student upon my return to Purdue.

Spring Break was so overwhelming, but in a good way.

The fun parts were really fun. There was many a game of euchre beasted with my allstar partner Dan, an adventure at MagiQuest, a trail ride taken on wild mountain horses, and a near death experience with the broad side of a mountain and a mass of mud.

Spiritually it was difficult though. God really spoke to my heart and broke me at times. I learned a lot about community and what that has looked like in my life and how that perhaps needs to change. A lot of broken relationships came to light, as well as new friendships forming.

I'm still processing a lot of information and trying to understand how: community should manifest itself in my life, and how I can take all the revelations, understanding, and desire for God and translate it to real life at Purdue and not leave it on the beautiful mountainside.

More thoughts and notes will come up as well as a video of Dan's baptism. :D

I hate exams

I despise their ability to feel like they have stripped you of all your knowledge that you have so lovingly stored up over the past weeks.

I despise exams with only 12 questions so that if you miss even one you are pretty much screwed.

I despise being made to feel like I don't know anything about a particular subject well I KNOW that I have a damn good understanding of every concept presented thus far.

I despise the large influence exams have over grades as if a few pages of questions accurately reflects the learning that took place during the course of the class.

I despise all the things that those grades ride on and how everyone uses it as a measure against which we rate people into "those I will hire vs. those I will not" or "those who deserve free education and those who do not." Since when did numbers determine the ability of a person to perform well or be a contributing member of society?

These numbers divide our community into this ranking of good, better, and best. We begin to fail to see that each person is worthwhile, has an important place in our lives, and is a treasured being because they are a Child of God and made in His breathtaking image.

I mean, sure I don't want some surgeon cutting into me if they aren't capable of remembering all the things they need to know, and I don't want someone doing my taxes who isn't able to add and manipulate numbers well, but that isn't what I am talking about here.

I'm talking about how destructive these numbers can be. How they segregate people into these groups and give those with the higher numbers this idea that they are better than everyone else. There are few things that I despise more than a brainiac honors student who thinks that the world looks up to them because their GPA starts with the number 4 and when they graduate their first paycheck is going to have more zeroes at the end of it than mine. I'm tired of the engineers and scientists(including me) who think that they are better than those who study something that doesn't require pages of calculations for their homework. Who think that just because they get to wear white coats and have lots of extra letters before and after their name that makes them better than their peer sitting in the Liberal Arts building. I said to a fellow nerd recently that all those people in LA majors help make the world go round just as much as we do, and if they didn't do what they did, our lives would be a lot less awesome. His response was, "Yeah but they can't tell you how the world goes round." All I could think of in response was "Who cares?"

We are all made differently for a reason, because we all have a different purpose in life. So stop trying to rank people into good, better, best, super best and remember that super awkward, or super dumb person in your class was made in the image of our Creator and has just as important of a purpose on this earth as you do.

Interview

That's right, an interview. I have one. On Monday. At 10:45am. With Morgan Foods.

Yup.

You might be asking, "But Allyson, I thought you gave up the whole internship search last semester when you got tired of getting rejected by companies for things you had little control over at the time?" Well, you would be right. I decided to make other plans for my summer that included staying in West Lafayette and taking classes. Those may still very well end up being my plans, this is, remember, an interview, not a job offer. Wow, that last sentence had a lot of commas in it.

I am very excited about the opportunity for an interview. And it's completely a God thing because I didn't even directly apply for this internship. Gwen, the job person in the FS department sent them my resume, along with many others, and they decided that they would give me 30 minutes of their time if I so chose to take them up on it.

I'm also freaking out because while I have had several interviews in my time, most of them were for camp, and most of the time, I had a pretty good odds of coming out with some kind of job. This, not so much.

Anyway, I don't really have a lot of details about the internship that I didn't directly apply for but am interviewing for except that it is in Austin, IN(not Texas, unfortunately) and it's with Morgan Foods which is a co-packing company.(they make food products that they sell to other companies to sell under their label)

It does kind of amaze me, though perhaps it shouldn't by now, how interestingly God can work sometimes. It seems like as of late, He has been giving me a lot of ideas. Like, don't keep your heart and mind set on this one thing, be open to other opportunities. I like to plan my life out a lot and really far in advance, but the past few weeks have been full of a lot of reconsidering. And thus far, He hasn't really imprinted it on my heart that I really need to change anything right now, it's more just been the process of considering other options and keeping an open mind.

Well, that was my day today.

That and an awesome rave with Josh. :D yeeeah awkward dancing!