the women's retreat

I had a good weekend. Here’s why;
I slept so soundly, and so did Conor. That is really unusual for me when I’m away from home.
I am thoroughly over my need to co-ordinate. While I did find co-ordinating enjoyable (and let’s face it, I’m stinking good at it) my motives weren’t totally altruistic. Co-ordinating let me feel important. And it allowed me to hide – I was too busy to relate well. Now I don’t need to feel important, and I’m comfortable enough not to hide.
Over all, I was just comfortable – I enjoyed being with people, I enjoyed being by myself. I’m not so socially self-conscious anymore. I think blogging, especially the Breathe blog, had a lot to do with that. Being able to connect over the net makes connections in person easier on those rare occasions they occur.

I think God met me there. Even since then, I've been feeling more peaceful, and I've wanted to be with him. I actually managed to read my Bible and pray before I left for work this morning. That's almost unheard of. I think he was talking to me about prioritizing, letting go of the perfect house ideal, focusing on Him, my family, and myself (in a good way). I also feel like He's been telling me to just have faith. For about the last 5 years I have been in a space of a lot of doubting, wondering if this is all true, wondering if I could just be fooling myself. I felt like God was saying that the intellect will never be satisfied, but that I can be satisfied if I just walk out the way in faith.

I played one of my songs. That was...hmmm...hard to describe. I was thinking of this song all weekend - it just fit, in my mind, what God was saying about being close to us. But does thinking about a song mean I should share it? Or is it just for me? Or does it matter? I went back and forth in my mind on Saturday night. The old question: "If I share it, what's the worst that could happen?" Let's see - I could be totally off in my spiritual senses and serve to derail the whole worship atmosphere and thus ruin the night for almost 50 people. That didn't work. What finally convinced me, I'm not sure. I thought that maybe God just likes it when I try. I didn't get much feedback that evening, which caused me to feel like maybe I had just made a total fool of myself. But I did get some more concrete feedback the next day, so I know that it connected with others the way I hoped it would.