ec fiction contest finalist: Ashlie Bowman

With no further ado, we present to you the winning stories in the ec fiction contest. After reviewing all the stories you sent us at the end of last year, we picked an overall winner and two finalists. The winner was Taylor Clemons and her story, "It was just a simple box" is printed on page 6 of the September issue of ec. On September 1, we published Caitlin Greer's story. Caitlin and Ashlie Bowman were the two finalists in our contest.

Today, we're publishing Ashlie Bowman's story. Ashlie is a senior from Toney, Ala. She enjoys reading, writing, playing the drums, hiking, snowboarding, and pretty much any other extreme sport. Ashlie says she loves to write and says her writing is done in service to the Father. She'd like to thank Missy Shoemake for suggesting she enter our contest. Here's her winning submission:

Gone, but not forgotten

By Ashlie Bowman

The faded red sneakers flopped on her feet as they always did while she trudged on through the damp grass. Although they were almost two sizes too big for her, she had worn them nearly every day for the past three years, along with the red guitar pick she wore as a necklace, though she had never played a guitar in her life. Most people just chalked it up to eccentricity, and she never bothered to correct them. If they knew the real reason …

But she shook her head quickly to dispel those thoughts. She could not think of it yet, not now. She tried to focus on her surroundings, squinting through the morning haze that lingered between the tombstones. She knew immediately where she was; she was far too familiar with this cemetery than any living person should be.

She wove around the graves and trudged up the small hill that signaled her destination. She stopped at the top of the knoll and read (for perhaps the thousandth time) the epitaph on the headstone in front of her…

Sarah M. McCauley
1989-2005
Beloved daughter, sister, and friend
Gone but never forgotten

Most people would find this to be an ordinary tombstone, no different than any of the hundreds of others poking up out of the earth. But for her, this stone represented a million laughs, a thousand memories, and one best friend.

She knelt on the grass in front of her friend and closed her eyes, letting the memories have her.
Music blasted out from the speakers, far too loud for safe driving standards, but the girls didn't care. They were celebrating Sarah's sixteenth birthday, and not one of them was about to ruin the mood. The small slip of paper with Sarah's name and picture on it was perhaps the most exciting thing that any of them could imagine at the time. Not that the paper itself meant anything, but the independence and freedom that the license gave was what they celebrated now. As is normal for excited teenage girls, none of them were paying as much attention to the road as they should. They were far too busy chatting and squealing in the backseat to focus on anything serious, and so none of them noticed the truck weaving back and forth on the road. None of them noticed until it was too late. She woke up in the hospital, her left arm and leg made immobile by plaster. At first she did not understand the expression of grief on her mother's face. She was going to be OK, right? But it wasn't for her own daughter that she was crying. When her mother first told her of Sarah's death, the first thing she felt was disbelief. Nothing could ever happen to Sarah, nothing serious. But as her mother's story was confirmed over and over by doctors, nurses, and even other friends, the reality fell like a tangible weight upon her, crushing her to the overly clean hospital bed.

When she looked back now, perhaps if they had been paying attention, they would have seen the headlights of the truck swerving into their lane. Perhaps they could have warned Sarah, maybe she could have avoided the obviously intoxicated driver. But that was not God’s plan. Tears streamed down her face now and her broken sobs carried through the silence of the graveyard. She did not blame herself for her friend’s death, or at least not the death of her body. But the eternal death of Sarah’s soul was what she grieved even to this day.

Sarah had never fully understood the loving devotion that her best friend shared for God. The blind faith always baffled her. How could anyone feel that strongly about something they couldn’t see?

Of course she had dragged Sarah to church regularly enough, but the message had never hit home. She did not want to push her friend, for fear that she would be driven away, but now she regretted the nonchalance with which they had treated the subject. And now it was too late.

She remembered a Bible verse that she had learned as a child in Sunday School where Jesus charged the apostles to spread the gospel, and it haunted her now.

“Therefore go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19.

She knew that it had been her responsibility to share what Jesus had done, not only with Sarah, but with everyone she met. She had always been too timid to just walk up to people and start preaching. She worried that people would think she was some Bible-carrying fanatic.

But after Sarah's death, her fears had changed. She no longer worried what strangers might think, or what her friends might think, or even what her family might think. Instead, she feared what might happen if she were to bite her tongue when she knew she should take a stand. What might happen if she let someone walk away without knowing the truth that Jesus Christ had died for them.

For the past three years since Sarah had died, she had worn her friend’s favorite sneakers and guitar pick nearly every single day as a reminder of the burden she bore and the commission she shared to fight for the souls of God’s children.

When she stood up, she felt the same sense of determination that she always felt after facing those memories. A determination to share all she could about her faith with everyone she came across so that no one would walk away without knowing the message of her God and his Son. It was her calling, the calling that we all share as believers in Christ.