I've been getting a lot of questions lately so I figure it's about time I do some explaining.

It all started a little over a year ago, I guess.  I met this guy at a film festival one night when I was not feeling particularly great about myself or the idea of being hit on, but he was so freaking nice it was hard to keep up my no-boys-allowed walls.  So I didn't mind so much when he started showing up at Gin Bucket Thursdays.  Very soon it felt like we were the only two people there because when we talked hours passed like minutes and it was hard to notice anything outside our little space bubble.  So when he finally asked me out in the middle of a conversation about something completely unrelated, I was ready to say yes in an embarrassingly giddy fashion and only found his impulsiveness endearing.  

Cinco De Mayo happened to be the day: our first date.  I went to a wedding the weekend before in Colorado and whenever anyone asked about my life or the "what's next", all I could say was, "well, I have something on Tuesday and Thursday but after that I have no plans for the rest of my life."  Nathan Thum was the Tuesday.  Then that turned into Thursday.  And Friday and Saturday.  Then pretty much every day since, and now for as long as we both shall live.  We got married two Sundays ago and now all I can think is, "of course we are married.  It's us."  It was all very organic.  Even our growing pains just seemed like another part of the process of getting closer and closer.  I have never had another relationship that was so secure, so without fear.  

Now it's the time again when people are asking about the "what's next."  And again I can say there are no plans for the rest of my life.  Our life.  We have an idea, but there is nothing set in stone except for the life partner.  We are set up in Colorado to start our new business-- waste vegetable oil recycling.  We have a couple big trucks and tanks but we put the acquisition of restaurant contracts on hold in order to fast track our wedding and wait and see what will happen with our church house.  That's right, our church house.  The same day-- the same hour-- that we got engaged we entered into a contract for a house that used to be a church in a small town in Colorado where we are pretty sure we would love to live.  That was nearly three months ago and it's not ours yet but we will know on Wednesday if it will be.  It's crazy: all the planning you think you are doing in life always ends up just being a bunch of preparing.  And I can't even tell you how often, for me, it ends up being preparation for something completely different.  

Every day I bow my head with my husband and I listen to him utter the words to God, "your will be done," and I know that there is no planning we can do that will make us know anything for sure.  So at this point I've basically thrown up my hands and contented myself with the reality that I have no idea what's next.  As for today, we're packing.  Something is going to give pretty soon and all we know is that we need to be ready to hit the ground running.  

Sometimes I will be writing a text message on my phone and get incredibly frustrated with the prediction texting mode.  It is supposed to make the whole thing easier-- and sometimes it does--  but other times I swear it takes me three times longer to correct prediction texting mistakes than it should have taken to send the whole thing (and it takes me forever to write and send a text message anyway).  I just tried to type "texting" and it guessed "textimg."  Every time I try to type "of" it automatically enters "me."  The best is when I try a new word-- God forbid it should be a multi-syllable word-- and the prediction mode freaks out and just starts giving random letters or what appears to be words from an Eastern European language that I don't "tofepsubof," I mean understand.   That's just "rijly," er, I mean silly.  

The other day I was texting a friend to tell her I had a change of plans because I got into a fight with my boyfriend and she replied by asking  "you ok?"  I typed "totally bummed," with the 286633 keys but when I looked up at the screen I noticed that I was instead "totally atoned."  This stopped me dead in my tracks because it was like God had just straight up texted me. 

 "Atoned," according to Wikipedia, "describes how sin can be forgiven by God."  In that moment it was like all the terrible things I was feeling about what a bad person I am were spoken for.  Whatever it was that my boyfriend and I had just been divided over and no matter how broken or mean we were to one another, all I wanted was to know that everything was going to be okay and that even though we are not perfect people in a perfect relationship, we could be forgiven and in love.  And we are.  Thank God.  

I have to get something off my chest: I hate, hate, hate it when someone tells me to speak up.  Or that they can't hear me.  Or when they cup their hand around their ear as to nonverbally say the same thing.  I know that I am quiet and that there are times when a person needs to tell someone something like that, even out of respect for that person speaking, but it doesn't change the fact that in those moments I am simultaneously filled with rage and shame.  In those moments I almost always have to stop talking altogether for at least a moment in order to compose myself because I feel like it is almost always said kind of harshly, because I am embarrassed, because I hate myself for being so quiet, because I hate the other person for saying it, because I get flashbacks of myself as a small child sinking deeper and deeper into myself, wishing I could be louder because then maybe I wouldn't frustrate people and then maybe I would be worthy of love.  Then it feels nearly impossible to speak up because for me to do that would be a vulnerable thing and in that moment I'd rather have the muffled voice of someone speaking from behind the wall I've built around my heart.  I don't know if I have ever told anybody that before.  Not like that.  The thing is that I find it incredibly difficult to share any feelings that don't make sense and I know it makes no sense to hate such a silly, little thing.  But I think I will hate it forever if I keep it shoved in that messy junk drawer in my mind.  So there you have it.

It's 3am and I am up because apparently when I am sick it is customary for me to wake up at 3am, mind racing with thoughts and ideas.  I wish I could instead summon this sort of thinking when I am not sick and when it is not the middle of the night but here we are nonetheless.   

Tonight I am supposed to share my life story and I guess that has been in the back of my mind because that is where my mind went this 3am.  I was thinking about how I am going to organize my story to keep it brief and still highlight the critical, most telling milestones.  I remembered that a couple years back I was doing this Bible study wherein we learned a technique for compiling our life story and the format was this: divide your age by five and then segment your life in that many years, give or take.  Then organize your thoughts by considering the most influential happening(s) of each segment of time.  I was 25 at the time so divide my age by five and you get five, which means I was to look at my life in five year increments.  I am 27 now and you get roughly the same number plus a few months.   

So this 3am I decided to give it a whirl because I was up and what else was I going to do while I was just laying there sniffling and trying not to cough?  Okay, years one through five.  That's easy.  Mom died.  Next.  

Years five through ten.  I must be in a morbid mood because the first thing that came to mind was the death of Grandma-Down-the-River as we called her.  Images of Little Red Riding Hood might be flashing through your mind as you read this but I just think about how we had to go south of the River to get to her house because when you are from Kansas City you think in terms of crossing the Missouri River to get someplace kind of far away.   I don't think I have ever really considered her death a milestone before or even included it in my life story but like I said I must be in a morbid mood because there you have it.  Next thing I know I realized that that was the second time in my life I saw my dad cry.  Both times I wanted desperately to make it better-- whatever "it" was because I was too young to understand at the tender ages of three and eight-- but I also somehow knew I was powerless to do so.  So at three I cried with him and at eight I turned from outside his bedroom door where I heard the sobs and walked quietly to my room, where I probably cried.   

Years ten through 15 Aunt Lora passed away.  By this point I was thinking almost exclusively about how often I lost my loved ones.  Aunt Lora was one of my favorite people in the world and it was the second time in my life that I recall crying inconsolably.  I mean in an absolutely-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself-can't-stop-crying kind of way.  The first time was when I was twelve and I finally realized that my mom was dead.   

Fifteen through 20: this was a doozy because both of my remaining grandparents died.  I was super close to Grandma and Popo because they lived about three miles away and made it a point to see us multiple times a week, including Sunday dinner when there was always a feast.  Although I loved her dearly I was never as close to Grandma as Popo, especially at the end because she got kind of mean as a result of being in constant pain and exhaustion from knocking at death's door.  But Popo was always kind and loving--even up until the end when he just got crazy from the bleeding in his brain-- and we always had a special relationship because I let him tease me and I adored him.   

So by the time I was 19 years-old I had already been to more funerals than one would wish to attend in a lifetime and at least three of them signified for me the burning down of a safe refuge.  This is why my counselor hypothesized that I have issues with abandonment-- why I fear-like-the-bloody-plague losing all of my close relationships.  Because apparently even though one might understand cognitively that people don't mean to leave you when they die (usually), there is a place in your subconscious that simply feels like you have been kicked to the curb and left for dead.  Anyone who has lost someone close knows that it feels like a part of yourself has died right along with your beloved.  I guess a part of me also feels like there was something I did to deserve it.  And that's where the fear lives.   

I'm 27 now and it has been a while since I have lost someone very close but to be honest I feel like I am only biding my time because I am close to several people who are very old and a couple animals with short life spans and death is unpredictable anyway so, who knows, I could be next to kick the proverbial bucket.  In the meantime I have seen friends lose moms and grandparents and dogs and unborn babies and my best friend even lost her little sister to a long battle with cancer before she graduated from high school (someone explain the justice of that to me).  I know I started out thinking about my life story and now find myself concluding a story of death but, "death," as they say, "is a part of life," after all.  It certainly is a big part of my life.   

I won't be sharing this whole saga tonight because as much death as I have experienced it is only encompassing enough to be a part of my life story, not to be my life story.  Still, it is what has kept me awake in these wee hours of the morning thinking about my life and why I am the way that I am.  Recently I was reading a book and was stopped by these words: "she has the softness and generosity and toughness of someone who has endured great loss," and I could not help but wonder at what a beautiful combination of characteristics that is and how it is probably being forged within me at every funeral.  Now I finally understand the term, "a severe mercy." 

And I think I am ready to sleep. 

Maybe a year ago when I was once again wrestling with the cosmic question of what the hell I am going to do with my life, asking myself ultimately, "what do I want?" I came to the realization that I cannot have it all.  No one can.  This is not a new concept, of course, but I had never really thought it through before then and now I am realizing it in a new and practical way. 

I had been the ultimate single girl for quite some time-- independent, warring against loneliness with a plethora of friends and activities to flood my social calendar.  I was educated and I managed to find jobs I truly enjoyed, but I knew it was not my greatest calling to be a waitress for the rest of my life.  I became introspective (well, more so than usual) in a quest to "live like the grass is greener on this side," and find something more than contentment in my singleness.  I had heard it said and I believed that to be single was a gift.  It meant that you were free to go and see and be and do unlike anyone else who is tied to another person.  The more I thought about all this the more I became okay with, even occasionally excited about, the idea of living the rest of my days as an unmarried woman if that's the way things worked out for me.  If this was to be the case, then the question of what I was made to do-- the question of my greater purpose in the world-- was to be answered outside of the consideration of marital partnership, parenthood and traditional domesticity.  When I let my mind explore all that this entailed, I realized that my life might ultimately reach a fork in the proverbial road and I would have to choose between the constancy of my vocational dreams or family life.  Both would require my undivided attention, at least if I were to do either with the devotion that I desire.

Eventually I came to believe that there is a writer inside of me anxious to get out, and that potentially she is a great one.  In order for her to express herself it will take much time, dedication and support.  It is possible for me to give my whole life to give her the chance of success.  As a single woman this was not a big problem, it even seemed like an exciting and noble venture.  There was something I could do with my life-- and more specifically with my days-- to be true to myself and at the same time give something to the world.

Then something happened.  I fell in love. 

I happened to meet this amazing guy who is nothing less than the kind of man I always pictured myself with.  And that is a tall order!  The kind of guy I would settle with is not someone I would have to settle for.  He would have to be nothing less than Nathan.  This is the kind of guy I can really get behind and the kind of guy I can tirelessly spend hours upon hours with. 

So I have found myself here and now with two powerful and wonderful forces in my life: vocation and love.  There are two people I am really compelled to support: that writer inside and the man in my life.  Generally speaking everything is great and I have not yet had to make any major sacrifices with one for the other, especially considering how overwhelmingly supportive my loved one is of me and my work.  Even with all that said, I have still found myself here lately understanding more acutely than ever that I cannot have it all.  That is not to say that I have reached the aforementioned fork in the road where I have to choose between the two, it is simply to say that with the presence of both in my life I am limited in my ability to devote myself fully to just one.  I find my thoughts and priorities and time divided.  All this even in addition to the more numerous, smaller aspects and relationships in my life that seem to lose bits of my attention. 

Don't get me wrong.  I am not grieveing the fact that there are too many wonderful things in my life.  My problem is more mathematical.  You see, there is 100 percent of Ashley and every day is like a pie chart where I divide my attentions and priorities, and every day something' s gotta give.  Nothing and nobody gets the whole pie.  Nor do I get the whole pie of anything else.  I taste bits and nibbles and huge chunks, but never the whole thing.  Neither do I have room for it all.  At the end of the day the simple fact remains that I cannot have it all.

All this does not depress me.  It is best that I realize it because it allows me to make reasonable choices so that whatever sacrifices I make will be worth it.  I will however say that I am not yet a maestro at orchestrating my priorities.  I am frequently finding myself disappointed at the end of a day with how much I did not get done in one area of my life or another, wondering if the things I did choose to do were worth much.  It's okay, though.  It was meant to be this way and I will get better at making those kinds of choices.  In the meantime I will do my best. 

And now I kind of want some pie.

To begin the writing process I have been doing a little writing and a lot of reading and listening to audio mp3s and the like.  For me, the labor of writing is not so much in how to say something as it is in knowing what I am trying to say.  What makes me a writer is in part how I knit together words into prose but the majority of it is in how I see the world and interpret what I see.  For me it is about communicating a message.  Words, I believe, are very powerful and so I love writing because it is a patient process that allows me to mull (and mull and mull) over an idea before finally naming it.  Verbal communication is much less forbearing because we as people have a hard time with dead air; the silence that happens while waiting to hear what someone has to say.  We want to know every thought inside a person's head, forgetting that it is best that people not hear every thought inside our own heads, knowing all too well how cruel or stupid we ourselves can be above our shoulders sometimes.  Then when we say something the words are out there, representing us and what we think, available to be used by anyone who hears them in any way they wish.  (Ask any celebrity or politician about that.)  This reality can terrify me if I think about it too much because I know I cannot stand by every word I say or write and yet I cannot take it back.  This is why I have felt strongly that I need to get my head straight before I just. start. writing. 

People who know about my current quest have been asking a lot, "so, have you been writing?"  A good and obvious question.  The answer, as I started out saying, is that I have been reading mostly, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say, even what I believe.  Then the writing will come.  In the meantime this is all part of the process. 


"Writing comes more easily if you have something to say."  Sholem Asch