Searching for Joy

I started this blog 5 years ago as I was fighting to come out of a year and a half long bout of depression. I felt hopeless, alone, and worthless. I did not see my future progressing and I couldn't imagine living a happy life. Each day was a struggle and took immense amounts of energy to complete.

I remember my counselor explaining to me that our brains create thought pathways. These thought pathways are carved through repetition of thoughts, whether the thoughts are negative or positive. The thought pathways that I had created in my mind were deep and maladaptive. I had a very unhealthily negative view of the world. I believed countless lies that made me have a dark and hopeless view for my life. I would attribute every negative event that happened to me as the world fighting against me. I had lost all hope of having a productive future and I felt incredibly alone. In one of my last therapy sessions my counselor gave me a homework assignment. Each time I produced a hopeless or anxious thought I was instructed to write it down, challenged to seek truth (if there was any) in the thought, think of the worst thing that could happen in the thought was true, and then counter it with a positive outcome or a truthful statement embedded behind the lie. She also begged me to focus on the positive things that were occurring in my life.

This assignment proved to be ridiculously monotonous because I had absorbed so many lies as truths. I stuck with it though. To ease the repetition of writing the negative thoughts I thought that I should record the little things that brought me joy in a dark time. Instead of writing those little pieces on paper I wrote them down on a blog. Thus, Little Pieces of Happiness was born. I was required to find joy in my mundane everyday life.

I am so thankful that the Lord brought me to such a low place in my life where I was so hopeless because He became my only hope. He broke me down to the point where all I could do was crawl back to Him. He became my Joy and I was able to notice every little piece of joy He brought into my life. This blog was started as a place where I shared my joy. I want y'all to share your joy too! I want to share our joys and sorrows together. We were created to do life together. If anyone who is reading this is to the point where I was, feeling hopeless, alone, and ready to give up, know this, you are love. You are never alone. There is so much more out there. Seek help if you feel this way. God create all emotions but we need to experience them in moderation and in syncrany. We will face many different seasons in this life. If you are in a joyful time, experience it fully. Soak it up and write about it so you can remember how beautiful life can be. If you are experiencing pain, betrayal, or hopelessness know that it won't always be like this. Look towards the light and chase after your creator who loves you beyond your belief. Seek professional help because you deserve more. Plain and simple, you deserve to be free and live in joy because we are protected by a savior who has it all in his hands. Find peace in that.

 If there is anyway that I could be praying for you please let me know.


 So much love,

New Year, New Me

New Year, new me, as cliche as it sounds, has been said a lot in my home the past few days. We've all adopted new goals and resolutions for this next year and it's motivating to see individuals starting their year off strong. I neglected to sit down and actually mull over what my resolutions would be this year. So here is me doing that. I think that I have overarching goals that I would like to keep throughout the entire year and press into my lifetime.

• Stay motivated. I want to invest my heart into what I'm doing 100%. I've spread myself too thin recently and because of that I've lost the value that could come out of each commitment. I want to follow through and enjoy my activities as I complete all of their duties.
• Get healthy. Not in the sense that I want to loose weight to find satisfaction. I want to feel healthy. My sleep schedule is wack, my body feels fatigued and my mind gets foggy. I want to eat right, push my body, and get the necessary amount of sleep my body needs to function. To achieve all of that I'm gonna try to reduce the crap I eat, walk as much as I possibly can and do yoga, and go to bed by midnight every night. 
• I want to serve. I've realized how selfish I've become while being in college. My weeks are centered around my schooling, which is a priority in my life, but so is loving on others. I want to help carry others burdens and walk along side of them through life. 
• I want to break down my walls and allow others into my heart. This is going to be a long process. It's going to start with coffee outings and solid conversations but it's going to happen. I want to share my mistakes and brokenness so I don't look intimidating to others. 
• I want to fully rely and push into God. I want to feel and be in sync with him.  I want to find truth in his word. I want every move of my to be intentionally inspired by him. I want to recognize his work in my life.

There is my start. This list will grow, I'm certain of it. I also want to add blogging onto it, but lets be real, it's not going to happen as frequently as I would like it to. New Year, New You! Go change the world, loves!


 Yo, Yo, Yo,

21

It's another mushy one year of my life has past post. Get ready for it.

In this moment of me writing, I am sitting in my bed at my home in Muk-Town on the eve of my 21st birthday. This is one of the most liberating birthday anticipations I've ever had. I'm excited to be 21 because I feel like I am now able to go and do anything with people, except for renting vehicles. So here is a compilation of 20 things that I have learned during my 20th year.

1. It's imperative that you don't hide who you are when trying to make new friends. Be yourself, be weird! Hopefully the friends that you make will like your weirdness!
2. Put yourself out there and work hard. If you fail at least you will know that you have tried your best. 
3. Once you become a tour guide you will sporadically pull tour facts out of your butt in non-tour conversations. 
4. Transparency forms trust.
5. Laxatives and Lamb rugs don't go well.
6. God will blow any expectation that you have for Him out of the water. He will continually surpass any expectations that you set for Him. 
7. You can't do everything. You can try. You will get tired and have to be okay with not being able to do everything.
8. Loving people can be hard. Do it anyway. The hardest people to love need the most love.
9. Creating blanket forts can be the best way to solidify friendships.
10. We are all sinners. Some are just saved by grace. Those who are saved are working to save the rest of the world.
11. Old friendships can be strangely and uniquely transformed into deeper relationships.
12. Making mistakes and messing up sucks. Realize that your worth is not formed around your successes and failures but your efforts and character.
13. God is so faithful. I continually doubt. He continually carries me. Stay the course.
14. Love covers a multitude of sin and is the best way to form relationships.
15. Being interrupted is God's way of relinquishing your plans and utilizing His. Welcome interruptions and be joyful in all you do.
16. I have no clue what the future holds. That's terrifying yet exhilarating.
17. God's timing is greater than mine. I'm not too good at waiting for God to execute that timing, but it's worth waiting when I do.
18. The things worth having are worth working hard for.
19. I can't please everyone and I have to learn to be okay with that.
20. Life is so good and worth living. I'm so in love with where I am and I am beyond blessed with all of the relationships that God has given me and all that He has trusted me with!

I can't wait for my 21st year of life! God's going to do radical things around me and I am blessed to be a miniscule part of His story. He is my rock and my savior. Praises to Him.


 Thankful for this life,

A Great Devide

I am broken, a sinner, wrongly righteous, lost but found, uncomfortable, tired, and transparent. I am also a follower of Christ. You guys know that I am authentic and open about all of my faults and I am going to be really open with you in this post.

God's been speaking to me this past 3 months, a lot. My heart is discontent and I feel conviction. I love feeling that way though because I know that the Holy Spirit is doing something inside my heart. I don't ever want to feel content spiritually because when I do that will be the moment when I stop running toward Jesus. I want to continue to sprint toward our Lord and encourage others to run along side of me. I think that the conviction is partially stemmed because at my university I have two very distinct group of friends, believers and non-believers. Almost all of my believer friends all associate with each other and befriend other believers. I love these people with my whole heart. They challenge me, and make me think. They hold me accountable for my actions and they push me to better myself. The one thing that I am coming to realize about that group is that they all hold such a strong bond with eachother that it is intimidating for outsiders. Now i will come back to this but I wanna describe my other group of friends and they explain why my heart is discontent.

My nonbeliever group of friends. This is a group of about 8 girls who I bonded with last year. They don't believe in Christ as their Lord and Savior. They reitcule me for believing in him everyday. They push me in my faith all the time and make comments that can make my heart break. But you wanna know something? I love them all with my whole heart too. See I believe that God calls his followers to run into the chaos and befriend the ones who don't believe in him. I pray everyday that I they will come to find him. Until that day I will continue to love them and show them grace. I am extremely transparent with them and show them all of my faults. They know what I believe and I talk to them everyday about it. They know that it is my life and they are starting to respect that and become interested in it. I am here for them to plant seeds. It's not up to me to get them to make a decision for Christ. I am there to show them Christ and explain the gospel but they will find God in God's time. It's his thing.

Here's the issue though. I want those two groups to befriend each other. I want the believers to engage the non-believers. I want them to make relationships. I want them to all become brothers and sisters in Christ. This is where my discontent heart comes into play. The churched friends that I have are so tight that my non-churched friends are terrified of them. I wrote a paper this week for my social psychology class regarding stereotypes. In the prompt I had to break down the 5 biggest social groups that are present on campus and describe how the whole see's them. One of these groups I named the Ministry Makers. This is how I honestly described outsides view of us, " The Ministry Makers are the students whose identities are founded in a religion and they are pursuing their faith publicly. The common stereotypes and traits that this group exhibit are that the students are prudish, close-minded, kind, stuck-up, loving, non-relatable and ignorant." I wish that this wasnt their view of us but for the majority of students on this campus that is how we are seen. How can we break that? I am not sure. I think that a great place to start is to stand firm in our beliefs but to be completely transparent about our brokenness with others and share that we need a savior to save us and his name is Jesus. 

My heart breaks when I say this but I am afraid to bring my non-churched friends around my churched friends because their lifestyles are so incredibly different. This is not how it should be. The believers should flock to the broken with open minds and heart to hear their stories and show them God's grace and the road to redemption. Now, I am not an expert on this and I am still trying to understand how God is explaining to me how to bridge that gap, but I am trying and that has to mean something.  

God's been using music a lot to remind me of his beauty and power and I want to share with you a few of my favorite lyrics that have resonated within my heart this weekend.

I breathe You in, God
Bryan and Katie Torwalt
The presence of the Living God
Satisfies the depths of my heart
And all of me I change when you came
And I'm led free by Your glory and grace
And I breathe You in,God
Cos You are there all around me

The kindness of Your love's pure light
Pierces through the darkest of all night
And everything is possible now
For God is here
And God is good

And You are good, God
For You are good to me

And when I don't understand
I will choose You
And when I don't understand
I will choose to love You, God



Sing Holy
Another Bryan and Katie
All of heaven, all creation
All the angels, sing holy

Interruption

So I’ve been trying to write a blog post for the past 4 hours. I sat down with my laptop in my bed and some Emily Wolfe playing trying to brainstorm what I was going to share with you. I had nothing. Nothing that I felt lead to share. Just as I started to look through my bible for inspiration my roommates came home and I lost my train of thought. It was totally okay though! I loved hearing about their days and learning more about their personalities everyday. We talked about classes, jobs, people, and life. We decided to Photoshop a picture of Shelby to see what her hair would look like blonde and then I decided to Photoshop my face onto a photo of Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum… hahaha this is the result. 

ANYWAY, I feel like this quarter has been so full of interruptions. Things have just gone so many different unexpected directions. I am not able to control everything and I am okay with that. At the beginning of this quarter, I made a list of 14 goals. 

One of them was to be open to God’s direction and where He could be placing me in a single moment. I’ve really been focusing on that. I need to be open to taking a break from my sociology reading to listen to different friends vent about their present living situations and listen to them stress about next year’s living options. I need to be able to take time on Monday nights to council children with addicted parents or children who are going through cancer treatment. I should be joyful to take a break from job applications to sing vocals for a worship CD.  These were all unexpected interruptions, but they were all welcomed. The thing that I have come to realize is that all of the necessary things that I must accomplish in life will get done. Somehow they will be accomplished. I might have to stay up later than planned and rearrange my schedule but I’m okay with it if I am helping others when I put my stuff aside.

Two weeks ago at Ekklesia, Garret talked about Mark 2. Chapter 2 starts with Jesus just heading back to His home after performing different miracles so He could rest. His followers followed Him home and interrupted His recuperation. When Jesus came upon them He didn’t tell all of them to leave, He started to teach them. He saw this interruption as an opportunity. There was a paralytic man who was brought to Jesus by his friends. Unfortunately, the crowds were too large for them to carry him to Jesus so they cut a hole in the roof and lowered him down in front of Jesus. The whole idea of the sermon was that we should do anything that is necessary to get to Jesus. The piece of his sermon that really resonated with me though was the idea that Jesus is never too busy to be interrupted. I think a lot of the time when I have things that I can’t handle in my life I don’t give them up to Him because I am afraid what He will do and that He will be too busy to make something of them. Wanna know what I found out? He is never too busy to be interrupted. Because of that fact, I never want to be too busy for someone to come and interrupt me with their life.

Some of the things that I have been “interrupted” (that’s in quotes because when I say interrupted I mean taken away from my own schedule and not Jesus’) with this quarter have tested my patience; others have brought great joy, and others I am still wondering what their meaning was. All of these things have taught me so much and I hope that with letting people interrupt me I can interrupt them too. Interruptions aren’t always bad. I think that Jesus speaks to me a lot through interruption. Let yourself be interrupted. And if you ever need anything, please, interrupt me.

Winter Quarter 2014 Goals

Tomorrow is the start of my 5th quarter at Western Washington University. I am excited, nervous, and not fully prepared but I am praying for God to make the day His and let everything go smoothly. I want to make this quarter the best one yet. I want to develop into the person who God wants me to be. I want to establish relationships that he sees fit. I want to invest my time here right where he wants it to be invested. So to maybe help set me on the right path for that I have made some goals. Here they are.

Goals for winter quarter. 

1. Read all of Acts. Take notes, look stuff up, reread if needed.
2. Make a solid dinner once a week. 
3. Go see an academic  adviser. 
4. Apply for the Student Admissions Representative position. 
5. Feeling okay to not hangout with everyone all the time. It's okay to do your own thing and take a break, Alli.
6. Talk to God more and rely on him.
7. Do laundry once a week. Thursdays?
8. Blog once a week. I'm gonna try to do Monday nights!
9. Walk to class and eat only when I'm hungry.
10. Call someone from home once a week or write someone a letter once a week.
11. Keep a prayer Journal.
12. Look for God and look for opportunities where He is placing me.
13. Go on adventures and admire God's creation. 
14. Listen for God.

 I feel that with these goals I will be starting on the right path of seeking Jesus more. I long for him and I can't wait to see what God has for me this quarter.

Alone on a Saturday Night

9:51 pm - Saturday - November 16th

Quiet, my suite is quiet. My roommates are all gone for the evening and I chose to stay in tonight and spend some time by myself. I don't know why but this week has taken it out of me, physically and emotionally. I would consider myself to be an introvert and when I am at my parent's home I love spending time alone in the evenings. At school, I don't seek out such alone time like I do at home. Usually, I am always spending time with friends, studying, or at church. And on the rare occasion I am in my room with one of my sweet mates. So tonight is rare. For some reason it is tough for me to be here though. I feel uncomfortable. I feel that I am unsocial and that I don't have any friends, which is not true. I have lots of friends. I think that I am always trying to justify to myself that I have friends and that I am liked. This internal debate is usually sparked because I fear that people don't like me because I am too quiet and seen as unsociable. For some reason I equate me sitting home on a Saturday night with the idea of me having no friends. But there is nothing wrong with being home on a Saturday night curled up on my bed, wearing a flannel with a hot chocolate in hand and my computer on my lap while I listen to quiet music and read Love Does. Nothing wrong with that, at all.