A Response Piece

It isn't often that you see your face on the internet.
Not just on your Facebook profile, but on the actual internet.
About nine months after Josh and I got married, this picture began circulating the web:





















Photo taken by the incredibly talented Grant Daniels. You can find his information here at  grantdanielsphotography.com




It started on Pinterest. I would log on, and there would be four or five different people who would have tagged me or sent it to me saying, "This is so crazy! Your picture is on Pinterest!"
Over the next year and a half, Josh and I have probably had over 150 people either tag or email us to say that they saw our picture on some random website. I have had mere acquaintances as well as total strangers recognize me from this picture. At first, it was pretty bizarre. I once tracked the picture to a tumblr page that showed it had been reblogged over 60,000 times. What?! That's insane! Our faces have been on 60,000 people's computers, phones, or tablets. But over time it has become pretty commonplace. Once every couple of months, someone will forward something to me and let me know the picture is still out there, and Josh and I will chuckle about how weird it all is. But it did begin to make me think, "What can we do with this? How can we use this as a positive thing?"

And then today, I received an unexpected message. A very sweet girl that I used to work with sent me a message making me aware that an article was going around and The Picture was being used as the cover. My first reaction was, "Here we go again..." But then I read the article. And wow. I just don't think the Lord could have been more clear in giving me an opportunity to use this picture for His glory.

The article is titled "5 Things You Can Do Right Now To Find A Husband In Your 20's" After reading the article, my pride and anger began to flare up. "How dare they put our faces on something like this?! Don't they have to ask our permission?! I do NOT want my face associated with something that I so completely disagree with!" But then as the dust settled, I began to realize that this was such an incredible opportunity. As of now, the article has been shared at least 1,000 times. There is no telling how many people have read it. I don't expect this response to be shared nearly that many times, but it is my sincere hope that someone will read it and find a little more hope and encouragement than the article that I am responding to.

The basic premise of the article is that it is totally okay for young girls in their twenties to be on the Husband Hunt and lists five ways to make the search a little easier. The hard thing about what this writer says is that so much of it sounds so close to being right, but instead it turns out so completely wrong.

She says,

"Marriage isn’t for everyone.

Are you sure that you want a lifelong commitment to one man? Are you confident that you can spend the rest of your life putting his needs before your own?

Honestly, that’s the basis of a good marriage — each of you putting the needs of the other at the top of your priority list."

This is one of the few things in the article that she and I agree on, but I'm pretty sure it isn't for the same reason. I feel like there are a few things I could touch on in this brief paragraph, but for the sake of time I'm going to focus on her question, "Are you confident that you can spend the rest of your life putting his needs before your own? Honestly, that’s the basis of a good marriage — each of you putting the needs of the other at the top of your priority list." Josh and I have only been married for two and half years, but man, the only thing I am confident in is that I am SO not confident I can spend the rest of my life putting his needs before my own. And I know Josh would say the same for me. The basis of a good marriage is not putting each other's needs first. The basis of a good marriage is looking at the other person and saying, "I am so broken and selfish and sinful, but if you will have me I will spend every day of my life working my hardest to love and serve and honor you, and when I fail (because I WILL fail), I'm asking you to forgive me, and help me, and push me to be better." And it's the other person looking back at you and saying "Woah, me too. I will forgive you when it is the last thing I want to do, and I will push you to be better, and I will give this thing everything that I've got if you'll do all of that for me too." The BASIS of a good marriage HAS to be Jesus. It just has to be. If it is anything else then I promise you, it will flounder. And that's not to say that just being a Christian is going to save your marriage. I'm a child of divorce in a Christian home. Putting the other person's needs above your own is definitely vital, but it isn't the answer. The willingness to choose to love someone who is guaranteed at some point not going to put your needs above their own is far more vital. 

Josh and I got married very young. I was just 20 when he proposed, and 21 when we were married. Before I met him, I had a life plan all set out to graduate, take a year off, maybe go to grad school, travel, and then start a career. Then Josh came in my life and everything was turned upside down. For the better? Yes. For the harder? Absolutely. ( I realize that "for the harder" is not a grammatically correct phrase, but work with me here.) So while I fit into this writer's category of a young, married 20 something, I want to be very clear:

Marriage is not the end all be all. 

Not even close.

This writer is encouraging young girls essentially to nail down a husband now because you're young and hot and if you wait 10 years to live your life then your chances of getting one of the good ones decrease like crazy. 

And my heart BREAKS to think about how many girls have read this and have taken her words to heart. 

She says,
"If you wait until you’re in your 30s (as in, “… I’m going to take the first 10 years out of college to build my career and then think about finding a husband and starting a family…”), you’ll be competing for the same men with women 10 years younger than you. That’s not a competition that you will fare well in.

Women in their 20s are fresh, dewy, innocent and irresistible to men… They have 10 more years of fertility than women in their 30s.

A man who has also taken 10 years after college to build his career, sow his wild oats, and is now ready to settle down and start a family, wants a bride who has a long fertility life ahead of her. At 35, your pregnancy is already considered high risk due to advanced maternal age.

You are at your most beautiful and most desirable in your early 20s, and should use this time to your very best advantage."

Women reading this- please, please hear me: These are NOT reasons to find a husband. Not now, not ever. I hate, hate that she writes this as if to pit women against one another, as if we don't struggle with comparison and jealousy enough. Marriage and dating should not be a competition. This idea that you should go out right now and marry some guy before your looks fade and before your fertility window closes or some younger, hotter girl scoops him up is absolutely devastating to me. Why? Because it promotes the idea of settling for something less than the very best of what God has planned for you just so that you will have a husband, instead of patiently continuing to live your life and trusting that there is so much more out there than a guy who wants to marry you just because you're pretty and you can give him babies. I know plenty of women who did not get married until they were 30+, and that's not to say that they couldn't if they had wanted to. They dated, and they had potential men in their lives, but they didn't rush into a marriage with a guy they weren't sure about just because their time was running up. They continued pursuing their dreams and careers, knowing full well that they might be single forever. And I can guarantee you that not a single one of their husbands thinks, "Man, I bet she was way hotter 10 years ago." 

Later on in the article she says,
"Okay, so we agree that you should find a husband while you are a student, but men on campus aren’t interested in marriage.

How do you overcome that? Easy: Don’t have sex with them."

She goes on to say,
"Girls, you know that as soon as you have sex with him, the relationship changes — irrevocably. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, men won’t buy the cow if the milk is free.

This isn’t complicated game theory. If you offer men sex without commitment, you eliminate the incentive for men to commit."

I want to first say that, yes, I absolutely agree that sex changes a relationship in every way. Our generation has become so inundated with the normalcy of casual sex and I am really glad that this writer is seeing the flaw in that- but her advice so completely misses the mark. "If you offer men sex without commitment, you eliminate the incentive for men to commit." 

Young women, I cannot stress this enough:
Sex is not a toy.

Sex is not something to use in order to get a man to settle down. Withholding sex should never be used as a tool for manipulation, before marriage or during. The writer is so right when she says that sex changes things, but that is because we were each made to have one sexual partner and only inside of a covenant relationship. 

If you are getting married so that you can have sex, or if a man is marrying you so he can have sex with you, you are going to be severely disappointed. 

Sex is about 10% of marriage. If even. My husband uses the illustration that if you have 24 hours in a day, and one of those hours each day is spent having sex (which if we're being honest is probably not true in most cases, but if that's your marriage then power to you!), that is still 23 hours of the rest of the day spent NOT having sex, which in turn is 161 hours a week spent NOT having sex, and 616 hours a month spent NOT having sex, and so on and so forth. You get the picture. That is a heck of a lot of time to spend with someone NOT having sex. Don't get me wrong: sex is a crucial part of marriage, where intimacy, trust, and vulnerability are grown. But there is so, so much more to marriage than that. The writer talks about finding someone who goes to your school so that you will have things in common, and again, that's important as well, but there are things that go so much further and deeper than that, like respect, honesty, friendship, trust, unconditional love, extending grace and forgiveness, compassion, gentleness, humility...the list goes on. The man you look to marry does not have to excel in these things, in fact he probably won't. But he does need to be willing to work towards these things every single day, and be willing to love you when you aren't doing so well in those areas either. And if those things aren't being cultivated your marriage will fall apart. Again, sex is definitely important, but what's more important is that you and your spouse work well together outside the bedroom.

The article goes on to list five ways and places to hopefully meet the love of your life, but I'm not even going to hit on those. I could probably spend several more hours dissecting each of them but I feel like it is far more important for me to say this:

The overwhelming theme of this article, in my opinion, is that marriage is going to make you happy. Finding a husband is synonymous to finding happiness. Lock that guy down, and don't give him sex until he's ready to commit to you. 

I am still a rookie as far as marriage goes, but I know this to be true: If you are looking for total happiness in marriage, you are going to be so, so disappointed. If happiness is your goal, you are setting your husband up for intense and devastating failure. The expectations you put on him cannot be met, by him or any other man for that matter. Marriage is hard. It's work. It's wonderful and sweet and unlike any other relationship I've ever experienced, but if I relied on it to bring me total happiness then my marriage would fall apart. That's not to say that Josh doesn't make me happy; he does. But he also makes me mad, sad, confused, thrilled, silly, and a host of other emotions. Relying on someone else to make you happy is the fastest way to make you unhappy.

If you take nothing else from this post, please let it be this: the only thing that can fill you up and satisfy you is a relationship with Jesus. The only thing that will enable you to look at a sinful man and continue to love him the best that you can is a relationship with Jesus. The only thing that will keep you from walking out the door when you are angry and your husband is stubborn and you feel like you are at the end of it all, is a relationship with Jesus. Your beauty WILL fade, no matter how much botox or makeup you use. Your list of things in common will always differentiate and you will argue about these things for years to come. Your sex life will take time and effort and the magic of it all will die very quickly. Your children will be difficult and time consuming and you will have to fight to prioritize time with each other. It will be wonderful, and it will be work, but it will not fill up that aching hole that you feel every time you watch a romantic movie or attend a wedding. It might subdue it for a time, but it cannot satisfy. Only Jesus can. Jesus wants to draw you into himself and love you in a way that no husband ever could. There is no judgement, no shame, no condemnation, no criticism, no hatred, no bitterness in a relationship with Him. There is unconditional love, healing, and pure joy, which is so much better than simple happiness.

I realize that the majority of readers for this article are more than likely not on the same page as me when it comes to a relationship with Jesus Christ, and more than likely will not agree with my stance. But if this is a new concept to you, or if you have any questions, or if something about this resonates with you and you want to know more, comment to me or ask someone you know who is a Bible believing Christian. I would love to dive into this further with you and answer any questions you may have.

And if you are a 20 something thinking about getting married, good! You should be thinking about it. I hope every single person that reads this gets to experience the gift that marriage is. But you should not be basing your life around it. You should not be obsessing about it and planning your life around it when you have no prospect in sight. You should not be chasing after it and making it the ultimate goal for your life. You will miss out on so many good and wonderful things because you are idolizing something that is not guaranteed to happen.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I apologize if it is scatter brained or doesn't read well. But I could not pass up this opportunity, or condone something with this message that has my face plastered all over it. If you care to, please share this message, and maybe we can counteract the other one that has been spread. 

These are my confessions...

Hi. 
My name is Chandler Allen and I am not a good blogger.

I really do have excuses though! They may not be good...but they're excuses. First of all, we have been all kinds of busy the past few months. True, not so busy that I couldn't pause and take a few moments to give mini-updates.......but alas, they never happened. The only other attempt I have at an excuse is that the internet has been out at our house for about a month and so we have to go up to the school or coffee shops in order to do anything online. But still, I apologize to any of you who have been disappointed in my lack of cyber updates.

But hey! I'm here now! Better late than never posting again, am I right or am I right?

Tomorrow is December.
Tomorrow is December. I keep having to repeat this to myself in order to get it to sink in. December. Tomorrow. As in the last month of the year. I know it's so cliche to say that the time has flown by, but I'm going to say it anyways. It comes very near to stressing me out when I think about how quickly the time has gone. We are merely days away from being finished with the semester, which we are so looking forward to. The past few months have been crazy with school, jobs, church, and being newly weds. Don't misunderstand me, it has been a wonderful semester. We love being married. Really and truly, it is the best thing I've ever been part of. Hard as heck some days, but nonetheless so rewarding. Our God is good, people. He knows exactly what we need even when we're point blank telling Him we don't. I'm incredibly thankful He knows me a lot better than I do. Husband is an incredibly patient man, and together we are learning how to better love one another and how to better love our God. It's slow going sometimes but sanctification is not a quick process. I'm thankful for a man who loves me enough not to get frustrated with me when I continually leave my Chacos by the front door where he will trip over them, (It's not on purpose, I swear!) and instead just picks them up and puts them in the shoe rack.  He loves me so well and I love the heck out of that man.
We have both been working quite a bit. He's still a barista at Mugwalls and I am working at a cafe in downtown Bryan. Both of us love our jobs and the people we work with, and while they are two opposite environments they are both exactly where we're supposed to be. We're grateful for such great places to work while we're still in school.
Funny enough, we are both doing better academically than either of us have in several semesters. Who'd have thought, right? A large portion of that is due to the fact that we're now only doing our major and minor courses so we're getting to take classes that really interest us. It's been a good semester, but both of us are definitely ready for graduation. I'll be taking six hours next semester and working a good bit, while Josh will still be full time. I'll graduate in May and he will most likely finish up in August.

All in all, not the most exciting or out of the ordinary semester. Really probably the most exciting thing to happen was a couple of weeks ago we had two weddings in one weekend. Both were some of our best friends, and one was in California and the other in Lubbock. It was an adventure but we were incredibly blessed to be able to participate in the covenants of two couples very special to us. But through all the business and bustle of the last semester, I have had one song playing in my head over and over and over again. It sometimes gets easy to be so preoccupied with the things going on around us that we forget what the entire purpose of this life is: To know Jesus and to make Him known. That is the only, only reason we even live. Everything else is and should be a product of those two things. Yet so quickly I get overwhelmed by all the things we need to get done and all the studying I need to do. And then, this song plays in my head:

All I once held dear, built my life upon,
All this world reveres and wars to own, 
All I once thought gain I have counted loss,
Spent and worthless now, compared to this

Knowing You, Jesus
Knowing You,
There is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the Best,
You're my joy, My righteousness,
And I love you, Lord.

The truth behind this song weighs heavy on my heart. Before I truly knew the Lord, my worth and value was completely in the things I had to do, the things I thought I had going for me, and the relationships I thought were more fulfilling than anything Christ had to offer. (All I once held dear...built my life upon). Seeing the things that the people around me are pressed to gain, earthly things like success and wealth people value above all else (All this world reveres and wars to own)...none of it is even comparable to just Knowing Jesus. Just knowing Him is enough. Knowing Him is worth more than any price, any item, any other relationship. Just to know Him, Him who is so perfect and blameless and yet loves with the deepest love sinners as broken as we are. There is no greater thing. It has been such a sweet reminder in this busy season of who I really serve and how fulfilling He is. There is no greater thing.

Well, that about does it for now. Pretty quick rundown of the last two months, but I promise to try my hardest to be a little more disciplined about updating those of you who keep up with us. Definitely check in over the next few weeks as we're going to be making a pretty exciting announcement!
(No, we are not pregnant, and shame on you for thinking it! You know who you are, Candace Scott). It's just an announcement once it's finalized on what the next step is going to be for The Allen's. So stay tuned!

We are greatly blessed by each of you and thank our Lord daily for the support and love from our family and friends. Have a happy last day of November, because oh yeah, tomorrow is December.

Humble Soup.

*Disclaimer: This is definitely a more vulnerable post than those I have written thus far. I'm by no means a believer in using the internet as a person's diary, but I see no fruit in pretending we have it all together and therefore will share the lessons we are learning, including the harder ones. For those of you who are shifting uncomfortably in your seats at the thought of getting a little deep for a blog post, this might be a good time to return to Pinterest.
I hate being sick.
Obviously that seems like a "duh" statement. Is there anyone that really enjoys being sick? Surely not. But I really, really, really despise being ill. 
Of course there's the whole "I feel like I'm dying" part, but there are many facets as to why being sick is so despicable. 
However.
That's not what we're going to focus on today. Instead, we're going to pay more attention as to why being sick is so very good for me. 
If by this point you haven't deduced that I was recently very ill, here's your pick up point: I was recently very ill. All day Saturday, in fact. Husband and I had a very comfortable evening on Friday, eating pizza and watching The Return of the King (extended edition......it was a very, very comfortable night). Halfway through the movie I felt a little funny but I have this problem where when I'm starting to get sick, I convince myself that by sheer force and determination I will outwit my body and therefore dominate the sickness by choosing not to be sick. I have yet to actually win this battle. We went to bed and by 3:30 that morning I was sprawled out on the bathroom floor, praying that God would just take my life and call it good. (I also tend to be a little dramatic, if you haven't noticed...)
But seriously. I don't recall ever having been this sick, at least not in a very, very long time. I've caught the stomach bug a few times since I've been in college, but it was nothing like this. I finally stopped throwing up (sorry if thats TMI for anyone, I tell it like it is) around 10 that morning, and laid in bed for the rest of the day. But like I said, I have never felt like this before. The simple task of lifting up my head seemed comparable to climbing Everest in scuba gear. It felt darn near impossible. (Drama, right?) But really, I felt quite helpless. Sweet Husband had to be at work at 11 and told me he would call my best friend to bring me crackers and Sprite, to which I respectfully declined. I didn't need to be taken care of, I would be fine, I told him. His reply was so simple, but so strong and convicting. "Chandler. People want to love you. Let them love you." I was a little embarrassed and still didn't want him calling Brittney, but was much too sick to put up a fight and knew, though I didn't want to admit it, that he was right. I didn't think much on what he said until the next day when my brain felt fully functioning again, but I still tucked it away to mull over later. Of course, my wonderful, kind, and ever so witty bestie brought me all kinds of goodies for a sick stomach, and just sat with me for 2 and a half hours in case I needed anything. While she was there my fever spiked up and I was the worst company in the history of friendships, but nevertheless she stayed with me until it was almost time for Josh to come home. Once he was back, he picked up where she left off and continued taking care of me, (from helping me hold my head up while I drank to walking me to the bathroom to keeping the house at a freezing 64 degrees to try and cool me down), even despite my feeble attempts to tell him to go do something better with his time. He gently, patiently, and firmly kept reminding me that there was nowhere else in the world he would rather be. 
I promise there's a point to all of this.
The next morning I felt much more like a human again, praise the Lord, and have since been contemplating what Josh had said to me and what I had seen from two people I love the most in those 24 hours. 
People want to love you. Let them love you.
This seems like a rather elementary concept, and yet, it has been hard for me to swallow.
I've always had a very difficult time asking for help. Many people call this a pride issue, and while I'm still working through the real heart behind this issue, I'm not entirely convinced it's purely pride as much as it is that I hate inconveniencing people. And I do mean hate. The thought of someone having to go out of their way to do something for me makes me cringe. The real root issue here, I think, is not so much pride as it is my constant battle against being a people pleaser instead of a God pleaser. I've struggled against it my entire life and pray through it daily, but it is one of my deep idols and something the Lord is ever constantly seeking to strip me of. I'm so afraid of taking advantage of someone's hospitality or wearing out my welcome that I will go to any length to make sure that neither of those things happen. I can't get past this self made notion that people don't actually want to do the things that they offer to do for me, they're just offering out of obligation. And so I will deny, deny, deny the help that I need in order to keep on someone's "good" side. So yeah, actually, maybe that is pride. But again, my very wise husband brought up the point that if people offer to do something they don't actually want to do, that is their issue, not mine...and where is the gospel in that belief? Would I deny my Savior his offer to help me? One of my favorite quotes that our pastor at New Life often says is, "Jesus came to do for us that which we would not and could not do for ourselves." I think what strikes me most about this is not the could not, but the would not. Even if we had the ability, we would not save ourselves. Our hearts are so prone to sin and so naturally corrupt that even if we had the option of saving ourselves from sin, we wouldn't do it. And so Christ, in all his perfection and love, chose to help us because we would not help ourselves.
How could I deny Him that?
And additionally, how could I deny the people I love the opportunity to reflect Christ and show me the Gospel as they have been commanded to do? People want to love me, serve me, and help me when I cannot help myself because Christ has loved us, served us, and helped us when we cannot and will not help ourselves. And so, I'm learning. I'm learning that when someone offers to pick me up from school, or to buy me dinner, or to take care of me when I'm really ill, it isn't because inside they're thinking "Oh dadgum it, I didn't think she'd actually take me up on that....well heck, now I'm really in a pickle"...One because no one really talks like that, and two it's because they love me, and they want to be allowed to love me. That was a rather humbling thought for me.
I apologize if this has been a little scattered. I'm usually not such an external processor, but these are just the musings of someone still somewhat recovering from what was potentially a form of the Black Plague. (OH the drama). But because of it, I received a much needed taste of Humble Soup...because lets be honest, there's no way I could have kept the Pie down.

Firework.

I always wanted a sister.
I have vivid memories of being a little girl, begging my mom to have another baby, but only if it was a girl. (I didn't quite realize at the time that parent's don't get to choose...). Growing up with two big brothers, I desperately wanted a sisterly companion. Little Women was one of my favorite books, and I would vicariously live my life through those characters (as I did most books I read as a kid), wishing that I at least had one sister to play with. I remember always feeling jealous of my friend's who had sisters, and I'll admit, even as I grew older and entered adult hood there has always been a twinge of envy when I see friends with their sisters and the close bond that they have. I think I always assumed that a sister meant having a built in best friend, and while I know that's not the truth in all cases, it definitely is true in most that I've seen. But that wasn't the Lord's plan for my life, and I'm more than okay with that. I was given two wonderful, artistic, somewhat insane but great older brothers who I'm very thankful for. I just wasn't meant to have a sister.
Biologically, that is. 
The first time Josh brought me home to meet his family, I was pretty nervous. Meeting the parents is an intimidating thing no matter what, but that wasn't what most worried me. I generally get a long with people, and was excited to meet the people Josh loved most...but I was really nervous about meeting Rachel. Josh had described Rachel to me as "the light of his life", and truly is his favorite person in the world. I was so nervous, knowing that I was about to meet his sister, and one of the most important people to him. But the Lord is so good. I was silly to be so nervous. I think I like the way that Josh puts it best:
Rachel is the best picture of unconditional love that I have seen on this earth.
She is the most joyful, loving, genuine person that I have ever met. From day one, Rachel displayed love and kindness in such an open way. It really doesn't matter who you are or what you do, Rachel just loves you. She is hilarious and has one of the best laughs you'll ever hear. She is imaginative, creative, and quirky in her own Rachel way. Rachel has Charge Syndrome
and because of it is partially deaf and blind. She uses sign language and my goodness, that girl is patient. She is a wonderful teacher and between her and Josh I'm slowly learning how to sign. She has probably had to tell me 500 times what the sign is for "name", but she never acts frustrated with me (even though I get frustrated with myself). She has 5 kiddos, (4 Teletubbies and a doll named Christine) and she is their mother, doctor, teacher, and fellow rockstar. She loves Harry Potter as much as Josh and I do, and she is just an incredibly joyful girl. I never would have imagined all those times I prayed for and dreamed of having a sister, the Lord would put Rachel in my life. When I say she is unconditional love, I mean that sincerely. She is such a beautiful reminder that if a human being could love us so well, how much more perfectly does our Heavenly Father love us. Makes you think, right?
One of my favorite things to do is watch Rachel sign and sing to her favorite songs, and one of these is "Firework", by Katy Perry. I've never been a Katy Perry fan, but now when I hear this song, I admit I turn it up. This may sound cheesy, but Rachel is totally a firework. She is bright, colorful, and big. Not big in physical stature, she's pretty tiny actually. But big in the sense that her personality and heart are huge. She genuinely lights up the room and her joy is infectious so everyone around her feels joyful, too. For example, when the wedding ceremony was over and our pastor announced as Mr. and Mrs. Allen, Rachel was so excited that she rushed the stage. Not out of any motive except her genuine joy and happiness and pure excitement. It was one of our favorite moments of the entire day. We are so blessed to have Rachel in our lives, especially me. I love getting to call Rachel my new sister and am excited about the relationship we are building.
So happy birthday, Rachel.
We love you more than you will ever know.

Honeymooners.

To say that our honeymoon was perfect
would be an understatement. And I don't mean perfect in the "everything went off without a hitch, flawless, total and complete bliss" kind of perfect. I mean in the Allen's kind of perfect. (It's similar to how perfect our wedding was...if you missed out on that spiel, check the first blog post). But I think both of us would agree that what made the trip even more special was once again seeing how many phenomenal people we are blessed to have in our lives.
The day after the wedding we drove to Dallas where a very dear friend had gotten us the hook up to stay at The Joule downtown. Such a cool hotel. We got up early Sunday morning to go exploring downtown and eat breakfast before we caught our flight.
Side note to all you future honeymooners :
Don't book the flight for your honeymoon the day after the wedding. We LOVED having a day in between to just rest, pack, and process the events of the wedding day. We still got out of town but gave ourselves time to recoup a little before embarking on the chaos of catching a flight. There was no stress or pressure, just good quality time. Also, Sunday flights are way cheaper than Friday or Saturday. Just FYI.
Need Title.
You should know that finding the sublime honeymoon spot for the two of us was a bit of a challenge. Not the worst, but we definitely had to think hard about where we would go that both of us would enjoy. You see, Josh is a bit of a playaholic. By this I mean the man LOVES to be active, whether it's playing basketball, climbing, hiking, running, surfing, long-boarding, playing soccer, playing water polo, jet skiing, wake boarding, snow boarding...it never ends. And the great thing is that I love doing the majority of these things as well (notice I didn't say "all". The day I shoot a basketball is the day you can expect the rapture), however none of those things are my definition of a vacation. To me, there is a difference between a "trip" and a "vacation". If we're going on a trip, we can be as active as we want and fill as many adventures into a small amount of time as possible. But if I'm going on a vacation, well that's a different story entirely. I want to do nothing but relax, and if that means laying next to a body of water reading a book in the sunshine for 3-6 hours a day then so be it. So you can see where our dilemma arrives. Josh wanted to go to Colorado or Washington and hike all over the dang mountains until our feet fell off. I wanted to go to Mexico and have a little man bring me Pina Coladas while I re-read the Hunger Games and come dangerously close to getting skin cancer. (Obviously joking...we all know I would have read Harry Potter.) So where do we find Compromise?
Florida.
The perfect blend of action and rest. We spent the first 4 days at a condo in Orlando and had the time of our lives. We did 3 theme parks in 2 days, being Sea World, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Universal's Islands of Adventure (Harry Potter World, to be specific). We had an incredible time sharing so many hilarious and fun memories and really got to emphasize the whole "best friends" part of marriage. (Especially at Harry Potter World. Heaven on earth to a couple of nerds like us.) Two of our favorite things from the Orlando portion (besides Harry Potter), would be
1) the night we ate at The California Grille.
I had eaten there my senior year of high school on our choir trip and ever since had dreamed about how delicious the food was. I'm not exaggerating people, I have literally dreamed about this food. The steak literally melts in your mouth. Literally. Plus it's on the top floor of Disney's Contemporary Resort with a view right over Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom. Towards the end of the night the whole restaurant goes out on the balcony to watch the Magic Kingdom's fireworks show and it's...well, it's just magical. (It's really the only word that fits.) Easily a highlight of the trip.
2) the night Josh surprised me with tickets to Cirque du Soleils' La Nouba. He had been telling me since about June when we were at Kamp that he was looking into a surprise for the honeymoon, and finally on our last day in Orlando he pulled out the tickets. I had never seen a Cirque show but had heard great things, and let me tell you people, they did not disappoint. It was easily the most mesmerizing, beautiful show I've ever seen, and I've seen Wicked on Broadway. But Cirque had it beat. At one point, a woman did a hand stand on a man's head while he walked 50 feet in the air across a tight rope. That's all I'm sayin. We were both awestruck by the whole show and count it as our favorite part of the whole honeymoon.

On Friday, we headed for New Smyrna. We were incredibly blessed to have friends with a condo on the beach (and we mean right on the beach) that they let us stay in for the weekend. We had an incredible view of the ocean and the condo itself was beautiful. When we first arrived we went on a long walk on the beach (how very honeymoon of us...) and just enjoyed each other's company. The next morning we went for a good run, but by the time we had cleaned up and were in our swimsuits Hurricane Isaac had decided to visit. Definitely not the real storm but enough rain to keep us inside for the rest of the weekend. Some of you may think that this was disappointing, but in actuality it was perfect. The rain was the only thing that could really force Josh to rest. Even if we'd been on the beach he would have been surfing or boogie boarding or running, but being inside gave him the chance to just take naps and watch movies and let his body have a little bit of a break after 3 months of hard work at kamp and a crazy wedding week. It was really a blessing and the perfect way to end our trip.

The flight back was nothing terribly interesting, with the exception of a delayed flight and some rain-soaked luggage, but we were glad to get back to College Station and start the real life part of marriage. We started classes the next day (not the most fun transition, but oh well) and Josh jumped straight into working while I started up the job search. We've been unpacking our sweet little house (more on that later...) and are loving our new life together. I haven't uploaded any honeymoon pictures yet, but here's another wedding picture just because they're beautiful and I love them.
Happy Monday!

Here We Are.

Blogs are great.
I've always been a big fan of blogs. It's such a convenient way to keep up with people that you usually don't see or only get to catch up with briefly. With blogs, you can hear all (or at least quite a bit) about a person's life and still feel connected. Some may think they're too impersonal, but not me. I think they can be as personal or impersonal as you want them to be. And hey, they're efficient as heck, and we Allen's are all about efficiency! (Okay...one of us is all about efficiency. The other is learning how to be more efficient. Rome wasn't built in a day, alright?) But seriously, it's such a great way to know that you're updating multiple people at once instead of having the same conversations over and over again. Not that it's a bad thing to have these conversations in person, but it does make it easier to get to deeper matters and have more intentional (yes, intentional, the most over used word in the American Christian language, but sometimes it's the only word that fits) conversations with a good friend without having to catch up on the basics.
So here we are.
A blog on the lives of Josh and Chandler Allen. We both have friends all over the nation (and some parts of the world), and wanted to be able to give you a peek into our life together. I'm not an avid blogger and am still learning the basic's of "the how-to's" in the blogging world, so bear with me as we get this thing started up. More than anything this is just going to be a little insight into the things we're doing, where we're going, and what we're learning.

How to put this briefly...
An attempt at a quick update on the last couple of months. (Key word: Attempt.)
We spent the 3 months before our wedding working at K7 again. Yes, we might have been crazy. But neither of us would change that time for the world. You'll probably notice that I use the word sanctifying a lot, and that's because as believer's we go through daily sanctification, so be prepared, it's a common term around the Allen house. All that to say, our time at K7 before the wedding was probably the best sanctification we could have gone through before entering into marriage. Learning how to balance full time jobs, ministry, and a soon-to-be marriage was rough to say the least. But it brought us both to our knees every day, and the somewhat-bitter-but-oh-so-sweet realization that relationships are nothing without Jesus was exactly what we needed. We could not be more thankful for our time at Kamp.
And then...the wedding.
I hope every girl's wedding is as wonderful for her as mine was for me. It was so beautifully imperfect (the cake almost fell over and in the madness of set up we forgot forks) and we wouldn't have dreamed it to be any other way. The imperfection of the day made it absolutely perfect. Josh and I are not extravagant, lavish, "have it all together" type people, and so the little bumps in the road through out the day made it even more "us". But the greatest part of the whole day was that when it was all over, we had just made a covenant with our Lord to do this thing for His glory, and we had so many incredible people around us as we made that promise. We were both overwhelmed by how loyal and loving our friends were to us during that time, and made us so appreciative of the relationships that God has blessed us with to challenge and sharpen us throughout the years.
And then...we danced.
And boy did we. I have never had so much fun at a party or event in my entire life. We absolutely tore up that dance floor for a good couple of hours. It was the best celebration and I'll never forget it.

So there's a brief (not too shabby, right?) update on this summer. I'll post more about school, jobs (or lack thereof...prayer please!), our house, church, and other fun shenanigans later. But for now, I leave you with one of our favorite pictures from the wedding day. It truly captures the joy and celebration that filled the atmosphere.