Fast Forward.

Fast Forward. 

Super condensed version of the past year of my life. 

Ali Schmidt gave way to Allison Law.

That seemingly endless wretched 

summer in Nowhere, Ohio turned into 8 amazing months in Saint Louis, Missouri (Go Cards!).

I met a man. An Englishman, to be exact. And married him in a super-secret Clayton courthouse wedding. 

We lived 245 miles apart. Long-distance marriage was the plan. 

We can do this for 4 months, we said. Madison needs to finish the school year, we said. Don't want to uproot her again, we said. Time will fly, we said. 

We were in Kansas by April. 

And here we still remain. Smack dab in the middle of Kansas City Suburbia. 

Oy. 

I catch myself complaining. Cursing Kansas. Day-dreaming of being back in the city. Wishing and hoping and planning. 

Then I stop myself. I feel a tug at my heart that says, "uhh, dude...are you seriously that ungrateful?!"...and I stop - immediately - and give thanks to God for the new and amazing life I have. So maybe I'm not exactly where I want to be geographically, but I'm right where I need to be in so many other ways. 

P.S. The incredible man I married exceeded my exceedingly high expectations. All that waiting and pouting I did? Worth every second. 

Stuck in the waiting room.

This summer certainly hasn't turned out the way I envisioned it. It's nearly mid-July and I'm still stuck in the waiting room.

All waiting rooms are different.
My waiting room happens to be in the form of a place called Barnesville, Ohio.

Ah...good ol' Bville! It's a nice enough spot. Population 4,000ish. Large, brightly colored Victorians welcome you as you cruise down tree-lined Chestnut, making your way "up-town". Thrift shops, pizza parlors and empty storefronts share the blocks of Main Street. We have churches and gas stations. Banks and bars. Even a reputable boarding school makes its home within the boundaries of the village.
Kids on bikes, towels draped around their necks, head down to the pool. Truck trailers full of noisy livestock clamor down Main Street. Jones Boys stumble around half intoxicated (or wait, maybe that's Buzzy...).
It's all relatively normal. Peaceful even. Simple. And I'm sure for most folks here, it's a happy place. It's normalcy. Contentment. Safety. Life.

Then there are folks like me. Where life doesn't appear to exist here. Where entering into the city limits puts me in a state of hysterical panic. An instantaneous wave of suffocating emptiness. For me, this place is the sum total of every bad decision, every mistake I have ever made. A place to be escaped...survived. To live only in rumors, yearbooks, forgotten friendships.

So it's no mistake I'm here. Whether it be by Gods direct will or by my own fears (Job 3:25), I can't be sure. How I got here isn't as important as what I do while I'm here. So, here I sit...in the waiting room...flipping through the magazines of my past. Scrambling to make peace with who this town shaped me to be - peace with who I was, wasn't, should've been and can never be...

Wolf!! No, seriously this time...I think.

It sure seems like I'm always blabbering about what God shows me and what God tells me. And I often feel like I'm left looking sheepish and borderline crazy struggling to provide an explanation for why things suddenly turned in the other direction. Many times I've gotten things wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. I've cried wolf (truly believing it was an actual wolf) more times than I'm comfortable admitting. Not because I'm stupid, or naive or a liar. But because sometimes I'm just wrong! Being wrong doesn't make me foolish or unstable or irresponsible or an idiot. It just makes me human. It happens. Even to those of us who are faithfully and passionately following the will of Jesus...we get it wrong too. I feel it's incredibly important as a Christian to be able to say that. That we often miss the mark too. And it's okay. It doesn't make us bad Christians. I honestly think my biggest problem is that I'm so expectant, so passionate about all the desires stirring in my heart...that I get impatient and run ahead and start filling in all the blanks with my own overactive imagination. Unfortunately, my imagination doesn't have all the facts, can't see all the players or even understand the game at times.

Keeping all the above in mind, I'm about to embark on a brand new adventure. I strongly feel that God is calling me to St. Louis Missouri, and has been for about 2 years now (that story shall be told soon!).Could I be wrong? It's possile. But my heart is in the right place, my eyes are fixed on the will of God and I have unshakable faith that all things will work together for my good (Romans 8:28). If I get it wrong, I get it wrong. At least I wasn't afraid to step out and do it. If I tumble and skin my knees, bust my nose and black both my eyes, it surely won't be the first...or the last time. I'm a big girl, I can handle it. And I have God on my side, with Him I can do ANYTHING (Matthew 19:26)!

Seriously God...another one?!

I'm starting to think that God puts men in my life for the sole purpose of teaching me things. What better way to get my attention than through a man? Seriously! Sometimes that's all I can see...and He knows that. So, when He wants me to learn something or wants to reveal something to me...He'll throw a man in the mix. Although a very effective tactic, it usually ends badly on my behalf. Instead of me realizing that this man was placed here for a temporary purpose (a simple lesson) I get all swept up in emotion and throw my whole heart at him and expect him to catch it with both hands. Rarely is he as excited about catching it as I am about tossing it, so naturally the poor thing hits the floor...and shatters (Note: my heart is currently being held together with a complicated mix of super glue, J-B Weld, zip-ties and pure heavenly hope.) Then I'm left feeling completely foolish, slightly neurotic and terribly sad.
But I do learn some incredibly valuable lessons this way. Through my relationships with men, I've learned amazing things about myself...things I could not have learned in any other way. But I'm seriously thinking God needs to find a new way to communicate with me. He's running out of men!! Not only is He running out of men but I'm running out of confidence that I can actually sustain a normal, functional, intimate relationship.
I'm at the point where I don't think there is a man in the world I'm compatible with. Honestly! And I'm nearing the point where I just don't give a shit if I spend the rest of my life alone!

The End :)

Change of plans

Well, well, well...look who's back at it! It's been months, literally! Lots of "new" going on in the land of Ali Schmidt..since my last post: I've moved, become gainfully employed and snagged me a lover!! But of course none of that came to me in the way I had planned...

I was cruising through life with a pretty good idea of where I wanted to be, what I wanted to do and even who I wanted to do it with (ha!). I had a life plan. It was pretty fantastic. All the pieces fit, all the colors matched and all the notes were perfectly pitched. I had a beautiful purpose and a fantastic existence. My future. I had it all mapped out in my head...in my prayers...in my heart. I was zooming at top speed, passing things left and right, not able to focus on the blur of anything else around me...I had a destination and was happily on my way to reaching it.
Then I saw the flashing lights in my rearview....

I was forced to stop. Breathe. Listen. Rethink some things. Look around. Get out of the friggin' car and stretch! None of which I wanted to do, none of which I'm very good at doing...especially when I've already settled my mind on other things. But, when you're forced to stop...you simply have no other choice. So I stopped. And as usual, I was able to see that the Lord was up to something again. He sure does work creatively in my life...let me tell ya!!
Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that I'm okay. Better than okay. I'm peaceful. I'm content. I'm relaxed. I'm not hammering down the highway at 120 trying to get somewhere I don't even know exists anymore. I'm doing this day by day, sometimes even hour by hour. I'm not fixating on all the things I've dreamed up or all the things I'm lacking. I'm training my heart to be wide open to new ideas, new languages, new surroundings.
I still have a pretty good idea of where I'm going to end up...but the getting there is a completely new road. I'm guessing it's going to be laden with potholes and truckers and horrible drivers. But the thing is, if I'm not so focused on the actual drive...I'll be able to see the awesome scenery and maybe even enjoy the company of my passengers.
Life is good folks. God has a plan. Don't get all freaked out when that plan seems to change...because it really doesn't. It's what He had designed all along.

Chasing love where it can't be found

I'm single. Very single. Very, very single. Painfully single.

That sounds a little desperate...maybe I should clarify. I'm single because, well, I choose to be.

Kinda.

I quit dating, completely, several months ago. This was directly after about 5 months of intense, non-stop, obsessive dating. (NOTE: by dating I mean actual dating. Going out on real dates. Pre-planned meetings. Not slamming shots at bars and going home with random skeezy fellas. That's a whole other discussion folks.) I was meeting guy after guy. Having coffee, drinks, taking walks, chit-chatting over pasta, laughing, simply enjoying the company of someone new. I was having a blast! But it quickly came to a point where I was getting a little overwhelmed. I felt like I was losing myself in the process of gaining attention from these men. Almost like I was leaving bits and pieces of me all over the place. Giving all of me away, laugh by laugh, kiss by kiss, to people who didn't genuinely treasure a piece of Ali Schmidt (no, not that piece...geesh). Until I stopped having any sort of significance. Until I had nothing left of me to give. I started hating it. I started hating me because of it. I needed to re-evaluate. I needed to gather up all those lost pieces of me and try to put them back in some sensible order. That's when I began to see that I never had all the pieces and the ones I did have hadn't been in any sensible order to begin with! And so the revelation came pouring into my heart. Although that stint of dating didn't provide me with relational success, it did provide me with the realization that I sucked at love. Bad. My heart needed some fixin', and with the quickness.

So, I decided to have a chat with the Lord. With His guidance I began to dig deep inside of myself. I started pulling up junk that I purposely buried and junk that I didn't even know existed. It certainly hasn't been an easy process. I've had breakdowns, meltdowns and total freak outs...yea, yea, I've always had those...but this time they had a point.

So now here I am, with a bucketful of fresh insight into my own heart. A brand new outlook on life and love. Ready to jump in with both feet and eyes wide open! Yet I remain unattached. And for the most part, I've made my peace with that. There are times when I get pouty and weepy...but I remind myself that my time is coming. After all, I'd much rather be single then in ANY of my past crappy relationships. Indeed.

SIDE NOTE:
Kiss Quick by Matt Nathanson does a phenomenal job at summing up this portion of my life. I swear he writes songs specifically for me.

Winter in my soul

Today I feel defeated. I've grown tired of reaching, worn-out from jumping, exhausted from the endless effort it takes to keep my sanity and my faith.
I've realized the past few months (interestingly enough, since turning 30) that I'm different. Subdued. Quiet. Pensive. Boring.
Ouch.
Boring? That's a little too close to normal for my taste. Uh oh, wait...does that mean I'm normal too?? Ugh. I've hardly ever considered myself boring or normal, but that's exactly what I've become.
I quietly faded into my thirties, unaware that the wild and fearlessness of my twenties was forever behind me.
Good Lord, that's depressing.
Maybe this isn't so. Maybe I'm just experiencing Winter in my soul. A bit of hibernation and quiet restoration or maybe I've just grown dull and bitter. Maybe I should just lock myself in my bedroom and gorge on Cheetos and self-pity, only to die an old maid with cheese-stained fingers :(

No. Heck no.

I'm far too ambitious, adventurous, and dare I say, foxy for such a fate! Clearly I'm on a roller-coaster of thought and emotion today. But why? PMS? Yes, actually. But I haven't been PMS-ing nonstop since September folks. This is deeper than that.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on the edge of a breakthrough. That if I squint really hard I can just barely make it out in the distance. But it's there. I can feel it. Wooper even caught a whiff of it. But time passes and it doesn't seem to get any closer. Then the reaching and jumping and clawing come in. I'm not tall enough, even on my tiptoes. My arms aren't long enough. Even if I stretch really far and do that whole scrunched-up face, stick the tongue out thing. Still, no dice. Aint happenin'. So, I give up. I fall down. Cross my arms, sigh, spit, cuss and settle into full on pout mode. I drag out the old Boo-Hoo game. You know it. It goes something like this:
Wha, wha. Why can't I have what I want? God, why are you such a jerk sometimes? Why won't you just let me be happy? How come so-and-so has everything I should have but he's a total juicebag and I'm not?? What more do you want from me?! Why isn't anything I do good enough for you?! Why is my life harder now that I'm actually listening to you??
The results of this game are usually: smeary mascara, red-puffy eyes, guilt and shame. It's a losing battle. I know it before I start playing but I break it out anyway. Fortunately I don't play very long anymore. I have learned that much.

Anyway, back to my point. Wait...what the heck was my point?? Oh yea. I'm thirty and lame. And Winter sucks.

Joel Osteen always talks about how things are often the most difficult and we feel the most hopeless directly before an awesome victory comes. I sincerely hope this is also true for me (and it should be. God is no respecter of persons, after all).
I'm currently in a season of waiting. My life will be taking on some dramatic changes very soon. I'm expecting a 400 mile move West to St. Louis this Summer (God willing. Those of you who pray, make sure you include me and my big move!) which is pretty huge. I'm leaving my entire family to venture out on my own. Single momma in the big city with the kiddo. No support system, no friends, no job, nothing!! Not to mention the kiddo will be entering high school. Ugh. (Feel free to pray about that too. I'm trying to get her into one of the awesome charter schools they have.) So anyway, yea, I've got some big events coming up. Maybe this Winter in my soul is just a way to keep me calm and quiet before the raging changes of Summer fall upon me. Yea. I like how that sounds. Good one Ali.
And who knows...maybe I won't be so lame and boring in the Show Me state. Maybe my prince charming will be there, waiting for an abnormally normal, put-back-together, thirtysomething like me. I suppose only the Lord knows how his will all play out and for now I just have to trust and believe. Oh, and throw away that stupid Boo-Hoo game.