ALY ALLEN | THE BLOG

recently i had one of those days where my to-do list consisted of six different super-quick errands. seems simple enough to most people. before kids you could knock them all out in less than an hour and go about your day. but with kids, forget about it. you dread the outing for two days and put it off until you have no more food or toothpaste and your husband is wondering about the dry-cleaning and the alterations. when you have to strap and unstrap three kids into their carseats for six different super-quick errands, it's a whole new kind of monster. it takes longer to get them in and out of the car than the amount of time we actually spend inside the post office, or the dry cleaner, or the bank. multiply that by six and we're all going crazy. truly, there needs to be a drive-through dry cleaner, drive through full-service post office window, drive through banking (not just ATM but actually denominations-other-than-twenty banking), and a drive-up pre-order Target servic...

my to-do list looks like most of yours: laundry [fold & actually put away] groceries pick up living room print orders dance class write? make dinner pick up dry cleaning design? bathtime hang out with husband lots of chores and errands and little tasks, with the occasional is-there-time-to-create? thrown in there. i'm a wife and a mom and a home-keeper-together-er and i have a couple part-time-from-home jobs for income, too. i mean, it's pretty much a crap-shoot whether there will be time to create. and lately i've been discouraged over that. i like to design. i like to write. i like to take in beauty and give out my interpretation of it. i want to write music. i want to practice my non-existent keyboard because the piano still isn't tuned. i want to have a life full of margin and free-time to just do what my brain feels most at-home and my heart feels most at-peace doing. but that's just not reality. i don't think it's reality for any...

I thought I would write out my first impressions of the weekend. Or maybe, more accurately, my  lasting impressions. I met a few friends for the very first time, and a few that I'd met before and communicated with a lot through the past nine months or so. I hope they don't mind that I'm talking about them behind their backs and they don't even know it! Oops! What I learned about: Mindy She came out here, by herself, from Kansas. Are you kidding me? And then took a taxi from her hotel to meet us in Balboa Island for breakfast. You guys, she was so sweet. Like beyond sweet. Totally real, totally charming, totally warm. You felt like her best friend after like 30 minutes. Not afraid to just be herself, she was encouraging and fun. I felt so happy getting to meet her [since I wasn't expecting to]. And her kids have the coolest names: Wilder & Story? Are you kidding me? April She was immediately engaging. She wanted to chat and joke and get to know you. J...

you already know where i'm going with this, don't you? do you hate saying "no" as much as i do? i don't like saying "no". sure, there are times when it doesn't bother me at all. usually when it's something i really don't want to do, or something that i don't feel obligated to do, that i know i haven't been "called" to do. those times it's easy to say no. but when someone asks me to sing or do something music-related, i feel guilty saying no. i have narrowed it down to this: it's not that i am a people pleaser... i don't think i am one. it's not that i feel like people won't like me if i turn them down, or that i'll feel bad they won't be able to find someone else in my place, or anything like that. nope. it's that i wonder whether i really should be saying yes to them. if God really wants me to say yes, but i'm saying no anyway without consulting Him. it may be because i have a ...

i go to a  large church . i sing in the choir and praise team, with the occasional solo. the music department is  bursting   with talent. i've often heard people say that they don't like our church because it's all a big production, a show. i can understand how it may  look  that way from the outside, but it's so far from the truth. we do have great music, and we have the opportunity to do things that other churches may not be able to do... but i wonder if it would be better to suppress all this talent and not allow it to be used for His glory, so as not to offend anyone? i wonder if it would be better not to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth through a growing television ministry, so we don't look like we're showing off?  i think you know the answer to those questions. anyway, i wrote an email to our choir director/worship leader today because i was completely overcome this weekend by the whole thing. overcome by the power of the resurrection, ...

in his sermon on Sunday, our pastor spoke about God's best for us, how we can miss out on it, and how that's a dangerous place to be. He's going through the book of Hebrews, verse by verse, and this week we were in chapter 4. here's how it starts: Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands,  let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.  For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did;  but the message they heard was of no value to them,  because those who heard did not combine it with faith. "His rest" is the promised land: God's best for us, His specific, blow-us-away plan for our lives... the Israelites didn't combine the message with faith, so they missed out. of the millions that were brought out of slavery in Egypt, only two entered the promised land. the rest of them died in the wilderness. died   in their unbelief. it's just the same, this side of the cross. Go...