See Something More

It's not every morning that you get to watch the sun rise. A couple of days ago, I met some friends out at Pinnacle Mountain a little after 6:00 in the morning for an early morning hike. I bundled up in my sweats and hat, ready to get climbing so my body would warm up and only my nose would stay chilled as I breathed the December air in and out. My breath looked like smoke in the beam of my headlamp. It was a good thing we didn't have to be follow any quiet-hour guidelines because we laughed and talked all the way. We enjoyed each other's company so much that we lost the trail and never found it again. "Well, when in doubt, just keep going up." We basically bushwhacked up the north side of Pinnacle mountain, not realizing where we were going to come out until we reached the top. Within five minutes, the bright orange sun peeked over the top of the horizon, instantly flooding our little world with light and warmth. "Perfect timing." I love mountai...

Just for today, I would like to direct you to a blog post by Katie Davis , who wrote beautifully about something that I have also felt deep in my heart, and I wished that I had such poignant words to express it. May Katie inspire you as much as she does me. And may God's powerful love sweep over all of us - especially this Christmas season - and may it move us to love as He does. Here is an additional link to her blog if you would like to read more.

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ . 2 Corinthians 4:6 I am now officially calling this my "wow verse". It is one of those Scriptures that I have probably read before, but it suddenly meant something vastly more amazing when I read it again this week. I think I may have actually "wowed" aloud when I came across it. "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness...'" In the beginning, when the world was still formless and empty, God spoke light into existence. But even before He spoke it, even before He created it, He was Light. In the beginning was the Light, the Word of God, Jesus - who was with God and who was God. "...made His light to shine in our hearts..." This light-speaking God is still creating light in dark places. This time, instead of filling the emptiness of the...

Every year at the end of the fall semester, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment not only because I completed another semester of nursing school, but also because I completed another season in my life - and am stronger because of it. I get into a very reflective mood when I think about everything that has happened in these past five months, and it is incredibly amazing just how much God has done. At the end of every semester, but especially this one, I feel like I am a newer person because I have grown in so many ways. It is as though I have been sent through fire and water and come out more purified.  How could so much growth and change come about in one short semester? I find myself asking. Soemtimes I just wish things would slow down and that I could have a period of my life when I am not rapidly growing and things might actually stay somewhat the same, but then I realize that is not what I want at all. Really, there is nothing that I want more than to be cons...

This semester, my friends and I have been studying the book of Nehemiah, an Old Testament read that is not nearly as popular as it should be. It is one of my favorite books of the Bible because of its relevance. Just change a few names and tweak a few details and you will find a story very much like your own - a story of brokenness and how God redeems what has been lost. Nehemiah's story is like a treasure chest tucked away in the middle of the Old Testament, ready to be explored so that riches may be uncovered. Last night, we finished our Bible study by reading and discussing the last chapter of Nehemiah, and I want to share with you some of what we discovered. The following passage is from Nehemiah 13, which tells about several reforms that Nehemiah instituted for the people of God in Jerusalem in order that they might be more holy. One such reform was this: "Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God. He was clos...

A crowd had already gathered on the front lawn by the time I got there all bundled up in my sweater and hat. All the normal evening-time lights had been turned off in order to create the most wintery darkness, and the chatter in the air communicated an eagerness to see the great contrast that was about to occur. Then, the countdown began. It was ten seconds until 6:00. "Ten...nine...eight...seven..." I stuck my hands in my pockets and lifted my eyes to the treetops. "Five...four...three..." Suddenly, on "three" all the lights flashed on, eliciting an audible gasp and murmur from the crowd. It only took an instant for the operators to realize that they jumped the gun, so they quickly flipped the switch to "off" once again and waited for the crowd to regroup. "Three...two...one!" This time, the lights illuminated the entire front lawn right on cue. An extra enthusiastic "hooray" arose from the crowd because of the mi...

"Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6 This is the promise that comes to mind when I think about what God has done for me. Five years ago, when I was diagnosed with an eating disorder, this promise would have been so vague that I would not have believed it. Looking back, now I see God's master design over this timeline of the past five years. I recognize that He knew the day of my diagnosis, the day of my liberation, and the day of my publication (which was Thanksgiving day!) all along. I don't consider my story and the book it has become to be my story at all. I really don't feel like a writer, but God is an excellent author. This is His story, and I am proud to share it. Boundless tells the story of my battle with an eating disorder and the power of the God who is able to bring about deliverance. It includes a 30-day Bible Study for young women with ea...

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 eve...

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 ...

The bedroom floor exploded with pink and green as we dumped all our purchases onto the floor. We spread out the fabric, paint, ribbon, and all sorts of crafty things that we had just purchased. The four of us club sisters in Chi Omega Pi then went to work, creating gifts for our upcoming new members - all of course in pink and green, our club colors. Each fall semester, when new girls are inducted into the club, old members pair up to become "big sisters" for each of the new members. Our purpose is to welcome them into the club, build a friendship with them, support them throughout the induction week process, and shower them with fun and cute gifts. They work hard throughout club week, and it is our joy to reward them with sweet surprises. Each day of the week, we treat them with a gift. The first night we decorated their dorm room doors with pink and green streamers, balloons, and poster board. Throughout the next five days, we leave them surprises - chocolate in the...

This week, our church hosted a missions-centered dessert night in which we heard from several speakers regarding their experiences with world missions, prayed together over the nations, and were challenged to live with God's heart for the world.   We were seated at round tables in groups, and each table represented a specific county. When the desserts were served, I began to notice that there was something deeper and significant going on.   The United States table was loaded. Their server brought a cart filled with rich desserts and just kept putting them on the table until there was no room left. Then the server started placing desserts in the hands and laps of the people sitting around the table.   When the server came to my table, which represented Russia, one person got a real dessert and the rest of us recieved a tiny cup of gummy Warhead candies. Some tables got nothing at all.   Of course, the Unites States table got up and started passin...

We pulled up to the trailhead past dark, and my headlights shone on a sign that read, "Day use only. No camping." "Hmmm, that's strange," I announced to the other girls in my car. "I was sure that we camped here before, but maybe I was wrong. We will just have to keep looking." We drove around for the next thirty minutes, only to no avail. By this time it was 8:30, way past dark, and none of us had eaten dinner yet. Our hot dogs and smores were still packed away, along with our tent, which I couldn't figure out where we were going to pitch for the night. Slightly frustrated and embarrassed at the way our girls' camping trip was starting off, I decided to drive to the nearest town and ask for directions. However, all the stores...actually, the one and only store...was closed for the evening. It was past dark. We were in an unfamiliar town in the middle of no-where-country-backwoods-Arkansas. And we were a vulnerable-looking bunch of six ...

I slightly panicked when I opened my card holder. It noticed right away that it felt more flimsy then normal, and then I realized my student ID was missing. I quickly scanned the ground around me, only to have the panic set in a little stronger than before. I retraced my steps to the room I had come from. I messaged my friend and asked her to check her backseat. The hosts of my Sunday night community group looked all through their house. After looking everywhere I could think to look, I admitted it. "I think I have officially lost my student ID," I told my friends the following morning. My busy schedule combined with the narrow office hours of the card-making office made it impossible for me to get a new card until several days later. The problem was that my card gets me into the cafeteria and dorm. "I don't know how I am going to eat over the next three days," I confessed. "Well, I guess you will get to practice living in need!" my friend, Emily, ...

I looked at my calendar and realized that the 5k that my friend, Rachael, and I decided to run this semester had snuck up on us too quickly. "Is that seriously this weekend?" I asked last Sunday night. "Yeah, we have to start running!" Rachael responded. Maybe this will be the inspiration for my next book. Sounds like a good title, doesn't it?  5k in 5 Days . We ran two miles on Monday night, three miles on Tuesday and Wednesday night, and three and a half miles Thursday night before resting on Friday and getting up early Saturday morning to race. Even though it was usually around 11:00 PM before both of us could find time to jog during the week, we bundled up in leggings and sweatshirts and jogged around campus in the dark. We don't get to see each other very much these days, so we spent the time catching up, telling stories, and laughing together as we ran. Then, Saturday morning, we drove down to the Arkansas river in the morning fog and completed o...

I came across a Scripture this week that I don't think I have ever read. Even though I have done those read-through-the-Bible programs, I would not have recognized this particular verse had you mentioned it to me. I suppose I have read it before now, but I had never really read it. And when I think about it, I realize that I can re-read a verse that I've read a thousand times before, and there will come a moment when I feel like I finally read it for the first time. That's just one of the many beauties of God's marvelous Word. And this particular verse, the one I really read for the first time this week, was exactly what I needed to hear. Another one of the beauties of God's Word. In Isaiah 5, Isaiah points out some powerful "woes" to the rebellious people of Israel, who have neglected God as their first love and turned to all sorts of other things to find pleasure and satisfaction. "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, an...

As soon as we began to sing, I stood up and made my way to the front, my heart beating fast and tears forming in the corners of my eyes. I joined others as we walked down the rows together, and I met some friends in warm embraces at the front. Before us stood a large panel with a map of the world. The oceans were painted with colorful strokes of pinks, purples, and blues, yet the continents were left unpainted...but not for long. Prompted by the keynote speaker that night, we came forward to make a committment to mission work and to place our hands on the part of the world to which we were going. I watched people before me place their painted handprints on China, India, Latin America, and the United States. We were instructed, "If you don't have a specific place in mind, put your mark anywhere on the world. The Lord knows." Together, my friend Emily and I, with blue-painted hands and passion-painted hearts, stamped our hands and our love for God's world right in t...