Seasons of Life

I went to a Women's Retreat today, and I'm glad I went. We are still pretty new to the church, so I thought it would be a good place for me to start building relationships with the chicks and it was. There were ladies there from 11 to 70 and everything in between, single, married, divorced, with and without children. I enjoyed observing the women greeting each other when they arrived. This one had changed her hair. That one got a new job. It was all the stuff in "Captivating" come to life.

The theme of the day was the changing seasons of our lives and how God is there leading us through them all. We got a chance to hear from some of what we called "seasoned ladies" first in the morning, looking back on their lives and sharing how God had seen them through all the ups and downs. Then we broke up into groups so that we could share our own stories.

At first our group of about 35 split into three groups: teenagers, 20's-40's, and over 50-ish. When one of my friends realized what was happening she encouraged some of us to switch, so I ended up in the teenagers' group. It was interesting hearing their stories and how at 15 they are struggling with the same things I struggled with at that age. Some things never change I guess. I just hope that as we older ones shared our stories and how we had come through that stuff in our own lives that the girls can see that there is hope. That one day they won't struggle with those things anymore, but of course there will be new things to work out. But God is faithful through it all.

In the afternoon someone spoke about the seasons of the Christian life and related it to gardening, with God as the gardener. It was meaningful to me and I appreciated the time and effort that went into the presentation. After this there was time for some of the women currently involved in ministries in our church to explain what they do and what kind of help they need. It was good to hear about all the things that are in place here and I am getting ideas about what I want to do.

I guess that's about it for the moment. We will be part of a small group soon, I think, and we're enjoying hanging out with friends and meeting new people at church each week. Work's good, the house is good, Bailey's good. He just got a new dog bed, in fact, but is sleeping behind my chair instead of on it right now.