The Day I Became a Woman

This is going to sound strange, but I have been struck with an understanding--today is the day I have become a woman. I don't know the moment it happened. Still, something has changed about the way I see the world. Dreams and goals that used to seem so far away are near and immediate. I will be a mother. God has pierced my heart with the desire to adopt children, and it will happen. While I desire a husband to enter into this journey with me, I will trust God either way. He has called me to be a spiritual and physical mother to children, my own and others.

Through his work in me, He will set captives free. Through dance and truth imparted in counseling, bonds will be broken. Lives will be healed.

No more saying, "Someday". Someday is today. I will boast in my weaknesses and jump aboard this train.

Let this day go down in the books as the day I became a woman. No turning back.

Stroll Down Memory Lane - Resurrecting Old Blog Posts

I was digging around in old blog posts and found what I'm about to share. First off, let me just say that God is doing so much in my life right now I can hardly contain it. I will write it down and share it later. I. am. in. awe.

Until then, I have some very antiquated (circa. 4-7 years ago) blog posts to share. They are the love stories of Alan and Ellen, Adam and Eve.

April 23, 2005 Sophomore in college, young and restless

The name Alan means "noble, handsome."

The name Ellen means "mercy, light."

In the story of my mind, Alan and Ellen's worlds collide, sending sparks of light all around, confounding the wisdom of the world with the delicacy of nobility and the undeserved impartation of mercy.

The question remains--Is the enamorment mutual between Alan and Ellen, or must nobility and mercy forever walk along separate lines, still impactful, yet not as earth-shattering as if the two virtues were combined and detonated by the passion of God lighting them?

The saga continues...

March 10, 2008 Senior in college, sorting through much confusion

“The Stuff of Miracles”

I am all too familiar with Eve’s story. It’s mine, too. You see…God formed me from Adam’s rib and brought me to him as a companion. Then Adam looked at me and said, “I’m waiting on Eve.” I laughed to myself, because I knew that he didn’t recognize me as his wife. I could tell him all day the truth of my identity and purpose, but until he understood it himself, his disbelief would override my surety. What I have left out is that God put Adam to sleep for a long time…so long that Adam had begun to adjust to the solitude in my absence. He dreamed about me so much that he had dissolved the hope of my reality and consigned himself to hang onto the dream instead. Sometimes it’s easier to hope for something forever than to actually accept it when it’s there. What if we mess it up? It can be perfect in our minds in a way that it never can be in reality. So God brought me to Adam, and Adam put me on hold for the dream Eve. This broke my little Eve heart, because the man I was created to love was in love with the false substitute of me. Ironic and unbelievable…but true. Yet I stayed by his side and loved him in subtle, secret ways that wouldn’t jar him from his dream world. I didn’t want to invade and overtake him from the illusion. No, I longed to woo him out. I knew that if he truly saw me, he would prefer me to the dream. Now, I need to confess…when I said God brought me to Adam, I didn’t tell the whole truth. Actually, Adam doesn’t even know that I’m here right now. You see…he’s still asleep. And I’m not quite finished yet. God was reminding me of this the whole time I was wishing for his notice, but I couldn’t help myself. Why can’t he open up his eyes and behold me? God said that he would not recognize me in part but in completion. God apparently has given Adam this keen ability to name things appropriately. He named giraffes, lions, elephants, and bears as what they were created to be. But until he sees me as the finished product of his mate, he will have to withhold the name I am destined for…Eve. I am so close to the identity I can almost taste it. But it is in waiting and longing that God fashions me beautifully in His care. I fall in love with Adam while watching him sleep and fall in love with God in our special time alone. And the rest…as you know, is historically the stuff of miracles.

I have so many old blog posts, but since I was in a whimsical, romantic mood, I chose these. The dreams God gives us are beautiful, even if we never experience them ourselves. At relatively immature and difficult times in my life, God gave me these dreams. And to this day, I see forms of them happening all around me. In romantic love. Brotherly love. Sisterly love. Parent/child love. Friend love.

God is writing poetry into our lives, each syllable having a purpose in its rhyme and rhythm. I can't wait to read the next line.

The Meaning of Sex

I have a feeling that this is going to be my most popular blog post of all time. And rightly so. I think many people need to read this--sex is very misunderstood.

First of all, I just want to share the truth that I am a single virgin woman, who loves Jesus and thinks sex is awesome. I can't say this from personal experience--I just believe and know it to be true. God has wired men and women so perfectly to come together.

So why am I saying this to you? Listen closely.

I believe something is seriously broken in our Western culture, specifically when it comes to sex. God created sex, fully intending for two to become one. It's a mystery, like the union of Christ and the church. In sex, a man and woman give themselves to one another in vulnerability and honesty. The act is purposed to bring pleasure, more so because it's given as well as received (just as love is) and mimic God's act of creation by producing a child. This is what God created sex to be--an act of love, unity, and creation. So beautiful!

So what has gone wrong?

Sadly, men and women are no longer coming together. Sexuality has been taken out of fine china and put into a trash can. The sexual drive that was intended as a gift has become a curse, because we are misusing it. We are running to other things to satisfy us sexually--for some it's pornography, fantasy, masturbation; for some it's seeking comfort in materialism and food, anything to distract them from their sexuality; for others it's playing with pleasure in empty relationships outside of marriage; still others practice prudishness, denial, and asceticism (which is not the same thing as having the gift of celibacy, mind you.) Let us not be like the Gnostics, who consider the body evil and the spirit good, because God has made the body good, and He is pleased with sex. However, let us neither be like the Antinomians, who would take advantage of grace and practice licentiousness, because self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and prevents God's gift from being mishandled and broken.

What needs to change? Instead of allowing our differences to alienate us from one another and turning to other avenues to satisfy us sexually, we have to do a reversal. We have to enter in. We have to reach out to one another in relationships (leading to marriage) and take the chance that we might be hurt if it does not work out. Only by faith in God and the allegiance to a greater love in Jesus is this possible. Everything within us SCREAMS for self-protection, for caution, for fear. And while there is a place for wisdom, discernment, patience, care, and self-control in interactions with the opposite sex, may we never confuse them with self-protection, which is the enemy of love. We only need protecting if what we are at risk of losing is supremely valuable to us. What we fear losing reveals the idols in our heart that must be crushed in order for us to experience freedom. Only freedom will allow us to come together and give of ourselves in love and humility. And out of that love proceeds even more love through having children. And out of all of these things, joy!

Here's my humble prayer and vision. Dallas has an unreal amount of single people, who want to be married. My prayer is that God would humble us all to lay down our idols, our temptations, our fears and take risks. I pray that more people would get married and have children, so that God's people would multiply, fill the earth, and share the good news. While I know that marriage and sex are never going to function as fully as God intended them because we inhabit a fallen world, I am praying that God would redeem them for His glory, that His people would walk a different way and cause the world to take notice.

So that leaves us with one more question. How am I personally planning to respond to what I have just shared with you?

Press into Jesus more. Ask Him to fill me and satisfy me and not awaken love until it so desires. Allow the ache, the loneliness, the longing, and the hope to be married to give me a stake in the suffering and brokenness in the world and move me to reach out in love to all around me--my brothers and sisters, the least of these, my neighbor, and my enemy. I plan on still praying for my husband--that God would give Him courage, boldness, and passion for Jesus, that God would put me on His heart, and that He would pursue me. Also, I plan to stay out in the open and not cloister myself away--even if I never marry, I know that it will not be because I shied away from being a Ruth or an Esther. I will accept the risk. No matter what happens, I pray that God turns the tide of what I see in this culture. And even if I never marry, I trust Him and put my hope in Him. He is worth it all and more. What a small sacrifice for an infinitely generous King.

I hope that God heals your heart in this area, as He is healing mine. I'm feeling more and more freedom to love, take risks, and allow a man to know me without playing games of self-protection and pride. I pray it for all my brothers and sisters who have a heart to be married. May God be glorified in this.

Feel free to share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear them.

For Freedom

One journey and then another

Lives cross and intermingle

Hardly knowing the destination

The path that must be taken

And what must be given up

For freedom

Constrained by time, space, and context

Given purpose and a voice

But what do we do with them?

Labor against the chains

And speak out boldly

For freedom

Yet the labor itself is constraining

And our best of intentions, failing

We tie ourselves in knots

In attempts to make a bow

And all the while we're pining

For freedom

It. rarely. meets. us. elegantly.

But with arched bow and outstretched arms

The battle is waged for our souls

We give up our lives, lay down our charms

To grasp the fullness of life

From the One who gave it all for us

Freedom from what we were.

Freedom for all we will be.

Free. as. birds.

You and me. Free.

The cry of my heart, the longing of my soul

As I hold your hand, remember--

This journey

To bind ourselves to Love

To be truly free.

Stepping Out of the Buffet Line

There are those rare, yet potent moments in our lives when we realize that something we’re doing is supporting a system that we despise, and so we are responsible to change if we are to constructively speak out against the inherent danger of the system. Or else resign ourselves to hypocrisy with eyes wide open.

I have recently had one of those moments. I have long recognized a system that has bothered and puzzled me and yet have found myself blindly playing within it. The buffet line is the system of male and female interaction that is a product of our Western consumerist culture and the postmodern era. Oh, not to mention human selfishness. The way it works is that men look at all the choices available and try various women on for size, while women compete for their attention and notice. Well-named the buffet line.

What is so sad about this arrangement is that it’s a game that can’t be won. So everyone plays and plays. Men are left disappointed; women are left hurting. And in the body of Christ, it does nothing to stir brotherly and sisterly affection. Rather, it encourages frustration, jealousy, and division. And men and women who would like to marry are left wondering what has gone wrong.

Well, call me naïve, call me idealistic, but I cannot settle for playing with mud pies when I’m offered a holiday at the sea. I have a vision for how beautiful love can be. For a man to choose one woman and pursue her. To lay down his life for her. For her to follow him with abandon. Like Jesus and the church.

And so that means I have to leave the buffet line. I have to sit down and choose the four-course meal. Even if that means that I enjoy it alone, that no one comes with me. It’s worth the risk. And it’s an opportunity for me to trust that my God knows what He’s doing. I don’t have to submit myself to the buffet line or play the game that can’t be won. If He so chooses, He can lead me to a man who knows my name and recognizes me as his choice.

I recognize that no one is perfect and that life is messy. I’m as thankful for grace as anyone. I’m not laying out an accusation toward anyone specifically, because I believe that this problem is bigger than any individual’s contribution. But at the same time, I believe that the system would die if we all stopped supporting it. With this in mind, I’ve made my choice.

What does it look like for me to pull out of the system? To treat my brothers like brothers and sisters like sisters. To love well and purely, rather than selfishly. To lay aside my desires for the good of my brothers and sisters. Hopefully, the very attitude that should mark my life whether or not I ever become a wife.

So feel free to take my spot in the buffet line if you want. Or better yet, come sit down with me for the four-course meal. I've heard steak is the main entree.

Beckoning the Brave

Beauty is the infinite presented in the finite. -Schelling

Art has this amazing capacity to speak to our souls. We not only express what we believe about reality in our art, but we also take what we believe from it. That is why the power of art as a form of communication can never be overstated-art speaks to our souls in ways that words cannot.

Epiphany has a heart for pursuing excellence in two qualities: beauty and truth. And these two cannot be more related-beauty and truth are standards, flying in the face of the postmodern idea that there is no real beauty and no real truth. We believe that both are real and aim to express them authentically in what we create.

So that brings me to what awaits us in February-the encore performance of our best show yet, full of so much beauty and truth, that I am convinced that you will walk away knowing that you have gotten a glimpse of something truly sacred.

It tells a story. And one to which we can all relate. Full of struggle and longing, giddiness and hope. Beauty and truth.

Allow me to give you a taste of what I mean.

I have created this dance, which is more than a dance to me. It’s a longing, a vision, a prayer. Starting in June 2010, I began counseling women and girls at a domestic violence/sexual assault agency and saw tragedy and brokenness like you would not believe. On top of that, for quite some time I have felt a burden for the millions of boys, girls, and women that are bought and sold like cattle. Human trafficking is a prime moneymaker in the US and all over the world.

Heartbreaking but true.

In my counseling work, I looked around me and had a sudden realization-90% of those I worked with were women. Women helping broken women and girls. Where had all the men gone?

And that is what inspired my dance. With grace from God, I fought my inclination to become angry at men. I realized that there is some deep ideology at work here. Feminism has told men that they need to back off and let women handle themselves. But here are these women I see, feeling used, broken, and hurting, and needing real men more than ever. Not men that will hurt them. But men that will stand up for them. Men who know how to show strength in love and humility, not rage and abuse.

My longing, my vision, my prayer is that men will be who they were created to be. That they will be strong, brave, and stand up for what is right. That they will not live for themselves but have a greater allegiance to the One who made them. I have known men like this and what an inspiration they are! I yearn to see more in the coming years.

It is men like this who inspire true beauty in women and children who feel safe and free to be themselves, and my hope is that the beauty in this show will in turn inspire this kind of strength and courage in them.

The song is “Sigh No More” by Mumford & Sons. And there is a certain line that gets me:

Love it will not betray you,

dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free

Be more like the man you were made to be.

There is a design,

An alignment to cry,

Of my heart to see,

The beauty of love as it was made to be.

I believe that there is a day coming that we will truly “sigh no more”. Let’s chase after that day with everything in us.

Men, this dance is dedicated to you.

Pondering [these things] in my heart - A Look Back at 2011 and Into 2012

"But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." Luke 2:19

I haven't been able to get these words out of my mind for the past couple of weeks. I have the slightest notion of what Mary must have felt. To have found herself in the middle of the vortex of God's plan, watching unbelievable events unfold before her eyes. How could she not treasure them all up, waiting for the moments when sitting down and marveling at them was available?

That's what these past several months have been for me. A vortex.

...and now the time for pondering.

The year of 2011 has been a year of transitions. So unlike what I expected and far more than I could have asked for. This year I have experienced the gamut of ups and downs and have pressed into the Lord unlike any other.

In January, I began my third and final practicum, as well as my final semester in DBU's graduate counseling program. I had been running the same loop for 3 years, and at last the final stretch was in sight. I can remember many moments of expectation, sprinkled with fear. And as I walked through the traps of fear with others that the Lord brought me, I was awakened to fear's presence in my own life, to its ever loosening hold on me. I saw my whole life spread before me, along with the sight of this miracle--His steady hammering away at fear in me.

I read myself in the pages of Hinds Feet on High Places and knew that, just like Much Afraid, Jesus took me on this journey out of the Valley of Despair through the Desert, the Shores of Loneliness, the Precipice Injury, the Forests of Danger and Tribulation, and the Floods...that He laid me on the altar and brought me to the end of myself (and will forevermore). Out of the ashes of Much Afraid, He gave me a new name--Grace and Glory--and gave me hinds' feet, so I can walk with Him upon the high places (Habakkuk 3:19).

The Lord gave me such joy in my counseling practicum, as He let me witness miracles of His grace rain down on people. He gave me such joy and fulfillment in dancing for Him with Epiphany, fulfilling a promise He gave me years ago when I was a freshman in college that I would "use dance for ministry", when I had turned my back on dancing, thinking dance was as finished with me, as I was with dance. But no...He had plans. He has plans.

On the other side of the high places, He called me to return to the valley--this time, as Grace and Glory.

...and thus, the journey of this past year.

I wanted to stay and delight in the high places with Him. But He knew better. Even this has been part of His plan in changing my name and my identity. This past summer was dry and difficult, as I experienced various forms of disappointment and loneliness that I had not faced at such a depth in a long time--searching for a job, lacking community. He stripped me bare of anything that I depended on other than Him. Also, in my lack and need, He led me to opportunities and relationships that I cherish. Nuggets of pure gold in my life. Out of the ashes, beauty.

I have a feeling that this next year is going to be unparalleled. I'm learning to ask, seek, and knock with expectancy. God is calling me deeper, to cast aside the sin that so easily entangles, to run the race with abandon. Here's some of the things He's laying on my heart for this year:

1) Prayer will become more like breathing this year, as I'm realizing more of my need and desire to commune with Jesus. My prayers will be bolder and more persistent. And I will listen more.

2) Wisdom is something that I am longing for. I need so much more of it than I have. God is asking me to do things that are beyond my ability, to walk in places that are unknown to me--so this is one of the gifts I'm asking for with increasing fervor and expectancy.

3) My family--I have such a heart to see all of my family know Jesus and experience freedom, joy, and life. I have seen such beauty as God has saved and redeemed parts of my family. And I'm praying that He claims all of them, grants them hope in His grace, and gives them new eyes to see His goodness. That He shows them a new way to live.

4) Evangelism--God has done a very unexpected work in me, having taken this naturally timid, tongue-tied girl, and poured out the gift of evangelism on me. I'm experiencing such joy in sharing the truth of the gospel with others, as Jesus lets me see them with His eyes. Also, I see myself growing in discernment concerning when and how to share. This year I look forward to growing in and developing this gift.

5) Missions--God has seared in me a heart for the nations for several years now and while I have taken part in the roles of praying, mobilizing, and sending out, it has been years since I have been able to go. Thankfully, I think this is the year! This prospect fits in so well with the theme of waiting that God has woven into my life. My longing grows as I wait, and my joy increases when what I have waited for is given to me. He is wise and good in this.

6) My neighbors--I want to get to know my neighbors and have been praying that God would open up doors for me to talk with them. Just a couple of weeks ago, I met my next door neighbor, Maurice! We had a long talk about life, our hometowns, change, death, Jesus, hope, and the gospel. He knows Jesus too. :) I was so encouraged by our conversation and all the more determined to get to know my other neighbors too.

7) Dance/movement therapy--This is the unfamiliar path that God is taking me down. He is opening up doors to do what I have been dreaming about--to facilitate healing and growth through movement and truth--when I had expected it to take so much longer. When I had expected to have more training, experience, tenure (something!) to offer, He has chosen to equip me as I go. He is calling me here now...and reminding me that He is the Healer, the Redeemer. I am just a vessel.

8) The Present--God has convicted me of my tendency to try to peak ahead into the future, to try to "get past" the valleys and the busy seasons of life. I realized that I could live my whole life trying to "get past" everything and have nothing to show for the joy and suffering I experience. So this year, I choose to walk another way. I want to be fully present in whatever I'm facing--be it joy, sorrow, blessing, trial. I will accept it, lean into Jesus, and glean pearls and beauty from every bit of it. I'm feeling determined and relentless about this.

I am so thankful for another year of life and look forward to a year of being filled up and poured out for the sake and renown of Jesus, in whom all things hold together, including all the pieces of my heart.

Truly,

Ashellen