See Something More

At the end of Thanksgiving break, I dreaded returning to school and looking at my calendar. I knew that every day had something due - a paper, a project, a test, a presentation. I knew that I had a to-do list four miles long. I knew that the Christmas season would bring cheer to everyone else on campus as they participated in Christmas movies, functions, parties, and events...everyone except the nursing students. So I went into survival mode. If I can just survive the next three weeks, then it will be Christmas. Just focus on one day at a time, turning in what needs to be done and only working on what absolutely must be accomplished next. Nineteen days and it will  all be over and done. I'll sleep when I'm dead... But then I remembered my word for the semester. Presence . And I realized that graduation is only one semester away. And I love Harding. And I really don't want time to fly by. Because I don't want to blink and miss it all. I want to be present in every

When our small group Bible study gathered together on Sunday night after Thanksgiving break, we opened our Bibles to Nehemiah 12 to continue our semester-long study of Nehemiah. I opened the discussion by announcing that our focus for the night was on thanksgiving. "Which I think is appropriate," I said as I smiled. Playfully and sarcastically, one of my friends replied, "Ashli, don't you realize that Thanksgiving is over ?" That's just it: For the follower of Jesus Christ, thanksgiving is never over. As a group, we shared our thoughts on the meaning of thanksgiving. First, we talked about how we should practice Thanksgiving even in difficult situations - in those times when you really don't feel thankful for anything. It is in those moments that we should practice the spiritual discipine of thankgiving by actually thanking God for the very thing that we are struggling to appreciate. Looking back, I see how this is true. Five years ago, when I wa

I scanned the book list in class with an already negative attitude about having to do one more assignment over Thanksgiving break. I was hoping to do some reading for fun, but instead I would be stuck with this assignment. Then, I spotted one that actually sounded pretty good, so I signed my name by it and headed to the library to pick it up. Something Beautiful For God by Malcolm Muggeridge is a book about Mother Teresa. I hadn't read three pages before I realized that I loved the book. I couldn't have picked something better if I had chosen a book to read just for fun. This week, I have discovered that I want to be like Mother Teresa. For those of you who are wondering, no, I am not going to become a Catholic nun or start a convent, but I do love Mother Teresa's simple way of life. She expresses her theology in words that I feel came out of my own heart. In interviews with Mother Teresa, people ask her mutliple, complex, deep questions, but she always gives the sam

"I came across a great verse the other day," I told my friend as we sat beside the fountain yesterday afternoon and enjoyed the warm sunshine mixed with the quickly cooling fall air. Isaiah 45:3 says, "I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places." "What does that even mean?" she asked. I playfully patted her knee and exclaimed, "I don't really know. You tell me!" We laughed together and then carried on our conversation, discussing what such powerful words could mean in our lives. The promise reverberated in our hearts because this semester has brought unusual and difficult struggles for both of us, and we have found oursleves in dark places - not as in darkness of intentional sin, but places where hope, strength, and joy seem to be missing. We don't know how we got there. And we both wondered at times where God could possibly be taking us. God's promise to us in Isaiah 45:3 is an unusual one:

"If you had all the resources you needed and a guarantee for success, what would you do?" the group leader asked us in the introductory session of Beth Moore's Bible study on James called Mercy Triumphs . I was the third person in line to answer, so I didn't have very much time to think. I quickly answered, "I guess I would start a medical clinic in a place with poor medical care as a foundation for ministry and church planting." I didn't realize it in the moment, but that was the first verbalization of my heart's inner dream. I had never expressed it aloud until that very moment. Not even two weeks later, I attended the Global Missions Experience sponsored by Harding University. During the first keynote speaker, I sat by my friend, Emily, who is a social work major that is just as passionate about mission work as I am. During the singing, we were slightly distracted by a family across the aisle with really precious children. After the session,

As I was walking back to the dorm at 5:00 PM after a long day of classes, my eyes were drawn to this one beautiful fall tree. The sun was setting directly in front of me, and its beams of warm light shone right through the bright orange leaves of this tree, illuminating its colors so that the leaves actually appeared to glow. It was the closest thing I have ever seen to a burning bush. I don't typically think of leaves as translucent things, but these leaves absolutely were, especially as the sun's rays hit them just right. I stopped to marvel for just a second, and then I picked one perfect leaf and held it up to the sunlight as I continued walking all the way back to the dorm. I set the leaf on my desk, planning to press it to retain its color. I put my books away and then returned to my desk, only to notice that my leaf was...brown. Sitting on my desk in the artificial light of the room, that leaf looked ordinarily dull, kind of like it was half dead already. I puzzled

At this time approximately five years ago, I began an adventure that would shape and transform the rest of my life. At the time, I felt like I was ruined. When my eating disorder was first diagnosed, I felt like the rug had been pulled right out from under my feet, but I was only seeing a small piece of the picture. God, who reigns over time and circumstance and who loves His children without limits, had something so much greater in mind. He has taken my ashes and turned them into beauty. He has taken devastation and turned it into deliverance. And He has made a way for my testimony to be shared in a way that I never dreamed possible.  Once on the road to recovery from my eating disorder, I began to wonder why I went through it all. After I tasted freedom and deliverance, I felt called to share what I had learned in order to minister to others. The eating disorder rocked my relationship with the Lord, and I was closer to Him than I had ever been in my entire life. That's when

The fog was still rising when we loaded our boats and pushed off from shore into the Buffalo River. The river valley was still waking up. The sun shone on the tops of the hills, illuminating warm fall colors in the trees, but had not yet made its way down to the river, which was still saturated with cool colors of sleepy stillness.  We paddled silently down the river, which was as still as glass. The mountains and sky were perfectly reflected in the water like a mirror image. The only ripples in the water were made by our paddles as we silently stroked through the crystal clear water. I was comfortably silent as I listened to my paddle  rhythmically  enter the water and then drip, drip, drip as I pulled forward to stroke again. I watched smooth rocks glide by three feet below me, but the clearness of the water seemed to magnify it all so that I felt like I could reach down and touch the small fish swimming by. The whole river was covered in a thin, majestic mist, which I could see in