God: Women vs. Wilderness

God: WOW! What an amazing weekend!! The women's retreat this year was such an absolute blessing.  I could write a book on how amazing the retreat was but for the sake of time, I will highlight the best parts.

Friday night started off like your typical women's retreat (which is ironic for me to say because it was my first retreat) but we did the typical retreat things like getting settled in our cabins and chatting with everyone before our first session.  We started our first session at 7:00pm and our speaker was Marian Jordan, founder of Redeemed Girl Ministries.  She didn't tell us much about her story the first night but she did jump straight into why we were here.  Our retreat was about the wilderness.  All people have had wilderness seasons where there is pain, bitterness, feelings of betrayal, sadness, loss, fear and despair.  She explained wilderness as having these emotions and where the emotions take over our thoughts and actions so that we are suffering and not living our lives with joy.  Pain is pain is what she said and no matter what the circumstance, wilderness happens usually when you are at your weakest.

Anyway so after our first session we met with back in our cabin to reflect on session one and talk about any feelings of wilderness that we have felt or are currently feeling.  Some of the other girls talked a bit about what they were going through and it was really sad to hear how they were suffering.  God had been making it extremely clear since about 7:15 that night that i was going to have to deal with my wilderness much sooner than i was thinking...our group leader turned to me and asked how I was doing and if ive ever had a wilderness season.  I held my breath and blubbered out that i was in a very dark wilderness season right now and that i was in the crazy place (Crazy place is where your emotions take over your thoughts and actions and fear is more powerful than God).  I poured out my heart to these women and to God and they gave me such hope and inspiration for how I could get out of my wilderness season.  Mat and I have soooooooo much that we are thankful for and God had blessed us tremendously. We know God loves us and that He has a marvelous plan for us.  However, I was having such a hard time with my parents divorce.  It is the most painful topic ever and it was eating away at me for about the past 2 - 3 years.  And it gets harder as the days go by - the holidays are coming up soon and my dad is trying to move on with his life and be "happy".  I couldn't understand why he was choosing to be happy at the cost of the happiness of our family.  It just seemed so selfish - its like saying to your family - my happiness is more important than yours.  Anyway - needless to say it has been a struggle but it took this retreat to help me realize that God does not have bitterness and despair in our plan.  He is love, joy and certainly forgiveness.  I feel so much more at peace today and I learned this weekend how badly satan wants to ruin my life.  All of these negative thoughts in my head are not coming from God and I have to stand up and say "BE GONE SATAN" and show him that the strength of God is greater and that the devil will never win the war in my life.

I feel like i have my life back - I have my day to day joy and happiness back.  I don't have to let satan try to take over my thoughts and actions and i dont want to waste my life in bitterness.  I've noticed such a change in  my attitude and I thank God and give Him so much praise for healing my heart.

This weekend was so perfect, only God could have orchestrated it.  I am so thankful for all of the amazing women that have come into my life after this weekend and I am looking forward to starting fresh with positive God driven thoughts and actions!

Oh and I have to mention the girls who did our worship music, The Reliques, and they an amazing job!  These girls came out to spend the weekend with us all the way from Austin.  They were both named Sarah and one of the Sarah's had an amazing story that she shared with us this weekend and it was her birthday today too!  Happy birthday Sarah!