laundry

a sign you have entered "adult world" is that at least half your clothes require slightly more effort than just throwing them in the dryer after you wash them.

unlike the tooth fairy and the easter bunny,

the monkey lady does exist.

and of course, she is related to us (or she is our "kin" to properly reference the term). mom didn't believe it either... until she actually met the monkey lady while she was in walterboro the other week. sadly, i was not present to experience the excitement.

apparently the "monkey lady" (as she is referred to around walterboro) is a distant cousin of ours. surprise suprise. we have strange relatives. how do ya'll think momma, aunt meg and nancy were able to write 3 books? because we have got real life inspiration right and left around here.

the monkey lady explained that she used to have many monkeys, but she took most of them to florida to give away.
except connie of course.
connie is the monkey she kept. connie apparently goes everywhere with her ("except to the hospital"), is bathed daily, wears diapers at night, and sleeps between her and her husband ("i like to keep an eye on her, because you know monkeys can get into everything...").

i told mom i needed to meet and document this lady and connie for our family photo album. maybe i can have lunch with her....i need to work on that next time i'm in walterboro.
i wish i could make this stuff up, but i can't. :)


"When you find out things about yourself
That you hadn't ought to know
When your grandma calls and books you
On the Jerry Springer show
And you find out you and your wife of ten years
Just might be related
Brother, life's not over
it's just Simply complicated
Life is complicated with its Ifs and ands and buts
It's alright to be crazy, Just don't let it drive you nuts" -Jimmy Buffett

one year of cancer free-dom

i found out this week that i have passed the one year test. after a long wait (thanks to my doctor deciding to take monday off), I was at work when I finally got the voicemail i had been waiting for: "you are completely fine!" exhausted and excited, i went home and cried myself into a nice long nap curled up with my heating pad. (my body temp isn't quite back to normal yet haha).

a lot of the fear and anxiety i have experienced in the past few years has diminished over the past 12 months. my God has been so kind to me in many ways, and through many people. if you are reading this, you are probably one of them. thanks for the encouragment.

the Lord has granted me at least another year. which for me, equals finally being able to move on with my life. finally making plans for things down the road, but being flexible to what God may have in store for me.

"We plan and figure and predict that this or that will happen, but we forget to make room for God to come in as he chooses. Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but do look for Him...No matter how well we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that He may break in at any minute. We tend to overlook this element of surprise, but God never works in any other way. " -Oswald Chambers

2008.....get excited!
i am.

thyroid insanity and answered prayer

not all of ya'll got these, but they are actual emails that went out within an hour of each other yesterday:

8:30am
hey ya'll-

so latest update as of a few minutes ago.....got my blood work done yesterday and just got the results. Two weeks ago, my TSH level was at 1.75 and I has to be at least 30 to have the test, so they made me wait until this week to check again. My TSH is now 129. Which means I am a walking dead person pretty much. The doctor seemed real surprised that it got that high (story of my life).

Unfortunately, I am not able to have the scan this week. Normally I would take a radioactive pill, get scanned and be done (pretty quick procedure). However this year I was just informed that I have to have a more invasive scan. The only day they can do this is on February 4th. I will be injected with some radioactive fluid at 11am and scanned at 3:30pm. Which means, I am still on the diet and still off my meds for another week.

Prayer requests:

-That I can make it through work this week (no thryoid = diminished brain function = aly is an idiot). The Lord's strength will be displayed if I do, because I certainly can't do it on my own.
-That the teachers will have grace and I can rearrange my schedule for monday so I do not have to take the day off.
-That I can make it through the weekend...particularly with energy and not being able to eat at several large events (which includes having to work on Saturday morning, a family birthday party, and the super bowl... which i may skip entirely (sorry wynn and john!).
-That the Lord will have mercy on me during the injection procedure on Monday (if you know me, you know I don't do well with needles in my arms) and that the scan will be clear.

I know the Lord is working through this just like everything else. But honestly, I am just real discouraged/frustrated and it doesn't help that I am psychotic by this point for being off my medicine for over a month. My mom is coming to take care of me today. Please just pray.

In His Kind Arms,
aly
..............................................................................

9:30am
well, not sure who read the last email, but your prayers worked! (thanks cheryl and simonsl! :)

i called the doctor upset and asked if there was any way they could do it sooner. she put me on hold, then came back on and told me that they made a mistake and had scheduled me for the WRONG scan at the hospital (makes you wonder how often that happens?) She worked it so i could have everything done ASAP.

I am getting my pill tomorrow and having the scan on Friday (YAY! which means no injection and i get to start my meds on Friday afternoon).

God has an ironic sense of humor. I think he's teaching me to be flexible.
aly


So needless to say, it was an emotional rollercoaster of a day.
Really, I just need ya'll to pray that I can make it through the next few days. My body feels like its dying, my hair is falling out, i get dizzy when i stand up, and I still have to work until Saturday afternoon. I am so grateful for the Lord and his mercy working it out that I can have this done now instead of next week because I don't think I could have lasted that long. Thanks for the emails...I love ya'll.

i want some m&ms

God is so funny sometimes.

So this morning before coffee with my mentor extraordinaire (Debi) I am sitting at Starbucks reading this:
"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." James 4

I told Debi that over Christmas was the first time I had thought about making some plans for my life since I had gotten sick a few years ago. During my 2 weeks of down time I had a lot of time to read and be still and I realized that I have been so afraid to make plans for fear that I wouldn't be around to carry them out. It sounds silly I know...I was "cancer free" as of last February. But along with my yearly scans to make sure it hasn't come back comes a host of fears all over again.

So I was supposed to have my yearly scan this week and then be able to slowly go back on my synthroid pill. I've been off my thyroid replacement meds for about 2 weeks, and on a low-iodine diet which knocks out anything with salt, eggs, dairy products, soy, butter, seafood, certain veggies, anything in a can, and red dye #3, etc. etc. etc. Which means that you are hungry. And tired. And craving candy to the point of killing someone (or maybe that is just me).

However, after some TSH bloodwork my doc says I will have to wait 2 more weeks....I might feel horrible now, but my blood isn't ready yet. "You do not know what will happen tomorrow..." How about you do not know what will happen today! The Lord is teaching me patience, dependence and flexibility. Apparently I need to hold onto my plans loosely.

so as my brain is going to mush over the next month or two (according to "thyroid for dummies" being hypothroid = confusion, memory loss, dizziness and an ironic sense of humor...not even kidding on that one) ya'll will have pardon me if i am a complete idiot. :)

highlights from the holidays...

well we survived christmas. at least so far. dad's back is full of staples- but he is walking , the dog did NOT knock over the christmas tree (thank goodness), and rachel's heart is on the mend.

memorable tidbits from christmas vacation:

-so we got an elevator lift installed in the new house. it was much needed since the grandparents can't hike up tons of stairs and dad just had back surgery. however, the current temporary elevator is not ours exactly. the welder apparently didn't come through on his end of the bargain, so our elevator guy stole our lift from the nuns. (so we could use it while the grandparents are here) i wish i could make this stuff up, but i can't.

elevator guy: "Since the "sisters" are on christmas vacation, i figured they wouldn't need it for a few days while ya'll used it," he tells us. "and don't worry about it being able to lift everybody. the sisters are pretty good sized, so i figure it can lift ya'll."

i don't know where these supposed hefty nuns are that are missing an elevator, but i hope they don't come back anytime soon.


-So I got assigned the task of picking up the ham from the Honey Baked Ham store in West Ashley. After sitting in an hour of traffic, I finally get to the store only to find that they have posted a cop outside the honey baked ham store. Is there a problem with people stealing hams at the holidays??? Or do people have violent outbursts when they run out of bread or cranberry relish or something? I am not sure, but the Honey Baked Cop looked pretty serious to me.


-And finally, quotable quote from my sister:
(While watching the news)
Rachel: "Who is this Gooliani they are talking about? That sounds like a kind of pasta or something."
Me: "Its Giuliani Rach. Not Goo. And he's trying to be the president."

and the award goes to.....

quote of the year:

"yeah...he's kind of like margerine in that way."

-cheryl woods

shane and shane

hear my prayer, give Your ear
in Your faithfulness answer me
in Your righteousness do not judge
for no one is righteous

teach me to do Your will Lord
for you are my God
Your Spirit is good
lead me on level ground Lord
for You are my God
Your Spirit is good
it is good

revive me, revive me
not for me but for Your name
in Your mercy deliver me from my enemies
revive me

i rememebr days of old
Your works i meditate oh Lord
i consider all the works of Your hands
i lift up my hands to you, my soul longs
revive me

-Psalm 143

storms on the horizon

at the greer house, when it rains....it pours.

ya'll pray for us. its gonna be an interesting holiday season.

distant acts of charity

Below: some discussion about how most of us are nowhere close to living the type of life that Christ called us to live. It makes me feel real selfish. I'm trying to figure out what to do about it.


"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament" - Soren Kierkegaard


"Its much more comfortable to depersonalize the poor so we don't feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that results in someone sleeping on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes. We can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables. When we get to heaven, we will be separated into those sheep and goats Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 based on how we cared for the least among us. I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me," or, "When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me." Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: "you fed me...you visited me in prison...you welcomed me into your home...you clothed me." - Shane Claiborne

you know you're out in the country when...

so sometimes i have to travel to really really really small towns to do presentations at a high school (like today). here are some signs that you are out in the stix:

-You pass 6 taxidermy places within 20 minutes of each other
-All the streets are named after produce, animals, or farm equipment (Ex: "Blueberry Lane," "Watermelon Road," "Kicking Horse Circle" and "Tractor Drive"....not even kidding).
-The speed limit for the whole town never exceeds 30 miles an hour (and sometimes gets down to 15mph) and there is only 1 stoplight within a 30-40 mile radius.
-You lose all cell phone service from the moment you get off the I-26 exit.

Just a few tidbits from my day..... :)

long time gone

okay okay.....so i haven't abandoned the blog i promise. my work computer has it blocked so I have to make an extra special effort to get on my old laptop to write anything. there have been some complaints from the lack of blogging (well, only by my dad and rachel....who says she needs something to read in accounting). so this one's for you kid.

i just finished reading a book a few weeks ago called "the irrestibable revolution." wimbo read it and said it was awesome. it is.

it is one of those books that just changes you. and you don't really know where to begin in the process of making all of these changes. there will be some quotes from it coming soon....i promise. the writer basically talks about how we really don't live how jesus challenges us to in the bible. how we have watered down the gospel so much to fit in with our often self-righteous habits....and how jesus disliked that most about the pharisees. how often are we spending time with the poor? with hurting people? dying people? how come we have extra bedrooms but we let homeless people sleep on the streets... and then feel good about ourselves for volunteering at the soup kitchen for a night? jesus didn't tell us to give money to a good charity.....he told us to love people. and loving them is not distantly throwing a few dollars or a free meal their way. it is spending time with them and investing in their search for the Lord. and i really think the church as a whole would really change if we stopped always hoarding the gobs of information we learn about Jesus that we use for making us feel better about ourselves and instead we sometimes take the knowledge of Jesus' love and shared it with other people.

i don't know. i have just been thinking about all this a lot. and its taking a while to process how i should be living it out in my own daily life.

beginning on my quest to become paula deen.....

just kidding. well....half kidding anyway.

wow, i have not written on here in a long time.

i can't help it. my work computer won't let me blog b/c it has it blocked. and since this is the first week i have been home in forever, i haven't had a chance.
(haha...i talk like people other than my dad actually read this. i love you dad).

my first week of my new job was spent in pittsburgh. i left charleston around 6am, hoping to sleep on the way there, but sitting next to people on the plane who wanted to chat on both of my flights. however, the lady on the longer flight just so happened to start talking about faith, and her doubts, and her thoughts about the church, etc. etc. etc. Talk about the Lord handing me the easiest conversation ever to talk about my testimony, my experiences with God, and my love of Jesus. Her husband kept asking me if I wanted him to make her be quiet...haha. It was awesome...but...the bad part about plane rides is they are so short and you never see those people again. i am praying that the things we talked about and the reading i recommended will help her on her journey.

so i get to pittsburgh. at 10:30 on a sunday morning. practically everything in the whole city is closed, but i get on the hotel shuttle to go see the andy warhol museum. on the shuttle, i meet a guy and his kids who give me a free ticket to the Chicago Cubs/Pittsburgh Pirates game. I mean, really. Ridiculous.
So I go the museum....drool over the cambell's soup cans.....and meet them at their seats at the baseball game.....ON THE 5TH ROW....ON THE THIRD BASELINE. needless to say,i bought a baseball hat and some cracker jacks and called my dad to gloat over my amazingly strange luck that day.

okay okay. so the job. basically 40 new "rookies"from across the US trained the past two weeks (pittsburgh, then charlotte) learning everything about the Art Institutes nationwide. We memorized presentations, studied, and then had to get up and present...the 15 new culinary reps went into the kitchens with one of the top chefs in the country and he laughed at us while we learned to chop, mince, dice, and julienne. Somewhere between the dicing and the julienne I cut off half my fingernail and quickly got familiar with the first aid station in the kitchen. (i wasn't the only casualty, okay?).

The funny part was, all 40 of us had similar personalities. Meaning....the majority of us could have a conversation with a brick wall and like getting up in front of people. So when we were all together, it was a little.....loud.....to say the least. :)

i think one of the most enjoyable things so far is that i can be more of myself in this job. they want me to be funny....they want me to talk to people. crazy i know. i'm not afraid of taking a wrong step and getting fired for stapling something the wrong way, or not cleaning out the fridge, or something like that.

well....that and the fact that it gives me an excuse to watch the food network.

wrong number

picking up a weird number:

me: hello! this is aly
redneck guy: HE - LLO!!!
me: hello?
redneck guy: who is this?
me: aly
redneck guy: who?
me: ALY
redneck guy: Aly!!!! What's going ooooon?!!!
me: what?
redneck guy: oh, i know i have the wrong number, but you just sounded purty.
me: ........thank you?
redneck guy: YOUR WELCOME!!!!!
me: well....have a good day!
redneck guy: YOU have a good day purty lady!

oh.....hi.......oh!

why are there so many people from ohio here? i don't know anyone from ohio or i would ask them.

has anybody else noticed this?

oh. my. goodness.

i got a new job!



more on this later. :)

happy birthday to me

23.

thats getting close to 25.
when you were little, 25 was old....25 was an adult.

am i really grown up now? most days i feel about... 12.
people i talk to on the phone at work tell me i sound like i'm 12 haha.

forget numbers, how i know i am offically an adult: i am at work on my birthday for the first time in my life. they are taking me out to lunch though, so that makes it a little better. :)

to my family and friends: thanks for all the messages- i love ya'll!

asking

so over the past few months a phrase that debi has drilled into our heads is,
"What comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you."
...meaning that what you perceive God's character to be often reflects on the spiritual condition of your heart at that moment.

and for me, recently I have realized (or God has shown me) that I wasn't acting like i believed he is the giver of good things. i think it really boils down to the fact that i don't feel like i deserve them....well i know i don't. i think i forget to focus on grace.

I have gone through enough hard circumstances to know and believe that they can turn out to be blessings in the end.... though you first have to suffer through the trials. and although that does happen sometimes, that isn't the way it always has to be.

.....what about blessings that are just... blessings? asking God for something good and believing that if it is his will, he will give it to you? some days i have these big dreams....and i am afraid to ask for them because some small part of me is telling me "you are not made for big things! you can't even manage the small things in your life right now!" and that is a lie. God tells us to ask. He wants us to ask for impossible things, so that in our undeserving sinful weakness, he can give us a miracle and be glorified.

http://www.rbc.org/utmost/index.php?month=06&day=09&year=07

James 1:
"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

i'm trying to believe. i'm daring to ask.

title? i don't know. i lose my creative edge after 2pm.

some things i am learning:

-sitting behond a desk for the majority of my day is slowly taking years off my life. i am working on remedying this. people every day are suffocating in the land of cubicles and multi-lined phones and carpel tunnel syndrome and i don't know how they do it for 30 years.

-most people (at least most people i know) are really not enjoying their first job out of college. this makes me feel good....well, better. not because my friends are suffering through horrible work experiences, but because i am not the only idiot that made a bad first career choice. there is strength in numbers guys. we'll learn from our mistakes.

-despite our craziness, my family is dysfunctionally functional. if that makes sense. the more and more I am exposed to really really bad family situations at work, the more I am thankful that my parents are relatively normal the majority of the time. i love them. :) they are really funny.

-how to catch bait. dad has officially declared me a "bubbette" (the female version of a bubba?). this honorable title was bestowed upon me after i successfully learned how to throw the cast net this weekend. after getting covered in pluff mud and a mouth of salt water, i did actually manage to catch some shrimp. yay.

-and....my brain often tries to convince me not to do what the Lord is telling me. Like when I am praying about a job with a Christian company and the Lord says clearly not to take it, my brain is saying "No!!! What are you doing!!! You need a job!!! These people are nice! This doesn't make any sense at all!" This is a problem. I am having to tell my brain to be quiet more and more frequently these days. Perhaps I am learning obedience even in seemingly illogical circumstances. I am banking on the fact that relying on earthly wisdom leads to disorder (see James 3).

*note: after writing this initially, i went home and read this below:
ha. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? (and an ironic one at that).


"Yes— But . . .!"

Lord, I will follow You, but . . . —Luke 9:61
Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark."
Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

trusting in his promises

listening to selah:
you are my hiding place
you always fill my heart
with songs of deliverance
whenever i am afraid
i will trust in you

i will trust in you
let the weak say i am strong
in the strength of the Lord
i will trust in you

then happened to go home and read Psalm 32 on the same day. weird.
well, not weird. God.

1 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD "
— and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found
surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.
7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.
9 Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.
10 Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORD's unfailing love
surrounds the man who trusts in him.
11 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!

If he says he will, then he will. A promise is a promise, after all.