One day I will blog...

One day I will blog, and it will be something like this:

Maybe I decided to blog because I like the idea of possibly sharing my life with people one day. Maybe I did so because I was inspired by other bloggers. One thing is for sure, I did NOT decide to blog because I was bored or needed something to fill my free time. Free time is something that comes few and far between these days.

Regardless, my prayer is that someone, through this blog, will:
-be able to relate
-be inspired
-decide to follow Jesus

I suppose there are some basics you should know about me. My name is Ashli, clearly. And as I type this I am 24 years old - however in a couple of months I will be 25 ... and that scares the poop out of me.
I have recently graduated college have started a new job in my home town. I have one sister and two loving parents who I would not trade the whole world for.

There are some people you need to become familiar with because I will use their names a lot here.
- Jaime,  for one. She is my mentor and she is incredible. Always, and I'm not exaggerating, has a word for me- and most of the time I think it's from the Lord. Her husband is Joe and her daughters are Hannah Ruth and Ali.

- Laura, for two. She was my roommate for the past year and a very dear friend of mine. She has recently obeyed the Lord's calling her to serve in Haiti. I cannot express how much I miss her and I will probably talk about her a whole bunch.

- thePOINT is the college ministry I am involved in at my church. I help plan events and do whatever they tell/need me to do :)

- Katie is a new friend of mine. She is younger than me but I like to think of her as a mini me :) While our lives have been very different, our personalities are not. We are very much alike and she is joy to be around. You will read about her often.

- Mary Katherine and Morgan are my current roommates so there will be stories of them from time to time.
- Rachel is one of my best friends who is planning to marry her best friend on March 17, 2012. I am a bridesmaid, of course :)

You may be wondering why I chose to call this blog "One day..." so I will tell you. I feel like we live in an anticipative way. Almost always anxious for the next thing to come, even if we don't realize. Even if it is subconsciously, we tend to think in future tense. "One day we will build our own house... one day I will get a degree... one day I will go back to school ... one day we will start trying to have kids ... one day I will meet the love of my life... one day I will go on that mission trip"  and the list goes on and on.

However, this summer I was faced with the cold hard truth that God wants us to SOAK UP  the exact season He has us in. Trust me, it was cold and it was hard. Have you ever heard the cliche saying "If God brings you to it He will bring you through it" or "God won't give you something you can't handle" ..?? While borderline cheezy, these cliches are true. Sure I have been through my fair share of storms that at some points I thought I could not make it through another day of. But I obviously did because I am here to write about it.

When I was younger, my "one day's" were things like: a lot of money, a big house, a great husband, being a housewife, several kids, boats, 4-wheelers, etc... As I have gotten older, the sad truth is that those desires have remained. However, my story does not begin there. It does not begin when I was born. It doesn't even begin with where I grew up in church or the date that I decided to repeat some prayer after a pastor. My story started   about a year and a half ago. And that is where my "one day's" changed.

Through a series of events which led to God stripping me of what I thought was my identity, He drew me to Him in a way that was irresistible to even the 'strongest of sinners.'  I jokingly say that I had no choice but to turn to Him because He was the only thing left of me. But now I can see His hand in adding people to my life on HIS timing. (We will talk more about that later) This was when I began to seek Him and His Word. I was studying my bible all the time. "I have so much God in my life, I don't have time for anything else," I once told Jaime. She laughed and said "That's a good thing, Ashli."
God put her in my life at the perfect time. I MUST stop here and tell you how He did that.

I worked at a gym in Oak Grove for about two years where both Joe and Jaime worked as well. I knew Joe because he trained me a few times and I knew their daughter Hannah because I worked in the Kids Zone some. I knew Jaime because she worked with Valerie, our nutrionist, but that was the extent of the relationship. One day after work, Jaime came to me and said "I was wondering if you and Rachel wanted to start getting together once a week and talking about the bible and stuff. It doesn't have to be anything formal, we can meet at Starbucks or something." Of course I responded with "ABSOLUTELY!" Jaime began to explain that God had put myself, Rachel and another girl we worked with on her heart to talk to us about singleness. I will never forget she said, "Just wait til you hear my story." As far as Jaime knew, I was still in a serious relationship with a guy who's life did not honor the Lord, nor did our relationship. It was a very dark time of my life and I was only beginning to see the light out. Anyway, Jaime was just following the Lord's lead to meet with us. Surprisingly to her, she found out later in the conversation that I had just gotten out of that relationship and was in fact, single.

We began to meet weekly, sometimes more than once, and the rest is history. I learned a lot from her (I still do) and she always says that God has me in fast-forward. I'm beginning to agree. For whatever reason, the Lord shows, teaches, and puts me through things that a lot of people do not experience in years.

At this point in my life, I began to think that "One day... I would have a godly boyfriend." The more we studied singleness and that it truly is a gift, it turned into "One... I will have a husband. A godly one."

This is where we will leave off for now. It's a good start, I think.

Oh boy, has God since changed my heart...