Spiritual Retreat 1-28-17

My church held a Ladies Retreat Friday January 27-Sat January 28th. We had about 34 women Camp Hoblitzelle about 1 hour and 20 minutes from Mineral Wells. Mom attended with me. We took her car and had 2 others go with us.
attend. Our venue was at

Our guest speaker was Anna Maher. She is young enough to be my daughter! (Geez, I am getting old!) Her message was simple but very good.

She felt like God had given her three words for us. Rest, Recharge and Re-acclimate. She also shared about dreaming with God. She had us make a list of our dreams. She asked us to start with 10 but to keep adding until we got to 100. I still have some work to do.

We had a session on Friday night and one Saturday morning.

I caught Mom visiting with some of her friends.










During worship Saturday morning I encountered God through a picture He gave me. The very first song we sang was called "All Who Are Thirsty". The lyrics of the chorus are "Come Lord Jesus come". As I am singing those words the picture forms. I see Jesus out on the water. I was in a boat. More like a ship or like a cruise ship. Very big and tall above the water. As I sing the words Come Lord Jesus, I sensed that Jesus was saying to me "I want you to come to Me." As I looked out toward Him from where I was it was very scary how far it was to the water. I kept sensing that He wanted me to come to Him. To do that I would have to jump off the ship. All through worship I kept sensing Jesus calling me to "Come to Him."  We sang several songs when we started singing "Good, Good Father". I began an internal dialogue with myself. "If I truly believe God is good, I wouldn't be so afraid to jump off the ship. I would believe God wouldn't allow me to be hurt." In the picture in my mind I jumped off the ship only to find that the jump wasn't far at all. I realized that it was my "perception" of the situation. My fear distorted my vision. When I chose to believe God was good. A good Father, then my fear was dispelled and I was able to jump and run to embrace Jesus.That isn't something that happens to me all the time so it was pretty cool! 

We had some free time in the afternoon and I walked around a bit. I love going to the lake where there is a cross. I loved how the sun shining on the water looked like diamonds sparkling. I also liked the shadow that was cast from the cross. I was doing some journaling. 

You know me and shadows. I thought I would try to get a picture of my shadow with the cross shadow.

As I was doing this the lyrics to another song came to mind.

Trade these ashes in for beauty
And wear forgiveness like a crown
Coming to kiss the feet of mercy
I lay every burden down
At the foot of the cross

Then I took a selfie. I liked this one too.

The lake is by the cafeteria. After dinner I went back to the lake and cross for a few pictures as the sunset. There were no clouds so the sky wasn't colorful but it was still pretty.

Beautiful and peaceful!



Have a good one!