old habits die hard

well, well, well. my dear sweet blog has been so neglected. what was once a never-ending babble of my twenty-something musings is now dead, cold, and useless. useless most of all to me. i don't pretend to think that my little blog had a large following - or made much of a difference to anyone (except maybe lindsey. love you bffl.) other than myself. for me, so much of life is a grey area that i need desperately to work out. because i think much faster (and much sloppier) than i write, typing is the most efficient way for me to collect my thoughts. one time last year i tried to start blogging again. i started a whole new blog with my new married name. i posted one entry. i just couldn't get in to it. this little corner of my world, maggiebloom.blogspot.com, is the place i fumbled my way through most of my twenties. why wouldn't i come back to it to embrace marriage, my thirties, and a whole new slew (that's totally a word) of life changes. here's a quick life update: i re-met my husband in april of 2012. our first date was april 6. i knew that very night i wanted to marry him. i quit my job on june 10, and i moved back to camden on june 28. i got a job teaching first grade. kenny and i were engaged on january 8, 2013 and married on june 8, 2013. and we're just getting started on our happily ever after. hmm. happily ever after. it feels weird to approach this blog with happily ever after as a real, tangible thing. i spent years tracing the lord's plan for my life through broken relationships and bad decisions. oh, if i could only know then what i know now. these are some things the twenty-eight (gasp. twenty-eight.) year old ashley would like to tell the twenty-something-younger year old ashley: 1. god is faithful. 2. god is faithful. 3. god is faithful. that's it. the means by which i have learned this lesson are many and varied. well, really not all that varied. mainly i just learned through relationships, because all i ever wanted wast to be a wife. anyway. i am hard-headed as the day is long. i wish, oh how the very pit of my soul longs to have simply trusted that god would be faithful. i wish that i had listened to the lord in 2007 when i refused to give up a relationship that turned out to be a fraud (i think we all know this story. if not, go back to this blog in 2009 sometime. it's there.). i really believed my plan was best and tried to force (read: bulldoze a path that destroyed anything and anyone who got in my way) something to be when it simply was not. i wrecked a lot of relationships along the way, but nothing was more destroyed than my heart. this broken heart of mine led to bad decisions numbers 2 and 3. i spent about three months after my life fell apart letting the lord put it back together. then i decided he wasn't working fast enough or aptly enough, and once again, i took over. let me give you some advice: if you've got a broken heart - if you've been through a traumatic situation - if you're emotionally fragile - if you're hurting - you're probably not in any shape to try to hold your own life together. let me be clear: you have NO business trying to get your own crap together, keep it together, and work it all out for your own good. there is a reason that paul writes that jesus holds all things together (colossians 1:17) - because ONLY he can. i took a mess and turned it into a catastrophe. by the time my heart recovered (no thanks to me) from the damage i had done, i was 26 years old. i wasted days, weeks, months and years giving myself away to stupid boys and superficial relationships. throughout the process i had some sweet times of fellowship with jesus (mostly after my heard had been broken...again), but i was really too busy trying to create my happily ever after to be bothered with the kingdom most of the time. thankfully, in his own good, right, and perfect time, the lord answered my twenty-six year old prayer for a husband. when i look back, i see that the lord was arranging everything in my life to prepare me to be a wife at this moment in time. had i married any other man at any other time, i would have been making a fatal mistake and missed out on the joy that i have found in marriage to kenny. i feel like i should also point out here what i am NOT saying. i am NOT saying that if the lord had not given me a husband that he would not have been faithful. not at all. (that's an awful lot of "nots." i apologize to all my english majors out there. what can i say? i write like a i talk.) his plan for my life includes marriage, and i am so very thankful for that. BUT, whether or not the lord had ever given me a husband would not have dictated his faithfulness. he is faithful, because he is god. he would have still been faithful to redeem me, heal me, and restore me. in march of 2012, i was more content than i had been in a long time as a single, twenty-six year old. he took me to that place where i was okay with singleness (even long term singleness) before he ever gave me the joy of being a wife. i don't mean to suggest that the lord plays games with us: he wasn't waiting for me to go left, so he could go right. what i have learned about him is this: he is jealous. violently jealous. for ME. and he will burn away anything in my life that stands to compete with his lordship in my heart. for me, that was marriage. jesus worked on and in my heart until i was okay taking marriage off the table. does this seem a bit dramatic? maybe so. but i think a lot of women, especially those in their early to mid-twenties can identify with what i'm talking about. whatever you're walking through, sister, he is faithful - even when you are not.