In one week, I will graduate from college after a long and trying journey. It took me six years, one university transfer, two complete withdrawals for hospital stays, two changes in major, and one big change of heart to finally make it. I used to joke, "Well, it's about time!" and even considered putting that on my mortar board for the big day. Well, I've decided to stop saying "Finally..." like it's a bad thing, worthy of discrediting my achievement. I've decided that those 6 years and every obstacle has changed me in a way for the better and turned me in to the loving and awesome teacher I'm about to become. Those six years are my journey to own, not to make me feel bad. Let me tell you about that journey and the loving God who got me through it.
In the sixth grade, I was selected to participate in a school program where we took the ACT College Entrance Exam and I'm still not really sure why. I remember it very clearly. They prepped us a bit by talking about the overall testing experience, but we never received practice on the material. I will never forget when my teacher told me that as a sixth-grader, I had scored higher than the average high school graduate with a composite 19. I had never even studied geometry or algebra or calculus. I certainly couldn't read at a twelfth-grade level quite yet. However, I had a good head on my shoulders and I had excellent reasoning skills. I could apply the bits I did know and I did well. It was at that moment that I decided to go to college. I'd always known that I was different from the rest of my family. By sixth grade, my home life was a complete mess, but I will save that story for another day. I knew I was different and I wanted something else for my life. I only knew what I had seen and lived, but in my soul I always knew it wasn't right. My life was not the way things were supposed to be. I had always loved school and my teachers, but that day, I realized that education was going to be my ticket out.
From then on, I worked even harder at school. It was my saving grace, my personal haven. In high school, I studied non-stop, taking every concurrent college and AP class offered to me, except AP Calculus my senior year which conflicted with the scheduling of the spring musical. You see, by then, music had become a part of my heart. My music teachers, beginning in sixth grade actually, had all touched my heart and my life in some unique and special way. Music itself had become an avenue for self-expression and a moment of inner freedom. Music provided a wonderful and beautiful world of which I only knew the bare surface. I decided to go to college for music education, to learn more about this world that inspired me so and to become a teacher so that I might inspire others. Even with my 4.57 GPA, I graduated third in my high school class. I was able to score a 32 on my ACT by then, so I received several big scholarships. I won a prestigious organizational scholarship on top of a full ride from a small university honors program. I took it and went off to college, completely unprepared.
By the time I graduated high school, I was estranged from my parents and my foster parents and I didn't have much support, personally or financially. I was seventeen years old and not equipped to handle adulthood. I was suddenly responsible for figuring everything out. I knew how to do school, but not how to do life. I quickly fell apart. I hadn't dealt with the pain and trauma of my past and that was enough in itself to put my life on hold for a while. On top of that, I went in to college as a music education major when I couldn't. read. music. Yep! That made for one hell of a freshman year! Music is definitely not a joke major, let me tell you. It truly is a supremely complex world of it's own. I've had constant battles with my health, mostly mentally at first and then physically in later years. I slowly lost most of my scholarships. When I completely dropped out of school for the second time in spring 2011, I thought my life was over. That I would never accomplish my dream and that I would become what I most feared...
But on Easter-eve 2011, God forever changed my life. I had been saved as a six year old child and looking back, I see how God was always right beside me, through every scary night. As a teenager, I had gone back and forth between believing God didn't exist and hating Him. When I was 17, I finally started coming back to Him, reading the Bible and attending church when I could. I even worked at a Christian summer camp for kids for 2 summers where I witnessed the love of Christ more than ever before, yet the deepest part of my heart was still in serious doubt. Easter-eve 2011, something changed. Jesus grabbed hold of that doubt and took it away from me. I finally understood that His sacrifice represented true and selfless love. I let Him truly come in and was baptized on the spot, given new life before my new brothers and sisters in Christ. That's when my relationship with my Savior truly began. What happened next still blows my mind.
I have several amazing women who have helped mentor me and who have become my little "pack of mamas." I met several of them that month. Within a year, I was able to completely stop heavy-duty bipolar disorder drugs that kept me in a near-sedated state. Now I do other things, like exercise and eat right, to help keep myself level. I was able to go back to school, and for music, even though people told me I would never make it and I was messing up my life. Guess what? I can more than just read music, I am a fine musician and teacher. My GPA went from a 1.3 to a 3.7. Yes, I will be graduating in one week with a 3.7 GPA after many, many D's and F's from the early years. I still can't believe it! I went from being sad or fake in every picture, to often smiling from pure joy. I have life-long friends who have stood beside me through thick and thin, providing the support and the family I never dreamed I could have. Obstacles still arise and always will, but now I know there's nothing my God can't take care of.
Jesus brought me from drowning to flourishing. He healed my brokenness. He took a girl, whom the world had deemed unworthy of love and condemned to always be white trash, and turned her into something beautiful and useful for His glory. He turned a stone-cold heart into love and compassion. He took the crazy and made it sane. He took the dark and made it light. He took the hope, the dream, and He fulfilled it.
When I walk across that stage in exactly one week, I will not regret or feel bad that it took me six years. I will not say, "Finally!" It was my journey to walk and without it, I would not be the Ashley Anne you know today. Without it, I would not know that my God is beside me all the way, as long as I turn to Him. Without it, I wouldn't be God's girl.
XOXO,
Ashley Anne
