thunderstorms and name changes and Spam

I keep thinking of really fun things to blog about at like 2am. Mostly because today at 2am, I got woken up by the most rockin' thunderstorm ever ever ever. It was throwing down outside, and the lightnight was horizontal and super close to my house, and my mom fliiiiiipped when I went out and stood on the patio to watch it. Smudge totally hated it, she had her head stuck under my bed for about three hours of misery and I had to give her a bunch of cookies and tell her that life was going to be okay again soon.

Anyway, this morning at church was super rad. I bounce around between churches in Atown, but today I went to Woodland Hills Church of Christ (I typed out the name for a reason, stay tuned) with my friend Sally because she's moving to the dang Czech Republic in two weeks, which is the weirdest/neatest thing ever. Pastor Paul talked about creating a contagious culture, and about representation, and mostly about worship, and it was so neat, but the neatest part is that they're changing the name of that church! Cool, I know, right? They're changing it to Woodland Hills Christian Church to better portray to the community what they're about, which I think is rockin and bold and all kinds of other stuff. I really like Pastor Paul. I went to the church across the street from WHCC all through high school, and their pastor is named Paul as well, and sometimes I'll pop over there because those guys are my church family, but man oh man do I love Pastor Paul's teaching. He's got nothing on Richard, though, but I think those two would get along.

I would like to leave for Colorado today, please. It's a bummer that I have to wait for that a little while longer. But I get to do lots of fun things before that, like my half marathon training (bahaha...I am currently a fan because I don't have to run again until Tuesday according to that fun little guy), and a road trip to a YL camp here in VA, and this fun thing called JamFest which is a big youth rally week, and I get to lead a team on to total victory this year. I'm the bobbing for SPAM (yes, you read that correctly. It's like bobbing for apples. But better.) champion, so I'm gonna have to train a new pro. Nothing i can't handle. I think I have the neatest life ever.

virginia is for boring people.

I have the best dog on the face of the planet. Her name is Smudge, she's an Irish Wolfhound and I don't remember life without her. She weighs a million pounds and all she does is lay on my bed all day long, so since it's summer I've been focusing on taking a nap with her every single day because she loves that so much. Mom says that whenever I'm gone at school, she just mopes around the house all day. People think I'm kidding when I say I'm going home just to visit my dog, because that's really what I'm doing. We're best friends, and I don't think anyone else will ever love me as much as she does. I think I'm okay with that.

Abingdon is pretty...boring. It's pretty, too...but mostly boring. I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with Young Life leaders and kids up here. I love YL here...it's so comfortable and wonderful and I just love the people. I guess because Young Life up here is what captured my heart and spurred me on towards becoming more like Jesus, so I just love being around my old leaders that helped me through high school. I've been helping lead some Bible studies up here, and the other day I got up at 7am to go hang out at a coffee shop with some 9th graders, and we read through the story of David & Goliath and it was such a fun way to start off the day. I stayed after they went off to school and read a little bit more of Jeremiah, and it's really been convicting to me. It reminds me of Hosea, because the early chapters talk a lot about how we're unfaithful to the Lord, but how He loves us through our lack of consistent faithfulness. So good.

I really want God to do something ridiculous to my life. I was sitting in best friend Caroline's living room until 1am last night talking to her about how I don't feel like the last year has really changed how I feel about where God is calling me to go with my life. And that really bothers me, actually. Because you know what, if I'm trying to discern between medicine and ministry...whichever one God tells me to do is pretty much going to shake up evertything, and I don't like thinking about what that might mean. I've grown so much in my walk with Him, but I just don't listen to God. I drove around town for about an hour, because that's what I do when I need to think, and then came home and watched the Nooma "Noise"...and it was about how sometimes we try to hear God in the wind and the storms and stuff, when we're really supposed to hear Him in silence. And that's what I want to do this summer. This whole summer. I just want to shut the heck up and listen to God, just like Mary...I want to sit at the feet of Jesus and just listen.

i fought the law and the law won

Isn't that BEAUTIFUL? That's the view from the deck of the Young Life camp I'll be working at for a month this summer out in Colorado. I'm freaking pumped, in case you couldn't tell. Sad day though, because I don't get to leave for that until June 20th! I'm not a good waiter.

So it's officially summertime in Virginia and I don't know what to do with myself. I've only been "home" for less than a week; I spent a few days after commencement at Wofford down in Myrtle Beach with some of the girls from my hall (Marsh 2! Whoop whoop!) and it was soooo ridiculous but suuuch a joy. The beach is actually one of the many many places where I feel close to God...I just sat out out the shore, and it made me think about the beauty and complexity of Creation, how God made something as powerful and mighty as the ocean, but then also knew where exactly to make it stop, so that I can sit a foot in front of the tide coming in. So cool. But then, after getting a nice sunburn (which is now a tan, no worries) and a fabulous 7-hour drive on roads in a really pretty part of NC I've never driven through before, it was time to come back to Southwest Virginia for a while. And I don't want to waste my time here; I have three months of respite, one of which is already going to be dedicated to serving and growing spiritually out in Colorado. So today I made a plan! Well not really, but I figured out things I want to accomplish.

Read more Bible than ever before!. My Biblical knowledge is not stellar, granted I only figured out about a year ago that being in the word on a daily basis was a pretty important thing, but it's been a hang-up in my personal and life-on-life ministry. So I really want to commit to diving deep into the word and wrestling with God on what it really means, applying that to my life, and then telling people about it. I'm going through Jeremiah, and I just love the first chapter, because it's a really beautiful picture of one of God's promises. Basically, I like Jeremiah's modesty--he's so taken aback at the fact that he should be a prophet to the nations! And he's feeling all unqualified, but then it goes on to assure us that even if we do not know God's work, God does, and He will graciously stand by us and carry us and equip us and provide for us! Neat. Jeremiah is up there on my list of favorite books of the Bible, and going through it is sort of a long process, but it helps me to go back and look through a commentary as I go (I like Matthew Henry's...or the Coffman Commentaries).

Run and run and run. Yeah, I'm a workout nerd. I'm missing Richardson more than I thought was possible. And all the gyms in Abingdon are pretty lame (no spinning classes, Allison) so I'm committing to becoming a better runner. My neighborhood is about a mile around, mostly uphill if you run in the right (but paaainful) direction, so I try to run it a few times every night (granted, this is day 2 of that plan and my quads are dying). My favorite running song is "I Fought the Law" by Green Day, haha. My goal is to work on a nice 5K time and find some races when I get back from CO. But I'm having a hard time with this, because I've been doing my ab regimen before my running, and my abs will totally cramp up about a mile into my workout and it's killer! And I can't give up abs, so I think I'm just going to have to separate the two. Pre-cardio ab workouts just don't work out. I'm such a workout nerd. I cut out white carbs and high fructose corn syrup from my diet. Doesn't that sound like something an old person would do? Yes, it does.

Go to the OR.Not to have surgery, but to watch it! My dad works at a hospital with a pretty ballin' OR setup, and I know a bunch of the surgeons, so I figure that I should use my good networking skills to continue to discern if God is calling me to go into surgery. I really think He might be; my dad and I were putting together this bookcase I went out and bought, and I did all the drilling, and we got into a conversation about burr holes (that's when someone's gone unconscious from a head trauma, usually because of a subdural hematoma, and so they'll take this sweet drill and just put some holes in your skull to relieve the pressure. The best part is the drill knows to stop right after the skull has been drilled through, so none of the soft matter of the brain gets messed up) and I want to dooooo that. I want to drill holes in peoples' brains. That sounds so messed up. But when God gives someone a passion, He gives someone a passion. And a lot of people never want to drill holes in skulls. That's all I'm saying. Actually, I want to specialize in whatever will be best for doing pro-bono work overseas, but I figure neuro or ortho or cardio will be what I go with. Annnyway, I'll probably be watching some sweet operations and talking to some surgeons about the intricacies of what they do. There's one guy that I've never even met, but he knows about me through Dad, and he's from near Spartanburg and wanted to know where I went to church and knew about Young Life, so I'm excited to meet him. I want to be serious about science (and skull drilling, that's so neat) AND serious about Jesus and I really think that God will give me the strength to do both and do both well.

Okay, I'm done rambling about running and abs and carbs and brains. For today. Oh, summer...