The Pages of AllieLife has been hard lately. In many ways, it feels like the world is falling apart. The heaviness of the broken world has been getting to me. And I know I’m not the only one. This passage in Lamentations is one of my favorites to turn to when life gets heavy. 19 Remember my affliction and […]
The idea of healing terrified me for a long time. I was comfortable carrying the weight of buried emotions that manifested in depression and anxiety. I taught myself how to function while constantly feeling like I was drowning. I was miserable, but at least I knew the misery. Healing was unknown territory. I know being […]
In my experience, stories of suffering have two parts: the beginning and the end. The story starts with a detailed explanation of what caused the suffering, and then jumps to the part of being healed where everything in life makes sense again. The middle part—the process of becoming healed— is glossed over or even skipped […]
One word. Just start somewhere. You’ll find your way again…to complete sentences. Write something. Anything. Maybe you’ll even say something thought provoking or insightful, but don’t try too hard. Be honest. Open. No one will read it, unless you show it to someone. Eventually, you’ll form a whole paragraph. You’ll remember how to do this. […]
As a child, I skipped the stage of learning how to ride a bike or a scooter or, well, anything with wheels. I don’t entirely remember why this was. There were a few attempts with riding a bike and a skateboard, but I never stuck with it. Now, as a young adult, I feel as […]
Growing up in church, I always heard about God’s unconditional love. As a child, I was taught that God’s unconditional love meant that God would love me no matter what I did. Back then, that was enough. However, no one ever explained what God’s unconditional love really meant. As I got older, the disconnect between […]
On May 29th, I nervously parallel parked on a crowded street in front of the apartment I would be living in the rest of the summer. For someone who avoids parallel parking as much as humanly possible, this internship was already off to a rocky start. I still didn’t really know what I had gotten […]
LTN intentionally focuses on community in their program, both with the other interns and in the neighborhood. I knew that coming into the program, but I wasn’t actually sure what that meant until I got here. Living in a small apartment with three other girls and sharing a balcony with two other apartments that also […]
About 2 months ago, with a random burst of courage and a desperate need to do something with my summer, I applied for an internship with Love Thy Neighborhood (LTN), a program that I had only recently found on social media and knew next to nothing about. The only information I had was that LTN […]
There’s something magical about fireworks. It’s this big explosion of light and color that paints the night sky. It’s beautiful. Fireworks are for celebrations, like 4th of July or at an amusement park during vacation. In my mind, fireworks are always associated with happy memories filled with the people I care about. This week is […]