My Swanson moment...

I had a Ron Swanson moment.

I was trying to upload pictures to my last blog entry, and ended up uploading every single one of my pictures on my computer to google's version of "the cloud." I thought, No big deal, I guess if my computer dies, my pictures will at least be saved. 

But that wasn't quite the end.

My phone (which is apparently way smarter than I realized) started sending me random slide shows of my pictures. And not just any kind of slide show. Very specific slide shows, with titles, correct names of towns where the pictures were taken, and the correct sequence of the pictures that were taken.

The first one was kinda neat, the second one was a little intrusive. But the third one was down right creepy. So the only solution to me was to delete my google account and erase all my pictures I had uploaded. Enter Ron Swanson.

In my haste to preserve my privacy, apparently I deleted all my pictures from my blog. I don't really know what to do.  I could spend my time trying to find those pictures again and upload them again, or I could just forget about it.

Also ended up deleting all the picture from my phone. Like the ones I took when my friend that lives hundreds of miles away in Philly came to visit me. Confounded technology.

Maybe one day when I have absolutely nothing else to do, I'll take the time to try and re-upload the pictures to my blog. Today is not that day.

-21...

*photos accidentally erased from existence*

Currently it is -4 outside right now. Wind chill? -21. Of course I chose the 2 coldest winters to live in the midwest. 

Is it bad that it makes me feel better that the weather is just as bad, if not worse, in NJ? Sorry guys.

As cold and snowy as it is, this was the sunset as I was driving home last night. Had to pull over to get a good shot out the window of my car. Better be thankful for it, took 5 minutes for me to get the feeling back in my hands afterwards (note to self, clean car windows for optimal, 'indoor' photography).

Big girl update: I did my taxes this past weekend. 

For whatever reason, this seemed like one of the adult things that I would never really understand and never know how to do, and would have to depend on others my whole life get it done for me. But thanks to Turbo Tax's free option for Federal and State, I was able to get it done myself. 

Also, found a new family doctor. Its like I'm an adult or something…

During said doctor's appointment, I was asked what my occupation is (by my male, attractive, my-age doctor no less), and then a couple questions later, the obligatory "are you sexually active" question was asked, to which he answered before me with "Oh, well I guess with your job, that'd be kinda not good if you were…" I have some really interesting conversations these days.

With our crazy weather, I had a day to work on my current project: Plarn (plastic yarn) tote bags!!

Don't worry! In a little bit, you'll get a chance to get your hands on one of these, I promise! In the meantime, please feel free to save any and all plastic grocery bags you come across…and if you feel like mailing them all to me, I wouldn't mind in the least. 

One another note, there are a few other things I wanted to process. 

I feel like I oscillate between wanting to know exactly how my life is going to be played out, and then when God actually shares things with me, I freak out and can't handle the prospects of the future. Thank goodness God is sovereign and knows exactly when to tell me things, but I still struggle with my reactions. 

I've recently observed in my life how often I react negatively to…well, everything. I complain, I stress, I stress-eat, I stress-Zumba, I overanalyze, and I essentially doubt God. I doubt that this was the right thing that should have happened to me, that this was the right circumstance for me, that this was the right way I should be treated. 

I doubt because I believe I am entitled. 

Entitled to reward, entitled to ease, entitled to a break.

And yet I'm sitting in a warm (enough) apartment, I have clothes on my back and in my closet, food in my pantry and fridge, friends to see tonight, and a myriad of non-essentials that give me a life of general comfort. 

Yet I always think I deserve more. The problem is that what I actually deserve is not so good…judgement. Ultimately death.

That is always a good wake up call to my never-ending complaining, my never ending doubt of a loving God who took the ultimate judgment from me and for me. And yet, I still say "Please sir, may I have some more?" (Dickens quotes are always a good crowd pleaser, right?).

Its like that one guy that Jesus helped… "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."

Lord, I trust you. Help me trust you.

My positive story for the day is that while on the phone, I was told by my favorite 3 year old in the world "I have a kiss for you" and while I couldn't quite hear the aforementioned pucker on the other end, I was assured it happened by the adult in the room with her. Oh how I miss all of you, my dear family and friends. 

Next...

This is a post I've wanted to write for a while. It's filled with things that have made me smile since being back in Ohio. Seeing as how I meant to write this back in October, a few other things have happened along the way that I can add. 

Lets start with good 'ol Dunkin Donuts. They built one down the street from me. And by down the street, I mean within walking distance. Thank you, Jesus!

Getting ready to have the best morning ever.

Do these Ohioans even know what they're in for?

My life is complete and filled with lots of coffee...and less money.

Next…

At work, we have a required spiritual day of rest. We are told to take the day and spend it with Jesus. Its amazing. Last year, I spent the day walking around a beautiful park. This year, I wanted something a little more…reclusive. 

Let me introduce you to "The Refuge".

Can you say cozy? There's a pond outside that window, ducks and rainy day included.

There's a couple just outside of Cincinnati that turned a portion of their house into a suite. They allow anyone who works in ministry to use this suite, free of charge, to recuperate in, and it. Is. Amazing. 
 

Did I mention it was cozy?

Breakfast bar with a Keurig, lots of coffee, and happiness.

See? Wasn't lying about the pond.

Next…

Finally got our apartment together. 

Practically none of this stuff is mine. Thank goodness for a furnished roommate.

Dresser that a coworker gave to me. A tall coworker, so no slouching in front of the mirror. At last.

This isn't currently how the room is set up, but wanted to show off my shelf hanging skills. As well as my bed purchasing skills. Got this at a yard sale for $29.50, then saw the same one for sale at a thrift store for $350.

Bargain of the century, what-what!

Next…

My friends are famous.

Here they are laughing it up, having fun making cotton candy, while I am sweating in the background dishing out snow cones to Harvey Cedars campers that are literally inhaling them and getting back in line for seconds. Is death by snow cone possible? It was a very real possibility that evening.  I exaggerate nothing.

I am also famous...and not just for my upper right arm as I am in the picture above.

No, our eyes aren't glazed over from drug use.

We were on a beach at night and someone took a blinding flash picture. 

I can still see the spots. 

Next…

I was blessed with my Aunt Joanne's bread-maker. I haven't bought a loaf of bread in probably 3 years, and this has made my bread-snobbery oh so much easier. But as you can see, that first piece wasn't exactly the perfect makings of a sandwich…

Yes, its ridiculous. But warmed up with butter? Delicious.

Next…

BSF, as always, is amazing. Coming back to this group with these awesome ladies has been such a blessing. When apartments change and bosses change and churches change, BSF is always the same. 

Also, super cool fruit bowl from an estate sale.

You'd think a blog post that was 3-4 months in the making would have been a little better. But I think that's why I'm taking such a long time to blog. I read so many blogs that are so good, and I feel like I could never write as comical as they do, as deep as they do, or even as grammatically accurate as they do. I'm trying to get past that and assume you will all still love me, even when my sentence-putting-togetherness isn't up to snuff. 

My encouraging ending story is from STARS today. I had a good day. Sometimes, it feels like they're never listening, they'll keep making whatever choices they want, regardless of the kind of advice we try to give them, but today, I was encouraged. Our topic was on media, particularly how ads/tv shows/movies use relationships/sex to sell their product. We talked about a lot of different things and were having a really good discussion, and it seemed they were all understanding what we had to say. Then I mentioned a horrible horror movie my friends in college made me watch so I could encourage them to be bold enough to speak up to their friends if they don't feel comfortable watching something, and at the mention of the movie title, one of my students yelled out "Oh, that's the best movie! You should all watch it!" and I just wanted to yell back "Have you heard anything I've said?!" But there was one student, my quite little anonymously-named student, who looked at me, and smiled. And I knew she listened. I knew she heard my heart and I know she will take what we said and apply it to her life. Being in the business of "seed-planting" stinks. But when you see one little seed take, its a wonderful thing. 

Joining the 21st Century...

I feel like I keep waiting for something amazing and life-changing to happen to me so that I'll have something excited to blog about.

Shockingly, that hasn't happened yet.

But I would really like to continue blogging…and more than once every 4 months.

Hold that thought, just remembered I have laundry in the dryer. brb….

Sorry about that. If I leave it too long in the laundry room, my fear is walking in only to find my nice clean clothes in a pile on the gross floor of our laundry room, which also doubles as the hallway between apartment buildings, as well as dumping grounds for random trash that our neighbors feel belong in the corners of the laundry room. 

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, my re-entry into the blogging world.

Life has been…alright. Just returned to Ohio from my Christmas vacation in NJ, and Ohio has welcomed me with open arms…and temperatures below 0. Its great to be back. We had snow days this week, forcing me into a life of office work, and 3 days of that just about killed me this week. 

But alas, I survived. What else does the month of January have in store for me? I'll be talking to kids about sex, talking to some other kids about sex, and then I'll be guest speaking at a church talking to their teens about…anyone? Anyone? Yup, sex. 

I have the weirdest job. 

I'm still flabbergasted that this is where God has lead me. What else could He have in store?

In other semi-exciting, non-spiritual news, I've officially joined the 21st century. I, Allie McGillick, now have a smart phone. I had to change numbers to get a good deal on one, and the first day I had it, I wanted to chuck it across the room because I couldn't seem to do anything correctly on it, but now that I've had it for a few days, I'm starting to see the light. How did I ever live without one? 

First order of business was to make sure I ordered the perfect case. Not only did I want to be able to protect my new baby investment, I wanted to do it in glamorous, geek-culture style. So in 7-10 business days, I will be sporting this bad boy around…

No judgements please. Unless you think I'm cooler. Then judge away, my friends.

And if you would like an affordable smart phone of your own, check out Republic Wireless. Their plans are amazingly inexpensive. The number change was worth the nearly $600 I'll be saving in the next 2 years. Cha-ching.

What else? Did I mention it was cold? Moving on…

I signed up for health insurance last month, but am still waiting on the info to be mailed to me. Hopefully that happens soon, I want to take that little, magical health care card for a spin. Maybe not to the extreme they do here…

April and Andy and their insurance...

I think that's it for now. Gotta go get my laundry out of the dryer. Had to put it in for a 2nd round; the other dryers were being used and I was stuck with the broken one that takes at least 2 cycles to properly dry stuff. 

My positive little story for today is that I was blessed to be able to purchase almonds. And not just any almonds, but cocoa roasted almonds. It's all I can do to not run in the kitchen now and consume all of them. But I'm gonna make that bag last as long as I can…or at least the next couple of days. 

Blogging to Blog...

I am an external processor. I can only work through my feelings on something once I've voiced them to another person or written them out, or in this case, typed them out. I stop blogging because I wanted to stop processing.

This doesn't mean life was all horrible. It just got messy. I didn't understand a lot of what was going on, and rather than blog as if those things never happened, I just stopped blogging.

Who wants to dredge up the messy stuff of life? 

Last year, I would somehow make it through my work day, get home, and drown out my feelings with noise. Music, movies, TV shows, phone calls, whatever it took to not process what was really happening.

The worst part?

My life really wasn't that bad.

I was drowning out my feelings on being so far from home and not liking Ohio and not liking my housing situation, and in my misguided purge of thoughts and emotions, positive emotions and feelings went with the bad and everything seemed worse than it really was. That usually happens when you focus on only the bad...you can't see anything past it. 

I would call friends and family and vent or share good news, but then I would stop thinking because it was all so confusing.

"Why in the world am I here?" was about as far as I would get. But...

I HAVE TO STOP ASKING THAT.

I won't ever know why I'm here. When I lived in Florida, I never asked that question.  But, in all fairness, its because being a dolphin trainer living in the Florida Keys never stretched me like being the director of a student outreach department for a pregnancy resource center in Southwest Ohio is stretching me. 

Its so easy to focus on the tears (as in something that is torn from being stretched, not boo-boo kind of tears…) and to miss the growth. 

This can't be a way for me to vent to cyber space. This can't be a way for me to complain about a state that I still don't know how I feel about. And this can't be a facade of how my life really is.

This needs to be an outlet in which I can safely process life.

So far, this year has been….completely unpredictable. My one constant however is God and that He's going to keep throwing things my way that I probably won't understand this side of Heaven. 

I've made it through a whole year of working full time for a ministry and 6 months of volunteering for another while working full-time (I never understood how everyone else did that back at SRCC student ministry…and now I know how…only with God's help!), and they haven't fired me yet, so something must be going right.

Instead of a "remember when", I want to share small positive experiences at the end of my posts. For example, a very small, inconsequential thing happened today, but was a positive spin on what was turning into a negative mental downward spiral. 

At my church, they stop passing out the bulletins with the sermon notes in it once the service starts. Then right before the pastor preaches, the ushers walk around to pass out bulletins to anyone that came in late and missed them….so yeah, I'm usually raising my hand to get one. As I was sitting there waiting for him to walk down the aisle with the bulletins, I was feeling a little ostracized…the friend I usually sit with wasn't there, and the friends I'm still working on making don't usually save me a seat, and I tried to be a tiny bit chatty with the lady next to me, but she wanted nothing to do with me. So when the usher ran out of bulletins before I could get one, I wasn't too happy. It's hard starting up at a new church, and its been really difficult not to get discouraged when it still doesn't feel like I belong. Oh, and I also felt like I annoyed the person behind me because I wore heels today (#justcallmeshorty #whatupsixthree) and the lady behind me was so short she had to switch seats with her husband so she could see. So there I was, no sermon notes, no friends, and pissing people off all around me. But then the couple behind me tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a bulletin that had the sermon notes in them. It was something so simple and non-life changing, but in that moment, after feeling like I didn't fit there (physically and emotionally) this simple gesture showed me the light. I still may not have my community, but people do care. I may not be best friends with everyone in the church, but I'm still going and meeting people each time I do. So thank you to my thoughtful, short, church-pew neighbor for showing me a little bit of kindness when I really needed it. 

Truths...

The sky is blue.

Ohio is far from New Jersey.

Moving is hard.

I saw kids burning things in a park today.

Little Chief is an amazing band.

I stopped blogging because I wanted to stop processing life.

Wanting to stop processing doesn't make life stop.

These are all true statements.

The truest statement is that no matter what I'm going through or anyone else is going through, God never leaves us or forsakes us.

I'm going to start processing and start blogging again.

Here's to seeing that last statement come true. *clink*

"The Lament of Eustace Scrubb"

There has been a lot going on inside my head lately. I don't know that I can blog about any of it yet, but I wanted to share something with you all (however many that is...).

I was driving home from work yesterday and an unexpected snow storm caused that commute to more than triple in time. This lead me to search for inspiring music on my ipod. It was either that or curse out every driver I passed...aren't you glad I choose the former?

I had been jamming to upbeat music to keep me energized, but after driving through an hour of snow, I felt like something more....contemplative. Pensive. Thought-provoking. Instrumentally intriguing.

I put on an album I downloaded for free (legally...don't you judge me...). I had listened to this album a few times before, but there was a song so profound I had to put it on repeat for the remaining 45 minutes of my commute.

Please, if you value your soul in any way, click the video below and listen to this song, "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb":

Even if you weren't paying attention to the lyrics, the music alone is enough to create an emotional reaction.

And if you were one of those slackers people who didn't pay attention to the lyrics, let me give them to you:

"brother, forgive me
we both know i'm the one to blame
'cause when i saw my demons
i knew them well and welcomed them
i knew them well and welcomed them

i'll come around
i'll come around

father, have mercy
i know that i have gone astray
'cause when i saw my reflection
it was a stranger beneath my face
it was a stranger beneath my face

i'll come around
i'll come around
someday

when i touch the water
they tell me i could be set free"


I feel as though I have been a stranger to myself these past 6 months. I have no idea who this person is that's moved away and is living on her own.

I'm plagued by professionalism and immaturity, and I am flip-flopping back and forth from those qualities so rapidly these days, I don't know who to expect in any given situation.

One moment, I'm at work and scheduling meetings with school officials to discuss curriculum, and the next I'm throwing a temper tantrum because I don't want to go grocery shopping, and then I'm calling different mechanics to discuss my options in purchasing tires for my car, and then I'm crying because I can't decide what to eat for lunch because I am so sick of making decisions.

I know I'm where God wants me, but sometimes that only applies geographically. I don't seem to be there all the time emotionally. I feel like there is a stranger beneath my face. Some days, she seems to be a better person, other days she's a worse person. Even in the moments I think I am being most genuine, everything is so different, I still don't feel...right.

I read "The Dawn Treader"last year, and just wept as Eustace described the way Aslan came and removed the person he didn't recognize.

I need that removal. Or maybe even an introduction to this new person. I know my demons, and sometimes the familiarity of self-pity is more comforting than the unaccustomed confidence I have been experiencing at certain times. I don't want to welcome them anymore.

I don't want to just wait for all of this to be over. That was my plan in the beginning, just survive until it was over. So far, that hasn't worked out very well. When we just wait for things to pass, we can't see any of the progress we've made. I can't recognize any of my accomplishments. I'm just keeping my head down and chugging along. I really don't want to do that anymore. Because keeping my head down has now turned into trying to keep my head above water, and I'm sick of feeling like I'm drowning.

But maybe when I go under, when I fully touch the water, I could be set free...

Free from the sin that so easily entangles me. Free from worldly expectations. Free from myself.