Jesus can you hear me?...

...come and heal my brokenness - put the pieces back together and be a father to the fatherless

Sixteen finds me blowing out candles and making wishes and all around me is everyone but the one I'm wishing for. and he didn't even send me flowers and gift wrapped excuses from a daddy whose daughter wants to see him again. and I know it's just another birthday but I guess I thought that this would be the one when he would call me, see me, hold me and free me. But it's just another birthday and I'll be fine. 

About five years ago, my life found me living in a small town, dating a highschool football player, surrounded by people who I called best friends but didn't know anything about me. The biggest thing I wanted to do was go to a highschool party and get drunk and party and be able to be involved in all the funny stories that my classmates told. I wanted an escape from the world I found myself in. The one where my father killed himself when I was 8. The one where I was almost the sole caregiver for my brother and sister at home, even though there were two capable adults living there. The world where I wanted nothing to do with my family and just wanted an escape. My birthday, I went bowling, I was surrounded by people, and I felt entirely alone. I was old enough finally to understand what my dad did, and I entirely blamed myself. What had I done wrong? Why wasn't I good enough? This was my birthday at 16. 

Nineteen finds me, and I'm wide eyed and wide open. I gave myself away to love but backseat promises fade like a mist. I'm screaming at the midnight air - everyone hears me but I don't care. My heart's clenched just like a fist 'cause, people, I didn't ask for any of this and I'm not fine.

At 19, things were very very different. I was in college. I was a typical college student for the most part. I partied, I drank way too much, I flirted, I dated, I went too far too fast. I was going full speed down a road that I didn't know, that I didn't know how to stop on. Everything was too fast, too colourful, too loud, too uncontrollable, and I was high on it. I had left friends in the dust with no backwards glances, I had left my strong morals from highschool in my closet at home when I moved out. I was free (or so I thought) for the first time. But I quickly learned that freedom comes at a price. A heavy price. I was no longer stuck in the world from my early teen years. Instead I was stuck in a place where every night I had to drink more, go further and up the ante to continue to get the same high on life. I was in a horrendous relationship. I thought that this is what life called love. The word 'marriage' was thrown around. It terrified me, but I had to keep upping the ante, right? I quickly realized that this was no more freedom than before. In fact I was stuck in my own head and my own world, even more unable to escape than before. 

Twenty-one finds me blowing out candles and making wishes and all around me a barefoot princess twirls and sings. It's so amazing looking back at all God's brought me through. You are my happy birthday and I was born to break the chains. Now I know, it's not just another birthday, cause I'm here, You're here and look how far we've come since You called me, saw me, held me and freed me. Thank you Lord, for another birthday and I'm more than fine. 

In exactly 3 hours and 30 minutes I will turn 21. 

For the FIRST time in my life, I don't feel trapped. I feel content in where I am, where I am going, what I am working for. I work in a place that I feel needed, wanted and appreciated. I have reconciled with the friends that I screwed over in the last few years, and have an AMAZING group of friends. 

That is not to say that life is perfect. That isn't to say there aren't still some pretty significant struggles. That isn't to say that there isn't still pain that cuts deep. 

Because to let you in on a little secret, being a christian is still just as painful, and has just as many struggles as being athiest. If not more. But there is a pretty stellar reason to keep going and keep pushing and keep trying in my life now. And no, contrary to popular belief, that is not the promise of heaven. It is knowing that we have someone on our side who has felt all the pain and struggle that we feel. Jesus is a pretty awesome person to have in your corner. 

This is just a lighthearted(ish) blog post for all of you out there following my muddled up thoughts to celebrate my birthday. 

In case you were wondering, the song is called Just Another Birthday by Casting Crowns and the lyrics have been mildly altered to fit my life. 

In Christ Alone, my friends
- A

therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come! The old has gone, the new is here!

What a crazy week. What a crazy life. This week is pretty huge in my life. This week has been really hard emotionally. There have been a lot of decisions that I have had to make in the last week and I am just barely hitting the consequences of those decisions now. The metaphor I would chose to use about all this is that I'm currently in the state where the Titanic is aware that it is going to hit an iceberg and there is absolutely nothing it can do to change it. 

I know things are about to blow up in someway, I just don't know how it will end, and I can't stop it, even if I tried. And also, like the titanic, I will be the captain that goes down with the ship if it were to sink. 

It's a weird place to be in mentally. It has showed me a lot about humility, and how sometimes I have absolutely none of that. Sometimes I am extremely prideful, and the last week has shown me that pride gets me nowhere. 

Another thing I am really coming to terms with recently is the difference between weakness and vulnerability. These two things do not go hand in hand. Not at all. And this is something I have struggled with my entire life. Showing someone that I trust that I am vulnerable in situations is sometimes a good thing, and shows strength, not weakness. It is real. I was always taught to think that anything less than perfection and total control and strength was sub-par. That it would only turn people away from me and make them see me in a negative light. This has been something that God and my loved ones have really challenged in the last six months. 

And now to the good news, the good stuff. Tomorrow will be exactly a year to the day that I gave my life to Jesus. It has been a year. I can't believe that. In the last year I have seen more change in me, in my heart, in my character than I can even begin to process. A year and a few weeks ago, I was really close to getting into a relationship that would have turned out disastrous for my emotions and well being. I was dealing with a lot of suicide within my work (paramedicine) and in my personal life - friends were struggling, and I had very little to turn to, to get me through the days. I also was really struggling with the pain from my past, and the pain from the stuff going on within my family. In the moment, I thought I was doing fine. but looking back, I was going down the wrong road, at breakneck speeds and was going to crash and crash hard if I didn't get my act together. God stepped in, and I collided. In the aftermath, I found a hope, a strength and a peace that I didn't know existed.

I found grace. Wow. Grace. What an extraordinary concept. Grace. Just the word feels good. Even without knowing the biblical definition of it, its a word that brings about good feelings in your heart and soul. I have heard it said that grace is the last good word. I would agree with this entirely.  Grace. What would a person feel if suddenly their greatest debt, their greatest trespass in this world was lifted? They would be ecstatic. Now what if that forgiven debt was paid in full by the person that it was owed to? Not only did that person lose the money that you owe them, they also lose the money to pay it back. Its a two-fold loss for them. And that is what grace is. It cost the recipient nothing, and costs the giver everything. Wow. That is Jesus. That is what saved me from the road that I was on. Grace. 

What a crazy world. What a crazy life. In the moments recently where I feel totally broken by the world around me, one thought of the grace and love I have found brings me up out of that dark and broken place, into the place where I can handle anything thrown at me. Because I am not alone. And this I know with my entire heart. 

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self -Francis of Assisi

The best proof of love is trust. - Joyce Brothers

Hey There, 

Its been a few days since I last updated and today (and the last few days) I have been stuck in an endless thought loop about trust. Trust. Its a simple word. Five letters, four consonants, 1 vowel. You can have a million different types of trust. Trust in your paper being delivered every day. Trust in your car to not break down, trust in your mechanic to fix it when it does. Trust in your friends, trust in your spouse, trust in your family. Trust in your Savior.

Trust is an undeniably huge part of life. Sometimes we have trust for something and don't realize how much we trust that thing until it is broken. Thats the toxic thing about trust. We don't really notice it until it is gone. And then we are generally hurt beyond words. So where is a happy medium? 

This summer I struggled with the idea of trust. Trusting someone particularly. Not any particular person, but just the idea of trusting a virtual stranger with the most broken parts of me and my past. How do you go about doing that after years of never opening up? I struggled. I wrestled. I failed sometimes, but in the end, there were a couple people I opened up to. One was a great friend that I made early in the summer. I considered this person one of my best friends, and after slowly opening up to him, I felt like I could trust him with practically anything. This was one massive mistake on my part. Not trusting him, that wasnt the mistake. Putting the weight of MY world on HIS shoulders. I screwed up. I trusted too much and put too much pressure there. Now, I can't even call that person a friend anymore, and that breaks my heart everytime I think about it, every time I talk about it, and every time I see him. I trusted too much, and I got hurt. 

I don't trust enough and I get hurt. So where is the happy medium I ask? 

This summer also opened me up to a different kind of trust. People trusted ME. Not because of anything besides my position at camp. Parents trusted me with their children, children trusted me with their pain, co-workers trusted me with their secrets, with their not so nice side. I had more trust in me, in my abilities, in my leadership this summer than I have ever had in my life. And I always used to think that when I finally got to that place I would feel like I had everything together. Instead I was terrified. I cannot even begin to describe how much is scared me to lead a team of professionals. To have sole responsibility of the safety of 600 people on me and my team. To know that when something went really, really wrong it came down to me and my skills to minimize the damage and make them feel better. That terrified me. 

And now, at this moment, there is so much that is hinging on trust. I have my friends and family trusting that I will make the right decision no matter how much it costs me and the people involved. I have to trust God to get me through the next few months which will be the hardest of my life. I have the option to start to open up to someone and trust them to not turn around and walk away. So what do I do. because it could fail either way. 

and that, my dear friends, is a moment of insight into my sometimes meddled up mind. 

Any advice you could offer, would be wonderfully appreciated.

Taking a Look Back

Today, I am sitting at my desk surrounded by cards and pictures and notes I received throughout the summer. Some are about my baptism, some are encouraging me, some are handmade. Regardless of what they are or who they are from, they all instill a sense of melancholy in me. This summer was outstanding in ways that I am still learning and realizing. 

So today I decided to take a little trip into the past. 

Way back to advance crew (which was from May 1 - June 21st). Advance Crew is basically the people who will be serving on summer staff that want to come early and help prepare camp for the summer. It is a great time that allows people to really connect together and get to know one another. It was also, for me, a huge time in the growth in God and my relationship. 

On June 6th there was a camp open house. basically during this time we opened the doors to camp to 1500 people. From babies, to moms and dads to grandparents everyone was invited to come and enjoy our beach, our challenge course, and our food. It was a crazy day. It was also the day that I called the first ambulance of the season. There was an older lady that came and had diabetes that didnt take her insulin that day. In other words, her blood sugar was through the roof. I remember while I was waiting for the ambulance wondering how in the world this would allow us at camp to better minister to people. I didnt understand how God could be present through the stuff like this. 

At the same time, my best friend had just gotten to camp a week earlier. Let me start by telling you that I love this girl so much, through everything. But she also suffers from moderate to severe anxiety and depression. Moving to camp was a big deal for her and I was super proud of her, but when she got out here, she basically flatlined. She refused to get out of bed, she wouldnt eat. I poured a ton of energy into praying with and for her and trying to motivate her. After a week of that, I was really downtrodden. I didnt understand what God was doing. Why he called her out here, just to see her go through this. Why he kept telling me to put effort into it, when she wasnt responding to anything I did. I just didnt understand how God could be present through the stuff like this. 

Both of those things were made very clear to me that day. It was almost like God was waiting to show me how great he was. The lady that had to go to the hospital lived on the mainland, but since she had to stay at the hospital she wasnt able to go home that night so her family ended up staying at the Guest House (which is a house owned by the camp used for situations just as this). The next morning was sunday so we all went to church and surprise, the lady that went to the hospital and her family were at my church. I was pleasantly surprised, and even more so after they came up and personally thanked me as well as the pastor from their church back home. They were awesome and then said that they were planning on financing a couple children from their church to come to camp this summer. It made me realize that God uses everything for the good of the people that he loves. 

That was also about the time that my best friend finally started to engage in camp and start to open up. This taught me a HUGE lesson that I used many times throughout the summer. Not everything is about me. In fact, very little is about me. My best friends suffering wasnt in any way there to teach me anything besides to love unconditionally. This struggle was her fight and fight she did. She ended up staying the whole summer and touching so many lives here and in the beginning all God was asking me to do was to love her, and love her unconditionally. How many lives did my love affect through her? I may never know the answer to that question, but I do know now that the love I found and gave this summer was not started in my heart, instead it was started by God loving me first. 

What has your love done?

This is my wonderful, crazy life.

So here we are. Here I am. I have been living on Vancouver Island for a little over six months now, and it blows me away how much I have grown and changed in that time, so I have decided to start blogging so that I have a real time account of what my life is like and how things are going. 

First, I will introduce myself. My name is Ashley, I am a 20 year old who was raised for most of my life in Southern Ontario. A little over a year ago, I met Jesus Christ for the first time and that radically changed my life. I went from being a lost teenager without anything to keep me going through the day besides popularity and parties to someone who had an unshakable hope in the life that surrounded me and the people that were introduced to me. 

That is not to say that I didnt struggle, or wander away from this new life I found. There was a time where I was so mad at God for the past that I lived that I went nearly a month where I did everything in my power to punish him - from moving away from his love, to telling him that I didnt believe in him and never would. But at the end of the day, I definitely knew in my heart that God was there and that God loved me regardless of my actions or failings. 

So that brought me to early april. I applied to a christian camp on the west coast of canada as the First Aid Attendant/Health Care Team Leader. It was a big job, but after over a month of wrestling with God over it, I finally applied and had been hired. The next month was a flurry of activity trying to get everything ready and set up to move out here. 

On May 1st, it finally happened. I boarded a plane at Pearson International Airport and flew to Victoria BC. I moved into my new home that day and went to be wondering what in the world I got myself into. 

The next four months threw me into possibly the most difficult summer of my life. In 10 weeks, my team and I were responsible for over 5000 campers and staff. There were many really close calls, and a few potentially terrible accidents that were narrowly avoided (all things you would expect when there are 600 children and young adults running around a high adventure camp). But it was also the most rewarding experience of my life. I got to see children come into camp feeling lost, unloved, and just plain rejected and then I got to see God use the staff and campers here to show that child just how loved and cherished they are. It was amazing and it constantly blew my mind. 

I also met some of the best people in the world (in my opinion). I began some amazing friendships with people that surrounded me, some of them are some of the strongest I now have, and some of them have fallen apart - but regardless, they have shaped me and helped me grow in ways that I think I dont even realize yet. 

One of my two best friends were also out here this summer, and seeing how God stretched her and used her were incredible for me to see. My other best friend wants to come out here next summer, and I cannot wait to see the growth in him. 

That brings me to the fall. About half way through the summer, I made a final decision on something I had been weighing since I got here. and that was to stay on at the camp as an intern. It is a year long commitment, and I am currently a few months into it. I thought that the year round part of camp would be easier than the summer. I was wrong. The year round has really pushed me to get to know God in his true self, not the God that I think he is. It has pushed me to learn how to actually love people, sometimes from a great distance. It has pushed me to learn how to be loved, how to connect with the tightknit community I find myself in. It has pushed me to be accountable to those around me, even when I don't want to be. It has taught me to look at myself through humble lenses and start to change the parts of me that I wouldnt like in other people. 

All in all, it has been a crazy six months, and I have another ten to go before this contract is up (and then who knows where I will go or what I will do) and I would love to take you along for the ride. 

- Ashley