Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything on here.  Since my last entry, I've completed my first year of college, declared a major, been to Indiana, become better friends with some and drifted from others, read several books, been to visit friends in Lexington, got an iPod, pretty much packed up my room to move into a new house, watched a season and a half of gilmore girls, talked on the phone ALOT, written a few letters, spent way too much money, spent a weekend at the lake with a bunch of friends, missed many of my school friends, realized the awesome power of living my life wholeheartedly for Christ, tripped a few times in trying to do so, and best of all, grown in my precious relationship with the Lord.

So, as you can see, I've been busy... and my summer will only continue to get busier.. I'm leaving for Hawaii in a week!! ahh!! I'm pretty excited about that..  I might put pictures up from that... lol if i get around to it! 

Alright, so I realize I write in spurts, forgive me...

First of all I want to recommend the book Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers! It's incredible!  I can't put it down.. It's based on the story of Hosea and Gomer in the Bible, and by golly.. I have been sucked in!  :o)

Now, for the pictures!

First, Zeta's Wild Wild West Side party:  This was a fun post-initiation party!! Exciting.. we're members!! :o) Anyway, we could dress up in either country attire (Wild Wild West) or gangster (West Side)... Wild Wild West Side together...clever huh?

Here's Emily, Mark, and I... it's funny because Em and I ended up sharing him as a date, but he was neither one of ours to begin with!! Em and I decided to go without dates this time, and he was going with a friend of ours who ended up with the flu.  He was already at dinner with us when we found out she wouldn't be coming, so we decided to "adopt" him as our date!! lol...

 

This is Lydia and I in our ganster apparel... we're trying to look tough! 

Here we are having a blast!! lol I promise those are IBC root beer bottles!! Dry campus...

Audrey and I when we first got to the party... lol see i even carried a basketball for effect!  :o)

Mark and I at dinner.. and I have no idea what he's doing!

Now, for the Lambda Chi (LXA) Gangsta's Paradise party!! This is not to be confused with my "gangster" look.. this is the 20's mobster-type gangster...

Here is Tori and I... She's so beautiful.. and she's my prayer partner!

Here's some of the gangstas there!.. fun stuff..

all the lovely Zetas there...

Ashley and I all dressed up.. :o)

There are more pictures from that party in my photobox.. so look at 'em!

Next are some pictures from a birthday party... we celebrated Andrew Courtner's birthday with a surprise dinner at Longhorn!

Here we are singing Disney songs and displaying our crowns...

we played the face game.. this is where you move your face really fast and someone takes a picture of you.. and your face is forever stuck in that position.. at least in that picture...

aww.. such lovely girls! I just love them!

Seek the Noblest... that's all i have to say!  :o)

Last set of pictures is from the Monday after initiation when we could FINALLY wear our jerseys!! Yippee!!

me and some of my beautiful "new" members!!

 

Me and Carly outside the SUB

Some of the senior nursing majors I just happened to catch in the hallway while they were on a break...

Alisha and I in the hallway of the PAC

Lydia and I... I just love this girl!

Tori, Ashley, and I in New Testament... isn't that map in the backgroup cool?  it covers the ENTIRE wall!!  :o)  i actually go to class... despite what my pictures convey, i really do attend my classes.. and this proves it!  :o)

Well, I guess that's about it for the time being... Next time I write I'll probably have more to show again!! :o)

Everyone have a marvelous day!! and check out 1 Peter 1:3-7!! incredible verses!!  :o)

In Christ,
Ashley

This has been an incredible week/weekend!  My family has decided to build a house in the neighborhood I really want to live in (although, I'll be back at Union by the time the house is done), the new members got initiated this weekend (praise the Lord!!), and I'm pretty excited about formal coming up in April!  Things around here are just wonderful!  :o) 

I have been so busy the last few weeks, so I have lots of pictures of the fun stuff I've been doing, so I'll be sure to put them up before too long!  Some are pretty crazy!  lol..

I hope everyone's having a great day/week/month/year!! Boy! I sure am!!  Everyone I haven't talked to in a while (you know who you are...), please call sometime, so we can get caught up!  :o) 

In Christ,
Ashley

Ahh!!! this has been a crazy week, and it's only Monday!! :o)  I can't believe how busy I am!! lol... college.. gotta love it!

I'm going to Hawaii!!  Oh my goodness!! :o)  Praise the Lord!

It's been quite a while since I last wrote on this thing, but I have some good excuses... I've been so busy because my classes are alot of reading/studying but I'm loving them all.  Also, we are finally done with Variety show!!  :o)  It was sooo much fun, but I'm also very excited to be done with it.  My dad and sisters came down for it.  We had a blast, and I love having them here.  All our hard work payed off because we are once again the champs!! the last 7 outta 9 years woot woot!!  :o)

It's over.. but it was fun!!! yippee!!  ZTA is #1!!

Also, look what else has been happening on the weekends... (the weather doesn't get bad on the weekdays when we could get out of class!!)

and this is my roommate and I outside while it was snowing!! it was beautiful!!

well that's about all I have time for right now... I hope everyone's having a wonderful week!! Hope it continues in that!!

In Christ,
Ashley

I'm back!!! I'm back!!!  I love Union, and I'm back!!!

God loves us so much.  Think about this:

     "'Can anything make me stop loving you?' God asks.  'Watch me speak your language, sleep on your earth, and feel your hurts.  Behold the maker of sight and sound as he sneezes, coughs, and blows his nose.  You wonder if I understand how you feel?  Look into the dancing eyes of the kid in Nazareth; that's God walking to school.  Ponder the toddler at Mary's table; that's God spilling his milk.
     'You wonder how long my love will last?  Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill.  That's me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding.  Covered in spit and sin-soaked.  That's your sin I'm feeling.  That's your death I'm dying.  That's your resurrection I'm living.  That's how much I love you.'(In the Grip of Grace, Max Lucado)" 

So, me...I'm a little crazy (hence the title).  Guess what I did today?  I went to class while I'm still on break!!  I went to Amy and Rachel Bonin's psych class with them today.  lol... I know, I'm weird, but I'm having withdrawls from class and school and my friends!  :o)  I can't wait to go back!  I love being here, and I'm going to miss my family, but I also can't wait to go back to my routine (which will alter slightly since I will have a new schedule, but that's beside the point).  :o)  Why am I so weird?  lol  But I really did enjoy it!  lol (1) one because I've already had Vanzant psych in high school, (2) I had college psych last semester, (3) I'm not really in that class because I don't go to MTSU.  therefore I could enjoy people watching and disagreeing with the professor on certain points (not actually vocalizing them, but mostly writing them down). but the funniest thing that actually happened in class was when the professor asked what research in general could be used to find out, one guy in the class raised his hand and said, "to find out the best kind of beers."  but that wasn't all.  He proceeded to answer a couple more questions with beer somewhere in the answer.  lol i thought it was humerous.  I definately became a bit more appreciative of Union and it's environment today.  I really like the small campus atmosphere where I walk from class to class and run in to a hundred people I know.  It's much better in my opinion.  :o)

Well, that's about all I have to say about my day!  Thanks for letting me go with you Amy and Rach! 

Praise the Lord

Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
    praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpets,
    praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing,
    praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
    praise him with resounding cymblas.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. (italics mine)

Praise the Lord.

~Psalm 150

Amen and amen!  I confess I had never read this psalm before, and last night when I did, I sat back in awe because God, the maker of the universe, desires praise from me.  He doesn't need praise from me; He doesn't make me praise Him.  He desires praise from me.  One day "every knee should bow...every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:10-11)," but until then, we have the choice to praise Him.  He doesn't force us into anything.  We have the option to either accept or reject Him.  How incredibly awesome is our God.

I hate being sick!!  (Yes, Julie after I left your house last night, I got home and started feeling bad, too.  So I hope you don't get sick!!)  I just feel like my head should fall off and quit hurting..  Blah... But, in laying on the couch all day, I've had a lot of time to think on what God's been teaching me over the last few weeks (mainly the last few days).  It's crazy how you can learn so much and think you've got it, and then you trip up again...  it's very frusterating.  I just need lots of prayers for focus and the awareness of God's sovereignty... thanks bunches...

In Christ,
Ashley

As I rest against this cold, hard wall
Will you pass me by?
Will you criticize me as I sit and cry?
I had fought so hard and thought that all my battles had been won
Only to find the war has just begun

Is He not strong enough?
Is He not pure enough?
To break me, pour me out, and start again
Is He not brave enough?
To take one chance on me
Please can I have one chance to start again?

Will my weakness for an hour make me suffer for a lifetime?
Is there anyway to be made whole again?
If I'm healed,renewed, and find forgiveness find the strength I've never had
Will my scars forever ruin all God's plan?

Is He not strong enough?
Is He not pure enough?
To break me, pour me out, and start again
Is He not brave enough?
To take one chance on me
Please can I have one chance to start again?

He took my life into his hands and it turned it all around
In my most desperate circumstance
It's there I've finally found

That You are strong enough
That You are pure enough
To break me, pour me out and start again
That You are brave enough
To take one chance on me
Oh Thank You for my chance to start again

My hair is gone!!  :o)  Yippee!!

During Sunday school this morning, Adam challenged us to fall in love with God, and that phrase all of the sudden struck me as the solution to the struggles in my life.  I had always heard the phrase, and I had even thrown it around myself.  But this morning, I gained a whole new perspective on what it meant to "fall in love with God."  

When I got home, I started to think about what that really meant.  To fall in love with God.  What does that take?  What am I going to have to give up or change in my life?  Well, when I think of the phrase "fall in love," I generally assume it refers to the feelings between 2 humans of the opposite sex.  So, with that picture in mind, what kind of relationship does that entail?  I would say that most people agree that a husband/wife relationship should be one of good communication, trust, sacrifice, love, patience, faithfulness, friendship, humility, and so much more.  As a Christian, I understand that a healthy marriage should reflect Christ's relationship with the church, and so we can liken falling in love with God to falling in love with another human being.  But we must be careful when using this comparison because we can't pull God down to an earthly level.  He is God, and nothing can change that.  He is the creator of the universe, the one who came to die for our sins, and no amount of human likeness we put on Him will ever change that fact.  He isn't human.  He is God.  

1 John 4:16 says that "God is love," and so I believe that unless we understand God (as well as we can in human terms), we will not understand love.  Ultimately, the epitome of love was exemplified in God becoming man and dying on the cross for the sins of the world, but this love is hard for us, as humans, to grasp because God didn't have to do that for us.  He wanted to, and that takes a selflessness that I know I don't understand.  So, because it's hard for us to understand this love, God gave us the metaphor of His relationship with the church being like that of a marriage.  But the picture of marriage here is a solid, dependable marriage, not the type of marriage we see in our society today.  It's like what I described above. 

Therefore, I think that falling in love with God has to do with applying the same attributes to our relationship with Him as we do a relationship involving a husband and wife.  We must have good communication (a solid prayer life), trust (in Him and His Word), sacrifice (in tithing, ministry, gifts, and service), love (for Him as well as others), patience (for His will and timing), faithfulness (to Him and Him alone), friendship (a combination of love, admiration, and respect), humility (admitting when we are wrong and recieving advice and peace when we mess up), and so much more.  I'm still not sure how to love like this, but I know if I ask God to help me, He's faithful and will reveal to me Himself ~ the ultimate example of love.

So, with all that being said, I want to issue the same challenge to you, fall in love with God.  Make Him your only focus.  You don't need anything else.

"You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever."
~Psalm 30:11-12

"If the Lord delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand."
~Psalm 37:23-24

There are so many things we as Americans take for granted, and I really think the only way we will realize the extent of our blessings is for them to be taken from us.  For example, how many American children, even high school and college students, truly appreciate the fact that we are taught to read and have the opportunity to go to college?  Think about the children in other countries who do not have the opportunity to go to school because they have to work to help their families put food on the table.  Think about the kids who are deprived of the ability to read because the government is so controlling that they go as far as forbidding books in the hands of the citizens.  And even so, the small bit of education they may pick up along the way is so precious to them that they cherish it and crave more.  Why is it we dread going to school each day because it cuts into our precious sleep and social time?  We can go every day Monday through Friday, and we hate it.  Other people may never set foot in a classroom, and they desire to get ahold of any bit of knowledge they can get their hands on.  We shove all the information we need for the next exam in our heads the night before only to lose it all as we walk out the door.  We actually have laws in place that prohibit truancy, and yet our education means nothing to us.  This is all because we don't value the time we spend "learning."  It's all about getting the grade or moving forward in school.  It's not about gaining knowledge.  We should take lessons from those less fortunate than ourselves and make the most of every opportunity to improve our minds.  It is only then that we can actually learn.

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."
~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Another year has passed, and it has been a year full of milestones, some bigger than others.  I had my 18th birthday; I registered to vote; I was able to vote for the first time; I applied for scholarships; I went to prom; I graduated from high school as valedictorian; I spent a week with some of my best friends in the world; I got my first job; I packed up my room and moved away from home; I've made new friends from all over the country; I've learned the value of a dollar, and how far a college student can make a dollar go; I have stayed up late and paid for it the next morning; I have learned that boys, or anything for that matter, shouldn't be my source of satisfaction; I've been to Los, Wal-mart, and Coburn too many times to count; I've gone to class and studied a little; I've lost some friendships but gained others; I've  become addicted to facebook and spider solitaire; I've experienced life away from my family and because of that, frustration, confusion, and sometimes loneliness has penetrated my being, but most of all, and because of all this, I've grown.  I've grown and learned more about myself in the last 4 months than I've learned my entire life.  My walk with Christ has had its ups and downs throughout all of this, but I'm realizing that He is what keeps me going.  His mercies are new each morning, and I'm finally realizing what that means.  So, with my newly learned lessons in mind, I begin 2006.  I don't have a resolution per say; I simply want to continue growing as a godly woman.  I want to continue in this patter of learning.  I want God to teach me, fill me, and grow me.  I'm ready to accept what He's got in store for me.  As the old year fades away, I want to look to the future and know that God is with me every step of the way.  After all, that's what He promises.  

It feels so good to be home and done with finals!!   I can't believe I'll be here for 6 weeks!  I keep thinking I've only got a few days here, but really I've got a long time. 

Tonight, a friend of mine Tiffany got married.  I can't believe it because she's only a year older than me!  I don't know what I'm going to do when people my age and younger are going to start getting married and engaged!  I'm not sure I'm ready for all this change.  :o( 

Well.. tomorrow is church, so I better get some sleep! 

In Christ,
Ashley

My roommate just left, and I won't see her for 6 weeks!  Can you believe that?!  I'm soooo sad! This J-terms stuff stinks... I won't see a lot of people for 6 weeks, and i'm not sure i like it!

i guess this is the only thing I have to remember her by.. :o)

So, I have finally uploaded all my pictures that were on my camera to my computer, so I decided it was time to put some on here.  Here's what I've been up to lately...

First of all, ZTA Semi-formal:  It was a blast!

This is some of my sorority sisters and I before dinner.  (It was a black and white affair, so we were wearing all black, as you can see.)

This is Jason (my date) and I at dinner.  Isn't he adorable? lol

My prayer partner Tori and I at dinner. 

Here we are again...

One of my favorite Ashleys in the world!  (not me... the other girl...lol)

Emily and I...

I love this picture!  :o)  It's so cute!

My Family! (From the left) Me, Heidi (my big), Beth (my grand big), and Jenna (my aunt)... 

Brooke and I... I stayed with Brooke last spring when I came to register for classes.  She's engaged... aww

Next, this is what I did Friday night of Thanksgiving break...

These are some of my best friends at Daniel's house.  (From the left) Daniel, Andrea (my sister, in case you don't know), Rachel, me, Amy, Lauren, and Patrick...

Next, my roommate and I goofing off...

Rachel and I one night... lol Sorry if it scares you!

Next, is BigLil Christmas...

Carly and I at the lodge.

Tori and I again...

My big and I... aww

Last night SAC had a movie night where we rented out theaters to watch a movie at midnight, and I saw The Chronicles of Narnia which I advise everyone to see!  It is really good! Anyway, this is what we were doing as we stood in line outside. 

 

Here we are cuddled under my blanket.  That's me, Ashley, Ryan in the brown coat, and Jordan in the back.

Jordan and Ryan

Ashley and Ashley... lol She's so much fun!!

Well, that's about all... I've been really busy and with finals this week, I knew I wouldn't get another chance to put pics on here, so I thought I'd do it now.  Hope you enjoyed them! 

In Christ,
Ashley