In the beginning, I had a box. It started out small, in black and white with hard edges. As I grew and experienced new things, my box grew too. I decorated it with colour, and…
I’ve always lived more inside my head. Things just felt safer and looked more hopeful in my imagination. I grew up in the Christian tradition, with those stories of hope, yet it became harder and…
I like words. I rarely find myself stuck for them. Words have been my friends all my life. I like to talk, to say what I think, to express how I feel through them. I lose…
I have a confession: I find it infinitely easier to find God in fiction than I do in church. It may sound obvious, but a book doesn’t have to be by a Christian author to…
My body has been through some difficult times already. There came a point where people began remarking: “Of course, this happened to you. If it’s extreme/random/unlikely, it’s going to happen to Ashleigh.” Now, this looks…
It was the mid 1990s. A new teen, Jonathan, had joined the church youth group. He was cool; he had a black leather jacket. Jonathan was clean cut, held passionate opinions and was sensitive. We…
Glancing up at the screen I register the song lyrics – ‘You’ve never failed me yet’ – and experience a familiar surge of frustration and pain. I’m sat at the edge of the room with…
I love singing, and have over the years developed a compendious knowledge of Hymns Ancient & Modern, through to a range of current (ish) worship songs. However, I find myself struggling with a lot of…
The archetypal narrative of a Christian often begins with that remembered moment when they first welcomed Jesus into their life as a young person. However, what has instead become the most defining aspect of my…
I’ve always felt that if I had to describe my life in terms of the tortoise and the hare fable, I’m the tortoise. My spiritual evolution has been slow and steady. I grew up in…
The podcast I was listening to cut out halfway to my Aunt Hilda’s funeral. Like a switch being flicked, I suddenly saw my surroundings. I saw the greyness of the sky, the blankness of the…