aaaaannnnnddddd, I'm back.

It's been a while. I'd apologize, but I don't know of anyone who checked my blog every day during my 4ish-month hiatus. So, I'm not sorry. Just lazy.

Summer was weird. Usually, you hear laments that the sweet season flew by. My summer started off sprinting, then went into a coma, and ended in a comfortable power walk. I could tell you what I did, but I might as well not drown you in the probable boredom, and will keep it to a list instead: work, wedding planning, finding out I hate cooking for myself (as in, one person), and learning to drive a stick shift. Also, Eric and I consumed lots of pizza. Oh, and we got lots of awesome gifts - like a Keurig - at a bridal shower.

So what am I up to now? Welp, school has started again. That, my friends, took off like a Kenyan marathoner. I'm leading two student groups, working on my senior seminar project, and trying to enjoy my last semester as a college student. I'm also three months out from my wedding, and trying to give what I've been told is the most important day of my life the attention it deserves. Life is good, friends. It's busy, quite difficult to follow at times, and requiring lots of late night/early morning combinations.

I originally was going to vacation from blogging until I finally decided what I wanted to blog on. I know that blogging doesn't have to be this super well-thought out thing, or that each blog has to have a specific reason for existing other than for its author to write. But, I've always wanted to have a blog with purpose, talking to particular topics, like family, faith, fashion, relationships, and other stuff I like to think I'm knowledgeable on.

...And then, I realized that I really missed blogging. I missed submitting my random thoughts to the cyber world's critique. And I really missed writing, which, in this case, is synonymous with typing.

Lesson learned? Not everything I do in life has to serve a specified purpose, as long as I enjoy it. So with that, thank you for reading, and bask in the things you love, even if they only matter to you. Welcome back, and let's hope I'm better at supplying you with silly, useless thoughts.

It's good to be back,
Ashley

So, it really goes that fast

I’m in the middle of my first official week of summer, but I feel like summer never officially began.

Everyone knows that feeling. It’s the day after your last day of school, you wake up right before noon, and decide to have ice cream for lunch. To a lesser (or maybe further) extend, the feeling of finally “being done” is common among college students.

But what if you never have this feeling? What if everything just blurs together? (Insert intro music that awakens you to the topic for this post.)

The past year of my life has been an accumulation of mixed feelings. A year ago, I was crying in my parents embrace, telling them as they tried to say goodbye that I had made the wrong decision in deciding to spend a summer away from home. Nine months ago, I was finishing up a great internship experience, and preparing for another year at college. Eight months ago I learned one of my closest relatives had cancer, and the next 8 months proved to be the wildest rollercoaster ride of emotions I’ve experienced. My uncle’s cancer, busy school life, no social life, getting engaged (!), planning my wedding (again, !), experiencing the worst homesickness I’ve ever felt, and restarting the same internship I was dreading a short year ago.

So why is everything blurring together? Maybe it’s because that rollercoaster of emotions, specifically within the nine months of the school year, I so often curse was strangely satisfying (aside from the cancer and homesickness). This past year, I’ve found who I believe are true friends, and have kept the ones I always thought would be. I have a new love for some new people, and have grown closer to those I already did.

Choosing to focus on my third year of college, most days, I could NOT wait for it to be done. And then it came time to say goodbye to some friends for the summer, others for longer, and I prayed that the year wouldn’t end. I said ‘goodbye’ to the people I came to love, but only wished that the space pushing us apart would bring us closer.

Maybe that’s the irony in it all. I’d lay in bed at night, talking to my two roommates/best friends about my inner turmoil, and all I could say was that the greatest things in life pass by the quickest. Why must the things we most enjoy and the people we love, aside from all their faults, enter and leave our lives in what feels like a few minutes?

I blame myself for not appreciating the things I miss when they were in the present. I also blame this lack of smooth transition from school to summer to work on me, too. If only I’d given myself more time to adjust, soak in summer’s glory, and reflect…well, I’d be sitting on a deck basking in the May sun as I write this post rather than at my desk at work. 

What my mother taught me

It's Mother's Day, and being more than 700 miles away from my mom, I'm left with no option but to tell the rest of the world (or maybe just those who read this) what my mother means to me. Thank you, social media, for being so viral efficient.

Lessons from my mother

1. The love I have for my future kids will always be my priority. Since getting engaged, I can't stop thinking about the life I will have with my fiancée, especially for when we have kids of our own. As I plan our wedding, my rationale to stay within my budget is that my wedding is a big day, but the biggest day of our lives will be when we have children. You've heard it a billion times - the gift of life is truly a miracle. My mother has lived every day of her life with the philosophy that my three younger siblings and I are the greatest gift she's ever received. Of course, there have been days when having four kids isn't so fun. But my mother always make sure to tell us she loves us, and that we mean everything to her. 

2. Loving your spouse doesn't always mean you'll be happy. I've seen my mother sacrifice a lot of things for the benefit of my father, and as we all know, having to sacrifice things we want doesn't always make us happy. But more than her happiness, my mother loves my father, and if his happiness results from her sacrifice, it's worth it. I love my future husband more than I ever imagined I could, and I've also sacrifice more for him than I ever thought I would for a man. I've happily and willingly made these sacrifices, and I thank my mother for the strength to do so, knowing that what makes him happy will ultimately make me happy. 

3. Loving your kids doesn't always mean they'll understand at first. I can not tell you how many times I fought the love my mom (and dad) tried to show me by enforcing curfew and continually questioning what I was doing on the weekend. To be honest, I hated how over-protective and possessive they seemed, and I had no interest in trying to understand how they were "loving" me by "making me miserable". Their definition of tough love sounded more like social torture to me. To be blunt, I was stupid. I thank God for the epiphany I suddenly realized one day that tough love was more difficult for them than it was for my social scheduling. It would have been 100 times easier for them to let me do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, rather than trying to protect me. I'm thankful that my need for pride is outweighed by my want to acknowledge that yes, my parents were right, and only ever had my best interest and safety at heart.

4. In difficult and sad situations, you want more than anything to be strong for your family. I've never met a stronger woman than my mother. As a woman who lost both of her parents to tragic and sudden causes by the time she was 40, what I remember most at both of my grandparents' funerals was that my mom was a stronghold for my siblings and I. As we cried into her shoulders, waiting for her reassuring touch as she played with our hair, whispering that everything would be alright, I never gave much thought to the healing we may have deprived my mother of. My mother ignored her need to grieve, to cry with her siblings, to be held my by father, her process for healing, to comfort her children. I can not fathom the strength it took for her to be that for us, and I pray that I can be then same for my children.

On this day, whether or not you have the opportunity to be with your mother, I encourage you to think of what your mother has done for you, what she has taught you, and what she has been for you. My mother has been my best friend, my protector, my strength in hard times, my encouragement in discouraging times, my cheerleader in good times, and my fighter when I am too weak. The woman that has been all of these things and so much more for me is the woman I can only hope to be a fraction of some day.

Mom, I love you. Happy Mother's Day. 

L to R:  The woman I am, and the woman I want to be.

Hope Under a Ceiling Fan

I have a dozen memories I could easily share of when my uncle was healthy and I was younger, of him teaching me basketball, and realizing as I grew up that he literally had a song for everything. As geographical distance and the courses of life have put more space between our families, these times are harder to have. Thankfully, I was recently granted time with Gailen that I think back to often.

I was sitting beside Gailen's bed, his wife Stephanie making her rounds, moving in and out between their bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, where the rest of our family was pretending to be focused on anything but Gailen when, really, it was the opposite. I sat next to my uncle as he laid under the warm, soft cotton covers in his bed, his kind face propped up with the support of a pillow. The ceiling fan made it's soft, monotonous hum above us. It's odd how little noises like that can bring us comfort, but I knew when I sat down that I needed the ceiling fan's song to get through what happens next.

As Gailen took my hand, feeling too heavy for his own, and held it, I lost control of the water my eyes were working so fervently at hold back, as if a dam trying to contain a flooding river. The tears began to trickle down my face, and I prayed that God would make them stop. Crying at that moment made me feel unworthy of my uncle's presence, his bravery. His eyes were kind and loving, his smile small but there. As he handed me a tissue, reassuring me that it would be OK - whatever 'it' was - he began to speak the words I was feeling.

He told me that life is not always fair, and found the most delicate way to explain to me why terrible things happent to good people, causing the dam of tears I thought I had regained control of to burst again. He shared some of his favorite words - most from the Bible, others from things he'd read - and he told me he believed God has a plan. His ability to sense my feelings was almost supernatural as he answered my mental response of doubt about what plan God could possibly have. And what felt like too quickly, he asked me if I had an questions for him as he squeezed my hand with one of his own and wiped a tear with the other.

I asked him how he continued to stay so positive, why he found it easier to believe God has a plan versus doubt. I listened to every word he spoke as if they were my only source of life in that time. I wanted him to talk until I found it easy to believe in a divine purpose for this cancer, even if it was only for a second. I wanted his confidence, and had hoped it would transfer to me as he squeezed my hand a second time. As we talked about hoping for a miracle but accepting whatever was handed to him, I knew that things would never be the same. I realize now that what I wanted during that time, more than confidence in a cure, was the pre-cancer version of my uncle. I wanted a miracle.

That conversation between just the two of us has gotten me through the past five months. The hugs of my parents, tears shared with my siblings, and the sympathy of my closests friends and fiance, I've found, are feeble substitutes for the genuine comfort my uncle gave me in teh few minutes spent with him alone - crying, desperately wishing for him to miraculously be healed, hoping. The small glints of faith and hope I still carry with me from our time under the ceiling fan's quiet hum tell, "Whatever happens, it will be OK" - just as my uncle told me that night. All I need is a miracle, and that's all I can hope for.
.................................
For more about my uncle's cancer and testimony, please click here.

Practicality at it's finest....or maybe not so much

Thinking back on last week, I'm thankful it was over. For one, I was the most sick I've ever been with a common cold. I even skipped a day of class (*gasp* I know!). Aside from that, a difficult time dealing with tough family things and other relational-related stuff made for a very emotional, mildly-bipolar-but-mostly-rollercoaster-esque me. I was like hungry grizzly bear who had no specific appetite for anything; not so pleasant, eh?

While talking through some things with my husband-to-be, I've come to a strange realization about myself. I am entirely impractical on so many levels.

Let's take conflicts, for example. Rather than being 152% rational like Eric, I'm 154% relational, making me quite irrational. I will always, ALWAYS put relationships first, and base my conflictual instincts off of that. How much do I love this person? Do I in any way want to be their best friend? Yes? ...Crisis "averted" through bypassing conflict and putting up with the behavior that irritates me so.

I'm confident that those who know me best would wish for me to be more practical. Why is that to me, the simplest task involves 17 steps that make it simple, when really, it complicates? The human brain is truly a mystery, and for me, I'm housing a mind that is an endless, solution-less game of 'Clue'.

This blog post is another example of my impracticality. I'm going to tell you right now that it literally has no point, and I am only blogging this for two reasons: 1) I have not blogged since mid-March, and 2) I can. But I promise, I will attempt to make a point.

Whether we are designed, described, or assigned as impractical or practical creatures, the fact is that (sorry, fellow Ke$ha dislikers, for the quote that will follow) we are who we are. Whether rational or somewhat insane, the way we think and process our feelings, our emotions, and our experiences distinguish us not only from robots, but from each other.

If you read this, congratulations on making it through what may be the, for lack of a better term, dumbest post I've made yet. You're a champ.

Practicing more practicality,
Ashley

Doing stuff: what life really is(n't) about

Second-to-last day of spring break, and I'm still waiting for those "ready to go back to normal, to be home and on a schedule" feelings.

When Eric and I bought our California plane tickets all the way back on December 23, we had plans to do everything we could in the seven days of vacation. Yosemite National Park, the redwood and sequoia forests, the beach, a day in Fresno, and a trip to a super awesome mall were all scheduled into our itinerary. ...We did one of those things (and I guess I did go to a mall for two-ish hours), and I'm so thankful that almost of our plans went unfulfilled.

While the thought of being a newbie into Eric's family was quite intimidating, as if I was the new kid transferring schools halfway through my senior year, the experience has been anything but that. I really feel that I understand the addiction good families can hold over someone.

You know, this transition into married life (happening on January 7 - yay!), really isn't going to be that bad. Sure, I have to learn to live with a male, the increasing bane of existence for many women, and I'm likely to resent my current loves of cooking and cleaning a month into marriage. But many say that the hardest part about marriage is the transition into adding and becoming a member of another family, and although I do hate the thought of picking and choosing when it comes to holidays, I'm thankful that Eric and I can both joyfully say, "Bring it on"...our families are so great.

To all reading this, be thankful and appreciative of your families. You may think of bad or happy experiences when the word 'family' is vocalized, but regardless, your family is a part of who you are; they shape you. They can make you stronger, intentional to love, or entirely abnormal, and still, they stick with you in any sense.

Deity ignorance

As I relax after a wonderfully long and nature-filled day in Yosemite National Park, I can't help but think back to the multiple conversations my fiance and I had as we trekked through various ares of the Yosemite Valley. Although the subject of this post refers refers to deity in a vague sense, I want to hone in on my Christian belief and talk more about the God I live to serve, and the God I experience daily, some days stronger than others.

How can people ignore or discredit the presence of God, and still experience natural and perfect wonders, like Yosemite? I spent seven hours in awe today as I disgracefully tried to capture these beautiful views with a 10-megapixel camera. (Lame, I know.)

My experience today is the most recent time where I've looked at something amazing, monumental, and so entirely organic, and truly felt the presence of God as his power overwhelmed me. I wanted to cry; I wanted to dance; I wanted to run; I wanted to shout. I wanted to DO something, exhibiting my passion for God as my Father and his creation as my home.

I've heard some Christians say that God created this world for us to use, and how we use it is our decision. What a completely irresponsible philosophy. How any individual could think a thought through one glimpse, whether it be digital or real, of this earth is beyond me.

And then there are those who, whether on a smaller or larger scale, deny the existence of God and his presence in our world. ...They're kidding, right? How could any single explosion or minuscule occurrence produce such large and intricate wonders is simply not possible. God's personality, his genius, exudes through beauty like those in the national parks. A denial of that is...well, ridiculous, if you ask me.

I know this post is only my opinion, and I know that all who come across this may not appreciate it. But somewhere in this micro-space of the internet that I inhabit, I feel it necessary to share what I believe, and how I believe such things. Although my Christian faith goes much deeper than the mind-blowing realizations of God's wonder through national parks, I experienced something today unlike any other - a feeling and experience that I hope is universal among many, however that experience is lived.

Thanks for reading, for listening, interpreting, and caring.