Fierce in How We Love People: Staying at the Table with Allie Gronning
“People’s drinks are empty but they stay at the table because the relationship has kept them there.”
This episode is the third in our core value-inspired series, diving into what it looks like to be "Fierce in How We Love People". Abby will be interviewing Allie Gronning, a wife, mom, and social worker who has coached Abby throughout the years in how to fight for relationships.
She'll be speaking on her experiences with...
- loss in motherhood
- learning sacrificial love
- the power of vulnerability
- practical tips for building intentional relationships
“In challenging relationships we have to navigate not through an all-or-nothing perspective, but a lens that sees, okay, my main goal is love.”
About Allie
Allie Gronning is a wife, mother of five, business owner, and Mental Health and Substance Abuse Crisis Worker. She enjoys coaching her daughters' basketball teams, volunteering at church, and sipping iced americanos in the summer.
Read the Podcast
Intro: Welcome to Beyond the Bar, the podcast where coffee and conversation are a catalyst for growth. If you’ve been searching for that coffee-with-a-friend experience that leaves you feeling seen, met, and encouraged, you’ve come to the right place. So grab your cup, listen up, and together we’re going Beyond the Bar.
Abby: Hey friends, welcome to Beyond the Bar. I’m your host Abby. Today’s episode is going to be an extremely good one so I’m looking forward to it and excited to get into it. We' are in our Core Values mini-series, so this is our third core value, “Fierce in How We Love People: we show up to our relationships and continually invest in them".
Today’s guest is a woman who really showed me how to do this in life and challenged me multiple times growing up throughout middle school and high school on how to fiercely love people, how to continue to show up to relationships, specifically in relationships where I have been hurt or things got hard. So I think this is going to be a great episode. I’m excited to introduce you to her: she’s a wife, a mother of five, she’s a business owner, a social worker, a coach, does multiple things so you can almost always find her with a coffee at hand and planning some sort of event to give back to people and be involved in people’s lives. So without further ado, here’s Allie Gronning.
Allie: Hi!
Abby: Thanks for coming on to do this. You, I mentioned this a little bit in the intro, but you’ve known me I think since I was in middle school and have been involved as like kind of a youth leader and mentor for me growing up and now you keep doing that. So this is kind of a fun episode to bring you on for because you’ve just been involved in my story for so long and walked through this. So I appreciate it.
Allie: Yeah, this is amazing. I’ve always told you that you can do anything you want to do, so when you were going to start a podcast, I wasn’t surprised. So this is great and I think it can bless a lot of people.
Abby: Thanks, thanks. Well we’re gonna jump right into the show topic because I think you’re gonna have a lot to say on it so I’m excited to get into it. We’re obviously talking about fiercely loving people and showing up, how we continually show up to our relationships and invest in them, and when I was thinking through people in my life and this core value and “Who do I bring on as a guest?” I didn’t hesitate to think of you, mainly because you’ve challenged me so much on how to do this throughout my life. Not because I didn’t want to fiercely love people, but because when relationships got hard or difficult or I got hurt, my tendency was to pull back and to run away from relationships and to shut people off. So you’ve been a voice all throughout my growing up who’s challenged me to do opposite than that. So I’d like to maybe just start by diving into that a little bit.
Why have you always been- at least for me you have been, maybe you’re not with other people… why have you been always so passionate about not giving up on relationships and continuing to try?
Allie: Yeah, I think every person has a story and most of the time in life we get to see little bits and pieces of people’s story so it’s always a good question and I think for people to always ask people, “Why are you like that? Why do you do that?” Because most of the time, people aren’t just naturally like that. I get the question of, “Why are you positive? Why are you happy?'“ And no one’s really naturally like that. It has taken a process of learning and usually a process of a lot of hurts. So I think growing up, I was always very closed with things going on. I played a lot of sports. You learned work ethic and working hard and those values, but never really learned how to deal with hard relationships. Most of the time I would just close up, deal with it myself and move on. I really didn’t need explanations. Um, and it wasn’t until my late or my early twenties that I learned that is where freedom is found: is intimacy with relationships. So, really diving into relationships and not just being the person that could just close up and move on.
But how do you be intimate with your relationships? Because it really does matter. So I think when I, um, had two major life experiences in my life, and one of them is coming up next week, I was about, I think it was 28 weeks pregnant, and I was at work, and I just new something felt wrong. So I actually had one of my co-workers drive me to the hospital, and I found out that we had lost our daughter. There was no heartbeat, and I went through this process that seems like something you should never get over. It seems like something that could never heal. And I look back at it now and I can’t remember much of it. But what I do remember is people were literally coming to my house. Now this could be a situation that I could go through and I could do myself because I do feel independently strong, but to allow others to walk through the process was super uncomfortable for me in my early 20s.
So for me, looking back, I just remember like, groceries would be dropped off at my house. People planted a tree in my yard for my daughter that had passed. I had so many people come with different gifts and… cooking meals, and cleaning up, playing with my little kids, and I often wonder like, “What state was I in and all these people were there?” but they didn’t really care. It was a sacrificial love, and that sacrificial love impacted how I wanted to have relationships.
Abby: I was… I mean, I knew you and when you guys lost Lacy, you were a youth leader at the time, you were my youth leader. I would babysit your kids, and watching you and Sam go through that loss… Like that was one of the hardest funerals I’ve ever been to. But watching you guys like raise your hands and worship the Lord… and like you were heartbroken and it was super hard and traumatic, and watching you guys lean on people, particularly knowing you and you are super strong, independent, like very fierce and bold personality, super capable… like you’re just a super capable woman and watching you go through something like that and the way you guys walked through that and did allow people to help like carry you and hold you was such an inspiration to me at the time, and I was just, you know, like a young middle school or early high school, somewhere in there. Was that actually in your 20s?
Allie: Mm-hmm.
Abby: Wow.
Allie: Yeah, I’m getting old now.
Abby: Wow. So you talked about something there, so to backtrack a tiny bit, you grew up in a super athletic family, like you were in a lot of, a lot of sports, super highly involved, so you grew up on a lot of team sports in a lot of relationships actually. So you’re saying you didn’t always start as somebody who was actually very for people necessarily.
Allie: Mm-hmm, yeah, I always got along with everybody really well, but I would say probably, which most teens could relate to, I was pretty selfish. You’re into just whatever you’re doing and that’s what matters. And it wasn’t until my early 20s when my eyes and my heart just really started to turn. I wanted to go to school to be a school counselor at that time, so I always had a heart for people, but was never really intentional with it. We can have a heart for people and a love for people and be positive, but if we’re not intentional with it it goes nowhere. So that was what was really working on my heart, and after we had lost Lacy, I just had gotten this vision for people. And the vision in my mind was just a people, like when you’re at a restaurant and the bill is paid and people stay. Relationships where people stay after they get what they want or what they’re doing. So similar to your coffee shop, I love walking up to your coffee shop and you can see people’s drinks are empty but they stay at the table because the relationship has kept them there. The intimacy with that relationship is more than just “I wanna stop, get this done, and go.” So really wanting to create that in relationships for people because we live in a time where we want intimacy but we also want independence.
Abby: Yeah, how do you handle that? You said we want intimacy, but we also want independence. And you are seriously one of the most like competent, strong, capable females that I know. Like I have never seen someone with a busier schedule with more activities going on. Like your kids are going to a billion places, they’re involved in a billion things. And you still manage to somehow be thoughtful and intentional and think of other people… in your world, like, if other people saw your calendar, they would have an anxiety attack. and you manage it, like just with like a coffee in hand, like it’s no big deal.
Allie: Coffee is needed in hand (laughs).
Abby: Like, “This is just a Tuesday, what are you talking about?” So how do you, how do you do that? How do you fight for intentionality? How do you be independent in doing your things, but then really create intimacy and relationships? Because you do that really well.
Allie: Yeah, and I think about, I just attended the table fellowship conference, and Joey really wrapped it up and I thought, “What perfect timing for this podcast to come on after that?” Because it’s like, real true fulfillment in life comes through service. So in these relationships of being intentional and the busy schedules and everything that’s going on, to some, they look at it and it’s draining. And to me, I feel fulfilled because you’re being intentional in people’s life and that is a service. It’s a sacrifice and just being okay with the value of sacrificial love. Like love for people isn’t about what you can get out of it, but what could you sacrifice for them? Because that’s where true fulfillment comes from. Even in our relationships, I was thinking about, so much is online and I will hear some people that say they have friends and you end up finding out they only know them through the online spectrum. And it’s so sad for me because we’re created and meant for each other, and that comes through being intentional in your relationships, but physically, you know, I have been guilty of this myself where you’re like, “I’d rather someone text me than call me” (laughs), where you’re like, “Oh, why are they calling?” It has become weird to us that someone calls to ask the question rather than text it. So I’ve really had to fight back even through myself of just like, “Wait ‘til you see him in person, then text him.” You know, if someone’s telling you something good about yourself, I guarantee most of the time you go back and reread the text that someone might have sent you. It’s like we desire that, but I’ve tried to be intentional at telling people, tell them face-to-face, get used to telling someone something great about them face-to-face and not through text.
So it’s really trying to fight against the new age of technology as we want to feel like we have relationships, but the intimacy is still missing.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. How do you… or how would you recommend to start that process? Because it can be really uncomfortable at first, like super awkward. And I know this is something that… this is something that growing up was so hard for me. Like so hard. I liked to be viewed as strong, I like to be viewed as independent, like I had everything together. When I was going through something it was something I was gonna bear on my own and like just such a harder outer shell of like, “I’ve got this”, and I remember like vividly, I think I was probably in middle school, you looking at me and saying, “Abby, don’t you know your most beautiful side is your most vulnerable one?” And I looked at you and I was like, “No way, you’ve got to be crazy”, cuz I hate that part of me, like I hate that vulnerable part of me. Since then, it’s become like apparently my life motto to start learning how to run in the vulnerable parts of me. But I actually think that getting to those parts in our relationships to those vulnerable real parts is how you make it through things. Like you kind of said, if you hadn’t let people in when you guys lost Lacy, like would you, you probably, you kind of said it or alluded to it, you don’t know if you would have made it, like you don’t even really remember part of that season so it was through the vulnerable parts of your story and letting people into relationship that that happened… how do you get there? How do you get to the vulnerable, awkward, uncomfortable, “I’m going to talk about honest stuff instead of just liking your post”?
Allie: Yeah, and I always tell people there’s no magic trick. There’s no easy answer. There’s lots of slogans within even the therapy world or social work that I’m in, and most of them I look at and say, “Really truly what it is is one foot in front of the other.” So you have to take a step. There’s no, you can give yourself a million pep talks and still sometimes you’re like, like “No, I’m not doing it”, so it’s really just one step in front of the other and that’s a lot of life. There are little steps that lead to bigger things so for me it was just looking at who’s around me, who’s around me and start there. Find one person that you could be intentional with and it doesn’t have to be big things. You’ll be surprised that people are fulfilled by words, so it could be hanging out with someone, like a coffee shop. It can be being intentional with where you’re at.
Another thing that I started, which again, I’m going against the norm here, but once COVID hit, everyone was so used to online shopping and even grocery pickup, those types of things. And I have five kids and a busy schedule, “This would be so convenient for me!” And at first, I started to do some online pickups and I was like, “This is amazing. I don’t have to unbuckle anybody.” But then I just thought about, “How many interactions are you missing within the store?” So I have stopped that now where I’m just like, “I’m going to go in and we’re all going in no matter how many kids I have”, put a smile on your face and interact with people because people need people, even if it’s inconvenient for us. So you’re training yourself not to think about yourself, which is against the norm. So it’s really just being intentional, even with little everyday things that you think “this isn’t gonna matter” and it will matter to someone.
Abby: I think that is so, like you said, counter-cultural. Like I don’t know a single mom who has one kid who wouldn’t do the convenience of “I don’t have to unbuckle them”, you know, “I don’t have to run into that, like I can just pick up the things, someone brings it to my car, I don’t even have to say ‘hi’”, um, so the fact, this is why I knew, I knew I needed to talk to you on today’s episode (Allie laughs) because you just do things like that. Like you have this like stubborn will that’s like, you actually, you know what, like this hard thing is worth it, ummm and I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that anew, part of it I think comes from like athletics, like you really like to win and you like, you’d like to conquer. And so I think when there’s a mountain to climb you’re like, “Okay, I can do that, like I’m climbing the hard thing”, and I’ve seen you do that time and time again. I’ve witnessed you do that particularly as you lie coach and mentor young women of like really challenging them to do the hard thing. I can attest to this in my whole life. What are some ways, now, like relationally, you’ve said it’s one step in front of the other. Have there been some times where you’ve had to go through the hard things and relationships and what are some ways that you’ve helped walk through that? Could you speak to that a little bit?
Allie: Yeah, I think I have experienced both extremes. Whenever you set out and you think, “I’m going to start doing this” like this, say you listen to this and you’re like “I’m going to start doing relationships”, you should be prepared. You’re going to be given some tough situations, you know, and this helps you. So I have two extremes of the situation where probably, I think it was like seven years ago, I got a call from my sister that my dad, my biological dad was in town, and I have not seen him or spoke to him for probably… at this point it was about 14 years. And I had been talking about like, “Oh, I need to go do this. I need, I need to just go see him.” But again, when you come from relationships where you’re like, “I’ve moved on, I’m not really upset, but I don’t ever need to see you again.” And of course I got this call and I just knew, “Oh, you have to do it. You have to do it.” So we drove down there with a day’s notice and you had to face the most awkward situation. My husband Sam was like, “Why, why do you keep hiding in the house"?” and you’re like, “this is so awkward”, but it was so good. I look back and you’re just like, that’s freedom. That’s freedom. And it doesn’t mean that I would say we have this flourishing relationship now. But for me, it was a part that it’s like, “You can extend forgiveness.” You can extend forgiveness and it doesn’t mean that everybody’s happy afterwards. This is about me right now and something in my life conquering. So it’s like you have these relationships and I hear of many people where they haven’t talked to family members in years, and you’re thinking, “How can that be, that can’t be?” We have to be a people that says “That can’t be”, you know? And there’s different types of relationships.
I think about people that pour out a lot in their lives, and they’re gonna go through stages where you feel like, “I’m burnt out.” And that is okay. I think so often we tell people “Don’t burn out, you can’t burn out, you just gotta keep going.” And sometimes people just need a rest. And I’ve taken times in my life where I’m just like, “I need a few weeks”, you know? And some relationships are more draining. As soon as you feel like you’re expecting things back from people and you’re actually getting upset about it, you need a break from that relationship. And sometimes that might mean maybe you don’t talk to that person as much because they take so much emotionally. It doesn’t mean you write somebody off. You can come back to that relationship, but you just need a little rest and that’s okay. And that’s healthy. So I think in challenging relationships we have to navigate it not through an all-or-nothing perspective, but a lens that sees, “Okay, my main goal is love.” Am I doing that? My main goal is service. My main goal is sacrifice. Is that me? And it takes a true honesty. People will struggle with relationships the rest of their lives because we’re with each other. So at some point, someone will fail you. Someone will talk bad about you. Someone will say something you don’t like. We could find hundreds of things to disagree on. But we have to know who we are and what we’re intended to be for is for service, for encouragement, for loving other people and that’s where true fulfillment comes from.
Abby: Yeah, you’ve talked a lot about sacrifice and that to you relationship is actually about sacrifice, which I don’t think is talked about. I also don’t think a lot of people even believe that or have heard that, I think there’s lot about “do what makes you happy” and as soon as someone doesn’t make you happy, whether that be a friend or a spouse or a significant other than you know you need to get out of the situation. Sacrifice is different than happy, so could you talk about that a little bit?
Allie: Yeah, so sacrifice is different than happy, but ultimately makes you happy so it’s realizing that intentionality and sacrifice are pretty similar. When you’re being intentional with someone, you’re sacrificing your time. You might be sacrificing your money, your needs, whatever you have, you’re giving to someone else, and ultimately, giving up yourself is what’s going to fulfill you.
Abby: I just love that perspective on sacrifice, because like you’ve said kind of throughout this episode, it’s just something that a lot of people don’t approach relationships with, but when you reframe it in that mindset, it changes the entire way you approach the idea of people and diving into friendships and relationships in general, which obviously you can see the fruit of the difference your mindset- like your mindset completely shifts, and then out of that, your actions just automatically become different. Would you say, and maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know, but your professional background has not played in at all to how you handle relationships?
Allie: I would say it’s definitely played into just education-wise. I think the biggest piece that has played into my relationships is experiences. I didn’t suddenly wake up one day with lots of friends. You don’t just wake up with friends. You don’t just wake up with great experiences. You have to go out and get them and to be in people’s lives. So, being a social worker and going through those experiences we are put in a lot of crisis situations with people, you have a lot of ongoing education that you have to do, so, and overall, I just see how it all connects. Even from a mental health perspective, we often tell people, “Support, you need support, you need people in your life.” Out of all the textbooks and every therapy session you should get, you need people. That’s the overarching consensus that we would all say is coming out of this. So it’s just, how can we do that for people and be that for people, but also knowing that you yourself have to have people like that in your life. As much as you’re pouring out, you will need to get filled up too. And allowing that- sometimes people like myself, it’s hard to allow people to be filling in your life. So it’s knowing that about yourself.
And I have just been touched with so many people in my life that have done that for me and my kids. Um, I have family members, I even think of my sister-in-law and some close friends where my family and my kids? They could go to their house and it would be just fine. They could stay the night, they could have supper… it doesn’t feel any different than like home. And being in community with people and fellowship with people, that’s what we’re truly desiring. I think we allow one or two bad relationships to cloud our view of how everything should be.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. I mean I’ve experienced some relationships that left me fairly heartbroken and they were difficult and traumatic to go through in a variety of different situations throughout my life, and every time you’ve been there to encourage me like, “Hey, this doesn’t have to define”- I remember a note actually that you and like the girls wrote just like, “Just so you know, this doesn’t define who you are” something along those lines. So you’ve always been such a source of encouragement and just challenge to me to never let something that was broken define how I move forward and approach somebody else.
How would you say, again, like from your background in social work and mental health and also just your own personal experiences- you mentioned and talked about Lacy and going through that- how would you recommend to someone wanting to support or trying to support a friend or something through something really traumatic or hard?
Allie: I would say to be present and by being present it means physically present. Over the last several years I’ve always smiled to myself and been someone who’s done it, also where someone loses someone or something tragic happens or something bad and we’ll put in the comment section, “Praying for you” or “Thinking of you” or '“Let me know if you need anything.” Most people are not going to reach out. So it’s knowing that you need to do something physically. So I’ve really tried to change that about myself even of being physically present when people are hurting. So that might be waiting ‘til the next time I see them to say, “Hey, sorry about…” whatever it is, or giving them a card physically instead of just sending a text, trying to be more physically present with that. Closer relationships when you know those people, you may drop off a meal or groceries or maybe they’re older kids… during that time, I look back and I wonder, “What were my older two kids doing?” but people just ended up coming nd picking them up, going to play with them. I was really carried through that time. And it’s like, we need to be there for people and not have the expectation of, “Oh, I hope they say thank you”, “Oh, I hope they remember what I did for them.” You know, we just need to be there knowing like, I’m here as a sacrifice for you and out of love for you without any expectation. And when people are hurting, they may not see or even remember who all helped or what all helped. But that’s not the point. You know, the point is being their to support other people. It’s always a bigger mission, a bigger mission field that we have than just thinking about everyday immediate results that make us feel good.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. Is there something in your life looking back that you can point to that has been memorable for you, where it’s touched you, like the most specifically that somebody has done?
Allie: I think for me, still looking at when Lacey died, and I had someone that was present at my birth also and she was there and the whole funeral service was set up, like I literally remember just putting clothes on and showing up… and that’s so against me because I would be the one organizing the setup. I would be the one getting the people there; doing all those things, and I was put in a situation where you had to let others to let love you and serve you, and that that is a good thing. And you look back and you just think what brought you through that? And the only answer I can have is, people around me. People that loved me. People that had a love that was bigger than just your typical, “Oh, I wanna be nice.” Because sacrificial love goes way past that. Because doing things just out of trying to be a nice person, it doesn’t last. You get annoyed real quick with people. That’s just the reality of it, um, because you’re dealing with so many different people in relationships.
Abby: Yeah. If you were going to, you’ve mentioned diving into relationships that you need people, um, all totally agree with. It’s kind of a core of what Redemption is all about: believing in community and relationships and the importance of it and good conversation. It’s why we’re doing this podcast. It’s why we do Redemption. So I couldn’t agree with you more on any of the today’s show topic, but a lot of times I hear from people that they can recognize or listen to an episode like this or hear someone talk about it and they can recognize their own desire for it or maybe the need for it, but they have no idea how to get involved. No idea how… how to go about finding people or relationships or community. What are some ways that you would recommend or places to look? How do you find it? How do you build community?
Allie: Yeah, I think you find it by just looking at who’s around you. And I have also in the past done thins like, told a friend, “Hey, hold me accountable for this.” And this is probably why I loved athletics so much, is because it creates a new discipline. It’s a discipline to do something and to follow through. It’s a discipline that if you’re going to do something, do it to be great. Don’t just do it to be good (both laugh). So if we’re going to do it we might as well do it. (More laughter) They’ve heard this. So it’s, I take that in every area of my life, um, doing that. So it could be something like, “I have this friend”, and again, “What’s their love language?” Let’s say it’s me, I love coffee. I’m going to go drop her a coffee off. This 4 dollar, 5 dollar, easy service… I guarantee you will impact someone’s day. Or maybe it’s waking up in the morning- I’ve had someone do this before, and it was really cool. They woke up and they sent like two messages through message or calling and say something to that person… like trying to be intentional and if you’re scared to do it face-to-face, start with a text message, start small, like no step is too small to start but trying to change your relationships and taking it seriously to do that. And I just think for me, when I was in my early 20s and going through a lot of heartache and changing, my whole life changed, completely upside down, I’m not the person I once was. And people would probably be like, “Oh my word, you used to do this, you used to do that”, it was like my whole life changed and I was surrounded by people that loved me so well that it changed who I was. So thinking about like, “I could do that for someone else.” The experience that I have is so impactful and it comes through sacrificial love.
Abby: Yeah, and now some of the ways that I mean, I wouldn’t see you do that. You’re obviously super involved in church. I’m lucky enough to go to church with you, so, you’re involved in there. You’re doing youth group, but you coach like every sport that is on the planet to be coachable for people, like what?
Allie: There’s a few we wouldn’t… (laughs)
Abby: So you’ve really gone and like leveled up in that too. You know, you’ve gone way beyond now sending text messages, which you still do, or delivering coffees which you still do, but you’ve gone really way beyond that to some bigger acts too, of saying, “Actually, I’m going to take on this responsibility. It’s going to be a big thing. It’s going to require a lot of sacrifice for time and investment.” But you have an impact now in so many young women’s lives because you’re just diving in and you’re not just really coaching basketball or volleyball or softball, but you’ve really taken an investment into those girls’ stories.
Allie: Yeah, I always have to shake my head and say like, mm-hmm, I’m reminding myself to, because talking about myself or things that I do is actually super uncomfortable for me, which for some people they like to do that, and I do not like to do that. I could talk about other people all day long. So it’s like, yes, I do, I am choosing to be involved in other people’s lives and want to create an impact. And most of it, for people, well find a hobby that you like. Whatever hobby, like for me, I love sports. I love activities. I love those things. So it doesn’t have to be this new journey that you’re on. Like find something you love. For some people, it could be… you like farming, you like crafting, whatever it is, start there. So for me with athletics, it’s “start here.” Start loving the people that are in something, my kids are in it, I'm there and make it purposeful. You know, so these things that we’re in everyday. Everybody leaves their house at some point. So we all get lots of chances to engage in relationships and it’s going past basic relationships. I always see the two extremes where people are like, “I don’t like small talk relationships”, and “I don’t like really deep relationships.” (Laughs) And it’s like, we don’t have to be all or nothing. Sometimes small talk is needed and sometimes bigger conversations are needed. So just look at it as wanting intimate relationship with people through sacrifice, but you have to first see, what is an intimate relationship. And that’s where I got that vision, going back, to people that will stay when the check is paid. People that will stay when the coffee is done. People that will stay when the event is over. Like I think about in sports, when the event is over and people are still talking afterwards; that’s relationship, that’s community. So those are the type of relationships that I want to build and invest on an impact on people.
Abby: I love that so much. I’m so glad I picked you for this episode. It feels like, well, I knew it would be great. But this is just by far exceeding my expectations, so I’m excited for people to hear this.
We end every show at Beyond the Bar-
Allie: Oh boy…
Abby: I’m out of breath. You should be ready for this. We end every show with two questions that I like to know. So it’s a two-part question. First part is, “If you could go back and tell your younger self one thing, what would that be?” And then part two is, if it’s, “What’s one thing that you want to be remembered for?”
Allie: If I were to tell my younger self, I would probably tell myself, “You’re not the most important person on earth.” Just to be less selfish. And what I want people to remember me by is the way that I love them. People to know, know me as how I made them feel. “Did I make you feel loved?” “Did I make you feel like you were something?” So by, more so by the way people feel than what they know about me. I want them to know like how I made them feel was loved by somebody.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. That was my answer to that question. (laughing)
Allie: There we go. (laughing)
Abby: Perfect, I think that was the best answer. No, I really, really do love that. I think it’s something you do so well. You’ve done it well, even maybe when you didn’t think you had done it well, ‘cause like I said, I just have the privilege of knowing you for a lot of years now, and knowing your family, and knowing your kids, and watching how you guys have lived your life and structured it. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, that kind of a love, of you going above and beyond and remembering birthdays and being there when my life’s fallen apart and writing notes and bringing coffees. And so I’ve just experienced the impact of that tidal wave of that kind of love, even when I was snotty or talking back or looking at you like your advice was just like crazy. You loved me so well through what was hard, you loved me so well through what was difficult. Never gave up on the girl you saw. You just always saw somebody more than I ever could. You still do that for me. You look at me and you’ll see more than I ever see myself. And that kind of love is so powerful and impactful. It makes people believe for better when they can’t for themselves, so hopeful. And I watch you do that to me, I watch you do it to people in our church, I watch you do it to specifically the community of Shell Lake, but really any room you walk into. Kind of like you mentioned earlier, even if you’re going into the grocery store, I watch you do that. I watch you head up looking for opportunities to leave impact and to love people. So I think you’re doing it, girl.
Allie: Thanks, thanks.
Abby: Well that’s a wrap on today’s episode of Beyond the Bar. Thanks guys for being here, I hope it really impacted you. This core value, “Fierce in How We Love People: we continually show up to our relationships and invest in them” is probably my favorite of our four core values. It is something I’m super passionate about. And so hopefully you were as blessed by this episode and Allie as I was. We are gonna see you next time.
