My name is Ashley. I grew up in rural Missouri with my three siblings and two parents in a home rooted in Christian values. Respect your elders. Go to church. Love Jesus.
I prayed the prayer when I was five years old, sitting in my dad’s beat-up brown Chevy pickup. We went to church nearly every Sunday. My dad was a leader. I was in small groups. It was just the water I swam in.
When I was 13, our family left our home church to serve in our own community. We plugged into a new church — one that actually had a youth group, kids from my school, people I could fit in with. High school was, if I’m honest, pretty easy. Predominantly white, predominantly Christian. Smooth sailing, mostly.
College was the first time I had to figure out what my faith actually looked like when it was mine. I got plugged into campus ministry right away. And then I dropped out after three semesters and moved back home, and the scaffolding I’d been given started to shake.
For years after that I wrestled with questions I didn’t know how to ask out loud.
Why is the God of the Old Testament so different from the God of the New? How can I believe so readily in a God who sees everything, but dismiss Greek mythology without a second thought — what actually makes Christianity different? How accurate is the Bible? What is loving about a God who allows suffering? And if God isn’t real, what is?
Underneath all of it was shame. For questioning. For being unsure. For feeling like a failure at the one thing I’d been handed as foundational truth.
But I needed that desperation. I needed the despair. It’s what kept me searching. And slowly — imperfectly, incompletely — I’ve started to find the roots of my own faith and my own relationship with Jesus.
I’m still questioning. I’m still growing. I probably always will be. But somewhere along the way, the shame started to loosen its grip. Now I find more freedom in the questions than I ever found in the certainty.
This blog is one piece of that.
It’s imperfect. It’s incomplete. It will probably never fully express what God is laying on my heart. But it’s mine. And I’m sharing it openly — my experience, my questions, my evolving understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in the world we actually live in.
I’m glad you’re here. I hope you’ll stay.
With love,
Ashley
Dear Christian, 