We drove deep into Amish country to faraway Lancaster! All of an hour away.
It was a great weekend! The weather was gorgeous! And I had a fantastic time recharging as a woman, mother, wife, and friend.
What was the point of this retreat? What did we do? Well, I was trying to explaining it to a friend and came up with:
- The retreat was a chance to have real and full conversations with friends, meet new people, and get to know anyone you wanted to know a little better.
- Worship - however that involved a lot of singing with contemporary Christian music. And apart from Breakaway music from A&M one year, I really prefer traditional hymns. No surprise I am Catholic huh? :)
- Listening to the featured speaker speak on biblical verses and their applications to our lives as women, mothers, friends, and wives.
- Eat.
- Talk.
- Listen.
- Play Games.
- Relax.
- Repeat.
We.Talked.All.Weekend.LONG. Yup, that's a ladies' retreat! :)
I met a lot of my neighbors!! Ok - maybe 4 of my nearby neighbors go to this church and 3 were at the retreat. Two of my other neighbors go to my Catholic church. What a blessing to be surrounded by so many Christian families, all less than a quarter mile away! It makes me feel less alone out here in the wilderness that is my home.
One talk I really liked centered on worshiping false idols, which sometimes serve as blinders to what is really the issue at the heart of some arguments:
- Idol of comfort
- Idol of success
- Idol of appreciation
- Idol of respect
- Sadly, I can't remember the 5th.
But to embellish briefly:
- Idol of comfort - wanting to do what WE want when WE want instead of helping others when they need help. For example - like when I do not want to get Michael his snack because I'm comfortably sitting on the couch doing nothing. Yea - like that! :)
- Idol of success - pretty self explanatory. Especially in our culture.
- Idol of appreciation - Wanting to be openly appreciated for our actions instead of giving of ourselves without expectation of recognition.
- Idol of respect - she gave a great example of kids giving attitude and our first reaction is to send them to their discipline for being disrespectful instead of seeing what is the root cause of the disrespect in the first place. Since we are dealing with this now a bit - this was a real eye opener for me.
This all probably makes no sense as I wrote it, but I swear the speaker was much more effective at conveying all this than I am! It just helped me to see how I can better give of myself and see God's model for all of that.
All this with meals thrown in that I didn't have to cook or clean up for. And uninterrupted grownup conversation. And a quick pop over to the outlet malls in Lancaster (why do the Amish get this?!?!). WOW - what a luxury the whole weekend was!
I had a wonderful time.
Brian and Michael went ice skating on Saturday and then to see Hop. Michael fell asleep in the car on the way home at 5:45pm and then continued sleeping on until 7am the next day. LUCKY BRIAN!!! :) He must have worn him out ice skating!
On Sunday, they worked on the yard and it looked beautiful when I got dropped off!
I am a blessed woman. Really and truly am.
