Did everybody have a good weekend?
Mine was full of churchy stuff, and it was really good. Friday night and all day
Saturday, I went to a women's conference which was excruciating and wonderful all at the same time. It was really unlike anything I've ever attended before. It wasn't about sitting in a room and listening to someone talk about how we should feel about God. It was messy and hard and comforting.
Instead of just talking about the "masks" we put on for people and how we have to put the masks down and be real, we MADE masks that represented who we feel we have to pretend to be and laid them down. Then we talked to eachother about where the masks came from. That's where things started to get messy.
There were so many other things we did--lots of journaling about deep questions, discussing our answers with people who were basically strangers to us (at least to me because I'm fairly new at the church), and figuring out what to make of our answers and what our answers reveal about who we were created to be. Best $30 therapy I've ever had.
On top of everything else, it was really good for me because I met several ladies--and in such an intimate setting and discussion of such intimate questions, it's almost impossible to walk out that kind of atmosphere and not feel a connection with the other women. So many of us had the same issues, anyway...we just dress them all differently. It kind of gave me a new perspective on people in general.
Then at church, I had one of the most powerful worship experiences that I can remember. Maybe it was because we had communion (I've really grown to have a special love for communion) or maybe it was a combination of that plus the sermon, plus the music, plus my experience at the retreat. But it just felt right. And free. I've also developed a special love for freedom in worship--something that I didn't realize I didn't have until I stumbled upon it.
2 comments:
Awesome! Thanks for sharing about your weekend. Glad you had a close encounter with God.
I went to a writing class one time where the instructor made us look at ourselves as a statue and then write about it. We were supposed to imagine ourselves in a dark room, with a flicker of light that got brighter as we observed the statue...what it looked like...what it was made out of...what it felt like. Probably one of the most eye opening things I have ever done. I had to force myself to tear off the mask that I wear when I look in the mirror...which is sometimes bigger than the mask I put on for other people.
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