Ashley's Blog

I am 42 years old and I am dying.

I was diagnosed in July with ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—words I can’t keep in my head. Fortunately, most people know it as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. The doctor who finally diagnosed me called it motor neuron disease.

The summer I was 13, I went on a mission trip to Chicago. I guess that’s where they send kids from Alaska to do missionary work. I was excited to be traveling with my friends and to do God’s work, though I was unclear on the details of what that would entail.

Jesus taught women and worked with women, and women financially supported his ministry. In a number of cases, he could have chosen men to share the Gospel, but he instead chose women.

Be like Jesus. Support women in ministry.

Paul worked with women. He named them as leaders, teachers, deacons, and apostles. Saying otherwise is contrary to the witness of Scripture.

My reading was legendary. My best friend Meghan would get so frustrated by me reading instead of playing on our sleepovers her that she would say, “I have a book to lend you, but I’m not going to give it to you until you leave in the morning.”

I wonder how many kids who watched E.T. identified with E.T. instead of one of the child characters. It kind of makes sense, though, because I learned from an early age that I was from a strange place.

“How confident do you feel that the publisher will want your book?” Troy asked.

“Maybe 50%?” I threw out a number. “The other publisher I talked to was interested, so they probably will be.”

“That seems high.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess we have to get real jobs,” I said, feeling discouraged.

Berkeley was like Santa Cruz with the intensity dialed way up. Weed was a way of life in Santa Cruz—it was considered good manners to pass a bong to someone as they walked in the door—but these Berkeley kids were serious about getting high.

We would pool our money for rolling paper and one of them bought the Vicodin I had left over from getting my wisdom teeth out.

I became self-conscious in a way I had not been before, feeling hurt when professors asked me to leave the door open when we met.

My body felt like a problem—a magnet for desire that I had no power to control.

It was a strange thing to be in my mid-twenties and have no clue what I found attractive in another person. I set out to research this in the first way that occurred to me: I bought a copy of People magazine’s 50 most attractive people of the year issue and looked through it.

Then I heard him: “I’m coming with you.”

I walked toward my apartment, hearing his footsteps behind me. I was afraid to run, sure he could overpower me easily. I counted the steps to safety, praying that I would make it.

It is so painful that Chuck took my message about supporting ministry and twisted it into something that—years later—serves as a cautionary tale for young Quaker women who are thinking about doing public ministry.

So I am here to to uproot and tear down. Not Liberal Friends, but this behavior.

It is NOT OKAY for one man to do so much damage to the lives and ministries of young women in the Society of Friends.

I just want to work. I just want to write. I start at the beginning and pieces fall into place from there.

They all dreamed of the day when they could be together again, like it was before. And you know what happened when they were reunited? They started fighting with each other! Seriously, they could not get along! Some of these fights were small: people being cranky and treating each other badly. Basically, being jerks.

This has been a big year, with many highs and lows. I celebrated the release of my book, The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible throughout the Year. I grieved the deaths of friends and family, including two grandparents. It felt like a leap of faith when my partner and I moved to Greensboro a few months before my 40th birthday.

Bathsheba is one of the most famous women in the Hebrew Scriptures, which is ironic because this text says so little about her. The only description is that she is bathing and very beautiful. Her father and her husband are named; both are part of David’s army. But there is nothing here about Bathsheba’s inner life, her hopes, or her desires.

The harvest is ending, and Naomi knows that she and Ruth need more security. Until now, the women have relied on Ruth’s daily gleanings, but that source of food will end with the harvest. So Naomi devises a plan for Ruth to marry Boaz.

Rahab, the Canaanite woman at the center of this story, is the second woman listed in Matthew’s genealogy leading to Jesus (Matt. 1:5). Some have characterized this passage as Rahab outsmarting the spies,1 but really, Rahab outsmarts everyone.

Tamar is a woman who has experienced a lot of loss. She loses two husbands and her home, and she is waiting for her husbands’ third brother to be old enough to marry and give her sons. Her first husband, Er, was “wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death” (Gen. 38:7). Her second husband, Onan, pulled out and “spilled his semen on the ground” instead of impregnating Tamar (38:9).

The launch day for The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible throughout the Year is tomorrow! I have so many feelings about this, including excitement that it's finally almost here, and amazement at just how long a process this has been.