Author: Ashley

Recently when I’ve been confronted with Jesus I’ve just wanted to run.

Not just figuratively, putting forth a combative front and an armored heart, but physically–sometimes, I just want to literally run. Run from my emotions, my reality, my fears. My God. And recently, when I’ve pushed myself to the breaking point, I have–I have sneaked out of worship meetings and ghosted from my seat during messages, bare feet padding up steps and out doors and picking up the pace faster and faster and flying down sidewalks and through the warm night air or into sun-dappled alleys and simply found a quiet spot to have a good cry and plead with the Lord for this great hard thing in my life. It’s hard to face him when I feel like I’ve given up everything for him, although I know he gave up everything for me. That’s what Easter is all about, isn’t it? The God of the universe suffering an unimaginable death to create utterly undeserved life for a creation which has done nothing but hate him from the beginning. He gave up everything for me. So why does it feel so darn hard to keep on loving and trusting him, when I give up what’s made my life bright to keep on in the light he has promised me?

Today, I did better. Today, when my eyes confronted a screen full of words of hope meant to be sung loud and free, today when my body froze up and didn’t want to move a centimeter, today when I knew I was going to cry, again, and hated myself for it, today when I felt exposed and vulnerable in a crowd full of people, today when I wanted to shrink from God and withdraw my trust and my love from him and demand from him the cry of my heart–today I made myself open my mouth and sing. I wanted to trust him, wanted to rest in him, wanted him to take some of this pain away, but didn’t know how. So I just did what I wanted my heart to want to do. I took another step forward in faith even when nothing in me could feel the right emotions for doing it. When it went against all I wanted for myself. I have told myself–if I can blame him, then God can fix this. If I can corner him into a promise, then he will have to make everything better. If I can wrestle out an assurance, then I can keep on not trusting, not surrendering, not believing he is all loving yet can demand everything of me. If I can be angry at him, can place the guilt on him, then maybe I can get what I want without letting go. But I can’t do that–I have nothing to blame him for. I walk this road for him, but I have chosen it. I know it is the right road… and it is hard because I am an imperfect person living in a broken world with a heart that hopes for goodness. And so I cannot blame him. And so I sing. And so he lets me rest in him. He does not fix it in this moment–he can only promise good for me. He does not tell me he will do exactly as I ask–but he holds me. And for now I try to let him.

Today, I only need ten minutes in that little alley… ten minutes for my feet to slip down the aisle and patter across a dusty wooden floor and fly into the sunlit freedom and take me to a place where I can hide and breathe and lean against a warm brick wall and look up at the sky. I plead with God, over and over. I don’t know what else to do, how else to be. I try to listen for him through the clamor of my emotions, clouding my perception of what is real and what he is saying to me. I can’t tell what is me and what is him. I feel hope but I don’t know why–wishful thinking? I move to leave, look down from the sky–and right in my line of vision, right as if someone had planted it there specially for me, right as if it is looking at me, right in the middle of the gravel of that alley is a dandelion. And I lose it. God may not be telling me if he is answering my prayers–but he promises to love me always and give me what is best. He could be working, answering my prayer at this very moment, and I wouldn’t even know it. But he knows what dandelions mean to me–and there it is, tempting me into hoping with every ounce of hope I have left that God is making my prayers come true. I don’t know. But for now, I let that little yellow dandelion smile fill me with hope. And I walk back into that church and listen to a message about God’s power to save, and how he is always working, even when we cannot see it.

The story of Hannah in the Bible has really resonated with me recently–that woman had such a desire in her heart that she could not silence the grief and aching which it caused her. She cried out to God so earnestly that the priest thought she was drunk. Drunk! I can identify with Hannah here. She cries out to the Lord, receives no promise from him, but in the end is given the answer to her prayer. I wish for that kind of ending to my story too, even though I am not promised it. The story of Hannah tells me God hears, and that his desire is to fulfill this longing if it is for the best good. Yet there is something that happens between Hannah’s asking and God’s giving–she gets up, dries her eyes, praises the Lord, and then goes about her daily life. This is so dang hard for me. How can she do that, having been given no assurance from God that he will do as she has asked of him? How can she trust in who he is, believing that she will be okay, no matter what? How can she go about her life, still hoping that the Lord will heal her hurt, without knowing if he will? And yet she does. And yet she praises him with true peace and joy. And this is an act of faith which I am still learning.

Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” How true is that. Gosh, my heart is sick. Wow how amazing, how tree-life-like it would be to have that desire fulfilled. And how hard it is to wait, not knowing whether one’s hope will bear fruit! So much trust is required, so much surrender when I feel like fighting, so much relaxing into Jesus when I feel like struggling. Jesus tells me its okay to be sad–it is okay for my heart to be sick. But if I push him away in my sickness, then what is the point of it all?

So this Easter, I resolve to try to fight for faith better. I will go on writing “All things new” (Revelation 21:5) and “I won’t give up” (I Won’t Give up on Us, Jason Mraz) on my hands in pen like a bored high-schooler, a visual reminder to keep me from despair during the days that feel utterly and impossibly too long. I will make myself sing to Jesus when I don’t feel like it. I will try to stop blaming him for something which he never did, and trusting that he can be working when I don’t see it. I will have my moments of immobilization and fear and tears but will make myself get up and keep going because I don’t know what God is doing, and I can’t turn off my emotions, and I might as well keep on hoping and hoping if I can’t help it anyway, and praying and praying until I receive an answer or until my desire becomes a reality.

I wish this was easier. I wish I had new ideas, new solutions, new ways to fight this battle. But Jesus has already fought it for me–and he wants me to surrender, relax into him, even as I resolve to not give up, to not stop praying, to not stop hoping, to allow myself to feel and desire. He tells me not to push him away. He tells me to trust him.

And the great secret of all of this is? Jesus didn’t just die–he rose from the dead for us. All his friends and followers had no idea what he was doing. They thought everything was dead. Gone. Their hopes and dreams all lies. There were darkness and mourning, when in reality God was in the middle of doing the greatest thing ever, the greatest victory ever won, the greatest gift ever given. And then Jesus rose–and they realized they should have trusted him all along.

I don’t know what God is doing in my life. You might not know what God is doing in yours. You don’t know what your resurrection will look like. But don’t stop praying for it. Don’t stop trusting that God is at work. Don’t stop pleading with the Lord for the desires of your heart. Trust that he will give you good things, and desires to bring light and resurrection to every heart in the world.

Yes, I know tomorrow will be hard. Yes, I wish I had some way of knowing if anything is happening in my dark place, if I have any reason to hope. If change really is occurring, or if at least a desire for change to occur or the pursuit of it is still present. But I do have a reason to hope–for I have Jesus. And so do you.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19.

I turn around in the store and see you there, right behind me, and neither of us is expecting it. Your smile sends a jolt straight through my stomach. I smile back timidly.

You pick up a bag of tortilla chips from the shelf and walk to the counter, headphones in. I didn’t know you like plain tortilla chips. I wonder what you’re listening to–music? a podcast?–and why… just because, or to drown out the sound of your own thoughts?

My friend and I walk to the counter. I engage her in a friendly argument–do you say it care-a-mel or car-mel?–my brain detached. My voice manages to sound upbeat. My heart is all a flurry and frozen, arrested in uncertain flight, ambushed by vulnerable feeling.

You exit without looking back.

‘You okay?’ my friend asks on the way out. ‘I wish I could have spared you that if I knew.’

I shake my head. I’m crying. ‘No, I’m glad,’ I say. And I am. So happy and so sad. That smile. I saw you today. You smiled at me. And ouch ouch ouch. The missing. The pain of being apart from you stealing my breath again.

What a strange beast this kind of love is.

‘I’m glad,’ I say again. And I mean it. The night is warm. The plastic bag rustles. We put our arms around each other’s shoulders. I wipe my tears with the sleeve of my flannel and march up the hill.

I listen to a song to make me brave, tunes pumping feelings out of a heart that doesn’t want to beat. I make life easier on tired feet that don’t want to move by ditching the shoes and letting toes live loose. A dandelion in my hair, a fierce look in the eye, why does waking up every day feel like a battle cry? For this, yes, this is a fight for me. This, yes, has felt like going to war. A war I’m still baffled as to how I’m fighting, I a soldier who wakes up in the crossfire and tries desperately to remember how she got there.

Everything takes effort, every human interaction, every word typed on every page of homework, every class attended and seat warmed. I never thought I’d be so proud of ‘functioning,’ never thought that word would be something I’d be excited to check off my to-do list. Everything else seems an unnecessary luxury, pointless to the extreme, extra. I’m just trying to get through the days–who knew one day could be so long anyway? Feelings are even more unpredictable than usual–attacking in flurried streaks of color, random, out of an echoing void and fizzling out just as fast as they have appeared and struck, like missiles of red anger and green energy and blue sadness and purple daydreams and pale yellow meaninglessness. But most of the time it’s just deadly quiet. Just deep dark black. Just emptiness. Sometimes a bit of alone and a bit of scared. Often a dash of panic. Always a lot of hollow. Every breath a tension of hope and fear.

This is a war I fight against no one, a war against myself, my circumstance, my own desperate heart. This is a war both for and against my feelings, propaganda billboards screaming you are here because you pretended to own what you cannot have and counter-pamphlet confetti dumping from the sky shouting it’s not over, there’s still hope yet. I am both holding on and letting go, existing on both sides of the front line, staring myself down each and every day, both me’s trying to fight the invisible thing that brings and owns all the darkness, trying to rally the light inside to mirror the Light above who promises that everything will be okay no matter what (although that’s hard to believe) and that He can change everything, cause miracles, stop this war, all this very second if He chose (and He can). Ah it’s all too much. I am fighting everything and nothing all at once, myself and sin and hopelessness and defeat and the pain of existence all at the same time. And it’s just exhausting. Is it possible to even win this war? What does winning look like? A win is out of my control, a win has nothing to do with me, a win is something I experience and not create. I think my win is just surviving the storm and hoping for sunny skies on the other side, all the while knowing that I might not get them.

And yet–and yet, there are bright moments. Dashes of clear vibrant tones in a muddled world of swirling emotion and empty hours. Teasing under the stars. Hot socked feet by a campfire. Carabiners snagged in my hair. Frisbee spinning through balmy spring breeze. Collisions and laughter and mischievous smiles. Bare feet pounding through grass and stutter-stepping to a halt. Spinning through silly dance moves just because I can. These are bright lights to hold on to, these are my ammo for heavy moments and blank-eyed afternoons. These and the promise that He hears my heart’s cry, even when I cannot hear Him answer me. These and words once spoken, true confirmations of identity and heart, that I will never forget. Yes, I am a soldier. Yes, each day can feel like a war. But all wars come to an end. Here’s to hoping for a bluebird day on the other side.

Ocean waves hissing on a black beach.

Wind whistling through a hole in a rock.

Boots crunching alone on a gravel plain.

A line drawn in stark white sand.

Brown eyes blank windows, a ghost looking out of a slow body.

Silence, silence, radio silence.

A buzzing, an annoying static grumbling in my brain, nothing more,

Numb feet, slowing down until I can’t force them to function any longer,

Falling, falling into soft comfortable dark and sleeping for a moment,

Waking to realize the nightmare never stopped,

While I ignored it for a while.

Rubbing fog from my eyes, heavy heart having to process a broken reality,

With a mind replaying how we acted in my dreams, good and bad and bittersweet.

Everything felt real, oh so real,

Even sleeping isn’t uncomplicated anymore.

My dreams feel more real than reality and my past reality like just a dream.

I’m grasping at slippery spiderweb strands hoping they will stick,

Bring a little bit of aching glimmer to a string of darkened days.

How do you describe an emotion

That can only be defined

As an absolute lack of everything.

It’s the end of the movie, and the scene cuts all the way back to the beginning, where the boy and the girl spend their first day together. I’ve seen the movie, I know they end up together, at least in a way; I know how they feel about each other, I know how it ends. But all I can think, when I see them laughing and running in the tall wild grass up on that windy hill, is this–this is the beginning of their something.

Until now, I never quite understood what my friend said, all the way on a little island in the middle of the ocean, just two kids enjoying being wild and free and navigating the world all on our own, reveling in the little mistakes and trip ups we made along the way. She said that labels are overrated–what’s the point of labeling a relationship as something, when it is what it is anyway? Good communication she said, that’s what’s important. Ah, I said, nodding. Yes, I see. That makes sense. But it didn’t really. Two people either were something solid and particular or they weren’t… I didn’t see the point of avoiding clarification. It felt dangerous otherwise, communication or not.

But now–I’ve got my own something. It’s amazing and wild and precious and magical and sweet and gentle and messy and oh so darn hard and even more comfortable. It’s belonging and giggles and a bit fragile and determination. It’s living and warm and always changing yet always somehow the same. It’s a person. It’s something that began when I didn’t even know it was beginning and when I wasn’t even expecting it and now I just don’t want to even imagine myself without it and I don’t even know what that would be like and yet at the same time I do know and it’s too awful to think about yet I know that we’d be okay at the same time, somehow, someway, even though it doesn’t feel like that–and gosh darn it, all I know is that this something is part of my heart and I don’t want to lose it.

The boy and the girl in this movie–their something inspired me. They didn’t try to label it. Yes, it was messy and even dangerous–they definitely should have defined it more, contained it more. But in some ways, their ‘we’ reminded me of our ‘us.’ They were best friends, and something more. They were together, and yet not. But they always fought for each other, even through the years, and in the end, their something ended up working out, even if it wasn’t in the way they thought it would. They just remained dedicated to their something, without thinking too hard about what it should be, and just focused on what was. What is. They focused on “Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today.” Gosh I’m trying… I’m trying not to squeeze the darn life out of today because I’m terrified of tomorrow. I have to remember that today is good, and just live in it and be ridiculously joyful in it, without breaking all my rules somehow. I have to make as many beautiful and bright memories as I can without being painfully conscious of the fact that I’m making them, that one day they will just be memories–tomorrow in fact. But today, today, today–gosh, Jesus, I am so thankful I have today. Help me live it right.

“Listen, listen. Nothing truly good was ever easy,” the boy said to the girl. Listen, listen, I’m listening. I’ll try to walk it out, balance the curb, toes pointed, eyes straight ahead, feeling my way through the bumps and dips, alive to the world… focusing on the person holding my hand, keeping me balanced. Focusing on that grip, not worrying about when it will let go of me, and when he does, whether we will ever hold tight to each other again.

When we hugged back in November, I didn’t realize that it was the beginning of my something. That the moment would change my next year and even my very self forever. I didn’t realize ‘we’ would become so much a part of my vocabulary and my way of thinking. I didn’t realize that I’d finally have a something. And as crazy and hard and scary and beautiful and wondrous as it is–I want to thank you. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Thank you for being just that–my something. And I am so so grateful, that we have today to live it.

We piled into the vans on a cold, grey Saturday morning, friends and strangers alike, most having no idea of the journey ahead of us. Some of us expected to come back changed, and others of us did not–but West Virginia was about to work her untamed magic on us regardless.

Slumber filled car rides turned to noses plastered to chilly windows as the miles wheeled by, passengers staring quietly at the blue mountainscape that scudded past. The road wound up and down, sideways and through, over and dipping softly beneath, depositing us deep into the heart of the wild and wonderful… into a scraggle of unloved houses with flaking white paint and sagging porches.

The community center of BCPIA became our home for the first half of the week–the sprawling hallways covered in children’s scrawled names and the artwork of pondering volunteers of years past and the quirky warmth of mismatched armchairs and cramped bunk rooms welcomed us in. Sounds of pattering feet skipping through the halls and coal-black footprints in the showers began to add to the layers of memories that richen the air and dust the baseboards along with the buzzing bodies of millions of ladybugs. Three-hour chicken pot pie pans and nighttime tea adventures added to the flavor and rhythm of living life with twenty-two other human beings, sleeping in the same room, eating off the same dishes, and hearing the same stories of love and betrayal from folk with the lilt of the mountains humming in their speech.

From learning about Joel’s hydroponics, losing ourselves in Marsha’s time-machine stories by the lake, or dancing the night away to Chester’s rollicking music, we immersed ourselves deeper into the land and culture the people of Appalachia hold so dear. We piled onto mattresses in front of a VCR and an old boxy TV and cried for the plight of a small boy with dreams brighter and higher than the mines as we watched October Sky and rose the next morning to blast away pieces of concrete stairs with a sledgehammer, all feeling like mini Thor’s.

As the days accumulated, the exhaustion built. Eyelids grew heavy and heads dropped to friends’ shoulders. Unplanned naps became almost planned for, and appetites burgeoned as blankets and raincoats became constant companions to shield against wind and storm. Yet even as hearts grew wiser and heavier with knowledge, and minds became chock full of information and calculation, and hearts stretched further with all the emotion they could carry, laughter and mischief still glimmered in eyes and echoed around the halls, and the night was full of sneaking footsteps on creaking stairs and the snores and exasperated giggles of a new family, bonded together through an experience that had never been expected, and some never thought they’d have.