An abacus of gratitude

Oujia board juju and counting the right things

When I met Sarah Hummel in the early aughts, she was in the middle of fighting cancer. We met up for the first time on the Redondo Beach pier with a few friends. I’d heard about her outrageous courage and how she’d throw up repeatedly after her chemo treatments, and each time Sarah came up for air, she’d yell, “I’ve got a purpose and a destiny!!” And back into the bowl, her head would go.

She’s radical, talented, and her husband, Dave, a producer and audio engineer, is one of the most upstanding and delightfully irreverent men I’ve known. They welcomed me into their heart and home at the beginning of my recovery journey, and Sarah is the reason I began to lead people in ministry.

On Fridays, she hosted a group called Girls Night Out at her home. Some of you OG’s know this story, but this is where I met my friend Delores (who passed away in 2019 from cancer). I hadn’t told anyone, but I was in voice therapy to heal from bulimia and very much struggling to stay sober, and definitely still rolling on dubs smoking Newports with my two kicker twelves thumping in the Acura 2.5 TL I drove at the time.

We ended late one night after our friend Missy (a massage therapist) taught us some techniques to help with tension and stress, so I offered to drive Delores home. The bus didn’t run like clockwork after 11 pm, and the bus stop by Sarah’s was too dark to wait. Delores directed me to downtown Los Angeles (and this is pre-Staples Center), and we landed on Skid Row.

”You can let me out here,” she said.

“The hell I will,” I responded, “I’ll walk you to your door.”

“Ashley,” she said firmly, “No.”

I respected her boundary and drove toward my apartment in Hollywood by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I’ll never forget the moment she called me, right as I passed the In-N-Out, and said, “I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but I’m homeless.”

My 21-year-old, nobody-is-homeless-in-my-small-town-self did not have that figured out yet, but as the gears clicked into place, I began to plot a full pivot in our weekly group. Here I was, addicted, struggling, broke as a joke, and here she was, homeless, working two jobs, figuring out how to survive.

And we were watching movies, hosting game nights, and, thank God, getting massage techniques. Listen, we need to have fun and be together, especially when we’re struggling. It’s a common misconception that when people are grieving or sick or poor, you should tip-toe around them. Don’t pry too much. Don’t laugh too much. Don’t be too much. But in reality, if you’re close, and sometimes if you’re not, the opposite is true.

Pry. Ask questions. Laugh because life is absurd and we must. Live your life and be yourself. That’s easier to be around when you’re grieving, sick, or struggling than folks who have no idea what to do with their hands.

Anywho, the irony of us playing together as friends and not fully knowing the pain we’d checked at the door was not lost on me. So, I approached Sarah and said, I think we should call our group Breaking the Silence and make it a place for women to share their stories and be together in solidarity once a week—a safe place to take our masks off and be real. I promised we’d still have fun (because we’re hilarious) and we’d make room to show up for each other in new ways. “So, what do you say?”

She was absolutely down, particularly because she’d just survived a bout of hell herself and masks really weren’t her style. And in her living room, I fell in love with women’s ministry. That precious group grew to eight recovery groups in LA County. Women finding freedom from self-harm, healing from sexual assaults and abortions, leaving abusers and entering DV shelters, realizing codependency was bondage, discovering how they wanted to serve the world.

There were some wild nights at Breaking the Silence in those early years. For example, an accidental prophecy night that went OFF THE RAILS. My friend Katherine had to explain to me what the hell happened… mostly that half of us were probably still filled with the occult and leftover Oujia board juju. By the way, my teaching series had names like “Anointed by God, Used by Satan”. (It was 2003, and that was the way.)

Sarah and I connect randomly here and there on Instagram, once in a blue moon, over text, but I will always love her dearly. She went on to become Dr. Sarah Hummel and started her university, Seapointe College: Biblical Ministry for Community Care, where she serves as President. She inspires me.

A book from her stories on Instagram caught my eye the other day, perhaps because we’re planting our roots deep in the ground here and probably because I am hungry for rhythms of replenishment. Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way hooked me with the forward by Mark Buchanan. His book The Rest of God turned our world inside out, and I love the way he writes. This phrase caught my eye:

Mark was writing about his pastoral rounds for the week. He’d gone to visit two women from his congregation who are in their eighties at the hospital, and this is how he describes Elly. It struck me. What will be my life toward the end? What will I be found counting?

What memories am I collecting for meditation?

As I’ve gained more wisdom about my body, the nervous system, and how trauma seeps into the bloodstream and bones, I’ve realized how our collective consumption is not serving us but hurting us. Most people are not counting the right things. And left empty. Wanting. Unfulfilled.

I’m challenging myself, and maybe you, should you feel up for it, to think this week about the things you’re counting, the words you’re holding, the memories you’re ruminating on. Are the majority life-giving, replenishing, and a relief to your body? Or are they draining, de-energizing, and an anxious presence in your body?

Could we spend some time living as an abacus of thanksgiving? I’m not there, but I aspire.

Sending you love where you are. My gratitude for you runs deep.

Love,

Ashley