A pulsing blob of emotional madness

Can't you just see it now? Ashley. A pulsing blob of emotional madness. My friend K-star would laugh and probably make fun of my way totally wicked dance moves. I am a hot dancer. ;) So can you see it now? A pulsing blob of emotional madness doing a little "rub the kitten" hand motion in the air to either side of my head. It's a beautiful picture. I wish I could draw it on blogspot. Somebody should invent that...a blog where you can draw and everything. That would be rad.

Anyways, yes. The color of the blob, in my mind, is blue--a blueberry blue (like the girl from Willy Wonka). Not blue in the depressed sense.

Thankfully, I begin work sooner than expected, next week, in fact. Though that is working out well (and I still pray that I will be hired on fulltime come September), the rest of life seems so insecure right now. Little money, craziness, uncertainty, no home church...blah blah blah.

But I met an older man named Bob yesterday who suffered from a stroke a while back. We chatted out by the pool as the sun scorched this pulsing blob of emotional madness, and I was again reminded by myself, "Ashley, shut up."

Yes, Self. Shut up. Bob doesn't know the Lord. And you do. Do something with your life, because you have been given LIFE. HeLLO.

It's really hard not to allow the things we do to define our purpose in who we are. It should be the other way around. Who I am defines my purpose. And who I am is a forgiven sinner, forgiven by Jesus Christ.

So I am trying to shut up now. It's hard. I'm trying to shut up about a lot of things. I don't know how. It's like I can't do it on my own.

And then I had this amazingly crazy dream last night. I was walking around a boat out in the ocean and it was a huge boat. There was a ton of people on the boat whom I know and have known in the past (people from high school, etc.). And my family and friends were there too. But there was an evil being who was trying to kill people, to kill me. And I can just remember its power as it made my youngest brother lose his will to live, because he needed somebody to fight for him. I was trying. And then I caught glimpses of people I knew as they were in various acts of sinning, and they were all dirty and covered with smears of blood, though they didn't realize it. They were putrid, actually. As I searched for this evil presence, who kept trying to make all these people die, I reached the middle of the boat and called out, "Just come out and face me!" I waited as all the people who had been sinning came around to see what the commotion was about. (By the way, I was one of those sinners, because I remember walking by a couple fornicating and I remember the hate eminating from my own heart toward the woman.) I had been carrying around a sharp sword-like object in order to kill whatever this evil thing was. As the people gathered around, an image popped in my head. The image that Christ did not fight with a sword, but went before the people empty-handed, as a lamb before the slaughter. (Though I am a sinner, I believe it portrayed the Spirit living inside His people who are saved, though we are not perfect.) So I threw down my sword and stood in the middle. My friend J stood next to me, supporting me. And as people came to me, one by one, I could feel that they weren't the evil being, but that they partook in it. I did something like share the Gospel, though it is a little unclear, with one or two people as they came to the center. As I did, more people drew closer, though the evil presence never emerged. And then I woke up.