I am sooooooooo excited

It's finally here! Women of Faith! Just a few moments in time with some great women learning more about ourselves and who God has created us to be. Also to unwind and get a little silly. More about all of this when I get back. I've been rushing around all morning. Making sure I have everything I need for the weekend. Baked some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for us to snack on. Spent some time with my Hazel girl in school. Got to participate in a lock in with her class. The questions those children ask. Makes me wonder if self defense training should be included in the requirements for teaching now adays.

Anyway. Finally sitting down with a cup of coffee. Letting the cookies cool and taking a moment to catch up on my mail. I look forward to seeing any and all of you who will me in Minnesota for the event this weekend. Enjoy!


http://www.womenoffaith.com/

Girls Retreat 2012 (part 3)

The retreat ended with some pretty powerful sessions.

The Stuff You Use Every Day.
"I like opened my mouth, and she said it."
What is the difference between the stuff you use every day and the things that you need, your necessities. The girls acknowledge that we live in a complicated, complex, technological society. That the stuff we need to survive in today's world isn't all necessarily a necessity but we would be living a very hard life in America if we didn't acknowledge them...like toilets, toilet paper, deodorant, cars. They agreed that we use a lot more stuff every day than we need to be having or using every day. And having stuff isn't always a bad thing. It turns bad when you stop thinking of them as tools and start thinking of them as treasures. The girls were warned to be on their guard for every form of greed. To store up to make an easy life isn't always using the best of our abilities to live the life Christ designed for us. It's not bad to have things and success in life. It turns bad when all you do is want more. Greed misinterprets the meaning of life. Greed says "more", while coveting says "all". We tend to want our stuff to label us. We think that our things will show the world how smart and successful we are. Are there things you just can't get enough of? Becareful of those things. We can become wrapped up in the having and storing of things rather than using what has been given us for the glory of God's kingdom. For example, those clothes that don't fit you anymore, give them away. There is a woman out there with hardly anything, looking to better herself, and make herself feel successful as she creates her success.

Tithing gives us perspective. It allows us to be good stewards to the earth. It teaches us that we can live on less than we acquire. Everything you are and have belongs to the Lord. Your body, your time, the buttons on your clothes, and the phone in your pocket all belong to the Lord and can be used for His glory. Dare to be Sold Out to God. Learn to be content.

How are your desires controlling you? Dispose of the attitude of need if you can not remove the item of necessity. He is our Earl, our Lord over all.

We watched a video My Own Little World. It shows us our labels and how it's time to step out of our population of me.

Does your heart break for the things that breaks God's heart?

God uses everything that the enemy puts in our path for His purposes.

And now the reason for the boat in the room. Matthew 14:22. Jesus made the disciples get into the boat so that He could go to pray. Matthew 14:27. Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid.

Peter's faith was strong enough to step out of the boat. It wasn't until he took his eyes off Christ that he started to sink. His faith was stronger than the other 11 that stayed huddled in the boat in the middle of the storm. Our boat may be really comfortable and it might not be easy to step out of. Faith is hard, it takes courage and strength. Faith takes us from where we are to where we need to be.

A shark (and a goldfish) will stay the size of the tank it is in. Once released it will grow to full size. Step out of your tank and grow to your full potential.

You can respond in fear or faith to Jesus. We need to take the worries to Him and He will give us our faith.

Do you have a risk taking faith? What is God calling you to do? Don't focus on your labels. Focus on what you can do. What is keeping you in the boat? Toss it overboard.

They shared a clip from skitguys.com . Go and check them out when you get a chance. They bring the stories to a whole new light. "Why did you say my name?" "Peter, that's grace."

And that is the end of my notes from the retreat. It gave me so much food for thought that I started writing out my life story and the lessons that I learned from it. I have 14 big lessons so far in the 10 year period that I chose to start with.

Girls's Retreat 2012 (part 2)

"That's so funny it made me laugh."
"It will make sense later."

The girls got to learn about the greatest failures in the Bible. Names like David, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Peter, and Paul. They were questioned as to what makes a failure or a success in life. The leader admitted that she was a failure in life according to the one test that means everything. The Ten commandments test. Now I was inspired to do this test as well and realize that I am a total and complete failure.  The leader put up the Splotch of Failure and had all the girls write one failure in the splotch. It really looked quite beautiful from the back of the room where you couldn't read all of the words. The overall lesson was that our disappoints look overwhelming to us. You just need to lay them at the feet of Jesus and they won't be there anymore.

Disappointments was the next topic of the day. We were taught that all disappointments weigh the same in the eyes of God. It's amazing how we see God as our genie with unlimited wishes for us. How our lives are filled with unmet expectations. Many of them come from inside ourselves, while others come from other people or circumstances.  The girls were given the example of Elijah. How our faith does not insulate us from disappointments. How disappointments come after our greatest actions. We were all reminded that God can see us as if we are only three feet away from Him. We need to put on our spiritual army boots and go to battle daily. Also, to ask God to give us something to be thankful for.

This next section was amazing. The girls all grabbed their sleeping bags and pillows and laid down in the entry hall. The girls are facing a full wall of windows looking out into the pine tree woods behind. This section was based on the song Lost the Plot by Newsboys. The leader started reading verses from the Bible about Jesus's second coming. She kept asking them if they heard the trumpets calling since it could happen any second. She asked if it was silly to sit and listen for Jesus's coming? As the leader was asking these questions a small storm was blowing outside and the trees all began to sway. I was getting ready to hear the trumpets call or a tree to fall.

The leader went through the words in the song and asked the girls to help dissect it and share what the song was saying to them. It's about how we forgot the purpose of our lives. How we are vulnerable to destruction. How we're not getting out of life what we wanted. How our first love is Jesus and we should try not to drop it or forget about it. How it's about God's grace and how we're waiting for proof. How God doesn't give up and how because of what Jesus did, we are heaven bound.

Next topic was on Complacency. We are called to transform our environment and not just hope to survive it. The leader shared some ways to refresh our faith and get a new perspective.
1. Go to a different service or church every now and again. Seeing how others profess their faith and learn about God will make old things new again.
2. Join a Bible study. The best way to grow is to read something. Just don't dig through the garbage to find the bit of good in it. Did that with a book recently.
3. Use a daily devotional or weekly devotional. There are many good ones out there in books and online.
4. Be a mentor. Their excitement is contagious. I have found that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Then you get to learn it twice.
5. Find an accountability partner. Just like exercising your body, you need someone to keep you accountable when exercising your mind.
6. Read a book of the Bible that you have never read or haven't read in a while. You will see something new that you've never seen before because you are in a different time of life.
7. Praying in a new way: scrabble it, graffiti, playdough (smash your challenges or sins), etch in the sand and wipe it away, use a paper shredder, world map, music, look at the many faces of Jesus, talk to people about your faith, do a service project.
The leader also shared a joke about the devil calling up three demons to send out into the world and their plans for us all. The first one was going to tell everyone that there was no God and the devil told him that it would just get a few and not enough. The second one was going to tell everyone that there was no hell and the devil told him that it would just get a few and not enough. The third one said, "I will tell them that there is no need to hurry." And the devil sent him out amongst the people.
The world IS going to end. What are we doing to make it better while we are here?
God, expand our faith and forgive us for the casual attitude we give You.

Next topic was FEAR. The leader shared that we need not be afraid to act, to show kindness, and to give. The stickers will only stick if you let them.

"They're not fat; they're full of knowledge."

"As long as we're alive we're breathing His name. We just don't know that we're doing it."

Got a few more sections to go (but I also have other things to do today). This is when I accomplished my goal for the weekend...to make a carpenter ring for every girl there and every adult that spent the whole weekend with these girls. I remembered that the girls enjoyed them so much last year that I thought I would surprise them with one in their goody bag.

Forgot to take a picture of them all together.

Hope you enjoyed the beginning of day two.

Wordless Wednesday - Girls's Retreat

Girls's Retreat 2012 (part 1)

I have got so many good thoughts, ideas, plans and experiences from this past weekend. It's almost scary to type them out for all of the world to see. Makes it feel a bit more final. But, as all the ladies kept reminding me, there's going to be another one next year and the planning starts today.

 

The topic of the retreat was WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
My first note after that is...It comes down to trust.

They started the weekend with a getting-to-know-you session. All the girls had to answer a question from the slip of paper from their table. One was, "What would you like your name to be if you could change it?"Another was, "What's the nicest thing someone has said/done for you?" Another was, "If you could ask God one question, what would it be?" And the most inspiring one to me was, "Who inspires/encourages your faith the most?" When the one girl answered, "my mom..." I set that to memory. I want to be that mom to my girls. I want them to be able to say that I encouraged and helped strengthen their faith.

We had a session on Doubt and being dry spiritually. The girls compiled a list of things that has/could cause them to doubt. Then the leader showed them all of the amazing people in the Bible that doubted and what God still did with them (Abraham, Moses, Job, Elijah, Thomas, David, Peter). Face your doubts. If you're certain of something, there's no need for faith. You shouldn't doubt alone. It takes work to overcome doubt and you should tap into the accumulated wisdom of people who've been there and done that. There will always be things in this world that you do not understand and you're not supposed to. That's where faith steps in. Jesus is the bridge between God and us. He doesn't just love the "good" people. No matter what we do, we can be forgiven. No matter who we are, we can be transformed. Doubt can keep us from being gullible.

"Everyone saw Jesus in the room. He is in the room."

It's hard to believe that you can have as big an impact on the world as Jesus did because He was chosen. (but so are you) What would happen if I truly believed what God said and I stepped out of the boat. If not you, then who? If not now, then when?

The girls were challenged to come up with a local level charity and a national charity that they would like to sponsor or create with $30,000. There were five sets of girls with at least five girls to a table. They were led to believe that the money was real. Half of the girls believed and the other half had doubts. The catch was that they all had to wear labels on their heads (that I spent two days working with, it was good therapy) telling the others at their table how to treat them. Half of the labels had negative reactions like, ignore, second guess, put down, talk over. The other half had positive reactions like, encourage, compliment, be attentive to. It was amazing how after 20 minutes of being treated in these manners that the girls started acting in those ways. The ones that were put down, started to shut down. The ones that were encouraged (and weren't used to it), felt over whelmed. The girls were instructed to close their eyes and all pray together about seeing others as God sees them. The lights were turned off and the black lights were turned on. When the girls opened their eyes, the whole room inhaled by the awesomeness of it all. Everyone's name tags now said, loved, daughter, saint, empowered, highly favored, beloved.

They worked to pull the ones that were knocked down back up and the choices they had to made were done in under 10 minutes. Then they were told that it was just a story and that there really wasn't any money. But they were encouraged to take these ideas that they were passionate about and run with them. They were told that their projects are worth following. The girls at my table wanted to do the parachute drop of Bibles that I had participated in back during Christmas time and to find a was to get medical expertise in a small country that is in need. They also wanted to find a way to support St Jude's and to set up a local disaster relief program (after living through the tornadoes here last year).  The girls were told that nothing spoken over you can have control unless you allow it to. That they need to label people with love and build them up. That we want to behave as God sees them. The girls shared stories that they connected to in their daily lives. How they will be able to relate to people better. They realized that you need support in decisions and that it's hard to do it all by yourself. And that you are not what others say you are. The labels we put on ourselves weigh us down and can turn us into someone we don't want to be. After a while, we start labeling ourselves before the people in our lives can even try to put a label on us. Until you believe what God has said, you will never get out of the boat. The devil will continue to distract us with smoke and mirrors. We have to give our labels away in order to do what we were put on this earth to do. We need to keep praying for God to remind us who we are to Him.

The last session of that night was mine. I got to be the leader of the crafts again. We covered composition notebooks and filled them with phrases that were going to be used throughout the whole weekend. I printed off all kinds of cool fonted words for them to use. We gathered papers, cloth, ribbons, lace, pens, markers, googly eyes, and everything else we stumbled onto. I printed off this picture of the notebooks I had made last year (or was it two).

We inspired the girls to build their own. They were amazing. They hardly needed any help with them and they all turned out so differently.

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

We finally shuffled them off to bed just after midnight. They ladies finally made me go to bed just after one. My brain had shut down about two hours earlier and my body had started to shut down. I snuggled up in front of the fireplace and slept for 6 hours...well...not completely. My darn brain wouldn't stop talking about all of the great stuff that I had experienced and learned that evening and how excited I was for all that was going to be coming tomorrow.

My 100th Post

Ok...so it's more than the 100th but I deleted some of them. So this is the official 100th post in case you want to go and count the current ones.

What does one do with this immense post? Do I write about the state of the world? The state of my house? The state of my mind? The state of my girls? The state of my grass? What state I'm in?

Too much pressure for a simple outlet of all of the things tumbling through my mind...ah ha! The perfect topic. Writing.

I LOVE WRITING.

I believe everyone should do it even if it is only your simple thought of the moment or what you did today. There is so much therapy in writing. I don't think I can tell you just how long I have been writing for myself. I was never able to find that obscure person to write to. I would write fabulous emails and letters and I hammered through my journals like they were water. But to sit down and write to a person or an idea of a person that I did not know...could not wrap my mind around that.

Until one women's retreat. I had quite a few ladies tell me that the things that come out of my mind definitely need to be put into a book and that they would buy a copy for all of their friends. So I started collecting topics...with the image of the mom that's like me. She's bombarded daily from every aspect of her life. The mom that some days feels as though she has lost herself in this world of raising children. The woman that feels as though she is only a glorified housekeeper on other days. The woman that feels eternally blessed on yet other days. The woman who feels that she is all alone...as well as the one who wishes she could just have a moment alone. The woman who is having a hard time understanding and the next moment wishes that she didn't understand at all.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. The thoughts that tumble through my head astound and amaze me most days. So I started this blog building on the idea that started 2 years ago. Sitting on the front porch with women that you knew would never betray you. Being able to pour out your soul to them and know that if you got it trampled that you probably deserved it. Drinking wine and collecting the random sentence that makes you smile and sparks a thousand thoughts by just reading it again.

So this is where I am starting my book. This is where I am collecting my thoughts. This is what I am going to leave behind. You never know what's going to happen tomorrow, much less in the next minute. Leave someone something to let them know who you really are. Reading someone else's thoughts gives you an insight into that person that a conversation never will.

Random Thoughts from the weekend

Random thoughts from my head.

Not enjoying living in my head lately. And a great friend of mine told me not to live there…just visit.

Throwing a tempertantrum doesn’t get you anywhere and doesn’t solve anything. So why do we feel the need to have them?

Point at a red light.

Zoomed past a minivan and a moving van because I was tired of driving 10 under the speed limit. Just got passed and felt good about accomplishing the task…..when I saw a county police officer up on the hill clocking the traffic going by. I was going 25 over the speed limit at this point. Got on the brakes and thank the Lord, I did not get pulled over.

The words mean one thing, but hearing them mean something different. 

Am enjoying the silence of nobody talking to me and having to talk to nobody.

When it gets to be the end of your life, does everyone want to write about where they’ve been? Or do they want to live it up until it’s over because they have nothing to leave behind.

Does the world seem less safe now than it did 50 years ago? Could it be a simple math problem. Let’s say, on average, there are 2 really bad people out of every 100. So in a town of 10,000 there would be 200 really bad people. It’s not that there are more bad people in the world; it’s because there are more people in the world in general.

Can you form a habit of thought? Silly question, of course you can. Can the habit of thought be yearly? Not daily. Every year at the same time, nothing specific to tell that it is that time of year.

Taking a break from the computer and the phone is liberating. But not everyone agrees with this thought process.

Afraid of letting my personality show. Because not everyone agrees or can handle my personality at it’s fullest.

We all know how wishes work. You’ll get it, but not always the way you want it.

On vacation, who cares about what time it is.

Today is my day. From the moment I opened the door and smelled the air. The weather is exactly how I feel. My mind has been a pile of much. Some beautiful things can grow in muck. But not everything we need can grow in muck. But today…the sun is fighting to get through the clouds and the breeze is out helping as well. I am shaking the rain from my brain. Blowing the cobwebs from my mind. I am stretching up to the Sun. This is the type of day that I just want to walk and walk and walk until I can’t walk anymore. Then sit down, enjoy the breeze and an Arnold Palmer. When that’s done, get up and start walking again until I get tired or it is too dark to see.

Awesome Girls Retreat

Had a fantastic time at the girls retreat this past weekend.
Friday night I joined them for singing and their guest speakers. Powerful stuff both of them. And then we designed carpenter rings until midnight. A carpenter ring is something I stumbled onto about a year ago. I had some wood beads in my storage container and thought they would make an awesome ring to wear. I was right. I loved it! And then moment I placed it on my finger, I thought, "I am in love with a carpenter." Second thought was that I needed to send this ring to one of my best friends. She would love it as well. Took it to a woman's retreat and it was a hit there as well. So I offered to bring my wood beads and let the girls create their own carpenter rings to show that they are in love with a carpenter as well. (By the way, in case you didn't know, Jesus was a carpenter.)

Saturday when I showed back up to share the gems of the Bible bracelets, I was asked if I had brought my beads with again. Some of the girls found out about the rings the next morning and wished that they had known what we had been making the night before because now they want one. Unfortunately I had not brought them with; fortunately I had brought some that I had already made with.
The Bible bracelets were a huge hit once they were made. Making them was a bit of a chore for some. Never realized how hard it was for some people to tie a knot. The girls and moms loved them and some were even wearing them still at church the next day.
I learned a lot of great things about raising girls this weekend listening to the teens and their parents. Took many notes because I am one day going to be a mom of three teenage girls *sigh*. But atleast I won't be alone in it and there are women in the church who will be there to help me through  it, as I witnessed this weekend.