8:00 pm Tuesday, waiting on my friend to get out of class...
Me: Well this man just got done bathing himself in the fountain while I sat and watched from afar.
Mom: C anything interesting?
Me: Well, I consider a 50+ year old man walking up in a bathing suit, jumping in the water with out any hesitation, shampooing his hair and soaping his air pits, then flopping down to rinse himself, jump out of the water and walking away dripping wet, pretty interesting. But if you are asking if I saw his “manhood”? The answer is no, I did not.
On Tuesday March 19, 1991 at 2:32pm, Arlen and Amanda Hunt welcomed me, their 6 pound 15 ounces, “Bundle of Joy” into the world. After tears of confusion and shock that I was in fact a girl, they named their miracle Allison Renee Hunt. We had the perfect little family. Living in a suburb of Chicago the three of us couldn’t be any happier, at least that’s the way I saw it. My parents, however, thought adding a brother to the family would be a great idea. March 23, 1993 our family of three welcomed our 4th member, Austin Ryan Hunt. Fast-forward to the year 1994 when our family of four pack up and move to Memphis Tennessee where we would soon welcome the 5th and final member of our family. December 6, 1994, Adam Ray Hunt, joins the world and makes this a family of five. A few years later the Hunt family packs up again and heads to Chicago land again where we will stay put for 2 years. After 2 years in Chicago we head to Pennsylvania for a record-breaking stay of 6 months. After the short-lived stay in PA we head back to the homeland of Chicago where I will be starting the 3rd grade.
It’s a pretty normal life for our family of five. I am very athletic and always want to hang with the boys. I take after my mother, a natural basketball player. When 5th grade rolls around our life suddenly is no longer normal. This year my dad is diagnosed with a brain disease called Multiple Scleroses. I took this news very hard, and over the next 3 years experienced some seasons of depression. Not only did my dad have a brain disease I knew nothing about, but I was also about to start middle school.
School and I have never been friends; I don’t like it, it doesn’t seem to like me. The 3 years I spent in middle school were the worst years of my life. I had no friends, I hated my teachers, and my dad lost his job. The only thing I had going for me at that time in my life was basketball. When I played ball I was free, nothing else mattered. The loss of my dad’s job was hard on our family. Weeks, months and soon years went by and he was still out of work. I was struggling even more because high school was soon approaching, how was I going to like high school if I didn’t like middle school? I remember going to orientation night at the public high school and just crying saying “I can’t do this”. After a few answered prayers I didn’t even know I prayed, I was taking a tour of Wheaton Academy; 48 hours later I was the happiest freshman in the building. How could an ordinary 14-year-old girl attend a private Christian school that her parents couldn’t afford? I am still looking for the answer, and all I can come up with is a thing called grace. Going to Wheaton Academy changed my life forever. I had teachers who actually read a name off the role sheet, not a number. I had teachers who wanted to eat lunch with me just so they could know how to better teach me. I had teachers who cared about me, not the letter grade I was getting. I was an athlete all during high school, played on the basketball team until my senior year and played softball all 4 years. I was the captain of the basketball team my freshman and sophomore year, and the captain of the softball team all 4 years. My best memories of high school come from the softball field. The attitude my coaches carried with them has inspired me to get my degree in physical education so that I can one day change the lives of high school girls the way they changed mine.
Ever since I can remember I have wanted to go to David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. But God seemed to have a bigger and better plan. So here I am at University of North Alabama. Living with my sweet grandmother, working for family, going to a school I can afford to pay for on my own, coaching at Mars Hill Bible school, life couldn’t get any better as far as I’m concerned.
Who I am today has everything to do with my mother. She has been the rock of our family and my up bringing. Anyone who can work 40+ hours a week, raise 3 kids, have a husband in and out of jobs, move 4+ times, go back to school and get her RN degree, is a special person. I could not have made it this far in my life with out her.
