A story.

My story, to be exact. Or part of it at least. Our theme for the year at PSF is "Connect," so once a month we connect through story telling, and someone offers a part of their faith journey, or some meaningful experience they've had. Tonight was my turn and in case you're interested, here's what I said (ish)...

Here I stand, somewhere around 4.5 months into my year as a Young Adult Volunteer. But instead of telling a YAV story tonight, I’m going to share a little of how I ended up here in the first place.

I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and my mom is what I like to call the quintessential “church lady.” She’s always helping with some project or another...delivering meals, knitting shawls or hats for various organizations, baking casseroles for those who need them. Each Sunday brought with it the mandatory trip to Sunday school, with “big church” to follow (we were not early service people...). For a good six or seven years, you could find me at choir practice on Sunday nights too. Once middle school came along, the church activities became less mandatory. Church on Sunday morning was still a given, but the other stuff was a little negotiable. I took up playing handbells, but fizzled out on the whole choir thing. I went to youth group off and on, but conversations usually (and understandably) revolved around school...which tended to be a little awkward, as I was one of a handful of private school kids in a youth group that mainly went to the local public school. Youth group was never an unpleasant experience, I just wasn’t exactly super involved. 

About halfway through high school, we got a new youth pastor named Shelli. She really made an effort to include me in things at church. This was probably in part because my mom, naturally, volunteered to host a welcome party of sorts at our house soon after Shelli moved to Davidson. Handbell rehearsal was at the same time as youth group, but I’d go to events relatively regularly, when I could. Still, I wasn’t the type that wanted to be on youth council or the pastor nominating committee or anything. I do, however, credit Shelli with keeping me interested and relatively involved, and since then she’s put up with countless emails and cups of coffee helping me process potential life plans.

Off I went to Furman. A few different times over breaks I went as a chaperone on middle or high school youth trips with my church in Davidson, but I never really got involved Furman’s version of PSF. I went once, but there were only four or five people there, and they didn’t have a weekly worship service or anything like this. That’s not to say they weren’t very welcoming and friendly, I just decided it wasn’t particularly my thing. I also definitely slacked on the whole finding-a-church-in-Greenville thing. I tried some, freshman year, but none of the places I went really felt right for me. It probably didn’t help that very few of my close friends were particularly outwardly religious. (But to keep the record straight, they were still lovely friends!)

So I continued on with college, all the while trying to be a faithful person, but without a real, concrete faith community. After junior year though, I found myself with a summer job at Camp Grier, a PC(USA) camp right down the road from Montreat. Now if you’ve talked to more for more than like 15 minutes, camp has probably come up. I’m still working on remembering the fact that not everyone in real life wants to hear a camp story every five minutes. But in all honesty, the fact that it so often pops into my head has made me realize what an impact the past two summers have had on me. That’s only four months total at camp, but I’ve made friendships that I’m quite sure will be life long, and it really gave me that faithful community I’d been looking for in college. 

Here I am, a lifelong Presbyterian with a religion degree who in all honesty really doesn’t know all that much about the ins and outs of her denomination. A girl that kind of went to youth group and volunteered at church, but never made it to a youth conference and until a few weeks ago had never been to a college conference. And despite these things, here I am spending a whole year volunteering for the PC(USA), directly involved in campus ministry. 

Funny how things work out the way they do. 

So there ya have it, a wee bit o' the life of Allison. It's nice being around at the beginning of the term and actually knowing what's going on. (As opposed to showing up in the fall a few weeks after school's started and taking a month or two to figure stuff out...) We're busy busy bees planning all sorts of things for spring term. (I just said busy busy bees...oh dear.) The Shed even has a brand new bathroom door! I mean, I'm guessing it's not brand new, but it's new to us. :) Instead of one of those sliding folding doors, Beth and I have a real life regular door! Whoo!

Love,

Allison