"Ramblings" is perfect for this post...

Wow... no blogging for 3 months? I swear I'm still alive, for those of you that read my blog but don't really keep up with me (I really do enjoy your fb messages, though!). I don't even know how to begin any sort of "intro," so we'll dive right in and play catch-up.

First of all, I can't believe summer is over & I've already started my very last year of school... ever (hopefully). It's really weird to think that a year from today, I'll be scribbling "MS, CF-SLP" (then 9 months later changing it to "MS, CCC-SLP") behind the chicken-scratch I like to call my signature. Oh, but not only that, I'll be WORKING... making a salary... and living in [insert city not in Arkansas here]. This time last year I was settling into Little Rock -- getting to know my classmates, using my Garmin to get me everywhere, hoping school wouldn't be too hard and trying to figure myself out a little bit better all while sporting long brown hair. Five hairstyles later, my classmates are some of my closest friends, I only use my Garmin occasionally (ok, more often than not), I still hope school stress doesn't get the best of me and I still don't know who I am for the most part (although I hope it's safe to say I'm not the same person I was 365 days ago).

But let's be honest, no one really completely knows who they are and what they want in life at 23 years old. Thank goodness that God has a plan and a purpose for me, and all I have to do is sit back, trust Him, & jump when He says, "Jump." But let's get real for a second, it's so hard to do that. We as humans are control freaks. In "Having A Mary Spirit," it's put this way:

Fear in its purest form is really unbelief, the false conviction that "God can't, God won't... so I must." Faith, on the other hand, chooses to believe that "God can, God wants to, and God will... so I choose to trust Him with my life."

All life challenges present us with a basic choice: fear or faith. I can only pray that as this school year winds down, God gives me the patience and the courage to be faithful. That being said, I hope God's plan for me includes living in some really cool city for a few years. And if He wants to throw in an amazing but affordable place to live, awesome co-workers, and perhaps a desirable salary, I definitely wouldn't be opposed to it :).

This semester I have a graduate assistantship with Tri-District. I'll be at elementary schools on Tuesday & Thursday mornings, and I'll be at Arkansas Children's Hospital on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I am beyond excited for this :). So it's a safe bet that my next post will blab on and on about that! Seeee yaaaa.

3 leetle letters

Ok I'll just fill you in on every day since I last updated a month ago... Not really. :) That'd be way too much.

Chapter 7: A Willing Spirit

Though humans have so many ways of messing things up (ie procrastination, cough cough- me), God chooses to use the most unlikely people in the most unusual ways to perform His most perfect will. But it all starts with one word: yes. I don't know why God chose Mary to carry His Son, but she sure had the willingness to say yes to God instead of questioning and resisting Him--to lay down her own dreams so that God's plans could prevail. Yes: that simple, 3-letter word (unless you say si or wi, of course) that we tend to so often contradict. For it's one thing to want God's will and quite another to do it. A willing spirit, like Mary had, is a heart and mind that says yes to God and a will and a body that sets that yes in motion. Saying yes is our simple job. We don't have to accomplish God's will- that responsibility belongs to Him alone. After we say yes, all we have to do is follow through, one request at a time.

Truth: saying yes to God brings blessing, but it can also bring pain. That's why we need a submitted heart that keeps on believing... even when it hurts. But remember: God is who He says He is and He can and will do what He says He will do. God knows what He's doing. When we can't trace His hand, we must trust His heart. God always sees the bigger picture-- after all, it is He who is the Creator, the Alpha, the Omega, the Great Shepherd, the Overseer, our Father. He will use whatever method is needed to make us more like his Son, even if it hurts and even if we struggle to understand, for He makes all things new.

Do you find yourself listing the reasons you can't rather than the ways He can? ...Yep... Resisting His love rather than resting in His arms? ...Guilty... Mary lived a life that proved that great and important things always begin with saying yes to God, and then moving along one yes at a time. When you keep in mind that your whole life is holy ground, you keep yourself open to the wonderful opportunities He has planned for you. God's overall intention is to continue to bless you just as He already has. Although saying yes to the Lord means you may not know exactly where you'll end up, you can always find your way home.

Ironically a friend of mine was watching Jim Carrey's "Yes Man" earlier tonight. Without reading too far into the movie, I think it could be a good minimal analogy. And although we're not hypnotized or under a spell or anything, we should say yes to God, even when we're fearful and doubtful. All resistances aside, "Here I am. Send me," (Isaiah 6:8).

It's past my bedtime...

This is so long overdue I honestly don't even know where to start or what to say without rambling like I always do. We're doing teacher evals in our classes this week- do we always do them this early? Is it really March already??

My "I'm gonna get in shape for Spring Break/summer starting Feb. 1" has been pushed back to "I'm gonna get in shape for Spring Break/summer starting March 1." Me & my procrastination habits... Why do I always find something to occupy myself when I am fully aware that I should be doing something more productive? Even something as pointless as organizing my binders from undergrad has kept me from doing what I need to be doing in the moment, such as SOAP notes, lesson plans, studying... you name it, I'm not doing it!

Glancing through "Having a Mary Spirit..." This book has changed my perspective on so many random things & I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good book that will really initiate a change in them. Just about the whole section called Faith is Our Withdrawal Slip from the chapter "Dying to Live" is underlined. Here it is in a leetle nutshell:

A lot of Christians are like the hitch-hiker carrying a heavy load. The driver of a passing wagon offers him a ride, and as he joyfully accepts, he keeps his pack on his shoulders. The driver asks why he doesn't lay down his heavy load, his burden.

"Oh, I feel that is almost too much to ask you to carry me," the man said. "I could not think of letting you carry my burden too."

Like the man in the story, many of us continue to let this accumulated weight of the world bear down on us to where we are practically crawling. When, all along, Jesus has been waiting to bear our load.

Faith--believing that what Christ did on the cross was enough for me, for my life, for my situation--is our withdrawal slip. It is the debit card that accesses our account. For to settle for so little when Jesus provided so much is like having a billion dollars in our bank account and never using a penny.

It's as if God is telling us this: "Give me all. I don't want so much of your money and so much of your work--I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good.... I will give you a new self instead. In fact I will give you myself, my own will shall become yours." (C.S. Lewis)

It's the great exchange. Christ's life for mine. The original holy makeover.

This chapter said a lot to me because so often do I think that no one wants to hear about my problems day-to-day. When in reality, there is One who wants to take them on... all of them! It's hard to fathom how I have any right to put all of my burdens on God, for He has already done so much for me. But, He is willing to let me cast all my cares on Him. He wants to take them from me- how cool is that?! I would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to hand over my worries to the Creator. It makes me think of the Cares Chorus: I cast all my cares upon You. I lay all of my burdens down at Your feet. At anytime I don't know what to do, I will cast all my cares upon You.

It is now officially March 4... one day closer to SBOneOh! I neeeeed/really really really want this break! To say I'm frickin ecstatic would be an understatement!! Can't wait to fill a few frilly pages in that "Auspie QB!!" :)

Syonara!

"This then is how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." -1 John 3:19-20

"My clarinet brings all the boys to the yard." -LMcD

11:15 ... I should be in bed right now, but I'm not because I have recently become a huge fan of iChat. That wildfire spread like herpes & now all of us Auspies are going to flunk out of school because of it. So, thank you Apple for cheating us out of our careers.

While watching the ProBowl last night, we got to talking about the Haiti chaos. We talked about how sad it was-- & sad is an understatement! It's absolutely devastating that the poorest country in the West Hemisphere is having to endure this. It'd be a tragedy for anyone to have to go through something so destructive. Another thing I find disturbing (because I'm not sure whether to think of it as blunt journalism or horrific exploitation) are the pictures of the Haitians in the rubble. I came across a picture one day that instantly made me choke. It was a picture of a father holding his dead daughter (she looked somewhere from 6-9). The pain on his face was indescribable... something that I hope I never see ever again. Posting pictures of people all bloodied up and bruised and piled in the rubble is different- those pictures of course are sad & break my heart all the same. However, this one photo stood out to me and I just didn't know what to think about it being public. This father looked so helpless and vulnerable and heartbroken.

On a lighter note--an uplifting one--I slept in til 11:30 this morning! I didn't really mean to, but I turned my 10:00 alarm off thinking I would fall asleep for about 30 more minutes. Oopsies :). Anyway, I read a really good devotional when I woke up. I usually underline a few key phrases & what not, but today I think I underlined the whole page!! So of course I need to share this one with you, so I'll show you what I underlined. Here it goes:

Who Deserves the Credit?
When we experience success, it's easy to proclaim, "I did that!" It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others. In other words, reality breeds humility. The greatest among us are the humble servants who care less for their own glory and more for God's glory. If you're tempted to overestimate your own accomplishments, resist that temptation. Give credit where credit is due, starting with God. And, rest assured: There is no such thing as a self-made man. All of us are made by God, and He deserves the glory, not us. "We are never stronger than the moment we admit we are weak." -Beth Moore

I'll wrap this up, but I can't end this post without giving you faithful readers a recap of the Snow Days Twenty-Ten (even though you were there, hah!). In very little detail, this is how the weekend played out:
-Dinner at Tori's Thursday night... yum. yum. YUM! I think it's such a nice gesture when someone is willing to cook a lot of food for a lot of hungry, poor, living-on-student-loans graduate students!
-Friday: "The Edge of Darkness." SO. GOOD! (I love talking in periods... I like how it emphasizes!). Definitely a keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat movie, which I love! Several parts in the movie made me not only jump, but scream. Yes, scream like a little girl. Afterwards- Tori's house... Scattergories & Catchphrase!! Built pyramids bc girls just... like to do that. I walk into Tori's living room just in time to catch the last few seconds of the pyramid fall as Katie arm-plants into Tori's glass coffee table!! We all nearly peed our pants laughing- or we did!
-Saturday: Game night at Weston's. Catchphrase and Scattergories... again! I love how Catchphrase somehow makes you spit out words that don't even exist, like "dumbos." Then back to Tori's only to play Catchphrase once more... "Black girls like to do this." "JUMPROPE!!" How in the world Tori guessed that on the very first try, I have no clue. & another: "He was an anti-semitic!" ... It was Walt Disney. I just don't get why he didn't say, "He has his own world in Orlando!" One small detail that I cannot leave out from this night: My dear friend, Lindsey, must've found inspiration in the X-Games when she decided to sled smack-dab into the front of a parked Suburban! How brave you are, Linds... we all love your battle wound :).
-Sunday: Bittersweet because it was the last snow day. The snice spoiled us! Mallory & I went to Weston's house to "watch the game." We get there & the Pro Bowl was about to start. Turns out we were watching that game, not the Razorback game! Then the Grammy's were on so of course we had to watch those.

One more funny story: Teach sang to us in class, today. "All assimilations, all assimilations, all assimilations, all assimilations" to the tune of B's "Single Ladies." ...Was def the highlight of class!

Ok this is plenty enough for one post... probably more than enough for two! Peace out, yo :)

3rd post Woo Hoo!

WHEW! First week with adult aphasic clients is over with! If I'm completely honest, I was more nervous to work with them than I was to work with the little ones. I think it's safe to say that this semester will consist of a LOT less screaming and temper tantrums. A select few of you know just what I'm talking about! I find it arresting the reasons for older clients' therapy sessions. It's almost like they're living in reverse, to some sense. Think about it-- a child in therapy is more than likely there because their deficit is congenital. They deal with it and are given care for it from Day 1. On the other end of the spectrum, here are older clients who have had good educations and careers and families and stories... and then one day they have a stroke (or anything else, for that matter) and their life changes. It just blows my mind. That's the thing about speech therapy - the job opportunities are so broad... babies to old people, school districts to hospitals. Or we could just work with Brad Pitt. I think I've found my calling!!

Being a busy bee during the week makes the weekends THAT MUCH BETTER! We finally get a chance to relax and have fun and not think twice about why Spongebob's favorite pants are his favorite, as if we wanted to know in the first place. I can only wonder what this coming up weekend has in store... hopefully nothing that involves challenging gravity!! Because as most of us know from last weekend, gravity always wins. I love calling everyone on Saturday morning & sharing stories! And as far as this ice storm business goes, bring it on! I'm an experienced survivor :).

Keeping up with "Mary Spirit:"
Chapter 3 talks about that inner turmoil between wanting what God wants and wanting what we want. It describes Satan's role in all this. Satan isn't too worried about losing us to God. He is, on the other hand, bound and determined to keep us from being effective Christians. He's eager to constantly remind us of our failures and our unworthiness. He wants us to be so preoccupied all the time with what we're not that we never get around to realize all that God is. But Christ's sacrifice was enough. And "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus," Phil 1:6. Whatever God has started in me, He's going to finish it. It's a constant changing, though...

Do actions REALLY speak louder?

I believe I got "Having a Mary Spirit" for my high school graduation. I had it tucked away in a small chest that I brought to Little Rock, and as I was going around my room convincing myself that I wasn't overpacking for Christmas break when indeed I was, I grabbed a couple of books--"Mary Spirit" being one of them. I grabbed it from my suitcase one night at home. The subtitle reads "Allowing God to change us from the inside out." ...I thought that sounded like a pretty good plan, so I dug in.

Chapter 1 is simply called "A Mary Spirit." ... I can already tell that this will be hard. It would be so much easier to simply tell you to go buy this book & read it for yourself. ... Luke 10:38-42 tells a story of 2 sisters: Martha & Mary. Jesus visited their home, and Martha was freaking out because she felt like she was doing all the work while Mary just sat there and listened to Him. Martha rebuked and asked why Mary was doing nothing. Jesus responded to Martha and told her, "Only one thing is needed." It's easy to get so caught up in the busyness of life that sometimes I forget about that "one thing" that is needed - to sit at Jesus's feet. I tend to forget to just... be still. Joanna goes on to say that Martha & Mary had to "learn the balance between a soul at rest and a body in motion, between working hard for Christ and sitting at His feet." That's what I need- to learn that balance. I want to be changed to have a Mary spirit and learn to sit at the feet of the One who leads me. Ok, Lord... here we go.

Chapter 2 is where I had my first big "Aha!" moment. Joanna writes, "I assumed that Christian perfection was an outer work I had to do." That caught my attention. What? Isn't it, though? "If I could just be good enough and do the right things, then I would please God." Ok... go on. "But in my heartfelt desire to serve and honor the Lord, I feel prey to ... the lie that holiness is all up to us." Wait... it's not? There I was, realizing that the dangerous belief that I had to make myself presentable to God through my own human efforts was all a lie that Satan had planted in my mind. And boy, did he reap & sow on that lie.

I struggled a lot in undergrad with this issue. I felt like I had gotten so caught up in everything--sorority, partying, meeting people--and I began to neglect my spiritual life... put it on the back-burner, if you will. When I hit some low points & realized that I needed to mend this part of my life, I didn't know where to start. I began going to church on a somewhat regular basis & reading daily devotionals ever so often, etc. I tried to monitor my words and actions. But as we all know, people fall. As I read through Chapter 2, it became more and more apparent that my human actions are not what is going to bring me closer to God. Contradictory to what I had unconsciously thought before, I didn't need to prove myself worthy of anything- because I'm not worthy. No one is, nor will anyone ever be. Salvation is a gift, not a job. And it is all up to mwah to decide to accept this gracious gift. For it is freely given.

It was when I read the following words that I could have sworn that this chapter was written ABOUT me and directly TO me:
"I somehow fell for the lie that when I accepted Jesus as my Savior, the rest was up to me. As though, after an initial warm hug of welcome, God had tossed me into the sea of life, stepped back, and crossed His arms as if to say 'It's up to you now, sweetheart--sink or swim.'"
BaDaBING! I didn't know what exactly it was that I had been struggling with until I read that line. That's it! That's the lie that has me stuck in this rut! My Christianity and my salvation is not dependent upon me and my actions... it's through the grace of God. Now I've known since I was a little girl that there is one and only one way to God, but like Joanna said, I believed that after that initial "Come into my heart" prayer, it was all up to me. But it's not. I began to realize that all I had to do was follow Him. I have a God who understands that I am caught in the middle of humanly contradictions. I want God one minute and I chase the world the next. Jesus not only understands my weaknesses, but he has the power and the know-how to help me change. He peels back my sin like an onion, revealing one layer at a time. He exposes my weaknesses, then shows me how to change.

There were many parts of chapter 2 that I had to re-read. This book was proving to be a bit more complex than I had bargained for. I was expecting to pick it up and read bullet points on how to become a better person spiritually. "Good deeds: check. Church: check. Prayer: check." Boy, was I in for a ride as I realized that this was going to be about self-evaluation and application in my own life. This should be interesting...

I'll try anything once...

Ok... I give in. After following Lindsey's blog for only a few weeks, I've decided to jump on the bandwagon of blogging. And yes, it was I who, just a few weeks ago, said I would never "blog" ... whatever that means anyway. I didn't (& still don't, really) see myself as the kind of person to "blog about my ideals," as the Twix commercial puts it. But sometimes when writing in my diary, my brain works way faster than my poor fine motor skills do. Therefore, I end up having all these thoughts that I want to put down but by the time I finish one sentence I forget what I was thinking about writing next.

One of the main reasons I've decided to succumb... to conform... to this blogging world is because of the book I'm currently reading: "Having a Mary Spirit" by Joanna Weaver. I have underlined and starred so many phrases, paragraphs, scriptures. And although writing about some of them in my diary gives me some way of regurgitating what I've read, some of it is just too good to keep to myself. I realize that this blog (which will probably be re-named over & over because of my indecisiveness) will not be read by tons & tons of people. The group of people who read this will probably consist of a select few. Still, some of the things I read in this book SCREAM to me, "This is YOU, Ashley! Apply THIS to your life! And THIS! And THIS!" So, as I am halfway through the book, I plan on going back to the beginning and sharing the points that stand out to me and speak to me in hopes that they will speak to you, too (whoever you are).

We'll see how this goes :)