Beyond my Crimson lips

Look at me she whispered
Yet no words actually escaped her lips
they seemingly shouted from the canyons in her soul
See me! Don't you dare look right through me
Don't dismiss this moment
Do you want to see me
To know me
To crave me like your next breath
Can you not gaze deeper than my crimson lips
Your eyes dance upon the curves of my breasts
they wander from my hips to my neck
aimlessly searching for a point of contact
What are you thinking right now?
Do you have any idea how far away I am from you right now
I ache for you to step inside and search for me
Unpack my things
Place them on shelves as conversation pieces over dinner
tidy up the place will you
Call for me
Shout my name down the corridors of my heart
Seek me as if I were the conquest to complete your existence
Seek me and make me your home
Seek me and you shall find me rather easily
I hide among shadows of hope
I ache for your pursuit
My God can't you smell the desperation like sulfur
My voice is cracked and I am covered in ash
from all that burns around me
Do not then focus on my lips of playful red ribbons
Don't reach out and touch the curls that dance from collar down my back
Reach out and take my hand and I will guide you
If you tire I will rest beside you until love restores your strength
until love restores your passion
until the flames of your desire to really know the depths of where I came from are burning within
If you find that the journey is too long or too burdensome
then I will bid you farewell with a kiss that will tattoo your heart forever
but you will see me and once you do you can never forget me
and that is what makes loneliness bearable
Names I may never know, words I may have forgotten and scars that may never heal
whisper my name beneath the moon
yet just like my words they never really escape your lips
I am held captive within you and you want nothing more than to set me free
but there I am and just as your soul cries out for me
I cry out for this love that will quench the thirst inside of me
the tears roll down my face to the place that tears seem to go
and just as you cant understand why you long for me
I remember you and countless others who walked away from me
left me standing there burning with relentless pain
waiting patiently just to be seen once again

Courage and Fear: Decision making

I think courage is one of the first life lessons we learn. It isn’t a life lesson that comes alone though. Courage is usually accompanied by fear. They seem to travel together don’t they? Yes they are side by side but they are not allies. They couldn’t be any different. One of them will hold you captive and the other sets you free. The choice seems so simple. They are like night and day in the sense that they are right there together yet one cannot exist with the other. You either make love to fear or wed courage but you cannot be a bride to both. Some have tried but they are fools. Their pride will not allow them to admit they lie in bed with fear wearing a mask of courage. They walk the streets among us but I see them. They are not as hidden as they think they are. Winston Churchill said “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” You see courage is not beating our chest in the midst of fear and charging forward into the night. Courage is simply the act of acknowledging fear and walking past it. I have blogged about fear before so we have the clear understanding of what fear is.

The thing about fear is that it comes in all shapes and sizes but it is real and to the person it attacks it can be torment. For me personally I don’t allow fear to hold me captive but I do encounter it from time to time. It seems to come in the form of myself. I find myself fearing the integrity of my decisions. If there is one choice in front of me then clearly there is no doubt but life tends to give me choices. They are all dressed as what I pray for. They are all saying everything I have been dying to hear. They are all offering exactly what it is I need. There I am face to face and I have to choose which one is the real deal and dismiss the others. These choices could be as small as who to date or as big as what job to take. Ultimately I know even small decisions can grow into life altering commitments and I am scared to make the wrong decision.

Recently I was talking to my children about the choices we make in life. Our lives are a series of choices and each carry a consequence. There are good consequences and there are bad consequences and it all depends on the choices we make. We must always seek God’s will for our lives in order to make the right choices. I have lived my life making the wrong choices for various reasons and I have suffered the consequences of those choices. That is because I have made those decisions on my own without waiting for God’s answer. How do we hear God’s answer? We pray and we wait faithfully and he will open those doors for us. The answers will sometimes be as loud as a church bell and sometimes as quiet as a whisper. We must be still and quiet to hear it. When the answer is what God wants then we will feel a peace about it. We will not feel the sense of fear. We will courage. God will grace us with his courage. That courage stems from the roots of our faith. If our faith is weak then our roots will not hold against the wait of fear and we will fail.

Distressed with restless pain

I could not lift my head

Until God’s voice broke through

And this is what he said

Child if you knew my plan

And my high purpose in it

You’d fight the fight of faith

Undoubting you could win it

Then a bold resolve gripped me

To fight although discouraged

That is when God breathed upon me

A bit of his fresh courage.

Fall in Love with the Journey

"I am an ambitious person. I never consider myself in competition with anyone, and Im not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, its just that my journey started so so long ago and Im still on it and I refuse to stand still"

The more I have spent alone the more I have had time to really ponder. I am not sure if that is necessarily a good thing. You know I tend to get off on these ideas and theories that do nothing but fuel more ideas and theories until I am a big southern mess of hair and over-analyzations. 

I have talked to guy friends who discuss their dating lives and I have talked to girlfriends who do the same. We are all swimming in this local fish bowl waiting for the other person to prove that they are a sure bet before we take the bait. We are all so jaded and worried that we will repeat every mistake we have ever made that we tend to play it on the safe side. What’s the worst that can happen? You will either break up or get married. No one is saying dating has a time line and we have to be exclusive by a certain date and married by another. 

It seems like most men want to be someone’s superhero yet here I am drowning in all these things I feel but no one can hear me screaming. Maybe I am not meant to be saved. Maybe I am meant to leave pieces of myself with everyone I meet until there is nothing of me left to give. Maybe I am one of those people who is never meant to be tied down. Lord knows the idea of it gives me anxiety. How can I want something and loathe it at the same time? How am I both flighty and needy? Why is it that men call me a drug or say Im magnetic yet the right ones never seem to stick around? The simplicity of it all is that once we find “our person” it will be this mutual connection and we will just know it.

 All this playing it safe crap and risk management is only necessary when it comes to standards and compatibility. I will not be intimidated by a man I find interesting and I will always talk to who I feel compelled to talk to because if I never try it may never happen. If we are waiting on some man to ride up on his white horse and twirl us off into the sunset we need to wake up. That man may have fallen off of that horse too many times. The horse could’ve gotten tired of looking for us and DIED! Ladies we need to throw prince charming a bone here because he is in this same nightmare we are in. 

WE ARE ALL TIRED. We are tired because we have made it a task or conquest. That is why we feel defeated. Let’s just have fun and enjoy meeting people. Let’s drop the expectations and know that we will always gain something from trying whether it be a life lesson, a friend, a memory, a laugh, an amazing night, networking or the love of our life! Let’s stop worrying about the destination and fall in love with the journey.

Letter to myself 7.29.15

Dear Ashley,

It is time that I tell you how I really feel. It is time to stop hurting you over and over again. The time has come to cast aside all of the blame I have unfairly laid on your soul. You are beautiful. You have seen so much pain through your eyes yet they shine with a light that others see every day. You wear a smile and make those around you laugh as if you aren’t falling apart the moment everyone turns their head. I know you. I see everything inside. I know that you cry yourself to sleep at night. I know that you bury your face in your pillow so your boys won’t hear you and worry. I know that sometimes you stroke your hair with the opposite hand and pray asking God to just wrap his arms around you because you’re lonely. I’ve heard the prayers asking him to hug you tight against him so you can rest for a moment. Don’t you know it breaks me as well? Don’t you see that I want your heart to mend? You have to let go of your past. You have to understand that it is not healthy to allow those memories to haunt you. I know that your parents were not fit to raise you and because of that you learned early on that you were not worthy of unconditional love. Your grandparents loved you with every fabrication of their soul and your family adored you. Why did you not latch on to that as proof that you are worthy? You can’t base your entire worth on those who couldn’t even take care of themselves. I know that men have always promised to love you forever but they left or you made them leave. I know that they lied and deceived you. I know you were abused mentally and physically. I was there when you would hide in your closet crying and praying that God would heal your marriage. You stayed and kept faith that everything was going to be ok. Can’t you see how strong you are? These are not the memories you should hold on to. You should focus on the triumphs. You have overcome so much yet you carry on without fear of the future. You are a Proverbs 31 woman. You are so lovely. You are so caring. You are selfless when sometimes you need to be a little more selfish. You forgive instantly and hold no grudges even against those who would not blink if you took your last breath right this second. You do not have hate in your heart and for that I am in awe of you. It does not matter what this world thinks of you. It does not matter how they define you. It does not matter what they say you should or should do. It doesn’t matter how they think you should or shouldn’t look. What matters is what is within your heart and darling let me just say your heart is pure gold and you should be reminded by me daily. You are a charming southern belle and you should never forget that. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of the kind of love fairy tales and Nicholas Sparks novels were written about. You are worthy of happiness beyond comprehension and laughter beyond the years you would ever expect. I am sorry I didn’t defend you as often as I should have. I am sorry I sat quietly and allowed others to break you without speaking. I am sorry that I chose to avoid drama and decided to take the glorious approach and walk away with dignity. Maybe we do need to stand up more. Maybe we do need to put others in their place when they wrong us. We speak so boldly and freely about everything else so why do we cower to men who want nothing more than to break us down into nothing simply to try and build us back up into something they want.  Oh my dear that stops today. Today is a brand new day and you my beauty, are a brand new woman. You will command respect in the way you hold your head high. You will confidently smile and welcome new friendships and love into your life. You will no longer have this facade of the woman who has it all together. YOU ARE THE WOMAN WHO HAS IT ALL TOGETHER. I love you. No matter what anyone else says. I love you and you are worthy.

Love, Ashley