just ashley.

I have spent a lot of time forgetting the things that God taught me through this blog -- things about Himself, things about myself. For whatever reason, he used the writing and the time, to teach me. So, often throughout the years, when I'm confused or hurting, I have realized all over again that I need to write. That's what he had me do then, and I should do it again.

I've thought a thousand times about starting another blog. It's never happened. And then tonight I realized that I don't need another blog. This is the blog. This is the one. People say that when you feel as though you've lost your way, you ought to go back to the last thing the Lord told you, the last place you really knew Him. 

For me, that thing, that place, is here. 

This is where God took me from whatever I had been (what do you get when you cross a snobby drunk with a theologically-liberal Christian?), to what I became (a real believer). It was slowly, post by post, and painful word by dreadfully painful word, that he grew me, and saved me, and brought me into relationship with himself, and his people. 

I think it's fitting then, that this is the home to which I return . 

I'm so different now. My life is so different. I'm married. Ha! To a guy who is about to be a pastor. I have spent the last couple of years discipling younger women. Now, I lead a college girls' bible study. Like, I have been and continue to be entrusted with the spiritual well-being of a group of other people. Mind-blowing, I know. I probably shouldn't be in charge of the spiritual growth of your dog. But here I am. 

And yet. I'm not so different. I still have questions. I still feel a ferocious instinct for justice. I still question the finances of the Christian world, and its odd parallels with the secular world. (When you're right, you're right, y'all.) I still see in myself this timid little girl, approaching the chair in which her father sits, sometimes full of love, sometimes confused, sometimes in confidence, sometimes not approaching at all, but just standing off to the side, wounded and unsure. 

So maybe there's life in this blog yet. My problems are different these days (where my ministry wives at?), but I'm just me, just Ashley. Just searching. Just still desperately trying to live out the call that my God placed into my heart so many, many years ago.