Ashlin Boyles
-
“I don’t think he ever really loved me.” Aunt Carla often exaggerated, but that day I believed every word. She propped her tan legs on the railing and swallowed the salty air. The screen door slapped as my mother popped in and out to serve snacks and jars of sweet tea. Uncle Simon taught me…
-
I hope someday if my kids ask me how to be honest, I knit them together with stories of how I should have, almost did, and then eventually showed up with the truth. I hope they tuck them into their pockets to study when they’re looking for answers along the way. That they decipher that…
-
I used to think the innkeeper in the Christmas story was the villain. No one ever told me that, but through the years I think I secretly just thought “What a rotten dude! He couldn’t give a pregnant woman a bed?” At some points I pictured him as this indifferent guy who shrugged and was…
-
I didn’t know how to be His, how to belong to this God who seemed to be breaking my heart. But if there was the option to be His, even in the loss of everything else, I had to grab a handful of truths that I’d always believed: God doesn’t leave us and there is…
-
We buried my grandmother in December. It’s hard and blunt way to begin a post, but in a world where people are moving fast and always speeding to the next thing, I wanted to start with why any of this matters. In the months leading up to her death, I noticed that I was desperate…
-
When I crossed the state line into Georgia, my backseat packed with everything I owned, I dialed the number of the soon-to-be roommates I barely knew. My chest pounding, I was choking on sobs, gasping for breath. I no longer wanted to be the person I had been. Those girls prayed me through the rest…
-
I was a challenging child at times. Mostly, my parents nurtured my strong will, until at my mother’s dismay it confronted her like a bull in a china shop during one of our church’s Christmas pageants. Ironically dressed like an angel, I stood ready to take my place and demanded to carry my noticeably-sized toy…
-
I’ll never really know what people expected of me, I think that’s where I have to start. Some probably thought I’d be the calculated type to spend years evaluating the ins and outs of a relationship, examining the nooks and crannies of every part. Sometimes I think that’s what I expected of myself—to logically pick…
-
Across oceans and continents, we still write and leave one other voice memos. When crisis comes or we find something funny, we send it to the other. We reminisce about the years we spent under the same roof, how we miss the Sunday mornings we spent making breakfast or listening to Josh Garrels in the…
-
I learned strength from a woman whose falls from grief would have made Humpty Dumpty himself marvel that she ever got back up. Born into a family of blue eyes, I got mine from the hazel-eyed woman who was put back together again and again. My grandmother sang me this nursery rhyme in the same…
ASHLIN'S BLOG 