Ashlin B
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I turned my head at just the right moment. The couple next to me, maybe in their mid-sixties picked up their styrofoam cups and toasted to one another. She called him darling and he helped her clean her plate. A casual Thursday lunch. They were simply celebrating life and enjoying each other, as if it were the…
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If I hadn’t decided to become President of the United States, I’m quite certain I would have settled on becoming a professional boxer. I once asked for a punching bag for Christmas. While in hindsight, that probably should have been cause for concern, it seemed perfectly normal at the time. I’ve always been a fighter.…
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There’s a tiny cafe hidden in Ireland that nearly saved my life. Desperate for a quality cup of coffee and a place to warm our hands, my sister and I wandered into an ordinary cafe that smelled like warm bread and sweet potatoes. It became our getaway spot. It was a safe place during the weeks that held nothing but storms…
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I always go back to the summer with tennis courts and milkshakes. That was years before the pride and silence broke our hearts. I remember the day we drove to get sushi and the rhythm you nervously tapped out on the steering wheel. You said something about dogs, I pretended to laugh. My mind was blank that day. I…
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When 2016 came rolling around, I had one resolution: Fight God less. That’s what I decided. I fought Him so much through the years of 2013 to 2015 that I was determined not to spend this entire year in the ring with Him. I sat down with my coffee and journal and told Him I was resigned.…
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When my foot touched the top step, and I smelled that familiar scent, I went back to three years prior. I closed my eyes and told God, before I even cracked open that door: I can’t fix it. I’m going to want to, but I can’t fix it. I didn’t and couldn’t. But I figured out how to settle…
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Today I’m twenty-four years old. Time goes incredibly slow and unimaginably fast–it’s the paradox of growing up, I guess. I’ve learned a lot over the last 365 days. It’s safe to say that I’m not spending this birthday the way I thought I would, but I guess that’s been a lot of the last year: entirely…
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I’ve pretty much been in a car for the last week. I’ve done so much driving, traveling, last minute road-trips that I’ve had lot of free time to think, a lot of free time to ask myself some really hard questions. I’ve had a lot of free time to examine all the good, bad, and uncertainty that I…
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We settled into a booth in the back of the restaurant. We talked about work, God, love. We caught up on where old friends ended up–have you heard from her lately? How is she? Then we talked about my move, about what life is going to look like a few weeks from now. “Coming back…
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I specifically remember the day we stopped fitting into each other’s lives. We never got that back. Its been years now, and sometimes I think, from now on we will always be strangers. We will always find ourselves unfamiliar with the shelves and cupboards of one another. I won’t know if you still like peanuts and…
ASHLIN'S BLOG 